Work Text:
Kyouka hated night shifts. Seriously, who decided two in the morning was a good time for a car chase? Like what the hell. Maybe the real villainous act wasn’t the theft or the car chase but the fact it occurred at two in the morning while she was on the night shift.
“Floor it, Nighthide!,” she shouted as she leaned out the passenger window.
Shinsou swerved around a turn with a sharp skidding noise. “Dammit, Earphone Jack, I’m trying! Maybe it’d be easier if you weren’t out the fucking window!”
“Try harder!”
Shinsou muttered something under his breath as he pressed on the accelerator. They were gaining on the other car and were almost in range for Kyouka to hit it with a sonic wave to stop it.
“Come on, just a little further,” she said to herself.
The light at the intersection turned yellow. Shinsou sped up even more and punched the ceiling of the car as he sped through the yellow light right as it turned red. He picked up the habit from Denki, who picked it up from the teenaged daughter of the hero he worked for in America a few years back.
“Now!,” Kyouka shouted.
Shinsou hit the brakes as she plugged her jack into the speaker on her wrist and sent a heartbeat soundwave at the other car. It skidded to a stop at the force of the blast, and the villains decided to actually exit the car and realize they were beaten for once.
After that was all routine stuff. Round up the criminals, hand them off to the police, and then apologize profusely for breaking almost every single traffic law in the last five minutes. After almost half an hour of bureaucratic nonsense, they were finally free to go on their way. At least the night shift meant there weren’t any reporters wandering around just waiting for pro heroes to come by so they could rush in for an interview or comment or whatever. Who knew how long they’d get tied up in one of those?
Kyouka yawned, the exhaustion of the last day and a half dragging at her limbs. “Do you think we have time to stop by that coffee place Aizawa-sensei recommended?”
Shinsou shrugged. “Does that even matter? We both know we’re gonna stop there anyway.”
Kyouka didn’t grace him with a response, instead reaching into her pocket for her phone. Yeah, yeah it was bad form to have her phone out on patrol, but considering she’d been at work for the last thirty-six hours and wanted nothing more than a shower and a hug from Denki and to sleep for a week, she really did not care.
It wasn’t like she wanted to work for this long. It was just that her few sidekicks all put in their time off requests around the same time, she was bringing back Team Nightwatch with Shinsou and Tokoyami for a big job Hawks wanted them to do so they all had to prep for it, and the paperwork kept piling up and she couldn’t focus on it at home. It’d be a miracle if she didn’t end up staying for another shift.
She smiled at a series of text messages from Denki. They weren’t anything important, just a few TikToks he probably saw while scrolling before bed. But damn, any message at all made her chest ache. When was the last time she even saw him?
She pocketed her phone as she and Shinsou walked into the coffee shop and ordered. Thank everything Aizawa shared all his favorite spots that were open to heroes on the night shift, this coffee shop being one of them.
Kyouka took a sip of her coffee, a small sliver of her exhaustion leaving her body. She grabbed her phone out of her pocket. “Shinsou, get in the picture,” she said once they were out of earshot of anyone who’d hear his civilian name.
She sent the selfie to Denki even though he wouldn’t see it until she was already home. “I miss him.”
Shinsou took a sip of his drink. “I get it.” He sighed and looked up at the sky. “Neito’s been busier lately, and since I usually work nights…”
“Yeah,” Kyouka said, her voice thick. Was she about to cry? Embarrassing.
Shinsou knocked his shoulder against her’s. “Don’t let the exhaustion get you.”
“I know.” Kyouka scrubbed at her eyes, partially to get rid of her unshed tears and partially to keep them open. “Let’s just finish the patrol.”
She knew being a hero was demanding, even more so since she was a hero that specialized in investigative work and was in the top twenty. It meant long hours of research in addition to running a top agency that did routine stuff like patrols and taking on work study students. Hell, she was so busy she didn’t even see her own fiancé more than two or three times a week, and he literally worked next door to her, lived in the same apartment as her, and even had some of the same patrol routes.
At least she and Denki were both off this weekend. They managed to get the same four days in a row off for the first time since they graduated ten years ago, and she couldn’t wait to just exist in the same space as him for more than a scattered few minutes each day.
“Calling all units and any heroes on patrol,” a dispatcher crackled over her comm. “Armed robbery on 13th and Tatooin Junction.”
Kyouka looked up at the street sign, seeing they were on 12th Street. Great. One block away from the incident.
Kyouka and Shinsou exchanged a tired glance. She dropped her half finished coffee in the nearest trash can and took off down the street, Shinsou hot on her heels.
When they arrived, the villains were all piling into the back of the truck.
Kyouka scowled. “No way in hell we’re doing another one of these.”
“Freeze!,” Shinsou shouted, amplifying his voice with one of the buttons on his mask.
That got the person climbing to the driver’s seat and the three villains who started swearing about them stopping.
The other villains hopped off the truck bed. Kyouka fired off a Heartbeat Surround and incapacitated all of them except one. That villain stood perfectly still, looking right at Kyouka and Shinsou.
They both slid to a stop. This couldn’t be good. Normally a group of small-time villains like this would panic and scatter when beaten like this.
Kyouka saw the device first. Her eyes narrowed. “Nighthide, they have-”
“Trigger,” Shinsou finished. “At least we know where their confidence comes from.”
Kyouka would use what happened next as an example for why heroes should prioritize their health over work for the rest of time.
The villain injected themself with Trigger. They punched the ground, sending an impressive sound wave out that shouldn’t have had an effect on her since she could cancel it with a Heartbeat Wall.
