When Aizawa had told the five students who'd failed last semester's final to finish a study guide in preparation for final exams, Satou hadn't been all too excited to give up his weekend, but the idea of amending his previous mistakes and passing with the rest of his classmates was worth it in his opinion.

His study partners weren't nearly as thrilled.

Ashido's groan could probably be heard for miles, dramatically flopping onto the floor with the grace of a newborn fawn. Sero snickered as she rolled around with a pillow pressed to her face screaming. Kaminari, on the other hand, was sprawled over the couch about a watt away from frying with a bunch of textbooks scattered around his body.

If Satou didn't know any better, he might actually believe it if they told him he was killed by knowledge.

"Man, this is the worst." Kirishima sighed, still stuck on question three of the English section of their multiple study sheets. "I didn't even fail the written exam. It was the practical. I should be sparring with Blasty or something."

"It's still better safe than sorry." Satou reasoned, Kirishima giving a sigh and nodding in response. To be fair to the redhead, he was trying, even if he'd barely finished anything while Satou himself was halfway done. Meanwhile, Sero was fully allowing himself to be distracted by Kaminari and Ashido rolling around in their own misery and non-productivity.

Looking over his company, it was extremely clear to Satou that they were getting absolutely nowhere.

He sighed and stood up. "I'm making cookies."

"I WANT SOME!" Ashido and Kaminari both screamed, while Sero gave him a huge smile.

"Make some for us, please!" Kirishima beamed with a toothy grin.

"Hey Kaminari," Sero snickered. "If you're not actually fried right now, why aren't you at least over here doing something?"

"Uh..." Kaminari blinked at him with a deer-in-the-headlights look, slowly putting his thumbs up. "Uh, ye-. Y- yeh?..."

Satou shook his head fondly, pulling out the necessary ingredients for the dough as the four left alone in the common room were already roughhousing, throwing paper and homework everywhere in their fun. As much as Satou loved his classmates, the fact that they were caring so little about their grades at the moment was starting to irritate him. He knew they'd care when the time came, as they were all serious aspiring heroes with a boatload of potential each, but wouldn't it be so much better if they just got it out of the way now?

Frustrated, he continued his work in silence with the laughter of his playful classmates throwing each other over the couches as his only background music.

It's about this time, as Sero launches Kaminari over a coffee table and Ashido is viciously assaulting Kirishima with a pillow, that Bakugou strides in. Judging from the sweat covering his body, he was just returning from the gym, probably training for the practical. He also seemed more relaxed than usual, most likely due to just exerting so much energy, which Satou was silently grateful for.

Bakugou glanced over at the madness taking place in the common room as if he'd expected nothing different and groaned. "S'up, dickheads."

"Hi, Blasty!" Ashido greeted over smothering Kirishima with her pillow, before being violently thrown off.

"Hey, dude." Kirishima said, completely unfazed by the play fighting around him. "Satou's making cookies. You want some?"

"Cookies-. Guys, finals are coming up. Go to the fucking gym."

Kirishima groaned. "Oh, trust me, man. I'd love to, but I gotta finish this stuff first. I'd ask you to tutor me, but again, gym, practicals, all that jazz."

Bakugou snorted. "Right. Looking real productive there."

"I've been telling 'em!" Satou called out as he went to preheat the oven. "I'm about halfway done with my study work, so my break is justified."

"Nobody asked you, Big Lips!" Bakugou screamed back at him half-heartedly before looking back at his idiot classmates accusingly. "So which one of you four is the furthest along?"

"I am." Kirishima said, pulling at the collar of his shirt nervously. "I, uh... I'm not even close."

"Then what are you-..." Bakugou gawked at them. "What the fuck are you all doing!? I know you morons aren't above asking for help, so you could at least ask Big Lips over there about it. The sooner you get this shit out of the way, the better!"

The four all glanced at each other sheepishly. Kaminari speaks. "Hey, don't worry, man."

"Don't 'man' me, Sparky!"

"But seriously, it'll be fine! We'll get by on the written just fine, and then we'll nail the practicals this year!"

"Yeah!" Ashido cheered. "It's gonna be a-okay! Just you wait!"

Bakugou scowled deeply at them. "'Just fine' isn't gonna cut it in the real world, you know. You're fucking heroes."

Kirishima and Sero glanced at each other, seeming to understand what Bakugou was getting at. Satou could see 'but it's hard' on the tip of Sero's tongue, but he held it, lest he really set Bakugou off. With a huff, Bakugou stomped off towards the stairs, the sounds of wrestling and laughter starting back up almost immediately. Satou shook his head. They'd come to regret slacking off when the time came, but it would be their problem at that point. Not much he can do about it.

Bakugou paused.

If he wasn't still looking away from the group, Satou could probably at least guess what he might be thinking, but he was just standing there, no hints of what emotion might be gracing his features through his body language. There was a heavy sigh and he turned around, and Satou takes back his first statement because his face is completely unreadable, almost blank even.

It's slightly disturbing.

"Hey."

The fact that he spoke at the volume of a normal person who's indoors and living with other people was apparently enough of a shock to gain the attention of all four goofballs, even though they shouldn't have even heard him over their own screeching. They sat in silence, watching him with curiosity.

"You know," he continued. "It would be nice if you guys weren't stuck doing make-up work this time around. You may be a bunch of idiots, but it's better than nothing, I guess."

