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Denki groaned as consciousness came fluttering in, his eyes creaking open slowly. He looked quickly around his room, trying to gauge the time of night by the light peaking through his blinds. Maybe, if he can fall asleep quickly he can manage to get more rest before his alarm goes off. Grasping onto that hope he glues his eyes shut and begins counting, trying to bore his mind into sleep again.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five…
The sound of Britney Spears interrupts his thoughts, as his alarm blasts his eyes open once more.
“Fuck this.”
He rolls out of bed, dramatically, with his knees making a harsh sound against his floor, his upper body follows suit. The wood barely misses impact with his head, saving him from one of the more embarrassing injuries he could have obtained. Criss-cross on the floor, sock fibers tickling his thighs, and an oversized shirt pulling at his clavicle he feels a sensation hard to miss. It is the man living on his head, ass crack right on the back of his eyes as he sits down heavily. The pressure is a constant reminder that no matter how hard he tries he will never be able to calmly wake up and entertain a normal day.
Peeling himself off the floor, he makes his way through the motions. Stretch, check, shower, check, brush teeth, check, put on uniform- half check. He manages to conquer putting on pants just fine. It’s when he looks down at the cliff of buttons running downing his shirt that he runs into the flashing ‘error’ sign in his head. He knows how to button a shirt, promise! But, he can’t seem to imagine how the ivory buttons manipulate themselves into the holes. He picks at both sides of the shirt, a button in between two fingers, and stares . He can feel the pressure on his eyes swim, and his vision starts processing the world with half of its usual frame rate. Here we go.
The button in his hand is dropped, his body no longer operating at his own violation. He stands there and takes it, because as his hand goes back for the button, then drops it again, he can barely process it.
He doesn’t want to keep picking at it, but he’s stuck like a broken record. He tries to stop, and yet it keeps repeating, just like how his vision is getting blurrier. Just blink . Just blink and it will be over. He knows he can blink, he knows he’s trying. He knows he’s trying to stop picking at the damn button, and he knows his body isn’t starting to sway because he thought it would be fun.
Then he blinks.
And blinks again.
He drops the button, frowning at it now as he slowly blinks back to his feet, applauding himself as he manages to stay standing of his own accord.
One seizure down.
His day had only begun a half hour ago.
He lets himself breathe for a moment before he tries to tackle the goliath of buttons on his shirt once more. Buttons swiftly move into place now, he barely even has to guide the task with his eyes.
The rest of his uniform takes a significantly less amount of time to put on, only a few seconds lost to mindless staring. Overall, he finds the fact that he was only a few moments late to lunch an accomplishment.
Egg whites and syrup drift to his nose, the apple-y smell of bacon following suit. Breakfast in the dorms was always a welcome sight for Denki, with people such as Bakugou and Satou cooking daily it was hard to not water at the mouth at the thought of meals. Yet, as he’s drenched in the scent of homecooked food it does nothing but accentuates the churning in his stomach.
God, it sucked to have to work through his seizures. It sucked to ignore the rolling in his stomach and the way his limbs felt heavy with each movement. His head ached and each action felt harder to do than the last. He just wanted to sleep.
“Dunce Face,” Denki looked over to where Bakugou was standing, an apron tied around his waist and a spatula in hand, “are you eating or not?” He stares for a moment trying to decide if it were worth it. Skipping breakfast would be a sure-fire way to cause another seizure, but, then again, his stomach- it felt as though a donkey kicked him in the gut. “Tick, Tick, motherfucker, I’m not gonna stand here all day.”
“I’ll skip, thanks though!” he shot a smile, giving Bakugou a thumbs up as well for good tidings. All he was given was a shrug and a slight frown before the other turned back to his pan.
“Are you feeling okay, Kaminari?” Sero looked at him with concern, eyebrows drawn into eachother, making Denki feel awful for making his friend feel so worried. Sero had always been the best at reading him, having been friends since the other moved to his school in the last year of middle school. Sero had helped him through seizures, had helped him focus on homework, and had generally been supportive when Denki needed it. He knew he could trust Sero, he knew that when he had asked him to help keep his seizures quiet.
He knew when Sero said that he would beat anyone up that made fun of his seizures that he wasn’t lying, yet, that did nothing from deterring his desire of keeping them a secret.