Except she wasn’t moving as fast as normal because her body chose that moment to realize she hadn’t slept more than three hours in the last day and a half. Shinsou got out of the way using his capture scarf, but she moved a second too late.
The sound wall collided with her, sending Kyouka flying down the block.
“Jirou!”
Her vision blurred. She must’ve hit her head. She needed to get-
Another blast slammed into her and set her down another half a block, and she had enough time to register police sirens before she passed out.
Her head hurts. She blinks as she opens her eyes, trying to adjust to the bright lights that are only making her headache worse.
She’s met with ceiling tiles and overhead lights. Where in the world is she? She takes in the pile of blankets she’s buried in and the window to her right showing the bright blue sky.
She turns her head to the side, seeing the machinery next to her. A heart monitor and an IV drip. She’s in the hospital.
Wait. Why is she in the hospital?
She pushes herself into a sitting position, ignoring the stabs of pain all over her body. She stares at her cut up hands, trying to puzzle out why she’s here, that stupid heart rate monitor picking up as she realizes she doesn’t even know her own name, much less where she is.
“Kyouka?”
Kyouka. That must be her name. She looks up, seeing a very frazzled yet beautiful man standing in the doorway. He’s got this electric blond hair with a jagged black streak across his bangs. A pair of expensive looking sunglasses hangs from the neck of his black crewneck, and Kyouka (her name . Was it her first or last? What was happening to her?) can’t help but stare at the jagged scars down his right calf that weren't hidden by his shorts.
He walks over to the bed, nearly tripping over himself as he tries to make it there as fast as possible. “I was so worried,” he rambles, coming to a stop at the edge of the bed. She can see the small black hoop earrings he wears. He gestures with his hands when he talks. There’s a simple silver band on his left ring finger. Is he married then? Engaged? Why is he here freaking out over her? “When they called and told me what happened I-are you okay?”
Kyouka blinks, shaking her head and taking a deep breath to try and maintain any semblance of calm as she speaks. “I have no idea who you are.”
And that look he gives her. He looks like she just punched him in the gut after saying she killed his dog or something. Kyouka never wants to see him like that again, and she has the urge to take his face in her hands and reassure him that everything is okay.
“Okay. Alright, this is fine. This is fine,” the man says, getting up and hitting the call button. He’s talking to himself more than anything. He sits down in a chair next to the bed, looking miserable as he does. “I’m Kaminari.”
“Kaminari,” Kyouka repeats. She looks at him closer. She thinks she’s supposed to know who he is and that she most certainly doesn’t know him as Kaminari, but she can’t retrieve that information. He feels so familiar, and once again something in her aches to reach out and hold him. This time she wants to take his hands and stop his nervous fidgeting.
“Yeah,” he says. “Do you remember anything?”
Kyouka searches her mind, coming up empty for what feels like the hundredth time in the last few minutes. She shakes her head, gripping the blankets in frustration.
“Right,” Kaminari says. “Well, your name is Jirou Kyouka. You’re a pro hero, and while you were on patrol last night, a villain sent you flying down a block and a half with some weird sound blast. Shinsou said you hit the ground pretty hard, so that’s probably why you don’t remember anything.”
Jirou Kyouka. But that’s not as interesting as, “I’m a pro hero?”
Kaminari grins. “Hell yeah you are. One of the best. Your Quirk, that’s a superpower-”
“I know what a Quirk is, idiot.”
Kaminari grins wider, and Kyouka’s heart sings at the fact she managed to do that. “Right. Well your Quirk lets you use the jacks on your earlobes to hear heartbeats as well as amplify your own.” He moves like he’s going to reach out, but he stops. “The left one is a hella cool robotic prosthetic our friend, well I actually don’t really know if she’s a friend. More like a close acquaintance? Either way, her name is Hatsume and she first designed it for you back in high school. She probably has a new upgrade waiting.”
Experimentally, Kyouka raises the jacks extending from her ears, one a sleek silver metal and the other flesh. She breaks into a grin. “Wicked.”
Kaminari gives her this soft look, but before he says anything, the doctor walks in.
They explain what’s wrong. Amnesia caused by blunt force trauma to the head. Definitely temporary, definitely common enough among pro heroes. The doctor says the second statement with a level of amusement Kyouka doesn’t think is fitting for this setting.
The entire time, Kaminari types away on his phone, that miserable expression back on his face as he asks questions and nods. She doesn’t have any problems other than the amnesia, so they decide to send her home and let the memories come back naturally.
Somehow the knowledge there’s nothing he can do other than just exist and try to signal some of Kyouka’s memories back makes him look like a wilted yellow flower.
“Hey,” she says, grasping at anything in her subconscious to make him less miserable. “I wasn’t listening. When do the doctors say I can leave?”
“Tomorrow,” Kaminari answers. “They want to keep you under observation to make sure they didn’t miss anything, but then we can go home.”
“We,” Kyouka repeats, a smile playing at her lips. “We live together or something?”
Kaminari smiles back. “Yeah.” His smile drops immediately, and he’s back to gesturing with his hands as he waves them around while spewing something about how she can stay with someone else if it makes her uncomfortable and her gaze falls on his ring again and-
“Oh my God,” she says, breathing picking up as she stares at that ring and kicks herself for not realizing it sooner.
Kaminari stops, concern etched in his features. “Kyouka? Are you okay?”
I can’t ask him . If she asked if she was the person who had the other ring, it would likely shatter Kaminari into a million pieces. So she shrugs and points at her head. “As fine as I can be after losing all my memories.”
