Denki had tried surrendering, even if it would mean a tongue-lashing from Bakugou later. Afterall, his best friend's safety was more important than winning a training, even if they were supposed to be enemies in that moment. He tried to surrender and get Neito to stop building up charge, but Neito just kept going higher and higher, the manic smile growing and his laughter getting louder. He didn't realize the danger he was in; he was just high on the newfound power that Denki had been steadily growing. While everyone else took cover, Denki had rushed forward, right through the electricity that zapped and sizzled across his skin. Denki had managed to catch Neito before he fell to the ground or hit his head on a nearby piece of pipe that was sticking out of the wall.
The training ground was unsafe and disorganized, which was good for training heroes to be prepared for anything, but bad for heroes who just wanted to help their friend who took on a quirk that had grown more powerful than he had realized.
Denki didn't even realize that he was hurt until he woke up in Recovery Girl's office.
Denki had a truly heroic experience where his legs moved before his mind had even decided what to do. When the static charge around Neito got too big and started to burst, others recoiled, which was the right thing to do. Denki rushed forward, and the only reason he was mostly unharmed was because it was his quirk that had been stolen, so his body was well-equipped to handle the electricity. Denki didn't care either way. He would do it again. And again. And again, given the opportunity.
Denki had crashed against the wall with the broken pipe sticking out of it, and it had easily slashed through his costume and the skin on his back, but he didn't even feel it because he was too concerned about his best friend who was finally in his arms once again, and he wasn't about to get distracted by pain and mess anything up.
Denki immediately gathered the charge that was still raging though Neito and pulled it into his own body instead. As he continued pulling the electricity from Neito, he started to discharge it into the ground below them and the building at his back, anywhere that would take the charge and dissipate it instead of continuing to be a risk to Neito. Denki couldn't remember it later, but he was screaming at someone to go fetch Hitoshi, knowing that Neito would want to see his soulmate when he finally came around again.
Denki did this so automatically and quickly that he short-circuited his own brain, but he was so high on adrenaline that it didn't catch up with him until after he was sure that Neito was in the clear.
The electricity roared and crackled in Denki's ears, but he could still hear his louder classmate yelling at him to back off of Neito and let him face the consequences of his own actions. Denki ignored Bakugou, not caring if he would be lectured later as long as he knew that Neito wouldn't go through the same thing he always did when he went all-out, but it looked like it was too late for that.
Still, he could make it better, and he would.
When the excess electricity was away from Neito, though still haphazardly striking off of Denki's skin, Neito started to stir. Denki had hoped that Hitoshi would have arrived quickly but knew that probably wouldn't have happened quickly enough based on how far away the training ground is from the school building. Denki hoped that any familiar face and voice were good enough to help Neito through waking up disoriented, even if it wasn't his soulmate that was there to comfort him. Denki grit his teeth, hoping that experience under Hitoshi's quirk would make him feel more familiar and at ease as he came around.
"You're okay, you're fine," Denki started, looking around for Hitoshi, but not seeing him arrive yet. "You're at school. It's a training exercise. You took my quirk and short-circuited. You're just waking up. You're going to be fine. You're at school, outside. It's a training exercise. You took my quirk and short-circuited. You're just coming around now. No big deal! You're fine."
Neito's eyes fluttered open and looked up at Denki, who was still absolutely glowing from all of the electricity thrumming through his body that he had taken out of Neito.
"Does anything hurt?" Denki asked.
Instead of answering, Neito asked, "did I win?"
And then Denki collapsed.
No one could get close because of the electricity that Denki was still emitting. Mr. Aizawa and Vlad King tried to command Neito away so that he could go get checked by Recovery Girl, but Neito couldn't just leave the boy he loved in this condition until it went away naturally. That would take too long. It hadn't been five minutes, yet, and Neito still had Denki's quirk, so he started pulling the electricity back from him and pushing it into the ground, just like Denki had done for him seconds earlier.
It was a genius move that was really only helpful in this specific type of circumstance, and Neito didn't know if he would have thought of it on his own. He realized that Denki must have done extensive quirk work during the year, and probably just as much extensive research into electricity as well, if his various TikTok handles had anything to do with it.
