Chapter Text
Shoto isn’t the biggest fan of noise. He finds that, more often than not, enough of it can get very overwhelming very quickly.
That’s why he notices so quickly when Iida starts humming.
It’s a typical Wednesday evening, and the two are situated at a floor table in Iida’s dorm room, surrounded by notebooks, papers, and textbooks as they revise for one of few upcoming tests. The study session began with Iida going over a couple concepts, explaining them to Shoto as a form of quizzing himself on his knowledge and of teaching Shoto at the same time, then slowly settled into a familiar comforting silence.
Shoto enjoys this silence. He doesn’t enjoy all silence, but something about this one pleases him. There’s a hum of warmth underneath it, and it comes with none of the awkward coughs and pressure to fill the air as it would at other times. It envelops him in a safety bubble, where nothing in the world exists but himself, Iida, and the study material in a single dorm room.
It’s a bit disorienting, the fact that Iida himself is the one that pops the bubble.
The sound would be hardly noticeable to most. A soft, fuzzy sound coming from under Iida’s breath. It’s melodic in a subtle way floating through the silence and becoming a part of the mood, rather than cutting through it.
Shoto thinks he likes it.
“What is that?” Shoto asks, voice low as to not disturb the peace.
Iida’s humming stops immediately, and he looks up from where he’s highlighting his notes to meet Shoto’s gaze.
“What is what?”
“That song you’re humming,” Shoto responds matter-of-factly. In a tone that he personally thinks doesn’t warrant the redness that grows on Iida’s ears.
“Oh, that– sorry. I’ll stop,” Iida responds with widened eyes and a frantic look down back to the table.
Shoto frowns at this.
”I don’t mind it. I was just curious.” He attempts to soothe Iida’s sudden apparent discomfort. No, not discomfort—embarrassment. Why would he be embarrassed?
When Iida looks up again, it’s evident that he’s taken aback. His features are a mixture of confused and touched, as if Shoto’s words are ones that he’d never expect to hear.
“I see.” The words seem to be his way of collecting himself. The dazed expression slowly dissipates, and he instead sends a soft smile Shoto’s way. It’s, inexplicably, warm. Iida’s smiles always are. Shoto doesn’t quite know why.
“It’s just a nursery rhyme from my childhood. My mother sang it to my older brother and myself when we were younger. It was the only thing that made me stop crying, the few times I did.” Iida chuckles, as soft as the rest of him. Another sound that Shoto doesn’t mind penetrating the silence of the room.
A beat passes.
”I like it,” Shoto replies simply, because he does. He likes the story behind it, a glimpse into a part of Iida he’d never get to know otherwise, and he likes the song itself as well. Maybe what he likes more is the sound of Iida’s voice as he hums it. Or maybe it’s the sound of Iida. Just Iida.
“Thank you,” Iida responds in kind, nodding his head curtly.
Shoto hums, then looks back down at his notebook to mark the end of the interaction. If a couple minutes later, the tune starts playing again, that’s for Shoto to engrave into his memory and him alone.
________
Shoto shoots a blast of ice down the rocky road, sliding frantically through the mess of an artificial forest UA somehow built just for this 1A training session. The robot behind him is fast, hot on his trail. He can hear the sizzling of the ice being melted as quick as he produces it, and the high pitched wheee of its engine working overtime. Whatever Bakugo did earlier in an attempt to stop it only made it faster, and angrier, if these things had emotions.
Shoto’s not sure what to do. He’s tried blasting it with ice in hopes of stopping it, which only succeeded in fogging up the area with steam as it immediately evaporated when in contact with hot metal. Heat, as Bakugo so helpfully showcased, would only serve to make the situation worse. He also didn’t want to burn the surrounding area, as his classmates were scattered around all over. He can hear Sero and Uraraka off to one side trying to trap a couple robots in a tape web, Midoriya off to another smashing through some weaker versions of the one on Shoto’s tail.
He’s overwhelmed by the barrage of auditory stimulation. The wind wooshing in his ears, the yells and battle cries of his teammates, metallic screeching of robots being blown to bits, teachers calling out advice that’s probably being ignored, the rustle of artificial leaves, the wind up of the robot behind him as it prepares to shoot an energy beam into Shoto’s back—
The rumble of a familiar engine, footsteps faster than should be possible for a human being, and a loud crash as Iida sends a kick flying straight through the body of the robot.
