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Hitoshi is confused to say the least.
The young alpha has just finally figured out how to accept and appreciate love and attention from his parents, which means he doesn’t quite know how to react when other people are maybe giving him some?
Through his last years of middle school, he maintained his status as a loner, and that was okay with him. He had so much to think about concerning getting into UA and training with his dads that he never thought he would have time to make friends. Shouta always told him that he definitely did have time to make friends, but that wasn’t all. Even if he didn’t have to worry about time, making friends didn’t come easily to him. He found it hard to make connections to other people. He never tries to come off as mean, but sometimes he doesn’t know what to say and throws in a snarky or sarcastic comment. He’s working on it, okay? But overall, he’s decided that he doesn’t need friends at his high school.
That went out the window on pretty much the first day. Midoriya, Ochaco, Iida, and eventually Todoroki pretty much forced him to be their friend, making him sit with them at lunch and study with them in the dorms. At this point, he could begrudgingly admit that he likes being included in their friend group. They were nice and they accepted Hitoshi for who he is, not pressuring him to act a certain way around them. Most importantly, they weren’t afraid of his quirk.
He understands now that there are people who want to be his friends, and he's adjusting to the thought, he really is. And he’s also realizing that there are still people who are afraid of him. Like Denki Kaminari.
Or it’s really confusing with the blond. Usually, his classmates would just pretend he doesn’t exist if they didn’t like him, but not Kaminari. The smaller boy would follow him around the school, and for two months now, Hitoshi would catch him staring at him in the hallways, during class, and at practice. At first, Hitoshi just thought that the omega might be intimidated by him, which isn’t surprising given his height and brainwashing quirk, but now he’s not so sure.
Kaminari flirts with everyone. He would flirt with Ochacho and Sero and Jirou so often, he’s even seen him flirt with Bakugou once. The blond practically walks into class everyday and compliments every single person he comes into contact with.
Kaminari flirts with everyone except Hitoshi. Kaminari jokes and laughs with everyone except Hitoshi.
Every time the two of them have to interact or talk, Kaminari just turns bright red and stammers. To Hitoshi, this obviously means that he’s nervous and afraid of him. It doesn’t help Hitoshi’s confidence with the situation that Mina glares and Bakugou growls at the alpha whenever he’s about to approach Kaminari, the female alpha and male omega being very protective over their friend. The only logical explanation being that Kaminari talks about how much Hitoshi scares him, and they’re just trying to defend their newly developed pack.
It’s fine. Whatever. Except it’s not. The worst part is that sometimes Hitoshi thinks that maybe he’s read the situation wrong. Because sometimes Hitoshi will be verbally battling with Bakugou, and the blond omega will burst into laughter over something Hitoshi said, but the second he looks over, Kaminari immediately looks away in order to not make eye contact with him.
Hitoshi tells his dads this one night at dinner when they could tell that his emotions were so pent up.
“Did you ever seriously think that he has a crush on you?” Hizashi asks his son with a smirk on his face. The older alpha has seen the way the blond omega looks at his son in his English class. He also knows that his son is too dense to figure this out on his own. It’s not his fault, he’s young, and he’s learning, albeit slowly.
“Dad. We’ve been over this,” Hitoshi groans. “He doesn’t like me, I think I would know.” The boy had been fighting his father over the fact that the other boy didn’t even like him, so there was no way that he had a crush on him. Hitoshi has promised himself that he is not going to get his hopes up just for them to be thrown to the ground and stomped on.
But just thinking about the blond makes Hitoshi’s thoughts wander a little to the way that Kaminari’s smile is blinding and how funny he is and his jokes make even Hitoshi smirk and he’s super talented and will make a great hero.
Yup, Hitoshi is screwed. He just has to like the one person who’s scared of him. Just his luck.
---
Class reps Iida and Kendo decided that it would be good for the two classes to get together and do some training as a bonding activity. It’s a Friday night and all forty first year were sitting in one of the gyms. They settled on no quirk one-on-one sparring, names being pulled out of a hat to make sure pair ups were completely random, since their teachers had been grilling them on relying on their quirks too much.
Up on the mat was Kaminari and Hagakure. Hitoshi was rather impressed with how long the round had gone given that Kaminari was against an invisible partner. He must have been paying extreme attention to her little sounds and the weight changes on the sparring mat. Unfortunately for the omega, he was tripped and pressed face first into the mat, panting in exhaustion.
Hitoshi was genuinely admiring Kaminari’s sparring techniques when one of the alphas from Class 1-B let out a whistle.
“Whoo, what a sight that is. I want him pinned underneath me like that,” Tsuburaba lets out, smirking and making a lewd gesture with his hand at his friend next to him as Kaminari’s shorts were riding up.
