If Denki thought that his first year at UA was hard, he had no idea what was in store for him the following two years. Sure, there were tradeoffs, like he finally got his quirk under control by the time third year came around, so it had been over a year since he had short-circuited when Aizawa and Vlad King paired the Class 3-A and 3-B students off with each other.
It was a relief, honestly. At the same time, though, it kind of felt like a huge weight hanging over his head, like it was too good to be true. He always knew that if he didn't get it under control, he'd have to give up his dream of becoming a hero.
It was a recurrent nightmare he's had since he made it into UA. He'd be fighting a villain, didn't matter which one or just a vague mishmash of what a villain is in his mind. He would short-circuit after being careless with his power output or having to go all out to save someone with no other choice. He then would be taken hostage by the villains who would laugh and taunt his teammates as they were forced to pull back, all because Denki couldn't handle himself in the field and became more of a liability than an asset to the team.
He could have had it worse, though. He knew others woke up screaming; he's heard it. He only woke up with tears streaming down his face. He wouldn't call it trauma, not like the others have, but that made it worse in a way. They all suffer so much to be here and to do what they do, and his biggest fear comes from inside himself, so much so that it even overwrites the villains that they've faced when it comes to his nightmares.
Because he has avoided short-circuiting, though, his memory has never been better, and he has been staying consistently at the middle of the class instead of falling dead last like he had for the majority of first year and the first half of the second year.
"Team ups in the field happen randomly, at times. It's not always who works best together, or whose quirks work best together," Vlad King announced to the students.
They all stood in a semicircle around him and Aizawa, all giving him their complete attention, standing still and straight, without fidgeting, looking like they were part of an indestructible unit all standing tall in their gym uniforms. They looked more and more like heroes every day if Vlad King had anything to say about it.
"You're all intimately familiar with your own classmates' quirks, so we'll be pairing you off randomly with someone from the other class," Vlad King explained. "You'll have thirty minutes to analyze each other's quirks and come up with strategies based on who you might be paired against in the next exercise. Use this time wisely, and don't take it for granted. Remember, this is training, and out there, villains aren't going to allow you time to come together and brainstorm. Use this time to become more flexible and quicker with your thinking and teamwork."
Denki sat with Shinsou Hitoshi on the floor of the large gym, other groups of two spaced out further from them, notebooks and pencils out as they talked and dissected each other's quirks. Denki was grateful that he had spent some time with Midoriya, so he knew some of the basics of quirk analysis from the expert of their class. Otherwise, he knew he'd be a burden on Shinsou.
Shinsou with the pretty eyes and fluffy hair. Shinsou with the captivating voice that reverberates through his brain like a sledgehammer hitting off a steel beam. Shinsou, who smiles mischievously and flirts back.
Maybe if Denki could prove that he's not just an empty-headed jerk, Shinsou might take that flirting to the next level? Denki could dream, at least.
"Can we start with our support gear?" Denki asked Shinsou.
"Yeah, that's perfect, actually," Shinsou said.
He pulled his artificial vocal cords support item off of his neck and handed it to Denki, who tried to play off his surprise, but probably failed spectacularly. He didn't expect to be handed something so intricate, is all.
"I use the dials, here," Shinsou explained, pointing to the dials on the sides of the mask, "to change the positioning of the plates to alter the resonance of my voice to mimic the sound of someone else's. It helps because people already know about my quirk, so they're more likely to not verbally respond when they know I'm involved in a scenario, but sometimes they forget, especially if I can get them to let their guard down and they think they're responding to someone else."
Denki beamed at Shinsou. "Can I try it?"
Shinsou smiled back. "Sure." He shifted onto his knees and crawled across the floor to maneuver his way behind Denki to help him affix the support item to his face correctly.
Denki felt the relief of the cool metal of the mask against the flush of his cheeks as Shinsou's fingers brushed against his temples, adjusting the straps to fit just right.
"Is there a way to make me sound like you?" Denki asked, not bothered by his natural response to Shinsou's proximity. He'd had plenty of time to get used to his reactions and knew they weren't easing up any time soon.
