flowers present and their meanings: gardenia (secret love), christmas rose (soothe my anxiety), crocus (children), hydrangea (you are cold), tulip (red) (true love), jonquil (please requite my love), aster (conveys eternal love and affection), daisy (innocence and purity). the flowers do not appear in this order.

Word Count: 9,087

This was not how Momo had ever imagined going down the aisle.

Well, maybe the act of going down the aisle wasn't too far off, but the context of everything was certainly nothing she ever could have dreamed up.

Oh. "Dreamed" was a bad word for her situation. Dreamed would imply that she would have wanted it all to happen like this, but that's now how it was at all.

After all, what girl would dream of a marriage borne not out of love, but out of a desperation that wasn't even her own? Of a union formed not to join two hearts, two souls, into one, but rather, two quirks neither of them had ever had any choice over?

Ha. Choice. The illusion of it had been strong for the first sixteen years of her life. Paper or plastic? U.A. or Shiketsu? Rescue Bakugou or stay behind?

Nothing had ever made her feel as powerless as she did the day her parents told her she was getting married, and nothing since had ever felt like her own.

To think, her entire future had been decided for her before she could even understand the concept of time. Even to this day, she wondered if her recommendation into U.A. had passed because of her ability, or if it was the work of the man behind everything she was now experiencing.

After all, he had also gotten his son in the same way.

Momo wondered if anything that had ever happened to her was of her own doing or simply made to be for the sake of this future.

Some days, the latter seemed as if it were the only possible explanation.

"Oh, Momo," Kyouka sighed as she affixed another gardenia to Momo's hairdo. "You look so beautiful today. I'd say you look like a bride, but you're already playing the part!" She laughed, truly happy for her best friend, and truly oblivious to all the context that brought her here.

"Thank you, Kyouka," Momo said.

"Awww, Momo, aren't you excited at all?" Ochako asked, bouncing on her heels. "You're getting married to your one true love!"

Oh, if only she knew.

"I'm just nervous." This, at least, wasn't a lie.

"You love him. He loves you. You get hitched and live happily ever after. What's there to be nervous about?"

"I should ask you the same thing when you get married to your 'one true love', Ochako."

Her tiny, round-faced friend puffed up with indignation. "Mo-mooooooo!"

Kyouka laughed.

In order to keep the true nature of their marriage under wraps, Momo and her fiancé had begun dating halfway through their second year at U.A., mere weeks, days, after she herself had learned of their engagement. Before either of them knew it, they became the talk of the school. Hushed (and giggly, in some cases) conversations about them took place in everywhere from the girls' bathrooms to the boys' locker rooms. Everyone knew they were a thing, and in no time, they became the literal power couple of the school.

In hindsight, it was a useful thing. Thanks to all the attention, they had to learn how to maintain the act as fast and as best as they could. They knew each other well now. They certainly could play the part of husband and wife perfectly without even batting an eye. Momo knew the feel of his hands, his cheeks, the crook of his neck just as well he knew hers.

At the end of the day, she was just glad her friends knew of their relationship, however distorted their views of it were in comparison to reality. Momo knew what it was like to be told of a marriage without any buildup whatsoever.

"Mom? Dad? What did you want to talk to me about?" Both of her parents had frighteningly serious expressions, and it made Momo nervous.

Her mother sighed. "I never realized how cliché this was going to sound, but Momo, honey, you're engaged."

A moment passed for the information to sink in, and then—

"What."

Her parents exchanged concerned looks.

"Maybe we should have told her when she was younger?"

"No! This isn't the kind of thing a child should be concerned about. She's still a child!"

"What?"

"But if we had just told her from the time she was able to understand, we could have gotten her used to the idea. We wouldn't have to explain everything all at once and overwhelm her like this."

"Mom, Dad, please, just— what?"

"I suppose you're right in that sense, dear, but it's too late to talk of 'could-have-been's now. There's no use crying over spilt milk. It's all we can do now to clean it up."

"I— I just— I'm— can one of you just explain all this me right now, please? What's going on?" Momo pleaded.

Her parents turned their attention back to her.

"Yes, well, that's what we're here for." Her father chuckled nervously. "Oh, boy. Where do we begin?"

Kyouka shook Momo out of her thoughts, literally but gently. "Hey, lovebird, it's almost our cue. You don't want to miss out on your own wedding, do you?"

"No, I suppose not," Momo replied with a sigh as she picked up her bouquet.

Kyouka opened their dressing room door, and all three girls stepped out into the church foyer. Strangely enough, the press was nowhere to be seen, but something told Momo they would not be hard to find.

"Eri's already going down with the petals," Ochako whispered as she peeked through the grand sanctuary doors. She twirled around to face everyone gathered in the foyer, which now included the two groomsmen, Izuku and Kaminari, now that they had popped out of nowhere. "Ready, Deku?"

Izuku scratched the back of his neck. "Well, ready as I'll ever be."

"Great, because you're supposed to be walking down that aisle with Ochako in about…" Kyouka paused, only to remember her dress had no pockets.

"Gosh, this all still feels so surreal, and I'm not even the one getting married." The green-haired boy stared up at the ceiling with a half-dazed smile on his face.

"Now," Kaminari cheerfully informed them as he pocketed his own phone. He finger-gunned Kyouka with a wink, and, grinning, she repeated the gesture back at him.

