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It starts, in all honesty, from a joke. Ochako swears that Mina’s at fault for beginning this—Mina suggested offhand that Izuku and Todoroki are so intense about each other they might as well start dating, and Ochako laughed her off. 

But now.

She can’t stop thinking about it. 

The thing is—the thing is Mina is kind of right? When Izuku and Todoroki are in the same room, the aura in the room changes. And Ochako isn’t one to think about things like auras but there isn’t any other way to describe it. Todoroki alone is one thing and Izuku alone is another thing, but Todoroki and Izuku at the same time is a particular vibe that Ochako has only otherwise felt in the presence of Shinsou and Kaminari, who are likewise obsessed with each other but have the good grace to say so. 

This is what leads to Ochako doing what she swore to never do: 

Shipping two of her best friends with each other. 

She wouldn’t have given in to temptation and done this if it weren’t for the cold hard evidence she has that Izuku and Todoroki are indeed in love and have no idea about it. These items of evidence include: That time at the Sports Festival. Whatever it is that happened in Hosu, which both of them and Iida refuse to talk about. The whole thing at the provisional licensing exams. Honestly, every interaction they had during their entire first year of school and now, well into the second.

So Ochako has a mission in front of her. She has to get Izuku and Todoroki together. At all costs. Because she does not believe for one second that they will get themselves together—the two of them combined do not come close to the communication skills of a single Kaminari. This is Todoroki “The solution to all emotional problems is not having them” Shouto and Midoriya “I have a million secrets and must bear them alone” Izuku. They need help if they’re ever going to become an item.

Thus begins The Quest. It’ll be easy, she thinks. Ochako may not be self-proclaimed Love Expert Ashido Mina, but she knows her friends. She has communication skills in spades. She can make this happen. 

Or so she thinks. 

She starts out bold, because she has nothing to lose. As they’re wrapping up a study session in Izuku’s room, she asks Izuku straight up what his opinions on Todoroki are.

“He’s going to be a great hero,” Izuku says immediately. 

“Right,” Ochako says, because yes, of course he is. “But I meant on a more personal level?” 

Izuku frowns at her, puzzled. 

“I mean…” Ochako flounders. “Do you like him?” 

“I love Todoroki!” Izuku says, with such explosive passion Ochako reels a bit, not least because he just used the L word. “He’s funny and interesting and really talented. I have to keep up with him!” 

Ochako blinks at him, stunned, unsure what else to say. “Right, well. Why don’t you ask him out?” 

“You’re right.” Izuku jumps to his feet. “Since we’re done, I should ask him to train with me! Do you want to come?” 

“No, I meant…” Ochako says but she’s too late. He’s already digging though his closet for his gym clothes. “No, Izuku…” 

“You don’t have to come if you want to keep studying,” Izuku says graciously. “But I have to catch him before curfew, so we’ve gotta go now if you want to join.”

“I… No, I’m…” She has to salvage this, somehow. She pats her book helplessly. “So busy. You and Todoroki should go…together…” 

“Good idea,” Izuku agrees. 

“…alone,” Ochako says, but he’s already gone. 

She stares after him, not sure what just went wrong but absolutely unequivocally certain that something about that interaction did not go the way she wanted it to. After she sets her brain back in order, she wanders downstairs and asks the first person she can find where Izuku went. 

“One of the training gyms, I think,” Jirou says. “With Todoroki and Iida and Bakugou.” 

“Right,” Ochako says. “Of course.” She looks at the door for a long time. It had started so strong. And it had all gone to pieces. 

She's beginning to suspect a little that this is not going to be as easy as she initially thought. 

She changes tactics after that and starts aiming for getting them alone together as frequently as possible. She figures if they have some time to talk, they’ll figure it out themselves. 

How wrong she is. 

Over the entire course of the second half of second year, she sends them on every possible errand together, sometimes, in fits of desperation, even taking other people’s errands over. She nearly yanks the dry cleaning out of poor Yaomomo’s hands and insists that Todoroki and Izuku can take it. Yaomomo looks absolutely baffled but lets it happen. Ochako sends them to the store, she sends them to drop off her library books, she pokes her head into their internship planning sessions to make sure they’re signing up for the same ones. 

She needn’t have worried about that last part—they sign under the same hero every single time, without fail and without any intervention.

At a certain point Aizawa has the guts to suggest that they might learn something more if they go to separate internships and he gets shot down by three separate but simultaneous arguments. The third arguer, of course, is Ochako, from all the way across the room. He gives Ochako a confused look and Todoroki and Izuku resigned ones before saying it’s up to them and leaving them alone. Ochako slumps back in her chair, her job done. Mina turns around in her seat and throws her a huge double thumbs up.

“We just work well together,” Todoroki tells her later when she mentions it.

“You two should start an agency together,” Ochako tells him earnestly. “You can practice all sorts of combos in your internships.”

“That’s the plan,” Todoroki says. 

It makes Ochako’s day. It makes Ochako’s year.

“Do you want to join?” Todoroki adds. 

And just like that, the moment is ruined. 

If only, Ochako thinks, she could take herself out of the equation. 

It’s this thinking that leads to a particularly low moment for her. She locks them in the dorm pantry and runs. The pantry does not survive the incident—Todoroki sends a Heaven-Piercing Ice Wall right through the door. It takes all of one minute for him and Izuku to reach this solution and it does not achieve, as Ochako had wanted, any confessions of love or realizations of feelings.