However, even with extensive research, and even if he got to practice, which wasn't likely unless he got another electric-type quirk user to help him train, it was still a risky move. Neito blinked back tears as he thought about the nasty things he said to him, and yet he still rushed forward to immediately come to his aid when he overused the stolen quirk. That was the exact type of thing that people looked for in a hero, and Neito hated himself for ever even trying to doubt that Denki didn't wholly deserve his spot in Class 1-A, let alone trying to make Denki think that the other students would call him crazy if they found out about the voices he heard.
If anyone was crazy, it was Neito, wasn't it? He was the one who was unhinged, yet his classmates still treated him decently. Neito didn't even have an excuse or reason, like Denki had the voices, to be as crazy and manic as he was. Denki was lightyears ahead of him, and Neito knew he made a huge mistake because Denki probably believed every word Neito spat at him, even though in reality, it was just a massive self-projection.
Neito felt a little fuzzy and noticed the similarities to how it felt being under Hitoshi's quirk. He felt he was fine to walk, but his teachers insisted that he allow the robots to wheel him to Recovery Girl's office, and he couldn't exactly directly disobey his teachers twice in a row, so he complied.
He heard the hero course students, from both Class 1-A and Class 1-B, muttering amongst themselves about how terrible Neito is and how selfless Denki was to save someone who underestimated him, copied his quirk, and brought disaster onto himself. They called him a crazy bastard and didn't care if he overheard.
Neito tried not to care. He tried to mentally brush the comments off, but the most he was able to do was to refrain from letting the tears fall until he was out of sight of the other students. But it was just as he deserved, wasn't it? He tried to distract Denki by threatening the very thing that their classmates now thought about him.
All he wanted to do was to beat Denki with his own quirk to try to knock him off of the pedestal that Neito had placed him on in his mind ever since Denki snapped his imaginary picture on his imaginary camera in response to Neito's signature sass.
All he wanted to do was to stop being in love with Denki, but it backfired. He was more in love with Denki than ever, and he hated himself more than ever, too.
Hitoshi was waiting in Recovery Girl's office when Neito was wheeled in by the robots, Denki's own set of robots wheeling his unconscious body in right after. Hitoshi stood up, but hesitated, before coming over to Neito. The hesitation hurt a little, but Neito wished Hitoshi would have gone to Denki first, instead. He felt lower than low and needed something to help him drown in self-pity, but he didn't have any excuses or reasons to justify it other than what he had done to himself.
Neito explained what had happened, and Hitoshi listened quietly. Neito had tears dripping down his face, and he didn't even bother to wipe them away. Hitoshi never saw Neito so vulnerable, but even then, his eyes still lit up when he talked about how amazing and heroic Denki was. Hitoshi had mixed feelings. Hitoshi was grateful to Denki for getting Neito out of that situation unscathed, but him acting like that did nothing to dampen the feelings that either soulmate had developed for him. He knew that Neito was feeling the same way and had fallen even deeper for Denki.
When Neito told Hitoshi about what the other students were saying, Hitoshi knew they were in for a rough ride, because Denki would absolutely not allow anyone to say anything bad about Neito, and both soulmates would fall for Denki even harder.
"Is there any denying it? Is fighting it even going to do anything?" Hitoshi had asked, glancing away from his tearful soulmate and to the electric blonde boy who lied unconscious on the next cot over.
Recovery Girl had given him a kiss to heal the wound on his back, but his brain had short-circuited and just needed time to bounce back and get the electricity stabilized again.
Neito opened his mouth to respond, but at that moment, Denki let out a gasp before sucking in a breath immediately after. He twitched in his unconscious state, and his breathing increased.
"Nightmare?" Hitoshi questioned, moving closer to get a better look.
Neito opened his mouth and started singing the lullaby that he sang almost every night for Hitoshi. Hitoshi looked back at him with nothing but pure love in his eyes, but Neito felt that he did not deserve to be looked at like that, so he focused on Denki, and watched his twitching stop and his breathing return to normal.
"We have to tell him," Hitoshi declared.
Neito continued to sing.
Hitoshi sighed. "We have to. Maybe the not knowing is the worst part. There's too many what-ifs. What if he doesn't suspect and he thinks we actually hate him? What if he feels the same? What if—"
"You said so yourself," Neito argued, abruptly stopping his singing. "It would end badly. Either he doesn't feel the same way for us, or he does. If he doesn't, maybe he never will because of the way we've been distancing ourselves from him. If he doesn't, maybe he could someday. If he does, or he could, he might find his own soulmate, and that would hurt all of us. If he does, and it even works out, he might feel like he's coming between us, or that he will never truly be secure because he isn't permanently bonded to us like we are to each other. There are so many different scenarios that could go wrong and ruin everything."
