Chapter Text
We lovers never say goodbye
We lovers never die
We stop and go so quietly
Cold lovers fade away
Part I - Kyouka
The harsh, jagged sound of Joan Jett shakes through the speakers in Kyouka’s room, maddened lyrics and pandemonium guitar riffs rattle the necklaces hung on tacks over her sticker-covered mirror. Kyouka knows that it’s probably a little too early for music this loud, but it’s Joan , and she knows that her dad will understand. There are just some songs that aren’t meant to be listened to on low volume.
I think of you every night and day, Joan gripes, frustration clinging to her cadence, you took my heart then you took my pride away-ay-ay-ay
Kyouka shoves her face into her pillow, bracing herself for the chorus, her foot swinging along to the beat.
I hate myself for loving you, can’t break free from the things that you do
And god, fucking damn, does she ever relate to those words. She knows that she’s a fucking loser, but she really thought that with a week left of high school before graduation that she’d at least have made some progress on her stupid useless love life.
She turns over dramatically, staring at the plastic stick-on glow stars at her ceiling before she sings along: ” I want to run but I walk back to you, that’s why I hate myself for loving you!”
“Jesus Christ, Kyou,” calls a voice from her doorway that definitely does not belong to her father. She startles, gasping loudly. “You’re really not coping well with the senioritis, are you?”
Kyouka sits up and scrambles for her phone, touching the pause button on her home screen before turning to face the intruder. It’s Denki Kaminari, leaning against the splintered wood of her door frame, watching her suffering with a raised eyebrow and a know-it-all smirk.
“Dude,” Kyouka snaps, throwing one of her stuffed animals towards his head. He catches it easily, laughing. “You need to fucking knock.”
He shrugs, crossing the room and tossing Mr. Fluffikins back onto her bed. “I heard Joan and figured it was a cry for help.”
Which, fair. But still. She doesn’t remember even asking Denki to come over today.
“Leave me alone.” Kyouka hits the play button and lays back on her pillow, letting the sharp sound of Joan’s rock and roll fill the space between them once more.
Denki clicks his tongue and snatches the phone from Kyouka’s hand, shutting it off just before the good part. Kyouka protests, but Denki holds the phone out of her reach with his stupid tallness and backs away towards the doorway.
“No,” Denki says, smiling. “No way, dude. This is our last week as high schoolers and I am not going to let you turn this into some fucking lesbian cry fest. We have four days before we’re officially adults, no longer bound by the shackles of grade school.”
Good , Kyouka thinks, turning over to groan into her pillow, The sooner I get out of here the better.
Kyouka has just over 96 hours until she boards a bus to Tokyo to start her summer pre-program at her dream college. 96 hours until the three fucking years of torture are over once and for all and she can finally get started on her actual life.
“I made a list,” Denki says, ignoring the fact that Kyouka flipped him off from where she’s laying in her bed. “And you are going to help me complete it.”
“What?” Kyouka says, turning over again to glare at her idiot friend.
“I said, I made a list.” He doesn’t offer any further explanation. Instead, he unlocks her phone and puts on Bicycle by Queen, knowing that she really fucking hates that song.
“If you want your phone back, you’re going to have to follow me into the garage,” Denki tells her, walking down the hallways as the fucking terrible sound of Freddie Mercury’s worst song booms from her speakers. “I’ve already called the guys and they’re on their way over. This is an emergency meeting.”
Kyouka doesn’t have time to ask what could possibly count as an “emergency” before she’s pulling on her converse and stomping down the stairs.
*.*.*.*.*
“What the fuck do you mean you ‘ made a list’ ?” Katsuki growls from where he’s perched on top of one of the amps in Kyouka’s garage. He’s holding his drumsticks like weapons, pointed dangerously in Denki’s direction.
“I mean, I made a list , idiot.” Denki steps into the middle of the room and makes a dramatic display of reaching into his pocket to pull out a wrinkled piece of lined paper. He holds it up, eyebrows shooting to his hairline, as if he’s awaiting some sort of awed response from his audience.
