Chapter Text
When Denki wakes up in the morning, it feels like a sledgehammer is currently being drilled into his brain.
He groans quietly and pulls his blanket over his head, hiding in the soothing darkness beneath the covers. It’s only when he starts to smell his own sweat that he realises how hot he really is.
Blearily, Denki pulls the blanket off his body, kicking it to the end of his bed. He glances at the clock on his bedside table, only to get a shock that comes quite close to one of his own electric charges.
He must have slept through his alarms, because it’s already 8 o’clock and he isn’t even out of bed yet— he’s never gonna make it to the first class of the morning on time.
Denki curses, only to be hit by a cold flush, rushing through his body so suddenly it almost makes him yelp. He grabs his pile of blankets and hugs them close to his body when he starts shivering violently, sparks flying off his skin as he loses control of his quirk for a second.
Once it passes, Denki furrows his brows. He isn’t usually this charged up in the mornings. This typically only happens after a long day spent indoors, with no opportunity to discharge some of his energy, and even those times have become less and less common these days with all the effort he’s been putting into controlling his quirk.
He groans again and bites his tongue, finally throwing the blankets off him for good with a determined look in his eyes. He can’t afford to miss even a single minute of class— not even when he suspects he might be coming down with something. He’s already behind and him being stupid doesn’t help either, so he’s pretty sure he’ll never be able to catch up if he misses even a single class.
Forcefully, Denki throws his legs over the side of his bed, and immediately comes to regret this action. His whole room starts to spin in front of his eyes and he has to squeeze them shut and focus on his breathing in order to stop his world from spinning.
Okay, maybe just a teensy tiny bit slower this time, Denki says to himself as he takes a deep breath and tries to get up a second time. It takes him a few moments, and he has to steady himself on his bedside table, but eventually he doesn't feel like fainting anymore and the banging headache in his head turns into a slightly less banging headache. He exhales and makes his way towards the bathroom sluggishly, dragging his feet, because his limbs feel leaden and exhausted, like he’s been chased around town the whole night.
However, the shower feels good on his sweaty skin and gets him awake, even though he has to adjust the temperature of the water every few seconds, because his body can’t decide if it’s being hot or cold. Briefly, lyrics from one of his favourite English songs pop into his feverish mind, but Denki quickly shakes them away.
After getting out of the shower, he already feels a bit better. He’s not as disgusting anymore and his head feels a lot clearer and less dizzy. However, his quirk is, unfortunately, still very active, buzzing inside of him, and he has to use a great amount of energy to keep the electricity from exploding out of him.
He bites his bottom lip and checks the clock again. He’s gonna be late anyway, so what are a few minutes more? He decides to rummage around in his desk drawer, until he finds various electronic devices, all uncharged.
He keeps them there for emergencies like this one, when his body just won’t cooperate and feels like it will overflow any second, sparks flying when he so much as breathes wrong, when he doesn't have a good enough outlet, a way to get rid of all the excess energy.
His head starts spinning once more, vision blurring at the edges, when he bends down to get them, so Denki slowly sits back down on the edge of his bed and just breathes for a few moments.
One after the other, he starts to charge the electronic devices until there’s a neat little pile to his left with fully charged phones, gameboys and tablets.
He can still feel the electricity sizzling inside of him, but at least it isn’t as bad as when he woke up anymore and he can focus some of his strength on controlling his dizziness instead of his quirk.
The first class of the day is, fortunately, English with Present Mic. English is one of Denki’s better subjects, and Present Mic is usually not as strict as other teachers (cough cough, Aizawa-sensei, cough cough) when it comes to being late, so Denki’s heart is only half racing by the time he knocks on the classroom door.
“Come in, listener!” sounds the booming voice of Present Mic, and Denki tentatively opens the door, all of a sudden sweating profusely under his clothes, even though it’s winter and he just showered a few minutes ago.
“Hi, uhh…I am sorry. I slept over. Excuse me,” Denki stammers upon entering, using broken English, because Present Mic has a zero tolerance policy on speaking Japanese during his classes.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, listener!” Present Mic waves his hands in the air and ushers him to his seat. “We were just getting started! You haven't missed much!”
