Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Twelve Years Earlier

“Edgeshot and his wife are splitting up.”

“Hm?” Todoroki raised his eyes but not his chin to look over at Momo in the armchair opposite the common room sofa.

“Sad, isn’t it?” she turned the page of her newspaper with a shake of her head. (Never mind that there were a thousand more convenient ways to get her news – Momo insisted upon print.) “He always had such good things to say about her in interviews.”

“Oh.” Hero marriages were of very little interest to Todoroki, though he tried to feign interest for his friend’s sake. “I guess I never really paid attention to that.”

“Oh, I know. I just thought it was kind of sad to see that even the ones whose marriages seem so good from the outside don’t make it.”

“Well, it’s understandable.” The topic of conversation wasn’t his favorite, but he’d deal with it if it meant this rare uninterrupted moment would last a little longer. “You’d always be making excuses and never have enough time, so it would be hard to be with someone who wasn’t also a hero. They’d never fully understand what was expected of you.”

“And pros rarely marry each other,” Momo added. “That’s actually a very good point. Maybe they’d have more success if they did.”

“Maybe, but you’d still not have time for them. Honestly, I think it’s better to stay single in this line of work.”

Something hard to read but suspiciously like disappointment crossed Momo’s face but disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “So you’ve thought about this.”

“Hard not to.” You must be forgetting what I had to put up with growing up. “I just don’t think it’s possible to do the work that we do – well, will do – and…I don’t know. Throw another person into the equation.”

“That makes a lot of sense.” Momo folded her newspaper and set it neatly on the coffee table, trying not to look at Todoroki. “It still might be lonely, though. Marriage is the extreme example, but the same goes for all relationships, doesn’t it? So if you look at it that way – like being close to people isn’t worth what you’d both be put through – you’re not going to be able to keep anyone around. And I get that it’s best if you’re the only one who has to be inconvenienced, but…” now she glanced over at him. “I don’t want that. Is that selfish of me?”

“No,” he replied. “But maybe a little bit unrealistic.”

“I actually don’t think it is. We can’t perform at our peak without a good support system, right?” Momo couldn’t say why her voice was so shaky. “I mean, first of all, it’s beneficial to have good relationships with our coworkers – that, we really can’t do without. And then, at least for me personally, I have absolutely no intention of losing my relationships with my family” – easier, she realized, when that meant loving parents and a handful of cousins, and not what Todoroki had to work with – “or our classmates. Even you.” She smiled, her nose scrunching at the tip as it tended to when she was trying too hard to seem chipper. “No self-isolation for you, Todoroki-san. If nothing else, you’re not gonna get rid of me.” 

He studied her but it didn’t look like he learned anything from the quick, intent scan he made of her face. “I wouldn’t want to.”

“But you just said-“

“That isn’t what I want, Momo. Just what I think is likely.”

“May I be frank?” she didn’t wait for his answer. “You’re going to make yourself miserable if you go on thinking that.”

“Personal fulfillment wasn’t really in the picture when I decided I wanted to be a hero,” Todoroki said flatly. “I might be, but I don’t really care.”

“Well, you should.” She looked back up at him, her cheeks just red enough to make her embarrassment obvious. “If only because I fully intend to know you for the rest of my life.”

“Huh?”

“Sorry, that came out wrong,” Momo muttered, cheeks flushing a deeper red. “I just meant that I…never mind. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“No, I…” Todoroki trailed off, brows slightly furrowed as he watched her for some sign of what she’d meant. “…go on.”

“No, it’s…it’s nothing.” She shook her head so quickly it seemed like she was trembling, muscles moving of instinct and not her own will. “Don’t…don’t worry about it.”

He looked her over, expression inscrutable, and for a fraught moment he didn’t say anything.

“I think very highly of you, Momo,” he finally said, voice so flat it was almost cold.

“Thank you?” She wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “I…well, you have to know that I also, well, I greatly admire and respect you as well, and, well. It’s just…it’s good to hear that, Todoroki.” She always spoke this way when she was too nervous to trust her words, overly-formal and board-stiff for an airtight seal against the inappropriate and the inadvisable. “But why do you mention it now?”

He shrugged. “If you were somehow still in my life after graduation, I would like that.” His wide, impassive eyes blinked up at her. “For practical reasons.”

“Because you think highly of me,” she said flatly, putting the pieces together. “As a colleague.”

“I would be stupid not to.” He looked so disinterested that he might as well have meant the compliment as an insult.

“That’s kind of you to say.” She smiled the way she had as a child when her parents’ friends had asked her unwanted questions at their parties. “Though I confess my own reasons for wanting to keep up our acquaintance are significantly more personal than that.”

“They are?”

She managed a weak smile. “I’m not sure if the feeling is mutual, but I consider you a close friend.”

His brow furrowed again. “Why would that feeling not be mutual?”

“Oh, well, it seemed like you were mostly just interested in business relationships.” She coughed into her hand. “With your classmates. Friends. Us.” She’d never in her life felt so unprepared to deal with unforeseen circumstances. “It didn’t seem like you’d want us around just for friendship’s sake.”

“I don’t spend time with people I don’t like.”

“You did a group project with Mineta last week,” she pointed out, cheeks burning.

“Voluntarily,” he amended.

“Is this your roundabout way of saying you enjoy my company?” Momo tried to tease, but she sounded so choked that the effect was underwhelming at best.

Todoroki shot her the kind of look that three years of friendship still hadn’t taught her to read. “I would think that much would be obvious.”

“Well, I’m glad.” She tried to smile, though she wasn’t sure enough of her own feelings to do it with any conviction. “I…I guess reading that article just got me thinking, and…” she trailed off, wondering why she was bothering to tell him this. “…never mind.”

“You keep saying that and I don’t know why.” He looked…troubled, if she had to put a word to it. “Why? Do you think I don’t want to hear what you have to say?”

“It’s more that I’m no longer sure I want you to hear what I have to say.”

“Why?”

Do I really need to explain that?

“Um…it’s just…I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. That’s all.”

Understatement of the century.

“You keep making me curious, though.” Now his unreadable expression seemed a little more open, and much more expectant. “What is it you keep getting at?”

“Getting at?” We’re not going there. “N-nothing. Just…thinking too much. That article and all.”

“Hero marriages. Right.”

“Right.” She smiled tightly. “I guess I’d never really considered the idea that getting married might not be realistic for us. As heroes.”

“Well, you can try, I guess. I just kinda doubt it would work out.” He raised his eyebrows. “Why? Is that something that you want?”

“Well…yes, I suppose.”

“Hm. Didn’t know that.”

“Let me guess, you assumed that I was too focused on my career to even think about that?” she sighed. “I get that a lot.”

“I kinda thought we all were.”

“Well, yes, but I’ve always sort of just assumed it would happen. Watching my parents…” she trailed off, eyes drifting to the left corner of the ceiling. “It seemed nice, having someone to share your life with.”

“Nice, maybe, but dangerous.” She suspected there was more to Todoroki’s words than met the eye. “If you’re that obviously connected to someone, it could be used against you.”

“True, but…think about how lonely that would be, cutting yourself off for everyone,” Momo pointed out, surprised at how much the prospect upset her. “And it’s kind of unfair to the people who care about you. You make it sound like you’re going to cut us all off after graduation-“

“No I won’t.” He narrowed his eyes. “When did I say that? And why would I do that? That would just be stupid. Burning bridges is a terrible idea.”

“Well, what with all your talk about being alone and connections being dangerous, I had to assume-“

“Yaoyorozu?”

“…yes?”

“You’re overthinking this.”

For obvious reasons, to everyone but you. “Right. Sorry.”

“Besides, we were talking about marriage, not friendship. Big difference.”

“We were,” she agreed, cheeks hot. “Sorry. I’m not really sure why I’m being like this.”

“No, actually, it’s kind of interesting. I never realized you had so many thoughts about this.”

“And you actually want to hear those thoughts?”

He shrugged. “I value your opinion.”

Well, if that’s not the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life, Momo thought privately, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s nice of you to say.”

“Also, I’ve never seen this side of you.” He seemed as sincere as she thought he possibly could. “I didn’t know you wanted to get married or…whatever it is you’re getting at.”

“Perhaps it’s cliché, but…who doesn’t want to be loved, right?” she glanced towards the window just for an excuse to look away. “And I guess…when you set aside my career choice, I’m kind of conventional. I want what you’d expet me to want.”

“So you want to get married because it’s just what people do,” Todoroki guessed.

“And because it seems nice, I guess. Sharing your life with someone.” She knew she shouldn’t lay her cards on the table so freely when there was so much she still wanted to keep him from seeing, but his admission that he valued her opinion had loosened her lips more than it should’ve. “Especially because nothing is guaranteed in this job, right?”

“Which is exactly why I think it’s a bad idea, but go on.”

His disagreement didn’t faze her as much as she would’ve expected it to. “I see it as…insurance, kind of.”

“Of what?”

“Well, when you marry someone, you’re promising them your future.” Part of her felt like a fool for revealing so much, but she didn’t really want to stop. “And that way…well, for one, you have someone to share it with, but for another, you’re telling that person you’ll come back.” She looked over to see how Todoroki would react and was surprised to find him a little less impassive than usual, his cheeks slightly more flushed than they’d been a moment ago. “That you’ll stay. And that’s pretty powerful in our line of work.”

“I never would’ve thought of it like that.” He smiled almost imperceptibly. “You have a point.”

“You do, too, to be fair.” Momo knew she was about six steps past the point of no return now, but he wasn’t giving her any cue to stop talking, so she didn’t. “It would be hard to make that work. Never having enough time, always being in danger – it would take a toll.”

“But you made another good point earlier. About how it’d be easier with another pro?” Todoroki gave her a pointed look. “It obviously still wouldn’t be easy, but I think it would be better if the person understood the pressure you were under.”

“Oh, I agree. For sure.” And for both our sakes, I hope you don’t know just how much. “Though that does narrow the playing field, so to speak. I mean, what are the odds of falling for one of the fifty or so heroes you’ll ever meet?” she picked at her cuticles. “And having those feelings returned?”

“Slim, I guess?” There was that inscrutable look again. “But I really can’t imagine you, of all people, having a problem with that.”

“With what?” she thought she got his implication, and it made her heart pound, but she didn’t want to assume.

“Having your feelings returned. You’re not really the type to get rejected.”

“You would be very surprised,” she muttered.

“Oh?”

“I have a tendency to go for people who have no idea how I feel about them, that’s all.” She tried to play it off gracefully, but it didn’t work. “Honestly, part of me just wants to marry someone I know I get along with even if I don’t…you know.”

“Like an arranged marriage?”

“Well…no. I’d want it to be a mutual decision, not something somebody else chose for us.” They both knew she was using the royal ‘us,’ but the unspoken implication still made her feel oddly dizzy. “Maybe, in the sense that it wouldn’t be based on romantic feelings, but then again, that seems like an even worse idea.” She could picture it now – marrying for convenience or companionship, falling in love without meaning to, having to hide – and it wasn’t an image she was eager to dwell on. “Yeah…maybe not. I’d probably catch feelings” – it felt odd, using slang she’d picked up from her classmates in a conversation with a friend who didn’t use it any more liberally than she did – “and them make him uncomfortable, and that would be worse than having no one, probably.”

“You don’t really seem like the type to develop those kinds of feelings easily, though,” he pointed out.

“You’d think so, but I just know I’d get really attached and then all the bets would be off.” She tried to make it seem like this was a hypothetical, but she knew that it wasn’t.

“But he’d probably return your feelings eventually, wouldn’t he?”

Momo’s eyes widened. “What makes you say that?”

“Just a guess.”

**

Yaoyorozu Momo had a way of getting herself stuck in Shouto’s head that he could never quite figure out. He’d always felt, at first without cause, that she was someone worth listening to. Time had only strengthened that conviction – hence, this.

Shouto never gave much thought to love. He wasn’t the type who’d ever knowingly pine for someone who had no clue how he felt or imagine himself in someone’s arms; he didn’t think it upsetting that he was nearly eighteen and had never so much as held a hand in anything but brotherly consolation, and he certainly didn’t think of marriage when love was mentioned. For all that he’d seen of it, those concepts were as unrelated as were gravity and jealousy – there’d been nothing within a dozen miles of romance in his parents’ marriage, after all. He’d had it implied on several occasions by pot-stirring friends that the way his throat tightened and his palms sweat when he approached Yaoyorozu meant something, but he didn’t want it to; anything beyond friendship was a vast and daunting unknown and he didn’t want to explore it.

Not when he had more important things to do.

Not when love hardly even seemed real to him.

Still, though, Momo’s words had gotten wheels turning in his brain that hadn’t moved in ages. He’d be the first to admit that any friendships he lost would be surrendered out of necessity and not a lack of interest, and he thought he’d always visit his mother on Sundays and take his most burning (embarrassing) questions to Fuyumi. But he couldn’t help but wonder, hearing what she had to say, if he might ever want to take a less passive stance against that loss of old connections when they weren’t sustained by proximity alone anymore, or to seek out new ones.

They sounded nice, these new ones – the kind that lingered and lasted and simmered like pots of savory broth on warm, inviting stoves.

The idea of it and the warmth it set to bloom in his chest reminded him of the dozens of long nights like this one that he’d spent in the common room with Momo, dissecting the meaning of life and their place in the universe and other such high school clichés in hushed voices and hiding, concealing their laughter, when their sleep-addled classmates wandered into the adjacent kitchen for water. He could name pleasant nights he’d had with most of his classmates, but those ones had seemed different somehow – more private, more sacred. He’d have felt embarrassed, somehow, mentioning them to anyone else, and knowing that he’d shared them only with Momo…meant something.

The idea of more of that – more warmth, more comfortable companionship, more things shared only between two beloved confidants – almost made her sentimental argument about promised futures seem rational. And he thought about it: someone to talk to at inconvenient times when no one was awake, a partner with whom to shoulder burdens and share triumphs; something to hold in his arms the way he’d never admit he clung to his pillows as he drifted off, shy smiles across a dinner table, a quick press of lips to his cheek before he left for work – and it seemed, somehow, like something he might one day regret counting out.

He wondered why he’d ever taken up the habit of cuddling with a pillow, if it was reflective of some deeper longing he hadn’t known he had. Surely he couldn’t want something he’d never seen or experienced, but from where else had he gotten that desire?

And since when did he think about things like that at all?

“Thanks a lot, Yaoyorozu,” he muttered, pulling a pillow over his face as if it would protect him from the mortifying ordeal of self-reflection. But it couldn’t – not from his thoughts or from his ringing phone. 

**

“Shouto?”

Momo’s voice was tight with anticipation when she spoke, keeping her voice down. Never mind that it was two in the morning and he roomed down the hall – she’d been sure he would pick up, and he had.

“What time is it?” he muttered, early-morning grumpy.

“Um…two,” she said shyly. She’d known he’d answer, but she realized now that she should’ve felt worse about waking him than she did. “Sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“No, couldn’t sleep.” A pause. “You realize you could’ve just come over, right?”

“At two in the morning?”

“The result is the same.”

“I’d get a demerit, Todoroki. You know that.”

“Ugh. Fine.” It sounded like he’d flopped back against the pillows on the other end. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, just thinking too much.” She fiddled with the tassel on her pillowcase to calm her nerves. “About earlier.”

“What about it?”

“Okay, this is going to sound completely insane, but will you promise to hear me out?” she was glad he couldn’t see how red her face was.

“Um…sure,” he replied apprehensively.

“Okay. So…I want to get married, we’ve established that.”

“Yes?” Todoroki didn’t seem to understand what she was getting at, for which she was secretly grateful.

“And we’ve also established that heroes are more likely to stay married if they marry other heroes, right?” She drummed her fingers against her knee and wondered why she was feeling so fidgety.

“Well, yes, though it’s obviously not a guarantee, and what are you getting at?” Todoroki asked in reply.

“Well, we’re both going to be heroes, we know where we stand with each other” – what a lie that is – “and we work together well. We both have reservations about relationships and we’re…compatible.”

“We’re also eighteen, Yaoyozoru.”

“N-no, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all!” she stammered, so warm in the face that she thought it might burst into flame. “Not now. That would be stupid.”

“Oh…kay.”

“Instead,” she said, trying to force herself to remain calm, “I want to propose a deal.”

“A deal.” He paused for a beat. “What kind of a deal?”

“If we’re both single at an age that we decide on, we’ll marry each other.”

Todoroki, a few doors down and sixty miles away, coughed.

She wanted nothing more than for the floor to absorb her body until nothing remained but the blue hair ribbon she always wore to sleep, wadded up on the floor as a token of the affection that had induced her fatal faux pas.

“Thirty,” he said, finally, after an eternal five seconds.

“Thirty what?”

“If we’re both single at thirty, we get married.”

“You’re actually agreeing to this?”

“Why not? It’s a decent idea. And you’ll probably find someone else in that time anyway.”

“Well, that’s kind of you to say-“

“That was a yes, Yaoyorozu.”

**

Eight Years Earlier

“It feels like it’s been forever, doesn’t it?”

“Mmhm.” Shouto busied himself with his ice cream, unwilling to think too hard about that. “We were lucky to be able to catch each other at all.”

“Guess we were.” Where he’d resorted to licking his cone, she still took delicate bites of hers with an absurdly-tiny plastic spoon. “We have a lot to catch up on, don’t we?”

“Not really. Most of that mission was classified.”

“No, not that. Just…life.” She knew as well as anyone that, whatever Shouto had been asked to do for the last month and a half, he wasn’t going to be able to disclose it. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing, as usual.” Shouto leaned back against the bench with a sigh. “Not a lot of time for anything but-“

“Work, work, work,” Momo agreed. “It’s gotten so hectic that I’ve only finished three books this month. Shameful, really.”

Shouto’s eyes goggled. “Where did you find the time for that?”

“Plane rides,” she said simply, as if that was an explanation he shouldn’t have needed. “Normally I’d have gotten in at least five by now, but…duty calls, I suppose.”

“Sometimes it terrifies me how freakishly productive you are.”

“Well. One has to pass the time.” Momo lowered her head so the blush in her cheeks wouldn’t show. “And you? Any news?”

“No, why?”

“I was wondering about that girl Mina set you up with last month.”

He grimaced. “Let’s just say I shouldn’t have let Mina set me up with anyone.”

**

Five Years Earlier

“Do you have matcha?”

Momo blinked a couple of times, hoping she’d have an explanation for this by the time her vision cleared, but he didn’t try to give one. “Um…what do you need matcha for?”

“No reason.”

“Shouto, it’s one in the morning.”

“Wait, were you asleep?”

“Well, no, but I have to question why you needed matcha so badly at a time like this.” She shook her head fondly. “Care to explain?”

“It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow.”

“And you’re giving her matcha that you borrowed from me?”

“No, but Fuyumi said she’d like it if I cooked her something, and she likes this matcha pudding stuff, but everything’s closed, and it takes forever to set, and I have to go over there at ten tomorrow, so I can’t go get the powder tomorrow and make it in the morning, so…” she could almost see his sheepish expression through the phone. “…I figured that if anyone I knew might have matcha, it’d be you.”

“You’re lucky that I love you,” she muttered.

(She knew he knew she wouldn’t dream of letting her stock run out.

He really was lucky.)

**

Two Years Earlier

“…so I’m never using a dating app again.”

“Understandable.” Shouto glanced back down at her phone and winced. “Why did you in the first place?”

“Well, you never know…”

“But I have to assume you at least guessed that this wouldn’t go well.”

Momo huffed and dug her spoon into a container of her favorite mango sorbet. “Fool’s hope?”

“Sorry, anyways.” He patted her shoulder, which was the closest Shouto was likely to come to the kind of affectionate consolation others might offer a twentysomething in dire need of a dating intervention. “Wanna talk about it?”

“I think I’d much rather forget it ever happened.”

“Fine by me.” He laid back against the couch cushions, crossing his hands behind his head to use as a pillow. “Sounds like a tool, anyway.”

“He was.” Momo leaned her head against his shoulder and he could feel her shoulder rise enough to bump his when she sighed. “I swear, this stuff is pointless. Why don’t I just date you?”

“Because you don’t like me that way,” he said matter-of-factly. “As far as I know.”

“No, but you wouldn’t freak out and alert the paparazzi when you figured out who I was” – that had been the first of her disastrous internet dates – “or stand me up” – the second – “or try to rope me into a pyramid scheme.”

That, he couldn’t argue with.

“Maybe it would be a good idea to retire the dating app profile,” he suggested.

“Way ahead of ya.”

**

Present

September 23

Happy birthday, Yaoyorozu.

It was a deceptively simple message, and not at all out of the ordinary – weirder would be hearing nothing from her best friend today, even though his work had him off in a tiny northern town two hundred miles from the small gathering of friends she’d planned to mark her thirtieth birthday. But it set off a cascade of thoughts she wasn’t sure she wanted to face here, in a room full of friends whose expectant faces awaited a report on whatever it is that had her smiling sheepishly at her phone in the middle of her own birthday party.

Four more months and they’d both have crossed the threshold she doubted he even remembered. Both, for now and likely for some time more, were single as can be, and the part of her that had never been good at letting go of the past desperately hoped he wouldn’t meet anyone before January rolled around, that he’d remember and that he wouldn’t write off their teenage agreement as a ridiculous product of the sleep deprivation and forced proximity that had been their constant companions at UA.

Thank you!, she replied, because she’d never been good at laying her cards on the table when it came to Todoroki Shouto.

**

January 11

“There’s…no one else here.”

Todoroki took another long slurp of his soba before he replied.  “I know.”

“Um…it’s nice.” Momo bit her lip, trying not to smile. “Being here with you. I just thought you’d want to see some of your other friends today.”

“I do, but right now, I have to talk to you.” He set aside his chopsticks so he could look up at her – a rarity, given how much Todoroki hated making eye contact. “Alone.”

“Oh.” Thirty, she reminded herself, but it didn’t do very much good. “On your birthday.”

“Mmhm.” He searched her face as if she was supposed to know what that meant. “So…remember-“

“The marriage pact?” Momo couldn’t keep herself quiet anymore. “And that we’re both thirty now?”

His eyes widened. “Well, clearly, I didn’t need to be worried about that,” he muttered under his breath.

“Of course I didn’t forget.” She laughed, lighter than she’d felt in a long time. “I mean, it was a crazy idea, but also not half-bad…right?”

He looked away for a moment and she wondered if she’d said something before he fished something out of his pocket and set it down next to his bowl. He tried to keep it concealed beneath his hand while he fiddled with it, but Momo had an inkling – however improbable – of what he was getting at and had to bite her lip so as not to blurt out something inadvisable.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, a little nervous but obviously not as much so as she was. “For…well, twelve years now.”

“You actually thought about that?” Momo had to hold back a delighted giggle. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Never did have much of a sense of humor.” He finally finished fiddling with the object in his hand and opened the lid of what she could now see was a navy velvet jewelry box, sliding it halfway across the table. “And since we’re both still single and close, I thought – well, like you said. It might not be a half-bad idea.”

Momo blinked a couple of times to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

“You bought me an engagement ring,” she said, disbelieving, “for your own birthday, because of a deal we made when we were in high school?”

His face fell. “No?”

“No, no, not that. Just give me a second to process this.” She shook herself. “I always thought that you just went along with the pact idea to placate me-“

“No.” He was, to his credit, as earnest as she’d ever seen him. “I…I like the idea of – what was it you called it? ‘Promising you my future’?”

“Shouto…”

“I mean, I might not be in love with you or anything, but that was never part of the deal, was it?” he tried to smile, but it obviously took more than he had to give. “You’re my best friend, and…I want to know if you want to make good on that deal.”

Momo hid a beaming smile behind her hand and nodded but not before she said, “just one question.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you…actually ask me?” she asked, suddenly shy. “I mean, I’m only going to get spontaneously proposed to by my best friend in a noodle shop once.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “I know this isn’t very romantic, and you probably wouldn’t even want it to be, so that’s…fine. But, uh…”

“Yes?” she prompted.

“Marry me?”

This is crazy, said logic.

This is going to break your heart, said tenderness.

This isn’t going to be what you think it will, said caution.

“Yes,” said instinct, said fondness, said the part of her that had never been convinced that the love she’d buried for so long was unreturned. And she reached for his hands across the table, giving them a squeeze. “I would love to.”

Chapter Text

“This is a terrible idea.”

Shouto didn’t miss a beat, nor did he look like he’d been asleep even though the hour was nearing four. “Ring’s returnable. No problem if you wanna back out.”

“No, no, it isn’t that.” It probably should be. “It’s just that…we really didn’t think this through, and there’s so much to consider that we just…didn’t, and I let myself get caught up in the moment but we need to give this much more serious thought if we’re actually going to go through with it.” Momo cleared her throat to make sure she wouldn’t choke on her next words. “That’s all.”

“Um.” Shouto blinked to clear his vision, all too aware of his rumpled appearance - couldn’t I at least have put a shirt on? – and the unfortunate hour. “Are you sure we need to do this at three in the morning?”

“S-sorry!” Momo pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know what came over me-“

“Hey, it’s fine.” He opened the door a crack to let her through. “I know how you are when you get something stuck in your head.”

“Can’t think about anything else until it gets resolved?” her pinched expression relaxed.

“Yeah.” She still wasn’t entering, so he gestured towards the living room behind him. “So you might as well come in.”

She followed, swallowing doubt and trying to exude confidence she knew she didn’t feel. “Thanks.”

“You’re not wrong,” he replied. “And I couldn’t sleep anyway. So…might as well, right?”

“Ugh, me neither.” Momo sank down into one of the cushions around his low-slung living room table with a weary sigh, resting her weight on her elbows at the edge of the tabletop. “I kept replaying tonight and wondering what I was thinking.”

“Same.” He ducked his head to hide a sheepish smile. “At least you’re not the one who bought an engagement ring for your best friend on the assumption that she wouldn’t have forgotten about something you said twelve years ago and gave it to her at a hole-in-the-wall noodle shop.”

“That was actually sweet.” Momo allowed herself the indulgence of a small smile. “And unexpected. I honestly thought I was crazy for having remembered that conversation.”

“But you weren’t.”

“And yet.” She massaged her temple – touching her face had always been a nervous habit of hers. “The fact that we hadn’t talked about it since it happened makes me wonder if acting on it is a recipe for disaster.”

“Well, we’ve only gotten closer since then,” Shouto pointed out. “And as far as I know, your feelings on the subject are the same.”

“Marriage, you mean?” Momo nodded. “Yes, I’d say they were.”

“So it really wasn’t all that out-of-the-question.” He shrugged. “And I figured I could play it off as a joke, and you’d have a good laugh over it if you didn’t actually want to take it seriously.”

“Fair enough, but you have to know that you’re terrible at playing things off.” Still, the idea of Shouto trying to make her laugh warmed her more than it had any reason to. “And this ring…”

“Returnable,” he reminded her. “I could’ve just said I was really committed to the joke.”

“I know you too well for that, but I like that you had a backup plan.” No matter how ridiculous it had been. “Very forward-thinking of you.”

“Well, that should at least reassure you that I thought this through.” Shouto tilted his head expectantly. “Does it?”

“Well, yes, but we have to talk about things like this,” Momo pressed. “There’s so much more to this decision than we’ve even begun to consider, and…well, honestly, agreeing on impulse without talking about specifics is like that is perhaps the least Yaoyorozu Momo thing I’ve ever done.”

“Oh, yeah, I was surprised you said yes.” A tiny smile forced its way onto his lips. “I didn’t think you liked me enough to make a life-altering decision without making sixteen contingency plans first.”

“Well, we still need them-“

He arched an eyebrow, a look she’d never been able to copy. “Ah. There she is.” 

“Even if you set aside the obvious awkwardness that comes with the expectation that a marriage be romantic when ours wouldn’t be, there’s a lot to discuss.” She glanced off towards the kitchen. “Mind if I put the kettle on?”

“At three-forty in the morning.” Shouto leaned forwards on his elbows the way she was, imitating her skeptic’s posture. “For a conversation about whether or not a decision we made when we were eighteen is grounds for our getting married?”

“It’s calming,” she offered weakly, even though she knew he already understood that she just needed a distraction.

He shook his head fondly. “Well, you already know where everything is, so what’s stopping you?”

**

“So.” Momo took a long sip of ginseng and a deep breath. “We need to talk about our finances.”

“…finances?” That hadn’t been what Shouto had expected.

“Well, yes, given that we’d be combining assets and whatnot. Very important to know what we’re going to be dealing with. Do you have a bank statement handy? Any sort of tax documentation? What about the deeds to your properties?”

“Momo. It is three in the morning.”

“Taxes wait for no man, Shouto.” She slid a manila folder – where had that come from? – across the table to him. “I got this together earlier once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. You know…in the interest of transparency.”

“Momo. C’mon.” He slid the folder back to her. “I’m not going to comb through your bank statement this early in the morning. My brain’s not even fully on right now.”

“Fine,” she muttered, stashing the folder in her bag. “Then could we at least discuss living arrangements? We have so many properties between us and have to relocate so often that I have no idea what would make the most sense, not to mention the matter of living together. And, on that topic, there’s the matter of what we both want out of this, and how to set boundaries, and what we’re going to tell the press, and whether we’re at all compatible for this kind of thing, and possible name changes, and that’s without even considering the wedding itself…”

“Okay.” Shouto bit back another protest about the hour and his foggy brain; she clearly wouldn’t be able to rest until she got this out. “I have no idea where we’d live, either, although your apartment probably has more space than mine, and I really don’t want to live with my entire family if we do…um. Go through with this. So probably not at the estate, either.” He tried to recall her next few questions and nodded to himself when he got it. “The press isn’t important, I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t know that I could live with you, name changes can wait, and I’m pretty sure we just want to be married, regardless of…feelings, so there’s not really much to what we want, right? Nothing really needs to change.”

He’d gotten very used to answering strings of her questions without asking her to repeat them in the past few years. He considered it one of his most valuable skills.

“Wow.” Momo smiled at the table, unable to look at Shouto directly. “You really have thought this through.”

“Well, yeah. It’s not a decision I would ever make lightly.” He wanted to get up and pace, to fidget – to give his nerves somewhere to escape to – but he felt as if he couldn’t move; it was all he could do to reach for the teapot and pour himself a cup even though he’d sworn he wouldn’t. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether I even should at all when I first started thinking about this.”

Momo’s face clouded over. “So you are having doubts.”

“Not anymore.” He took a sip so he wouldn’t have to continue right away. “I just wondered if I could live with myself, doing this to you.”

“Doing what to me?” Now she did look at him, brow furrowed. “This was my idea, if I’m remembering correctly.”

“Offering you a loveless marriage.” He set his teacup down and rested his now-freed hands behind his back, leaning against his palms. “I’ve seen enough of those to know that I could never do that to you.”

“Loveless?” she echoed. “But…it wouldn’t be, would it?”

“In a sense. Obviously, you mean a lot to me” – apparently I love you was a step too far for comfort even now – “and I’d never…I don’t know. Neglect you.” He’d seen too much of the loneliness in his mother’s eyes to stomach the idea. “Leave you lonely. If we’re going to do this, I’m going to treat you right.”

“I know you would,” she said softly. “Which is why it confuses me that you’d worry about that, of all things.”

“Well…I’m not in love with you.” He leaned his head back, letting out a long breath as he studied the ceiling. “I was afraid that you might always regret not having the chance to be with someone who loved you like that because you’d already married me.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, something she rarely did even in her most anxious moments. “Well, yes, I will admit that that crossed my mind, but I’m not the romantic I used to be.” She forced a tight smile. “I’d be perfectly content with you, really. Even if it wasn’t the kind of marriage I’m used to seeing.”

“But would you be happy?”

“I…I think so.” Years ago, Momo would’ve privately admitted that nothing in the world could’ve brought her greater joy than the prospect she was facing now; she couldn’t, though, now that the years had lent her their perspective. “I do love you. Not…romantically, of course, but that doesn’t mean our marriage would be loveless.” She didn’t wait to see the look on his face. “Because I do love you, Shouto. Very much.”

“I…I…me too,” he admitted. Thirty years hadn’t made that one particular phrase any less daunting, apparently.

“There is one request I would make, though,” she went on, cheeks a little redder than usual. “If we, um. If we were actually to get married.”

“Yeah?”

“I…well, I know we’re not marrying for love in the traditional sense, but if I’m married to you, I…can’t exactly kiss anyone else.” Her face didn’t redden any further – experience had dulled the intensity of her reactions to such things – but she looked so embarrassed he was surprised she was still speaking. “And, I…well, now that I say it out loud, it sounds silly.”

“No, go on.”

“I…I’d like to kiss you sometimes.” Her expression had shifted from self-conscious to hopeless, the what-can-you-do face she always wore when there was nothing more to be said. “It’s…nice. And, well, we might as well play at being a couple if we’re going to do this, right?”

Shouto could only describe the sensation which those words produced in him as analogous to the one he had felt three years ago when he’d taken a chunk of concrete to the chest in the field and nearly died on impact.

More baffling still was that he truly had no idea why.

“You…want…to kiss me.”

“Well, yes, that was what I said.”

“Why?”

“Because, as I said, you’d be my husband, so I can’t very well kiss anyone else, and because it’s a nice perk of being married that I’d like to cash in even if…well.” She looked up at him without much hope in her expression. “But if you’re uncomfortable with that, I completely understand.”

“Well, no. I’m not going to say no to that.” He looked off blankly – thoughtfully, perhaps – into the middle distance. “But do you just mean you want to kiss me, or is that a more general way of telling me you want some kind of ‘friends with benefits who happen to be married’ arrangement?”

Momo thought she might choke on nothing for several reasons, not the least of which was that her unswervingly literal-minded best friend’s brain had managed to go there without prompting. “No,” she coughed. “It was not.”

“Okay, good.” He exhaled slowly. “I’m…not sure how I would feel about that.”

“Nor am I, so I’m glad we agree.” Momo thought she might catch fire at any moment but forced herself to remain calm. “But I thought kissing was reasonable because, well, we’re always touching anyways, right?”

“Um…right.” It wasn’t something Shouto ever thought about, but he knew upon examination that he’d come to think of her hugs as a comfort, and rare were the days they spent together where her hand didn’t find its way into his as they walked – they’d had to fend off dating rumors in the tabloids for years for all the casual touching they did. “I…yeah. If you want.”

“I do think we should probably sleep apart, though, just for practicality’s sake,” she continued. “Because our sleep schedules are so misaligned. It wouldn’t be beneficial to either of us not to get proper rest, and we’d probably be a lot less likely to do that if we had to work around each other getting in and out of bed at weird times.”

“Says the one who showed up at my door at three in the morning?”

Momo pulled a face at him. “I was only making the most of my fiancée privileges!”

He didn’t want to admit that he’d been deflecting from the fact that he didn’t love the idea as much as she seemed to, so he bit down the confession and nodded. “That makes sense.”

“But…you can crash with me if you really can’t sleep.” She smiled softly, playing with the cuff of her sweater. “I’d like that.”

That image was decidedly more agreeable to him. “Sure.”

“Though none of this is particularly important right now-“

“It’s not, but you and I both know you weren’t going to be able to sleep until you got it all out of your system.” He reached across the table to pat her hand – five years ago he never would’ve managed such a casual touch, but she’d taught him well, and he’d come to relish it. “Any other burning concerns?”

She wouldn’t let him retract his hand. “You’re so good to me, Shouto,” she replied, noncommittal, with as much tenderness as she knew how to permit herself.

“You’re dodging the question.”

She was perhaps the only person on the planet Shouto knew how to read – sometimes that was more annoying than it had any right to be.

“Well…not at the moment, but I know I’m going to be awake in two hours with more,” she admitted sheepishly. “I feel so stupid, unpacking all of these unimportant details when we should both be asleep, but…”

“Weighing on you, right?”

“Yeah.” She looked down at an unexpected feeling of pressure against her ankle, eyes narrowed, then rolled her eyes.

Shouto’s robot vacuum…thing. Typical.

“Why are you running Kosechan at four in the morning?” she muttered, bumping the disc-shaped vacuum away with her foot until its course diverted. The stupid thing was always underfoot, but he’d sworn by this particular brand of floor vacuum since he was twenty and mooching off of his sister at home – Fuyumi apparently loved them – and this one…

Well. He’d given it a name, which just about said it all.

“Couldn’t sleep. You know I do weird stuff when I’m up too late.”

“Yeah, but really? This thing’s been on every time I’ve been over in the past month, Shouto.”

“Yeah, because I’m always tracking stuff in!” he defended his…whatever the vacuum was to him (conclusion: unclear). “And would it kill you to be nice? Kosechan’s a part of the family.”

“Oh?” Momo threw a look over her shoulder at the edge of a tatami mat, where the vaccum had managed to get itself stuck and was, in accordance with its programming, beeping in protest. “I have become stuck!”, its disembodied robot voice protested every few moments, and more insistently with passing time - that she’d been given a name derived from a word for “fussy” was no coincidence. “Then why don’t you go get her? She’s crying, isn’t she?”

Shouto rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t about to argue with that. Privately, Momo thought he should’ve gotten a cat if he wanted something to dote on, but Shouto had a bond with that vacuum that she simply couldn’t understand – it made for good entertainment, though, watching him carry the disc to a better location and mutter something she couldn’t make out as he restarted it.

He took a seat on the cushion next to hers when he returned, rather than the one he’d been seated at on the other side of the table – that choice wasn’t lost on her.

“Oh,” she couldn’t help but mutter. “Hi.”

He didn’t move to touch her, but he seemed like he wanted to. “Hey.”

“You and that vacuum,” she said lightly, trying to lighten the tension lingering in the foot of space between their cushions. “It’s like your high-maintenance little sister or something.”

“Well, who else am I supposed to talk to in the middle of the night?”

That was a concerningly salient point.

“Well,” she said after a moment of tremulous silence, “I guess that’s what you’ll have me for.”

“You still want to do this?”

“Well, I still need to see that tax return-“

“Momo.”

“…fine.” She reached for his hand as if it weren’t anything out of the ordinary. “And by that I mean yes. Again.”

“No second thoughts?”

“Plenty, but those are inevitable.” She angled her body to face his. “And you?”

“Well, I’m not the one who showed up at three in the morning because I was having cold feet and then announced that I wanted to kiss you, so I think it’s safe to say-“

“Hey!”

“-that that’s a ‘yes.’” He mimicked her movement again and now they both faced each other. “But are you sure?”

“…how many times are you going to ask me that?”

“Thirty’s not old, Momo. You could still fall for someone, and then what?”

“Well, I could, but by then I’d already have made a promise, and frankly I’m not sure why you don’t think the same might happen to you-“

“No, I don’t think it would.”

Momo knew better than to press the point. “Okay, then we’ve established that the possibility of developing feelings for someone else isn’t a compelling reason enough not to go forwards?”  

“In all likelihood, the highest possibility is that one of us ends up developing feelings for the other, which would work out fine.” Shouto shrugged. “I know you probably think that’s unrealistic, but if we’re constantly together, it’s…possible.”

“I suppose.” Please, said the same part of her brain which wanted to scream at her to stop before she got any more foolish ideas. “I did open the door to that when I asked if I could kiss you.”

“Oh, I doubt it’ll be because of that. I’m not good at it.”

“Kissing?” Momo narrowed her eyes. “What’s there to be good at?”

“I just…fell out of practice.”

“But you’ve had plenty of relationships,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but I was never a kiss-on-the-first-date guy. You know that.” He shrugged. “And I don’t usually like the blind dates people set me up on, so I kind of try to avoid it as much as I can.”

“It’s…a big deal to you, then?” She hadn’t known that. How had she not known that? She’d have assumed she knew just about everything she could’ve about him.

“I just really have to trust someone to be willing to do that. Otherwise it’s just awkward.”

“And yet you told me I could,” Momo replied. “That was sweet of you.”

“Well, I trust you, so…”

“But still.”

“I guess.” He shrugs. “Most of the time, either the idea of kissing someone makes me feel sick, or it’s just kind of…there. It’s repulsive or else I accept it as a fact.”

“Your point?”

“Well…kissing you just kind of seems like a fact to me.”

Momo thought that might’ve been both the oddest and the highest compliment that she had ever received.

“That’s…a relief.”

“Yeah?” he seemed to shift an inch closer.

“Mmhm.” She closed another inch of space.

“I was thinking-“

“It’s late, I know.” Another inch gone.

“And I act like I’m drunk when I’m up too late.” One more.

“But if we’re going to do this-“

“Practice, right?” Yet another.

“Practice makes perfect.” They could feel the ghosts of breath against each other’s faces now.

“You…you still want to kiss me, right?”

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

“If you want to.”

“That’s not helpful, Shouto.”

“Do you want to?”

“Well…yes.” Because it had been too long, because that was what one did after accepting a proposal – the reason was uncertain, but she knew that she did. “But I don’t want to force you into anything.”

“And you aren’t.”

“So…”

“Should I kiss you?”

Her nose brushed against his ever so slightly as she leaned in, too afraid of her own voice to answer his question in words. “Okay,” it finally whispered when she trusted it again, hot against his lips, and she couldn’t help but think that it was awfully strange for a moment like this to feel as sweet as it did with someone she didn’t love the way it demanded she did.

And then – with barely a second of warning, before Momo had even gotten the chance to open her eyes – he pulled back like he’d been slapped, and it only took a moment to realize why.

“I have become stuck! I have become stuck! I have become stuck!”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Momo muttered, because she knew very well that neither she nor anyone could compete with the siren call of that stupid vacuum’s disembodied robot voice.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Shouto called from the other side of the room once he’d set Kosechan upright. “Anyways. Do you wanna…”

Momo got to her feet, shaky enough on sleepy legs that she had to use the table for support. “Yes,” she said flatly, unwilling to risk another interruption, and one of her hands reached out to grab the collar of his shirt, but-

What am I doing?

“S-sorry!” she stammered, hand still fisted in the fabric of his shirt. “I…that was way too forward of me and-“

“Hey.” Shouto lifted her chin so she could see that his eyes had crinkled with amusement at her uncharacteristic boldness. “S’okay. Really.”

Shouto was as matter-of-fact about the act of kissing as he was about everything else important, and he didn’t wait for another opportunity to be interrupted or to let Momo’s doubt creep in again. So he bent his head and, a little tentatively, brushed his lips past hers; she sighed without meaning to and, this time, he let the featherlight pressure of his lips against hers last a beat longer. Her fingers still curled weakly around a fistful of his shirt, and it was a stunned moment before she had the wherewithal to remember that she’d been the one to request this kiss and return the favor. Her free hand didn’t seem to know quite what to do with itself in a kiss so different from the ones she’d known so far, so it curled weakly around the side of his face. He followed suit, and the hand he wasn’t using to keep steady at her waist gingerly settled against the base of her ponytail – ginger, though, only until he slid a finger beneath the hair tie she’d used to pull it back and tugged until her hair, shorter than it had been in their high school years, was loose.

There was really no good explanation for that, and Momo pulled a fraction of an inch back with a muffled catch in her next breath. Some sliver of what logic still remained in her sleepless and kiss-hazy mind told her to ask him what he’d meant by that, but it had no chance of drowning out the voices urging her to kiss him again. So she did, one hand still resting against his chest and the other – as she’d picked up in his own movements – tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck.

This had been, at the beginning, downright proper. Now she got the feeling that she was starting down a slippery slope.