Hitoshi immediately turns to the other alpha. “Dude, shut the fuck up.”
Tsuburaba lets out a sneer, “What’s your problem?”
“Don’t talk about him like that.” Hitoshi figured it should be obvious. During his time at UA, he has not once heard someone talk about an omega like that. Most students were respectful and saw omega students as equals.
“Oh shut up, I bet you were thinking the same thing.”
“You’re a disgusting piece of shit,” Hitoshi challenged.
“Yeah? What are you going to do about it, huh?” Tsuburaba says, pointing a finger at Hitoshi’s chest.
At this point, Hitoshi realizes that the majority of the gym was staring at them, being much louder than he originally thought. Kirishima and Mina were holding Bakugou by the armpits, thinking it would be hard to explain Tsuburaba’s injuries as anything but in a sparring match. The red and pink alphas were trying to get it through Bakugou’s head that he can’t kill Tsuburaba no matter how justified it would be.
Hitoshi looks over and sees Kaminari a bright shade red, the boy not knowing what was going on but knowing that a lot of attention was on him, spurring on his next statement. “Let’s spar next. If I win, you have to seriously apologize to Kaminari and then run five laps around campus.”
“Alright, when I win, you have to announce to the gym that you have a small knot and then take your laps.”
“Whatever, man.” There was no way in hell that Hitoshi was going to lose.
Iida looked hesitant, not liking that they were breaking the rules made about random pairings, but one look at Kaminari’s face made him agree.
The second Iida says go, Hitoshi is in action, kicking the other alpha’s legs out from under him and pinning Tsuburaba to the mat with a knee on his back. That was the fastest mat all night.
“What the - dude you cheated!” the pinned yells, accusingly.
“How?” Hitoshi asks, unamused.
“I don’t know, but I know you did!” At this point he was just being ridiculous. “I want a rematch!”
Hitoshi just sighs, of course he wouldn’t accept defeat that easily. He’s about to tell him no when another voice jumps in.
“Alright,” Kaminari steps up to the mat after Sero informed him of what they were sparring over. “But this time you can spar a round with me. And when you lose, you can apologize to me and then run ten laps instead of five.”
Hitoshi wasn’t going to argue with him since he was part of this, too. He gets off of Tsuburaba and gestures to go ahead.
“Ha! Easy peasy!” He must not have actually been paying attention to the match before.
Kaminari and Tsuburaba assume position until Iida indicates for them to start. The alpha immediately lunges for the omega, who dodges almost seamlessly. Kaminari easily puts the alpha into a headlock and pulls both of them to the ground, twisting in the air as they fall so that Tsuburaba lands underneath the other. The omega sits on the other’s lower back and presses his hand into the back of his head to keep him down.
Tsuburaba’s face was bright red in humiliation as Kaminari finally let up.
“I believe you have something to tell me,” Kaminari says standing up and crossing his arms over his chest.
The alpha gets up and looks to the floor, mumbling.
“What was that? I didn't quite catch what you said.”
“I’m sorry, okay!” the alpha yells.
“Better get running,” Hitoshi tells him, smirking.
With a huff, he takes off running out of the gym. Kendo runs after him. “I’ll keep watch to make sure he does all ten laps, I’m so sorry about that Kaminari!”
The blond omega waves to Kendo before turning to look up to the young alpha standing next to him. He opens his mouth and then closes it, not knowing what to say. Kaminari would rather not make a fool of himself at the moment, so instead he just lifts his hand up to Hitoshi for a high five.
Hitoshi hesitates for a second before gently slapping the other’s hand. Crap, he really hopes that his hands aren’t sweaty.
Hitoshi wants to talk to the other boy, wants to tell him how impressive he is and how funny he thinks he is. But, pretty much the second Hitoshi opens his mouth to talk to the other boy, Kaminari is pulled away and checked on by his friends, leaving Hitoshi wondering if he did the right thing.
---
That night was rough for Hitoshi.
He laid in his bed in his dorm and just stared at the ceiling, thinking about what happened that evening. Kaminari high fived him, so that must mean that he at least doesn’t hate him, right? Ugh, he doesn’t know how to read people.
For as long as he could remember, he always had a difficult time sleeping, and while it was slowly getting better since he was adopted, it wasn’t great. It didn’t help that he couldn’t stop thinking about the blond.
He sighs before sitting up in bed and wrapping his comforter around his shoulders. He slips on a pair of sweats over his boxers and tugs on a sweatshirt before leaving his dorm and locking the door behind him. He climbs the steps up to the roof.
He liked to watch the stars and think when he was having nights like these. Being in the crisp air usually helped clear his head.
Hitoshi opens the door to the roof, feeling relief from the cool air, but stops when his eyes meet Kaminari’s face. He freezes, not really knowing what to do. Normally, nobody else occupied the roof when he came up. He supposes nothing about this day has been normal.