Quickly, Denki rushes towards his desk and takes his seat next to Shinsou—the newest addition to class 2-A and the person currently on the fast lane to becoming his best friend.
Denki grins and gives him a thumbs-up and Shinsou grants him a lazy smile in return, making Denki’s body shiver. He’s not sure if it’s because of whatever illness he has, or because that’s simply the effect Shinsou has taken to having on him during the last few months.
Shinsou looks tired, the dark purple shadows under his eyes more prominent than ever and skin pale. Denki knows by now that Shinsou struggles quite a lot with sleeping, partly because of his general insomnia and partly because of nightmares Denki knows to be related to his past. He doesn't know what happened exactly, but he would never push Shinsou to tell him. If he feels comfortable enough sharing it with him one day, Denki will gladly listen, but until then, he waits.
Once Present Mic turns his back towards the class and writes something on the whiteboard, Denki quickly turns around in his chair and greets his friends, alternating between a wave and a thumbs-up.
He receives an air high-five from Sero, a thumbs-up from Kirishima and an eye roll from Bakugou in return. Mina is busy checking her many social media accounts in the short time Present Mic isn’t paying attention, so he doesn’t get a reaction from her.
When he turns back around, he does it way too fast, causing his world to start spinning again to the point where he feels sick and he has to focus on his breathing for a while until the overwhelming feeling of nausea passes.
After a few seconds, Denki regains his composure and finds Shinsou looking at him with a frown on his face, so he quickly throws him a thumbs-up as well, ignoring the ringing in his ears. His fingers are already tingling with excess energy, even though he used about eighty percent of all the electricity in his body just twenty minutes ago.
Carefully, so nobody will notice, Denki reaches for the empty tablet he hurriedly stuffed into his bag just before he left, and tries to discharge some of his energy into it. All too soon, however, the tablet flashes a green battery at him, signalling to him that it’s fully charged, and Denki suppresses a frustrated sigh, still buzzing with electricity.
All the noise in the classroom becomes a garbled mess to him, and Denki tries desperately to focus on Present Mic’s voice, but the words just don't make any sense to him and the sound of people hitting the legs of their table or flicking their pens is excessively loud, echoing in his head. A piercing pain shoots through his skull periodically and his whole body feels like it's on fire, yet also exposed to the biting cold of what Denki imagines the arctic must feel like. Frustrated, he stares at the open and mockingly empty notebook on his desk and tries to blink the tears away.
He’s so occupied with the amount of energy it takes him to keep his quirk and his frustration in check that he only hears Present Mic’s question when he asks him for the third time.
“Kaminari?”
“Wha—what? I mean—I mean. Excuse me?”
The motion of whipping his head up at being addressed, leaves Denki wanting to vomit right onto his desk. Present Mic clicks his tongue and shakes his head at him, clearly disappointed.
“Pay more attention next time, listener!”
The words feel like a dagger to Denki’s chest, because Present Mic has always been the one teacher that didn’t judge him for his trouble focussing and his poor attention span.
“Iida, can you please answer the question!” Present Mic says, and turns away from him, not even bothering to give him another chance.
Denki clenches his fists under the table and feels the electricity surging through his body tenfold, his anger at himself making him lose control, and he wants to bang his head against his desk until his body is willing to cooperate again.
“You okay?”
Shinsou leans over to him, a worried glance in his purple eyes, and his brows pulled together in a frown.
Denki startles slightly, another cold flush making him shudder, and he hopes Shinsou didn't notice.
He throws him a wide grin. “Right as rain!”
As fast as he can manage, Denki forces his tired, yet sparking fingers into a thumbs-up and hopes Shinsou will stop wasting his energy worrying about someone like him.
______________________
Lunch time rolls around and Denki doesn't feel any better. In fact, he might even feel worse, judging by the cold sweat on his neck and his trembling hands.
He pushes the food on his plate around with his fork, because just the smell of it nearly makes him retch.
The noise of the cafeteria usually doesn’t bother him (first and foremost because he is, as a general rule, one of the people making the noise) but right now, the loud chatter of different conversations and the sound of dishes clinking are somehow amplified, echoing off the walls of the big room and ringing in his ears, making his headache pretty much unbearably bad.
