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If Momo was completely honest with herself, she didn’t know why the students of Class 3-A even bothered with going out shopping as a group anymore. It seemed, she thought, that no matter which mall they went to they were bound to run into villains.
It had been a smaller group of them that left—just a few people, that didn’t have presents, for one reason or another. Kaminari and Mina, who had put it off until the last minute, as per usual with them. Ochako, who had been waiting for a sale to start. Kirishima, who was still on crutches from a recent injury that had been serious enough to keep him confined to a bed for weeks before, and Midoriya. He looked tired even while he trailed next to Kirishima, talking animatedly with one hand while the other was crammed into his pocket.
Midoriya was a chronic over-worker, and always had been. Considering Momo was on this last minute shopping trip for similar reasons—though of the academic variety, rather than the working one—she couldn’t exactly judge him.
Mina pulled Kirishima into the debate she, Ochako, and Kaminari were having over some recent meme Momo didn’t know about, and Midoriya slipped out of the conversation. He fell into step with Momo instead, offering her one of his trademark smiles even as he trapped his other hand in his pocket. “How’ve you been?” he asked, because he was Midoriya, and therefore eternally friendly.
Momo returned his smile easily. They weren’t the closest friends, not necessarily, but they did have a best friend in common with Todoroki which meant they spent enough time together outside of the classroom to be on good terms with one another. “I’ve kept myself busy,” she confessed. “Yourself?”
“Oh, you know,” he said, chuckling slightly. He took his hands out of his pockets so he could fidget with the band tying his hair back instead. Momo wasn’t sure why exactly he’d chosen to grow it out—she suspected it was a combination of lack of time to get a haircut and his recently developed fondness for fidgeting with it—but she had to admit it looked nice, framing the sharp planes of his face when errant curls escaped the bun he usually kept it tied back in.
“You need to remember to rest.”
“So I’ve been told,” he said, voice light. Immediately afterwards, however, he paused, his expression and posture changing so suddenly that Momo immediately felt her own guard go up. It was undeniable that Midoriya had an intuition to rival the best of them. Momo afforded a glance towards the other four, who walked on, blissfully unaware.
A boom sounded all around them, shaking the building so intensely that drywall fell near them. The other four were alert now too, though still several paces ahead of them. Momo cast them a glance, already trying to work out a plan that complimented all of their skills.
There was another boom, and the building creaked in protest, this time much more ominously. The ground beneath Momo’s feet suddenly felt more unsteady than it reasonably should, and she quickly got her answer as to why that was when a crack started opening beneath her feet.
Several things happened at once in that moment that Momo couldn’t exactly remember. Several more booms sounded in quick succession of one another while pieces of rubble started to fall from the building. Momo started to run, though she clearly wouldn’t be fast enough to get out of the danger zone on her own. There were several shouts of her name at once, and then the soft crackle of lightning that indicated Midoriya had activated his Quirk.
A pair of strong arms slammed into her a moment before a piece of rubble would have dropped directly on her head. The force she was moved with caused both her and the person that had saved her to slide for a while, ending with her head smacking rather aggressively against the side of something rough and hard. There was more shouting and more rubble falling, and then the feeling of rough fingers on her face, and then everything went dark.
Momo awoke with a somewhat involuntary groan of pain. She immediately tried to sit up, and then regretted it when the world spun around her.
“Yaoyorozu-san,” a voice—Midoriya’s voice, she thought—said over her, and she became aware of the feeling of his hand at the back of her head supporting her so she didn’t move it excessively while she was unconscious. “Don’t move, Yaoyorozu-san, please.”
“Midoriya-san…”
“It’s me.” Midoriya’s voice was soft, even softer than usual. After a moment, green light flared to life around him, blowing stray strands of his hair about his face in an erratic way. The glow of his Quirk cast him in a haunting, nearly ethereal light, masking the bags that had taken up near-permanent residence beneath his eyes. “How do you feel?”
“My head,” Momo started, raising one hand to try to touch it, before giving up halfway there.
“You hit it pretty hard,” Midoriya murmured. “The bleeding has stopped, at least, but we need to get it looked at when we get out of here.”
“Where is here?” Momo asked.
