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Shinsou was very, very gay. This was no surprise to him, he always knew he admired men in a way no heterosexual would.
But this, this was unfair.
How the hell was he supposed to get the revision books he needed with that behind the desk‽
Shinsou was pretty average now that he’d finally escaped the cold grasp of his parents, he lived a simple life as a UA student and there wasn’t much else to it.
He’d woken up, gotten dressed, eaten and left before he realised, oh shit! He didn’t understand one of the very fucking important concepts that, without a doubt, would be in the upcoming biology test.
He swore under his breath, thankful that it was a weekend, so he actually had time to revise, which was convenient.
A rushed google search informed him of the best location to find out about it.
The closest library, only a short journey away, which he managed in roughly ten minutes.
The inside had a noticeable lack of life, a few quiet visitors scattered around, browsing for specifics but nothing more.
After he was satisfied with the layout, he made a beeline for the biology section, keeping his footsteps quiet out of nothing more than habit.
The section was large, no doubt big enough to hold all the knowledge he was missing, yet seemed too small in comparison to everything else.
The shelves were neatly packed, in alphabetical order, unsurprisingly. They were well dusted and Shinsou was procrastinating again, wasn’t he?
Sighing, he picked out what he suspected were the right books, and set them down near the front desk just in case he needed to take them out for extra time.
As he was flicking through the first hardback, he accidentally looked up, eyes latching on to a rather green figure hunched behind the desk, face highlighted with the dim blue glow of a laptop screen.
His hair was short, only going down to the base of his face, curls tangling around his ears, their shamrock colour matching his wide eyes perfectly.
He found himself staring at the boy, who looked to be a similar age to himself.
His mouth was moving constantly and if Shinsou listened hard enough, he could hear ghosts of words haunting his lips.
He was awed by the boy, he simply couldn’t get his head around how… He paused, looking for the right adjective.
He didn’t find it.
By the time he was back in reality, the teenager had noticed his staring, and was anxiously glancing from side to side as if he were in trouble.
He blinked, switching his eyes back down to his book, face pink with shame and glare burning holes into the pages.
Shinsou shivered slightly as he felt prying pupils scan him, searching for any hint of something before they turned away.
His cheeks were still red minutes later, even as he skimmed the paragraphs on meiosis. His brow furrowed as he attempted to understand the words as they stared back at him in bold, mocking letters.
The subject wasn’t an easy one, easily mistaken with mitosis, even though the processes resulted in completely different cells.
He struggled to focus on the typing, mouthing the letters in a hopeless dual against the pure, unadulterated confusion.
Shinsou sighed, leaning back against the spine of the chair. He just couldn’t do this right now.
He picked up the books, fully intending to take them out, when he met eyes with the boy from before.
The mentioned man was seemingly trying to break the record for heart attacks given from sheer sweetness as he smiled softly down at his phone, images of cats barely visible from Shinsou’s angle.
Even though he felt his heart melt a little, he simply couldn’t bring himself to approach him, not knowing the smaller had caught him staring.
And so he abandoned his books for the next day, hidden safely.
The day after, when he returned, the green teen was still behind the god fucking damned desk, infuriatingly so.
His head swivelled at the sound of the door’s bell, leading on the probably the most awkward eye contact Shinsou had ever had in his surprisingly sized life.
He felt like that one kid who wore a fucking onesie camping with those eyes on him, judging and concerned.
He shuffled hastily to the hidden books, hoping for a suitable distraction.
Shinsou found it in the dumb texts describing the creation of new cells, even though the explanations were lost on him.
He groaned in frustration, dropping his head into his hands.
Meiosis was stupid.
Biology was stupid.
Libraries were stupid.
And most of all, the green boy was stupid.
If he had the energy, he’d cry.
But he didn’t, so he sat there staring at the wall for a solid five minutes without blinking.
When he regained focus, the sun was shining right into his eyes. He hissed slightly, bringing his hand up. Unfortunately, said hand was the only thing holding his head up, and his chin smacked into the open book.
He swore under his breath, rubbing the sore spot.
As he was doing so, his sight locked on to the green male again.
He seemed to be looking for the source of the sound, head swivelling like a meerkat.
Shinsou chuckled at the imagery, but in the quiet library, the half-laugh made its way to the subject of its origin.
Their eyes met, through several empty spaces across three shelves, which was pretty impressive.
Shinsou held his breath, expecting a frown or something else of the sorts.
He was not expecting a smile, or for the boy to knock over his coffee directly into his lap, but who would’ve?
Although it wasn’t the right thing to do, he ducked down, trying desperately to muffle the shakes of amusement racking through his body.
Now, Shinsou wasn’t usually one to laugh at the suffering of others, (Complete Bullshit) but this man appeared to be a walking stand-up.
Not saying that he wasn’t, but that was different.
He sank back into his book with a sigh. If he managed to get the other’s name by the end of a week it’d be a miracle.
So he continued with his hopeless, and frankly laughable, attempts at returning to revision.
Just as he was beginning to get into it, the greenette emerged from the staff room in shorts, the cycling kind.
Somehow, his mouth went dry and he simultaneously choked on saliva.
He hastily averted his eyes, focusing on the ignored book spread in front of him.
