2. A Rocky Road Ahead
"... and so, the class reps from each class are working together to put on a UA School Dance. The ticket prices are on the handouts we left on your desk before you arrived this morning."
Even before Yaoyorozu finished speaking, Eijiro Kirishima had given up on all of his hopes and dreams. Not literally, but the price tags on those tickets were basically highway robbery and he couldn't justify spending any of his allowance on that when he could just invest in costume upgrades or other accessories for hero work. Even as his frugal side screamed at him to save his money, something about asking someone to a dance played to his manly side a bit too perfectly. It took guts, it took putting your emotions out for all the world to see, facing either victory or defeat head-on…
'I guess I can tighten my budget a bit.'
Now that he consigned himself to a month of living off of the scraps, Kirishima began thinking about the rest of the stuff he would have to do. First, he would need to get the manliest of all outfits: A tux.
Mentally, he took himself down to two meals a day as his budget suffered yet another blow. His savings wouldn't survive that, either…
Next, he had to pick someone to ask. The redhead leisurely passed his eyes along the classroom. Unless he wanted to look backwards and draw Eraserhead's ire, he didn't have much to work with while still in class. He didn't know Kyoka or Hagakure well enough to ask either of them to something like a dance, even as a friend. Asui was pretty cool, but they didn't talk much more than he did with the other two girls. Even he, a total blockhead, could see that Uraraka and Midoriya would probably end up going together one way or another, so he quickly dismissed that idea. Yaoyorozu, maybe? She was absolutely stunning looks-wise, but something told him their personalities didn't quite line up. Whenever they were partnered together for training, they could just never end up on the same wavelength. That wouldn't make for a very fun dance, manly as it would be to ask someone completely out of his league like her. Among the six girls in class 1-A, that just left Ashido…
'When you've actually overcome yourself, deep down, let me know, okay?'
A cold feeling washed over him as the memory of that conversation came back. His first day of high school... His new debut, the spiky-haired hero-to-be, and against her it just... melted. He could tell she supported him and his goals, even if just tangentially, but she was also blunt enough to call him out. To tell him, 'You're working on it, but you're not there yet.' He knew that... even his internship with Fatgum hadn't brought him to the point where he was willing to go to her yet. He couldn't ask her to a dance when he was still hung up on his cowardly middle school self.
One cringe-inducing flashback to middle school later, Kirishima buried his head in between his arms and let out a shaky sigh. Maybe he'd just save the money and get a new game system. Kaminari and Sero were always down to goof off with him, and even if he would never admit it, Bakugo loved playing with them, too. He'd talk to them after class and gauge the mood.
Right as he started zoning back in to the lesson, a pink-haired girl with strange irises that Kirishima recognized from the Sports Festival (the one girl from the Support Course that had worked with Midoriya's team) threw open the door, ran over to Iida, and practically dragged the poor kid out of the class while yelling something about "needing help making some new babies."
Mineta was the first to break the silence with a fit of sobs, cursing the unfairness of the world.
"So? Just don't go to the stupid thing."
Kirishima chuckled lightly, not sure why he expected anything more from Bakugo. "I dunno, man. This isn't like, an annual thing, so I don't really wanna miss it."
"Then go, dumbass! I don't care what you do!"
'This isn't helping.' Kirishima gave up on asking the explosive blonde, turning to Sero instead. "Do you have any ideas?"
The teen absently played with a strip of his elbow tape, sprawling to take up the full length of one of the green couches in his floor's common area. "I couldn't tell ya, man. It really comes down to what you wanna do. Like, if you picked up that new system I would play it with ya, but I'm also thinking about checking out the dance, too, so you may just end up alone if you don't ask anybody."
Kaminari chimed in after him. "You don't really have to put so much thought into it; if you wanna ask someone, just ask them. If you don't, hey, more power to you."
Before Kirishima could respond, Kaminari flipped the switch to the blender in the attached kitchenette. Twice a day, without fail, Kaminari drank a special, electrolyte-filled shake that helped fuel his power, and twice a day, he would turn that blender on at the most inopportune time. At a quarter past midnight, Kirishima knew that his friend was going to be chewed out by Kyoka the next time she saw him. With her enhanced hearing, and her room being directly above them, she possibly suffered the worst from Kaminari's poor blender timing.
The group sat, listening to the shrieking blender. A vein bulged on Bakugo's forehead. Finally, Kaminari flipped the switch off and… turned it back on again, the solution not to his satisfaction. At this, Sero's eyebrows furrowed in annoyance, but he didn't move from his laid out position. As the blending drew into its second minute, even Kirishima-
"And, done!"
"Imma kill you next time you turn that damn thing on, Sparky," Bakugo growled. Kaminari's face immediately darkened. Probably, Kirishima assumed, thinking about the time Bakugo dragged him behind a bush and did who-knows-what to get him to discharge all of his electricity. It looked like a shakedown, but once Kaminari recovered he reassured Kirishima that there wasn't any robbery involved. He was tight-lipped about the use of any violence, though.
"My problem is, I don't know who to ask."
