Chapter Text
Jirou lounged back against the pillows of her bed slowly making her way through the day's homework. At the end of her bed, Bakugou's blond tufts stuck up just over the edge of the purple bedspread. Music thrummed through her room, quiet and unassuming as to not disturb their studying.
Normal business as usual.
She couldn't exactly remember when this had started, Bakugou knocking on her door to study and the pair of them sitting in companionable silence with only music to fill the space. Sometimes they discussed her music choice of the day or something that didn't make sense on their homework, but mostly, they were silent. Their time together was probably the only times Jirou saw Bakugou do anything quietly. It was relieving and honestly a breath of fresh air, and she thought that maybe it was the same for him.
Bakugou huffed, and there was the soft clatter of his glasses hitting the table as she finally glanced up from her book. His head was leaned back against the bed, heels of his palms pressed into his eyes. Silently, his lips moved, but they weren't moving along to the words of what they were listening to.
Reaching over, she turned down the volume on her radio to near silent. “What's the matter?”
“My soulmate,” Bakugou ground out, pressing palms into his eyes harder, “Keeps singing the same song over and over again. Fucking annoying.”
“What's the song?”
'If you're gonna tell them everything/tell them I'm a good kisser./Tell them all things you told me/in your desperate whisper./If you're gonna tell them everything/don't leave out the good part./Tell them the way that you broke my heart/when you told me that your missed her./Tell them I'm a good kisser!' Bakugou's voice was a pleasant warm rumble through the room.
Jirou wasn't sure how many people knew, but he had a great singing voice. Not as rough around the edges as his regular speaking voice, but more smooth like an old time jazz singer. She'd never admit it out loud, not to Bakugou at least, but she loved listening to him sing and often goaded him into it. In her room, he sang more freely than when they were outside which was just another plus to this weird arrangement that they had.
It was good that his singing voice was nice though because his soulmate, whoever they may be, had a habit of singing for hours on end. Sometimes Bakugou could resist the pull, clench his jaw against the words trying to roll off his own tongue. Other times, he either didn't have the energy to fight it or just didn't care, and let them flow. When he was in her room, he rarely tried to force them down.
"Over and over and over again," Bakugou growled, still in the same position as before, "Like the song doesn't have any other lyrics or something."
"I've heard it before. I think they just like those lyrics. Maybe it's stuck in their head."
"Fucking fantastic."
Jirou smiled, reaching over to pat his spikes. He growled at her, but didn't move as she swung her legs over the side. “Is it really that annoying?”
Again, Bakugou growled. When he dropped his hands, it was only to reach for her music player on her bedside table. “Enough to need something to drown out the little fuck. Can't believe he's listening to something so annoying. I don't think it's stuck in his head, I just think he put it on replay.” He scrolled through her playlist before clicking out and going to the list of music they'd made together.
That was another thing that had become common, and it had happened after the music festival. Making music together. Unbeknownst to the others, Bakugou could rap and seemed to prefer it, though she'd gotten him to duet with her a couple times. His voice filled her room as he turned up the volume on the stereo.
“He?” Jirou asked curiously. She stretched her arms high over her head, back popping from neck to waist. “Do you know who it is?”
Bakugou ducked his head back towards his book, but she knew he was lying when his ears blushed red. “No, how the fuck would I know that for sure? It just wouldn't make any sense if my soulmate were a chick seeing as I'm gay.”
Jirou hummed, but thought about how soulmates weren't always exclusively romantic. They could be platonic. Kaminari and she had proven that when they'd figured out they were soulmates.
People could also have multiple soulmates, and Kaminari had proven that when he'd started singing someone else's song and she hadn't been compelled to join him. That had been a very strange and confusing day, but they'd figured it out. Kaminari was still looking for his second soulmate, but it didn't stop him from singing Jirou's song with her.
“A plausible reason,” she said, slipping her slippers on, “Do you want anything? I'm going to get a drink from downstairs.”
