Cooking almost never goes right in class 1A’s common room.
“Get out of the fucking kitchen, Raccoon Eyes! Take Dunceface with you too!”
“Aw, but– ”
“Get the fuck out!”
Mina cackles with delight as she jumps off of the counter where she’s sitting. Kaminari grins and joins her in being shoved out of the kitchen by Bakugou, who is wearing an All Might apron that Sero got him as a joke. He constantly talks about how stupid it is, yet continues to wear it every time he cooks, without fail.
Wearing a much cuter apron splattered with spices, Uraraka smiles apologetically. “Sorry, guys. We’ll let you know if we need your help!”
“No we fucking won’t!” Bakugou’s voice explodes from somewhere near the oven. Kaminari and Mina crack up laughing again, and even Uraraka grins at the harsh language. They’re all desensitized to Bakugou’s foul mouth by now.
Almost everyone is in the common room, spread out on couches or laying on the floor with homework or moving around the kitchen with more success than them. Kaminari can see Tokoyami sitting on top of a washing machine in the laundry room, talking to Shouji, who is putting a load of clothes in. The atmosphere is playful and friendly, like they’re all at a sleepover. Technically, they are, tonight.
Iida, always worrying about some sort of detail, says, “What if Aizawa-sensei comes back to check on us and sees us all out of bed? It would be very unseemly for heroics student such as ourselves to be taking his absence so carelessly.”
Todoroki, who once had them all convinced that he was a stoic, fun-hating loner, says, “What is he going to do about it.”
It’s not even a question. It’s a statement.
Midoriya, the mediator who hates seeing people argue, says, “It’s okay Iida! We’ll be careful and make sure to clean up after. And if he comes to check on us, we’ll go back to our rooms, right, Todoroki-kun?”
“Sure.”
Kaminari just watches in amusement. He can’t believe he ever thought Todoroki was serious and rule-abiding. He hates rules as much as Kaminari does, and breaks them almost as often.
“It’s going to rain, kero.” Tsuyu says as she leans against one of the large windows surrounding the common room. Outside, the sky is turning dark quickly. The heavy clouds in the horizon seem to be drifting closer and closer.
Sero frowns. “How can you tell?”
“I don’t really know, but I can always tell. It’s part of my quirk, kero.”
The infamous Midoriya hero notebook must be up in his room, but the boy nods along, like he’s memorizing all of this information to write down later.
Truthfully, Kaminari can tell, too. Not specifically that it’s going to rain, but that there’s going to be a storm. Ever since he woke up this morning, the static has been strong in the air and has tangled in his air and his clothes. He can feel electricity thrumming through his veins, more sporadically than usual. On days when it storms, Kaminari’s quirk acts up worse than usual. He can still control it, but his body generates more electricity, which means he has to release more, which means that he’s always sparking or accidentally shocking things. It also means that his ADHD is on steroids, making it nearly impossible to focus. He’d been tempted to take more than just one dose of his ADHD meds this morning to help, but then he’d remembered the last time he did that, which had ended in him crying against the fridge for almost an hour after school before Kirishima found him.
And so he didn’t do that.
“Are you going to be okay, Kami?” Kirishima nudges him, where they’re now sitting on the carpet in front of the tv together.
“Yeah, it’s just a storm. There have been tons of those since school started!”
“Well, yeah, but now you have seizures.” Kirishima’s voice drops a little, like it’s a sensitive subject. It’s not, really, but it’s still a very new thing for all of them, so Kaminari doesn’t take offence. “Isn’t all the extra electricity going to affect them?”
Oh shit. Kaminari, per usual, hadn’t even thought of that.
He laughs, but it’s a little nervous, betraying that he’s been caught off guard. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’ll just, uh. Be careful? I guess?”
Kirishima seems to be okay with that. He smiles, teeth sharp, and holds out his fist for Kaminari to knuckle-punch. “Yeah, you’re right! You’ll be fine, bro.”
Somehow, Kaminari doesn’t feel completely reassured by that.
There’s a loud banging sound, like pots being slammed on the counter. “Dinner’s ready, assholes!”
Iida and Momo, the lovers of tradition, had initially tried to get everyone to sit at the tables to eat dinner when they ate it all together, but that quickly derailed. Ojirou changes the channel to a rerun of some popular hero blockbuster, and they all gather around to watch. The curry is almost unbearably spicy, but they’re all used to Bakugou’s obsession with spice, now, too. Kaminari’s eyes barely water as he eats, even though his tongue is essentially numb.
Tokoyami, who can’t taste spice because of his quirk, eats slowly and peacefully as the rest of them (besides Bakugou) shovels it down their throats to minimize the heat.
