Previous Chronologically: Rhythm 19 / Moment 15

Word Count: 2,856

It was always that stupid fucking Careless Whisper.

Oh, sure, it was getting better, especially after all those times Kyouka had roasted his playing, but there was only so many times a girl could take hearing her own instrument's meme song played on any instrument before she got well and truly sick of every part of it.

Just what had Kaminari been trying to accomplish today anyway, calling her over just to play that stupid song? They were out on the track to practice for the parade next Saturday, and the time they had before blocking up was meant for warming up, not shitty serenades!

Kyouka stomped her way over to first period Lang, alone. She crashed into her seat right across from him, putting her books up between them. (She saw a spark of excitement fade from his eyes as a smile slipped off his face.) She was being irrational, she knew, avoiding him so stubbornly, especially at such a benign and normal occurrence, but she wanted to be selfish right now.

Besides, he got up and left for History without her after first period anyway. Not that she minded so much anyway— after all, she'd been taking that route with Tokoyami before Kaminari had somehow, in some way, wormed his way into that part of her routine, too. She'd just walk with him again, as though nothing had ever changed, talk about the latest in emo band technology.

It got a little weird after second period, though, when she had already long calmed down, yet when she made eye contact with Kaminari on the way to their shared third period class, instead of their now-usual ritual of drifting towards each other to chat idly in the halls, he turned around (very quickly, too, might she add, though it wasn't as if they had, like, agreed in plain English that they would do this every day).

So she dropped Yaomomo off at her AP Calc class and entered math alone.

She couldn't focus on the lesson one bit, either, though she doubted that had anything to do with him. Math— whatever kind— just did that to you sometimes.

Halfway through her next period, Japanese, she sighed, her cheek propped up by her elbow, feeling vaguely like she would rather be taking a nap. And maybe she would have (her eyes were growing heavy as they were anyway), had it not been for a note that was slipped underneath her arm from the boy who sat right next to her, Kouda Kouji.

You seem tired today. What time did you go to bed last night?
—Kouda

Kyouka snorted softly to herself. How sweet of him, to check up on her like that.

1 as usual. ~Kyo

She slid her scribbles back on the same note Kouda had used.

:(
—Kouda

I'm just a bit stressed from this one guy, that's all. ~Kyo

D:
—Kouda

It's not your fault, you're an angel, my dude. ~Kyo

Is this why you've been avoiding Kaminari?
—Kouda

Kyouka stared at the note he passed back, dumbfounded. Had he noticed? She glanced over at him (their eyes met, his cheeks flushed a bit, and he quickly broke their gaze), studying him for the moment. She relaxed, feeling a bit like a cat, basking in the sunlight, except that she was instead soaking in her abstract, wordless thoughts.

Of course he knew; it was always the quiet ones who noticed everything about everyone around them, after all.

With a soft sigh, he stuck the scrap of paper under her notes proper, turning her attention back to the teacher, and that was that for the period.

Kyouka sat as improperly as she humanly could in the shitty, little, wooden chair in her and Momo's regular lunchtime practice room (just because she could) and stabbed her chopsticks into her lunch, just plain tired at this point.

"You know," she said to Momo, who was sitting less than three feet away on a slightly less shitty chair, "if Kaminari came up to me right now, popped his head into our practice room, and just started cracking jokes like nothing ever happened, I'd let him. I'd laugh at him, even."

She paused for a moment to shove a sizable clump of rice into her mouth, during which she heard Momo heave an audible sigh.

"Kyouka," she said. Her voice was filled with rare notes of annoyance, which alone was enough to nearly make Kyouka mis-swallow her food. "Why aren't you talking to him?"

Kyouka took a swig from her water bottle to clear her throat, pretending that it wasn't just her way of dodging the question for even a few seconds longer. "I dunno," she said (even though she knew she knew), "I just would rather not."

"You can't keep doing this," Momo warned.

"Doing what?"

"Manufacturing your own drama by wishing for an apology the other party has no idea that you want, said in a specific manner that, again, the other party has no idea that you want, all while throwing shade about them to other, unrelated people about how the other party isn't telling you they're sorry because you never communicate your desires."

Kyouka frowned at her best friend, a little mad at being read like that. But, it wasn't like she could just say, "Well, what do you know about relationships anyway, Miss Sheltered Rich Girl?" because Miss Sheltered Rich Girl's first anniversary with Pretty Boy Tokidoki was in less than a week, and maybe you could say it was the soulmates, but there was something to be said about high school relationships that lasted longer than a year. So instead, she said, "He's been kind of avoiding me all day."

Momo appeared to soften a little at that; after all, she couldn't help it if she couldn't approach him. And Kyouka began to relax (having successfully evaded the question), until some more words popped out of Momo's mouth:

"You've been talking about Kaminari a lot more lately, Kyouka."

