"Well, this is awkward."
The words had barely left Denki's mouth, the faint breath of humour coiling around the syllables like a makeshift shield, and yet he already regretted them. Kyōka's gaze was withering, sharp enough to pierce concrete, and he felt his mouth snap shut, the click of his teeth audible in the late-night silence. For such a bustling place, full as it was with over-eager students and over-tired teachers, UA High was deathly quiet come sunset, the air thin and still despite the campus inhabitants' many nighttime activities. Class 3-A's students had often guessed that it was the result of some quirk, or some intentional structural phenomenon; the guesswork, though, had remained just that.
The body on the grass, uncaring of such meaningless trifles as silence, speculation, and situational appropriateness, continued its wretched task of oozing blood all over Denki and Kyōka's shoes. Denki wondered, almost offhandedly, if the dirt beneath his feet would be enough to cover up the smell of copper and the vibrant sulphate-blue tint of the unfortunate man's vital fluids.
Or, well - ex-vital fluids, he corrected himself. It wasn't as if they would be of any use to the man now, seeing as he was dead.
That was why they'd spent the effort to drag him from the city all the way to the back of the dorms, after all.
Because they'd stabbed him, while he was alive, and now he was a distinctly un-alive corpse.
A corpse they'd managed to drop on the floor when confronted by their classmates.
Goddamn, Denki thought, and wondered if the hysteria he could feel bubbling up somewhere in his lungs was visible on his face. They were utterly screwed, weren't they?
"Is that a dead body?" the girl who'd encountered them asked, head twitching to the side as she tapped her chin in contemplation, and Denki took a deep breath. There it was, the vaguest of openings to de-escalate the situation. Mitigate the damage. Avoid getting dropped in a deep hole somewhere for unheroic crimes.
He opened his mouth.
"No?"
Oh god.
Kyōka's glare graduated from piercing to something that conveyed serious consideration of the merits of stabbing him. Perhaps that would, in fact, be the better option; the high-pitched crack of his voice as it trailed off into a thoroughly unwelcome question had been, uselessness aside, frankly humiliating.
Puberty, he decided, was awful. One day you're a twelve year old angel with no problems and no acne, and the next you've got several crimes meriting imprisonment under your belt and you sound like a strangled Furby.
The boy in front of them stared down at the disaster at their feet with all the emotion of a white picket fence. "It looks like a dead body," he told them, in a flat tone befitting conversations on the colour of the sky, and his companion blinked.
Out of the corner of his eye, Denki saw Kyōka's ears twitch.
"Well," Denki said, "It's not."
His tone was intended to be firm. Realistically, it probably came out more like he was bordering on a breakdown; and he was, but they weren't meant to know that.
"It's not a dead body, so you should just go back to the dorms, and forget this, and let us do our thing, and you don't have to call anyone, and we can just -"
Kyōka finally cut off his babbling with a sharp jab to the shoulder. The metal cut into his arm, blunt and forceful, like some sort of unusually sadistic vaccination, and he felt it take blood with it as it returned, leaving behind a patch of raw, heated, liquid iron. Careless - on the evidence front, and the control one.
She was just as frazzled as he was.
"It's a mannequin," she said. "We were going to film something for dumbass here's social media -" she jabbed a thumb at Denki, and he stretched his mouth into a grin out of some half-buried instinct, damningly aware of the ways his eyes resolutely failed to follow "-and it just got a bit... realistic."
"Because you used a real dead body?" their male discoverer asked blankly. Kyōka's ears twitched, again. Denki felt the blood on his shoulder pool.
"He's not dead," Kyōka said, failing entirely at the job of denying the body's status as a real human. Not that Denki felt like pointing that out.
"He smells dead," their female interrogator said, and made a soft noise in her throat. It was a little affronting, really - the man had only been dead for an hour. There'd barely been enough time for the blood to dry and stop flowing, let alone for him to start going off.
It wasn't as though they'd been desecrating graves, or something! They weren't monsters!
"He smells edible," the boy said, with the air of a classmate correcting another's homework. For a moment, Denki felt the urge to consider whether that was a better or worse comment to be made of you. Only for a moment; and then he pushed it down. It wasn't like it mattered, anyway, firstly because it wasn't him being questioned, and secondly, because the man in question was a corpse.
Because they'd stabbed him.
And that had caused him to die, as effective stabbing usually did.
"Well, he's not," Kyōka said, almost, but not quite, authoritatively.
