Previous Chronologically: Moment 19

Word Count: 3,297

Mornings were often a blur to Denki, at least when he was on break. By the time his brain came back around from its time in the break room (where he had his sleep deprivation and self-indulgent fantasies), he was already well along a trail up to some place called Mirror Lake. He had probably been following Kirishima, who was tagging along with Bakugou (naturally), who apparently did this sort of thing for fun. It didn't matter all that much, really, because the nearest person to him was, to his complete surprise, Jirou.

Jirou, who hadn't allowed for him to be near her in weeks.

Jirou, who hadn't talked to him, actually talked to him, not just scolded him, in ages.

Jirou, who hadn't looked at him, not since forever, until yesterday.

(Kyouka, whom he wanted so badly to make happy again.)

"Nguh."

That was the sound that came out of his mouth? What was he doing; what was wrong with him? He was a well-spoken chap— his essay scores proved as much— but he supposed that there was just something about talking to your crush when six-ish weeks had gone by with minimal interaction that just blew every word he knew away. Whether that was a good thing or not, he was yet to find out.

Jirou looked at him, her eyes bored, maybe a little bit curious. (He almost tripped over a rock.) "Are you okay?" she asked, a little dully, but he was pretty sure he could catch some genuine concern under that.

"I'm fine!" he said, probably a little too chipper about it because immediately afterward, he tripped over a root and faceplanted into the hard packed dirt trail. "…Or maybe not," he said, spitting the blood and grit out of his mouth.

He heard Jirou snort as he picked himself up and brushed the dirt off his clothes, and aside from the stinging in his cheeks, the throbbing of his nose, and the dripping of sweat mingled with drops of blood down his forehead, he was feeling pretty good about his slip-up, too. Enough to grin and laugh it off as he swiped at the grime on his face.

"You're bleeding!" she exclaimed, and Denki looked down at his hand.

"Oh yeah," he said. He snorted and felt something drip down to his lips as he grinned. "You're right."

"Yaomomo should have a first-aid kit," Jirou said, searching through her pockets for something, and— hold on a second, was she fussing over him? Heh, the thought of that was soft and nice in his cotton-ball brain. "Here, have this Chipotle napkin."

Confused, he almost put the napkin in his mouth when he realized that it was probably to stop the nosebleed he was only just now realizing he had. (It was also starting to occur to him that eating shit— in both the figurative and literal senses— probably didn't put him in the best headspace at the moment.) He jammed the napkin up his nostrils and said, "Thank ye."

Jirou's cheeks puffed out a little, the way they always did when she was trying not to laugh at him. "Let's go find Yao—" she began, turning around, but when they looked backwards, the trail was empty.

A beat of silence.

Denki smacked his palm with a fist, an idea making a crash landing in his brain right at that moment. "Bakugou does this kind of thing all the time!"

"What, eat dirt?"

"I can't confirm that in full faith and confidence, but I can tell you that he goes on hikes as a hobby. Kiri told me so," Denki proudly replied. "Knowing him, he's probably got, like, a tourniquet or something in his backpack."

"I don't think you need a tourniquet," Jirou commented dryly. "Maybe a lobotomy, though."

"And you are lovely just the way you are, my dude," he said, then realized what he just said.

Words really just came out of his mouth, didn't they. And sometimes, they meant things.

Not to say he didn't mean what he just said; au contraire, he spoke from the heart. He just hadn't meant to start flirting with her like that, especially since she hadn't really been too keen on it in the past, and also since he was pretty sure she liked—

"Aaand let's go find Baku-bitch," Jirou said, pivoting around on her heel. She grabbed him by the jacket sleeve and started dragging him along the beaten path, not meeting his eye or even letting him see her face.

"Yoink," was all Denki found himself capable of saying as he stumbled after her, trying desperately to not sneeze the Chipotle napkin out of his bloody nose.

She didn't say anything in response, though it felt like she picked up the pace on him. (He didn't exactly have the best sense of tempo, however, so maybe he was just dragging.) She didn't even change the subject, and for a while, it was just the two of them breathing as they hurried down the hiking trail best they could.

