Archive of Our Own

Have you ever seen a cat that hates being touched by literally everyone but its person? Like the one person this cat will allow to pet them. Every other human ever can fuck right off, but that one person gets petting rights. And the cat is really clingy with that one person. Lays on top of them, weaves between their feet and trips them, demands to be pet when they’re busy, sits on their keyboard when they try to use their laptop, the whole shebang. But while being shameless about its demands for attention, the cat also acts like it’s a complete coincidence that where they want to sit just so happens to be on top of their person. They keep up the aloof act while aggressively demanding affection. We’ve all met this cat before at some point.

Okay, now that you have that cat in mind, picture Shinsou Hitoshi. Tall, perpetually exhausted, snarky, ‘not here to make friends,’ and allergic to being touched. That Shinsou. Now imagine Shinsou, but with the exact same mannerisms of the aforementioned cat. A little weird, right? The guy likes cats, but that doesn’t mean he acts like one. Except he totally does. He’s so remarkably similar to a cat that hates people it’s ridiculous, it’s just that it hadn’t been noticeable before since he didn’t have a Person. But now Shinsou has a favorite person in the form of one Kaminari Denki, and he does indeed act like an asshole cat that swipes at any hands that reach to pet it and refuses to come out from under the couch when there’s too many people in the room and monopolizes his person’s attention whenever the opportunity presents itself. 

Not literally in the case of the second one, obviously. Shinsou does not hide under the couch when the common room is crowded, despite how much he would probably like to. He either flees to his dorm room or makes it through the hardship of being around both the Bakusquad and Dekusquad at the same time by relying on his emotional support extrovert, which is—you guessed it—Kaminari Denki. If you try to touch him though there is a very real possibility of getting your hand slapped away though, so the first and third ones are pretty accurate. 

To most of their classmates it seems like the change in his behavior happens overnight, but as the Chosen Person involved, Denki is aware that it actually happens so gradually nobody notices it until the shift is already mostly complete. The blond first notices it a month after Shinsou transfers into their class. The purple haired boy has a very strict personal bubble, trespassers will be prosecuted. His vibe screams ‘do not speak to me. don’t even fucking dare touch me.’ He shoots a death glare at people that sit within a foot of him on the couch and has zero qualms about leaving you hanging if you offer a high five. He is very obvious about his dislike of being touched, which makes it even easier to notice when he starts doing things that contradict that. 

Denki had been determined to befriend Shinsou from day one. He met the guy at the joint training exercise and immediately decided he was a cool (and attractive) dude. Working his way up into the hero course from general studies is hella admirable, he’s going to be underground (which is super cool), and he has more determination than anyone Denki has ever met—which is saying something considering he knows Midoriya, who broke all of his fingers more than once during their first sports festival. Actually, on second thought maybe he and Shinsou can share the title of most determined. 

After the training exercise Denki had no doubt about whether Shinsou would make it into the hero course, all that remained to be seen was which class he’d end up in. Rumor has it originally he was going to be added to class B as a twenty-first student, but then Mineta finally crossed the line during The Incident and was expelled not just from the hero course but UA entirely, leaving an open space for a new, much less sexist purple boy in class 2-A. 

Befriending Shinsou was made easier by him joining their class, but it was still no easy feat. The tall teen declared he wasn’t there to make friends and he meant it. Any attempts to start up a conversation not explicitly necessary for class or training were harshly rebuked. They’re still rebuked a lot of the time, just less harshly and never when it’s Denki doing the conversation starting. The purple haired boy slunk off every lunch to eat alone somewhere—to this day Denki still doesn’t know where he had been going, Shinsou refuses to tell him. He knows not knowing is driving Denki a little insane and finds joy in his suffering. 

Denki’s best efforts at forming the foundations of a friendship were shut down for a solid week, maybe week and a half straight. It was a bit disheartening, but Denki did not let it crush his spirit. He was determined to befriend the purple haired boy no matter how prickly he was. He’d already befriended Bakugou, which was somehow easier than trying to become friends with Shinsou, but that might be because he had Kirishima to soften the angry blond up. At this point, as Shinsou’s favorite person Denki is essentially a different version of what Kirishima is to Bakugou in terms of paving the way for other people to make friends with the ‘I don’t need friends, I hate people, leave me alone’ boy. 

He tried all sorts of stuff to make friends with Shinsou, but nothing had been working. Denki had never failed to at least become acquaintances with someone he wanted to be friends with, but Shinsou proved to be a rather tough nut to crack. 

The turning point was completely unintentional, as so many of Denki’s moments of genius are. Looking back on it now, it really set the tone for their friendship. 

Denki has a form of quirk related insomnia, which honestly sounds worse than it is. His body is constantly producing electricity, a certain amount of which is stored for him to easily call upon whenever he wants to discharge his quirk. Anything above that amount goes into his body’s system to replenish any energy he’s lost throughout the day, which is super helpful but also really annoying since his body likes to accept more energy from his quirk than is strictly necessary, making him rather jittery and hyper. It’s either accept that excess energy into his system or walk around as an electrical hazard shedding sparks like crazy, which obviously isn’t safe. Thankfully the negative effects of hosting the excess energy can be prevented by regularly discharging some electricity, which he does plenty of between heroics training and the occasional phone charging throughout the day. 

This energy aspect of his quirk means that he doesn’t need nearly as much sleep as the average person. He can function healthily on three and a half hours of sleep and actively struggles to get more than five. He doesn’t need more than four though so it’s fine, he doesn’t have eyebags the size of checked luggage like Shinsou. The poor guy’s eyebags are so far beyond carry-on size it’s not even funny. As far as quirk related insomnia goes, Denki’s got it pretty good. His quirk doesn’t prevent him from getting enough sleep, it just lowers the necessary amount of sleep. Most people find it difficult to get more than ten hours of sleep in a row unless they did something truly exhausting the previous day, likewise Denki doesn’t sleep more than five hours unless they just did something like a day of Aizawa’s Training Camp From Hell—the normal version with no villain attacks involved.

Denki’s alarm for getting up for school goes off at 7am—first period starts at 8:45am and he takes forever to get ready in the morning—so he usually doesn’t go to sleep until sometime between 3-4am. Nobody’s down in the common room past 1:30am-ish though so he’s usually chilling in his room in his pjs by 1am. He’s not the only one with something weird with his sleeping habits—though he is the only one that needs so few hours of sleep—but despite having a fun little group chat for the class insomniacs, there isn’t anybody to regularly spend the hours of 12-4am with. 

Tokoyami had been the strongest member of the insomniac support squad for a long while, but he has better control over (and cooperation with, having a sentient quirk involves an element of teamwork that other quirks lack apparently) Dark Shadow now, so he doesn’t have nearly as much trouble sleeping as he did during first year. Asui regularly wakes up in the middle of the night from nightmares and has trouble falling back asleep, but she doesn’t typically leave her room when that happens and it’s rare it takes her longer than an hour to get back to sleep. Sero has trouble falling asleep pretty often but he’s usually out by 2am. 

Denki can handle a few hours of alone time, but it’s still annoying sometimes when he really wants to talk to somebody and there’s no one awake. He’s a social creature, he can’t help it. His hyperfixations like to sink their teeth into him when there’s nobody for him to ramble about them to, which is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it means his friends are saved from some of his info dumping, which they already hear a great deal of during the daylight hours. On the other hand, he just learned some fascinating facts about squids (not an actual hyperfixation of his, just the result of some curious googling and subsequent reading of a few interesting articles on giant squids. did you know their eyes are the size of basketballs?) and he needs to share them with someone, but he can’t. If the urge gets irritatingly strong he resorts to texting Sero, who silences his phone when he goes to bed and will respond in the morning with proper interest in his fun facts. 

So now we’ve established A: Denki is awake in the middle of the night, every night, and B: he had nobody to talk to during this time at the start of second year. Now imagine his delight when he ventured down to the kitchen one night for snacks at 3am and found Shinsou sitting in the common room, discovering that the purple haired boy is typically awake at this time due to his own regular, non-quirk related insomnia. 

Yeah, a game changer. And friendship starter, it turns out. 

He grabbed a box of off brand cheez-its from the cabinets that had ‘Kaminari’s Treasured Cheese Flavored Snacks. if you eat these I will cry and you will have to deal with it’ written on it and sat down on the armchair next to the couch that Shinsou was sitting on. The armchair was only a few feet away from the couch, it was actually a little bit closer to the purple haired boy than Denki would have been if he sat on the other end of the couch. Sitting there both put him closer to Shinsou and would help keep the purple haired teen from raising his hackles at being approached. He doesn’t like when people sit on the couch at the same time as him, it makes him wary that they might shift closer to him. Even after befriending him, Denki has never seen him sit on the common room couch outside of the hours of 12am-5am unless the room was empty when he arrived, in which case he vacated the space as soon as someone else sat down. 

Shinsou did not look pleased to see him, to say the least, but Denki didn’t let that deter him. No one is able to resist his charm. Except the many people that have shot down his flirting and told him to fuck off with varying levels of politeness, but that doesn’t count. His ability to make friends and his ability to score dates have drastically different success rates. 

His stellar conversation opener was “Sup, dude. Come here often?”

The look he received for his joking use of the world’s worst and most basic pick up line was incredibly disdainful, and the response was expectedly snarky, but it did get him an actual answer to something he said for once. “Do you think the eye bags are a fashion statement?”

Denki had laughed and replied “Yeah man, you rock the ‘sexy sleep deprivation’ look.” Shinsou cocked an eyebrow at the description of his appearance, but didn’t say anything else. Meaning he didn’t carry on the conversation, but he didn’t tell the blond to go away either. Naturally, Denki took this as an opportunity. “I figured you had insomnia, cause like, duh, but I didn’t realize you came down here this late. I’m up this late all the time but I just hang out in my room.”

The purple haired boy looked down at his phone for a second—presumably checking the time—then back up at the blond before responding with a full sentence for a second time, officially making this conversation longer than any of the ones Denki had attempted to start previously. “You’re regularly awake at 3am?”

Denki politely swallowed most of his mouthful of cheez-its before speaking. “I mean 3am is getting pretty close to my bed time so not always, but often.” 

That statement was apparently so surprising Shinsou actually made a visible expression of slight surprise. “Your bed time,” he said the words ‘bed time’ in that judgmental, slightly sarcastic way that had been the start of freshman year Denki’s crush on Jirou (turns out she’s a huge lesbian so any romantic interest on his part was doomed to failure from the start, but they’re good friends), “is past 3am.”

“You betcha. But if you really wanna keep me up past it, I’m game,” Denki replied with a wink. 

Shinsou raised his brows slightly like he couldn’t believe Denki had the audacity to flirt with him of all people. The joke was on him, after flirting with Bakugou—unreciprocated of course, and requiring dodging a few explosions, but flirting nonetheless—no one is too intimidating to flirt with. “How are you this peppy when you sleep so little?” ‘How the hell do you not have eye bags like mine if you sleep four hours or less every night?’ he also meant, Denki figured.

The blond snapped the fingers of one hand (the one not currently inside a box of cheez-its) into a finger gun, sparks flying off the end of his index. “Weird side effect of my quirk,” he explained, “I basically make my own energy so I only need like three to four hours of sleep.”

Shinsou glared at him as if it was his fault his quirk based insomnia didn’t leave him exhausted and dropped his head back against the couch, closing his eyes as he grumpily muttered “God, I fucking wish that were me.”

Denki snorted, almost dropping a cheez-it. Who knew Shinsou had a sense of humor buried in there? 

“So anyway, want a cheez-it?”

Shinsou did not, in fact, want a cheez-it at that particular moment in time, but he seemed to maybe appreciate the offer. Emphasis on the maybe. 

This encounter was the beginning of Denki’s newly re-invented plan for befriending Shinsou. Approach the boy when he was in the common room at night, a place the purple haired teen felt comfortable in but could retreat from easily, unlike their classroom. Sit nearby but not too close and don’t make any moves to get closer. Use snacks as bribery. Get him used to Denki’s talkative personality and establish that it isn’t necessary to give thorough replies to the blond’s rambling. Gradually begin to approach the purple haired teen during the day when there were few people around. 

To Denki’s utmost satisfaction, the plan actually worked. It genuinely fucking worked. In retrospect he practically befriended Shinsou the same way one befriends a stray cat, which should’ve clued him in to the purple haired boy’s cat-like behavior sooner. Within a week he was regularly rambling about his day and his hyperfixations and whatever else crossed his mind at 3am in the common room with Shinsou. Within two weeks he could wrangle the standoff-ish teen into at least one, if not multiple conversations during the course of the day. Around the two to three week mark he eventually got Shinsou to disclose what kind of snacks he liked and used them as an excuse to sit on the opposite end of the couch as him, placing the snack in the center of the couch between them.

He didn’t push the boy’s physical boundaries and backed off when he seemed overwhelmed or genuinely aggravated by being talked to. He didn’t hunt him down when he went off to eat his lunch in solitude and he didn’t try to drag him into squad or class shenanigans. All in all, he did his best to get Shinsou accustomed to his company without coming off as pushy. A somewhat difficult task for someone like Denki, but worth it to avoid making Shinsou uncomfortable.

Just after a month has passed since Shinsou joined the hero course he sees the first sign that the purple haired teen does anything more than tolerate his presence. They’re paired up for an activity in math class—a subject that Denki is dreadful at, by the way—and not only does Shinsou actually work with him in a helpful manner rather than doing the problems by himself and shoving the page at him afterwards for Denki to copy so Ectoplasm wouldn’t get on their case for not working together (something the purple haired boy had done to Denki previously), he asks about a story the blond had accidentally left unfinished the night before. Denki’s stories tend to wander, going off on tangents of other stories that include their own tangents. He tries his best to finish any he starts and wrap around to his original point, but sometimes things are left half-explained. 

Denki gleefully details the tale he’d touched on in the wee hours of that morning: his and Mina’s journey to get their ears pierced during the break between the end of first year and the start of second—it had been a long yet successful ordeal involving more than one piercing salon and faux tears from Mina and genuine tears from him, neither of which occurred during the actual piercing part. 

