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Denki has been staring blankly at his page for what feels like hours. Across the table, Bakugou is yelling at a sheepishly grinning Kirishima, beating him over the head with a rolled up textbook sharply. They have an English vocabulary test on Friday, and he can barely remember the first five of the assigned fifty words. He stares and stares, and stares some more, feeling like the words are floating right off the page. His finger curls the corner of the page absently.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. He's heard the phrase a lot over the years, thrown around by his doctors, his parents. He'd told the teachers at his last school when he had found out, desperate for a way to fix his dismal grades. When they had given him a slightly pitying look and absolutely no help at all, he decided that he didn't need to tell the UA teachers. It didn't help, anyway. So what was the point?
He stares at the page again, shaking his head slightly and shifting to sit on his left hand so he isn't tempted to fiddle with the page. When he glances up, Kirishima has put his head down, diligently studying. Bakugou, however, is staring at Denki sharply. Denki flinches slightly, turning away to glare at his page again. His finger twitches under his thigh, and the pen in his right hand twirls smoothly. He looks up furtively again, only for the pen to be snatched out of his hand.
"Oi, Sparky," Bakugou growls from where he now stands in front of him, voice a touch quieter so as not to disturb Kirishima. "Come outside."
Denki blinks, but before he can even respond he finds himself lifted out of his chair by the arm and bodily hauled to the door. When they reach the corridor, Bakugou turns to stare at him judgingly, and Denki shrinks back.
"Yeah, man?" he asks, laughing awkwardly to hide the nerves that jump under Bakugou's gaze. The other blond just scowls, squinting at him like he's a particularly irritating math equation.
"The fuck's up with you?" he spits out finally, and Denki laughs nervously.
"Sorry, Bakugou. I'm just not feeling up to it today."
"You're not ever ' feeling up to it', apparently," Bakugou deadpans, and Denki flushes as shame unfurls in the pit of his stomach.
"I—" he begins, before pausing to swallow roughly. "I'm not really as smart as you guys, you know? I'm kinda slow, so it takes me a while someti—"
"You're not fucking dumb," Bakugou cuts him off sharply. "You're telling me that you're not studying because you're dumb. God knows you can be an idiot sometimes but you're not dumb. So what the fuck is up?"
Denki blinks, feeling oddly warm.
"You—you really think I'm not dumb?" he says incredulously, letting out a short laugh. Bakugou's eyes narrow.
"I don't think shit. I know you're not dumb, because I've been stuck with your ass for the last year. You're decent at literature, and you're good with social cues and shit. You—"
Bakugou stops, seeming to hesitate for a moment before ploughing on quickly.
"You're smart but it's like you got some type of learning or attention issue."
Denki freezes, and his blood runs cold at the way Bakugou's seen straight through him. He takes an involuntary step back, and stutters out a weak "I—I don't—" before trailing off in shame, not able to meet the other's intense gaze. He hadn't wanted this to follow him to UA, hadn't wanted for people to find out, but apparently his stupidity was obvious enough for even the most obtuse student in the class to catch on.
"Kaminari," Bakugou says, and Denki jolts at the foreign sound of his actual name leaving the other's lips. Bakugou seems slightly uncomfortable, and seems to be regretting this conversation more as the seconds pass.
"I'm not—I'm not making you say shit. For all I know you might not even have anything. But if you do, it would fucking help if you told me, so I could stop wasting time on shit that doesn't help you."
Denki swallows the lump in his throat, feeling heat burn in his cheeks as he chokes out a quiet, "I, uh. I have ADHD."
Bakugou nods like he knew all along, lips thinning to a line.
"Go to bed," he says finally, as if the conversation hadn't even occurred. "We'll figure it out tomorrow."
And Denki isn't even given the opportunity to mourn over being kicked out of their study group before Bakugou is walking back into the room. He blinks back tears, before heading to his dorm room and resigning himself to fail the test without Bakugou's help.
The next day is oddly mundane, with Bakugou yelling at him like normal. But he feels like shit nonetheless, and the fact that Bakugou knows weighs on him like stones in his stomach.
After school, when Kirishima and Bakugou head to their usual study spot, Denki is just edging away to get to his dorm when Bakugou grabs his arm roughly.
"Oi," he says, almost quietly. "Come to my room at six."
And Denki blinks, so taken aback by the order that all he can do is nod numbly.
At five fifty-seven, he heads to the other's room like a condemned man to the guillotine.