It wasn’t that he was embarrassed about it.
But, he was.
He’s seen videos of himself as he’s seized. The phone that had been thrust in front of him would play the video, and he would watch in horror as his eyes roll back, and his face goes slack and pale. Life would leave him in his seizures, leaving a shell of a human with glazed eyes, the only sign of life is the way his pupils grew and shrunk and the rapid blinking. Any movement would become distorted, his head moving like a doll without enough stuffing.
Denki’s classmates didn’t need to see him like that. Certainly, they would treat him like glass, scared to punch him as hard or be wary of his contributions on the field. They already laughed and teased at his short-circuiting, something that unbeknownst to them was a series of small seizures that kept him dazed. When he couldn’t do his homework, nearly in tears as the words blurred and danced around the paper, they would tease him for being “stupid Kaminari” and the likes.
He knew that Mina, Kirishima, and Bakugou were his friends, but sometimes he wishes that instead of teasing they would offer to help him read, or explain how the fuck exponents work.
With all of this, Denki can’t help but fear how much more their perception of him would change if they knew that quite regularly his brain decided to throw a party without any notice and left him incapacitated. It might not be all bad, they might be kinder when he’s short-circuited or offer him time to recover. But. The chance that it would be like middle school again, where kids would come up to him and roll their eyes back and say shit like, “Boobs!” was still a possibility.
So, Sero just asking if he felt well, it meant a lot. He hopes he conveys his thankfulness when he nods in agreement, he is feeling better than this morning and sits next to Sero.
“What do you think Aizawa will make us do today?”
“Hopefully, nothing like those robots from last week.”
“Don’t remind me!” Sero groans.
“Right! I’m still sore,” Jirou teases as she sits down across from them, scooping a piece of toast off of Ochako’s plate who sits next to her, receiving a small slap on the hand.
“Well, you didn’t have a car thrown on you,” Hitoshi teases as he also sits down, a mug of black coffee steaming the air. Denki, laughs, remembering his boyfriend’s face as the shadow loomed over him. He had looked like a rained-on cat. “Hey! It’s not funny, I could've died.”
Denki kept laughing, much to his boyfriend’s growing frown. He couldn’t help it, the girlish scream that had escaped Hitoshi had practically become his ringtone. Sero laughs beside him as well, both him and Jirou coughing around their breakfast. The laughter begins to carry strangely, despite their proximity, making Denki’s eyebrows bunch in confusion. Suddenly, as though time had sped up around him, the laughter became a low buzzing.
Oh.
He’s having a seizure.
He doesn’t think it lasts long, as soon he’s blinking back into the room, not having even noticed that his vision had eased into darkness. His friends are looking at him oddly, as though he had just announced he was pregnant. But no, he was sure he hadn’t done that.
“What?”
“Nothing, just you looked kinda stupid there for a moment,” Jirous laughs, trying to make light of the situation, yet her mouth is set in a slight frown. Denki laughs along with her, trying to rope Hitoshi into believing he was just goofing around, although he doesn’t seem to buy it. The downturn of his laugh probably isn’t helping his case, however, his mind seems to get stuck replaying that word. Stupid.
Running into the glass door with a spoon in his mouth was stupid. Going outside during a thunderstorm and getting hit by lightning was stupid.
Was having a seizure the same?
Shaking his head he rids himself of those thoughts, thoughts his therapist definitely would not condone.
“I’m just being stupid!” he teases, ignoring Sero’s pitying eyes, “I was just trying how to remember how to spell.”
“Spell what?”
“Anything!”
Surrounding lunch tables joined in with their laughter, creating a dark wall of giggling shadows. Denki’s stomach kept flipping.
***
“Pop quiz.”
Black and white glared at Denki, a thick mound of paper stapled together on his desk. Flipping to the back page, his eyes bugged out at the number of questions.
“67…” the rest of the glass groaned as they reached the same information.
“Kaminari, quiet during quizzes,” Aizawa glared at him and all that rang out in Denki’s head was Jirou’s ‘stupid’ from earlier. Of course, he was stupid, why else would he talk during a quiz?
Picking up his pencil he confidently marked his name on the papers, this was the easy part, then inched his hand with caution to the first question.