"The watermelon lemonade I made earlier.”
“Sure thing.” As she left the room, she heard Bakugou start in with the song he'd put on. She rolled her eyes, and closed the door.
Downstairs, her classmates were clustered in the living room laughing wildly. Stepping up beside Kaminari, she raised an eyebrow. “What's going on?”
Wiping a tear from beneath an eye, Kaminari gasped. “Midoriya's soulmate has got him spitting bars. It wouldn't be so funny if it were just normal rapping, but-” Another peel of laughter fell from his mouth, and he wrapped his arms around his stomach.
Jirou raised an eyebrow, and stepped closer to get a good look at Midoriya. His face was red from forehead to chin, mouth moving rapidly as he shielded his face with his arms. Her eyebrows jumped higher as she finally caught the words.
'Let me just tell you something/You don't want to fuck with me./Imma be number one cause bitch that's all that I can see./King of the UA/Everybody knows that I'm a G/Everybody knows that I will be/Top of the class/No rivalry-' He clamped his lips shut, but after a moment, the words were spilling out again. 'What I gotta do to prove I'm in another league?/I get stronger as I go/Don't give a fuck about fatigue./I'm a warrior without a challenge-' Curling in on himself, Midoriya hid his head between his knees. His words went muffled, and Jirou finally stepped away towards the kitchen.
Rushing, she grabbed two glasses and the jug of watermelon lemonade before booking it back upstairs. There was absolutely no way that Midoriya and Bakugou were soulmates. There was just no way. It was ludicrous to think about, to even consider. What kind of sick joke would that be for the universe to bind the two of them like that?
She bumped her door open with her hip and paused in the doorway to hear Bakugou still going for it. The song had changed, but a quick plug of her jack into the floor told her Midoriya's words still matched up perfectly with Bakugou's. She felt dizzy with the new revelations, confused even. It just didn't make any kind of sense.
Swallowing, she set the glasses and jug on the table. “Have you ever thought that your soulmate might be embarrassed when you rap? You're songs aren't exactly... clean.”
Bakugou glanced up, pausing.
Through the floor, she heard Midoriya let out a grateful sigh.
“Has my soulmate ever thought that maybe I get embarrassed when he makes me sing Ariana Grande or Blackpink for hours on end? Tic for tak.” He waved off her concern, glancing down at his papers again. “He'll be fine.”
Jirou rolled her eyes and poured herself as glass of the lemonade. “Oh, I'm sure. They'd have to be able to take a lot to deal with you.”
Bakugou's head jerked up. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what is sounds like.” She grinned, and he flipped her off.
…..
After that, Jirou made a habit of paying more attention to the pair more than normal. She wasn't normally one to insert herself into her classmates' business mainly because she didn't want them in hers. She was making an exception for these two, determined to figure out 1) how they couldn't have possibly realized it yet and 2) how it was even possible. They were the bad kind of opposites. They still barely got along, even after everything they'd been through. Their tolerance of each other had to do with necessity rather than want. They couldn't even agree on a drink to buy from the vending machine.
She'd watched an argument breakout between them when Midoriya offered to split a drink with Bakugou on one of the hotter summer days, but they'd never even made it to pushing coins into the machine before storming away from each other. She didn't understand it, but she wanted to.
So she started to pay attention. Neither of them had a habit of singing during the school day, both staying relatively quiet except to talk to friends or answer a question in class. Neither of them even hummed. During the day, there wasn't even a peep of musical notes.
At night when they were back at the dorms was a different story all together.
Jirou would often walk downstairs to find Midoriya and Bakugou whispering the words to the same song under their breath on opposite sides of the common room. Or pass each other with their headphones in, one singing loudly while the other's mouth barely moved. Or eating at dinner with someone playing music, and one would start singing followed closely by the other. Or Bakugou would be sitting on her bedroom floor singing along to something slow that had come on, and she would plug her headphone into the floor to hear Midoriya crooning the same song on the floor below.