It takes a record six minutes for someone to spill curry on the floor – it’s Aoyama, this time – and they spend five minutes desperately trying to get the stain out. They do, eventually, sort of, thanks to Jirou reading instructions off of wikihow and Uraraka’s unmatched cleaning skills.
No thanks to Todoroki’s unnecessary freezing of the carpet, which not only does nothing for the stain but also makes the carpet soaking wet.
It’s still only eight in the evening, and they plan to stay up all night, so after dinner everyone retreats to their rooms to get ready for bed and figure out what they’re bringing downstairs. Kaminari puts on pajamas, washes his face, and fills a workout bag with his toothbrush, Nintendo switch and multiple chargers. Like, multiple. He buys them all the time, whenever he finds a cute one or one with a character he likes, so he probably has about twenty lying around. He packs seven of them to be safe. He throws his ADHD and epilepsy meds in, too, and prays to every god he can think of that he won’t forget to take them.
“Bro, how many did you pack?” Sero asks as Kaminari opens his door. He looks down and sees some of the ends of his chargers sticking out of the top of the bag.
“Uh, like seven?”
Raising his eyebrows, Sero leads the way to the elevators. “That many?”
“There’s a storm coming, I think.” I know. “Do you wanna be fried alive in your sleeping bag?”
Sero laughs. Kaminari loves his laugh because it’s ugly even though Sero is very much not. “Good point.” He hits the elevator button once, and Kaminari punches it a few more times just because. “Do you think your epilepsy is going to be, like, affected by the storm?”
So apparently everyone had already thought of this before Kaminari had. He says, “I don’t know, but it’ll probably be fine?”
“You don’t sound that confident.”
“When do I ever sound confident in my answers.”
Sero grins. “True.”
The common room is already full. The couches have been moved, probably by Kirishima and Satou, so the area in front of the tv is big enough for almost everyone to sleep. A couple of people will have to sleep on the stiff couches, and it’s not going to be Kaminari. He races to an empty spot on the carpet and sits down. The carpet is pretty hard, but the couches will screw up his already horrible posture and couch cushions aren’t great when you’re a magnet (ha, literally) for static electricity.
Sero follows, sitting down next to him. Shinsou appears, carrying sleeping bags.
“Where did these even come from?” Sero asks as he takes one.
Midoriya seems a little nervous as he answers. “Um. Todoroki-kun bought them last week, when we went shopping.”
There’s a pause where they all stare at Todoroki, who just shrugs. There’s nothing significant about that, they all know his dad is Endeavour, which means that he’s rich, but oh wait –
Kirishima raises an eyebrow. “Dude, did you use your dad’s credit card to pay for these?”
Todoroki’s face holds a hint of a smile. “Yes.”
“Dude, that’s sick.”
Uraraka’s eyes light up as she practically froths at the mouth at the thought of Endeavour’s credit card.
Kaminari has been waiting to have a sleepover with his classmates since they moved into the dorms. They’ve all had little sleepovers here and there. For example, Kaminari knows that the girls have slumber parties once in a while, and has heard rumours that Midoriya and Todoroki spend interesting amounts of time in each others’ rooms after curfew. The bakusquad have them all the time, sometimes pre-meditated ones on the weekend, but more often that not impromptu ones that happen when they stay in each other’s rooms too late and are too lazy to walk back to their own. They’re technically not supposed to sleep in each others’ rooms, but Aizawa-sensei hasn’t called them out on it yet. Kaminari and Mina have started keeping some of each others’ clothes in their rooms just in case.
But this is going to be everyone. Everyone. All twenty-five of them. They’ve been preparing for this, buying snacks on their free days, brainstorming what games they’re going to play and what movies they’re going to watch. Kaminari has been practicing playing Super Smash Bros in his room for a week, not that he’s going to tell anyone.
Usually someone is always monitoring the common room – or so they say – but tonight, Aizawa-sensei and all of the other teachers are attending an important staff meeting. There could, of course, still be someone checking the cameras, but from what they’d gathered this week, every single UA staff member is going to be at the meeting. On top of that, tomorrow is Sunday, their only day off. That means that since no one will be monitoring them, they can stay up after curfew and make a mess of the dorms. To some of them, like Kaminari, it’s a dream, and even to those like Shinsou who would much rather be alone, it was too tempting to say no. And so, the class 1A slumber party came to life.
Nearly everyone is settled into the living room within half an hour, talking and laughing and throwing things at one another. Someone brought down a beach ball, of all things, and it turns into a very intense game of don’t let it touch the floor as they wait for their remaining classmates to come down.
Satou arrives last, carrying two very big containers.
“Ooh, what’s that, Satou?” Mina squeals.
He places them down on the coffee table and flushes in embarrassment. “I made us all sweets for tonight.”
