Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all started because Denki kind of sucked ass at essays. Aizawa knew this. He also didn’t care much for essays, never had, not even when he was a student at UA himself. No hero in the history of ever had learned practical heroics lessons from writing a three part thesis about them, which meant he as the teacher was grading heaps of worthless material and wasting class time. And that was illogical. Unfortunately, the essays were in the curriculum and Nezu wouldn’t let him remove them. Yet. Also unfortunately they still affected Denki’s GPA. So Aizawa made him a deal. An extra credit deal.

“One black coffee for you, and one caramel frappe for me.” Denki held out a paper travel cup, scalding his fingers even through the sides of the container. Aizawa grunted, pulling his head blearily off the staffroom table. His left hand reached down into the signature yellow sleeping bag zipped up to his chin, while his right hand searched blindly for the coffee. He rustled around in his bag for a second, before slapping his grade book down on the table with another grunt. Slurped the coffee. A third grunt. Denki interpreted that as meaning the coffee was satisfactory when he marked the extra credit down on Denki’s file.

The blond eased into the chair next to his teacher, sipping at his own drink. Aizawa was probably expecting and/or hoping for him to leave now that his extra credit had been marked for the day, but it was a lot earlier than Denki usually woke up and made it onto the school part of campus, and he hadn’t had his morning caffeine yet either. The staffroom was still relatively empty, he could sit here and enjoy his drink for a minute or two.

He didn’t get how Aizawa could drink just plain black coffee, but this was what the man had given him for his coffee order and he didn’t want to risk jeopardizing his extra credit by getting the wrong drink, so. Black coffee it was. He peace-signed at Midnight as she entered the staffroom with her jingling keys and 80 thousand bags— seriously, what was it with language teachers and bags; Present Mic did the same thing— her eyebrow already raised as she caught sight of him.

“Hey, Kaminari, don’t usually see you in here this early, everything all right? Did you need to talk to Eraser about something? I can wake him up for you if you need.” Denki was already shaking his head.

“Nah, but thanks Kayama-sensei. We’re just sittin’ and chillin’.” The Japanese teacher’s eyebrow curved up even further into her hairline, if that was indeed possible.

“Sittin’ and chillin’, huh? If you say so. I need to unpack, but give me a holler if you need anything, okay, hun?” Denki nodded, but wrinkled his nose. She clearly thought something was up. There’d undoubtedly be teacher gossip about this later after he’d left.

Ectoplasm gave him the same weird look as Midnight had when they came in a little later, but Present Mic just made finger guns at him and sighed at Aizawa’s face-planted form as he passed the two. Denki had moved on from just “sittin’ and chillin’” to enthusiastically explaining the plot of Undertale to the back of Aizawa’s unconscious head, as it was physically impossible for him to shut up for more than five minutes at a time. Luckily for him, the back of Aizawa’s unconscious head was the ideal info-dump partner.

Around 7:35 Denki drained the last of the sugary goodness from the bottom of his cup, called out a ‘see you later’ to the rest of the assembled teachers, and headed off to 2A’s homeroom to find his friends. It was a surprisingly pleasant way to wake up, surrounded by the administrative calm of the staffroom, his faintly squishy vinyl chair rolling mutedly back and forth across the carpet. The quiet musings of his teachers waking up and getting ready for the day padding his rambling words as they curled into the cushioned air for anyone to listen to or not. He might not mind this whole extra credit thingy as much as he thought he would.

Chapter Text

It was awkward for the first little bit, but Denki’s teachers didn’t mind his presence in their early morning rituals as much as he’d feared. In fact, Present Mic nearly immediately began arriving at the same time Denki did so they could chat. Denki would help him shuffle all his bags into the room, and then the two would watch amusedly as Aizawa dragged himself back from the clutches of sleep for long enough to sample his coffee and check off some points in his gradebook.

After that, Yamada-sensei usually went to set up lessons and put his bags away. More often than not, he then came right back out to the main staffroom though, and flopped down next to Denki at the table. It was a very different experience to talking to the back of Aizawa’s snuffling head about whatever topic had his brain in its throes that day— Yamada-sensei actually talked back for one.

“You’re kidding… No, no, no listen, yo! You’ve seriously never heard his ringtone before? Eraser’s always going on about how annoying it is, I can’t believe you’ve never heard it.”

“Mmm, well that’s probably because All Might keeps his ringer off in class like faculty is supposed to, Mic.” Oh yeah, that was the other way Yamada-sensei’s presence changed Denki’s extra credit visits to the staffroom— all of the rest of the teachers seemed to feel very comfortable stopping by and talking to them now, instead of just eyeing Denki worriedly and making awkward small talk.

