Work Text:
Yaoyorozu Momo, as a rule, wasn’t late.
Emerging from a childhood rife with galas, dinner parties, and other social events that required a certain degree of etiquette even from the youngest of guests, Momo had been taught early on in life that being on time was key to success—being late by only ten minutes could throw a wrench in an evening’s plans and, as she’d learned throughout her time as a Pro Hero, perhaps even make the difference between a successful takedown and unmitigated disaster. It was much better to simply be on time in the first place and avoid the potential consequences—the extra minutes simply weren’t worth it.
So when her phone buzzed in the middle of a nail-painting session after a hard day of work with a text from Kyouka asking whether she still planned on attending Kaminari’s birthday party—which, she explained, had started nearly twenty minutes ago—Momo had panicked.
Of course, forgetting about the party hadn’t been intentional. Kaminari was someone Momo considered a good friend, and she’d been planning on attending. But the day’s stress had certainly taken its toll on her; the notifications on her calendar, most of which were for meetings, had been turned off in the service of self care. Even worse, her sleep schedule had been volatile recently, and she usually only managed to squeeze in a few hours at most. While that did allow for increased work efficiency and hours spent on the job, it also had the unintended side effect of making her brain…fuzzy, when it came to matters unrelated to work. Unfortunately, Kaminari’s party, a meeting she would rather have liked to have kept, had gotten lost somewhere in the sea of withheld buzzes and beeps that dictated Momo’s daily schedule and the social corners of her sleep-deprived mind.
Be there in 10, she typed back haphazardly, fingers gliding over the keys faster than ever before. Momo knew very well that Kyouka lived a good fifteen minutes away on foot, but if she channeled Ingenium just enough she suspected that through sheer force of will she would manage to make good on her promise.
In a flurry of scarf, limbs, and various layers of clothing to ward off the biting cold, she rushed out the door in a frenzy, clutching the present she’d bought her friend’s boyfriend under her arm and praying that the foot traffic outside her high rise wasn’t too horrendous.
Expertly, Momo weaved through the crowd, narrowly avoiding collisions with several people as she made her way to Kyouka and Kaminari’s place. She could see the flickering light in front of their apartment complex, and with a quick glance at her watch, she smiled.
Two minutes to spare.
Momo jogged towards the building, letting her labored breathing calm so Kaminari wouldn’t be able to tell just how quickly she’d run. When she finally arrived, she rang the buzzer and stepped into the building’s lobby. At the door of the elevator she could see the back of a tall man’s head as he stepped inside, hair sporting a very familiar red and white pattern—one that she hadn’t seen in person since the Heroes’ Gala last fall.
“Todoroki-san?” she called out, breathless. “Wait, hold on! Please hold the door for a second!”
Todoroki turned, hand bracing the door of the elevator to keep from closing, and he blinked, a look of faint surprise settling upon his face. “Yaoyorozu,” he acknowledged, lips curling into a smile that grew somewhat as she approached. “So you were invited, too.”
Momo smiled, too, unable to help it. It was always nice seeing her old classmates again, especially ones like Todoroki, who had made himself scarce since graduation. “Yes,” she said, walking through the open doors and into the elevator, taking a step back to allow Todoroki to follow suit. “Kyouka wouldn’t have it any other way…though I think everyone from our old class is coming.”
Todoroki only hummed his acquiescence, leaning against the wall as the elevator ascended, seemingly unbothered by the awkward silence in the elevator. Momo almost wished there were some catchy jingle blaring in the background, if only to find some way to fill the weird void.
After a few more moments of no speaking, Momo’s eyes drifted back to him unconsciously, and she shifted her weight between her feet, unsure of what to say. They’d never been close back in high school—she had preferred to focus on her work, and so had he, forgoing many of their classmates’ social functions in favor of studying or extra training. It had certainly paid off—from what Momo knew, Todoroki was enjoying some success as one of the top rookies in the game, and she herself was quickly moving up the ranks of the agency she’d joined up with out of college. Still, from time to time, Momo couldn’t help but wonder whether Todoroki had ever been as lonely during that time as she had been.