“The door was jammed,” Todoroki explains when Aizawa comes and stands, wordless, over the wreckage. 

“Was it,” Aizawa says. 

Sero starts laughing. Ochako feels the guilt start to take over her expression and she turns away before anyone can see it. 

Ochako spends the last part of the one v. ones at their third year Sports Festival with her face in her hands, her fingers slightly parted so she can peer through the cracks of her fingers at Izuku and Todoroki once again destroying the entire arena as they go at each other. She has a feeling Izuku could have ended it a while ago, but he seems to be enjoying himself and doesn’t have the urgency he probably should when up against Todoroki. He wins anyway, obviously, because One for All is a beast of a quirk that probably should stop existing after Izuku, but they take so long to do it that they have to take a break in the middle to both catch their breaths and have a quick conversation, seemingly without discussing it first. 

Ochako closes her fingers over her eyes and sighs. 

“Do they even realize how obvious they are,” Shinsou mutters from somewhere behind her. 

“Shh,” Kaminari says. “They have no idea. Shh.” 

Ochako swivels around in her seat and looks up three rows of seats to where they’re sitting. She meets Shinsou’s eyes gravely and says, “If you can get those two together before the year’s out, I will give you literally twenty thousand yen. Immediately.”

Considering it, Shinsou squints down at the field where Izuku and Todoroki are dusting themselves off and chatting and laughing, because they’re in love. He makes a face and seems about to say no—Ochako cuts him off before he can.

“I’m not above using your quirk,” Ochako says. 

Shinsou shakes his head. “It’s not happening. If this couldn’t get them to see it, I’m not sure what will.” 

“Have you tried,” Kaminari says, “setting them up on a date together?” 

Ochako locks eyes with him with a gravity she thinks is only right. “I have tried,” she says, “literally everything.” 

She hasn’t tried everything, of course. Over the course of their third year:

She stoops to asking Yaomomo to forge their handwriting in an anonymous note and slipping said notes under their doors. Izuku somehow gets it in his head that Aoyama did this—apparently this isn’t the first time, which Ochako would find hilarious if she hadn’t been thwarted—and they both move on without even discussing it.

She sends them on a road trip together all the way across Japan under the guise of picking up a specialty package of Thirteen merch from a store down there. Izuku tells her there are much better ways to get specialty hero merch and when they return at the end of the weekend, they have visibly grown closer—they’re on first name basis now—but they are still not dating. 

Truth or dare has long been banned in the class due to the damage to school property and/or students that the game always results in, but Ochako starts an illicit game in the hopes that this will somehow lead to a confession of love. Hagakure is the one who dares Todoroki and Izuku to kiss—they do it dutifully even though Yaomomo tells them they are under no obligation to carry through with it—but they’re all disappointed as a group when, other than some blushing and avoiding of eye contact afterward, Todoroki and Izuku continue on the same as ever. Still not dating. 

She splurges some of her work-study money to get a romantic dinner for two, pretends she was going to use it for herself but got ghosted, and gives it to the two of them. They are so unbelievably clueless they do this entire thing and come back still not dating. After that one, Ochako considers she might be getting pranked, but Ojirou thankfully makes a comment when they’re both out earshot that reassures her that not only are they not pranking her, but also everyone in the class is astounded that her best efforts continue to fall to ashes. Ochako drops her head on his shoulder and wails. He pats her sympathetically on the shoulder.

A few weeks before graduation, she’s starting to think she’s underqualified for the mission she’s undertaken. The window for getting these two together is rapidly closing, and she’s losing steam. 

So she does the only logical thing and goes to self-proclaimed Love Expert Ashido Mina for advice. 

“I’m trying to get two people together,” she says. “They like each other but they refuse to talk about it.” 

“Todoroki and Midoriya,” Mina agrees, swiping another layer of purple onto her nails.

Well, yes, but Ochako isn’t going to admit it outright. “You said that, not me. Anyway, I need some help. I’m running out of ideas.” 

“Girl, it’s a lost cause,” says Mina. “They’re so oblivious it would take one of them giving the other CPR to get some sparks flying, and even then they’d probably be like, ‘But he would give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to anyone so obviously I’m not special.’”

Ochako thinks this example is missing some of the point, since Izuku and Todoroki would resuscitate anyone if the need arose, mouth-to-mouth and all, but she chooses not to say so. “Okay, imagine for a second that it’s not Izuku and Todoroki and that they have a chance of communicating their way into dating. Ideas?” 

“It would be great if we could get one of them kidnapped,” Mina says. “Rescue mission.” 

Perhaps going to Mina with this was not in fact a good idea. “We are not setting villains after Deku for the millionth time,” Ochako says.

“Good point,” Mina says. “I have Dabi’s number. We could get him to kidnap Todoroki. Then, Deku goes crazy and gets all protective and goes after him and hopefully beats up Dabi a little—I am still not over it, redemption arc or not—and then they kiss romantically and get together.”

Ochako can’t even begin to get into the flaws in that plan, which start and end with Aizawa, so she winds back a few steps. “How do you have Dabi’s number?”

“Internship with Hawks,” Mina says, switching the brush over to do her other hand. 

This has made nothing clear. “Which led to you having Dabi’s number…how?”

“Ugh,” Mina says, “don’t even get me started on that particular mess of a slow burn.” 

Ochako decides she doesn’t want to know. “Okay, well, that plan is not going to work.” 

Mina pouts, looking up from her nails. “Why not?” 

