Work Text:
Wished it Time to Time
It started pretty much immediately after getting into U.A.
Denki Kaminari hadn’t known until shortly before he got into U.A., but then his middle school friends had teased him about being into the boys just as much as he was into the girls.
Like many other middle schoolers, Denki had promptly denied it. There was no way he liked boys, he claimed. Look at all the time he’d spent appreciating girls! Then he got into U.A.’s 1-A and heard Shouto Todoroki’s smooth voice, and suddenly he realized that maybe his old friends had been right.
So perhaps there was something there. Maybe, just maybe. He stayed back, away from Todoroki, and watched from a distance. Taking in what he saw, what he heard.
Denki observed to see if maybe, just maybe, he really did have a liking for Todoroki. He had to dedicate an entire page in his nightly journals to his observations.
The first battle practice with All Might -- which, by the way, being taught by All Might was the coolest thing in the world! -- was when Denki got to see Todoroki in action. That day was when he found that, first of all, it turned out that Denki found he had a level of interest in someone’s strength.
And the fact Todoroki managed to freeze an entire building very much caught Denki’s attention, and next he knew, he’d managed to doodle a rough estimate of Todoroki’s face in one of his journal pages.
That was the first journal page he’d ever hastily torn out and thrown away. Denki did his best to ignore the burning in his cheeks as he rewrote the page.
(He tried to ignore how much he missed the doodle on the rewrite.)
Denki wouldn’t admit it to anyone, at least not yet, but when the USJ Incident happened, he... well, like most everyone else in his class, he was terrified. Villains, attacking U.A. within the first few days of school!
He nearly died, held captive -- and he refused to admit that, right as his brain started to reorient from frying itself with his Quirk, Denki’s first thought had been: is Todoroki okay?
Admittedly his second thought had been, Is everyone okay?
Jiro had helped to inform him of everything that had happened, and that despite the villains’ efforts, everyone was getting out alive and in one piece. She also happened to mention seeing a giant field of ice.
Denki nearly asked to see it, but managed to awkwardly change it into simply asking if it had been Todoroki or a villain. Jiro had laughed a little and clarified it was Todoroki.
The entire school got the next couple days off, and despite his caution towards this budding crush, Denki found himself missing Todoroki. Even though they had almost no interactions at this point.
Denki had to take a few minutes -- hours actually, but who was counting -- to really, really think on how he felt about Todoroki. So when they returned to class, Denki did his best to pay attention a little closer to his crush. He also did his best to try and hide it from Jiro and Mineta.
(He’s not entirely sure he was any level of successful.)
When the Sports Festival was announced, Denki was very distracted with studies and preparations for the competition. Listening to old comfortable music, continuing his exercises, studying his school subjects... so more of the usual, just more stressful because of the upcoming broadcast competition.
Then the festival arrived, and Denki very quickly found himself stuck in the middle of the pack -- right behind Todoroki.
He got to watch, with awe and amazement, as a massive glacier appeared before him in the race track. Denki got to see as his classmate, his crush, made this magnificent creation with a single wave of his hand and simply ran off in its wake.
(Denki tried, and failed, to not get distracted by the broad strong back that ran ahead of him so boldly.)
It was a bitch and a half to get around and deal with, but Denki still managed to get through in time to get into the second round.
The second round was an even greater pain in the ass. Cavalry battle wasn’t something that Denki had even thought to practice, but his team managed to get themselves through to the next round.
Then it was suddenly the final round, a set of one on one matches.
He watched Sero get his ass handed to him in only a second by Todoroki, but Denki found himself wondering why Todoroki looked so sad.
Unfortunately, Kaminari never got the chance to ask, having to go to his fight instead. He valiantly ignored the feeling in his gut that he was simply too scared to even talk about his feelings to... well, anyone.
Instead, Denki focused on trying to leave an impression on him, perhaps a good one that might impress and get Todoroki’s attention.
That final round went by faster than Denki anticipated, or wanted. Denki did what he thought was his best -- at least until he woke up in the recovery room several minutes later and found that he really, really hadn’t.
Now alone for a bit, Denki put on his headphones, and just let his phone pick a song, any song to maybe help him calm down and relax from the sudden bought of nerves at his utter failure.
To try and convince himself that he still had a chance at his steadily-growing crush.
“I wasn’t yours and you weren’t mine,
Though I have wished it time to time...”