There’s almost nothing that teenagers like more than free food, especially free desserts, and they are, by its very definition, teenagers. Everyone jumps up and scrabbles to open the containers and taste Satou’s baking, which rivals even Bakugou’s cooking.
Kaminari could cry at all the cupcakes and cream puffs and little cakes. There are twenty-five cookies, each one decorated for its respective student. Kaminari’s has a little battery made of fondue, surrounded by lightning bolts.
“Thanks Satou! These are amazing!” Hagakure says, and Satou blushes, and it’s all very adorable.
Kaminari feels a small surge of electricity travel from his chest down to his fingers all of a sudden, which causes sparks to jump between his fingertips, and his cookie to get zapped out of his hand. He just stares for a second before picking it up off of his sleeping bag and grinning sheepishly. Thankfully it didn’t crumble.
“You good?” Sero asks, kind of concerned but mostly faking indifference for Kaminari’s sake.
“Yeah, just got excited for a second.”
“It must be because of the weather,” Tsuyu says. She’s already finished her cookie and there are crumbs in her hair, somehow. It’s weird but also very endearing. “It looks like it might storm, kero.”
“Probably. Anyways, don’t worry! It just surprised me.” As he says that, his classmates finally look away and resume their conversations. Ever since he had the seizure in front of them, they’ve been weirdly attentive to changes in his quirk. Since then, he’d also told them about the other drawbacks that they probably hadn’t known about; the ADHD, the insomnia, the constant electricity running through him. It feels good to have told them, but it also makes Kaminari feel vulnerable. They know pretty much everything now. His whole medical file.
Kaminari runs a hand through his hair, shaking out the excess sparks that he finds. The storm is close now. Hopefully, it won’t be a long one.
Ojirou suggests that they play Super Smash Bros first, and Kaminari cracks his knuckles and thinks, this is what I came for.
He does not win.
They decide on a tournament bracket, and he loses his second game. He loses to Tokoyami, who keeps choosing Daisy, of all the playable characters. Kaminari chooses Pikachu, of course. It’s almost depressing how quickly Tokoyami keeps throwing his character off of the platform, and Jirou’s endless teasing doesn’t make him feel any better. Tokoyami’s Daisy eventually gets beaten by Shouji’s Cloud, though, which makes him a little happier.
Kaminari has to say, he’d never imagined Shouji as a Final Fantasy kind of guy, but now that he thinks about it, it makes a lot of sense.
The final game has everyone sitting up, staring at the tv, holding their breaths. Kouda is sweating as they move their character around on screen, and Iida is so focused that he looks like he’s shitting himself.
No one knows how these two made it to finals. Like, literally no one.
Jigglypuff lands a hit on Sonic and Uraraka falls off the couch from leaning forward so much in anticipation. An exchange of hits later and Jigglypuff pounds Sonic one last time with a satisfying squeak and the room explodes. Kaminari is crying laughing. Bakugou yells incoherently, despite saying earlier that he doesn’t care about this stupid game. Iida falls to the ground in shock and Kouda stares in awe as Kirishima shakes them like a maniac.
It takes a while to recover from that one.
Kaminari goes to high-five Kouda, who still looks surprised at their win after fifteen minutes, and shocks them by accident, with enough power to make a crackling sound. Thankfully, Kouda is too out of it to notice, but Kaminari sticks his hand in his pocket and tries not to think about it even as his heart thuds.
They play Guitar Hero next, which Jirou dominates, of course. Midoriya is surprisingly good, too. Meanwhile, Bakugou doesn’t hit a single note and they have to calm him down before he throws the plastic guitar across the room.
Thunder rumbles outside, deep and daunting but still pretty far away. Seconds later, rain starts to come down fast, heavy, beating against the roof like drums. There’s no lightning yet, but Kaminari knows there will be, soon.
They start to settle down a little once the rain starts. The sound of the raindrops is calming, even with the threat of the storm. They dig back in to Satou’s desserts and Mina dumps her bag into the center of the living room, revealing chips, packages of gummies, chocolate bars, everything and anything. Todoroki hands out drinks, and they all know where they came from, now. Kaminari’s melon soda tastes especially good knowing that it came from the wallet of Todoroki’s asshole dad. Midoriya is chugging his, so obviously he shares that thought.
As they all get into comfortable positions to talk for a while, Kaminari suddenly gets a rising feeling, like his skin is trying to float away from his body. It originates in his shoulder, and he only has enough time to yelp before he grabs the thing nearest to him to channel the electricity into and his ears pop and the cap of the bottle he’s holding explodes out.
Silence follows.
“Um.”
“Are you alright, Kaminari?” Her pajama shirt is wet, since she was sitting right in the direction the bottle was pointed when it exploded, but Momo doesn’t even pay attention to that as she looks concernedly at Kaminari. He wants to sink into the floor in embarrassment.