- What move did the villain, Cluster, use in his first fight in the month of May of 2XXX, with the superhero, Miruko.
What.
Wait, no, what the fuck?
How was he supposed to remember this shit?
- Spinster
- Spin
- Spins
- Spin style
- Spin styles
- Spin stylez
- Spin stylz
- Spinzer
Holy shit.
Scratching comes from his right, Midoriya frantically muttering from his left, and page flipping all around. How were his classmates seemingly almost finished? Eyeing Bakugou’s quiz he saw at least five answered pages, his mouth slightly agape in awe. Turning back to his quiz he went to reread it, having forgotten what the question even was after reading all of the answer options.
He started again, reading with proper enunciation with his mind voice, One. What move did the villain- holy shit, who was tapping their pencil.
Lifting his head once again, he searched the room, spotting Shoji using one of his arms to tap a whole second pencil . Denki is going to lose it. Okay, okay, tune it out. He can do this. One, what move did the villain, Cluster, use in his- mumbling. The mumbling.
Turning his whole body in his chair he sends a vicious glare toward Midoriya, who stays blissfully unaware.
“Kaminari, attention on your own paper,” Aizawa’s voice shocks him back to his paper, where he starts searching for where he was on the quiz. Right. The first question. Denki nearly groans at the sight of it but thinks better than to do that at the sight of Aizawa’s judgemental gaze. He stares at the words for a moment longer, which have long since just turned into black blobs on his paper before he just marks a random answer. Spin Stylz better be correct. Tracking his pencil to the next question he nearly cries like a blubbering baby. It’s a whole ass paragraph of text. The quiz is just mocking him now. Once again, he marks a random answer, not even bothering to put himself through that torture.
The next question is a blissful reprieve from hell. Just five short words.
- What year did he die?
When did who die? What type of bullshit quiz is this? Denki moves to the answers in an attempt to clue together his answer when he realized the text was no longer just his normal hard-to-understand, but instead his oh shit, hard-to-understand. The words seem to float off the page, going up and down in a sick form of dancing that made his head spin. Denki attempts to focus harder, just trying to get a grasp on the words. His eyes take this as an excuse to do whatever they want, his pupils creating a shaking feeling in his eyes. Pulsing, they then move to roll upwards, and with it his head moves down, bowing ungracefully.
He tries hard to think, to focus on his surrounding but he feels as though his string to reality was severed. All the room seems capable of doing is spinning, the lights fluctuating to a dizzying brightness to a dim cave. A bang on his table registers in his mind, sending weak alarms off in his mind, crawling around the huge ball of haze in the center. Belatedly, he senses Aizawa standing above his desk, casting a menacing shadow on his desk, which he’s stuck staring at.
“-nari, no sleeping on the desks,” with each blink the firm voice becomes stronger in his mind, crisper, “Kaminari? Are you okay?” He must be hallucinating to hear his teacher use such concern in his voice. Taking pity on the man, he stiffly lifts his head, giving a stout nod. Aizawa ignores his assurance however and bypasses his personal bubble to press a clammy hand to his head. “Not sick.”
“I’m fine,” he looks around the classroom, startled as it begins to spin around him, intensifying with the faces of his onlookers. A warning crawls up his back, itching his brain, as he turns and makes direct eye contact with Mina, who just stares, confused, back at him.
“I’m going to seize,” he tries to enunciate it, and convey his anxiety in his voice yet all the class hears is, “‘m sea.” Denki’s vision goes dark, his ears ringing before he can feel his body pick up its arm. It starts rubbing at his face, sweaty hand alternating between falling uselessly by his side, to harassing his cheeks. Without his senses intact, it’s hard to tell when he begins to tip, but suddenly his mind is not where his body is. He thought he had been sitting in the comfort of his chair, yet when his eyes blink to a small second of clarity he’s met with his body pressed up against Aizawa’s.
He floats in limbo, eyes unseeing until random blinks bring him back, mouth drying as it hangs loosely. The only movement in his body is the robotic motions of his arm, moving at a rhythmic pace to rub his cheek. After an eternity of this, his hearing cuts out the ringing, enabling him to tune into the outside world.
