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Denki was a good guy, he liked to think. Sure, some of the girls in class thought he was weird and Jirou was constantly aggravated with him, and yeah, maybe he had his moments of total obliviousness, like with the incident involving him giving his opinion of Stain literally two feet away from Iida, but really! He was cool!
Aizawa-sensei didn’t really like him, but hey, totally valid man. Denki was pretty dumb, honestly, but with an electric Quirk that fried his brain anytime he went over a million volts it would be a shock - heh - if he had any neurons left to fire! And he didn’t want to waste those precious bits of brain power on school, even if it was the coolest school ever, learning to become a Pro Hero.
So yeah. Denki Kaminari was pretty secure in who he was and what his role was. The jokester, the funny, airheaded dudebro who hung out with the popular kids and called as much attention to himself without actually giving himself away.
And then the notes started appearing.
To be honest, it hadn’t bugged him much at all in the first place. He had dyslexia and was majorly ADHD so like, reading… yeesh. Especially pure kanji, like who bothered to write just in kanji? The kana everyone was taught was so much more useful, honestly.
Bougie whack jobs, that’s who.
Or, apparently, vindictive Gen Ed students.
It took some looking but eventually Denki found a website that translated pictures and words on pictures from text to audio and he plugged in his phone, uploaded the pictures he took of the notes, and listened disinterestedly as he heard an automated voice tell him to transfer out or get himself expelled because he just wasn’t suited to become a Pro, that he was too dumb, too airheaded, and didn’t work hard enough to be at UA at all.
Some people have way too much time on their hands, seriously.
He let out a snort as he deleted every picture and balled up the different notes - and a worksheet, whoops, which he had to fish out of the trash.
The trash he apparently belonged in. Pfft.
Those kids couldn’t bug him with words, he’d heard way worse in grade school, where the kids were really cruel and their parents couldn’t be bothered to hide their faces from their impressionable youth.
But then it escalated. Apparently laughing when someone tapes a note on your locker is the wrong reaction. Or something.
He walked into class with half a slushie worn on his uniform that day and everyone stared. Jirou made a snarky comment asking him if he’d tried to chew gum and walk at the same time again, though, and a few people laughed. The atmosphere grew calmer and normal resumed.
Until it became extremely clear those idiots clearly had more than enough pocket money on hand to really mess with him, and a hell of a grudge at being overlooked for the Hero Course while the likes of Denki were skating by.
It took two days of slushies painting his uniforms for it to escalate again and he found tacks in his indoors shoes the painful way. Then after that got boring, someone broke into his locker and left shattered glass over his books and his jacket. And then , when he was sure those Gen Eds would get the message that he just wasn’t going to react the way they obviously wanted him to, they resorted to schoolyard violence.
Hooboy did that suck. But it didn’t really matter either.
See, Denki had always resolved to tell his teachers if he ever got bullied physically, and had done so at his last school. His Quirk was too dangerous to fight back, he only felt pity for anyone who bullied him and felt the force of electricity flooding into them after shoving him into a locker. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, they couldn’t do much because it was just a month before middle school officially ended and everyone would scatter to their new high schools or find jobs.
UA had a strict anti-bullying policy and Denki was going to cash in on it, he told himself.
But like always, he put his foot in it.
One of the bullies, a jerk by the incredibly ironic name Abe, had given him a solid whack to the ribs right over a bruise that was forming thanks to Heroics training earlier. He had stumbled into another punch to the gut, again somehow aimed right at the sore spot where Eiji had gotten past his flimsy defence. Abe noticed his excessive reaction and grinned haughtily at him, telling him that nobody would even believe a clutzy Hero trainee was getting bullied since he’s already battered up by his so-called friends every other afternoon. Add to the fact that Denki wasn’t bothering to fight back, and Abe really thought he was in the clear.
The cruel laughter from Abe’s posse hurt more than the punches did, and so did the realization that he really couldn’t report it without a lot worse coming to him.
So he hid it. Played off bruises that showed as training accidents, or after school hours mishaps, like climbing a tree to free a cat that got stuck - which had gotten an approving nod from Aizawa-sensei, so that was something - or accidentally running into a street sign on the walk in.
