Kaminari's heart sunk like an anchor into his stomach when the technicians announced that it was time to go to the cafeteria for dinner. His heart then soared when he realized that Hitoshi and Neito weren't making their way for roll call for the trip over to the cafeteria. He thought it was too good to be true, so he thought it would be pretty self-sacrificing and heroic of himself to tell them to go to dinner with the rest of the patients.
"We can't. New patients on the unit don't get to leave until they have been here for three days," Neito said with a shrug. "I think I should be exempt since I've been here a million times, but they never let me. Why aren't you going?" he asked, and not maliciously. As far as Neito was concerned, Denki could have been admitted the day of or the day after he had left, and that would put him at or over three days.
"Oh! I didn't know that! Well, this is only my second day… and I tried to escape when I first got here. Momo said that I'll be stuck here for a while after that," Denki disclosed, rubbing the back of his neck as he admitted his impulsive action.
Neito's eyes roamed over Denki thoughtfully before he guessed, "you used your quirk to get the door open, didn't you?"
Denki's eyes lit up at the intelligence of his new friend. "Yes!" he said excitedly. "How did you guess?"
"It's what I would have done if I had your quirk," Neito admitted, looking down at his hands, visualizing the electricity cracking across them hours earlier. "I mean, if it was my first time and I was scared," he clarified before his companions thought that he would escape and leave them behind if given the chance. "This is honestly my favorite hospital out of all of the places I've been. It's almost like a second home, I'm here so often."
When Neito noticed the awkward silence, he looked around at his companions' faces.
"Well don't pity me!" Neito demanded. "I have a blast here! It's so much better than being at home."
Then, after more sad looks, "Not like that! It's just boring as hell if I'm not causing trouble!" Neito sighed, adding, "I don't have it bad. It just gets boring when no one will even look at me. My parents are always busy, and the cleaners just started to ignore me when I would try to get them to do something with me, saying that they had to work."
After that, when his friends' sad faces didn't change, Neito yelled at his friends to just forget it, but he was cut off abruptly by Denki's hug. Before he could complain, Hitoshi's arms went around both of the blonde boys, and Neito couldn't say no to his soulmate, could he? Okay, he could, he just didn't want to. And honestly, he wouldn't have wanted to say no to Denki either. So, he let himself have that moment of comfort, as long as they would stop giving him looks of pity afterwards.
When Denki got distracted as they were eating, hands flailing about as he told them a story that might have been a little exaggerated, they had to remind him to keep eating. Denki would duck his head and blush every time, but Neito and Hitoshi would just chuckle and nudge him, telling him to keep going with the story, but reminding him that Touya commanded him to get all of the calories he could for the upcoming training. Denki would shovel a few mouthfuls of food into his mouth, chew a few times, and force it down before jumping right back into the story, delighted that his new friends were actually paying attention to what he was saying, sometimes jumping in with their own comments of the situation and what they would have done under that circumstance.
Denki loved the interaction. The whole back-and-forth conversation was rare for him to get because everyone else either got annoyed or couldn't really follow along with his train of thought. They would get frustrated that they had started talking about playgrounds and ended up talking about an apple orchard that Denki had visited with his parents. It made perfect sense to Denki because playgrounds have slides, and so do waterparks. His favorite waterpark happens to be a part of a huge amusement park a few cities over, and his favorite ride there looked like apples. They were red and sparkly and reminded him specifically of candied apples. Then that made him think about that one adult he met with the quirk that made the skin of fruits into a candied texture without having to go through the trouble of actually melting down candy and dipping the apples in. That then led him to the apple orchard that his family went to, but the apples were too sour for his taste, and he really would have loved to bring that fruit-candy quirk person along to make the apples more appetizing.
Neito didn't mind Denki taking the reigns of the conversation. It gave him a chance to observe now that he was excused from being the default center of attention. He paid close attention to Denki's stories that were admittedly hilarious, even as his eyes trailed over to Hitoshi quite often, admiring how his soulmate seemed just as invested in Denki's retelling as he was. They were off to a decent start, he figured, with both of them seeming to really like Denki. That was one more thing that they had in common that Neito could use in his favor to start treating Hitoshi better, now that they were stuck with each other indefinitely.
Hitoshi noticed his soulmate glancing at him with a soft smile on his face in between climaxes of Denki's tall tales, but he didn't make it obvious that he was aware. He liked the way Neito was looking at him when he thought he didn't notice. He was softer, and not so much on guard all of the time. Hitoshi didn't want to end that just by acknowledging what he was doing, so he let him be and focused on Denki. Denki was an energetic spark of a boy whose happiness was contagious, so it was not hard to get lost in his stories.
When Denki had finally run out of steam and took a break to shovel more food into his face, Hitoshi decided to inquire about something that he had been nervous about since arriving that morning and being put in a room with Touya instead of being able to stick with Neito.
"Hey, uh, Denki?" Hitoshi had ventured, not bothering to stop himself from asking a question. It was really amazing how different this place was from the outside. Whether he was at home, at school, or out in the community, people avoided speaking to him like the plague, and even went as far as giving him dirty looks and stomping away when he dared to ask a question instead of a suggestion. "What's Touya like as a roommate?" And, after a pause, clarified, "like how does he sleep? Is he a heavy sleeper?"
Denki nodded, swallowing down a bite of food before answering. "Yeah, I think so. He snores!" Denki laughed, once again verbally answering Hitoshi's questions without fear of being brainwashed. "And I got in last night after he was already asleep and didn't wake him up. Why?"
Denki felt bad about asking as soon as Hitoshi looked away from him, avoiding his gaze.
