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It was a normal Tuesday afternoon, and Todoroki Shouto and Yaoyorozu Momo were talking about their feelings.
No, this wasn't Yaomomo helping poor Todoroki to express himself; he was more than good enough at identifying emotions and expressing them - when those feelings fell within the realms of rage, contempt, and irritation. If anything, it was a bit of the reverse situation.
But Yaoyorozu Momo, Queen of 1-A, out of touch with her feelings? Heavens forbid!
That's what they all say, Momo had reported to Todoroki during the conversation which initiated these weekly get-togethers. "What they don't know is that it's just manners. The social formula for operating with peak efficiency in every given situation. You can read books about it; it's not like it's hard."
"Remind me to have a look at some of those books some time," Todoroki had said.
"I'd rather you don't," said Momo, politely. "I find your honesty refreshing. I don't need a chemical formula if I've got the raw elements in front of me."
"Still. It must be useful, to have a prescribed way of behaviour in every situation imaginable."
"Not every situation, of course, but one can extrapolate based on similar use cases or applications of an action or phrase --"
"Are you saying there's a precedent for how to go about declaring war on a fated rival by revealing your tragic backstory?"
"Literature is full of them, Todoroki-san. But for the more commonplace occurrences, I find it somewhat lacking. Such as when I wanted to know it Shouji-san could only reproduce his own body parts with his Dupli-arms, or if he could for example make Tsuyu-chan's tongue come out of one of his mouths. It would be a huge asset to his rescue capabilities. What would have been the optimal thing to say then?"
Both of them had puzzled over this for a while, and come to the conclusion that this sort of thing was a mutual topic of interest, and should thus be discussed over very expensive dried leaf beverages on a weekly basis.
Hence where they were now, struggling with the recurring annoyance of a theme that just wouldn't go away -- high school relationships.
"I think I really did it this time, Todoroki-san," Momo declared.
Todoroki nodded gravely yet cluelessly. Upon reflection, it was a bit of a guilty nod too. "So have I."
"You have? Surely not you? I can certainly see my premeditated behaviors being misinterpreted given the context, but you don't tend to overthink that much…"
"I realized it just this morning. Or, Kaminari helped me realize it. It's a real problem."
Momo calculated, nodded resolutely, and then directed: "We'll say it at the same time, then."
It was for the best. The numbers said so.
"I think I might… " she started.
"-- accidentally be dating --" they said in tandem, which was just about three standard deviations away from the mostly likely outcome that Momo had foreseen.
"Hatsume-san!" she blurted, surprised by the improbability of it all.
"Bakugou," intoned Todoroki, sounding like he was about to attend a funeral.
Which, if that information ever went public, he probably would be.
"Bakugou-san? Really, Todoroki-san?" Momo wasn't supposed to let the judgmental hint slip into her tone, but this was a safe space. And it made her feel much better about her whole situation with Hatsume anyway.
"Why Hatsume?" asked Todoroki, throwing away the etiquette textbook as usual and answering a question with a question. "Midoriya's traumatized by her boobs."
That was certainly something Momo would have to look into... But no, she mustn't! Her whole problem might have arisen from looking too much into Hatsume's boobs in the first place; to ask about them might sink Momo even deeper into this.... situation.
"She asked me to make babies with her," Momo confessed, most likely failing to hide the full-body blush that even thinking about these words prompted.
However, Todoroki simply... shrugged. As if gorgeous girl geniuses asked him to have their babies every day, which... might be his reality. Momo didn't know, but if she thought about it she might be a tiny bit jealous.
"He told me in great detail how to go fuck myself, and then yelled at me to pay attention to him," Todoroki offered in exchange.
Momo frowned, a small polite thing. Then she remembered where she was and scowled until she could feel her face turning ugly.
"Then what?" she asked, expression exercise completed. After all, it didn't sound too out of the ordinary for Todoroki and Bakugou.
"You first," Todoroki insisted.
Momo did not hide her face behind her hands in the prescribed cutesy manner, and simply stated the facts "We ... I believe the term is 'fooled around'."
Todoroki leaned forward, intrigued. "Did you do anything naughty?"
Momo thought about the multiple smoke alarms that had gone off, the highly corrosive acid their experiments had produced, some minor explosions and an appalling lack of safety goggles. As a class representative she really ought to have done a better job of adhering to the rules. "Yes." She thought it best not to go into details; besides, she was curious. "What about you?"
"We fought. It was hot, and sweaty. I'm not an expert but I believe the sexual tension was off the charts. Later we showered together, then had dinner."
"Oh, please!" A new voice broke into the conversation. Momo sighed, but noticed that Todoroki shifted the slightest bit in surprise. She supposed that on the boy's side of the dorm, no one had quickly learned how public the hallways -- and thus the girls' rooms were -- when Jirou was walking about. It wasn't like she could help her Quirk; it was why she almost made sure to be constantly plugged into something, to avoid overhearing too much information.