If she had been eating or drinking anything at that moment, Kyouka would have had to pay the high repair fee for the piano in front of her. Luckily, she wasn't, so she just had to spend a second or two recovering from the way Momo's words felt like a pile of bricks heaved into her chest (in a way that somehow didn't break all her ribs) before she could say, "Have I been?"

"Well… yeah," said Momo.

"Since when?"

"October. Homecoming."

"Okay, but that makes sense to talk about because it was weird and random and I didn't know him at the time. Besides, you're the one who seems to bring it up all the time."

"Because you never really stopped talking about it, Kyouka. November, after Homecoming, when you found out he was in your Lang class with you."

"We became friends, Momo. And he's fun and he's dumb, and we do dumb, fun things together sometimes that I want to tell you about," Kyouka argued, and Momo didn't argue with the soundness of her argument there. She just kept going.

"December, after finals week. What happened there?" Momo asked.

Kyouka bit her tongue. (Maybe she did it on purpose, maybe she didn't; she wasn't about to think too hard about it lest she hurt herself.) "He gave me his phone number," she said, her tongue feeling strangely thick and heavy in her mouth, as if it knew better than she that there was more to it than just that when… what other things could have happened back then that would have made her talk more about Kaminari?

(She couldn't pull up a single other thing from that time relating to Kaminari specifically.)

((So maybe her tongue just felt that way because she bit down too hard.))

After all, what else could it be?

Momo stared at her, however, making Kyouka feel like a student caught under the teacher's spotlight, an adequately articulate answer expected of her under penalty of failure.

"Well, you see," she began, her brain for whatever reason only pulling up some ridiculous collection of his jokes, quips, and the stupid facial expressions he made when delivering them. "He's—"

Momo looked away, and suddenly, Kyouka didn't know if she was defending all the time she'd spent this year talking about Kaminari, or just proving her best friend's point that she didn't shut up about him these days.

Momo pulled out her phone, and Kyouka was frozen, the dialogue passing through her mind whizzing by too quickly for her to really know what was happening in her own brain.

"The lunch bell rang," Momo said matter-of-factly as she shut off her phone (and Kyouka's racing thoughts) and slipped it into her pocket.

Kyouka watched Momo pack up her bag for a second, not yet realizing she had to do the same. After all, she had her Physics class across campus that she couldn't be late to.

"…A friend," she blurted out, and suddenly, she could move again.

Momo stood up, looked at Kyouka, and raised an eyebrow at her. "Pardon?" she asked.

Kyouka didn't like the way her cheeks suddenly began to burn. "Kaminari," she said, the voice crack just fanning the flames in her face. "He's a friend."

Another pause.

"That's why I've been talking about him so much. Because I…" She swallowed, some sort of moth fluttering in her chest, brushing its wingtips up against everything in her ribcage and dusting her heart with a healthy helping of nervous energy. "…like him."

With that, Mr. Moth went away, but a little wriggly worm named Fear moved into her stomach in his stead.

"As a friend," the little wriggly worm named Fear made her say, the words jolting up her spine and flying out of her mouth as the emotions of them dissipated into the air, calming her down. "I like him as a friend."

Momo pursed her lips for a moment. She looked out the practice room window, then back inside at Kyouka, and sighed, opening the door at the same time.

"C'mon," she said. "Let's go to class."

"Hey, Bakugou, do you think Kaminari was being an ass this morning with the Careless Whisper thing, or nah?"

The band room doors slammed shut behind Kyouka, exhausted from both physics as a class (because fuck circuits; they could choke for all she cared) and having to cross the entire campus to get back to the band room for what little remained of her free period.

Bakugou turned around, having been wrapped up in his math homework, and his face was scrunched up in one of his uglier expressions as he said, "Hah?"

"Oh, whoops," said Kyouka, dropping her books on a table and letting her backpack fall to the floor with a thunk! Her hands now free, she repeated the question in sign language.

Bakugou stared at her blankly, crossed his legs, and turned back to his calculus, grunting, "I don't give a shit."

Kyouka snorted as she sat down across from him, sprawling her arms out for a second, then springing back all at once, deciding the surface was too cold for the mid-February afternoon. "You probably should," she said. "After all, remember what Mr. Aizawa always says? 'Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.' If you don't stop him now, he's gonna pull another one of his dumbass moves and dick around the day of the parade, too."

"And why don't you do something about it, Miss Fucking Head Drum Major?" Bakugou snapped, not even missing a beat of his homework, judging by his steady pencil scribbles.

"Because isn't it your band, too, Mr. Explodo-kill?" Kyouka drawled, slowly picking her cheek off the table by propping it up on her elbow.

Bakugou hit the table (but with, like, a reasonable amount of force for a frustrated teenage boy) and signed, "Shut the fuck up."

"Sure," Kyouka signed back, trying not to look too smug.