Mina and Sero are busy squabbling about something and Denki lazily watches them. He assumes it's something to do with food, because Mina is desperately trying to reach the chips in Sero’s outstretched hand, but he can’t be sure because their words aren’t really reaching his brain.
“Will you shut the fuck up, some people are trying to eat,” Bakugou barks and glares at them, his mouth full. Denki laughs and triest to come up with a funny remark, but he finds that the mere motion of opening his mouth is already too exhausting, so he just closes it again and lets his eyelids droop instead.
When Kirishima joins them with his tray filled with food, he brushes Denki’s arm and the sudden contact startles Denki so much, snapping him out of his daze, that his hold on his quirk slips for a second and he feels the familiar sensation of electricity discharging.
“Bro, you shocked me!” Kirishima complains, all but pouting at him.
“Sorry, sorry,” Denki is quick to apologise, lifting his hands up in the air and pulling his lips into a grin. “Thought you might need the extra energy to break up that fight over there.” Denki nods his head in the general direction of Mina and Sero and hopes that they’re still fighting. He can’t really check because he’s too tired to turn his head.
Kirishima laughs. “Good thinking, bro. Bakugou might just blast the whole cafeteria away otherwise.”
He quickly sets his tray down on the table and moves out of Denki’s field of vision, presumably towards Sero and Mina, who are sitting a few metres to his right.
Denki casts his gaze downwards, and his stomach churns as soon as he catches sight of the rice on his plate.
“Hey, how was the movie you watched last night?”
Shinsou’s deep voice breaks him out of his thoughts, distracting him from his nausea for a moment, and Denki blinks, lifting his head in order to look at his best friend.
“It was awesome,” he answers slowly, and forces a smile. He doesn’t remember even a single second of the film.
Shinsou hums quietly, keeping his gaze locked on him and Denki feels like squirming under his scrutinising gaze.
“Which one was it again?”
Denki doesn't know. He remembers a very long conversation with Shinsou yesterday, discussing at length which one of the four movies he should watch, but he can’t, for the life of him, remember which one they agreed on. In fact, he doesn't remember most of yesterday evening, so maybe whatever illness has him feeling like this today started sometime around then.
Denki licks his lips. “Your Name?”
He’s aware that his answer sounds an awful lot like a question, so he tries his best to give Shinsou a confident smile as he repeats, “Your Name.”
Shinsou looks sceptical, searching his face for a few seconds, before he inches closer and whispers something into his ear that Denki doesn't quite catch, even though the cafeteria noise is nothing more than a steady buzzing sound in the back of his mind by now.
His quirk sends another violent wave of electricity surging through his body and Denki should focus all of his energy into controlling it, but—Shinsou is so close to him that he can smell the coffee on his breath and see the hole in his nose where his piercing usually sits and his whole world just zeroes in on the other boy.
He can feel sparks flying off his fingertips, tingling his skin, and he quickly hides his hands in his lap, all the while staring at Shinsou’s pretty purple eyes.
Shinsou’s pretty purple eyes that are looking at him quite expectantly.
“Uhhh. Yeah,” Denki nods, for lack of a better response, because he has absolutely no clue what Shinsou just asked.
Judging by the confused frown on Shinsou’s face, that wasn’t really the answer he was expecting, but before he can get suspicious, the bell rings, signalling the end of lunch and saving Denki from having to explain himself.
He’s one step closer to this day ending, and one step closer until he can finally curl up in his bed and hopefully wake up feeling like his normal self again.
When his friends start getting up, packing their things and talking in way too loud voices, Denki focuses on his breathing and follows them, hiding his full plate until he can get rid of it.
He just has to get through one more class today—homeroom with Aizawa-sensei. He really hopes Aizawa-sensei will go gentle on them today.
______________________
“I am not going to go gentle on you today,” Aizawa announces immediately after walking in. He lets out a long sigh, his eyebags so prominent Denki fears they are going to drop down onto his shoulders one day. Aizawa sighs again and tells them that today’s lesson will be a special training session.
“It's going to be a one-on-one exercise,” Aizawa drawls once they reach Ground Beta, his tone blunt. “You’re going to be fighting against a quirk you’re not used to, that directly counters your own. You need to learn how to fight under unforgiving circumstances.”