Shinsou hummed his affirmative, maneuvered his way to be in front of Denki once again, and turned the dials located on the sides of Denki's face, one hand firmly affixed to the front of the mask to feel the subtle clicks of the movements of the plates to make sure he got it right. Denki watched him intently, not fighting as Shinsou's hand would shift, allowing his head to move in whatever direction Shinsou's small adjustments would nudge, watching the reflections of the fluorescent lights of the high ceilings reflect off of Shinsou's eyes. Then suddenly those eyes were looking right back into his own.
"Give it a try."
And Denki did, smiling wickedly at his accomplishment.
"Hey, Denki, it's me, Shinsou. What do you say? You, me, Netflix, chill?" Denki asked, dramatically wiggling his eyebrows as he punctuated the words by physically outlining the space in front of him like the options were there for the choosing, but frowned under the mask, brows furrowing with his concentration.
Shinsou's eyes crinkled at the force of his smile as he laughed. Denki watched as his head dropped forward, allowing his hair to fall over his eyes as he shook his head to get his bearings before looking up again, smile still wide on his face.
"Not totally unexpected," Shinsou commented, "but a good one all the same."
"It's not the same, though," Denki complained lightly. "It doesn't sound the same as you, so I guess you'll have to be the one to actually say it."
Shinsou barked out another laugh, and Denki's eyes drank him all in once again. He'd never get tired of seeing Shinsou laugh.
"It's my quirk," Shinsou explained, rubbing at his eye and sitting back on his heels. "It adds elements to my voice, and some things just can't be replicated. I'm surprised you noticed, though. It's a really subtle difference that even my own classmates wouldn't have picked up on."
Denki shrugged off the compliment. "It's probably just because English is my favorite class, and Present Mic has a voice quirk," Denki tried to dismiss.
"Or maybe it's because my voice is your favorite, so you'd be able to pick out a fake in a heartbeat," Shinsou said, flirting back with that devilish smirk that Denki never gets tired of adorning his face. And he didn't know how right he was.
Denki pulled off his own support gear and handed it over to Shinsou, explaining the technology and how it had greatly improved his accuracy. It was kind of uncanny hearing something close to Shinsou's voice coming from his own face without his throat or anything feeling anything different. At least when it came to sucking the helium out of balloons, there was a different feeling about it. Shinsou's mask was very cool in the strangest of ways.
"During the USJ incident during first year, there was no way for me to aim. If Yaoyorozu hadn't made an insulated blanket to shield them, I wouldn't have been able to shock the villains without also taking out everyone else around me," Denki explained. "So, this thing has been a huge game-changer."
"What's the biggest challenge you still have with your quirk?" Shinsou asked as he examined the different parts of Denki's equipment.
Denki turned the dials on the sides of the mask, hearing the light clicks of the shifting plates. When he answered, his voice was higher pitched, sounding almost like Ms. Joke if he had to put a name to it.
"I really have to focus on balancing the input and output of the charge so that I don't short-circuit," Denki said, changing the dials as he spoke, making his voice go deeper and finding the sweet spot where he sounded exactly like Aizawa, causing him to laugh. "Denki gets an A and can graduate tomorrow!"
"Hey!" Shinsou reprimanded. "Include me in that, too!"
"Oh!" Denki said, thoroughly admonished. "Denki and Shinsou both pass with flying colors. They both get to graduate!" Denki declared in Aizawa's voice, trying his best to keep the monotone drawl to sound as realistic as possible.
Denki reached back behind his head to unclasp the latches and carefully handed the support item back to Shinsou with a smile that crinkled his eyes at the corners before dragging his notebook across the floor and pulling it into his lap, positioning his pencil on the page.
"Shinsou?" Denki asked, glancing up from the page and poking at his own cheek with the eraser end of his pencil in thought.
"Yes, Denki?" Shinsou asked, looking up at him, his eyes trailing over where the eraser bumped against Denki's skin.
"What's it like to be under the influence of your quirk?"