It was a good effort. It was also a wasted one. Denki was fairly sure his classmates could smell fear.
"Because he's not cooked yet?" the girl asked, as if that was the main sticking point.
"Because he's not a real person!" Kyōka almost-yelled, completing her job about thirty seconds too late.
The boy's head tilted, catlike. His eyes glinted in the faint moonlight. He examined the slumped figure with the faintest trace of interest, as if it was a mildly unusual television advertisement. "I could fix the cooking problem," he said, ignoring Kyōka entirely and taking the conversation in a terrible new direction. "Do you think he'd taste like person, or crab?"
Denki would have bet on crab, if only because he had no plans to find out what person usually tasted like.
"He'd taste like plastic because he's not real," Kyōka said, pale in the face with her own stubborn foolhardiness. It wasn't a particularly good look on her.
What a pair she and Denki made.
"Maybe both?" The girl repeated her throat-noise, louder and stronger. "He has human legs, but his upper body clearly resembles a horseshoe crab." She paused. "I think he'd be tasty, either way."
Tenya, Denki remembered, had once said to him that there was a socially optimal response to every situation, even if it wasn't necessarily the best one.
Denki did not know what the socially optimal response to that particular proclamation was, so instead, he said, in the least strangled voice he could muster, "I didn't know you liked crab, Tsu-chan."
She shifted her gaze to him. Her eyes were very round, and very dark. Pretty, he'd often thought; deep reflective pools of the colour he saw when he closed his eyes. "I'm a crab-eating frog girl," she said, as if that explained everything.
"Could you maybe eat crab somewhere that's not here?" Kyōka asked, testy but hopeless.
The boy shifted on his feet, moving his weight as if they were getting tired. "You can't bury him out here, so I don't see why we have to leave."
Denki glanced over at Kyōka to check her reaction and was met with a face that looked like it might start crying or screaming at any moment. Perhaps both. "We're not going to-"
"The back of the dorms is where the wood-chipper scraps go, so you'll just get even messier."
"He's not -"
Kyōka cut herself off, realising the boy hadn't said a thing about the corpse. Not-corpse. Subject of discourse.
"The whuh?" Denki asked, meaning the woodchipper, and the boy let his gaze flicker over Denki's form of a brief moment before pointing behind them, into the gloom.
"Whenever someone displeases the principal too much," he said, in the tone of a student reciting a presentation they didn't much care for, "He kidnaps them and forces them into his torture labyrinth. And then when he kills them, he places them into the wood-chipper, and the bits of chipped person get all mixed together and dumped out at the back of the lawn. It's the reason the begonias grow so well." He paused, seemingly in deep thought for the first time that night. "The principal likes those begonias a lot..."
"Shoto-chan," Tsuyu said, "We don't actually know if the maze thing is real. Just the wood-chipper."
"And the begonias," Shōto agreed. "But it's what I'd do, if I were him."
"You're not, though. You're Shōto-chan."
Shōto nodded without a hint of sarcasm, as if she'd quoted some philosophical ideal at him.
"Why are you telling us this?" Kyōka asked, voice low and strained. "If you're trying to intimidate us, it's not going to work."
Shōto looked at them. "You need to put the body somewhere else. The Principal likes to keep this area clean and private." He pasued. "We keep ours in the fridge."
Tsuyu glanced sideways at him. "Should you say that?"
"I don't know." Shōto looked utterly at peace with the statement. Denki sorely wished he had that sort of emotional control.
He went to speak, opening his mouth - closed it, opened it again. Intended to say something useful, but instead got, "You can't fit a whole body in our fridge it's got too much other stuff in it."
"We have a private one," Tsuyu said. "And you don't put the whole guy in. Just the tasty bits."
Next to her, Shōto's nose wrinkled slightly, as if he was imagining the un-tasty bits.
"...you guys are eating people," Kyōka said, dazedly. It wasn't a question; it had ceased to be a question several statements ago, by Denki's measure, but he was glad someone else had put it into words before he did.
"Bodies are hard to get rid of," Tsuyu assured her. "It's needs-based."
"Logical," Shōto added. "Caloric. Good for Yao-momo's constitution."
There were several things about the pair's explanation that had sounded wrong and right at the same time. Much like Denki's homework, the status of such paradoxes would remain up in the air until someone smarter than him dealt with it. As such, he opted against considering the implications of anything that had been said in the last few minutes. Instead, he chose to do the polite thing, and stepped closer to Kyōka, who, at the mention of her best friend, looked dangerously close to passing out. There was, after all, more than a small chance that she'd fall over on top of the corpse - the one they'd made - the bleedy one - and that would be far more trouble than it was worth.