The cartoonish cells stared back at him.
He slapped his cheeks gently, scolding himself for getting distracted again.
This was beginning to form a frustratingly repetitive cycle.
He blinked sluggishly, watching the words swirl below him as they constructed a suspiciously green face.
And that was it, he needed the boy's name just like he needed to fucking revise, because one had to happen.
With a final sigh, he collected his books, piled them in his arms and scraped his chair back.
The route to the counter was impossibly intimidating. Every step he took seemed minuscule in comparison to the lengthy looking path.
Shinsou steeled his nerves and with a deep breath, continued.
After what felt like ages, (but was thirty or so seconds in reality) he was there, with the short greenette looking up at him.
"H-hello, how can I help?"
Averting his eyes, he placed the pile on the desk.
"Could I take these out, please?"
The teen smiled and with a nod, began to scan the books.
As he was doing so, Shinsou got a good look at him.
Thankfully, his name was on a small badge, 'Midoriya Izuku'. As if that weren't good enough, he could see a splatter of freckles smudged on his cheeks, the colour not unlike that of caramel.
And.. he was staring again.
He cleared his throat awkwardly and his line of vision drifted to the floor.
The soft beeps of the machine seemed to bounce off of his brain, sending it into spirals of threading thought. Most of them were about cats and the colour green.
Once he was done, Midoriya pushed the books across the table with a smile.
“P-please bring these back before our three week deadline and come again soon!”
His words were punctuated with a soft smile.
He nodded emptily, scooped up his ‘rewards’, and stiffly walked away.
A giddy grin worked itself onto Shinsou’s face. That wasn’t so bad, right?
Wrong.
Because, like the dumb fuck he is, Shinsou’d managed to leave his bag behind.
Of course, he didn’t notice until he was home.
Shinsou couldn’t sleep that night.
His brain whirred like a pre-quirk computer trying to load more than two tabs of chrome. (Yes, this is a call out post)
He felt as if he’d drunk seven pots of coffee, been dunked in ice water then bathed in energy drinks. It was a strange feeling, without a doubt, but he could get used to it.
He rolled over to face the wall. It was a very nice wall.. and there was a spider on it, never mind.
Shinsou had no idea what was going on with him, but it was weird.
It wasn’t like he wanted to date Midoriya or anything, the thought almost unnerved him, but the way he felt wasn’t exactly platonic.
He sighed, turning over for the upteenth time.
What the fuck are emotions anyway?
Shinsou kicked another rock out of his path, watching it skip across the pavement before dipping into the road.
His hopes of finding his bag again were low, it’d probably been stolen the second he left, but it was worth an attempt to look for it.
And so, for the third time in as many days, he was on his way back to the library.
Almost as soon as he entered, a staff member called out to him and beckoned him over.
“It’s you! Midoriya told us to look out for that hair.” The woman laughed.
“Where is he?”
She blinked at his straight forward question.
“A-ah. He’s off today, something about a raid? He works with the police, you know, and he’s only fifteen.”
Shinsou did not, in fact, know that the cute library guy worked with the police, because he was too fucking awkward to maintain any kind of proximity to him.
“But! He asked us to give this to you, said you left it behind.”
She gestured vaguely to the same dull grey bag he’d lost.
“Thank you.” He bowed his head politely.
He had to admit, although he came for his belongings, he probably wanted to see Midoriya as well.
He didn’t feel as guilty as he thought he would, telling the truth.
Snapping back to the present, he realised that the woman hadn’t finished talking, “Then, for some reason, he comes in to volunteer anyway! Gods, that boy scares me sometimes.”
He nodded emptily, backing away just enough to be noticeable but not enough to be deemed rude. Thankfully, the library worker got the hint and allowed him to leave.
He originally planned to leave with his things, but he might as well get some relaxing time away from the endless chaos of too many (Read: too few) cats.
Fuck, the stress of life was catching up fast. Shinsou barely made it to his usual space before his eyes closed for more than a blink.
When he awoke, it was to a slight shaking from the surface he was leaning on.
He groggily lifted his head, blinking the blur out of his vision.
He turned around, only to come face to face with a bandaged Midoriya, who had a firm grip on the table.
“S-sorry, you wouldn't wake up.” He smiled awkwardly and his hands returned to his sides.
“Fuck,” Shinsou said before he could stop himself, eyes fixed on the white wrappings, “What the hell happened to you?”
Midoriya looked guilty.
“It t-turns out that r-reconstruction and deconstruction type quirks don’t always put y-you back right.”
He looked to the side.
What the fuck?
“Oh, shit I-,” Shinsou cut himself off. If he’d been taken apart then put back together, he wouldn’t want to talk about it, for some strange reason.
“Uhm, you found my bag. Thanks for that.”
Midoriya blushed, “A-ah, don’t worry about that. Anyone would do the same.”
The taller raised an eyebrow, resulting in a small blush of embarrassment.
“Anyway! I- uhm- I saw that you’re looking at biology, right?”
Shinsou nodded.
“If you need any help, I-i could try?” It was more of a question than a suggestion, but hey, who was Shinsou to say no?
Shinsou smiled, it was soft and warm.
“Sure, I’ve been stuck on this one topic for ages..”