Denki tries to listen, but just standing upright while also keeping his quirk in check pushes him to his limit. Add to that the constant banging in his head and the periodic hot and cold flushes, and he only manages to catch about fifty percent of what Aizawa is saying.
“Midoriya, you’re with Iida,” Aizawa announces, and Midoriya is already jumping up and down with excitement while Iida bows.
“Bakugou. With Kirishima.”
Bakugou snarls at his boyfriend, who has already adopted a fighting position, his hands clenched in front of his face and a grin on his lips.
Denki rests his tired eyes for the fraction of a second when Aizawa says, “Shinsou, your partner is Kaminari.”
Forgetting about his condition for a moment, and probably sparking quite a lot due to his lack of focus, Denki turns around to face Shinsou with a wide grin. He throws his hands up in a thumbs-up and receives a shy smile in return as Shinsou rubs his neck.
Denki loves fighting with Shinsou. The most important thing is to not respond to anything he says, which is always a bit tricky because Denki is a quite talkative person by nature. But even if he fails—and that’s a very strong if—the feeling of having Shinsou in his mind, controlling his actions, is weirdly comforting and Denki quite enjoys the tingling sensation of having another person in his head.
But regardless of their quirks, Shinsou’s combat abilities have also increased steadily ever since transferring into the hero course and it’s always a welcome challenge to fight with him and work on improving his own skills.
Denki just wishes he didn't feel so burned out.
Once they have all been sorted into pairs, they are each assigned a private spot of Ground Beta to train on and when they reach theirs, Shinsou is already bending his knees, taking on a fighting stance as they face each other.
“You ready?”
A lazy smile plays around Shinsou’s lips, but Denki knows better than to answer him. Instead, he adopts a similar fighting stance and tries to ignore the blood rushing in his ears.
Shinsou gives him a lazy smirk and loops his capture weapon around a pipe to his left to pull himself up on the rooftop.
A chuckle escapes Denki as he remembers the last time they trained together, when he had simply electrified the ground, shocking Shinsou in the process.
Quickly, Denki straightens up and tries to find a better angle for his sharpshooting gear, turning his head to scan the area. The sudden movement, however, makes his head spin and his vision fray at the edges, and Denki has to stop dead in his tracks, bending over until he can catch his breath.
“Are you okay?” Shinsou’s voice calls from the rooftop, but Denki merely grits his teeth and meets his gaze again, determined to win this fight— what kind of hero loses a battle just because he feels a bit under the weather?
He tries shooting a pointer at Shinsou, but his aim is way off and Shinsou easily dodges the attack—several times.
Without giving Denki the chance to reposition himself, Shinsou throws his capture weapon. It’s not as fast as Aizawa, and it’s not as smooth as the last time they fought, and it’s an attack Denki easily would have dodged if he weren’t so out of it, but as it is, his body doesn't react in time and Shinsou’s capture weapon wraps itself around his arm.
Denki pants heavily, his heart racing in his chest with the amount of effort it takes him to keep his quirk from frying everybody in a perimeter of fifty metres and causing a school wide blackout, but his lips pull up into a smile as he looks down at the white material.
Last time he checked, the capture weapon was made out of fiber and at least partially out of some kind of metal—and metal conducts electricity. Denki grins. This might be his chance to win this fight without exhausting himself any further.
He releases the hold on his quirk the tiniest bit, trying to let a small charge of electricity travel through the scarf and shock Shinsou, but the moment Denki feels the charge leaving his body, he knows something is wrong. It’s too much, too fast, and—it’s not travelling through the capture weapon at all.
Instead, Denki feels his own quirk hitting him, his whole body shaking with the impact of the electric shock. It’s a piercing kind of pain, like when he uses all of his quirk at once and accidentally fries himself in the process, but the pain is a thousand times worse than usual, amplified by his illness and the sudden loss of control.
He hears an earsplittingly loud sound and wonders what could possibly make that much of a noise if not for Present Mic, but when he closes his mouth and tastes blood, he realises it must be him screaming, the sound echoing in his ears and making his head pound.
Then he feels his world shift and his feet lose grip as his body falls to the ground. His head painfully collides with the concrete, making him cry out, and the last thing he sees before his vision goes black is Shinsou running towards him at a velocity that would honestly have made Aizawa proud.