Midoriya’s face twisted unpleasantly with whatever answer he was about to share with her, and he sighed. “We were buried.”
Momo reached out with one hand, connecting with a wall of rubble sooner than she would like. She raised her hand above her, and ran into the same problem. She focused back on Midoriya, noting the way the light from his Quirk bounced off of the walls around them, indicating the narrow nature of the space. Midoriya himself was crouched half over her, his face a lot closer to her own than she had thought it was initially, his back pressed close to the rubble roof above him.
In other words, the space was tight enough that no matter what they did, there was no possible way they would get out of this on their own strength. Additionally, any rescue attempts would likely kill them due to shifting rubble.
Momo breathed in sharply and tried to ground herself in the green of Midoriya’s eyes and the feeling of his fingers at her scalp. “The others?”
He made an inhaling sound not unlike the one she just made, and when he closed his eyes, two tears leaked out and made a track down his cheeks. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Momo said. There wasn’t much else that could be said, after all.
Midoriya took a deep breath, shifting so he could lay her head down on the ground. There wasn’t any space, but Momo shifted over the best she could, pushing herself up onto one side while Midoriya did the same, facing her. He took in her face for a moment, much like she imagined she was doing with him, and then he turned off his Quirk, casting them in darkness instead.
“Looks like we’re going to miss Christmas this year,” he whispered, voice so quiet that Momo barely heard it.
Momo didn’t say anything, but she thought privately that there were certainly worse ways to die.
Time was an abstract thing.
It was some amount of time after Momo had first woken up. She thought Midoriya might have dozed off—there were a few places where light leaked through the rubble tower they were trapped under. Occasionally, she still heard the rumble of fighting in the distance, so she didn’t think it could have been too long.
“There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you,” Momo whispered, her voice barely above a whisper. She didn’t know what exactly it was that caused her to speak up about this—it was something that had been on her mind since she’d seen Midoriya destroy one of his fingers to throw a ball in the Quirk Assessment Test that Aizawa had given them on the first day of their first year, sure—but she felt the near-death situation was most likely lowering her inhibitions.
“Ask away,” Midoriya murmured, though he didn’t open his eyes.
“Your Quirk. You could use it without breaking your bones, so why did you choose to break them so often anyway, back when we started school?”
Midoriya hummed contemplatively. “You’re referring to the Sports Festival first year, aren’t you?”
Momo felt herself blush at being read so expertly, though the dark concealed it. “Yes, actually. In the cavalry battle that year, and your fight with Todoroki-san, you were able to use it without breaking your bones, yet at other times you chose to break them anyway.”
Midoriya was silent for a long moment, and Momo began to worry she’d offended him. He was usually one to talk, rapidly and often, so silences were concerning from him. Just when she was ready to apologize, he finally spoke. “I can’t tell you the full story, because it’s not mine to tell, but the short version is that Todoroki-kun was only using half his power, and that pissed me off.”
Momo laughed softly, covering her mouth with one hand even though it was certainly too dark for him to see even if he had his eyes open. “Don’t tell me that’s how you became friends.”
Midoriya was silent for another long moment, and then he chuckled, surprisingly. “Actually, now that I think about it, I broke a bone with my Quirk to make all my closest friends.”
“No,” Momo breathed, also laughing slightly in spite of herself. “Don’t tell me. But wait, you really did, didn’t you?”
“I did,” he said, laughing again, but louder this time. “With Uraraka-san and Iida-kun, I broke my arm and both my legs at the entrance exam, then I broke my fingers with Tsuyu-san at the USJ, and then the Sports Festival with Todoroki-kun…”
Momo laughed softly again. “There are easier way to make friends, you know, Midoriya-san.”
“I wouldn’t know them,” he said, voice light. “Well, that’s not necessarily true. I definitely know them—I’ve researched making friends before, you know—but I apparently don’t know how to execute them. Instead I make friends through a series of broken bones and terrible decisions.”
“And saving people, so I hear.”
“That too.”
They fell into the same not-quite-awkward silence they’d been in before, until Midoriya broke it. “I’d like to make a close friend without breaking a bone.”
“Is that so?” Momo asked, bemused.