“-always had them… embarrassed… no…I said…morning-” Sero’s voice echoed around his head, only being interrupted by the gruffness of Aizawa’s, which was much softer in volume and tone. He supposes Sero deserves the right to panic, after all, it had been around a year since he last seized like this in front of him.
The feeling in his body crawled back to his consciousness, making his limbs heavy with post-mortem. Twitching his fingers allow him to take control of the rest of his body, slowly easing it off of where he rests on Aizawa’s lap. A hand helps guide him, staying with his back for a few moments before Aizawa is sure he won’t just flop back over. Denki appreciates the effort but the contact on his skin so close to coming out of consciousness makes his skin crawl.
Denki looks up at where Sero is crouching in front of him, looking behind the boy for a brief moment to process that his classmates weren’t still in the room. Thank fuck. Sero shoots him a thumbs up, trying to be reassuring, which he reciprocates with a startled gag. For a moment, he thinks he’s going to vomit on the ground, probably getting some on his friend’s shoes, as he keeps up the gagging act. His insides swoosh around, tongue getting too close to an acidic taste for comfort before a trash can is thrown under his mouth. Just in time, as a small amount of bile pools at the bottom of the plastic.
Pulling his head back from the offensive sight, he frowns. He tried so hard to keep this life separate from his real one. His attempts to keep his friends from giving him that pitying stare and that insult fodder were for nothing. The one time he committed to something for more than a month ends with a trash can full of vomit. Everyone saw. Mina, Kirishima, Baugou, Jirou. Hitoshi.
Sure, they had been dating for a full month now, but he had successfully hidden his struggles. Every time he felt an aura he would pretend to use the bathroom, and wait them out patiently on tile. Every time he couldn’t focus on homework he would just redirect their study dates from less study to more date. And now, his boyfriend knew he blacked out from reality on the regular.
“Sero was telling me that you have epilepsy, right?” his teacher edges himself around to be sitting next to Sero instead of behind them, “can you tell me where you are?”
“Yeah, I do,” his voice was still slurred, “I’m in the classroom.”
“What about your name?”
“Kaminari Denki.”
Aizawa’s eyebrows relax from where they were furrowed, satisfied with his responses, even if they were a bit slow and slurred.
“You scared us, kid.”
He scared them? He thought that maybe he would disgust them or something like that, but not scare them. Maybe he had meant it like he freaked them out, watching him be vacant like that, but the worry clouding his teacher’s eyes deter him from that thought process.
Fuck, he should have just told the class when they met. He wouldn’t have had to have so many seizures in dirty bathrooms.
A knock at the door makes him swivel his head up, an ache in his spine that will definitely be a bitch later. Recovery girl comes in hot and heavy, cane tapping coarsely on the linoleum. Behind her, Hitoshi attempts to sneak in, timidly shooing the rest of their classmates back into the hall as he shuts the door.
“Shinsou, out.”
His boyfriend freezes like an idiot as he’s caught, although in Denki’s humble, seizure-confused, brain he was doing a piss poor job of it. The horrified look on his face forces a snort from Denki.
“He can stay,” Hitoshi visibly relaxes, causing a small smile to blossom on Denki’s exhausted face.
“Are you sure?” Sero worries, trying to protect Denki like always. Denki nods, ushering Hitoshi in with a lazy sweep of his arm. Both Hitoshi and Recovery take their places around him, creating a small circle of reassuring smiles for Denki. Cold hands held one of his as Hitoshi tries to lend him support out of the way of Recovery Girl, who starts a small check-up on him. She takes his pulse quickly, along with his blood pressure, giving small nods that he doesn’t know the meaning to.
She clears him after a few more small tests, ensuring he didn’t fuck something up during his seizure. His body relaxes a bit, not even noticing he was stressed that something could be wrong but as she squares up a bit in the shoulders, cane raised in warning, the fear came back in full force.
“Not being truthful to us was very dangerous, Kaminari,” Recovery Girls face contorts as she scolds, “the first day of school you should have come to me and Aizawa about this. Not having proper medical attention and surveillance can have many consequences. If this had happened during physical training and no one knew the signs you could have been seriously hurt.”