“Sorry,” Shouto stammered, pulling back a little too quickly. “The…hair. Didn’t mean to. Don’t know what-“

“It’s okay.” He’d always liked playing with her hair – that had to be all it was. “I…I liked it.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” She smiled, pressing her forehead to his. “I did.”

“Well, uh…I’m glad.”

In truth, Todoroki Shouto was a lot of things right now, but he was decently sure that ‘glad’ was not one of them. Conflicted, reeling, and so utterly confused he could barely think straight, yes; glad – well. That one was a little less clear.

Absolutely none of what had seemed so sharply-defined ten minutes ago was as easy to make out anymore and he looked down at his fingers, still flexing to stretch the hairband he’d taken from her ponytail.

Glad? Not really.

Chapter Text

“Kyou, I…I have to tell you something.” 

“Well, yeah, I gathered as much.” Jirou swirled what little coffee was left at the bottom of her cup and set it down with a gentle thud. “Good something or bad something?” 

“Well…good something.” Momo fidgeted with the chain around her neck – the one Jirou had earlier noted was new, its end hidden just below the neckline of her shirt – and her eyes didn’t fix on anything for more than a few seconds at a time. “But you’re probably going to be a little bit shocked, which is why, well…why I wanted to tell you in person.” She raised her face with the same wan smile she gave harried cashiers when she noticed the customers ahead of her in line giving them trouble. 

“You’re not pregnant or dying, are you?” 

Momo bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Not that, Kyou.” 

“Oh, thank God-“

“Though I suppose it’s easy to see why you’d think that.” She looked down sheepishly, then fished the end of the necklace out of her shirt to hold the ring she’d strung on its chain up the light. “Um. So.”

For a moment, all Jirou could do was blink at her friend in stupefied silence. 

“Yaoyorozu Momo,” she said, eyes still goggling, “is that an engagement ring?”

“Um…” she almost laughed, so patently absurd was this whole situation. “Let’s just say that you…might want to get used to calling me Todoroki Momo.” 

“You…what?” Jirou sputtered. “Todoroki?” 

“Well, yes, that was what I said.”

“But…when?” Jirou was grateful that she hadn’t taken her last sip of coffee too quickly on the heels of that revelation – surely she would’ve spit it out. “And…just, what?” 

“I know this is kind of unexpected-“

“I mean, we all knew you two had something going on, but…this?” she gestured emphatically to the ring Momo was turning in her hands at the end of its chain. “I...I think I need a minute.”

“Understandable,” Momo replied, though she looked a little pale. She tried to convince herself to take another bite of the soufflé pancakes she’d decided to let herself indulge in to mark the occasion (whatever this occasion was), but even the thought of the favored outer corner of her last pancake melting on her tongue was unappetizing in the nervous tension of the moment. “I...know it’s sudden.”

“Okay.” Jirou took a deep breath to center herself before she went on. “Let me get this straight. You and Todoroki are engaged, right?” 

Momo lifted her ring again as evidence. “Mmhm.” 

“As in, getting married.” 

“Well, yes, that is what being engaged implies-”

“Yeah, but I’m still not entirely sure I’m not hearing stuff.” 

“Fair enough,” Momo sighed, slumping against the back of her chair. Posture was a particular focus of hers and it took a great weight indeed to compel her to slouch; Jirou knew that and arched a skeptical eyebrow. 

“I never thought you guys would...I dunno. Hide something like that from all of us.” Jirou didn’t seem upset, though she easily could’ve been. “I mean, I’m not mad, but you really didn’t seem like secret-relationship people.”

“Because we aren’t.” Might as well bite the bullet. “We...weren’t seeing each other before the engagement.” 

“Huh?” 

“This isn’t really a love match,” she admitted. 

“Wait, wait, back up-”

“We made a marriage pact back in high school and said we’d get married if we were both single at thirty because I wanted to get married but we both knew that pro heroes usually can’t make marriages last and he didn’t really want to get married at the time, but he agreed to make the pact, and then he turned thirty and we were both still single and, I mean, we get along so well, and we spend so much time together, so he proposed on his birthday and I said yes and I know it seems like a terrible idea but I swear it’s actually a good arrangement and…”

“You done?” 

Momo’s cheeks reddened. “Sorry.”

“No, no, context is important.” She knew her friend’s tendency to stuff words when she was nervous very well. “So...this is like...arranged marriage, but you two arranged it yourselves?”

“That makes it sound so stuffy and lifeless.” Momo pushed the sliver of pancake she’d cut an inch to the left with her fork. “It’s not like that. We just wanted to be married, and statistically, we have the best chance of making that work if we marry people in our field, and whom we already know we work well with.” She swallowed hard. “Like our best friends.” 

“And this has absolutely nothing to do with love?” 

“Well, of course I love him-”

“Romantically?”

“Well, no, but that isn’t the only kind of love there is.” 

“Yeah, but it’s usually the only one that people get married for.” Jirou shot her a questioning look. “So that’s not a thing here? Ya sure?” 

“No, no, of course not. We’re friends making a logical decision that just happens to look a little strange.” Momo tried to muster up a reassuring smile but it was too watery to look convincing. “That’s all.”

“Okay, but...this isn’t usually the sort of decision people make because it’s ‘logical,’” Jirou pointed out. “You sure that’s the only reason?” 

Momo narrowed her eyes. “What exactly are you implying?” 

“The obvious.” Now she did take her last sip, confident she couldn’t possibly receive any greater shock than she already had. “You guys won’t admit it, but I doubt you’d be doing this if you didn’t have feelings for each other.” She silenced Momo’s inevitable protest with a knowing look. “Y’know, the kind of feelings you keep saying you don’t have?” 

“You realize that would be ridiculous, right?” Momo composed herself enough to take a sip of her long-neglected tea. “I mean, if I was attracted to Sh-I mean, Todoroki, I would never suggest we do anything so rash. I mean, that would’ve essentially been getting engaged on the first date, and...well, I have a reputation to uphold.” That, in spite of it all, brought a tiny smile to her face. “But since romantic attraction isn’t a factor, and our friendship is already so well-established, this didn’t seem like a particularly hasty decision.” She looked down into her tea. “Even if he did…” 

“Even if he did what?” 

“Oh, nothing.” It took everything Momo had not to glance down at her wrist, bare of its usual hairtie.

“Yaomomo,” Jirou said flatly, “what did he do?”

“N-nothing! Nothing bad. Nothing to worry about! Just…you know what tends to happen when I keep him up too late,” Momo stammered. “It’s…it’s really not important.”

“When you keep him up too late?” Jirou echoed. “Care to explain?”

“No, I really don’t.”

“Yaomomo,” Jirou sighed, already exhausted. “Please just tell me what it was he did.”

“Well…” Momo knew now that she wasn’t going to be able to dodge this. “So. One of the drawbacks of marrying someone you’re not in love with-“

“Debatable.”

“-is that there are a lot of things you probably won’t ever get the chance to do, since your husband doesn’t love you and you can’t very well go around cheating even if you don’t have feelings for him, right?”

“Yeah, which is half of why I don’t think this is just a pragmatic decision. You’re way too much of a closet romantic to be able to live with that.” Jirou smirked as if she knew something Momo didn’t. “So?”

“Well…I wanted to…try to get out ahead of that, as is my wont.” Momo’s nervous fingers began to play with the hem of her napkin. “So I asked if perhaps sometimes I could kiss him.”

“Momo.”

“I know it’s strange, but it’s so nice, and I just wanted-“

“To kiss Todoroki?” Jirou raised her eyebrows. “Yeah. Believe me, I know.”

“Not exactly,” Momo demurred.

“So anyways. What happened?”

“Well, he said that was fine, and then we had a long talk about finances and living arrangements-“

“Yup, that checks out.”

“And then we agreed at the end of that conversation that marrying each other probably wouldn’t end in abject disaster, so we kind of…reaffirmed that decision. And I guess I got caught up in the moment, because, well. I…made some decisions.” She cleared her throat. “Which were probably informed by the fact that it was three in the morning and I don’t do well with surprises.”

“Right.” Jirou lifted an eyebrow. “Then what?”

“I asked him if I could kiss him.” Momo took a sip of her tea so she wouldn’t have to look at Jirou. “And he let me.”

“Let you,” Jirou said with a shake of her head. “As if he hasn’t been wanting to jump your bones since high school.”

“Kyouka!”

“What? It’s just the truth.”

“No, it’s…where is all of this coming from?” Momo’s face flushed tellingly and she knew by Jirou’s smirk that she hadn’t missed it. “You’ve never said any of this to me before.”

“Because I wanted you to figure out your feelings on your own,” she explained. “Which you evidently still haven’t, despite being literally engaged.”

“But-“

“Just telling it like I see it.”

“Kyou…”

“So, continue. Kiss?”

“Right. Kiss.” And some kiss it was. “So…we kissed. At three in the morning.”

“Why were you even with him at three in the morning?”

“Because I had questions about our engagement that I needed him to answer before I could have any peace of mind about the situation,” she said. “Obviously.”

“…right,” Kyouka muttered. “So…was there anything particularly noteworthy about this kiss?”

“Well, not at first. He’s a little bit rusty, since he doesn’t usually seem to get past the first date very often.” She couldn’t help but smile at that – somehow, for some reason she couldn’t put a finger on, it made her happy to know he’d been holding out for something special. “And, well, you know I haven’t had many chances to do that lately. So…it was kind of awkward, but…nice.”

“And?”

“…he did do one weird thing.”

“Oh?” Jirou smiled knowingly.

“Neither of us knew what to do with our hands, right?”

“Uh…sure.”

“So, at one point, he kind of had his hand on the back of my head, right?”

“Little weird, but okay.”

Momo pulled a face and then continued. “And after a moment of that, it, uh…seemed like he got really into it and he sorta took out my hairtie.”

“Huh?”

“My hair was in a ponytail,” she clarified. “And he sort of pulled the elastic down so my hair would be loose.”

“Um…I’ve never heard of that happening, but, uh, that is definitely not platonic.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it!”

“Didn’t mean anything.” Jirou shook her head wearily. “He was practically undressing you, Yaomomo.”

“No, he was not!”

Jirou slumped against her elbows as if the effort of bringing her friend to an understanding was too great a weight to stand under. “If you two are going to get married, you had better work all of this out first.”

**

“Hold up. When did you even get a girlfriend?”

“I didn’t.” Shouto’s expression didn’t change. “This is because of a pact we made in high school, not a preexisting romantic relationship.”

“In…high…school.” Natsuo looked about four seconds from slamming his forehead into the table until he passed out. “Shouto.”

“Um, there’s more to it than that, right?” Fuyumi asked, half-hopeful and half-despairing already.

“Well, yeah, of course. She’s my best friend. There’s really no reason we shouldn’t get married-“

“Except that you don’t love her?” Natsuo shook his head. “Shouto, you can’t go through with this.”

“Hey, at least hear him out,” Fuyumi cut in, trying to do damage control when she herself clearly wished she could add to the damage. “Maybe there’s a better reason-“

“No, it’s just like I said. It’s practical.” He knew he needed to say something more, so he added, “and we make each other happy.”

“As friends?” Natsuo challenged. “Please explain to me why that means that marrying her is a good idea.”

“Pro hero marriages usually don’t last. This way, we both mitigate our chances of ending up in a failed relationship.” He’d clearly practiced this. “Anyone we chose based on attraction alone would probably end up backing out because our careers would make it hard for us to give them enough time or attention. But if we had the same jobs-“

“Then the problem would be twice as bad and you’d barely even see each other?”

“No, we’d understand the pressure that the other was under and allow room for that. Hence, no messy divorce.”

“Well, that’s true,” Fuyumi conceded. “But…are you sure about this? Marrying someone you don’t love seems…I don’t know. Like a big risk to take just for the sake of being practical.”

“I get what you mean, but I do love her.”

“Why the hell didn’t you lead with that?”

“She’s my best friend.” Shouto didn’t seem to understand their objections. “Of course I do.”

Natsuo’s shoulders deflated again. “And there it is.”

“I thought you guys liked Momo,” Shouto muttered.

“Can’t speak for him, but I do,” Fuyumi replied. “Which is why I’m skeptical. I’m not going to let you make some poor girl miserable because of a decision you made when you were eighteen.”

“Miserable?” Shouto’s brow furrowed. “Why would I ever do anything to make her miserable?”

“Not intentionally, of course, I know how much you care about her.” Fuyumi patted his arm but he couldn’t find the wherewithal to resent the fact that she was speaking to him as if he were still a child. “But you might not realize how much of a toll a situation like that could take on-“

“You’re talking about Mom, aren’t you.”

Neither Fuyumi nor Natsuo could find the words to respond to that.

“This isn’t some quirk marriage,” Shouto said, eyes averted, voice low. “And I would never hurt her.”

“And we know that, but-“

“Fuyumi, stop.” He took in a shaky breath. “I don’t want anything out of this marriage. I’m not using her. And I’m not Father. I…why don’t you get that?” now he raised his eyes again. “Momo is probably the most important person in my life and you think…you think I would ever let her be unhappy?” He could feel the blood rush to his face even though it was probably hard to see it flush in the dim restaurant lighting. “Willingly, and because of something I did?”

“We’re not saying that, Shouto,” Natsuo conceded. “Look, neither of us thinks you’d ever hurt her intentionally. It’s just…easy to see how you could do it accidentally.”

“And you don’t want to see her end up like Mom.” Shouto pinched the bridge of his nose. “You realize that that’s the last thing in the world I would want, right?”

**

“And I know this sounds…odd, but he’s wonderful, you know that, and it’s a practical solution, and treat me well-“

“Momo-chan, we weren’t questioning that.” Momo’s father laid a hand on her shoulder, and with the reassurance in his voice, she finally felt ready to meet his eyes. “Frankly, I think this is a wonderful idea.”

“Oh,” she said, playing with the hem of her sweater. “No one I’ve told so far had that reaction, so…that’s good to hear.”

“I know young people nowadays can’t fathom the idea of an arrangement like this, but I think it’s sensible. Your reasoning is solid, and I know he’ll treat you right.” He gave Momo’s shoulder a squeeze. “And besides, I’m not so sure that you don’t love Todoroki-san.”

“Well, of course I love him,” Momo replied, already weary of that explanation.

“Darling, he looks at you like he can’t believe you’re even real.”

“Mother-“

“What? I’m just stating a fact.”

“Perhaps we oughtn’t to confuse her right now, Kimiko,” her father cut in gently. “If she thinks she’ll be happy and the arrangement makes sense, it might be best to let her work the rest out on her own.”

“Hmph. I don’t think this much denial is good for a person’s health,” Kimiko said crossly.

“Denial? Really?” Momo pressed a hand to her temple as if a phantom headache were coming on. “Why is it so hard for everyone to believe me when I tell them that Shouto and I are friends?”

Kimiko eyed the ring on her daughter’s finger (she’d moved it back after the reveal). “Well, you might want to start with the fact that you’re engaged.”

**

As expected, it had fallen to Momo to inform their former classmates of the engagement. Still in touch with more of Class A than he was, and far less likely to say anything strange or incriminating over the phone, she was the natural choice even when one didn’t consider Shouto’s mortal fear of phone calls. Perhaps that was why he’d felt the need to prove himself capable.

Or maybe he wanted to impress her. A ridiculous thought, really – he was thirty, not fifteen, and she knew his strengths and weaknesses as well as he did (maybe better) by now – but not one he could count out. After all, he’d agreed to make twelve phone calls, and there were few things he’d less rather do.

(Because, apparently, “they’ll all be upset if they find out we told some of their classmates personally but not them.” Momo had been insistent on that point – equality of opportunity and whatnot.)

Some classmates were easy: Aoyama had gone off on such a lengthy tangent in rapidfire French that Shouto had had no reason to speak at all after the initial announcement, and Koda, Satou, Ojiro, and Shoji had made do with the most taciturn congratulations they could appropriately give. Others didn’t’ need to be called: Jirou already knew, and he’d told Midoriya on a recent patrol, figuring that – if Momo’s choice served as an indicator of proper behavior – his other best friend should be told face-to-face.

(He’d cried, which had almost been a relief – better that than the probing questions about his feelings for Momo that Hagakure and Mina had asked. Must’ve been a sight, though, the number-one hero crying into his partner’s costume in the middle of a morning patrol.)

If Jirou knew, she’d no doubt already told Kaminari – true to form, he was the one to reach out to Shouto with a text reading DUDE?!??!!?!? SPILL?!?!?!?!, which had been…as expected. And if Denki knew, so, most likely, did all of his friends – he’d never been good at keeping his mouth shut, so Shouto could safely assume that most of their friend group had heard. That took a little of the pressure off of his calls to Kirishima (who sounded a little too excited), Sero (who was as confused as one might expect him to be), and Mina (who nearly deafened him with her shriek of delighted surprise when he told her.) Iida, who was at very least too proper to probe, was easy, and neither Tokoyami nor Asui seemed particularly interested, which was a relief. And Katsuki and Ochako, who’d married earlier that year, only needed one call between the two of them.

That should have made things easier. It did not.

In a spectacular lapse of judgement, Shouto decided he feared Ochako’s excitement far more than Katsuki’s derision, and tapped on the call icon next to Bakugou’s number. It picked up after only a few rings – surprising – but the answer on the other end was an entirely unsurprising “the hell do you want, Half-and-Half?”

“I’m getting married,” he said flatly.

Also unsurprising was the click on the other end as the line went dead.

**

“’Chako?”

Ochako tore herself from the electric fan with a great deal of regret. “Yeah?”

Katsuki glanced down at his phone, then back up at her, and gestured for her to join him on the couch. When she had, he turned his phone so she could read off of the screen.

Put a Ring On It? Pro Heroes Shouto and Creati Make Things Official!, it read. Nothing new – the tabloids had been following their classmates for years, what with their lack of discretion about public hand-holding – but this photographer had gotten a particularly clear shot of what was quite obviously an engagement ring on Momo’s right hand, and that was new.

He nudged her with his elbow as if to ask if she was seeing the same thing he was. “Since when are Icy-Hot and Ponytail a thing?”

**

This was supposed to be so simple.

All he needed to do was follow a script. “Hi, Mom,” and “I’m getting married,” and the canned explanation he’d given everyone else who’d asked for one – he needed no further skill than the press-placating tactics he’d practiced for over a decade to navigate this final visit.

None of those easy steps seemed half as simple in the moment.

“I…I have to tell you something,” he stammered, unable even to muster a proper greeting at the entrance to his mother’s sitting room.

Rei set aside the book she’d been reading to give him a questioning look. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. Nothing bad.” His clammy hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I…um.”

Rei patted the couch beside her to invite him in. “You seem out-of-sorts,” she commented, moving over to make space when he finally moved from the doorway. “Are you sure that you’re all right?”

“No, I am.” Am I? “Just…nervous. And I have…news.”

“News,” Rei echoed. “And is this good news or-“

“Good news. But…” Shouto ran a hand through his hair. “I’m getting married.”

Rei’s eyes widened. “I had no idea that you were seeing anyone.”

“I wasn’t.” He couldn’t bring himself to look up. “That’s…that’s why.”

“So this is” – Rei’s voice cracked – “an arranged marriage or something like that.”

“No, no, nothing like that.” He’d expected that reaction after Fuyumi and Natsuo had received the news with such suspicion earlier. “It’s…it’s kind of an arrangement, I guess, but it’s one that we came to ourselves.”

“And your fiancée?”

Something in Shouto couldn’t help but smile, however sheepishly, at that. “Do you remember Yaoyorozu?”

“Your classmate?” Rei’s taut features visibly relaxed. “I do remember her, yes.”

“We made a pact back in high school.” It sounded so trivial aloud. “Because…we didn’t want to marry people who we couldn’t make things work with. So we decided that if we were still single when we both turned thirty, we’d get married.”

“And you were.”

“And we did.” Shouto nodded tightly. “And I know this probably comes as a shock, but I promise we’re not…being forced into this.” He’d imagined she might worry about that. “It’s something we both want.”

“Well, I have to assume it would be if you’re going through with it.” Rei didn’t seem tense the way her children had been; she didn’t seem shocked or upset, though she had greater grounds to be distressed by the prospect of a loveless marriage than anyone. “And I know from what I remember of her that the two of you are…close.”

He dipped his head in a perfunctory nod. “The night I asked her, she was at my apartment at three in the morning to ask me for my tax returns because she couldn’t marry me without knowing if I was financially stable.” He couldn’t stop himself from a smile that he had to bite back at the memory. “She was there for a couple of hours – even made tea. Wasn’t the first time, either.”

“She’s special to you, then.”

His left hand grazed the fabric of his jeans, smoothing down a nonexistent wrinkle just so they’d have something to do. “Very.”

“And I take it you’re as special to her if she thought you were worth discussing taxes with at such a ridiculous hour,” Rei continued, laying a hand on Shouto’s forearm to still the movement of his fidgeting hand.

“Well, I wouldn’t read far into that when Yaoyorozu actually enjoys finance.” Leave it to Momo to find his tax returns riveting. “But…I hope so.”

“Then I’m really not sure why you thought I would have a problem with this, Shouto.” She patted his arm. “I haven’t talked to her too recently, but from what I’ve seen, I like her very much-“

“But I’m not in love with her.”

“But you do love her, do you not?”

He let his head hang loosely on his shoulders, reaching up a hand to stop his hair from falling in his eyes even though there was nothing to look at. “More…more than almost anything.”

“Then I think you’re going to be just fine.”

“But…I’m so confused.” He didn’t know what had made him say it, but he wasn’t upset that he had. “I…everything was perfectly fine a couple of days ago but now…I feel like I don’t know anything.”

“Don’t know anything?”

“It’s…stuff happened.” He raised his head, shaking a few locks of hair out of his eyes. “Between us.”

“What kind of ‘stuff’?” Rei asked, shifting to a spot where the cushions weren’t as depressed beneath her weight.

“I…” Breathe. “I kind of kissed her.”

“’Kind of’?” Rei asked, trying not to sound amused. “How exactly does one ‘kind of’ kiss somebody?”

“I…she wanted to kiss me. Because if we got married, she’d never be able to kiss anyone else. And, I mean, what am I going to say to that but ‘yes’? I want to make her happy and if that’s the way to do it, I mean, okay. Yes. Kiss me as much as you want. But then she did and…gah. I’m thirty and I feel like a stupid high schooler.”

“You started seeing her differently?” Rei guessed.

“Well, no, but also sort of? And I should really be past the point of this stuff getting in my head, but…I haven’t ever really had anything serious like this before, and…now I just don’t know what to think.”

“Do you want to know what I think, Shouto?”

He glanced over at her, half-curious. “Yeah.”

“I think you want to love her,” she said, eyes gentle. “And…that’s not a bad thing.”

“But she…”

“She asked you to kiss her, Shou. That…that isn’t nothing.” She smiled knowingly.

“That was never the arrangement, though,” he protested. “And she…she agreed to this because she wanted what I could give her, not because she wanted me.”

“No, she didn’t.” Rei’s voice was so much sharper without warning that he nearly flinched. “I know she didn’t.”

“But-“

“Listen to me, Shouto.” Rei’s ‘listen-to-your-mother’ voice hadn’t changed a bit in thirty years. “I know better than anyone what it’s like to be married because someone wants what you can give them, and if this Momo is a fraction the woman you say she is, she wouldn’t even think of marrying you because you were” – she almost spat – “useful.”

“I just…” Shouto’s voice was shaky now. “I can’t imagine her being willing to settle for someone like me – I mean, yeah, she’s going to marry me, but there’s always going to be an asterisk after her signature on the license.” Before he’d come here, Shouto hadn’t even known that the stirring confusion in his gut could be put into words, but now he couldn’t stop them. “She’s marrying me because we made a deal, and that’s how it’ll always be. I can’t assume that she ever would’ve agreed to if we hadn’t done that, and…I can’t presume that she would ever want to be that kind of couple.”

“But you could talk to her,” Rei said gently. “You could tell her you’re feeling confused instead of stewing like an angsty teenager, you know. That is allowed.”

“And what if she wants to back out?” Shouto looked up at her with wide, nervous eyes.

“Then she can, but at least you’ll have been honest with her.” Rei looked off into the middle distance; there was something knowing in her expression. “But…would it upset you if she broke it off?”

“Yes! That’s exactly the point!”

Now Rei smiled. “Ah. There it is.”

“There what is?”

“You admit that you’d be upset if she no longer wanted to marry you,” Rei said. “Why’s that?”

“Because I…”

He trailed off to let himself get lost in thought. He thought of the night he’d wandered past a jewelry store and gotten to thinking; he thought of the countless months it had taken to convince himself that this wasn’t crazy; he thought of poring over glass cases for hours until he’d found a ring that might one day be as ubiquitously her as a matryoshka doll or the champagne lace cocktail dress she always wore to galas. He remembered the soft glow of the noodle shop’s neon sign backlighting her face as she looked up at him across the table, surprised, a little bit delighted; he remembered her shy, demure expression when she’d asked if she could kiss him, and the softness of her lips against his, and the softness of her hair beneath his fingers. He glanced down at the hair tie around his wrist and swallowed hard.

“I want her,” he said softly. “I know it’s selfish, and I shouldn’t, and I have to do everything I can to stop myself, but…dammit, I want her.”

Did I know that?

He certainly hadn’t last night, when it had seemed as natural as breathing to say that love wasn’t a part of this delicately-balanced equation of theirs. He’d been more confused than anything when she’d kissed him, barely thinking straight and certainly not about that. But now, airing his woes so much more freely than he’d allowed himself before, it seemed stupidly clear.

I could’ve forgotten about that arrangement like any normal person would, he reasoned. So why would I have proposed to her if I hadn’t…wanted it? Wanted her?

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I knew that from the minute you came in here spouting off about a wedding.” Rei patted his arm. “At least you’ve said it now, hm?”

“But she…”

“Again, you need to be honest with her about this. It’s like you said – it wouldn’t be fair to hide your real intentions now that you know them.”

“Well, I guess, but-“

“Shouto.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I guess I should.”

Chapter Text

Late January

She was lovely.

She was so impossibly lovely, waiting at the end of the sidewalk, pushing a lock of her hair back behind her ear as she smiled at something on her phone. She was – so impossibly lovely in that forest-green peacoat dusted with snowflakes that melted almost as soon as they made contact with its fabric that he almost didn’t want to approach her and ruin the tableau.

Beautiful, he realized, was the word he had to be looking for – beautiful, and he felt so choked-up at the thought of finally saying so that he didn’t know how he was going to speak at all. Finally seemed as strange a word as beautiful at a time like this, when it had only just dawned on him that perhaps his feelings for her hadn’t been as friendly as he’d assumed they were, but it was the right one, undeniably. Twelve years – that was a long time to be in love with someone without putting a word to the feeling.

And now he had to explain that.

He wasn’t looking forward to it.

“Uh…Momo?” he called, approaching but reluctant to do it too quickly.

“Oh, hi!” Momo looked up from her phone, her face brightening. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“That’s all right.” He dug his hands into his pockets. “Something funny?”

“Kyouka and Denki got a puppy.” She turned her phone out to him so he could see a puppy with curly golden fur bouncing off the walls with excitement in a blurry video she’d been watching. “They’ve been sending me stuff all morning.”

“Mm.” Cute as it was, that was the last thing Shouto wanted to think about right now. “So. I wanted to talk.”

“Oh, right.” She straightened the strap of her purse on her shoulder and motioned with her head towards the coffee shop they’d agreed to meet at. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, nothing like that,” he told her as they walked. “I’ll tell you once we get inside.”

“Oh, so it’s private.” Shouto had no idea how she’d come to that conclusion, but he supposed it wasn’t an entirely wrong one even if his only intention had been to buy himself a few moments to think.

“You could say that.”

That, at very least, gave him a moment of silence to think without interruption, though tuning out the ambient noise of the shop served only to help him dig himself into an even deeper hole. He hadn’t planned out what he’d say, nor how he’d respond to various reactions she might have; he should have come in prepared, but he hadn’t wanted to, fearful that he’d lose his nerve if he had a speech planned. Really, he didn’t have the foggiest clue what he was doing or how it might play out, aside from the fact that it may well lose him his fiancée.

No pressure.

“Um…so, I wanted to talk to you,” he said once they’d taken their seats. Best to get this over with before he couldn’t anymore. “Before we, um…go ahead with the wedding plans and…whatnot.”

Momo raised her eyebrows. “Are you thinking we should call it off?”

“No. No!” Shouto held up his hands defensively. “Nothing like that. Actually, um…actually, it’s kind of the opposite.”

“Oh. All right.” Momo’s expression relaxed. “What does that mean?”

This would be the time to say something romantic, he reminded himself, knowing full-well he wouldn’t be able to. “Well…I just…wanted to clear some things up.”

“Oh.” She nodded intently. “About…?”

“My…” he fidgeted with his hands. “About my feelings for you.”

“Your feelings for me?” Momo cocked her head curiously. “Are you…what’s wrong?”

“N-nothing, I swear. I…just…” he forced himself to take a breath. “I wanted you to know that…I don’t see this marriage as an obligation.”

Fantastic. What eloquence! No wonder no one ever invites you to appear on talk shows.

“Because…of your feelings…for me,” Momo puzzled out. “Whatever those are.”

“Right. Exactly.” Thank God. “I…I talked to my mother about this when I told her-“

“You talk to your mom about me?” Momo smiled shyly. “Aw.”

“Well, yeah, I obviously had to tell her we were getting married.” He cleared his throat. “Anyways. She seemed…to think that there had to have been some deeper reason that I went through with this, and she thought it was important that I talk to you about it.”

“A deeper reason,” Momo repeated. “Like…?”

“Like…I…um.” This would’ve been the time for a prepared speech. “Well, I…I care for you. And…even if I hadn’t made a pact with you, I think…” Shouto closed his eyes for a moment to let himself cool off. “I think I would’ve eventually realized that I wanted to be with you.”

“That’s sweet of you,” she replied, voice dropping to a murmur.

“And…I just thought…it was only fair for you to know that.” He cleared his throat one more time; it felt a little clogged. “Because you should know how I feel. About you. Before we…you know.”

“Right. Of course. Feelings are…important to consider.” Momo coughed into her elbow, though Shouto could tell it was fake. “But if it eases your mind, I feel the same way.”

His face felt curiously warm. “You do?”

“Yes, of course.” She smiled reassuringly, though he wasn’t sure whether she was trying to reassure him or herself. “I mean, we’re an excellent team, and I care for you, too. I can’t think of anyone I would rather marry than you.”

Well.

“I’m…I’m glad,” he muttered, wondering if she even knew she was rejecting him.

“Right!” Momo said brightly. “It’s important to establish as often as possible that we don’t feel like we’re being coerced, isn’t it?”

“…yeah. Of course.” His eyes widened a beat later. “Wait, do you think that’s why I’m doing this?”

“Doing…what?”

“Talking to you. About…how I feel?” his eyebrows knit anxiously. “Do you think that’s because I’m afraid that I’m being coerced? Because it’s…it’s not that.”

“Oh?” Momo paused to thank the waitress who brought her coffee before she went on. “So you’re not just trying to clear everything up?”

“No, no, I am. It’s just that…it isn’t about whether or not this is coerced, and I worded that really badly because what I’m trying to say is actually…”

I can’t do this, he realized with sudden tightness in his chest. I can’t tell her. I can’t risk it.

“Is actually…” she repeated.

“The…that kiss,” he blurted out, face so red that its blush was probably visible across the room. “I-I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Momo couldn’t muster any response beyond staring and blinking for a long moment.

“Well,” she said cautiously, “that might be a side effect of a lack of practice.”

“But-“

“It…probably made you question things, didn’t it.” Momo looked down into her coffee. “I’m sorry. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“Oh…” she shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, Shouto. I didn’t mean to do that to you.”

“You’re…sorry?” he asked. “But…why?”

“I got you all confused. I should have known that romantic interactions with touch-starved people always make them see things that aren’t there.” She shook her head. “I should know. There was a period of time when I thought I was in love with you every time you so much as touched my hand.”

“But…you weren’t?”

“No, I don’t think so. I was just…so lonely,” she sighed. “And that kiss probably made you think of me differently, and I’m sorry for that. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“But…it was good,” he said weakly.

“Yes, but you told me outright that you didn’t see me that way, and I still asked you to do something that made you think that you did.”

“…right.” She was wrong; he knew she was wrong, but she wouldn’t even believe him now if he told her how he felt if she was so convinced that it was all a product of the kiss. “I…I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Shouto, no,” she murmured, reaching across the table for his hand. Hers was warmer than his right, dry and small and smooth around his. “I’m glad you told me that. I need to know how my actions make you feel if I’m going to be a good partner.”

A good partner, indeed, albeit one with entirely the wrong idea about his feelings.

“I won’t ask favors like that anymore,” she concluded. “That was selfish of me, anyways. And if it makes you uncomfortable-“

“It didn’t.”

“Well, I mean, if it confuses you, I’ll stop.”

“You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“No, but I want you to be happy.” She smiled gently, the cold metal of her ring pressing into his knuckles as she squeezed his hand. “And…you’re not happy if you’re head’s all a mess, trying to figure out why you feel so strange.”

“All right.”

(It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.)

**

Mid-September

She tried not to look at him.

It had been easy enough at first: watching the ceremony unfold as if she were a spectator and not a participant, tuning in to the crinkle of the fabric of her white kimono as she moved and the whispers of footsteps across the tatami mats. She forced herself to take notice of the bitterness of the sake as she sipped from each of the three flat plates and didn’t look at Shouto when they were passed over to him; she regretted her choice to request that they exchange rings in a slight deviation from the otherwise-traditional ceremony they’d planned, because she couldn’t avoid looking at him, couldn’t avoid touching him when she slipped the ring onto his finger. Her hands shook; he gave her fingers the slightest of squeezes when he noticed – of course he’d noticed – but that only made matters worse.

This was one of those moments she knew she was supposed to mark, one that required a quiet mind and a solemn deportment. After all, it marked a fork in her path; she ought to be thinking about that. Weddings, she’d always thought, were for celebration, but that didn’t feel appropriate here – she wanted this, to be certain, but it wasn’t cause for raucous joy. This marriage, really, wasn’t – she didn’t regret it, of course not, but it would be neither easy nor romantic and it was best not to pretend that it would be. Those were the things she ought to have been thinking about. But she wasn’t, and she didn’t think she was going to be able to, because here she was, vowing to spend her life at the side of a man who’d only ever think he loved her when her lips and her hands were playing tricks on his mind.

Maybe Shouto had thought he’d meant it when he’d tried to confess that day in February; she suspected he had. He rarely said anything he didn’t mean, and it seemed as if he’d been sincere. Had she taken that sincerity at face value, Momo thought she might’ve been a little happier, a little less confused. But she knew that hearts were fickle, wandering things, liable to be stirred up until they produced unrecognizable emotions at the right provocation. She’d been selfish to ask for that kiss when she’d long known that touch played tricks on even the most logical minds – she knew that now. But part of her had wanted to believe despite all evidence to the contrary that he’d been lying when he told her that he had no feelings for her before.

She knew better. Todoroki Shouto was honest almost to a fault, and if he’d said he didn’t care for her before she’d kissed him, his change of heart had to have been a product of that heated moment and nothing else.

Don’t be silly, she tried to tell herself. Momo was certain she didn’t feel that way about Shouto, so it was ridiculous to wish he harbored one-sided feelings for her – cruel, even. Maybe part of her wanted it just because a husband should want from his wife the things Shouto had thought he wanted from Momo; even so, she could not wish a one-sided affection on him.

Then why can’t I look at him?

**

Ceremony, Shouto could do. When there were rules to follow and traditions to mark out the course of an event, he saw no need to worry; things would go according to plan simply because they had so many times before. Not even the perfect drape of Momo’s white kimono against her creamy porcelain skin could induce unbearable anxiety, though it certainly didn’t help matters.

Parties, though, were another issue entirely.

Where only their immediate families had attended the ceremony itself, the reception would be packed: all of their classmates, and most of Class B; at least three dozen colleagues whom it would’ve been rude not to invite; childhood friends of Momo’s, cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, students who’d internet under one or the other, all thirty-two Endeavor Agency sidekicks and all of their plus-ones. There was almost no chance of its not being loud and raucous and everything Shouto hadn’t wanted his wedding to be – he was feeling as elated as he was morose, and entirely uncelebratory. He wanted to relax, to eat dinner in bed and ask Momo if she’d concede enough dignity to let him rest in her arms like he’d always done before he’d gone and kissed her and made a mess of things. Instead, he’d be entertaining guests.

Even seated on a couch away from the other guests, his socialization meter was already shot ten minutes into the reception.

“Shouto?” Momo whispered, using the room’s distraction at a lull in Jirou and Kaminari’s joint speech (they’d paused to argue over who remembered a minor detail in the story they were retelling correctly) to check in. “Are you all right?”

“Exhausted,” he muttered, and if he’d had just an ounce less self-control, he’d have slumped against her shoulder in spite of the messiness of the implications of such a thing and the risk of mussing the delicate lace of the gown Momo had chosen to wear for the reception. “Too many people.”

“Oh.” She squeezed his arm, a gesture that meant more than it had in the past for its rarity now. “Well, you won’t have to be doing much socializing for a while if Kyouka and Denki can’t come to an agreement, which it doesn’t seem like they will, so…I guess that’s good, hm?”

“I just want to go to sleep.” He risked his head against her shoulder this time. “Would anyone be offended if I went to sleep?”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to laugh.

“Aw, but I’m tired.”

“I know, Shou.” Some affectionate warmth that she’d been too careful to show for a couple of months made it past her defenses. “Just a couple of hours, though.”

“Mmkay,” he muttered, making no move to back away.

He could only hope she’d be willing to give him that much.

**

“Creati.”

Momo turned, narrowing her eyes at the unexpected form of address even though, recognizing the voice of its recipient, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. “Endeavor-san,” she said coolly. “I hope you’ve been enjoying the reception.”

He inclined his head slightly, but that was all the acknowledgment he would give. “I don’t believe I’ve had an opportunity to extend a proper congratulations to either of you yet. Allow me to do so now.”

Momo felt like a band around her lungs was tightening with his every word and couldn’t quite say why, but she forced her expression to remain pleasant. “Thank you. I’m sure I speak for both of us when I say that I appreciate that.”

One of Enji’s brows rose. “Oh. So you’re speaking on each other’s behalf now.”

“Well, we are married,” she pointed out, trying not to ask why that was unusual.

“Yes, but I hadn’t thought this was that sort of marriage.” Enji’s tone was so much lighter than the implications of his words that Momo thought she might be sick once she caught the latter. “Knowing that you and Shouto weren’t seeing each other before the engagement, I’d assumed that this was…” he trailed off. “…not a typical love match.”

“Well, no, it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t built, first and foremost, on our deep respect for one another.” She coughed. “Our deep mutual respect for one another.”

“Hm.” He looked her up and down. “I can see why he’d feel that way.”

“Sorry?”

“You’re a formidable hero, Creati.”

“Thank you,” Momo replied, keeping her tone clipped. She didn’t know exactly where he was going with this, but she didn’t like it.

“With a formidable quirk,” he continued. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Shouto had taken that into account when he chose you of all people to marry.”

“’Me, of all people’?” Momo repeated, incredulous. “Do you…what exactly did Shouto tell you?”

“That he’d made a pragmatic arrangement.”

“Yes, which was my idea!” It took all Momo had not to make a scene as she forced her voice to stay down. “I was the one who proposed that we should get married if we were both still single at thirty, not him.”

“And what was pragmatic about that?”

“It’s…it’s supposed to prevent a messy divorce down the line,” Momo admitted, hands fisted in the tulle of her skirt.

“And why marry in the first place?” He asked, crossing his arms. “If not to have successors, or anything remotely useful?”

Momo almost pitied the man his inability to see what was so apparent to anyone who knew her. “Because he was my best friend,” she said simply. “And because I was his.”

“And this was adequate cause to get married?”

“This is not,” she almost spat, “a quirk marriage, or any sort of mutually-beneficial setup except for the fact that it…brings both of us personal fulfillment, and…and the fact that you’d even insinuate that your son is the kind of man who’d…coerce someone into marrying him for his own gain shows me that you don’t know him at all.”

“I never did say he coerced you,” Enji replied. “You seem rather uncoercable.”

“I am.” Hard black eyes met his teal ones. “Which is why it’s patently ridiculous to believe that Shouto chose me, of all people to marry for any reason other than…affection, whatever form it took.”  

“Hm. Well.” He turned on his heel, but before he went, he spared her a glance over his shoulder. “I wish you both the best of luck.”

**

“Hey.”

Momo flinched at a hand against the small of her back, but relaxed when she realized whose it was. “Hi,” she said shakily, head still reeling.

“You okay?” Shouto asked, lightly rubbing the base of her back. “I just saw you talking to my father, and you look really tense. Did he-“

“He made some unsavory insinuations about our motivations for getting married, and I straightened them out.” She forced herself to breathe as she normally would even when her lungs only wanted to take shallow breaths. “That’s all. I’m fine, really.”

“You sure?” his hand continued its slow revolutions at the small of her back.

“Sure.” She gave him a watery smile. “Thank you for checking in, though.”

“Of course.” Shouto frowned. “He said some strange things when I told him about our engagement, so I had a feeling he might say something to you. Sorry I wasn’t around to stop him.”

“That’s all right. It was nothing I couldn’t handle.” Still, though, the knowledge that he’d wanted to be at her side through the questions she’d inevitably have to answer made her heart swell in that odd, sweet, indescribable way that only Shouto – Shouto, with his loyalty and his faith in her and his endless capacity for the awkward and the imperceptive – ever had. It was the kind of sensation that always made her wonder if she might be in trouble until she forced herself to ignore it soundly enough.

She wondered, in a rare moment of honesty, how long she’d be able to keep that up.

**

“Shouto.”

He looked up from the notifications he’d been scanning on his phone once he’d finally changed out of his wedding clothes to find Momo peeking through the doorway, hair loose and expression shy. That sight alone was enough to make him think the kind of traitorous thoughts Momo thought had abated when she’d stopped kissing him – stopped showing almost any of their old affection before today – when they hadn’t at all. “Yeah?” he asked, voice exhausted after too much small talk.

She stepped into the empty doorway, clutching the flimsy silk of a lace-edged bathrobe tightly about her waist. “I…you know how I said that I wouldn’t kiss you anymore?”

He could’ve jumped up and run to her even in his profound exhaustion for that. “You can,” he said, a little too eager. “I know you said you didn’t want to confuse me, but it’s fine, Momo. If you want a kiss, please ask for one. I just want to make you happy-“

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, eyes cast down, arms folded protectively across her middle. “I know it’s selfish, but…I…I’d like one tonight.”

“Of course.” Please, he wanted to rasp, to let her know how little he cared if she thought it was selfish. He wondered if she’d still think so if she knew that his feelings hadn’t ebbed after she’d tried to convince him they were fleeting – probably not. She’d probably decide then that it would be selfish to withhold them, even if he begged her not to try to satisfy him with her conscience and resolve but not her heart, and he couldn’t – not now. “Any time. It’s not selfish to ask me for things you need, Momo.”

She smiled gratefully and sat at the edge of his bed, beside the spot where he’d been sprawled out a second ago, so gingerly that her weight barely disturbed the mattress. “May I?”

