uno - todomomo

x 27 ~ wait pt. 1 || momo

"Hypothetically, what would you do if you said something really fucked up to someone you care about?" Todoroki asked, staring intently at his cards. Momo had almost sent him away the moment she saw him when he knocked on her door. Momo didn't really do...falling in love with people. And it wasn't because she had commitment issues, it was the exact opposite. She was far too willing to give herself wholeheartedly over to someone without a second thought, which got her into trouble as was obvious from Awase. And that's why she didn't want herself falling for him. It was too risky.

However, when he showed up at her door, leaning in the doorframe with a smug smirk on those perfect lips of his, she found herself providing him room to enter, despite everything in her telling her to send him away. The only problem was, that now she was falling faster than she had been before. And she was ninety percent sure that this time would end just like the last time: with her crashing into the ground a hundred miles per hour.

This is why she just stared at him when he asked her such a question. There was something different about him. Something about the way his lips curved downward, the way his eyes were glued to the cards in front of him like they were the only thing in the world that existed...something about him was different. If she had to hazard a guess, she would say that it had something to do with his question to her.

"Hypothetically...what did I say?" The words rolled off her tongue before she could stop them and she quickly bit her lip to stop herself from saying anything else. She knew that Todoroki wasn't the most open person. Sure, he'd shared a lot with her, but they had never discussed his family life before. It seemed to be an off-limits subject. They could talk about anything...but anything didn't always include everything.

"What you said isn't the important part. It's that you might've lost them for good..." His eyebrows were furrowed, his smugness and arrogance were gone and all that was left was...was just a side of Todoroki that Momo never knew he had and never wanted to see again. He was sad. He was just sad and that was the only emotion playing on his expression when he said, "Hypothetically, of course."

Momo faltered, her eyes stuck on him like glue as they traced the curve of his lips, the defeated look in his eyes, the faded sigh he barely managed to give her, as if the life was slowly being drained from him. It had been raining before her call with Mina and her mind recalled the muted tone of the clouds, seeing them in his face. What was wrong? What had happened? Could she fix it?

"In this hypothetical situation...is this person worth keeping?"

"Yes."

"Then I would apologize," Momo looked up at him softly, scanning his unreadable expression and wishing she could cure his sadness by booping him on the nose. Momo was actually quite skilled with emotions because she could listen for hours and she would never judge someone for speaking their mind or saying how they feel. But Shouto Todoroki was different. He wouldn't talk to her about his past if she didn't prompt him. She'd barely gotten him to tell her about his ex-girlfriends. She never imagined asking him about his family life.

"Yeah, well in this hypothetical situation an apology wouldn't do much," He said defeatedly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Momo knew that this conversation was anything but hypothetical and that it was highly likely that nither of them was focusing on the game anymore. There were clearly more important things on his mind and all she could think about was wanting him to feel better.

"Tell me what happened, Shouto," She prompted gently, despite knowing that her efforts were most likely futile, to say the least. But he rarely ever shut her out anymore, and he was hurting. Momo hated seeing him hurting. She didn't care if she had to hear about the countless girls he had sex with from Mina, she didn't care if he was smug and arrogant and constantly taunting her with a relationship that would never happen between them, she didn't even care if he got angry at her (which he rarely did). Anything was better than watching the familiar look of heartbreak, one that Momo had seen on her own face too many times, cross his expression. Anything. "Please."

"No."

"Why?" She didn't intend to pry, but she must've been asking an unwanted question because he suddenly said,

"Because! I mean- just- It doesn't matter, okay?" His voice seemed irritated and his eyebrows furrowed, making the angles of his face seem colder and less inviting. He had only gotten genuinely angry around her once before and that was because she accidentally drenched him in water. But his anger then had subsided quickly. Now was clearly different. But she didn't know how to handle it. All she could do was try to be understanding with him like she always was. That's the only way she knew how to help. So, she softened her voice as she started to tell him,

"It matters to me-"

"Well it shouldn't because it's none of your business!" He snapped suddenly, causing her to stop, her lips still parted with the words that she was going to say. Hey had suddenly disappeared from the tip of her tongue, however, lost to the ether as he glared at her. A shiver ran down her spine. Why was he so angry? She hadn't meant to be invasive or anything. She was just trying to help. Should she have left it alone? Oh god, what had she done? Guilt mixed with something akin to anger rose at his words, and she couldn't tear them apart from each other.

She felt a crushing sense of guilt for pushing him too far, but she also felt angry, genuinely angry. All she had been trying to do was help him and if he wanted her to stop asking he could've asked her to do such in a calm...less loud way. Momo was used to stone cold silence because her parents had basically given her the cold shoulder since her sister died, and she was used to being a disappointment, but getting yelled at made her heart stop dangerously in her chest.

His expression suddenly softened as the remnants of his raised voice filled the small room. She swallowed roughly, trying to control the expression on her features as he said, "Momo I-"

She stood up, wanting to escape the feeling of suffocating under her guilt as she headed for the door to get a glass of water. This argument was her fault in the first place. She had overstepped her boundaries and she was paying for it with his anger. She hadn't made anything better. She had only made it worse. And it was suddenly dawning in her as she reached her door that it really wasn't any of her business. It didn't matter how she felt about him because he didn't have to reciprocate her feelings and she couldn't push him into doing so. If he didn't want her to know, she shouldn't know.

Her heart was beating in her ears, but all she could hear as she walked down the hallway was Todoroki saying, "Wait."

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a/n ~ 1/2. thanks for reading!

word count: 1239