It was honestly maddening. Now that she was paying attention, it felt incredibly obvious what they were. There was a voice in her head screaming at her to tell them, to reveal the truth to them, but even though she was invested, she was unwilling to meddle to that degree.
Leaning against the edge of her balcony late one night, she didn't notice the two bodies slipping across the lawn. It was late enough that the lawn was dark, all of the lights on the bottom floor turned off as well as the girls' side of the building. The sky was moonless, the dark expanse punched through with numerous stars and beautiful to a fault.
It was the only reason Jirou was still awake. Her eyes were trained on the sky, watching shooting stars pass in a never ending shower.
So, no, she didn't see the two bodies stopping in the middle of the lawn or fanning out the blanket that had been bundled under an arm or lying down side by side with their hands twined between them. She did hear them though, hear the first beginning threads of song. A quiet humming in the dark.
Jirou's eyes jerked down, easily finding the dark shapes in the grass below.
“Deku,” a second voice growled without heat, “You know I'm not a fan of that song.”
Midoriya's voice floated up from the darkness, soft and coaxing. “But I like singing it with you. Just once. Please?”
After a pause, Bakugou grumbled, “Fine, but you can't complain about what I choose next. And no crying this time.”
Midoriya's reply was to start up his humming again, a light gentle tune that after a moment, Bakugou picked up with his deeper base. Their voices were a harmony Jirou didn't think they could achieve, Bakugou with the deep smoothness of his singing voice and Midoriya's tentative but strong tenor. Listening to them was like watching a romance at the exact moment the main characters fell in love.
Their words filled the night, gentle and twining. 'If I could begin to be/half of what you think of me/I could about anything/I could even learn how to love./When I see the way you act/wondering when I'm coming back/I could do about anything/I could even learn how to love/like you-' Midoriya's happy little chirp of a laugh cut into their words, even as Bakugou kept going. 'I always thought/I might be bad/now I'm sure that its true!/'Cause I think you're so good/and I'm nothing like you!/Look at you go!/I just adore you!/I wish that I knew!' Midoriya jumped in, their voices twining together again if a little choked. 'What makes you think I'm so special.'
Jirou felt heat press in at the backs of eyes, and she pressed a hand over her mouth to muffle her sniffle.
Bakugou's voice dropped away, and this time Midoriya sang as his voice trembled with obvious tears. 'If I could begin to do/something that does right by you/I would do about anything/I would even learn how to love./When I see the way you look/shaken by how long it took/I could do about anything/I could even learn how to love/like you. Love like you~'
Again, Bakugou joined in, and she could hear just how tight his throat had gotten as his voice deepened. 'Even though I can't compare/and I'm sorry if I stare/I just want to do everything./Maybe I could even learn how to love./ People say/this love is wrong/but all I want is to belong./I could say without any doubt/everyone should learn how to love/like you/love like you/love like you~'
They trailed off, and after a time, Bakugou whispered, “This is why I don't like singing this song. You always end up crying at the end.” In the darkness, she could just barely make out one form pulling the other in close.
“I'm sorry. I just love listening to you sing it. It makes me happy.”
“I know, that's why I do it even if I don't want to.”
'Holy shit.' Jirou's thoughts were a scatter of confusion and elation. On the one side, she was happy that they were together, that they knew about each other. On the other side, she was so incredibly confused on how they hid it so well. And on one last side, she was a little embarrassed to still be standing on her balcony listening to their private moment together. 'I should go inside. I should forget about this. I should congratulate Bakugou tomorrow about it.' She had too many thoughts and not enough brain capacity to deal with them at the moment.
Midoriya hummed, and she heard a barely audible, “I love you, Kacchan.”
'Definitely time to go!' As quickly and quietly as she could, she slipped back into her room and started closing the sliding glass door, but she still caught Bakugou's reply.
“Love you too, 'Zuku.”