"Nightmares?" Neito guessed, quickly and correctly.
Hitoshi nodded, but didn't offer a verbal response, still avoiding eye contact.
"Hey," Neito demanded, making Hitoshi look up at him. "If you wake up with a nightmare, just sing Little Drummer Boy and I'll know to start singing you back to sleep, okay?"
"You'd do that for me?" Hitoshi asked, breaking eye contact once again as he awaited the answer, not wanting to put pressure on Neito to answer in any way that wasn't truthful.
"Of course. I bet Denki here would, too, if he could," Neito answered, and like Denki, did not seem phased in the least about verbally answering Hitoshi's questions.
Hitoshi could have cringed. Neito bringing in a new potential friend like that and putting him on the spot wasn't a good way to keep him around, was it? But, when Denki answered, Hitoshi's face lit up.
"My singing is terrible, but even then, if I could make you feel better and I had that mind connection with you, I totally would!" Denki agreed.
What had he done to deserve such a supportive soulmate and new friend? Maybe all of the negative karma from his terrible quirk was making the positive karma rush to catch up to keep the balance, at long last.
"Okay. If you need me to sing to you, just sing Masters in The Hall, so then I'll know," Hitoshi said in a joking matter, but all three knew that the offer was real.
"Denki, if you need me to sing to you, just wake me up by singing Jingle Bells, all right?" Neito half-joked to his roommate, not wanting to make Denki feel like the odd one out.
Denki laughed wholeheartedly, eyes squinting at the force of his smile. "You got it!"
When Denki was pulled into the psychiatrist's office, he felt like he was in trouble. It was too much like being pulled into the principal's office. He answered all of the doctor's questions, and eventually relaxed when the questions kept coming, but no reprimand. Denki explained when the voices started, that there was two of them, and even embarrassingly admitted that they sometimes matched the words that other people were saying.
He was surprised that this doctor was actually listening to him and writing everything down when the doctor from the emergency room kept making him repeat himself. Like when the psychiatrist asked him if he ever thought of hurting himself and he said no, the psychiatrist nodded, wrote something down, and then asked the next question without bothering to ask him if he was sure. He didn't know how anyone could be unsure of such a simple question in the first place, so he was grateful that the doctor in front of him was actually listening to him for once.
Denki had mixed feelings when he saw his parents. For a second, he was kind of sad that he would have to leave so soon. Later, he would think he was weird for his thoughts, but he would quickly correct his thinking. It kind of made him similar to Neito if he kind of liked it there, didn't it? And Neito wasn't weird, he was awesome! Thankfully, his parents had just come to drop off some clothes for him.
Denki would never admit to laughing outright on the look on his mother's face when the technicians who were going through the clothes started pulling the strings from his hoodie and sweatpants, but he did. Fully belly laughs at the downright horror on his mother's face, and delight that she wouldn't be able to blame him now that she saw the technicians doing the unforgivable sin with her own eyes.
He was actually able to focus on the conversation that the psychiatrist had with his parents. He wasn't sure if it was because he used easier words deliberately so that Denki would be able to understand or if Denki was just smarter when he was more relaxed. Denki was grateful when the doctor recommended that Denki not be medicated because of a few reasons, mostly that the side effects would not be worth the effect of the drug, especially when the voices weren't telling him to hurt himself or others. There was no reason to dampen the voices unless and until those voices tried telling Denki to hurt himself or others, and his parents actually seemed relieved.
It was late when Denki stirred from his sleep. There was no clock to tell what time it was exactly, but the moon was out in full force. Denki had awoken gently, but for no reason it seemed. He did a quick mental check, and he didn't have to pee. He wasn't itchy anywhere. He wasn't lying on his arm weirdly and it didn't become numb and tingly from the lack of circulation. He was no longer roomed with Touya, and Neito didn't snore. A quick glance over at the blonde, and he was still sleeping on his side, facing away from Denki, just as he was before Denki had fallen asleep a few hours previously.
He turned over to get comfortable and was ready to fall back asleep again when he realized what it was that awoke him in the first place.
…To lay before the King pa-rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum. rum pum pum pum
So to honor Him pa-rum pum pum pum…
Denki could have snorted to himself if he didn't want to wake Neito. Of all the songs to get stuck in his head, it was a Christmas song. One that was mentioned earlier that day, no less! His brain did weird things, so he just figured it was one of those things that was better to learn to accept than to try to fight.
As Denki's breathing evened out and he was falling back asleep, two voices overlapped. The first one stopped then, replaced by another one: A lullaby to lure his nightmare-ridden soulmate back to sleep. Just like that, Denki was in dreamland once again.
In the next room over, Hitoshi shifted, hugging the pillow closer to himself, and huddling under the blanket. The tears were already drying on his face and his breathing relaxed. Denki had been right: Touya was a heavy sleeper. He was relieved because he might have freaked the older teenager out if he had woken up to Hitoshi tearfully whisper-singing a Christmas song in the middle of April. Neito, with his many stays at these types of facilities, would probably have taken it in stride, having seen much weirder things before. But a Todoroki? Yeah, he'd demand a new roommate, probably, and he'd get one, too.
Neito whispered the soothing lyrics to his favorite lullaby as to not wake Denki, smiling softly to himself that Hitoshi trusted him enough to actually do what he had told him to. Neito wanted more than anything to prove to Hitoshi that he could be a good soulmate. He could do this little gesture for him, and not even tell anyone about it in the morning. It could be their little secret, and Hitoshi would learn to trust that he could keep his big mouth shut when it mattered.
A/N: It's been eight chapters, but we just ended Denki's first full day in the psychiatric hospital. So much has happened already!