Chapter Text
"Aw please, not even just one drink?" Kaminari Denki pleaded into his mobile, other hand buried in his pocket and scarf wrapped around his neck. It was finally December; the trees stood bare and waving in the middle of Tokyo's streets. On his way down to the local bar, he was strolling along in the wake of a chilly sunset. Streetlights started to flicker on, and store lights began to illuminate.
"You said that last week!" he moaned down the phone. "And the week before that, and the week before that! Look, I'm almost there. Do you want me to save you a seat or not?"
A muffled sigh emanated from the speaker, to which Kaminari jumped on the spot. "Sweet!! I knew you'd come around sooner or later! See you in 10?"
After getting hung up on, he flipped his phone shut and stuffed it back into his jacket, and walked with a new spring in his step. His high school friend and up-and-coming hero, Jirou Kyouka, had finally caved in and agreed to go out for a drink to catch up. Though it had only been a few months, they felt more like years to him. She had always seemed to tag along with his group, eventually being pulled in and embraced as a fully fledged member, but between finding new work in the field and paying for an apartment in the city, Jirou hadn't given herself the time to keep in touch. Granted, Bakugou and Kirishima never read the chat that much anymore either, but Sero, Mina and Kaminari made it work still. Regardless, Kaminari had found himself missing Jirou a bit more than he thought he would after they parted ways. Though they had been close friends at school (in which "close" means "being on the receiving end of all kinds of jokes"), he had never really taken the time to try and deepen their relationship, much to his disappointment. Imagining all the things they could've done during school, Kaminari almost wandered straight past the bar he had arranged to meet her in, and ducked inside, out of the cold.
Ordering a vodka and Red Bull, he sat down on the opposite side of the bar and took off his winter gear. He took a sip and shivered; it had been a while since he'd sat down and had a drink. Without the appeal of social drinking, he had no reason to go out and get drunk, really. It was always so much more fun at the parties he used to hold. Every time, he would forget everything that happened past midnight, apparently ending up not only singing drunken karaoke with Mina, but trying to fight Kirishima in arm wrestles, asking Sero to hang him upside down with tape and see how long he can go without passing out, and finally insisting on powering the speakers up to 20 using his quirk, and passing out. Every time, he remembered waking up, lying on the floor in Jirou's room. Jirou was the only one who refused to get too drunk at these parties, and took it upon herself to, in Bakugou's words, "take the lightweight up to his room and make sure he doesn't screw anything else up, as fucking usual". And so, she spent one of her weekends every few months making sure an extremely hung over Kaminari didn't end up accidentally killing himself. He always seemed to wake up with a new set of clothes next to him, and every time it happened, either his shirt or sweater never found its way back to him.
But before he got the chance to scrutinise his memories and figure out what happened to all that clothing, he saw a rather short figure walk through the doors of the bar.
"I can't, not this week." Jirou Kyouka said into her headset, sat in her living room doing paperwork. Looking out the window, a beautiful red sunset beckoned the coming of night, and with it an even further drop in temperature. Though sat underneath a kotatsu, she shivered in the old sweater she had on and slumped down.
"No. Maybe next week if I find the time, though?" she said, hoping she could weasel her way out of the offer this time. But after the pleading dummy moaned at her that he's basically in the bar already, she sighed and accepted her fate.
"10 minutes my ass. I'll see you in half an hour, you prick." she said, and hung up. Looking out the window, and checking her phone for the weather, she slid under the heated table and groaned.
Jirou hadn't seen Kaminari for a few months now. What with joining a hero agency and moving out at the same time, she hadn't really had much time for the social aspects of life, and had been working pretty much non-stop for the past half a year, trying to support a living. She had muted the group chat, because as much as she wanted to talk to her friends, they'd only go and invite her out for drinks, or try and badger her into seeing a movie or something, and she didn't want to disappoint her old classmates like that. Kaminari, though, was different; he had made a special effort to not leave her alone. After leaving school, she kept in touch for about a month as they found their footing in the pro hero scene; after their debuts, they both found themselves with little time for anything else. Kaminari, though, had decided to stay living with his parents for a little while, and thus had a lot more time to himself. After all, at the minute, he was doing hero work more for the fun of it and a bit of spending money, like most of her class was. As a result, he would try to call her and ask her out for drinks every so often, but had got a no every time. Jirou, amongst not having the time to go out or the money to spend getting drunk, was also kind of dreading seeing her old friend for a very different reason.
