Chapter Text
Kaminari blinks, and registers too-warm air and a really fucking loud boom. There’s blue sky, and sparkling blue water, and he sees an island with golden sand and green trees, and his hands are gripping the railing in front of him and also he thinks he might puke, and also there’s the smallest rocking motion to the ground and – is he on a boat? “What the fuck?"
He whips his head around, sees he is in fact standing on a fucking boat, and the booming was some kind of horn. And Kirishima’s standing to his left and Ashido, Yaomomo and the class rep are on his right, and then the horn blasts again and it tears through his head so suddenly that he has to lean forward over the railing and hurl his guts up. Sensory overload fucking sucks ass. Normally when he clicks back into his body, his senses come one at a time, not all at once.
“Holy-bro, Kami, shit, are you all good?” Hands are on his back a second later, and he groans as he stands back and wipes his mouth. Yaomomo hands him a cloth from nowhere and he cleans himself off, stammering out an embarrassed apology while his head spins and his focus tries to cling to the smell of salt, the taste of bile, smell of salt, seagulls screeching somewhere above him, smell of salt. Kirishima and Ashido, bless their beautiful faces, seem to make some kind of connection, and they pull him with gentle hands through a door and into some kind of indoor viewing room, thankfully with air conditioning and soft seats. Ashido brings him a bottle of wonderfully cold water, and he sees white spots dance in his vision, and his ears ring for a moment before they pop, and he can hear fine again. He drinks half the bottle in one go.
“Kami? Babes, you okay? Back with me?” Kaminari looks at his pink friend, kneeling in front of him. She’s in her uniform, her hair looks a little windswept, her lips are chapped, she’s talking to him.
“Y-yeah, sorry, sort of. Kinda. Are we on a boat? I – did I overload or something? I got no clue where we are.” He rubs the back of his neck, Kirishima is gone, the feeling of swaying reminds him again that they’re on a boat, and boy oh boy, his mind is a mess, is she saying something? “Where’s Kirish- oh, s-sorry.”
She laughs, hands rubbing his knees to comfort him. He focuses on the weight of it, tries to listen as she starts again. “You’re okay. We were on Nabu Island-” Where the fuck is Nabu Island “-we’re leaving now. Kirishima’s gone to get your hot, hunky boyfriends, I think they were upstairs-” How big is this boat, are they on a boat? “-and yeah, you overloaded, it… was a big one, but you’re okay. You got checked by Recovery Girl.”
“Was Recovery Girl on the island? Why were we on an island? How long were we there for?” He looks around, his leg starts to bounce, and he tries to take a sip out of the water bottle in his hand, but finds it sadly empty. When did he finish it? More importantly; “Are we on a boat?”
Ashido smiles at him again, squeezing his knees. “Yeah, babe, we are. Hey, what’s my name?”
Kami recognizes the question, it’s the start of a short routine his friends have come up with whenever they wanna see how far out of his overloads he is, mentally. He prefers it to the routine his doctors have – talking and a steady hand makes him feel much better than lights aimed at his face and his limbs poked and prodded. He sighs, shakes his head and almost gets distracted by the yellow flashes of hair that enter his peripheral vision before he’s pulled back by another squeeze on his knees. “Um, Mina Ashido. You’re my bestie. We study at U.A. together.”
She holds up three fingers, then lowers them. “Yellow. Orange. Red. Pink. Black. How many fingers did I hold up?”
Kaminari tries to think back, gets stuck on red, then shakes his head at her. There’s a vent above them that’s whirring slightly, and his eyes dart outside to where he can still see some of the island, Nabu Island, and counts three seagulls. “Red. There’s some birds outside, I wonder if they’re Koda’s friends.”
Ashido snorts, jostles his legs, sits up and runs a hand through his hair. The feeling is nice, soothing. He thinks he can hear voices echoing somewhere far away, and he can still taste bile in the back of his mouth, but at least it’s not blood he can taste. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he overloaded, but the lack of metal tang means he’s at least somewhat recovered. He looks at Ashido, gets stuck looking at the beautiful gold flecks in her otherwise black eyes, feels his shirt stick uncomfortably to his slightly sweaty chest. His brain gets unstuck when she grins, runs her hand through his hair again. “So… wait… we went on holiday to a tropical island and I fucking forgot the whole thing?”
She bites back a laugh, but something uncomfortable passes her face. He tilts his head and feels a little more himself, feels less like his mind is sticking to every little thing that pops into his awareness and more like he can think. She looks hesitant, and he thinks over what he just said, proud that he actually remembers and then a bit sad. “Oh, did something happen? When we were there?”