“Um,” he says again because he’s not really sure what just happened.
“What the fuck, now we have to clean the floor again, Dunceface.”
Jirou has already left to get paper towels. Kaminari feels worse and worse. “I don’t– sorry, I don’t know what happened?”
“At least it was just green tea!” Midoriya exclaims. Always trying to see the bright side of things.
“Yeah,” Kaminari says. His heart sinks, and he doesn’t like it at all. It feels like foreshadowing.
The green tea soaks out of the carpet much easier than the curry, and within a few minutes it’s forgotten, just a damp patch on the floor that will dry out soon. Kaminari apologizes to Momo, who just smiles and waves her hand and excuses herself to change into a fresh shirt.
“You good?” Sero asks for the second time when they’re lying down, playing Animal Crossing on their Nintendo Switches.
“I think so.”
“It’s the storm, right?” Kaminari nods. “So it’s not your fault, don’t feel bad.”
It’s easier said than done, and his ADHD brain means he’s probably going to spend the next three days worrying about how Momo must hate him and how bad of a friend he is. But maybe it’s the atmosphere, because by the time he’s collected wood from his twentieth tree, he already feels a little better. Momo’s new pajama shirt is a lot prettier than the old one, anyways. Jirou compliments her on it, blushing the whole time, and Kaminari pretends he didn’t see it.
(of course, he’ll be bringing it up later. jirou can’t be doing all the teasing tonight.)
It’s always fun to just sit and talk to his classmates. They talk about anything and everything, including teacher gossip. When Iida says that Mic-sensei needs to ‘chill out’ with the grammar correction, Kaminari thinks he’s going to piss himself laughing. They get into deeper things, too, like fears and how they feel their training is going. Shinsou admits that he feels more at home in the heroics class than he ever did in the general class. He’s not afraid of showing off his quirk, anymore. He’s proud, even.
It’s refreshing to get everything out into the open, and for once, no one makes fun of Kaminari or calls him stupid. Even though he knows they’re just joking when they do it, it’s nice to be reminded that they love him just as much as he loves them.
To disperse all the touchy-feely stuff afterwards, they pull the beach ball back out and play another, even more intense game of don’t let it touch the floor. They agree on a no-quirks rule after Uraraka wins every round and pretends not to be pleased about it. Kaminari has a million different bruises at the end, the biggest one from crashing into the coffee table trying to make a dive. He saves the ball, though.
They don’t find out who brought the beach ball. No one seems to know.
Excess electricity continues to fill up Kaminari’s veins. He can sense the static in the air like a tangible thing, now, and it’s so heavy that if he reaches his hand forwards, he thinks he could run his fingers through it. No one else seems to even notice it.
Two chargers find their ways into his mouth, attached to Mina and Ojirou’s phones at the ends. Even though he knows he’s releasing energy safely this way, he still feels too charged up. It’s a little early into the storm to be using more than two chargers, though, so he just waits for the electricity in his body to balance out.
Tokoyami, the emo kid that he is, says that they should watch the new true crime series he found, so they turn the lights off and bundle up and turn on the first episode. It’s horrifying. It’s even worse because halfway through the first episode, Sero starts sneaking up on everyone in the dark and using his tape to wrap around them like little ghostly hands. He stops when Bakugou yells loud enough to burst their eardrums and Tsuyu very seriously threatens to do the same to Sero, with her tongue.
Two episodes in, the first flash of lightning appears outside. They abandon the show for a minute to stare up at the sky.
“I love lightning,” Hagakure sighs, “it’s so beautiful.”
They watch it flash again, a sharp white bolt against the darkness of the sky and clouds. Kaminari shivers with the thought of all of the energy it must contain. He can’t absorb and release anywhere near as many volts as a lightning bolt. They’re straight out of nature. Uncontrolled, limitless.
It’s scary, but beautiful, like Hagakure said.
Three episodes in and Kaminari realizes that he’s feeling kind of… off. Not sick, but just. Something is different. Something is weird. He squirms in his sleeping bag, his limbs suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. Lightning continues to flash outside as the storm settles directly above them. It illuminates the room hauntingly each time.
It’s eleven-thirty, according to his phone. Despite that, he knows what he’s feeling isn’t exhaustion. On storm days, he can usually only sleep about five hours, so he knows he’ll most likely be awake until three or four in the morning.
Trying to get his limbs to still so he doesn’t disturb anyone, Kaminari lets his thoughts wander away from the crime scene investigation happening on screen. The last it had stormed this hard, he’d basically spent all evening lying in bed, five chargers in his mouth, trying to force himself to finish a project. He had stayed up so late and hyper focused so hard that he’d almost forgotten to take his meds –
Oh. Oh, right, the meds.