"So… we tell him anyway?" Hitoshi pressed, eyes flickering between his soulmate and his crush.
Neito sighed with a decisive nod. "We tell him anyway."
When Denki woke up, he was disoriented and alone. It wasn't as disorienting as usual because he recognized the ceiling of Recovery Girl's office, so at least he had a location to ground him and remind him of where he was and what happened. He rocked his head back and forth to recalibrate his feeling of orientation in time and space before slowly sitting up.
Denki slumped in on himself when he remembered.
"Oh!" Recovery Girl exclaimed as she came in to check on him and saw that he was awake. "You were hurt during—"
"I remember," Denki stated without his usual enthusiasm.
Recovery Girl hummed, pleased that Denki's memory was intact, and ignoring the fact that she was interrupted. The aftereffects of her quirk could make the most patient students into irritable, drowsy disasters for a few hours, so a small interruption so that his day wasn't needlessly repeated to him wasn't anything to fuss over. Especially when some excess electricity was still snapping across Denki's neurons, it was easy to see that he still wasn't quite himself, yet.
"You're going to be tired for a while. You hurt your back on the way down. That's all fixed up, but I couldn't do anything about the electricity in your brain. That will just have to work itself out like it normally does. Don't go pushing yourself until you feel like yourself again," Recovery Girl warned. "And no quirk until tomorrow at the earliest. Just take it easy for now."
Denki nodded but wondered if he was ever going to feel like 'himself' ever again. He often felt this way when coming out of a particularly bad short-circuit, but the added stress over the conflict with Neito and directly disobeying Bakugou and his instructors amplified the feeling of no-return.
Before he could ask about Neito, Recovery Girl announced that he had a visitor. Denki perked up and nodded, and because Recovery Girl could already see the old spark of Denki back in his movements, she allowed the visitor in instead of sending him away.
Denki was hoping that it was Neito, or even Hitoshi who had an update on Neito if Neito wasn't up to visiting himself. But Neito had gone home early, and Hitoshi had accompanied him to make sure he made it home okay.
When Bakugou stomped into the room, Denki slumped against his cot and put his arm over his eyes.
"Oi, Sparky. That was a risky thing you did out there. You looked heroic as hell, but wasted it on that manipulative little shit," Bakugou started at his normal, loud volume.
Denki didn't mind the volume; he didn't have a headache or anything. He just minded the content. Hell, Bakugou was basically complimenting him, which is unheard of from the self-focused Bakugou, but red-hot anger flashed through him anyway at the mention of Neito.
"Don't," Denki warned simply, taking a deep breath to calm himself.
It didn't do anyone any good to get worked up when he was like this after a short-circuit occurrence. He needed to feel in control before he said or did anything that he couldn't take back.
"Hah?! He—" Bakugou started, leaping to his feet to defend his right to talk down about the menace who hurt one of his friends.
"Please don't," Denki whispered, heart hammering in his chest. "I'm not a hero. What you saw wasn't heroic. I was just trying to help my best friend avoid the worst side effects of short-circuiting."
"And here you are," Bakugou argued, but more gently, sitting back down, "taking on the full effects in his place. Some kind of best friend he is."
"Please, Kacchan," Denki pleaded again, finally turning toward Bakugou, not caring that he saw the tears in his eyes.
"You love him," Bakugou accused incredulously, not even bothering to phrase it as a question. "He has a soulmate, idiot!"
"I love his soulmate, too," Denki admitted easily with a shrug, like that made it all okay and evened everything out.
They already weren't talking to him. They were already avoiding him. And in his post-short-circuit state, he didn't care if anyone or even everyone knew. He just wanted everyone to stop saying nasty things about a boy he loves. He just wanted everyone to stop saying that he was heroic when it was something that anyone would do for a loved one. If Denki had done that for an enemy, that would be heroic. He would even accept the compliments if it was for someone he just disliked, or even an acquaintance, and maybe even a friend. But, for his best friend? One of the two people who he felt such a strong connection with? One of the two people he loved? If anyone, even a civilian, or hell, even a villain, felt this way about a person, they would have done the same exact thing.
