"Denki?" Momo whispered, pushing open the slightly-ajar door to his dorm and peeking inside.
It was dark and messy and quiet, and Momo realized with a sting of disappointment that the lack of a response meant she was talking to an empty room. She should have known – Denki could never sleep through a thunderstorm. It was the electric charge in the air, he said, that kept him awake. Momo could only imagine. Sleeping through flashes of plasma raining from the sky and shockwave expansions of superheated air was one thing; sleeping through the feel of your skin prickling with your Quirk (that, Denki said, was simultaneously the best and lamest description he could come up with), was something else entirely.
It was definitely the thunder and the lightning that had Momo, for one, up and about now, long before her alarm could even think of jolting her awake with a spike of adrenaline. It sounded rather unpleasant when put that way – and, even considering that she was accustomed to the sensation, it still was.
But she almost preferred it to fearfully sneaking around at 4:30 in the morning in desperate search of her missing "thunder buddy" (damn Denki and his labels).
Maybe he's in the common area? Momo thought hopefully, padding quietly down the stairs. He could've been anywhere, she wouldn't have cared, as long as it wasn't outside. Outside was the last place she wanted to go during a thunderstorm. Outside, her chances of being struck by a stray bolt were much larger than in the safety of an insulated structure.
The common area, much like her friend's dorm, was dark and quiet and empty. Momo's heart sank. "Denki?" she called just in case, heading for the double doors in the front. He was outside, she already knew. Outside was the only logical place he'd be. Because Denki.
The room was briefly illuminated with a painfully bright flash of purplish-white, and she involuntarily flinched away from the resounding crack of thunder that followed. Astraphobia was such a stupid and irrational fear to have, especially for someone like her. The chances of being struck by lightning in her lifetime were, while not extraordinarily low, minimal – enough so that she'd never encountered someone who'd fallen victim to the rage of the skies in her meager years.
But it certainly didn't help to know that the chances of winning the jackpot were drastically lower, and her family did personally know somebody who had done just that.
"Denki?" Momo called, louder, into the chilly wind that blew through the open door. She paused, hesitated, straining to hear even a shred of his voice. When the air around her didn't immediately explode with sound and fire, she cautiously closed the door behind her. Where was he? "Den-"
"Hey, Momo."
Momo's skeleton threatened to emancipate itself from her skin, heart and stomach lurching into her throat and strangling her scream as it was born. She landed on her feet, at least, as she spun to face the perceived threat, and dropped into an ingrained, defensive stance.
It was Denki.
"Oh. Denki," she said, voice curt with embarrassment as she straightened and walked over. He was sitting against the wall a couple of meters to her right, wrapped in a dark blanket. He was snickering as he opened half of the blanket for her, and continued as she sat down next to him, miffed, and pulled her knees to her chest. "Geez, Momo," he giggled. He had a cute laugh. It made him sound forever young. "I swear, you jumped higher than Tsu!"
Momo huffed. "You scared me, Denki!"
"Yeah, no shit." An unseen bolt fleetingly lit the sky in flickering brilliance, and Momo pulled the blanket tighter in spite of herself. Denki, as per usual, seemed unfazed. "Dude, you're fine," he said lazily, draping an equally-as-lazy arm around her shoulders and patting her knee with his other hand.
YOU ARE READING
30,000 Kelvin
FanfictionOne-shot. Momo hates thunderstorms. Good thing Denki's such a good "thunder buddy," even if something does seem a little off about him today...