“’Course it is,” he said. “Wanna help me out with it, Yaoyorozu-san?”
“I would love to,” she said, hiding her smile in the crook of her arm out of habit despite the fact that they were lying in near darkness and he likely couldn’t see it anyway. “It’s not as if I have something better to do with my time at the moment.” A moment later, she realized how her words could be taken and flushed. “That’s not to say that I wouldn’t want to be closer with you anyway, Midoriya-san. I only meant, well…”
“It’s alright. I know what you meant,” Midoriya said, though an edge of nervousness had entered his voice anyway. There was another long period of silence, broken when Midoriya cleared his throat. “Well. Interests. I know that you like tea and science and designer clothing, but, uh…I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t actually know much about you, Yaoyorozu-san.”
“About the only thing I know about your interests is that you like heroes, so I suppose we’re even,” Momo said, and to her relief, Midoriya laughed softly.
“I do like heroes a lot. But I also like katsudon and Quirks in general. And—oh, I shouldn’t say that.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll judge me.”
“I promise you I won’t.”
“How about this,” Midoriya said, sounding hesitant. “I’ll tell you that if you tell me something, I don’t know, uh? Embarrassing? About you, I mean.”
Momo considered for a moment, and ultimately decided that they were probably going to die here and she honestly had no reason to worry about something as silly as her own embarrassment at the moment. “I accept.”
“Alright, uh. Well, I do graffiti art sometimes.”
Momo audibly gasped. “You do not!”
“I do. I really do.”
“That’s not very heroic like.”
Midoriya blew out his lips. “I know, I know. You know, actually, whenever I do it I end up having a full on panic attack once I get back to the dorms and start coming down from an adrenaline high and then I sign myself up for community service at my next free moment cleaning graffiti off of city walls—”
“My goodness.”
“I know, it honestly makes no sense, really.”
“Are you maybe what they call an adrenaline junkie?”
He let out a defeated sigh. “I’m definitely an adrenaline junkie. Actually…I have a motorcycle license, you know.”
“Oh my,” Momo said, covering her mouth with her hand as she grinned at him. “Don’t let Mina-san hear you say that, she’ll certainly demand a ride.”
“No motorcycle to go with the license, sadly,” he said. “Maybe when I graduate, though.”
“I must admit I find it difficult to believe someone so adorable on the outside is so wild on the inside,” Momo mused.
Midoriya immediately made several familiar spluttering noises, and if she closed her eyes she could practically see him flailing and blushing in her mind’s eye. “Wh-what about you, then? What’s your secret?”
“Oh,” Momo said, feeling her face warm up unpleasantly. “Well…sometimes…promise me you won’t judge me, alright?”
“I promise!”
“Sometimes I read erotica,” Momo said, slapping her hand over her mouth as soon as the words were out. There were several more spluttering sounds from Izuku’s direction, and Momo immediately found herself regretting her decision to tell him at all. “I’m so sorry, Midoriya-san, please forget I said that. I should have tried to come up with something else. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“I-it’s alright! Don’t apologize! It—it is sort of the point, right?”
He laughed, and despite her embarrassment, she laughed with him. “I suppose it is.”
“Imagine what some of the others would think, if they could hear us right now.”
Momo giggled softly. “Imagine Kaminari-san in particular. He’d be so jealous of you.”
“For having a motorcycle license?”
“For knowing I read erotica,” Momo corrected. “But you know what, he would probably be jealous of your motorcycle license as well.”
Midoriya laughed again, a soft chuckle. “I should tell him about the motorcycle license, just to see his face.”
“You could do better than that,” Momo chided with a chuckle of her own. “Imagine his face if you just rode in on a motorcycle one day. You could even do that thing people do in movies where they take off their motorcycle helmet and shake out their hair.”
“Oh my gods,” Midoriya wheezed through his laughter. “I cannot do that, I would die from embarrassment before I even got the helmet off. Besides I’m way too plain to be able to pull something like that off.”
“You’re not nearly as plain as you think you are,” Momo said on reflex. She immediately felt herself blush, with her entire face. The words were true, as true as they could be, and too sincere for the conversation they were having. The mood shifted with them, back to the somber tensity it had been in before then. Momo was sure she had successfully ruined everything, yet again.