It was fine.
It was fine.
Eijirou shifted uncomfortably as he caught a glimpse of a bruise on the side of his friend’s neck. It looked like a handprint.
Denki wasn’t fine, not by a long shot.
His funny jokes had lost their shine, his eyes seemed to dim a little more every day, and he was sore and stiff days and days after the worst physical classes had ended.
He had fresh bruises that lasted weeks longer than they should have.
So yeah, Eijirou was worrying about Denki. That’s normal for friends to do, right?
Worrying didn’t mean watching, though. And worrying probably didn’t remotely cover
stalking.
It wasn’t manly, not at all, but Eijirou laid in wait and rationalized to himself that he was helping a friend out of a difficult situation, which was manly as fuck.
Not for the first time, though, did he wonder why he was doing this. Why he hadn’t brought his suspicions to Aizawa-sensei, the epitome of manliness, or All Might-sensei, who was a God amongst the manly.
Why he felt the need to meddle in someone else’s clearly private business.
But then Denki walked by the room Eijirou had been hiding in and all other thoughts left his mind, instead using that energy to grab Denki around the forearms and tug him into the room.
He didn’t expect the gasp of pain and terror that Denki squeaked out. He didn’t expect the flinch and cowering that he was now faced with, Denki hunched over in a small ball as if protecting himself from someone taller and bigger than him.
Eijirou hadn’t expected it to hurt this bad to see tears dropping onto the floor.
“Just get it over with!”
The words jolted through the two of them, Denki stiff as if he didn’t plan on those few words slipping out and Eijirou statuesque as he took in the many implications and possibilities those five words now faced him with.
Eijirou decided he was going to have to beat someone up later.
Or cry. Probably cry.
“Denki? Wah- what’s going on with you?”
Eijirou suddenly had a different concern as Denki’s neck snapped up with an audible click, worrying about how to tell if whiplash could occur at that speed.
The sight of Denki’s face, though, banished that worry. His face was splotchy and pink in some places, his eyes reddened by tears that seemed to linger and well up in the corners of his eyes like some manga character, his lips parted in confusion that turned to fear within mere heartbeats of their eyes finding each others’.
“Eiji?”
Hearing half his name squeaked out did something to Eijirou’s heart that he would inspect at length later, but first it was time to be a man and confront his increasingly distressed friend.
“What’s wrong? And please don’t tell me you’re-” “I’m fine!” “fine- no, Denki, I’m your friend and I want to know the truth so I can help you!”
Eijirou swallowed around the painful lump forming in his throat.
“Is someone hurting you? Is it a… a teacher? Or an adult? We can go to Aizawa-sensei together, he’ll protect you, unless he’s the one who’s…” “No!”
Denki suddenly burst into tears again, but in Eijirou’s experience with tears being cathartic, his friend seemed to be on the verge of releasing whatever secret pain he had been keeping to himself. So Eijirou did what came naturally and hugged Denki close, gently mindful of the bruises he’d seen over the last few weeks.
It seemed to be his smaller friend’s undoing, and when the floodgates opened and Denki admitted that three or four boys from Gen Ed 1-C were bullying him, Eijirou was glad to have him in his arms or else he would have put his fist through the door, which would have terrified Denki further and caused him to lose his friend.
Losing Denki scared him more than it probably should.
He’d figure that out later. Right now, protecting Denki was his priority.
“...and they come find me every single day and they know I can’t say anything to Sensei or the principal or Recovery Girl cuz then they’ll look into everything and there’s stuff about my family that they can’t know, they just can’t, and Eiji please you can’t tell them, please you can’t!” Denki was sobbing, every rough gasp torn from him stabbed through the taller boy viciously.
“Denki…” he muttered hopelessly, then pulled himself together for his friend, “Well then if the adults can’t help you, and I’m putting aside what you just said about your family for later because we will talk about that, I’ll help you.”
Denki’s hands came to scrub at his eyes and like a kind friend, Eijirou offered him a tissue from a pocket of his pants to clean himself up with. No words had to be spoken between them for the moment, the silence a gentle truce agreed upon together.
