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Momo feels like she’s taken a page out of one of Midoriya’s many notebooks when she asks Setsuna how her quirk works.
“But…you know that already,” Setsuna replies, hair hanging dark and soft over her shoulders. They’re both sitting on Setsuna’s bed in the class B dorms, balcony door propped open for the gentle breeze, no lights hanging over them but the moon. It’s the first time Momo’s stayed the night since they first became friends in Singapore and, technically, it’s not allowed, but what Iida doesn’t know won’t kill him.
Setsuna’s pajamas feel cool against Momo’s blushing skin- offered once they realized curfew had already come and gone, neither girl having noted the passing.
“I mean,” Momo starts. Pauses. Setsuna’s attention feels heavy and important and Momo picks at her fingernails under the weight of it. “It’s just…does it hurt?” she asks. “To be split into so many parts?”
Momo doesn’t realize her own gaze has slipped to the bare inch of space between their knees until Setsuna’s hand- disembodied, floating- tilts Momo’s chin back up.
Momo exhales a quiet, shaky breath.
“You worried about me?” Setsuna asks, the question light and lilting. A tease.
Momo allows herself to fall for the bait.
“How do you breathe?” she asks, leaning forward. “I know that you can, when you’re separated, but it doesn’t make any sense. Your lungs and esophagus aren’t attached.”
Setsuna laughs softly. Like ringing bells, Momo thinks, heard from a distance over sun-glistened snow.
“Like this.”
Momo watches with rapt attention as Setsuna’s oversized sleep shirt begins to expand, right and left, each side of her chest disconnecting from her torso with a soft noise that both sets Momo on edge and makes her feel protected. With nothing but the pale moon to see by, Momo can’t help but think that Setsuna looks like an angel, wings delicately unfurling, growing larger by the moment. Momo watches the separation of Setsuna’s lungs from her body with her own breath held.
“See?” Setsuna says, still breathing, smiling softly. “There’s nothing to it.”
Each lung continues to rise and fall in sync with the other, the sides of Setsuna’s shirt stretched thin enough for Momo’s eyes to trace the outline of her breasts. The gentle curve of her expanding ribcage.
Hesitantly, Momo reaches forward, easing her unsure hands beneath the opening of Setsuna’s shirt until she’s holding each gentle curve for herself, mindful of the placement of her fingertips and hopelessly aware of the burn in her cheeks. Gooseflesh rises on her arms. Momo presses Setsuna’s lungs slowly back into place until she hears that same, soft sound of reattachment.
Even without the wings, Setsuna still looks like an angel.
Momo leaves her hands where they are for another, full breath, and when she tries to slide them away, an excuse on the tip of her tongue for her boldness, Setsuna clumsily tangles their fingers together.
“You figure it out yet?” she asks.
Momo sits there with her heart in her throat, in Setsuna’s clothes, on a bed that isn’t her own but welcomes the hardened weight of her body anyways and she doesn’t know what to say.
Setsuna reaches up to tuck Momo’s loose hair behind her ear, eyes slanting with affection.
“Come on, smart girl,” she murmurs, tugging Momo closer by the hands until she has no choice but to roll onto her knees, fingers trapped, and Momo would crawl for her, she would, but then Setsuna surges forward until their foreheads are nearly touching and Momo doesn’t have to. “Show me something true,” Setsuna whispers, just the tiniest trace of nerves slipping out on a choppy breath.
It’s a test. It's a test with a right answer sitting on the tip of her tongue and Momo’s a smart girl so she angles her head until she can press their lips together, Setsuna’s body warm wherever Momo’s hands elect to wander- neck, shoulders, cheek. Momo presses further, harder, surprised when Setsuna’s counterweight suddenly softens and then disappears entirely.
Setsuna- allowing Momo to press her against the bed.
Momo- hovering, breathless, primed to slip over an all-consuming cliff she only recently learned the name of.
(Lesbian. Love. They both start with L, anyway.)
“I figured it out,” Momo whispers, later, when soft kisses have transitioned into gently dragging her nose against the long line of Setsuna’s throat. She can’t help herself. She’s high off of the success of a test well-met.
Setsuna’s wandering hands find a home around Momo’s waist as she laughs, pressing their tired bodies together. Their mouths slot together again with a gentle noise that sounds like reattachment. Like tying the strings of their fragile boats together in a world-shaking storm. Momo can feel the rise and fall of Setsuna’s breath against her stomach and it soothes her like the sound of waves crashing against a distant shoreline.
Setsuna grins and it’s all charm and teasing pride. She presses a lingering kiss to the bridge of Momo’s nose.
“I knew you would.”