Momo still didn't quite understand how Kaminari came to be chosen as a groomsmen, at least not when the two seemed to be nothing more than acquaintances in their school years. Then again, she didn't really see the point in questioning her fiancé's wedding party choices, at least not when Izuku and Ochako were scrambling to get themselves into the sanctuary on time.

In the blink of an eye, Kyouka and Denki were also gone, leaving Momo alone in the foyer with only her bouquet as company.

She threw one last glance at the open church doors. She could still escape. She didn't have to do this. She could still ditch the flowers, walk out, and reinvent her identity as she ran away to Sweden or something.

But she couldn't bring herself to do it. Aside from being an objectively terrible plan (the press was terrible), there was still some little bit of hope inside her. Sure, her soon-to-be father-in-law was an awful person, but her fiancé? Having known and schooled with him for years now, she could say with certainty he was a good guy.

So when it was her cue, she took a deep breath and opened the sanctuary doors with her eyes closed.

She took one step down the aisle and felt the butterflies explode inside her stomach.

She took another step and heard the awed whispers of the audience fill the church.

She took a third step and opened her eyes.

There standing at the other end of the aisle was her fiancé, Shoto Todoroki. With a small smile, she noticed his mildly nervous expression, and all the rest of the ceremony became nothing more than a blur.

"Could you start with the why, at least?" Momo asked.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose that would be a good place to start," her father muttered. "Well, you see, Momo, back in the first few months after you were born, we were struggling to survive."

"You told me this before. The business was new, but with a bit of luck, it took off."

"Well, yes. But we never told you what that luck actually was," her mother gently said. "Endeavor's heroics company approached us and asked if we would like to become one of their assets. He told us we could keep everything as it was, and that he'd sponsor us as needed. There was just one catch."

Momo's blood froze. So this was it.

Her mother looked at her with an aching heart. "You've figured it out, haven't you? He has a son your age, but you know that. He's in your class."

"He wanted me to marry his son," Momo whispered, "because of my quirk. With the only other choice to go bankrupt, you agreed."

Her parents solemnly nodded. Well, at least she knew who she was marrying, and at least he wasn't a grade-A asshole. She gulped. "When's the wedding?"

It was well past midnight when she came out of her daze. She was holding Todo— Shoto's hand as they walked up flight after flight of stairs to their hotel room. She said nothing, simply looked down at her feet, as he unlocked the door. Together, they walked in and flicked on the light.

Of course they'd do this to us, she halfheartedly thought as she eyed the rose petals scattered all about. Probably Kyouka's idea, but I can see Ochako going along with it, too. She let go of Shoto's hand, kicked off her shoes, and flopped down face first on the bed regardless of the petals, exhausted.

After locking the door, her now lawfully wedded husband also removed his shoes and fell down onto the bed. With his face in a pillow, Momo could just barely understand his mumblings. "I don't suppose you want to—"

"Nope."

"Good. Neither do I." He turned his face to the side, presumably so that he could breathe again. "I'm so sorry about all this."

"Why?"

Shoto grimaced. "He did this to my mom, too. Arrange a quirk marriage. She wasn't very happy. Cried a lot. I just feel bad that you got plopped into the exact same situation with me."

"How long have you known?"

"Since I was five. So about fourteen years."

"Wow. How come you didn't say anything about it when we first met?"

"No reason to."

Momo sat up and let her hair down, causing a crushed and wilted gardenia to fall onto her lap. She sighed and fell back down.

"How many kids do you want?" Shoto asked her after a pause.

"What."

"It's okay if you don't want any. It's just that I think it's good to know these things ahead of time. My dad's going to start pestering us about grandkids pretty soon, too, so if you don't want any, I think it would be good to break the news to him sooner than later."

Momo stopped to legitimately think about his question.

"Five," she blurted out, causing Shoto to give her a look.

"Five?" he asked. "Are you sure? That's a lot."

Momo shrugged. "I'm not sure about actually having any right now, but I was an only child. I just figured that if I had any kids, it would be at least more than one. Spare them from the same loneliness I had most of my life."

Her husband nodded in understanding. "Five," he mused.

"Besides," she continued, "we have more than enough money to support that many kids."

"Mm."

"And I think it would be nice to have a lot. Never a dull moment, you know."

"Five it is, then. Just not now."

"Good heavens, no, not now."

There was another pause as the two lay on the bed, simply listening the the sound of their partner's breathing.

Momo grinned to herself. Shoto shut off the light.

"G'night."

She wasn't sure when it happened, when he changed from being just her arranged fiancé to someone she had genuine romantic feelings for. But whenever it happened, there wasn't a thing she could do about it now. Not that it was necessarily a bad thing.

Momo stared dreamily out of her dorm room window, twirling a fresh aster from the school gardens between her thumb and forefinger. Absently, she began to daintily pluck the petals off one by one. It was no daisy, but it would do.

"He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not…"

Her door opened abruptly, causing her to yelp and hurriedly toss the flower out of her open window. She turned, still a little flustered, to see her fiancé standing there in her doorway. "To-To-To-Todoroki-kun! You startled me!"

"Uhm… may I come in?" he asked, looking a little confused.

