Chapter Text
Prologue
The only thing Shouto hated about winter was the color. Everything had a grayness about it. Cooler weather, surprisingly, was the one thing the Todoroki's and Himura's could agree on; fire sought the cooling relief as much as the ice grew stronger.
He paced through the school hallway during the last winter he'd spend inside the walls of UA High. Hands shoved deep into his pockets, he kept his eyes focused straight ahead. 'Nothing's changed.'
'That's not true.' He quickly replied. 'I've changed. We've changed - our whole class.' He paused. The air in the empty hall sat thick and heavy. A faint din clattered and hummed from the cafeteria.
'But, still. I can't help but feel like, there's something I'm still missing.' He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. 'Then again, I've always felt that way.'
He glanced to his left as he followed the bend in the corridor. Something sparkled; he stopped. Glitter-painted posters hung in triplicate - tipped at odd angles and stapled. New additions to the normally grey walls.
"Frozen Lights Festival" Scrawled in ice-blue sparkles across the top. Beneath it were the words everyone had been talking about for the past few days: "A Winter's Dream Dance". He stared at the poster; his left hand tightened into a fist.
An unconscious habit he'd only recently become aware of.
Momo's fingers slid over his left wrist. His heat dissipated at her touch. Warm, gray eyes crinkled at the corners as she offered him a small smile. "What's bothering you?"
"Huh?"
"You clench your left fist and engage your fire when you're bothered in a specific way. I'm not sure," her gaze lowered and she retracted her hand. "What the pattern is. But, it's only, uh, sometimes. When you get that look on your face."
"What look?"
"Ah, that is. You look a little lost. Sometimes."
"I, uh, I don't always," he sighed, "understand things. That seem normal to everyone else, I guess."
She leaned closer, and his heart picked up into a sprint. A strange, icy heat flashed through his skin.
"I feel a little lost sometimes, too," she spoke close to his ear. His lungs squeezed and he stumbled back a step. He stared at her.
Momo crossed one arm against her ribcage, and grasped her opposite elbow. "My parents wanted me to concentrate on my quirk development. So, I didn't have many opportunities to socialize with other kids my age. Until, until we entered UA." She shrugged and looked away.
Shouto's mouth went dry. In his third year, he'd been challenged, pushed well beyond his physical limits - time and time again. Their quirk training had been grueling, and intentionally so; the curriculum designed to ensure their psychological conditioning held up in the face of life and death situations.
He'd met many people who possessed similar dreams: to be top heroes. His classmates chased these goals, driven to achieve the same heights. But, he'd never….
"I-I know what that's like," Shouto said with a nod, "Momo."
"You planning to torch all the posters or what?"
Shouto glanced up and came face to face with his explosive sometimes-rival, sometimes-friend. "Huh?"
"Your fire." Bakugou slapped the sign Shouto had been staring at. Glitter shuddered and fell to the floor.
"Doesn't mix well with posterboard, idiot."
"Ah, yeah." Shouto gritted his teeth and mentally tamped down his flame quirk. The process always made him feel like that time he chugged the hot tea his mom had made. It burnt his tongue, seared his throat, and scorched the inside of his stomach.
"You don't have to go."
"Yeah."
The always-angry looking blond drilled a finger into Shouto's shoulder. "Or, you could stop being a dumbass and ask her."
The fire and ice hero swallowed against a burning sensation in his throat. "Who?"
"Yeah, I should have known. You'll be a dumbass for the rest of your life." Bakugou pushed away from the wall, jammed his hands in his pockets, and tromped off in the direction of the cafeteria.
"I feel a little lost sometimes, too."
Her voice, her breath. Her fingers soothing along the skin of his forearm…
A warmth spread through his chest - different than the angry flames of his quirk. He felt it when he wrote his mother letters, or had a casual dinner with his brother and sister.
And since that day…. Whenever he thought of Momo.