Not that any of this trouble was worth it.
Not that Denki wasn't also in danger of passing out, if the half-shattered thrum of blood in his ears was any fair indicator.
But the point still stood.
"Kyō asked a good question," he said. "Why are you telling us this?"
Shōto shrugged. It was an ill-practiced gesture, lacking in any semblance of the legacy child's usual combative grace. "I don't know."
"I do," Tsuyu said, with characteristic bluntness. "You have a problem that needs solving. We have a lack of crab budget that needs solving. And people would be upset if you got arrested. It's the smart choice."
Her eyes met Denki's again. Steady, lightless Eigengrau. No trace of lie nor mercy. They bored into him like drill bits into bone.
It was a better option than digging a hole, he supposed.
"I didn't take you two for the gang type," was the first thing UA's golden boy said to them, eyeing them curiously over the top of a notebook. Despite the way he'd been avidly scribbling and muttering to himself since they'd come through the door to Yao-momo's room, the most unsettling thing about him remained the fact that he was utterly unfazed by the smell of metal and seared Dead Guy.
Or perhaps, Denki thought, he was just used to the sweet-steel smell of caramelising flesh. He had grown up with Bakugō after all. Denki imagined there would have been... incidents.
"It's not really a gang," Kyōka said, words coming out slow, as if it took effort to speak. "It's really more. Uh. Two-person extortion."
"It used to be a gang," Denki said and resolutely ignored Tsuyu's cheerful hacksaw work. He had better things to think of, tonight, than how or why his classmates had such an intricate understanding of camera avoidance and butchery. "There were more when I started, right?"
Kyōka waved a hand dismissively. "Well, yeah, but they were a bunch of turncoats." She'd been bitter, when they first found out; now she was over it. "At least we found out before the USJ. Small mercies - the camera presence was awful."
She shuddered, and Denki shuddered along with her. Reporters were the devil, he thought; silver-tongued, often good-looking, and prone to airing your secrets on national television.
Really, the only way they could get worse is if they started exploding people, or something.
Tsuyu croaked in consideration. "That was very early in the school year," she said. "It must have been troublesome taking care of them, with all the stress and no training."
"It would have been," Kyōka agreed honestly. Something smug bled into her voice. "But I had a taser."
Denki waved.
The people in the room surveyed him for a moment, before Shōto huffed slightly. "You threatened them with him? That's not very frightening."
Well. Ouch.
Denki leant grumpily into Kyōka's side, dropping his head against her shoulder.
She ignored him. Not terribly unexpected; but sad nevertheless.
Izuku squeaked. "Shōchan, that's rude!" he exclaimed, and the weight of the criticism lessened slightly on Denki's shoulders. Made him feel like it wasn't so harsh.
"But true," Tsuyu said.
...never mind. Denki hated his life.
"I didn't threaten them," Kyōka said, vaguely indignantly. "Threats are useless if you're going to carry them out anyway. I just had him zap them into oblivion."
"And stabbed them," Denki added. Kyōka's hand found its way onto his head, absently ruffling his hair. Mission successful. How nice of her.
"And stabbed them," she repeated. "No point in keeping them alive if they were already planning to spill."
"Logical," Tsuyu commented. Denki had a feeling that their teacher had meant to impart a distinctly different lesson to the one they'd picked up from him.
Then again, what did he know?
Izuku, for his part, just observed them for a moment, before he posed a question. "Was that your first time, then?"
There was a sharp pause.
Izuku looked at them for a moment more, then stiffened. "Oh! I mean - you don't have to answer if you don't - don't want to, I know it's a personal question, but Shizuoka had a lower rate of gang-related deaths last year, and - and you weren't very emotional about him -" he nodded towards the indescribable, half-cauterised mess on the floor "-aside from being caught, I mean! And all of us are really young to be committing murder, really, even though Shō says age correlates incompletely with deadly intent, and you'd expect -"
"Izuchan," Tsuyu said, blandly, and he quieted instantly, eyes flickering from Denki's to Kyōka's above him and back again like an incredibly focussed light switch. It was, all in all, vaguely unsettling, and as usual, Denki's mouth decided to work without consulting his brain.
"Who'd you kill, then?" he asked, abruptly, and Izuku practically jumped out of his skin.