The next day Shinsou does something similar. They end up near each other in training as they watch their peers take turns fighting in 2v2 battles. They’re watching from close nearby, serving as practice for fighting near civilians, except they have better reflexes and most of them can defend themselves in some way if anything endangers them, which is why they make good practice, and between rounds—Todoroki’s ice always ends up everywhere after he fights and today is no different, they have to wait for the ice to be removed from the area for the next match to start—the taller boy says something to prompt him to talk about the English sci-fi book he’s been reading lately. 

His friends shoot him confused and curious looks when they notice that the person he’s excitedly telling about one of the book’s subplots is Shinsou, who is quite literally notorious for shutting down any and all attempts at conversation. He waves at them and continues explaining to the purple haired boy why he thinks this subplot is going to turn out to be super important to the plot of the book as a whole. Shinsou offers a comment at one point and Denki does a fist pump in his mind. He’s totally becoming friends with the other teen. He is the Friendship God. No hostile introvert can resist his persistence. 

That night Shinsou stretches his legs out on the couch. They’re not even close to touching Denki, but the space between them is greatly reduced. The blond doesn’t change how he’s sitting, which is with his own legs curled up, but when it happens again the next night he does the same with his own legs, mirroring Shinsou’s on the other side of the bowl of M&Ms (they taste better when eaten from a bowl, something about it just feels fancier) sitting on the center of the couch. 

Shinsou gradually adjusts his boundaries to allow Denki closer both emotionally and physically. They start to have real back and forth conversations about a variety of topics, both discussion of things like anime or what happened that day in class and more personal topics. Denki gets to know the person behind the hostile glare. Shinsou lived in a group home before moving into the dorms at UA. His experiences in foster care weren’t great but they weren’t nightmare fuel either. He loves cats and really wants to have one (or multiple) as a pet and plans to do so as soon as he graduates so his first apartment being pet friendly is a must. He likes matcha flavored candy since it isn’t too sweet. 

His best subject is math, which is completely unfathomable to Denki. It has to be witchcraft or something—maybe Shinsou wants a cat so badly because he needs a familiar to assist him in casting spells. He doesn’t read recreationally much but he really likes watching murder mysteries (but not true crime, he doesn’t hate it but he doesn’t like it much) and used to read a murder mystery novel series during middle school. His insomnia first appeared in the third grade. He’s not 100% certain in his sexuality but he knows he’s attracted to men and suspects he isn’t attracted to women. He doesn’t like to admit it since it feels cliché considering his hair and eye color but purple truly is one of his favorite colors, surpassed only by royal blue. 

Denki hoards the information he learns about Shinsou like a dragon does treasure. Each little tidbit is added to the pile that makes up everything he knows about the purple haired boy, where it is gleefully coveted. Shinsou is an incredibly private person and Denki is fully aware that he is the only one in their class, if not the only one, period, to know these things. He offers up information about himself in return, including a few things he’s not told his friends. It’s only fair since Shinsou is telling him things he’s not told anyone else. 

The blond tells him about how a few months after his quirk manifested he lost control of it during a stormy day and shocked several of his classmates. No one had been seriously injured, but his relationships with his peers changed significantly afterwards and his parents had him move schools at the end of the year for a fresh start. 

He tells him how he first realized he liked boys in the fifth grade when he felt the urge to show off in front of his friend’s older brother like he sometimes did around the girls in his class. He tells him that he genuinely isn’t bothered by the jokes his friends make about his intelligence or the nicknames of a similar nature, but sometimes when Bakugou is convinced to tutor the squad he’ll give Denki this look when he gets a math problem wrong like ‘god you are so fucking stupid’ and that does hurt a little, and occasionally people don’t take his input seriously during training even when he has a good idea and that hurts a little too. 

He doesn’t have much to share that he hasn’t told other people that isn’t either intensely personal or incredibly niche and specific, but Shinsou never seems to mind. As time goes on the purple haired teen reveals pieces of information that are more emotionally loaded. He discusses his depression and how his insomnia impacts him. He talks about the treatment he receives because of his quirk and how it affects him. He tells Denki “You’re still annoying, but it’s nice to have someone that doesn’t hesitate to respond when I ask questions.” The blond points out that there are likely several other people in their class who would do the same if Shinsou actually talked to them (Midoriya, for example), but doesn’t press him about it. He even talks about his parents a bit, a topic he makes clear he isn’t fond of, revealing that he was given up for adoption shortly after his quirk came in. 

As they grow more familiar with each other Shinsou begins to initiate brief moments of physical contact. He offers a high five when Denki gets a B on a math quiz. He nudges the blond with his elbow when he accidentally zones out while All Might is giving instructions for the day’s training. They’re in the kitchen at 1am and Denki is standing in front of an upper cabinet Shinsou needs access to; instead of having the blond teen move aside the purple haired boy stands next to him, their shoulders brushing as he leans towards him to reach inside the cabinet. Denki offers a fist bump during training and Shinsou taps his knuckles with his own. Denki doesn’t put a snack on the couch one night, leaving nothing between their stretched out legs; Shinsou spreads out across the space and rests his socked foot against Denki’s calf. It starts small and slowly builds, with Shinsou taking little steps towards more physical contact and Denki offering opportunities for it without initiating it himself. 

Sometimes Denki has to push down the impulse to plaster himself to the purple haired boy the way he does with his other friends, but it’s necessary to avoid making Shinsou uncomfortable. The taller teen has very strict personal boundaries, especially in regards to touch, and if he so much as thinks you might cross one of them he retreats even further into his iron shell. Denki starts up conversations and sometimes initiates touch if Shinsou has consistently shown that he’s alright with that level of contact, but he lets the other boy control the pace of their increasing level of physicality.  

Because it is increasing, there’s no denying that. Shinsou lets him into his dorm room about two months after transferring to their class. At first one of them sits on the bed while the other takes the desk chair, but as they continue to go up there every few nights Shinsou brings up the idea of watching a movie, which leads to them both sitting in the purple haired boy’s cozy nest-like bed. He has several blankets and soft pillows, and his bed is pushed into the corner—the default position for the dorm beds—so he has a wall of pillows along one side of the bed. Denki loves it and tells him as much. Fun fact: Shinsou has no idea how to react to being complimented. 

The first time he sits on Shinsou’s bed they don’t touch, as if to balance out the more personal location. After that they begin to sit with some part of themselves in contact. Sometimes they sit side by side near the headboard, shoulders pressed together, sometimes they sit on opposite ends of the bed, legs or arms touching in a messy sprawl. 

Denki loves physical affection, and while Shinsou isn’t as heavy handed with it as people like Kirishima and Mina, each touch carries more weight. Each one is a testament to Shinsou’s comfort with his presence. When the purple haired boy first starts doing more affectionate things like leaning his head against Denki’s shoulder or putting his feet in Denki’s lap while they’re sitting on the couch Denki is in such a good mood for the following days that his friends comment on it. 

Around the two and a half month mark is when Denki would say Shinsou really begins to ramp up their level of physical contact. Like, it’s blatantly physical affection at this point. One night the purple haired boy even gives Denki a wonderful hug since the blond had a rough day. It’s incredibly stiff and comes off as uncharacteristically hesitant, a contrast to how the boy normally introduces new forms of contact casually like they’re nothing noteworthy. Fortunately the awkwardness is remedied when Denki laughs at it and pulls Shinsou closer. 

Not a single night passes without them sharing some form of contact, be it Shinsou poking him to get his attention or leaning against one another in the taller teen’s bed. Leaning against each other becomes cuddling—like legit cuddling. Full body, long lasting contact in comfortable positions. It’s delightful and Denki is thrilled with this development. What’s better than a hug? An extended hug while under a fuzzy blanket, that’s what. 

During the day around other people Shinsou is far less likely to initiate physical touch, so Denki follows suit. The tiny shifts in Shinsou’s boundaries present themselves at night when the two of them hang out alone. At no point does it occur to Denki that due to this, in the eyes of literally everyone but himself and Shinsou, their friendship springs up out of nowhere. From their perspective Denki suddenly starts successfully talking to Shinsou in class one day, no explanation for why the purple haired boy is willing to tolerate his rambling. Similarly the gradual deepening of their relationship is nearly invisible from the surface, making for quite the surprise when their physicality sees the light of day for the first time. 

It’s a random night after a tough day of training when Denki falls asleep in Shinsou’s room. He usually heads to his own room to crash before 4:30am, but the exercise they did that day had been designed by Aizawa, leaving them all completely wiped and causing Denki to fall asleep while cuddled up to Shinsou sometime around 2am. His phone alarm goes off in the morning and is shut off before he has the chance to grab for the device. There are fingers running through his hair as a hand gently shakes his shoulder to wake him up. When he manages to get his brain fully online and functioning he finds himself pressed up against the firm lines of a warm, familiar body. He’s in a different position than he had been in before falling asleep, less on top of Shinsou and more latched onto his side.

He shoves himself into a sitting position with a yawn so large it’s uncomfortable, only to realize this has caused him to lose the fingers playing with his hair and flop back down with a groan. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the pale hand that reaches over to tug at his hair. “C’mon spark plug, get up.” Shinsou has a wonderful voice. Low and rumbling with the slightest bit of raspiness to it. It lends itself well to his tendency for sarcasm and snark, and to his generally calm demeanor. It’s not exactly the type of voice you’d hear on an audiobook, purely because no narrator of some random biography should sound so sexy, and Denki would gladly listen to it all day. 

“No,” Denki replies, voice heavily muffled by the pillow his face is currently shoved into. “School bad. Shinsou petting my hair good.”

The boy next to him chuckles and tugs at his hair again. “I’m flattered, but I can and will push you out of this bed if I need to.”

“You don’t get it,” the blond bemoans. “Having someone play with your hair is the best solution to literally everything ever.” 

Shinsou’s fingers scratch against his scalp and Denki melts into a vaguely human-shaped puddle of contentment. “That’s your pitch for world peace, huh.”

“Yessss,” Denki’s voice turns into a hiss as he stretches his back. Shinsou has very nice hands and having them run through his hair is equally as nice. 

“You still have to get up.”

“Absolutely not.” Why would he do such a thing when he could just stay right here, body pressed against Shinsou’s and a gentle hand in his hair? 

There’s a quiet sigh from the other boy and another tug at his hair before Denki’s world becomes a blur of motion. Hands push under his hip and shoulder and lift and suddenly he’s hitting the ground next to the bed with a loud thump. The blond lets out a groan and takes a moment to wallow in his miserable fate. He glares up at Shinsou, who sits upright on the bed looking far too smug, from his position awkwardly sprawled across the floor, his cheek pressed into the black rug beneath him. “You’re such an asshole. I hate you.”

Shinsou gives him a small smirk and says “That sounds like a you problem.” 

Denki scrunches his face up into an expression of discontent as he hauls himself up off the floor. “You are literally the worst.”

“I thought you like when I play with your hair, how can I be the worst?” Shinsou stands up and walks over to his dresser, his arm brushing against Denki’s as he moves past. 

“Don’t get cocky, I can find somebody else to put their hands in my hair,” he says. He can’t see Shinsou’s face but he can see the way he briefly tilts his head slightly in the way that tends to accompany him rolling his eyes. He grabs some clothes from the drawers and starts changing into them. It’s not the first time he’s been in the room as Shinsou changed, though usually it was him changing out of his uniform rather than into it, but it still catches him off guard. He turns around to give the purple haired boy some privacy, though Shinsou probably wouldn’t give a fuck if he watched him change. The taller boy is not body shy in the slightest, possibly as a result of living in a group home for the past few years where he shared a room with two other boys. It would feel weird to just stand there and watch Shinsou change his underwear though so Denki doesn’t turn back around until he hears the footsteps indicating that the other boy is getting a shirt from his closet. 

Side note: Denki forever dislikes the fact their uniform has a shirt—and pants, but you can get away with having wrinkly pants more easily than having a wrinkly shirt—that needs to be ironed. It’d be so much easier if they had a polo shirt or something. Polos aren’t nearly as fancy looking as button up shirts with ties though and UA is supposed to be a fancy school. Button ups are pretty common for most Japanese high schools’ uniforms too, so it would be even more odd for a school of UA’s level of prestige to use a different kind of shirt. 

Shirtlessness is a much more acceptable level of public nudity—for dudes at least, obviously it's not the same for chicks—so the blond has no qualms about watching the muscles in the other teen’s back move as he pulls a shirt off a hanger. It’s impossible to be in the hero course without being in shape, but Shinsou’s quirk isn’t directly combative so he relies on hand to hand a lot. Between that and using the same capture weapon as Aizawa, the purple haired boy not only gets quite the workout during training but also has to do some additional strength conditioning. He’s not built like a brick shithouse à la Kirishima or Midoriya, but he has a significant amount of muscle. 

A significant amount of muscle which Denki is very appreciative of. He meant what he said during the joint training exercise about Shinsou having the looks to be popular with girls. Turns out that’s not quite the attention the purple haired boy is interested in attracting, but that actually works out great since Denki isn’t a girl. He doesn’t expect anything to ever come of his attraction to the purple haired teen, the boy is far too focused on training and Denki is great friend material but not very popular as boyfriend material, but having friends that double as eye candy never hurt anybody. 

“Don’t you need to be going back to your own room to get dressed?” Shinsou reminds him while buttoning up his shirt, still facing away from Denki. 

“Ugh. Can’t I just lay in your bed forever until I wither away? I’ll die comfy and I’ll leave my video games to you instead of Sero in my will.”

The taller boy’s lips are quirked up in amusement as he turns around, hands fastening the button of his collar. “Drama queen. Get out of my room, shoo.”

“You can’t shoo me, I’m shoo-proof,” Denki declares for no discernible reason except maybe prolonging his time in Shinsou’s room.

“Don’t worry, I’m well aware that you’re impossible to get rid of.” He grabs his tie from on top of his dresser and wraps it underneath his flipped up collar. Denki’s attention is split between the small teasing smirk on Shinsou’s face and his hands dexterously doing the knot of his tie with ease. He wonders if the boy figured out how to do it within a few tries or if he had to have someone show him how to do it a million times during the first week of school like Denki did. 

“You know what they say, if you give a mouse a cookie,” the blond says with a shrug. 

Shinsou raises an eyebrow slightly. “If you give a mouse a cookie the next thing you know they’ll be sleeping in your bed?”