The relief that washes over Shoto is palpable. The moment he heard Iida coming, his shoulders relaxed in a reflex he didn’t know he had, and he could take a moment to pause. His laboured breathing was all he could hear, the rest of the world muffled by a ringing that sometimes happened during moments of overstimulation, and he isn’t sure how much time passes when he processes Iida’s voice.
”—roki-kun. Todoroki-kun!”
It startles Shoto enough to lock eyes with Iida, who’s taken off his helmet and placed a firm hand on Shoto’s left shoulder. The sounds of the world return to him, alongside a familiar tension in his temples of his head. Feels like the beginning of a headache.
“Are you okay?” Iida asks again. His voice is low, as if he’s trying to be heard only by Shoto, and leans in closer to compensate for it. It makes Shoto grateful for the weight on his shoulder keeping him grounded as his knees feel weak at the proximity.
“Yes. I’m.. I’m alright. Thank you for saving me.”
Iida smiles, then, and gives Shoto one last firm pat on his shoulder before turning and looking around. “I think our other classmates may need my assistance. I’ll be off!”
And before he knows it, Shoto’s standing alone, left with nothing but the remnants of the comforting rumbling of Iida’s engines as he speeds off into the distance.
________
Sleep isn’t easy for Shoto. Both the ordeal of trying to fall asleep, and the act of sleeping itself, come with their difficulties.
It’s an unfortunate fact that Shoto’s faced with once more as his eyes jolt open to be greeted with his empty ceiling, a cold sweat uncomfortably covering his entire body. His breath comes out in short, fast puffs, and he has to shakily sit up to help his lungs get a bit more air.
He doesn’t really remember what this nightmare was about. It’s mainly a fuzzy mess of blazing heat and a face stung with tears. One part of it that was clear, though, was the horrible sound of Iida’s voice strangled into a guttural scream.
His senses are returned to him slowly, until he’s grounded in reality once more. He’s in his dorm room, bedside clock reading an angry 2:34 visually cutting through the darkness of the area, and it’s oh so silent. He wishes someone were awake and in the common area, making tea or watching movies beyond when they should. He wishes there were something to distract him from how tiny he feels in the infinite nothingness of his room. How the silence is heavy and imposing, a solid pressure surrounding him from all sides, pressing in and in and compressing his very body into itself. How the rustle of his bedsheets as he shifts, the shff of his hair, the sound of his breathing, is all too loud and all too much for the moment.
How the knock at his door slices through it all, three sharp thunks against wood, wholly unexpected and all too welcome.
“Who is it?” Shoto gets out, voice haggard and gravelly from sleep. He winces at the sound, wishing he could hide his vulnerability from this mysterious visitor.
“It’s Iida. Can I come in?”
How silly of Iida to think he needs to include a name in his introduction. How silly of him to think that Shoto wouldn’t recognize the familiar tone of his voice immediately, even muffled by the door and shrouded by the rest of the world’s all too loud silence.
“Yes,” Shoto responds.
A shuffle of the door handle, a click of the lock as it pops out of place, and a creak as Iida softly pushes the door open. It all moves in slow motion until Iida himself is by Shoto’s bedside, looking determined and unsure of his presence there all at once.
“Hi,” Shoto says, breaking their silent staring contest.
Iida startles, as if he’d just remembered where he was, and smiles.
“Hi,” Iida returns the greeting. He hesitates before he continues. “Are you okay?”
Shoto blinks at him, suddenly aware of just how uncomfortable he feels again. His shirt is sticking to his back uncomfortably, and the air of the room makes it cold, but his legs are too warm under the covers, and he’s been sitting in a position that now makes his lower back ache, and—
”Yeah. I’m okay.”
Well, he couldn’t exactly say all that to Iida, could he?
Something in Iida’s facial expression changes. The space between his eyebrows tighten, just enough that most people wouldn’t notice, and the corners of his lips turn down in a slight frown.