Which this most certainly was.
Jirou opened the door and poked her head in. "Neither of you are dating anyone, that's just how they are," she announced.
Momo made hushing noises with her hands; almost guiltily, Jirou realized her desire for privacy, stepped inside, and shut the door. "Sorry," Jirou said, but without the amount of true remorse that etiquette dictated should accompany apologies. "I was walking back from the shower and heard this nonsense."
Todoroki frowned deeply. Momo made a note of how his eyebrows scrunched together unevenly in annoyance, and resolved to try it out soon.
"Explain," he demanded.
Jirou gave her best goth-emo sigh and threw a dead-inside look at Momo. "Yaomomo, you did lab experiments with Hatsume."
Momo opened her mouth to elaborate, but Jirou wasn't done yet. "Todoroki, all of your sparring matches are like that. Also, the showers are communal and so is the cafeteria."
All of these facts were undeniable.
"Oh," said Momo, unsure of how she should feel about this.
"Hmmm," echoed Todoroki.
"But I --" Momo felt the need to elaborate. "I feel like I was quite indiscreet, which could certainly cause some misunderstandings… Jirou-san, I didn't think at all when she asked me to make a uranium battery, I just did it right away."
"Uhh, what's wrong with that? Were you breaking the economy again?" asked Jirou.
"The economy? Well, that's not so much the issue as the elemental abundance of the planet! Uruanium is less than three hundred micro-percent of the Earth's crust! What if she asks again, and I keep making them for her? I'd end up changing the composition of the world! To say nothing of the disposal process - they say a diamond is forever, but uranium takes thousands of lifetimes to decay! How can she not read into that?'
Jirou made a noise Momo couldn't interpret, then sat down on the bed between them and wriggled until she got comfortable, which involved laying her head on Momo's lap and slinging her legs over Todoroki's. Her dark violet eyes stared up into Momo's, with much judgement.
"That sounds quite serious when you put it like that," Todoroki summarized. "Maybe you're not accidentally dating her, though."
"That's what I'm saying --"
"Maybe you're accidentally married," Todoroki said over Jirou.
Momo did bury her face in her hands this time, but not out of any sense of appropriate female mannerisms. It was simply because her face had become too hot to be safe at this very moment.
"Assuming she thinks about that stuff," said Jirou. "I mean, I didn't know about that. And sure, Hatsume's got to know way more than me, but isn't she more on the mechanical side of things? Would she know more about any battery you popped out of your skin besides, 'this will make my babies sing'? None of us know the atomic composition of the things we use, sorry to say."
Momo knew this was true, but sometimes the lack of people's knowledge could be astounding.
"She probably knew it was expensive, though, or she wouldn't have asked Yaomomo to do it," reasoned Todoroki.
"Or she was just impatient and didn't want to do the paperwork to requisition it."
"Hmmm."
"I suppose," Momo allowed slowly, peeling her hands away from her face since they were only making it hotter, "It's possible she might not have attached any significance to my… shortsightedness."
"It's excusable," Todoroki said, awkwardly patting her shoulder. "Midoriya told me it's hard to see much with a face full of breasts, and you're not the one with an eye quirk."
Jirou groaned, and buried her face into Momo's stomach under her breasts, as if to prove Todoroki's point, and Momo groaned too but only because she was the one seemingly unable to experience boob-induced vision problems and at this point she really needed to. For science.
"What about you, Todoroki?" asked Jirou, once she'd recovered. "What horrible indiscretions did you have that would make Blasty McBlasterface think the two of you were dating."
Todoroki considered. Momo instinctively didn't like where this was going. "I do everything he wants me to, and not just because he wants it, but because I do too."
"That sounds… unsafe," Momo commented faintly, remembering vividly the kinds of things Bakugou would tell Todoroki to do.
"Not everything he tells me to do," Todoroki hastened to clarify. "But what he really wants. More fire? Absolutely. Don't hold back? Plus Ultra. Can I make the Heaven-Piercing Ice Wall live up to its over-hyped name? His words, not mine. But yes, apparently I can when I want to carve his face into it."
"I mean, the two of you are extremely compatible in combat, and your tendencies to push yourselves bring your partners up no matter who you spar with," said Jirou. "And, no offense, but knowing Bakugou he might just think you're doing all these things because you're a pushover and his fragile ego needs to keep thinking he's better than everyone else."
"Oh," said Todoroki, with that small frown on his face that had been there when he'd watched the Sports Festival footage of the end of the final match. "I suppose you're right - I haven't really done anything to make him think I'm giving it my best after all. Not from his point of view."
"I think it may be the same, in my and Hatsume-san's case," Momo allowed.
"Yeah…." sighed Jirou, reaching up to pat both their arms. "Sorry to break it to you."
