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Two weeks.
He’d had a glorious, almost comfortable two weeks since Fujino, the student who’d attacked him in the bathroom, had been expelled.
Two weeks without catcalls in the cafeteria, sneered insults in the hall, his uniform stolen or destroyed in his locker.
Denki should have known it couldn’t last.
Classes had finally ended and a free weekend stretched out blissfully in front of them. They’d been given permission to go home, so the dorm would be fairly empty for the next few days. He was looking forward to that—having the TV in the common room to himself, no one to bug him if he lived off cup noodles and energy drinks for two days—even the looming threat of Bakugou checking his homework on Sunday couldn’t dampen his spirits.
When he opened his shoe locker, a note fell out of it and landed on top of his foot. It was pastel, with a little flower sticker holding it closed. He picked it up and stared at it, flipping it over to read his own name written in beautiful penmanship on the front.
“What’s that?” Sero asked, leaning against his back and resting his chin on Denki’s shoulder.
“Someone left me a note,” he replied, still a little stunned that it had actually happened. He’d heard about this for years, seen it happen to his classmates, but no one had ever left him a note before. “Someone left a note!”
“Nice, bro!” Sero slapped his other shoulder. “You gonna open it?”
He slid his thumb under the flap and popped the sticker free. Was it his imagination, or was the note inside perfumed? Denki pulled the note out—written on pale yellow paper—and unfolded it with an eager hand.
It was a printout of an elementary school class picture. One student was circled—a little girl with her hair chopped short and ragged, a bandage on her cheek.
Sero leaned in closer. “Why’d someone send you that?”
“It’s just a joke.” His hands were shaking as he balled the note up. Of course someone had found that. It wasn’t like his last name was very common…but maybe he could just ignore it and they’d stop. “Hey, you still going home this weekend?”
“Oh, yeah. My brother’s visiting, I haven’t seen him since the sports festival….”
He let Sero’s voice wash over him as they made their way back to the dormitory, the note stuffed in his pocket.
…
“—ari? Earth to Kaminari?”
Ashido tapped him on the forehead, and he jerked away. The others stared (or glared, in Bakugou’s case) at him from various spots in Kirishima’s room.
“Did I miss something?” he asked.
“You’re spacing out more than usual today,” Kirishima said. “Everything okay?”
“He probably just wishes he could go home like the rest of us,” Ashido said, nudging him with her elbow. “Come on. We might not get another chance before winter break.”
“My parents are traveling this weekend,” he lied. He hadn’t faced them since the bullying two weeks ago, though he’d heard plenty from them when he needed to buy new uniforms.
“That’s no fun,” Ashido pouted.
“Yeah, have you talked to them?” Sero added. He was sprawled across the floor, head pillowed on Kirishima’s legs. “Maybe they can change their plans.”
“Or take you with them!” Ashido nudged him again, grinning. “Come on, don’t you miss your family? I’m sure your parents miss you.”
He didn’t know what came over him. Maybe the lingering worry over the note he’d found in his shoe locker, and the old fears it stirred up from Fujino’s confrontation. Maybe the endless pressure to go home, from both his classmates and his parents. Maybe he was just tired of dealing with it all, but his mouth opened almost without a thought.
Denki snorted. “Yeah, right. They don’t miss me.”
The room fell silent. He stared down at his knees, cursing himself.
“You okay?” Sero asked. He’d sat up, as Kirishima had climbed to his feet to sit on the bed next to Denki. “You’ve been out of sorts since you got that note in your locker.”
Ashido started to say something, but Kirishima hushed her. He wrapped an arm around Denki’s shoulders and tugged him close, letting him lean against his sturdy frame. “What happened, Kaminari?”
He tugged the crumpled note out of his pocket and passed it to Kirishima, not daring to look him in the eye. Kirishima smoothed it out on his knee, squinting at the lines of print and the class picture. He sucked in a breath. “Is that?”
Denki nodded miserably. Ashido reached for the note, but Bakugou snatched it out of Kirishima’s hands. He stared at it, swore, and crumpled it up again. “Any idea who left it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t even know how they found it.”
“Found what?” Ashido leaned against his other side. “What’s wrong? Is someone bullying you again? They’ll never find the body, Kaminari. Just point me at ‘em.”
Denki slumped against Kirishima. His stomach was twisting up in knots, his ears were ringing with white noise. Ashido was still talking, but her voice sounded far away and distorted.
