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Shinsou thinks he’s starting to get the hang of his new classmates’ names. He’s still ages from understanding anything else about them, but by his second month, he almost thinks he has a handle on things. Like maybe he has a chance of integrating into the class.
Then he watches Iida and Uraraka interact once and realizes he has no clue what’s going on whatsoever.
“Iida, I’m sorry it’s come to this,” Uraraka says, solemnly clenching her hands together in front of her, “but I need to do it to ‘em. And by ‘them’ I mean you.”
Iida pushes his glasses up onto the top of his head so he can rub his eyes in a frantic attempt to wake himself up. Two seconds ago, he’d been fully asleep, zonked out on top of his homework at the table, but he manages a, “Uraraka, I--”
“Don’t even try to explain yourself,” Uraraka says. She suddenly screws up her face in distress, and wails, “Does this friendship mean anything to you?”
The common room goes still, as everyone turns to watch what’s clearly about to be an argument. Jirou slides her headphones down onto her neck for the first time in an hour to pay attention. Todoroki blinks open one eye and rolls off of Midoriya’s lap to track the argument as well.
Shinsou looks to Midoriya to see if this is a serious situation, but Midoriya hasn’t flinched. He’s still doing conjugations like nothing’s wrong. His headphones are on. Maybe he hasn’t heard?
“I could ask you the same thing,” Iida says coolly, and snaps his English textbook closed. With his glasses still up on his head, sending his hair in all different directions, he looks like an over-exhausted cockatiel.
Uraraka narrows her eyes. “I can’t believe you.”
“Uh,” Shinsou tries, because nobody else is saying anything--Midoriya and Tsuyu are both completely ignoring the proceedings. “Can we--”
“Shinsou, this doesn’t concern you,” Uraraka snaps. She stomps forward and, with one deft motion, sweeps all of Iida’s homework across the table so it’s out of his reach. “We’re going to nap.”
“I see,” Iida says, and situates his glasses on his nose again. “Will your... lover be joining us?”
Midoriya makes a noise that sounds like a choked-off laugh, while Tsuyu just turns a faint shade of pink and keeps scribbling in her notebook.
Shinsou urgently whispers to Tsuyu, the lover in question, “Is this a fucking joke, or not?”
“I heard that,” Uraraka says. “We’re a joke to you?”
Iida says, “This is between us , Uraraka. Don’t bring our classmate into it.”
“Very well,” Uraraka says. She turns up her nose (this has to be a joke ) and then smacks a hand into Iida’s arm, turning him into a weightless shape to be dragged through the air into the hallway.
Shinsou hears Iida say, “I have protein shakes in my room, if you can stomach having a snack with me after that,” and then Uraraka gives a cackling laugh in response before the door to the stairwell shuts behind them.
Jirou puts her headphones back on and Todoroki rolls over to fall asleep on Midoriya again and Tsuyu yawns demurely behind her hand.
It’s Midoriya who catches Shinsou’s bewildered look a few minutes later, but all Midoriya offers in explanation is an eye roll and a, “Don’t worry about it,” so Shinsou tries not to.
Ochako practically kicks open Tsuyu’s door one Wednesday, dragging Iida behind her. “Tsuyu, honey, you have to watch us do this dance. I saw it on Tik Tok.”
“Cool,” Tsuyu says, and politely puts her book down to watch. It’s easier if she doesn’t complain.
“Hello, Tsuyu,” Iida says, while Ochako queues up the music. He looks out of breath--so does Ochako, now that Tsuyu’s looking. Their dance rehearsal seems to have been going for a while.
“Hi, Iida,” Tsuyu says. “Are you going to dance?”
Iida looks a little nauseous, but also determined. “Yes. I believe I have it down.”
“Okay here we go,” Ochako says, and sets her phone down to start.
The dance goes poorly, to say the least. Ochako pretty much has it down, but Iida loses his spot halfway through and Ochako turns on him, snapping, “Iida, if you’re not going to take this seriously you’re off the team.”
“I wish I would have left this dance team back when Midoriya quit,” Iida tells her.
“Maybe I wish that too!” Ochako says.
Tsuyu goes back to her book.
“If that’s how you feel you only had to say so,” Iida tells Ochako.
When Tsuyu glances up again, Ochako’s face is set in grim determination. “Let’s try it from the beginning. Just, when we get to that one part, throw it back harder this time.”