And when Eijirou thought he finally had his shit together after all that , Denki’s soft voice called him back to reality. “How are you going to help? They don’t care about hurting me visibly anymore, not after I lied about that black eye they gave me, so getting between them and me won’t work. They’ll just hit you and you don’t deserve that, you’re going to be a great Hero and I’m just an idiot who got lucky…”
“Stop. I’m not going to just get between them and you,” Eijirou started, and seeing the deadened vacantness in his friend’s eyes, added on, “And you’re not an idiot, and honestly you weren’t lucky. If anyone was going to get into UA with that exam, you’d be in front of me on any list. You’re kind of terrifying, don’t you know that?”
Watching the blonde blink and tilt his head was just too cute, Eijirou decided. C’mon, Denki looked like a confused kitten! Who wouldn’t find that cute! He was just so cute that Eijirou found his arms encircling his friend again.
He grinned.
“If you’ve forgotten that, then I guarantee those idiots in Gen Ed haven’t even considered it. Denks, your Quirk could stop someone’s heart with such a low voltage you would hardly have to think about it. You could take down the power grid alone and harness wild, raw, untamed lightning without so much as sweating,” he boasted on behalf of the boy in his arms.
Taking his enthusiasm down a notch, he smiled down and stated, as if his word was the complete truth, “Denki, I think you might have the most versatile Quirk in our whole class, including Midobro and Todobroki.”
Denki’s breath hitched. The way Eijirou said it, so easy, as if it was just a universal truth… The grass was green, fire was hot, and Denki’s Quirk was versatile and he was badass.
It made the world shift on its axis, just a bit. And without realizing it, the past few weeks of learned behavior melted off of him in the warmth of Eijirou’s reassurance and confidence… in him.
Which made his voice cracking even more embarrassing than it usually was.
“REA-lly..?”
He covered his mouth and groaned, head tipping forward to land on Eijirou’s shoulder and oh… oh no, his shoulders were actually really comfy. So were his arms, which had returned around Denki’s waist.
He’d think about that later.
If he could think at all.
Proving his point that shorting out might just be the safest and sanest option, Eijirou laughed softly and the sound sent tremors down his spine.
“We all do it, s’ fine Denks. Uh… I can say that, right? Y'know, we’re friends, right? You… you still think of me as a friend, even if I’m budging in and making this my problem?” The flash of insecurity that struck Eijirou was gone in a second, but like lightning Denki was highly attuned to it and immediately nodded his head up and down, “Yeah! I’ve been called Kami or Nari before too, I don’t mind either… Can I keep calling you Eiji or Ei? It’s… nice.”
Another split second emotion covered Eijirou’s face when he reacted and Denki found himself just as attuned to it as the last, this time a vibrant flush that disappeared even quicker, and he even had to strain his ears to hear his mumbled, “ Please don’t stop calling me that.”
Like fate had wanted to intervene before Denki could reassure Eiji that it was okay that he’d intervened, before he could confess that if he hadn’t stepped in Denki would have just let it keep happening, the sound of raucous laughter broke the easy spell over the two boys.
Denki, who had been lulled into a semblance of peace and serenity being in those strong arms with his friend who promised to protect him, stilled again and shifted away a little to protect himself on instinct.
Eijirou, on the other hand, bristled in a Bakugou-like way. His Quirk thrummed under his skin, begging to be activated at the sound of a threat, but instead of letting Hardening stiffen his body, he pulled Denki as close as possible.
For a moment, the scared blond thought he heard a low growl leave the red head’s lips.
For that one moment, Denki thought he might’ve died and gone to heaven.
But the moment passed and three boys plus Abe piled into the room with sickening grins on their faces and phones in their hands. One of the other boys’ phones was blinking white light at them, signalling that it was on and recording. Or taking pictures.
Either way, the sight made Denki shut down and he wanted to hide even more.
“Well would you look at that! The Hero Course is just full of surprises, isn’t it boys? Who’d have thought that there were two f-”
Suddenly Denki felt exposed and cold, and realized he was standing alone just as he heard a crack and a yelp of pain. He looked up and startled when he saw Abe holding his nose, blood gushing between his fingers, and Eijirou’s face was almost as red as his hair. His fist still extended, shaking in midair, he looked angrier than Denki had ever seen him - with the exception of the one time one of Monoma’s comments got to him and he put his fist through a wall.