"Of course!" she said, leaping up to let him inside. He sat down on the edge of her bed, watching her intently as she locked the door behind him. Just so that no one would find out their secret, of course. She turned to face him. "What's up?"

"I just thought that maybe we should start dating?" he said, but with the amount of uncertainty it held, it was posed more like a question than anything else.

Momo immediately felt like her face had been set on fire, and she struggled to rein in her explosively fast heartbeat at the suggestion. It's just because of the arrangement. It's just because of the arrangement, she told herself, but she didn't really want to believe that.

He didn't seem to notice anyway. "You know, to make it seem more reasonable when we get married and all. We can't just be going around without relationships for the next two and a half years, then all of a sudden just give all our friends wedding invitations. That's pretty suspicious."

She hums in agreement, unable to talk out of fear that she may say what was on her mind.

Their lives weren't affected by the arrangement a whole lot at first, for it was just that: an arrangement. Sure, they lived together now, and sure, they were expected to act differently around each other now, but they still had to be heroes. Days went by when they didn't even see each other. There was no rest for the wicked, and, by extension, the just.

Momo was tending to some hydrangeas on a rare off day some weeks later when her friends decided to visit.

"Yaomomo~" Ochako sang as she tackled the girl in question. "It's so nice to see you again, Yaomomo!"

Momo smiled and tugged Ochako off of her as gently as she could. "Nice to see you, too, Ochako. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Not since you got married," Kyouka said, running to catch up to Ochako. "Which reminds me, we can't really call you Yaomomo anymore, huh? Yaoyorozu isn't your last name anymore."

Ochako crossed her arms at Kyouka. "Yeah, but Todomomo is their ship name! Does it really matter if we call her Yaomomo anyway?"

Momo laughed, brushing the dirt off her hands before she swept her bangs out of her face. "Sometimes, I forget that I'm a Todoroki now," she admitted. "Yaomomo's just fine by me. Don't worry about it."

The girls gave her a weird look, but neither of them said anything.

Momo clapped her hands together before the silence could grow awkward. "Oh! I forgot to ask! What kind of tea would you girls like to drink?"

The first time they had kissed had been on an impulse. Or at least, that's what it seemed like to Momo. Even to this day, she had no idea how it happened. All she knew at the time was that she and Todoroki had begun the façade of dating in secret some time earlier, then the sports festival came again.

One moment, he was on the podium for second place, and she was standing there with the other tournament finalists, cheering him on. The next, he'd hopped off, taken her face in his hands, and, well.

It was sloppy and wet; it was clear from the experience that neither one of them knew what they were doing. When they parted, he couldn't even look her in the eye as he mumbled his apologies. She wasn't even mad at him, just caught off guard.

She couldn't even remember if she heard the deafening roar coming from the crowd afterwards. The only reason she knew it had been that and not an abrupt and hushed silence is because she saw the highlights of the festival on TV later that night in the common rooms. Never before or since had her face been quite so red.

She still wasn't sure how she survived the intense girl-talk (read: interrogation) with Jirou in the early hours of the morning that same night.

In hindsight, maybe it had been then that she had truly fallen for him.

"I'm home," Shoto called, disrupting the women's cheerful kitchen gossip by walking into the room and planting a kiss on his wife's head.

"Oh, Ochako! We should get going! It's already been hours, can you believe it?" Kyouka immediately said, standing up and tugging on Ochako's arm.

"Oh, yes, indeed!" Ochako squeaked, taking one final sip of tea before jumping up to join Jirou. She nodded at Shoto. "Nice seeing you, too!"

"Uhh…"

They were out the door so fast, one might even question whether they had even been there in the first place.

"…I should have told her to say hi to Midoriya for me."

Momo blinked and looked up at Shoto, who was staring at the place their guests had last been. "Don't you see Izuku every day? You're in the same heroics company."

"Different shifts, and he gets requested more often. We don't see each other often," he replied, sinking down onto the couch beside her.

Momo froze as he leaned against her; yes, they had been married for weeks, engaged for years, but most of their affection was for public display only. They were alone, so why would he…

Shoto glanced up at her. "I'm sorry; is this making you uncomfortable? I'll stop."

"N-n-no," Momo stuttered. Damn this fluttering. "It's…" she struggled to think of a good word. "Nice."

Her husband gave her a look, and she hoped he didn't ask why her cheeks were red because in all honesty, she didn't know either. "I thought that since we're married and all, we should at least adapt to private displays of affection, but if you don't want to be touched, that's fine, too."

Momo relaxed, leaning her head into his and feeling strangely calm about it. "Honestly, Shoto, it's fine. I-I forget."

Shoto hummed in reply.

It felt nice, to lean against each other. For the first time, it wasn't to maintain an act. To just sit and enjoy one another's company was pleasure enough.

He was her first, her only, in many ways. First kiss, first date, first boyfriend— though all of that made sense in the context of not being allowed to date, even before being informed of her engagement.

Yet he was also her first in a different way, one that she couldn't control but really didn't mind at the end of the day.

Her first kiss, first date, first boyfriend— he had also been her first crush, first love. She didn't know how it happened; it just did. And, she supposed, sometimes these things just happen. The heart wants what the heart wants, after all. Better to want something it can have than to pine into oblivion for the rest of her life.