It didn’t take thought or effort to lean in and press his lips against hers, gentle and cautious until her hands at the nape of his neck got the better of his reason. His eyes had closed when she’d begun to kiss him, but he felt them flutter as if trying to close once more, and his lungs didn’t want to take in the air he needed not to feel lightheaded.

But it was over just as quickly and she smiled, resting her hand against his cheek.

“I know it’s a stretch, since you don’t feel like that about me,” Momo started, “and the last thing I want to do is try to confuse you again, but…this is our wedding night. And…it might…not hurt to spend it in the…traditional manner.”

It took a full minute for Shouto to process what she’d said. He didn’t blush once he had, didn’t pull her into a melting kiss, didn’t do any of the things he wanted to, because even in that split-second he could see the writing on the wall: once, and never again; once, and memories he couldn’t keep from haunting him. He’d spend his days in a restless, miserable hunger for more and more and more, more that she didn’t want to give when this had been as much a heat-of-the-moment decision to bow to an irrelevant tradition as anything else. That one night would be the only one he could remember and he’d never be able to tell her so.

After all, she’d been the one to tell him that his feelings had likely been a result of their first kiss. How much less would she believe him if their first night together made it impossible for his mouth to stay shut? She’d taken a muddled confession as confirmation that this was a friendship more than anything else, and though he was shocked she’d even suggest such a thing in light of that, he knew she couldn’t have been doing this out of the kind of love he felt for her.

There were many reasons she might have made the request – an insatiable ache for human touch, or the need to play at being someone’s beloved, or afterglow of that kiss, or a tendency to get caught up in the festivity of the occasion, all of which Shouto could understand – but he couldn’t ignore his own reasons to turn it down.

Give him one night and he’d want a thousand more.

“I…I don’t think that’s a good idea, Momo.”

She nodded, though she didn’t try to hide the disappointment on her face. “All right.”

He watched her go with an ache he didn’t even want to suppress.

Chapter Text

Two Months Later

November

It was easy to forget, caught up in the tumult of his realization that Shouto had – somehow, sometime, and somewhere along the line – fallen for Yaoyorozu Momo, that she’d been the kind of friend who’d show up at his apartment at three in the morning without batting an eyelash. It hadn’t taken more than a few days of life lived under the weight of his one-sided feelings to lose sight of that thread, even though it – and not the irritatingly-persistent longing for something more that had overshadowed it – had been what kept him at her side for so many years. She was his best friend, after all; no one knew him quite like she did, and he suspected the reverse was equally true.

Remembering that in the lonely hours, lying awake and wishing that Momo were here and not a few meters away and feeling utterly ridiculous for his inability to walk down the hall and ask to join her (never mind that they’d agreed not to do that), made it all a little bit easier. And crushing loneliness didn’t seem as inevitable as it had before once Shouto remembered that, in another way, he’d been loving Momo for years now.

He could love her – should, even. Perhaps not with confessions or lips or hands, but in whatever way he could – in whatever way she wanted. Granted, it was a little less “you’re beautiful” and a little more “let me get that” (she rarely took him up on that offer, but it always seemed to make her smile) and “you pick tonight” (she’d invariably choose soba and he wondered how he was going to survive an entire lifetime of this) or “my interns won’t shut up about this new show I think you’d love and I want to watch it with you” (even though he, personally, thought it sounded impossibly boring and would rather watch almost anything else). It was small things like those, easy outlets for repressed longing, that kept him from snapping and shattering the happiness they’d shakily constructed after their uneasy wedding-night truce. Perhaps he suspected they wouldn’t be able to hold him back forever, but for now, they kept a cork in the bottle where he’d taken to storing the words he couldn’t say.

He wondered, each time he held her hand or she showed him something that had reminded her of him, each time he noticed the graceful curve of her hips as they gave way to her waist beneath something sheer she wore, each time she wrapped her arms around him or answered to “Todoroki-san” and each time she gave him that only-for-Shouto smile, how long it would take for his defenses to give out. Somehow, Shouto knew it would happen one day; he could only hope it would be too far in the future to do any damage. Maybe by then she’d be so used to the idea of being his wife that the revelation of his love wouldn’t come as a surprise.

And that was what it was. He knew that now, though he’d waffled. There was no explanation but love for the way she’d taken up residence in his heart, his mind, his space, and everything he’d once kept to himself but that; he wouldn’t ask for one, even if he thought there were. And one day, she’d know that. Momo was too sharp not to figure it out eventually, stubborn as she seemed to be in her denial right now, and he was content with its inevitability. He’d be cornered, probably, and he would confess plainly; she’d say something blandly polite so as not to hurt him and dig a knife beneath his ribs without knowing it or meaning to; he’d pretend not to bow his head in shame as he walked away. They’d never address it, and whatever desire for affection she’d had would probably be repressed in the interest of deterring his doomed interest before it wore a hole in his weary heart. And he’d waste away like that, the lonely husband of a doting wife, only it would happen so gradually that she’d never see it coming.

Shouto wished for the life of him that he’d realized all of this before he’d had the foolhardy idea of proposing on fool’s hope and a vague, back-of-the-mind hunch that Momo’s words twelve years ago hadn’t been forgotten. Because here, on a bright morning across a table that might’ve been a canyon for all the distance it put between them, it was nearly impossible not to think of all the things he wished he could say.

“Labor Day is coming up,” Momo remarked aimlessly, setting down her cup of tea.

“Uh…yeah. I guess it is.” That was the last thing on Shouto’s mind right now, but it was nearly the 23^rd. “Next Sunday, right?”

“Yeah! So we get Monday, too. That’ll be nice, since it’s been forever since we had a day off together,” Momo said brightly, taking a delicate sip of miso soup before she continued. “Want to do something?”

Yes, he thought. Kiss you until you forget your own name. Lie on the couch with you in my arms, watching boring dramas until we both fall asleep.

“Uh…sure,” he replied instead. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well…we have two days, right?”

“Yeah.” Shouto wished he could come up with something a little less bland, but it was hard to get himself to speak at all sometimes. “Were you thinking of going somewhere a little more out of the way?”

“My family used to go up to Nikko every fall,” she said, picking up her teacup again and wrapping both hands around its base. “It’s pretty. Relaxing, I suppose.”

Shouto nodded – he remembered her having mentioned that offhand once. “And you want to go back?”

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind-“

“No, I think that would be nice.” He smiled tightly. “It’s been a while since either of us took a vacation.”

“Right, because someone didn’t want a honeymoon.” She pulled a face at him.

“The way I remember it, someone had work conflicts the entire month after the wedding.” He smiled to himself, though it disappeared in a fraction of a second. “But I agree. It’d be nice to get away.”

“Especially since you’ve got that work trip coming up.” That tugged at Momo’s chipper expression until it flattened out into a kind of blankly disappointed look he wasn’t used to seeing on her face. “I doubt we’ll be able to spend much time together for a while after this weekend, so we might as well take advantage of it.”

“Are you upset about that?” Shouto asked. He certainly hadn’t expected her to be – before all of this, she’d never minded his long absences beyond reason, and from what he could tell, the way she felt about him hadn’t changed much since then.

“Not upset, but I am going to miss you.” She glanced up from her tea to meet his eyes. “It would be strange if I didn’t.”

“You never used to,” he commented.

“What do you mean?” Momo set down her tea again. “I always hated it when you’d be gone for weeks at a time. I thought you knew that.”

Shouto forced himself not to give too much thought to the persistent tightening in his chest. “You never told me that.”

“And besides, you weren’t my husband then.” The tips of her ears reddened, though Shouto didn’t notice them. “It’s a little different now that I live with you. And…”

“And?”

“Well, now that we’re married. You’re…kind of my person, Shouto.” That got a smile out of her. “I don’t like it when I can’t be with you.”

“I…I had no idea you felt that way,” Shouto said, because it seemed a more appropriate response than ‘that makes me so happy I think that my heart could rupture and I might die.’

“Really.” She frowned, setting her cup down again. “Well, clearly, I haven’t been appreciating you enough.”

“Hm?”

She stood, circling the table to stand behind Shouto. “Have I not told you that lately?” she asked, looping her arms around his neck, resting her chin atop his head. “That I appreciate you?”

“Um-“

“That’s my bad, then.” She dropped a kiss to the crown of his head almost thoughtlessly, so carefree – and so like the old Momo, the one who hadn’t been afraid of igniting unwanted feelings – that even in its gentleness it ached. “I…sometimes I’m not a very good wife-“

“Hey.” He took the hands around his neck in his, unable to resist pressing them to his chest. “Don’t say that, Momo. You’re not.”

“No, but…you’ve seemed so down lately, and I’ve just been assuming you were tired, or…tired of me, but I should’ve asked, and I should’ve remembered that you don’t do well when you don’t get enough affection and I know I’ve been avoiding it but…” she trailed off with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Shouto. I…I don’t think I’ve been meeting you halfway lately.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” he said, trying not to let her hear the choked-up gruffness in his voice. “It’s all right. Really. You’ve been doing more than enough.”

“It hasn’t bothered you?” she asked. “You haven’t wanted anything more from me?”

“Of course not,” he reassured her, because it would be unimaginably selfish to tell her just how much he wished she’d give him when he knew she didn’t want to. “Whatever you’re comfortable with – that’s all I want.”

“Mm,” she murmured, turning her head to rub her cheek against his hair. “Well, if you’re sure…”

“I’m sure, Momo.” He was, strangely – he was entirely sure that the last thing he wanted was to cause her pain or discomfort, that all he wanted was to keep her happy. “But I will admit that this is nice.”

“You mean” – she freed her hands from his and dropped them a little lower to wrap around his waist – “this?”

“Yeah.” It was nice. “Like that.”

She didn’t say anything to that, but she didn’t move away, either.

**

Labor Day Weekend

In the two months of their marriage, Momo had come to the distressing but not entirely unforeseen conclusion that her husband was extraordinarily beautiful.

He didn’t look at her often, focused on the road, so he didn’t notice the frequency with which she looked at him. Against a backdrop of soft instrumental music (they both preferred music without any words for driving), they’d spent hours driving the winding roads towards the mountain foothills where they’d be spending the weekend, and while most would’ve studied the brilliant foliage outside the windows, Momo examined her husband. His face was as free of tension as she’d seen it in ages, and though he didn’t smile, he wasn’t frowning, either; he seemed…content, if nothing else. He’d had to take a hand off the wheel a few times to push his hair out of his face, fingers brushing lightly over those fine cheekbones the ways he wished hers could.

Momo wasn’t a stranger to her husband’s good looks. She’d watched people fawn over him since they’d met, after all – she’d been one of them, back in the day – and she knew that more than a few people admired his sculpted face and physique. But that had always seemed distant, a fact she was aware of but which meant nothing to her. She didn’t love Shouto for any reason half so shallow as a pretty face, and though she, too, found him attractive, the thought didn’t do anything to her. If anything about Todoroki Shouto were ever to make her heart race, it’d be his thoughtfulness, his determination, the endearingly awkward answers he gave in interviews, his belief in her – not his face. But it was a nice view. She wished she could tell him that.

Why can’t I?

The thought sprung to mind unbidden, and she couldn’t claim she had a ready answer. Because he’d think it was weird, her brain supplied first, and you can’t make things weird when you’re stuck together – but that wasn’t it. Shouto had always thrived on praise, even when he hadn’t known it, even when he’d thought he wanted the praiser to focus elsewhere. Because it’s a shallow compliment, she tried next, but shallow compliments were still nice ones to get sometimes. Because it sounds too romantic, and that’s not the kind of relationship you have or even want, she thought next. That might well have been true.

Either way, she wanted to say something, but she couldn’t.

**

“Um…”

“Is something wrong?” Momo poked her head through the doorway of their hotel room behind Shouto, who’d gone ahead to take their bags inside. “With the room?”

They’d hit Saturday night traffic on the way up, so the curtains were drawn and the room was unlit by the time they arrived, and it was hard to tell what it was about the room that Shouto objected to. He strode to the nearest light switch, trying not to trip over anything in the dark, and flicked it on to illuminate the tiny bedroom-

Oh.

“I can sleep on the couch,” Shouto said automatically.

“Um…you don’t have to do that.” Momo hadn’t even thought about the issue of sleeping arrangements when she’d booked this room, a regrettable and entirely uncharacteristic oversight on her part. Her eyes flicked from the bed to the couch and back, and she shook her head. “I can, or…we can share.”

“Would you be okay with that?” Shouto set down her suitcase so he could turn to look at her. “I mean, sharing?”

Momo laughed nervously. “Well, we are married,” she reasoned. “And since we don’t have to worry about sleep schedules, we might as well, right?”

“Well, if you’re okay with it, I’m okay with it.” He didn’t look at her. “So I guess we’ll share for tonight.”

**

“Momo,” Shouto asked, cracking open an eye and turning to face her, “what are you doing?”

She looked up, a deer caught in headlights. “…getting ready to sleep.”

“Yeah, but…” he gestured at the approximately four feet of space between them. “Do…is it okay if…”

Her groggy eyes narrowed. “Wha’?”

“Could I make…kind of a strange request?”

“Uhh…what is it?”

“I want…” he trailed off, almost as tired as she was. “Could I…could I hold you? For just a little bit?”

A beat – she said nothing, blinking up at him with eyes that told him she didn’t quite comprehend his words or his actions. His face flushed, but he kept going. “Could we…be a little closer? Would you mind that?”

“N-no, of course not!” That seemed to have woken her. “Is something the matter?”

“No, not at all. It’s just…something I wanted to try.”

“Oh.” Her face softened, and she crawled over to rest her head against his shoulder with a contented sigh. “I…I didn’t know that you wanted that. I’d have thought you’d rather have some space.”

“Sometimes I don’t want space,” he murmured, risking an arm around her back and hoping his chest wouldn’t seize up like it sometimes did when she let him touch her as tenderly as he wanted to. He was far too tired not to be honest, and it was hard to care whether that was for the better or the worse right now. “Most of the time I don’t.”

“I’ve been giving you too much, then.” Momo sighed, burying her face in the soft fabric of his overworn Chargebolt shirt (a gift he hadn’t wanted but had made great use of anyways). “’m sorry.”

He didn’t deny that, even though he normally would’ve.

“You wanted this?” she asked gently, even though they were both too tired for a serious discussion. “But…doesn’t it confuse you?”

He cracked his eye open again. “No.”

“No…what?”

“No, it doesn’t confuse me.”

“Really?”

His hand began to rub circles against the soft jersey of her shirt. “No. Not at all.”

“So I can-“

“You can do anything you want, except…” he trailed off, wincing at the memory of her wedding night request. “…well. Anything within reason.”

“And it won’t confuse you?”

“No, it won’t.”

“But the kiss-“

“It’s all right, Momo.” He didn’t want to admit that their first kiss had clarified far more than it muddled up. “Just…do whatever makes you happy.”

She didn’t reply. Maybe she was asleep, maybe she had nothing to say – he didn’t particularly care which, and in a moment of boldness probably born of exhaustion (driving wore him out like nothing else) more than anything else, he kissed her hair before he let himself sink back into the pillows, head too heavy to hold up.

Strange how leaden his head felt when everything else, when he was holding her like this, felt so light.

**

Shouto had never thought his primary emotion at the sight of Momo’s smile would ever be stone-cold dread. But, waking up to find her smiling down at him from her perch atop his chest, that was the only thing he could feel.

If she kept up like this, it would barely be an hour before he told her all the things he knew would ruin what he couldn’t bear to lose.

**

Nikko had always been beautiful this time of year, all crisp air and bright foliage set against a backdrop of picturesque mountain foothills. When she was a girl, Momo had thought there could be nothing more lovely than the play of turquoise against reds and oranges where the river carved channels through the hills; she still did, privately. And for a moment, forgetting the confused roiling in her gut at the thought of last night, she closed her eyes and let herself be that little girl again, leaning against the guardrail of a bridge, gazing out in wonderment at a world that seemed to hold nothing but possibilities. She was hardly that girl anymore – thirty, married, a professional hero and the co-head of an agency, and a great deal more hardened than she’d ever been at ten – but this place had a way of reminding her of what she’d been back then, and she smiled as she closed her eyes to feel that familiar breeze on her face.

“I missed this,” she murmured to no one in particular.

“Yeah. It’s pretty.” She felt Shouto’s weight settle in beside her at the railing without looking up. “You used to come here a lot, right?”

“Every time Labor Day fell on a Sunday and we had that extra day, we’d come up here.” She lifted her chin to catch a better breeze. “We’d always eat onsen manju, hike up to the waterfall…y’know. Local things. Sometimes we’d use the hot springs, but usually we were just here for the scenery.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah, it was.” Momo opened her eyes so she could gauge his expression – blank as usual. “That’s mostly why I wanted to bring you, actually.”

“Hm?”

“Well, this is a family tradition.” She laughed aimlessly. “You’re a part of the family now, so I had to indoctrinate you.”

“Oh. Yeah.” That got a smile out of him. “Guess I am.”

“So…you like it?”

He turned his gaze back out over the river and nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. I do.”

**

“Hey, why’re you over there?”

“Oh, um. I just thought…maybe you wanted to, um…go back to normal tonight?” Momo finished fluffing one of the sofa pillows and then straightened. “So I was just getting the couch ready-“

“Oh. I see.” His face fell. “If you want, you can.”

“Well, I thought-“

“But if you don’t want, get over here.”

At that, Momo’s face broke into a smile entirely unbidden. “Do you want me to?”

“Do…you mind? You don’t have to.”

“No, no, of course not.” She could feel her cheeks reddening as she made her way to the bed and settled in beside Shouto the way she had last night, though this time he was the one who rested against her. Part of her wanted to stammer out a thousand apologies for the awkwardness of the positioning, but she wouldn’t dare disturb him. “I…just thought you might want to go back to normal. That’s all.”

“Do you want to?”

“Honestly? No,” she admitted. “I’m not sure why, but…it’s nice. Sleeping next to someone.”

“I think so, too.”

**

Two Weeks Later

December

Shouto always set his alarm an extra hour early, knowing he’d never be fully awake on time if he didn’t give himself time to ease into the waking hours of his day. So a reasonable nine o’clock flight woke him at six, and he cracked his eyes open to find Momo already awake, propped up against the pillows with a book against her bent knees. “Morning,” she said when she noticed that he’d opened his eyes.

“Nngh,” he muttered, moving in closer even though he barely had the energy to sit up. His head fell lazily against her shoulder, and he found his body going limp against her side as he slipped dangerously close to sleep again. “Hi.”

“Someone’s tired,” she remarked. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘m fine.”

“Right.” Her nose crinkled affectionately. “Not a morning person, hm?”

“You knew that,” he muttered. They hadn’t shared a bed every night since they’d gotten back, but they’d done so enough times now to know each other’s sleeping habits well.

“Yes, but I’d thought…well. I suppose I was foolish to assume you’d ever get up at such an ungodly hour without issue.” Never mind that a six-A.M. wakeup was nothing to Momo.

“Well, yeah, but still.” He yawned and began to stir against her shoulder, a surefire sign that he was beginning to wake in earnest. “Too early.”

She patted his shoulder. “There, there.”

**

He hadn’t expected to reach his tipping point so soon. He’d known that the shared beds and the exhortations to “do whatever you want” had been a slippery slope, but he hadn’t had enough self-control left to know that they’d erode what little remained; and now he was here, staring across the kitchen table and into the middle distance, trying not to meet Momo’s eyes over a quick pre-flight breakfast.

“You’ve looked a lot happier lately,” she’d said. “That’s…good to see. You seemed really down for a while.”

“Oh.” He no longer had the resolve to insist that he hadn’t been. “Well, uh. Yeah. I guess I have been.”

“I’m glad.” She looked down at the tabletop. “I’d wondered what was wrong for a while, but I never wanted to ask. Figured you would deflect like you always do.”

“Is this your roundabout way of asking me now?”

“Well, I would like to know what changed.”

“I…I can’t,” he stammered. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

She furrowed her brow. “Is it something at work that you can’t discuss?”

“No, not that.” He rain a clammy hand through his hair. “I just…it’d change too much.”

“What do you mean by that?” Momo asked cautiously.

“Knowing you, you’d…change a lot of things if I told you, and…I can’t ask that of you.” He poked at his rice aimlessly. “I’ve been too selfish already.”

“Selfish?” Momo’s eyes widened. “How’s that?”

“I…I keep asking you for things-“

“Aren’t you the one who told me it’s not selfish to ask for things you need?” she reached across the table for his hand. “Shouto, you can’t just…not tell me things because you think they’ll inconvenience me.”

“But you’re happy like this,” he protested. “You don’t want the same things I want. And…I just want you to be happy, Momo. I can’t ask for the things I want because you don’t want them, and you are my priority, not me-“

“But what do you want?” she pressed. “What is it that you think you want that I don’t?”

“It’s just…” he buried his head in his hands. “Forget it.”

“Not this time.” She gently pried his hands free of his face. “We’re not doing this, Shouto. If we’re going to make this work, you have to talk.”

“Momo,” he warned, “if I tell you that, you’re going to trip over yourself trying to do things you shouldn’t have to.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care, Shou. I need you to tell me what exactly had you so off for the entire first month of our marriage, and what changed.”

“Momo, I…I don’t know if I can.”

“Please. Just talk to me.” She took a deep breath that did nothing to ground her. “Just tell me now so I don’t spend three weeks without you worrying about this.”

“I…I told you. I want things you don’t.”

“But what does that mean?”

Shouto took in a shaky breath. “You want us to be the way we were before, but I…I want more than that.” He swallowed hard. “But the last thing I’d want is to force that on you when you don’t feel that way.”

“More as in-“

“I don’t want us to have to ask whether or not it’s okay to sleep together, Momo.” He couldn’t look at her, but she could see the desperation in his eyes even so. “I want to be able to kiss you when I get home from work without it being some weird arrangement we made because things worked out that way, and…everything that comes with that. I want to say things that friends don’t but I’ve wanted to for ages. I…I want this to be more than a deal we made, but really, I just want you.”

“Shouto…”

“I want you to feel the same way when you look at me that I do when I look at you,” he went on. “But you don’t, and I can’t have any of that. And I’m sure as hell not going to ask, because I may not be all that great of a person, but the last thing in the world that I’d ever want is to ask you to give me what I want at your expense.” He laughed mirthlessly. “You might say I’m confused, and that it’s just all of the kisses talking, but I know it isn’t. Even when you’d barely come near me, I felt it. I couldn’t not feel it.” Shouto knew he was rambling now, but he couldn’t possibly have cared less. “Yeah, it started with the kiss, but now that I look back on it, it started way before that. All that kiss did was click the last piece into place, and yeah, I wish you felt the same way, but…how could I ever ask you to?” his eyes fell. “I always had to stop myself because if things…if things went too far, I wouldn’t be able to keep it in, and I’d just go and ruin everything. You think I turned you down that night” – neither had to ask which night he meant – “because I didn’t want you? Are you kidding? I wanted you that night more than I’ve ever wanted anything, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself and…and I couldn’t do that. Maybe I’m a coward, telling you all of this before I leave, but I am, and…I dunno. I don’t need an answer. I just…I can’t pretend that I don’t feel anything. Not anymore.”

She couldn’t even speak, and for a long moment, neither of them did.

“I love you,” he murmured, barely loud enough to break the silence. “But that means I had to accept that I could never burden you with my feelings.”

“You…”

“Actually, no.” His eyes darted around the room, landing sporadically on anything but her. “We’ve been saying that for ages. What I actually mean is that I’m in love with you.”

“S-shouto, I-“

“It’s okay,” he said, more defeated than she’d ever heard him sound. “I don’t need an answer.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, hand pressed to her mouth, eyes wide. “I…thank you for telling me this, Shouto.”

“I’m sorry.”

“N-no, no, I…I wish you hadn’t felt like you had to carry that alone.” Her eyes seemed moist now. “It…it isn’t selfish to…to feel that way.”

“But you don’t-“

“I have no idea what I feel, Shouto.” She inhaled shakily. “But it’s certainly not anything that would make…this a burden to me.”

“Well.” He felt like his chest was going to burst with the pressure building behind his ribcage. “I, uh. I’m glad.”

She caught him on his way out the door and held on tight for a moment, face buried in the wool of the peacoat he always wore for travel. But she didn’t say a word. That was all right with Shouto, though – he couldn’t think of any, either.

Neither mustered a goodbye.

Chapter Text

Day Two

He probably feels horrible.

The thought came to Momo’s mind unbidden, and once it had, it wouldn’t let go. It was really such an obvious observation that she was surprised she’d been able to stave it off for a solid day before it had taken up permanent residence in her brain, but it still stung, still gripped her lungs like a constricting snake.

She knew Shouto too well after fifteen years of friendship not to have come to that conclusion eventually. He’d always been an overthinker, reading too far into things to compensate for the skill he lacked in interpreting others’ behavior; he’d always found it harder to judge character and read motivations than most people he knew did, so he thought and thought and thought to make up for it. But that often led him down the path of the worst case scenario, and there was no other destination at which he might possibly have arrived after his confession and a day’s worth of silence.

Confession – the word alone made something squirm uncomfortably in Momo’s chest. That had been what he’d done, hadn’t it? Confessed his love – as juvenile as the phrase seemed in light of the intensity of that moment, that had been his intention. Love. That word, too, felt like a boa constrictor wrapped around her lungs. That was probably what he’d been afraid of, this confusion and heartache and loss for words, but…

Well. What was truly to be feared was the risk of his heart breaking, not hers, and Momo wished he’d thought about that when he’d chosen to hide for so long. She wondered when he’d come to the conclusion that he loved her, or to the decision that he’d go on loving her in secret – she wondered why he’d begun to think that it was selfish to share that burden when Momo would’ve given anything to know why he’d seemed so lonely in those first difficult months.

Because of me, she thought, guilt settling like a wet blanket around her shoulders. Because he thought I’d be unhappy if I knew that he loved me.

His reasoning, in a strangely roundabout way, made a little bit of sense. They were stuck together now, and awkwardness would’ve been unbearable; she would have felt awful if she’d learned of his feelings knowing she’d never return them, and she probably would’ve acted a little differently than she had if she’d known in order to ease his longing. But that would only have been an issue had she truly believed that she’d never reciprocate his affection, and if she were honest with herself, she’d never been sure of that. It had been no chore to kiss him, and an unexpected pleasure to sleep beside him on the nights when he’d been feeling bold enough to ask; for what it was worth, she’d loved playing at romance with him, and she’d felt its absence keenly when she’d thought she needed to give him space. She’d never have been unhappy in the knowledge that he loved her, though she couldn’t put a finger on a reason for that besides the general pleasantness of being desired (that, after all, would’ve applied to anyone). And she wished, though he seemed as blind to her affection as he was to the subtle digs from reporters that he always unknowingly ignored in interviews, that he could’ve seen that – that nothing could’ve been less likely to make her miserable.

She had been the one to request their first kiss, hadn’t she? And hadn’t she been so forward as to proposition him?

He knew none of that, though. She hadn’t seen the need to sort out her tangled emotions when she’d believed that he wanted nothing more from her than companionship and a little more affection than was normal among friends, so she’d never outright expressed that there was no small possibility of her having developed feelings for him. And now he probably thought she was stewing in guilt exactly as he was, thinking he’d made a mess of things.

And she couldn’t have that – not for sweet, longsuffering Shouto, who’d loved her in silence for so long, putting her happiness before his own. Not when he, who’d never been good with his words, had poured out his heart no matter how difficult it must’ve been, simply because she’d asked him to. If there were any way she could act-

Before she could stop herself, she scrolled through her contacts until she reached his. It picked up after only two rings; she shook her head sadly, knowing he was probably expecting to be let down gently at best or chastised at worse.

“Hi, Shouto,” she greeted him, voice as gentle as she could force it to be when it wanted to shake.

“Momo?” Shouto asked, far-off and tinny on the other end of the phone. “Um…hey.”

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, no, not at all.” She could hear him clear his throat – is he nervous? – before he continued. “Uh…is something wrong?”

“No, no, I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.” A pause. “You…did?”

“I’m…I’m not upset, Shouto.” She closed her eyes even though she couldn’t see him as was. “I was thinking about yesterday, and how, knowing you, you’re probably freaking out, thinking you ruined everything. And I couldn’t just not tell you that you didn’t, and I…I’m not upset. I could never be upset at you.” Well, that was a stretch. “Not about that.”

“You don’t have to say that.” He sounded a little distant now.

“But I’m not, Shouto.” Her voice rose just enough to necessitate holding her phone a little further from her mouth so as not to deafen him. “You…you were honest with me, and that means a lot. I’m…I’m glad that I know.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t seem to be taking this well, so she changed tactics. “And besides, what kind of person would I be” – she laughed hoarsely – “if I was upset with you for falling in love with me?”

“Momo, I…” he trailed off. “I’m tired,” he finished, and to his credit, he sounded convincing. “Can we…can we do this later?”

“I’m sorry, Shou,” she murmured, “but you’re doing the thing where you run from hard conversations again, and I’m not letting you do that. Not about this.” She shook her head, though he couldn’t see it. “Not with me.”

“I…I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, Momo.”

“I’m trying to tell you that you didn’t do anything wrong, Shouto.” She wished for all the world that he could see her face now, read the desperation in her eyes and the sincerity in every line that worry had etched into her forehead. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m right here. I’m not leaving, and…and I’m not going to stop loving you, and I’m not mad. You got that? I’m not. I…you’re my husband.” Her voice cracked on that last word. “No matter what that means, no matter what that looks like right now…that counts for something, Shouto.”

“You weren’t supposed to know,” he said, his voice small, miserable, defeated.

“But I’m glad that I do, Shouto.” She wished now that she could reach across the hundreds of miles and wrap him up in her arms. “I…it’s not entirely impossible that I might feel the same way. I don’t know yet, and I need to think it over, but…I never would have even started to reflect on it if you hadn’t told me what you did.” She chewed her lip. “And isn’t that what we should want? To love each other?”

“You don’t have to say things like that.”

“But I mean it.”

“I have no doubt that you do, but what happens when you realize that you don’t?” Rarely had Momo ever heard his voice more defeated. “Then what do I have? False hope and guilt, and what else?”

“Why are you so sure that I will?” She challenged. “Wasn’t I the one who asked to kiss you first?”

“Yeah, to scratch an itch.”

“Who are you to tell me what’s in my own heart, Shouto?”

“Have you looked at my track record?” Shouto scoffed. “Thirty years of caring about people who barely know I’m alive, and you expect me to believe that this is different?”

“Yes, I do.” Irritation prickled at the back of her throat. “Why are you mad at me? I’m trying to reassure you!”

“Because I don’t need to be reassured when it’s going to amount to nothing in the end.”

“I wish you didn’t see things that way, Shouto,” she sighed. “I…I love you, and I know this is kind of a tough moment, but…you couldn’t make me leave now if you tried.” Because you felt obliged to stay, she was sure he’d answer, so she added, “because there’s nothing you could do to make me want to.”

“Momo…”

“I miss you,” she murmured, brushing her fingers across the countertop in a pathetic lover’s caress. “It’s been a day.”

That seemed to get him to soften. “I miss you, too.”

“Three weeks.” A lump rose in her throat. “I’ll be here. I can promise you that.”

**

Day Eight

“I don’t know what to do, Kyou.” Momo’s shoulders rounded, and she folded her arms protectively across her middle. “I just don’t know how to get him to believe me.”

“Probably how he felt when you tried to convince him that he was just confused the first time he tried to confess,” Jirou pointed out. “I dunno, Yaomomo. You guys are kind of a mess.”

“You are a fount of things I don’t want to hear today,” Momo huffed.

“Well, yeah. Marriage is like that.” Jirou shook her head fondly. “It’s…rough, Momo. It’s two people trying to figure out to mesh entirely separate lives together, making each other so mad that they can’t even talk half the time or they’d spit whenever they tried to get words out.”

“What a lovely image that is.”

“It’s only natural. Communication is hard, and if it breaks down for even a little bit, all that careful work is going to come crashing down.” Jirou shot her friend a look. “And I don’t think you guys had any communication up until this whole fiasco.”

Momo sighed plaintively. “Says the one whose biggest fights with her husband seem to be over whether or not dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets are appropriate dinner fare?”

“Okay, that was once!”

“And it’s the only fight you’ve ever described to me,” Momo said flatly.

“Well, yeah, ‘cause it was a good story. But that doesn’t mean that was, like…anywhere near the biggest fight we’ve had. I mean, Denki and I were a mess when we first got married,” she replied. “We had this one argument about his finances that ended in him sleeping on the couch for a week.”

“A week?” Given that sleeping in the same bad had come to be a sort of privilege for Shouto and Momo when one of them happened to be in an affectionate mood, the idea of a couple who’d otherwise have no reason not to do so sleeping apart was nearly-unimaginable. “Were they that bad?”

“It’s Denki, hon.” Jirou shook her head. “I love him, but he’s so bad with money that he almost became a registered tax evader without even knowing it.”

“Okay, but that’s not the same as ‘I hid my feelings for you for six months for fear that they’d make you miserable and now I won’t believe you when you say that you aren’t mad at me,’” Momo countered. “Finances, dinosaur nuggets…those things can be smoothed over. But this?”

“Well, of course you can fix it.” Jirou looked baffled that she’d even suggest otherwise. “When he gets home, tell him you feel the same way, and…that’s it. Done. Resolved.”

“But what if I don’t?”

“Idiot.” Jirou wasn’t above outright insults when she thought they were deserved – evidently her patrol partnership with Bakugou had rubbed off on her. “Of course you do.”

“How could you possibly know it?”

“You’re my best friend, Yaomomo.” Jirou rolled her eyes. “And you’re really bad at hiding things.”

“And?”

“It’s obvious, Momo. You look at him like he’s the only person in the room.”

“No, I don’t!”

“Yaomomo.”

“I…I mean, I think I have feelings for him, but…I don’t know if they’re as stong as his, or-“

“Momo?”

“Yes?”

“You love him.” She reached across the table to press Momo’s hand.

“But…how does one know that?”

“You miss him when he’s not with you.” Jirou didn’t miss a beat. “You’d do just about anything to make him happy, right? You want to help him improve, and when he wants to do the same, you listen. You guys are each other’s best support system, and you’re constantly thinking about him, both in the stuck-in-your-head way and in the constantly-anticipating-his-wants-and-needs way. He’s the person you most want to spend time with.” Now she trained a pointed look on her friend. “You wanted to kiss him without knowing why, you married him when I know you’re too much of a romantic to marry someone you really only saw as a friend, and didn’t you try to seduce him once?”

“I did not-“

“Well, you did something, didn’t you?”

“We don’t talk about that.”

“Point stands.” Jirou drew back her hand to give Momo a little space. “So yeah. You can fix this, because you do love him. And I promise he’ll believe that one day.”

**

Day Thirteen

“How’s work?”

Momo almost smiled – that was a decided improvement. “It’s all right. Someone decided to try to rob the modern art museum, so that was…diverting.”

“All that hideous postmodernist pseudo-art, gone forever,” Shouto deadpanned. “What a tragedy.”

“You’re so ridiculous,” Momo giggled, grateful that his sense of humor had at least begun to return. She’d learned a few years ago after dragging him to a traveling exhibition of Degas paintings (her favorite) that he had stronger opinions on art than she’d ever expected, and she hadn’t ever let him live it down. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re ridiculous?”

“You. Frequently.” He paused. “Anyways, how’d the op go?”

“Fine, except that they had a guy in their crew with a magnetism quirk. Everyone with metal in their costumes was in a bit of a pickle for a while, until one of them realized that his quirk would release if someone knocked him out.”

“Oh. Magnet villains are the worst.”

This was common knowledge. “The worst,” she agreed. “What about you?”

“It’s…okay.” She could hear his comforter shift as he adjusted his position – he’s sitting on his bed, probably, she realized. “Just a lot of desk time.”

“Desk time? I thought you were in the field most of the time.”

“Not much to do out there, honestly. Just a lot of monitoring chatter and being on hand in case something actually happens.”

“You could’ve done that from here,” Momo grumbled, even though she knew very well why he had to be in Hokkaido. Shouto had been one of a handful of heroes called in as backup in case a suspected threat from a criminal syndicate up north became anything concrete, and though they hadn’t had any cause to move against the group yet, he had to be in position in case they needed to. “Then I wouldn’t have had to cuddle with a pillow like a loner.”

“You’ve been cuddling with a pillow?”

“That’s…weird, isn’t it.”

“I mean, I’ve been doing that for years, so not really.”

“Oh.” She paused, wondering if she should go on. “I…you’re better.”

“Than a pillow?”

“You come with climate control.” Shut up, she instructed herself, but she never had been good at obeying orders when she didn’t want to. “And pillows don’t make that clicking noise that you make in your sleep.”

“I make a clicking noise in my sleep?”

“What, you didn’t know that?” Momo laughed softly. “It’s kind of cute.”

“Well, that’s just embarrassing.”

“I miss it.” It was easier to talk about these things when she pretended he’d never told her why he’d started asking her to sleep beside him. “Sleeping next to you, I mean.”

“Me, too,” he admitted.

“Not too long, though, right?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

**

Day Seventeen

“You look like you haven’t slept in a month, Todoroki.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“No, really,” Midoriya insisted. Never mind that he’d been here for less than an hour with the new crop of heroes being rotated in to replace the ones who’d been here for the last three weeks – apparently that had been all he needed to conclude that something was wrong with Shouto. “Lots to do, then?”

“Something like that.” He didn’t feel like explaining his marital problems to his well-meaning but perpetually single best friend. “I’m fine.”

That was supposed to be enough to get him off his back.

It was not.

“Todoroki!” he called a few hours later, knocking insistently at the door to Shouto’s hotel room. “Can we talk?”

He opened the door, however reluctantly. It might be work – he had to be sure. “What is it?”

“I’ll buy you soba if you tell me what’s wrong.”

“You sound like my wife,” Shouto muttered.

“Yaoyorozu is a very smart woman,” Midoriya said sagely.

“I don’t want to talk about-“

“Oh. So it is about that.”

“It’s fine. Seriously.”

Midoriya examined his face now that he was a little closer. “You’ve got bags under your eyes.”

“Uh…thanks.” Midoriya was hardly one to talk about failing to take proper care of oneself, but here he was anyway.

“Are you guys fighting?” he probed. “I mean, I know it’s none of my business, but I heard that you’d been going through some stuff-“

“Oh. So Momo put me up to this.”

“No, actually, the Kaminaris did.” He shrugged. “Apparently Yaoyorozu” – no one had gotten used to referring to her as ‘Todoroki’ yet, even though she’d changed her name, and besides, it would be confusing now – “talked to Jirou” – similarly, not yet ‘Kaminari’ even after several years – “who talked to Kaminari, who then went out with Kirishima and apparently told him that you two were a mess, and he tells everything to Kacchan, so Kacchan found out, and he told me before I left that I better not let you get killed because you were ‘pining,’ whatever that meant, so I thought I’d check in.”

Todoroki would’ve been touched if he weren’t so aggrieved at the idea of his personal information being made so widely available.

“I’m in love with her,” he said flatly.

“Well, yeah, of course you are. She’s your wife.”

“…you realize we got married because of a pact we made in high school, right?”

“Well, yeah, but I always kinda thought you had feelings for her. I mean, not that I ever notice that stuff, but I didn’t think you’d marry her just because of a pact.”

“Well, I did.” He opened the door enough to let Midoriya in, and he promptly took a seat at the end of Todoroki’s bed. “I didn’t realize that I was in love with her until after.”

“But…that’s good, right?”

“She doesn’t feel the same way.” Well… “Might not feel the same way. I don’t know. It’s confusing. I hate myself.”

“…Todoroki?”

“She just wanted things to be normal,” he muttered, beginning to pace. “She wanted us to be like we always were, and then I had to go and tell her all of that and ruin it and she keeps insisting she doesn’t care but I know she does. I know.She’s too good of a person not to pretend that she’s okay for my sake, but she’s always going to feel like she has to love me because I love her and she doesn’t and-“

“Have you considered that she might actually be telling you the truth?”

Shouto froze. “Huh?”

“If she says she isn’t mad, she probably isn’t.” Midoriya shrugged. “Yaoyorozu isn’t very good at hiding things.”

“Well, no, but…”

“And if she hasn’t said she doesn’t feel the same, then don’t assume that.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Thing I learned from the last girl who dumped me.”

“Not to assume she doesn’t feel the same way?” Shouto raised his eyebrows. “Why did you assume that if she was dating you?”

“No, not that specifically. Just not to assume that she feels a certain way.” Midoriya gave him a pointed look. “And why are you assuming she doesn’t feel the same way if you married her?”

“I really shouldn’t be taking dating advice from you.”

“No, but you shouldn’t be taking your own, either,” Midoriya said brightly. “You’re making yourself miserable over something she never even said.”

“Wow. Bakugou really did rub off on you.”

Midoriya cocked his head curiously. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re not being as nice as you usually are.”

“Well, you need a reality check.”

It had to be bad if Midoriya was the one saying that.

“Anyways,” he continued. “Just listen to her. She wants to help you figure this out, I promise.”

“But I don’t want her to think she has to,” Shouto protested.

“Maybe not, but she doesn’t think of it as a burden. That much is obvious.” He smiled gently. “She cares about you more than you could possibly realize, Shouto.”

Shouto froze for a moment at the rare use of his given name and at the statement, unusually sentimental even for Midoriya. “Just…listen?”

“Communication.” He nodded resolutely. “I’ve gotten dumped for that three times. What can I say? It’s important.”

“Yeah, I still don’t understand how you get broken up with so much.”

“Probably for the same reasons that I actually know what to say in a situation like this.” He shrugged. “I’m not really good at listening to stuff that goes against what I already think.”

This was a very self-reflective statement, with which Shouto found himself rather impressed. “Just listen,” he muttered. “Well, wouldn’t hurt to try.”

**

Day Nineteen

“Hey, Momo.”

“Wow, you called first this time?” Momo smiled against her phone. “I’m honored.”

“I want to ask you something.”

“Well, hate to break it to you, but we’re already married-“

“What are you thinking right now?”

Momo blinked a couple of times, taken-aback. “Um…that I’m surprised you’re calling me, to be completely honest,” she replied. “I…you haven’t seemed very eager to talk the last few days.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. You’re tired, I’m sure. I mean, I know I am.”

“I think I worded that badly,” Shouto sighed. “Sorry. I think what I really wanted to ask was how you were feeling. Like, not just right now, but…generally. About…your life. About us.”

“Oh.” She twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “Well. A little less confused, I guess.”

“Less confused how?”

“I’m…I think I have a better perspective on my own feelings.”

“I’d like to hear what that is, if…if that’s okay.”

“Well, I know it’s been kind of hard to get it through your head that I’m not upset with you, but the longer I thought about it…” she trailed of to give herself enough time to muster her courage. “Well. The longer I thought, the happier I was.”

“About?”

“About what you said.” Her heart had picked up speed somewhere along the line. “I’d wanted to have this discussion in person, but there’s no time like the present, I suppose.”

“You’re happy?” he asked, a little incredulous. “About…you know…”

“Your confession?” It really was a fitting term. “Well, yeah. I am.”

“But…why?”

“Well…you love me.” She bit her lip to hide a disbelieving smile, even though no one was around to see it. “That…that’s a good thing. I don’t know why you thought I’d think it wasn’t.”

“But do you-“

“I…I think so,” she admitted. “I mean, I’m not sure about anything, but the more I think, and the more I talk to people about it, the more I start to think that…that my being so happy about your telling me you loved me has to mean something on my end, too.”