“Aizawa.” Ochako lifts her eyebrows. “One, he won’t let Todoroki be kidnapped. Two, he won’t let Deku, of all people, be on the team that rescues him.” 

“Ah,” Mina says, brandishing her brush like it’s a conductor’s baton. “You’re forgetting something. This is Todoroki and Midoriya. Two inherently kidnappable people who won’t wait for permission to go save someone. I’m still not 100 percent on what happened in Hosu, but I’m pretty sure it involved not listening to any authority figure.” 

She makes a good point. A very good point. And Ochako is getting desperate here.

“Okay,” she says. “Maybe you should give me Dabi’s number.” 

Mina gives her the sort of sharp grin that makes Ochako wonder if perhaps she shouldn’t have come to Mina for help and says, “I thought you would never ask.”

Up to a point, the plan goes off without a hitch. Ochako feels a little bad about it when Aizawa does the panicking thing and immediately tells Izuku he is under no circumstances allowed out in the field right now. Izuku, of course, is awful at following instructions that include the words “stay put,” and he vanishes that very night. Two hours later, Todoroki is back, a little drowsy but unharmed, and Izuku is fuming. 

“I couldn’t get the person who did it,” he spends the entire day after muttering, apparently oblivious to the sporadic disapproving glares from Aizawa. “They’d left by the time I got there. I did a sweep for fingerprints and there wasn’t a trace…. But what would be the point of kidnapping someone if you’re not going to stick around?” 

“Hmm,” Ochako says. “Good question.”

Over lunch, she manages to keep him back in the classroom. She sits crosslegged and backward in Bakugou’s chair to face him and finally gets Izuku out of analysis mode so she can ask, “How are you feeling?”

“Irritated,” Izuku grumbles, which is, for him, an impressive display of emotional awareness. 

“And how are you feeling about Todoroki?” she nudges. “Did you guys bond at all or…?”

Izuku’s face flushes bright red. He buries it behind his hands.

Ochako leans forward, breath bated. “Did he say anything to you?” 

“He was all sedated and loopy,” Izuku says, voice muffled.

“Izuku!” Ochako shrieks, grabbing him by the arm. This is it. This is the moment. “What did he say?”

He shakes his head. 

“Tell me right now,” Ochako demands. Her heart is racing. Soon, she will be free. She will owe Mina forever for this, and it will have been worth it.

He mumbles it into his hands. Ochako tugs on his elbow to free his face. He gives her a miserable look and says, “I can’t repeat it. Physically, I cannot.” 

“Did he confess any undying love for you,” Ochako demands. 

Izuku’s face, if possible, goes impossibly redder. “Ochako, stop…” 

“What did he say?” 

“Stop, stop, okay—” Izuku frees his arm from Ochako’s grip and hides his face behind his hands again. Ochako lets him, because he seems to need a shield in order to reveal what happened. “It was—it was a really, really awful pick-up line.”

Ochako frowns. She can physically feel the embarrassment flaring off him. 

“It was—I can’t say this out loud.” He takes another second to muster up the courage, a second in which Ochako holds her breath, and then all in a rush he gets out: “He said the real kidnapper was me for abducting his heart.”

“He said…” Ochako opens and closes her mouth. Izuku’s ears are such a bright red it looks like he has a fever of 40 C. Ochako turns to stare out the window. She has nothing to say. She has nothing, absolutely nothing, to say. The plan was so good! Self-proclaimed Love Expert Ashido Mina came up with it! And yet this is where it had led them. Todoroki Shouto has learned pick-up lines.

What’s the point? What is the point.

Ochako swears faintly. 

“And so,” Izuku says, lowering his hands, “I am praying to every god I can think of and All Might that he does not remember anything from the moment I got there to the moment I dropped him off in the hospital wing.” 

Ochako’s voice comes out strangled. “Understandably so.” 

“He was really loopy,” Izuku says. “I think he was just…talking. Shouto and I aren’t…like that. I mean, he probably didn’t even know it was me.” 

“Well, but,” Ochako says, scrambling to get a hold on her goals again. This reveal has evaporated a lot of her passion for this project. “But surely he wouldn’t say that if he didn’t mean it.” 

“I don’t know,” Izuku mumbles. “I’ve said a lot of weird things after surgery. Remember that one time I decided to become a vigilante and wrote everyone notes revealing the most important secret of the quirk age?”

“No? When did that happen?” 

“Oh, ha ha.” Izuku shoots her a dirty look. “Point is—that was right after I woke up.”

“Okay, but,” Ochako says, “that was…”

He gives her such a miserable look that she stops. She sighs and leans back until the edge of Bakugou’s desk digs into her spine. She looks up at the ceiling as if there will be answers written there and finds only a pencil that someone, probably Sero, managed to toss up and get lodged in the tiles. 

“I think,” she says finally, “that we need to ban pick-up lines from the class. And get Todoroki to stop hanging out with Kaminari.” 

Izuku returns a numb nod. “Agreed.”

Graduation comes and goes. During the ceremony, Ochako realizes that the end of school does not mean the end of Todoroki and Izuku’s potential for a relationship. Still, no one can start their own agency straight out of school, not even All Might, not even Izuku, and they have to split. Ochako goes with Todoroki to Hawks’s agency, where she learns that Mina was not lying about the slow burn between him and Dabi, and Izuku goes alone to Miruko’s. Over the next few years, such little progress is made it’s almost remarkable. 

Izuku goes through a stint of dating Bakugou not long after graduation, during which time Ochako does her best to be supportive even though it is obviously not a match made in heaven, and sure enough it goes so horribly it’s almost comedic. There are several public screaming matches, after which their hero rankings both take hits, which is particularly impressive given that Izuku is Deku and had previously held the Number One spot so securely it seemed that no one would ever take it from him. Le Million got to hold Number One for about three months, and then Bakugou and Izuku had the explosive breakup everyone was waiting for and Izuku once again took his Number One spot back and reclaimed Ochako’s shipping attentions.

Almost miraculously, this breakup did absolutely nothing to destroy Izuku’s previous friendship with Bakugou. They’re still thick as thieves, but now they are thieves who aren’t dating and understand that they cannot live in the same space without completely and utterly destroying said space at least twice. 

After that, it’s back to Izuku and Shouto both being single, both being available, and both being utterly clueless. Ochako watches them—they spend inordinate amounts of time together, they go on countless missions together, they go on grocery runs together because Shouto claims, correctly, that Izuku cannot be trusted to do such things alone or he’ll somehow manage to get attacked, and Izuku claims, equally correctly, that Shouto also cannot do such things alone or he’ll somehow manage to buy ingredients that do not make actual meals. 

Ochako lets them have it, trying not to meddle too much because she’s busy with her own life, trying to find stable ground in the tumultuous world of heroics, and additionally it looks like everything is going the way it should. But somehow, agonizingly, impossibly, it continues the way it has—they are still, against all odds, just friends, years later. 

It isn’t until their third year after graduation that something finally, finally actually happens. Ochako is over at Izuku’s apartment, binging the All Might movies with him. Everyone in the group knows Izuku has to watch all the All Might movies every couple months or he becomes insufferable, and everyone knows he will not do it alone. They take turns with the responsibility of watching them. It happens to be Ochako’s turn when it happens—he pauses the movie. Ochako hadn’t known he physically was able to do that without immediately launching into a fun fact. 

After a moment of quiet contemplation, he turns to her, wringing his hands in his lap. His eyes are wide, his face slightly red. He says, “I think I’m getting a crush on Shouto, and I don’t know what to do with it.” 

Just like that, it’s back on. This is the moment Ochako has been waiting for since second year of high school. She fights to keep her expression neutral. “Oh, really?” 

Izuku covers his face with both hands. “I feel awful about it. What if he doesn’t feel the same way? We should just stay friends.” 

“I think you should talk to him about it,” Ochako says, all casual on the surface and all screaming on the inside. “You won’t know until you ask.” 

She wishes she could take a picture of the horrified expression he shoots at her—it’s almost cartoonishly intense. “I can’t ask him! What if he—what if he— I can’t ask!” 

“Why not?”

“Because!” says Izuku. “What if he doesn’t like me back and I ruin our friendship and everything is awkward forever? Or what if he does like me back and then—and then what? And then…”

It’s like Christmas, but a Christmas in which Santa requires negotiation before he gives you the present. “And then you date. And make out.” 

“But then what if one day he realizes that we actually hate each other and we’ve spent all this time in a relationship and making an agency together and then everything falls apart and we can’t ever talk to each other again?” 

“You might be catastrophizing,” Ochako says.

“You’re right.” Izuku’s shoulders drop back to a normal level, and he adds, as if it is the plain truth, “He doesn’t even like me back.”

Ochako sighs. There’s no amount of logical explaining that will get through to Izuku that Shouto obviously likes him back, and she’s beginning to believe the two of them are so oblivious that they will continue to dance around each other until the feelings have evaporated and they drift their separate ways and Ochako lives in the agony of what might have been forever. 

But it’s fine. 

“You won’t know,” she says again, long-suffering, “until you ask.” 

Izuku makes a quiet wailing sound and flops over on the couch, his head landing on her thigh. Ochako gives him a pat in his soft curls. She doesn’t know what he’s complaining about—she’s been doing this for years now. 

It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t: two days later, Ochako is supposed to be prepping for a mission with Shouto, when he says, “Do you think Izuku likes me?”

Ochako gives him a sharp look. She glances around the office to see if they have company, but it’s quiet in here—everyone else is out patrolling or on lunch. “When you say like,” she says, “you do mean…”

“Like like,” Shouto says, completely flat-faced. 

And so a new agony begins. “I don’t know. You should ask him.”

“Hmm,” Shouto says. “No, I don’t think I will.” 

Ochako presses both her hands into her eyes and takes a deep breath. She should just tell him. She should just tell him, but Izuku told her about his feelings in confidence and she’s not about to break that just for the end of the pain. She can hold out a little longer. Maybe Shouto will be mature and brave and talk to Izuku about his feelings like a normal person. Maybe miracles do happen and pigs can fly. “Well, do you like him?” 

“Yes.” 

She has no choice but to admire his stoicism under the circumstances. She remembers when she was still eager about the potential between these two, when she still thought the road to their romance would be easy. She draws on some of that energy to say cheerily, “Then you should tell him!”

Shouto thinks about it. “No,” he says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” 

Ochako fixes the smile on her face. “Why not?” she says through her teeth.

“Because,” he says, “I don’t know if he likes me back.” 

If this doesn’t end with Ochako strangling one of her best friends, it will be a miracle. “Shouto,” she says. “How will you know if he likes you back if you don’t ask him about it?”

He has the gall to look at her as if she’s the one being impossible. “I’ll just know.”

