pretend it only happened in a dream | bakuiida

part five | how does he manage music this loud with math this hard

~*~

At my school, there's a small gap right behind the language hall where the athletic area meets. On the opposite side of the language hall sits the tennis courts, which have high dark green walls that prevent the tennis players balls from landing on the roof or hitting cars. On the right side, there is a table that's broken that nobody sits at, so there's a stack of garden equipment on top of it; and to the left, there's a small shed where PE equipment goes. 

The area is the most private place on campus.

Stoners go there to smoke, football players go there to shit talk, girls with scathed knees go there to make quick money. I go there to pass from PE to Life Essentials without having to pass by the bathrooms, where everyone goes to vape. It smells awful and people usually have some comments to make that quite frankly I don't want to hear.

So you could imagine my surprise when I see Tenya Iida standing there alone. He's just standing, not speaking, not smoking. Just minding his business. I keep my head down and walk forward. No point in saying anything.

I successfully manage to walk by him unscathed. I didn't expect him to say anything really, I just got nervous. He never stands there, so why today?

There's something hanging in the campus air today. Something off- like when someone close to you is hiding their feelings from you. Maybe it's the fog- it usually never socks in this bad. 

Whatever it was, I wanted it to go away. And soon.

When the day dwindled all the way down into the fourth period, I sat at my desk patiently waiting until Tenya would show up. He was a few minutes late today, and because of that Mrs. Long gave him a mini-lecture which he seemed to blow off. 

He sat down, completely out of breath. "Hello Katsuki," he says.

"Hi," I reply, looking away from him.

He puts his headphones in and gets his phone out. From the corner of my eye, I see him choose to play Jennifer Lopez and then shove his phone into his pocket. We stay silent as class begins before Mrs. Long tells us that we have work time. 

Tenya zooms through the questions. I get stuck after the third. I try to get the answers by looking at Tenya's paper discretely but he notices me. 

"Do you need help?" he asks.

I look up at him. "I uh- yeah."

He shifts the paper towards me and looks at mine. "Oh, just combine the terms there and then divide, which cancels out the radicals," He tells me.

I nod and scribble it down. "So the answer is 4 square root 5?"

"Perfect."

Then we're silent for a moment while I work on the next problem. "Wanna listen to music?" Tenya asks, his hand held out with one headphone.

"Sure." I take it and put it in. 

Things to remember about Tenya Iida: he only listens to girl pop. I watch as he scrolls through his playlist and all of his music are those songs that are made for girls to listen to in the car with their friends and scream the lyrics to. No shame in that though- I only listen to Christina Aguilera and Ariana Grande so it works for me. Girly pop is one of those genres that everyone enjoys, whether they'd admit it or not. He settles on Gimme More by Britney Spears. 

Another thing to note about Tenya Iida: he listens to his music way too loud.

But so do I.

We work together on the sheet until I finally finish. Then we don't talk, but Tenya's music blares. We're listening to Lady Gaga. Midway through our silence, Tenya turns towards me.

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

I shrug. "Shoot- but don't expect a response."

"Are you gay?" he asks bluntly.

I furrow my eyebrows. "You're not subtle to ask, are you?"

He chuckles. "Not at all," he replies. 

"Yeah. I am. Use it against me I guess, I'm not too scared of what people have to say."

He shakes his head. "Can I tell you a secret?"

I nod and he sighs. "Me too."

"You're gay?" I ask him.

"Yeah. But I've never come out to anyone before," he explains.

Without even knowing it, my eyebrows move up in surprise. "Not even your best friend?"

Tenya shakes his head. "Todoroki wouldn't understand." He pauses before he sighs yet again. "I feel like you might be the only person who does understand," he whispers.

Now listen- this part of the story stays between me and you. You- as in the reader. 

I took Tenya's hand under the desk set in on top of my hand and laid the other hand on top- like a sandwich. He didn't look at me, and I didn't look at him. And at that moment- that one soft moment- it felt like I knew Tenya Iida more than anybody else at our school. More than Todoroki or Uraraka and Deku or Kirishima or even his own brother- I knew him.

Without saying so, we both move once Mrs. Long calls time again. The class continues as normal and we don't speak about it again really.

The bell rings at 2:55 as it has for the last four million days. I walk behind Tenya, who turns to me once we're out of the classroom. "Hey so um," he says, looking down as if to find the words. "That's between us, right?"

I laugh. "Dude duh," I say. "Of course it is."

Tenya smiles wide. "Oh good! Hey also, can I get your snap or something? So we can talk?"

I shrug. "Sure." 

After the exchange, I walk off to meet up with Kami and Sero for our after school record search. There's a small record shop by our school, and when Sero gets his paycheck he always buys Kaminari and me a vinyl as well as one for himself. 

Sero is the kinda guy to waste money on his loved ones all day long. In Freshman year he dated this girl and spent four hundred dollars on her in one day, and then she broke up with him and never came to school again.

He, however, did not learn his lesson.

Kaminari picks out a bright red record by Fugazi called 13 songs. He's always getting into some obscure 80's emo band, which I can only assume this is. Sero picks out Cherry Bomb by Tyler, the Creator. He's been looking for it forever, so he's ecstatic about finding it. 

As for me? I find ANTI by Rihanna and add it to our records. This album makes me feel free, and I think that's one thing I deserve to feel right now. Sero pays for our items before we all leave.

In my pocket, my phone buzzes, and I check to see.

Snapchat: from Tenya