#cooldowns

The site is green and overgrown now. It’s been five long years since the fight that left a crater in the city ten blocks wide. The greenery does what it’s always done, swallows slowly all traces of things man-made. But still in ragged points, the remnants jut up like an ever-reaching hand, scooping acres of saplings and piles of rotting leaves in hollows of torn concrete. Whole buildings ripped up and transported here, at Izuku’s behest, now lay in ruins, crumbled or kicked open, leaving skeletal steel rebar woven through with weeds and vines.

Cementoss raises a three-story likeness from the rubble: Deku with his mask thrown back, one cleated boot propped heroically on a fallen I-beam. The eyes are harder than they ought to be, and the freckles are all misplaced, but it’s close enough to drop Inko to her knees with wet and ugly sobs. Katsuki has learned enough by now to take her in his arms and wait, to talk low and gentle if at all, to hold the grief with her as though it’s him who wielded All Might’s strength.

He breaks once Inko’s escort takes her well and away from the memorial, once almost everybody else has gone home. He breaks when Denki touches his shoulder and says,

“It’s time to go, Kacc—“

he breaks right as he’s breaking Denki’s nose, and he wants to say don’t you dare call me that, not now, not here, not ever again, but all that comes out is a garbled scream. He falls to the ground at Izuku’s feet and sobs harder than he has in years, harder than the night they sucked each other’s blood from their own ragged knuckles and brokered the shaky truce that Katsuki thought would last the rest of their lives.

Maybe it lasted the rest of his life.

The thought brings a wave of fresh, full-body sobs, and everyone but Eijirou leaves him to splinter under the weight of his own grief.

“H-he’ll be back.”

“I know,” Eijirou says, steady hands and steady voice and Katsuki collapses against him, saying

“He’s coming back, I know it.”

and

“He fuckin promised he would come back.”

and

“He’s a shithead but he’s not a liar, Eiji, he promised he would—“

and Eijirou is smiling, something half-mad in his eyes, and says,

“You really want him back.”

It’s more than want, it’s desperation; and Eijirou knows, because he says then:

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: