Word Count: 1,561
"Betcha he would~"
"He would not."
"He totally would."
"And how would you know that?" Kaminari challenged as he and Kirishima walked to the band room.
Kirishima shrugged good-naturedly. "Just a hunch."
Kaminari slowed down to think about Kirishima's response. "…Do you think Kyouka would catch me if I tried running into her arms?"
"Bro, I'm not going to lie to you," Kirishima replied, stopping to put his hands on Kaminari's shoulders and stare into his eyes. "She would honestly just bat you away with her sax case and let you perish until she finished putting it away."
"Aww, come on! She's not mean like that!"
"It's like that thing Katsuki tells the freshmen all the time. We the players are expendables and mean nothing in comparison to our several-thousand-dollar instruments," Kirishima said, crossing his arms.
"That's a lot of 'fuck's you omitted just there, my dude," Kaminari said, but to that, the redhead merely shrugged. "But anyway, it's not like she's even practicing right now, so we can assume she won't have her sax when I run at her."
"But the whole idea is to see if our soulmates would drop what they're doing to catch us," Kirishima pointed out.
"What if she's eating cup noodles?"
"Kaminari," Kirishima said very seriously, stopping the two of them in the middle of the hallways for the second time. "Listen to yourself, bro. Would you really— would you really— want to eat cup noodles and then put your mouth on a saxophone mouthpiece? Like, think of the reed, bro. That's just gross."
Kaminari wilted slightly. "I guess you're right," he admitted.
"Plus, don't you still owe her for getting water all over her drum set?" Kirishima asked.
"That was last year—!" Kaminari began as they resumed their journey to the band room.
"And didn't you used to always disrespect her practice times by listening to EDM at full blast or something?" Kirishima cocked a skeptical eyebrow.
"That was a phase, dude!" Kaminari cried, only to have his desperation met with a laugh.
"This is why I'm glad we're not soulmates, bro," Kirishima said as he opened the band room doors. "Like, you're a good friend and all, but if I had to put up with half the stuff Jirou does with you…"
"Yeah, yeah, tell me about it when you manage to convince Bakugou that fifty push-ups is not a reasonable punishment for dropping the baton," Kaminari said absently, waving Kirishima off.
"One, being strong is good for you. And manly. Which is cool. And second of all, that was your own fault for twirling it around like some kind of anime character and throwing it, like, ten feet into the air," Kirishima argued, but Kaminari shushed him as he set up his trombone.
"The cords hurt my hands," he said, and got an amused smile back from Kirishima.
"Thirdly, you even dented it, but okay dude," he said as he pulled his own baritone case down from the highest shelf. "Have fun practicing, bro. Maybe if you're lucky, Jirou won't call out the 'bones tomorrow with your carry."
"What? Nuh-uh. Not now," Kaminari said, cradling his instrument haphazardly as he jabbed a finger at Kirishima. "I still think Bakugou is the type of person who would do nothing if you threw yourself at him, so I need to see you prove your point and jump into his arms, like, right now."
"My what now?" Bakugou called from the back, followed by a few grunts. "I'm cleaning up after shitty concert band because they can't put the nice drums away to save their pitiful fucking lives."
"Calm yo' titties, boy!" Mina chided as she escaped the timpani pit. "Your boyfriend just wants to show you some looooove!"
"Fuck you and your shitty-ass two hundred dollar mallets too," Bakugou harumphed, picking a pair of cymbals up off a chair while scouring the area for their bag. "He can show me some god damn love by locking up the god damn quads for me. What the fuck were you even thinking, Shouji?"
"It's too much work to pack and unpack them twice a day," Shouji grumbled, decidedly neither practicing the quads nor helping Bakugou pack them up. "How bad could it possibly be…"
Kirishima tuned out percussion's bickering. "Well, you asked for it, bro," he said to Kaminari, flashing the latter a brief grin. He dropped his bags in an instant and ran towards the pit, leaping dangerously over chairs on his way there. "KATSUKIII, CATCH ME!" he yelled, and Kaminari, unable to watch what looked like certain doom, looked away.
"Ohfuckinghell—oomph." is probably what Bakugou had said, but the crash of the cymbals as they collided with the tiled floor was near-deafening, so Kaminari would never know Bakugou's verbatim verbal response to Kirishima's surprise attack. Through the clattering, Kaminari peeked through his fingers, slowly turned back toward the site of attack.
Bakugou scowled, the cymbals having just stopped rattling against the ground, but Kirishima was happy as a clam in his arms, blithely ignoring the death glares his boyfriend was sending the spectators. Kaminari nearly whistled, impressed at the redhead's correctness, but decided against it when he too received a death glare.
"I hate you," Bakugou deadpanned at Kirishima. Nearby, Mina giggled and pulled out her phone to record the moment. (Tooru pulled her out of the frame, knowing better than to leave her best friend subject to that kind of temper.)
"I love you too," Kirishima replied, laughing as he hopped out of his soulmate's arms.
"I mean it this time," Bakugou threatened as he picked up a cymbal and inspected it.
"Of course you do," Kirishima said, unconcerned as he helped look at the other.
A practice room door burst open, and Kaminari jumped when he noticed his girlfriend, the head drum major, storm out with her index fingers crammed in her ears. "What the FUCK was that all about, you absolute walnuts!?" she cried, scanning the room.
Kaminari knew that was his cue to skeddadle when his eyes locked with Kyouka's, but it was already too late. "It was, uh… for science?" he called with a sheepish grin, waving his trombone around half-assedly as if that would fix anything.
"Value your god damn eardrums, please," she begged, and it was at this moment that Aizawa-sensei finally decided to poke his head out of his office.
"Watch your language," he told everyone present. "And also, please don't go dropping more percussion instruments. I'm trying to sleep."
The teenagers watched in silence as their conductor, too lazy to exit his sleeping bag, hopped back into his office, but the general background chatter soon returned.
Kirishima looked at Kaminari and winked. For a second, the blond didn't understand what he was getting at, but as Kyouka shook her head in disapproval, it clicked.
Kaminari finger gunned back at the baritone; laying aside his trombone, Kaminari made a run for his girlfriend before she could return to her practice room. "HEY, KYOUKA!" he yelled.
"I swear to god…"
"CATCH MEEEE!"
"DENKI, I SWEAR TO GOD—"
She turned around too late to catch him, and they both yelled incoherently as they went down, tumbling into Kyouka's favorite practice room, the door miraculously closing behind them. Kaminari banged his head against the piano, Kyouka crashed her shoulder into the corner of her case, and it was honestly a miracle the neighboring rooms didn't pop their heads out to see what the hell just happened.
"…Ow," Kaminari eventually said, quite belatedly to be sure, as he sat up and hit his head against the piano yet again.
Kyouka sat up slowly, wincing as she rubbed her shoulder. "That was the dumbest thing you have ever done, ever," she told him, "and that's saying a lot."
"I'm sorry," Kaminari said, unable to meet her gaze.
There was a pause. And then, Kyouka huffed with laughter. "I love you," she said softly, crawling to her boyfriend, and the weight building in his stomach dissipated all at once.
He scooted to make room for her under the piano, patting the space next to him with a grin. "Hell yeah."
However, Kyouka didn't move into it. "But, uh…" Now it was her turn to turn away, her cheeks reddening. "I think you have to take me to the nurse."
Kaminari's spirits fell. "Why?"
His girlfriend grimaced as she felt her shoulder. "Saxophone cases really hurt when you hit their edges."
Kaminari crawled out from under the piano, crouched down, and held out his arms. "C'mere, Kyo."
"You don't have to carry me," she protested, but the blond shushed her.
"You're a fermata now," he said with a lopsided grin. "I'll hold you."
Kyouka stared at him for a full thirty seconds. "My legs work just fine; I'll just ask Yaomomo to take me."
"Aww, Kyo!"
"I'm kidding, Denki!" she laughed, accepting his offer. She hummed contentedly and rested her head against his chest as he got up. "I love you, idiot."
"I love you too, ma'am."
Author's Note: hihi! I've never actually written kiribaku hahaha. I have a couple things cooking for them, I guess you could say, but most of my stuff is todomomo lol. This was actually meant to be primarily krbk, but then it turned into a duet between krbk and kamijirou. Not complaining tho. I need to write more of both. I meant for this to be longer than it actually is but eh. This work is part of a soulmate/school band au thing I have going on called "Without You, Life Would Bb", or "w/o you, Bb", as I like to abbreviate it. There's just one other work in this thing rn, a todomomo oneshot called Three Cents Shy. Yeah.
anyway, thank you for reading! faves/reviews would be nice if it was good enough and you're into that, but either way, have a greaaat daaaay~~ :D