To her surprise, she felt fingertips brush against her hand. They brushed again, and Momo moved her own hand, feeling Midoriya’s rough palms and knobby, crooked fingers until they were able to intertwine their fingers together.
“Thank you, Yaoyorozu-san,” he whispered.
“Of course,” Momo said, and they slipped into silence again.
Time was an abstract thing.
They had some conversations, reminiscing about their classmate’s antics. There was the time that Todoroki followed Shinsou and Aizawa around for a week, trying to collect photographic evidence proving they were related. There was the time that Kaminari spiked the punch at Christmas and then had to serve detention for a week afterwards. There was the time Bakugou got hit with a Quirk that caused him to blurt out his true feelings, and went around telling everyone how amazing they were with the most furious expression Momo had ever seen for an entire week. There was the time, too, that Mina had insisted on makeovers for all the boys, and Sero had worn immaculate winged eyeliner for a month afterwards on a dare.
They both slept eventually too, and when they woke up the next day—Momo would have to assume it was the next day—they could no longer distract themselves from the situation.
“The fighting seems to have stopped,” Midoriya murmured.
“That’s true,” Momo agreed. They’d shuffled closer to one another at some point in the night, and Midoriya’s knees were pressed against her shins. They still held hands in between them, but it was something that they both seemed to need. “They will most likely begin rescue efforts soon.”
Midoriya shuddered, and she felt it through the points she was connected to him through. They knew enough about their situation to know that their rescue attempt was the most dangerous stage for them—moving the rubble could cause it to fall, and they could, unfortunately, be crushed.
“Is there…” Midoriya trailed off after he started asking the question, so Momo squeezed his hand in some form of silent encouragement. He took a deep breath—and that was something that was limited too. “Is there anything you regret not doing?”
It was a serious question, but Momo couldn’t bear to give a serious answer, not right now. “I borrowed an album from Kyouka-san, and I doubt she’ll be able to find it in my room, considering where I put it.”
Midoriya laughed softly. “I have a pair of Iida-kun’s glasses in my room.”
“Why on earth do you have those?”
“He leaves them places,” Midoriya said, still laughing softly. “He just takes them off and forgets about him. That’s why he has so many, you know.”
“I’ve always been curious about Iida-san’s glasses,” Momo admitted. “He doesn’t seem to need them, since he takes them off when he gets in his hero costume, yet he wears them anyway.”
“They’re reading glasses,” Midoriya said, through his laughter. “He can see just fine. He just can’t accept less than perfect vision.”
Momo giggled, ducking her head as she did. Coincidentally, it caused her to put her face, essentially, in Midoriya’s chest. She pulled away immediately. “That is very like Iida-san.”
“I know, right?” Midoriya laughed again. “When he told us, I’m pretty sure Uraraka-san and I couldn’t get off the floor for ten minutes we were laughing so hard.”
“That sounds like you two,” Momo said.
“Yeah,” he agreed, something sad in his voice.
“Do you regret not getting a chance to tell her how you feel?” Momo asked.
There was a moment of silence. “What?”
“Ochako-san, I mean. You like her, don’t you?”
“I…” he trailed off. “I mean, I did. I liked her in first year, but, uh. Not since then.”
“Oh,” Momo said. “Please forgive me for assuming, I just…”
“It’s alright,” he said, voice quiet. “Actually, I, um. I like someone else. And I do regret not telling them, so, uh. You weren’t…wrong.”
“Oh,” Momo said, feeling her heart sink slightly. She was well aware of her small crush on Midoriya—quite honestly, she imagined it would be difficult not to have a little bit of a crush on Midoriya, with how amazing he really was—but she’d never had hope of her feelings being returned anyway.
“What about you?”
“Oh,” Momo said, glad that he couldn’t see her expression in the dark. “Yes, I like someone. I regret not telling him, also.”
“Oh,” Midoriya said, sounding sadder than he had before. Maybe he was sad for Momo—it would be so like him, after all. “Is it Todoroki-kun?”
“No. No, not Todoroki-san. He’s incredible, yes, but…”
“Ace?” Midoriya supplied.