He had already looked back down at the page, ready to write whatever Shinsou was about to tell him. If he had been looking up, he might have seen and interpreted the look on Shinsou's face to know what was coming, to know what Shinsou had in store for him next.
"I don't know. Will you tell me?" Shinsou asked.
Denki didn't know that Shinsou's voice was primed with quirk, and he would unwittingly pull the trigger by answering the question. Shinsou had perfected the use of his quirk so much so that the difference between his typical speaking voice and his primed with quirk voice was not discernable to the human ear, after all. It took hours and hours of practice, days and weeks of sore throats and lost voices to erase the tell-tale waver from his voice, but he had so much improvement to show for it.
"Wait. What?"
And so what if working with Aizawa had relaxed his too strict morals, anyway? Everyone else got to practice their quirks whenever they wanted, so why was he the one who had to hold back? He should have never had to, and now he was making up for lost time, at long last. He was finally seeing what he deserved and taking the opportunities for himself, no longer content to fall behind his classmates because of the fear of others finding his quirk too villainous. Besides, this was Denki. Flirtatious, fun, outgoing, adventurous Denki. If anyone could handle Shinsou's quirk, it would be him.
When Denki answered and the opening was there, and Denki's mind ripe for the taking, Shinsou swooped in and took it.
When Denki's face fell blank, his eyes looking straight forward at nothing, Shinsou put aside Denki's support equipment and slid forward to sit right in front of Denki.
"So, how does it feel to be under my influence?" Shinsou asked, his voice lowering to a whisper as he continued, getting closer so Denki would be able to hear him over the background noise of the echoing conversations of the other students in the gym. "Am I really so scary? Will you never be the same after this?"
Denki saw Shinsou move forward, closer toward him. He saw his mouth moving and he saw a smile on his face, but he didn't hear a word that Shinsou was saying, not with the blood pumping through his veins, thundering in his ears, from the absolute panic that he was experiencing.
He didn't remember using his quirk, so it didn't make sense that he would have short-circuited, but it wouldn't have been the first time that he would have experienced retrograde amnesia. Maybe Shinsou had asked for a demonstration of his quirk, he obliged, and he fucked it all up. It was a possibility.
The panic didn't last long, and Denki realized he couldn't even give his signature thumbs up to let Shinsou know not to worry, and that's when he realized something was different.
"Are you nervous?" Shinsou drawled in a whisper. "Nervous that I might command you to do something that you normally wouldn't? Nervous that you'll never be released from my quirk?"
Was Denki under Shinsou's quirk? Is that why he wasn't panicking after short-circuiting? That would also explain why he couldn't move at all. It must have been pretty bad for Shinsou to put him under his quirk like that, and he hoped that the amnesia was over with and that he was in the clear moving forward, though it wouldn't be the first time he had a spotty memory with various gaps if that's how it was to happen, either.
Denki felt his hard work slipping down the drain. After over a year of no short-circuiting, and here he was, setting the counter back to 'zero days since short-circuiting' and most likely ruining his chance at ever becoming a hero.
Even if UA felt comfortable enough to push him through to graduation, what agency would be willing to hire him on? And even if he found an agency willing to do so, what kind of hero would he be if he was already starting out knowing what kind of liability he was sure to become? He was doomed, and he knew it.
Shinsou had moved back, just a little, and reached behind him for his own notebook and pencil. When he dropped his quirk's control over Denki, it was like a bucket of ice had dropped over Denki's head, and his fear and panic came back to hit him full force without Shinsou's quirk there to force him to remain at homeostasis.
Denki scrambled backwards, using his hands and feet, sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor as he struggled to find enough purchase to get as far away as possible, needing to get his destructive body and quirk away from those who truly had the potential to become the next generation of heroes.
Once far enough away, he turned over, took a few unstable, stumbling steps before balancing out and sprinting for the doors, trying to refrain from gagging and heaving until he was outside and out of view of everyone else, not wanting to cause more of a scene and disrupt their learning experience more than he already had. Just because he was a lost cause didn't mean that he had to drag everyone else down with him; if leaving before he had the opportunity to taint the rest of the class was the last heroic act he ever did, he might be able to live with himself.