“Right,” Ochako says. In that moment, something structurally important inside her gives. “You’ll just know. Right. Right. You’ll know.”

Shouto frowns at her. “Are you okay?” 

It’s been a long battle, Ochako thinks to herself as she’s laying in bed, wide awake. It’s summer and her apartment doesn’t have central air. The humidity is so intense her skin feels sticky and heavy. She’s stewing instead of sleeping. And Shouto and Izuku are hopeless.

She’s made such a fool over herself for this, and for what? Years have passed, and only now are Izuku and Shouto even considering the possibility of one another. When clearly they were made for each other. If they weren’t, this would have been over with already. 

In fact, she reasons with herself, if anything, this is a sign that their relationship will be sweet and long-lasting. They’re so on the same wavelength that they can’t even confess their feelings to each other. 

Ochako groans and throws a pillow over her face. She smashes it down with her forearms. They are never getting together. Her life’s work will have been in vain. 

Her phone pings and she throws out an arm for it, clumsy, and pats around in her blankets until her hand hits the plastic case. She draws it up, lifting the pillow slightly so she can see the notification. It’s a calendar reminder for Hawks and Dabi’s wedding tomorrow. She swipes away the reminder and returns her pillow to its rightful place, smothering her.

Then it hits her.

Wedding.

Nice outfits. 

Shouto. Izuku. In love. 

Confession.

It’s the perfect opportunity. If not tomorrow, then when? Never, clearly. She has to strike now. She throws her pillow to the side and gets up to pace her room. She will get them together tomorrow. She will. 

The next evening, she dresses up in her floofiest dress. It’s blossom pink, and it has a sweetheart neckline and a cape-like drapery down the back. She’s about to Fairy Godmother the hell out of this. She’s about to get those two together. She’s about to achieve what has become, embarrassingly enough, one of the biggest goals of her life. 

She texts Izuku and makes him send her a picture of himself. He looks all right—he’s gotten someone to do his tie for him, thank goodness. She’s about to text Shouto to verify that he, too, looks nice, but before she can ask, Izuku sends her a picture of Shouto, who has done something very strange with his hair. It’s way too smooth, gelled down hard. 

Ochako immediately texts back, IS HE AT YOUR APARTMENT????

Izuku replies, yep! getting ready together.

Ochako wants to shake him, but she cannot from all the way over here. What she does do is text, And have you had an Important Conversation about Feelings? 

shhhhhhh is all Izuku sends back. 

So no. 

Ochako should have known better than to get her hopes up. Mess up his hair, she instructs. It’s a little flat.

Izuku sends a new picture a moment later in which Shouto’s hair looks significantly more natural. It’s got a nice tousle to it now. 

Ochako’s thumbs drum hard into her phone. And NOW have you had an Important Conversation?

SHHHHHH, says Izuku. 

Ochako sighs. 

Sure enough, they arrive to the wedding together. Ochako takes a break from matchmaking to enjoy the wedding ceremony, trying not to tear up when they exchange vows—she doesn’t even like Dabi that much, but it’s sweet—but the second the reception starts, she’s back on it. She arranges it so Izuku and Shouto are sitting next to each other at the table. She refuses, flat out, to let another opportunity slip by. This is the last chance. Tsu and Iida, who have the misfortune of sharing the table with the three of them, stare at her like she’s crazy. She is crazy. This is driving her crazy. 

When dinner is over and everyone starts to mix and mingle, Ochako turns to Izuku and sends him what she hopes is a clear Look toward the dance floor. He receives it, flushes, and shakes his head before turning to continue the conversation he’s having with Todoroki Freaking Shouto. 

Ochako marches over to them when a slower-paced song starts, smiling as wide as she dares, so wide it might look a little strained. “All those people are dancing,” she says, and she fixes a smiling glare on Shouto this time. “Doesn’t that look fun?” 

“Would you like to dance, Ochako?” Shouto asks. 

Ochako nearly screams. “No. But Izuku loves dancing. Don’t you, Izuku?” 

In truth, Izuku has never expressed any love of dancing to Ochako, but he takes one look at her expression and starts agreeing immediately. Shouto narrows his eyes at Ochako, figuring her out, but she’s long past the point of being embarrassed about this. 

Luckily, he is not so irritated with her meddling that he doesn’t turn to Izuku and ask, “Would you like to dance, Izuku?”

Izuku glances at Ochako, who is trying very hard to keep her eye from twitching. “Yes,” he says, and lets Shouto lead him away. 

They spend the whole dance staring at each other, both of their cheeks flushed and their eyes alight. At one point, Shouto leans down and whispers something into Izuku’s ear and Izuku laughs, and Ochako feels, at long last, that this is it, that she has succeeded. 

And then the song’s over, they break apart, and it’s right back to normal with them. They drift off and start chatting with Iida across the room. 

Only now, they keep casting each other longing looks, somehow managing to accidentally time it so they’re looking at each other exactly when the other is looking away. Izuku sends Ochako the saddest hopeless look she’s ever seen and then goes right back to the pining. Ochako pinches the bridge of her nose. She’s beginning to sympathize with Aizawa a little more, she thinks. 

Dabi appears out of nowhere, eyes fixed on them. “How is this still going?” 

Ochako’s eyes are starting to sting in the way they always do right before she starts to cry. But she is not going to cry over this, especially not in front of Dabi on his wedding day. She is not that invested. But the thing is—it’s so unbelievably frustrating. “They like each other,” she says in a hoarse voice. “I know they like each other. So why…”

He takes a sip of a fun-colored alcoholic beverage. Ochako doesn’t drink much but she would do anything for one of those right about now. “It’s a little impressive.” 