Momo breathed out a sigh. “Yes, that.”
Midoriya let out a soft laugh. “It doesn’t mean you can’t still like someone, though. I know I did.”
“You like Todoroki-san?”
“Oh. Yeah. Well, actually, I did! Not, uh. Not him anymore, though.”
“I didn’t know you were…”
“Pansexual?”
“Yes.”
“O-oh. I don’t really, uh, discuss it a lot, so that makes sense. That you wouldn’t know.”
“I appreciate you telling me,” Momo said, turning her face upwards in the direction she knew his face was. She made out the glint of his eyes in the darkness as he met her gaze. “I won’t judge you for it.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re a very considerate person, Yaoyorozu-san.”
“You can…” Momo trailed off to steel herself. “You can call me Momo, if you would like. We might die together, after all, and I don’t really see the need for formalities.”
“Alright,” Midoriya said. “You—you can call me Izuku, then, if you would like.”
“Izuku-san,” Momo said, testing it out.
He laughed softly. “I thought we were dropping formalities? Just Izuku is fine.”
“Oh,” Momo breathed. That felt so…intimate. “Okay, Izuku.”
He hummed in acknowledgement, and they fell silent.
Desperate for something to distract herself with, even as unideal a topic it was, Momo considered who his possible crush could be. Ochako and Todoroki were both out, apparently. As to who he was close to outside of that, there was Iida, Asui, and Shinsou. She didn’t see Iida as much of the romancing sort, to be completely honest, and she was also fairly sure he might be dating Hatsume, from the support course. Tsuyu and Shinsou both seemed like viable options, though—they were both quiet and calm but also incredibly kind if a little blunt, but considering his past crushes were Todoroki and Ochako, that may very well be Izuku’s type.
“May I attempt to guess who you have a crush on?” Momo asked.
Izuku made an aborted sound in his throat. “S-sure. If you want.”
Momo hummed. “Shinsou-san.”
Izuku made another aborted noise that neither succeeded in confirming it or denying it. “No! Not Shinsou-kun!”
“Why not Shinsou-san?”
“Isn’t he dating Jirou-san and Kaminari-kun?”
“I would know if he were,” Momo said, affronted. “Kyouka-san is my best friend.”
“And Shinsou-kun is one of mine,” Izuku said, in the same defensive tone Momo had just used. “I know he at least likes them!”
Momo gasped softly as she came to a realization. “Oh, you know, they have been spending a lot of time with him lately, haven’t they?”
“See, that’s what I’m saying,” Izuku said, laughing as he did. “You thought I liked Shinsou-kun. No, it’s not Shinsou-kun I like.”
“Who is it, then? Tsuyu-san?”
“No.”
Momo considered who else it could possibly be, and ultimately decided to just guess Iida anyway. “Iida-san?”
“No.”
“Hatsume-san?”
“No! Iida-kun and Hatsume-san are dating each other!”
Momo hummed. “That’s what I thought, actually.” She paused for a moment while she tried to think. There weren’t many other people he spent time with that also weren’t already in a relationship of some kind. Although, she supposed, they were talking about crushes, so it was entirely possible he had one on someone that was already in a relationship. “Kirishima-san?”
“No,” Izuku said, sounding utterly befuddled. Momo supposed that was fair, considering everyone knew Kirishima was with—
“Bakugou-san?”
Izuku made a sound not unlike a gag. “Alright, no, that’s it. I’m revoking your guessing privileges.”
Momo laughed. “I apologize. I didn’t realize they were so horrible.”
“Kacchan?”
“Other than that one, I didn’t realize they were so horrible.”
“I didn’t think you’d be so all over the place, considering it’s you,” Izuku said.
Momo made an indignant noise she wasn’t particularly proud of. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No, Momo, I—” he shifted around, letting go of Momo’s hand. She mourned the loss for a moment before his hand reconnected with her cheek. She gasped softly when she felt it. “I mean, it’s you. You’re the one I have feelings for.” Momo found his eyes in the darkness and stared as one of his thumbs tracked across her cheek, the motion soothing. “I just—you asked me if I regretted not telling them before we…you know, and I said I did, but then I realized it was stupid to be nervous about it now, all things considered, so. Momo. I like you.” There was another long period of silence, where Momo was too shocked to fully comprehend what was happening, and then Midoriya pulled away from her, as much as the space could afford. “Sorry, I just. I know you probably don’t feel the same, but I just…you deserved to know.”