Kaminari pauses for a moment before dissolving into laughter. Kyouka doesn’t know what she said that was funny, but his laugh is intoxicating. It’s electric, just like the rest of him. She wants to trap that sound like those little kids who try to capture lightning storms in jars and hold it close to her chest.
“Glad to know you didn’t lose your sense of humor,” Kaminari says through a laugh.
“I didn’t even say anything funny,” Kyouka grumbles, but she smiles anyway.
“Kaminari. Go home.”
“I hate you, Momo.”
Momo, a stunning, tall woman with shiny dark hair, impressive golden hoop earrings Kyouka is certain are real gold, and impeccably pressed slacks and blazer over a red turtleneck, just gives Kaminari an unimpressed look. “No, you don’t. How long have you been here?”
Kaminari doesn’t answer, and Momo sighs and gives Kyouka a look that she has a feeling they’ve exchanged hundreds of times before. Another person she clearly has an extensive history with that she can’t recall. Just perfect.
“Go home. Take a nap. Eat a real meal. It’ll do wonders,” Momo says, her heels clacking on the hospital floor as she walks over and drags Kaminari out of the chair he’s sitting in. “She’ll be fine if you go away for a couple hours.”
Kaminari gives Kyouka another one of those concerned looks, and she raises an eyebrow at him. “Go take a shower. You smell.”
“I do not smell,” Kaminari protests (he’s right, not like Kyouka would ever admit that the strange coppery wire scent he had was strangely comforting. Who got comforted by someone’s scent . That was fucking weird). “But fine.”
After a few more moments of convincing him to go, Kaminari finally leaves and Momo sits in the chair.
“How are you doing, Kyouka?,” Momo asks.
Something tells Kyouka she can be honest with this woman, so she sighs and sinks back down against the pillows. “Fucking awful.”
Momo grins at her. “I figured, so I brought along some of your favorites!”
Kyouka watches as Momo digs around in her purse and pulls out a box of strawberry Pocky, a pair of headphones, a shattered phone, and a battered notebook.
“Your favorite treat, your headphones, the ancient phone you use just for storing music, and your songwriting notebook!,” Momo announces cheerfully. “I did some research and picked some things that might help your memory.”
“Thanks, Yaomomo,” Kyouka replies, the nickname slipping out of her mouth with familiarity.
Momo smiles wider, taking her phone out of her purse and typing away. “Kaminari said you can go home tomorrow, but if you’re overwhelmed at the prospect you can stay with me for a few days. We lived together before you two moved in together, so it should be familiar enough to you to-”
“Momo,” Kyouka interrupts. “Answer me honestly. What is Kaminari to me?”
Momo doesn’t look upset or confused, but contemplative. After a long moment, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a chain with a silver ring on it that looks nearly identical to the one Kaminari was wearing. “This is your engagement ring. When they took you in for all the scans they gave it to Kaminari, and I asked him to pass it off to me earlier.”
Hands shaking, Kyouka takes the chain from Momo, cradling the ring in her hands. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she recalls that it’s actually made out of titanium so it doesn’t break while she’s out on the job. There’s an engraving in English on the inside that Kyouka can’t read in her amnesiac state (now that was truly terrifying. Even if she’s not fluent in English, she should know what this says, especially since a lot of the songs in that notebook have long sections of English words in them), but just the sight of it calms her.
“How does it feel to know?,” Momo says delicately.
Kyouka doesn’t even have to think about it. “It feels right.”
Momo smiles. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Kyouka smiles back, reaching for the Pocky as she holds her ring in her hand.
Almost two hours later, Kaminari comes back into the room to find Kyouka and Momo both sitting in the bed and giggling over something on Momo’s computer. He looks much better with his sunglasses perched on his head and wearing jeans and a clean white long sleeve advertising a world tour for a rock band Kyouka has a feeling they saw together.
Kyouka waves at him and points at the screen. “You didn’t tell me that you’re also a hero.”
Kaminari shrugs and walks over, sitting back down in the chair. “You didn’t ask.”
Momo sighs and shakes her head. “Really, Kaminari?”
Kyouka raises an eyebrow, playing with her necklace. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know.”
Kaminari goes pale when he realizes she’s wearing her engagement ring. “Oh. I-”
“Shut up,” Kyouka says, cutting him off. “Don’t apologize or anything. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t tell you either.
Kaminari sighs. “Yeah. But I should’ve.”
Kyouka shrugs. “I know now, so when I’m discharged from this place we’re going to go home and get my memories back.” She motions for him to come closer and look at the laptop screen displaying the news coverage from one of his more recent fights. “That man there is pretty badass if I do say so myself, and I want to know why I agreed to marry him. That seem fair?”
Kaminari doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Kyouka’s worried she said something wrong. Did she overstep? Was she getting the wrong idea of how they acted with each other? Was he hoping she’d want to stay with Momo so he could have space to process this?
But then he breaks into that electrifying smile. “Seems perfectly alright with me.”
Momo clears her throat. “Now that we’ve settled that, who wants to watch news coverage of Kyouka being awesome?”
“I do!,” Kaminari answers instantly, making Kyouka and Momo laugh. God, he was so adorable like this, leaning close and pointing out her ultimate moves and how fast she rose through the hero rankings and how amazing she was. She was Earphone Jack, the number fifteen hero in Japan who solved long, complex cases related to kidnappings and serial killers and trafficking rings of all kinds. Because of her and this Team Nightwatch she was a part of with Nighthide and Tsukuyomi, crime in the underground world of gangs and smuggling went down almost five percent in the last few years, reaching pre-Paranormal Liberation War (whatever that was) numbers. Call her crazy, but learning she was that important was a lot to take in at first.