On the verge of raising any random subject of conversation, Momo was surprised when Todoroki turned to her and said, “I saw you on the news the other day. I’m impressed, Yaoyorozu—you’ve really made the most of things.”
Momo blinked, surprised. She wasn’t sure why, but the thought of Todoroki keeping up with the goings on of their former classmates, herself included, apparently, filled her with a warm, gooey sort of feeling. “Thank you,” she said after a beat. “You, too.”
Silence fell upon the room, and then the elevator reached the floor Todoroki had pressed with a cheerful chime. Todoroki walked out first, knocking on the door in three careful raps, neither too loud nor too soft. Momo hovered behind him, and when Kyouka opened the door—revealing a room full of people she hadn’t interacted with since her third year, and the faint scent of burning pizza rolls—she filed in after him, and watched as he slipped into the crowd, disappearing from view and becoming just one more attendee among the sea of bodies in the room.
A few hours later, Momo was lingering near the kitchen after enjoying a few glasses of wine in the hope of avoiding a drunk Ashido when she came across Todoroki again. He was leaning against the wall, holding a cup in one hand with the other shoved into his pocket. He looked every inch the alienated teenager he’d been a few years ago, even though they were both in their twenties now, and Momo couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her at the thought.
Todoroki’s gaze drifted to where she was standing, brow cocked in curiosity. “Yaoyorozu,” he acknowledged, dipping his head in her direction. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Momo said quickly, though she was still giggling, hiding her mouth behind her palm. She knew she was being impolite, but she couldn’t seem to stop laughing—it was so weird! Perhaps she had taken a few too many drinks from Kyouka’s portable bar. “It’s just—no, it’s nothing. Ignore me.”
With a bemused expression, Todoroki slid a little closer, so that now they were together rather than simply standing close to one another. “Ashido overdid it a bit, I think,” he commented, jerking his head in the direction of the crowd. “I think Kirishima’s almost popped a blood vessel trying to chase her around the apartment.”
Momo laughed louder this time, more freely than before. Todoroki was funny—had he always been so funny? “I don’t blame him,” she said. “The last time I saw her she said she was going to beam me up…I’m vaguely terrified by the thought.”
At this, Todoroki cracked a genuine smile. “I guess she lives up to the name Alien Queen,” he remarked. Gaze searching the crowd once more, he said, “Bakugou and Midoriya have disappeared, too, though I’m not entirely surprised by that.”
Brows raised in curiosity, Momo searched the crowd, unsurprised to find that Todoroki had been correct. Huh. Maybe the gossip magazines she found sitting around in the office did hold some truth to them, after all. “Todoroki-san,” she began, changing the subject, “you know, you really are more perceptive than you act. Maybe you should consider becoming a detective.”
Todoroki looked back to her, his smile flattening into a contemplative set of the lips. “Then what good would my Quirk do?” he asked, though the question seemed rather more rhetorical than directed towards Momo herself. And then, after a beat: “I don’t mean to be too forward, but may I have your phone number?”
And, though there was no way she would have been able to predict it five hours earlier, Momo was unsurprised when she found herself saying yes.
*
Over the next few weeks, she and Todoroki exchanged only a few sporadic texts. Most of them were related to the news—a big villain attack one of their colleagues had been involved in, maybe, or an achievement made by an up-and-coming U.A. student. It wasn’t surprising, and yet Momo found herself a bit disappointed. She’d conceived some sort of friendship between herself and Todoroki—a kinship, she supposed, formed between two people with very few social relationships and very many highly flung aspirations. If he didn’t see it the same way, that would of course be fine, but she’d felt something on his end, too. Why else would he have asked for her phone number, if not in the search of some sort of bond between them?
It was a few days later when, as she was doing some much needed relaxation in bed after a long day’s work, she received her first personalized text from Todoroki.
Biting back a laugh, she examined the contents of the message he’d sent her. Enclosed was a picture of a cat. A lean, black cat, perched on what seemed like a streetlight, its sleek pelt glinting majestically in the moonlight. Biting her lip, she typed out her response, unsure of where the line Todoroki was drawing stood.