"E-eh?"
Denki shrugged, the movement awkward against Kyōka's frame. "Well, Shōto and Tsu said they kept their bodies in the fridge, and clearly we've killed people. I hear Yao-momo is also..."
He spared Kyōka some consideration as he contemplated how to word the topic. She was probably still recovering, after all.
"...involved. So why are you here? You're real strong, y'know. Murder'd be real easy."
Izuku stared at him. He had, Denki noted, rather large eyes. Bright green and always wide open. Pupils sized slightly wrong and a gleam that was almost teary.
For a moment, Denki thought it was nervousness. Maybe it was, a bit - but then they twitched, just a little, and something buried in his mind twitched in return.
Not nervousness, then, or even consideration. No, the gaze pinning him down like a bug was calculating, and his insides twisted, uneasy and quivering, as he remembered that in this game, he could barely count.
"He does have a brain," Kyōka drawled beside him, and tugged him a little closer, leaning them both against the bookcase behind them in faux-relaxation. The move was carefully deliberate, as was the way she smoothed out the mess she'd made of his hair earlier. "It just calls in sick a lot."
"I..." Izuku began, then paused, frowning slightly. "I used to be a vigilante. I wanted to do good things, I - I needed to bring hope to people heroes couldn't reach. I wanted to do something that would have made All Might proud..."
"He got overexcited and brained someone with a brick," Tsuyu told them, and a gasp of laughter escaped Denki's throat before he could stop it.
"You killed a guy with a brick?!" he asked. "By accident?! Goddamn, man..."
"Wait, no, stop," Kyōka said, sharply. "You said used to. Used to be a vigilante. You stopped?"
"Well, yeah," Izuku said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. "After the brick, it felt like a bad idea... I didn't kill anyone for two whole years."
"But you did eventually," Kyōka observed, and Izuku nodded.
"After Kamino... I have someone to keep safe. And happy. Even if I don't tell him... I don't need to be asked to help."
Denki squinted at him. "I don't think that sounds like the sort of thing he'd ask you to do, though."
"Meddling where you don't belong is the essence of being a hero," Izuku said, the words falling rote from his lips, and smiled nervously. The freckles on his cheeks stood out in the light as his gaze flickered, skittish, his twisted fingers holding his notebook slightly too tight. Same old Midoriya Izuku.
Denki forcibly put any thoughts on the notebook's contents out of mind.
"All your reasons for murder are so nice." Shōto's words provided a handy interruption with regards to notes-based catastrophising. He was, apparently, done with his part in the whole corpse-disposal business, and wandered over to sit next to Izuku, wiping his hands on a rag that might once have been a non-red colour. Much like Denki had earlier, he flopped over onto Izuku like a limp noodle, head lolling onto the shorter's shoulder. Tsuyu didn't bat an eye at it; it must have been par for the course, then. "I just go after people who remind me of my father. Or people you guys tell me to."
Izuku shifted slightly, until his arm was able to reach around Shōto's shoulders. "It's okay, Shōchan," he said gently. "Murder is always selfish, and just because mine if for All Might doesn't make you a worse person."
Shōto's face remained unmoved. His eyes, however, shone like polished gemstones. Denki had the sudden impression he'd walked into a shōjo manga. "Really?"
"Shōchan," Tsuyu said, before anyone else could speak. "You know Izuku will forgive you for anything. Stop fishing for compliments."
There was a brief pause.
Shōchan leant further into Izuku's side, like a defiant cat. His face, still, refused to show the barest hint of motion. His eyes, still, continued to glitter.
Alright then.
Denki turned to Tsuyu - with some trepidation, considering she was still holding a hacksaw - opened his mouth, and was beaten to the punch.
"Children deserve to be safe," she said, explaining an answer to a question unasked. "That is our job. To keep them safe and happy. But children aren't always safe. We can't be everywhere. So they need a reason to keep themselves as safe as possible. A few people here and there makes all the difference. Fairy tales went away a long time ago, so something similar is required instead." She paused. "It's good practice, too."
"Oh." Denki wasn't sure if the train of thought she'd just outlined was logical. It sounded vaguely like it, to him, but his vague assumptions weren't always to be trusted.
For one thing, he'd assumed that shampoo would taste different according to the smell.
Which it did.
It didn't taste good, though, which was a bit of a sticking point.
"And..."
Denki couldn't see Kyōka. She sounded worried, though. Or perhaps pained.