Denki scowls petulantly. “Hey, it wasn’t intentional. It’s not my fault Aizawa’s exercise drained my life force and your bed happens to be a haven of plush-textured comfort.”

The purple haired boy unplugs his phone where it sits on his nightstand and looks at the screen for a moment before sliding it into his pants pocket. “It’s seven forty-five. Go get dressed, Pikachu, or you’re going to end up skipping breakfast.”

“Pikachu isn’t even my favorite electric type,” Denki grumbles as he makes his way to the door. 

Shinsou looks up from where he’s putting on a pair of socks. “I know, it’s Jolteon, but you make that funny little surprised face Pikachu does.”

“Are you really implying I make the surprised Pikachu face?”

“I’m not implying, I’m explicitly stating it. Now go get ready for class before I physically carry you to your room and throw you in there.”

Denki wiggles his eyebrows. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

There’s a moment where Shinsou cocks an eyebrow, as if calling Denki on his bluff. During this moment the blond is acutely aware that he could laugh and walk out the door and avoid finding out whether the purple haired boy will genuinely follow through on his threat. Instead he winks. 

The moment breaks with Shinsou quickly stepping towards him and bending his knees so he can wrap his arms around Denki’s thighs and throw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The blond lets out an “oof” as his stomach lands on the taller boy’s shoulder. He’s not sure what he’d been expecting when Shinsou threatened to drag him to his room, but it was certainly more graceful than this. He’s jostled against the boy’s back with each step and the back of his loose t-shirt has fallen victim to gravity (ha, fallen, like the effect of gravity). The front of his shirt is held in place by being pinned between himself and Shinsou, but the back is bunched up around the back of his neck. Not only does this make him feel certain he looks stupid, but the hand Shinsou has on his lower back is directly on his bare skin, which happens to be very distracting. The only pros of the situation are that he’s getting to experience Shinsou’s strength first hand (okay, and maybe that the taller teen’s large hand is pressed to his skin, that too) and he has a very up close view of the purple haired boy’s ass. It’s a nice ass, by the way. 

“Damn, anybody ever told you you have a great ass?” Denki has never claimed to have a great brain to mouth filter, nor has he denied accusations of being an unrepentant flirt. He wouldn’t typically be so crass in hitting on someone, frankly it’d be rude to go around telling strangers and acquaintances that they have great asses, but he knows the purple haired boy doesn’t really care if he says crude things. 

Shinsou doesn’t quite stumble at his words, but his next step seems much smaller than normal. “Has anyone ever told you there’s something severely wrong with you?” Ouch. Shinsou is brutal at all times. No mercy. 

“Of course,” Denki says conversationally from where he dangles off Shinsou’s shoulder. “I’m too insufferable to live, too sexy to die.” The purple haired boy’s floor of the dorms has relatively few people living on it, so it’s not that large a surprise they don’t encounter anyone while walking to the elevator. 

“Well you’re right about one of those.”

He pats Shinsou on the back of his leg. “I’m glad you agree I’m too sexy to die. I really feel like our class doesn’t appreciate my sex appeal enough.” He doesn’t need to see the purple haired boy’s face to know what expression is on his face. 

Shinsou adjusts Denki’s weight a bit, the arm wrapped around his thighs shifting his frame so that his hips are more in front of the boy’s shoulder rather than digging into it. “I’m going to remind you that the only thing that stands between you and being dropped on your head is my goodwill.”

“Pshh, whatever. I was dropped on my head as a baby,” not true, but a fun thing to blame when he gets nearly every problem on his math homework wrong, “and I turned out fine."

“That explains so much about you,” Shinsou replies, because he’s an asshole like that. Denki loves befriending people that have zero reservations about bullying him for the dumb shit he does and says, doesn’t he. Jirou, Bakugou, and now Shinsou. The whole Bakusquad teases each other constantly, but it's those three people, only one of which who is fully in said squad (Jirou is Bakusquad adjacent, she’s got like half membership, and Denki is literally the only person in their class that Shinsou talks to so obviously he’s not in any squad, Baku- or otherwise), that regularly bring the phrase ‘shots fired’ to mind. 

“You’re so mean to me.”

Shinsou pinches him with the hand on his leg. “Tough luck. Cope.” Denki pinches the boy’s side in retaliation, but Shinsou just pinches him again, harder. Denki wisely chooses not to continue this escalating war of pinches, both to avoid getting pinched more and because he’s pretty sure he would wuss out first. 

When they exit the elevator on Denki’s floor the blond doesn’t hear any voices, but he also can’t see down the hallway so he can’t truly tell if there’s anyone there. As Shinsou stops to open his door Denki sees someone out of his peripheral vision and cranes his neck to lift his head up and get a look at who it is. It’s Iida, who’s staring at the sight of Denki hanging off Shinsou’s back like he has so many questions he doesn’t even know what to ask. Being the anti-social creature he is, Shinsou neglects to offer the class president a greeting despite definitely having seen him already. Denki waves at him. Iida still looks like he thinks a hallucinogenic might have ended up in his water bottle without him knowing, but he nods politely in return. Their brief interaction ends as Shinsou enters his dorm room. 

Denki’s room is kind of a mess if he’s being honest. The squad never hangs out in his room because, in the words of Bakugou, ‘your taste in decorations makes me wish I was blind,’ and Shinsou and he always go to the purple haired boy’s room when they hang out in the late hours of the night, so there’s not much motivation to keep his room tidy. He doesn’t leave laundry on the floor—most of the time—or trash/half eaten food everywhere—ever, that's how you get ants, he has a trashcan he doesn't empty nearly often enough instead, which admittedly probably isn't much better of a defense against ant infestation—but cluttered would be an accurate description of the state of the small room. He has shit everywhere. Shinsou has to navigate around some of it just to reach his bed. Once in front of it he turns around, putting Denki’s upper half vaguely above it.

“Uhhh, you gonna drop me or what?”

“Knowing you, you’d somehow manage to snap your neck if I did that. Just get down.” He hoists Denki’s weight further back on his shoulder. Not exactly how the blond expected to get down, but this works he guesses. He has to place his palms on the backs of Shinsou’s (very nicely muscled) thighs so he has leverage to help him wiggle forward. Once enough of his weight is on the back of Shinsou’s shoulder rather than in front of it he places his hands on his bed and awkwardly walks forward on them like he’s doing a handstand until he fully slithers off the other teen’s shoulders and lands on the bed with a muffled thump. 

Like the ride from Shinsou’s room, the experience isn’t the most comfortable but is overall alright. 6/10, he’d do it again. A hard object drops onto his back, managing to dig into his spine with one of its corners before bouncing a bit and landing flat. He awkwardly grabs at it and after a few clumsy attempts manages to get ahold of it. It’s his phone, apparently carried to his room in one of Shinsou’s pockets. Shinsou is so thoughtful, Denki totally would have forgotten he left his phone in the other’s dorm room and spent way too much time hunting for it elsewhere. 

He rolls over onto his back and scoots towards the edge of the bed to stand up, by which point Shinsou is already stepping through the doorway. “It wouldn’t hurt you to say goodbye, you know,” Denki calls, not truly offended by the boy’s disregard of polite social custom. 

“You don’t know that,” Shinsou replies over his shoulder, prompting a laugh from the blond, before disappearing down the hallway. The asshole doesn’t close the door behind himself. 

Several days go by in which Iida has to bear the burden of being the sole person to know about how close Denki and Shinsou are. The blond catches the glasses wearing boy intently watching his interactions with Shinsou as if he might be able to find something he’d previously missed about their relationship in Denki’s complaining about how long their upcoming English test is going to be—English is his best subject, but he’s still a horrible test taker. Denki is pretty sure the class prez thinks he’s being subtle, which makes the way he has to look away rapidly whenever Denki looks over at him while talking to Shinsou much more entertaining. 

It’s during movie night that their peers get their first taste of Denki and Shinsou’s highly touchy friendship. The purple haired boy typically avoids class movie nights like the plague, but this time it's Denki’s turn to pick the movie, which he plans to use to rope Shinsou into attending by picking a movie he knows the purple haired teen either likes or wants to see. When he brings it up Shinsou dismisses it with the admittedly true claim that Shinsou can watch any movie he likes with Denki without the rest of their classmates while they’re both up in the middle of the night. 

Fortunately the blond had anticipated this response and had a trap card lying in wait to be activated by this. He tells the taller teen that if he goes to movie night Midoriya might take it as a sign he’s beginning to integrate himself with the class (which he has not done at all yet. Denki’s working on it. they’ll get there eventually) and back off in his attempts to gain the purple haired boy’s friendship. Midoriya, powerhouse of friendship and comradery that he is, is still stuck where Denki had been before he started hanging out with Shinsou while everyone else is asleep each night. He’s very persistent and the purple haired boy has sought Denki out on more than one occasion to escape the cheery curly haired boy’s attempts at making conversation. 

The blond feels a little bad for the green haired teen, he managed to befriend Shinsou and has absolutely zero useful advice on how to do so. He can’t exactly be like oh just don’t sleep until 4am and hang out with him alone in the common room, both because Midoriya presumably has a normal healthy sleep schedule and because Denki himself accompanies Shinsou late at night now so it wouldn’t be possible to approach Shinsou alone then. Denki thinks that attending movie night will actually make Midoriya double down in his currently fruitless efforts to befriend Shinsou, but if not knowing that will get him to attend movie night then Shinsou doesn’t need to know. 

What matters is that he manages to convince Shinsou to come to class movie night. He then has to text the squad group chat to be like ‘hey Shinsou is coming to movie night don’t scare him off. if you swarm him he will leave, zero hesitation. and then I’ll cry or short circuit your phones or something.’ 

He immediately receives a storm of texts asking how he managed to get Shinsou to agree to such a thing, as well as how he managed to get Shinsou to speak to him at all in the first place since they still don’t know that either. Shinsou is not a chatty person, but Denki has had many full fledged conversations with him at this point, the least of which happen during class and training in front of their peers. He doesn’t exactly hide their late night hang outs, but he never brings them up either. Mina calls him the Shinsou whisperer, which he feels a little guilty for finding funny since Shinsou isn’t a wild animal, he’s just an incredibly anti-social person with enough hang ups about hero course students to fill a suitcase, but Denki is an active participant in calling Kirishima the Bakugou whisperer so he knows she means it in good fun. 

After extracting promises along the lines of ‘we solemnly swear not to hound Shinsou at movie night’ from Mina and Sero, ‘I will not attempt to give Shinsou a high five, fist bump, shoulder pat, or bro hug’ from Kirishima, and ‘I will not make a rude comment about Shinsou finally deeming us worthy of his high and mighty presence’ from Bakugou, Denki is mildly reassured that Shinsou won’t duck out ten minutes into the film. There’s still like a 35% chance it’ll happen anyway between the chaotic nature of the Bakusquad and the unpredictable factor of their other classmates, who are generally tamer (the Dekusquad is tamer in their shenanigans most of the time until suddenly there’s stuff like attempted murder or mass graffitti involved. they’re a weird bunch) but still fully capable of chasing Shinsou off. 

As people begin to gather for the movie, Denki makes a detour to Shinsou’s room to grab one of the blankets that live in there and a big ass pillow. Shinsou’s blankets and pillows are soooo soft and since Shinsou himself will be sitting next to him he has the perfect excuse to snag some to use during movie night. The purple haired boy is in the room as he does so and gives him a look like ‘really?’ but doesn’t protest. Denki goes down to the common room alone. Shinsou doesn’t want to come down until right before the movie starts so he has to deal with their peers as little as possible. Considering it’s practically a miracle he’s talked the purple haired teen into attending at all, Denki doesn’t take issue with it. Pick your battles and all that. 

He’s one of the first people there. He sets the blanket and pillow down and retrieves some snacks from the kitchen, then returns to the common room and lays the blanket out. He claims a chunk of the floor, folding the blanket in half so they can lie on top of it while also covering themselves with it. The spot is in front of one of the couches so they can lean back against it if they want. Whoever wants to sit on the couch behind them will have to accept that they won’t get any leg room since he already has the big pillow propped up against it. Whoever it is can just put their feet in somebody’s lap or something. 

People trickle in with their own blankets and pillows and claim spots for themselves. Jirou and Yaoyorozu end up being the ones on the couch behind him, which is definitely preferable to any of the rowdier members of the class (aka the Bakusquad and a few select others). Sero makes to sit down next to him, which Denki would normally be totally down for, but today he has to say “Sorry bro, this spot is reserved.” 

His friend looks confused for a moment before going “Oh. Okay, I see how it is,” with a smile that feels way too teasing and finding a different place to sit. 

He’s just about to text Shinsou like ‘get your lanky ass down here the movie’s about to start’ when, in a truly impressive display of timing, the purple haired boy walks out of the elevator. His quiet presence doesn’t attract much attention, not until he walks into the heart of the common room rather than past it to the kitchen. Then the class is suddenly very interested in watching the tall teen navigate his way around the blankets and pillows spread out across the floor. Denki’s not sure if they think they’re being subtle or something but his peers’ voices get much quieter and he hears Shinsou’s name on more than one pair of lips. The Bakusquad is very guilty of this. The purple haired boy weathers the attention with grace. And with a glare that screams ‘shut the fuck up.’ 

Denki lifts up the blanket so the other can slip under it to sit next to him. The whispers increase in intensity, reaching a level that’s frankly ridiculous as Shinsou puts his arm across the blond’s shoulders. Denki nudges him with his elbow and gives him a grateful smile. They both know the reason the purple haired boy agreed to come isn’t his desire to escape Midoriya’s friendship endeavors. Shinsou’s face remains impassive but his hand squeezes Denki’s shoulder briefly. The blond looks around to find who currently has the remote and is greeted with the attentive gazes of most of the people in the room. Being gawked at like a particularly interesting zoo animal is getting a little old so he cocks a judgmental brow, directing the majority of the expression towards his guilty friend group. His peers seem sufficiently cowed so he goes ahead and asks “Yo, who’s got the remote? It’s my turn to pick.”

Uraraka, still looking embarrassed from being caught staring, tosses it to him. He pulls the film up, shooting Shinsou a questioning look. The movie he chose looks truly terrible. Like, not so bad it’s funny terrible, a waste of two hours terrible. Shinsou merely blinks at him. Denki lets out an exasperated huff and hits play. 