“Oh.” She heard him swallow hard through the phone. “So…you…”

“I miss you,” she said softly. “I…I want you home, and every time I think about…that look on your face when you told me you loved me, and how determined you were to hide it because you thought I’d be unhappy if I knew, I feel…I don’t know. Warm. Right, I guess, like I’d found the way things were supposed to be, you know? Like I used to when I finally figured out how to get at a tough problem in calculus.” 

“…so I’m math to you.”

“You know what I’m saying, Shouto.”

“Well, yeah. But I’m…having a little trouble wrapping my head around it.”

“That makes two of us,” she laughed. “I have no idea what I’m saying.”

“Clearly. You just called me a calculus problem.”

“That was a compliment!”

“Believe it or not, most people wouldn’t see it that way.”

“Shouto, I am trying-“

“No, I know you are.” His tone softened. “Go on, if you want.”

“I don’t really know what being in love is supposed to feel like,” she admitted. “I mean…I don’t think I ever have before. But if that’s what it is, then…I guess I am.”

He was silent on the other end of the line for a moment.

“You mean that.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I do.”

"I...oh. Um. Wow." 

"I think," she went on, even though she could've left it off there, "that I might've loved you for a long time without ever knowing it." 

**

Day Twenty-One

Momo reached the entryway as the door latched behind the last of Shouto’s luggage and, for a moment, froze.

He looked up at the sound of footsteps, eyes wide, knuckles white around the handle of a suitcase.

She stood stock-still, staring.

Neither moved or spoke, and for a moment, all they could do was stand and blink rapidly, as if someone had switched on a too-bright light. A glass wall of hesitation had extended itself from floor to ceiling, and neither wanted to shatter it for a moment, but someone would have to.

“Anata,” Momo said, voice so soft she was surprised he’d heard it when his eyes went even wider.

Even that softest of sounds was enough to shatter the glass, though, and before she could stop herself, she stepped through, mindless of the shards of doubt she might’ve stepped on if she hadn’t been careful – and she was in no careful mood now. She moved to her unmoving husband, hands settling so lightly against each sculpted cheek that she barely registered the coolness in one or the heat in the other, forcing herself to meet his eyes. He swallowed, his shallow breaths hot against her face; she waited for a cue, but he gave her none for a moment.

“You’ve never called me that,” he finally replied after what felt like a year.

Momo had heard her husband’s voice on the phone so many times in the past three weeks that it should never have been unfamiliar, but it rang differently in her ears here, at the end of a long and arduous road. And something in the soothing, raspy timbre of his words wore away the last of the willpower it had taken to force herself to wait.

Pushing herself up on her toes as she pulled him down to meet her, she kissed him.

**

This wasn’t the kind of kiss Shouto had grown accustomed to.

Those had been measured, careful, engineered not to interrupt a delicate equilibrium; this one was insistent, the push and pull of an ebbing tide and not the stillness of a lake on a windless summer afternoon. Her hands threaded in the hair at the nape of his neck; her forehead rested against his when she pulled away for air.

“Do you believe me now?” she whispered, her words a hot puff of breath against his lips.

He answered wordlessly, and she knew the language he spoke as if she’d been its student all her life.

**

“Are…are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Momo nodded, a little breathless, and gently lifted his shaking hands from her shirt to undo the last button herself where his clumsy fingers couldn’t. “Sure if you are.”

“Of course I am.”

“You’re shaking, Shouto.” She raised her eyes to his and quickly lowered them again. “Are you…are you positive?”

“Of course. But…I just…I need to know that this time is different.”

“What do you mean? Of course it is.”

“Well, yes, I know, but…I can’t do this if you’re going to regret it later, or if it isn’t going to be a forever thing. There’s…there’s a reason I never did before.”

“Of course." She ducked her head in acknowledgment or embarrassment or both. "But I think we've...sorted things out since then." Now she looked up at him. "And you know that I love you, right?"

“Yeah. I do.” He couldn’t help but look a little awestruck at that even in his nervousness. “I just need you to know that if…” he inhaled shakily. “I don’t think I could handle a one-time thing with you.”

She laid her palm flat against his chest, using her eyes to draw his up to meet her. She knew that there’d be no misreading the love and excitement and soft, heady want in her eyes if he saw them; it was only fair that he know that she knew now that she’d wanted this before she’d ever been able to admit why. “It wouldn’t be, Shouto.”

He closed his eyes. “You have to know that if I have you once, I’m only going to want more.”

She smiled.

“Then by all means, Shouto, have me.”

Chapter Text

The Next Morning

“I’m so happy, Momo.”

That wasn’t the kind of statement one could respond to with just anything, so for a moment, Momo didn’t. Maybe she didn’t need to: this seemed the kind of place – too-warm bed, one arm around her waist, legs entwined a little too haphazardly for her liking – where words didn’t need to matter. It was enough to know he was here, enough to be the one here with him.

But he’d learned to use his words. She might as well do the same.

“I’m glad.” Her voice came out gravelly, but he nuzzled against her neck in appreciation of the fact that she’d even spoken at all. “A little bit taken-aback, but…I’m glad.”

“You make me happy,” he mumbled, pulling her flush against his bare chest.

So this is how he is when he’s…

Well, happy.

Momo thought her heart was going to burst, and something in the unassuming sweetness of Shouto’s declaration made her wonder how she’d ever been able to interpret the fondness he made her feel as anything but love. “I’m happy too,” she agreed. “Anata.”

He whined contentedly against her shoulder. “I love it when you call me that.”

“What, anata?”

“Mmhm.”

She turned to face him, and her stomach seemed to drop and catch itself at the blush dusting his finely-cut cheeks and the sheer adoration in his eyes. “That’s good to know, anata.” His eyes fluttered closed, and at some unspoken prompting, Momo nudged his shoulder with her own, pushing it down so she could lie down against him.

One of his eyes cracked open, then closed again. Still, though, his hand found its way to the base of her ponytail (when she’d had time to tie it back and why she’d bothered when she had to have known he’d muss it in short order, he had no idea), and she laughed softly when he tugged on the elastic. He stroked her hair with all the inspired laziness of a man who knew he had no further need to rush, and she nudged her forehead into his palm when his fingers reached her hairline.

“Do you like that?”

He was surprised that it hadn’t yet occurred to him to ask.

“I do, anata.” She wasn’t about to let go of an easy way to please him now that she knew it was one.

He smiled cautiously. “And…what else do you like?”

“Mm, anything.”

“Momo,” he groused playfully, “be specific.”

“Only if you do the same.” She propped herself up against his chest so she could look at him. “Deal?”

“But-“

“I’ll tell you one thing that I like for every one thing you tell me that you like,” she suggested. “That sound okay?”

“I don’t…it doesn’t matter, Momo.”

“Of course it matters, Shouto. This is a two-way street.” She brushed his hair from his forehead so she could kiss it. “And you need to learn how to ask for things, anata.”

“Well, if you insist.” He didn’t look entirely pleased with the arrangement, but he conceded anyway. “But you have to start.”

“Fine. I like the way you say my name.”

“Really?” Shouto’s brow furrowed. “In the normal sense or the…other one?”

“Yes, really. And, well…obviously the former is the one I have the lion’s share of my experience with, but I…do like both, I think.” A heavy blush had crept up into her cheeks while she was speaking and he brushed his fingers against her temples just to see if they felt warm – they did.

“That’s…good to know.” I could do a lot with that one. “Um…my turn, right?”

“Well, yes, that was our deal.”

“I…” think, Todoroki. There has to be something you can say that won’t embarrass her.

“…I like your thighs,” he blurted out. “Like. Touching them. But also just looking at them. I’ve always thought they were attractive, but they also…feel kind of nice…” he trailed off. “…that was weird, wasn’t it.”

“Not weird at all, anata. I’m flattered.” With a teasing smile he’d never seen before, she took one of his hands and placed it against the back of her thigh; something in his face went slack, as if his whole body felt weak-kneed. “You like that, hm?”

“You’re going to be the death of me, Momo.” He didn’t seem upset in the slightest. “Your turn?”

“Sure,” she replied, trying to bite back her grin so he wouldn’t know just how much she was enjoying the look on his face. He was trying to hold it together – really trying, so much as he could be while he was cradling her thigh – and the strain showed so clearly on his face that it was all Momo could do not to laugh. “I like how soft your voice gets when you’re asking me if something is okay.” She reached down to take his hand from her thigh (she didn’t want him to be distracted now) and placed it against her heart instead. “You probably didn’t think I’d notice, but…it’s so gentle.” He smiled, feeling her heart race beneath his palm. “I like it when you’re gentle.”

“That’s two things, Momo.”

“Oh?” she nudged her knee into his. “Give me two, then.”

“Momo.”

“What?”

“Enough with the teasing,” he muttered, grabbing a pillow and covering his face. “You’re gonna make me say something embarrassing again.”

She pried the pillow from his hands. “You don’t have to be embarrassed, Shouto.”

“I know, but…this is new.” He risked a glance at her, and she privately thought it might’ve been the bravest thing he’d ever done. “I…I have no way of knowing what might freak you out, or…make you uncomfortable or something.”

“You won’t, Shouto, I promise.” She laid her head against his chest again – that had always seemed to comfort him before. “It isn’t like I know what I’m doing, either, so…we’ll learn together, right?”

“I just don’t want to scare you away.”

“Shouto, given that I am your legal next of kin and completely undressed right now, I highly doubt there’s much of a risk of that.”

“That little whining sound you make when you like something that I did. I like that.”

Momo had never thought about it before, but now that she did, she knew exactly what he referred to, and she smiled. “Really? Why?”

“It tells me what you like,” he said simply. “I’m not good at reading people. So…it’s nice to have cues to follow.”

“So you like vocal cues,” Momo said, more to herself than to him, as if taking note of something she’d be tested on later. “Does that mean you’d be okay with it if I were…a little talkative? Because I can think of a few times that there have been things that I wanted to say, but I thought you’d think it was strange if I just started talking all of a sudden and…didn’t. But if you like that-“

“Talking is good,” he confirmed, as flustered as she. “Talking is great. Talk all you want. Do you want me to talk?”

“Um…if you…want to?” Momo squeaked, wondering how it was possible to feel so awkward even at her (in her mind) advanced age. “I mean, it would be nice…I mean. Never mind.”

“No, no, tell me.” That seemed to snap him out of his embarrassment. “What would be nice?”

“Well…nothing. It’s silly.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist. “Learning together, right?”

“Of course you had to quote my own words back at me.” She didn’t really seem frustrated. “I’ve just heard, um. Well, maybe it only happens in novels, but sometimes, um, the talking is less…practical and more…romantic.”

“How so?”

“Well…you know. ‘I love you’ and ‘you’re beautiful’ and all that. Sappy things that are supposed to just…pop into your head in the heat of the moment. But really, it’s not nice unless you mean it, so it’s kind of silly to ask you because then you’ll do things you don’t want to just to make me happy, and…that’s not what either of us wants. So maybe just pretend I didn’t say that.”

“Oh.” Shouto paused. “Wait, I haven’t told you that yet, have I?”

Momo’s already-red cheeks grew even hotter. “Hm?”

“That you’re beautiful.” He’d begun to stroke her hair again, but she’d been too distracted by her own embarrassment to notice. “I guess I just got so used to thinking it that I forgot that I hadn’t said it out loud.”

“W-what?”

“You are beautiful, Momo.”

“Anata…”

“I’ve always thought so,” he murmured. “I remember taking my seat in homeroom on the first day of high school and…just looking over at you and thinking, ‘wow, she’s kinda pretty.’”

“Kinda pretty,” Momo repeated, giggling. “Hey, I’ll take it.”

“And then I forced myself not to think about that.” He sighed heavily. “Then I married you and spent six months stopping myself from choking on my own breath every time you looked at me, so I kind of never got around to mentioning it. But now that you do-“

“Shouto, I don’t want you to feel like you have to-“

“I’ll tell you that so often that you’ll get sick of it.” He kissed the crown of her head, and it felt all the sweeter for knowing how much courage it still took for him to take liberties like that with her. “Does that sound good?”

“You’re so corny sometimes,” Momo laughed. “I would love that.”

“Mm. Sorry ‘bout that.” He rested his chin atop her head. “I like it when you let me lay on you.”

“Hmm, I wonder why that is.”

“Okay, first of all-“

“You’re adorable,” she laughed. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first to tell me that I make a nice pillow.”

“Soft,” he murmured.

“Yes, yes, I’m completely aware.” She freed herself from his arms – he seemed a little bit put-out – and stretched out on her back so they could switch places, an offer he eagerly accepted. “Better?”

He muttered something incomprehensible that she took as a resounding ‘yes.’

“I like how you hold my face when you kiss me,” she offered.

“I like that nose scrunch you do when you’re confused,” he replied.

“Would it be weird if I told you that I like it when you use your quirk on me?”

Shouto raised his eyebrows. “Which part of it?”

She leaned down and made a drawn-out spectacle of leaning as close to his ear as she could get before she whispered, “cold hands.”

**

The sun was a little higher, and it felt wrong to air such intimacies to the daylight streaming through their windows; their game was little more than a series of whispers in ears after that, anticipatory chills running down spines, kisses pressed against whatever skin either could reach. It would’ve been easy, in the soft, sweet afterglow of a long night of long-awaited relief, to forget to breathe – even the air itself seemed irrelevant. Everything did, really, except for the words they exchanged in half-silence like rings, truer and more sacred than the ones they already wore, and the glow that the sunrise cast across bare skin and the softness of each caress.

“Anata,” Momo murmured, gentle fingers stroking the curve of her husband’s jaw. “I love you.”

He seemed to melt in her arms, then, and a smile broke across her face like the sunrise of an hour before. This, she thought – this is what it means, this is why it matters. This is what he meant by those words.

“Actually, no.” Her breath ghosted his face. “I’m in love with you.”

**

I like it when you don’t want me to go.

Shouto wasn’t sure when he’d started keeping a mental list of the things he loved about his wife, but each one seemed to log itself as meticulously as his agency’s paperwork never did. They were easy to recall that way, to pull out when Momo needed a boost or when he felt like doting on her a little more than usual.

That one came shortly before an overseas conference. He’d been two steps out the door when he’d felt a tug at his wrist, and it’d have taken a stronger man than he would ever be not to turn. And Momo had pulled him into her arms, face buried in his jacket, holding on tight.

“Take this, anata,” she’d said, pressing an envelope into his hands, and then she had kissed him, slow and sweet and full of regret. For when you miss me, the envelope had read. He’d opened it on the plane.

(His seatmate – a middle-aged American with atrocious Japanese and a distastefully expressive face – had asked if he was all right midway through the letter, when it had begun to be obvious that he might cry.

He couldn’t blame himself, though – apparently, his wife was as good at writing love letters as she was at nearly everything else, and apparently, his wife wanted him home.)

It had hurt, reading those words when duty called him to go somewhere she couldn’t follow, but there’d been sweetness in the ache, too, for the knowledge that she felt no more at home without him than he did without her.

He decided that he liked it when she didn’t want him to go.

**

I like it when you tell me how you feel.

“I know it’s not that good,” Shouto stammered, hands raised defensively, “and it’s probably nothing like yours, but I…I wanted to try.” He already looked embarrassed. “So it’s okay. You don’t have to say that you like it, but…happy birthday, Momo.”

She looked up from the neatly-creased paper and its half-illegible scrawl of whatever had come to her husband’s mind as he was writing. That was quick. Then she looked back down, eyes scanning the page once more and, again, raised them to look at Shouto when she was done. This time her eyes shone a little too brightly – is she crying? – and she folded the letter (what made me think this was a good idea? We both know I’m terrible with words) neatly again.

He hadn’t had time to brace himself when she collided with him.

Face buried in the thin cotton of his shirt, it was impossible not to notice now that she really was crying. Instinctively, he raised his hand to cradle her shoulders, closing her in against him; Momo had said she liked that, the way his height and build let him surround her when he held her. He warmed his palm, a gesture of comfort that was probably not needed but nevertheless appreciated, and the tension she held in her shoulder relaxed beneath his touch.

“Anata,” she murmured, arms wrapped so tightly around his waist that her bony wrists dug into the tense muscles of his middle back (that…felt better than it should’ve). “I love it.”

She’d always liked it when he told her in no uncertain terms how he felt about her; for all its ineloquency, that was one count on which he knew that his letter had succeeded.

“I tried,” he offered lamely. “I know it’s not that good-“

“Anata,” she repeated, firmer this time. “I love it.”

**

I like it when I’m the one you notice.

Even in rooms full of people, they always seemed to find each other first.

This was one of those class reunions Shouto habitually avoided because, as much as he loved his friends (well…the ones he still kept up with), someone invariably made a comment about the state of his marriage (word spread quickly), and someone else followed up with a wink-nudge mention of ‘how close you two seem to have gotten,’ and soon all the former Class A could talk about was…well, them. It was truly one of the most unpleasant ways to spend an evening that he could imagine.

Still, though, they had their moments.

Shouto’s eyes scanned the room anxiously without really knowing why, and he had to shake himself back to attention when he realized that Midoriya hadn’t actually finished his bit about a mission he’d coordinated a while back. He’d noticed Shouto’s inattentiveness, though, and paused.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, sorry.” He wasn’t even sure why he’d been doing that. “Not sure why, but I feel…a little distracted tonight. That’s all.”

“Work stuff?”

Shouto shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Hm. Well, if you need to talk-“

“Thanks.”

He went on with his story then – God forbid he leave a long-winded anecdote unfinished – and Shouto tried to keep his eyes on his friend, but something made it hard to do that and it only clicked into place a moment later at the sound of Momo’s voice.

“Anata!” she called a ways off, and something clicked into place when he turned to her. Oh. “Can I steal you for a second?”

He offered a hasty apology and joined her by a table of incomprehensible European hors d’oeuvres, where she’d been talking to Mina and Jirou; she asked him a few questions, rested her hand on his chest for a moment – mine, she seemed to be saying, and he’d be damned if that didn’t make him think positively improper things – and let him go with a private smile and a quick kiss to his left cheek.

Much better, he thought, returning to Midoriya. That certainly explained his twitchiness earlier.

“Anata, huh?”

There was something like regret in the slump of Midoriya’s shoulders.

“Yeah.” In a rare moment of perceptiveness, Shouto knew exactly what that barely-concealed longing in his voice meant. Far be it from Izuku to be jealous or resentful – Shouto knew he was neither – but he knew that wish-I-had-that feeling all too well, and he raised his eyes. “You’ll find someone, Midoriya.”

Maybe it was the wrong thing to say, but he couldn’t think of any other response, and besides, he was confident that it was true.

He chuckled mirthlessly. “Thanks.”

I’m lucky, aren’t I? Shouto observed silently, eyes crossing the room again to settle on Momo.

It looked like she’d finally managed to convince Kyouka to let her hold baby Kanade, and her face was lit with contentment, lips moving in words he couldn’t make out, as she held out a finger for Kanade to wrap her hand around. Denki hovered over her shoulder, a little too close for comfort; Kyouka looked more exhausted than he’d ever seen her, but she smiled – Shouto didn’t know how anyone couldn’t at a sight like that. And after a moment, she looked up again, catching his eye across the room, and something in his chest felt impossibly warm.

Nothing would ever amaze him quite like the way he’d become the person she always found first in a crowded room.

**

I like it when you don’t even try to hide.

“You’re staring, Shouto.”

Shouto’s expression didn’t change, nor did his eyes waver. “I know.”

Momo’s lip quirked up into a knowing smile. “You do, now, do you?”

He swallowed hard. “You knew I would.”

She smirked. “Of course I did.”

**

I like it when you believe in me.

It was such a subtle thing, back at the beginning, one he’d barely noticed until a few unpleasant family gatherings had passed and it still hadn’t stopped. But whenever his family was in earshot, Momo was as vocal with her praise as she could semi-appropriately be.

He couldn’t pretend he didn’t love it.

It seemed she was never at a loss for what to expound upon next: his attentiveness, his determination, his admirable work-life balance (that one sounded a little bit fake, but he didn’t mind), his kindness and consideration, later how good he was with the children – things, apparently, that she was unwilling to let his family overlook. No one, it seemed, would ever be allowed to doubt his merit for even a second so long as she was around. It might’ve been some kind of protective urge, but even if it wasn’t, it was perhaps the sweetest of her habits – he wasn’t one for ego-stroking, but it was nice, knowing she thought so highly of him.  

“He’s so good with her,” she told Fuyumi, who’d warmed to the marriage considerably, as they watched him from a few feet off; even in the middle of what sounded like a semi-passionate argument with Natsuo, he aimlessly stroked Asumi’s back as she slept against his shoulder, head nestled into the crook of his neck, and they both smiled. “I think he gets it from you.”

Fuyumi looked surprised. “From me?”

“You were the one to get most of the nurturing genes in your family.” That much, given that four of the six children here tonight were hers, seemed obvious. “I think he picked some of that up.”

Fuyumi smiled to herself, unexpectedly pleased. “That’s…kind of you to say.” She watched her sister-in-law for a moment as she shifted Kenichi, the younger of the twins by seven minutes, in her arms. “But I think that might have something to do with you, too.”

Momo smiled, wondering what Fuyumi would say if she learned that she had been the one panicking at her own lack of knowledge and experience for most of the twins’ lives. “No,” she said, almost to herself. “I think that’s all him.”

**

I like the way things around here never really change.

“Anata!”

That was not good.

Ten years’ worth of lessons, and Shouto had learned very well that his wife’s favorite term of endearment had many meanings. They depended upon context, and tone, and volume; this was her ‘I-love-you-but-I’m-probably-going-to-throttle-you’ one. “Yeah?” he asked, wary.

“Ooooh. Papa’s in trouble,” Asumi pointed out, thumbing through (he glanced at the cover) a chemistry textbook as she lazily spun her mother’s spare office chair.

“I’m well aware,” he muttered.

“Your vacuum is acting up again!”

Asumi snickered behind her hand.

(Good riddance, she was probably thinking. That thing was ancient, and she’d never understood what her father meant when he said he wanted it around for “sentimental reasons.”)

“Coming,” he called, shaking his head sadly.

This wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to save Kosechan from his family’s collective wrath, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

**

I like it when you just know.

“Hey,” Momo said softly, her palm tracing circles against Shouto’s back even though her own voice sounded shaky, too. “They’re gonna be all right.”

He didn’t say anything, though he didn’t bother trying to conceal the fact that he was crying into his wife’s shirt in the Heights Alliance hallway, either. Students and parents shot them sympathetic or questioning or sometimes just uncomfortable looks as they passed by, carting boxes and suitcases and (in the case of an orange-haired girl who he’d seen Asumi chatting with earlier) oversized potted plants to their dorms, but neither of them cared.

They doubted anyone here was going to tell the gossip rags that Shouto and Creati had a bit of separation anxiety when it came to their children. It would be nearly impossible for them not to – it had taken a minor miracle and a good deal of begging on the part of a few friends on the faculty to convince them to entrust the twins to UA in the first place given its epic failure at keeping them out of trouble in their day. A little anxiety, Momo thought, was, if not inevitable, then cathartic. And wouldn’t any parent be reluctant to let her children off into the great (semi-) unknown?

They hadn’t needed to say it to know, and neither had been surprised when they’d wound up making a spectacle of themselves in the hallway. Even the twins themselves had kept their eyes down – “you gotta let ‘em have their moment,” Asumi had told her brother, in that ‘Neesan-knows-best’ fashion she was so fond of, and he’d gone with it even though it seemed he wished he could’ve consoled them. “This is part of the process.”

Asumi was also fond of making declarative statements she had no way of backing up. Her parents blamed the time she’d spent with Uncle Natsuo as a child.

“They’re going to be fine,” Momo repeated, though no one was convinced.

“Right,” Shouto said shakily. “They’re…they’re good kids.”

Momo sniffled. “Good students.”

Shouto leaned his forehead against her shoulder, which admittedly made for quite the picture when he was a good six inches taller than she was. “Mmhm.”

“Things are different now.”

“It’s not like they can’t visit-“

“They’re well-trained-“

“Asumi always makes friends in five seconds-“

“And Kenichi tags along-“

“And they have each other-“

“They’re gonna love it here-“

“I hate this, anata.”

They both did.

Perhaps that was part of the package deal.

**

“Momo?”

She normally would’ve looked up at that, but this time she buried her face in the crook of his neck and wouldn’t emerge. He took that as a response.

“I think they’re going to be fine,” Shouto continued. “But there is one thing I’m a little bit concerned about.”

She sniffled. “What’s that?”

Shouto’s forehead creased with concern. “What with all of the imminent-danger stuff, I think I forgot the actual most concerning thing we did in high school.”

“Hm?”

“What if one of them makes a marriage pact or something?”

Without even looking, she reached for a pillow and swatted him.

Chapter Text

January

Momo shifted her weight from foot to foot. It wasn’t like her to be so nervous about something so trivial, but the fluttering in her stomach hadn’t gotten the message. So she fidgeted, trying to give that nervous energy somewhere to go even though sidekicks gave her knowing looks as they passed – some amused, some annoyed, some pitying. It irritated her; really, there shouldn’t have been any need for the nerves or the staring. No one doubted the grounds she had to be here – even without really saying so, their boss had made it clear that she was always welcome.

Still.

“Sorry, Creati-san. He’s on a call.” A willowy blue-haired sidekick brushed past her, carrying a stack of paperwork. No point in pretending they didn’t all know why she was here already. “Want me to tell him you’re here when he gets off?”

Momo’s brow furrowed. “A call? He didn’t mention that he would be.”

The sidekick didn’t look particularly sympathetic. “Oh. Sorry ‘bout that. Guess it came up at the last minute.” Something infinitesimal shifted in her expression. “That, or he just forgot to mention it.”

You could’ve just told me who he’s on the phone with. It seemed as if this sidekick – isn’t she the one with the weather quirk? – was getting a kick out of this. No surprise, really. Momo knew that the staff at Shouto’s agency had never been particularly enamored of her, probably a side effect of her having abruptly taken Japan’s most eligible bachelor off the market. It was safe to figure they found her discomfort amusing.

Still, it made her prickle.

“No,” she said frostily. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Suit yourself, then.” The sidekick smirked, glancing down at the bag in Momo’s hands. “Bringing him lunch? Cute.”

“Yes,” she said crossly.

“Hm. I’m sure he’ll like that.”

“I’m sure that I don’t have to remind you that it is my husband’s birthday.”

“Oh, that’s right!” she said. Elevation, Momo finally remembered. That’s this one’s name. Yamahara Kumi. Elevation. “What a nice surprise.”

“Well, I’m certainly hoping he’ll feel that way.” Momo tried to sound distantly cool, but she knew that Elevate could read her nervousness between the lines.

“Hm. He’s lucky to have such an attentive wife,” Yamahara replied, not even bothering to conceal the condescension in her tone. “I can certainly see why he found you appealing.”

Don’t pretend we don’t both know what you mean by that, Yamahara. “I’d thank you not to comment on my marriage, Yamahara-san.”

At very least, she had the dignity to seem cowed at that. “Of course. How rude of me.” She gestured to a line of office chairs along the right wall of the corridor, evidently determined to get rid of her conversation partner before she had the chance to risk running afoul of her boss. “Please, have a seat. We’ll tell Shouto-san you’re waiting.”

Momo didn’t even want to know who ‘we’ meant. “Thank you,” she said, pretending to busy herself with a wrinkle in her blouse. Yamahara disappeared back down the corridor and it would’ve been impossible not to let out a breath.

That one definitely has a problem with me, she assessed. Perhaps she’d been one of Shouto’s countless would-be suitors, jilted by the sudden announcement of his engagement to an old friend, but Momo doubted that. She couldn’t put a finger on the reason, but that didn’t seem like her issue – there’d been more suspicion than jealousy in her conduct. Perhaps she, like so many less-savory members of the press, assumed that Momo had coerced her husband into marrying her. Unsavory, but at least that would be preferable to a would-be romantic rival.

Even if that were true, though, she felt a little silly being here. If Shouto’s employees thought she was forever trying to curry favor with a husband who’d never wanted to marry her in the first place, she was certainly giving them something to work with now. He had been mentioning lately that he wished he could see more of her, so she’d thought he might like it if she stopped by with lunch. But now she wondered if the gesture might just seem childish. She could easily imagine it – “it’s so sad,” they’d say. “His wife is always trying to make him forget that he doesn’t want her,” and they’d never know how true that wasn’t. I should go, she thought in a panic entirely unbefitting of her age or station. But the creak of Shouto’s office door swinging open kept her from chasing that train of thought any further. 

“Momo?” He sounded surprised, definitely, but pleasantly so. “You sure are a sight for sore eyes right about now.”

Too late for that now. “Oh. Shouto.” She tried to manage warmth but only managed to get out bashfulness, twisting the handle of her reusable bag in her hands. “I didn’t know you were on a call. Sorry. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.”

She looked up. He stepped into the hallway, almost smiling. “No, I’m sorry. It was a last-minute thing.”

“I, um…” she stood, wiping her free hand on her jeans. “I had a light patrol and the agency could spare me for a few hours, so I thought I might…um, bring you some lunch. Since it’s your birthday.” She glanced up at him – smiling in earnest now – and tried to muster one of her own. “But if you’re busy-“

He looked down at the bag in her hands. “Soba?”

“Well, yeah.” She bit her bottom lip. “I…figured you’d like that best. But again, if you don’t have time, I…I can just drop it off and head out.”

“No, of course not.” He reached back to push the door back open and kicked a doorstopper underneath it to hold it open. “This…this is exactly what I needed today, Momo. Thank you.”

See? You had nothing to worry about. “I’m glad. I was a little worried that I might be overstepping. Elevation didn’t seem to think you’d be happy to see me.”

“Elevation reads too many gossip rags,” Shouto muttered.

“Oh?” That would explain a great deal. She sank into the armchair at the back of Shouto’s office. “Well, I’m glad she was wrong.”

“’Course she was.” Shouto, unusually brazen, knocked his shoulder into hers – mind making some room? – and took the other half of the armchair, though the fit was so tight that Momo had to throw a leg over one of his so they’d both fit. He didn’t seem to want to risk anything further when anyone might walk in, but he let his hand linger against hers a second too long when she passed him his food, and space constraints dictated that their thighs stay pressed together. “People talk. I’ve tried to get them to stop, but Yamahara is one of the worst ones.”

“Worst?” Momo passed him a pair of chopsticks. “In what sense?”

“Well, she’s sort of convinced that I only married you because you talked me into a corner. I tried to straighten things out, but I guess it didn’t really do much.” His brow furrowed. “Was she rude to you?”

“Not…really.” There was no point in smearing her reputation even if she did deserve it. “Well, not openly, at least. Just a little passive-aggressive.”

He frowned. “Hm. I’ll talk to her later-“

“No, don’t.” The last thing Momo needed was to make a bigger mess of what sounded like an already-messy situation. “I don’t…I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“You wouldn’t be.” His arm had found its way around her shoulders, and he swiped his thumb back and forth across her shoulder through the fabric of her cardigan. “She’s out of line and you’re my wife, Momo. If she’s rude to you, I’m not just going to ignore it.”  

“No, really, it’s fine.” Momo folded her hands in her lap. “I…I haven’t exactly kept up with what the media was saying about us, but I know a lot of it wasn’t flattering, so I can’t say that I’m surprised. There’s…your staff might have no way of knowing that none of it was true.”

“Well, the fact that it came from the tabloids seems like one way,” he muttered. “And I’ve tried. I guess they just like the other story better than the true one. More dramatic or whatever.”

“Or they’re all in love with you,” she teased halfheartedly. That would explain their desire to believe the tabloids’ party line – word on the street was that Momo had coerced an unwilling Shouto into their unexpected marriage, or that Shouto was following in his father’s footsteps in a quirk marriage, depending on whom you asked. Neither of those things would mean that Shouto was emotionally unavailable. Doubtless he still had colleagues who hoped that was true.

He didn’t seem very pleased with that. “But I’m in love with you.”

“I know, anata, but-”

“But nothing. It’s my job to look out for you.” He patted his knee – a little closer? – but she shook her head rapidly – not here. “If Yamahara is going to be like that, she has to know that I won’t let it slide.”

“Mm. Very chivalrous of you.” Momo managed a faint smile. “But really, it’s fine. Nothing she said was outwardly rude, and unless she carries a torch for you, I doubt she had bad intentions. Probably just looking out for you.”

Shouto nearly stabbed his chopsticks through the bottom of the Styrofoam takeout container. “Looking out for me how?”

“Well, if they think you were coerced, they probably think you need to be protected from me.” The thought was almost amusing, but Momo wasn’t in a laughing mood. “Perhaps Yamahara thought I was invading the one place in which you’re usually free of me.”

“Ridiculous,” he muttered.

“Perhaps not if one takes that viewpoint-”

“You don’t have to make excuses for her, Momo.”

“No, but I really don’t think it was a big deal. It was…uncomfortable, but nothing worse.”

He didn’t look remotely satisfied, and Momo regretted bringing it up. But there was nothing to be done for that now, clearly. They ate in silence for a few tense moments before he spoke again. “You know, I really appreciate you doing this.”

“Uh…it’s nothing,” she replied, relieved that he’d dropped the subject of her conversation with Yamahara. “I just…I thought you might like it. I’m…I’m glad you did.”

“I just got off the phone with the lawyer,” he sighed. That explained a lot – mergers like the one he was attempting with Midoriya’s agency were a logistical nightmare, and Shouto’s tolerance for social interaction was limited as it was. “It’s all kind of a mess right now. And he drives me crazy. So…you kinda showed up at the perfect time.”

Momo clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Rough morning, I take it?”

“Very.”

“I’m sorry.” She leaned her head against his shoulder, which was more than she’d usually risk in public but seemed called-for now. “Glad I could help.”

He paused to swallow before he responded. “What do you have going on later today?”

“Nothing, actually.” A spot of color rose in Momo’s cheeks. “I had patrol this morning, but I actually…well, I took the rest of today off.”

Shouto’s eyes widened. “You took a day off?”

“I…I wanted to do this,” she explained hastily, “and to be home when you got home, since it’s your birthday and I always end up running later than you, and I know I should’ve been there but Kendo said she could handle the office by herself and things have been so light lately and I just wanted you to have a good birthday.” She stopped to breathe. “Anyway. I…I’m sorry if this is too much.”

Shouto didn’t say anything, but a smile spread slowly across his face as her words sank in.

“So,” he said cautiously, “you…you took a whole day off for me?”

She offered him a small smile of her own. “I hope that doesn’t put too much pressure on you. I know you’re busy.”

“So you can stay?”

Momo tilted her head. “Stay?”

“Here.”

“At…at the agency?” she narrowed her eyes. “I’d be happy to, but don’t you have a lot going on?”

“Just paperwork.”

“Ah.” Momo shook her head fondly. “So either you’re trying to get out of dealing with it, or you want me to sit in your lap while you do.”

“…either works.”

“Shouto,” she chided. “You can’t let me distract you.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek, though, so she obviously didn’t mind the idea.

“You wouldn’t be. I just have to fill out forms and sign things.” He scratched his neck. “If you don’t mind hanging out, I mean. It’s not really all that interesting.”

“That’s not my concern, Shouto. I mean, I did take this day off because I wanted to spend it with you.” She reached for the nearer of his hands and laced her fingers through his. “I just don’t want to be in the way, and you know people would probably talk.”

“You wouldn’t be, and wouldn’t seeing us together probably get them to shut up?”

It wasn’t an unfamiliar thought – she’d half-considered pulling him down by the collar to kiss him in the middle of the hallway until someone saw them and carried that latest bit of gossip to the relevant authorities. “They’d probably decide that I’d forced my way in and was refusing to leave.”

He said nothing to that.

**

“Afternoon, shachou.”

Of course it had to be you I ran into, Shouto thought, irritated. “Yamahara,” he said flatly. “Do you need something?”

She set down the cup of water she’d been filling and turned to him, arms crossed. “Someone let you know that your wife came by earlier, right?”

“Yes, I found her.” He crossed his arms in unconscious mimicry of her posture. “She mentioned that you’d shown her in.”

“Oh, uh…yeah.” Now Yamahara looked uncomfortable. “I did. I wanted to catch her on the way out-“

“She’s still here.” He gave her a hard look. “And can be as long as she wants to.”

“Oh!” Now Yamahara knew she’d been caught. “That’s…well, of course she can. She is your wife, after all.”

“That’s right.” He pretended to rummage through the freezer for the mochi ice cream he always kept there, though he’d actually come for a tray of sliced mango in the fridge that Momo had requested. “She is.”

“Shachou, if you don’t mind me asking-“

“I do, as a matter of fact.” He closed the freezer door.

“I just don’t want you to feel like you’re in a situation you can’t get out of.”

It was best not to respond directly to that. “Did you know that I proposed to her exactly a year ago today?”

A beat of uncomfortable silence. “No. I didn’t”

“We’d made a pact in high school. If we were still single at thirty, we’d get married.”

“That’s…that’s a long time,” Yamahara said lamely.

“And we were, so we did.” He always wore his wedding band on a chain around his neck, and now he pulled it free to let it catch the light. “I don’t regret that decision.”

“That’s why you married her?”

“The tabloids have it wrong, Yamahara.”

“…oh.” Yamahara, to her credit, managed to look cowed. “I’m…sorry.”

“You should be.” Shouto tucked his ring back into his shirt. “Whatever you think about the circumstances of our marriage, Momo is my wife, and I love her.”

Yamahara opened her mouth, and then closed it. It was rare to see her boss so openly articulate an emotion, let alone one so personal. But that made it all the more difficult not to believe him.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I…I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You’re right. You shouldn’t have.” He gave her a hard look. “Now. I’m going to go take her this mango she asked me for.” He gave her another, harder look. “Because I love her.”

“I…I understand that now, shachou.”

“And I expect you to be civil the next time you happen to see her,” he continued. “I’m not going to let it slide if I hear that you’re disrespectful to the people I love.”

“…yes. Of course.”

“I won’t fire you this time, but consider yourself warned.” He turned in the doorway. “And consider yourself lucky that my wife didn’t want to make a thing out of this. Which I’m respecting, even though I should suspend you. Because I love her.”

“I…I got it, shachou. Like…really. I got it.”  

“Good.”

**

“Oh! There you are.” Momo stood, brushing nonexistent dust from her skirt, at the sound of the opening door. “I was wondering-“

“Momo.”

She froze at the unexpected firmness in his voice. He crossed the room, set down the tray of sliced mango she’d requested, glanced towards the door, and then stopped in front of her.

“Yes?” she asked, voice barely above a murmur as she swallowed hard. There was something steely and determined in his gaze that she couldn’t recall ever having seen before.

He didn’t say anything as he stepped towards her, bracing one hand against the wall next to her shoulder while the other cupped her cheek. He moved in close enough to keep her from moving and began to back away in wordless apology when she took in a sharp breath, but she shook her head rapidly – no, don’t. She knew what he meant to do, and she didn’t want to discourage him.

He kissed her, so close her back was pressed to the wall – the sort of kiss meant to melt.

“I love you, that’s all.”

**

“Are you getting hungry yet?”

“Little bit.” Shouto shifted, disrupting some of the papers on his lap desk (a gift from Momo years ago), so she could lean more comfortably against his side. “Why, are you?”

“It’s” – Momo checked her phone and grimaced at the time – “a little late. That’s all. I was wondering if I should go get something.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight-fourteen.”

“Oh. That is kinda late.” He didn’t seem to be particularly concerned. “It’s okay. I’ll just order delivery.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m happy to go pick something up.” Momo didn’t exactly want to leave, even though the floor of Shouto’s office was perhaps not the most comfortable place to spend several hours. (The floor had been a compromise, since she’d deemed sitting on his knee ‘inappopriate.’) It hadn’t been an exciting afternoon, but she’d enjoyed it – they didn’t usually get to spend so much uninterrupted time together.

He pulled a face. “I wanted to keep you here.”

“All right.” Her fingers curled around his forearm. “If you want, I’m all for delivery. Though…maybe not on the floor.”

“Right. Maybe not the best idea.”

“We…could go home.” Momo was reluctant to suggest anything when it was his birthday, but she wasn’t sure she could take much more of this office. “If…if you’re all right with that.”

“Oh. Of course.” He looked like he wished she’d said so sooner. “Do you want to?”

“Well, it’s your birthday-”

He knew her well enough to know that she meant ‘yes.’ “Then we’ll go home.”

“You don’t have work to do here?”

“Nothing I can’t take home. Really, Momo.” He turned her cheek so he could kiss her forehead. “I’ve already kept you here all day. If you want to go, we will.”

“All right.” She stood, then offered her hand to help him up. “Delivery at home, then?”

**

“You can tell me what you want. You know that, right?”

“Hm?” Momo stirred against his shoulder, shifting so the armrest between their seats on the train wouldn’t dig into her ribs.

“Today at the office. I could tell you wanted to leave, but you didn’t say so. I want you to know that you can.”

“It’s your birthday. You had work to do, and you wanted me to stay, so of course I was going to,” she replied. “Besides, I thought you were trying to stay until everyone had left.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why would I do that?”

“Well, to be entirely honest, you seemed impatient for them to leave.” Momo faked a cough into her hand to buy herself a second to regain her composure. “I…had thought there was a reason for that.”

“No, not really.” He wracked his brain but couldn’t come up with anything substantial. “Did I come off that way?”

“Well, ah…may I say something entirely inappropriate?”

“Go for it.”

“I’m sure you recall that on one occasion, you…pressed me to a wall and kissed me.” She cleared her throat. “Rather ardently.”

“I did do that.”

“Well, after that…” Momo’s cheeks felt feverish with embarrassment at words she hadn’t even said yet. “I had thought you were waiting for the staff to leave so you could deflower me in your office.”

She’d expected him to laugh or to drop his voice and confirm her suspicions, but instead he raised his eyebrows. “Did you want me to deflower you in my office?”

“N-no, not exactly. But…”

“Would you have let me?”

Momo forced herself to meet her eyes, even though she felt embarrassingly skittish. “Y-yes, I…I would have. If…if there was no one around.” She couldn’t keep eye contact. “I’m not completely devoid of the sense of adventure.”

Shouto wrapped an arm around her shoulders and flipped up the arm rest to pull her flush against his side. “I’m surprised that your mind went there.”

“Was I wrong, then?”

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, but that was definitely not why I wanted everyone to leave.” He thought about it for a moment. “Though maybe-“

“Forget I ever brought it up,” Momo interrupted. She couldn’t even lift her eyes for the embarrassment she felt. “Sorry. That was probably very uncomfortable for you.”

“No, it wasn’t.” His eyes were kind but confused when he glanced back down at her. “Why would you think that?”

“Well…this is all so new, and it’s…unusual to be so forward about it, and I completely misread your intentions, which just makes it look like I have a dirty mind, which I swear I don’t, and it makes me seem presumptive, because you didn’t want that and I look as if I think you should find me so irresistible as to want to debauch me in public, which would be a terribly arrogant stance to take.” She had to remind herself to breathe as she always did after a nervousness-induced monologue. “Sorry. I’m rambling again.”

“Hey.” He closed his hand over hers. “Don’t apologize, okay?”

“B-but-”

“We can talk about these things. I’m not uncomfortable.”

“But I was so crass,” she murmured, averting her eyes again.

