Chapter Text
Mineta sighed, accepting his current situation and letting his body fall limp where it was held, that being tightly against his classmate's hip by an arm wrapped around his squishy middle.
“I’d rather it was a girl,” he grumbled, sighing and closing his eyes, trying to imagine what it’d be like to be pressed up a soft womanly body instead of the hard lines of Bakugou Katsuki.
“HAH!? What did you just fucking say to me?” Mineta jolted as he was shaken around by the other, eyes widening and looking down at the ground so far below. Bakugou was busy transporting him across the training grounds, having caught him mid-jump while he had been trying to escape him.
“Hey! Don’t drop me!” His hands moved from flailing in the wind to grabbing at the bicep digging into his waist. Mineta groaned, dropping his head low, the tight grip making him uncomfortable.
“I don’t give a fuck if I drop you,” Bakugou says in response, despite taking the time after a slightly bigger blast to fix his grip to hold him more securely. Mineta felt a bit of security in the fact that, despite his words, Bakugou cared at least a little bit whether or not he fell, even if that care was brought on by not wanting to accidentally kill him and fail the lesson.
The lesson itself was a villain capture task, half the class were meant to be villains while the others were heroes. The villains weren’t meant to fight back until they were captured, but Mineta had basically given up once Bakugou grabbed him. He knew Mr Aizawa was going to grill him for it but he honestly had no idea what he could possibly do against someone so much stronger than he could even dream of being, and was too distracted by the pressure around his middle to think properly. He couldn’t even begin to think properly. He WOULD rather it be a girl, honestly, but he couldn’t ignore the touch of anyone. People touching him happened so rarely that it always shocked him when someone did.
The others were so casual with touching each other, a hair ruffled here, a pat on the shoulder there. But he was so much shorter than the rest of them that he rarely got the chance to be included, and also most of the girls hated throwing him a bone because they knew he’d chew it to pieces.
It also didn’t help that he also always felt fidgety and awkward when guys showed him attention. It was a mess, really. Or, rather, affection made him a mess. But it generally didn’t MEAN anything. He just wasn’t used to touching!
Bakugou sucked his teeth loudly above him, prompting him to look as his scowl seemed to get even deeper, creasing his handsome eyebrows to the point it almost looked painful. It had to be painful to frown that hard.
“You’re seriously so fucking useless,” he spits out, full of vitriol and venom, Mineta felt his cheeks burn, shame filling his chest. Bakugou still wasn’t looking at him, focusing on the villain's cage on the other side of the field, and dodging randomly moving and shifting scenery.
“You’re not even trying to escape, so fucking boring,” Bakugou continued, stirring himself up. Mineta rolled his eyes before choking when his captor suddenly tightened the arm wrapped around him, forcing the breath out of his lungs. He started coughing and choking when Bakugou didn’t let up, continuing to rant into the air about his uselessness and how he wished he’d gone after someone else. He desperately started smacking at the arm holding him as his head started getting light, the amount of air he could get in his lungs was useless when Bakugou would just tighten his grip more on each breath out.
Bakugou was so distracted by his own anger he didn’t realize Mineta was on the verge of passing out, or maybe he did and just didn’t care.
In a fit of asphyxiation-induced hysteria, Mineta pulled a sticky ball off his head and threw it at Bakugou’s busy hand, the one that was keeping them in the air, somehow sticking perfectly over the entirety of his palm. There was a moment of silence as Bakugou stuttered mid-sentence, trying to process what had happened to his blasts before they started falling. Bakugou was forced to let him go, twisting his body around to try and grab him with his stickied hand and sending a blast to keep them in the air, but Mineta had already fallen too far out of his reach, and Bakugou wouldn’t have been able to wrap a hand around a body part anyway with the ball stuck to it.
Plummeting to the ground, and still extremely lightheaded, he barely had the wherewithal to pull another ball from his head and use it to bounce off of the concrete, protecting him from serious injury. The downside was bouncing straight back up into Bakugou, who kicked him in the middle of the back, hard enough to watch him bounce once more and cry out in pain before collecting him in his arm once more.
“Fuckhead, you’re fucking lucky I don't kill you for that,” Bakugou growled. Mineta winced from the squeeze he punctuated it with, letting the extra ball he was holding fall to the ground, he didn’t want to risk hurting either of them by using it the same way he had before.
“Sorry,” Mineta wheezed, once more falling limp around his arm, this time his tummy was cushioned by his familiar ball instead of a man’s large hand. He was still breathing heavily, and now his back ached horribly, already expecting a bruise in the shape of a boot print to appear by the end of the lesson. Something about that made his face feel hot.
“You better get this fucking ball off my hand when I put you away.”
“What will you do if I don’t?” He snarked back, with a cough for punctuation, a bit withered from the earlier asphyxiation but feeling a weird sense of contentedness after the fact, he just wanted to get back at him a little and couldn’t figure out what else he could do without risking serious injury to each other.
“I’ll kick you in the dick,” Bakugou responded with so much venom Mineta found it almost hysterical, shaking with quiet laughter, tears pooling at the edges of his eyes, all this caused was a shrill “don’t laugh at me, fucker!” and a smack to the forehead with his abrasive, glove covered empty hand.
Mineta looked up, seeking out the capture cage, and finding it quickly approaching. He could already make out Tsuyu and Tokoyami sitting next to each other inside, leaning against the edge of the cage, likely chatting idly.