There’s a beat of silence, and then Fumikage sighs loudly. “Denki, if you’re going to make a show out of this, you can at least tell us what you’re talking about.”
Denki places a hand on his chest, his mouth opening in shock, clearly affronted by the attitudes of his friends.
“I’m talking about us, guys, and all of the shit we still haven’t done in high school.” Denki waves the list again, and Kyouka squints to try to make out any of the words scribbled down in sharpie. “I’m talking about The Losers Club, and one last hurrah before we all go our separate ways after graduation on Friday.”
There’s something earnest in his voice, like this is something he’s given a lot of thought to. Their little gang of misfits was pretty much the only thing that kept Kyouka sane throughout high school and she’s thankful for the roles they all played in her life. Sure, The Losers Club only played like, one gig during their three year run. And sure, maybe that one gig was Fumikage’s sister’s sixteenth birthday party, but still. It felt like they were working towards something for the last three years and that has to count for something.
Band practices were never really about booking gigs or trying to make CDs to sell. They were about hanging out with friends in Kyouka’s garage, sucking down cigarettes and sneaking beers from her dad’s stash. Kyouka looks away from Denki where he’s watching her with pleading eyes, and focuses instead on a cigarette burn on the faded couch cushion that she’s sitting on. She doesn’t remember when it happened or how it got there, but she’s pretty sure they were laughing when it happened.
“You called us over here for this shit?” Katsuki sneers, throwing one of his drumsticks into the air and catching it in a flip. “What a load of garbage.”
Denki glares at him. “It’s not garbage,” he says. “I’m serious, guys. Don’t you want to leave Yueii with some kind of legacy?”
No one says anything, so Denki continues: “Look, let me just read it. You guys can decide if you want to help me or not, but I sort of made this with you guys in mind, so.”
He clears his throat and smooths out the paper. “The Losers Club’s Wicked Awesome Bucket List,” he reads, his goofy fucking grin splitting his face apart.
Kyouka snorts. “Dude, that is like, the longest title ever.”
“Hey,” Denki snaps, shooting a glare in her direction this time. “I’m trying to read it, so I’m going to need you to shut the fuck up.”
Kyouka puts her hands up in mock surrender and leans back into the springy couch cushions. She gestures for him to continue.
“Number one: play a real gig. Like, a real one that’s not some sixteen year-old’s birthday party. A gig with people and a crowd and like, cheering and shit.” When no one says anything, he keeps going. “Number two: get invited to a party. How the fuck is it that we’ve never been invited to a party and we’re seniors?”
Fumikage shrugs. “I mean, our band’s name is ‘The Losers Club’.”
“Touche,” says Denki with a nod in his direction. “But that’s not the point. We have four days left to be invited to a party and luckily for us, it’s fucking graduation week so there’s like seven hundred bajillion parties happening all over town this week, so. Yeah. We’re getting invited to something, even if it kills us. Number three: play spin the bottle, easy. A staple in the high school experience that we haven’t done yet. Number four—”
“This is literally the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard,” Katsuki half-shouts, rolling his eyes.
“Number four: get laid. Look man, this one can be any of us. I’m pretty sure we’re the only four virgins left in that entire fucking school, and I’m including the freshman. One of us needs to get laid before we graduate so we can have — number five: brag about getting laid.”
“Well that one’s easy,” Katsuki says, and Kyouka can’t help but smirk in anticipation. “I’ve already done that.”
Denki, bless his soul, turns to gape at Katsuki. “What? When?”
Katsuki shrugs. “The other night.”
“Dude!” Denki stares. “You didn’t tell us?”
“Yeah man, I fucked your mom the other night. I thought she would have told you over breakfast or something.”
Kyouka and Fumikage both burst into laughter.
Denki rolls his eyes. “Ha ha, very fucking funny. But we all know that you wouldn’t fuck anyone other than Izuku Midoriya, and since he doesn’t give a shit about you—"
“Hey man—” Kyouka starts, but Katsuki is already on his feet.