“No, you weren’t. Why do you keep saying that?” He lifted her chin. “You used the word ‘deflower,’ Momo. Deflower. How could you possibly be less crass?”

That, at very least, was true. “Well…it was still presumptuous of me.”

“Not even a little bit.”

“I will admit that…well. It was on my mind anyways.” Momo still wanted to disappear, but she thought she owed it to him to try now that he was being so sweet about the whole thing. “I…that was part of my birthday present.” She was still so shy that she rarely expressed such desires aloud; she’d known when she planned it that he would appreciate her openness. “I wanted to be home early so that I could spoil you a little.”

Now it was Shouto’s turn to swallow hard and she noted with pride that his tongue darted out to wet his lips. She hadn’t expected her words to have that effect, but she’d recognize his I-want-you tells anywhere. “I guess I kind of ruined that plan. Sorry.”

“No, you didn’t, though I guess it made me read further into that kiss than I should have.” It was getting a little easier for Momo to speak without feeling like her throat was going to close up. “That was what I was getting to. I’d been thinking about what I’d do when you came home all day – running through a routine, if you will. So it was easy for my mind to make that jump.”

“You were rehearsing in your head?” Shouto sounded oddly touched.

“Well, yes. I…I wanted it to be perfect.”

“Permission to be corny?”

“Always.”

“You are.” He nuzzled his cheek against her hair. “Rehearsal or no rehearsal. You already are.”

“…okay, that was corny.”

“But true.” He sounded, improbably, entirely sincere. “I’m just glad I get to be with you at all, really.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

He paused – neither of them ever wanted to talk when they were passing through a tunnel, for some reason – then resumed when they reached the light again. “And…learning together, right?”

“Right.”

“So…you’re all good.” He squeezed her shoulder. “No reason to be embarrassed.”

“You’re surprisingly good at this.”

“Well, I have a lot at stake, I guess.” He leaned a little closer. “Especially now that I know how you feel about offices.”

“Shouto!”

“What? You gave me that opening!” Shouto raised his free hand in surrender.

“I’ll accept that only because I like that you’re so much more confident than you used to be.” Even if they had been together, Momo knew he’d never have bantered so easily five years ago. “And honestly, you should probably be glad that my initial plans changed. I…don’t know how that would’ve gone.”

“How what would’ve gone.”

“Me, attempting to brazenly seduce you.” Her cheeks reddened, but she managed a chuckle. “I don’t think I would’ve done a very good job of it.”

Shouto looked as if there was a lot he wanted to say to that but wouldn’t. “I don’t know about that.”

**

“What are you laughing at?”

Momo tried to sound offended – she knew it had to have been something she’d done – but she couldn’t, not when Shouto looked as carefree as he did now.

“Nothing,” he chuckled. “Just…this whole thing.”

Momo raised her eyebrows. “Explain.”

“I don’t think this is really what you had in mind when you said you wanted to spoil me,” he said. “Eating yakitori in sweats, I mean.”

“I know, right?” Momo couldn’t help but grin as she held up a half-eaten skewer and brandished it like a sword. “So seductive.”

He leaned in and stole a kiss. “It really is.”

“Right.” She shook her head fondly. “Irresistible.”

“No, I meant that.” He pulled back and smiled. “I like it when you’re just…relaxed. Confident. Goofing around with meat skewers because you know that you don’t have to put up any fronts around me.”

“Well, yes. Obviously, those are desirable qualities in a friend, but I fail to see how any of those things might, ah.” She paused to steel herself. “Be effective seduction tactics.”

“You make it sound like you’re going to war with me.”

“Well, it’s all about strategy, isn’t it?” Momo set aside the now-empty skewer and leaned back into the couch cushions. “Nearly everything is, when you think about it.”

“You think too much,” he replied, leaning in to kiss her again. “I just think it’s hot when you don’t care what anyone thinks of you.”

This hadn’t been the day she’d planned – hostile sidekicks, an afternoon spent doing paperwork on the floor, yakitori in sweats and an old shirt of Shouto’s – but it was hard not to see the charm in it when he put it like that. “So do you consider yourself adequately spoiled?”

He smiled across the couch at her. “Very.”

Chapter Text

March 3^rd

“Wait, give me a minute.”

“For…what?”

Shouto furrowed his brow in concentration and both his hands reached up to lift her face. He examined it briefly, then smiled, though he didn’t let go. “I was testing a theory.”

“And what would that be?” Momo asked, curious if not displeased.

“That you always get freckles when you’re in the sun a lot, not just in the summer.”

“Oh, that’s what you were looking for?” Momo smiled up at him. “I had no idea you’d ever noticed them.”

“Of course I did.” He’d been obsessed with the swath of freckles that invariably dusted her cheekbones in the summertime since they were teenagers.

“And what have you concluded?” she teased. “Is two weeks in Manila enough to do it?”

“Almost.” He examined her cheeks once more. “You’ve got some, but they’re pretty light.” That seemed to disappoint him.

“Well, to be fair, I was indoors most of the time,” she laughed. Conferences tended to be that way – even when the Asia-Pacific Heroics Conference was held somewhere with abundant sunshine, its participants spent more time freezing in the aggressive air conditioning of the host city’s convention center than they did in the tropical heat. “Why?”

He shrugged, letting go of her face. “They’re cute.”

**

March 7^th

“And she told me she’d love to see it. I mean, maybe she was just being nice, but she seemed so sincere, and I know she likes that stuff because she’s got blueprints up all over her walls – it’s so cool! I’ve never met someone who’d use architectural blueprints as posters before, but she does, and it’s really her, you know? And she told me about all of the buildings she had floorplans for and why she’d picked them. She’s awesome like that. So, anyways, she told me she’d love to go see it but she didn’t say that she wanted to go see it with me-“

“You’re muttering again,” Shouto cut in gently. Interrupting one of Midoriya’s monologues was like rousing a sleepwalker – it was best not to shock the system too much. He’d always known that, but he’d gotten more practice at it since their agencies had merged than he had ever thought he’d need.

Midoriya scratched the back of his neck, cheeks flushed. “Right. Sorry.”

Shouto took another bite of his gyoza – last night’s leftovers – to give himself a moment to think of a proper response. “This…this is about your costume designer, right?”

“She’s not my costume designer,” Midoriya hastily corrected him.

“Didn’t she make your costume, though?” Shouto arched an eyebrow. “That’s how you met, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, but it would be reductive to call her a costume designer when her work is actually much more focused on developing support technology and I actually only went to her for my costume redesign because no one’s as good at integrating quirk function with costume technology and…” he trailed off. “I’m rambling again.”

“It’s fine.” It was actually sort of endearing by now. “You like her. It’s only natural.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that I liked her-“

“Midoriya, you’re panicking because you don’t know if a random comment she made was an invitation to ask her out or not.” Shouto’s puzzlement wasn’t at all dented by the reminder that he was just as dense only a few months ago. “Which, if I followed any of what you were saying correctly, I’m pretty sure it was. That’s…kind of an obvious sign that you like someone.”

“But do you know that?” Midoriya protested. “How would you? You took six months to confess to your own wife!”

Shouto paused – that was, sadly, very true. “I know.”

“And?”

“You haven’t stopped talking about her in weeks.”

“Well, this…sort of thing doesn’t happen to me very often.” Midoriya looked a little embarrassed to admit that. “And she’s…she’s different.”

“Yeah. I can tell.” None of Midoriya’s past relationships had amounted to anything, but he’d never talked about any of them with nearly this much enthusiasm. “Which is why I keep trying to tell you that you like her.”

His shoulders slumped. “I have no time to do anything about it,” he lamented.

Shouto wasn’t particularly impressed by that excuse. “Then make some.”

“But I’m notoriously terrible at relationships-“

“Not all of them,” Shouto offered.

“And she might think it was weird if I just showed up at her office asking if she’d like to go look at buildings with me.”

Shouto felt like he already knew this woman, even though they’d never met, and he was rather confident that Midoriya was wrong about that. “She’d probably be thrilled.”

“But everyone else I’ve dated has ended up hating me-“

“’Hating’ is kind of a stretch.”

“Okay, resenting me-”

“But you’ve learned, right?” Shouto, considering himself cured of the curse of romantic ineptitude after three blissful months on the same page as his wife, had little patience for denial anymore. “Don’t be like me.”

“Hm?”

“Denial just wastes time.” He picked up the last of his dumplings with the detached air of a man of some distinction in the relevant field. “You met someone who obviously likes you a lot and you have things in common. And I’m sure your PR team would get off your back a little bit if you had a date for the Heroes Gala later this month.”

At the suggestion, Midoriya’s whole face rose a few shades in color. “That’s…that’s a lot,” he stammered. “The amount of press attention on me at the Gala would probably be way too much for someone who isn’t used to the media and I’d probably just scare her off and besides, there’s no precedent for me to do that, because of course I want to think that we’re friends, but I’m pretty sure she just thinks of me as a customer she had some nice chats about buildings with, and she’d think it was really forward of me and probably never want to work with me again and have you seen this redesign? She’s amazing. You don’t lose connections like that if you can help it.”

It terrified Shouto that every single word of that mile-a-minute explanation made perfect sense to him.

“I’m not going to push it,” he said calmly, because one of them had to be, “but I really think she’d like that.”

**

March 8^th

“So apparently I’m qualified to give dating advice now.” Shouto looked a little too smug for someone who knew very well that that was a false accusation.

“Yeah, right,” Momo teased. She’d not normally be so unguarded or flippant, but separations always begot a kind of familiarity that she hadn’t yet learned to expect. It was easy, reclining against her husband’s chest in the hazy light of an unseasonably-hot morning, to forget those usual reservations.

“Well, I must not be that bad if I haven’t managed to do something to make you want to divorce me yet,” he shot back, his thumb brushing across the rise of her cheekbones where he knew a fresh dusting of freckles lay.

“Well, the benefits of not giving into that compulsion are very compelling.”

“Oh, are they?” he lazily shifted his hand from her cheek to her hair and worked it through the waves that last night’s French braids had left behind. “So you’d recommend this product to a friend?”

That was a long-running joke of theirs, the way surveys unerringly asked if they’d recommend a product to someone else when no one would ever have reasonable cause to walk around recommending brands of dishwasher. “Well, no, because that would imply that I’m willing to share you, and Shouto, you should know that I am very much not.”

“Hmm, I see.” He paused, thinking – this kind of snappy banter was a favorite pastime of Momo’s which didn’t come nearly as easily to him. “Well. Would you leave me a good review?”

Momo’s eyes sparkled, though he couldn’t see them. “Depends on what I’m reviewing.”

“Well, assuming that we’re not talking about my inability to differentiate between eight kinds of kitchen towels-“

“It’s not difficult!” Momo protested. “All of them are different textures and shapes!”

“And all of them are white,” he muttered. “I see a white towel and I see a white towel, not a cleaning rag or a kitchen towel or a cloth napkin-”

“Napkins and towels aren’t even the same kind of thing.”

“They’re…literally all just pieces of fabric that you use to wipe things.” Shouto patted her head fondly and sighed. “And all of them are white.”

“The microfiber cleaning cloths aren’t white,” she pointed out.

“No, but I have no idea what they’re for.” He decided to divert the conversation before the neverending towel debate (Momo had many types, each with its own function and place to live and all totally interchangeable in Shouto’s mind) could continue. “Anyways. If we weren’t talking about towels, would you leave me a nice review?”

“Very.” She dropped her voice to what was probably supposed to be a seductive contralto but just sounded choked. “A very nice review.”

Sometimes she was so cute it made him wonder if he had a heart condition. He kissed the crown of her head in lieu of expressing that concern.

“Glad to hear it,” he said, thumb moving in absentminded circles over the peak of her shoulderblade.

“Now. You. Dating advice?” Momo asked. He hadn’t realized she’d wanted to hear more. “What happened to prompt that?”

“Midoriya has a thing for his costume designer, apparently.”

“Oh, Kurahashi?”

Leave it to Momo to know more about the story I’m telling her than I do. “He always calls her Sayaka when he talks about her, but probably.”

“First name basis. That’s…intense.” Momo looked up, interest piqued. “And she’s not really a costume designer.”

“Which is exactly what Midoriya said,” Shouto muttered. “When they literally met because she was designing his costume.”

“Well, yes, but she’s usually more on the engineering side than the design one. Heroics ran a piece about her in their December issue.”

“Oh. That’s how you know who she is.”

“She’s apparently one to watch,” Momo went on. “Anyway. Midoriya mentioned her to me, so I’m not surprised.”

“He was trying to do the whole ‘denying that he actually likes her’ thing,” Shouto said. “I kinda just told him not to bother. I mean, he hasn’t stopped talking about her in weeks, and apparently she told him she wants them to go look at some old buildings together, so…” he trails off.

“Well, that’s a very Midoriya first date.” Momo chuckled fondly. “Why, though?”

“She likes historical architecture.” Shouto knew this because every single gift Midoriya had suggested while agonizing over what to give her as a thank-you for her work on his costume (apparently payment hadn’t been enough) had somehow been architecture-related. “Apparently he gave her a coffee table book about ziggurats” – Shouto hadn’t even known what a ziggurat was before that exchange – “and she almost cried.”

“Oh,” Momo murmured, her voice going soft like it always did when she thought  something was romantic. “Is it awful that I’m invested in this now?”

“No, not really.” Shouto was, too, though more because he wanted to see his best friend put out of his misery.

“That’s so sweet,” she went on. “He found his person!”

“Well, that might be a little premature-“

“Ziggurats, Shouto.”

Only a nerd of Midoriyan caliber would find that gift so touching and they both knew it.

“I told him to invite her to the Heroes Gala,” he continued after a pause. “It might be a bit much for a first date, but she might as well know what she’s getting into ahead of time.”

“Smart.”

“I don’t know if he will, but it sounded like a good idea.” Again, Shouto sounded a little smug. “Maybe I am okay at this advice thing.”

“Are you, now?”

“Well, I get good reviews.” He looked so hopeful, saying that.

She smiled, and she hoped she’d never know a day when the answer to that didn’t come as easily as breathing to her. “Five stars. Obviously.”

**

March 21^st

“So? Do you like it?”

Shouto seemed to have lost the faculty of speech. Momo let the corner of black chiffon she’d been holding up fall, mostly amused and only a little nervous.

“Um.” He blinked rapidly. “Um, yes. Yes. I like it.” Then his lips quirked into a smile, as if he’d realized he was out of the woods. “You…you look beautiful. I…wow. Sorry, I’m…I’m not…having words…come out good,” he muttered. “Yes. I like it.”

Momo would’ve kissed him there in the middle of the sidewalk if not for the lipstick she didn’t want to smear. “I had hoped you would.”

He offered her arm even though the walk to the waiting car was only a few steps. Hired cars to the Heroes Gala were the norm so that a full parking lot couldn’t hinder an escape in the event of an emergency, and Shouto had never liked that, but he could see the merit of it now. Even in the simplest dress she knew she could get away with – perhaps especially in it – Momo was a vision. And he’d rather watch her than the road.

**

“Shouto-san, Creati-san, it’s rumored that your marriage began as-“

“A pact we made in high school, yes.” Shouto shot that particular reporter his stoniest glare.

Momo winced a little at his obvious displeasure, though she shared it wholeheartedly. “A surprisingly great decision for two eighteen-year-olds,” she forced herself to joke, gripping Shouto’s arm a little too tightly. “We’ve had a very happy couple of months.”

“Right,” Shouto agreed. She could see his fists clench. “Very.”

**

“Creati-san, tell us a little more about the circumstances of your-“

Momo brushed past that one without a word.

“Red carpets,” Shouto muttered, “are actually the worst.”

**

“Shouto-san, you’ve recently merged agencies with Deku-san.”

That wasn’t a question, which was a shame, because that, unlike his marriage, was something he’d willingly discuss. “I did. It was a long process, but-”

“Everyone is speculating about the woman who’s accompanying him tonight,” the reporter cut him off. “Working as closely as you do, would you happen to know anything about Kurahashi Sayaka?”

He looked the camera dead-on. “No.”

**

“Creati-san!”

This time, she kept walking.

**

“I feel like I just ran through a minefield.”

Shouto’s haggard expression said it all. “Same,” he said wearily, collapsing into a chair.

He figured he’d earned it.

**

“So that girl Midoriya brought with him is all anyone wants to talk about, apparently.” Kyouka took a long sip of something shockingly pink and scanned the room for the subject of their conversation, but she was nowhere to be found. “I feel kinda bad for her. It must be rough, getting thrown in the deep end like this on the first date.”

“It would be,” Momo agreed. “I can’t tell you how many tabloid reporters we had to dodge on the way in.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Kyouka glanced up at her friend with a smug smile. “Though you did kind of bring that on yourself with the whole marriage-of-convenience thing.”

“It wasn’t,” Momo muttered. “A marriage of convenience.”

“No, and I know that, but if you feed the press a real-life story that looks like the plot of one of those trashy historical romances I know you secretly read, they’re gonna have a feeding frenzy.” Kyouka leaned back into her chair. “Imagine how nuts they’d go if they knew what actually happened.”

“I doubt my poor husband would ever recover from the shock.” Momo raised her champagne flute to her lips but barely drank enough to wet them, distracted as she was by the thought. “You should’ve seen his face when he started getting questions about Midoriya’s date, and that wasn’t even personal.”

“They asked you about Kurahashi?” Kyouka raised her eyebrows. “Huh. That’s…a lot, even for them.”

“Comes with the territory, I suppose,” Momo sighed, glancing around the room for more pleasant topics of conversation to pursue. Her eyes landed on Kyouka’s half-empty glass of something pink and carbonated. “What’s that drink?”  

“Watermelon Ramune.”

“Ah.” She should’ve guessed that – it had been Kyouka’s favorite flavor of soda back in the day. It surprised her that she hadn’t remembered. “I remember you used to like those. Feeling nostalgic?”

“No, I just wanted something to drink and…well, it was kind of surprising to find it somewhere this fancy, that’s all.” She shrugged, seemingly hesitating, and Momo wondered what she wasn’t saying. “And I can’t do champagne right now.”

“Oh.” That was a preference of which Momo had been unaware. “Well, it is an acquired taste.”

“Oh, no, not because of that.” Kyouka definitely seemed nervous now. “Although it is kinda gross.”

Momo wasn’t going to ask – there was no reason to pry, no matter how dull these kinds of gatherings could be – but Kyouka didn’t make her. “I can’t drink while I’m pregnant.”

“Oh!” that made more sense, but it came as a bit of a shock, too. “Congratulations!”

Kyouka smiled sheepishly, averting her eyes. “I was gonna tell you soon, but…no time like the present, right?”

“How long have you known?” Momo asked, full of questions now that her words had sunk in. “I had no idea! Are you feeling all right? I’m kind of surprised you’re here tonight if-”

“I’m not dying, Momo.” Kyouka finally lifted her eyes, crinkled at the corners with amusement. “I’ve only just now started feeling sick sometimes, and I’m fine tonight.” She lifted her glass of soda. “But if anyone asks, this is some weird fruity cocktail and you didn’t hear any of this.”

Momo nodded. “I heard nothing,” she said, hoping the mock-gravity in her voice would make Kyouka laugh.

“Oh?” a third voice cut in, and Momo turned her head to see Ashido standing behind her chair, innocently batting her eyes. Great. There was no one worse to go to with news like that than Mina. “Heard nothing about what?”

Momo glanced across the table at Kyouka for a cue, wondering if she should cut in with an innocuous explanation before Mina had a chance to get suspicious. But Kyouka stopped her with a shake of her head and looked across the table, looking Mina dead in the eye. Oh, Momo thought, I suppose she has a plan.

“The fact that your emotional support himbo knocked me up,” she said coolly.

I thought you weren’t going to tell anyone, Momo thought. That had been a quick turnaround, and Kyouka could obviously read the surprise on her face. “We weren’t going to be able to keep her from sniffing it out,” she explained.

“Well, if that’s all right with-“

“He what?”

“-you,” Momo finished weakly.

“Wait, wait, you’re pregnant?”

Momo winced as half the room turned to stare.

**

“You’re Kaminari Kyouka, right?”

Every head at the table turned at an unfamiliar voice. It didn’t sound threatening – if anything, the woman who’d spoken had a sweet, unassuming voice that seemed almost shy – but it was unusual for heroes here who weren’t personal friends to address each other by anything but their hero names, so it was a little suspicious. Denki, who’d returned to their table to find that every single member of his class now knew he’d be a father in a few months, looked annoyed, but he didn’t say anything. The call was Kyouka’s to make and she nodded.

“That’s me,” she said.

“Oh! Well, ah, you see. I wanted…I wanted to come over and congratulate you.” She pushed a stray orange curl behind her ear. “I heard about the baby, and it…seemed like an appropriate occasion to stop by.”

Stop by? Shouto wondered for a moment what she could be talking about when no one here seemed to have any idea who she was. Has she been waiting to?

“Um…thank you.” Kyouka looked as confused as Shouto felt. “You, uh…I’m not sure we’ve met, but I appreciate it.”

“Oh! Right! Silly,” she muttered under her breath, suddenly animated. Her sea-green eyes sparkled without reason and it tangentially occurred to Shouto that they perfectly matched the teal of her dress. “I’m Kurahashi. Kurahashi Sayaka? Um…Midoriya-san’s date?”

Then where is Midoriya? It wouldn’t be like him to ditch his date, and it was surprising to see her here alone.

“Oh! You’re Kurahashi!” Mina cut in. “Oh, that makes so much sense!”

“Yeah! I’m…I’m glad to meet you all.” She smiled earnestly. “I’ve heard so much about you, and-“

“Wait, I was going to introduce you!”

Sakaya turned, then smiled at the sight of an obviously-flustered Midoriya approaching from her left. “Sorry,” she replied, a little red-faced. “I hadn’t realized-“

“No, no, no, it’s fine! Seriously,” Midoriya insisted, waving his hands. “No harm done! I just had thought it would be good to introduce you formally since you’ve never met any of my friends and I know it can be a little overwhelming to meet so many new people at once, but I guess I shouldn’t have been worried, right? You seem totally fine. Oh, by the way, congratulations!” he looked over to Kyouka and Denki. “Sorry, I hadn’t gotten a chance to come by yet.”

Shouto glanced over at Momo, who raised her eyebrows. See what I mean?, he asked, and she smiled slyly – exactly like you said they’d be.

“Oh, no, really, it’s fine,” Kurahashi insisted. “I…just saw an opening and, ah, decided to take it, you know?”

“Right, of course.” He stood at her side now, and looked out at the tables his friends had pushed together. Most of them had returned to their seats, though a few were empty, and he set his hand on Kurahashi’s shoulder. “Um…this is Kurahashi. We…worked together. She’s in support tech,” he explained hastily. “Sorry, I meant to do this earlier-“

“It’s fine, Midoriya,” she said, cheeks dimpling as she smiled. “Really.”

“No, really, it isn’t.” Midoriya’s brow furrowed. “I shouldn’t have left you-“

“Honestly,” Denki muttered. “Get a room.” Kyouka elbowed him. Kurahashi’s cheeks, already red, flushed even more, and Midoriya shot him an irritated look.

Interesting, Shouto observed. Feeling a little protective?

Whatever the cause, the two lapsed into an awkward silence and wordlessly drifted to two empty seats between Shoji and the sidekick Sero had come to the gala with. They glanced at each other every so often, and both blushed like teenagers nearly every time. Kurahashi’s pale skin hid absolutely nothing, and the redness in her face was stark against her orange hair and cool seafoam eyes. She was pretty, tall and a little gangly for twenty-seven with a soft, inviting face and long, wavy hair that caught the light, and he couldn’t help but notice that the two of them lingered as near one another as they reasonably could. They seemed to float just outside the boundaries of one another’s space, as unwilling to overstep as they were to take a step back. And they touched when they could get away with it: their hands brushed as they both reached for their drinks at the same time; Midoriya helped Kurahashi into her chair without a reason; they’d touch each other’s arms as they spoke. They hadn’t known each other long but it was evident that they felt a comfort in one another’s presence that Shouto knew was difficult to find.

“They’re so sweet,” Momo murmured, leaning in close to Shouto’s ear so as not to be overheard.

“They are.” He closed his hand over hers where it rested against her thigh. “Kinda reminds me of us back in the day.”

“Aww. They do, don’t they?” Momo leaned her head against his shoulder. “Hope they figure it out faster than we did.”

They lapsed into silence, letting Kurahashi’s animated voice pull them back into the general conversation as she related some anecdote to Mina and Hagakure.

“And so I get a call from the receptionist that Deku is here to see me, and I’m freaking out, right?” Sayaka’s eyes shone almost as much as her date’s did, watching her. “Because I’m thinking at this point that there’s something wrong with his costume and I’m going to get a piece of his mind. And, I mean, no one wants that, but from the number-one hero? Who happens to be a total sweetheart who just bought you a book about ziggurats for no reason? I mean, oof, I was seriously worried back there. So I’m all shaky when he comes up to my office, right?” Sayaka paused to gauge her audience’s reaction, then went on when it became obvious that they were still interested. “So when he shows up and almost immediately holds out this giant bouquet of peach roses and asks me if I’ll go to the Gala with him, I’m, like…dying inside.”

“Aww, Midoriya!” Mina squealed.

“W-what?” he stammered, a sheepish expression on his flushed face. “I didn’t do anything special! I mean, isn’t that just proper etiquette-“

“It…I was so surprised!” Sayaka laughed, leaning over the table, shoulders and face open and sure. She’d seemed shy earlier, but she had an easy confidence that was impossible to miss now. Maybe it came from ignorance of social convention, or maybe it was hard-earned; either way, she seemed the brighter for it.

It wasn’t hard to see why Midoriya couldn’t stop staring.

“That was the last thing I was expecting,” she went on. “But…I was thrilled. I mean…who wouldn’t be?”

**

“Are you all right?”

Momo turned, keeping her grip on his hand as they walked. “I’m fine, Shouto,” she assured him. “I just…wanted a moment away from it all.”

He let go of her hand to settle against the balcony railing. “All right. I just wanted to be sure.”

“It’s been kind of a long night,” she admitted, leaning against his shoulder. “Not that I mind! It’s nice to see everyone. But…I wanted to be with just you for a minute.”

“Of course.” He didn’t need to tell her, as she leaned against his arm, that there was nothing in the world he’d like more.

“Can I…can I be a little sentimental?”

“Of course you can.” He draped his arm around her waist.

I love her, he thought, and he’d known that for months but the realization still jolted him like a shock from a downed wire. Because he loved her – without and beyond reason, more than he know how to put into words – and she’d chosen to love him, too, and the cold of the late March night seemed as irrelevant as any time when he’d ever not known that to be true. All he wanted was to love her, unreserved, and he could – sometimes that knowledge was so overwhelming he could hardly carry it.

He took a breath just to remind himself that he needed to.

“I guess…back there, I kept seeing people in love.” Momo let her head rest against his shoulder. “The way Kurahashi and Midoriya were looking at each other, and Denki hovering around Kyouka, and…Mina showing off her engagement ring to whoever would listen, and…I could go on. And I just…felt lucky, I suppose.”

He looked down at her. “Lucky?”

“That I’m one of them.” She stood again, turning to face him, laying her palm flat against his arm. “Shouto, I…I know it’s been a little bit rough, and we’re still learning, but…thank you.” She swallowed, a lump forming in her throat. “For letting me be one of them.”

And in the wake of all of that, Shouto couldn’t muster up a single word to say.

“Sorry,” she said, laughing shakily. “Too much?”

“No. No, it’s not that at all.” He finally managed to look at her and wondered how he’d ever looked at anything else. “I…I don’t know what to say, except that I think I should be thanking you.”

Momo didn’t have to stand on her toes in the shoes she’d worn tonight to press her forehead to his, and she relished that. Her hands joined at the small of his back, and she let her eyes close so all that remained of her senses were the heat of his breath against her face and the stinging chill of the air raising goosebumps on her arms. She didn’t say anything, and neither did he; soft music floated from the hotel ballroom rented out for the occasion, but neither heard it.

“Thank you,” she murmured again, lips curving into a smile. “For choosing to be my husband.”

**

“Anata?”

“Mmhm? Shouto yawned, thoroughly exhausted as he slumped against Momo’s shoulder in the backseat of the hired car.

“I had kind of a weird thought tonight.”

“What was it?” he asked, a little more awake.

“Well…Kyouka got me thinking about…children and such,” she admitted. “And I thought…well, maybe I shouldn’t say this when you’re already exhausted and we’ve never discussed it, but-”

“No, no, tell me.” He sat up, just to show her he was serious. “What’s up?”

“I…well, I realized that if I were to find out that I was…expecting, I…I think I would be happy.” She swallowed hard. “I’m not, obviously. And the timing couldn’t be worse if I was, but still, I think I would be happy about it.”

He met her eyes. “You want a baby, then.”

“Just an idle observation,” she deflected. “I know you probably don’t-”

“I…actually kind of do.”

“Oh. You do?”

“I mean, you’re right – we’ve never talked about it. But I do think I want children, if you’re open to having them.”

She smiled to herself. “Have you always?”

“Wanted kids? Kinda.”

“I…never knew that.”

“Well, I never brought it up, to be fair.”

“But this means you…agree with me?” Momo asked cautiously.

“You mean that I’d be happy if you found out you were pregnant?” Shouto asked. “If that’s what you mean, then yeah. Of course.”

She smiled. “Maybe one day, then?”

“I would like that.”

**

Shouto had expected to pass out the moment his head hit the pillow, but apparently that had been Momo’s job and not his. Watching her back rise and fall and her hands curl and uncurl around the fabric of his shirt in her sleep (what’s she dreaming about? He couldn’t help but wonder), he couldn’t bring himself to drift off, but he wasn’t upset. His phone dinged; it was the one he used for personal conversations, not the emergency alert tone, so it was a welcome distraction.

Thank you, Midoriya had texted him.

For? He asked, decently sure that his friend was lying awake the same way he was.

Telling me to go for it with Sayaka. Tonight was something else.

Shouto shook his head fondly. Leave it to Midoriya to be shocked that his first date hadn’t been a disaster. I’m glad.

Momo stirred in his arms, though she didn’t wake, and he silenced the phone and set it aside so as not to disturb her. She murmured something incomprehensible in her sleep and he wrapped her in his arms, lips barely grazing her forehead.

No, he thought. It really should’ve been me thanking you.

Chapter Text

july

“What would you say to a replacement honeymoon?”

Momo froze, her teacup a few inches above the table. “What do you mean?”

“Since we never got one, and our anniversary’s in a few months. Thought it might be nice to do a first anniversary trip as a replacement.” Shouto let a small smile sneak its way onto his face. “And I think we’d probably like it a lot more now that we’re not in denial.”

“You’re probably right about that.” Momo’s stilled hand finally released and she took a sip of tea. “It might be a bit of a struggle to get the time off, but I like that idea.”

“Well, we are our own bosses.” He tilted his head, expecting a response. “So?”

“You know I hate taking time off,” she said reluctantly.

“I know.” The last off day she’d taken had been his birthday, back in January, and he’d been surprised that she’d even been willing to risk that much. “But it’d be good for us. I read somewhere that taking time off together is supposed to be good for your marriage.”

“It probably is,” Momo agreed, and he knew her mind was made up.

“So.” Shouto leaned against his palm, which rested atop an elbow dug into the table for balance. “Where would you wanna go?”

Momo set her teacup down. “Where would you want to go?”

“Not a city,” he said, “but I told you to pick.”

“Hey, you can’t have all the fun.” She pulled a face at him. “You proposed, after all. And confessed first. Can’t I spoil you this once?”

“It was my idea.” He pulled a face right back. “And I’m not going to complain about that, but if you want to go to…I dunno, Shanghai, I’m taking you.”

“Why Shanghai?” Momo’s nose scrunched. “I don’t think Shanghai is very romantic.”

“It’s not, but I mostly just meant to use it as an example of a city I wouldn’t want to go to. Too crowded.”

“Oh. Well…I’m all for seclusion,” she agreed. “Somewhere warm, maybe.”

“By the ocean,” Shouto suggested. “Where you don’t have to do anything but lay around on the beach all day.”

“Hm. Laying around on the beach.” Momo painted on her most impassive expression. “So that’s how my darling husband most wants to spend our replacement honeymoon.”

Shouto reddened. “Not the whole trip.”

“Well.” Momo watched Shouto’s expression changed and a swell of fondness rose up in her chest. He was so cute sometimes, and so utterly easy to read when he chose to wear his heart on his sleeve. “I’ve always wanted to go to Bali, and I’m pretty sure that fits both of those criteria.” She cleared her throat. “Seclusion and beaches, I mean.”

“You’ve never been?” Shouto asked. “Seems like the kind of place your parents would’ve taken you.”

“No, they said it was a tourist trap full of honeymooners,” she replied.

“And yet their fourteen trips to Paris weren’t?”

“Well, you know how my mother is. When it comes to Paris, logic doesn’t apply.”

“Ridiculous,” Shouto muttered. “Well. You wanna go to Bali, then?”

“Do you?”

“I just want,” Shouto told her, “to go somewhere nice and private and far away with you and forget that I have a job for a week, so yes, that’s fine.”

“And you’re not going to wish we’d chosen the Seychelles or something after a day?”

Shouto narrowed his eyes. “The what?”

She blinked at him for a moment, trying to figure out why he would think that would be funny. But his expression was so flat that she could only conclude that he truly didn’t know.

“A group of islands in the Indian Ocean. Really popular for honeymoons. Never mind,” she said hastily. “What I really meant to ask was if you’d actually like Bali enough to justify taking a week off.”

“It’s our first anniversary and we never got a honeymoon, Momo. Kazakhstan would warrant taking a week off.”

“Oh, so you do know your geography,” Momo teased.

“Hmph.”

“Well, if you really wanted to be in the middle of nowhere, Kazakhstan would actually be perfect.”

“I don’t.” Shouto blinked a few times to orient himself. “It’s landlocked. And besides, you want to go to Bali.”

“Well, all right.” She didn’t mean to gloat, but she couldn’t help but grin. “Anniversary week, right?”

“Yeah. If we start planning now, we should have enough of a cushion to get everything arranged in time.”

“Hopefully.” One never knew what would come up at the last minute in this line of work.

**

mid-september

“Wait, can you…can you just kinda hang back there for a second?”

Momo narrowed her eyes, pausing in the middle of the jetway before she remembered that she was obstructing the flow of traffic and moved. “Sorry?”

“Um…never mind.” Shouto seemed to sense that whatever he’d been planning wasn’t going to work and gestured for her to follow. “I just, um…I wanted to take a picture.”

“Of me?”

“Well, yeah.” She could see the tips of Shouto’s ears redden from behind. “I don’t have a lot of pictures of you, so…I kinda wanted one. You know. Just for phone wallpapers and stuff.”

“How could you not have any pictures? We’ve taken a million together,” Momo asked. “And I’ve taken just as many of you.” He knew that – she’d set a picture of him eating ice cream, glancing back at the camera before he’d realized that she was trying to take his picture, as her phone’s home screen.

“Well, yeah, but I’m not going to use a thirteen-year-old photo from our high school trip to Kyoto as my lock screen.”

“Fair enough, but we just got here, and I think we’re going to find much better backdrops for your future wallpaper than a jetway.”

“Okay,” he conceded, but she caught him sneaking a photo while they waited for the baggage carousel even so.

**

She was right, of course.

Though perhaps their dreams of lazy, secluded beach days were quickly dashed by the discovery that they hadn’t been the only tourists looking to soak up the final weeks of the island’s dry season, there was no lack of stunning backdrops to be found. Even if they took a little trekking to find.

“Well, we did want to go somewhere warm,” Momo said good-naturedly as they watched their footing on difficult paths through the forest, climbing at a grade steep enough to make even their absurdly-conditioned legs ache. Even early in the day, it was already hot; there was little that was romantic about waking at dawn to hike uphill through a rainforest in the stifling humidity that they couldn’t escape even in the early morning. They had to be careful where they stepped not only because the path could be treacherous with constant rainfall but because, apparently, they might disrupt a snake if they weren’t. But it was worth it – apparently. Shouto thought he’d be the judge of that once he reached the end of the trail.

“That we did,” he replied. “You okay?”

“You’re the one who’s behind,” she laughed, and Shouto privately told himself to up his conditioning when he returned. Evidently she’d done something with her legs that he hadn’t thought to. “I’m fine, though.”  

And it wasn’t how Shouto had expected to spend his not-honeymoon – not at all. But the vapor-heavy air shrouded the forest in something like magic, and there was something impossibly humbling in the view of the sheer dropoff that let the falls drop some eighty meters to the valley below – something not romantic but much better.

They stood still for a long, long moment, trying hard not to look down, doing it anyway. Backlit by the barely-risen sun, the cascade of water dropping over the cliff face seemed to glow, and it would have been nearly impossible not to. Spray from the falls left the air damp – not humid, as it was everywhere else, but refreshing – and Momo stretched out her hands, laughing as they caught as much as they could.

“I told you,” she laughed, half-delirious with awe.

He shouldn’t have looked away for even a second – he shouldn’t. But he needed to remember exactly what this moment had looked like. She gazed out over the falls in her running shorts and muddy trainers with sweat slicking flyaway hairs that had escaped her ponytail to the back of her neck and her arms outstretched; he pulled out his phone – he shouldn’thave, not when he never knew if he’d ever be back here – and took her picture.

**

The waterfall bug seemed to have bitten Momo, and – relaxation be damned – Shouto wasn’t about to complain.

“Shouto,” she murmured, grabbing his hand as if needing to be sure that he was really there, “look at this.”

“I am.” He squeezed her hand in response and turned his face up to watch the falls – not as tall as the last ones but intimidating nonetheless – tip over the precipice rush to meet the water below. Droplets of vapor danced along the outcroppings in the cliffside and stirred up rainbows that barely lasted seconds, and, at the base of the falls, it was impossible to stay dry for long. But Momo didn’t mind, intoxicated as she was, so neither did Shouto. His shirt already clung to his chest in the humidity; it might as well be soaked through. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Momo pulled in closer to him, her soaked shirt rubbing up against his arm. “To think that there’s so many beautiful things in the world that I’d never have known were even out there if I hadn’t come here.”

That was decidedly more sentimental than what he’d been thinking, but it had its truth, too. “I guess there are.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, leaning her head against his shoulder.

He wrapped an arm around her soaked waist. “What did I do?”

“For seeing them with me.” She turned her face up to look at him and grinned. “So that I’ll always have someone to remind me that what I saw was really there.”

**

“Well. Someone seems happy today.”

“Yeah.” Shouto didn’t care one bit that he’d draped himself over his wife like a blanket in full public view – if the relentless paparazzi managed to find their way over the dusty backroads to a public but utterly deserted Balinese beach, they’d earned whatever photos they snapped. Momo didn’t seem to, either; her arms wrapped around him, inviting him to stay, and she laughed softly. “’m happy.”

“Well, I’m glad. I could tell you were getting sick of hiking to waterfalls.”

“Oh, I love you.” He had been. “Did you know that I love you?”

“Lazybones,” she teased fondly, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head.

“They’re nice,” he added as a consolation, “but sometimes I just want to lay on a beach and do nothing.”

“By which you mean you want to lay on me and do nothing?”

“Well...kinda.” He shifted so his chin rested against her chest and he could look at her as she smiled fondly and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “You okay with that?”

“Well, I am dragging you to a temple tomorrow, so I suppose I can let you have your way.” Never mind that the temple had been his idea. It had looked interesting from its reviews on GetawayGuru. “No, really, I am.”

He didn’t know if he was ever going to be able to bring himself to leave this place.

**

The place they’d chosen to stay was beautiful, all hardwood floors and bay windows, a cliffside vantage point on the sheltered bay below. It had been four days here – they’d planned it so that their anniversary fell evenly in the middle of the trip – but the impact of the view still hadn’t worn off. Even in the twilight, most of the shades drawn, it was turquoise stretched out as far as the eye can see. But right now, Shouto’s eyes were closed.

The view out the window had never been the best one here, anyway. Momo was in the shower she’d insisted on taking alone, so, in his estimation, there wasn’t much to look at.

He leaned back against the pristine white pillows with a long sigh, listening to the sound of Momo’s hair dryer in one ear and the ocean crashing against the cliffs below with the other. Stretched out luxuriously against the comforter, Shouto could’ve slept easily, but something told him to stay alert even though his eyes were closed.

The dryer shut off; he sat up. That must’ve been why he wanted to remain alert.

“Shouto,” Momo said, peeking around the corner. Her hair was down, and she wore her favorite robe, petal-pink silk trimmed with lace, with an expression that looked a little impish.

He looked up, lips quirking into a smile before he could stop them. “Yeah?”

She stepped into the room, holding her robe tight around her waist. He wasn’t sure why she was trying to cover up when they both knew she wouldn’t stay that way for long, but he was too curious about her intentions to give the matter much thought.

“I think I’d like a kiss tonight,” she told him, casting her eyes down in mock shyness.

What? Momo never asked for kisses anymore – she hadn’t needed to since their arrangement settled down into something more natural. “You don’t have to ask,” he told her, though it was really more of a question.

She smiled, though, and there was that false shyness again. There was something elegantly self-assured in her movements that belied her timid expression, and she stepped to the bed, sitting at the very edge and then tucking her legs up under her. Holding herself up with both palms planted on the bed in front of her, she leaned forward to press a quick, chaste kiss to his lips. Shouto, though, was feeling anything but chaste, and he chased her when she pulled away, a hand on her cheek holding his place.

Momo took that hand in hers and then set it back down on his lap. Not yet, he knew she was saying. Nevertheless, she seemed bashful when she looked back up at him.

“I know you’ll probably say no to this,” she said, “and I don’t want to make a mess of things, or to…confuse you again, but this is our wedding night. And, well. There are certain things most people…spend that night doing.”

What…what are you doing, Momo?

“Um,” Shouto stammered. “I…I don’t follow.”

But he did, a moment later, when it clicked into place: the words and the gentle, shy kiss and that pink silk robe, all the same as they were a year ago tonight. “Unless…”

“You…you don’t have to, Shouto.” She cast her eyes down bashfully, refusing even now to break character. “I just thought-“

He remembered what he said that night as if he’d said it an hour ago. “I think that sounds like a very good idea,” he said solemnly, taking her small hands in his own again.

Momo’s face lit up, even though she had to have known that he’d agree. “I’m glad,” she murmured, taking his hand and placing it on the knot in the sash that held her robe closed. “I would…I want you to have me tonight, Shouto.”

He raised his eyebrows, resting his hand against her abdomen over the knot in her robe. “I think you’re about six months too early on that one.” If she’d been doing what he thought she had.

“Maybe,” she said, finally dropping the act with a sheepish smile. “But since it’s been a year now, I wanted a redo of that night.” She moved his hand, which had drifted to rest at the curve of her waist, back over the knot. “The way it should’ve gone.”

“All right.” He wasn’t ever going to complain about that.

He made quick work of the knot, slowly enough to savor the rise of her shoulders as she swallowed hard (is she nervous?) and the slivers of skin he revealed as he worked the knot free and peeled back her robe inch by inch. When, finally, he had the sash undone, Shouto folded back the two ends methodically, then opened each side with painstaking care until she was ready to let him step around behind her to slip the robe down her shoulders.

“So cautious,” she said, a teasing lilt to her tone. “What, do you think I bite?”

