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“Sorry,” a voice says from behind you, and you turn around in your seat to face Kaminari. He’s rubbing the back of his neck, sheepish. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Oh, I didn’t zap you?” He holds his fingers in front of his chest, a thin line of electricity surging between them. You shrug, shaking your head. “Oh, good. I was worried I might have hurt you.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” you say, and he smiles. You smile back, though you don’t realize it until he’s walking away and Momo is giving you a look of amusement.
You tell her to shut up, tugging on one of your ear jacks self-consciously.
“Yo, Jirou!” Kaminari calls out from across the quad, jogging a bit to catch up to you. You pause for a second, tugging on the strap of your bag to pull it higher up on your shoulder.
“Yo.”
“How’re you today?” He asks, and you raise an eyebrow skeptically.
“Uh... Fine?”
“Ah, good!” He’s over-enthusiastic. It wears you out a bit. You think that it might have something to do with the literal electricity that runs through his veins. “I was just wanting to make sure, you know, that you were okay after everything that happened at USJ.”
Your throat tightens a bit. But you nod, gripping the strap of your bag tighter. His smile falters a bit, and he takes a step toward you.
“It’s uh... It’s okay if you’re not. That was kind of intense, you know? It wasn’t something that you can just move on from.”
“You almost died,” you say, the words flooding out before you can stop them. “That guy he- he had you by the throat. You were totally fried. I couldn’t...”
You frown at the floor, vision beginning to blur.
“I couldn’t do enough to help you.”
The silence around you is heavy, nearly suffocating. You hear footsteps, a sigh, and a pair of arms wrap around your shoulders hesitantly. Kaminari pulls you to his chest, resting his cheek on the top of your head. You sniff as you melt into him, letting him run his fingers through your hair and rest a hand on the small of your back.
“You were brave. I was okay; nothing was going to happen to me.”
“You couldn’t have known that,” you say, voice muffled as you speak into his chest. You can feel him smile.
“I know it. Nothing would have happened to me.”
You nod a bit, sniffing again. He laughs, rubbing your back. You can feel the pinpricks of electricity running along your spine.
“You’re zapping me,” you say, laughing a bit and wiggling against his chest. He laughs with you, squeezing you tighter and lifting you off of the ground. You squeal, shouting his name as he swings you in a circle before setting you down again. You push his shoulder, and he laughs as he staggers backward.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” you mutter, and he cups his hand around his ear, grinning.
“What was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”
“I said you’re stupid. Goodbye,” you say instead, turning and walking away quickly as he calls your name behind you, laughing and jogging to try and catch up.
“Jiroooou,” Kaminari whines, laying across your desk and kicking his legs a bit for dramatic effect. You hum, resting your book on his back as you continue to read.
“I don’t wanna take the remedial classeeeees,” he whines again, and you roll your eyes as you repress a smile.
“Then you shouldn’t be so dumb.”
“Rude!” He cries, and you laugh a bit. “I am not dumb. Besides, this affects you too.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” he pushes himself off of your desk and onto the floor, sitting cross-legged at your feet. “Now we can’t hang out on the retreat.”
You can feel your ear jacks turning pink.
“You wouldn’t even want to hang out with me,” you say, staring pointedly at your book. You’ve been reading the same paragraph for the past 10 minutes and haven’t read a thing. “You’d be with Kirishima or Bakugou or something. And I’d be with Momo.”
He drops his chin onto your knee, and your stomach nearly drops through the floor.
“I’d like to be with you, Jirou.”
Your ear jacks are practically fuschia by the time class starts, though you’re too happy to care.
“It’s not funny,” Kaminari pouts, and you giggle a bit as you run your fingers through his hair.
“It sort of is,” you say, and he leans his head on your shoulder. “He was just trying to make everyone feel better.”
“Why?” He asks, jutting out his bottom lip a bit. “You were one of the only people Aizawa said he wouldn’t expel.”
“And you think that makes me feel any better?”
“Maybe?”
“No,” you say, resting your head against his. “That would really suck if everyone but me and like, 2 other people got expelled.”