Midnight-sensei was sitting with them currently, legs thrown up on an unused chair. Talking shit about each other (plus Aizawa) seemed to be one of Mic and Midnight’s favorite pastimes, but they especially loved talking shit about All Might. Apparently the number one hero didn’t even have a rudimentary teaching license, which honestly explained a lot about how he “ran” his classrooms. Denki hummed.

“Speaking of, did you ever hear Mineta’s ringtone? Mineta Minorou?” Midnight snapped her fingers.

“That was the gropey kid Nezu expelled last semester, right?” Her nose crinkled at Present Mic. “Did we ever find out what he got kicked out for?” Mic shrugged without looking up from where he was answering a text.

“Harassment, hopefully.”

“Wait, wouldn’t you guys know because you’re like— teachers?” Midnight shook her head, fingers flexing against the tabletop. Her mouth twisted into a scowl.

“Would you believe that Eraser won’t tell us because Nezu wanted to ‘keep things quiet’? I mean,” she snorted, “I don’t want to speculate—” Mic rolled his eyes, locking his phone and placing it face-down on the tabletop.

“Yes, you do.”

“Yes, I do,” Midnight agreed immediately. “But I always got the feeling there had to be NDAs involved with that whole thing because of how quiet it all was. No news stories, no announcements, nothing.” Now Mic nodded sagely, mustache twitching.

“You don’t get that level of hush-hush about a UA Heroics student being expelled unless there’s some legal weight being thrown around, ya dig?” His green eyes got all twinkly as Midnight made eye contact with him out of the corner of her eye.

“But you’re not under any nondisclosure agreements.” A pause. “Are you, Kaminari?” Denki popped the ‘p’ in his “nope.” There was a moment of intense silence before Mic suddenly scraped his chair closer and Midnight put her feet back on the ground in order to lean in with a pearly Cheshire grin. “You don’t say.”

Denki felt his face stretch into the familiar wide smile thing it did as both his teachers’ full attention settled on him, but he powered through the embarrassment. Spilling this would be worth all the weird faces his face would undoubtedly soon be doing. He got himself situated in his chair, taking a sip of the oat milk latte he’d brought for himself today along with Aizawa-sensei’s cup of liquid sadness.

“You know, my original point in even bringing this up was that Mineta’s ringtone was the intro noise to uh,” Denki was suddenly very aware of the raised eyebrows of both his teachers, “a certainadultfilmwebsite but anyways, ok so I knew there had to be a lot more that went into Mineta getting expelled than just he was being extra gross one day, because like, the girls had been trying to file complaints against him for forever and nothing ever came of it. It makes sense since his parents were big UA donors, so it would’ve taken something big for Nezu to be able to expel him.”

“Wait, his parents were donors here?” Mic asked, and Midnight nodded grimly,

“Even I had had words with Nezu about that kid, and I knew something was up when he kept telling me his hands were tied and the school board wouldn’t let him do anything.” Kaminari bounced his head up and down emphatically, hands batting at the table again.

“Yes, yes, but then all that Midoriya and Bakugou drama from last year got involved— the stuff with the Gossip Club,” Denki clarified when his teachers clearly couldn’t pinpoint the exact piece of Midoriya-Bakugou drama he was talking about from the previous year.

(This was a fair reaction, seeing as Midoriya and Bakugou never really stopped fighting. Instead, Bakugou just continued to jump to newer and more outrageous reasons to squabble with Midoriya, and so the topic of their arguing had eventually become the only reliable way for those unhealthily invested in the two’s— frankly, reality-TV worthy— interactions, such as Denki, to categorize different periods of fighting.)

“Oh, also— can we just talk about the Gossip Club for a second because, like.” Denki scrunched his nose up. “Midoriya and Nezu kept saying it was created to show people that important information can ‘come from ordinary sources’ and ‘you don’t need a super powerful Quirk to collect important info’ or whatever, but, like, we’re all agreed that it was just an excuse for Nezu to get his gossip fix, right?”

“And keep an eye on Midoriya, probably,” Midnight agreed with a snort. “Bless him, but that boy is a disaster.”

“Amen,” Mic— who had never been religious until he watched first year Midoriya throw himself face-first onto a pile of landmines to win a school festival— muttered.