Yaoyorozu (10:10 PM): A new friend?
Immediately after, she regretted it. Maybe her tone was too casual—after all, she and Todoroki were hardly friends. With bated breath she stared at her screen until, a few minutes later, her phone pinged with his response.
Todoroki (10:14 PM): A villain.
Momo started laughing in earnest at that response, in spite of its silliness. She could almost imagine Todoroki in a bed identical to hers typing that out, face completely deadpan. The image made her chest feel a bit warm. Was Todoroki imagining her, too? Was he wondering how she would respond to his message?
Yaoyorozu (10:20 PM): He seems pawsitively furrocious.
Oh god.
Puns.
In her defense, it had seemed really funny when she’d first sent it. And yes, she’d laughed at her own joke—which, in her view, was acceptable in the case of terrible cat puns.
But when Todoroki texted her puns of his own, arguably worse than the ones she’d come up with in her sleepy haze, they began a truly horrifying battle for the title of pun pundit. The conversation soon devolved into funny cat pictures stolen from the Internet and assigning famous cat memes to their friends and colleagues—(Bakugou was obviously the sly looking cat with the knife, they’d both agreed)—and Momo found that she was enjoying texting back and forth with Todoroki even into the early hours of the morning, at which point they were forced to admit that they were both equally as bad as each other.
When she fell asleep that night, her phone was still resting on her chest, mouth curled up into a huge smile.
And for the first time in months, she found that she slept peacefully.
*
Their relationship continued like this for the next few months.
At first, these long conversations were separated by a cool off period in which they’d solely converse about subjects like politics, the weather, and their friends and family, which she assumed Todoroki also found as interesting as watching paint dry. And then, like a miracle, one of them would send the catalyst that set off the spark for their dive into whatever the subject at hand would be on that particular night.
Soon enough, though, it became multiple times per week, and then nightly, and then—though Momo wouldn’t like to admit it—it was sneaking texts during her lunch hour, or in the mornings before her shower, or both, if she was feeling particularly talkative.
She’d seen Todoroki in person a few times in passing since that first conversation; at a book signing beside his agent, once, and then later accompanying Bakugou and Midoriya to a meeting in a large office complex. Each instance, she’d briefly contemplated going up to him and saying hi, but at the last possible minute had decided against it. And as their growing relationship continued to expand, Momo increasingly found she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to meet her in real life.
Momo was, to put it mildly, terrified. Online, she had the time to think about her responses—two or so golden minutes during which she could consider exactly what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. In real life, she knew she wouldn’t have that—and with Todoroki, she felt like she needed it. There was a natural flow to their conversations online, certainly, but in real life Momo was…awkward. Not socially experienced. And neither was Todoroki, if she was being honest.
Would they even have anything to talk about if they did decide to meet up? And, when they inevitably didn’t, would it ruin the thing they had?
Momo sighed, rubbing at her eyes. She was tired of overthinking everything—she was sure Todoroki shared none of her doubts. He probably didn’t even think about their conversations in the abstract.
As if on cue, her phone buzzed with another message. This time, it was a photo of a crêpe stand in a neighborhood Momo had gone to a few times, with the caption ‘Bon appetit.’
Starting to type out a response, Momo nearly pressed send when, right before her finger pushed down on the button, a feeling in the pit of her stomach stilled her hand. Momo paused, biting at the tender skin of her lip. It was true that this friendship wouldn’t lead anywhere; both she and Todoroki had busy lives, after all, with few times for social meetups. And besides, wouldn’t one of them eventually send the last message, regardless?
Right…it would only make sense for it to be Momo. She didn’t want Todoroki to think she was overly invested, after all. For the first time in their friendship, she deleted her reply and—stowing her phone back in her pocket and turning back to the spreadsheets glowing up at her from her laptop—left the message on ‘read.’