“I might just kill them,” Ochako says. Dabi catches her staring longingly at his drink and he passes it over without a second’s thought. She’s so far gone she doesn’t even think about it before taking an unladylike swig. It burns on the way down. Ochako is losing it. “Just to get something to happen.” 

“I could kidnap Shouto again,” Dabi says, probably joking. 

A few steps away, Hawks is talking with Tokoyami, but that gets his attention. He turns around and frowns at them. “Again…?” 

They both ignore him.

“No,” Ochako says, blinking very hard as her eyes start to well again with frustration. She’s too invested in this. It’s gone too far. “No, it’s… You know what? I’m done. They’ll get there when they get there.” 

Dabi gives her a skeptical look that quickly shifts into concern.

“I don’t care anymore.” She just can’t take any more of this. There comes a point when it’s too much. “I can’t do this.” 

“They’re the worst.”

Ochako laughs. It comes out a little wet. “Yeah,” she says. “They are.” 

The thing is—now that it’s started, she literally cannot escape them. She had her rock-bottom moment. She vowed to be better. And they just keep dragging her back into it. 

Izuku talks about Shouto nonstop when Shouto isn’t around. 

Shouto talks about Izuku with frequency when Izuku is not around, which, in Shouto terms, is the equivalent of nonstop. 

Ochako is the middle man of pining. She’s in hell. And she has only herself to blame.

“If, hypothetically,” she asks Tsu at their weekly coffee shop get together, “Shouto was in love with Izuku and Izuku was in love with Shouto—”

“Hypothetically,” Tsu says. 

“Purely hypothetically,” Ochako agrees, “say they had both confessed these feelings to me and not to each other, am I morally obligated to tell them the feelings are mutual? Or am I supposed to say nothing?” 

Tsu winces. “That’s… I’m not sure.”

Ochako groans and flops her head back. 

“If it were me, I’d want you to tell me,” Tsu says. “But if I had a crush on someone and you told them, ribbit, I might be upset. Even if the feelings are mutual.”

“I could sit them down,” Ochako says, “and I could reveal it to them both at the same time and then leave them to talk.” 

When she looks at Tsu again, Tsu is grimacing. 

“Yeah,” Ochako sighs. “It doesn’t sound good to me either.” 

“Surely they’ll figure it out, ribbit,” Tsu says, tapping her chin with her finger. “Eventually.” 

“We’ll be retired,” Ochako says. “We’ll be in our eighties and all living together in a Class A senior living center. And then one of them will be like, ‘I’ve always wanted to tell you this, but never got up the guts…’ and then they’ll both realize that they’ve wasted their entire lives—”

Tsu’s laughing cuts her off. “I’m not sure they’ll take it that far,” she says. “Ribbit, that’s some anime protagonist stuff.” 

“If anyone was going to be an anime protagonist…” Ochako says.

Tsu laughs again and shakes her head. “At least they know they like each other now,” she points out. “That’s a step.” 

“Yeah,” Ochako says, although she doesn’t really see it going with any amount of speed from here. There’s no point arguing about it. 

“Anyway, worry about yourself,” Tsu says. “Are you interested in anyone?” 

Ochako furrows her brows. She spends her days working, going through paperwork, training, etc. She’s been applying to other hero agencies—Nejire’s new one has been doing really well, and Ochako wants to switch over there, as much as she loves working with Hawks. And when she isn’t working, she worries about Izuku and Shouto. Admittedly, it’s not the best use of her time—there isn’t a lot of space between heroics and the love life of her unwitting friends for her to do much for herself. 

A smile breaks over her face, and she asks Tsu, “Are you telling me to get a life?”

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do,” Ochako says. She’s back to it, back to her battle plans, because in order for her to get back to her own life, she needs Izuku and Shouto to get back to theirs. Which means she has to resolve this. Now. “We have that mission next week in Spain—Miruko lent you over for that one, right?” 

“Yeah,” Izuku says. He’s flopped on her couch, facedown, after lamenting about his loveless existence for a half an hour. Ochako has all her notebooks of evil plans out and is hunting through it for things she hasn’t tried yet to get these two together. She’s down to one option. It’s actually her last chance. 

“Right, so I’ll talk to Hawks about this and get you guys to share a room.”

Izuku shoots up. “You’ll what?” 

Ochako is so past panicking over this stuff. “I’m not done.” 

“I can’t share a room with Shouto!” Izuku says. 

“You guys stay the night with each other all the time,” Ochako says, rolling her eyes. “And I’m about to make it even better—I’ll call the hotel and ask them to make your room a king instead of a double queen—”

“You will not.” Izuku shoots her an accusing look. “You’re trying to one-bed trope us!” 

“Yes,” Ochako says blithely, flipping to the next page of her notebook. “It’s scientifically proven to work.” 

“No it is not!” Izuku says, voice rising in pitch. “If it was, we’d be together already!” 

Ochako is about to argue with him, but then his words catch up to her. She narrows her eyes at him. “Why?” 

He flushes bright red.

“Izuku,” Ochako says, putting both her hands on her notebook, fingers splayed out. “Izuku, what happened?” 

“It was back in high school,” he mumbles, and just like that his face disappears behind his hands. “It was nothing.” 

Why does Ochako even try? Why. Does. She. Even. Try. “Doesn’t sound like nothing,” she says, her voice going low and dangerous. She’s reached it. Her wit’s end.

