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The Todoroki-Yaoyorozu Household wasn’t a place you could find everywhere. On top of being the home of two pro heroes, and one that would later be nicknamed “power couple” by the press, it wasn’t even a common building.
A long time ago, before the apparition of quirks made a shamble out of the society, it had been a luxurious inn for tourists. Not a very popular one, but enough to get by. It played on the traditional feels, that was considered as “has been” and “uncomfortable” by japanese folks, but so “kawai” and “authentic” by outsiders. Luckily enough, it survived the revolution when power started to spread among the population, without getting that much damages. Which was, for a lot of people, a miracle, since it was almost entirely made of wood.
What saved the building from the demolition was an healthy family of owners, and an university that popped out not far from here. Since being an hotel was too much of risk, it turned into a pension for students. That’s how the strange japanese inn was divided into several tiny apartments, where the landlord, an old lady, lived casually among students.
It was cheap, as the old lady could barely provide any help as landlord, due to her age, and if you had fire power you had to sign an assurance before moving in. But the place was great and full of life and history. That’s what Shouto loved, when he was looking for a place to live, after graduating from UA.
That and the fact that it was very close to Momo’s starting business, the Peace office. Aoyama, who had become a manager instead of a hero, was working there, helping the office to rise. And since he was also Shouto’s manager, so...It made sense.
At first, he didn’t plan to stay long, after all, but he fell in love with the place. It was way bigger than almost all his friends’ places too, except maybe Momo, who lived in one of her parents’ flat.
The landlord was quite nice, and more often than one, she accepted to wait when he was late for the rent, in exchange for tiny services, like changing a bulb in the common area or helping her repair something. She often said, with a proud voice:
-I met lot of people, some students i welcomed here even became doctors or politicians, but heroes? Never! Life is really full of surprises.
And since Shouto couldn’t sleep well in a non-japanese decorum, it was hard to imagine living in one of those modern apartments that spread everywhere.
It became the place that witnessed his first step as an adult and pro-hero. While he had loved his family home, he had hated to live there as a kid because of his father, and when he enjoyed every minute of his life in the dorm at UA with his friends, it was still what it was call : a dorm. Not his own place. Not his home. This three rooms apartment became his home.
He loved the opened kitchen, even though there was a wood column that stood right in the middle of it. It was the first place he looked at the sink and wondered what the heck you were supposed to do when water didn’t get out. He loved the bathroom, made entirely of wood, and had a window right next to the bath, giving the view of an japanese traditional garden, even though the first time he took a bath he hadn’t realized people outside could see him as much as he could see them. The living room had lived through many changes, and sometimes he tripped on what was left of rice-papers sliding doors, but he liked the way it had turned out, and especially the round window, that was more of chinese style than japanese, but…
“Tourists didn’t know, so why bother?” had smiled the landlord when she explained him this strange fact.
He had two rooms, one he turned into a training place. It took him days to make it, with the help of his friends, as he had to recover every wall of wax, in order to avoid starting a fire. He first thought it would be weird to sleep there ; in what became his room ; all alone, as he always lived with someone else, was it his family, or his classmates.
But he worked so much that most of the time he slept like a log. And before he knew it, he got used to it.
So, Shouto stayed for two, almost three years.
Then life happened, and before he knew it he had found himself in charge of a 9 years old boy named Satoru. The place wasn’t Shouto’s home anymore, but the Todoroki Household.
The training room became Satoru’s room. Walls got plastered with photos, and the fridge drown under the child’s drawings. From clumsy and dark, they slowly turned colorful and abstract -at least Shouto hoped it was abstract because he had no clue what it was supposed to represent otherwise. The wood column became the perfect way to take measures of the kid’s growing spurt. Before he was aware of it, he stopped tripping on the old sliding doors’ remains, but toys and plushies. The kitchen table found a new purpose in its life, as it became a part-time foundation for pillow forts.
Among all the things he had to take care of, moving was the last thing on his mind. His apartment was good enough for the two of them, and that was all he asked for at the moment, his hands already full of responsibilities. After all he still had to discover adulthood, as he was barely turning 21, yet at the same time, learning what parenthood felt like. Not that Shouto regretted it. Not at all. But the year that followed his decision to adopt the kid, he desperately needed help. His friends tried, of course, as much as friends of their ages could. His family -at least some- did too.
But Momo made the difference.
That’s when the place slowly turned into the Todoroki-Yaoyorozu household.
It happened gradually.
Momo Yaoyorozu already lived with Shouto Todoroki for quite a while, though it wasn’t official. At first it was to help her new-boyfriend taking care of Satoru.