Shinsou’s hands tighten around his, probably conjuring up images of the worst, Sero looks just as terrified, if not a bit guilty, probably realizing that going along with Denki’s put him at risk. And, he just feels numb. Hearing it all put so plainly, that he could have been hurt, put his classmates in the position to hurt him, was devastating. He was more aware than anyone what the risks of his epilepsy are, but before today, when nothing even serious had happened, he is struck for the first time that it is a real issue.
“I’m sorry,” his voice cracks, startling himself as tears drip down his cheeks. He’s tired. “I just didn’t want anyone to think I was weird.”
The confession comes out as a small whisper, rendering his insecurities for the room, allowing his fears and guilt, and secrets to spill out. Hesitantly, Hitoshi reaches his arms around him, swallowing him in a warm embrace full of the scent of spice and linen. He cries. Snot dribbles down his face and soaks into Hitoshi’s uniform, creating a small puddle with his tears.
“No one will think you’re weird Denki, and if they do they aren’t meant to be heroes,” Aizawa expresses, a small amount of intimidation veiled in his voice.
“They already think I’m stupid!” he’s crying wholeheartedly now, his voice hiccuping.
“You’re not stupid,” Sero and Hitoshi speak at the same time, startling each other before Sero continues, “you’re like super smart bro, you're the only one in the dorms who can beat Momo in reciting all the countries in Africa.”
Nodding, his sobbing lessons to just a few small tears. That is true. He can thank his third-year history project for that.
“Plus, you always know how to help me with the English homework, or how to cheer me up when I’m having a bad day,” Hitoshi continues the praise, rubbing small circles on his back that have his eyes closing. His body is riddled with exhaustion, sore all over as though a train had hit him. It’s a miracle his eyes are managing to stay open.
“I’m not supposed to announce this yet, but, you also did the best out of your class on the history midterm, congratulations,” Aizawa’s deadpan brought the tears in his eyes to an end. Shooting a smile at them, he eased away from his boyfriend’s hold, feeling much more confident than he had before, “now, I shouldn’t tell you what to do, but I think it would ease your classmates' nerves if you were to tell them what happened,” Denki nods, albeit reluctantly, “Sero, Shinsou, please help Kaminari to bed.”
He’s eased off the floor, Hitoshi taking most of his weight, and Sero flanking his left side with a comforting hold on his arm. The three of them move slowly throughout the halls to accommodate his sluggish movements. Luckily, the halls had been mainly cleared since it was lunchtime. Denki assumes, the only reason his classmates hadn’t still been waiting for them outside of the classroom was that a teacher had yelled at them to wait in the dorms, which was proven to be correct when they stopped in front of height alliance’s door.
Looking through the glass he spots them all sitting around the common area, even Bakugou, looking worried. A few were tapping their feet, Iida was pacing around the carpet, and Kirishima was chewing rapidly at his nails. They looked like hot messes.
“Are you ready?”
“I can totally use my tape to sneak us in?” both of them looked at him, waiting for his approval to break in- which although it sounds appealing, would not work with how tired he is.
“No, let’s just do it on three. One, two,” they all prepare themselves to be trampled, “three.”
The minute the door swung open there were seventeen teenagers accosting them from every angle. A barrage of questions was fired, along with Mina’s worrying hands checking his face.
“Is everything okay?” her eyes have little pinpricks of tears threatening to spill. Wow, they really did care. His eyes sweep the group once more, spotting chewed lips and tears scattered around worrying faces. He doesn’t know why he was so scared of this.
“I,” he stutters for a moment, unsure of how to phrase it, “I have epilepsy.”
The room takes a moment, the group allowing the information to settle.
“My cousin has epilepsy, ribbit,” Tsuyu observes, “so I know some first aid.”
“Mine, too!”
“What can we do to help?”
“That’s okay!” Mina says, moving from where she holds his face, to hug him, “we love you just the same!” The rest of the room moves in for a group hug as well, keeping in mind to be a bit more careful than they typically would. Even Kirishima, who is known for his bear hugs, is able to keep it to a minimum.
Denki smiles despite how drained he feels, and leans into the mass of warm bodies around him. He really is stupid. His class would have never reacted differently.
He falls asleep on his bed, cuddled up with Hitoshi, and around his room swaddled in various blankets, sheets, and the like, lay his friends.