But Kaminari sat by her side, explaining things like the charts and the Hero Network and her own timeline as a hero to help her piece together her past. She was hoping the videos and explanation of her hero life would somehow trigger some big memory breakthrough, but that was too much to hope for.
She sighed, twirling her jack around her finger. This was going to be harder than she originally thought.
The next morning, Kyouka was practically bouncing up and down with how excited she was to go home. She wanted to see this life she and Kaminari had, one where they were engaged and their hero agencies were right next to each other and they saved people.
Momo brought her clothes the day before. The black sweatpants and loose, off the shoulder purple t-shirt were pretty comfortable, but Kyouka was more excited when she looked in the mirror and put her assortment of piercings back on. They got taken out for her series of MRIs and other scans, and putting them back on made her feel more herself.
She’d just finished adjusting her nose ring when Kaminari walked in.
He smiled. “I see Momo gave you your jewelry back.”
Kyouka nodded. “Yeah. She even sorted them based on what went where thankfully.” She pointed to her ear. “If she hadn’t I would’ve accidentally put one of these hoops in my nose piercing, which definitely wouldn’t have gone well.”
Kaminari laughed and held his hand out. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
Kyouka took his hand with a smile. His hands are rough and calloused and scarred and familiar. She wonders how many lives these hands have saved as she absentmindedly traces her thumb along the back of his hand. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
The apartment is another one of those achingly familiar things that Kyouka feels like she needs to know but doesn’t.
Kaminari opens the door and steps aside to let her in. “So. Home sweet home.”
Kyouka steps inside, taking in the space as she toes off her shoes and lines them up where they belong. To her left is a sitting area with a mismatched couch and chairs, as well as a TV. The kitchen table is right in front of her, and to the right of that is a kitchen. A hallway to her right leads to what she assumes are a bathroom and bedrooms. There’s framed photos and newspaper clippings and posters everywhere.
“I’m gonna go sort some stuff out,” Kaminari says. “I’ll be in the office if you need me.”
Kyouka frowns. “What?”
Kaminari rubs the back of his neck, looking at the ground. “I didn’t know how comfortable you’d be sharing a room with someone you basically don’t know, so I figured I’d stay in there until we get this sorted out. There’s a couch.”
“Oh. Right.” Kyouka feels like she misstepped again, watching as Kaminari heads down the hall and ducks into one of the rooms. She shakes it off. Like he said, they’d get through this together. She decided to wear her ring because it felt right, even if Kaminari (and everyone else in her life) were strangers right now.
She makes her way to a shelf next to the TV that’s filled with photos. There’s a framed photo of her, Momo, and four other girls holding diplomas with their arms slung around each other. Those must be her friends from school that Momo mentioned. Next is her, Momo, and Kaminari with two people she didn’t recognize. One of them had spiky blond hair and scowled at the camera, and the other’s head looked like some kind of bird Kyouka probably knew before. All of them wore orange t-shirts that had a white “A” on them. Didn’t Momo mention they were in a band together in high school? This was probably them.
Her heart nearly stops when she looks at the last photo in this row.
It’s clearly an engagement photo. She and Kaminari are in an open field, the sun setting over the mountains in the background. She’s laughing as she spins, one hand over her head holding Kaminari’s. He’s looking at her with this sweet expression that simultaneously comforts her and twists her stomach into knots. She knows that it’s an expression meant for her and her alone, but the Jirou Kyouka in the photo and the Jirou Kyouka looking at it aren’t the same person.
She reaches out, running her fingers over the edges of the frame, emotion lodged in her throat. This wasn’t fair. Why did Kaminari, the sweetest, bravest, most caring person in the whole world, have to deal with his fiancée losing all memory of him?
Kyouka forces herself away from that shelf of photos and goes for the collection of certificates and newspaper clippings on the shelf above it. There’s two diplomas from UA High School, one for Jirou Kyouka and one for Kaminari Denki.
Kaminari Denki, Kyouka thinks, rolling the syllables around in her head.
“I see you found the photos,” Kaminari, no Denki, says.
Kyouka turns around, seeing Denki standing behind her, leaning over the back of the couch. She hadn’t even noticed him walk over.
He reaches over and picks up the photo, smiling sadly at it. “Don’t get too beat up about not hearing me. You looked really absorbed in this.”
Kyouka touches the ring hanging from her neck. She looks at the English inscription along the inside again, some unconscious sense of comfort flooding through her as she did.
Denki sets the photo back down, and after a moment’s hesitation, he speaks. “Do you want me to tell you what it says?”
Kyouka shakes her head. “I want to remember.” She looks at him and flashes a determined smile. “I will remember. Denki.”
Denki smiles back. “There she is.”
He says it mostly to himself, but the words cover her like a warm blanket. Denki steps back, heading into the kitchen and saying something about dinner that Kyouka doesn’t really register.
It’s all so sickeningly domestic, and she wants it so badly that she aches. She wants to know what restaurants Denki is suggesting for dinner. She wants to make a teasing comment about their matching earrings and pretend like they don’t do it on purpose.
She wants so, so much, but she doesn’t act. She just returns to looking at photos and newspaper clippings, wondering how this legendary hero Earphone Jack could even be the same person as her.
The first memories come back that night.
They’re not pleasant memories. They’re just flashes, but they’re so horrific that she wants to throw up. Losing her ear and the preceding events, the horde of clones, the pain. Those must be from the Paranormal Liberation War about ten years ago.