"Mirror Lake, one-point-six miles away." Denki read aloud from a sign they passed. "Who's writing these things? I'm pretty sure the last one said it was less than a mile away. What is the truth, huh? Park rangers, if you're out there, and if you're not too busy seducing Bigfoot…"

Jirou snorted. She still didn't say anything, though, so Denki dropped the bit.

It was odd, how they still hadn't caught up with the rest of the party, though. There had been a few forks in the trail earlier, so it wasn't impossible that they'd gone down the wrong path.

"Hey," said Denki after a while. His feet were the ones aching now, his headache gone down to a sort of dull throbbing.

"What," said Jirou, adjusting her grip on his jacket sleeve. She didn't even make it sound like a question, like she was curious about what he had to say, which…

He tugged at his jacket, as it was starting to slip off his shoulder. (He couldn't be going around showing his shoulder like some sort of filthy commoner, now could he?) He winced a bit— he was probably going to have a few bruises blooming later, wasn't he? "I don't think we need that first-aid kit anymore."

Jirou tugged at his sleeve again, and, hey, he thought it was getting warm out, too (especially compared to the literally freezing night before), but he wanted some dinner first. He didn't expect her to say anything, but to his surprise, she did:

"Why not?"

Denki decided to take a risk and pull the napkin out of his nose. He sniffled (was that a bad sign? He didn't know), and it was kind of gross, the way a bit of blood trickled down the back of his throat, but he wasn't going to die or anything. His scratches were gonna be fine on their own. "I'm not that hurt."

Jirou stopped, so he stopped, too. She looked at him again, so he did her the courtesy of staring intently back. She let go of his jacket sleeve and… cracked her knuckles, all right. (He wasn't sure where this was going anymore.)

"Are you sure?" she asked, and Denki really could not help but to get the feeling that she was going to punch him if he said yes.

But he trusted the concern in her eyes more than he did that instinct (after all, when had she ever actually hit him?), and he nodded. "I'm fine."

Jirou reached out and softly touched his face, swiping her thumb across his cheek and sending electric sparks down his spine.

"Woah," he said, flinching away reflexively. His head was spinning, his face was tingling, and his heart was pounding, all so much more strongly than they had ever before. His stomach had decided his bodily cavity was an amusement park, and it wanted to go on the loop-de-loop ride until he puked.

Jirou jerked away as well, her cheeks now flushing with a light fairy dusting of bright fucking tomato red. "Sorry!" she yelped, hitting some high note outside of what she usually used, at least around him. "You were— it was just— you were still bleeding!"

"Huh?" He scrubbed at his own cheek, wincing at the way it stung, but unlike earlier, his hands came up clean. "Let me see your hand," he said, grabbing for her wrist.

She squealed and jumped back a foot, clutching her hand to her chest.

His eyes grew wide with realization. "Oh, shit, sorry— please," he added. "Can I see your hand?"

Jirou made a low noise of mistrust, regarding him the way he expected a wild animal would, but even when he backed off with his hands in the air, she took the step forward and held her hand out to him, palm up, to reveal a thin, orangey-red swipe of blood on her thumb.

Denki snorted, delighted and amused that she was so worried over something so small, it rapidly approached insignificant to nonexistent. "That's nothing," he said. "When I was in seventh grade, I had to get six staples in my head because I fell down skateboarding."

Jirou paused wiping his blood off on her jeans to give him a bug-eyed look that lasted for approximately two seconds before falling away in favor of a, "that makes sense" kind of look. "I'm assuming that most of your common sense bled out of your skull from that," she said.

Denki shrugged, then started skipping down the trail. "Who knows?" he asked.

He heard Jirou's footsteps scraping against the ground as she jogged to catch up to him, then fell in step with him as he dropped the skips. She didn't say anything, but he missed their little talks, so he started one up again.

"I'm glad we could hang out again. It's been a while, huh?"

(He was so busy looking ahead, at the pretty, blue sky, that he missed the way she looked at him.)