He collapsed in the grass outside of the gym, sobbing and dry heaving. Tears poured down his face, and he was embarrassed to be crying over something that he brought onto himself, but his embarrassment only seemed to bring on more tears rather than stop them.
He tensed at the hand on his back, and when he turned around, he squeezed his eyes shut in horror that it was Aizawa. Of course, it had to be his teacher to see him like this, but nothing ever seemed to get past Aizawa's all-seeing eyes.
Denki forced his emotions down. Crying and panicking wasn't going to convince anyone that he would be able to pull himself together by graduation, to improve enough to earn the right to graduate from UA and be on his way to become a Pro Hero with the rest of his classmates.
"Can you tell me what happened?" Aizawa asked once Recovery Girl had given them the all-clear.
Denki had insisted that he was fine, but procedures had to be followed and all that. It was just a panic attack. He hated that they had to make such a fuss about it.
"It was my fault!" Denki said quickly, like someone was going to interrupt him, even though it was only him and Aizawa, and Aizawa was looking at him with a very flat expression, not giving anything away.
"What was your fault?" Aizawa asked.
But Denki didn't answer, furrowing his brow in thought. He hated this part. The spotty memory was frustrating by itself, and downright embarrassing when others were exposed to it.
Aizawa sighed. "Shinsou used his quirk on you." When Denki opened his mouth, probably to protest, Aizawa cut him off by saying, "he already told me what happened. Now I just want to hear it from you."
"He did it to protect me, I think," Denki said, his face scrunching in frustrated concentration as he tried to piece together what happened with his messed-up memory. "I used my quirk, overdid it, and he used his quirk to—to—I don't know—"
"You didn't use your quirk, Kaminari," Aizawa said, his form relaxing just the slightest as he went from leaning against the wall to sitting on the couch situated across from the one Denki was seated on as they sat together in the empty teachers' lounge.
"But then—"
"Shinsou used his quirk on you. You weren't expecting it, and it wasn't during an active training scene," Aizawa stated, leaving no room for argument.
But that wasn't right.
"No—" Denki stated, thinking hard. "That wasn't—? I didn't short circuit? That was all Shinsou's quirk?"
Aizawa just met Denki's eyes with a leveled stare.
Denki shook his head and waved Aizawa off. "I asked him what it felt like to be under the influence of his quirk. He was just showing me. It just—fuck—sorry! That's what it feels like?"
"What did you think happened?" Aizawa prompted again.
Denki sighed, but he knew it was better to come clean than to let Shinsou take any of the fall for what had happened when it had been entirely Denki's fault. "It felt like—being under Shinsou's quirk feels like when I short-circuit, except I couldn't move and I wasn't—" panicking, but Aizawa didn't have to know that. Denki shook his head and continued, "in control of myself at all. That's when I figured out that I was under Shinsou's quirk, but I thought that he had done that to help after I must have short-circuited somehow."
"You had a panic attack, Denki."
"I know, and I'm sorry about that. I really wish I could go back in time and finish out the exercise. I didn't mean to make Shinsou miss out on the second half of class," Denki said, looking down and fidgeting with his fingers.
Aizawa sighed, and Denki glanced up to see him rubbing at the spot between his eyebrows.
Denki counted his lucky stars as he rushed back to class, eager to finish the rest of the day as normally as possible after getting a few concerned looks after sneaking into English class halfway through the period. He wasn't expelled. He was still on track for graduation. He hadn't short-circuited. It could have been much worse.
Denki's heart froze in his chest as he packed up at the end of the class when he realized what he had done.
"Hey," Ojirou said, approaching a little too cautiously for Denki's tastes. "Are you okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Denki asked, plastering a smile to his face.
"Shinsou's quirk," Ojirou deadpanned with a grimace. "I know how brutal it can be, so I just wanted to check in and let you know I'm here if you need anything."