When the robe laid pooled around her hips, he lifted her hair to press a kiss to the back of her neck and let a hand brush down the curve of her shoulder to feel her shudder under his touch. “I know you do,” he teased.

He had no idea how he managed to sound anywhere near smooth when she was completely bare beneath her robe, and he kept a hand on her shoulder as he circled back around just to be certain he wasn’t seeing things.

“I…can I tell you something you’re going to think is silly?”

He sat down in front of her. “I doubt I will.”

“Well…” Momo brushed a lock of hair out of her face, bare and cross-legged and shy as can be. “I…that night…”

He inched closer, taking her hands to reassure her. “Yeah?”

“Well…I didn’t have anything on under this robe then, either,” she admitted, her cheeks and the tips of her ears reddening. “I know it was overambitious, but I thought that maybe if I made myself…look good for you, and if I tried to seem…prepared, you might actually want me-“

“Momo.” He slipped an arm around her back and used it to tug her closer until she took the hint, settling in his lap with legs straddling his waist. “I did want you.” He ducked a finger under her chin. “Then and now.”

“Well-“

“You know how much self-control it took to say no to you?” he chuckled, brushing his knuckles along the curve of her jawbone. “And if I’d known that, I guarantee I wouldn’t have been able to.”

“Oh?” Momo seemed a little more comfortable now, pushing her forehead up against his.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. “I’d have to be crazy not to want you.”

“Because I’m…because I’m beautiful?”

“Maybe. But mostly because you’re Momo.”

She squirmed in his lap, a little uncomfortable. “You’re being so sweet tonight.”

“Am I?”

“I…I don’t think that night would’ve gone like this even if you had said yes,” Momo admitted, a little abashed.

“No, it definitely would’ve.” That, he knew for certain. “I think I would’ve scared you out of bed in five minutes, losing control and spouting off about how much I loved you.”

She pressed a palm to his chest, still (irritatingly) clothed. “And probably about how you couldn’t bear the fact that I only wanted one night with you when I’d never actually said that, too.” 

“Okay, I had to assume-“

“Todoroki Shouto,” she teased, “I can’t believe you’d ever think that I’d only want you once.” A little thrill shot up her spine at the realization of what she was setting up – if they were going off-script, she might as well turn the tables on him.

He seemed to know what she was trying, and he smiled. “Oh, really?”

“Mmhm.” She captured his lips almost as soon as they were done speaking. “If I had you once, I was going to want more.” Another soft, brief kiss. “If I’d had you then, I would’ve wanted you again.” This time no kiss separated her sentences, only a beat of blissful silence. “Just like I do now.”

She couldn’t see his face, but she knew her husband was smiling. “Then by all means, Todoroki Momo, have me.”

**

It still didn’t seem like Shouto had had enough.

“Darling,” Momo laughed, gently pushing him away from the spot where he was hovering at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, “aren’t you tired?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, unmoving. “Don’t care.”

“Evidently not.” Momo bit her lip to keep from sucking in a sharp breath as he resumed the trail of kisses he’d been planting down her neck. “You seem far more determined to kiss every inch of my body for anything as dull as fatigue to get the better of you.”

She’d come to this conclusion after a good five minutes of lazy, sloppy kisses to every inch of skin he could get at. Never mind that it had already been two rounds.

He lifted his head and smiled lazily up at her. “Exactly.”

She gathered him close and kissed the crown of his head, affectionately mussing his sweaty hair. “Don’t I ever get to spoil you, Shouto?”

“Already did,” he said with that same half-delirious smile.

“Not properly.” She pouted, even though she didn’t mean it, and let him go just so he can see – he’d always thought that expression is cute. “Not like this.”

“’s okay,” he muttered, bending his head again and shifting so his lips brushed the ridge of her shoulder this time. “You did that…reenacting thing. That was hot.”

“Oh, really.” Momo’s lips tipped upwards in amusement. “So reliving our most head-scratching moments is arousing to you?”

“No, you getting all in-character is.” He shifted and rested his head against her stomach. “And that robe.”

“That robe, or-“

He accepted defeat. “That robe with nothing under it.”

“You are utterly shameless, Shouto.”

“No, I just have taste.”

She tapped her finger against the tip of his nose, laughing when it reflexively scrunched. “And also insatiable.”

“Well, didn’t I warn you?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Warn me?”

He finally sat up, but she didn’t move from the place where she lay against the pillows. “That if I had you once, I’d want you more?”

She lifted her head and laid it back down against his bare thigh, closing her eyes in anticipation, and she wasn’t left wanting. His fingers brushed through her hair, and she nuzzled contentedly against the skin where her cheek lay. “You were really not kidding about that.”

He seemed all but offended. “Of course I wasn’t.”

“Because” – she turned her head and, in a moment of what could’ve been either be inspiration or total stupidity, kissed his thigh – “you’re insatiable.”

She knew from his sharp intake of breath that she was probably not going to get more than a handful of sentences out of him right now.

“Momo,” he said through gritted teeth, “if you really think I’m insatiable, why are you encouraging me?”

She raised her head, blinking innocently up at him. “Who said I minded?”

At least four emotions flashed across his face in the span of six seconds but the one she took most notice of his sheer hunger. And that couldn’t do. She never had liked to let him stay that way for long.

“I don’t mind,” she murmured, leaning up and kissing him. “I actually quite like it.”

He tugged her closer, one hand against her back, the other bracing her head. “I’m glad,” he said, his voice strained. “Because I’m not so great at self-control anymore.”

“Yes, yes, because if you had me once-“

“Do you always have to bring that up?”

“You brought it up last, darling.”

He just sighed.

“Anyways.” He’d begun kissing her throat again and she bit back an encouraging whimper. “Yes, I know. Have me once, want me forever.”

His eyes darkened. He raised them to hers, but made sure they softened first.

“And now I have you forever,” he murmured.

She nudged her nose against his. “You do.” Then she pokes his chest. “And that means, just for tonight, you can have me as many times as you’d like.”

“You sure?”

“Well, given our current position, I’d say-“

“Momo.”

“What? You say that as if I don’t enjoy being had.” She looked a little insulted. “Wherever would you have gotten that silly idea?”

He grinned. “Well, then.”

She grinned right back. “Happy anniversary, Shouto.”

Chapter Text

December 4^th

“Did you wash your hands?”

“Um…yes?”

Denki narrowed his eyes. “With soap?”

“He’s not you, Denki,” Kyouka cut in. Then she turned to Shouto. “Did you, though?”

“Um, yes, I did wash my hands.” Momo hadn’t been subjected to this interrogation. “You told me to.”

“Okay.” Denki nodded. “Okay.”

He still made no move to hand off the baby.

“He’s not going to drop her,” Kyouka tried to reassure him, but he still eyed his classmate suspiciously.

“I’m not going to drop her,” Shouto agreed, however reluctantly. “Momo didn’t drop her. Why would I?”

“Momo is responsible,” Denki muttered, then reluctantly added, “fine.”

Shouto opened his arms, hoping the signal would get his point across. I am very responsible and utterly trustworthy, he thought it might say, though he was unsure whether it wouldn’t make Denki trust him even less. “I…can take her now,” he said.  

“You look like you’re waiting for me to hand you a sack of potatoes or something.”

“Um…is this not how you-”

“Put your arms out like you’re going to cradle her.” Kyouka, graciously, took pity on her guest and mimed the position she was describing. “So you can support her head.”

Thank you, Kyouka. Shouto nodded and tried to mimic her example. “Like this?”

“Yeah, just make sure that your right hand is under her head when you hold her,” Kyouka said. Her husband didn’t look convinced; she gave him one of her this-is-not-up-for-debate looks.

“What she said,” he said, setting his daughter in Shouto’s arms with a warning glare. “Support the neck.”

“Right,” Shouto replied. He remembered that much from his minimal training in the art of baby-holding, all of it administered hastily by well-meaning relatives with more urgency than clarity when he’d met Fuyumi’s children, so he set her head against the crook of his elbow.

The baby stared up at him with what he was certain was all the judgment a two-week-old could muster.

“Um…hi?” Maybe I should talk to her. Do people talk to babies? Do babies even know when people are talking to them? “I, um…my name is Shouto.” Great. Why would she need to know that? “And yours is Kanade, right? That’s, um…that’s a nice name. Kanade. Gonna guess your mom picked it for you.” There’d been no question which parent Denki and Kyouka had hoped their daughter would take after with a name like that, but her golden eyes were all Denki, and so were her squirming and general air of distrust.

Neither of which convinced Shouto that he was doing anything right. He couldn’t say why, but he wanted Kanade to feel safe in his arms and suspected she didn’t, and that – for reasons he couldn’t understand – made him panic.

“Um, I think I made her mad,” he said, looking to Kyouka for advice since Denki still looked like he’d stab Shouto for the smallest mistake.

“Oh, no, don’t worry, she just moves a lot,” Kyouka reassured him. “You’re kinda lucky she hasn’t started crying.”

“She has very impressive lungs,” Denki said solemnly.

“Oh. I see.” Shouto privately hoped that he wouldn’t have to. “Um…she’s…” What are people supposed to say about babies? “She…she looks like you,” he stammered. Good. Nice save.

Denki narrowed his eyes. “Which one of us?”

Never mind.

**

“Oh, uh, well. She has your eyes, I, um, I guess?”

Momo bit back a chuckle – leave it to the number-five hero to crack under the pressure of a baby in his arms. “That she does,” she cut in, setting down the tray of tea she’d been brewing before she took a seat next to Kyouka. That was par for the course – visit the Todorokis and one would be subjected to at least three more hours of tea and the sort of flaky European pastries Shouto insisted he didn’t understand than one had planned for. “But-”

“She’s got little earphone jack stubs,” Shouto finished, cautiously shifting his hand so he could touch the tiny stubs at the lobes of her ears. They didn’t look like much yet – couldn’t, at this scale – but it was obvious what they one day would be.

Denki looked like he might cry. “She does.”

“But they’re so tiny.” Shouto couldn’t not smile to himself, seeing his friend’s features replicated in miniature. Of the babies he’d known, few had so closely resembled their parents at such a young age. “I had no idea you were born with these.”

“Mine didn’t actually do anything for a couple of years, but the little stubs have always been there.” Kyouka twirled one of her own earphone jacks around her finger, then let it go. “But…it’s kinda surreal, you know? Obviously I know that she’s mine, but I look at her ears and that’s when I’m really like, ‘that’s my kid.’ It’s…” Kyouka trailed off, taking a deep breath. “It’s a lot, sometimes.”

“I can imagine.” Kanade settled in Shouto’s arms, her tiny legs finally still, and – though he didn’t know exactly why or how – he could. Her warmth and weight still felt foreign in his arms, and he couldn’t even begin to translate her soft snorts and whines, but he understood what that meant. It must have been strange, seeing those things and knowing that they existed in a child only because you’d helped to bring it to life, seeing the same features in that tiny face as you had every morning in the mirror since you’d been old enough to look. But it must have been some kind of wonderful, too.

Wordlessly, Momo switched seats to settle in beside her husband on the opposite end of the couch. She touched his shoulder; he shifted so she could rest against his side as he watched Kanade blink sleepily up at him.

“She likes you,” she murmured, lips curling into a soft, knowing smile.

“She’s two weeks old. How could she possibly like me?” Shouto protested. “Just because she’s sleepy-”

“She’s probably just tired.” Denki, apparently, was determined not to give one single inch.

“She probably just likes how warm you are,” Kyouka said.

Shouto’s warmer arm had been the one supporting Kanade’s body – he supposed that its heat might’ve calmed her. Still, it made little sense. “But…she’s so warm already.” He shifted Kanade after her head began to loll to the side. “Like a little space heater.”

“Oh, wow, I wonder where I’ve seen that before,” Denki said drily.

“If you think she’s warm, imagine how hot your kid would get.” No one missed Kyouka’s smirk. “Bet your cold side would come in handy.”

Shouto didn’t even want to respond to that but Momo, apparently, did. “Wouldn’t it?”

**

“I didn’t know you were so good with babies.”

“I’m not,” Shouto replied, puzzled. “I had no idea what I was doing back there.”

“I know, but you’re so natural at it.” Momo opened her phone to pull up a picture she’d taken while he’d been holding the baby and hadn’t known she was looking. “See?”

He examined the photo for a few seconds before shaking his head. “I just look like I’m making it up as I go.”

Momo blinked innocently, brow creased with what seemed to be agitation. “Well, yes, but-”

Oh. He knew that subtle pleading look of hers well. “Is this your unsubtle way of telling me you want one?”

“Well…no,” Momo said sheepishly, turning away and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I…”

“I…you actually think I’m good with babies?”

“Well, that’s,” Momo stammered, “that’s sort of irrelevant if you don’t like them. Do you not like them? You seemed to like Kanade, but I’m not sure how much of that was out of politeness, and of course I know that neither of us have any experience with children, but…”

“No, it was…nice.” It had been. “I just thought Denki was going to kill me.”

“But can you blame him? That’s his baby.” Momo’s face softened at that. “It’s actually very sweet.”

“Well, yeah, I guess.” And she wants a baby, he thought, and somehow that meant something more now than it had a second ago. “You…really want one? A…baby, I mean?”

She bit her lip. “Are you going to feel…pressured if I say that I do?”

“No, not at all. I…I want you to be honest, even if…if you think I’ll say no.” Wait. That sounded bad. “Which I won’t. By the way. If you were worried about that.”

“You…won’t?”

“Of course I wouldn’t.” He didn’t know how she still didn’t see it – that he couldn’t deny her the things she wanted. “I might not think it was a good time or something, but I’m not just going to say ‘no’ if you want children. Didn’t we agree that we both kind of did?”

“Well, yes.” Momo drummed her fingers against the side of her teacup. “But if you changed your mind after meeting Kanade, I’d get it.”

“…no,” he said slowly. “I…I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was kind of nice. Holding a baby, I mean. Except for the part where I thought Denki was going to kill me-”

“You keep saying that. He wasn’t.” Momo smiled into her teacup. “He was stressed, yes, but he wasn’t upset with you. Really, anata. You did fine.”

“Well, it was very nerve-wracking at the time.”

Momo turned at a knock at a neighboring apartment’s door, but he could hear her soft chuckle even with her back turned. “But…I liked seeing that side of you,” she admitted. “I don’t think I ever have before.”

“What side of me?”

“I don’t know how exactly to describe it, but…you’re different around babies. I hadn’t ever seen you with one before, so I didn’t know that.” She turned again and slipped out of her shoes. “Kind of…lighthearted? Even if you were scared, it seemed like you really liked it. Holding Kanade, I mean.”

“Lighthearted?” Shouto repeated, wondering what that was supposed to imply. But it made perfect sense, with a little further thought – he had felt different. Younger, maybe. Kanade was too young to see or understand much of anything, but he’d felt an inexplicable urge to figure out what made her happy and do it. Shouto never gave much thought to humor, but he’d wanted her to laugh. Ridiculous – a baby could hardly laugh at his fumbling awkwardness – but he’d felt the urge nonetheless.

She had made him feel strange things, now that he thought about it. He’d wanted her to know that she was safe with him, though she wasn’t his child. He’d wanted her approval, though she couldn’t give it. He’d thought about how strangely gratifying it might feel to hold a child in his arms and look down to see his own eyes staring back at him.

Lighthearted – maybe it was true.

“Well, maybe,” he conceded. “I did feel different.”

Momo smiled cautiously. “Good different?”

“Good different.” He took a moment to watch her expression change, just to be sure he wasn’t pushing any buttons. “Can I ask why you bring this up now? It can’t just be because of Kanade.”

Momo shrugged. “Well…I have always wanted them,” she said. “Children, I mean. Ever since I was young. I’d always assumed that I might not have them – work and all – and after we got engaged, I decided they were out of the question entirely. For obvious reasons.”

“Which I would think have become a lot less obvious.”

“Well, obviously, yes.” Momo’s eyes smiled but her mouth didn’t. “So…when we became an actual couple, I…suppose I started thinking about them again. Not that work would be any less of an obstacle now than it was then, but, well.”

“Yeah. We talked about that.”

“And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea,” she said. “And you’d think that watching my best friend be pregnant and miserable would’ve dissuaded me, but it didn’t, so here we are.” She glanced at Shouto over the top of her teacup. “But enough about what I think.”

He knew he was being prompted. “Um…I didn’t know how you felt, so I didn’t really think about it before you brought it up. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“You mean because you thought-”

“That you might not want them, and that it was a moot point if you didn’t.” He looked down at her to see if she got what he meant. “Given that you have to do all of the work.”

“Not all of it.” She fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly but couldn’t keep a straight face. Accordingly, Shouto took her teacup from her hands before she had a chance to dump it down the front of her pristine white nightgown in a fit of laughter.

“Wow. Looks like I’m not the only one feeling lighthearted,” he teased, setting the cup down on the counter.

“Okay, you gave me an opening and I couldn’t resist,” she snickered. “You should see your face right now.”

He didn’t need to look to be sure that it was redder than it had any right to be. He’d never heard Momo make such a brazen joke and, though he couldn’t deny that it had landed, it was such an odd turn of events that he couldn’t help but blush. “I’m sure,” he muttered. “Anyways, as I was saying-“

“As you were saying. Right.” Momo gave herself a moment and a few deep breaths to regain her composure. “What was that?”

“I never thought about children because I didn’t know if you’d want them.” This, again, was comfortable territory. “And now that I know you do, well, I…I want you to have what you want.”

“This isn’t a decision we can make because it’s what I want, Shouto.” Momo reached across the counter for his hand and folded her fingers through his. “Kids need both of their parents, and if you don’t like the idea of being a father-”

“No, no, it’s not that.” He’d thought about it, holding Kanade, and that wasn’t the problem at all. “It’s just that I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m not going to mess up a kid like I was because I decided to raise kids I wasn’t qualified to have. Today just goes to show that.”

“I see where you’re coming from.” Momo gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “And I understand if that means you don’t ever want to risk it. But…if it means anything to you, that’s not the impression I came away with earlier at all.”

Shouto tilted his head just enough to let her know that he didn’t understand. “What’s not?”

“That you weren’t qualified. I didn’t think that at all.”

“But I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said weakly.

“No, but you learned quickly, and…well. I know you, anata. I know what it looks like when you like something.” She poked his shoulder, hoping a little playfulness would get her point across. “And you really liked holding Kanade.”

“And?”

He hadn’t denied that, which was a start. “That – genuinely wanting to be around a baby you’d never met before – that tells me more about your potential to be a good parent than whether or not you know how to hold a baby properly does.” Momo tried not to sound too hopeful, but she couldn’t help it. “Those things can be learned – why do you think parenting books exist? But feeling that affection that I saw today towards kids…that can’t. And you already have it.”

“I don’t even know what a good parent is supposed to look like, Momo,” Shouto countered, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I…I want to believe that. Because I do want kids, if I’m being honest. I know I would love them. I’d probably even like them. But who am I to say that I should have them when everything I know about raising kids is so wrong?” Given a little room to fester, doubt had a way of growing. “And what about you? You’d have to take so much time away from work for even one baby-”

“Don’t worry about that, anata.” At that, Momo smiled – at least she could put his doubts to rest in that area. “I told you. I want to be a mother, and if that means there’s a year or two that I have to put being a hero on hold…well, it’s a compromise, I suppose. And I’ve never liked the idea that those two things have to be at odds. Why shouldn’t we be able to have a family if we want one, you know?”

Shouto tensed, stammering out a generically reassured reply and trying not to sound as bowled-over as he felt. It felt different put that way – children were one thing; a family was entirely another. A child was a person, and people could be negotiated with; a family was a ticking time bomb and an incubator for all kinds of pain and a web of complexities it might take three lifetimes to untangle. And that thought made him feel so small that he couldn’t even bring himself to reply.

Momo noticed. She always did.

“Shouto,” she said, soft in the way she always had been when she knew what he needed to hear. “Family can be a beautiful thing.”

“I know that. I still don’t believe it.”

“We aren’t them, anata.” She leaned across the countertop to take his face in her hands. “And if you don’t want this, I’d never ask it of you, no matter what I think. But we aren’t them.” Her breath was close enough to touch his face now. “We’re not your parents.” Now her forehead rested against his. “You are not your father.” Momo’s thumb traced Shouto’s cheekbone with aching tenderness. “And I know that we could make something beautiful.”

And of course it would be beautiful, he knew – it would have her fingerprints on it, her inflexibly loving influence to set it on its course, her gentleness to bind it all up and keep it whole. If not for his absolute faith in her possession of the qualifications that he lacked, Shouto would never for a moment have considered the prospect of children. Words could not undo years of training, but they could try; he could try, because she wanted it. He could try, because she could be what he was not, and because he would never forget the way it had felt to hold a child and its absolute trust in the palm of his hand, warm and pure and achingly small.

He could try.

“We could.”

**

January 3^rd

It wasn’t an overnight change, this resolution of theirs. It wasn’t urgent, though it was a thought in both of their minds.

It was the offers to watch Kanade, three months old now and (as her mother always put it) louder even than her father. She was apt to cry with even more aplomb at the smallest provocation than most babies, but that, if anything, only helped their purposes. Neither of them had any illusions about the purposes of those nights spent babysitting: they were test runs.

It was the way they’d catch each other’s eyes lingering on the sign marking the baby-products aisle when they went to the store. It was the new and welcome intentionality in the looks they shared when they wanted one another, and it was the fraught tension behind even the most routine of injuries sustained in the field.

It wasn’t a decision either was eager to rush into, but the inevitability of their saying “yes” in the end settled over the two of them like a single sheet on a hot summer night – welcome, and just heavy enough to remind them it was always there.

**

February 8^th

“But I’m not-”

“I know.” Shouto, sprawled out diagonally on his stomach across the bed, dog-eared his page in What Every First-Time Parent Needs to Know and flipped it closed. “Just thinking ahead.”

“Ah.” Momo bent to kiss his forehead and he tipped up his chin for easier access, eyes fluttering contentedly closed. “Well, I can’t complain about that.”

“What I’m getting from this,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed to sit up, “is that if we do spawn a kid, we’re going to be miserable.”

“Really, Shouto? Spawn?”

“It’s a good word.” It was also the word that Denki always used when describing Kanade. “None of what I’m reading makes this whole parenting deal look very good.”

“No, I’m certain it doesn’t.” She sat beside him and nudged the book open to the dog-eared page, printed with a diagram that was supposed to depict instructions for swaddling. It included more descriptions of how heinously difficult such a thing could be than helpful pictures, which Momo thought said it all. “And I’m fully aware of that.”

“Oh, have you been reading these, too?”

“No, but I wouldn’t even have broached the subject of children if I hadn’t done extensive research of my own.” Of course she wouldn’t – it was one of the many things he loved about her, that inerring tendency to head into a challenge with six contingency plans. “And I’m aware of the difficulties, but I don’t see them as a deterrent.”

“Oh, no, I’m not saying that I do, either.” He closed the book again. “I was just…making an observation.”

“Oh. Good.” Momo visibly brightened. “I agree. I certainly never saw the downsides of the job as a deterrent from hero work, so I don’t see why parenting should be any different.”

“Right.” Shouto didn’t think those two things were quite so analogous, but she seemed so pleased by the idea that he wasn’t inclined to counter her. “But…no, that’s not what I meant. I do still, um. Want to.” He cleared his throat. “Have a kid.”

Momo looked down at her lap and smiled. “Have my kid.”  

“Well, yeah, I’m not sure who else’s-”

“Oh, be quiet, Shouto. I was trying to be sentimental.”

“…oh.”

**

February 14^th

Neither Shouto nor Momo was sure why they’d left the ceiling fan on. Neither thought about it, though.

They lay on their backs, loosely slotted against one another, watching its blades turn lazily against the blank white backdrop of their ceiling. Momo had thrown back the covers and pulled the topsheet up over them for cover in the February chill a while ago, but neither remembered when.

“Anata?”

Momo hadn’t turned her head when she spoke, so Shouto didn’t, either, when he replied. “Hm?”

She bent her right arm at the elbow so its hand pointed upright and followed the motions of the ceiling fan’s blades with her finger. “Think we made a baby?”

“Uh…I don’t know.” That hadn’t been more than a distant thought in the back of his mind an hour ago – had they really lain here for an hour? – and he hadn’t given it much thought since, either.

It was Valentine’s Day, after all. They were supposed to be enjoying each other, as Momo had put it (she loved euphemisms almost as much as he loved her abashed blush when she used them), not trying. Even not-trying looked a little bit like trying nowadays, though.

“Me neither.” She finally moved, shifting to lay her head against his shoulder. “Sorry. Was that weird?”

“Not weird.” He kissed her shoulder, the only thing near enough to reach. “Why’d we leave the fan on?”

“No idea.” She sighed at another stout kiss to her shoulder. “Maybe we thought you were going to overheat.”

“Literally impossible.”

“You are hot enough.” Momo had gotten used to things like that lately. It still wasn’t her forte, this brand of humor, but it was unexpected even after a year and a half of marriage and she liked Shouto’s surprised face.

“Wow. I’m honored.”

She laughed against his chest and thought this might be a good candidate if she had to choose a night to remember as a fateful fork in their road.

**

April 11^th

It was not.

That honor would belong to the entirely ordinary night of March 1^st.

Perhaps a younger Momo would’ve planned some elaborate means of announcing her news, but now she was too tired to bother. Besides, Shouto wouldn’t ask for anything like that – heaven only knew that all it took to please her husband was a bowl of cold soba or an extra hour of sleep. He was easy that way. And though Momo never shrunk from the idea of going the extra mile for him, she’d mellowed out enough in a year and a half to know that the world wouldn’t end if she kept things simple.

Her mother had always, for some reason, been mistrustful of over-the-counter tests, which was just fine. All the easier to, at very least, maintain the element of surprise when all she had to hide was a quick visit to the doctor and some paperwork. And it was easy from there – maybe he’d suspected something when she suggested they eat at the noodle shop he’d proposed in for the first time in months, but if he did, he didn’t show it.

“So.” Momo picked at her udon, too nervous to eat it even though she knew she had no reason to be. “I, um. Learned something this morning.”

“Oh?” Shouto looked up from his soba. “About that weather villain?”

“No, not her. Something a little more, ah…personal.” She fished the document out of her bag. “Here.”

He scanned it and then squinted. “You had lab work done? Why?”

“Shouto.” She shook her head fondly. “Did you even read it?”

“Well, yeah. Don’t know what it…” he trailed off. “…oh.”

“I…went to the doctor,” she said, feeling a little shy. “Just to be sure.”

Shouto looked back down at the paper, then up at her, then down, then up.

“You’re pregnant?”

She laughed shakily. “Looks like it.”

(He upset his soba, diving across the table to kiss her, and couldn’t even be bothered to order a second bowl.

It was perhaps the sweetest thing he’d ever done.)

Chapter Text

May 4th
Eight Weeks

“You okay?”

“I don’t think you’d be holding my hair back right now if I was, Shouto.”

That was an excellent point. He knelt beside Momo to rub her back with his cooler hand, hoping the cold would be soothing. She always felt too warm nowadays. “I’m sorry,” he said lamely, because there was nothing else to be said.

This, those fear-inspiring parenting manuals had gotten right.

“I feel like someone’s putting my stomach through a washing machine,” she informed him, leaning on his arm for support as she stood. The hand that wasn’t clutching Shouto’s arm drifted, as it often did, to her stomach; it still didn’t look like much, but she’d still been touching it a lot lately. “As usual.”

Shouto winced and turned the faucet to fill the glass she kept by the sink to clear out the taste of morning sickness. “Anything I can do?”

“I don’t think so, but thank you.” She took the cup, and it seemed like she could breathe again once she’d washed up. “This isn’t going away anytime soon, so I think I’m just going to have to learn how to push through it. No use in coddling me.”

Shouto wanted to protest, but she was probably right, so he bit back his reply. “Are you sure?”

“Comes with the territory.” She managed a weary smile but still leaned heavily on Shouto’s arm for support. “What can we do, right?”

“Well, yes, but-”

“I can work from home if I ever don’t feel like I can make it through a day at the office.” That was supposed to reassure Shouto, but she could read on his face that the idea of her feeling so sick that she couldn’t go in to work made him worry even more. “Just in case.”

“You’re that sick?” Momo had never mentioned feeling as sick at work as she did at home, though he realized he probably should’ve concluded on his own that she might. “Does this kind of thing happen at work, too? Why haven’t you ever called out?”

“Can’t. Even with me out of the field, there’s way too much to be done.” Momo tried to smile reassuringly. “I guess Kendo’s taken my absence from patrol as an excuse to load me up with all the paperwork she doesn’t want to do, so you can just imagine.”

Shouto’s brow creased with concern. They reached their unmade bed and Momo all but collapsed against the pillows, her face pinched. “She shouldn’t be doing that. Didn’t the doctor say that you’re not supposed to be put under undue stress?”

“Shouto,” she laughed, though she looked like she was in pain. “Darling. I’m not going to die if I have to write up some extra case reports.”

“But it’s not good for you!” Shouto had half a mind to call up his wife’s partner and clear this up at the source. “You’re supposed to be taking it easy, remember?”

“Yeah, but audits are only stressful when you’re running up against a deadline.” Momo reached out her arms – cuddle, she silently demanded, as she was apt to lately. “And I never run up against my deadlines.”

“Well, that is true.” Momo might’ve been just about the only pro who didn’t procrastinate her case write-ups for all she was worth. It wasn’t any wonder that Kendo, with whom she co-owned her hero agency, had taken this opportunity to look to her for help on the paperwork end of things. “Still…”

“I’m okay, really.” This time, she managed a smile that barely seemed forced. “Can’t just hole up here for nine months, right?”

“Well…”

“Besides, I’d be miserable. I have to be doing something useful.” That, he knew. “So…paperwork it is.”

“Well, all right, but…” Shouto wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to exhort her to do, only that there was something. “Be careful?”

“Careful of what? I’m not going to detonate.”

“Working too hard,” he supplied. “People trying to send you out on patrol-”

“Everyone knows not to do that, though.”

“But not why.” Shouto leaned on his elbow and his anxious eyes met hers. “Kendo obviously does, but who knows-”

“What, do you not trust the two of us not to send me out because some sidekick got sick and missed their shift or something? Really, Shouto.” He was almost amusingly overprotective sometimes. “Besides, they have to know by now. There aren’t that many other reasons I’d be in perfect health and completely out of the field.”

“Well, okay, but…” he trailed off. “Never mind.”

“Any particular reason you’re, ah, feeling so…protective today?” Momo asked. “Is it that book I saw you reading earlier?”

“No,” he said, obviously lying.

“Shouto.” She gave him her best schoolmarm look. “What did it say?”

“Nothing…nothing important. Just…worst-case scenarios.” He’d begun to blink rapidly, the way he always did when he was especially nervous. “It’s fine, Momo. Really. I’m just working myself up for no reason.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Momo was quickly learning to make good use of that phrase. Shouto, in his eagerness to ensure that he wouldn’t repeat his parents’ mistakes, had amassed an impressive collection of pregnancy and parenting manuals, some of them…decidedly less reputable than others, but all of them treated with exactly as much seriousness as a heart attack. She’d frequently found herself having to allay some of his less-likely worries lately, which had no doubt mostly originated in the pages of those books.

“It’s…it’s nothing, really.” Shouto sat up now, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap. After a moment’s pause, his hands began to toy with the fabric of his worn sweatpants. “I don’t want to make you worry over nothing.”

“But you’re worried.” Though she still felt a little sick to her stomach, Momo forced herself to sit up across from Shouto so she could meet his eyes. She took his hands in her own to give them something to do besides fidget with his clothes – that always seemed to calm him. “Would it help if you talked about it?”

He studied her for a few seconds. His rapid blinking had slowed, but his eyes were still too bright with anxiety, and his hands were too warm and too cold in hers; he didn’t seem to know whether he wanted to speak or not until he did.

“It’s about your quirk,” he finally confessed.

“My…quirk.” Momo would be lying if she said that she hadn’t thought about it, but it had been a thought she’d tried to shove to the back of her mind as much as she could. “What about it?”

“Apparently body fat-related quirks are a risk factor for all kinds of problems and I wasn’t going to mention it, because I figured you already knew and I didn’t want to make you worry even more, but…but your quirk…”

“I know they are,” she said softly. “I…I do. That was…one of the reasons I decided to stop working in the field so early. I’m not using my quirk. I’ve…I’ve done everything I could, Shouto.”

“I know you have.”

“Anything beyond that, I…I can’t control.” It almost hurt to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry, but…worrying isn’t going to change that. I just…I just can’t mitigate the risk of something going wrong just because I have this quirk.”

“And I know that, and I shouldn’t be making you think about this more, but…” Shouto felt awful for making her worry like this and she could tell but wouldn’t say anything. “What if, right?”

“What if.”

“This is terrifying.”

“Says the one of us whose body isn’t incubating a human being for whom it bears full responsibility,” Momo said under her breath.

“N-no, I don’t mean that this is anywhere near comparable to what you’re going through, it’s just-”

“Scary. I know.” She didn’t blame him. “I didn’t mean to say that you didn’t have the right to be afraid. Of course you do.”

“I…thank you, Momo.”

“But it’s not going to help us to be freaking out, right?” Momo tried to keep her face from falling. “Best to focus on making sure everything that is within our control goes right. And…enjoying things, right? Because this is a good thing.”

“This is a good thing,” he repeated.

“One day at a time.” Momo had been telling herself that all too often lately. “Take it on good faith, right?”

“One day at a time,” he repeated, unsure if he could muster anything else. “Take it on good faith.”

**

May 18^th

Ten Weeks

Momo looked like she might faint. That was always a risk with the way she couldn’t keep anything down nowadays, but it seemed especially heightened now, and the doctor shot her a sympathetic look.

“I’ll…get you some literature on multiple births,” she said, ducking out of the room to give her patient a moment. It wasn’t particularly appreciated, though, as all Shouto and Momo seemed to be able to do was blink at each other in utter bewilderment.

“Twins,” Shouto said flatly.

“Twins,” Momo repeated, dazed.

“How…?”

“Well.” Momo’s hand drifted to her stomach, barely now starting to show, and for a moment she looked down at it as if she weren’t quite sure what it was. “In some cases, a single zygote-”

“No, not…not that.” Shouto stared at the small swell of her abdomen with as much confusion as she did. “We…twins don’t run in your family, do they?”

“Of course not.” That, at least, got her to smile. “Figures that would be your first question, mister secret-love-child.”

“But still…” Shouto’s voice was faint with shock. “Twins?”

“Looks like it.”

The smallest of smiles fought its way onto his face. “Twins.”

“You keep saying that-”

“Yeah, because I can’t really believe it.” He was smiling in earnest now. “Two of them?”

“Pretty efficient of me, getting two for the price of one.” She patted her stomach through her shirt, a loose one she’d taken to wearing so that those who they hadn’t yet told wouldn’t see that she’d started to show. “Good job, us, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Shouto said, dazed again.

“Twins,” she heard him mutter again, and this time she couldn’t help but laugh.

**

May 20^th

Ten Weeks

“Shouto, I…I don’t know what to say.”

“If I’m being honest, I don’t either.” Shouto glanced up at his mother for barely a few seconds before he looked back down at his fidgeting hands. “Sorry I don’t…don’t have something better to say.”

“Don’t be, Shouto. This sort of thing is…overwhelming, I know.”

“We’re, um…we’re having twins.”

Rei’s eyebrows lifted. “Twins?”

Shouto nodded and wiped his sweaty palms on the knees of his jeans. “As in, um. Two of them.”

“Yes, dear, I know what twins are.” She patted his shoulder, chuckling fondly. “That’s wonderful.”

“It’s terrifying.” He didn’t quite want to meet Rei’s eyes. “One baby was terrifying. Two babies is…more…terrifying.”

“I can imagine that it is, but I don’t think they could be in more capable hands.”

Mothers, Shouto couldn’t help but think. How is it that they always know what I’m thinking?

(It made him smile, a little, to know that he’d unconsciously started including Momo in thoughts like those.)

“Of course. Momo is…handling this a lot better than I am, honestly, which is kind of embarrassing because it’s not like I’m the one carrying them.” He had to stop and let out a sigh before his breath caught in his lungs and stayed there until they burst. “But.”

“Well, isn’t it better to be anxious and know that you care than to not feel anything at all?”

Shouto wasn’t sure if that was the advice he’d give a panicking father-to-be, but he supposed it made sense in his mother’s eyes. That was something he’d tried to keep in mind – how reassured she’d feel, knowing his wife would be well attended-to the way he was beginning to think she probably hadn’t been. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m personally thrilled.” She smiled into her teacup. “Seeing as this brings my grandbaby count up to four instead of three.”

“Oh, um, me too.” He was excited, no matter how hard that was to express in his worry. “I…don’t want you to get the idea that I’m not. I am, and…and I’m going to do everything I can for her and them but…there’s only so much I can do.” That, of course, was the rub. “I hate that.”

She looked at him, trying to find something in his face and smiling when she succeeded. “You’ve come a long way, Shouto.”

“What?”

He failed to see the relevance.

“You’ve grown a lot since you barged in here telling me you were getting married,” she said fondly. “I can’t help but notice. And earlier, before Momo stepped out – don’t think I didn’t notice that.”

“Didn’t notice…?”

“Well, your comfort level with each other is quite a bit higher than it was, wouldn’t you say?” She nudged his arm. “I knew that you loved her, but it’s good to see you acting like it.”

“Of course I love her. What kind of-”

“Now, now, Shouto, I never suggested otherwise.”

“Oh. Um. Well.” He cleared his throat. “I should hope that wouldn’t be in question anymore.”

“I just said that it’s not.”

“Because I do love her.”

“I am well aware, Shouto.”

“She’s the best thing that’s ever-”

“Sweetheart. I know.”

“I can’t do very much, but-”

A knock at the door cut him off before Rei could.

“Shouto?” Momo called through the crack in the doorway that they’d left behind in Shouto’s negligence to close it. “May I come in?”

He hadn’t asked for one, but he knew she had left to give him a moment alone with his mother; evidently she was ready for that moment to be over. “Yeah, of course.”

“Oh! Come in,” Rei agreed, gesturing for Momo to sit beside her. “Your husband was just in the middle of waxing poetic about you.”

“Mom!”

**

May 27^th

Eleven Weeks

“I feel like everyone’s staring at me. Is everyone staring at me?”

“Probably not, but people suck.”

“I mean, even though I don’t have much of a bump yet, it’s been drawing eyes.”

“They do tend to do that.”

“I had this Shiketsu student who’s interning with Kendo ask me if she could touch it yesterday. Is that normal?” Momo had a feeling it wasn’t, but it seemed like a good question to ask. “Is everyone going to start doing that?”

“Yup.” Kyouka sighed heavily into the phone. “And that’s only going to get worse as it gets bigger.”

“Oh, how lovely.”

“Tell me about it.” Kyouka paused. “Wait, what’d you tell that girl who asked to touch it?”

“No, of course. I don’t even know her name yet.”

“Then why would she-”

“I don’t know, Kyouka! People are weird!”

“This is true.”

“Kendo gave her one of those lectures she used to give Monoma, though. So at least I doubt she’ll try that again.”

“As she should, honestly. It’s bad enough without all the stupid questions.”

“Unsolicited advice,” Momo sighed. “The parenting experts just bleed out of the woodwork, don’t they?”

“Is it tacky that I always wished those stupid fainting spells I used to have would happen in the middle of those conversations just so I could make people like that feel a little guilty for getting in my face?”

“I think my own thoughts on the matter are even less charitable, so I’m going to go with no.” She almost smiled. “I’ve started taking Shouto where I know I might run into those sorts of…characters. Apparently he scares people.”

“Shouto?” Kyouka almost laughed. “People are seriously scared of him?”

“…you realize that he is the number-five hero, right?”

“But he’s so awkward!”

“Well, yes.” She’d always thought it was one of his most endearing qualities. “But he’s very tall and very recognizable. And besides, he…tends to come across as…stoic.”

“But his cheek chub-”

“Doesn’t change the fact that no one wants to lecture me about breastfeeding when I’m hanging on his arm.” She couldn’t help but laugh at that observation, though – he truly was the only person she knew whose cheeks seemed so chubby from some angles and so chiseled from others. He was just so adorable sometimes, so devastatingly handsome at others, and that full, crooked smile he seemed to save just for her managed to be both at once. And right now – who knew why – that made her feel so overwhelmed that she could cry. “I…”

“Momo?”

“Sorry.” She shook herself, trying to bite back the lump in her throat. That she had no idea where it had come from suddenly seemed like the least of her worries. “I…I’m sorry, I just…”

“You good?”

“Um…yes, I’m all right,” Momo stammered, but the feeling wasn’t going away and she felt the curious urge to cry. “I’m fine! I promise-”

“Are you crying?” Kyouka’s gentle voice on the other end of the line only made it harder not to give in to the temptation to burst into tears.

“N-no?”

“Momo, you forget that I did this, too.”

“Not yet,” Momo corrected herself. “Maybe?”

“This is normal, Momo. Completely normal.” Kyouka laughed softly. “Did I ever tell you that Denki brought home a Pikachu onesie, like, two days after I told him I was pregnant and I cried for an hour?”

“You…didn’t.” Momo still felt like crying, but that made her smile, at least.

“Same with the time I broke a glass.”

“I cried because I knocked over the wastebasket last week,” Momo admitted.

“I used to start crying because food tasted good. That…happened way too many times.”

“I started sobbing when that stupid intern asked to touch my stomach,” Momo offered, laughing even as tears stubbornly insisted on falling.

“I would’ve punched her.”

“You can’t go around hitting children, Kyouka-”

“…metaphorically.”

“Kyouka!”

“You get the point.” She paused to try to figure out whether Momo was still crying. “Do you…need to talk about it?”

No, she thought, her cheeks red. “Sure,” said her traitorous mouth.

“Is something wrong, or-”

“Shouto is just so handsome,” she blurted out. “He just is! And I…I…when he looks at me…”

“Oh.” Kyouka sounded like she was trying not to laugh. “I’m…glad you’re all right.”

“He only smiles like that at me,” she said, so lost in her own thoughts that she almost forgot she was talking to another person. “And he just needs to come home from work already!”

Momo had no idea where that had come from, but now that she’d said it, she decided that it was true.

“Oh.” Kyouka really sounded as if she was trying not to laugh now. “I see.”

“You see what?” Momo’s face felt feverishly hot and she had a feeling her voice was going to crack. “I just…I just miss him!”

“Of course.”

“I do,” Momo insisted.

“No one is saying you don’t, Momo. Except maybe you.”

**

May 27^th

Eleven Weeks

“I’m not moving.”

Shouto’s cool hand made a few lazy passes across Momo’s shoulders – she was always hot these days – and he smiled. “No one’s asking you to.”

“I have too many feelings,” she informed him.

He’d figured as much when she’d all but thrown herself at him when he’d come home from work, but it was nice to know for certain. That meant he’d probably need to do more than let her lie in his arms like she was doing now. “Oh?”

“I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“I know you won’t believe me, but you’re definitely not.” He bent to kiss her forehead. “This was in all of the books. Mood swings-”

“Books don’t do it justice,” she grumbled. “Kyouka told me you had chubby cheeks today and I started sobbing.”

“Among other things, clearly.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Wow. You never tell me to shut up.”  