They still hadn't caught up with Bakugou, or Kirishima, or any of their other friends by the time they made it up to Mirror Lake, though there was evidence that they were following in their footsteps. The footprints with the thick, blocky K in the middle. The little arch made of tiny rocks by the water. The loopy dicks drawn in the sand, and the stick discarded not too far away.

It was a pretty lake. The water was tranquil, working as an actual mirror to the trees and blue sky in the distance, and the few parts that weren't actively reflecting the light were startlingly clear. Like, Denki hadn't previously believed that bottled water came straight from mountain springs, but maybe, looking at the water here, you could have fooled him.

(He knew better, though. Animals peed; he knew that.)

Tragically, he had about two minutes to appreciate it all and catch his breath before Jirou checked the time and had to grab him by the hood, saying that they were about to be late to lunch. Denki was sure to get a blurry selfie with the back of Jirou's head before stumbling after her, a gesture that had her rolling her eyes at him, but he valiantly defended his actions under the arguments of YOLO and memories.

"Hey, so, remember how we met?" Denki cheerfully asked after a spell. This conversation might as well happen, right? They hadn't talked about soulmates since the day they met back in July; maybe it was time to bring it up again.

Jirou gave him a bizarre look. "You tried to ask me to Homecoming," she said with a fantastic degree of confidence for someone so incorrect. "I said no, 'cause you were a weirdo, but then it turned out we have Lang together, and I…" She stopped suddenly.

For a second, Denki thought they had stumbled across a wild bear or something. Maybe a real live cougar, the first one he'd ever met aside from Miss Kayama the drama teacher. But as he rounded the bend after her, there was nothing, not even a cool stag or anything. stag or anything.

He waved a hand in front of her face. "What's up?" he asked.

"Huh?" Jirou shook out her head and jumped backwards, evidently startled. She blinked owlishly at him for a second or two, then quickly shifted into a scowl. "Nothing," she half-snapped, half yelped. She started walking again, picking up the pace this time.

Denki trotted after her, wondering just what was cycling through her head. Was she still mad at him? Had that come back? It would have made sense; it would be kind of hard to ignore just whatever it was he did that resulted in six-ish solid weeks of ghosting.

He flicked his eyes downwards at her, expecting to see some sort of, oh, he didn't know, maybe a pair of sharpened earphone jacks pointed threateningly in his direction. There was nothing of the sort, of course, not even the vague sense that if it were possible, it would be happening.

She was simmering, he could tell, but in what emotion, he could not fully identify. Irritation? Anger? Embarrassment? Whatever it was, it didn't feel like it was directed at him. That was a good sign.

"Hey, do you ever think about your soulmate?" he asked as he parkoured over a rock to skip a hairpin turn in the trail. He skidded to a stop just before the packed dirt ended, then turned around and flashed Jirou a grin, his hands on his hips.

Jirou looked at him like he'd just challenged her to a d-d-d-d-d- duel. (Which he was absolutely one hundred percent down for, except for the fact that he'd left his Yu-Gi-Oh! cards in his suitcase and weren't on his person at the moment.) She took a few steps back (Denki took a step or two to the side, seeing where this was going), then a running start, and leapt over to where he stood, casually saying, "Yeah, sometimes," in response to his question as she did so.

Denki felt like his heart flatlined as he watched her roughly brush the dust and dirt off her clothes, and— if he could be allowed to be a shitty male romance writer for a second— when she looked him in the eye with a fiery defiance, it was like he'd gotten his heartbeat jumpstarted with one of those uh… electric… things?

(He was an eloquent man, he swore; it was just hard to sound cool when his brain was short-circuiting from the combination of falling in love all over again and, like, hormones, probably.)

"Do you ever, uhh, do you ever, like, think about the shit about how being soulmates works?" he asked, fumbling to get his tongue untied. He started walking backwards, as though his brain literally wanted him to start backpedaling. "Like, is the music thing like wi-fi? Do you think if you go far away enough, it'll just turn to this krrrshhh-k-k-k-krrrshhhh static in your head for a while before it just poofs out until you get back in range?"