"No," Denki gasped, heart falling into his stomach. Ojirou looked concerned, but Denki offered a weak smile, said, "I don't need anything, but thanks," and waved him off.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no. What have I done?!" Denki muttered to himself under his breath as he rushed through the halls, desperate to find Shinsou and set things right.
Denki was so concerned with making sure that he was still on track for graduation and that Shinsou wasn't in trouble for using his quirk on him that he missed the huge, neon flashing sign that pointed at a much larger problem: Denki had freaked out after Shinsou had used his quirk on him.
When Denki saw the flash of purple, he chased after him, muttering thoughtless apologies under his breath to those he bumped into as he rushed past them.
"Shinsou?" he huffed, out of breath as he had caught up.
Shinsou kept walking, not turning around, but Denki could tell by the tense set of his shoulders that he had heard him.
"Shin—Shinsou?! I know you can hear me!"
Still no response.
"Sh—Hitoshi!"
"What?!" he snarled, whipping around.
The students who had just been pushing and bumping into them, in a rush to get to their dorms at the end of the day, were suddenly giving the two a wide berth, holding their breath as they passed, like the sound of their breathing might be enough for Shinsou to activate his quirk if he felt so inclined.
Denki winced.
"Can we talk?" he asked.
Shinsou glared. "What? So, you can say, "it's not you, it's me?""
Denki looked down and scuffed his shoe off the ground. "Yeah, kinda…"
Shinsou scoffed and turned around to leave, but Denki reached out and grabbed his wrist. Shinsou turned his head around to look at Denki with a tentative glare, but kept his body facing away, ready to storm off as soon as he could shake free.
"The reason I freaked out had nothing to do with you or your quirk," Denki said.
Shinsou quirked an eyebrow skeptically.
Denki sighed and rolled his shoulder. "Okay, it did, but not in the way you think."
"Are we done here?" Shinsou asked, tugging lightly at the arm that Denki still held in his grasp.
"I thought it was my quirk," Denki admitted, wincing as he ripped the band aid off, cheeks reddening in his embarrassment.
Shinsou paused his movements at that, finally turning to face Denki head on once again. Shinsou's eyes darted between Denki's as he considered what Denki could mean by that before he sighed in resignation, shoulders slumping slightly.
"Come to my dorm?" Shinsou offered.
"Yes, please," Denki answered, a little too quickly.
"You gonna let go?" Shinsou asked, lifting his arm slightly to indicate Denki's grip still on his wrist.
"Oh, Shinsou," Denki said, despite his face reddening further. "If you wanted to hold hands, all you had to do was ask."
Denki changed his grip to intertwine his fingers with Shinsou's and his heart fluttered because while Shinsou rolled his eyes, he didn't shake Denki off. Denki didn't think Shinsou even did it consciously, but he even gave Denki's hand a slight squeeze that sent a jolt right through Denki's heart.
Shinsou led Denki into his dorm room and plopped himself down in his desk chair.
Giving Denki a nod, he demanded, "well then, explain."
And explain Denki did.
"Your quirk feels," Denki ignored the way Shinsou's shoulders visibly tensed, like he was waiting for the insult to come, "like the side effects of mine when I short-circuit."
"Wait. What?" Shinsou asked, confused. That was obviously not what he was expecting Denki to say.
Denki nodded. "It's fuzzy, hazy. The only way I knew that it was your quirk at all was because I couldn't move, and you were talking to me. I thought that I had used my quirk, short-circuited, and that you used your quirk to put me under before I could do any more damage."
"That doesn't make any sense," Shinsou countered.
"Sure, it does," Denki said, taking a breath to gather his nerve, "when you consider the fact that when I short-circuit, it messes with my memory. I thought that I just completely forgot using my quirk at all, and the last thing I remembered was talking to you about your quirk." Denki shifted his weight as he looked around the room, too nervous to look at Shinsou straight-on. "It's been so long since I've lost control of my quirk like that. I panicked—well started to, at least. Your quirk has this forced calm situation, so when it was dropped, it was like all of that panic that was suppressed came back and hit me full force. I couldn't stop thinking about how I wasn't going to be able to graduate."