There’s flashes she figures are from later in her career too. Confrontations with drug lords and human traffickers, helping battered and bruised people out of domestic violence situations, and the searing frustration from when she was caught in a tense hostage situation while off duty and couldn’t do anything.
(She remembers that Denki saved her from that one and that it happened while they were in their third year of school. Other than that, nothing)
The door to the room slams open, revealing Denki. He runs over and sits on the bed, holding Kyouka’s hands in his own. He’s got this worried crease between his eyebrows. His hair and eyes glow faintly in the dark, but it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to her so she doesn’t mention it.
“Nightmare?,” he asks, voice soft and quiet.
Kyouka nods, still feeling like she’s going to throw up. “More like flashbacks.” She looks at their hands. “How did you know?”
“You were screaming.”
“Oh.”
Denki reaches up and brushes her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. “It’s not abnormal. You get them all the time, and so do I. I make all the power in the building short out when mine are really bad, so don’t feel guilty for screaming.”
He looks so worried that it’s making Kyouka even more sick to her stomach. Moving on autopilot, she brushes her fingers over that worried crease between Denki’s eyebrows. His eyes flicker shut, and she watches some of the tension drop from his shoulders.
“I’m glad you’re getting memories back, but it’s shitty you have to get the bad ones back first,” he whispers.
“Yeah,” Kyouka whispers back, feeling that ache in her chest more intensely than ever. “It really is.”
Eventually, he gets up and goes back to the guest room, and it takes everything in her not to beg him to stay.
When she wakes up, the clock on her nightstand reads that it’s nearing ten in the morning. Even through her amnesia, Kyouka knows that she never wakes up this late. Ever.
She gets up, looking around the bedroom for anything to bring more memories to the surface. She walks over to the dresser and mirror. There’s a photo taped to the corner of the mirror of a much younger her and Denki. They’re in high school, sporting black pants and those bright orange t-shirts that read “A-Band” on them. His hair is longer and her’s is shorter, she doesn’t have as many ear piercings or her nose ring yet, and she doesn’t have her prosthetic ear. They’re standing back to back, him playing guitar and her playing bass. This is significant and she knows it, but still, no memory.
She tears her gaze away from the photo and gets dressed, putting on a hoodie that probably belongs to Denki and a pair of shorts.
When she walks into the kitchen, she sees Denki already sitting at the table. He’s frowning at his laptop, adjusting his glasses (since when did he wear glasses?). But more than that, her gaze falls on the angry red scars marring his right arm. She didn’t get a good look at them yesterday since he was wearing long sleeves, but they’re on full display due to the t-shirt he’s wearing right now. The scars get thicker and more concentrated the closer they get to his hand. They look like the ones she saw on his leg yesterday, just a lot more severe.
Denki looks up from his laptop with a small smile. “Morning, Kyouka.”
“Your arm,” she blurts out before she can stop herself. “What happened?”
Denki looks a little shocked at the question, but it doesn’t throw him off too bad. Kyouka knows it was rude to ask, even with her memory loss as an excuse. She opens her mouth to apologize, but Denki starts speaking.
“They’re really old,” he says with a shrug. “They’re from the war back in high school. Got burned since I overexerted myself.”
Kyouka stays frozen in the hallway. “Oh. Well, I’m sorry for asking.”
“Don’t be.” His answer is immediate, free from any blame or anger or confusion. “Most people know how I got them. The question was a shock.” He stands up, tilting his laptop shut. “Come on. Do you want breakfast? I can make us some coffee.”
“I can do it,” she says, walking into the kitchen. “You never make it right.”
“How did you-”
Kyouka shoots him a teasing smile. “I didn’t. I just guessed.”
Denki blinks before breaking into a grin. “How’d you guess?”
Kyouka raised an eyebrow as she dug through the cabinet. “You don’t just lose eleven years of training as an investigative based hero overnight. Just because I have amnesia doesn’t mean I lost all competence.”
She waits for him to call bullshit, but it never comes. She turns around to look at him. He looks…well, he looks sad. Or contemplative? Whatever it is, she cannot figure it out.
“Denki,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “What is up with you?”
Denki just stands there with this startled expression. “What?”
Kyouka gestured at him with her earphone jack. “What’s up with you?”
He shakes his head with a small smile and goes to get something out of the cabinet, meaning he’s now facing away from her. “Nothing. Just thinking.”
“About?”
He grabs two mugs from the cabinet. “Don’t worry about it. Seriously, you have bigger problems.”
This stupid boy. Kyouka walked over to him and grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to turn around. “Denki, tell me what’s wrong.”
She’s looking right into his eyes. They’re a brilliant gold with fragments of brighter yellow peeking through. His glasses magnify his eyelashes just enough where she can see how long they are. There’s an old argument there, one about how he has no use for such pretty eyelashes because he’s a boy with him poking back about how boys can be pretty too.
He drops his head on her shoulder with an exhale. “Even with memory loss, you’re exactly the same.”
“And is that bad?”
Denki shakes his head. “No. It just makes it harder.” He looks up to meet her eyes again. His glasses are crooked, and she reaches up to fix them. He smiles, but it falls almost immediately. “What will you do if you never get them all back?”
“Haven’t let myself think about it.” She shrugs. “Then I start over, I guess.”
“Right,” he says, voice strained. “You start over.”
