Chapter Text
Shinsou Hitoshi flops down onto the gen-ed common room couch beside his best friend Midoriya and groans. His classmate looks up at him with a raised eyebrow, even as his hand continues to scribble down notes in his notebook. Shinsou barely has the presence of mind in his despair to comment, “that’s going to be beyond illegible.”
Midoriya waves him off with his free hand as he continues writing what looks like… Shinsou frowns, an endless stream of random words?
“Don’t worry about it, Shinchan. I had these special ordered with raised lines so I don’t need to look down to write neatly, I can just feel the lines on my pinkie as I go… Anyway, what happened? You look like someone just kicked your-“ He cuts off before he can say cat since Shinsou has been known to death glare anyone using that expression into submission. “...hero costume…” he finishes weakly.
Shinsou narrows his eyes at the feeble substitution but lets it slide in favor of sighing and sagging even further into the couch.
“That bad?” Midoriya asks softly, finally putting the pen down so he can pat comfortingly at Shinsou’s hair. “Don’t worry about sticking to our three year plan Shinchan, you've already got your foot in the door and now that I’ve got time to prepare more detailed measures against 1A we're sure to do better in the Sports Festival next– mnph!”
Shinsou’s dead eyed stare faces him head on and he keeps his hand over Midoriya’s mouth as he slowly says, “that’s the amount of faith you have in me? In your quirk advice? In my training?”
Midoriya shakes his head rapidly, eyes wide behind the hand keeping him from answering. A light flush works its way up his cheeks and he doesn’t pull the hand away from his face even though they both know that he could if he really wanted to.
Shinsou continues staring him down unblinking before finally sitting back. “Good. The actual exam went well. It’s some of the students that I’m not sure about.”
“O-Oh… was it…” his voice lowers and he glances around before whispering, “Kacchan?”
Shinsou almost scoffs at his best friend’s paranoia. As if Bakugou would suddenly be somewhere nearby, just chilling in the gen-ed dorms on a random Tuesday night. He settles for rolling his eyes instead. “No, I barely saw him.”
He tips his head onto the back of the couch and stares up at the ceiling, and Midoriya has to fight the urge to pat at his head again.
“We’ve got plans." Shinsou continues. "And I don’t trust those hero kids. And I’m– We’re planning on going underground and starting our own team after school anyway so… so I wasn’t really interested in playing nice.”
“Oh no,” Midoriya groans. “Shinchan what did you do?!?”
“Nothing,” He grumbles. “I just introduced myself along with the words ‘And I’m not here to make friends.’”
”Shinchan!”
“I know! It was stupid alright! Whatever. The point is… I got to fight twice. Once on a team from 1A and then again for 1B and…” He stops then and continues studying the ceiling like it holds the keys to the universe.
“And??? Were they mean to you? Did they try to sabotage you? Come on, tell me what happened!”
Shinsou sighs and finally picks up his head to meet Midoriya’s eyes again. “Two of them told me that they liked me.”
“What???”
“I know.” He leans forward, elbows on knees, and presses his hands to his forehead. “Kaminari on my team from Class A and Monoma on my team from Class B. And I don’t. I can’t tell if they were trying to mess with me or if they were asking me out or if they were trying to make friends even though I said I didn’t want any or maybe they were confessing and asking me out because I said I didn’t want to be friends? What do I do Midoriya???”
Midoriya swallows, pushing down the sudden swell of angst and longing in his chest. Shinsou doesn’t feel that way about him. And that's fine. As long as he can remain by Shinsou’s side it’ll all be fine.
Speaking of which, “Well… we’d always planned on recruiting more members at some point anyway… if they weren’t hinting at romance and were merely commenting on how well you worked together then maybe…”
“Uh uh. No way. Kaminari is way too powerful to be heading underground and even if he wasn’t, Monoma’s got some kind of anti 1A crusade going on. It’s not gonna happen.”
“But that’s fine! So long as you extend the offer to test their intentions, whether they agree or not doesn’t really matter. We can invite them to eat lunch with us tomorrow and just ask.”
“Huh…” Shinsou thinks it over, absently chewing on his bottom lip.
Midoriya clenches his pen tight and tries not to stare.
“Okay so that's good if they meant they liked working with me but what if they did mean it romantically? I’m not- I feel- I don’t see how they even could considering we just met today! And I don’t remember interacting with them at Sports Fest either so they probably didn't mean- but what if they did… ”
Shinsou honestly looks like he’s panicking and it’s that thought alone that has Midoriya surging forward to grab his hand and blurt, “So then you tell them that you’re already taken!”
Shinsou blinks, startled enough by the suggestion to snap out of his anxious spiral. “Don’t be ridiculous. Who’d be willing to pretend to be my boyfriend on such short notice?”
And Midoriya licks his suddenly dry lips and says, “me.”