Fifteen minutes later and Denki is convinced this is the worst movie he’s ever seen in his entire life. They’ve barely gotten into the meat of the plot and he can already tell it’s genuinely awful. It’s a failed re-invention of the classic ‘chosen one come to save us all’ trope that manages to lose all of the (minimal, in Denki’s opinion) appeal of the trope without gaining any from successfully putting an interesting spin on it. The plot is unoriginal and relies heavily on preventable miscommunication, which drives Denki insane. 

Twenty-five minutes in and he’s starting to think this is Shinsou’s revenge for dragging him to movie night. There’s zero chemistry between the bland protagonist and the generic and underdeveloped love interest, the scene that’s supposed to endear the old mentor figure that will surely die later to the audience only serves to make Denki dislike the old dude, and the acting is mediocre. It’s not bad enough to be funny and it’s not good enough to be convincing. The attempts at comedy scattered throughout are so painful he wants to tear his hair out. No one's ever going to want to let him pick the movie ever again that's for sure. 

“Shinsou,” he says, maybe a bit louder than he intended since it startles Ojirou, who’s sitting on the floor nearby. “If you really didn’t want to come you could’ve just said no instead of putting me through this torture.” 

He feels the boy’s arm over his shoulders shake slightly as he laughs silently. If Denki couldn’t feel it through the way they’re pressed against one another he’d have no idea the other was amused. “I live for taking joy in your suffering,” he replies, voice and face completely deadpan. Satou, sitting a few feet away from Shinsou, looks a little alarmed by how serious he seems.

“I’m your friend, can’t you take joy in someone else’s suffering instead of mine,” Denki complains. 

“You aren’t the only one watching this movie right now, are you? Who said you were the target?” Shinsou’s gaze flits around the room at their peers, the ones currently enduring the same horrible movie as Denki.

An unexpected bark of laughter escapes the blond’s throat. “Oh my god, I’m collateral damage in your war against our class. You’re such a dick. Why am I friends with you?”

“You like being in my bed,” the other replies, the slight curl of his lips indicating he is fully aware of the innuendo laced within his words. There’s a sharp flick against Denki’s ear from one of Jirou’s earjacks that promises the blond will be thoroughly interrogated about this later. 

“You’re lucky you’ve got good taste in blankets, mister.” Denki elbows Shinsou in the side before settling against him once more to continue watching this god awful movie. 

The movie resoundly does not improve the further they get into it. If anything it gets worse, which Denki would have thought impossible were it not happening in front of his own eyes. His only consolation in these troubling times is that he can turn further towards Shinsou and throw his legs over the other boy’s lap as he leans against the purple haired teen’s chest. Just in case Denki hasn’t yet made it clear, Shinsou makes a wonderful cuddle partner. It takes Mina at least ten minutes to notice he’s no longer sitting in the same position as earlier, but once she does her excitement is palpable. 

A while later someone in the Bakusquad group chat, which Denki has been steadfastly ignoring through the film since he has no doubt all the notifications he’s getting from it are for messages either going on about him and Shinsou or telling the others to shut up about him and Shinsou (Bakugou, the one man counterforce against their friend group’s enthusiasm), must say something particularly funny since everyone in the squad save for Denki erupts into laughs and hoots out of nowhere. Mina cackles loudly, Kirishima laughing with her just as loud—the others burst into laughter as well, even Bakugou lets out an evil sounding little cackle, but those two are definitely the loudest. The scene playing out onscreen is this film’s pitiful attempt at a quiet moment of connection between the protagonist and the love interest. While pathetic, the failure at intimacy isn’t remotely laugh worthy. 

Shinsou glares at the group for a second before pushing himself off the pillow they’re leaning against. “Fuck it,” the purple haired boy says before shoving the blanket on top of them down towards their feet. He rearranges himself so he’s curled up next to Denki, his cheek resting on the blond’s thigh. It’s not something he’s done before, but it’s nothing revolutionary considering how much contact they share when they cuddle. Then Shinsou does something he doesn’t expect. He grabs Denki’s hand and puts it in his hair. 

What he wants seems obvious, but Denki can’t help but ask “Do you want me to–”

“You said having someone play with your hair is the solution to every problem. Time to prove it, sparky.”

Denki laughs as he starts running his fingers through thick purple hair. The sound draws the attention of the people seated near him since his friends have already quieted back down (as quiet as the Bakusquad gets at least). To say they do a double take would be an understatement. After a moment of fierce whispering to inform those sitting further away from him and Shinsou, there are many pairs of eyes on them, all of which Denki ignores. His phone, which he had failed to silence during the movie for some unknown reason, vibrates like crazy with messages that are assuredly from the Bakusquad group chat and maybe dms from a few other people as well. The attention disperses after a few minutes, but several people definitely continue to sneak glances at the pair every now and then.

Shinsou lets out a hum that’s practically a purr as Denki scratches his scalp. What a cat the blond thinks amusedly, still not having realized that he quite literally befriended Shinsou almost the exact same way one befriends a stray cat, just with more talking and complexity because Shinsou is in fact a person, not a feline. 

Around twenty minutes later Shinsou sits up, getting onto his knees a good foot or so away from Denki. Denki, for his part, is understandably confused. Then Shinsou prods his leg and says “Scoot.” Still slightly confused, the blond does as instructed, moving over to the spot Shinsou had just been sitting in (curled up in? lounging in?). The reason becomes clear as the purple haired boy relocates himself to the spot Denki just vacated, laying down once more with his head on the blond’s lap except with the opposite cheek on his leg. Apparently he’d grown tired of resting on the one side of his face. 

Denki does not squeak—though it is a near thing—when one of Shinsou’s hands grabs his thigh and moves it to what he apparently deems a more preferable position. Because that’s the reasonable choice between moving his own body and moving Denki’s for him. Obviously. Whatever, Denki goes back to playing with the boy’s hair. It’s very soft despite its gravity defying inclination. Shinsou has large hands. These two thoughts take up a little too much space in his brain. 

If he hears Mina make a valiant attempt at quietly whispering that comes out more like exaggerated stage whispering about something involving Denki and Shinsou’s names and the word ‘manhandle,’ no he doesn’t. If he did hear such a thing, which he doesn’t, he would be inclined to say that moving Denki’s thigh a bit did not count as manhandling just because Shinsou has large hands. They’re not even that big anyway. They’re…proportional. He’s just tall. 

Unlike Denki, who is still waiting for his next growth spurt at the impressive height of 5’6 (yes. the exact same height he was at the start of first year. no, he is not available for comment, Kirishima, fuck you and your three inch growth spurt you 5’10 bastard), the purple haired boy stands at 5’11. He was 5’10 at the end of first year. They’re less than a full semester into second year and he’s already reached 5’11, and honestly Denki thinks he’ll hit 6 foot by the end of the year. Anyways, Shinsou does not have large hands so much as he’s a large teenager overall. You know what, somehow that doesn’t seem like it’s helping Denki’s point here. 

At one point near the end of the film Aizawa comes to check on the class before leaving for patrol. Some people offer verbal greetings while others simply wave or nod at him. Denki is part of the first group while Shinsou, who is not in a position to nod and apparently too cool to wave, does neither. 

Their teacher’s gaze lands on the purple haired teen and his position lying with his head in Denki’s lap, one of the blond’s hands in his hair, and he does something incredibly specific with his eyebrow. Denki has no idea what the expression is supposed to mean. It doesn’t look like incredulous disbelief, nor frustration, and not judgmental disdain either, which are Aizawa’s top three expressions (when it comes to their class at least. maybe some magical soul out there can inspire other ones). He’s gotten pretty good at reading Shinsou based on his eyebrows, but between this being a different person and the sentiment possibly involving context he’s unaware of, he can’t come up with anything solid. 

Shinsou seems to know what it’s meant to convey though, as his eyebrows flick into what Denki has come to interpret as him issuing a challenge. Keep in mind he’s doing this from Denki’s lap, which makes it a bit comical. Aizawa’s brow settles back into its neutral resting place, his face wiped clean of any discernible expression. Somehow he seems smug, but Denki can’t figure out what it is about his face that’s giving that impression for the life of him. 

The man tells the class not to do anything that would require him being contacted for an emergency then heads out. “Bastard,” Shinsou mutters under his breath as soon as their teacher is out the door. 

“Did you just call sensei a bastard?” Denki asks, amusement tinged with a hint of incredulity. He feels Shinsou nod. “That’s like, illegal. He’s sensei. And I think he would expel you or murder you or something if he heard it.”

“He knows what he did.”

Denki laughs. It’s loud enough to garner a glare from Iida, though the look is much more confused than it is assertive, as has been the trend with the looks Iida has sent his way since the class president’s morning was interrupted by Shinsou fireman carrying Denki down the hallway. 

Eventually, mercifully, the movie comes to an end. It was indeed the worst movie Denki has ever had the misfortune of sitting through. He will be paying Shinsou back for this at some point. He’s not sure how yet, but he’ll figure it out. As loath as he is to end the physical contact between him and the other boy, his butt is getting sore from sitting in the same position for so long, so he wiggles his legs and tugs on Shinsou’s hair. “Your awful movie is over, you can flee from your peers now.” 

He can’t see the purple haired boy’s face but there’s a very solid chance he rolls his eyes at the blond’s teasing. “Why would I do that when I could just stay here?”

“Because you love me and my butt is starting to go numb?”

Shinsou hums quietly. “Tragic. You’ll just have to deal with it.” The tall teen really finds far too much entertainment in being a contrary little shit. 

“God, I wish we were in your bed right now,” Denki says exasperatedly. He ignores the choked off intake of air from Jirou behind him and the way Mina is unabashedly watching like they’re spilling the hottest new gossip. 

Shinsou turns his head to look up at him. Denki is struck with the thought that he might be a little more attracted to Shinsou than the typical level of everyone-I-know-is-so-hot attraction he holds for his friends and peers. He looks curious, ambiently amused by his words. “And why is that?”

Denki looks him dead in the eyes, a small friendly smile on his lips, and states “So I could fucking push you out of it like you deserve.”

The purple haired boy snorts, the creases of his eyes wrinkling with amusement. “You wish you could push me out of bed, twig arms.”

“Hey!” Denki cries offendedly. He holds up an arm and flexes, poking the muscle with his finger. It admittedly does not compare to the buffness of several of his peers (Kirishima. Satou. Bakugou. Shouji. Midoriya can somehow lift over five hundred pounds without his quirk, if his story of moving a giant fridge with weight on top across a beach was true. plus Uraraka. even Shinsou himself), but his arms are very much not twigs. “I’ll have you know I am 100% beef.”

“Sure you are, blondie,” Shinsou retorts, obviously not believing him in the slightest. “How much can you bench?”

Fuck. It’s been ages since he went to one of the campus gyms and actually lifted weights. Denki’s muscle is almost exclusively what he’s built up from practical use of it during training. He knows he’s gained a bit of muscle since the last time he did a bench press, but he has no idea how much and the number of pounds on the bar when he did was like barely over half of what Shinsou can currently bench based on what he overheard the purple haired boy discuss with Aizawa a few days ago when talking about upping his weight training. He can’t say that embarrassingly low number from the last time he actually went to a gym and it’s not like he can lie since Shinsou would find great amusement in calling out his bullshit and challenging him to lift what he claimed to be able to. What else can he say? 

“Your mom.” 

Nailed it. 

“So nothing,” Shinsou replies, clearly taking joy in making fun of him.

“Oh my god, are you seriously busting out your mommy issues to make fun of my arm muscles?” Laughter bubbles up in his throat, escaping in tiny noises somewhere between snickers and giggles. 

The purple haired boy looks rather pleased with himself. “It’s my god given right to weaponize my parental issues as I please.”

Denki outright laughs at that. “Take your parental issues and get off my goddamn lap then.”

Stubborn bastard that he is, Shinsou refuses. “Don’t feel like it.” 

“And I don’t care, you big lump, get up.”

Shinsou does not say the words ‘make me.’ He merely looks at Denki with a smirk on his lips, expression radiating ‘you couldn’t make me if you tried.’ 

And, well, Denki can’t just let that stand, can he? No way. 

He grabs Shinsou’s shoulder and pushes as hard as he can. He succeeds in moving him. He does not succeed in getting him off his legs. All he manages to do is force (he chooses to ignore how it seems like he’s only moving the boy’s weight, not having to push against any force the other is using to keep himself in place) the purple haired teen to roll over. Now he lies on his stomach, head on the blond’s leg just above his knee. Shinsou doesn’t look the slightest bit phased. Denki scrunches up his face in discontent. “You suck.”

Once again Shinsou doesn’t verbally reply, simply cocking an eyebrow that conveys the innuendo he’s thinking of just as well if not more effectively than any words could have. 

“Shut up,” Denki says halfheartedly, rolling his eyes. Shinsou’s lips quirk up a little further. The blond shoves the boy again, to the side this time so he can free his leg. 

This time he does successfully free himself. He grins at his triumph, only for Shinsou to sit up and reach over, placing a hand on his shoulder and giving a congratulatory pat before knocking Denki over. 

The blond squawks indignantly as flails, failing to prevent himself from falling over. “Oops,” Shinsou says, sounding the opposite of remorseful. That shit eating smirk is still on his smug face. Denki can’t just take that lying down, he does have some pride, so the only logical next course of action is to throw himself at his purple haired friend in retaliation. Shinsou lets out a grunt at the impact against his side and twists to catch himself on his palms rather than landing on his back. In a mad scramble Denki flattens the other teen onto the floor, sitting on top of his back. 

After a tense moment of preparing to be somehow launched from his new spot, Denki gleefully crows “Who you calling twig arms now, sucker?”

Really, he should know better than to be blinded by apparent victory. UA has taught him better than that. He doesn’t even see it coming. Shinsou, who had apparently taken Denki’s moment of triumph to get his elbows out from where they were trapped under himself, surges upwards, pushing up onto his hands and knees and then kneeling upright. Denki frantically tries to grab onto the boy’s shoulders to no avail. With a screech he falls backwards onto the floor, very nearly hitting his head on Ojirou’s knee. When he tries to sit up he finds himself pinned down by a hand on the center of his chest. He glares indignantly up at his captor and his stupidly attractive smirk and raised eyebrows. He tries to slap at the boy’s chest but the lanky teen’s arm is long enough the best Denki can do is smack his upper arm. The audacity of these tall fuckers, ridiculous.