She takes his hand in her’s and traces over his engagement ring. His has a few more scuffs on it than her’s does, but it’s just as well taken care of as it is worn. “I’m going to remember, Denki. Have a little faith in me, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Kyouka steps back, even if she wants nothing more than to hug Denki close and never let go. It’d be wrong of her to act on it even though she doesn’t know why she wants to, so she takes the step back.
There’s reasons, and she thinks she’s starting to discover them again. The way he cares so much about everyone and everything, his smile, the ridiculous and mismatched socks in their drawer, the courage in clips of him doing hero work. But she can’t act, at least not yet.
She smiles. “C’mon, let’s go somewhere.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Where?”
She crosses her arms and mirrors his expression. “I dunno, let me just search my memory for a place we should go – oh wait!”
Denki looks at her with the most bewildered expression she’s ever seen before bursting into laughter so strong it has him doubled over. “Kyouka. That was so poorly timed.”
His laughter is contagious, and soon Kyouka’s laughing too. “I know, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he manages. “Just…oh my god.”
“I know,” she laughs. She’s laughing so hard she’s almost crying, leaning against the counter for support. Denki’s nearly on the floor, and in the grand scheme of everything this shouldn’t be as funny as it is, but it feels so good to just laugh about the absurdity of the whole situation.
“This is so ridiculous,” she says once she’s recovered a bit. “Do you understand how ridiculous this is?”
Denki stands up and wipes his eyes. “You’d think I’d be the one to lose my memory after getting knocked out, but it was you.” He leans back against the counter below the mug cabinet. “You should’ve seen Bakugou’s face when we told him about it. It was priceless. Wait, I think Dark Shadow got a photo.”
Isn’t Dark Shadow a Quirk? She just ignores that confusion and rolls her eyes. “When I get my memory back, I’m going to take extra care to remember every single somewhat embarrassing thing you’ve done since I’ve known you.”
Denki just laughs again and walks over to stand next to her. His phone displays a text message from Tokoyami with the best photo of Bakugou in all of existence because it was so rare. He looked so caught between worry and confusion and anger that it was like his face somehow reached some net zero expression.
Kyouka smiles at the photo. “We should hang out with them again soon.”
“Yeah.” Denki pocketed his phone and held his hand out. “So, what do you think about getting some coffee and pastries for breakfast?”
Kyouka takes his hand. “I thought you’d never ask.”
After almost a week of sitting at home and doing nothing, Kyouka gets restless. So restless that Denki found her pacing around the living room at two in the morning listening to music just to do something other than sit around and try to entertain herself with activities that were supposed to help her get her memory back while Denki did paperwork. Seriously, how was he always doing paperwork?
After that, Denki said he had some kind of surprise for her. Kyouka honestly did not care what it was, she just wanted to get out of this apartment.
“Why so secretive?,” she asks as they get off the train.
Denki smiles. “You’ll see.”
They walk a little further down the street before stopping in front of a building labeled as some sort of music production studio.
Kyouka gasps. “Denki, did you-”
He opens the door for her. “All your instruments are here. We were able to get a special exemption or whatever since your dad basically runs the place.”
She’s practically walking on air as she enters the building. She follows Denki down a few hallways before they stop in front of a room that was somewhat isolated from the others that just says “Jirou” in the label for who the office belongs to.
“Apparently it was your mom’s when she first started out,” Denki explains as he unlocks the room. “But when we graduated, your parents decided to give it to you.”
Kyouka steps inside and her jaw drops. The walls are a pale purple and covered in various posters for musicians and pro heroes, the exception being a wall that has multiple guitars and basses hanging from it. There’s one guitar missing, but Kyouka knows it’s the one sitting in their living room. There’s a desk with a comfortable looking office chair underneath a window on the far wall, and there’s a small sofa with pro hero branded throw pillows and a yellow blanket against the wall with the door. The rest of the space is filled with instruments including a drum kit, piano, cello, and violin. There’s cabinets and drawers no doubt filled with spare parts and equipment, and there’s multiple amps and pedals scattered around as well.
She walks further into the space. The blanket is unfolded, and there’s an open notebook and scattered papers on the desk. She traces her fingers over the rim of a mostly empty mug of tea in an Uravity mug next to a neon pink sticky note that says “think of your vows like writing a song” on it. She covers it with the mug before she can think about it too hard.
“So?,” Denki asks. “Do you like it?”
“Like it?” Kyouka turns to face him, feeling so light she could float. “I love it.”
Denki smiles and walks into the room, eyes resting on a yellow guitar mounted on the wall. He opens his mouth to say something, but she beats him to it.
“That one’s yours, right?,” Kyouka says as she walks over. She takes the guitar down from the wall. “It was your sister’s first, but then you borrowed it for long enough it eventually became yours.”
“You remember,” Denki says in awe.
She hands him the guitar. “Only pieces,” she admits. “Come on, let’s play something.”
She sits on the floor with her acoustic, and Denki sits on the couch. It’s familiar enough where she just lets herself play, strumming out a pattern and humming notes that come to her right away.
Denki keeps smiling at her the whole time. He even comes up with a game to test her muscle memory where he says different songs and she sees if she can play them.
“Ha! I win again!,” she laughs.
Denki leans back against the couch, his own guitar long forgotten. “Whatever, Kyouka. How many was that?”
Kyouka grins. “Ten.”
He smiles at her with that soft expression again. “How are you so amazing?”
She has no idea what to do with the compliment, so she just gets up to go put the guitars away. “How long have we even been here?”
Denki looks at his watch. “Shit, it’s been like, four hours.”
Kyouka rolls her eyes with a smile. “Let’s go home.”