She arrived one day, helped tidy up the place, then another she did shopping and filled the fridge, more often than none she stayed for dinner, under the excuse that her boys couldn’t just eat omelet and fishes every time -the only meal Shouto seemed to master- and then she spent one night. And another.
At one point she didn’t even return to her own flat, even though it was in a brand new modern building. Maybe she would have, if she had to pay a rent for it, but it originally belonged to her parents, and they took care of every expense of it. So she didn’t really think about it, except when one of their friends needed a place to stay, where she willingly lended them the key and the place.
Naturally Shouto started to tidy his drawers and give his girlfriend one of her own in his room. One evening, she asked if she could order the kitchen furnitures differently, he agreed, and helped. It didn’t take long for her to purchase pretty decorative stuffs for Shouto’s place, nice cushions for their “movies nights” with Satoru or tiffany lamps she found so pretty for their stained glasses while the boys only found them not-useful because it didn’t give much light. But she loved it so much that they just accepted it, the same way Momo accepted Satoru’s collection of class A plushies, and Shouto’s taste for japanese architecture.
The turning point was definitely when Shouto started to offer books to Momo. The tiny shared shelf they had in the living room tripled its size in just a few weeks, and they had to change the whole setting of the room in order to get more shelves. At this moment, Shouto realized that half of their space was already packed with Momo’s stuff.
The bathroom had her shampoo and toothbrush, along with cream and other beauty products he didn’t even know existed before. The kitchen was already full of Momo’s presence, with even a tea set in the counter, mixing traditional english porcelain with Shouto’s favorite japanese cups and Satoru’s funny mugs. Once he noticed it, he tried to remember the last time Momo had gone back to her own flat, and failed. She already had the spare key of the place. There was absolutely no denying that Momo was already his roomates, unofficially, so he did the only thing he could do :
-Do you want to move in? He asked her simply, as they were washing dishes.
Maybe he could have waited for a more romantic moment, when he didn’t have his hands full of soap and when Momo wasn’t holding a plate. Because of course she dropped it, as she blushed, and it broke in tiny pieces inside the sink. The matter was postponed, as Shouto cleaned the mess before she cut herself on the broken pieces. But as he got the trashes out, she was waiting for him in front of the front door, her cheek still red and her eyes shining with a mixture of hope and doubts.
-Is it alright with you? She whispered, taking his hands in her. -Do you really want me to stay?
Sometimes, Shotuo forgot that Momo didn’t see herself as he saw her ; strong, beautiful and reliable. And Sometimes Momo forgot that Shouto might be the silent type, but he was blunt and honest to the boot.
-I wouldn’t have asked if i wasn’t sure of it, smiled Shouto. -Do you want to move in with me and Satoru?
And after a second thought, he added:
-Do you want to live with me?
Of course, she said yes, or i wouldn’t be talking to you about the Todoroki-Yaoyorozu household today.
Lot of things changed. Momo quit her old apartment, thanking her parents for lending it to her in the first place, and met the landlord lady. Not all was easy, Momo promised to not buy -or create- too many lamps, so the place wouldn’t hand up too crowded like her old room at UA. While Shouto, on the other hand, accepted that not all furniture in his house were japanese style. Satoru promised to tidy his room and not leave every single one of his clothes on the floor. They all broke those promises from time to time, and but mostly tried to keep it.
Compromises were made. Some were easy. Like deciding to buy both japanese tea set and western ones. Other were a little bit more complicated but they both worked on it.
Shouto couldn’t sleep anything but a fuuton, Momo was used to real mattress and western bed. So they customized their room, making a hole on the floor that was the right size for a western bed. That way Shouto was still at ground level and couldn’t fell off the mattress while Momo had good night sleep.
Well, Shouto was an heavy sleeper when she was a light one, so, maybe not. But at least when she woke up in the middle of the night because her boyfriend had to go for a mission, she often met her adopted son in the living room and they spent their insomniac time with hot milk and tea on the couch.
The third addition to the household happened in those adaptions times, when they still stumbled a bit and tested each other’s limit. Shouto once came back with a bunny for Satoru.
-His psychiatric has one, and he likes it. Kota’s bunny had babies and he didn’t know what to do with them.
The boy was so overjoyed with the present she didn’t have the heart to say no. Even though the bunny did quite a lot of damages in the house. It ate a lot of wires there and there, escaping death by electrocution by some miracle. One day as Momo tried to dress up before work -while Shouto fell back asleep on the bad, his pants half way up, she found a big hole in the wall. And the bunny got out, super proud of its work.More than once, one of them almost crushed the little pet, as they sit on a chair -or the couch- not seeing that it was already there, busy destroying the furniture.
-No bunny in the living room, i don’t mind him being free, Satoru, she said, but as long as it stays in your room.