“Now that’s just unfair,” the blond whines, fully aware of how much he sounds like a petulant child. 

“Sounds like a you problem,” Shinsou replies with a slight shrug of his shoulders. 

“Lemme gooooo!”

“Hm.” The purple haired boy tilts his head slightly, eyes looking up to the ceiling for a moment as if he’s thinking it over. “Nah.”

Denki is a habitual flirt. An outrageous one, some might say. It became second nature somewhere back in middle school. He doesn’t even think over what he plans to say before he’s throwing out the words “If you wanted me underneath you, all you had to do was ask, handsome,” a charming smile on his face. 

Shinsou is not a habitual flirt. He does however greatly enjoy embarrassing Denki at every opportunity. He cocks a brow in the manner the blond has come to associate with him deciding to bully the shorter teen lightheartedly. “If you were underneath me for that reason you’d be too preoccupied to be dropping lines like that.”

Denki opens his mouth then closes it abruptly as he realizes there is no flirtatious reply on the tip of his tongue. He settles for a pout and “One of these days I’ll have a comeback for when you do this.”

“Sure you will.” Shinsou sits back on his heels, taking his weight off Denki’s chest, then stands up. He leans down a bit and holds out a hand to help the blond up. 

Where others might see a friendly gesture, Denki sees an opportunity. He grasps Shinsou’s hand and pulls down with as much strength as he can muster. The purple haired boy hadn’t been expecting such treachery—even though he really should know better by now after being friends with Denki this long—so he topples right over. Directly on top of Denki. This goes about as well as you’d expect. Shinsou’s knees hit the ground with a painful sounding thump, narrowly avoiding the blond. The same avoidance cannot be said for the rest of him, as the majority of the purple haired boy seems to end up on top of him. It knocks the wind out of Denki, who had not thought this through at all and was not prepared to be flattened by Shinsou’s weight. 

When the metaphorical dust settles and both boys are properly breathing again, Denki is barely escaping suffocation against Shinsou’s chest due to the other teen holding himself up on his forearms rather than letting his weight crush the blond. His hips are pressing into Denki’s stomach uncomfortably, one knee on the floor on the outer side of the shorter boy’s leg and the other between his thighs. His lower thigh is awkwardly close to Denki’s crotch—Denki is doing his best not to think about it. Still, there's a brief moment–that feels far longer–where both of them are acutely aware of the compromising nature they've landed themselves in.

The blond chuckles—he has a tendency to laugh when he’s nervous. “Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my actions.” 

Shinsou laughs as he pushes himself up onto his hands instead of forearms. The strange tension between them breaks and Denki’s laughter becomes genuine. The taller teen carefully climbs back to his feet and crosses his arms, looking down at the blond on the floor. “I would offer you a hand, but I’m not sure you can be trusted with that anymore.”

Denki reaches both arms up, making grabby hands. “Please,” he pleads in a pathetic tone, making his best attempt at convincing puppy eyes. 

The purple haired boy rolls his eyes but leans down and grasps both of Denki’s wrists, hauling him up onto his feet easily. That weight training has definitely been paying off, he lifts him like it’s nothing. Once his friend releases his wrists Denki turns to head to the elevator. It is at this point that he is reminded they are still in the common room. In front of at least half of their class. There are even a few people stopped halfway between the couches and the elevator, turned back to face the center of the room. More specifically, turned to watch him and Shinsou. There are no hushed whispers this time, but the odd silence filling the room as their peers stare at them is in fact worse. It had somehow completely slipped his mind that they weren’t in the privacy of Shinsou’s room where stuff like this happened all the time, they had been shoving each other around in front of most of the class. 

Denki does not know what to say in this situation. That does not stop him from saying something, but it does mean what he says doesn’t do much to help. “Uhh, you guys need something?” He is answered with a resounding silence and continued intense stares, except now people are occasionally looking at each other before back to him and Shinsou. 

Shinsou scoffs. Denki turns his gaze to the other boy rather than their classmates and catches the tail end of him rolling his eyes. The purple haired teen crouches down and scoops up his pillow and blanket, then takes Denki by the hand and begins making his way to the elevator, pulling the blond along behind him. The door closes behind them and Denki slumps against the other with a groan. “They’re gonna be such a pain about this tomorrow.”

“To you they will be,” Shinsou corrects. “They won’t dare pull that on me.” He pushes the button for his own floor. He does not push the button for Denki’s floor. 

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the intimidating lone wolf, I know. You’re gonna end up with friends, just wait and see.”

They emerge on the second floor. His hand is still in Shinsou’s. 

“I’ve already got you, I don’t see why I need anyone else,” the purple haired boy replies. Denki is aware of the unhealthy sentiment behind it, no one should rely on solely one person, but that doesn’t stop something within his chest from sighing yearningly at how the words could be rather romantic in a different context. He definitely has a crush on Shinsou. How inconvenient. Whatever, he got some good practice in at not being a horrifically awkward mess around his crush back when he found out Jirou isn’t into dudes, he just has to keep any screaming about how cute and hot Shinsou is internal instead of external. 

Denki swings their hands as they walk to Shinsou’s door. “You know that’s not a very healthy mentality to have, bro, right? You need a support network and shit.”

The taller teen shoots him a look like ‘obviously, dipshit,’ to which Denki sticks out his tongue. “I’ve got a support network,” his hands are full since he’s carrying the blanket and pillow in one arm and has the other hand wrapped around the blond’s, so he nods for the shorter boy to open the door. “I have Aizawa, Mic, Eri, and you. That’s plenty.” Once they enter the room the purple haired boy lets go of Denki so he can use both hands to put the blanket and pillow in their proper places on his bed. 

Denki genuinely does not know whether Aizawa and Yamada’s marriage is a secret Shinsou has let him in on or if it's an open secret amongst their class that the blond never picked up on, and he’s too afraid of letting out something he shouldn’t to ask one of his classmates about it. He refuses to ask Shinsou about it, he’s gone too long without asking at this point.

“You know what they say about support networks, the more the merrier,” Denki proclaims cheerfully as he plops down on the other boy’s bed, paying no mind to the pillows he dislodges. Shinsou scowls at him briefly for daring to disturb his carefully curated den of comfort before attending to the pillows the blond knocked out of place, his expression conveying that he thinks the phrase ‘the more the merrier’ is bullshit no matter the context. 

Once satisfied with the arrangement of pillows and blankets, Shinsou throws off his shirt and crawls onto the bed, settling down under a blanket in the corner against several pillows. Taking the open invitation for what it is—if the purple haired boy wanted him out of his room he’d say so, plus he’s the one that didn’t push the button for the blond’s floor—Denki lays down next to him. He keeps his shirt on, but the blond is a firm pants hater so he kicks those off before getting in the bed. It’s not like he’s naked, he still has on his underwear and neither he nor Shinsou care about propriety. Shinsou is lying on his side facing away from the wall so Denki tucks himself against the other as the little spoon like it’s perfectly ordinary, which at this point it is for them. The blond opens a game on his phone that he bullied Shinsou into getting and nudges the purple haired boy with his foot until he opens it on his own phone so they can play together. Shinsou grumbles about Denki having shitty taste in games but opens the app nonetheless, his phone resting on the blond’s shoulder.

After they stop playing, Denki finally braves the Bakusquad group chat. The most recent message is from Mina. It’s in all caps and includes both ‘shinkami’ and ‘play fighting.’ Denki promptly closes the messaging app. 

Over the following weeks two things happen. Denki drags Shinsou into making acquaintances—that will eventually become friends—in their class and Shinsou embraces the asshole cat he is deep down. 

Using himself as a buffer—thing Shinsou likes—to temper the unbearable hardship of talking to his peers—thing Shinsou does not like—he successfully gets Shinsou to realize that there are other tolerable members of class 2-A. The people he introduces the purple haired boy to are Midoriya (who is thrilled to talk to Shinsou and near impossible to dislike once you’ve had a few real conversations with), Jirou (she’s chill and has similar taste in music to the other purple haired teen), and Tokoyami (they can brood together in companionable silence). Denki thinks those three should be enough to set him on the path to opening up to the idea of being friends with their classmates, but he can always introduce him to a few more later if need be. He may not end up in any sort of squad, but Shinsou will be making friends if Denki has anything to say about it, which he most definitely does. 

In regards to the bit about unleashing his inner asshole cat, Denki really isn’t sure how to describe it as anything other than ‘picture a cat actively dodging pets from everyone in the room except for its Person whom it plops itself in the lap of with no regard for what productive task they might be trying to accomplish at the moment.’ It’s like being subjected to the class’s attention during movie night because of their physical affection broke the barrier between how they act while alone when hanging out at night and how they act during the day. 

Shinsou steals him away from the Bakusquad at least once a day, walking over and grasping Denki by the wrist. He doesn’t pull, he doesn’t need to, the blond knows what he wants; Denki excuses himself from his other friends with a smile and a “I’ll be back in a sec!” before following the purple haired boy. Usually they don’t even go far, just give themselves a bit of space to separate from the crowd of their classmates as they talk. Some days–about half the time–Shinsou sits with the Bakusquad at lunch. He barely interacts with the others (though he does respond with short answers to direct questions! progress from completely ignoring them or telling them to fuck off), simply sitting with his side pressed against Denki’s, either on his phone or working on homework. Their classmates have actually heard Shinsou laugh now, like genuinely laugh. For some reason Denki thinks they aren’t nearly grateful enough for being given such a gift, but maybe that’s just him and his love for the purple haired boy’s laugh. 

At this point Denki thinks he and Shinsou might be more publicly affectionate than some of the actual couples in their class. Not that he and Shinsou are a couple. Because they’re not. They are not dating. But Midoriya and Todoroki are generally pretty low-key with their PDA, sticking to stuff like holding hands, resting their head on the other’s shoulder during movie night, standing rather closely, that sort of stuff. Denki and Shinsou are wayyy past that. They’re not making out in the common room or anything (cough Bakugou and Kirishima, who save their tender moments of affection for private but have no qualms about kissing with an indecent level of intensity and bodily clinging in public spaces), but they’re…well, you could probably go ahead and call it touchy. 

Denki’s sitting with the Bakusquad in the common room when Shinsou walks in? The purple haired boy plops down on the ground in front of where he sits on the couch and leans back against Denki’s legs. The blond makes room for him between them and Shinsou leans his head against his knee, a hand curled around Denki’s ankle. 

Denki jokingly complains about the only spot left at the dinner table being next to Bakugou, who he pissed off earlier in the day? Shinsou waves him over and pulls him down onto his lap, where Denki sits for the duration of the meal, carefully arranged so the purple haired teen can still eat from his plate. One of Shinsou’s arms is wrapped around his waist the whole time. Denki even grows confident enough in Shinsou’s comfort with the blond touching him to initiate physical contact/affection now. 

The purple haired boy is looking particularly grumpy while waiting for his microwave ramen to cook? Denki slips his arms around Shinsou’s waist and gives him a hug, pulling him close and letting the taller teen rest his chin on top of the blond’s head. When the microwave timer beeps Denki unlatches himself from the boy’s front and pats his arm before returning to his hunt for snacks. Often when Shinsou comes to stand near him, be it during class or training or in the dorms, the blond gives in to the urge to ruffle his fluffy hair, pushing up onto his tiptoes to make it easier.

Their classmates slowly become accustomed to this being the new normal in the dorms. Denki and Shinsou cuddling and fucking around. Witnesses matter not. Shinsou still does not give a fuck what their classmates think of him and Denki enjoys his touchy friendship with the introverted boy far too much to be deterred by things like Mina’s excited whispering or a raised eyebrow from Jirou. A solid chunk of their classmates don’t seem enthralled with their physicality and the drama the class has given the whole situation (unlike Mina, Hagakure, Sero, Uraraka, Aoyama, Kirishima) but aren’t quite able to ignore it (unlike Tokoyami, Shouji, Asui, Bakugou, and Todoroki), leading to a great deal of subtle staring and slightly stilted conversation where they try to act like Denki and Shinsou aren’t canoodling before their very eyes. 

And it’s like Shinsou can sense when Denki is doing something. He can sense it, and then decides giving the purple haired boy attention should take priority. Denki is participating in a Mario Kart tournament with three fourths of the class and it’s only when the blond is one of the people with a controller in hand that Shinsou appears, claiming the back of the couch as his lounging spot. From there the taller teen rests his head on top of Denki’s, striking up a conversation that has absolutely nothing to do with the video game tournament the blond is currently fighting for his life in. 

Their peers have still not grown used to seeing Shinsou touch someone, nor have they gotten used to him starting conversations. They have begun to get used to him talking though since Denki drags him into conversation frequently. On the second lap Shinsou starts poking at him, quickly moving on to blocking his vision. 

“Shinsou,” Denki says, the light tone of his voice disguising the underlying accusation, “Are you trying to make me lose?”

A hand runs through his bangs before pushing them in front of his eyes. Denki has to duck his head and move to the side to remain able to see the TV screen. “Hey! Stop that! You’re supposed to be rooting for me, not sabotaging me.” The hand tugs at his hair again, hard enough to make him complain. “Owww! Knock it off.”

“The sooner you stop playing the sooner you can pay attention to me,” Shinsou drawls cooly, like he isn’t straight up saying he’s sabotaging Denki’s playing for attention. 

The blond rolls his eyes—it doesn’t matter that Shinsou can’t see it, he can feel it spiritually and that’s what matters—and leans forward, away from the other boy’s meddling hands. “Has anyone ever told you you’re needy? Cause you’re needy as fuck.” Denki isn’t in first, which is embarrassing, but he is beating Uraraka, who’s the closest behind him as they, plus Kirishima and Shouji, compete for a place in the final round. No thanks to Shinsou. 

“Actually,” the purple haired boy begins in a smug tone “I—“

“If the person calling you needy was in any way connected to the foster system then it doesn’t count, they were just being a dick about you having the same needs all other children have.” 

The silence that follows is downright pissy. Shinsou despises when Denki ruins his snarky comebacks before he even has the chance to say them. The blond laughs loudly. “Seems like you need to find something to weaponize other than your parental issues, my good sir.” 