The four chargers in his mouth get spit out, all four phones already charged to a hundred percent. He sits up, trembling from electricity or this uncomfortable feeling or whatever else, and digs through his bag in search of his epilepsy pills. He’s supposed to take them at the same time every morning and night, but he’s taken it late before, and there were no side effects, so he’d let himself forget. Well, there’s a first time for everything. Forgetting his meds must be the reason for this weird feeling.
His fingers grip the bottle and at the same time, his stomach swoops, so suddenly and violently that he feels less like he’s descending a roller coaster and more like he’s being thrown out of the roller coaster altogether. His vision blurs sickeningly fast.
Fuck, fuck, fuck –
Kaminari reaches a hand out desperately, trying to find any living thing to help him. He makes contact with a bony shoulder.
“Hm? What, Kami?”
Chemicals fill his mouth, the taste so strong Kaminari can almost smell it, even though he knows it’s not a real taste, just his brain holding up a big flashing sign that says have fun! sucks to be you!
He needs to leave, he thinks vaguely. He needs to go somewhere, the teacher’s lounge, he needs to lay down on the carpet and be with an adult, this is going to be really bad –
He stands up, and Sero’s hand grabs his forearm. “Kami, what are you doing? You’re shaking.”
He’s going to be doing a lot more than shaking in a second.
All of the sensations are assaulting him at once, sending him into overdrive. Lightning cracks in the background. Kaminari can’t even see straight anymore, can only feel Sero’s hands try and steady him and hear his classmates whisper and make noises of confusion.
“Turn the lights on,” someone says, and then everything is bright. The sounds around him increase tenfold.
“Oi, let go of him, Tape face! Can’t you tell he’s gonna – ”
Kaminari’s muscles seize up painfully and he feels himself tilt, and he can only think, please catch me, what the fuck.
True crime is definitely not Kirishima’s thing, but he has to admit the show is pretty good. He finds himself rooting for the small-town investigator, going up against all of the big-city police officers that don’t know how to do their job for shit, and he can’t get over how manly the local bakery owner is for singlehandedly saving that girl from being the next kidnapping victim.
His train of thought is broken by Sero’s whispering.
“Kami, what are you doing? You’re shaking.”
A boom of thunder outside reminds Kirishima of the storm. Out of everyone in the class, Kaminari definitely has the most drawbacks with his quirk. Maybe not the most severe, but definitely the most. Storms especially affect his quirk, leave him overcharged when he’s already at full capacity most of the time. He knew the storm would affect his best friend, but he feels kind of ashamed now that he hadn’t kept a closer eye on him.
He looks to the left towards where Kami and Sero are, from his position lying on the couch. Bakugou is sitting by his feet, and he feels the boy turn towards the sound, too.
There’s rustling in the dark, and all he can see with the light from the tv is the edge of Kaminari’s sleeping bag shift and flatten. Someone is breathing very quickly. Whispers start emerging from around the room, the tv show all but forgotten.
Kaminari makes a sort of grunting sound from the back of his throat, and it sounds so out of place and unnatural that Kirishima feels the hair on the back of his neck rise. By the way the air in the room seems to sharpen, everyone feels the same.
“Turn on the lights,” Todoroki says. Uraraka, closest to the lights, turns them to full brightness.
Kaminari is standing up, staring at nothing. His golden eyes are glossed over, and Kirishima knows that look and so does everyone else. They’ve all witnessed it before, many times now, but most infamously that day in Cementoss’ classroom. Sero is grabbing Kaminari’s forearms, trying to balance him as he sways on the spot. Poor Sero is so caught off guard that he doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening, but thankfully, Bakugou stands up.
“Oi, let go of him, Tape face! Can’t you tell he’s gonna – ”
Kaminari stiffens almost dramatically and starts to fall backwards. Sero yells something and scrambles to catch him, and luckily, Shouji and all of his six arms reach out to help lower Kaminari to the floor.
That day, they hadn’t really watched Kaminari seize, besides Iida. Almost as soon as it had started, Cementoss-sensei was yelling at them to get out, call Aizawa, don’t come back in until I say so. They’d seen Kami fall off of his chair and start to shake, but other than that it was just the view of the door and the sounds coming from inside the classroom and their imaginations.
It’s terrifying to see in real life. It’s one thing to learn about seizures and hear Kaminari try to explain them, but it’s a complete other thing to watch it happen. Kaminari’s eyes roll back into his head, leaving just the bottoms of his irises visible, and his teeth are clenched together so hard it looks like his jaw is stuck. His body jerks, his limbs locked in place, his hands tensed in little claws. Electricity is dancing around him, shooting off of his body in arcs, tangling in his hair and zapping the floor. Kirishima can feel the heat from the energy all the way where he is, still by the couch.
