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Shinso was just tired .
It was exhausting. It was too much and not enough all of the fucking time. It was an overwhelming thrum against the inside of his eyelids, a constant ticking of an internal clock.
‘But that’s all that it is, right?’ his conscience provided. ‘An internal struggle. Something made up in your head. You’re probably overreacting, anyway. Or maybe you’ve literally just confused yourself- hell, maybe you figured out how to brainwash yourself! That’s always a possibility, right?’
He sighed, sitting up in his bed. It was one of those sighs that hurt more on the inside than would appear externally. That seemed to be a pattern.
Shinso rolled out of bed, padding quietly in socked feet over to his dresser. He pulled out a large gray hoodie, sliding it over his head and torso. He meandered over to the door of his dorm room, dreading the next part of his morning routine. The mirror.
Shinso Hitoshi wasn’t bad looking. He could kind of tell that, just aesthetically-wise. It didn’t hurt that he was just under 6 feet, all made up of long legs and lean arms. Some old lady at the corner store had called him ‘a tall drink of water’ one time. So yeah, Shinso considered himself to be just about average in the looks department, maybe slightly above on a good day.
That wasn’t the problem. It didn’t matter how attractive the world considered him to be.
He was just entirely too…
His eyes scanned over his jawline, his dark eyebrows, inset eyes. Pale cheeks, eyebags, and sharp edges.
Too…
His thin waist, broad shoulders, flat chest.
Masculine .
Everything that Shinso couldn’t change was too masculine. All of the features that he’d been born with, or that had hit him like a sack of bricks during puberty. God, puberty ruined whatever Shinso had but didn’t realize he did until it was gone. He longed for the days when he ran outside with his friends, wearing whatever clothes his mom had laid out for him that morning. Playing dress up in the attic of his cousin’s house, not caring what role he had in the story, just knowing he would not wear the green dress because it was itchy as hell.
Shinso had tried. Hard, too. He played with his posture, his facial expressions, even his voice. That had been the most disappointing. Well, that, and his chest. He couldn’t get over it.
And it wasn’t like there was an alternative that he wished he had. He didn’t want tits.
…
He didn’t , okay? He didn’t. That’d be… weird. And awkward to talk about.
That didn’t stop him from wearing a tank top underneath his clothes. He thought about cropping it- thought about cropping it a hundred times, actually. But he always came back to the thought about how much harder that would be to explain. To justify.
The only real success Shinso had ever had was with his hair. His amazing, moldable hair. He could do anything he wanted with that! He could dye it whatever color he wanted, cut it or let it grow long. He could buy little clips and pretend the star-shaped ones were the only ones in stock, when in reality he just thought they’d look good with the currently purple hues of his head.
So yeah, Shinso liked his hair. A lot. He took good care of it, too. Or at least tried to.
And right now, his hair was the only thing that Shinso felt like he could control about his appearance. Make it look like how he felt inside.
He ran his hands through it, trying to fix the bedhead that had befallen him. After he was successful in patting it down, Shinso grabbed his hairbrush and decided that, fuck it, he wanted to leave it down for breakfast.
‘Who cares, right?’ he thought, running the brush through the back. ‘It’s early enough that I bet people won’t even notice.’
He decided on a middle part, teasing his hair ever-so-slightly so he looked more like the girls he saw on Pinterest and less like a greaser gamer living in his parent’s basement.
‘Finally’ he thought, smiling at his reflection.
He opened his door, and stepped out into the hallway of Class 1-A’s dorm building.
Shinso made it down to the common room with no issues, passing only Tsuyu in the hallway. She looked like she had already gone to the gym, dressed in sweatpants and a sports bra. She smiled at Shinso, waving with one hand.
“Morning, ribbit!”
“Morning, Tsu,” Shinso responded, mood dropping a bit as he heard his pitch slide down at the end of his words. “Already on that grind I see.”
“Well, you know what they say!” Tsu responded, opening the door to her room. “Gaslight,”
“Gatekeep,” Shinso added, now walking backwards down the hallway.
“Girlboss!” They ended together, both laughing. Tsu and Shinso hadn’t always gotten along, but the more time they spent together, the more they realized they had in common. Shinso liked Tsu, he thought she was cute. In a platonic way, of course! More like her sister than anything.
Wait.
Shinso stopped dead in his tracks, halfway down the stairs to the common room.
Her sister. Her . What the fuck. Her. Oh shit, huh.
Shinso took a deep breath, shaking his head. His. His head. Oh what the actual hell was going on. Shinso shook out his whole body, moving forward down the stairs.
It was probably a fluke. It was one thing to think about different pronouns in your head, and it’s a completely different thing to hear them outside it.
To ask for it.
Ugh, that’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of questions that Shinso didn’t have answers to.
Midoriya and Todoroki were sitting at the dining room table with Kirishima and Kaminari. Shinso vaguely heard Bakugou clanging around in the kitchen, so he decided it would be best if he hung out in the common space until the explosive teen was done doing whatever he was doing.