Shinsou smacks him in the back of the head. The blond ducks forward again, this time remaining hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees as he tries to focus on the final lap. “Fuck you.”

Denki laughs again. “You wish, little man.” Kirishima lets out a heartfelt “Noooo!” as a blue shell knocks him out of first place, leaving Denki in the lead.

“You can’t call me little man,” the purple haired boy replies indignantly. “You aren’t even 5’8, you have no right to call me, of all people, little man.” 

“You aren’t 6 foot yet, big boy,” Denki says teasingly, fully aware he has no room to be making fun of the other for not yet being over 6 foot when he himself is nowhere near reaching it.

“When I hit 6 foot I’m going to lord it over you so much,” Shinsou declares, “I will never let you know peace. I’m going to change your contact name to short king and everything.”

“Ahuh. Sure you will.” Denki’s character crosses the finish line in first place, one place above Uraraka. Shouji comes in fourth. Poor Kirishima had been winning but kept getting nailed with items during the last lap after that blue shell and ends up in 8th. He throws both hands in the air and cheers. “Victory is mine!” He points at Midoriya, the winner of the first round. “I’m coming for you, green bean! The crown will be mine!” 

Midoriya smiles back at him from where he sits on one of the armchairs. He and Shinsou may be tied for determination but the green haired boy has him beat when it comes to exuding the stuff. He has at least five distinct yet equally determined facial expressions. Shinsou barely has five facial expressions total—not counting the eyebrow expressions, which tend to be mistaken for being the same two or three expressions, which is completely inaccurate considering how ridiculously specific he can make them.

“You can try, Kaminari-kun.” The curly haired boy offers up his challenge with that signature determined smile on his face. 

Now that Denki’s round is over, they still have two more rounds to get through before the final four person round can take place. Yaoyorozu, Kouda, Iida, and Shinsou had declined to play, leaving them with an even sixteen people, which allowed them to set up four rounds of four players to produce the final four that would compete in their own round against each other. The blond hands his controller off to Sero and wishes his bro luck. 

Then he turns to deal with his purple menace lying on top of the back of the couch. ‘Dealing with’ ends up being more along the lines of ‘giving him the attention he wants.’ Shinsou is still playing bitter about Denki refusing to throw his chance at winning the Mario Kart tournament just to pay attention to him sooner, but he seems mollified by the attention he gets during the remaining rounds that Denki isn’t a part of. The blond even plays with his hair for a while, including putting an ugly little braid in it that turns out so bad he undoes it as soon as it's finished. 

Because of this Denki makes the mistake of thinking Shinsou will allow him to compete in the final round unimpeded. This assumption turns out to be grievously false. Shinsou is a giant pain in the ass during the final round. He knows that how Denki does in this race has nothing to do with how quickly he’ll go back to paying attention to the purple haired boy. He’s doing it purely for amusement—and maybe with a little bit of pettiness for Denki not losing his preliminary round despite his sabotage efforts—the blond can tell. He shoves Denki around, holds a cushion in front of his face, he even tries to goddamn tickle him, which results in Denki shrieking and launching himself off the couch, nearly taking out his knee caps on the coffee table. 

He finishes in second place, much to his dismay. It’s still better than Midoriya’s third and Bakugou’s fourth, but it means he loses to Sero, who will hold this over his head for the next week at least, nevermind the amount of times Denki has beat him at Mario Kart in the past. 

The blond throws down his controller on the couch and points an accusing finger at Shinsou, who’s lying upside down on the couch where Denki had been sitting before fleeing the purple haired teen’s sabotage, his head hanging off the seat. He’s lucky he’s no longer on the back of the couch or Denki would push him off. “You asshole! My Mario Kart crown, gone! The golden helm decorates the brow of an imposter!”

Shinsou has the audacity to laugh at him. “Talking all flowery does not make you sound more intimidating, you know.” He does something vaguely similar to a backwards somersault to get himself off the couch—and somehow manages to make it look graceful—ending up crouched on the floor in front of it before rising to his full height and waltzing away towards the elevator like he hadn’t just been clamoring for Denki’s attention. Like he is absolutely guiltless of attempting—and possibly somewhat succeeding—to ruin the blond’s pursuit of the title of class 2-A Mario Kart champion. 

Denki charges at him only to be stopped in his tracks by a hand to the face. With his arm extended out fully, it puts enough distance between them that Denki can’t hit the rude, traitorous motherfucker. It’s horribly undignifying. Not that Denki really has any dignity in the first place, but it’s the principle of the thing. Shinsou’s hand covers almost all of his face too, which feels downright comical. He ducks under the purple haired boy’s hand and rushes at him.

He slams into Shinsou’s torso and promptly falls on his ass when he essentially bounces off like he ran into a brick wall. Fuck, dude. Since when was Shinsou built so solidly? Well, since sometime before transferring to their class, but it’s not everyday Denki is so forcibly reminded that the purple haired boy could bench press him. He’s got a core of steel too from that capture weapon. Aizawa must be fucking shredded. Now that's a weird thought to picture. 

Since he’s already on the floor it’s only fitting that he flop down onto his back and let his limbs sprawl out in defeat. Shinsou doesn’t verbally laugh at him, but he looks so smug he might as well have. 

“Dude.” The taller teen’s smirk grows even more amused at how exasperated Denki sounds. “I feel like I just ran face first into concrete. You’re fucking solid, my man.” Shinsou actually laughs at that. He doesn’t offer a hand to help him up, cause apparently he’s still feeling petty, but he does wait for Denki to peel himself off the floor before continuing his walk to the elevator. The blond decides to take his revenge by jumping onto the other boy’s back. Shinsou stops to adjust Denki’s weight a bit and grab hold of his thighs to support some of the weight, then continues moving forward. He presses the elevator button with Denki wholeheartedly enjoying his impromptu piggyback ride. 

He drums his fingers on Shinsou’s collarbone as they wait for the doors to open. They have to let Iida and Kouda out of the elevator first before stepping into the enclosed space. At least the class prez isn’t the only one seeing Shinsou carry the blond this time, both Kouda and most of the class are here to see this. 

Denki waves at them from his perch. Iida offers a polite nod in return while Kouda signs a greeting with his hands. The class has been making a group effort towards learning sign language this school year. Kouda prefers to communicate in it over speaking and Bakugou can barely hear anything less than yelling without his hearing aids in, plus it’s a good skill for a hero to have. You never know when you’ll encounter someone that’s deaf or hard of hearing and being able to effectively communicate with civilians and other pros is important. 

Shinsou presses the button for his floor but Denki presses the button for his own. When the purple haired boy tilts his head questioningly Denki tells him “I’m going to get my homework done now, just to spite you and your need for attention.”

Shinsou snorts and puts a dramatic pout on his lips—it’s very similar to what Denki would do in his place. It’s so similar in fact that it’s clear the taller teen is intentionally mimicking him. That Shinsou snickers when Denki smacks his shoulder does nothing to suggest otherwise. The purple haired boy carries the blond to his room and monopolizes his bed while Denki sits at his desk and fights his way through his math homework. He figures Shinsou would be doing more than just looking excessively forlorn whenever the blond looks over at the bed if Denki weren’t doing something he genuinely needs to get done. This math homework isn’t even due until right after lunch tomorrow so doing it now is actually early by Denki’s standard. Who knew pettiness was such an effective motivation for getting things done. Shinsou, probably, he’s the resident expert in being petty. Even more so than Bakugou, who is one hell of a petty motherfucker.

It takes him longer than he’d like to get through the problems, as usual, and at least 40% of them are most likely wrong, also as usual, but he does get the assignment done. He’ll get to gloat over this tomorrow when he leisurely eats his lunch while Mina and Sero do the math homework. Copying off him isn’t worth it when he’s so bad at math. After putting the notebook back in his bag—if he leaves it out on his desk he’ll forget to put it in his bag in the morning, which would hardcore suck since he fully completed the homework—he spins around in his chair to face the teen on the bed. The sound of it causes Shinsou to look up from his phone curiously. 

“Well,” Denki crosses his arms over his chest and raises an eyebrow, “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Uhh, I have zero regrets, I’d do it again, please cuddle me?” Shinsou replies with a small grin on his face that is paradoxically both sheepish and shameless. 

Denki tilts his chin up higher and huffs. “Nice try, but it’ll take more than that for me to get over you costing me the Mario Kart crown.”

“You might have gotten second even without my interference, you know,” the purple haired boy points out. 

“Irrelevant,” the blond dismisses with a flick of his hand. 

Shinsou hums and runs a hand through his hair. He tends to mess with his hair while thinking. “I’ll let you sit on my lap?” he suggests as a peace offering. 

“Why would I accept that when I can sit on your lap anytime? It’s not like you don’t normally let me sit in your lap.” Denki finds himself in Shinsou’s lap fairly often actually, be it while sitting on one of their beds or on the furniture in the common room. Shinsou has even sat in his lap a few times, however it’s much less common due to a combination of Denki being slightly crushed by the larger boy’s weight and Shinsou simply preferring to be the one with Denki on his lap over sitting on the blond’s. Denki sits in his other friends’ laps sometimes too (excluding Bakugou, obviously. he does have some self preservation instinct), he just sits in Shinsou’s more frequently. The blond is a bit like an overly large lap dog, although compared to the other boys in their class he’s much more lapsized than most of them. Except Tokoyami. Rip Tokoyami. Maybe his short height is a bird thing. 

“Yeah, but now that I’ve put the idea into your head you really want to sit on my lap and I am kindly offering you the option of doing so.”

Damn, he’s got Denki there. He does really want to sit on Shinsou’s lap now that it’s been mentioned. He spends approximately five seconds trying to maintain his resolve before getting up from the desk chair and quickly making his way to the bed and climbing onto it. “Fine, but you better rub circles or whatever it is you do to my back when you’re trying to comfort me.”

“Of course,” Shinsou agrees easily, sounding amused at how fast the blond gave in. Denki benevolently chooses to ignore his amusement. The purple haired teen sits up and adjusts the pillow behind his back, then scoots into the center of it so Denki’s knees will press against it rather than the headboard when he sits on the boy’s lap. The shorter boy would like to say he claims his spot on the other’s lap with dignity and grace (he can practically hear Bakugou laughing and saying he has none of either), unfortunately he trips on his comforter and falls on his face. Thankfully his face lands on the bed rather than on Shinsou’s nearby knee. 

After recovering from that—and pretending he doesn’t see how the taller boy’s shoulders shake with silent laughter—he straddles Shinsou’s lap, burrowing his face into the boy’s neck and tucking his hands between the pillow and the purple haired teen’s back. It’s very comfortable. Denki loves sitting in people’s laps, the more he’s able to cling to them the better. Them wrapping their arms around him is also an acceptable substitute. He gets the best of both worlds like this, able to cling to Shinsou while simultaneously having Shinsou’s arms wrapped around him. Eventually he’ll have to move when his knees inevitably get sore, but for now he’s very content to sit like this and listen to whatever music Shinsou is going to put on—he’s scrolling through his playlists at the moment—and talk to the other boy. 

It does not occur to him that being a viable contender for most affectionate couple in class might mean they are in fact behaving as if they're together. In fact it takes Mina pointing it out several days later for Denki to realize he’s kind of dating Shinsou. Or something close to it at least? It’s not exactly defined. She’s lamenting her single status after her date with Komori (mushroom girl, that’s how Denki remembers which one she is honestly) from class B didn’t go very well. It didn’t really go badly apparently, but according to Mina they just didn’t click. 

“It’s no fair, the rest of the Bakusquad is cuffed up and I’m not,” she complains with a pout, her cheek squished up by how she’s resting it against one palm. “I’m down for being fully available for hot girl summer, but now summer is ending and seeing everybody be all coupley has me wanting a boo.”

“The rest of the Bakusquad? I’m right here,” says Sero from his spot at Mina’s desk chair. What started as a squad study session has devolved into a squad hangout, much to Bakugou’s consternation. He gave up on getting them to do anything productive a good fifteen minutes ago in favor of scrolling on his phone while attached to Kirishima like a limpet

“True, true,” Mina concedes. “Wanna link up?”

“Not particularly,” the black haired boy replies casually. Both teens were bi, but neither had much interest in the other. 

“Damn.” She blows a bubble with her gum and pops it. It’s an obscenely large bubble. She’s popped three pieces of gum in her mouth since Denki entered the room and honestly he’s afraid to think about how many she might have eaten before he got here. 

“Uh, guys? Aren’t you forgetting someone?” Denki says incredulously. 

Mina and Sero look at each other before looking at Bakugou and Kirishima, who are sitting together on the bed shoulder to shoulder, then look at Denki again. “Nah,” Sero replies.

“Definitely not,” Mina agrees. 

Denki throws up his hands and gawks at them. “Me! You’re forgetting me! I’m still single.”

“Don’t do Shinsou like that,” Mina chides. “I know you guys haven’t labeled your thing but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Even if you haven’t officially made it exclusive yet, which it is anyway unofficially, it’s still different from being single.” Sero nods sagely at her words like she isn’t spouting complete nonsense. “It's too stable to even be a real situationship, tbh. All you’re missing is a label.”

Denki stares at her, jaw literally dropped. It takes him several seconds to recover his ability to speak. “What on earth are you talking about?” His voice is a little higher pitched than he’d like to admit. “Me and Shinsou don’t have a thing, we’re just friends.”

Sero snorts. It sounds exactly like a pig. “Dude, whatever you two are, ‘just friends’ does not cover it.”

“Kami-babe, we,” she gestures between herself and Denki, “are just friends.” She gestures between him and Sero. “You two are are just friends—but with a bromance, of course. Whatever you’ve got going on with Shinsou,” she makes a complicated hand gesture that’s apparently supposed to represent his relationship with Shinsou, “is more similar to that,” she finishes by pointing at Kirishima and Bakugou leaning against each other. The redhead smiles and nods in agreement while Bakugou rolls his eyes but tellingly doesn’t disagree. 

“I–There is no–We aren’t–” Denki forcibly shuts his mouth after his third failed attempt at an articulate defense. Mina alone thinking he has some kind of more than friends relationship with Shinsou is one thing, she sees love everywhere. The whole squad agreeing with her though…shit. If Jirou were here she’d probably agree too. “Wouldn’t I know if we were more than friends? I should know better than anyone, right?”