She got out of the kotatsu and slipped out of her clothes, shivering as the biting cold of the winter evening snapped at her skin. Tossing them into her wash basket (folding them was too much of a hassle), she looked at the shirts and sweaters available still in her closet. A lot of them were black, some of them adorned with lightning motifs, with the occasional Pikachu or some other electric-type Pokémon plastered all over it. Swiping one off the hanger, she thought back to the days of Kaminari's legendary parties. Legendary, of course, for being loud, obnoxious, and a source of ridicule for his friends over the following months. Every time she remembered he would get totally plastered, and she would take responsibility for, as Mina put it, "her very own electric rodent". Though, she did have... other motives.
Walking out the front door and stopping to curse under her breath at how cold it was, she recalled how she had come to own the jacket she was wearing. At the start of her school career, she was convinced she would leave and find herself a partner outside the walls of U.A., and especially someone who had no idea what she was like when she was 15. But, as time passed and she had to work with Kaminari more and more, she found herself growing fond of him and his airheaded nature. A fondness that eventually grew into an uncomfortable liking, eventually flourishing into a full blown crush. Of course, this made these parties very interesting. Kaminari wasn't the type to flirt with people he knew didn't want it while he was drunk, but he did get endearingly honest about everything, and was a massive lightweight at that. After a few drinks, he would spurt out how much he loved the whole group, before passing out and being carried upstairs to Jirou's room. She took it upon herself to make sure he would be comfortable, which meant getting him a change of clothes, and if he stripped his top half off at all, that meant... well, that meant Jirou kept it for herself.
Jirou slipped into the bar about 20 minutes later, and before she could order a drink or anything, an excited Kaminari got out of his seat and sauntered over. His smile spanned the width of his face and his eyes filled with glee at seeing his old friend.
"Some 10 minutes that was, huh?" he grinned, nudging her by the elbow. "It's nice to see you, late as you may be".
"You want a drinking partner or not?" Jirou replied, deadpan. "And, if you don't mind, I'll have a bottle of cider."
"Aren't you forgetting something?" he said, leaning forward a little.
Resisting the urge to smack him, Jirou replied "...It's nice to see you too."
She got her drink, Kaminari gladly paying, and the pair sat down on a table in the corner. A small couch made a U-shaped booth around an even smaller table, and on it sat the pairs drinks. Kaminari, already a few drinks in, sat slouched on the couch, comfortable as ever, babbling on and on about how he saved a group of ladies the other day.
"I even got a phone number from one of them!" he boasted, proudly. "It's not every day someone has the courage to try and hook up with me, huh?"
"I can't imagine why." Jirou said, trying not to sound all that interested. She sat opposite, leaning back with arms folded. For some reason she couldn't put her finger on, hearing about other girls flirting with Kaminari rubbed her the wrong way. She shuffled in her seat and sipped her cider, trying to push down her bubbling thoughts.
"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Kaminari said, mocking being insulted. "I'd like to see you get close to this beautiful face and not fall head over heels for it."
"Oh yeah?" Jirou replied. "I went to school with it for 3 years and did just fine, didn't I?"
"Then how come you've got some of my clothes?"
Jirou sat up with a start, and looked down at her shirt. A large Pikachu sat printed on the black cotton, and her stomach sank. Of all the times for her to wear one of his old shirts, of ALL the times, it HAD to be going out to drinks with him?!
Zipping up her jacket, Jirou retorted "I- Well, I like Pokémon too, don't I? There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"Of course not!" Kaminari laughed. "Still. I didn't know you were a fan of my fashion choices. You must've seen me wear that years ago though, I lost it at some point and I never found it again. I miss that shirt."
Oh, thank god, she thought to herself. He's an idiot.
Coughing and regaining her composure, she slumped back into the couch. "Just get another one, then. Easy."
"No, but that shirt was special. I got it from my grandmother before she kicked the bucket when I was 12."
"Oh."
Feeling like an insensitive idiot, Jirou reached for her cider and, without thinking, opened her gullet and downed the whole thing. If her conscious couldn't drown out the guilt, alcohol would have to do. She got up and poked Kaminari with her earlobe.
"My round, right?"
Kaminari nodded and handed her his empty glass. As she walked off, he couldn't help but wonder. That shirt she was wearing... It wasn't actually his, right? No, it couldn't be. through school she'd always been so disinterested, and felt strangely distant tonight, too; the idea of her wanting to steal his clothes was absurd. If he had had that thought when he was 16, neck-deep in a crush on her, he would push it further... but nah, best not tonight. He'd only just seen her for the first time in, like, 6 months anyway.
"Hey, Kaminari! Earth to Kaminari? You in there?" Jirou said as she walked back over with two more drinks, and two shots to accompany them.
"Woah, you didn't need to-" he started, but was cut off by her handing him the shot glass.
"Look, you wanted a night out. Do you want to go hard or go home?"
Glancing at her shirt, and then back down at the shot, his mind began to buzz. Between this, the Pikachu, his crush back when he was a kid...
"Ah, fuck it."
And with that, he necked the booze.