"What about... Yao-momo?"
Ah. He might have forgotten about that.
Tsuyu thought for a moment. "I don't think she's killed anyone, actually."
Shōto hummed. "What about that time with the really short guy?"
Izuku shook his head. "That was Ochako. Yao-momo just stood watch."
Kyōka twitched slightly; her hands tugged at his hair slightly and he yelped, garnering a whisper-mumbled apology and a pat on the shoulder.
"Where is she, anyway?" Denki asked. "This is her room, isn't it?"
"Oh," Shōto said. "We use this room for dismemberment whenever Bakugō's asleep. He gets cranky if you wake him up with blood all over the floor. And then Izuku gets mad at us for annoying him."
"Yao-momo has tea with Shōji around this time, so she leaves the key outside for us," Tsuyu said, and croaked. "She'll be back soon, though."
"I..." Kyōka trailed off. "Okay."
"You should talk to her," Tsuyu said, matter-of-factly. "Stay in here. It's not like we'll be doing any cooking today, anyway.
"Okay," said Kyōka, again.
"We'll stick around," Denki agreed, and then, as a thought occurred to him, "Wait, really short guy? You mean Mineta? Is that what happened to him?"
"No," Izuku said, and frowned slightly. "There's no way we could have killed a fellow student, a camera would have caught us."
Tsuyu blinked, slowly. "Yes." She did not offer any explanation. It was probably for the best; Denki wasn't sure he wanted one.
"I don't know anyone named Mineta," Shōto droned.
It would have sounded like a bad lie, if Denki wasn't entirely willing to believe that Shōto was capable of forgetting the names of people he didn't care for.
They still hadn't managed to conclusively prove whether or not he'd actually forgotten his surname, after all. It was bad form to question the memory of someone with a head injury, even if they'd produced it themselves.
"We should revise English while we wait!" Izuku chirped, and Denki wondered if he'd ever have a normal night again.
"Kyōka-chan!"
Yao-momo's return was heralded by two things; first, her high-pitched cheer of excitement, and secondly, the force of one-hundred-and-eighty centimetres of heroine-in-training barrelling into Kyōka's side at high speed.
"Oof," Denki said, as he was jolted onto the floor. He considered getting up again, but, all things considered, it was quite a nice floor.
And he'd had a night, so he elected to stay there.
"Hi," Uraraka said, from next to the doorway, and he tilted his head to see her properly - or as properly as he could from ground level. She was, he noted, looking very awake for someone wearing pink fluffy rabbit slippers and tapir-covered pyjamas. "I heard the word crab."
Iida slipped in after her, carefully closing and locking the door behind him. "Good evening, Jirō-kun, Kaminari-kun," he said brightly. "It's excellent to finally speak to you properly!"
"Thanks, prez," Kyōka wheezed, although whether from the same shock weighing down on Denki or because Yao-momo was squeezing her like a particularly cherished stuffed toy, Denki couldn't be sure.
It would be nice for someone to squeeze him like a stuffed animal, Denki thought vaguely. For now, though, he'd have to make do with sprawling across people's laps and being patted on the head.
Was that what Mina had meant when she'd said he was "...like some sorta spaniel, but, like, kinda screwed up, because dogs aren't supposed to have any electricity in them..."?
Whatever. He'd take it up with her the next time he got in trouble for chasing a squirrel.
"It's so nice to have you in the know," Yao-momo chirped, and Denki noted her nuzzling into Kyōka's cheek when he turned his head back to them. Which was a little intense, he thought, but he also got it, probably. "It's so hard trying to plan study dates around people cleaning up in my room!"
"Um," Kyōka said, faintly. "It's nice to know you too?"
"Now we can have all the study dates we want," Yao-momo said, happily, and then, as if discovering something new and unknown to science, "Wait! Kyōka-chan, does this mean we can go on date-dates too now?"
"Um," Kyōka said again, and flushed pink as raspberry soda.
"Hell yeah, get it," Denki said, because that sounded like what Mina would have said at this point, and his brain was still using a little too much processing power to come up with something on his own.
Once again, though: a little sudden, but he got it.
"You know," Uraraka said, "I thought that would take longer." There was a sharp little thump; Denki looked over to see what looked some sort of shell piece gently bumping into a foot. "Who's this?"
"Dunno," he said. "Didn't get a name. People pay us to keep our little bit of territory safe. Can't have someone else doing the same thing, y'know?"
Uraraka nodded like she did know, which was mildly unsettling on such a cute face. She did things that were mildly unsettling on a cute face about thrice a week, though, so Denki was pretty used to it.
"Ah, yes, territory disputes are quite the conundrum," Iida sighed, and dropped down into a sitting position next to Izuku. Shōto, apparently dissatisfied by his own current position, promptly un-noodled, shuffled over to lean on Iida instead, and re-noodled himself in the span of five seconds.
Uraraka, who'd hitherto been inspecting the unrefrigerated, unwanted pieces of crab-man, promptly trotted over and parked herself on Izuku's lap.
Huh.
"So, uh." The floor wasn't the greatest place to have a conversation from, now that he thought about it; Denki sat up with a grumble, propping himself up on his forearms. "We're all here. What now?"
Tsuyu glanced over next to him. "Well," she said, and croaked. "I was going to suggest talking through everything properly, but they seem to have sorted most of it out already."
"Ideally, some form of conversation would still be necessary in order to fully clear out any misconceptions or emotional upset," Iida said, adjusting his glasses. "But yes, this is going better than I thought it would when Shōto texted me."
"Pining's bad for you," Uraraka said sagely.
Shōto blinked slowly from his spot against Iida's side, and turned to her. "Isn't that a little hypocritical?"
She crossed her arms, pouting; her cheeks turned a little redder than normal. "Not anymore! I got it under control, didn't I?"
"Ochako-chan," Tsuyu said, gently, "You've killed someone for everyone you've ever had a crush on."
Uraraka puffed out her cheeks, crossed her arms, and frowned mightily. It was an extremely adorable look for an apparent serial murderer; not that Denki could judge much on such a front. "I don't pine anymore," she grumbled. "I got with Mina right away."
"We're very proud of your emotional development," Izuku assured her, planting a kiss on her cheek. She beamed.
Denki squinted at them.
"Oh," Tsuyu said, flatly. "They don't know about the crime polycule."
"The WHAT," Kyōka asked. Denki glanced over at her; she and Yao-momo had apparently finished with whatever half-conversation half-expression-of-PDA they'd been doing and were now flopped over against the bookcase.
"They're not supposed to know about it," Iida said. "Yet. So, theoretically, that's a good thing! Well done, everyone."
There was a small, round-about chorus of thank-yous.
"I think that absorbs the whole class, though," Izuku noted. "Right, Shōchan? That's a lot of spread for six months."
"Shōji," Shōto said blankly.
"Oh, Mezō knows," Yao-momo said, waving a hand. "He just doesn't participate. And he has a long-distance girlfriend in Hokkaido."
"I'm pretty sure our principal is training him to be some sort of super-intelligence-gatherer," Tsuyu commented. "He disappears sometimes and comes back with a menacing aura."
A shudder ran through the room; Denki wasn't quite sure why the idea was so viscerally horrifying, but his spine was quite clear on the matter, shivering as it was, and he was experienced enough by now to know when to defer to it.
"Nobody who knows about the crime dates anyone who doesn't know about the crime," Yao-momo explained, apologetically. "It wouldn't be fair to the person kept out of the secret, you know? And, um. Well, a lot of people in this class have multi-targeted affections, and it was best to minimise infighting anyway."
"...Mina's been holding out on me," Denki realised, indignantly. And he'd kept a line on the younger classes' gossip for her, too.
"To be fair," Tsuyu said, "There's not much interesting gossip to speak of, except when people get together."
"As was intended," Iida said. "The less - well, teenaged drama - the more effectively we're able to work as a class and allied unit."
"There's at least one drama," Uraraka pointed out, and then pointed physically at Shōto.
"Oh, yeah," Denki said. The memory of Mina's giggling and whispering over Eijirō's vain attempts to nudge them into studying floated to the surface of his mind. "You kissed Bakugō that one time, didn't you? Hall gossip was mad for weeks."
"I thought Shōto *bit* him," Kyōka said, sounding vaguely confused.
Shōto yawned. It was a very wide yawn that showed off flashing, sharp teeth.
It was also reminiscent of an overtired kitten.
It did not contribute the slightest bit of information, which was unsurprising, but disappointing nontheless.
"I think," Tsuyu said, "That Bakugō and Shōchan both speak intimidation ritual."
"It's good that both of them have found someone to talk to," Izuku chirruped happily, missing the point horribly. Or maybe missing the point well enough to loop around and hit it again. Things were often unclear, where Bakugō was involved.