For a millisecond, everyone just stares with wide eyes. Then, Midoriya kneels forward to grab Kaminari’s still-jerking-shoulder and recoils when he gets shocked. Bakugou pushes him aside.
“Kacchan – !”
“You’re not supposed to touch him, dumbass! He’s still fucking seizing!”
“But – ”
Iida speaks up. “Bakugou is right, Midoriya. We have to wait until after he’s finished seizing to move him into the recovery position. We learned this in Aizawa-sensei’s first aid class, remember?”
Midoriya looks like he’s in pain. “O-oh, right.” Tears glisten in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean – ”
“It’s okay,” Kirishima says, as calm as he can with his heart pounding as fast as it is. “We have to time it, right? Can someone time it on their phone?”
Jirou shows her phone, counting up the seconds. It’s already at eleven. Her hand trembles. “I’ve got it. I started it when he first started seizing.”
“Good job, Jirou.” Momo’s voice shakes a little. “Now we just have to…”
“…Wait.” The anxiety can be felt in Mina’s voice. A clap of thunder above them solidifies it. Comedic timing.
It’s an excruciatingly long wait. They don’t have to move anything, since there’s nothing obstructing Kaminari’s neck and nothing close enough for him to hit with his limbs. His head is already cushioned by someone’s sleeping bag. Kirishima runs through the checklist in his brain, sorting through all of the points that Aizawa-sensei gave them about what to do when someone’s seizing. He thinks they got them all. He’s not sure.
The next time Jirou holds out her phone, it’s at one minute and forty-seven seconds. Kirishima can feel his nerves climbing up his throat, threatening to suffocate him. Everyone is just standing around, unsure of what to do. “What’s the dangerous amount of time, again?”
“Five minutes,” Sero whispers. He looks more shocked than anyone, staring down at Kaminari like he’s looking down at a grave.
The seizure stops at two minutes and fifty seconds exactly. Is that a long time? Is that normal for him?Kaminari’s jerking slows down until it eventually stops altogether, and the electricity shooting off of him lessens until it’s just the little crackles of energy that they deal with every day. His muscles still tremble, like shivers, but he’s not aggressively hitting the floor anymore and his hands relax from their claw-like positions. He looks asleep now, eyelashes fluttering.
Jirou leans forward onto her hands and knees like she’s taking her first breath in nearly three minutes. Kirishima knows how she feels.
“He’s going to… wake up on his own, right?” Ojirou asks, tail shaking anxiously.
“Did any of you even take the fucking first aid class?”
Everyone winces at the sharp tone, but they know that Bakugou is just as panicked as the rest of them, and this is how he shows it.
“You can help him now, Midoriya-kun,” Momo says kindly. Midoriya nods and puts his ear next to Kaminari’s mouth, checking his breathing. It’s scary to think about why they need to do it. It’s scary to think about Kaminari not breathing.
Kirishima’s had nightmares about it.
But he is (breathing, that is), and Midoriya pushes Kaminari’s shoulder so that he ends up on his side, one leg crossed over the other, leaning heavily towards the floor. He sighs, and Kirishima thinks the whole room sighs with him.
He sits next to Kaminari, so he’ll be the first face he sees when he wakes up, and tugs at Sero’s ankle. The boy looks down at him, eyes wide, and slowly sinks to the floor, too. By the sounds of it, everyone else is sitting back down, too, realizing there’s nothing to do but more waiting.
“Are you okay?” He says it as a whisper, because Sero isn’t like Kaminari or Mina, he doesn’t like a lot of attention.
Sero sucks in a breath. “…Yeah, I think.”
“You helped him. He’ll be really grateful when he wakes up.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Sero says, and his eyes are filled with tears, and they’re shame tears, not sadness ones, which is worse. He laughs without humour. “I didn’t even think about that, I thought he was — I don’t even know — ”
“You know Kami isn’t gonna care about that! He’s probably just gonna be glad he didn’t fall flat on his face.” Mina pops out of nowhere, as she does, head resting on Sero’s shoulder.
“I think he was probably really scared.” Todoroki says softly. He doesn’t look as shell-shocked as everyone else, but he’s always been much better at hiding his emotions, too. “And you made him less scared.”
Jirou pulls her knees into her chest. “It was scary when he seized that first time, uh. In class. And I didn’t do anything, either, but he said that he was really happy I was the last person he saw before he blacked out. So.” She looks at the floor, cheeks red.
Reassurances come from all sides for Sero, until he nods and loosens his shoulders and smiles a little. “Thanks, guys.”
It sinks back into silence, besides the tv. No one talks, or turns the tv off, or breathes, it feels like. Bakugou re-enters the room — Kirishima hadn’t even heard him leave — with a glass of water that he shoves into Kirishima’s hand and refuses to comment on.