“Ugh.” Izuku lowers his hands, refusing to meet her eyes. “Remember when you needed us to pick up that package from Okinawa and Shouto and I went on that road trip?” 

Ochako just looks at him.

“We had to spend the night down there and so we got a hotel room but the hotel was almost booked and they actually only had the one bed. It was—” He picks at the edge of her couch cushion, visibly working up the nerve to finish whatever horrible thing he’s about to say. He winces. “It was the honeymoon suite.” 

“It was not,” Ochako says, in denial.

“It was. So. We’ve already done that.”

So. They’ve already done that. 

Completely calm, Ochako shuts her notebook. She packs up her battle plans. 

“And,” Izuku’s cheeks are the shade of a blazing inferno, “we stay over at each other’s houses all the time and neither of us have guest rooms, so we tend to just—I mean, you’ve slept in my bed before!” 

“That is completely different,” Ochako says. “Because you and I are not in love.”

“Shouto’s not in love with me,” Izuku argues, “so technically he and I are also not in—”

“How,” Ochako says, her voice going a little high-pitched and screechy, against her will, “are you supposed to know he isn’t in love with you if you haven’t talked to him about it? What if you’ve both been pining after each other since high school and neither of you are aware?” 

“I haven’t been—” Izuku starts to protest, and then he stops himself, likely realizing that yes, he has, even if he was blissfully unaware of it until a couple months ago. 

She raises a triumphant eyebrow.

“Okay, but it hasn’t been since high school,” he says. 

“You’re telling me that Year One Sports Festival wasn’t a bold-faced declaration of love from both of you?”

“Um…” Izuku thinks about it. 

“Or need I remind you of Hosu? When allegedly you both stopped Iida from murder? When Shouto decoded your highly specific, unreadable message and showed up to save you like a damsel in distress? Remember that time you raced across town to save Shouto from his own kidnapping in third year? Do I need to go on?” 

“No,” Izuku winces. “No, um… You’re right. I wasn’t thinking about it like that.”

“Surely you and Bakugou talked about this,” Ochako says. “Surely he was jealous about it. You were still hanging out with Shouto nearly twenty-four seven when you were with him!” 

“We did talk about it, but I thought…” Izuku trails off into mumbling, trying to figure out his own love life. Ochako stacks her battle plans, gets to her feet, and throws all the papers and notebooks in the recycling. She’s officially done with this. No more matchmaking for Ochako. She’s not cut out for it. 

“But if he’s liked me since Hosu,” Izuku says, “then why hasn’t he said anything?” 

Ochako sighs. She flaps her hands at him until he scooches over on the couch, leaving room for her to sit. “If you’ve liked him since you were fifteen,” Ochako says, “why haven’t you said anything?” 

“Because I was stupid and oblivious,” Izuku says immediately.

Ochako makes a hand motion she hopes implies ergo.

“Shouto’s not stupid or oblivious!” Izuku protests.

“Shouto?” Ochako says. “Neither of you are stupid, but Shouto, not oblivious? Are we talking about the same person? Shouto, who thought the tooth fairy was real up until third year, despite having never been visited by her?”

Izuku pales. “He was joking about that. He can’t not have been joking.” 

“I know what Shouto looks like when he’s joking,” Ochako says. He always keeps a remarkably straight face during the joke, but afterward, a smile cracks, small and secret. He can’t hold the deadpan expression for a long time—certainly not years. “You know he wasn’t joking.” 

“Okay, but,” Izuku says. “I can’t tell him!”

“You’re the Number One hero,” Ochako says, rolling her eyes. “I think you can handle it.” 

He cannot, in fact, handle it.

The Spain trip comes and goes. Ochako does no meddling, but Hawks, apparently, is just as invested in this relationship coming to life as she is because without any interference, he one-bed tropes them. They still don’t get together.

The two of them open their own hero agency. They invite Ochako, but she’s had about enough of them and absolutely can’t do both of them at once under the circumstances, so she finalizes her move over to Nejire’s agency and leaves them alone to their pining. They still don’t get together.

That is—she tries to leave them alone. The closer their proximity, it seems, the worse the unrequited love experience is, for both of them, despite the love being far from unrequited. Ochako gets dragged into all their romantic woes and miseries. But she’s washed her hands of them. She refuses to do anything else to help them.

She’s had it. 

Another year passes. 

It's when they're both texting her while at work that it happens. They're texting her in separate individual chats, probably both in their desks, which are right next to each other, each describing the other and doing the written equivalent of sad sighs for hours, relying on Ochako to comfort them, in separate individual chats, from her own work where she has real stuff to do because unlike the two of them, her quirk is not an overpowered behemoth and she does have to put a little more effort into everything she does—it's after hours of enduring this that it happens:

Ochako’s tether snaps. 

She invites herself over to their agency. She storms in, unannounced. They look up, surprised—Shouto confused, and Izuku scared. Which he should be. “Sit down,” Ochako snaps at Shouto, who’s risen up as if expecting a villain to come shooting in the door after her. Ochako grabs a chair and drags it to the center of the room, facing both their desks. She steeples her hands. 

Maybe she is the villain. 

“I cannot take this anymore,” she says. “I have to come clean.” 

Izuku starts shaking his head frantically.

“Izuku,” Ochako says, because she thinks Shouto will take better to her spilling the beans on his secrets than Izuku will, “Almost two years ago, Shouto admitted to me that he likes you. As in, like like. He has been pining about it since then.” 