*
This didn’t end things between them immediately, but after a certain point the flow of messages started to cool. One of them would wait a day or two before replying, and then the response to that in and of itself would require a few days, until—finally—it would be weeks before they communicated again.
Momo was, on a surface level, grateful for the return to normalcy. Now that she wasn’t distracted by her phone, she could focus on work, which she was already passionately invested in. Todoroki was doing the same—she’d seen reports that he and some of their former classmates had taken down a big drug trafficking ring a few weeks ago. Despite herself, she’d been disappointed that he hadn’t told her personally. And even better, she didn’t have to deal with the constant pressure of worrying about how someone would react to her message; how she would later have to respond in turn. It was after all quite strange to consider herself being friends with Todoroki; none of their friends would’ve expected it, and she hadn’t told anyone. So there was nothing lost, tangibly: no mutual friends upset by their dwindling connection, no dramatic confrontations at events reported by tabloids, nothing of that scandalous nature. Just an empty inbox on Momo’s phone, and a sinking feeling in her chest.
Nothing more, nothing less.
And yet, somehow, Momo felt the effects of the lag in their communication. She would wake up in the mornings and see a cat perched on a flower box, and her first thought would be to send it to Todoroki. They’d done that, a lot—random pictures of things encountered in daily life. It had made her happy, being able to share things that usually only she would be able to appreciate, like a particularly nice sunset or a bloom of flowers outside her window. She would think of a joke, and wonder what his response would be. It was like sharing a secret with someone, in a way—a private mental space devoted to the two of them. And Momo craved having that again more than she had expected. Much, much more.
*
This particular emotional dilemma was why, when she and Kyouka met up for drinks three months post ‘leaving Todoroki on read,’ Momo spilled her guts.
“So let me get this straight,” Kyouka said, stirring her drink with a long straw. She took a sip, and then said, almost disbelieving, “You started a secret friendship with Todoroki Shouto of all people over text, sent each other cat pics for a blissful few months, and then broke it off for…work? Because you were scared you’d blank in real life?”
Momo winced. “Well, if you say it like that—”
“There’s no other way to say it!” Kyouka interrupted, with another aggressive sip. “Momo, you know I’m talking as your friend right now, but why would you sabotage yourself like that? Things were going so well.”
Momo sighed, tucking a long strand of black hair behind her ear. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, looking down at her lap. “I just…it’s only texting, right? It’s not a big deal…Todoroki-san probably texts lots of people.”
Kyouka fixed her with a look and said, blankly, “You’re joking, right? I didn’t even know that guy had a phone in the first place.”
Laughing, Momo swatted her friend on the arm. “That’s not very nice. It’s not like I particularly use mine, either.”
“Exactly,” replied Kyouka, exasperated. “You two are basically both geriatrics with Pro Heroes’ bodies. Seriously, talk about being meant to be.” She shook her head with faint amusement, distracted by the thought, but then continued, “That's not the point. Look, if you were getting along well over text, I don’t see why that wouldn’t transfer to a face to face conversation. Todoroki can’t be that different online, and I know you’re not, so what’s the problem?”
Momo let out a long, deep sigh. “I guess I’m just,” she started to speak, and then stopped herself, the words caught in her throat. “I don’t know, Kyouka. Todoroki-san and I…It’s weird, isn’t it? Us being friends?”
Kyouka shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I always thought you were sort of alike, really.”
One delicate brow raised, Momo looked back at her best friend, but didn’t reply. “It doesn’t matter anyways,” she said at last, taking a sip of her own coffee. “It’s over. I already did it. So…even if I wanted to change things, I couldn't.”
Contemplatively, Kyouka stirred her straw once more, letting the liquid in her tall cup mix with the movements. “You couldn't,” she echoed. “Right.”
*
A few days later, Momo received a rather cryptic text from Kyouka under the subject header Be there or be square. Opening the message, there was a time and an address written down. In and of itself, this wasn’t surprising. Kyouka often left Momo addresses for her gigs with no added context, as if Momo would immediately grasp what she was referring to even in the absence of any explanation.
