Chapter Text
Denki could have sworn he just fell asleep. In fact, he was positive of it, but here he was, stumbling through a dark bedroom and groping towards a familiar bathroom. The light clicked on, and Denki blinked, stared with tired eyes at himself in the mirror.
Wait.
Where was his lightning bolt?
With a sigh, Denki lifted his arms and started to pull his hair up and back, revealing a jagged undercut of strange, shaved out black stripes on blonde, a hair tie snapping down on a messy bun. Another yawn, louder this time, and he rubbed at his bleary eyes as he turned on an… unfamiliar faucet? Fumbling across the counter, he picked up an electric toothbrush Denki also didn’t recognize, ran it under the water, and stared at it for a long, long time. Was he planning on putting on the paste any time soon?
“I’m never hacking discord again,” Denki said, his voice sounding just… slightly off… and that… that wasn’t Japanese. That was not Japanese. It was English, with a weird accent Denki thought might be some variety of American, but he wasn’t sure.
Denki’s English was pretty good. But he felt like he was understanding it to some degree on a different level. With another quiet, tired groan, he squeezed paste out onto the brush and stuck it in his mouth, clicked it on, and got to work scrubbing.
Denki didn’t feel… this felt weird. No, it didn’t feel quite right. Like his limbs were moving on their own, but the face was identical. That was his face, right down to the slightly sharp canines and small eyebrows. But, the hair was different, clearly, and he thought maybe the cut was different?
Oh, this was a dream, probably. He was just seeing an alternate version of himself. He’d never really been this aware in a dream, but it made sense, because this was definitely not his bathroom, and he was not in charge of his own limbs. The toothbrush felt weirdly realistic, though.
Denki spat out the paste and gargled, and then shuffled back into the bedroom. Another point: Denki had always wanted a bathroom attached to a bedroom. The light flicked on, revealing an… absolute mess.
There was a massive unmade bed, at least king sized, a wall lined with mirrors that were covered in taped-on photos and blueprints, maybe, marker scrawled across it in English and katakana and hiragana. There were clothes all over the floor, and a corner desk that was absolutely covered on one side in a half-constructed drone and bits and pieces of scrap and wire. On the other side was a massive gaming computer that must have cost thousands of dollars, complete with a high-end ergonomic chair that was making Denki salivate in jealousy. Posters all over the walls of bands he didn’t recognize and various anime, with a bunch of half-full water bottles on the bedside table and a full trash can of empty energy drinks. Another wall was full of shelves dressed to the nines in drones and figurines, and stuffed animals were all over the bed and discarded on the floor.
Denki was messy, but his mom would have killed him if he let things get this bad.
Dream Denki didn’t seem to care, though. Still in his pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, he shuffled over to the desk and flopped down, shaking the mouse to take the computer out of sleep mode. With another yawn, he reached into a bag on the desk and popped a chip into his mouth, bright, salty-sweet exploding in Denki’s mouth. Oh, this was a very realistic dream, sheesh. Denki couldn’t remember being able to taste before.
Slowly, Denki popped up a knee and rested his chin on his knee as the desktop came up. Lazily, he clicked open a browser Denki didn’t recognize, and started scrolling. Denki couldn’t read that well in English, and had no idea what was going on, but dream Denki could understand it just fine, given the speed he was scrolling through.
“Okay,” dream Denki mumbled as he scrolled over a diagram. “I think I know what’s wrong with you.”
With that, he turned his chair back around and loomed over the drone on the desk. Picking up a screwdriver, he carefully peeled off a panel and examined the wiring there that looked like it was connected to a battery pack. A pair of wire cutters were snatched up, and he snipped two wires, picked up some weird tube, and flipped them to crimp them together.
“Always better when you sleep on it,” dream Denki mumbled and screwed the panel back on before he tapped the drone once. There was a familiar jolt of a snap, and dream Denki hummed as a small light blinked on, once, twice, and then burned a steady green. “There we go, baby.”
With that, he started to fully reassemble the drone and picked it up to lightly toss it in the air. The thing flared to life as Denki felt a weird internal tug in his brain, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and the drone buzzed left, right, spun up, and slowly floated back down before it started bopping up and down.
It took Denki to realize there was no remote being used. Was this dream him? A quirk, maybe? It looked like it was still electricity related, though Denki didn’t feel like it was all that powerful. The drone spun in a lazy circle, and dream Denki’s lips twitched up in a smile.
“I think you’re ready for paint,” he declared and strode towards the door. The drone buzzed behind him, and the door opened to reveal an open-concept, industrial-looking penthouse apartment with a massive wall of windows looking out over a balcony. There was a skyline Denki didn’t recognize, clearly being around midday, with a waterfront reflecting in the light. No one was else in the apartment, and there was a note on the table dream him took a second to read, long enough for Denki to process what was being said.
The maid is coming at two. Get your nasty clothes in a hamper.
A maid? Seriously? How bougie was this alternate him?
Dream him sighed quietly, and Denki felt that same itch start up again, but twice this time, and then he kept walking towards the balcony, which had a table out decorated in some very colorful paint and tape and a bunch of spray cans. Oh, artistic? Okay, that was interesting. He pushed open the doors, sat down, and the drone slowly landed down before switching off, killing one of three itches.
Okay, so that was the quirk activating. Interesting. The other him was already dismantling the drone with what Denki now recognized as paint-stained fingers, full of crud under the nails and around the cuticles, and soon all the pieces were left off as he picked up a can to shake slowly.
“You’re going out tonight,” the kid said, and then started spraying as the acrid scent of aerosol filled the air.
It was kind of peaceful, Denki couldn’t deny it. The kid seemed to be able to sit and focus for hours, but every so often, he’d feel another itch as something else activated, so maybe he wasn’t all that focused. The way his leg was constantly jiggling, the way he flourished his paint cans, the constant itches in his brain turning on and off at random, sometimes a steady ‘click-click-click’... He seemed calm and still, but everything about him pointed to that not being the case. He was weird.
Time didn’t really seem to pass like a dream, though. Over time, Denki got bored. It seemed to be taking forever. The kid went back in a few times to collect various bare drones and paint them, seemingly perfect content to spend the entire day like this. Denki couldn’t imagine going an entire day without wasting at least one hour scrolling aimlessly on TikTok, but the kid seemed perfectly content. It was a bit weird. Denki would have lost his mind by now, and he was kind of losing his mind. It was just going on and on. An hour passed, then another, and another, and then after that the aforementioned maid came to clean up, but she didn’t come out on the balcony, only tapped on the window, and no less than five itches died down three seconds later before she went about her way.
Dream him was kind of annoying, actually, because Denki could feel his stomach growl, but the other seemed completely desensitized to it, apparently perfectly fine running off one singular potato chip. Of course, Denki knew he did things like that all the time, but it was different when he wasn’t the one focused. Denki kind of wanted to yell at him to go eat something, but the kid was blissfully unaware. What Denki wouldn’t give to be able to lucid dream.
Before long, he clicked on the balcony lights as the sun went down, and then something slammed inside.
“Obachi!” a man’s voice called from inside, and Denki’s brain spluttered.
Obachi?
“Where are you?” the man’s voice was closer now, speaking in lightly accented Japanese, but the kid seemed entirely oblivious to his presence.
“Obachi!” the man repeated, and then the balcony door opened, and Denki and ‘Obachi’ both jumped in unison as the kid swung around to stare up at the man. “Marta said you were out here at two. What are you doing?”
The man was tall, obviously Japanese, with slicked back, graying blonde hair and steely blue eyes, worn stress lines in his face and a serious countenance. He was dressed in a gray suit with tiny stripes, a blue tie with a pin and white shirt, the slippers on his feet clashing horribly, and he was staring down at Obachi’s bare feet splattered in paint with no small degree of distaste. He looked… very familiar, but Denki couldn’t quite place it. Something about his face, the tilt of his jaw and the set of his mouth, and---
Oh. That was the man in the wedding photos Mom had shoved back in the closet. His dad. Man, what a weirdly realistic dream. He even subconsciously applied aging and everything. What was his dad’s name again…? He’d seen it on the birth certificate… R… R… Rai Kaminari? Right? Yes, his name was Rai. That asshole that ran off when Denki was a month old and didn’t even have the decency to pay child support or alimony. Just left his mom high and dry and penniless, rich as hell and not even bothering with shared custody. Wasn’t he in New York or something? No… It was some other American city… Denki obviously did not know much of American history, but it was some historic place.
“I’m painting,” Obachi said, and then his stomach growled loudly, the rumble piercing the air.
“... Oba.”
“Dad.”
“Did you take your Adderall?”
“... Forgot.”
“I don’t send you to the doctor to just forget it.”
“Well, in my defense, ” and Obachi’s voice dipped into a whine that even grated Denki’s nerves, a thick American accent on his Japanese, “forgetting things is the entire reason I take it. So sometimes I will forget.”
“... Go shower and get ready for dinner,” his dad ordered and Obachi frowned, set down his can, and sent a forlorn look back at his drones. “ Now, Obachi.”
“I’m going. ”
With that, Obachi marched towards the doors, very obviously catching the way Rai was glaring at those drones like they were a personal failing, and then equally obviously deciding to ignore it.
Oh, was Denki going to get dragged along for the shower too? Really? Was this dream ever going to end---
Wait.
Obachi.
Denki’s mind flashed back to a little word on his birth certificate, shining much brighter than Rai Kaminari.
“Mom, why does it say twins?”
“Oh,” Mom said, her voice flat and unamused. “Yes, that’s why your dad left.”
“What?”
“You had a twin,” she said casually and flicked her makeup brush across her cheek, her voice as callused as ever. “Obachi. He died of sudden infant death syndrome, and your daddy couldn’t keep it together. Ran off to America instead of supporting his wife. Typical.”
“... Oh,” Denki said quietly as he stared down at the paper. “I had a twin?”
“Well, it hardly counts. He was barely a month old when he died,” she said airily and set the brush down. “Don’t crumple that. I need it for your school. Set it down.”
Hardly counts reverberated around his skull, and he wondered if this should be some kind of earth shattering revelation. Maybe not. Mom didn’t seem too upset about it, so why should he?
The realization settled in, thick on his tongue as the kid walked back into a slightly-cleaner bedroom, though it looked like she had just washed his clothes and bedding, and left all his tinker-projects intact and alone, and Denki subconsciously tilted his head.
Wait.
Maybe it was a big deal??
Denki woke up with a cough and a gasp, thrashing briefly in his sheets before he stilled, eyes wide as he stared at the poster taped to the ceiling.
“Oh,” he said out loud, and his nearly-thirteen-year-old voice cracked ever-so-slightly. “That was a weird dream.”
He would unpack that… never, actually.
With a groan, he rolled out of bed and stumbled to his feet. Sunday. No school, no responsibilities. And a weird dream to never, ever unpack. Ah, well. He’d forget it in twenty minutes, anyways.