“Yeah,” Kaminari says, turning his head so his cheek rests on your shoulder. His face is squished, and his words sound muffled through half-puckered lips. “That’s true.”
“Plus,” you smile a bit, nudging his side, “then I’d never get to see Bakugou turn you into a babbling idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Kaminari mumbles, and you laugh.
“You could’ve fooled me.”
Kaminari laughs, too, turning his head so his forehead rests on your shoulder instead, and you can swear you feel the ghost of his lips on your skin.
He comes to your room at nearly midnight.
You open your door in your pajamas, rubbing your eyes and yawning as your hair sticks out at odd angles. Kaminari stands on the other side, seemingly upset.
“Kami?”
“Kyouka.”
Your hand drops. The way he’s staring at you makes you weak in the knees, and you open your door half a foot wider to let him inside.
“What’s wrong?”
He walks inside, running his fingers through his hair as he paces back and forth.
“I need... I need to tell you something.”
Your stomach lurches, and you move to sit on your bed. “Okay?”
He paces in silence, seeming torn about something as he frowns at the floor. You watch, growing more concerned with every step he takes. Finally he turns, staring at you with an intensity that nearly knocks you backwards.
“I need to tell you. I’m-”
He pauses, choking on the words before steeling himself, taking another step forward.
“I like you.”
It feels like the breath is sucked from your body. You can feel your eyes widen, feel your ear jacks turning pink, can feel any hope of forming a straight sentence flying out the window on the other side of the room. Kaminari takes another step forward, dropping to his knees in front of you and settling between your legs.
“I really like you, Kyouka.”
The words come out before you realize it’s you saying them.
“I like you too, Denki.”
He smiles up at you, placing a hand on either side of your face and tilting his own head upward to catch your lips with his.
It’s like kissing a thunderstorm.
You can feel the electricity that runs through him, can feel the tiny zaps that his lips leave on your skin as he kisses your cheeks, your nose, your forehead, your chin. He kisses his way up to the shell of your ear, pulling you close and running his fingers through your hair.
“I really do like you, Kyouka.”
You hum as he runs his fingers to your temples, pulling back to look at you.
There’s something different, though. Something about the way his eyes shine, the way he smiles, the way he-
“Which is why I’m kind of sorry it has to be like this.”
The last thing you see before you black out is Kaminari, grinning at you as you fall forward into his arms.
The plan to rescue you is turning into a failure.
It’s not just you -- no, Kaminari had made it to five other students before he’d made it to you. Kirishima, Sero, Mina, Uraraka, even Todoroki.
(“I had to take out at least one of the biggest threats here,” he’d said when you’d woken up, tied to a chair in an unfamiliar basement. You had cried almost immediately, and he had looked at you with a pity that had broken your heart into pieces.)
They had put you all into the same room. All 6 of the students plus Kaminari and someone named Toga to watch you. It was Kirishima that had asked the question on everyone’s mind.
“What’s going on, Kaminari?”
He seemed calmer than you would have expected him to be. He seemed to be attempting to understand, to take it in -- to find an angle that didn’t paint Kaminari as the bad guy that he seemed to be.
You had crossed your fingers in their binding, prayed that it was a hoax, prayed that he was a double double agent, anything that could make sense-
“You know exactly what’s going on, Eijirou.”
“I- I don’t.”
“You do.”
“No, it’s not-”
“Stop it. Stop trying to make this make sense. Because what is in front of you are the facts -- I’m working for the Villain Alliance.”
It was silent for a moment before Todoroki spoke next.
“You’re the mole.”
Kaminari shrugged, a crooked grin breaking out across his face. “If that’s what you wanna call it, sure. Mole, double agent, villain, whatever.”
“Why?”
It was you who had asked, your voice small and broken in the room around you.
Kaminari looked at you, and for a moment his grin faltered. But he recovered it just as quickly, shrugging and leaning against the wall opposite you.
“Because it’s fun.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it!” He'd thrown his arms out, gesturing to you and the five other students in front of him. “That’s the whole reason!”
“So... none of it-”
Your voice cracked. Your heart broke. You'd taken in Kaminari’s grin, his flashing eyes, his outstretched arms-
“None of it was real?”
