False Heroes

Rise and Pine, Darling

Shinsou might have been a bit of an idiot, but he wasn't stupid. He knew he wasn't straight. He had pretty much all of his life. He'd always thought that some guys were cute or handsome and he kind of just shrugged it off. He didn't really care what his sexuality was, he just knew he wasn't opposed to the idea of dating a boy.

Mainly he realized this when he met a particular boy in his second year of middle school.

This boy was different from a lot of his classmates; he had bright pink hair that spilled over his face and covered his left eye. The boy never seemed to mind. Sometimes, he would wear a little ponytail in the back of his hair. His visible eye was beautiful, Shinsou dared to say. Even if they didn't really make much eye contact, he could see himself getting lost in those eyes.

The boy was the quiet type and didn't really talk to anyone in their homeroom class. He just sat at his desk and waited for class to start, folding his cardigan-covered arms across his desk and laying his head in them.

Shinsou never formally introduced himself. This boy was cute, adorable, more so than any of the girls in his class. But the one thing that scared Hitoshi away was his actual personality. Sure, he was quiet during homeroom, for the most part, but whenever Shinsou would attempt to talk to him, he was always bitter, cold. He would snap at Shinsou or poke fun at his appearance. He was cocky, selfish, and loud when he wanted to be.

So Hitoshi wasn't truly able to form a crush on him. He might have liked him if he tried to actually befriend him instead of giving up at the first insult thrown at him, but that boy was long gone. It was kind of too late for that.

Besides, now he had someone else to properly crush on.

But there was a difference between thinking you would probably like a boy and actually liking a boy.

This wasn't his first real crush, either. He had liked a couple of girls in middle school as well. But he never dated any of them, and he never actually liked a boy.

So he was treading through completely new territory, here. And he did not like it.

But, now really looking at it, it was painfully clear that this was definitely a crush, to his disdain. He didn't need this. He was already making friends, something he had sworn off, he couldn't be distracted by this, now, too.

He wished he didn't have to deal with this. What good could really come out of it? He could start acting different around Kaminari. Start avoiding him more, act more awkward, talk different, etcetera. Denki would probably notice, call him out on it and question Shinsou until he would either distance himself and lose a friend, or he'd confess and lose a friend.

So this was not an ideal situation.

Hitoshi slumped into his bed, groaning against his pillow. How the hell was he going to deal with this? He hardly had any experience to go off of, here. That just made things all the more difficult. How was he supposed to know what to do? This wasn't exactly something he could look to a textbook to give him the answer for. There wasn't really anyone who could help, either, was there?

And then he was struck with an idea. An amazing, perfect idea-- or so he thought. How wrong he would figure out he really was.

Shinsou practically burst out of his dorm room. It slammed hard against the wall, and he stopped and winced at the loud noise. Too loud for-- he checked the time on his phone-- nearly eleven at night. How the hell had it gotten so late so fast?

He groaned and moved to quietly close his door when he heard the soft click of another door opening. He froze as if he were doing something he shouldn't and turned around to see Midoriya peering at him from the crack in his door.