"Well," Yao-momo said, "The point is, there are no more huge secrets between 1-A. And since everyone here knows, that makes it much safer to expand outwards." She shot Iida a meaningful glance; although what the meaning was, Denki had no clue.
Iida was apparently fluent in silent glances, because he perked up. "Oh! How wonderful. I believe Kendo was becoming tired of running interference on Monoma."
The room collectively winced.
"He's really been angling after Hitoshi," Izuku said. "I was starting to get scared he might do a Romeo and climb a balcony."
"He couldn't fairly be blamed for that, even if he did see something he shouldn't," Shōto said flatly, and Izuku flushed.
"I did that once! Stop holding it over my head!"
"You fell off," Tsuyu said, with a faint hint of amusement, and - yeah, Denki decided, he'd definitely missed out on the fun gossip.
"It also means we can stop checking for bits of Tokage lying around," Yao-momo said. "Which I've really been looking forwards to ever since she left a knee in the fridge by accident."
"Ah," said Kyōka, who had probably forgotten about the fridge.
Yao-momo perked up, smiling at her. "Oh, yes, I nearly forgot! You should come over for snacks more often!"
Kyōka made a whining noise and buried her face in Yao-momo's shoulder. Denki agreed, vaguely; that was quite enough for one night.
"I'll make sure everyone knows you're in," Iida said, in the same voice he used for wrangling the class onto buses. "I'm sure our peers would be happy to explain their situations to you, should you request it of them!"
"Great," Denki said, because there wasn't much else he could think to say. "Thanks."
And they still needed to get the blood off their knives, too.
"There's no more room in the fucking fridge!" Bakugō bellowed. "What did you assholes put in here, a whole goddamned person?!" His hands popped dangerously; the students in the common room ignored it, as if explosions were a normal part of any average morning routine.
Perhaps, Denki thought, they were all a little too desensitised to dangerous things. There was, after all, a distinct line between bravery and foolhardiness.
Something told him they'd all crossed that line far too long ago.
"Bakukun," Mina whined, from her spot sprawled over the couch, "You're gonna break the Tupperware!"
"The hell is that my problem?!" he barked back at her. "They're just damn food containers, aren't they?"
Eijirō sidled into the kitchen, and placed a hand on Bakugō's arm. "Katsuki," he said, softly, but strong as an ox and twice as knowing. "That's where we keep the meth."
Bakugō gave him a withering look; it did absolutely nothing. "The hell," he asked, with the air of someone who already knew they were going to get a ridiculous answer, "Do you keep the meth in the fridge?!"
He did not, Denki noticed, claim any ownership of the meth.
He also, Denki noticed, did not claim any lack of knowledge of the meth.
That was probably interesting, he thought, but he'd save it for some time when his brain wasn't half-melted.
"Dorm rooms might get searched for contraband," Eijirō recited, checking the place off on his fingers. "None of the furniture in the common area lasts two weeks, and it'd be a contamination or sharps hazard. Bathrooms are too wet. Laundry would be fine but Tokoyami kept mistaking it for laundry detergent and then he'd wash his clothes and Dark Shadow would get really, really high."
Bakugō sent him a deadpan look. "Well put it in the pantry, then! You don't need to refrigerate meth, you - you don't even need to refrigerate flour or sugar, you idiots! I swear..."
He trailed off in a mumbled rant. It was almost reminiscent of Izuku, if he was prone to murder.
...if he was prone to threatening murder.
Eijirō, for his part, sent Bakugō a smile so sappy he could have been mistaken for a maple tree.
"I can't believe I missed this," Denki said numbly, referring to anything and everything, and Hanta patted his shoulder in a consoling manner.
"There's no shame in being oblivious, Denkkun. And, I mean - the teachers haven't noticed, either, so I guess you're doing pretty well!"
"There's meth in our fridge," Denki said, despairingly. "There's been meth in our fridge since the time Dark Shadow rampaged through three walls and you guys told Sensei it was a caffeine incident."
"We gotta cook, Jesse," Hanta said solemnly, as if the non-sequitur meant anything at all.
"So," Bakugō demanded, suddenly turning to stare at Denki. "Why does Sparky her know about this, anyway? How do we know he's not gonna spill, huh?"
Bakugō, Denki noted, had extremely red eyes. He'd know that before, of course; but it really was more obvious up close, with the pupils constricted into tiny, aggressive little pinpricks, and the iris unconstrained by some frown or snarl.