“But anyways! So this time, the Midoriya-Bakugou drama was that they just basically weren’t talking to each other or telling one another what was really wrong and it was this huge mess.” Midnight and Present Mic opened their mouths, but Denki rushed to amend himself, “No no no, I know they’re always a huge mess, but this time it was less of a yelling-type-mess and more, uhh, more of a not-communicating-keeping-stuff-secret-type-mess. And the best part is it all started because Bakugou thought Midoriya was being suspicious with his Gossip Club thing and wouldn’t let Bakugou join.” Mic put it together aloud for the table, eyebrows furrowed.

“Well that doesn’t sound like the little listener… he’s usually so friendly and welcoming, especially to Bakugou. I wonder what was so different about the Gossip Cl—”

“I know,” Denki let off an arc of lightning, practically vibrating in his seat at getting to share all this speculation with his teachers, “So it was super suspicious, right? Jirou said she heard it had something to do with some rumors about Bakugou that Midoriya didn’t want him to hear—”

“She thinks he was trying to protect Bakugou?” Nemuri-sensei’s eyes were wide with intrigue, and she’d begun chewing on her top lip as she considered what Denki had revealed. “Oh, but surely Midoriya knew that Bakugou would hate that?”

“Right?! And the whole thing was just so weird and they just weren’t talking to each other! But that’s just the background information— sometime during all that, Kirishima and I were heading to the infirmary to check up on Bakugou… maybe it was after that aquatic disaster training we did with the Coast Guard?” He snapped his fingers, “Yeah, it had to be then because I remember Mineta wasn’t even in the building since Sero had launched him into the ocean. But we heard voices— the infirmary door was open a little—” Denki cast his memory back, recalling the slightly raised voices echoing down the hallway, Midoriya and Bakugou’s tones uncharacteristically civil for any interaction between the two.

“—s just fucking nasty is all, and in the middle of training too!”

“I know, Kacchan, but you heard what Uraraka said, Nezu apparently can’t get the board to expel him on only victim testimonies of harassment.” Denki had tugged on Kirishima’s hoodie sleeve, eyes silently begging him to stop and listen. He knew the redhead wouldn’t like eavesdropping on his classmates, but something about the conversation made him not want to interrupt. A new voice filtered in, one Denki hadn’t expected to hear. Uraraka’s normally chipper tone was low and terse.

“Yaoyorozu told us why. The Mineta family donates a lot; apparently Yaomomo’s been having to put up with him at fancy banquets and rich people galas for a lot longer than we realized. Nezu can’t bring it up anymore without risking his job.” A violent sounding movement, like someone had hit a side table or the wall out of frustration; Kirishima jerked against Denki’s hold of his hoodie sleeve, but Bakugou's voice came again, louder this time.

“It’s just— fucking bullshit!”

“Shhh, Kacchan, I know but—”

“And he gets to just make nasty fucking comments all the time and feel people up whenever he damn well pleases without any damn consequences— don’t touch me, Deku, I said I’m fine—” There was quiet. The sound of something being dropped reluctantly back down onto a hospital bed.

“Okay. I’m sorry.” A long pause. In the hallway outside the room, Kirishima’s face twitched back and forth between horror and rage and terrible, terrible pain. He looked like he couldn’t tell if he wanted to shred a certain someone with his terrifying shark teeth or go try to hug Bakugou against all modern medical advice for keeping your face attached to your skull. Denki couldn’t tell which he wanted to do either. It felt— weird as hell, actually— to hear Bakugou being so vulnerable.

“If it makes you feel any better, Bakugou, you’re definitely not the only guy he’s been creepy towards. Ever since he came out as bi he’s been extra nightmarish.” Uraraka made a dissatisfied noise with her previous statement. “Mn, I don’t mean to say that bisexual people are just- just like that or anything, it’s all 100% Mineta. It’s just now he’s, like, ‘using’ it—” She sighed heavily. “You know what I mean.”

Denki did know what she meant, but he wished he didn’t. Aoyama had been spotted telling Mineta off angrily in French multiple times, and just last week Ashido said Tokoyami and she had intercepted Shoji, about to break something over a comment about the types of appendages he could create from his Dupli-Arms. Midoriya snorted, but there was no humor behind the sound.

“Yeah- yeah I know what you mean. He’s just harassing double the people now— not- not that it was ever okay what he was saying to the girls in the first place, or anything, but!” The sound of cloth against cloth, like someone was shifting uncomfortably. “He, uh, he keeps talking about my thighs and my, um. My ass.” Another pause. It was kind of a trip to hear those words from Midoriya’s mouth. He never swore.

“... none of that makes me feel any fuckin’ better.”