Something else behind his eyes changed, and his grin widened.
“Well, parts of it were very real. You should know that, Kyouka.”
You felt you’d be sick.
You still might be, you think as you slide behind a crate in the warehouse you’re hiding in. You still might be, but you clamp a hand over your mouth and sob silently instead.
Everyone is down.
The Villain Alliance is stronger than anyone could have ever thought -- they’ve gotten bigger in numbers and more powerful quirks, and they’ve taken down more heroes than they ever should have been able to.
The retirement of All Might hadn’t been something that anyone had considered to add to the equation.
But the thought of Kaminari as a villain hadn’t been considered, either.
He was powerful. Apparently his short-circuited brain had been entirely faked.
The first time he’d let out all of his power, he’d taken down almost 5 professional heroes without any effort at all.
And now he’s following you.
“Kyouka,” he calls, “come out. I won’t hurt you.”
You cover your ears, and you can feel the tears running down your face as you shake your head back and forth.
“I won’t,” he reassures you, though you really don’t believe him at all. “I promise. I’ve never wanted to hurt you, you know.”
“Shut the fuck up, traitor!”
It’s Bakugou’s voice, and you can hear the crackling of his palms from across the room.
“Don’t you fucking touch her! I’ll rip you to shreds!”
“Bakugou, please. You were so much easier to deal with when you didn’t actually care about people.”
There’s a buzz, a scream and a click of someone’s tongue before Kaminari speaks again.
“You should have taken our offer, Blasty. You’d’ve been great in the Alliance.”
He makes his way across the warehouse, stopping just before he reaches you. You know you should run, but your legs won’t move.
“Boo.”
You scream as he laughs, head poked around the crate as he reaches to grab you. You attempt to shove him off, but he shocks you into submission -- like a stun gun, he locks your joints and drags you around to rest against the crate.
“You okay, Kyouka?”
You frown, gritting your teeth as you speak.
“F-fuck you, Kaminari. Don’t c-call me that.”
“Oh, good,” his smile is huge, blinding, nearly reaching his ears. “I was worried I’d hurt you.”
“You did,” you say, and his smile falters just a bit.
“I wanted to tell you.” He sits down, cross-legged, one elbow resting on his knee, one hand in the air beside his face. He allows tiny trails of electricity to buzz along his fingertips. You can’t tell if it’s a habit or a threat. “It was never a part of the plan for me to get close. It was especially never a plan to fall for you. But I did, and here we are."
His voice grows quiet.
"I wanted you to work with me, you know. That’s why I always at least tried to keep you safe.”
“This isn’t s-safe,” you grit out, attempting to move an ear jack. The buzzing on Kaminari’s fingertips increases a level.
"No, but it can be.”
He looks at you, eyes flashing for the hundredth time tonight, practically begging you.
“Come with me.”
Your answer is immediate.
“No.”
Kaminari hums, placing a fingertip to your inner thigh. The pain is sharp, quick, painful -- a warning.
“Come with me,” he repeats.
“No.”
He hums again, though this time it’s mixed with a sigh, and he pushes himself up off of the ground, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
“Then I guess you aren’t who I’d hoped you were.”
“Th-that makes two of us,” you say, and he smiles at you as he leans down a bit.
“Yeah, but at least I could have saved you.”
And then he’s up, rolling his shoulders back, grin disappearing. It’s replaced with a sneer, disgust and anger apparent in his features as he rears his foot back. You have no time to attempt to dodge before it slams into your ribs, knocking you over and beating the breath from your lungs.
He pulls back a second time, this time landing a solid kick to your face. Everything turns white, you can hear a crack, feel something warm run down your nose and into your mouth. It tastes like metal, and you can’t focus on anything else.
But then you come to, with Kaminari above you, smiling as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I’ll be seeing you, then. You guys should really try and step it up the next time we meet.”
He turns on his heel, leaving you alone and broken in the middle of the warehouse.
I was worried I’d hurt you.
I know. Nothing was going to happen to me.
I’d like to be with you, Jirou.
I’m not an idiot.
I really like you, Kyouka.
At least I could have saved you.
A part of you wishes that you’d gone with him.