“Anyways. I went on this very embarrassing rant about how pretty you were.” She cleared her throat. “And how much I wanted you to get home from work, so I’m absolutely positive that Kyouka knew exactly how I felt-”

“You should’ve just called me, Momo.”

“I can’t just – that’s not…that’s not something I can just do because I’m feeling…feeling a little flustered,” Momo protested, blood rushing to her cheeks. “You were on patrol!”

That was true and an excellent argument.

“Okay, maybe not while I’m on patrol, but if I’m just doing paperwork-”

“Paperwork is very important, Shouto.”

“Momo is more important.”

“Yeah, if there’s an emergency,” Momo muttered under her breath.

“Sounds like an emergency to me.”

“Hardly.”

“Next time, just drop by the office.”

“S-Shouto!”

She sometimes wished he weren’t quite so aware of how she felt about offices. She reached up and poked his cheek in retaliation.

“But are you all right now?”

“Well, obviously. You came home from work.” She propped up her chin on his chest and blinked innocently up at him. “That got my hormones to shut up, so I’m fine now.”

“Okay then,” he muttered, slinging an arm across her back. “Can’t say I understand how that works, but I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“’s okay. I don’t know how it works either.” This was something no research or preparation could make sense of – it had to be experienced, the way her mood dropped and picked up and gained and lost speed like an runaway rollercoaster car – and she hadn’t yet learned to predict the fluctuations of her hormones. There didn’t seem to be any point in trying, though – not here, resting so comfortably in Shouto’s arms to the soft accompaniment of the television in the background. She shifted to see if she could catch the score of the baseball game they’d left on in their disinterest but caught a commercial instead.

She’d seen this particular car advertisement several times. It was shamelessly schmaltzy, following a bright-eyed little girl and her adoring parents from birth to college graduation, and the last time she’d seen it she’d cried for twenty minutes.

“No,” she muttered, grabbing a pillow to cover her face. “Don’t wanna cry again.”

“…Momo?”

She groaned beneath her pillow. Stupid hormones. “Tell me when the car commercial ends, okay?”

“Um…all right.”

**

June 4^th

Twelve Weeks

“Hey, have you seen my stapler?”

Momo raised her eyebrows. “Your stapler? No, I don’t think so.”

“Huh.” Kendo glanced around Momo’s desk – messier than usual today – as if she expected to find it there, but she didn’t. “One of the interns must’ve taken it.”

“What do you need a stapler for?” Momo couldn’t recall ever having used one around the agency.

“Release forms. Anyways, sorry about that-”

“Wait, no, I’ve got it.” Momo hadn’t had reason to make a stapler since high school, but it wasn’t a difficult formula to remember. “Apologies in advance if the staples are a little wonky. It’s been a while.”

“Hm?”

“Well, you lost your stapler, right?”

**

June 4^th

Twelve Weeks

Momo sat stock-still at the edge of the bed, eyes fixed blankly on the wall, unmoving, and she didn’t turn her head when Shouto called her name.

“Momo,” he tried again, his pulse quickening. “Did something happen?”

No response – he crossed the room to her, set his hands on her shoulders. “Momo-”

“I made a stapler.” She finally looked up but her gaze was no less dead than it had been when she’d been staring straight through a concrete wall. “At work today. I made a stapler.”

He blinked a couple of times, taken-aback. “A stapler?”

“Shouto,” she said shakily, “I made a stapler.”

“A…stapler…oh.”

Both of her hands rested against her abdomen now. “I can’t use my quirk,” she went on, absent and palefaced. “I used my quirk.”

“But the babies-”

“How would I know, Shouto?” Momo’s expression hardened. “I…I don’t but I…I could’ve…”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” It looked like it hurt her to admit it. “But…but I had one job and I…I…wasn’t thinking, and I might’ve…I might’ve…”

“But we don’t know that.” He felt like he might start shaking at any moment but he had to make sure she was attended to before he could. “We don’t know that, Momo. All of this is just guesswork. It could be fine – it could be completely fine, and you…you…”

“Shouto,” she cut him off, barely louder than a whisper, “what if…what if I…”

He took her hands. “You feel fine, though, right?”

“That’s not-”

“And we don’t know if your quirk…affects…that.”

“But it could!”

“You didn’t ruin anything, Momo.” His heart was racing and he felt like the greatest liar in human history for the false hope that might be giving her, but he had to believe it – had to know, as his shaky hands smoothed back her hair, that nothing had happened. “You’re okay. The babies are okay, I’m sure of it.”

“But how could you-”

“I just…don’t you think we would know if they weren’t?”

“No,” Momo whimpered, “no, we wouldn’t, and you have to stop giving me f-false hope, okay?”

There was little he could do for that but hold her while she cried.

**

June 8^th

Twelve Weeks

“If you’d like to clear things up, there are a couple of tests we can order in a few weeks, but there aren’t any problems we could see without one.” The doctor handed Momo an ultrasound printout and a sheaf of paperwork she’d doubtless spend hours poring over later. “So I think that, at very least, we can rule out the worst case-scenario.”

She could’ve collapsed with relief, even though she knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. “That’s…very good to hear. But I still want to take whatever tests I can just for the sake of…” she trailed off mid-sentence even though she knew exactly what she wanted to say. “…thoroughness.”

“Of course,” Shouto agreed, adding nothing, but she appreciated his support.

But neither of them even seemed to hear their own words. One hurdle cleared – for now, that would be enough.  

Chapter Text

July 15^th

Seventeen Weeks

“My poor husband must be getting so sick of me.” Momo tried to laugh, but it was hard to miss the way she winced. “He can’t even get two steps past the doorway before I latch onto him most days.”

“Huh. I kinda wanted to punch Denki most of the time,” Kyouka said, swirling the contents of her glass of wine (Momo tried not to envy her) absentmindedly. “Guess everyone reacts differently?”

“I was talking to Ochako a few days ago and she basically said the same thing that you did, so I guess so.” Ochako wasn’t in attendance tonight – apparently she’d been put on bed rest at thirty-two weeks, a decision she was less than thrilled with – but she’d had no shortage of advice to give beforehand. “Honestly, I kind of hate it, though. I’m just…so clingy, and of course I love Shouto but it’s a lot, and I can’t imagine that he doesn’t find it at least a little bit annoying.”

“He…doesn’t look annoyed, though.” Mina, who’d been lurking on the margins of their conversation but quiet out of lack of relevant experience, glanced over her shoulder. “He’s staring at you like he’s waiting for you to return from the war or something.”

“Hm?” Momo turned to see what Mina was talking about and her cheeks flushed.

That was an embarrassingly accurate assessment.

She’d been trying to keep her distance more than she usually would at this class gathering to give her husband a break from her near-constant clinging, but apparently he’d been watching her from across the room this whole time. His expression was a little mopey even in a circle of his closest friends – does he think I’m deliberately ignoring him? – and it lifted when he noticed Momo looking at him. Hi, he mouthed, lifting his hand to wave, and Momo had to bite her lip to keep back a very undignified noise.

He was so very, very sweet, and hard as she tried, she couldn’t really blame herself for thinking of him a little too often.

“See?” Mina said. “Definitely not annoyed.”

“You people are gonna make me sick,” Kyouka said, though she was smiling.

Momo gave her a look. “Oh, shush. I’ve only had hm for a year and a half-”

“So you really are still in the honeymoon phase, aren’t you,” Mina commented. “I can tell.”

“Yeah…never thought about that, really. Pregnancy and the honeymoon phase usually don’t mix, so…” Kyouka shrugged. “I guess this is what happens.”

“But can you blame me?” Momo glanced back over at Shouto (whose face brightened when he noticed her staring again), then back at Kyouka, with an impish grin. “I mean, look at him-”

“No one’s blaming you, honey.” Mina looked far too smug.

“I mean, ew, but same,” Kyouka agreed.

“He has reading glasses now,” Momo told them. “Do you have any idea how good Shouto looks in glasses?”

“Like I said. Ew.” Kyouka was only ribbing, but she earned herself a glare from Momo anyways.

“And he’s so nice to me, Kyou. Do you know what he did last week?” she set her hands on her hips, suddenly rather determined to make a convincing case for her husband’s all-surpassing merits. “He told me that he might as well carry me everywhere if I was going to cling to him this much, and I was in one of my moods so I told him that suited me just fine. And do you know what he did?”

“He carried you everywhere, I’m sure,” Kyouka said drily.

Momo nodded resolutely. “For the rest of the night!”

“Stop,” Mina crooned, pressing a hand over her mouth. “That is so sweet-”

“Right?” Momo’s face lit up. “I’ve been unbearable lately and he’s just so sweet to me and…and…” she felt her lip begin to wobble. “I just love him so much,” she finished, trying not to let herself burst into tears again. There truly was nothing quite so embarrassing as knowing she was embarrassing herself without knowing how to stop. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”

“No, no, honey, it’s okay,” Mina insisted, laying her hand on Momo’s shoulder. “If anything, it’s adorable that-”

“I wouldn’t,” Kyouka warned. “Take it from someone who’s been there when I say that you never know what’s going to set her off.”

“Oh.” Mina pulled back her hand, chastened. “Sorry, Yaomomo.”

“No, it’s okay.” Momo felt a little bit further from tears, at least, so it must’ve helped. “Don’t mind me. I’m just kind of a mess right now.”

“As expected. Don’t beat yourself up,” Kyouka told her. “And honestly, do you really think Shouto minds all of this? I mean, he’s like, obsessed with you. He’s probably thrilled.”

“But I’m such an inconvenience-”

“You’re growing life, Momo.”

“Yes, but I’m a mess and I’m ridiculously needy and I need help with things that I never even would’ve thought twice about before and I…” she trailed off again. She’d been doing that more often lately. “I’ve started having this…tunnel vision. Where all I can think about is him and the twins and everything else is just…there, and I should be focusing, because it’s not like the rest of my life is on hold, but I can’t, and…he probably knows that.”

“And?”

“Well, I’ve never let myself get distracted like this.”

“Do you really have a choice, though?” Mina cut in. “It doesn’t really sound like you have any control over it.”

Momo’s shoulders slumped. “Well, no,” she admitted. “I just…feel like I should.”

“Should what?”

Momo yelped in surprise at an unexpected touch, but she relaxed quickly once she felt a squeeze at her right shoulder. That was always Shouto’s cue when he approached her from behind. “Oh. Um. Hi.” 

“Hi.” He rested his chin atop her head. “You were saying?”

“N-nothing, Shouto,” she stammered. “We’re…we’re all good. What are you doing here? Last I saw you were…what was it? Mediating an argument?”

“Sero and Denki wanted me to tell them whether water was wet,” he told her.

“Did you?”

“Of course not. I was just there to make sure they didn’t kill each other.” She’d taken to resting her hands on her stomach and he took them both in his. “But I was waiting for them to be done the whole time.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I like you better.”

Kyouka gave them both one of her didn’t-I-tell-you? looks. “See? Nothing to worry about,” she said smugly.

“What would there be to worry about?” Shouto asked.

“Oh. Um…” Momo smiled to herself. “Nothing.”

**

July 20^th

Eighteen Weeks

Click.

“Oh, hi, Momo.” Shouto didn’t look up from his reading or turn to the door when he heard it open, though he wanted to. “You’re early.”

He’d normally greet her at the door, but it was always best to give her the option of space; That was a concession he’d reluctantly learned to make after Fuyumi had warned him that clinginess one moment wouldn’t necessarily carry over to the next. Apparently, it was best to operate with the assumption that she’d probably expect him to know which she wanted without saying so, however unreasonable that might be. So he didn’t get up when he heard her come in unless she asked for a kiss, which she often did anyways.

This time, though, she was quiet, and by the time he’d turned around, she stood beside the couch, clutching the strap of her briefcase in both hands. She looked a little nervous, with downcast eyes and cheeks redder than he’d seen them in ages as she chewed on her lip.

That got Shouto’s attention.

“Momo?” he asked again, dog-earing his page and setting the book aside. “Are you okay?”

She glanced up at him and even biting her lip couldn’t hold back a sheepish smile once she did. “I’m.” She swallowed. “Yes. I’m fine, Shouto.”

“Hm?” Shouto didn’t know what to make of her behavior – she seemed shy, which she rarely was anymore, and maybe a little nervous, but if anything bad had happened she wouldn’t be smiling. She cast her eyes back down and he took that as his cue to get up and go to her. “You’re, um. You’re acting a little strange.”

She didn’t look up, but she didn’t snap at him, either, which was a relief – perhaps he shouldn’t have pointed that out. “I’m pregnant, Shouto. When am I ever not acting strange?”

They were inches apart now, but he didn’t reach out to touch her, which she privately regretted. “I’m going to guess that nothing is wrong, since you’re smiling, but you seem really nervous, which makes me wonder if you found out we’re actually having triplets or something else like that-”

“No! Goodness, no.” Momo looked back up at him and – oh.

Her eyes were dark and heavy with a want that he recognized well – one she’d evidently been trying to hide.

“Not that,” she said with a strained giggle. “Just twins. And no, nothing’s wrong, it’s just…I…I feel a little out-of-sorts.”

He blinked at her, utterly confused for a moment before the pieces clicked into place.

“It’s the glasses, isn’t it,” he realized.

She had waxed poetic about his reading glasses for a week straight after he’d gotten them. The optometrist had informed him that he was farsighted and recommended them so as not to cause his vision to deteriorate further; that was apparently not their only benefit.

Momo couldn’t hide her smile now, though she ducked her head sheepishly. “It’s the glasses,” she admitted. “There’s…something about you in glasses, and…hormones, y’know, and it doesn’t really take much to make me feel, ah…a little more enthusiastic than usual, and I’m sorry if it’s creepy but I was just sort of watching you when I came in, and have I mentioned that you look very good today?”

“Um…I…thanks?” Shouto tugged at the hem of the v-necked undershirt he’d thrown on in an uninspired moment of laziness, unsure whether to feel flattered or self-conscious. “You…look good…too?”

That, at least, was true. Momo had resolutely refused to let pregnancy fatigue keep her from putting the same effort into the things that she valued – into her work, into her friendships, into her marriage – that she always had, and apparently that meant looking polished, too. He had no idea how when she’d spent months throwing up, but that was Momo – professional to the end. Today she’d worn a plum office dress he’d never seen before. And though she seemed to despair of the changes in her figure now that her quirk wasn’t burning fat, there was something about the dimples in her elbows and the softness in her lean, toned thighs that he’d never admit affected him as much as his glasses (of all the things) did Momo. “Seriously. You do,” he added, in case she was unconvinced.

“Thanks, Shouto.” She glanced down shyly again. “But, um. Really, I’m all right. Just being a little weird again. It’ll pass.” Probably. “Who knows, though, right?”

Shouto watched her for a moment – she was still keeping her face down, which probably meant she wanted to hide her eyes. “Momo,” he started, “you were giving me I-want-you eyes earlier.”

She sighed and some tension seemed to leach out of her shoulders. One of her hands began to rub circles against her belly, a nervous habit she’d picked up recently. “I was trying not to.”

He sat back down in order to cue her to do the same – too much time on her feet wasn’t ideal – and she took a seat a ways down so she wouldn’t give the appearance of desperation. Why?, Shouto wanted to ask, but he was pretty sure that would get him a look of betrayal at best and a night on the couch at worst. “Because…?”

“It’s…it’s just a lot, that’s all.” She seemed determined as ever not to look at him. “When we first told people, everyone said I was going to be angry or impatient or so sick I couldn’t move, but…no one ever said I’d be this clingy.”

“You’re not really being that clingy.”

She shot him a look that let him know exactly how convinced she was. “I texted you that I missed you in the middle of the workday for absolutely no reason.”

“Yeah, and?” That had made his day. “Why is that a problem?”

“You have a job, Shouto. I have a job. I can’t afford to be getting distracted, or distracting you. And when we’re actually together – you can’t tell me it’s not at least a little bit annoying that I hang onto you like a human backpack.”

“A human backpack?”

“Well, I might as well. I made you carry me, for goodness’ sake! Who does that?”

“I offered, though.” None of this made a solitary ounce of sense to Shouto, but he wasn’t about to say that. “Because I wanted to.”

“To carry me? But I’m so heavy-”

“You still feel tiny, though.” She’d gained weight, naturally, but she’d always been small, and she still didn’t feel like she weighed much in his arms. He smiled to himself. “And what’s all that working out good for if I can’t pick you up?”

“You’re just saying that,” she grumbled.

Okay, so that didn’t work. “Are you grumpy because I’m saying the wrong things or because you feel like you’re irritating me?” Shouto paused. “Or because you were trying to ask me for something and I didn’t get it?”

“None? All of them? I don’t know.” Momo crossed her arms. “What I’m trying to say is that I should be able to control myself well enough not to think about you every second, or drape myself all over you, or give you…what was it you said?” – she averted her eyes again – “I-want-you eyes every time I see you in glasses. Glasses. Am I really so obsessive as to be aroused by glasses? And it’s not as if you’d have any reason to…to…”

He wasn’t going to take a second more of this.

“To what, Momo?” Shouto moved in close enough to take her hand. “Any reason to what?”

“Well…want me. Like I want you.” She sniffled; he hadn’t realized she’d started to cry. “I’m…not exactly at my best.”

This had been another of Fuyumi’s cardinal rules: don’t try to talk her out of things, even if they’re obviously not true. Listen to her, and figure out why she feels that way. So he would try, even if all he wanted to do was blurt out how utterly preposterous he found the idea of his ever finding her affection a burden. “When you say you’re not at your best,” he said. “What do you mean by that?”

Her eyes widened in surprised. “What, no ‘you’re beautiful no matter what’?”

Should I have? “I’m trying to understand. That’s all. Of course, I do think that, but I also know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t believe me, so…I just want to know what you think.”

“Oh.” Momo seemed taken-aback by that answer. “Um…well. My figure isn’t what it used to be, and…and emotionally, I’m all over the place. I might cling to you at five and kick you out of the bed at ten and neither of us would even know why, and I cry over everything, and I can’t do anything for myself, and it’s embarrassing how reliant I am on you. I mean…I’ve never really been incapable of doing anything I needed to do, right? And now I just feel so incompetent-”

“You’re definitely not incompetent. Would you say you were incompetent if you broke your leg and couldn’t do field work for a while?” Shouto didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course not. But that wouldn’t mean you lost your ability to do that work. Just that you couldn’t for a while. And you’re never not going to be the smartest person I’ve ever met. And I know it sucks to have to ask me to do things you want to do yourself” – he’d always hated that when he was injured, and that was the only analogy he could draw, even if it was a poor one – “but that’s my job.”

“Being a hero is your job,” she grumbled, “not running errands that an elementary-aged child could do because your wife can’t move properly.”

“Taking care of my family is my job, too,” he pointed out.

“Like that’s better? So now you’re working two jobs, and that’s three jobs if you count putting up with me clinging to you at home-”

“Okay, can I please be honest without getting yelled at?”

“I don’t yell,” Momo said testily, even though she did. It wasn’t often, but she tended to swing between extremes of affection and snappiness. “Go ahead.”

“I…Momo, I’m not sure how you missed this, but I’m crazy about you.” He tried to initiate eye contact several times before he finally got it. “Why would it annoy me that you felt the same way? I mean, usually I’m the clingy one. The role-reversal is nice. And you’re also, you know.” He gave her an up-down once-over that she had to know could only mean one thing. “Very attractive. And I know you’re gonna say I’m just saying that, but I’m not. I mean…” he thinks that should go without saying, the way they’ve been lately. “…well, I made it kinda obvious.

“Shouto.” Momo looked down again, and this time he could see the flush in her face. “You can’t just say things like that if you don’t want me to jump you.”

“I don’t want you to jump me?” he tilted his head for effect. “That’s news to me. Can I get a source on that? Sounds pretty unreliable.”

“Sh-Shouto-”

“What am I going to do with you?” He pulled her in closer and, in spite of her reservations, she settled in his lap without any further prompting. From that improved angle, Shouto pressed a quick kiss to her forehead, then cupped her chin to tilt it upwards. “First you think it irritates me when you want to cuddle when I love it, then you go and insist that you’re notthe hottest woman alive? Tch. We have to do something about that, Momo.”

She tried to frown but couldn’t, and her hand against his chest gave her away. “What happened to ‘trying to understand?’”

“I think I do understand.” Shouto brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “Hormones suck. I need to appreciate you more.” He paused, just long enough to kiss her, and he knew from the whine she let out when he pulled away that he’d guessed correctly. “Much more.”

“Hormones do suck,” she agreed.

“Yeah. But they’re also wrong, ‘kay?” he said gently. “I love you, Momo. I love being with you. I love that you love me.Nothing’s going to change that, especially not this.” He probably didn’t need to clarify, but he placed his hand on her stomach just to be sure she got the point. “Okay?”

She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned in, though her stomach wouldn’t let her settle against Shouto’s shoulder as comfortably as she’d have liked. “Okay.”

**

[7:26 P.M.]

Hey Fuyumi?

[8:04 P.M.]

Sorry, was putting Hinami to bed

What’s up?

[8:05 P.M.]

NP

Just wanted to tell you that I tried your tip

It works.

You’re a lifesaver

[8:06 P.M.]

Glad it helped

Which one, though?

[8:07 P.M.]

Listening

[8:08 P.M.]

…Shouto

That was literally all of my tips

**

August 3^rd

Nineteen Weeks

“I need lobster.”

Shouto knew better by now than to try to argue that no, she did not need lobster at eleven at night. (Only Momo would crave lobster.) “Any idea where to find it at this hour?”

“Actually, yes.” She turned her phone out to face him. “This seafood restaurant is open until midnight on Saturdays.”

“Well, okay, but we might not get there in time. Also, aren’t you supposed to avoid shellfish?”

“No, I checked. Lobster’s fine.”

“All right, then. I’ll head out-”

“I’m going with you this time.”

“Hm?” Shouto had already been grabbing a shirt when she spoke, so he turned back to face her. “Why? Aren’t you tired?”

“I’m always sending you out for weird food in the middle of the night. I might as well get it myself this time.” She wasn’t exactly ready to go out, wearing only his oversized Chargebolt shirt (he couldn’t put his finger on why exactly he wasn’t too fond of that being the shirt she chose to steal), but she seemed like she’d made up her mind. “Give me five minutes to get dressed.”

**

This was probably a bad idea. Momo was supposed to rest as much as she could, and stay off her feet, and it certainly wasn’t the safest hour of the night, but she’d wanted to come along so badly – he wasn’t about to make her feel like he thought her incapable of a train ride and a short walk.

Besides, she seemed happy, for some reason. Maybe she hadn’t been out enough lately, or she just liked the excuse to walk side-by-side with his hand at the small of her back and hers around his waist. They hadn’t done that much lately, or really at all, as busy as they’d been in the time since they’d realized that they both wanted to. Either way, he found himself glad she’d come along.

Even though the hostess took one look at the nuisances who’d placed an online order for lobster thermidor forty minutes before closing and scrunched her nose like she’d smelled something unpleasant.

(It was admittedly not their finest moment.)

“Shouto?” Momo asked a few moments later, swinging a plastic takeout bag from her free hand as they walked.

“Mmhm?”

“Thanks for doing this with me.”

“Oh, uh…of course.” He leaned down to peck the crown of her head. “Any time.”

“No, Shouto.” Her voice sounded oddly strained. “Thank you for doing this with me.”

“Hm?”

“It…oh, never mind.”

“No, no, tell me. What’d you mean by that?”

“I’ve kind of felt like I’ve been living in a bubble for a while, that’s all. You know, work and come home, and that’s about it. So…this is kind of exciting. And I missed things like this.”

“Going out, you mean?”

“Going out with you. Yeah. We never really got to date, you know? So I like going places together. Still feels new to me.”

“That’s not why you needed lobster, is it?”

She swatted his arm. “Of course it’s not why I needed lobster, Shouto. I’m trying to be sincere. Ugh. Haven’t you ever heard of cravings?”

“Yes, of course-”

“Sorry. That was very rude.”

“Not really.” He tucked her under his arm. “And I wouldn’t have minded if it was.”

**

August 10^th

Twenty Weeks

“It’s just a routine checkup, right?” Momo’s foot bounced impatiently against the linoleum of the waiting room. “This doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong. I think? I mean, the doctor clearly wants to tell us something that the sonographer didn’t if we’re getting called in here, but…that doesn’t have to be bad, does it?”

“I don’t know.” Shouto couldn’t tell her that he’d felt his stomach sink as soon as the sonographer had requested a follow-up appointment with a doctor after a routine ultrasound – everything he’d read had indicated that being sent home without such a request was ideal. And the technician had already told them they were having a boy and a girl, so it couldn’t possibly be that. “But I’m sure we’ll find out in-”

“Mrs. Todoroki?”

“-a few minutes.” They both stood to follow the nurse who’d stepped into the waiting room, and he gave her hand a gentle squeeze even though he needed reassurance as badly as she did. “It’s going to be okay, Momo. I’m sure it is.”

He was not sure it was. He was probably a terrible person, giving her false hope like that, but he had no idea at all what else to say to her.

Judging by her ashen tint of her complexion by the time she took a seat in the doctor’s office, it hadn’t been the right call.

“Dr. Fujimura,” Momo began, standing as soon as she entered the room. “Is something wrong?”

She’s thinking about that stapler, Shouto knew. She’d been thinking about the stapler and her one and only mistake since they’d been sent to this appointment, and if something had gone wrong, she might never forget about it.

“Well, would you like the good news first?”

First. That one little word felt like a brick wall to the face.

“Oh, um. All right.” Momo’s expression shifted from apprehension to barely-contained panic in seconds. “And that is?”

“Both babies are right on target, size-wise, and neither of them have any external abnormalities.”

“But-”

“You requested an echocardiogram, correct?”

Momo nodded. “We did, yes. We weren’t particularly worried about heart problems, but…did it pick up anything unusual?”

The doctor looked back up at her and held her gaze for a moment, regretful.

“Unfortunately, yes, it did.”

Chapter Text

August 11^th

20 Weeks

“We should name them.”

The tracks of tears hadn’t even dried on Momo’s cheeks, but her expression was so blank she might as well have been an automaton switched off for the night. Shouto said nothing in reply – he didn’t seem to be able to muster words anymore. Funny, how a twenty-minute appointment had cleaved his life so neatly into a before where answers came easily and an after where even the most mundane of statements seemed too difficult to make.

“The babies,” she repeated. “We should name them.”

I’m so sorry, Mrs. Todoroki.

“Oh. Yes.” Shouto, only half-listening, had known what she meant, but only then did it hit him that her words had warranted a response. “Do you have any ideas?”

It looks from the scans as if one baby’s pulmonary valve isn’t developing properly.

“I want to name the boy.” Her voice had always expressed what her face didn’t; now it sounded flatter than his.

The boy, I mean. Your son.

“Oh.” Shouto’s breath snagged on a lump in his throat and it took a second to free itself. “Oh. All right.”

We caught this early, so we have more time to figure out the best treatment plan. That definitely improves the prognosis-

“You can name the girl if you want,” she said. “I don’t care.”

It’s no consolation, I know, but I thought you’d like to know that your daughter seems completely fine.

They’d discussed this – each would name one baby – but he hadn’t, even now, expected this kind of apathy. “Are you sure?”

He’ll need medication to maintain fetal circulatory conditions until he’s old enough to have surgery-

“I’m sure,” she said flatly.

At least one open-heart surgery, possibly more-

“Okay.” Shouto felt too numb to say anything else. “If you want.”

He’ll need to be monitored for the rest of his life-

“Kenichi,” Momo said after a moment’s pause.

Long-term complications include-

They’d discussed names, but they’d never come to any conclusions, so Shouto hadn’t been expecting her to reach a conclusion so soon. “Why Kenichi?”

Again, Mrs. Todoroki, I can’t tell you how sorry I am to have to say this.

“It fits,” she said. Clearly, she didn’t mean to offer any further explanation, so he didn’t ask.

**

Meaning can vary based on the kanji used. Popular meanings include “wise, one,” “polish, one,” “humble, one,” “build, one,” and “healthy, one.”

Shouto hadn’t asked which spelling Momo meant to use for their son’s name. He didn’t have to.

Healthy one. Of course she would.

Of course she would. And it made him angry, somehow, though he’d never say it, though he’d rather die than let her know he’d even thought it. Healthy one – a fool’s hope, surely. Shouto would’ve been afraid even to consider the matter of names for their son if Momo hadn’t brought it up. It felt like a curse – like jinxing themselves, however irrational – and he couldn’t say so.

“I need you to be strong for me,” she’d told him when he’d sat shellshocked in the driver’s seat of their car for nearly an hour after the appointment. And it was unfair and it was selfish but so was this, and he knew that she blamed herself, so he could not deny her. Never mind that Kenichi – apparently – was his son, too, and that he wanted to break down in tears and she didn’t want to let him.

So he couldn’t bring it up.

He couldn’t tell her that he didn’t want to name their (healthy, and therefore ignored) daughter without her, no matter how little she cared.

He couldn’t tell her that this wasn’t about a stapler and his maternal aunt had a heart condition and it all had nothing to do with her and assigning blame wouldn’t solve anything.

He couldn’t tell her that strength was too much to ask of him right now.

He couldn’t tell her that she wasn’t the only one mourning.

He couldn’t tell her that her denial hurt, in the name she’d chosen and in her refusal to see that Shouto couldn’t hold it together for her sake when he, too, might lose the baby he’d come to want so badly.

He couldn’t.

“Asumi,” he told her later that day. “Her name is Asumi.”

That name meant nothing relevant: “beautiful day,” and an homage to a family whose firstborn daughters were always named with the same final kanji. He thought it was pretty and appropriately cheerful and it wouldn’t saddle their daughter with the burden of a meaning she couldn’t possibly live up to. I’ll call her Asumin, he thought, because he had already decided that he would shower her with affection whether she wanted it or not and because he had never been given a pet name like that and wished he had.

“Okay,” Momo said weakly.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s fine.”

**

August 17^th

Twenty-One Weeks

No one can know.

Those had been Momo’s first words when they’d received their son’s diagnosis, and perhaps they were cowardly ones, but she’d followed them anyways. So had Shouto, probably; she knew it wasn’t fair to ask that of him but she felt like she was drowning. Fairness was the last of her worries. It shouldn’t have been like that, but Momo felt too broken to be good, and the thought terrified her in its inevitability. But she couldn’t go on like this, silent beneath the guilt of knowing that her only slip-up in five months might end her baby’s life. And she didn’t know who else to tell.

“Come by any time,” Rei had told her when she’d called to ask if they could talk, and though she hated making plans with so few absolutes, Momo gratefully took her up on the offer.

She seemed to know what her daughter-in-law’s tear-stained face and slumped shoulders meant before she said a word, and ushered Momo inside with a look that tried not to be pitying.

“Momo,” she said once they’d reached a quieter, more comfortable inner room of the house, “is everything all right?”

They both knew it wasn’t. Momo didn’t want to muster up the words; she wrapped her arms around her belly, shoulders miserably rounded, and shook her head.

“One of the babies…” she took in a long, shaky breath and wondered what exactly what she was doing here. “One of, um. One of the babies…”

Why am I here? Why am I telling her this?

(Because she knows, Momo would answer, if she were being honest. Because she knows what it’s like not to be able to look at your son and see anything but what you did to him.)

“One of the babies has a heart problem,” she finally managed to finish. “It’s…it’s called p-pulmonary atresia and it’s really serious and it’s” – Momo pinched the bridge of her nose in a vain effort to keep herself from crying – “it’s…it’s because of something that I did.”

Rei’s eyes widened in sympathy, but before she could say anything, Momo went on. “Shouto said you had…someone in your family with it. An aunt, I think. But…but I know it was me.”

“Yes, my younger sister.” That, in large part, had been why she’d had to marry – Enji had offered a fortune for her hand and Kimi’s medical bills never stopped coming. Her condition hadn’t been incredibly serious, but the costs had piled up anyways. “I…I’m so sorry, Momo. I don’t know what-”

“How did you live with it?”

Momo hadn’t paused for even a second to think before she’d blurted that out, and as soon as she realized what she’d said, she pressed her hand to her mouth in shock. “Never mind,” she stammered. “I’m so sorry, don’t-”

“My sister’s illness?”

That hadn’t been what Momo had meant, but she wasn’t going to correct Rei now. Best to let her think that relatively inoffensive question had been the one she meant to ask.

“I suppose we just…got used to it.” Rei winced. “That sounds awful, but it happens. It never becomes any less horrible, but…it’s a fact of life. You do what you have to do to make sure she’s cared-for and you don’t think about it when you don’t have to.” She studied Momo’s face. “That’s not what you meant to ask, was it.”

“Never mind.” Momo leaned down to rest her forehead against her palm so Rei wouldn’t see her face. “It’s…it was nothing. Forgive me. I’ve been…having a hard time reacting appropriately to things lately.”

“I’m certain no one expects you to, Momo.” Rei reached across the table to press her hand just as Shouto usually did when he thought it would reassure her. “Now, what did you actually want to ask me?”

“It’s fine. Really. I crossed a line-”

“Oh.” Rei nodded in understanding. “You meant to ask how…how I lived with knowing that I hurt my son.”

I am the worst person alive.

Who asks that?

You should’ve-

Momo raised her face, hot with shame, but couldn’t bring herself to meet Rei’s eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she said quickly. “That was horribly inappropriate-”

“Momo. You are not responsible for this.” If Momo had looked up, she would’ve seen an unfamiliar steeliness in Rei’s face. “For any of it. Whatever you think you did to your son-”

“I used my quirk and using fat-based quirks can lead to birth defects and I knew that but I still slipped up and-”

“You didn’t, Momo. I told you. My sister had a heart condition, too.”

“But,” Momo protested, “quirk use is a major risk factor-”

“But not the only one.” She looked at her inscrutably. “That’s why you came to me and not anyone else, isn’t it? You thought what I did to Shouto was like your son’s…”

“Pulmonary atresia.”

“Pulmonary atresia. It isn’t.”

“He might die because of me.”

Rei didn’t say anything – probably, given the way her face paled, because she had nothing helpful to add.

“I’m sorry, Momo,” she finally said.

“I am, too.”

**

August 23^rd

Twenty-Four Weeks

That Shouto had been out-of-sorts lately was impossible to miss. Even with solo field work keeping him out of the office and by himself more often than not, it took all Izuku had not to ask what had happened to prompt his partner’s above-average reticence.

He hardly ever spoke now, save to give instructions to sidekicks and interns. Shouto had always been a man of few words, but now he was a man of almost none, and his expression – usually blank and skewing towards confused when it had anything more to it – was vaguely somber, as if he were always contemplating something weighty. Before the last handful of weeks had gotten to him, he’d come in smiling to himself every few days or so, and he’d started getting comfortable enough to share relevant anecdotes with the employees, who were always curious about the twins. But no more of that.

Shouto had mentioned that they’d learn the sex of their babies at a twenty-week ultrasound a month ago, and he hadn’t ever mentioned it again despite the dozens of employees who’d asked about it.

At first, it seemed best not to pry, but Shouto himself made sure that course of action was quickly ruled out.

He should’ve been filing a patrol report right about now – he stuck closely to his schedule, and that was his typical just-after-lunch job. He’d take his first patrol from nine to twelve, then stop somewhere along the way to pick up lunch, then block out a creepily exact twenty-minute block of time to eat it before he started his write-up. But he wasn’t at his desk today, and no one had seen him take his usual lunch break, either.

It took Izuku all of five minutes to learn that the break room door was locked, and that was all the information he needed.

**

“Todoroki?”

Shouto bowed his head against a knock at the door. That voice and that particularly incessant knocking pattern were undeniably Midoriya’s, and there was no one whose attention was worse to draw when he needed to be alone. He’d locked the door for a reason but Midoriya wouldn’t hesitate to break in. He always did.

Privacy and personal space effectively ceased to exist once Midoriya Izuku sensed that someone needed help. 

“Todoroki,” he repeated when Shouto didn’t answer. “Why are you locked in the break room?”

Still no answer. Midoriya muttered something that Shouto was almost glad he couldn’t make out, then – judging by the sound of his footsteps – turned to leave the way he’d came. That would’ve been a relief if Shouto had been any less familiar with his friend’s habits; now, it probably meant he was hunting down a spare key.

And all he’d wanted was half an hour to cry.

He rested his head in his hands and tried to wring out the last of his tears before he had to make them stop.

**

“I didn’t want to make a scene.”

Shouto didn’t look up when Izuku finally managed to get the door open. It was easy enough to figure out what that meant.

“Shouto,” he said softly, though he rarely used his partner’s first name. “What’s going on?”

“It’s fine.” Shouto looked up, albeit only briefly. “I’m fine. I just…need to be alone.”

“That’s what you always say when you need help.” Izuku sat down at his left, though he knew that Shouto would probably protest. “And you’ve been acting weird-”

“I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

“…what?”

“I can’t do this, Midoriya.” He turned his face a little to the right so Izuku wouldn’t see him scrub at his eyes, at least in theory. “I…I’m not allowed-”

“Is this something work-related?” Izuku had enough experience with ‘classified information’ to know not to let anyone in dire need of support get away with that excuse if it was given.

“No.”

“Oh.” That was decidedly more delicate. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Doesn’t matter. Momo doesn’t want me to.”

“Is…is she all right?”

“She’s fine.”

That seemed like an indicator that he wanted to say more, so Izuku tried again. “Again, do you want to talk about it?”

“Yeah.” He wiped at his eyes openly this time – that was progress, too. “I do.”

“Okay.” Izuku wanted to do something – hug him, or at least say something more substantial than ‘okay’ – but he didn’t know if that would be welcome now, so he kept it at that. “Whenever you’re ready, I guess.”

“Momo doesn’t want me to talk about it. Usually, I wouldn’t.” His voice sounded strained, like he’d been crying, but that had already been obvious. “But it’s…the reason is…it’s not fair. I don’t think it’s fair. Is it horrible that I think it isn’t fair?”

“What reason?”

Shouto looked up at Midoriya – he was already crying again, but he wasn’t trying to hide it this time – and then back down.

“One of the twins is sick,” he said, hasty as a breath released too late. “With…with this heart defect. And Momo thinks it’s her fault because she used her quirk and fat quirks can cause birth defects. And she told me I couldn’t tell anyone because she doesn’t want anyone to ‘know what she did.’ But that’s…that’s not even fair. It’s not her fault and I…I needto talk about it and it can’t be with her and…and she told me to be strong for her and I’m trying, but he’s my son too.” Shouto wiped his eyes with the shoulder of his shirt, lacking any better means of drying the tracks of tears off of his face. Dimly, he knew he was rambling, but Izuku was the last person who’d ever mind that. “And we found out a month ago. I haven’t told anyone. I…I can’t do it anymore.”

Izuku couldn’t bring himself to do anything but gape for a moment before he got up to walk to the door. He’s leaving? Shouto wondered why that thought upset him so much. But he didn’t; the lock latched again, and Izuku had barely returned to his seat before he tugged Shouto close enough to wrap him in his arms.

That he’d known to do those things in that order was enough to bring Shouto to tears again.

“Then don’t,” he said, gentle as he could manage to be when he felt as shaky in the face of bad news as he always did.

“I’m sorry,” Shouto said under his breath, no longer trying not to cry. “I didn’t mean to make a scene. I just…didn’t want to cry in front of Momo.”

“That isn’t fair, Shouto.” Izuku couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain Shouto had to be in, but he could do his best to address the predicament he could speak to. “And you’re not making a scene, okay? Weren’t you the one who was always telling me it was okay to cry? You don’t have to lock yourself in the break room to be upset about this.”

“She needs me,” he said numbly. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“She does, but you need her, too. I think.” Izuku had never been married, but that much seemed self-evident. “And you’d never ask her not to cry, would you?”

“Of course I wouldn’t.”

“Right.” Izuku sensed that Shouto was about to tense up and released him. “You…have to be able to be upset. I mean, it’s like you said. It’s your son, too.”

“Kenichi,” Shouto said. “His name’s Kenichi. Means ‘healthy one,’ apparently. She picked it. I hate it.”

“It’s…nice.”

“Sure, it’s nice, but it’s wrong. Why’s she trying to bury her head in the sand?” Shouto’s voice grew ragged. “Why is she trying to make me bury my head in the sand? Why would she ask me not to get upset in front of her, or…or not to tell anyone when I need to? Does she think it’s going to go away if we tell the world that nothing is wrong? I know she’s the one with the harder job and she blames herself but…but I can’t keep doing this and that name makes me so mad sometimes-”

“Have you told her that?”

“Of course I haven’t! What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey, the name you picked because it made you feel better feels like an insult’?”

“Well, he’s your son, too-”

“If it were up to me, he wouldn’t even have a name yet. How am I supposed to tell her that?” Shouto was breathing harder than he should’ve been, his face flushed, and he suddenly felt in dire need of water. “That naming a baby who might not even survive is just setting us both up for even worse heartbreak? And then she goes and tells me to name our daughter-”

“You’re having a girl?”

“A boy and a girl, yeah. Anyway.” Though Shouto was annoyed at the seemingly-irrelevant interjection, it gave him a much-needed moment to cool down. “She told me to name our daughter because she ‘doesn’t care.’”

“I’m…positive she doesn’t really mean that.” It would be nothing like Momo to say something so callous, let alone about her own daughter. “You…you know that, right?”

“No, actually, I don’t. For the way she acts, we might as well only be having one baby.” Shouto took in a shaky breath, resting his head in his hands. “I…I was so sure that we’d never make my parents’ mistakes, and…and love both of them equally, but she doesn’t. I know it sounds crazy but she just doesn’t. I try to bring up Asumi-”

“Your daughter, right?”

“Yeah. That’s the name I picked. Asumi.” Asumin, his brain already corrected him, though he’d never once said it aloud. If Momo was going to ignore her second child, he would make sure no father had ever loved his daughter more – he was sure of that, sure that he already did. “I mention her, and Momo just goes glassy-eyed. I mean, I get that Kenichi is the priority, but…it’s like she doesn’t even care that she has two kids.” Shouto looked up at Izuku and tried not to sound as panicked as he felt. “It’s…it’s terrifying.”

“Which part?”

“Both.” He paused to catch his breath. “That Kenichi is sick and that she doesn’t seem to care about Asumi.”

“I…I don’t really know what to say, Shouto.”

“That’s fine. I just needed to get it off my chest, honestly.”

“Of course.” Izuku didn’t think Shouto would react well to another hug but he reached over to squeeze his shoulder. “I’m…thank you for telling me. For talking about it at all, really.”

“Can you not tell anyone?”

“’Course not.”

“Thanks.”

Izuku knew that was his cue to leave, but it hurt no less to leave Shouto like this, slumped-over in a break room chair and utterly unconsoled.

There was nothing he could do, though – not the way things stood now.

**

September 23^rd

Twenty-Six Weeks

“It’s our anniversary, Shouto.”

“I know.” He sat down on the opposite side of the bed, his back turned to her. “I…I didn’t want to bother you about it.”

That bad? I’ve let things get that bad?

“I’m sorry, Shouto.” Momo tucked her legs up under her. “I…I’ve been awful to you lately.”

“No, you haven’t,” he said, but they both knew he didn’t mean it. “You’re going through a lot.”

“So are you,” she said weakly. “I’m sorry. I’ve…asked too much of you, and…and I tried to force you not to talk about it when you probably needed to, and…and you need support too. And I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.” He pulled off his socks, then his shirt, and fell back against the covers. “But I don’t blame you for that.”