Kaminari plopped down into a bean bag he brought from home and took a long, thoughtful sip of his shake. "I mean, there are six girls in our class. You don't exactly have a plethora of options."
Sero nodded. "Good word, 'plethora.'"
Kaminari shot some a finger gun at him with his empty hand. "Thanks, dude. I try my best."
"Fuckin' know-it-all…" Bakugo muttered. He had tapped out of the conversation, focusing on scrolling through whatever social media piqued his interest. Kirishima appreciated the guy's disinterest in all things romance, and found his single-minded devotion to getting stronger exceedingly manly. His own indecision went against his values, but the whole fiery persona he had crafted for himself was only a year old, and he needed to be able to let it down sometimes. This just happened to be one of the few times he did so when in the presence of others.
"Let's look at this logically," said Kaminari, who, Kirishima admitted, was a bit more of a romantic than he was, "You won't get anywhere with Uraraka. Trust me, I've tried. She and Midoriya have something going. It's awkward as all hell and I don't think they've talked about it yet, but it's there. So, you're down to five. Four, actually, because I wanna ask Kyoka and I'm invoking Bro Code so don't even think about it."
Sero finished tying off a piece of his tape, finishing a rather ornate snowflake-shaped creation. As he put it on the table, he raised an eyebrow. "What the hell is 'Bro Code?'"
"N-nothing, some Western thing i-is all. J-just, don't ask her, okay?" Kaminari blushed. Kirishima didn't know why; all three of the other guys knew about how he went really deep down the Western culture rabbit hole, so him mentioning something they had never heard of wasn't, well, unheard of.
"So, Hagakure, Asui, Yaoyorozu, and… Ashido."
Kaminari perked up. "Hey, that's it! Don't you know Ashido from middle school? She's the perfect person to-"
"NOPE! No, nuh-uh, no way, not happening," Kirishima flustered as old memories assaulted every last shred of pride he had. The heat in his face told him that it was at least as red as his hair.
Before Kaminari's mischievous grin developed into any sort of interrogation, the door to Todoroki's room opened and its occupant stepped out. Four pairs of eyes trailed the stoic boy as he made his way to the kitchenette and started rummaging through the pantry. Even Bakugo tuned in, as he usually did when 'Icy-Hot' was around. Todoroki being up past ten was an unusual occurrence in and of itself, and he wasn't usually one to bother himself with the group's conversations about girls (neither was Bakugo, but Kirishima counted him nonetheless since he stayed and listened), so the four just opted to watch him quietly. After a couple excruciatingly long seconds, Todoroki pulled a bag of popcorn down from some long-lost recesses of the shelf and started making his way down the hall away from his own room.
Sero let his curiosity get the better of him. "Yo, Todoroki. Where're ya headed so late at night?"
Todoroki yawned and turned to face them. "Yaoyorozu has never pulled an all-nighter for fun before, so a couple of the girls and I have been drafted to join her."
Kaminari quirked an eyebrow. "Damn, that sounds fun. Who all is in the group?"
"Yaoyorozu, Hagakure, Ashido, and myself."
"Huh. Seems nice, but how'd you get in on it? Doesn't really seem like a group you'd usually hang out with."
Todoroki yawned again. A pang of sympathy ran through Kirishima; Todoroki was a sleeper at heart, often in bed by ten, and not usually waking up until he had to. "Yaoyorozu was insistent on me being a part of it. Apparently the other two heard about me going to the dance with her and wanted to talk to me. I don't know why it had to be so late, though…"
A beat. Sero: "Wait… you're going with Yaoyorozu?"
"Yes."
Kaminari jumped in with the follow-up. "But wasn't the dance just announced today?"
"She asked me a couple of nights ago."
Sero just let out a low whistle. "I knew you were popular, but damn. She asked you before anyone else even had a chance... Are you guys, like, going out now or something?"
Todoroki opened his mouth, then closed it and looked up at the ceiling. "I… I don't know."
Before Kirishima could jump in, the bag of popcorn kernels Todoroki was holding popped once, then twice. He quickly switched it into his other hand, but conversation had already been sidetracked. With a nod, Todoroki continued on his way, obviously in deep consideration about their last question. The group of boys was left to their own devices once again.
"Holy shit."
Kirishima nodded. "Yeah."
"She asked him."
Another nod. "Yeah."
Kaminari let out a huge yawn. "He's cooler than all of us combined."
Kirishima would beg to differ; manliness-wise, they all could compete on similar levels. Well, maybe not Kaminari, with his occasional affiliation with Mineta and rejection of manly ideals for perverted ventures, but the point still stood. "Yo, Bakugo, what did you-"
"Shut it," he mumbled, rolling over and pulling a pillow over his head. Apparently, Kirishima realized, Bakugo had been falling asleep.
"Aww, does 'Kacchan' need his sleepy time?" Kaminari gushed in a way that made Kirishima think that he was completely unconcerned about his own well-being. In one of the hugest strokes of luck Kirishima had ever seen, Bakugo had, somehow, fallen completely asleep and missed the teasing (or just didn't care at that point), so the number of students in class 1-A stayed at twenty. Kaminari had a record with getting away with things that Bakugo would normally kill someone for, but that was probably because he was really careful about when he teased him, often only doing it when Mr. Aizawa was around (for his own safety). This late at night, though, Kaminari seemed to have lost some of his survival instincts.