But there was something about his aloof attitude to their relationship that made her heart pine anyway. It was nothing more than a contract to him, something that simply was. She wasn't someone special to him. She was just another obligation, another objective to fulfill, another thing to do to keep his father off his back.

And it hurt.

Sure, she had seen him that way at first, too, but times change, people change. All she wanted was to hope that maybe, just maybe, he saw her as something more as well.

All throughout her second year, she found herself pining after something she, technically speaking, already had. It sucked, because to desire something one already had was ridiculous, oxymoronic almost. Yet there she was, craving the fruit she already held in her hands.

It was weird. By the time their third year rolled around, her heart stopped skipping when she looked at his face. Her thoughts stopped racing when she talked with him. The ache in her chest, which had been so biting and constant every time they kissed, became nothing more than a ghost of a pain before fading into nothing.

Just as flowers bloom and die, the moon waxes and wanes. Seasons change, and things come and go.

Momo realized, not long before her midterms, that her crush on Todoroki had withered into nothing.

It was April when they both caught ill. It looked like the flu, what with Momo's vomiting and Shoto's fever, but when they noticed how little their symptoms actually overlapped, the conclusion simply was that they caught different bugs.

Time passed. Shoto accidentally passed his sickness onto his colleagues when he returned to work too soon, but Momo's coworkers seemed none the worse when she went back even though her nausea persisted through the mornings.

Shoto leaned against the bathroom doorframe, wincing with every retch. "It's been two weeks. This can't be normal. I'm pretty sure you should get this checked out."

Momo flushed, confident that the day's nausea had passed. She leaned against the counter, her arms half crossed, as she faced her husband. "No, I'm pretty sure I'm fine. It'll pass. I'm not even contagious anymore, seeing that nobody else has gotten the flu at work, so it shouldn't be long now." She began to walk away, but she tripped over her own feet somehow on her way out.

Immediately, Shoto caught her and helped her to regain her balance. Momo frowned at him, to which he returned a skeptical look. "Something's not right," he said again.

Momo sighed. "If you insist. You can schedule the doctor's appointment; I'll get Kyouka to cover my patrol for today," she said, and then gave him a pointed look. "But I'm telling you, there's nothing wrong!"

"We'll see about that," Shoto said under his breath as he caught her before she could hit the ground again.

Momo couldn't lie, she was a little annoyed with him at the moment. She sat down on a couch, crossed her legs, and called up Jirou. But, she supposed he had a point. It wasn't normal to puke every morning for two weeks and not be sick.

"Yaomomo? What's up?"

"Hey, Kyouka, can you cover for me today? Shoto's been insisting that I go to the doctor, since, y'know. Told you about that thing going on in the mornings."

"Oh yeah, the flu, huh? Been going on for a while now, hasn't it? Awful late to be catching the flu at this time of year, too."

"Viruses aren't alive, so technically they can't die. They can only lie dormant in our bloodstreams until something activates it, so it's not implausible."

"I'm pretty sure I'm not the one needing a biology lesson right now."

"What?" Momo switched hands. "Nevermind. Doesn't matter right now. Can you patrol today or not?"

"Girl, you already know I gotchu. Don't worry about it. Take care of yourself for once. You owe me one, though."

"Yeah, of course." Momo felt Shoto blow on some stray wisps of her hair and looked up at him. "We're going to leave now, so b'bye," she said as she reached out to mess with his hair, but he leaned away. He poked her hair again, this time with one of her flowers, leaving a dusting of pollen on her head.

"Have fun," Kyouka said, and the call ended.

Momo pocketed her phone as Shoto simultaneously pocketed the flower. He stared at her expectantly. "Let's go."

They really should have seen it coming.

Biology had always been the forbidden subject for Momo. Sure, they had textbooks for it lying around the house where she could reach them, but once she discovered that creating life with her quirk was impossible, she quickly lost interest in them. Better to learn chemistry, physics, material science, things she could gain power from, than about the ATP cycle and punnett squares.

Besides, at the end of the day, the high school atmosphere let her pick up all the bits she really needed to know along the way.

Still, all the textbooks in the world didn't seem to be able to explain away the hollow feeling in her chest, the feelings of vague disappointment, or the heaviness in her heart.

Physiology said that her brain had a hormonal imbalance; it needed more serotonin in order to reach homeostasis again. It said that if she couldn't produce her own neurotransmitters, store-bought was fine, too.

Psychology said she was depressed, the cause of which seemed likely to be in response to some event that she had found deeply traumatic or profound. It said that a therapist or just someone to talk to would not be a cure, but still of great help.

Jirou flat-out said she was lovesick.

Momo stared at her friend in confusion. "But how can I be lovesick if we're already together? Isn't being lovesick just really bad pining?"

Jirou rolled her eyes and slung her arm around her friend's shoulder. "Look, I don't know what's been going on between you and Todoroki as of late, but it doesn't really strike me as normal. For now, just trust in the fact that I know things that you don't know yet."

"But I want to know!"

"Tough titties, sweetie. Sucks not knowing everything, doesn't it?"

How didn't they see it coming was knowledge beyond the mortal realm because even to them, it was obvious in hindsight. But the blood work didn't lie, even if they crashed and burned spectacularly through the days waiting for it.