It takes Bakugou about eight seconds to open the door after Denki knocks. The blond is wearing loose grey sweats and a black shirt, and the room smells so strangely of caramel that Denki can't even focus on the actual layout.
"Your room smells nice," he blurts, and Bakugou raises an unimpressed brow before pulling him inside by the elbow. "Sit," he says roughly, gesturing to the bed, and Denki sinks down on it slowly. The atmosphere is different without Kirishima to lighten the tension, and seeing Bakugou's full intensity be focused on him is slightly overwhelming.
The other sits across from him on the bed, cross legged. Denki expects a lot of things. He expects a cutting comment, or maybe some cursing. If he's lucky, Bakugou will just call this a prank and let him go back to his room to lick his wounds.
What he doesn't expect is for the guy to pull out an inch-thick stack of coloured index cards.
"I researched and shit," Bakugou says roughly, laying the cards on the bed between them. "Also, you're a fucking bitch. I wasted my time trying to tutor your ass for the last year and you never told me it wasn't helping."
Denki blinks dumbly, jaw hanging open at the spread of cards. "Uh," he says eloquently.
Bakugou ignores this, moving on quickly.
"Anyway, tell me if this shit doesn't work."
The cards are colour coded, with English words written in clear, large font on each. When Denki tentatively flips one over, he's greeted with a neat (and kind of cute?) illustration of the word, with a Japanese translation.
He blinks at them for a moment before looking up at Bakugou with wide eyes.
"You—you made these? You didn't have to do all this..."
The other blond snarls, ears turning red.
"I do what I want, fuck you."
Denki can't stop the awed smile from creeping across his face, feeling touched beyond words as he realises how much time the other must have spent on this.
"Bro…" he marvels, feeling slightly emotional.
Bakugou ignores him, ears reddening even further.
"We're starting with the first ten cards, so the pink ones," he says gruffly, shoving the other colours to the side and spreading the pink-coloured ones out on the bed.
Denki nods quickly, feeling somewhat overwhelmed.
Bakugou takes him through the words slowly, clear and patient in his explanations as he repeats the word before flipping the card and explaining the related illustration. He adds on a new word with each round, until it turns into somewhat of a matching competition where he will throw out a Japanese word and Denki has to shout back the English translation. The words stick in his head so much quicker this way, he notices.
When he gets distracted by something around the room, Bakugou doesn't yell the way he normally does—instead he simply nudges his shoulder in warning, or taps his knee. It isn't anything like his last school, and he doesn't feel stupid or slow. In fact, he doesn't even realise he's grinning, and by eight he knows the entire set of fifty words off by heart.
Bakugou gives him an odd look, and if Denki didn't know better he would call it impressed.
"Not bad, Sparky," he says appraisingly. "You went through them quicker than I expected."
Denki feels a huge smile break across his face, and pride explode in his gut.
"Thanks, man. Seriously." He dips his head, feeling like he can't express his gratitude enough.
Bakugou simply smirks at him.
"Thank me by passing the test."
And by god Denki has never been more determined than he is now. There's no way he's going to fail after Bakugou stayed up all night making these cards for him.
When he walks into the classroom on Friday morning, it's with clenched fists. But when he flips the paper, the second his eyes fall on each English word, his mind is substituting the Japanese translation automatically (in a voice that's oddly similar to Bakugou's) and he feels a stupid grin spread across his face as he rushes to fill in the answers.
At the end of the day, Denki is handed back his paper face-up with a big, circled red 'A+', and a proud smile from Present Mic.
"Very good, listener!" he booms happily. "Looks like we've found ourselves a dark horse!"
When the bell rings, he practically leaps out of his seat to sit on Bakugou's desk. The other protests loudly, trying to push him off, but they're both grinning wildly.
"Bakubro!" he screeches happily. "Can I give you a hug? I really wanna hug you right now!"
Bakugou glares at him heatlessly, and tries to fight the proud smile off his face.
No."
Denki ignores him, obviously, and wraps his arms around his squirming friend, who takes the opportunity to swear loudly in his ear, jabbing him painfully in the ribs in a futile attempt to unlatch him. "Get the fuck off, dumbass!" he hollers, and Denki cackles, reaching to wave the marked paper in the other's face.
"Dumbass? You're speaking to an A+ student, man!"
Bakugou growls at him playfully, and their friends laugh as they watch the pair mess around.
And later, when Katsuki heads to his room and finds a stack of jagariko cups at his door, he turns to hide his fond smile from the grinning dumbass who watches from down the corridor.