Everything was too loud, but the sounds didn’t make any sense. His vision was going gray—how did you breathe? His chest wouldn’t expand…everything was too tight, even his skin. He wanted to claw at it, to scratch it off. Make room to breathe.
They were louder. He covered his ears, squeezed his eyes shut. Electricity sparked along his arms, across his body. Someone yelped and backed away, someone else held on tighter.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t—
A hand on the back of his neck shoved his head down, not flinching away when he shocked them. His head was between his knees, the hand holding him down. Someone was in his face, filling his nostrils with a smell like caramel.
“—fucking breathe, dumbass!” Bakugou roared in his ears. He sucked in a ragged breath and coughed it out almost immediately. The air felt too weak and thin in his lungs, his chest too tight to take in a proper breath.
“Slowly you moron. Like this.”
His hand was pressed to a firm chest. The body in front of him inhaled deeply, slowly, and Denki tried to match it. Tried to hold his breath but coughed it back out too soon.
“Again.” Bakugou’s voice was firm, like this was another of those damned homework sheets and he wasn’t moving until Denki got through it. He sucked in another breath, held it, let it out as he felt the body in front of him relax.
“You’re doing great, man,” Kirishima murmured from beside him. His hand was on Denki’s back, rubbing soothing circles over his spasming lungs. “Just keep breathing, okay?”
It was getting easier now. He tried to look up, to see what Sero and Ashido were doing, but Bakugou firmly blocked his vision. “Don’t worry about them right now,” Bakugou said. His voice was almost soft, and his eyes held Denki’s gaze intensely. “Focus on us.”
He nodded. He managed to drag one hand up and grab Bakugou’s sleeve, and Kirishima took his other hand when he reached out.
Slowly his chest loosened. His head cleared. The roar of noise in his ears faded.
“You good?” Bakugou demanded.
“I think so,” he whispered. He’d been holding himself so tight that his muscles were aching. He tried to relax, and Kirishima leaned in to support him. “I’m okay.”
Bakugou moved away, and now he could see Sero and Ashido standing near the doorway, faces tight with worry. He tried to smile and wave to them, but his lip started trembling.
Damnit. Panic attacks always left him a crying mess.
“Are you okay?” Ashido asked, crossing the room to kneel next to the bed and rest a hand on his knee. “You, um…that was kind of scary.”
He wanted to tell them. They were his friends, right? If Bakugou and Kirishima accepted him, maybe they would, too.
But he suddenly felt too exhausted to say another word. He looked up at Bakugou instead and nodded, and the other blond rolled his eyes before passing the crumpled note to Sero.
Sero sat next to Ashido, spreading the note out on his knee so they could both see it. Denki didn’t look, just closed his eyes and let Kirishima support his weight.
That weekend alone was looking better and better.
“I don’t understand,” Ashido finally said after a few seconds. “Who’s Keiko Kaminari?”
He winced. The name still made him feel sick, still sent a slithering wrongness up his guts and under his skin.
“Kaminari’s parents don’t miss their son,” Kirishima said softly, emphasizing the last word.
Ashido gasped. Sero cursed.
“Oh, Kami.” Ashido climbed on the bed to throw her arms around him. “I’m never letting you go home ever again, you hear me?”
“It wouldn’t be too hard to arrange an accident,” Sero mused. “My mom would take you in, in a heartbeat. Plus, I always wanted a brother.”
“You have a brother,” Denki replied with a weak laugh. “You were just talking about him.”
Sero waved a hand dismissively. “I always wanted another brother, then. Hajime barely counts, he’s like twelve years older than me.”
“And I’ll track down whoever did this,” Ashido said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to match this handwriting. I bet Uraraka would help.”
Denki flinched, twisting to stare at the pink girl. “You can’t tell her,” he pleaded.
“I won’t,” she promised. “But Uraraka has a thing about bullies. Plus, I’m pretty sure she’d be down for helping us hide the body.”
He had a flash of memory…Uraraka appearing at his side, fury written over every line of her body, demanding to know who’d been laughing at him when his uniform had been stolen.
“I have no doubt about that,” he replied, sagging against Kirishima.
Kirishima sighed. “We should tell Mr. Aizawa.”
He winced at the thought. He knew their homeroom teacher would take his side in this, but still. It rankled a little to need to call on him, after he’d already been so much trouble.
“Want me to get him?” Ashido asked. Denki nodded, closing his eyes again. He felt utterly wiped out, and barely noticed when she kissed his cheek before leaving the room.
“We got your back, man,” Kirishima said. “We’ll watch out for you.”