The time had come for their cozy little life for two to prepare for the coming of a third in just a few short months.

Kyouka was unfazed when Momo told her about it a short while later.

"What do you mean, 'called it'?" Momo said, but Kyouka simply gave her a knowing look as she took a bite of ice cream.

"Well," she said with a mischievous grin, "with both of you coming from rich, prestigious families with reputations to uphold, I really doubt you would have been doing that much before marriage, so these past few months must've been pretty wild for the both of you."

Momo blanked out for almost a full minute, staring at Kyouka as she took a smug sip of water, before finally understanding what her friend was saying. "Kyo—"

Kyouka laughed. "Geez, Yaomomo, I'm just teasing. But seriously. I called this. Mina owes me and 'Chako like, two thousand yen for this. She thought y'all would wait a while before going off and getting preggers, but I know you. You're just crazy about each other; you just don't like to show it." She picked a fake crocus out of the table's centerpiece and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger. "I'm kind of glad Ochako and I didn't make our own bet between ourselves now because I'm not going to lie, I thought this was going to happen sooner, and I'd be out of like, three thousand yen right about now if we had."

Momo sputtered. "You guys gambled on this?"

"Heck yeah, we did. Us and probably like half you guys' fanbase. So much money is going to change hands when you guys make this stuff public." Kyouka replaced the crocus and kept going with her ice cream.

Right. Their fanbase. There were days that Momo miraculously forgot about the fact that she and Shoto had one as a hero couple. Granted, it wasn't common for them to encounter such fans (Unlike Uravity and Deku, who got questions at least once a week asking if they were secretly married, and more often than not, the fans were answered with vague sputterings), but that didn't make it any less weird to think about.

Momo's phone buzzed, showing a text message from her sister-in-law.

Kyouka gave her a look. "What is it?"

"It's from Fuyumi, so probably just congratulations," Momo replied as she unlocked her phone. "Shoto must have told her just now. Here's to hoping nobody tells the twins for a while because I'm not looking forward to getting…"

Kyouka raised an eyebrow at her, oblivious to the way Momo's expression fell. "Getting what? What kind of people are your brothers-in-law? They were the ones who got you the kitty litter as a joke for your birthday, weren't they."

"Spammed," Momo breathed as she rapidly reread Fuyumi's message over and over again, everything else forgotten. She looked up, and it was then that Kyouka knew that something wasn't right. "I have to go. Now. I'm so sorry, Kyo; I know I promised to treat you this time, but I guess I'll have to owe you another one." She hurried out of the ice cream parlour, hardly catching her friend's reassurances, her mind trapped on one track.

[From: 美美姊]

hey, momo, congrats on the baby. sho-chan told me abt it and it's great and all, but i'm going to need you to come to the hospital right now. idk what happened but shoto's gotten sick and? you should be here.

The fact that Todoroki never got sick was somewhat of a meme among the kids in their year. In the winter, when sickness ran rampant among every cluster of kids, there was always sneezing and coughing to be heard in the U.A. dorms, from every room at some point during the winter, except from Todoroki's. If the boy was ever to even sneeze, the joke would be that the seventh sign of the apocalypse had arrived and that the end was nigh.

Momo found out later that he did get sick. It turned out that, thanks to his quirk, his body was able to regulate its temperature. No one ever found out about if he caught ill, and everyone was none the wiser.

His quirk failed him just once during their high school lives, in the winter of their third year.

The flu was bad that year; even vaccinations did little to control the virus's spread. It was an unusual strain, too, so few people had decent natural immunity to it. As a result, school was cancelled for a few days that January due to the fact that only Iida was really able to drag himself to class, with everyone else trapped in their dorms, sicker than dogs.

Momo was embarrassed to admit that she was one of the poor students stuck in their rooms with waste bucket by their bedsides, especially since she was at the top of the class and needed every second to take notes and absorb information. But fortunately, the cancelling of class let her rest easy for the day.

It was the night that turned out to be the problem, for she found herself lying awake in bed at half past three and unable to fall asleep again due to the fact that she had slept through the day.

There was a knock at her door, light and hesitant, which interested and scared her equally. Who could it possibly be at this hour?

Careful so as not to disturb her churning stomach, she slid out of bed and tiptoed over to the door, opening it just a crack so that she could see who it was.

"Todoroki-kun?" She opened the door for him, and he stumbled in, seemingly in a daze. His eyes were wild and listless, and he hardly seemed aware of his environment. "Todo— Todoroki-kun!" He was without a shirt, too.

"Yao… Yaoyorozu," he said, swallowing thickly, taking a haphazard step towards Momo, his eyes refocusing for a split second on her face. "I… I'm…"

Concerned, Momo put her hand to his forehead, but she immediately recoiled. "Todoroki-kun, you're burning up! You need rest," she chided. "And water," she added as an afterthought.

It took him a moment to process what she told him, but his only response was touching her forehead in return. "You're the same," he said, the heat of his feverish breath brushing gently against her cheeks.

Momo furrowed her brows, not too sure how to respond. However, before she could, Todoroki pulled her to her bed, flopping down on the mattress and bringing her with him. She yelped, thankful that she had no neighbors, but there was nothing she could do anymore. He had her in his arms as they both lay in bed, already halfway to dreamland.

