You, if ever there was one - Jirou & Bakugou
AO3 link
There’s a beauty in simplicity, Katsuki thinks as he watches his friends eat lunch.
The quiet regularity of Jirou’s black-lacquered nails as she drums on the stiff leather of her skirt. She’s got one ear plugged into her smartphone, head bobbing gently to a music only she can hear.
He traces the soft curve of her cheek with his eye, watches her mouth twitch and purse, tongue tapping against her bottom teeth as she hums a line against the backtrack.
“So the bridge is like,” she says, humming a few bars, “and then if you come at the last two like,” she says, fingers tapping rapid against the table now.
“Nah, kid, like this,” he says, drumming a faster and more complex rhythm, layers of syncopation and a simulated kick as he trips back down to regular time. “Then you come back with that intro lick and something like—yeah, kid, keep going—“
He scans the table, privately self-conscious, but everyone is eating and joking and Mina is laughing so loudly that he’s almost afraid Jirou won’t hear as he hums a pretty little harmony beneath her. But her face lights up and her free jack does a quiver in mid air, an almost-annotation on an invisible staff, and Katsuki can’t help himself, he grins.
“Get this,” he says, “what if we had a cello pick up that harmony when the drop comes.”
Jirou nods, obviously, it’s a great idea, but then, with a frown:
“Nobody here plays cello.”
“I do, dummy,” Katsuki says, dropping his eyes like he’s embarrassed to admit it.
“Like, well?” she says, incredulous and a vaguely pleased, but Katsuki’s pride surges up like a wave in him.
“You think I can’t? Get up, I’ll fuckin show you.”
He knocks over Sero’s orange juice when he jerks Jirou up by the wrist, and some mottled shouts follow them, but Katsuki can’t hear, his heart is beating so hard it makes his ears ring.
“Fuckin chill,” Jirou says, though she’s laughing and breathless.
“Hurry up, ears. We ain’t got much time.”
They skip-run back to the dorms and book it up to the fifth floor, and Jirou stumbles once or twice but he catches her each time. And once they’re alone in his room, it occurs to him that he’s never had a girl in his room, not here and not at home either. But Jirou is kicking off her boots and perching on his bed with an expectant look on her face, so he rosins up his bow and sits down.
And he plays the courante from Bach’s G major suite, and he plays it ruthless and fast and skipping up and down the strings, and he takes the repeats because Jirou’s eyes are wide and unbelieving, lips parted around a silent sigh.
He finishes with a flourish and kicks out his legs, flushed and panting with the effort.
“Sounds like shit on a carbon fiber instrument,” he says, tapping the bow against the body. “But explodo hands, so.”
“It does not,” Jirou says, swallowing around the husk in her voice, “it, it sounds good.”
And her eyes are so pretty with that cast of admiration, and he can see the music unfolding behind them. And he sees her whole for the first time, sees her new, from her messy hair to her pointy knees, slim and compact and cute, something boyish in the narrow set of her hips. And he thinks, he thinks that maybe, if there ever was a girl, it would probably be her.
“C’mon, kid,” he says as he locks his case. “Time to go to class.”
She slips her hand in his on the way back to campus (and her hand is so small, so soft, he thinks, how can she possibly play so well with such tiny hands), and he lets her take the lead. And when he takes his seat, she smiles at him with a sideways softness, and he knows then that it’s mutual, that he’s not alone, and it fills him with a queer comfort. He hears it loud and clear, the message in her eyes, their own secret counterpoint:
if ever there was one—then you.