So, no. It wasn't 'heroic' at all. It was selfish because he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't do absolutely anything and everything possible to protect those that he loves. If Neito got hurt, he would hate himself. If he didn't do absolutely everything he could to ensure Neito made it out safely, he would hate himself. It was the bare minimum to keep himself functional.
It was selfish because he wanted to be Neito's hero. Neito would have been fine after some treatment. He wouldn't have recovered quite as quickly, but the teachers probably already figured he might do something like that and already had a game plan in mind for how to bring him out of it. Now, Denki probably made Neito feel small and insecure. Denki knows how much Neito's self-image and progress means to him, but he went and took the experience and opportunity away anyway because he couldn't stand to see him get hurt the same way he had over and over again as he was building up his ability to use that high voltage. It was terrifying coming around from that, especially when he woke up alone and it took him a few minutes to figure out what had happened. Denki knew he was the best one for the job, from taking the electricity away from Neito to helping him reorient himself when he regained consciousness, but that still did not mean that Neito would ever forgive him for taking away that training experience, let alone making him look bad and himself look good in front of both hero classes.
Denki didn't know if there would ever be a way to make it up to Neito for his reckless, quick-thinking. Denki knew an apology wasn't quite right because, to be honest, he wouldn't change a thing about what he had done. He would do it all again; and that was selfish. You can't call it a mistake if you'd do the exact same thing again. You can't apologize if you don't completely regret what you have done, and Denki didn't regret it because the outcome was favorable: Neito was okay.
He was lost in these thoughts as he walked across campus, fully intending to grab the next train to take him home and continue to sleep his bad mood off. His journey was brutally interrupted by a harsh slap to the back, and before the offender even spoke, Denki knew who it was.
There was only one classmate who wouldn't treat him like he was fragile and would slap him right in the back where he had just been impaled hours earlier.
"Come with me," Bakugou commanded, stalking off ahead of Denki without waiting to see if he would follow.
Denki did follow. He wasn't pleased with Bakugou's comments about Neito, but he didn't push it further when Denki asked him to stop. They were still good friends and Bakugou was someone he could trust to give him blunt truths and not skirt around important issues.
Bakugou also didn't leave Denki to be alone. He could have avoided the electric blonde, but he was hyperaware and attentive to his friends, and he didn't let Denki feel left out since the first time Denki followed Bakugou and Kirishima during a training and made the one-off comment that he didn't like being alone when questioned why he followed. Bakugou was harsh and loud and explosive, but he was a good friend.
So, when Denki mindlessly followed Bakugou through random alleyways until they ended up at a junk yard, he was lost in his thoughts and didn't realize the weird location until they had arrived and Bakugou presented the view with a wave of his arms.
"What?" Denki asked, mentally exhausted.
"Time to blow off some steam," Bakugou explained, stalking forward toward some abandoned televisions, and setting one up onto a table.
"I can't use my quirk until tomorrow," Denki tried to argue, really just wanting to go home and wallow in self-pity.
"No quirks allowed. Just pure destruction," Bakugou clarified, a promise in his voice.
Bakugou expertly flipped up a bat into the air, catching it by the handle, and giving it a few good test swings. He then whipped the bat in Denki's direction with no warning, and Denki caught it wide-eyed before looking at Bakugou like he was nuts.
"Are you nuts? Are you trying to kill me?" Denki asked incredulously.
"Just trying to get your mind on something else. What better way than a shock to your system? Nice reflexes by the way," Bakugou complimented, jutting his chin up in the air as he nonchalantly reached behind him.
Denki should have known something was amiss when Bakugou was giving out free compliments, but hindsight is 20/20.
Denki reacted beautifully, his instincts kicking in before his brain even had a chance to make a conscious decision to swing the bat as Bakugou whipped an old alarm clock in Denki's direction.
"Dude! You can't just—" Denki tried to object but was rudely interrupted by a lamp flying his way next.
Denki swung the bat and reveled in the lamp breaking and the reverberations it made against the bat that traveled into his hands and up to his arms. It made him feel alive.
"There it is!" Bakugou yelled, pausing his movements mid-throw, finding the essence of Denki coming back to the surface as Denki's eyes glittered and he smiled at the feeling. "Now, see how much damage you can do to that," he commanded, pointing at the television that he had aligned on the table earlier.
And Denki didn't hesitate to step forward, and swing.