“Fuck you,” Katsuki spits, holding his drumstick dangerously. “Don’t you fucking go there.”
Denki folds pretty easily, backing down almost immediately. “Fuck, dude, you’re right,” he says, “Sorry.”
Katsuki huffs and falls back down, crossing his arms over his chest. Izuku is sort of a… sensitive subject. Most of the time they no better than to tease Katsuki about it, especially considering that none of them are any better off about their stupid crushes.
“But since none of us have actually had sex with anyone, those two stay on the list. Number six: graffiti something. We have yet to leave our mark on anything in the city, and as the class delinquents, I think we’re doing a shitty job.”
Kyouka nods at that one because, yeah, that’s fair. Katsuki seems to have run out of patience, because he stalks across the room and takes the list from Denki’s hand.
“Hey!” he protests, but Katsuki just pushes him away and smooths it out for the others to see.
- Play a REAL gig
- Get invited 2 a party
- Get laid ;)
- BRAG about getting laid
- Play spin da bottle
- Graffiti public property
- Get drunk somewhere other than Kyouka’s garage
- Have a run in with the law
- Sneak out
- Sign the wall
“Alright,” Kyouka says after a minute, once she’s sure that everyone’s seen it. “So just those ten things?”
Denki nods from where he’s sitting on the floor. “Yeah. Ten things. Four days. Four of us. I think we can handle it, don’t you?”
Kyouka runs her finger along number ten, pausing in the middle. “Sign the wall,” she whispers, loud enough for them to hear her.
“Yeah,” says Denki. His tone changes, just a little. “We deserve a chance to sign it, too. Fuck Shigaraki if he thinks he can stop us from what’s ours.”
A tense silence fills the space between them. This list is mostly a joke, with half of the things being pretty close to some kind of illegall and the others being just plain stupid, but…
“I don’t know,” Kyoua says, stepping back. “It could be fun.”
Katsuki glances down at Denki and huffs a breath. Kyouka waits for Katsuki to write it off and say how fucking stupid all of this is, but he doesn’t. He just sort of… stares, his eyes doing that thing that they do when he’s thinking too hard.
“Whatever,” Katsuki says finally, dropping the list and stomping back over to his favorite spot on top of Kyouka’s amp.
Denki catches the list and glances between the other three people in the room nervously. “Whatever as in…?”
Katsuki clicks his tongue. “Whatever as in, I’ll fuckin do it.”
Kyoua feels excitement uncurl a little in her belly, a nervous, intriguing thing. They’d really spent the last three years of their lives doing absolutely nothing, trying as hard as they could to stay off the radar and just fucking coast through high school in order to stay the fuck alive. It’s only now that Kyouka realizes that they were never really living.
“If Katsuki’s in, I am too,” she says, feeling the smile on her face tugging at the corners of her lips. Denki looks up at her like she just agreed to like, fucking marry him or some shit. He looks over at Fumikage with big pouty puppy-dog eyes.
Fumikage sighs and crosses his arms over his chest. “If The Losers Club is going to try to book one last show before Kyouka leaves for Tokyo, how could I possibly say no?”
“Yeah!” Denki shoots to his feet, buzzing with so much excitement it’s practically electric. He throws open Kyouka’s garage door (the one that leads to her kitchen where her father is trying to enjoy his cereal) and calls: “Alexa! Play ‘Can’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen!”
“Denki,” Kyouka’s father says, dropping his spoon with a splash into his cereal. “Don’t, wait, Alexa—”
But it’s too late.
The sound of Freddie Mercury bursts fills the space between them, clinging to their smiles and setting something bright inside of them on fire. Katsuki hops off of the amp and slides into the stool in front of his drum set, spinning his sticks before he falls into rhythm with Roger Taylor, effortlessly like it’s just something he was born knowing how to do.
And that’s how they end up agreeing to the craziest week of their entire lives.