Momo looked down at her watch and suppressed a sigh when she realised that whatever this mysterious meeting was, it was supposed to be five hours from now. She’d been planning on squeezing in a few extra hours of sleep in the afternoon to counteract her recent exhaustion, but it also had been a long time since she’d been able to make it to any of Kyouka’s gigs, and she did always enjoy seeing her friend perform. For the next few hours she got some boring but necessary work done, and then, when the clock approached eight PM, slipped into a pair of jeans and the nice sweater she’d bought herself for Christmas before heading out to the designated meeting place.
When she arrived, she looked down at her GPS, confused about where it had led her. It was a coffee shop, and a fairly generic one at that, with a nice green awning and a pretty sign decorated with chalk. It was nice, but it was still just…a coffee shop. Normally Kyouka performed underground, or at least somewhere that tended to attract more people interested in music.
Walking through the door, which announced her arrival with a cheery jingle, Momo looked around for her friend’s distinctive look when her eye caught on someone else. Sitting at a booth near the back was someone very familiar—someone whose head she would recognise anywhere. Just not the person she had expected to see.
“Todoroki–san…?” she breathed out, her voice coming out much louder than she intended.
At the sound of her voice, Todoroki turned around to look at her. His heterochromatic eyes widened in a surprise that matched her own at the sight of her. Immediately, Momo realised what must have happened.
Thanks a lot, Kyouka. Humiliated to still be standing in the middle of the café and staring at Todoroki like an idiot, she swore internally that she'd tell her best friend anything again.
After a few seconds of painfully awkward silence, Momo was ready to flee back to the comfort of her apartment and forget this had ever happened. Todoroki wasn’t even looking at her anymore—he was texting, fingers flying rapidly across the keyboard. Cheeks flushed, she was on the verge of leaving when she felt a short buzz from within her pocket.
She withdrew her phone, and peeked at the screen.
Todoroki (8:03 PM): Hello.
Not looking up at him, Momo texted back. Her heart was pounding—could Todoroki sense how nervous he was?
Yaoyorozu (8:04 PM): Hello
Dots flickered on the screen, signalling that he was typing a response. Then:
Todoroki (8:05 PM): Can we talk?
Momo raised her head, then, and nodded in his direction, closing the few feet’s distance between herself and the booth Todoroki was currently occupying. Sliding in across from him, she said, quickly, “I’m so sorry Kyouka arranged this… I didn’t think she would—”
“It’s fine,” said Todoroki calmly, cutting her off. “I would’ve done the same thing eventually if she hadn’t. Jirou did me a favor, to be honest.”
“Ah…” Momo replied, unsure of how to continue now that her apology had been aborted. “I see…”
Todoroki sighed, rubbing at his brow with his hands. “I’m not… good at this,” he started, voice quiet and low. “So, if this doesn’t make any sense…” he trailed off.
“It’s alright,” Momo found herself saying, a genuine smile blooming on her face in spite of the anxiety roiling in her stomach. “Me neither.”
Todoroki’s eyes flitted to hers, and his lips twitched slightly. “Right. Look, Yaoyorozu… To be honest, I don’t talk to a lot of people on a regular basis. Midoriya, maybe, and Bakugou… though I don’t think he likes it much. But when I started talking to you, I wasn’t—it wasn’t the same.”
His words were halted, more awkward than she was used to from him, but with every word Momo’s cheeks flushed a little deeper.
After a moment, he continued, “Because—because I don’t know you from work, or from being a Hero. You’re just… a person. And we weren’t talking for a reason, but rather just because we wanted to. And I didn’t know- well, I don’t know what that means for you, but for me, I was… happy. To be friends with you.” Swallowing, his eyes drifted to the window, before he looked back up at her and said, “What I mean to say is… Yaoyorozu, will you go out on a date with me?”
Momo’s heart was in her throat, but—from under the table—she sent two texts.
Yaoyorozu (8:15): Yes :)
And then, a few seconds later:
Momo (8:15): I hate you sometimes
Kyouka (8:16): i told you so ;)
And when she looked back up, Todoroki was smiling.