“How could you possibly not?”

“I did, at first.” He hadn’t been honest with her in what felt like forever, and he might as well start now. “But I guess I knew deep down that you didn’t mean it. After a while, at least.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“The only thing that really still bothers me has nothing to do with that.”

“You might as well tell me,” Momo replied. “I don’t want to keep being like this.”

“You act like you only care about Kenichi.” There was no point in sugarcoating that. “Everything else got a little bit better, but that didn’t. You might as well have forgotten that you’re having twins. And…loving one of them more than the other…I can’t be fine with that.”

I’m not going to let our new family turn out like my old one.

“I…I do care,” she said robotically, too stunned for any real emotion. “I’m not…I’m not going to favor Kenichi. He just needs more attention right now.”

“They said that his condition doesn’t start to affect him until birth, remember?” Shouto pointed out. “So…no, he doesn’t. He will. But right now…why do you think so little about our daughter that you didn’t even care what I named her?”

“You didn’t care what I named Kenichi.”

“Because you wanted to name him, and yes, I did care.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

Shouto sat up, finally turning to face her. “Because you’re hurting, Momo,” he said, his voice starting to crack, “and because that was the last thing that mattered, and I wasn’t going to be another problem you had to deal with.”

“Shouto-”

“Didn’t you tell me to be strong for you?” He closed his eyes. “Do you have any idea how hard I tried to do that? I wasn’t going to let it fall apart over a name.”

“You should have said something.”

“You’re pregnant and mourning and I’d have to be completely heartless to do that, Momo.” Nice word choice. “Sorry. That…that was a bad thing to say.”

“I really have been unfair to you, haven’t I.”

Shouto said nothing.

“You…you’ve never even cried in front of me, have you.”

Again, he was silent.

“And I’m sorry that I made it seem like I didn’t love them both. I do. I’m just…not all there right now.”

“Sorry. That was unfair of me.”

“But…I liked the name you picked. If that’s any consolation.” She inhaled shakily. “Is it because-”

“All of the firstborn girls in my family have that kanji.” Shouto nodded. “Fuyumi, then Hinami…so, Asumi.”

“It’s pretty.”

“It is.”

“Some anniversary this is,” Momo said tearily. “My fault, I know. Still.”

“Sorry. I didn’t think you’d want to celebrate.”

“I don’t, but…but I miss you. And being able to think about things that aren’t Kenichi.”

“I do too,” Shouto said wearily. “But after all of this, I don’t know if I even can.”

“I get that.”

“I honestly just want to lose it sometimes,” he admitted. “But if…if I could just cry and know it wasn’t going to hurt you, Momo…that would be enough.”

**

He needed me to be strong for him, too.

“I’m here, Shouto,” she murmured, chin buried in the crook of his neck as he shuddered in her arms. He didn’t make a sound, but sobs wracked his entire body and all she could do was smooth her hand down the curve of his rounded spine. It wasn’t enough and she hated that, but she could do little else. “You can let it out, okay?”

There was no point in saying what was already obvious, but she couldn’t go without saying something.

He needed me to be strong for him, too, and I never even gave it a second thought.

“Can we make a deal, Shouto?” Momo asked, on the verge of tears herself.

“Hm?”

“From here on out,” she told him, her hand stilling at the small of his back, “can we agree that we do this together?”

She knew when his chin fell against her shoulder and his arms wound a vise-like grip around her waist that he’d been waiting for her to ask.

Chapter Text

October 10^th

Thirty Weeks

“I know, I know. I’m up now, I promise.” Momo smiled, and reached out her hand to cover the spot where she’d felt the impact of a tiny fist (or had it been a foot?) a moment earlier. “Morning, darlings. Restless, aren’t you?”

“Are they?” Shouto poked his head through the doorway, still holding the empty mug he’d been planning to fill with her tea.

“I don’t think they like me very much,” she said, though she was smiling and obviously didn’t mean it. “Or else they want out. Think they’re protesting in there?”

“No, probably just fidgety like their mom.” Hard as Momo tried to keep still, she’d still always been one to fidget when she was nervous or excited – it was an oddly apt comparison. “Can I feel?”

“Shouto, of course you can.” She shook her head fondly. “You don’t have to ask, darling.”

So she’s in a good mood today. That was good to know. They’d had time to adjust to their new reality now, and though they both had off-days, they hadn’t yet returned to the sobering coldness of the days following Kenichi’s diagnosis; that was good, Shouto thought. And sometimes, like now, Momo was as cheerful as she’d ever been – perhaps that had something to do with her having been relieved from office duty at thirty weeks, but he didn’t really care what had caused it so long as Momo was all right again. “Just wanted to check,” he said, sitting at the edge of the bed beside her and barely remembering to set the empty mug down on the nightstand.

He reached out his hands, tilting his head at her questioningly.

Momo closed her hand over his and pressed them both to her stomach, lifting her shirt – one of his, as was her custom lately – for closer contact. “You’re okay, Shouto. Really.”

“Okay.” His hand relaxed beneath hers, though he didn’t feel anything but her warm, stiffened skin. Still, he smiled. “Think I could train them to kick on command?”

Momo’s answering laugh came out closer to a huff. “You’re ridiculous, darling.”

“What? I want to talk to them!” He looked back up at her with an exaggeratedly wounded pout. It was nice, being able to make her laugh sometimes. “And I wanna know – oh, hi! Felt that one – who’s who.”

“You can’t, though.” She released his hand, now comfortably splayed against the side of her bump, so she could stroke the spot opposite his hand where the other baby seemed to have migrated. “But they like it when we talk to them, at very least.”

“But how do we know which we’re talking to? It seems so insulting.” It was hard to tell, now, whether or not Shouto was serious. “What if I’ve been calling them by the wrong names this whole time? That would just be embarrassing. Imagine being mistaken for your sibling who’s not even the same gender as you. By your own father.”

“…we’ve never seen them, Shouto.”

“But! But they’re ours! We should know these things. We should. Isn’t there some kind of parent intuition thing?”

“Um…last I checked, I don’t have a psychic bond with them, no.” Momo ruffled her husband’s hair. “You’re adorable, you know that?”

“I’m being serious, Momo. I don’t want them to meet me and be, like, ‘who’s this total stranger?’ Because I’m not.” He placed one hand on either side of her stomach and bent his head to face it. “You know me, don’t you? You recognize me. You have to, right? I mean, I made you. You gotta know that. How could you not?”

“Sweetheart,” Momo laughed gently, brushing his hair out of his face. “There’s no need for the existential crisis. They’ll know you when they meet you.”

“But I’m impatient, Momo.” He looked back up at her with that doe-eyed expression that always made her laugh before she lifted his face to kiss his forehead. “I want them to know me now.”

“Well, I’ve heard they do recognize touch. So on that front – sweetheart, what are you doing?”

“Telepathy,” he said. Apparently that was supposed to explain his decision to press his forehead to the top of her belly. “They recognize touch, right? So. Brain waves.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” She couldn’t help but reach down to stroke his hair, though.

He ignored her soundly. “Asumin,” he said, mock-firmly. “Asumin, do you read me?”

“I’d actually sort of like to see if this works.”

“Of course it’ll work. I’m her dad.” He smoothed a hand over her stomach to check for movement and grinned when a tiny fist collided with his palm. “See? She can kick on cue!”

“What if that was Kenichi?”

“It wasn’t.” Shouto seemed rather confident of this. “That was Asumin. I know my Asumin. That was her.”

She humored him. “And how can you tell them apart?”

“Telepathy,” he said, apparently dead-serious, before he burst out laughing and laid his head back down against her abdomen to catch his breath.

**

October 10^th

Thirty-One Weeks

Low days now tended to be rock-bottom. And there was no faster way to guarantee one than to schedule a checkup.

They never really learned anything new, since Kenichi’s heart condition wouldn’t affect him until he was born. It all went a little bit over Shouto’s head but from what he gathered, that was the tipping point because then, the circulatory structures that allowed normal fetal hearts to keep functioning would no longer be normal. Something about a gap between ventricles that usually closed at birth – he couldn’t really remember the minute details, but he did know that it meant no change in Kenichi’s condition right now. And Asumi was, as always, just fine. It wasn’t new revelations that made those appointments so brutal, but the reminder of what they’d already been told.

They’d been discussing options at this one – medicines, surgeries, check-ins with a cardiologist. Those things all assumed that Kenichi would survive his critical first weeks of life, of course; no one wanted to say it outright, but that was no guarantee. And it was all Shouto could ever think about when they left the doctor’s.

There was protocol to follow at times like these, frequent as they were now.

He’d turn off of the freeway or onto a quiet street. “I’m going to pull over,” he’d tell Momo – he drove, always – so she’d know. And he’d nudge the car to the side of the road and park and turn the key and when he was done with all of that, he’d rest his forehead against the steering wheel.

She knew he was crying, but Shouto’s grief had always been the quiet kind, so he still hid his face. He didn’t make a sound and he didn’t want to be seen any more than was strictly necessary – not out of lack of trust, but because he hated the thought of his visible pain hurting those who saw it. Momo knew that, and wished he hadn’t worried when this kind of pain was one so inextricably shared that it couldn’t possibly make her own worse. She’d always reach across the center console and take his right hand. It would be a little too cool, and in trying to warm it, she’d distract herself, because rare was the day when she didn’t leave an appointment wanting to cry just as badly as he did. 

She knew before he said so that they were going to be doing the same today.

“I think I need to stop,” he said this time, and the subtle change in wording wasn’t lost on Momo.

“Okay.”

He turned off onto an empty sidestreet in an unfamiliar neighborhood. “How are you holding up?”

“Not so great.” Momo had leaned her head against the window, though it wasn’t comfortable, and her uneven breaths fogged the cold glass as she inhaled and exhaled shakily.

“Me neither.” Shouto glanced over at Momo and took the smallest relief in knowing that, at very least, she wasn’t trying to hold back anymore. “Is…is it okay if we stay here for a while?”

He always asked that question, too. Better to cry at the side of the road than to crash.

“Yeah,” Momo said numbly, and he leaned down and folded his arms on the dashboard and stopped trying not to cry.

**

Neither would remember later how or when they’d arrived at home or when they’d curled up in bed, miserable, clinging tightly to one another. They could’ve used the backseat and avoided the risk, but it was cramped – Shouto needed more legroom than it afforded and Momo had not been on good terms with tight squeezes lately.

It wasn’t usually worth the risk of driving before his head was clear, but they had needed to hold each other.

It could’ve been hours that they stayed that way, though it was probably closer to twenty minutes. Momo kept her face tucked away in the crook of his neck against prying eyes that weren’t there, and Shouto buried his in her hair; they wrapped their arms around each other, and neither knew nor cared where one’s tears ended and the other’s began. It was all they could do against the helplessness they felt, and besides, they’d learned that it was better to hold on tightly than to let these moments tear them apart.

“I’m scared, Shouto,” Momo admitted, once words seemed called-for.

“So am I.”

She swallowed hard. “I don’t want to lose him.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “We’ll do our best.”

It wasn’t a comfort to hear, but it was all he could give her – ‘I don’t, either’ wouldn’t be of any use, nor would ‘of course you won’t’ when he could make no such promise. And they were doing all they could. But still he felt like he had to say something more.

“I hope they look like you.”

What?

“…sorry. First thing that popped into my head.”

“It’s okay.” He felt Momo’s shoulder shift against his. “Can I say something that’s going to sound pretty pointless?”

“Of course.”

“Back when we thought it was only one baby” – she stopped to rub her belly, trying not to burst into tears all over again when a foot connected with her hand – “I hoped it would be a boy.”

“You did?”

“Because I wanted a little Shouto,” she admitted. “Silly, right?”

“Momo…”

“I…I suppose that’s kind of selfish, projecting all of that onto a baby.” She dabbed at her eyes. “But…I kept picturing you as a baby, and then when you were a little older, just…you, but smaller and…still you. You know. All awkward and sweet and confused, and then…a little older, and all that but gentle and patient and I…I wanted that. I wanted the world to have more of the sort of people that I love. Is that terrible of me?”

“You never told me,” he said, trying not to let it show that her words had hit him like cold water to the face. He combed his fingers through Momo’s hair in an attempt to distract himself but it didn’t work.

“Because it seemed so wrong of me to want my child to come out a certain way,” she said. “Of course I’d love any child we had, but…I wanted one like you. Maybe I just wanted a little Todoroki to have a mother who’d never hurt him.” Momo was hardly thinking about what she was saying anymore. “And then I got one, and what’s the first thing that I do?”

“Momo-”

“I hurt him,” she stammered. “Shouto, I hurt him.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did!”

“Momo. You didn’t.” Shouto didn’t bother trying not to sound choked-up. “And you wanna know something?”

“Not really.”

“When he gets here,” he started, “he’s not for a second going to think that.”

“Maybe not at first-”

“He’s not going to think that you hurt him.” Shouto paused to collect himself. “If…if he makes it.”

“The fact that there even is an ‘if’-”

“All he’s ever going to know is that his mother loves him.” There was too much to unpack to do anything but wrap her up in his arms now. “And you don’t have to try to undo my childhood with his. Okay?”

“I wanted to.”

He brushed her hair from her face, then let his hands linger at her temples. “Wanted to do what?”

“Ever since you told me about your scar. Second year, I think.” She sighed, her eyes fluttering closed. “I just remember thinking that I wished there was something I could do to undo what had happened to you, and…I knew there wasn’t. I did. But I still wanted to.”

“Momo…”

“I couldn’t change the past. I knew that. But I thought…once I found out we were having a baby, well. I thought maybe if I gave you a child who was just like you and I made sure they grew up happy and I never hurt them…maybe that would…I don’t know. Would do something.”

“That’s not why you wanted kids, is it?”

“N-no! Of course not. No. I wanted us to have a family, like I said. I was telling the truth about that. I promise.” Momo’s breathing had become ragged again. “But…I wanted to give you that, too.”

“I…really don’t know what to say, Momo.”

“You probably think I’m awful,” she said sadly, “but I…I swore to myself that we’d never hurt them. That I’d never hurt them. And then I did.”

It would be useless to try to convince her that it wasn’t her fault after all of that. “I don’t think you’re awful. I wish you’d told me all of that, but I don’t think you’re awful. Not at all.”

“But I failed, Shouto. They’re not even born yet and I’ve already failed them.”

“You know what I’m going to say to that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“I never wanted to…I don’t know. Delete the past and replace it with a better one. That doesn’t work, and I don’t want to forget.” Without thinking about it, Shouto rested his palm against Momo’s stomach and rubbed his thumb in lazy circles across the fabric of her shirt. “And I don’t need a perfect future to make up for it. Really. What you’ve already given me is more than I ever thought I’d have-”

“But it’s not enough.”

“It’s ‘not enough’ because our son has a heart condition?” Shouto’s expression hardened. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s not…that’s not it at all, Shouto.”

“Because what I’m hearing is that-”

“I caused this, Shouto. I’m the reason that our baby is going to suffer his entire life, and that his life might not be very long to begin with – me. And no one and nothing else. And you are going to have to live with the knowledge that your wife did the same thing to your son that your mother-”

“Oh. So that’s what this is about.”

“It’s exactly the same,” Momo said weakly, closing her eyes in defeat at the loss of Shouto’s warmth when he sat up and leaned back against the pillows. “Except that this scar is invisible.”

It took a long moment for Shouto to speak.

“Do you remember what you told me when we were first talking about this?”

Momo sat with some difficulty, propped up against the pillow. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to, no.”

“That we wouldn’t be like my parents.”

Momo shut her eyes. “I did say that, didn’t I.”

“You did.” Shouto knew where her mind would go next. “And you’ve got it all wrong.”

“I know, Shouto. Believe me, I know.”

“No, you don’t, Momo. I’m not talking about Kenichi.” 

“Wait, what?”

“You’re…you compared Kenichi’s heart to my face.” Shouto’s breath caught in his throat at the end of the sentence and it pitched oddly upwards. “That’s not even remotely right. It’s just not. I got this scar because my father mistreated my mother for so long that she became unstable. Kenichi’s heart didn’t develop right because of genetics. Tell me again how those two things are even remotely the same.”

“It wasn’t, though. It was me.”

“Was it? Do we know that? Or do you just want to believe this was your fault so you can convince yourself that it was preventable? Because we don’t know. We never will, Momo. You’re not my mother and I’m not my father and the only way you’ve ever even slightly resembled either of them is when you forget that you have two kids.”

“That again?”

“Yeah, that again.”

“I don’t have a favorite, Shouto. I don’t know how to tell you that any more ways than I already have.”

“Okay, but you do.”

“You know, you’re making it look like you’re the one with a favorite right now,” she snapped, crossing her arms. “Asumi isn’t the reason that we’re having this conversation, so I have absolutely no idea why you think she’s relevant but she is not. She isn’t. This conversation is about you and me and Kenichi and-”

“That’s all of our conversations about the twins, though.”

Momo’s face fell, and she pressed her hand to her forehead to massage her temple with a weary sigh. “It’s not. I love Asumin.” Shouto didn’t miss the weight of her use of his chosen nickname – she must be desperate now, trying to prove herself. “I really do. And I don’t say it, but I’m…you wouldn’t believe how relieved I am that she’s okay. But right now, my brain wants to focus on the twin who’s not.”

“So when are you going to start focusing on both of them?”

“I don’t think you’re being reasonable, Shouto.”

“Well, then, neither are you.”

They fell silent, and though she knew he’d probably push it away, Momo reached for Shouto’s hand. “I know I’m out of line, and I’m sorry, but I don’t want to fight right now.”

To her relief, he took it. “I don’t either, Momo.”

She let out a breath. “I’m glad.”

“I hate arguing, but I just can’t let some things slide.”

“I shouldn’t have brought up your family.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, Momo.”

“Well, I still shouldn’t have.”

“Maybe not.” Finally, he turned back to face her. “It…hurts to hear you compare yourself to them. But it’s mostly just that I feel like I haven’t gotten through to you about Asumi.”

“I’m not going to mess this up any more than I already have, Shouto. I promise.” They shared a weighty look. “Especially not like that.”

**

November 8^th

Thirty-Four Weeks

“I wonder what you’ll be like sometimes.”

Momo expected no response, but it felt natural by now to fill these lonely hours at home with one-sided conversation. There was little else she had the energy to do these days with her stomach so swollen she could barely get out of bed, and she might as well try to get to know the babies she’d meet in a couple of weeks.

“Well, not you, Kenichi-kun. I still think you’re going to look like your papa.” She smiled at a forceful kick to the left side of her belly. “Oh? Are you telling me I’m right or telling me to stop talking nonsense? Hm. Very suspicious, sweetie. Very suspicious. Unless that was your sister…” she smiled to herself. “But you, Asumin – I wonder about you. Because I don’t feel like I know you just yet.”

Perhaps she only felt that she knew Kenichi because of the long-held desires she’d projected onto him, but they gave her something to picture. With Asumi, though – the twin of whom nothing but normalcy was expected – there was no such blueprint in Momo’s mind. Her face had taken on a thousand variations in her mind, and endless combinations of her parents’ features; she had no earthly idea who she’d resemble in looks or in temperament, and that was unexpectedly exciting.

“Yes, you’re a little bit of a wild card,” she said, stroking her stomach absentmindedly. “You could be just about anything, you know that? You could look like me, or like dad, or you could be one of those weird recessive babies who doesn’t look like anyone…and not to mention, I can’t for the life of me imagine what you’ll act like. Not like me, I hope. Mama’s been setting a pretty bad example lately.”

Understatement.

“I suppose you might want to be a hero,” she went on. “It would make sense. I have a feeling you’re going to be a daddy’s girl, so perhaps you’d inherit that dream from him. But he’d have a conniption if you were and you still decided to do that. So maybe don’t? I mean, I love my job. It’s wonderful, and I miss it, but as your mother…” Momo winced. “I’m not sure how I would take that, if I’m being entirely frank with you. Can you decide to be a doctor? That would be lovely. Just as many lives saved, just…lower-risk. Or something else. A teacher, maybe? No, I can’t see it. Something normal people do…accounting? Marine biology? I’d take anything, really. Maybe I’ll have you take piano lessons, like my parents did – that’d be lovely, if you took to it. Kyouka would probably have a field day with that, me having a musician for a daughter.” Momo smiled to herself. “You and Kanade could be friends, then, though I hope you would anyway. You’ll have friends from the start, that way – you have Kenichi and Kanade. That’s a lot for a little baby, Asumin. And maybe Ochako’s daughter, too? She’ll be a handful, that one. I think her father would lose his mind if his Nozomi was friends with a Todoroki, which honestly just makes it an even better idea. He’s not as scary as he looks now that he’s got a baby, but…it’s funny, how hard he tries to seem like he still is.”

That was an idea to which she’d become rather attached. Now that their classmates were having children, several of them had agreed that it might be prudent to raise them together as much as they could – that way, if something were to happen to one parent, their child would have the support of all the rest. And it was a built-in network of friends, one she desperately hoped her twins would come to love. As yet, it was small, but it would probably grow, and with it would come a circle of familiar faces to whom they could turn for things that required nonparental input.

“I think you’ll like them, Asumin.”

She hoped she would.

“I’m afraid I won’t always give you the lion’s share of my attention if your brother is especially sick,” she went on. “And I’m very sorry for that. I’ll do my best, but I can only hope that I’ll be able to do enough to show you that I love you just as much as I love Kenichi. But…”

How possible is that even going to be?

“That’s why I hope you meet good people, Asumin. And why I hope that you and Kenichi are going to be best friends.” She smiled sadly. “Because I’m not always going to be able to be everything that both of you need.”

**

November 22^nd

8:17 A.M.

36 Weeks

Shouto didn’t think it was entirely fair that a doctor should get to select his children’s birthday. But apparently they’d deemed it safest to schedule a c-section (something about shared placentas – he wasn’t entirely sure) and this had been, because of course it was, the most ideal day that they could fit a delivery in.

November twenty-second it was.

“You ready?”

Momo clutched her hospital bag to her chest like a nervous child on its first day of school. “No,” she admitted, shaking her head. “Not at all.”

There was little that Shouto could do but kiss her forehead, then, since he knew that words wouldn’t do any good. “Only a few more hours, right?”

“Yeah.” She mustered a wan smile for his benefit. “Almost there.”

 “You’re going to be great.”

“I’m not even doing anything, Shouto.”

“…still.”

Chapter Text

November 22^nd

11:21 A.M.

No one had said it would be like this.

No one had mentioned the way the air in the room seemed to still, or the narrowing of Shouto’s focus until the world consisted only of the weight in his arms. No one had mentioned how warm babies could feel. No one had told him that the rush of adrenaline he’d feel would be stronger than anything he’d ever felt in combat. No one had told him that babies’ eyes could follow their parents’ movements like Asumi’s did now.

“It’s you,” he said, softly so that only she would hear. “I know you.”

He didn’t, but it didn’t feel like a lie. This little face – so much like Momo’s, already – and the wide teal eyes she’d blinked open when she felt him shift her in his arms weren’t familiar yet. But he knew her.

There was so much to be thinking about now: Momo, whose recovery would take days; Kenichi in intensive care; the treatments they’d no doubt have to schedule when things settled. But it could wait – he was sure of that. Asumi might’ve been the only one not in need of assistance, but she was here, and in being so, she’d become her father’s most urgent priority.

“Hi,” he told her, letting her wrap her hand around his finger. “Hi, Asumi.”

She looked up at him with what he was certain was disgust. You patronize me, Father, he thought she’d probably be saying if she could, though her tight grip on his pinkie said otherwise. “What?” he asked. “Do you not like that?”

He probably looked a little bit pathetic, talking to an hour-old baby as if she’d respond. But he’d been talking to her since before she could listen and she was here now – he wasn’t going to stop. “You’re so pretty, Asumi,” he thought aloud. “You know that? Babies look like potatoes, but not you. You’re a pretty baby. Just like Mama.”

“I heard that, Anata.”

Shouto had to blink a few times to snap himself out of his trance at the sound of Momo’s voice. “That’s fine. No reason you shouldn’t.” He shifted the bundle of blankets in his arms so Momo could see her. “She is pretty. Looks like you.”

“She’s too little to look like anyone yet.” Still, Momo smiled at the thought. “And she has your eyes.”

“But” – he traced the outline of her face – “that nose. That’s you.”

“…how could you possibly know that?”

“I just do, okay? Let me have this one.”

**

November 23^rd

“She’ll only sleep when I’m holding her if I have her on my right side and if she’s on the left, she gets really fussy and won’t settle. Does that mean something? Is she overheating? Or does it mean she has an ice quirk? Or is it the opposite of that? Like, does she like my cold side because she has a fire quirk and she’s always hot? Or-”

“…Sir.”

“I just don’t want her to be too hot or too cold, you know? Apparently babies are really sensitive to that stuff and I don’t want to mess up. It might make her sick or something. Do you think she’s going to get sick?”

“Sir…”

“They said she was healthy and everything, but I don’t know. She’s still really fragile, right? What if she is healthy and I make her sick because I got her too hot or cold? I mean, she’s already so warm…”

“Sir.”

Shouto finally looked back up at the doctor. “Yes?”

Well. I suppose we’ll never have to worry about this one turning out like his father, the doctor thought, adjusting her glasses and trying not to sigh. As heartening as it was to see parents doting on their babies, the paranoid ones could be exhausting, to say the least. “Your daughter’s preference for your cold side probably has nothing to do with her quirk or her health.”

“…oh.” Shouto’s cheeks flushed. “Sorry. I just…” he shrugged. “I’m a first-time parent, and I’m the youngest in my family, so I don’t really know how these work.”

“And by ‘these’ you mean-”

“Babies. Sorry.”

“-your children. I see.” The doctor raised her eyebrows. “Well, I’ve never seen a parent with your, ah…particular problem, but I highly doubt that it’s going to cause any problems, so if she likes your cold side, just…hold her on your cold side. There’s no reason not to.”

She had a sinking feeling he was going to take that to heart.

**

“Dr. Eguchi said that if Asumin liked my cold side, I should just hold her there. So I guess I’m gonna do that. Weird, right? You’re supposed to keep babies warm. But apparently she likes the cold. Maybe it’s because she’s a winter baby-”

“I’ve never seen you talk so much as I have in the past few days.” Momo knew now to cut Shouto off before he could make himself spiral – he had a tendency to panic. “Is it just the nerves?”

“A little bit, but probably the excitement, too. I guess. And…I dunno. I just like talking to her. Is that weird?”

“No, not at all.” Momo pressed her fingerpad to the palm of Asumi’s hand and laughed softly when she wrapped it around her finger. “Especially not when she always looks like she’s listening.”

“It’s kind of creepy,” Shouto admitted. “She just…stares at me. Why is she staring at me so much? Does she not realize who I am? Or is keeping her eyes open all the time like that her baby fight-or-flight reflex? Fuyumi’s kids never did that with me, and neither did Kanade, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s because she’s scared of me or something. Is she scared of me?”

“Of course she isn’t. Right, Asumin?” Momo tapped her finger against the tip of Asumi’s tiny nose. “You know Papa, don’t you?”

He looked up and smiled, a little euphoric and a little desperate. “Does she?”

“Of course she does, Shouto.” Momo slipped a hand under Asumi’s head so she could hand her to Shouto – she’d learned, these past weeks, what it looked like when he needed to hold her. “Your voice, at least. Isn’t that why you’re always talking to her?”

He’d come to like holding Asumi against his shoulder and he settled her there with a featherlight kiss to the top of her head. “You think she really is listening?”

“Well, she’d better be. I’ve never seen you praise someone so effusively.” Momo’s smiles lately had been lined with worry, but this one wasn’t. “You’re very sweet with her.”

“Because she’s perfect,” he said, without a trace of sentimentality.

Momo tried not to laugh, another rarity with Kenichi in intensive care. “You say that so bluntly.”

“Well, it’s just a fact. Not like I’m saying anything particularly sappy.” He pressed his cheek to the baby’s back for a moment, then raised his face again. “I could, though. Do you think she’d like it?”

Somehow, Momo didn’t have the heart to tell Shouto that Asumi probably had no idea what he was saying.

**

December 1^st

6:00 A.M.

Momo had wanted to arrive at six sharp, though the surgery was scheduled to take place at seven-thirty, and neither told anyone but somehow – somehow – Fuyumi knew to meet them at the waiting room door.

“Your friend called me,” she told Shouto, a brief preamble before she wrapped him up in her arms. “We didn’t want you guys to be alone today.”

“But…it’s so early.” Fuyumi had probably wanted to attend to the obvious confusion on her brother’s exhausted face, but she’d only fueled it. “I mean…thank you. That’s…that’s really nice of you.”

“You came just…just to be here?” Momo’s eyes widened, and she took a few tentative steps closer. Asumi fussed in her arms and she tried to placate her with a precursory shushing sound, but got nowhere. “But it’s six-”

“And you guys need all the support you can get.” Fuyumi extended her arms and somehow, Momo knew that that meant to hand Asumi over for safekeeping. “So don’t, okay?”

“Don’t what?” Shouto asked, throwing a wary look at his sister in silent admonition to be careful.

“Try to send me back. Tell me that it’s too early and I have work and all of the other things I know you’re going to try to say to get rid of me.” She looked down at Asumi for a moment and smiled, soft and sad at the same time. “Okay?”

**

December 1^st

7:30 A.M.

Jirou was next.

“I brought more babies,” she said, taking Kanade’s tiny hand and waving it in greeting. “Good for stress relief.”

“Thank you, Kyou.” Momo gladly accepted the offering of her friend’s daughter, grateful for the distraction. Calming a fussy, willful eleven-month-old was a thousand times better than thinking about her baby on an operating table. “And thank you, Kanade. You have good timing, you know that?”

“She says ‘thank you.’” Kyouka settled into the chair beside hers. “How are you holding up?”

“Trying not to think about it,” Momo admitted.

“Neither of us slept,” Shouto added unhelpfully. He’d set Asumi against his shoulder again, and that was probably the only reason he’d managed to maintain any semblance of calm this morning. “How’d you know when to come in?”

“This was just the time slot I picked.” She glanced over at Kanade in Momo’s arms with what looked a little bit like apprehension, though she’d always been the more trusting of her parents. “Fuyumi came in first because she had to leave for school, so I took the next shift. Seemed like the best idea, since Denki had some classified thing this morning, who knows what. Anyways. I was going to be home with the baby anyway, and she’s always up at four in the morning for no reason-”

“Time slot?” Momo looked up, surprised and more than a little touched. “That…implies that a lot of organization went into these shifts you’re all taking.”

“Yeah, it did. Lots of moving parts, but everyone wanted to chip in.” Kyouka shrugged. “The shift thing was Midoriya’s idea. Not surprising, I’m sure. I think he’s in at, like, nine? Not sure. He said he was taking an early-morning patrol so he could get in on time, so sometime around then. And he might’ve been bringing Sayaka – can’t remember, really. I think Ochako said she was going to be by sometime this morning, too, and…” she started, but caught herself. Perhaps this wasn’t the time to mention that Rei had declined to join the group in fear of upsetting Momo. “…Iida offered to drop in, and I think he reached out to your parents, too? Momo’s, I mean. Not sure what happened with that. And-”

“That’s…a lot of people.”

Momo looked up when Shouto spoke and was almost relieved to find him as teary-eyed as she was.

“That’s a lot of people,” she repeated.

**

December 1^st

8:32 A.M.

“I think she’s getting tired.”

“You just want to hold her again,” Momo said, probably trying to tease him but too tired to make it seem convincing.

“Well, obviously.” He extended his arms to take back Asumi, who’d been passed around to so many fawning friends and relatives that she’d started to look as dazed as her parents did. “She needs to rest.”

“Not because of that.” Momo had found that it was always, always best to play off her near-frantic worry with a joke.

“I like holding my daughter,” he said flatly. “Is there a problem with that?”

**

December 1^st

10:11 A.M.

Shouto felt like he’d been kicked.

“What…are you doing here?”

“I was told that your son was having surgery.”

“By who?” Shouto narrowed his eyes, wishing he could will his father away from the waiting room doorway when he knew it was perfectly futile to think he could now when he’d never been able to before.

“Your friends thought I should come.”

“Oh.” There would be no use in telling Enji to leave or in picking a fight now that his nerves were so shot. His friends had all gone when a nurse had poked her head through the door to let them know that Kenichi was being moved into a post-op observation room and Momo, like Asumi, had fallen asleep; without their backing, he was too tired to win an argument. So he said nothing when his father sat beside him.

Never mind that he’d wanted to keep Enji as far from his son as he could, knowing what he’d say of a child with a weak constitution. Never mind that he understood his father a little less every time he held Asumi.

“I’m…sorry that this happened to you, Shouto.” Enji shifted restlessly in a seat he could barely fit into in the first place, disturbing the enture row of connected chairs as he did.

“Kenichi is fine,” Shouto said flatly. “They said he was stable when they moved him.”

Enji nodded curtly, though Shouto couldn’t see him in his refusal to look up. “That’s good to hear.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because you and your wife-”

Shouto reached for Momo’s arm, even though she wasn’t awake, and felt a little bit reassured once he’d wrapped his hand around her forearm for protection. “Leave Momo out of this.”

“-are…experiencing difficulties.”

“Experiencing difficulties?” Shouto had known to expect this but, somehow, still hadn’t. “Our two-week-old son could’ve just died.”

“You know that I know how that feels, Shouto.”

Perhaps he’d had similar experiences, but Shouto hardly believed that his father had ever grieved for Touya the way he and Momo had nearly every day since they’d received their son’s diagnosis. Maybe once he became relevant again – maybe – but hardly before.

What a laughable prospect.

“Maybe,” he finally said. “If you want to look at it that way.”

“And I’d like to meet my grandchildren.”

“You have,” Shouto said. One might assume that Fuyumi’s four children were plenty.

“Not these grandchildren.”

Shouto clutched Asumi to his chest in the one arm that still held her. “This is hardly the time for that.”

“Your daughter,” he said, undeterred. “You’re…protective of her.”

“Of course I am.” Shouto’s eyes flashed. “She’s my daughter.”

“That’s good to see.”

“Oh, is it, now?”

“I’m trying to be encouraging, Shouto.”

“I don’t need to be encouraged to know that I love Asumin.”

“Asumin?”

Shouto’s face felt flushed. I didn’t mean to call her that. “Asumi,” he corrected himself. “Her name is Asumi.”

“I see you’re continuing the tradition, then.”

“Something like that.”

Curious, Enji peered over his son’s shoulder at the baby in his arms. “She looks like your wife.”

“She does,” Shouto agreed, though he wished he could be contrary enough to say otherwise.

“And you…seem very attached to her.”

“She’s the best thing I have,” Shouto said, without really knowing why he’d felt the need to.

“You…gave her a…pet name.”

“A pet name?”

“Asumin?”

“Don’t call her that.”

“You did,” Enji pointed out.

“Don’t call her that,” Shouto repeated.

“Fine, then. I was only making an observation.”

“Yes, I did.” He might as well get into it if that was what his father was going to insist upon. “I…I was the one who named her, and…the nickname came about when the name itself did.”

“You chose her name alone?”

“We each named one twin.”

“And you chose to name the girl.”

“No, Momo chose to name the boy.”

“You would have chosen her anyway.” Enji glanced down at Asumi, then at Shouto, with a knowing look. “It’s obvious.”

“It’s obvious?” Shouto narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean?”

“Your son is the one in critical condition, but you’re only thinking about your daughter.”

“I’m not only thinking about either of them.” Shouto didn’t hold back this time from the dirtiest look in his arsenal. “You don’t seem to understand that worrying about Kenichi so much that we ignore the fact that Asumi needs us just as much would be…” he paused, searching for the right word. “…cruel.”

“Perhaps it would be, but it’s still unusual.”

“It’s not unusual at all,” Shouto muttered. “I’ve learned that recently. Funny how it took thirty-two years for me to realize that loving your kids is supposed to be normal.”

“And I understand why you’d have gotten the impression that it wasn’t.” Shouto would’ve seen the remorse in his father’s eyes if he’d looked up, but he didn’t. “I didn’t mean to say that you don’t love your children equally, only that you clearly prefer your daughter.”

“…is that not what loving my children unequally would be?”

“People can prefer one child without loving the others less. It’s…personality compatibility.”

“I can’t see how taking care of the kid who’s right here while the other is in surgery means that I prefer her.” This struck all too raw a chord, no matter how hard Enji tried to sound reasonable. “Momo wanted to name Kenichi, so I named Asumi. That’s it. And you want to know something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Every time I see her, I think I understand you less.”

Enji eyed his son warily. “Is that so?”

“Look how small she is.” He didn’t know why that was where he’d chosen to start, but he’d go with it. “Fragile, right? You’d call that weak. Probably look for signs that her quirk would be strong later to try to justify the time she spent being helpless. That’s probably how you felt about me. Just…wanting to get through the baby stage and skip straight to the part where you could start feeding your kids the lie that all that mattered was how strong they could be.”

“I…probably was guilty of that, yes.”

“But how?” Shouto would’ve clenched his fists if not for the gentleness with which he needed to hold Asumi. “I just…don’t get it. How you could hold a child that you made and want to do anything but love her.” He knew he should stop but didn’t want to. “I get that you’re trying to be better. I do. Sure. Credit given. But now that I’m a dad…”

“I suppose you’ve decided that there’s some things you can’t ever overlook.” He sighed heavily. “I understand that.”

“I don’t really know how to ignore the fact that you didn’t love your own children.”

“I…wouldn’t say that, Shouto.”

“You looked at your kids and saw tools.”

“I was misguided-”

“I think I love them more than I’ve ever loved anything,” Shouto interrupted. “I don’t get it. I just can’t.”

“This is the most I’ve ever heard you talk.”

Enji probably wanted to divert the subject, but Shouto was determined not to let it work. “Momo has been saying the same thing. I guess there’s a lot that I need to say.” He let out a long sigh, then paused to shift Asumi from the crook of his elbow to his shoulder; she tensed, but settled comfortably against his shoulder when she realized why she’d been stirred. “It’s…it’s been hard, I guess. And…fatherhood is a sore spot.”

“I can imagine why.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Would you do it differently if you could?”

“Of course I would.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I like to think I do.”

“If you could go back – if you could have done what a father should have, knowing I wouldn’t get as far if you did – would you?” Shouto’s hands wanted to shake, but he wouldn’t let them. It had been long enough that he’d refused to be honest with his father. “Can you honestly say that you would?”

“Well, I…”

“That’s what I thought.”

Shouto fell silent, picking at a spot of lint on Asumi’s onesie for a moment before he spoke again.

“She has your eyes, you know.”

**

December 9^th

11:23 P.M.

“Is something wrong?”

Shouto turned to look over his shoulder. “No, we’re good.”

Momo knew what that meant, and she sat up against the pillows (moving like that still made her wince, hard as she tried to hide it). “Do you need to talk about it?”

“It’s okay.” He traced the outline of Asumi’s face as he’d taken to doing when he was thinking too much. “I’m…just thinking. As usual, I guess.”

“You should get some sleep while you can.”

“Tried.”

“Is it bad tonight?”

Shouto shrugged. “Guess so.”

It was almost harder not to worry now that Kenichi was home, though the opposite should have been true. The surgery had been an easy outlet for his pent-up worries, but it had succeeded and his anxieties had shown themselves for what they were.

Nighttimes were the worst.

“I know we’re not supposed to, but I think I’d sleep a little better if she were-”

“With us?” Momo nodded. “Okay.”

“Really?”

“Well, if it helps you, I won’t say no this once.”

Chapter Text

February 4^th

They had a routine now.

It was one Momo knew not to interrupt; Shouto was usually easygoing in domestic affairs, but he’d been adamant about its importance, and she wasn’t going to protest that when he so rarely insisted on anything.

He’d return from his evening patrol – the late-night one he’d taken most of the time before the twins were born had been shunted off on an unlucky pair of sidekicks so that he could be home at a reasonable hour – and she would greet him, if she were awake and unoccupied. If she were not, she would hear him open the door and silently acknowledge his presence, or he would find her resting later. He would find the twins, always together, and nestle them both against his chest; once they were settled, he’d lie back against the pillows, set a timer and sit there, unmoving, until thirty minutes were up.

Momo had told him once that the image always made her smile not because of its sweetness, but because the babies were still so small, and the way his broad hands seemed to swallow them up made for an amusing tableau.

“They’re so light,” he’d agreed, so serious that Momo had nearly laughed again. “It feels wrong.”

They were supposed to be that way, and he knew that, but it took more getting-used-to than he’d had time for. Momo had, but she’d been with them nearly all the time; he envied that and hadn’t made a secret of it.

Perhaps that was the reason for his nightly ritual – thirty minutes, no interruptions, one twin in each arm. It was hardly the only time he held them, but it seemed to be important, and Momo knew without being told that she wasn’t supposed to be a part of it. She had all day with them, after all, until she returned to work, and he had only a few hours. And it was the least she could do, anyways.

She’d had too much time alone with her thoughts since her maternity leave began – time that not even her exhaustion could take the edge off of – and that was the conclusion that she’d reached: that she owed uninterrupted time with their children to her husband, if she could give it to him. Reasonable, by anyone’s standards. They needed him, he adored them, and it would be prudent to let them bond, unimpeded by her intrusion. But logic hardly had anything to do with the guilt that bowed her head or the real reason that she didn’t sit beside him, and touch his shoulder, and stay to watch, even when she wanted to. Logic couldn’t explain the things she’d said to him when she’d been at her lowest, nor did it tell her why he had insisted upon carrying on like nothing had happened when she was certain she’d hurt him.

And it wasn’t logic that had convinced her that she shouldn’t trouble Shouto any more than she had to for the twins’ sake.

**

Momo always seemed to make herself scarce when Shouto returned from work, and he wished he knew why.

At first, he hadn’t thought to ask. His paternity leave had been pitifully short, so when he’d returned from work, he’d thought of little else but the twins, whom he hadn’t seen all day – sometimes he’d been tempted to forego his shower until he’d had a chance to hold them, even though it probably wasn’t advisable to expose them to whatever dust and grime his costume might’ve picked up that day. He never actually did – babies’ immune systems were weak to start with and Kenichi’s was worse than most – but the need to check in on them bothered him until he did. It had been easy to chalk Momo’s absence up to her being tired or busy when he knew she was both.

But after two weeks, it had started to worry him.

Nothing had changed outright. She’d still greet him with a quick kiss when she was awake; sometimes she’d rub a spot of grease or dirt or dried blood off his face with her thumb and chide him to be more careful. He knew she was tired, but she never said so, and she always seemed happy to see him.

But she’d leave when he picked up the twins, quietly close the door, and stay away until she knew his timer was up, and after several days of this, Shouto had started to wonder if it was intentional. Four more, and he’d known it was – that was when Momo had woken from a nap, moved to the living room, and fallen asleep on the couch while she was waiting for his time with the twins to end. Nothing but Shouto had been there to stop her from getting back into bed, and he’d wished that she would’ve.

She hadn’t, though. That told him she knew exactly what she was doing when she left. What it didn’t tell him was why, when he’d said nothing to express that he wanted her to do that. He appreciated the chance to be alone with them sometimes when he often irrationally feared that their infant memories would lose all recollection of their father while he was at work, but he hadn’t requested it. Sometimes he wished she’d do the opposite, but she never did.