Jirou cracked her neck and started walking after him. "I dunno," she answered. "I don't think I can answer that. My soulmate goes to our school; I'm pretty sure they're in our band— although, I haven't found them yet."

"Why not?" Denki asked.

"No time," Jirou loftily replied. "Busy with classes and band and stuff. I don't have time to sit down and investigate soul bonds and shit."

"Okay, but there's like, what? Forty-ish people in our year in band?" Denki argued.

"Well, maybe I don't want to. Have you ever thought of that, Pikachu?" One of them stepped on a twig, and the sharp crack! that resulted only served to further punctuate her snappish tone.

There was silence, and she sighed. It calmed him down a little, but his shoulders remained tense. (He fucked up he fucked up he fucked up hadn't he?)

"Sorry. You don't deserve half the shit I throw your way," she sighed, staring up at the sky. "Junior year's just really stressful already." Another pause, and this time, Denki looked up at the sky, too, to look at the tops of the impossibly tall trees against the clouds. "I wouldn't mind if my soulmate came up to me, though, and told me we were soulmates."

This was his shot, Denki knew, but for some reason, he wanted to let it slip by. He wanted to savor the information, repeat it to himself under his breath, and let it sink in. It felt like the kind of moment he wanted to keep forever somehow, like in a snow globe or something, never moving forward, but preserved perfectly as it was.

Of course, he wanted to keep moving forward.

Just not yet.

He wanted to keep playing this game a little while longer.

Not even a few hours later, Denki regretted not telling Jirou that they were soulmates when he had the chance. What the fuck was he thinking when they were hiking? That he wanted to preserve the moment? Fuck off, man; the moment felt more like a twisted knife to the gut when he thought about it now, watching her from afar.

He was jealous. There was no other way of putting it! He hated that there was no other word for how he was feeling, but he was jealous! Of what, you may ask. What was there for him to be jealous of? Well…

Denki latched onto his friends' arms as he stared at Jirou from afar. Was he being weird about it? He didn't know. It didn't seem like she noticed anyway, she was so absorbed in conversation with Bakugou.

She had been since lunchtime, practically; he and Kiri sat practically right across the aisle from her, and while he, Kaminari Denki, actually sat directly across from her, the conversation didn't really involve him. (Or Kiri, so they spent the bus ride down the mountain talking between the gaps in the seats, but that was beside the point.)

He hadn't meant to stare at her, either. He just wanted to wander around the greasy strip mall in which Mr. Aizawa had set them all loose, cackling about the "domesticated rocks" Kirishima now carried around in his pockets or whatever with his friends. It was just by chance that he glanced into the Hot Topic as they passed it by and saw her dragging a nervous, flustered Kouda around with her and a surprisingly excited-looking Bakugou.

And the sight made him stop, not because he wanted to, but because he found he couldn't do anything else. It made his guts wrench and hiss and protest and want to throw up that really good burger he had for dinner half an hour before. He swallowed the feeling down, though, because it was irrational and stupid. He knew that.

But feelings were just like that, irrational and stupid.

He was jealous, and he felt like shit.

Because really, could he ever make her that happy?

Author's Note xx. hey hi it's been a while please do not actually do any off-trail hiking you might accidentally jump off a cliff.

anyway it's been a while and it will be a while again until the next update bc i'm STILL not done w/m21.
to be vague, the times are changing, but i'll do my best to finish this series. however, truth be told, updates will become more reliant on the scale of audience feedback than before.

i chose "lay all your love on me" by abba to kind of convey that feeling of i guess jealousy? from kaminari.
we're very close to finding out what happened btwn the two of them back in december. i wanted to try to get to that chapter for THIS december but we'll have to see. i get a lot less productive after daylight savings hahaha.

anyway that's all for now. follow me on tumblr (a-piece-of-shipping-trash) to get a taste of the ~changing times~ i mentioned earlier, leave a review, and stay safe out there

Happening Concurrently: Rhythm 13
Next Chronologically: Moment 21 | Rhythm 14