Their friends come by the next day for breakfast, which Kyouka somehow finds out about before Denki despite not remembering when the plan was made. It does lead to Denki walking in on Bakugou throwing chocolate chips across the kitchen as Momo and Kyouka try to catch them in their mouths while Dark Shadow flies around trying to trip them and Tokoyami just sits at the table and scrolls on his phone.
“Bakugou,” Denki says with a yawn. “Why the fuck are you in my house?”
“I’m making your amnesiac fiancée and the rest of these losers pancakes, you glorified phone charger,” Bakugou replies. He’s not even scowling or angry but still manages to convey an astounding level of annoyance, which is impressive. Well, regular Kyouka probably doesn’t find it impressive, but amnesiac Kyouka does.
“Yeah, Denki,” she adds with a smile. “He’s making pancakes.”
Denki sighs and heads into the kitchen with a shake of his head, only to get shoved out by Bakugou. “Kicked out of my own kitchen.”
“Don’t think for a second we’re letting you make anything while Bakugou is around,” Tokoyami says without even looking up from his phone. “And don’t touch the tea or coffee either. Yaomomo’s in charge of that.”
Denki sighs dramatically. “Always overworked and underappreciated.”
Kyouka giggles. Honest to God giggles like she’s fifteen and her crush just said something so unfunny everyone else was rolling their eyes.
The weirdest part about it is that everyone in the apartment stops and looks at her. They all look somewhere between relieved and shocked. This couldn’t be that strange…could it?
But then Denki absolutely lights up, his grin just as strong as those million volt charges that make up his ultimate moves. Bakugou laughs and says something Kyouka can’t hear over Dark Shadow flying around the apartment and cheering.
Kyouka blinks. “What’s so important about this?”
Momo smiles and rests a hand on her shoulder. “Nothing, and that’s what’s beautiful about it.”
Kyouka takes in everything happening in front of her. Bakugou yells at Denki to stop stealing fruit and chocolate chips off the ingredients plate as Dark Shadow flies in and steals blueberries when Bakugou threatens to explode Denki’s fingers off. Tokoyami is gone to the rest of the group, chatting on the phone with someone and ignoring Dark Shadow as he lines up blueberries like rows of soldiers in front of him.
She smiles. She can see why she’s friends with these people, and she understands even more when the door opens and Shinsou and Kirishima walk in. It’s warm and easy and comforting to swap stories with her friends while crowded around her and Denki’s table that’s really only meant for four people.
The best part is how she and Denki keep smiling at each other from across the table, and every look contains something she understands. She thinks about that pink sticky note on the desk in her studio, and she understands why she wrote it. She could write a dozen love songs just about those smiles he’s giving her across the table, and she could think up a dozen more about his laugh and the way sparks fly off his fingertips when he gets too excited.
There’s still too many questions, but for now, sitting at this table and rolling her eyes as Denki and Bakugou argue over a team-up they did last week, this is enough.
Hero agencies, shockingly, do not run themselves, so Denki has to go back to work after a few more days.
“And the keys are in the flower pot by the front door,” Denki says as he’s trying to put his sneakers on and balance a travel mug of coffee in his hand and type something on his phone at the same time. “I wrote all the passwords and stuff on a sheet of paper, and it’s on my desk in the spare room. And-”
“Denki,” Kyouka interrupts, resting her hands on his shoulders. “I’ll be fine.”
Denki looks like he wants to protest more, but he smiles slightly instead. “Alright, alright. You know I-”
“-worry a lot?,” she finishes with a raised eyebrow. “I’ve learned.”
Denki checks his watch. “Oh shit. I’m gonna be late.” He scrambles to put his other shoe on and rushes out the door with a ‘goodbye’ that Kyouka has a feeling is usually followed with ‘I love you.’
She takes a deep breath to shove that fact out of her mind. “A whole day to myself,” she says, looking around the apartment and once again seeing the same environment she’s been in for the last week and a half, but there’s no way in hell she trusts her memory enough to try and go somewhere else even if she used a map. She sighs. “Well, guess I’ll make do with what’s around here.”
It’s not like there isn’t anything to do. She cleans the whole place, plays guitar, and flips through the same photo albums she’s looked at almost every day for the last two weeks. But after a few hours, even that’s boring, so she makes turns on the TV.
She knows by now that she and Denki keep the local news as their default channel. In fact, she knows that normally the local news doesn’t show anything they have to worry about unless there’s a high profile case or a natural disaster, but they’ll hear about those through the Hero Network before they even appear on the news.
However, there’s the handful of times the news does display something they have to worry about. A disaster that needs immediate backup, something that’s happening right outside their door that they’ll get to before anyone else, or a friend in danger.
BREAKING: Ten civilians, two pro heroes injured following a fire in an office building in downtown Musutafu
She takes in the images on the screen displaying the burned out complex and the crowds around it and the firetrucks and ambulances and-
That’s when everything stops. Denki and Sero’s photos flash on screen as the reporters talk about how they were so brave and risked everything to save those civilians despite the risk of facing severe injury themselves.
Kyouka is out the door before she can even think about it. She skips the car because there’s no way in hell she’d be able to drive it and dares to trust that she knows how to get to the hospital from here. She’s certain she’s been there enough times by now considering that about half the hospital units have contacts in her phone.
She swipes her metrocard and manages to make it onto the train seconds before the doors close. Even though the train ride is only ten minutes, every second feels like an hour. And yet because she’s a hero or something, she helps an old woman off the train and to the grocery store before she takes off running down the street again to the hospital.