Izuku’s eyes go huge. 

Ochako turns to Shouto. “Shouto. Two days before you told me you liked Izuku, Izuku told me he has a crush on you. I have also had to listen to him pining about it since then.”

Shouto looks at Izuku, mouth falling open. 

“I cannot take this anymore,” Ochako says. “I’m sorry if I’ve ruined our relationship by spilling your secrets. I am tired of watching you waste your lives. Happy communication. Best of luck.” 

She gets up, returns her chair, and stalks out of the room. Izuku calls after her to wait. She does not. 

They appear at her apartment later that day, which is unwelcome and irritating, although she still loves them both. They’re holding hands. She takes one look, sighs, and lets them in. 

“How are you going to be my maid of honor,” Izuku whines, “if Shouto also wants you to be his?” 

Ochako stares at him. She turns and stares at Shouto, whose face is perfectly flat. She stares at Izuku again. “Wedding?” she shrieks. “You’re already talking about your wedding?”

“It’s really all thanks to you,” Mina says, watching Izuku and Shouto across the room. It’s the happiest day of their lives, and it might be the happiest day of Ochako’s, too. They’re eating cake up there and laughing. 

“It is decidedly not thanks to me,” Ochako says, smiling when Izuku catches her eye and waves. “They fought me at every turn. I did almost nothing, it turns out.” 

“Um, actually,” says Mina, “Todoroki says you spilled all their secrets and made them confess to each other.” 

Ochako stabs her fork into her cake. “Okay, I did do that, yes.” 

“Was it all worth it?”

Ochako glances at them again. They’re posing for a photo, Izuku’s head on Shouto’s shoulder, Shouto’s arm around his waist. Izuku’s tie is perfectly tied. Shouto’s sister had the foresight to muss up Shouto’s hair before he walked down the aisle. They’re sweet together. Ochako smiles, just to herself, and returns her gaze to her cake. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, it was. And my life is much more relaxing now.” 

Mina laughs. “I bet.” 

Someone rings their glass for a toast. As the room quiets, Ochako looks around for the source of it and frowns when she finds Dabi standing near the middle of the room, glass raised. “It’s been a long time, and everyone’s been waiting for this,” he says.

Kaminari cheers, “Hear hear!” from the other side of the hall. 

“If you had told me six years ago when I received a frantic message from a UA student asking me to kidnap my dear brother so Deku would have to come save him and they would realize they were in love, I absolutely—”

“When what?” Izuku says.

“Let me finish,” says Dabi. 

Ochako feels her face heat up. Mina’s cracking up next to her, and the noise is drawing attention.

“If you had told me all that, I would not have anticipated it would take another six years for us to get to this point,” Dabi continues. 

Ochako resolutely avoids everyone’s eyes. She makes the mistake of glancing up once and sees Aizawa looking at her, suspicious. After that, she keeps her gaze firmly on her hands in her lap. She refuses to look at Izuku. She refuses to look at Shouto. 

“Particularly when Izuku did show up to rescue Shouto within only a couple hours. We’re lucky I got away with that one!” Dabi says. 

Mina’s in hysterics, she’s laughing so hard. Ochako punches her in the arm. “Shut up,” she hisses, her cheeks burning. “I’m going to kill him. This is it—I’m going to kill him.” 

“The ultimate villainy,” Mina says, falling over herself. 

Ochako can’t help it—she has to look. Izuku is staring right at her, expression wide open in horror and realization. Shouto, too, is watching her, but he just looks vaguely amused and curious. 

“Okay,” Ochako stands up, cutting Dabi off. “Okay, listen. In my defense—”

“You kidnapped Shouto?” Izuku says, voice going all high pitched and screechy.

“It was a low moment!” Ochako shoots back. “Besides, I didn’t kidnap him, I just…hired…Dabi to…” 

She looks at Aizawa again and immediately regrets it. He has one hand covering his face. Because he’s laughing. At her. 

“It was a low moment,” she says again. “I was like seventeen!” 

“It sort of worked,” Shouto says. 

Izuku rounds his horrified expression on his husband. 

Shouto shrugs. “I did say that awful pick-up line.”

Izuku gasps. “You remember?” 

“Can I finish?” Dabi asks, irritated. 

Izuku gets out a strangled, “Please do,” and slumps down in his chair. 

Dabi finishes his speech. It’s not a very long one, thankfully, because Ochako’s face is on fire and she needs to get out of this room. This is ruined because Ochako can have nothing she wants—the second the speech is over, Kaminari shouts, “A big round of applause for Uraraka Ochako!” 

The entire room erupts into cheers. Ochako meets Izuku’s eyes over the hubbub. He’s unreadable for just a second, and then he must decide to get over it, because his face splits into a huge smile, and he laughs. Next to him, Shouto is applauding stoically. 

Ochako rises again, grinning, and gives a big, dramatic bow. 

It was all worth it, in the end. “It was no trouble,” she says. “No trouble at all.” 

Which, of course, is a boldfaced lie. She is never meddling in the love lives of her friends ever, ever again. From start to finish, it was eight years of hell. She’s getting gray hairs. She’s in her twenties. 

Never. Again. 

“So,” Mina says, “have you considered Bakugou and Kirishima?” 

Ochako’s stomach drops. She turns slowly to Mina, eyes widening. “Why,” she whispers. “Why would you do this to me?” 

Mina tips her head back and laughs.