Mina gives Sero a look that means she doesn’t know how to break something to Denki nicely. Sero’s expression makes it clear he doesn’t want to be the one to break the news either. Bakugou quickly gets fed up with their reluctance and does it for them. “Absolutely not. You’re damn oblivious. Jirou had to directly tell you she wasn’t interested for you to figure out she wasn’t just playing hard to get, she just wasn’t into you.”

Denki winces. Not his proudest moment. In his defense, Jirou has a solid ‘fuck off vibe’ she maintains at all times. Wow, she’s actually rather similar to Shinsou in that regard. In multiple regards really. Oh, Shinsou sharing several traits with the last person Denki crushed on really doesn’t disprove their relationship being closer to romantic than platonic. Damn. 

“It’s alright, bro, this stuff doesn’t always occur to everybody,” Kirishima says consolingly, which is nice to hear but does nothing to help with his current crisis, which is much more centered around his probably more than just friends relationship with Shinsou than it is on how he didn’t realize it was any different from his other friendships until now. 

The electric user hangs his head off the back of the plush pink and black chair he’s sitting on and tries to make sense of his new worldview. He and Shinsou are a little more than just close bros. Possibly a lot more. Emotionally they’re very close. Like, very close. He’s told Shinsou things he hasn’t told anyone else. Physically they’re already more affectionate than some of the official couples in the class. They don’t kiss or anything, but now Denki is wondering if Shinsou would be interested in doing that sort of stuff. He has a lot to say about the matter, but frankly the majority of it is embarrassing so he decides to refrain from giving his friends more ammunition to make fun of him with. 

Kirishima, kind person and good friend that he is, changes the subject from Denki’s love life. Save for Bakugou’s occasional scoffs, the others are nice enough to leave Denki to his contemplation. Twenty minutes go by before the blond pushes all thoughts related to Shinsou from his head and rejoins the conversation. 

The thoughts return when he hangs out with Shinsou that night. The purple haired boy has very kissable looking lips. He’s known that, and he’s known he’s attracted to Shinsou, but now the squad has put the idea of Shinsou returning that attraction into his mind and he can’t get rid of it. He thinks so hard about it the taller boy mentions how spacey he’s being, which Denki excuses as daydreaming. It kind of is daydreaming, in a way. He spends more than a little time thinking about what it would be like to date Shinsou. Not that different from their current relationship honestly, just add in some kissing and maybe pet names or something. Imaging Shinsou using pet names is simultaneously hilarious and also deadly. They seem like something the purple haired boy would never use and like any use of them from him would be comical, but also thinking about Shinsou genuinely calling him stuff like sweetheart in that voice of his…lethal. Denki would use pet names at the very least. 

Unsure what to do about this newfound revelation, Denki ends up rolling with the classic saying ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.’ His relationship with Shinsou is fine as it is. Sure, some kissing—and maybe a bit more than kissing—would be nice, as would being able to confidently call the purple haired boy his partner, but what they’ve got going on is good. 

That lasts a total of four days. 

It’s not actually Denki that shakes things up. Shinsou is the one to break that ice. The blond isn’t sure what prompts it since the odds of it being a member of the Bakusquad are rather low considering how Shinsou hasn’t begun to befriend anyone in it aside from Denki and Jirou, who’s both in the squad and also not. She’s part of the squad, but it’s not necessarily her core friend group. That title is split between the Bakusquad and her little group composed of her, Yaoyorozu, Tokoyami, and Shouji. She’s got like, dual citizenship. But for friend groups. Yeah, that makes sense. 

Anyway, the point is that the only people that Shinsou talks to are Denki (who obviously didn’t say anything), Jirou, Tokoyami, Midoriya, and recently Asui, whose blunt honesty, straightforwardness, and lack of a need to make conversation he likes. Tokoyami tends to mind his own business, so he probably didn’t bring it up with Shinsou. Jirou and Midoriya are both willing to meddle if they feel it’s necessary, but romance is typically below their standard for what makes meddling necessary. Asui, honestly Denki can’t tell. She’s very direct and honest, so she’d have no qualms about bringing it up, but she also tends to mind her own business. 

The two boys are hanging out in Shinsou’s room, not really doing much. They’re sitting side by side on the bed. Shinsou has an alt rock band Denki recognizes but can never remember the name of playing and is on some kind of social media while the blond is reading a short web novel that he found the link to on Twitter. The last time they spoke was over five minutes ago and it had been Shinsou showing Denki a meme. 

The music stops mid song. Denki doesn't think much of it. “I know you think I’m hot,” Shinsou says out of nowhere. Denki suddenly thinks much of it. 

He's not sure how to respond to that. He looks at the other’s face. Shinsou is still looking at his phone, looking for all the world like he’s making casual conversation if he hadn’t clearly been the one to pause the music. “Okay?” It’s not like he was really trying to keep his attraction to the purple haired boy a secret. He’s openly attracted to pretty much everyone in their class. He had thought he’d been pretty good about keeping the depth of his feelings for this hot classmate in particular from being visible. Apparently that might not be the case? Unless Shinsou just picked up on the sexual attraction only and not how head over heels Denki is for him romantically. 

“Do you just think I’m hot or would you date me?” Denki blinks rapidly. Suddenly this feels like a conversation that should be had while sitting up. He pushes himself upright and finds himself face to face with the other boy. They’re very close to one another. It’d be very easy to kiss him. 

“I’d date you,” Denki answers. “If you wanted to date me.”

“Cool. I want to date you.” Has Denki mentioned yet that Shinsou looks very kissable and is well within kissing range? Cause that’s currently taking up 50% of his brain. The other half is processing Shinsou’s words—which, holy shit dude. Shinsou just straight up said he wants to date him. 

“Then I guess we’re dating.” Denki pries his eyes away from the purple haired boy’s lips for a moment to look him in the eyes as he speaks before quickly giving in to temptation and looking at his lips again. He looks like he has soft lips, slightly thicker than Denki’s own and a little bit chapped. 

“Guess so. That mean I get to kiss you?” There’s a teasing lilt to his question, he’s clearly noticed the way Denki keeps staring at his lips. 

“Why don’t you stop talking and try it and find out?” 

Shinsou’s lips quirk up in amusement and then Denki can’t see them anymore since they’re pressed against his own. The blond closes his eyes and melts into the kiss, one hand coming up to bury itself in the other’s hair and the other grabbing Shinsou’s shirt to help him hold the other boy close. The purple haired boy’s lips are soft and the slightest bit chapped, just like he expected. It’s a good kiss, not too messy yet nice and thorough. Shinsou’s hand is warm where it cups his face. When they break apart for a breath they both lean back in immediately. 

Kissing Shinsou feels nice. Really nice. Denki would love to spend large amounts of time doing this in the future. The blond decides they aren’t nearly close enough and flops back against one of the many pillows lining the bed, hauling Shinsou half on top of himself. Oh yeah, this is the good shit. They should’ve started doing this weeks ago. 

An indeterminate amount of time later (according to his phone it’s been over fifteen minutes by the time they take a break from sucking face that lasts more than a minute. time kind of ceases to be real when Shinsou’s lips are on his and Denki could not care less) and they return to what they had been doing previously, this time thoroughly entangled. Every few minutes Denki remembers that he has kissing rights now and presses a kiss somewhere on Shinsou, usually his face but occasionally his hands and arms since they’re nearby. The blond finishes his novel and throws his phone onto the blanket, stretching with a quiet shriek remarkably reminiscent of what one would expect from a pterodactyl. 

“Didn’t know I was dating a dinosaur,” Shinsou remarks dryly.

“Sorry to break it to you like this, babe.” The blond lifts his legs into the air and wiggles them about before letting them plop back down on the bed. Shinsou pats Denki on the head with exaggerated wariness like he’s petting a dangerous zoo animal. Or, more accurate to the fictional scenario they’d just created, a dinosaur. The shorter boy lies there for a minute not doing anything in particular, just watching his boyfriend idly as he lets his thoughts wander. He quickly grows bored with this. A bored Denki is a dangerous thing though and tends to lead to impulsive actions, this situation being no exception. “Hitoshi, toss me my switch, would you?” It’s sitting on the nightstand and the other is closer to it than him. 

The purple haired boy doesn’t reach for the device, instead he stares at Denki with wide eyes. “Hitoshi?” he repeats. 

“I mean, yeah?” Denki shrugs. “We are dating, after all. I’m closer to you than anyone else. If anyone gets to use your given name, it should be me, right?”

“Who says anyone has the right to use it?” Shinsou replies, the quirk of his eyebrow indicating he’s saying it purely to be contradictory. He’s also trying to give himself time to mentally recover from Denki calling him by his given name, if the blond had to guess. 

“Me!” Denki answers with a smile, “I say so.” He lets the smile fade as he adds “If you’re really uncomfortable with it just say so and I’ll stick with Shinsou.”

“No!” Shinsou blurts out. He looks embarrassed by its intensity. “You don’t have to do that. You can call me Hitoshi. I like it.”

Denki’s grin returns in full force. “Dope. Feel free to call me Denki, by the way. Like, more than free. Please call me Denki.”

The purple haired teen huffs a quiet laugh at his insistence. “Okay, Denki.”

The blond’s chest feels warm just hearing his boyfriend say his given name for the first time. He likes the intimacy of being called his given name by his partner and he likes Shinsou’s voice, so hearing Shinsou call him that is double awesome. Dating Shinsou is like being friends with Shinsou but double awesome. Making out is very fun and Denki is certain all the stuff that goes with that will be just as fun, there's really no downside here.

At this point Denki is aware of how his classmates perceived his friendship with Hitoshi as popping up out of nowhere (Hitoshi had to tell him). It is due to this that he decides they should lean into that with the newest development in their relationship. It’ll be funnier this way. He suggests it, Hitoshi gives him an amused look and agrees, and now they’re just waiting for the accidental official relationship reveal to happen naturally. It’s surprisingly easy to keep the news of his newly official relationship to himself, which he credits to how funny the looks on his friends’ faces will be if they find out he got himself a boyfriend and didn’t tell them about it. They could engineer a situation where they’d have most of the class around them and would be able to indulge in some Definitely Not Platonic PDA, but Denki figured the best situation would occur naturally. 

He was totally right about that. 

It’s over a week before the opportunity presents itself. A week of indulging in their typical physical contact and affection while around their classmates and making out on the couch at night and in Hitoshi’s room. Dating Hitoshi is awesome. He’s already said that, but it’s worth repeating. 

He and the rest of the Bakusquad (including Jirou this time) are hanging out in the kitchen. It would be inaccurate to say they’re cooking since the only one doing any cooking is Bakugou. The rest of them aren’t helping in the slightest. If anything they’re a detriment to the blond’s efforts towards being UA’s Next Top Chef (a title Bakugou perpetually owns in Denki’s mind). 

Kirishima is the only one who can even claim to be attempting to provide culinary assistance, and he’s been relegated to washing the vegetables in the sink since his shoddy knife work gives Bakugou hives. Mina and Denki are both banned from doing anything in the kitchen more complex than microwaving microwave foods for the exact amount of time specified on the package–it had been a mistake to originally only ban them from everything but using the microwave. with their combined efforts it took less than a week after being banned from attempting to cook for them to blow up the microwave. To this day it is a shared crowning achievement. Sero isn’t actually banned from doing things in the kitchen, he’s simply choosing not to. Why bother when Bakugou already has it handled? Helping out would just mean subjecting himself to being micromanaged by an angry head chef with near unreachable standards. 

Denki is holding hands with Mina as the two of them sit next to each other on stools by the kitchen island, swinging their hands back and forth between them. The blond would be sitting on the counter of the island (way more fun than sitting on one of the stools), but Bakugou would literally chase him out of the kitchen if he tried that while the other blond teen was cooking. 

“I’m just saying,” Denki says, “Everybody and their mother knows you two are into each other. I’m pretty sure even Yaomomo knows. Just make a move, it’ll turn out fine.”

Jirou glares back at him, unimpressed, from where she’s leaning against the counter on the other end of the island. “Sorry, I don’t remember asking for romantic advice from the world’s biggest hypocrite.”

The blond boy sticks his tongue out in response.

“She’s got you there,” Sero adds with a chuckle. He’s standing nearby, his arms crossed over his chest as his foot taps out random patterns on the floor. 

Denki contorts his expression into one of dramatic despair. “Et tu, Brutus?” he proclaims. 

Sero nods. “Yep. Sorry dude, but she’s not wrong. You’re both partnerless and pining.”

Denki wishes he had a lightbulb on hand so he could use his quirk to make it light up to signify the brilliant idea he just had. He’s neither partnerless nor pining, but they don’t know that. “Jirou,” he slams his hand down on the countertop, “I bet I can get a boyfriend before you can get a girlfriend.”

Jirou gives him a suspicious look and replies “You bet you can get Shinsou to date you before I gather up the guts to ask out Momo, right? Not that you can get Sero or someone to split the money from the bet with you if they be your boyfriend for a day?”

The blond’s eyes widen. That hadn’t even occurred to him. “That’s genius, but no, specifically Shinsou and Momo. No funny business involving roping in other people,” he promises, specifically not promising no funny business in general. There will most definitely be funny business involved. “I bet I can get Shinsou to be my boyfriend before you get Momo to be your girlfriend.”

Just like he’d been hoping, Jirou’s desire to finally muster up the courage to ask out Yaomomo and her desire to beat Denki at anything and everything combine and she rises to his challenge. “You’re on. Loser owes the winner three weeks of chore duty.”

“Which chore?”

“All of them,” she declares. Denki grins in return. Joke’s on her, this bet is rigged in his favor. There’s no way for him to lose. Sayonara taking out trash, hello avoiding the nasty liquid that always leaks out of mysterious holes in the trash bag whenever Denki is the one taking it out. It’s gotten to the point he genuinely thinks someone is pranking him by poking holes in the bag when they know it’s his day to take it out. 

“Make it four,” Denki says. He knows he’s going to win, of course he’s going to raise the stakes. 

“Fine,” Jirou agrees. She holds her hand out for him to shake, western style. He lifts his hands towards his face and she smacks it down. “I am not shaking your hand if you spit on it, you heathen.” 

Denki laughs and shakes her hand with his spit-free hand. Sucker. “The bet has been made. No take backsies.”