Momo finally found she had words again. “Why…why would it be me?”
“Y-you can’t be serious,” Izuku said. He sounded so flustered right now. Momo wished she could see his face.
“Of course I’m serious! I’m not energetic like Ochako-san, or nearly as incredible as Todoroki-san, or as funny as Shinsou-san, or—”
“Stop that,” Izuku said, all nerves gone from his voice in favor of determination instead. “Those things might be true, but it doesn’t mean that you’re any less amazing. You’re the smartest person I know, and easily one of the kindest. You spend so much of your time just trying to help everyone with their coursework. You always come up with the most amazing plans. You’re incredible, Momo. You’re easily all of these things, and you—you’re really pr-pretty, too, you know. Somebody would have to be both blind and stupid to not see how amazing you are.”
“Izuku, you—”
“You don’t have to return my feelings,” Izuku said, all in a rush. “I just wanted you to—”
It was difficult to find his mouth in the dark, but Momo did anyway, shuffling forward until she was against him, raising her hands to his face. Her first attempt she only pecked the corner of his mouth—though it was effective for silencing him, at least—but the second time she kissed him fully. Izuku made a surprised sound, but then he kissed her back like a starving man. It was desperate, and messy, and neither of them seemed to have much experience (though Izuku, arguably, seemed to have more).
They broke apart eventually, because they had to, each of them gasping for air as they did.
“I regret not getting to know you sooner,” Momo whispered.
Izuku inhaled sharply, and this time, when he kissed her, it was wet with both of their tears.
Time was an abstract thing.
If Momo had to guess, the rescue efforts started on their third day being trapped, though she only knew through the occasional groans of rubble moving elsewhere. She and Izuku had stopped talking all together, by that point, throats too sore from lack of water to be interested in speaking.
Izuku cradled the back of her head, where she had been injured, with one hand. With the other hand he held her back, keeping her tucked against him even as they both shuddered, in fear of the next groan as rubble shifted.
The fourth day, as she figured it, the pain from hunger was so bad that she shook with it. Though it was possible she was shaking from oxygen deprivation, which seemed to have set in.
The hand at the back of her head tightened, calloused fingertips brushing at her hair.
“It’s alright. I’m here. I’m right here.”
Izuku’s voice was a murmur, a mantra, repeated every once in a while, when he found the strength to do it. Momo pulled him closer when he did, and shuddered, and held out.
“I’m here,” he murmured. A shudder racked his body immediately afterwards.
“It’s going to be okay,” Momo murmured back.
He dropped his forehead to hers, one of the curls that escaped from his bun tickling the side of her face.
They had stopped believing it long ago.
Time was an abstract thing.
The rubble was shifting. There was a sizzling sound, and light, and yelling. To be completely honest, Momo was a little too far gone to be able to remember the details as they happened.
Light fell on them, and it was the first time she had seen Izuku since this started. His face spoke of sorrow and his eyebrows were drawn. He cracked his eyes open, gazing at her. His gaze was heavy, and his eyes were distant but green, and brilliant, and somehow prettier than she remembered.
He didn’t speak—Momo doubted he could even still speak—but he pressed his forehead against hers again. He breathed out, and he held her. It was real, and they were alive.
The light came back to them slowly, just as the air did. Breathing became easier, one lungful at a time. They drew closer to each other, somehow pressing tighter together as rock after rock was lifted off of them. Izuku curled around her slightly, and she tucked herself away in his arms.
Another slab of concrete lifted off of them.
“Oh my gods,” a voice breathed. It sounded like Mina, but Momo wasn’t sure, and checking meant lifting her head. “It’s them. It’s them. Guys, they’re alive!”
“Deku-kun?” That was Ochako. “Yaomomo-chan? Oh my gods, oh my gods, thank goodness—”
“We need stretchers over here! Two of them!”
“Say something, you guys, please!” There was the sound of rocks skidding, and then someone was touching Momo’s shoulder.