“Throw what back--?”
Jirou’s been napping for about six hours when her precious slumber is abruptly ended by violent pounding on her door. She startles awake, bolting upright and banging a knee into the wall, and yells, “ Ow! What?”
It’s Uraraka who snaps back, “Is it your laundry that’s in the washing machine?”
“What?” Jirou asks. The sun has set in the midst of her nap. Her room is dark, and she blindly pats around her bed to find her jeans.
“Uraraka,” someone who sounds like Iida chides, and then he says in a calmer tone, “We’d appreciate if you moved your laundry, Jirou. It’s inconsiderate to--”
“Okay, just-- hold on,” Jirou mumbles, and tumbles out of bed and nearly smacks her head on the corner of her desk as she tries to get her foot through the skinny end of her jeans. Her brain is still running catch-up on the fact that she’s not in imminent danger. “Just, chill out I’m so--”
“Don’t tell me to chill out,” Uraraka says.
“To be fair, we texted you an hour ago,” Iida adds.
“I was asleep!” Jirou says, and wrenches the door open to find twin scowls on Uraraka and Iida’s faces. “You could’ve just moved my stuff.”
Uraraka glares deeper, but the thought clearly hadn’t occurred to her. “Are you gonna move it now?”
“Yeah. Shit,” Jirou mumbles, squinting against the harsh hall lights. She rubs her eyes, and her hands come away smudged with makeup. “I’ll buy you dinner or something, Ochako. I didn’t mean to fall asleep for so long.”
“It’s okay,” Uraraka says begrudgingly, like it isn’t okay at all, but she doesn’t yell again. “Thanks, babe.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Jirou says. She looks to Iida. "Did you need something too?"
"I came to lend moral support to Uraraka," Iida says.
As if Uraraka needed moral support. "Okay then," Jirou says, and then shoulders past them to stalk to the laundry room.
“Please cover yourselves,” Iida says. He’s shielding his eyes with one hand, and the other hand is extended to continue knocking on the open door.
“Stop it,” Ochako complains. Her voice isn’t as clear as it normally is, but she figures she deserves a break. She holds on tighter to Tsuyu, who pats her head in consolation.
Ochako’s mostly under the covers, using Tsuyu as a pillow while Tsuyu does her homework. Up until five seconds ago, she’d been almost asleep, trying to sleep off a migraine, trying to ignore the throbbing pain that spikes every time someone slams a door somewhere in the hallway.
“Hmm,” Iida says, but he’s thankfully lowered his voice. “I prepared you some tea, if you can sit up and accept it like a warrior.”
“I’d rather die a coward’s death than sit up and accept that poison,” Ochako says, but she struggles up into a sitting position and breaks character to say, “Thank you, babe.”
Iida nods, the image of politeness, and hands her the mug of tea. Ochako’s trying to figure out how exactly he found out she needed that--maybe Tsuyu had texted him. “Do you need anything else?”
“Your mom,” Ochako mutters, and blows on the tea to cool it down.
“Oh, I get it, that was almost a joke,” Tsuyu says encouragingly. It’s genuine sarcasm cloaked by false praise, to make it sound as if she isn’t chastising Ochako for being a brat. Tsuyu looks back at Iida. “The painkillers are on the bookshelf, could you grab them? It’s almost time for her next dose.”
Iida hands them over.
Ochako turns her head too fast to watch Iida, then winces and says, “Fuck--shit,” against a wave of nausea.
“Bitch,” Tsuyu agrees, holding out two pills for Uraraka to take.
“Mo Bamba,” Iida says, probably because he doesn’t know any lyrics to the actual song but he wants to prove he’s following the conversation. He puts the back of his hand to Uraraka’s forehead, testing for a fever. “I hope that you can get some sleep.”
“You would hope that, wouldn’t you?” Uraraka mumbles. She pats the side of Iida’s leg, which is the closest part of him she can reach from across the bed. “Some muscle there. Nice.”
Iida says, “Don’t touch me, harlot.”
Tsuyu says, longsuffering, “Take your painkillers, Ochako.”
“Make me,” Ochako says, and flutters her eyelashes.
Tsuyu flushes a very pretty pink, and Iida abruptly turns on his heel and leaves the room with a supportive, “Well anyway, feel better, Uraraka,” over his shoulder.