“Sorry, I’ll go,” Hitoshi says, starting to retreat back into the doorway.
“No wait!” Kaminari calls out, a look of desperation on his face.
“Oh, okay.” Hitoshi pulls the comforter tighter around his shoulders before sitting next to the other boy.
They sit there in silence, just looking up at the stars and the clouds in the distance while they muster the courage to talk to each other.
“Do you-”
“Thank-”
They both start at the same time. Kaminari just lets out a little laugh. “You first,” he says, gesturing to Hitoshi.
Hitoshi takes a deep breath before asking the both boy what has been on his mind for the past couple months. “Do you hate me?”
That makes Kaminari’s eyes widen and hands wave in front of him. “I don’t hate you! I swear! Why did you think that?”
“I don’t know. You act like it sometimes, I mean, you talk to literally everybody, but me.”
Kaminari fiddles with his fingers as Hitoshi continues. “You always act scared and nervous around me.”
Kamiari hunches his shoulders and looks to the ground as Hitoshi finishes. “And all your friends glare at me whenever I’m around you.”
“Sorry, they’re just really protective of me,” the small blond mumbles.
“Protecting you from me?”
“I promise, it’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?”
“I really like you,” he mumbles. “And I might have told them, and now my pack is kinda being overdramatic.”
Now it’s Hitoshi’s turn to blush. “What?”
“I really like you, and I get nervous around you because you’re so cool, and I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of you, but I think that backfired.” Kaminari looks down at his hands that are clasped together. “I see you, and I just freeze up. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
Damn, his dads were going to have a field day. Hitoshi doesn’t know how to proceed, that was not where he thought this conversation was going to go.
“But, you flirt with everyone else so easily?” Hitoshi questions after a moment. He was having a hard time processing this.
“That’s all just for fun. I seem to psych myself out whenever I want to flirt for real, sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. I’m sorry, I have a habit of assuming the worst.”
“Can we start over?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
They sit there just looking at the stars when Hitoshi realizes that the boy next to him was starting to shiver. Okay, Hitoshi goes over in his head, this boy just just confessed his feelings, so he feels like he should be okay with sharing a blanket, or would that be weird? Oh crap, he didn’t say anything back.
“I can tell that you’re freaking out, your scent is going a little crazy. If you want, you can completely forget I said anything,” Kaminari looks a little disappointed.
“No, no!” Hitoshi quickly rushes out. “I have just never had my feelings reciprocated before.”
“Reciprocated?” Kaminari asks, voice high.
“Yeah, I think you’re really cool,” he says scratching the back of his neck. He can feel his face burning.
“Oh, cool,” Kaminari responds.
They were so awkward, it hurt.
“What are you doing up here anyway?” Hitoshi asks him.
“As you know, I wasn’t having a super nice day, being objectified and all. Thank you, by the way, for sticking up for me, that means a lot,” he says bumping shoulders with the alpha. “And a storm is brewing, so there’s some electricity in the air. It feels nice on my skin. What about you?” Kaminari continues to shiver next to him.
“Insomnia.” Gosh, Hitoshi! You can be so cool and suave with everyone else but him, it’s literally required for your quirk! What’s wrong with you? You’re not a wimp, so just share the damn blanket with him!
Mustering up the courage to make a move, the alpha drags the corner of his blanket over the omega’s shoulders. Kaminari gives Hitoshi a blinding smile, releasing happy pheromones that surround them in honey. Their shoulders bump, shocking Hitoshi a little. He feels like he could scream out of happiness.
“Hey, you’re really good at sparring. I was extremely impressed earlier today. Where’d you learn that technique?”
“Oh, my mom is a pro hero, so she’d train with me once I told her I wanted to be a hero.”
“My parents, too.”
“Do they also have brainwashing quirks?”
“Uh, no. I was actually adopted. One of my dads has an erasure quirk and the other has a voice quirk.”
“That makes it seem like Mr. Aizawa and Mr. Yamada are your parents,” Kaminari jokes.
When Hitoshi just laughs a little instead of denying the statement, Kaminari’s face lights up.
“No way! Are you punking me right now?”
Hitoshi just shakes his head.
“Wow,” the omega breathes out, not really knowing what to say.
“You really need to teach me that move you used on Tsuburaba,” Hitoshi says, a small smile gracing his lips. He didn’t like talking to a lot of people, but he felt good sitting here with Kaminari. He felt electric.
“The headlock?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Alright, are you free tomorrow morning?”
“I should be.”
“Wanna meet me at the gym then?” Kaminari looks hopeful.
“Yeah. How about breakfast afterwards. I know a really good café down the street.”
Kaminari smiles at him. “It’s a date!”