“Sorry, Kacchan.”

“Sorry.” A longer pause. Kirishima and Denki were still awkwardly out in the hallway. Denki felt almost like an actor in a musical who’d come in too early and was just waiting for the lines ahead of his to be done so he could make his cue. It was freaky, to be so super aware of the space the conversation happening in the other room needed in order to happen, so super aware that any stray noise or appearance could shock the three out of the bubble they’d created in the other room.

“Hey, Deku.”

“Hmm- yes?”

“You believe the rat?” A moment while Deku translated what Bakugou was asking.

“... Mn, oh, you mean Nezu? Yeah, I think he does truly want to expel Mineta and he does care about the harassment happening.” A deep breath, muffled through the open doorway. “I believe him. When he says his hands are tied by the board I think… I think he knows he’s worth more to the students of UA by continuing to be principal than by getting fired for pushing the issue with Mineta.”

“So he’s doing triage work then.” Uraraka’s voice was numb and flat with realization, a beat too late after Midoriya had finished. There was a hitch of breath that Denki immediately clocked as the greenette. Uraraka sighed. “It makes sense, it’s what he does best. Strategy. Prioritizing. He needs to be here to protect the student body as a whole, keep his position as UA’s principal. He needs the leg up all that information about future heroes and current hero events gives him.” Numb and flat with acceptance. “He can’t just sacrifice all that for some harassment, and we can’t expect him to.”

“But he’s- he’s the principal, that means the good of students is his priority—”

“The good of the school as a whole is his priority,” Uraraka corrected. Anything less than the good of all the students has to be less—”

“Important. Less important.” Midoriya cut Uraraka off, sounding almost breathless with the unexpectedly horrible revelation. Uraraka made a noise of grim agreement that Denki could barely catch. A hoarse whisper.

“Just sucks that we had to be that thing that’s less important.” The longest pause yet. Then a big suck of air from Bakugou.

“You’re both dramatic fucks,” he diagnosed. He plunged on before Midoriya or Uraraka could object. “The rat saying his hands are tied is basically permission to make it happen.” A tiny pop of combustion on the word ‘make,’ as if Bakugou had gestured to prove his point and accidentally ignited his palms from the friction. “So. What if someone got proof. Not just witness statements or your fucking… gossip, but actual proof. A video or some shit. A voice recording even.” Another beat or two, the idea settling into the air around them, and then Uraraka spoke.

Her voice— the tone, the words— it wasn’t anything Denki had ever expected to hear from his brightest-eyed classmate. He still wasn’t quite sure just what he’d expected to hear from her that day in the hallway— maybe something healing and quiet to reassure Bakugou, provide him a space to vent again? Something cheery and blushing pink to brush the events of the day off and vow to try again tomorrow with an accompanying fist pumping the air? Something reserved and soothing to convince Bakugou to calm down and abandon the idea of revenge? Instead, Uraraka’s voice had become shrewd, considering.

“Huh. You know, I think-” Dangerously tranquil and unbothered, like the audio representation of a raised brow and a challenging glint to the eye, a bone dry desert persecuting flesh and bone until all that remained was just punishment and stinging wind. “... I think Nezu would agree that even the school board would have no chance at pardoning Mineta when confronted with such definitive evidence. Especially if there was a lot of it, you know? ‘Multiple offenses recorded’ type thing.” I know you’re guilty, her tone whispered, a handprint in the sand. I know.

“Kacchan, what are you think-”

“Tell Nezu I’m starting my acceptance trial for that Gossip Club bullshit, Deku.” A long silence stretched out between the three and their silent listeners in the hallway. Kirishima raised his eyebrows in a question at Denki, but Denki missed it as he pictured Midoriya gnawing on his lower lip, eyes narrowing as they met Bakugou’s in that way the class had only seen a few times, mostly before UA incurred huge property damage fees on its insurance plan. Then—

“You’re seriously using this to get into the club? You just don’t give up, do you, Kacchan?”

“You taught me that.” It was maybe the outwardly kindest thing Denki had ever heard Bakugou say about his childhood friend.

“Oh my gosh, shut up, you’re such a dick.”

“And I taught you that.” Uraraka’s giggle was also unexpected, although not in the way her voice had been earlier. It was, in fact, like that other Uraraka had never existed.

“Aww, it’s actually really sweet that you two are kind of bonding over this, even if I wish the circumstances were different!” A small explosion was lobbed at her, and the moment was gone completely. Denki and Kirishima made eye contact, feeling the earlier tense energy leak out of the room.