Bakugou flipped her off.

"Anyway, I'm glad you're leading the band this time," she continued, and Bakugou still paid attention, albeit with some rather bored eyes. "You kind of need to work on your spins—"

Bakugou looked back down at his homework, and thin trails of steam might as well have come out of Kyouka's ears.

"I'm too fucking stressed for this shit, man," she sighed, leaning back in her chair and staring up at the ceiling. She heard Bakugou slam his notebook shut and zip it away in his backpack just a moment later.

"That sounds like a you problem," he grunted, standing up, stretching, and starting to pace around the room.

"Yeah, well, you're not exactly helping, my dude," Kyouka snapped back.

Bakugou idly cracked his knuckles and looked off at something else, but at this point, Kyouka didn't even care if he was fully listening or not. She just wanted a brick wall to vent at.

And vent she did, about anything and everything that came to mind. As soon as she had a thought, she spoke it aloud and let it go, starting with the Rose Parade ("I know it's vain and stupid of me to assume, but just what if? What if I'm going to be the one ending up leading us all? It's a week until the next triband meeting and my brain just won't shut up about it!") to the upcoming festival competition ("I hardly even think about it, even though it's all we rehearse in the mornings these days, so every time it comes up it's like I'm getting jumpscared by a deadline behind my back, you know?") to tour ("Though, to be fair, I'm actually really excited for tour. There's just nothing else to it; I'm just really looking forward to it at this point because then I can finally fucking chiiiiiiill.").

And it felt good, to get her anxieties out like that, but even when she ran out of things to say or sign, it felt like one more thing still weighed on her chest, stressing her out just as much as all the other things. She frowned a bit, thumped a fist against her chest, which felt like it had some deep rooted ball of cotton writhing in the empty space. She'd say it wasn't exactly a bad or terrible feeling, but that was a lie— it made her uncomfortable, and she hated that she couldn't figure out why it was there.

"You know, it's kind of weird, dude. I feel like I've gotten everything off my chest, and yet, I still feel stressed as fuck," she said, tapping out the rhythm to one of drum solos in their festival pieces.

Bakugou paused his pacing and gave her a look right as the bell rang.

"Well, good luck with that," he grunted, heading towards his backpack.

"Where are you going?" Kyouka asked, the cotton ball of stress making its way over to fluff up her head.

"Out," Bakugou said, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

"It's a minimum day," Kyouka argued. "Shouldn't we be practicing?"

Bakugou stretched his arms and said, "If you were going to do that, you would have started already. I have a fucking date."

Kyouka felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising. She grit her teeth and said, "I don't know why you try so hard when it's not even fucking real."

Bakugou stopped dead. The words were already out of her mouth, unable to be taken back, when she realized just what she said, that she wasn't supposed to have said that, because she wasn't supposed to have known that.

"Oh, shit," she whispered.

Bakugou turned around, and if life were an anime, she'd be able to see the angry flames of hell flickering behind him as he approached. She'd be able to see the sound of her heart pounding against her chest in fear. She wasn't usually so scared of other people; in her eyes, usually Bakugou was just some bitch, but right at that moment, he was an angry bitch towering over her.

"Who told you that?" Bakugou asked, his voice dangerously low.

Kyouka gulped, the culprit's face the only thing that's been on her mind. Yet still, she hesitated.

She hesitated so long that she knew that if she lied, she'd look like a liar.

And if there was anything she knew about Bakugou, it was that he hated liars.

So she took a deep breath to calm herself down, sent out a mental plead for forgiveness, and gave him the truth.

author's note xvii. fun fact if you read rhythm, then you already know exactly who told kyouka. unless you're reading this update before the rhythm one bc this n r12 are coming out on the same day but shhhhh. they're not perfectly concurrent; m17 is technically before r12 but i think in terms of reading order, they're interchangeable. yeah you also find out who told jirou in like, chapter 28 here but that's not for a While(tm). i mean i think it's not that hard to figure out anyway if you read my a/n but i also think that a lot of the fun w/this plotline is in the dramatic irony instead of the reveal.

anyway i named this chapter "please don't" by mxmtoon bc jirou's basically in a "ugh pls don't ask me any hard questions" mood the entire time, but then at the end, she's confronted w/a question she has to answer. she still doesn't want to, but i mean, "she gave him the truth". :)

that last scene was actually a lot of fun to write into rhythm too bc it's told from bkg's persp! it really highlights the unreliable narrator thing going on. there's already been another scene that's in both moment n rhythm, but since they were told from kaminari n kirishima's perspectives, they weren't described that differently. in this case, i think it's really interesting how differently bkg describes the events!

anyway follow me on tumblr (a-piece-of-shipping-trash), leave a review, and stay safe out there

Next Chronologically: Rhythm 12 / Moment 18