She would have been able to fall asleep like he did, despite the fact that this was so against the school rules. His breathing was calm and regular, if a bit hot on her neck. She should have been able to fall asleep like he did, despite the looming threat of discovery hanging over their heads. Pressed up against him, she could feel his heartbeat, its rhythm a soothing lullaby.

Yet, just a few simple words from Todoroki in his fever-induced craze kept her lying awake for hours.

"I love you," he whispered, and Momo froze.

He pulled her closer, and there was an uncomfortable heat exchanged between the two. (Momo attributed it to their fevers and how little space there was between them.)

"I love you, Yaoyorozu."

It was just a murmur, induced by a fever dream, but the sound of those three words coming from Todoroki would be burned forever into Momo's mind.

She stared at the text, rereading it over and over again as she clutched the pole in the subway. There were seats available (the midafternoon wasn't much of a rush hour), but her legs were shaking so badly, she feared she wouldn't be able to stand up again if she sat down.

Shoto's sick. Shoto's sick. Shoto's sick.

It was all she could think about.

She should have known, she really should have known. He never got sick, save that one time. So a fever that kept him from going to work? She totally should have known that the second his body started regulating his temperature that he wasn't actually better; he was just hiding it.

But why though? Why would he hide something that so clearly needed attention?

"Mama, Mama, isn't that the heroine Creati? What's she doing on the subway? Don't heroes stay within their cities? Why does she look so sad?"

Momo looked up, saw a small child tugging on their mother's dress hem, and got an apologetic smile from the said mother. She tried to smile back, but her gaze was once again pulled back to her phone and the message from Fuyumi.

This was bad, so, so bad, if he was in the hospital. It sounded like he was incapacitated, since he hadn't texted her himself. He had a fever just a few weeks ago; had he fainted from exhaustion? No, that was jumping to conclusions. He couldn't have just overheated himself if he'd gotten well enough to regulate his temperature again.

Momo was struggling. Struggling to come up with a logical explanation as to why Shoto would hide being sick from her, struggling to keep her anxiety from overwhelming her, struggling not to think about the worst case scenario.

If he died on her…

Well, that would be ridiculous. Whatever he had, he was recovering from it. He was still able to hide it from her. There was no way it was fatal.

Still, the thought of him being gone from her life was enough to send a lump to her throat. The life they'd grown together as husband and wife, even if it was all fake, was one she wouldn't trade for any else in the world.

She arrived at the station, just a few blocks away from the hospital, and got off the subway in a daze. The urge to reach into her pocket, unlock her phone, and reread her sister's text yet again, even though by then she knew it by heart, was overwhelming. But, she had to stay aware of her surroundings, so instead she brushed her bangs out of her eyes.

The sun was so bright outside of the station, it hurt her eyes. She looked down at her feet as she hurried away, half-hoping no one recognized her without her hero costume.

She regretted that choice when she became so absorbed in her feet and the concrete that she banged her knee into a flower shop's outdoor display. So much for staying aware, she thought miserably.

She rubbed the injury, deciding it would be good stress relief to stop and admire the flowers. Shoto wasn't dying, she assured herself. But flowers were common gifts to hospital patients…

There were two things about that night and the morning after that Momo would never be able to forget. The first of which was when Aizawa checked up on all his students the following morning and got Midnight to almost literally throw a still half-asleep Todoroki out of her room. Aizawa later gave the two of them a strongly-worded lecture on self-control and how bad of an image it left on them if they were caught sleeping together, in any sense of the phrase, as students.

The other bit was, of course, the way Todoroki had declared his love for her. Obviously, the confession was to be taken with a grain of salt; he wasn't in the right state of mind at the time. However, it still didn't stop Momo's heart from racing with joyous excitement whenever she thought of it again.

Which made absolutely no sense to her at all. It wasn't like she liked him anymore. That had died months ago.

Unless, perhaps, it hadn't?

Had she simply thought that since she stopped feeling quite so giddy around him, it must have ended? Perhaps she still had some little bit of infatuation left in her for him; maybe that was what was making her heart flutter yet again.

She was halfway through texting a rant about it to Kyouka when she remembered.

She didn't know.

Nobody knew.

To the rest of the world, Shoto Todoroki and Momo Yaoyorozu were undoubtedly, unquestionably in love with one another. No one knew about the arrangement, the selling out, and all the dirty little things that went on behind the screen.

Momo rolled over and screamed into her pillow. She didn't know anything anymore.

"Fuyumi."

The older woman turned around, her face lined with worry. "Momo," she replied, her voice full of its usual concern and more. "You got here quickly."

"I'm," Momo gasped out, struggling to use her words, "concerned. What happened to him?"

Fuyumi gestured to another empty seat in the waiting room. Sit down. "I don't know," she answered ruefully. "Izuku brought him here. I talked with him briefly before he had to return to work; he said Shoto fainted. The hospital called me because in all this time, you two still haven't remembered to update your emergency contacts."

Momo felt a chill go down her spine as her sister-in-law gave her a reprimanding look. "Sorry," she mumbled, feeling like a child, but Fuyumi waved her off.

"It's fine. You're here now."

Momo stared at the pot of red tulips sitting on her lap, the feeling of dread building in her gut. "What if it's not?"

"What if what's not?"