“I love you!” Ochako calls. He makes a vaguely affirmative noise in response, but she doesn’t quite make out what he says.
Tenya’s door swings open at eleven in the evening and scares the living daylights out of him, but it’s only Uraraka, hair wet from a recent shower and a pore strip over her nose. “Kirishima has Tetsu over and they’re all studying in his room and they won’t stop stomping and it’s past quiet hours,” Uraraka says.
“Okay,” Tenya says, once he’s caught his breath. He pushes his glasses up to rub his eyes, and then readjusts them. “Did you talk to them?”
“I pounded on the ceiling but that just made them think we were having a fun through-the-ceiling interaction and they started stomping louder,” Uraraka whines. “Can you talk to them?”
Tenya looks longingly at his history homework, but he already knows he’s going to help her. He sighs. “Okay.”
“Right now?”
“In a minute.”
“Okay you’ll come right now? Thank youuuuu,” Uraraka says, and starts inching away.
“I'll do it in a minute. Close my door on your way out, please,” Tenya says.
Uraraka bolts without doing so, and Tenya says, “I asked you to close my door --” but Uraraka still doesn’t come back and do it. It occurs to Tenya that she’s ignored him on purpose.
Iida’s eyes are kind of glazed over. Midoriya rolls off of him as quickly as he can, but when he tries to grab at Iida’s arm, Iida flinches so hard that Midoriya backs up over himself, tumbling onto his ass a few feet away when his feet get caught under him.
Iida stays there on the ground, flat on his front. He’s stock-still--not even breathing.
“Iida?” Midoriya asks, hesitant. It’s not like they haven’t wrestled before. Midoriya’s never seen Iida react like this--he knows how to deal with panic attacks and flashbacks with himself, or with Todoroki, or even with All Might, but never with Iida. It’s probably the pinning-down that had triggered Iida, but Iida hasn’t recovered since Midoriya rolled off of his back.
It’s Uraraka who makes the next move, though Midoriya doesn’t process where she even comes from. She crouches in front of Iida and taps the ground in front of Iida’s face and says, “Hey. It’s Ochako. You think I’m gonna let anything happen to you here?”
Iida coughs. It’s not a coherent response, but at least he’s breathing again.
“Move your fingers, bud.” Uraraka pushes Midoriya out of the way and eases herself down into a criss-cross applesauce position, and wiggles her fingers in front of Iida’s face. “Like this! I know you can do it, I saw you type out an email this morning to Aizawa snitching on me for my cosplay last night.”
“It wasn’t--” Iida says, and chokes.
“I know you snitched,” Uraraka says, with no room for debate.
“It wasn’t because of the cosplay,” Iida wheezes, in the smallest voice Midoriya’s ever heard from him.
“Whatever. Move your fingers, big boy,” Uraraka says.
Iida manages to move his fingers, just a little bit.
“I know you were mad because I got the lettering wrong on the jacket. Well joke’s on you, Bewitched’s post-UA costume was--”
“The lettering was okay! It was close enough!” Midoriya interjects.
“Deku, this is between me and your class president.” Uraraka shuts him down, and gives him a warning look that says let me handle this.
“--I was simply telling him that you were the one breaking curfew, because,” Iida cuts himself off to wheeze again. His eyes are looking a little more focused, and have started darting around the room. They land on Uraraka’s face. “Last time you broke curfew, you let someone else take the blame.”
“That rat bastard deserved it,” Uraraka says.
“That’s accurate,” Iida agrees, still catching his breath. “Nevertheless, your...roundabout methods of justice...have come to an end.”
“You always thwart me,” Uraraka says, annoyed and affectionate at the same time. “Better?”
Iida hauls himself up to hands and knees, and then into a crouch, and then ends up sitting back down on the carpet.
Midoriya offers him his water-bottle, which Iida takes. He hunches over, head almost resting on his knees, still catching his breath. There’s a light sheen of sweat on his forehead that Iida doesn’t move to wipe away.
Midoriya glances sideways to Uraraka, looking for direction, but she’s ignoring him.
“I’m gonna touch your back,” Uraraka says. “You have about three seconds to stop me.”
Iida makes a noise that’s clearly a negative, and Uraraka’s hand halts in midair.
