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Mina arrived home at the dorms after a horrible date late Friday evening while everyone was asleep. After having placed her shoes neatly in the genkan and hung up her coat she looked between the common room and the hallway leading to their individual rooms upstairs. Feeling horrible with a heavy weight in the stomach and throat, she sneaked into the common room and turned on the TV. She flipped through the channels until stopping on one just starting the intro to a movie. Realizing the irony of her situation, she settled in to watch Pretty Woman, a pre-quirk movie about a hooker finding a love she wasn’t looking for.
As the movie played on, Mina thought back on her evening. She hasn’t experienced as much abuse throughout her life for her looks as someone like Shouji has, so finding out her date had been dared to date her hurt. His friends had apparently even been spying on them and when she’d turned to leave the restaurant, he and his friends had called after her to ask how much it’d cost to have her for the night. She’d felt her face heat up at that, and thankfully resisted the urge to tuck down on her miniskirt to keep her sense of dignity, but she’d felt absolutely humiliated and dirty.
On the couch, she hadn’t noticed when she’d begun to cry. Silent tears streaming down her face, letting out the feelings she’d been hiding the entire evening. The shame, the humiliation, and the anger. Anger at him and his friends for being such idiots, anger at herself for falling for it, for actually thinking he was interested in her. She doesn’t try to keep it in, she’s sure that the rest of class 3A are asleep so letting out a small sob and some sniffles will hopefully only make her feel better. She doesn’t notice the red eyes watching her from the hallway.
He’d gone downstairs to get a glass of water. He hated not being able to fall asleep and usually it wasn’t a problem because he had a set bedtime and a set wake time and if he just kept to his regular schedule everything was fine. Until of course Kirishima decided that the only person who could help him lick his wounds was Katsuki. So he’s been kept up long after his bedtime to help his best friend through the heartache of the love of his life going on a date with another man that very same evening. Katsuki very much regretted how his stupid friends had softened him up over the last couple of years. However, he successfully kept most of it internal. Sure he’d comforted Kirishima this evening, but he did it by beating the shit out of him while sparring and then beating the shit out of him in video games. Rarely did he actually say anything nice to those friends but his internal feelings towards them had changed.
When Kirishima had finally left his room to go mope in his own room, Katsuki had gotten ready for sleep immediately, only to lie awake staring at the ceiling. After doing that for two hours, he decided that a glass of water would probably help. As he walked down the stairs to the common area, he heard the telltale sounds of the TV being on. He didn’t have to listen for long to recognize a movie his mother had made him watch multiple times throughout his childhood. Instead of going straight to the kitchen for that glass of water, he decided to take a look at who was watching a pre-quirk movie at 1 am in the common room.
There, on the couch sat Mina, hugging herself trying to self-soothe. Katsuki peered around the rest of the common room, listening for others awake at this time, but found nothing. Mina was sitting all alone on the couch, not looking like someone who’d just come home from a nice dinner date. While she was still clearly wearing the outfit, her hair had been let down and it looked as if she’d tried to remove her makeup by rubbing her tears over her face. It was not a good look. And then he heard her sobbing. This was at no point a sad moment in the movie, Katsuki didn’t remember there being a crying-and-sobbing part in that movie at all.
Mina had been yapping on about how excited she was for this date all week. One side of him had been excited on her behalf, the other had been annoyed about her yapping on so much, especially because he also had to listen to Kirishima's complaints afterwards. Seeing her now, sobbing on the couch to a movie he didn’t remember being sad, he had a feeling that the crying didn’t come from watching the movie. Mina was supposed to be a ray of sunshine, an annoying one but still. He’d never seen Mina so down in the dumps before. She’d been on other bad dates but she’d usually just laugh about how it’d be a great story later and chalk it up to be all a part of dating life. But this time was clearly different.
He sucked on his teeth and scowled. It was just his luck to find her like this. What the hell was he supposed to do? He had no experience in comforting others, case in point him cormforting Kirishima this exact same evening! He figured he couldn’t just go in and tell her to get ready to spar, though that would have made his life a lot easier. He briefly considered going upstairs and waking either Jirou or Hagakure so they could take care of it, but dismissed that thought. It would be too much of a hassle and they’d have questions.
He almost groaned when he realized that if stupid Shitty Hair Kirishima had just confessed his stupid romantic feelings towards Mina and asked her on a stupid date, none of this shit would have happened. Mina wouldn’t be crying now, Kirishima wouldn’t have been crying earlier and Katsuki wouldn’t have had to comfort either of them. With that thought he realized he’d already made up his mind on going in to comfort her. How could he not? She was a part of the self-proclaimed Bakusquad, and while he found her annoying sometimes, she had forced her way into his, ugh, heart. Not even just as a friend, but like a stupid annoying sister that you couldn’t get rid of (never admitting that he didn’t want to).
So when he heard the classic opening of “Oh, Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison, he made a split-second decision on how he could hopefully comfort Mina. As the Roy began to sing, so did Katsuki while walking towards Mina.
“Pretty woman, walking down the street. Pretty woman, the kind I’d like to meet,” he sang low as he walked up to her. He grabbed her hand and pulled her up from the couch. In Minas shock, she could do nothing but follow Katsuki's nonverbal instructions. He guided her right hand to his shoulder, put his left hand on her waist, and kept the other clasped, as he sang, “Pretty woman. I don’t believe you, you’re not the truth. No one could look as good as you,”
He twirled her around, making sure to keep true to the music by including “Mercy!” as he did so. Finally, Mina seemed to get over her shock at the situation, as she snorted as Katsuki went on. He continued to dance her around the common room, even after the movie cut to the next scene and the music stopped. Katsuki made sure to give Mina the full experience of being twirled around and even lifted her once or twice. Mina’s laugh of giddiness was clear as day.