Denki, he noted himself, was getting very good at distracting himself from the sensation of oncoming doom by staring into people's eyes. It was a shame he couldn't get extra credit for it; his maths score dearly needed the help.
"Tsu and Shōto caught him 'n Kyō 'bout to bury a body behind the dorms," Mina said, offhandedly. As if it was mere gossip, like who was dating who, or what vending machine had new drinks in it. Maybe it was mere gossip, now. It had been a weird two-dozen hours.
Bakugō continued to stare at Denki, as if doing so would reveal the truth of Denki's existence to him.
It was a bit of a wasted effort, really. Denki was quite sure his mouth would betray himself better than his eyes could ever hope to.
"Didn't take you for the murdering type," Bakugō said, eventually, like he'd commented on Kōda's hoard of harsh noise MP3s in their first year.
"I'm not, really," Denki replied, honestly; his vocal cords decided to be honest, too, and broke like phalanges under pressure. "I'm more the guy who holds people down. For stabbing." He paused. "I can stab someone if I need to! I just. Don't. Very often."
Bakugō scoffed and turned away. It was in the way that said he was amused, though, and not the way that meant he was dismissive; Denki took the win.
"It's really manly of you to make sure we all have an accurate image of you," Eijirō said cheerily.
"Murder's a lot more intense than meth," Hanta hummed, considering, and flashed Denki a grin as he glanced around at him. "Guess that means you've got more to keep secret than us, eh?"
"Yeah," Denki muttered. "I guess it does." He looked away, back towards the kitchen, where Bakugō was noisily clattering around the benchtop, utensils and pans dropped down with more force than was strictly necessary for - well, anything, really. "...drugs, huh?"
"Hmm?" Hanta took a moment to respond. "Oh. Not Bakugō," he clarified. "Nobody told you? He does something else."
"Blasty doesn't tell us anything," Mina whined playfully. "I bet it's really sordid. C'mon, Bakukun... blackmail? Assassination?"
"Whatever it is, it's gotta be awful," Hanta agreed, blithely.
Bakugō sent them both a poisonous glare, eyes flashing; despite the way it glanced over him, Denki felt his heart quicken its pace in his chest. "You wanna find out, huh?"
"Nah, I'll pass," Hanta said, grinning audibly. "Ignorance is bliss, and all that."
"I need to stay alive for my information network," Mina agreed primly, which was big talk for someone who hadn't told her contacts about Izuku falling off a balcony.
There was a moment of dangerous, ringing silence; and then Bakugō just rolled his eyes with a sneer, like an angrier, snarlier version of Kyōka. "Whatever, idiots," he grunted; and then, to Denki specifically, "You know the fucking drill, dontcha? Keep your mouth shut when someone out of the know comes around. And don't put a dead guy in the goddamn communal fridge!"
"...wouldn't dream of it." Denki said, and then, because he was pretty sure his common sense had died a violent and unnecessary death, "Kacchan."
Katsuki's glare burned. "Good," he snapped, and said no more.
Denki breathed, and hoped that would be the end of it.
"Nedzu-sama?"
Aizawa was pacing outside the dorms, a phone in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. He caught Denki's eye as the student passed, and barely seemed to acknowledge his charge; his hand, though, tightened minutely on the papers. It was an odd reaction, having known his teacher for over two years. No amount of annoyed glaring or detention was worth Denki's curiosity, though, and so he continued off towards the main building with no fanfare.
"Yes, it's Aizawa."
Denki rifled through his pockets as he strode off across the grass. He was sure he'd put some gum in there at some point; whether or not said gum had been through the wash was another question.
"Your fertiliser's gone through again. Are you going to have me pick it up?"
Denki fished a packet out from under a small collection of paperclips and lint. It was, he noted, still wrapped; it also showed signs of water damage.
Did gum have the capacity to store meth?
He kept walking.
"Alright. I'll finish it off tonight."
Denki was pretty sure gum wasn't meth absorbent, but he wasn't sure he wanted to risk it. He didn't actually know what the effects of meth were, but he figured it might cause him to explode. Or something.
He kept walking.
It was, Denki mourned, probably a no on the gum. He'd have to pick up something else. Iced coffee, probably. And one for his teacher, too.
Keep walking.
He wondered what his principal's tastes were like. Tea? Expensive flowers? It was worth looking into.
Just keep walking.
It paid to stay on people's good sides, after all.