“Stuff it, Cheeks, Deku and I aren’t bonding! That grape fucker put his whole two baby-sized hands on my chest and told me I’d be ‘a great titty-fuck,’ and this is just called him meeting the consequences of his actions.” There was a growl. “I’m gonna fuckin’ ruin his permanent record.”

Denki cut off around the point where he and Kirishima had actually entered the room, Bakugou still laying in his infirmary bed— bandaged and dirt-scuffed and furious, but stable— with Uraraka and Midoriya sitting on the floor, still slightly damp and dripping from the aquatic proceedings and unwilling to get water on Recovery Girl’s nice visitor seating. Midoriya’s hair was frizzing up spectacularly as it dried. Denki had left out a few more personal points too, you know, things that weren’t really his business.

The fury and pain and heartbreak for Bakugou washing over Kirishima’s face as he and Denki lingered out in the hall, all of ten feet away physically, and yet miles of emotional understanding away from being able to be in the same room with Bakugou right now— to be there for Bakugou— in the way Midoriya, and, strangely, Uraraka, were able to be. The way the redhead had clenched Denki’s forearm so hard he left a mushy hand-shaped bruise across his wrist when Bakugou mentioned the nasty shit Mineta had actually said and done to him, upper body Hardening and unHardening over and over again like fists clenching and unclenching. How Kirishima had tackled Bakugou extra hard as they rounded the doorway, making more noise than was probably strictly needed so the trio would know they were approaching, Denki still trying to ease Kirishima’s fingernail indents out of his skin.

The tenderness in Midoriya’s tone the entire time he’d been talking with Bakugou, practical and low, worried but over-used to not being able to show it, no choice but to trust that Bakugou really was fine when he said so. The fond exasperation when he’d said “You just don’t give up, do you, Kacchan?”, that intimate emotional familiarity Midoriya seemed to have with Bakugou despite the two beating the shit out of each other at nearly every opportunity that had never spoken of an entire childhood weathered together more than it did right now.

The blank acceptance to Urarka’s words, the way she sounded so grimly acquainted with the notion of priority, with the notion of not being a priority. That hard knot in her voice that still sent a chill up Denki’s back even when he just played her words back in his memory, that frustration and spitting rage so carefully held back, that sure certainty that Mineta would fall, like a vulture or a hyena measuring stamina, squirreling away energy, outlasting its prey until its cup overflowed with rich, pinging coins of bloodied meat— it made Denki wonder if maybe Uraraka and Bakugou weren’t so different after all, if maybe the two could be equally angry on the inside but fury was an accepted emotion from only one of them.

He also left out much of the swearing and the vulgar language, figuring his teachers had been around both Bakugou and Mineta enough to fill in the blanks.

        “Wait wait wait, so, okay—” Mic waved his hands around wildly to get Denki to pause. “What was that whole ‘acceptance trial’ thing Bakugou was talking about? Did I miss this?”

“Oh, that,” Denki flicked his wrist breezily in the air like he’d seen his mom do while talking on the phone with his aunts. “That was this thing Nezu and Midoriya decided to set in place to stop Bakugou from joining the Gossip Club— they made up this idea that you had to have like, a trial run or something, like you had to somehow prove that you’re good at getting gossip and doing stuff with the knowledge you pick up.” Denki eyed the faint crack spidering up the wall behind Present Mic’s swoopy hair— although perhaps “spidering” wasn’t the best choice of words to use for anything in the man’s immediate vicinity. “And because Bakugou has the social intelligence of a friggin’—”

“Watering can,” Aizawa supplied, head lifting off the tabletop as the teacher surfaced from his pre-class slumber like a diver coming up for air. His eyes drilled into Denki’s soul. The blond, who’d been about to say “ass crack” and earn himself detention for the afternoon, just swallowed and let his face stretch into its customary wide smile.

“Yeah, that, so he would have had zero idea on how to even start. Which, by the way, Midoriya and Nezu both definitely knew and, I think, were counting on. Hi, Aizawa-sensei. Did you have a good sleep?”

“What are you talking about?” Aizawa asked his co-workers, completely ignoring Denki’s greeting. Present Mic waited until Aizawa went to take a sip of his coffee before telling him about his and Midnight’s workaround to the hush-hush in finding out what happened regarding Mineta Minoru’s expulsion from UA.

When the bell rang 30 seconds later, it was with a slightly wet and very irritable Eraserhead— pinching the bridge of his nose and grumbling something about nosy kids and nosier adults all the way— that Denki walked down the hall to 2-A’s homeroom.