Denki barely recognized his friend's voice and stared even more as Eijirou started in on what promised to be a venomous rant.
“That’s enough. I am so sick of watching my best friend come to class scared and hurt, especially since he could defend himself without a second thought! You… you suck and he doesn’t deserve to be tormented by you!” Eijirou lashed out, standing in front of Denki and sending the message clearly - touch Denki again and they’ll regret it, painfully.
Denki blinked when he saw a faint smirk settle into place over Eijirou’s lips.
“Did you know that a shock with as low a voltage as 42 milliamps is enough to kill a grown man?”
Denki did. He knew that he couldn’t risk fighting back, his Quirk surged to protect him any time he was hurt and anything from thirty milliamps to a thousand could seriously injure or even completely shut down any would-be assailant’s body. Of course, he would undoubtedly get in trouble for it, so he kept the voltage down and when he couldn’t, he’d turn it inwards.
His organs were probably soup. Tasty, tasty electric soup.
Eijirou had obviously continued, telling his bullies in graphic detail all variations of the ways that Denki could protect himself but hadn’t because he was going to be a Hero and didn’t believe in lashing out without extremely good reasons.
Tuning back in as Abe’s face paled further, Denki found that Eijirou had continued on to describe the ways he, Kyouka, and even Bakugo and Hanta could retaliate, ending with “And like you enjoy reminding him constantly, we’re in the Hero Course so we’re learning how to hide a body.”
The terror on the four bullies’ faces shouldn’t feel good, Denki thought, but damn if it wasn’t nice to get some vindication for his weeks-long torment.
They deserved it.
After Abe’s crew were faced with Eijirou’s protective fury and threatened with a visit from the most volatile members of their class, they made a show of deleting whatever they were doing with their phones and promised not to bother Denki again. Abe couldn’t quite meet Denki’s eyes when he made that promise, and Denki resolved to keep shaking his shoes out for a few more days just in case.
Soon, Eijirou and Denki were left alone, and Eijirou still looked ready to hit something, but Denki had never felt safer than when his friend stood up for him.
So instead of flinching away, he gently took Eiji’s hand and squeezed, making his redhead- his friend - smile and relax a little. “Sorry,” he murmured, again causing Denki’s stomach to flip, “I have a thing about bullies.”
Denki put on a smile the way some people put on a jacket, to protect and soothe, and let his thumb run over the back of his best friend’s hand, “You can tell me about it another time.”
Eijirou’s face lit up light pink and he mustered the courage to smile back nervously, smiling more naturally than Denki felt like he could in the moment, “Thanks Denks. Wanna go to the cat cafe?”
Denki’s real smile lit the room more than any display of electricity could hope to, and the two boys walked out together, to a brighter day and a future with four less bullies.
Meanwhile…
Aizawa Shouta glared out at the four hooligans that had run into him, running frantically over the track. All of them had been manic with energy, one cradling a broken nose, and had proceeded to whine at him about two of his students “going crazy” and “attacking all of them”.
Only one of the number was injured, and the four students were also remarked on by his mentee Hitoshi as being “way too full of themselves to ever actually put in the work to get into the Hero Course despite being insistent that they’re Hero material.”
It had been a day of so much salt, and honestly, Shouta was proud that the kid was comfortable enough to bitch about his soon-to-be former classmates like that.
One thing Hitoshi had warned was about another of his students, “Keep an eye on Pikachu, Aizawa-sensei. Those kids want to fuck someone up, and he’s the perfect target for ‘em.”
So when they tried to implicate Kaminari and Kirishima of all people, he had run out of patience, and put on his most sadistic smile.
“Five more miles to go, heathens. Unless you want detention on top of humiliation, get yourselves moving,” he grit out, watching the four boys stop for the third time to catch their breath.
If they wanted to be Heroes, well that was one thing. Send them on a ten mile run as punishment and see how they like the workout.
But if they wanted to bully future Heroes, they didn’t deserve the chance.
Especially not his students.