“Good morning, Shinso!” Midoriya peeped up upon seeing him enter, waving with one hand. Shinso hummed in response, sitting down in the chair closest to Kaminari. The loud blond looked over to him, seemingly to greet him as well, when he just. Stopped.
Kaminari had freezed, eyes glued to.
Fuck.
Shinso’s hair.
“Uh, ‘morning, Kaminari,” he tried, subconsciously moving his right hand up to smooth down a non-existent fly-away. Kaminari just stared back, jaw wide. Shinso glanced around the group, looking for support. “Uh, guys? What’s up with Denki?”
Kirishima laughed, reaching a hand across the table to poke the electric boy in the face.
“Yo, Kaminari! You’re looking tapped out, dude. Plan on coming back to earth soon?” Kaminari jolted at Kirishima’s touch, then seemed to suddenly realize all eyes were on him. A light blush came over his cheeks, something Shinso never seemed to get tired of seeing. Especially when he was in his pajamas.
‘Cute’ Shinso thought, putting his head in his right hand, which was now propped up on the table. ‘And not sister cute, either.’
“Ah! Sorry guys, just zoned out there for a second, ha ha! You know how I can be. Guess my brain just needs some FOOD, KACCHAN.” He yelled the last part towards the kitchen, and an explosion could be heard faintly in the background.
“YOU’LL EAT WHEN I SAY YOU CAN EAT, DIPSHIT. BE PATIENT.” Was the response, dissapaiting the tension at the table. Which was quickly brought back when Kaminari turned back to Shinso and said,
“Sorry I was staring, I just thought you looked really pretty,” he said, earnestly.
And holy shit. Shinso was going to die.
Seriously. It would read on his tombstone ‘Here lies Hitoshi Shinso, who died when a hot blond called him pretty. God knows he died a happy death.”
A deep, crimson blush found its way across Shinso’s face, and his mouth went totally dry as he croaked out a “What?”
“I said I thought you looked pretty! Gorgeous, even! Sorry, is that weird to say?” Kaminari fiddled with his fingers, confidence obviously wearing off.
“Nah, dude!” Thank god Kirishima was the master of reassuring his friends. “It’s not weird to say if it’s true. Shinso, he’s right- you look super cute, my guy!” Oh my god. Hnng. Interesting. Super cool and funky and fresh and WOW the phrase ‘super cute’, followed directly by ‘my guy’ was doing things to Shinso’s stomach. In not a totally unpleasant way.
Todoroki and Midoriya were engaged in their own conversation, like always, so they weren’t witness when Shinso’s eyes fell to the table as he stuttered out,
“Uh, th-thanks. That, um. Means a lot, I guess. Or whatever.” He wished he sounded more sincere, but judging by the looks on Kirishima and Kaminari’s faces, he thinks they got the gist.
Bakugou was yelling again, this time for Kirishima to get his ass into the kitchen. The redhead laughed before lifting himself out of his chair.
“Well, that’s my cue. Back in a sec,” he jogged to his boyfriend’s aid, leaving Kaminari and Shinso by themselves. Or, basically by themselves, as the other two boys were so engrossed in each other it was like they weren’t even in the common space.
“They’re so fucking gay,” Kaminari whispered, encroaching into Shinso’s personal space. He didn’t mind too much, though. Instead of shying away like he usually would, Shinso leaned towards Kaminari as well, bringing his own voice to a whisper. It was easier to get his pitch higher this way, too.
“Pretty hypocritical for a guy who just called me pretty,” he taunted back, locking onto Kaminari’s wide eyes.
“Well, well I wasn’t the one who had such an adorable reaction to being called cute!” Kaminari protested, floundering. And oh my god Shinso had died once again because he had just been called adorable by the cutest person he knew.
“Oh my god,” he groaned, burying his head in his hands.
“Sorry, sorry! Was that weird? Sorry.” Oh no, that was his regretful tone. Shinso has to fucking communicate his feelings now. EW.
“No, no. I just, uh,” he stammered out, raising his head to look at Denki. “I don’t get called that a lot. It’s really nice to be seen more…” he hesitated, looking away from the other boy. “Feminine.” He blurted out the last word, preparing to be laughed at.
“Yeah?” Was the first response. Shinso whipped his head around to be met with an excited looking Kaminari. “Well, in that case, I’ll call you all the feminine stuff you want!”
“W-what?”
“Yeah!” Kaminari’s grin was shining as bright as the sun as he took one of Shinso’s hands in his own. “Cute, beautiful, radiant, pretty, adorable, magical, anything, babe!” Both teens flushed at the last part, hearing how intimate it sounded. “I mean, if you want that,” Kaminari added on, stroking a hesitant thumb over the back of Shinso’s left hand.
“I,” Shinso started, finally meeting his eyes once more. “I would love that.”
“Then it’s settled,” Kaminari stated firmly, and a soft look washed over his face as he said endearingly
“Sweetheart”