She shuddered, moving closer to Izuku. He held her tighter in turn, but he spoke, voice rough with disuse. “Momo has a head injury. You—you need—”
“Okay, Deku-kun,” Ochako said. “Let her go. I’ll float her out first.”
Momo tightened her grip on Izuku’s shirt. It was ridiculous, to not want to leave now that help was finally here, but…
There was always that possibility. The things people say when they’re about to die aren’t always things they really mean, and if she lets go of him now, then it might turn out to just be a dream.
“You have to go,” Izuku rasped, in her ear. “It’ll be okay, really.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “Can’t leave you. It’ll—it’ll change.”
“S’okay,” Izuku said. “I’m here.”
And then he handed her off anyway. Ochako took her, negating her weight as she did, and Momo was floated out of the pit that they had been trapped in for the last several days. She was put on a stretcher and carried off to an ambulance long before she saw Izuku emerge from the pit as well.
She lost consciousness in the ambulance, and she didn’t regain it until she was in the hospital.
Momo was released from the hospital later that very same day. It had been three days, the hospital staff informed her, not five, but three days were still plenty long enough to do a number on her and Izuku’s (Midoriya’s? Was it still okay to call him Izuku, now that they’d somehow survived?)
So she left the hospital after several hours hooked up to an IV and fed an appropriate amount of food for someone that hadn’t eaten for several days (which was, admittedly, not a lot) and having the gash on her head wrapped up. She hadn’t seen Izuku—Midoriya—since they had been rescued. She would have to talk to him eventually, she knew, but still, gazing at the receptionist at the hospital, she couldn’t work up the courage to ask if he was still here.
She called her mother as she rode in a cab back to UA and agreed to come visit as soon as she could get permission to leave again. She checked in with the teachers at UA—Aizawa pinched his nose and called her a problem child and informed her that next time she got out of the hospital, she was supposed to wait for her teacher escort to arrive to collect her before she just left on her own. He was on the phone with Present Mic before she was fully out of the door to tell him to not worry about getting her after all. She felt incredibly guilty for that, even as she walked quietly back to the dorm building.
Kyouka was the one that spotted her first, while she was slipping her shoes off by the front door. “Yaomomo?”
Momo looked up, trying for a smile as she met Kyouka’s worried gaze. “Hello.”
There were tears in Kyouka’s eyes as she flung her arms around Momo. Momo, weak from everything that had happened, swayed with the force of the hug (though thankfully she did not topple). She was crying too, as she held her best friend. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
“Me too,” Momo breathed.
Kyouka hugged her for a minute longer before stepping away. At which point, Momo realized a small crowd had gathered around her. “We searched for you both for days,” Kyouka said. “We thought for sure that you’d been crushed.”
“Yaomomo!” Mina shouted, with tears in her eyes. She also sprung on Momo, hugging her tightly, just as Ochako did the same on Momo’s other side. “You scared us so badly!”
“Don’t ever do that again,” Ochako added.
“I’ll try not to,” Momo promised. She still had tears in her eyes when she said it.
Classmate after classmate offered her a hug next. Aoyama threw a handful of glitter on her after his, eliciting watery laughs from everyone in the room. Satou left quickly after his hug to go get started baking something for her. Tsuyu left her with an offer to talk if she ever needed to, and Shinsou offered to brainwash her if the nightmares ever got too bad—an offer he made to everyone, after they went through a particularly rough ordeal. Momo always suspected it was because he had nightmares as bad as the rest of them.
Iida gave her a brief lecture about the proper way to recover from malnourishment—Momo was intimately familiar with malnourishment and recovering from it, unfortunately, but she listened to him anyway. Iida fretted to show he cared, after all, so she wouldn’t deny him that. Kaminari draped himself dramatically about her shoulders and sobbed into her hair, claiming he wouldn’t let her out of his sight the next time they went to the mall together. Kouda didn’t hug her, but he did gently set his pet rabbit into her hands for several moments. Kirishima called her manly while he hugged her and Dark Shadow gave her a hug in place of Tokoyami.