Todoroki seemed to have reached acceptance of this small tragedy relatively quickly. "At least we don't have to break anyone's heart," he said to Momo.
Momo was still ruminating over her initial reaction to Jirou's logic. "Somehow I'm disappointed," she complained to the room in general, not really expecting a response to her childish outburst.
"Would you like to be dating Hatsume, Yaomomo?" Jirou asked, tone shifted now to a soft ballad.
Everyone was quiet, waiting patiently for Momo to respond. Long past the point of politeness, Momo finally found her answer. "I suppose so," she admitted, then tacked on a much less proper: "Very much."
Jirou threw her a hand sign that Momo inferred was a hip way of showing approval. Or so she hoped. She'd look it up later.
"Todoroki, would you like to be dating Bakugou?" Jirou asked next, although it seemed like she had considerably more difficulty getting the final words out of her mouth this time.
"Yes, I think so too," said Todoroki, serious as the grave. "I want to hold his sweaty hand, and see if my fire plus his nitroglycerin will make an even bigger explosion -- "
"It won't," assured Momo. "Nitroglycerin is impact-activated."
"-- and make him see that he is better than everyone else, but not because everyone else is weak, and take him to meet my mom, and for him to trade recipes with my sister, and then I want to lick his --"
Momo interrupted, knowing Todoroki wasn't fully conscious of the difference between sickeningly sweet and sickening to lesbians. "I want to make babies with Hatsume-san!" Well, like she was doing any better. "Hundreds of mechanical and electro-chemical ones, because she's so creative and it's amazing how she doesn't care what the rule-books or textbooks say, if she puts her mind to it she'll figure out how to accomplish the impossible! It makes me want to bring my Quirk to the next level, so I can start making biomechanical and then even biological babies with her --"
"You're going to be able to make real babies?" Todoroki broke in, aghast.
Momo gave a firm nod, determined. She knew her Quirk could do it, she just hadn't figured out the chemical formula for life yet, although once she could, even producing the simplest bacteria could be a huge battlefield advantage --
"I can too, you know," Jirou stated dryly.
"You have two Quirks?" exclaimed Todoroki, eyes wide.
"Most women and people with uteruses can," said Jirou.
"Most women have multiple Quirks?! Are you all Nomu?"
"Yeah, thought you were special there huh, Mr. Fire and Ice?"
"Not anymore. I need to talk to my sister…"
"Yeah you do." Jirou was stifling laughter now, but Momo's thoughts were still on Hatsume.
"I do want to be dating her," she said, sad that the reality, accidental or not, was just the opposite.
"For real?" asked Jirou, levering herself up to scrutinize Momo's expression. Momo did her best to make it one that conveyed the ardency of her sentiment.
"Yes. For real." Todoroki was the one who answered, but Momo nodded in agreement.
Jirou flopped back down on Momo's lap with an exaggerated sigh. "Then what are you waiting for. Just ask them if they want to date you."
Momo blinked. That violated so much etiquette that she had a visceral reaction to it. "We can just do that? That's so…"
"Rude?" finished Jirou, knowing her as best friends do. "Based on what manners? Old customs steeped in patriarchy and heteronormativity? Well, screw that! Be rude, Yaomomo!"
"Isn't that the whole point of these meetings?" added Todoroki.
"Well… yes, I suppose, in a way… but Hatsume-san isn't here! And, and it's so different out there, when I have my public face on you know how hard it is for me to just say what I really think because it's so impolite --"
"That never stops Bakugou," said Todoroki.
"Or you," quipped Jirou, then addressed Momo. "Do you want her dating your public face, or who you really are? And besides, won't she be the one to choose in the end? If she prefers Yaoyorozu Momo, the heiress, or badass, genius Yaomomo who's a huge nerd for making just the right thing for just the right time?"
"The second option," declared Todoroki, answering the question that wasn't really a question and was certainly not for him. "Hatsume would definitely pick Nerd-Momo."
"Okay," said Momo, breathing the knowledge deeply into her core. She clenched her fists. "Okay!"
Jirou chuckled, and nudged her with a sharp elbow. "Then what are you waiting for?"
Todoroki once again answered where he probably shouldn't have. "Well, there's still the tragic hero thing which my life has pretty much set me up for already so I'm doomed to failure -- "
Jirou whacked him in the face with her shin. "Get out of here, idiots," she groaned. "Please. Go get your people."
"Right!" Momo exclaimed, feeling the stern resolve harden her face. It wasn't pretty, or polite, or girlish enough for the books, but it wasn't like etiquette class covered these types of situations anyway. She was on her own for this one, and that was enough.
Well. Momo looked to her side, and saw her determination echoed in mismatched eyes. Not quite alone. "Let's go!"
"Uhhh… Jirou, can you get off of us maybe."
"Yes, Jirou-san, if you don't mind…"
"Oh. Sure. Right. Yeah…"