After a while, Iida looks up like he’s just remembered something. “Should we call Aizawa-sensei?”
Oh, fuck. They hadn’t even thought about that.
He just blinks when Iida looks at him, and so does pretty much everyone else. Kaminari has had seizures before, tons of them, and they’ve never needed to call their homeroom teacher before, other than that first time. But then again, those were small seizures. Staring into space, smacking lips, fiddling with shirts. Thiswas a big one. The ones Kaminari never lets them see.
He knows why, now.
Shinsou clears his throat. “I don’t know Kaminari like you guys do, but. I think we can handle this. And, um, the storm is moving on.”
It’s true. The next clap of thunder they hear sounds far away again, and Kirishima can’t see any bright flashes of lightning through the windows. The rain is still coming down in torrents, but the electricity in the air doesn’t feel as thick as it did before.
Kaminari needs to know that they can handle these types of situations. What if he seizes one day, outside of class? He needs people around him that know how to deal with this, how to keep him safe and comfortable.
Kirishima says, “Yeah, we can handle this! Kami trusts us to help him, so that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll call if something… goes wrong.”
There are nods from around the room, some uncertain and some enthusiastic. No one seems particularly eager to call Aizawa-sensei back to the dorms and get busted for having a slumber party, anyways.
Maybe two minutes later, Kaminari groans. He opens his eyes slowly, staring at the floor for a moment before raising them to meet Kirishima’s. They’re clear but disoriented. He groans again, and his fingers twitch, releasing little sparks. He seems to be awakening his body little by little, trying to recover.
“Kami? You okay?” Kirishima isn’t sure what to do. Does he touch him? Should he help him sit up?
Kaminari starts moving his hands, wrists, arms, straightens his legs out. After a minute he rolls onto his back so he’s staring up at the ceiling.
Right. Okay. Kirishima racks his brain for the list of things to ask after someone has had a seizure.
Aizawa-sensei’s voice comes to mind. Reassure them. Tell them what happened. Ask them if they know their name, the date, where they are, those types of things. Let them wake and get up on their own. They’ll probably want to sleep after, so help them to bed or somewhere comfortable.
“Um. It’s okay, Kami. You’re okay.” Kaminari meets his eyes again. “You just had a seizure. That’s why you’re — why you’re on the floor.”
After a second, his best friend nods. He swallows and licks his lips like he’s thirsty.
They might be confused afterwards, but that’s normal.
Sero leans forward so he’s in Kaminari’s line of vision. “Do you know where you are?”
They hold their breaths, until softly, Kaminari says, “UA. Common room?” The words are a little slurred, his tongue foreign in his mouth.
“Yeah, yeah. Right.” Sero smiles.
“Do you know what day it is?” That’s Mina.
“Um. Saturday.”
“Who am I?”
“Mina.”
“Who is he?” Mina points to Bakugou, sulkily standing next to Sero.
“Bakubro.”
“What did I say about that stupid fucking nickname — !”
Kaminari laughs softly, which cuts the tension in the room pretty quickly. They let him lie there for a while to regain focus and let his muscles stop twitching and let his brain recover. No one really says anything until Kaminari says, no longer slurring, “Sorry, guys.”
The girls jump on that.
“What are you sorry for?” Uraraka asks as Jirou makes a noise of protest.
“I kind of, uh, ruined the slumber party, didn’t I?”
“No! Of course not!” Pink hands wrap around Kaminari’s arm, despite everyone yelling don’t touch him! but Kaminari doesn’t seem to mind Mina’s over-dramatics.
Kirishima frowns. “Yeah, Kami, you didn’t ruin anything. What are you talking about?”
Maybe it’s because he’s so pale right now that Kaminari’s blush turns his cheeks a bright cherry red. “I literally had a seizure in the middle of our tv marathon.”
“I’ve seen the show before,” Tokoyami says. Dark Shadow, who had been very much present when the lights were off, is gone now. “So I’m not upset if I can’t finish it. It’s not really as good as I made it up to be, anyhow.”
“We don’t care about the tv show, mon ami!”
“We care that you’re okay,” Shinsou mutters, like he’s embarrassed by what he’s saying.
A pale hand reaches up, and Kirishima takes it and pulls Kaminari up as gently as he can. The boy leans back on his hands, blinking lethargically. His golden eyes are shining when he looks around. The tightness in Kirishima’s chest disappears.
“That’s — thanks. I’m okay now, I promise!” Kaminari gives them a thumbs up, dimple forming in his left cheek as he grins. His movements are all slower than normal though, betraying how tired he is.
