(also for @kanekibot ❤️)

things you said at 1 am

At Momo’s insistence, they’d taken a detour on the way back to the station through a bustling alley of street vendors, the air billowing with reams of heady smoke and chatter. They’d bent their heads together over a plate of okonomiyaki, seared their mouths on steaming sweet potatoes, laughed uncertainly over grilled mackerel so inundated with salt it tasted like seawater, which Todoroki suggested was probably the point. He’s walking in step beside her, now, the lines of his body relaxed and easy. Momo licks a curlicue of dango syrup off her fingers, the sugar sweet and soft on her tongue. The neon light off the signs and buildings fluoresces through his hair, catches in the glint of his eyes and teeth, pools over his skin.   

“Do you know,” Momo says, “I’ve never been bowling before?”

Todoroki tilts his head like they’re sharing a secret. “Me neither.”

“If I told my parents I wanted to, they’d probably–book out the entire centre, or something like that.” She smiles. “We must’ve been quite a sight, two kids in fancy dress at a bowling alley.”

She’d made bowling shoes (leather vamp, rubber sole, nylon laces) for both of them, now slung over the crook of her arm by the laces. They’d both been terrible at it for the first half of the game, trading cautiously delighted looks of commiseration and self-conscious grins when they managed to bowl strikes. Momo felt such a visceral relief in knowing she wasn’t alone that she forgot, momentarily, the terror of having the fumbling, amateurish moments of a first attempt displayed for others to see. By the time it set in she’d figured out a sort of technique to the throw, and the panic was easier to stave off. Todoroki won the first match; she won the second.

There’s a light breeze needling at her exposed skin. Momo rubs her upper arms, absently turning over cardigan design specifications in her mind. Todoroki’s hand on her wrist startles her so violently she nearly teeters off-balance, though surely the fact of his presence should no longer be coming as a surprise, by now.

“Are you cold?”

“A little,” Momo admits. “Nothing I can’t–oh.” He shrugs off his blazer jacket and drapes it over her shoulders. “Um–thank you.”

Heat sweeps down her neck; she clutches at the lapels, considers fitting her arms through the sleeves, decides against it. She makes a couple of hand warmers (supersaturated sodium acetate solution, aluminium disc, PVC pouch) to truncate this inane train of thought and passes one to Todoroki. At his surprised expression she realises his quirk is perfectly capable of performing the same function, and is overcome by the urge to cradle her head in her hands.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think–your quirk, of course–you don’t have to use that if you don’t want to. I just thought I’d return the favour. Since you’ve given me your blazer.”

He colours. “No–thank you. I appreciate the thought. I wouldn’t have–it doesn’t bother you?”

“Hmm?”

“Using your quirk for… frivolous… never mind. It was a senseless question.”

“Oh.” She casts around for something else to say, checks her phone. “Kyouka says my aunts are handling the situation back at the party, by the way, don’t worry,” Momo says. “Nobody’s missed us–not,” she cringes, crumples the jacket hem in her fists, then hurriedly smooths out the fabric in case it creases, “that I mean you’re–insignificant, or anything like that. It’s your birthday party, after all. And I’m–very sorry, again, about this whole commotion. I know you don’t like parties, but my mother was awfully insistent on organising something for you…”

The corner of his mouth lifts, such an infinitesimal movement she wouldn’t have caught it if she didn’t know what she was looking for. “It’s fine. I didn’t expect it, but it was–very kind of you.”

“Though we’re not exactly taking advantage of your party, I suppose.”

“Well,” Todoroki says, almost shy. “I had fun tonight, anyway.”

“So did I,” and Momo is surprised by the truth behind her words, the unexpected lightness something fumbling, amateurish, buoyant as smoke. They could have been any two people wandering around the city, out recklessly late, the night whirring and glittering around them, no messy, intricate histories to bind them together and yet here they are regardless, enveloped by the unshakeable truth of who they are, who they might become. Todoroki’s jacket around her shoulders, sugar on her tongue, blood beneath her skin, sweetened and softened by laughter, a million things she could make out of herself, but for now she watches Todoroki dip his head and smile at the warmer in his hands and it’s enough, to know that the two of them are moving, step by step, towards a common ground.