“You got it, champ,” Uraraka says. She kicks Midoriya’s leg, and pointedly jerks her head towards the exit. She mouths, I got this , and Midoriya understands that he’s not wanted.
As Midoriya exits, he hears a soft, “No, yeah. I got you,” from Uraraka. At least it means Iida’s going to be alright.
“Todoroki!” Uraraka calls, when Todoroki’s just trying to live his life and get some cereal from the damn refrigerator. It’s three in the afternoon on a Sunday, but that doesn’t stop Uraraka from shouting, “Look how high I can kick my leg!”
She kicks, and catches her heel and stretches fully, beaming. She’s clearly looking for some kind of positive reinforcement.
Todoroki gives her a thumbs-up, and then crunches his cereal loud enough that he barely hears what she says next.
“And Iida too!” Uraraka says. Behind her, Iida appears out of fucking nowhere and kicks his leg up, and his heel-stretch is almost as pristine as Uraraka’s.
“That’s great,” Todoroki says blandly, trying to figure out if he’s going to escape this confrontation without having to do similar gymnastics. It’s past his normal nap time.
“Mine’s better though, right?” Uraraka says.
“I guess.”
“I would prefer if you would judge them fairly,” Iida says. “I believe that my form is better, even if I lack the same flexibility.”
“Mine’s better,” Uraraka insists.
Todoroki says, “Hmm. Do both legs at once so I can see,” and both of them actually try, and Todoroki almost smiles at the image of Iida staggering into the wall with his full body weight.
Tenya finds Uraraka sitting on the kitchen floor at four in the morning. He hasn’t slept, and from the looks of it, neither has she. She’s staring at nothing, arms looped around her knees, and she doesn’t flinch when he sits down across from her and leans against the cupboards.
“You haven’t showered,” he finally states, when he doesn’t want to listen to nothing but their breathing anymore.
Uraraka blinks, and her eyes flicker over his face before looking down at herself. She’s still in her hero outfit, smudged with soot and ash and blood. “Uh oh, stinky,” she says, but it’s toneless and hollow.
“Do you want to talk about yesterday?” Tenya asks.
“No,” she says. “Do you?”
“Perhaps another time,” Tenya says. The two of them lapse into quiet for a few more minutes. Then, because he needs to make sure, he asks, “Have you eaten?”
Uraraka’s arms tighten around her knees. “I came down here to,” she says, “but I didn’t want to...you know.”
Tenya understands. “I could get you a protein shake.”
“If you have one too,” she says.
He stands on shaky, cramping legs and opens the fridge, bending over to find the cardboard box of individual shakes on the bottom shelf.
“Get yourself an ice pack,” Uraraka mumbles into her arm. Her eyes have drifted closed, but he’s pretty sure she has a secondary quirk that lets her sense whenever one of her friends winces in pain. “That looked like it hurt yesterday.”
“It did,” Tenya says. His voice wobbles a little, and she pats the side of his leg with a feather-light touch.
Tenya sits back down in his original spot after that, and slides a shake Uraraka’s way. He stretches his legs out, an ice pack pinned beneath each one to try and ease some aching, and then he punches a straw into the top of his shake.
Uraraka, across from him, uncurls a little bit to do the same. She gets weird about food, especially when she’s stressed, but protein shakes are the one thing Tenya can consistently convince her to drink, so maybe the routine is as comforting to her as it is for Tenya.
She takes a small sip, then asks, “Wanna skip class today?”
The worst part is that Tenya does. “We’re already excused from hero training. We shouldn’t miss our English quiz.”
Uraraka looks like she’s going to cry after being reminded of the quiz. If Tenya had any energy, he’d probably be crying too. “Will you please let me skip class?”
Tenya slurps his protein shake to avoid looking at her, but finally concedes, “Aizawa will excuse us if we ask him to.”
“You’re my favorite class president,” Uraraka says, with the ghost of a smile. “He can’t say no to you.”
“He can,” Tenya says. He can’t think of a specific instance, but he isn’t all-powerful.
“No, every adult loves you. So you could ask Recovery Girl to let us see Tsuyu later.”
“I’ll try,” he promises.
The sun has started to come up. Finally, Tenya’s beginning to feel tired, and he can tell by Uraraka’s yawn that she feels the same.
“But I propose that we nap until then,” Tenya says. Uraraka’s smile solidifies just a little bit more.