“I don’t mean to undermine your words, but.. Well, I heard you,” Iida’s demeanor changes once more, this time putting on a mask of exaggerated righteousness. “As class president, it is my job to make sure that all my classmates are in tip top shape! Even if it means checking on them at hours of the night it is unreasonable to be awake!” His back straightens, and he whips his arm in an arc as if to emphasize his point.
But Shoto doesn’t care about any of that. Well, he cares, in that it’s endearing in a way that makes him warm in the pit of his stomach—anything Iida does is. The issue is, he’s too preoccupied by the first thing he said to be concerned about his performance.
“What do you mean you heard me?”
Iida’s mask of bravado shatters, and the grimace is nothing but obvious this time.
“You were shouting, and you.. called for me.”
What?
Shoto doesn’t.. do that. He hasn’t for a long time. Not since he was a child, a soul too mature for the body it inhabited, choking back sobs and rubbing away tears, praying his father didn’t show.
It’s been a long time since he associated cries with bruises, after all.
Shoto swallows. His throat is sore.
The response is immediate. The visceral need to apologize, get on his knees and grovel and shut the fuck up before he does something stupid again. To run into a closet and curl up into a ball with hopes that his clothes will barricade his sounds from the outside world.
”I’m sorry,” Shoto chokes out, wincing as it feels too loud in the room. Idiot. And he hangs his head, shutting his eyes tight, balling his fists into the blankets pooled by his hips, and he waits. He waits for the punishment he knows he deserves. The shouts, the screams, the shattering of glass and crashing of furniture as his father tosses it around in an unabashed display of dominance.
When it comes, it’s nothing like the dizzying barrage of noise he’s used to.
“Todoroki-kun.”
Iida’s voice is so kind.
“You did nothing wrong.”
How is his voice so fucking kind?
Tears well up in Shoto’s eyes, and they’re spilling over the next moment. He tries, god does he try, to will them away. He should be able to, given all the practice he’s had, but something about Iida’s voice and his presence makes it impossible to accomplish. Instead, he turns his head away from Iida, looking at the wall and silently letting the tears roll down his cheeks off his chin.
He isn’t sure how much time passes, the only sounds being his occasional sniffles and watery intakes of breath, when he hears Iida moving.
Away.
”No.” Shoto turns, hand outstretched in Iida’s direction in an instinctive action. When he does, he notices that Iida’s frozen, hand over the back of Shoto’s chair, as if trying to pull it closer. He takes it off, looking sheepish.
“I should’ve asked. Before touching your stuff. Sorry,” Iida says, as if touching Shoto’s chair was the pressing issue at hand. He’d laugh if he were in a more regular state of mind.
“It’s.. fine.” Shoto isn’t sure what else to say.
”Would you like to be alone?” Iida asks, tentative and Shoto feels his hands grip at the sheets a little tighter.
“No.” Please, don’t leave, Shoto doesn’t say.
It’s then that Shoto realizes why Iida was reaching for the chair in the first place. Who knows how long he’d been standing there, just watching Shoto cry? Maybe Shoto should let him leave. Maybe Iida’s question was an attempt at getting out of this awkward, mortifying situation that nobody would willingly be a part of.
But Shoto can’t forget the way Iida sounded a moment prior. You did nothing wrong, so kind and patient and reassuring in all the ways Shoto didn’t realize was possible. All the ways Shoto didn’t realize he needed.
Shoto repositions himself on the bed so that he’s pressed up against the wall, laying underneath covers, leaving plenty of room for Iida to sit where Shoto was before. When Iida looks at him quizzically, Shoto simply pats the now empty space, trying not to feel like a child doing so.
Iida slowly takes his rightful spot, laying down next to Shoto with an ease that makes him feel less strange about the whole situation. They look up at the ceiling together, Shoto sniffling away the last of his tears.
“Can you keep talking?” Shoto requests.
Iida, without missing a beat, begins active recalling his notes from Mic’s English class earlier that day. His voice is low, but warm and soft in a way that cradles Shoto in a blanket of safety and makes him want to curl up and never leave. He talks about nothing in particular, but somehow in that moment, it’s everything that Shoto has ever needed in his life and more. Shoto breathes, and his heart is mended, scars kissed, by the pure resonance of Iida’s voice, as he drifts off to sleep.