There were only two people that weren’t there. Bakugou, because he was at work, and Iz—Midoriya, because—
“He got back earlier,” Todoroki told her as he wrapped her in a hug. Todoroki was always a strange person to hug, just because of the temperature differential, but he was good at it. (“He hugs people like he’s never going to get another hug—kero,” Tsuyu had observed once, on one of their many girls’ nights. “It’s adorable.”) “He went up to his room to sleep, and asked me to wake him up when you got here. I told him I would, but…” Momo felt him shrug from her position inside his arms, and she felt herself giggle slightly.
“Yes, please don’t do that,” she said. “I’d much rather he rest.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Todoroki said, sounding all too smug about it. He gave her one last squeeze and then reluctantly let go—he really did always hug people like it was the last hug he’d ever get—wandering off in Sero’s general direction.
Kyouka returned to Momo’s side when Todoroki left, fluttering around her nervously as she guided Momo to the couches. Momo could have gotten there on her own, but she knew from experience that it was better to let people worry when they wanted to. In their line of work, sometimes, they needed it.
Momo sat with her classmates for the rest of the night, letting her friends make her tea and bring her snacks and wrap her in blankets. She tried to not miss a head of green hair too much as she did.
There was a soft knock on the door of her dorm room around 11 a.m. the next morning. Momo had been catching up on her studying—she had missed a lot, in three days—and she cast the door a curious look, certain she wasn’t expecting anyone.
She opened it, somehow both surprised and not to find Midoriya Izuku standing on the other side of it, leaning against the door frame, arms folded across his chest. His gray long-sleeved shirt read pants and his shoulder-length green hair was tied back in a very messy bun and there were bags underneath his somber emerald eyes, but he smiled when he saw her. That smile made her heart flutter and her brain replay the feeling of kissing him desperately in the dark, causing all of her blood to race itself to her face to make her embarrassment known to him as well.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello,” she said automatically. “How did you get on the girls’ side?”
“I ran into Ashido-san in the common room on my way over,” he said. “She was happy to let me in, once I told her what I was here to do.”
Momo’s heart was racing. She swallowed. “What is it you’re here to do, exactly?”
He gave her a nervous smile, fingers tapping restlessly against his arms. The little part of Momo that still hoped he’d meant everything he’d said back in the rubble flared to life, wrestling fiercely for control from the rest of her. Especially since he was clearly so nervous, yet clearly trying to work himself up to something, if that determined glint in his eyes meant anything. “I’m here to ask you on a date,” he said. “Pr-properly, this time, that is.”
“You are?” Momo asked, her own voice coming out breathless-sounding to her ears.
“Y-yeah,” he said. He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his nervous stutter was gone. “I meant what I said in the—back there, you know. I really do think you’re incredible, and amazing. You’re smart, and kind, and so, so beautiful. I know that I’m not—well, I would understand, if you didn’t want to date me. I’ll even forget about what happened back there if you want! But, uh, if…” He cleared his throat. “If you would like to, though, I would like to give it a shot.”
Momo gazed at him, unable to fight off either her smile or her blush. Considering Izuku was the color of a strawberry, he wasn’t succeeding with the latter, at least, either. “I would love to,” she whispered.
A smile split Izuku’s face, blinding in its brilliance. “Yeah?”
“Yes. I don’t care what we do, or where we go, as long as you’re with me, I would like to go on a date with you.”
“I thought you would add a motorcycle ride in as a stipend, too,” he said, still beaming at her.
Momo giggled, and she didn’t even bother to hide it for once. “That would be nice.”
“Alright,” he said, unfolding his arms and pushing himself off the doorjamb. “I won’t do the helmet thing, though.”
Momo sighed dramatically. “I suppose that’s acceptable, as long as you make it up to me some other way.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her, which was at odds with the furious pink tint to his cheeks. “How so?”
Momo stepped into his arms, slotting against him as if she had never left, and tilted her head up towards him. “You could kiss me again, for one thing,” she said, not entirely sure where the boldness was coming from.
It didn’t matter, though, because the next moment he’d captured her lips with his own, his movements gentle and sweet, not nearly as desperate as they had been in the rubble, but just as nice all the same.
Time was an abstract thing, but she knew they spent quite a lot of it exactly like that.