He's uncomfortable. That's the first thing that Satou is finally able to glean through observation. He's biting his lower lip and won't look directly at any of them. Bakugou scrunched his eyes shut and loudly exhaled. "Last summer camp was a pain in the ass by myself, anyway."

Wait, did he mean...?

Oh.

Oh.

Kirishima blanched first, staring at the explosive teen as if he'd just murdered someone in cold blood directly in front of him. He shrunk back under Bakugou's sudden harsh gaze directed towards him, staring off at something that none of them could see. As the look of horror and discomfort slowly spread to the other three, there was, for a split millisecond, a look of remorse flashing across Bakugou's eyes, almost as if he'd thought he might have crossed a line, because whatever Kirishima might be seeing, Bakugou can probably see it, too.

He'd probably been seeing it for a pretty long time now.

And then it was gone, replaced with his usual burning glare as he crossed his arms and held his head just a little bit higher as Kirishima suddenly scrambled to his feet.

"Enough playing around, guys! We got work to do!" Kirishima roared, fueled with fiery determination and a burning desire to protect.

Because Satou had heard the stories, and if Kirishima was so allowed, he knew that the redhead would gladly reach out his hand again.

Kaminari and Ashido sprang to life with war cries, Kaminari scooping up three of the textbooks haphazardly scattered around the couch and dumping them onto the table as Ashido rolled her sleeves up in anticipation of getting her hands dirty, while Sero stretched his fingers, shoulders, and neck with loud, defiant cracks. Satisfied with his handiwork, Bakugou nodded to himself as he finally made his exit, leaving Satou watching in awe as the atmosphere instantly shifted from a bunch of high school students procrastinating on their homework to a bunch of teenage heroes saving the world.

And this persisted for the rest of the weekend, the four of them working on their multiple study sheets with so much vigor and enthusiasm that Satou was actually kind of scared. At one point, it had devolved into them screaming questions and answers at each other at the top of their lungs until their voices were hoarse like a bunch of drill sergeants fighting for power and Satou decided to do his sheets on his own and retired to his room for the night. He only had a couple of questions left, anyway. He found a poorly put-together bouquet of flowers, a plate of store-brand cookies, and four apology notes by his door the next morning.

He couldn't possibly be angry with them, however. Not when they were now actually putting so much effort into their grades ahead of time instead of waiting to panic near the end. Of course, there was more to it than that.

Kirishima had explained it best at one point a while back, though Satou couldn't remember the circumstances. It was because Bakugou was a complicated human being, he'd said. He was an enigma among heroes who would show no weakness and would not accept pity, even if he was an asshole in the process. He would laugh in the face of death and stand triumphantly through even the greatest adversity. He would reach the top, the number one spot, with his own power, and if you need help from someone else, how could you possibly call it your own power? The whole idea of teamwork and dependence was such a foreign concept to him.

And so, even though Satou could never, ever claim to know their most volatile classmate all that well, he could still piece things together and at least begin to understand the magnitude of what he'd seen over the past weekend.

He could never fully comprehend the levels of respect and trust it took for Bakugou to look back at them that first day and, in a way, hold his hand up to them and give them permission to reach for it.

To catch him.

And so, when they handed in their worksheets and came back with high C's at the absolute lowest, and when they passed their written exams with such great scores that Aizawa had individually interrogated them for certainty that the school hadn't been breached or something, and when they walked into their practicals with All Might-like smiles on their faces and back out with stars in their eyes and the world at their feet, it was as if they were all reaching back wildly, saying 'we're here!' 'we're here, just as the stars are always in the sky and the ground will always be somewhere beneath our feet!'

They are enormous planets, bursting with color and life, all orbiting the sun.

Man, if Tokoyami could hear some of this poetic nonsense coming out of his mind right now, he'd be so proud.

It would be late that night, just after practicals, when Satou would come down to the common room to bake a cake, though he hadn't decided what flavor yet, that he would stumble upon the strange sight of Midoriya hiding in the kitchen and peering into the common room with a look of pure, unadulterated adoration. When he noticed Satou approaching, about to ask what in the world he was doing this late at night, Midoriya quickly put his index finger to his mouth, motioning for him to come over. Satou did so quietly.

"Why are we being sneaky?" Satou whispered.

With a soft smile, Midoriya pointed towards one of the couches, chuckling when Satou's eyebrows shot up. "I didn't want to ruin it."

It was decided. Those four are a bunch of wizards.

The couch meant for three is occupied by five, all seemingly fast asleep. They all looked exhausted, having just successfully defeated and/or escaped their respective hero teachers and were finally feeling like they could stop and rest after a job well done.

Bakugou is in the center, arms crossed, shoulders slumped, and head lulled to the side and onto Kirishima's shoulder to his right, who had his head and arm draped back behind the couch and his mouth wide open with a loud snore, his hair currently left down and falling over his relaxed face. Sero has his back leaning against Bakugou's left side, his legs dangling over the couch's armrest, while Kaminari had himself lazily folded over the top of the couch just above Sero's stomach, sleeping soundly despite how uncomfortable it looked. Ashido had herself sprawled over Kirishima's and Bakugou's laps on her stomach, her face buried into the couch cushion and arm hanging off the side and brushing against the floor.

Midoriya's smile turned into a blinding grin, his eyes like literal sunshine. "Aren't they just amazing?"

Honestly, Satou had no idea if he was referring to the four wizards or all of them, as it could really be either when it came to Midoriya, but as they both silently agreed to cancel whatever plans each of them had in the kitchen to begin with and leave the group undisturbed, Satou didn't really have it in him to disagree.