“Kaminari Denki,” she answers without missing a beat when the receptionist asks her who she’s there to see. “My fiancé.”
By some miracle, they let her inside without asking her any more questions. She vaguely listens and nods along when the nurse tells her about Denki’s various injuries, but she checks out when the nurse says it’s not anything permanent. Just another day of observation in the hospital and then he’s free to go.
Kyouka takes a deep breath before pushing open the door to the room. She’s aware she looks like she just ran across the city to get here, but she doesn’t care. She just needs to see that Denki’s okay.
And he is, sitting in that hospital bed and staring at the wall. He has a mask over his nose and mouth to help treat the smoke inhalation and he has a few bandages wrapped around his fingers, but other than that he looks perfectly alright.
Denki turns to face the door when she walks in. “Kyouka?”
Kyouka smiles and waves. “That’s me.”
He blinks. “You’re here.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” She walks over to the bed and sits at the edge of it. “The doctor said you can come home tomorrow morning.”
Denki nods, but he still looks confused. “How did you know to come here?”
Kyouka’s face heats up. “I guessed. I was kind of running out of the house before I could even think about where I was going.”
Denki laughs a little. “That’s a little crazy, even for you.”
Kyouka smiles at him. “You do crazy things when you’re in love.”
She doesn’t even realize she said it until Denki sucks in a sharp breath and starts coughing. She nearly presses the call button, but he holds a hand up and takes deep breaths until the fit subsides.
“Do you mean it?,” he asks.
The question stuns her. All she can do is sit there and blink and try to puzzle out what he’s even asking.
“I just,” Denki continues, voice quiet. “How do you know?”
How do you know that you’re in love with me? Kyouka frowns. “Why would you even ask me something like that?”
For the first time in the last few weeks, she can see annoyance and frustration creep into Denki’s features. “You lost all your memories, which includes everything about me. About us, Kyouka. How am I supposed to know you aren’t just saying it?”
She sighs and leans closer so she can hold his face in her hands. “Kaminari Denki, I would be a fool not to fall in love with you.”
Denki doesn’t say anything, but he does meet her eyes. The bright lighting in the hospital room brings out those bright, sharp yellow flecks in the gold.
“These past few weeks, all I’ve seen is someone more kind, caring, and brave than anyone else I know,” she says softly. “First of all, your fiancé lost every single memory she has and I haven’t seen you falter once. You took me to my studio when I was so bored it probably should’ve been annoying. You’ve been sleeping on that shitty excuse for a couch we keep in the office just so I’d feel more comfortable.”
“Kyouka,” Denki breathes.
“You’re silly,” she continues. “And your jokes aren’t funny, but I laugh anyway. You know my coffee order and that my favorite pastry is that strawberry almond croissant from that place down the street and you buy it for me every time even though it’s entirely too expensive.”
“But you love it,” Denki says with a slight laugh. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“See what I mean?,” Kyouka replies with a smile. “You’re literally proving me right more and more as this conversation goes on. I love you, Denki, and I just spent the last month and a half falling in love with you all over again.”
She wipes a stray tear off Denki’s face. “That a good enough answer for you?”
“Yeah,” Denki manages. “But maybe let’s save love confessions for when I can kiss you, yeah?”
Kyouka laughs and presses a soft kiss to his forehead. “That good enough?”
“Not nearly,” he says. He reaches up and takes Kyouka’s hands in his own. “But I’ll wait.”
In the end, the doctors were right. All Kyouka needed to get her memories back was time.
She wakes up one morning with a yawn and a smile and rolls onto her stomach and props herself up on her elbows so she can look at Denki. He’s still asleep, and he has some of the worst bed head Kyouka’s ever seen, second only to Bakugou’s when they were in high school.
“Hey,” she says, poking him in the arm with her earphone jack. “Wake up, Denki.”
Denki mutters something incoherent and makes a halfhearted attempt at swatting her away, but Kyouka grabs his hand. “Darling. Love. Light of my life who for some reason also glows in the dark. Wake up.”
Denki manages to get his eyes open for more than half a second at a time after a few moments. “Morning, Kyouka.”
Kyouka grins and reaches over to grab his left hand and runs her thumb over his engagement ring. “Better than a love song.”
She sees the exact moment he registers exactly what she said. His eyes light up and his face splits into a grin. “Your memories are back!”
Kyouka laughs. Bright, true laughter she hasn’t felt in nearly two months. She leans over and kisses him, and oh how she missed all of this while her memory was gone. The pet names, the casual touch, getting to lean over and kiss Denki whenever she wanted.
“It’s a lyric in the song I wrote to confess back in high school,” she says once she pulls away. “I couldn’t figure out how to say it normally so I wrote an entire song about it, and then you used the best lyric to propose to me and had it engraved in the rings.”
Denki hummed in agreement, tracing lazy patterns on the small of her back with his fingers. “Said you were gonna sue me for plagiarism since you wrote the words and said you were gonna use that line in your vows when we got married, and I nearly died choking on air when I realized you’d been planning it for more than a year already.”
“All of this,” she says, looking at him in awe. “And you were still prepared for me not to remember.”
Denki’s smile shifted into something sad. “I didn’t want to pressure you. That’s why I agreed to give your ring to Momo.”
“And you thought she wouldn’t tell me?”
Denki laughs. “Yeah, I probably should’ve thought that one through more.”
Kyouka kisses him again, short and sweet and just because she can. “I love you.”
Denki looks at her with that soft look she saw in that engagement photo on the shelf, and now she finally feels like it’s for her. “I love you too.”