Mineta sighed, letting his head fall once more, fully accepting his fate as Bakugou finally landed, opening the cage door and chucking him in so violently his back slammed against the other side of it. He gasped out a wheeze as he got up on his hands and knees, sending him an angry look as he tried to catch his breath.
“Now, get this fucking thing off me,” Bakugou spat, holding his hand out, on the flight there his fingers had closed around it, and as he flexed them Mineta felt as though it looked like a semi-permanent stress ball.
“Well, now I don’t want to,” Mineta threw back, standing up and brushing down his hero costume as if he was even a little dirty, all things considered, he was perfectly pristine. Well, aside from the perfect, dark, boot mark on his back that he was blissfully unaware of. Tsuyu and Tokayami silently watched from their place on the other side of the cage.
“The fuck you mean-” The cage slammed shut before him as Bakugou went to charge forward. Mineta gave him the most shit-eating grin he could muster, stepping up to the gate, careful not to stand too close, else Bakugou could reach in and grab him through the bars.
“‘Cus you kicked me so hard you get to do the rest of the lesson just like that, just try and catch anyone else with one hand,” he challenged, crossing his arms.
“Watch me, fucker,” Bakugou hissed, taking on the challenge before turning and blasting off back into the fray.
“He’s going to be very mad at you when class ends,” Tsuyu says casually, tilting her head. Mineta shrugged, more surprised he wasn’t the first one captured, considering his complete lack of an attempt at escape, than worried about what Bakugou could do to him once back at the dorms. He walks over to his other classmates and sits across from them, folding his knees up to his chest and resting his head on top.
“So… how did you two get caught?” He asks and listens as they take turns telling their stories. Tyuyu’s about how Todoroki had frozen her tongue while she was trying to maneuver around him, causing her to freeze and be easily transported, and Tokoyami's story of how Denki had shocked him half paralysed and the light off his electricity had weakened dark shadow to the point of uselessness. Mineta also took the time to explain how he had been captured, though he felt more embarrassed to explain how quickly it happened. He at least redeemed himself a little by escaping briefly but overall the experience left him embarrassed.
The exercise only lasted another ten or so minutes, and in that time Bakugou had successfully caught three out of ten villains (not including him), each time punctuated by a “you see this, fucker?!” or something upon those lines directed at Mineta, making him have to explain to the new members of their little club why Bakugou still had his ball stuck to his hand. By the end of the exercise, it had become somewhat of a thing that Mineta was going to finally free Bakugou of his trap.
By the end of the lesson, the only villain not able to be caught was Midoriya, who had run everyone for a loop by using blackwhip to evade all attempts at capture. When the horn rang for the exercise to end and he finally landed before the captured villains, they cheered his success, causing him to fluster and pat his warm cheeks.
But the cheering quickly ended as Bakugou landed heavily behind him, a dark, heavy aura permeating the air itself. Midoriya spun around, thinking his anger was directed at him and stuttered out a “Kacchan!” before he was pushed aside as Katsuki stomped past him and up to the, thankfully, still closed cage. Like a zoo animal, he jumped on the side of it, single free hand gripping the bars, and started shaking it.
“Now get the fuck out and get this fucking thing off my hand you dumb little fucker!” He screamed, everyone turned to stare at Mineta who simply couldn’t hold it in and keeled over into a fit of laughter.
“Bakugou, get off the cage.” Bakugou went quiet, gritting his teeth, as their teacher's tired, monotonous voice cut through his yelling, and the teen reluctantly dropped down from his perch. Still scowling, he folded his arms and kicked the concrete at his feet, his single balled hand comically sticking out from his side.
“Mineta, unstick his hand before he breaks something,” Mineta nodded, waiting for Aizawa to open the cage before walking towards Bakugou with more confidence than he felt, truthfully without the cage protecting him he was terrified, but didn’t let it show.
Bakugou grumbled but otherwise obediently held his hand out, tensing when Mineta gently held the large hand with one of his smaller ones and easily popped the sticky ball off, chucking it safely out of the way.
“Just wait until we get back to the dorms,” Bakugou muttered, barely above a whisper. Mineta’s eyes widened, having never heard words that quiet come from his mouth. Their classmates had already started milling about the arena, chatting and getting ready to pack up and leave so they didn’t pick up the hushed words.
“Bakugou you’re not doing ANYTHING when you get back to the dorms,” Aizawa said with finality, having somehow heard his whispers. Nothing got past him it seems.
Bakugou simply rolled his eyes and huffed through his nose in response, kicking Mineta out of the way and moving to stand next to Kirishima while Aizawa debriefed them on their performance.
Surprisingly, Aizawa had a bit to say about Mineta and Bakugou’s performance, after grilling Mineta briefly about giving up too quickly for the exercise to be worthwhile, he went on to explain how his escape plan using his quirk to distract and disable his attacker was somewhat ingenious. This led him to Bakugou, scolding him for letting his guard down and underestimating his opponent, and also letting his anger get ahead of him. Bakugou simply rolled his eyes and sucked his teeth, sending a scowl Mineta’s way.
Mineta didn’t pay as much attention to the debrief since the rest of it had nothing to do with him, and the others had already told him how their capture had gone, and sooner rather than later they were all shuffling into the showers and washing the lesson’s muck off of them.
Mineta pointedly ignored the glare assaulting the back of his head as he pulled his pants up after his shower, trying to have a normal conversation with Denki about nonsense, the other stealing looks back at Bakugou so he didn’t have to.
He was not going to look forward to this. At all.