"Why wouldn't you be able to graduate?" Shinsou asked, his voice much softer than it had been before.
A harsh laugh tore from Denki's throat without his permission. "Because if I short-circuit in the field, I could become a liability to all of the other heroes."
"But you've built up your stamina," Shinsou countered, sounding confused. "And with the added security of your support gear as backup, I don't see how anyone could find that to be a concern."
"My—" Denki paused, eyes squinting as he looked at Shinsou with confusion. "My support gear doesn't…"
"Yes, it does," Shinsou insisted. "Do you have it with you? The headgear?"
Denki shrugged his backpack off and pulled his headgear out, handing it over to Shinsou.
"They put a regulating coil to help dispel any extra electricity. How did you not know about this?" Shinsou asked.
"I don't know," Denki said. "I can't remember if they never told me or if I just didn't pay attention."
Shinsou snorted, and Denki smiled. "How long since you've had it serviced? They put a counter in to keep track of how many times it prevented you from overloading, so they know when it needs replaced."
Denki paled. "Oh, uh… I haven't."
Shinsou scoffed and gently worked the headgear open at the seams, head slightly tilting as he located the counter.
"Oh, no. It's bad, isn't it? I'm living on borrowed time, and—"
"It hasn't been used once," Shinsou said, handing over the half with the counter for Denki to see the crisp, unchanged 30 on the counter right before the printed section that indicated that 30 was the maximum number.
Denki stared at the counter for a long time before Shinsou said, "you underestimate yourself."
Instead of responding to that, Denki chose the safe route and asked, "how do you know more about my support than I do, anyway?" as he clicked the two pieces of the headgear back together.
"I'm always in the tech classrooms," Shinsou said with a shrug. "Everyone always goes for my face whenever the battles start to try to break my artificial vocal cords, so I have to be able to fix them on the fly whenever possible. I was in there constantly to learn how, and then afterwards for spare parts."
"That doesn't explain why you know anything about mine," Denki said, before gasping dramatically and bouncing on his toes. "Unless, of course, you're helplessly in love with me."
Shinsou smirked, easing back against the cushion of the chair as he relaxed. "If I were in love with you, don't you think I would have commanded you to fulfill my every fantasy while I had you under my quirk, right where I wanted you?"
Denki flushed, not bothering to hide it. He never did, not caring that Shinsou saw how worked up he always seemed to get him.
"I wish you would."
"What?" Shinsou asked.
"I—"
"Don't," Shinsou said weakly. He had heard him the first time, of course.
But Denki wasn't under Shinsou's quirk, and Shinsou didn't have his power behind his command, so Denki continued anyway.
"I think if I would have felt you give me a command, then it would have further differentiated from the feeling of my own quirk," Denki explained, causing Shinsou to slowly look up at him as he thought over his words. Denki shrugged and continued, "it would probably be best to give me a really obvious warning, like "you're under my quirk and you didn't use your own" or something super in my face like that so I wouldn't have any doubts."
"You'd trust me to have full control over you again?" Shinsou asked. "Even after what I said to you last time you were under?"
"Yes," Denki chirped easily. "Wait—why? What did you say?"
Shinsou rolled his eyes and counted his blessings as he let his quirk infiltrate Denki's mind once again.
"This is all me," Shinsou said. "You're under the influence of my quirk, and you haven't used your own, no matter what it feels like. Got it? Now, nod your head."
Denki nodded robotically and Shinsou smiled.
"Good boy."
Denki would have flushed if he could, but Shinsou's quirk didn't let him be anything other than what Shinsou commanded him to be. And there, in Shinsou's room, out of sight of any eyes of teachers or classmates, Denki's heart might have pounded right out of his chest in anticipation had Shinsou's quirk let it.
The feeling overtook him easily, and even more unexpectedly than last time, but it was more familiar this round. The reminder was welcome, but after his newly instilled self-confidence after learning about his failsafe that he unknowingly hadn't even triggered in over a year, he was pretty certain that the fuzzy, floating feeling wasn't coming from himself. When the command came to nod, Denki wanted to do what Shinsou asked, anyway, but it was still a shock to his system for his body to respond without input from his mind, like there was a disconnect and someone else was pulling the strings—like Shinsou was pulling the strings—and Denki was left to be a spectator in his own body.