However, Bakugo's sleepiness brought their own lack of sleep into light, and everyone went about saying their goodbyes. Sero left first, quickly followed by Kaminari, and Kirishima stayed for a little while longer, watching a sleeping Bakugo and trying to figure out his dance-related problems. He fared no better alone, as he expected.
"Shit, man, I'm so unmanly right now…"
Bakugo muttered something incoherent in his sleep, which Kirishima took as a response along the lines of 'quit whining, you little bitch.' A fair criticism, to be sure.
Something about the common area seemed dimmer now that everyone had left. Being alone always made Kirishima's world greyer and less vibrant, but the rabbit hole of dances and hormones just added an extra layer to it. Ashido… she was honestly more manly than he would ever be. Any time he was around her, the memories of the time when he didn't do anything, when he was weak and cowardly, they racked him with shame.
Why did he even have to go? The dance didn't matter. It would just play into that manly bravado he was trying to live up to. He didn't have any kind of romantic attraction to Ashido, just some long-distance admiration. Whenever he thought about spending time with her, he just felt… sad. He reverted back to his puny, weak, middle school self. She knew how to live in a way he didn't. Everything about him, even his hero name, was a pale imitation of someone else. Kirishima knew that. He knew that he was just a fake, and he tried to fight that, to prove that he really was manly, but every time he tried the same feelings of inferiority took him over. He would never be Crimson Riot; he could only hope to be half as cool, maybe. Even after his experience with Fatgum's internship... he may have grown stronger as a hero, physically stronger, but that didn't change who he was on the inside. Ashido's existence served as an antithesis to his own, someone who tore apart the scaffolding he used to support himself just by existing.
And, maybe, he needed to confront that.
Kirishima stood up suddenly. Bakugo's body jolted in response, and the blonde awoke with a stream of curses. Kirishima apologized, but his mind was elsewhere. He could feel Bakugo watching him struggle through drooped eyes.
"Yo, walk with me."
Bakugo's sudden orders took him by surprise, and the blonde kicked himself up into a standing position he couldn't help but to follow him. They walked over to the fridge, which Bakugo opened and rummaged around in for a moment. He pulled out a small plastic container with a cupcake in it, ripped off a sticky note that Kirishima suspected did not have his name on it, and shoved it into Kirishima's hands.
"Take that, go to wherever Icy-Hot is having his harem time, and ask the damn alien out. You need to figure some shit out, right? So stop waiting around and figure it the fuck out."
Kirishima looked down at the cupcake, and looked up at Bakugo. Then, he smiled. "Thanks, man. You may come off as a dick sometimes,-"
"The fuck you say bout me?!"
"-but I'm really glad to have you as a friend," he finished, not visibly reacting to the explosion-filled hand a few inches from his face. Visibly, anyways. His skin hardened just enough so that it wouldn't hurt too much if Bakugo hadn't stopped.
Bakugo paused, his face still contorted in anger from the first half of the sentence, then sniffed and looked away. "It's nothing. Now, fucking get it over with, k?"
The redhead smiled and nodded. "I will!"
Before Kirishima could make into the girls' wing, though, Bakugo called after him.
"And, if she's stupid and says no, lemme know and I'll fucking take you, if it's that important to you." Bakugo yawned. "Tape-For-Arms can come to, since he's not getting at date. We'll make a group out of it."
Kirishima couldn't help himself from grinning even wider. He continued on his way, cupcake in hand, feeling manly for the first time in hours.
A/N: This was both exactly how I expected this chapter to go and nothing like what I expected when I started it. I knew that it would be shorter than the previous one, and I knew that, even when included in a romance-heavy collection of stories, this one wouldn't end up being extremely romantic. It's just kind of how I thought the story would progress with Kirishima. Of course, he will get a followup chapter, as will The ShoMomo Duo, but... yeah. In a little bit. Kirishima needs to figure some stuff out about himself first, before he can get to the fluff.
Some notes:
1. I WILL have Kirishima's asking scene written out, presumably next chapter if it fits, but the way this chapter developed made me think that it just didn't fit.
2. The length of these chapters will vary. This one is shorter than the last one, obviously, but some ideas, like the one I have planned for Iida, could only take like 1,000 words. That one may be combined with a different one, though. I'm still debating that.
3. Most of the ships represented will be pretty vanilla, with room for ambiguity (hehe this chapter hehe).
4. I like making numbered lists.
5. Interact with this story as you see fit. Reviews are always welcome, please crucify me if I deserve it, or don't if I don't (crucification is sometimes necessary but is never fun).
6. A random question, should I tag the actual characters I'm using in this or would it be better to just leave it as "Class 1-A Students?" Because I'm definitely using more than four characters, but tagging the Todoroki/Yaoyorozu pair among others may make the story more appealing to people just scrolling through. I dunno. Just a thought.
I will end my numbered list here. Thank you for reading!
Let me know what you thought!
-ND