Satoru promised. But since he hated sleeping with the door of his room closed and somehow this evil bunny was smart enough to know how to open it cage, the law wasn’t really respected.
-I made a terrible mistake, confessed Shouto, after he woke up to grab some food and almost had an heart attack, as he found the bunny, as dark as the night, staring right back at him with his red eyes.
But it was too late, as evil as the bunny was, and even without a proper name (Shouto called him evil, anyways) Satoru loved his pet too much, and they kinda did too. In a very masochist way.
This accident with the bunny, though, helped them take an hard decision.
-No more pet.
They both loved cats, but they were okay with the ones they give food to in the shared garden. They didn’t have time anyways, as Momo’s business office was getting bigger and bigger and Shouto had to take care of his family. It was hard enough to do their jobs as heroes, parents and friends already.
They kept this promise for two years and half. When Satoru was turning 12, and Momo and Shouto almost reached their 24, a tragedy occured in the household.
Momo lost a baby.
She didn’t know she was pregnant at the time, they never discussed about adding a new member in the family yet, though they knew they wanted to, one day, it was still something distant, something far away. The baby was an accident.
Their lost hurt all the same.
It happened during a mission a a hero. Momo had been fighting a villain with her friends. It was a tough one, that pushed them all to their very limit. In the end they didn’t know what caused it, was it because Momo used her quick too much, using the lipid and energy meant for the baby into creation, or because of the rough fight, one misplaced punch? It didn’t change the outcome.
Mineta -and for once Shouto blessed the boy for always looking at Momo- noticed she was bleeding first, and called her out, convinced her to leave the battlefield rather than keep fighting. It saved her life, but not the baby’s. It was too late for that.
After this incident, the mood in the household changed. Shouto and Momo got closer, as they grieved. They didn’t know they were ready for a baby of their own, but losing it made them realize that, despite their young ages, they wanted it. Satoru assured them he would be happy to be a big brother, as he would have been with the baby they lost.
And so, despite the sadness, they continued living, their eyes focused on the avenir.
A few months later, Shouto proposed to Momo, and they got married in the winter of the same year. And, funny enough, their first fight as married couple as about their names.
-I want to take your name, stated Shouto, quite determined.
-And i want yours, retorqued Momo, just as decided as him.
Satoru looked at them bicker and bicker until they finally agreed on taking both. Even though, each time they were asked about it, Shouto would give Yaoyorozu name in first, and Momo would do the same for Todoroki. It made the press puzzled, and their friends amused.
The name of the household remained the same.
Though despite their best effort, the next addition of the household wasn’t a baby. But a cat.
-I promise i have a good reason, swore Shouto, as he brought back the kitten in his arms.
-Do you? Asked Momo, not finding the energy to be furious, as the tiny kitten was the cutest thing she ever laid her eyes upon.
-Yes, you know, it was so tiny and weak and drenched by the rain, it needed help.
-Sound like a lot of what you said when you brought me home, noticed Satoru with a smile.
And that was true, even though Momo hated to put up her now also adoptive son together with a pet.
-Is it going to be our thing? You taking home every stray you encounter and begging me to keep it?
She didn’t want to admit that she loved this side of him. In the end they did kept the little black kitten and loved it all the same. What they didn’t expect though, was that only two months later, Shouto received a fan letter.
It was from a little girl, whose cat got pregnant. “My mother said we couldn’t keep any kitty that wasn’t adopted…So i tried to get every single one into a nice family but none of my friend can. I saw that you had a kitten in the newspaper, please, would you adopt one? I don’t want any of them to die!”
That’s how Shouto ended up in front of a fan house, with almost all of his heroes friends? The poor girl’s eyes got so wide when she opened her door and managed to somehow let out a silent scream the whole time as they were there. Managing to only nod when each hero choose one of the kitten. Somehow the press ended up learning about this whole situation and it blew up twitter and Shotuo’s popularity -and Kota, and Deku, and even Mezzou and Sero- went through the roof.
They obviously received dozen of similar letter in the span of a year after that, but Momo managed to keep her husband in check and they didn’t adopt any other pet.
Fortunately because the place was getting full.
One evil bunny, two kittens, one black and one red and white and a kid. In a three rooms apartment.
-It may be time to move out, whispered Momo, one day, as they laid in their bed, her head on Shouto’s chest.
-Yeah.
But they both didn’t want it. This place had grew on them, they loved it, even if it was becoming too small for them. It was the first place Shouto called home. It was the first place Satoru felt safe in. It was the first place Momo decorated by herself. It was where they lived and loved together, smiled and cried.
Maybe one day they would have to move out, when they finally managed to get a baby together. But today was not the day. Today, they wanted to call this old apartment the Todoroki-Yaoyorozu household a little bit longer.