She doesn’t answer for a moment, before she sighs. “Yeah, you could say that. We’ll fill you in on the details later, when you’re more awake, but yeah… things… Fuck, babe, it was crazy.” She shakes her head, leaning over to rest her head on his shoulder. “If you can’t remember the whole thing… Well, I’m not surprised. What you did…”
Kaminari rests his cheek on top of her head, pays no mind to the horn that presses into his temple awkwardly. “What did I do?”
Her hand slips into his, and his fingertips tingle like crazy, like they just remembered how to work. It feels nice, comforting, and he kinda wants to laugh at how he used to feel so weird about his friends being gentle with him when he over did it, just a few months ago. Now, having soft words and softer touches, from his boyfriends or friends, after his overloads almost make the pain worth it.
“Oh, you know. Spent a few hours charging back up batteries for everyone on the island, then saved Bakubro and Midoriya by being a lightning rod.”
He balks. “I-what? I saved Kacchan and Midoriya? Me?”
Ashido sits back as he twists, staring at her incredulously. There’s an eyelash on her nose, and he reaches up to brush it away before looking at her again. She’s biting her lip, eyes a little distant, like she’s thinking about something she’d rather not be, and that just won’t do, in Kaminari’s opinion. “You’re Mina Ashido. You’re my bestie, we’re students at U.A. high school, and you held up… three fingers. Yellow, orange, red, pink, black.”
It feels nice, to be the one pulling someone else’s focus back to the present. He loves his friends, and Ashido is incredible and far too full of life and love, and if the new smile, her real smile, beams at him so bright that his eyes itch like they’re going to start watering, well, who the fuck cares?
A door groans as it opens somewhere nearby, and there’s hurried footsteps, and then the boys, his boys, led by sweet, gentle, steady Kirishima, walk around a corner and Kami’s up before he registers. As soon as his arms are full of boyfriend, he finally feels really okay. Even if his fingertips are still tingling, and his leg bounces, and there’s still a few lingering white spots in the corners of his vision. He can’t taste blood, which is nice, and he can smell burnt caramel, which is better, and he feels Hanta’s hand cupping his cheek and pulling his face up to make Kaminari look him in the eye, in a way that’s weirdly familiar but he can’t quite think of. His boyfriend grins wonderfully down at him, eyes crinkling, teeth on full display, before he dipped down and presses their lips together.
Katsuki suddenly tsks and pushes Hanta aside, pulling a giggling Kaminari in for a long, bruising kiss, before he’s pulling back and looking him over. Ashido coos behind them, Kirishima snorts, Hanta laughs and stands back to let Katsuki do his thing, and Kaminari, well, he finally lets loose the tears that have been trying to escape since he’d thrown up over the side of the boat.
“Wha-why the fuck are you crying?” Katsuki rolls his eyes, tugging him back towards the seats and pulling Hanta along with them. "Jesus Christ, Denks."
He shrugs, and repeats yellow, orange, red, pink, black, and grins when he correctly recounts the fingers that they hold up. There’s soft kisses pressed to his temple, his cheek, one to the back of his hand when Hanta had lifted it up to his lips, “mi amor” pressed into his Lichtenberg covered skin. Katsuki’s heavy hands massaging his arms, his legs, checking pressure points with warm fingers, so much nicer than the sharp, clinical method of doctors. Katsuki keeps up the questions, checking in with him routinely, and Kaminari fights off the urge several times to grab his grumpy boyfriend's cheeks and smoosh them. He does let his tingling hands run through Kats' soft hair, and doesn't stop himself smiling softly whenever red eyes flick up to his own.
Kirishima and Ashido sit opposite them, keeping up a gentle, steady stream of conversation that he barely follows, knows he doesn’t have to nor is expected to. He looks at them all, sees a shift in them, notices the small flinches and mostly healed scratches and bruises. He sees the bags under Hanta and Katsuki’s eyes, knows it’s fatigue that’s stopping Hanta’s smile from shining as bright as usual, can see there’s a million things whirring around inside Katsuki’s brilliant mind. Later, when they’re alone, he’ll ask more questions, maybe find out why they’d been on an island instead of at school, maybe even find out what day it was while he’s at it so he can figure out how much time he’s lost.
For now, he lets himself be comforted by his rad as hell friends and his hot as fuck boyfriends, sighing to himself when Katsuki relents and takes a seat on his other side. He feels surrounded, and is fine letting his focus jump from Hanta kissing his cheek, Katsuki’s fingers drawing shapes on his palms, Kirishima and Ashido’s voices, Hanta’s hand on his knee, Katsuki’s head on his shoulder, blue sky outside, fingertips tingling, gentle swaying of the boat- Kaminari’s head jerks up.
“Wait, are we on a boat?”