"What if it's not okay?" Momo looked at Fuyumi with genuine fear. "He just… just… I…" She let out a strangled noise; she leaned into Fuyumi's shoulder and tried not to cry. She was starting to put a name to all these thoughts and feelings she'd been holding in for so long.

"Hey, hey, don't do that, peaches," Fuyumi said as she gently stroked Momo's hair. "Sho-chan isn't going to die. You know as well as I that he's a stubborn one." When that didn't seem to do anything, Fuyumi's gaze softened. "You really do love him, don't you?"

Now Momo was crying. She didn't know. Or maybe she did, and she just didn't want to say it. Maybe she knew at one point and said it until it lost all meaning. Wherever the truth lay, Momo knew not what it was. But before she was able to voice any of this, the door opened and a hospital worker poked their head out.

"Here for a Todoroki?"

She loved him. She loved him not. She loved him. She loved him not. She loved him?

Augh, stupid daisies. They didn't actually do anything. They couldn't tell her anything about herself that she didn't already know. All this petal plucking was ridiculous.

She swept up the petals and tossed them out the window. She had homework to be working on.

A coma.

Shoto was in a coma.

Fuyumi had left hours ago, quietly excusing herself whilst mumbling something about having to grade papers, leaving Momo alone with her husband.

She was distraught, to say the least.

How. How did he just go off, get sick, and overwork himself until he fainted and landed in a coma.

But even more than all that, she couldn't help but wonder how she hadn't noticed any of this going on. Not just Shoto catching ill, but also her own feelings coming back to life again.

The sun was setting, but Momo made no effort to turn the lights on inside the room. Maybe if she stayed still and quiet in the dark, the nurses wouldn't kick her out. To go home and sleep alone would be cold.

She rests her head on a table, her eyes growing weary.

The doctor had told her that the virus would run its course within the week, but that there was no telling when he'd wake up after that. It was unlikely to last years, or even months; it would be a few weeks at most. His brain simply shut itself down in order to better care for itself, apparently, or something. She didn't know. Life science wasn't really her gig.

But even a few weeks felt like forever to Momo. More than enough time to sort herself out, but still forever.

She fell asleep, and night turned to day. It was her day off, so she spent it wandering the hospital grounds.

The days added up. After a week, the staff insisted that she go home for at least a little while, to recover some of the lost sleep that showed so prominently in the dark spots beneath her eyes.

She found a note on her table from Kyouka and Ochako when she got home. They told her not to worry; Izuku was able to pick up a few more shifts, and the girls teamed up to take care of Momo's time. They'd convinced Bakugou to help maintain the house in her and Shoto's absence. She almost cried when she read it.

The days crept by.

Momo knew. Or maybe she didn't. She couldn't tell anymore.

The tulips by Shoto's bedside were soon joined by a pot of jonquils, their yellow blooms soon fading away with rest of the month of May. Unsurprising, since summer was coming, and most species of daffodil were of the early spring variety.

Fuyumi came in sometimes, mostly by herself, though once she brought the twins. For the first time, Momo saw the serious side to Shoto's brothers as they chatted seriously with her and without the normal sing-song to their speech. They teased her about how she had really fallen in love with their baby bro instead of just rolling with an arrangement, but that stopped once they noticed her expression.

They left behind a few red-and-white roses, saying the blossoms were a staple in the gardens where the four of them had grown up.

At around the same time, the tulips were also nearly spent. There was just one bud remaining stubbornly closed on the plant, and it seemed that there was nothing Momo could do to encourage it to open up.

Their friends visited when they could. Those days were often bittersweet, with the cheer of the first congratulations poisoned by the melancholic atmosphere of the situation at hand. Even Bakugou, when Kirishima managed to drag him in for a day, seemed less snappish and more somber when commanding Shoto to wake up again.

Through all the visits, Momo couldn't really find it in herself to carry out any real semblance of a conversation. Pleasantries and small talk, yes, but she was too lost in her own little world for anything else.

Fortunately, when Kyouka visited in the dying days of May, she managed to pull Momo back down to earth for just long enough to talk about something aside from the weather.

Momo played with the tip of a tulip leaf. "You know, Kyouka, I've been feeling kind of lost lately," she said. "And not particularly because of the coma thing."

Kyouka closed her mouth, choosing instead to lean back in her chair, cross her legs, and fold her arms on her lap in a patient, I'm listening, gesture.

Momo looked away, taking deep, quiet breaths to soothe her nerves. It would be weird to let the cat out of the bag now after so many years of being conditioned to hide it. "Shoto and I, our marriage was arranged," she admitted, glancing up briefly to gauge her friend's reaction.

Shockingly, Kyouka only had an eyebrow raised. "You know, there always was something about the early stages of you guys' relationship that didn't seem completely organic to me," she said as she crossed her arms.

Now it was Momo's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Wait, so you noticed? But, then— did anyone else?"

"You're fine, Yaomomo. As far as I know, I'm the only one who thought it felt kind of fake at first." When her friend didn't reply, Kyouka continued, sounding a little bit smug. "So, let me guess. You fell in love with him for realsies."

Momo's jaw fell. "How did you know!?"

"Well, I'm glad you finally noticed," Kyouka said dryly. "Geez. Didn't you hear me say 'at first'? I noticed the dynamic shift between you two during our second year. You fell for him then, didn't you?"