Exhilarating.
"You really are trusting, aren't you?" Shinsou asked as he stalked circles around Denki after lazily lifting himself out of the chair. "Even after I put you under the first time, you've continuously answered all of my questions. I thought you just might not realize, but maybe you've wanted this as much as I have, huh?"
Denki felt Shinsou's breath on the back of his neck and it set of alarm bells in his head in all the right ways.
"I thought I lost you," Shinsou admitted, stepping right in front of Denki to stand toe-to-toe with him. "We had a fun, lighthearted thing going, and I thought I ruined it. But here you are. Back up," he commanded.
Denki's feet moved before he realized that the command was even thrown in, too busy being surrounded by Shinsou's words, Shinsou's scent, Shinsou's presence in his very mind, Shinsou's everything.
Denki only stopped moving backwards when his back was flush with the wall, Shinsou right in front of him, having taken every step forward that Denki took backwards. Shinsou gripped Denki's chin and tilted his face up, and Denki basked in the view of Shinsou's eyes once again, not even minding that he could only look when Shinsou deemed him worthy of doing so.
"I could command you to do anything I want, and you'd be helpless to resist, already following through before you could even begin to decide that it might not be something you want to do. How does that sound?" Shinsou asked, eyes sparkling as his hands trailed down Denki's waist to rest on his hips, fingertips barely brushing the skin where Denki's shirt rode up to reveal his hip bones.
Denki wanted to scream, to challenge Shinsou to do his worst. He wanted to do more than just hear about it; he wanted to experience it for himself.
"Denki, I swear to god," Shinsou whispered, looking back and forth between Denki's eyes. "If you run out of here as soon as I drop control, I might never recover. If it was too much, I'd rather you throw up in my shoes and cry and scream or whatever you want—just as long as you stay here so we can talk it out. I won't—I won't even ask questions. Just—"
Shinsou closed his eyes and leaned forward until his forehead rested against Denki's. When the quirk dropped last time, it was like a bucket of cold water dumped over Denki along with the panic. This time, though, it was more comfortable and natural.
Denki wasted no time snaking his hands over Shinsou's shoulder to wrap around the back of Shinsou's neck, pulling him in closer to finally, finally connect their lips in a heated kiss, something that Denki had been wanting to do since he first laid eyes on Shinsou.
When they pulled back, Shinsou blinked at Denki, as if to make sure he was really seeing what he believed he was seeing.
"When can we do that again?" Denki asked.
Shinsou laughed.
"You're saying that we could have been doing this the whole time?" Denki complained early into the morning hours, still not having made it back to his own dorm.
"I didn't know you liked me," Shinsou defended with a shrug.
"Didn't know I liked you?!" Denki repeated, aghast. "I was all over you! Constantly!"
"You're like that with everyone, though," Shinsou said with a smile and a shrug.
"Yeah, I used to be," Denki admitted, leaning back against the wall as he sat next to Shinsou on the bed. "But then you flirted back. Reciprocated flirting is the best feeling in the world, and then I just kind of wanted you and no one else. You might have noticed if you were watching me as much as I was watching you," Denki teased.
"Hitoshi?" Denki asked, slowly tracing the fingers on one of Shinsou's hands.
"Yeah?"
"Would you have seriously been okay if I threw up in your shoes?"
"Denki, I would be thrilled to have you throw up in my shoes if it meant I got to spend more time with you."
"What if I never answered any of your questions ever again?" Denki asked thoughtfully. "What then?"
Shinsou barked a laugh. "Like you'd be able to resist!"
"I totally could!" Denki argued.
"You really think so?" Shinsou asked, trying to hide the smirk threatening to take over his face.
"Absolutely!"
Shinsou laughed as he enveloped Denki's mind once again, and Denki celebrated his own secret success at having manipulated Shinsou into putting him under again.