“Um.” Nervously, Midoriya holds out a couple of pillows. “You might not want to sleep on the couch, but here’s some pillows so you’re more comfortable? Unless you want to go back up to your room, of course!” He adds that last part as he realizes it.
Sero takes the pillows for Kaminari, placing them under his back and head. The boy looks conflicted. “You don’t really need to — ”
Two fleece blankets appear, too, carried by invisible hands. They make their way onto Kaminari’s lap.
“If you do not want to go upstairs, we will make you as comfortable as possible here! Stay there, and we will bring you anything you need.” Iida starts starts gathering up his sleeping bag, presumably to give to Kaminari, but he holds his hands out in protest.
“Okay, okay, Iida, you really don’t have to do — okay.” Kaminari huffs out a laugh. “I wanna stay here tonight, if you guys are okay with it?” No one objects. Obviously. “But you don’t have to treat me any different, okay? I’m just normal Denki. You can put your sleeping bag back, Iida.”
Iida flushes and rolls his sleeping bag back out. “Right. My apologies.”
Everyone starts getting back into their sleeping bags, resuming their comfortable positions. Kirishima abandons the couch to lie down next to Kaminari, Sero on the other side, and Mina pulls her sleeping bag closer so they’re all in a little half-circle together. Bakugou stubbornly stays on the couch for about five minutes before grumbling and yanking his sleeping bag onto the floor with them.
There are scattered “do you feel better?” and “are you okay?” and “do you need anything?”’s from everyone as they settle, and Kaminari just grins and chirps out some thanks. Kirishima fist-bumps him, because that’s kind of his love language, and Kaminari eyes bunch up into little crescent moons.
The lights stay on, just dimmed, and they rewind the tv show. The pattering of rain adds to the atmosphere, but it’s considerably calmer than before, and the thunder and lightning have long gone.
A few feet away, Sero whispers, “Sorry I couldn’t really do anything.”
Kirishima watches the shadows shift on Kaminari’s face as he goes from relaxed to surprised to confused. “Dude, what do you mean? You stopped me from face planting!”
“Told you,” Mina whispers smugly.
“That was mostly Shouji,” Sero says, but he sounds a little less self-deprecating, “Next time I promise I’ll think faster.”
Kirishima doesn’t say anything, because it’s not really his conversation, and he can tell Bakugou is biting his tongue, too. He glances to the left and sees Kaminari grinning. “Yeah right, you’re not that much smarter than me, dumbass – ” Kirishima turns back to the tv and smiles.
The air is sticky with too many sweets and soft drinks, and tastes like rain and Bakugou’s spicy curry. It’s warm and cozy and safe. Kirishima thinks he could lie here forever.
The air is cool and fresh and smells like morning dew. Kirishima opens his eyes, and is immediately faced with Bakugou’s hair. It’s not as spiky as usual, become soft and flat in his sleep, but it smells like the ocean, or whatever scent the shampoo factory has decided smells like the ocean. Everything is warm and comfortable, so he doesn’t want to get up yet, but he raises his head a little to look around.
Everyone is still asleep, it seems. Even Iida and Todoroki, who are notorious for getting up early, and Shinsou, who has a frankly disgusting sleep schedule. He grins in amusement because Mina’s splayed out halfway across the room, sleeping bag abandoned, and Tokoyami is now perching on the end of the couch like an actual bird, and Uraraka is just a lump, completely hidden under a blanket.
A shadow appears over Bakugou’s face. Kirishima looks up, and Aizawa-sensei stares back. He doesn’t look mad. He looks curious and indifferent at once if that’s possible.
Their homeroom teacher doesn’t say anything, so Kirishima offers, softly and very randomly, “Kami had a seizure.”
Aizawa-sensei glances over at Kaminari. “Why didn’t you call me?” he asks, quietly.
“We – we could handle it. We did handle it, sensei.”
“Hm.” Crouching down to absently brush Kaminari’s hair out of his face, Aizawa-sensei grunts. “Was he okay?”
“Yeah, we remembered everything you taught us!”
The stern-parent-at-a-sleepover energy is very strong in the room right now, and Kirishima kind of loves it. He didn’t have a lot of sleepovers growing up, just because he never had much time for that kind of thing. This feels like the whole experience.
Aizawa-sensei pats his head as he moves to stand up, ruffling his hair, gently enough that Kirishima can feel the affection (that his teacher refuses to show on his face) behind it. “I want this place cleaned up before two.”
The clock on the wall says eleven-thirty-four.
“Of course, sensei!”
“Hmph.” Kirishima lies back down and the shadow retreats. He throws an arm over Kaminari and lies on his stomach so he can feel his best friend’s heartbeat against his side. He turns his head so he’s facing Bakugou, and slowly floats back into sleep.
The common room isn’t going to be clean by two, and Aizawa-sensei knows it.