Mina had had the pleasure of experiencing Katsuki in all types of moods. Of course, she’d seen him angry, furious, and irritated. She’d also seen him happy, impassioned, and genuine, even joking and playful. But she’d never experienced him like this. Being outright silly was not something Katsuki did. But apparently she was wrong about that, because here he was swinging her around, making her laugh because he saw her cry in the middle of the night over some stupid date. She’d never felt so blessed before in her life. Who’d have known that being swung around by your friend who was known for yelling and exploding things, was all that was needed to heal a broken heart?
As the song started up again, Katsuki kept singing along to the lyrics, with Mina joining in when she wasn’t laughing. They kept increasing their volume as they danced around and sang, almost in competition on who could sing the loudest. In the heat of the competition and their goofing around, they’d forgotten it was the middle of the night. Neither of them noticed how the hallway seemed to be crowded with spectators woken up by their singing.
Their song ended with Katsuki singing at the top of his lungs while trying to twirl Mina, despite her balance being off because of her belly laughing. As the song ended, Mina looked to Katsuki with shining wet eyes, this time from laughing instead of crying. They’d yet exchanged an actual word with each other but just as Mina was about to thank him for the dance and cheering her up, clapping and cheering sounded from the hallway. Both froze and looked to their audience.
The entirety of class 3A was smushed together, all smiling and cheering for their classmates, despite having been awoken by their antics. Two figures pushed through the crowd and Katsuki could immediately feel a headache coming on. Kaminari and Sero came in wolf-whistling and grinning.
“We didn’t know you could dance, Bakubro!” Kaminari swung his arm over Katsuki's shoulders from one side, and Sero did the same from the other.
“Or sing!” Both grinned teasingly, letting Katsuki know they wouldn’t be letting this go anytime soon. It was a testament to Katsuki's growth that he wasn’t blowing their faces up right this second.
Instead, he scowled at them. “Shut up idiots, you weren’t supposed to see any of that shit.”
“Oh, but we did,” Kaminari’s teasing expression changed to a lecturing one, “Shouldn’t have sung so loud if you didn’t want us to hear, Kacchan!” He grinned and squeezed Katsuki's shoulders then turned a bright smile at Mina. “How’d your date tonight go? I can’t wait to hear your goss!”
Sero quickly joined in with the questioning, “Did you kiss him? You’re home pretty late,” he wiggled his brows, “did you go back to his place for a rendezvous?”
Mina grimaced at all the questioning, not feeling quite ready to talk about it yet, especially not in front of the whole class. Luckily she didn’t have to.
“Shut the fuck up idiots. You’re embarrassing yourselves,” Katsuki shoved both men off of him and grabbed Mina’s hand, “we’re gonna make some tea. Go the fuck back to bed all of you.”
He didn’t wait for a reply before pushing through the crowd in the hall, to the kitchen. There, he turned on the kettle and gathered some ingredients for tea. Mina watched on in silence, leaning towards a counter out of Katsuki’s way. Katsuki quietly poured water over the tea in the two cups he’d put out and handed one to Mina.
“Thanks,” she muttered and clasped the cup with both hands. They sat on the barstools at the counter in silence for another 3 minutes before Mina took a sip of tea and then spoke up again, clearer than before. “Thank you Kats, for the dance and getting me out of my own head. And for the tea. It’s really nice”
“Don’t have to thank me for any of it,” Katsuki responded. Much quieter her continued, “It was fun.”
Mina smiled, looking down into the murky water of her cup. She kept her gaze on the cup as she spoke, “he was dared to go out with me by his friends. They thought it was funny, because of my skin tone. I’m not a mutant in the way Shouji and Koda are, so I’ve never really been able to relate to their stories. Before tonight I have never felt ashamed and embarrassed to look the way I do. But he and his friends made me feel like the scum of the earth.” She took a sip of her tea then looked to the ceiling, “they asked me how much it’d cost to have me for the night, like I was a prostitute, something to buy, a possession. Not human.”
A short silence stretched out between them. It wasn’t because Katsuki didn’t want to say something, to comfort her, reassure her, or something, but he just did not know what to say. After what felt like a while, he simply looked at her blankly and asked “Want me to kill them?”
The question made Mina snort tea out of her nose, as she was in the middle of a sip when he asked. “Blasty!” Her tone wasn’t as accusing as it was meant to be due to her shocked laughter. “We’re almost heroes! You can joke about killing normal civilians just because they’re assholes,” she clearly didn’t believe his offer to be genuine, with the way she was laughing.
Katsuki grumbled into his tea, “Not joking. It’d be worth it.”
“Regardless, I don’t want one stupid date to be the reason you spoil your dream and end up in jail instead,” Mina smiled genuinely to Katsuki as they finished their tea. Both cups were placed in the sink for cleaning tomorrow and they went to their rooms, Katsuki escorting Mina to hers first. At her door, she kissed his cheek and thanked him for everything, despite his grumbling about needing no thanks.
That night both went to bed with their hearts a little fuller and feeling lighter.