"That was just a crush," Momo argued, "and it died a couple months later anyway. Remember that one time when you called me lovesick…" She trailed off as she came to a realization. "Oh."

"See? I knew what I was talking about. You were totally angsting internally about your apparent unrequited love at the time, don't lie to me."

"Apparent unrequited love? It obviously was unrequited, Kyouka!" She sighed. "Never mind that. I'm just feeling so lost right now. He's just here because it was arranged. I don't think he— why are you laughing?"

Kyouka pretended to wipe tears of laughter out of her eyes. "Momo, I can't believe you're so blind. I mean, seriously. That boy loves you to the moon and back."

Momo was taken aback. "What?" she said as she furrowed her brow. "But that doesn't make any sense. He told me on our first night of being married that his mom was in the same situation as me and that she cried a lot. Clearly, he's just pretending for the sake of keeping my mental health intact."

Kyouka snorted. "Momo, you can't just fake stuff like that. I mean, if you want to think about it so much, chew on this: you were both well beyond the age where you could veto the marriage if you chose to do so last year. But you didn't."

"Because my parents' company would have taken a nosedive if I hadn't kept up their end of the bargain."

"But there would have been no repercussions if Shoto had chosen not to marry you, right? I'm guessing it was his dad who arranged this whole thing; he doesn't even like his dad. If he'd felt indifferent about you, don't you think he'd have called it off to spite his dad?"

Momo sat quietly and stared at her hands folded on her lap. "I don't know how to respond to that."

Kyouka's expression softened, and she smiled as she uncrossed her arms. "You know how you feel though, right?"

Something soft and warm blossomed in Momo's chest, and suddenly, she felt like crying. She held it in as she slowly nodded. "I—"

"Don't tell me," Kyouka interrupted, and gestured over to where Shoto lay. "Tell him."

Momo turned around, trying hard to keep hope from fluttering too far up into her stomach, and stared at her husband. A lump formed in her throat and the fluttering increased tenfold when she saw him shifting in bed.

Shoto grunted, and for the briefest of moments, Momo turned to her friend with the most bewildered expression. How could she have known he was waking up?

Kyouka merely smiled and shrugged.

Momo carefully, ever so carefully, slid off the chair and tiptoed to Shoto's bedside. She held her breath, feeling as if anything might shatter him, if it were even real at all. Doing her best to ignore her thudding heart (for goodness' sake, she was twenty years old and married to him!), she crouched down to his eye level and watched.

She bit her tongue as his eyelids fluttered open, chewed the inside of her cheek as he blinked slowly at her, his eyes refocusing slowly.

"Momo?" he rasped as he struggled to sit up, and all the breath left Momo right in that moment. "What happened to—"

He couldn't even finish the thought; all the air was knocked out of him when Momo abruptly leapt up and hugged him, very nearly sobbing all the while.

"I love you," she choked out, her voice raw and vulnerable. "I love you, I love you, I love you. Please don't… please don't do that ever again." Momo felt tears fall thick and fast down her cheeks, but it didn't matter. He was awake and well again.

There was a pause. "What happened?" he wondered aloud, then brushed it aside. "Ah, well. I suppose it doesn't matter."

Momo sniffled as she slowly pulled away. "I love you," she whispered so softly that only Shoto could hear it, "for real. Not because Kyouka's here."

The way he stiffened when she said all that scared her. Her unbridled joy and relief slowly morphed into a gnawing in the pit of her stomach. Had Kyouka been wrong? Oh, please, don't let Kyouka be wrong, she prayed.

Shoto shot a subtle, uneasy glance at their guest, then leaned forward with some difficulty (he had just woken up from a coma, after all) until he sent shivers down her spine with how she could hear him breathing.

"I love you, too," he confessed, relaxing as he did so, "for real, not because Jirou is here. Since I don't even know when, but I love you."

It was all Momo ever could have asked for.

"Whooo," Kyouka said lamely, pumping a fist in the air. The couple distanced themselves again and looked at her.

Kyouka merely shrugged. "I told you so," was all she had as an explanation.

Momo looked at her husband again. He stared back at her for a second, then they both laughed to themselves. Laughed at how ridiculous it was to hide their feelings from each other, how glad they were to have each other again. It felt good.

Unbeknownst to all present, the stubborn little tulip bud finally began to unfurl its dark red petals that day. It, like all flowers, had its expiration date, but perhaps some of its beauty was to be found in how fleeting it was.

Perhaps, because some things (like a first crush, a first love) still hold beauty (in every laugh, every smile, every stolen glance) even though they last forever (as soulmates).

Author's Note: if i do this right, and if i'm patient, this'll be coming out on my birthday lol. we'll see tho. i'm generally not that patient.

this wasn't actually supposed to be quite so long... i thought it'd be like 3k... then i was like "aight 5k..." and uh yeah. this happened lol. i do quite like it tho. i finished this early february because that's when i was still thinking about keeping a monthly oneshot schedule lmao. can't believe i just kept this in all that time. but yeah you could actually say this is one of my first todomomo works. could you tell that i really love flower symbolism?

anyway thank you for reading~ fave if you thought it was good enough i guess; review if that's what you're into. and as always, have a greaaaat daaaay~~~ :3