The purple haired girl snickers at his use of the phrase ‘no take backsies’ and repeats it back to him in agreement. The squad choruses “No take backsies” in unison around them, with Sero and Mina throwing their fists in the air (Kirishima’s hands are busy but he lifts up a handful of tiny tomatoes). Bakugou looks at them like they’re all idiots but mumbles the words anyway. It’s a ritual whenever a bet is made within the Bakusquad. 

The bet has been made and no take backsies sworn, it is time for Denki to claim his victory. His boyfriend is currently down in the common room, after all. 

“Hey babe!” Denki calls, leaning his head towards where Hitoshi is sitting on one of the armchairs in the adjoining room. 

The purple haired teen looks up from his phone, looking around the room in the general direction the sound came from before spotting his blond boyfriend in the kitchen. “Yeah?” he responds at a much quieter volume. 

“C’mere for a second.”

Rather than asking what for or just getting up and walking over, Hitoshi asks “Is this another ‘do you think Pokémon can be sexy?’ or do you actually want me for something?”

“Do you think Pokémon can be sexy?” Bakugou repeats, voice thick with disdain.

Denki winks at the blond before replying to his boyfriend. “First of all, no, it’s not, come over here. Second of all, that’s a valid question and the answer is yes.” Bakugou makes another noise of disgust. His onion dicing seems to become just a tad more violent. Kirishima hides a poorly disguised snort at the explosive blond’s reaction behind a cough. 

He sees Sero nodding in agreement and reaches over with his free hand for a high five. The black haired boy slaps it. Jirou rolls her eyes at them and shakes her head. 

Hitoshi rolls his eyes as well but stands up and walks over to join them in the kitchen. Once the purple haired boy in standing near him, Denki places a big smooch on the back of Mina’s hand, followed by a bow of the head and a “M’Mina” (get it? like m’lady but with Mina. he’s hilarious). He then lets go of her hand. He swivels around on the stool to face Hitoshi—the swivel seats in the kitchen are one of his favorite parts of the dorm—and holds both hands out towards him, rapidly opening and closing his fists in grabby hands. 

The taller teen’s eyebrows shift slightly, belaying his amusement (whether the other people in the room can notice and interpret that for what it is, the blond doesn’t know) as he steps forward into the space between Denki’s knees. The blond immediately latches his hands onto his arms as soon as he comes within reach, eventually settling on his biceps (and what nice biceps they are). 

Hitoshi quirks a brow like ‘well what do you want?’

Denki responds with a grin, the one he gives the other when he wants him to roll with something, before puckering his lips at him. Hitoshi reacts with a tiny quirk of his lips and leans down to place a kiss on his lips. It’s a brief kiss, but more than a mere peck. Denki smiles as their lips break apart and pulls him back in for another. He can feel Hitoshi’s amusement when he deepens the kiss. He takes the chance to run his hand through the other’s soft hair. No crunchy product necessary, it does that hairstyle all on its own. 

Mina is hooting and hollering before they even turn to face their captive audience. Denki presses one last smooch to the other boy’s lips before turning to his friends, a triumphant grin on his face. Kirishima is beaming at him, no doubt eager to congratulate them both. Jirou looks somewhere between shocked and outraged. Nobody wants double chore duty. “Have fun with chore duty,” Denki tells her teasingly. 

“Getting Shinsou to kiss you to win a bet does not count!” the girl insists, “That is not the same thing as asking him out.”

“Oh Jirou,” Denki replies, an obnoxiously knowing tone to his voice, “Me and my boyfriend kiss all the time, no bets needed.”

The kitchen population goes into an uproar. There’s overlapping shouts, the sound of palms slapping countertops, even the clang of Bakugou slamming a metal bowl down. 

“No way,” Jirou says, disbelief oozing from her words and expression. 

“Yes way,” Denki says smugly. He still has a hand wrapped around Hitoshi’s arm. His boyfriend has great arms and Denki enjoys that fact at every opportunity. Seeing his many buff classmates’ muscles every day is entirely different from getting to feel those muscles up whenever the urge strikes him. It’s certainly different from being bodily lifted with those muscles while locking lips with their owner. Has he mentioned yet that he loves how strong Hitoshi is? Man, he really is so down bad. 

“There’s no fucking way you managed to hide a relationship from all of us,” Bakugou declares. “I call bullshit.”

“Yeah,” Jirou chimes in, “Shinsou’s just whipped enough to go along with anything you spring on him, including a kiss.”

“You know, you’re not wrong, but calling him whipped really doesn’t contradict the idea of us being in a relationship,” Denki points out. Hitoshi nods beside him. He’s silently having a great time judging everyone’s reactions to the situation, Denki can tell. By revealing their relationship in such a way they have the upper hand, rather than being pressured into telling people about it or caught mid-incriminating activity (kissing. he means kissing. they have not quite gotten beyond frisky makeouts yet. it’s only been a week since kissing was introduced, give them some more time before expecting anything truly raunchy). 

“Hitoshi,” Denki says, face turned toward the taller boy, “How long have we been dating for?”

“About a week,” the purple haired boy answers, tone flat but eyebrows indicating he’s amused. 

“A week!?” Mina shrieks. “A whole week without me knowing? What the fuck! Kami, I thought you loved me.”

Denki cracks up at how distressed she looks at not being immediately informed about his change in relationship status. “Eight days, if you want to be exact,” Hitoshi adds, prompting another wail from the pink haired girl. 

Sero, always down to side with the winner in squad fuckery, whistles, a wolf-like grin on his face. “Looks like you’ve got a month of double chores, Jirou.”

“No,” she denies fervently with all the passion of someone desperately trying to escape a month of double duty for taking out the trash, doing dishes, vacuuming the common area carpet, and more, “I don’t believe it. This is all just for the bet.”

Sero makes a wordless noise like ‘hm are you sure about that?’ Her argument was destined to fail from its birth and the whole squad knows it. Even Kirishima, who looks like he’d be giving her a consoling pat on the shoulder if it wouldn’t require him to wash his hands again afterwards before touching the food. 

The smile Denki gives her is full of amused pity and he’s fully aware of it. “Hitoshi responded when I yelled ‘hey babe,’” he holds up a hand and puts up one finger, “we kissed—and I in no way mentioned it being for a bet so he’d have no way of knowing about that,” he holds up another finger, “I call him by his given name,” a third finger, “and he literally just said we’ve been dating for eight days,” he raises one final finger. “What more evidence do you need? I guess we could invite you into the bedroom to watch but that seems like a little much for a mere bet.”

His last sentence sets off another round of laughs. Denki looks around at his giggling friends proudly. Making people laugh is one of his favorite things to do. 

Jirou flips him the bird. “Oh my god, Jamming-whey, shut the fuck up. I do not want to see anything like that.”

“Maybe you don’t, but what if I do?” says Sero. He wiggles his brows at Denki. “How about it, bro, is that an open invitation?”

The blond lets out a wheezing laugh. “Only for you, my man. Only for you.” 

Sero does a weird little shimmy and coos “Ooh, I’m excited—“ he says the word all breathy, borderline moan-like— “already. Nothing gets me going quite like young love.” The impersonation of Midnight is spot on and has Denki leaning an unwise amount of weight on the hand he’s got on Hitoshi’s arm, bent over in his seat on the stool as he clutches his stomach with the other as he laughs. Even Hitoshi quietly snickers. 

He’s barely caught his breath when Mina interrupts the group’s laughter by saying “I know! The receipts! Kaminari, whip out your text history with your supposed boy toy.”

“What? We literally just established that there’s no need for any further proof of my and Hitoshi’s relationship.”

“Hmm,” Mina taps a bright purple acrylic nail against her pursed lips, “Nope! I need more evidence. But I don’t wanna see y’all doing the nasty, so I wanna see some texts that reference you two dating from sometime in the past eight days.” The gleam in her eyes screams that this has nothing to do with proving they’re dating and everything with her nosiness and want for entertainment. 

Denki eyes Shinsou, gauging his willingness to go along with this nonsense. His boyfriend shrugs indifferently, not seeming to care one way or the other. 

“Hmph. Fine.” 

As soon as the words are past Denki's lips Mina is cheering and making grabby hands towards him, her nails clicking together each time—no doubt an intentional choice on her part. How she does anything with such long nails he has no idea. According to her the secret is a combination of immeasurable skill and natural black girl magic, which is perhaps the most Mina answer he's ever heard. 

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens his messages with Shinsou to search for a suitable exchange to share. The feeling of eyes on him is nearly palpable as he scrolls back through their most recent texts. It doesn't take long for him to find something from a few days ago, at which point he hands the device over to Mina's eager hands.

“Ahem. First message is from Tuesday, at 2:37am. Do neither of you sleep? Goddamn. Anyways, it reads ‘Hitoshi. Hitoshi. Hitoshi.’ All separate messages,” she describes, “followed by ‘are you up,’ using the letter u, no question mark.”

“Okay, I'm feeling a little judged to be honest, don't act like you text with proper spelling and punctuation,” Denki cuts in.

Mina resolutely ignores him. “Shinsou responds—Shinsou’s contact name is Purple Guy, by the way—Shinsou responds with ‘Yeah, what you want?’ Denki replies ‘Attention.’ Next message: ‘specifically in the form of cuddles and scritches.’”

Bakugou is the one to interrupt this time, with a skeptical “What the actual fuck are scritches?”

“You know, scritches,” Denki mimes scratching something with his fingers. “Using your nails to gently scratch someone's scalp. They're great.”

“You mean head scratches? Like you'd give a dog? Are you kidding me?”

“Well clearly someone isn't getting enough scritches with that attitude." Denki sticks his tongue out at him. "No one asked for your input anyway, Kacchan.”

Bakugou gives him a glare and a threatening gesture with the knife that make it very clear that were he not in the middle of food preparation he would be inflicting mild bodily harm upon Denki's person. 

“Yeah yeah, threats of maiming, he gets it, back to the texts,” Mina says bravely, completely ignoring the scowl Bakugou directs her way. “Kami continues, again in three separate messages ‘and also kisses. and maybe a little bit of making out. but I'm tired so mostly cuddles and scritches.’”

“Sounds pretty gay to me,” Jirou admits begrudgingly. Ha, a month with no dorm chores is gonna be so sweet. 

“Super gay,” Sero chimes in.

“Mega gay, bro, sorry,” is Kirishima's contribution.

“Gay as hell,” Bakugou mutters under his breath. “I'm surrounded by gay idiots.” Rude but true, the Bakusquad is very queer and takes pride in their joint stupidity. 

“Shinsou tells him “‘Fine, but you have to come over here. I'm comfortable and I'm not getting up.’ To which Kaminari says ‘sure, your bed is more comfy anyway,’ using ur for your, followed by —oh shit for real?” She looks up from the phone with wide eyes. “Y'all actually put a label on it?”

“He literally told you that earlier,” Shinsou deadpans. 

Jirou leans over Sero’s shoulder but evidently can't get close enough to read the screen, since she demands that Mina “Either read the damn texts or hand the phone over.”

“Geez, whatever happened to patience. Fine. Kaminari texts ‘I’m glad you acquiesced to my demands, I would hate to have to invoke boyfriend privileges at this time of night.’ How come you can take the time to spell out ‘acquiesced’ but you can't be bothered to type out ‘you’ or ‘your’?”

“Is that really what you're taking away from this? Really? My spelling? That's the focal point?”

“No, no, she's got a point, dude,” Sero, the absolute traitor, tells him.

“Okay, first of all, fuck both of you. And give me my phone back, hater.” He snags it from Mina’s grasp and shoves it back into his pocket. He fumbles it and nearly drops it, making Shinsou and Bakugou huff in amusement in eerie unison. “Second of all, I can be a lazy texter and still have a good vocabulary. Autocorrect handles the spelling for me.” 

Bakugou muses aloud, “Should've known autocorrect was involved if you were spelling things right.”

Denki’s jaw drops and he theatrically gasps in offense. “I came out to have a good time and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now. I voluntarily offer up my text history with my boyfriend for your perusal and this is how y'all treat me? Jail. Jail for the squad for one thousand years.” 

“Dumbass, you're in the squad too, that puts you in jail.”

He points a finger at the perpetrator. “Jail. Jail for Jirou too. Jail for everyone but my wonderful boyfriend and me.” 

“Why am I included in jail? I didn't say anything about your spelling.” The pout on Kirishima's face honestly should not be so effective on a guy that buff, and yet. Or on one with such insanely sharp teeth. 

“Alright, jail for everyone but my wonderful boyfriend and me and also Kirishima.” 

The redhead beams at him, pearly white shark teeth on full display. “Hell yeah!”

“Not a threesome I saw coming, but okay,” Mina jokes.

Sero of course immediately jumps on the bandwagon. “Can't believe you'd bring Kirishima into the bedroom and not me, man. I thought we were homies.”

“Yeah, don't drag Kirishima into your gay shit with Shinsou, he's gay enough as is already,” Jirou adds to top it off. 

Shinsou, for his part, says nothing, simply standing there and watching the whole situation unfold like the smug little cat gremlin he is. 

“This is literally harassment, I'm being bullied.” Denki grabs Shinsou by the hand and heads towards the elevators, pulling the taller boy along behind him with one hand and flipping the bird over his shoulder with the other. “I'm gonna go do gay shit with my boyfriend just to spite you all!” He slams his finger into the elevator button repeatedly, hiding his grin from the group as they cackle behind him. 

“I'm not telling your dumb asses when dinner is ready if you leave to go make out!” Bakugou calls from the kitchen. 

It's immediately followed up with Kirishima's “Don't worry, I will! I'll text you.”

“See! This is why Kirishima is the only one of you not going to jail!” Denki shouts back just before the elevator doors close, cutting him and Shinsou off from the others. 

There's a brief moment of silence before his wonderful, wonderful boyfriend breaks it by saying “So about that spiteful gay shit…”

“It's like you read my mind.” The blond hooks a hand around Shinsou’s neck and pulls him down for a kiss. By the time the doors open on the right floor he's pinned to the wall of the elevator as they make out with a zeal only found in teenagers. The subsequent lecture they get on appropriate levels of PDA in the dorms when the doors open to reveal Iida waiting for the elevator puts a damper on the mood, but it's one hundred percent worth it.