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To Izuku, the thunder seems cathartic, almost.
He's curled up against his bedframe, thumbs idly occupied with the two plastic cowlicks of his All Might figurine—Limited Edition Golden Era Ball-Jointed, of course; how could he settle for anything less—as the soles of his bare feet press against the cool, small section of bare wall that exists between where his bed hits the plaster and where the giant bust poster of Toshinori with "I AM HERE!" embellished in gaudy, blocky capitals speech-bubbling out of his mouth ends.
It's two. Or three. Izuku's not sure, really—all he knows is that it's just some trivial hour trapped between twilight and sunrise—and that Tenya and Shouto wouldn't be too pleased with learning about Izuku's tendency to accidentally wear away the paint enamel on his dolls at a time he shouldn't be awake (although mostly Tenya, he presumes, cracking a small smile, since he's the one who finally manages to persuade Shouto to develop a decent sleep cycle after a forty-five minute sitting of strongly—and loudly—worded sentiments, hand acrobatics, and a 10-slide Powerpoint Presentation neatly outlining the devastating effects of insomnia through approximately CXV sans-serif Roman numerals).
So when the thunder announces its presence by mildly vibrating inside of Izuku's skull and he watches the sky slowly turn into a black and blue watercolor painting, he's suddenly relieved, despite not knowing he was stressed about anything in the first place. Really, what is there to be stressed about, other than the fact that his Golden Era's hair is quickly becoming not-so-golden? Exams are over for now, and his quirk, as recommended students Shouto and Momo put it, is "nothing short of amazing,"is, as Toshinori puts it, "more than I could have ever hoped for at such a young age, my boy," and is, as Katsuki eloquently puts it, "too much for your damn baby body to handle, so just you fucking wait until I make you eat my damn dust, All Might Junior."
(He knows it's good even by Kacchan's standards because he doesn't even bother to hiss in a “Deku” into his sentence).
And of course, there's also a small, porcelain flowerpot delicately wedged between a mirror and a Silver Era Ball-Joint right on the very bedframe Izuku's curled up against. Day-old peonies and carnations rest inside of it carefully, loosely according to the principles of ikebana, soaking up stale water that Izuku should probably change out soon if he wants the remnants of his most recent date to remain. But it's really the least of his worries right now given that the boyfriends of said recent date are snoring lightly on his rug nestled in sleeping bags, although it probably would have made sense for them to just pile into a singular, larger one given that Shouto's head is buried in Tenya's chest and one of Tenya's arms is wrapped around his waist. The sight makes Izuku laugh—not at them, of course, but laugh in the sense that only now, in the dead of the night shielded by the lack of artificial lighting and the sheet of rain ambiently sliding down the window, can he ever see Tenya and Shouto do something like this so casually.
Well—granted, they are unconscious right now, but it's besides the point. When they sleep is, in fact, one of the only times Izuku can ever see the two even dare to come this close within proximity without tensing up and turning bright red. And of course, Izuku's guilty of this as well, but it's due less to the fact that he's a child playing at adult and more to the fact that he's been practically alienated from the idea of making any sort of move on anyone, and just now beginning to slowly unlearn and unravel the concept of shooting up a foot in the air whenever someone places a hand on his shoulder.
Not to mention the fact that these two boys—these two boys pretending so hard to be adults—are just too plain cute for Izuku to not tense up even a little whenever they deem his hands worthy enough to be wrapped in theirs, because oh god—even when their hair is tousled up and half of it is glued against the rug and a small stream of drool slides out onto their chin, they're beautiful.
In fact, they look especially beautiful when they're like this. And it's because, Izuku realizes, that they're no longer pretending.
Sleep offers them a chance to shed the act off, and tonight, they just look like two boys, not undergrown men, as Izuku watches the quiet storm outside the window tint them both bluish-grey and the cloud-filtered light slides across their faces.
And then he freezes as the sky tells him the stories going on behind their sleep.
—Behind the sleep of one of them. Shouto still has a relatively placid face, lids flat and smoothed over his eyes, but Tenya's bottom lip protrudes out slightly in such a way that Izuku can practically feel the clenched teeth hidden behind it. As Izuku slowly, apprehensively sets down Golden Toshi and advances to the edge of his bed to get a better view, Tenya's eyebrows arch down in an angry V—then up in a frightened inverted one—then back down again in frustration until—
"NO! DON'T GO THERE!"
He's up, he's up and Shouto stirs as the arm that was wrapped around him is ripped off and yanks his body up in the process, and Izuku valiantly leaps off of his bed, valiantly faceplants onto the floor, and anxiously scrambles back to his knees to join Tenya and Shouto in the blue-grey light that's slowly getting brighter and revealing bits of their face in blotches like cloudy bruises.
The sky warns him that something is wrong.
And so Izuku leans in closer, meets Shouto's gaze as he watches him rub the sleep out of his eyes, and desperately hopes the warmth that's emanating as he closes in to get a better view of Tenya's face is due to Tenya's own body warmth and not a result of his burning cheeks—old habits really do die hard.
But then he realizes—he realizes that no, it's not Tenya, it's him that's burning up, because Tenya is cold, he's covered in a sheen of cold sweat, and as Shouto, now finally wide awake (or at least awake enough), joins the circle and slowly, yet surprisingly not hesitantly, slides a hand across Tenya's face, he gasps.
He can feel the ragged, quiet sobs heave inside of Tenya's chest; they feel painfully withered away and small in comparison to the one who's shedding them.
"I..." Iida-kun. Izuku's voice feels caught in his throat. He can't imagine that any one of them could be able to speak now.
Iida-kun.
Iida-kun!
Ii—
"Iida-kun!"
Shouto Todoroki continues to amaze him every day.
Shouto shakes Tenya's shoulder a bit; a little out of necessity, and a little, Izuku deduces, out of desperation, to bring him back out of the nightmares he's slipping into.
Izuku knows the feeling all too well. He knows Shouto knows the feeling all too well.
So naturally they know Tenya has his nights as well—but it was something they agreed to in theory. Tenya never lets it out. But now, here he is, with Izuku's hands slung over his back and shoulder as Shouto clings onto his other shoulder asks him so quietly that Tenya has to weakly murmur, "what?" twice to understand that Shouto's asking what it was.
What it was about.
His voice crackles at the edges as he just shakily responds back, "Ingenium," and it's all they need to know.
Many misadventures have whipped them into battle mode prior, but Hosu still holds a special place in their hearts—not because they liked it, but simply because it just refused to leave them.
Izuku can't get a papercut without the small bead of blood on his knuckle reminding him of the blade with the power to paralyze. Shouto still shudders a little at the kitchen knives gleaming in the corner of the cafeteria kitchen. And Tenya—
Tenya still remembers everything. Izuku can see it in his eyes.
Those eyes don't belong on the face of a child.
Although, Izuku supposes, they should face the facts—they're terrible at being children. And they're still not ready to be adults.
At least they can all agree on that, even if it goes unspoken into the three-A.M.-air.
The only thing left now is to close the gaps between them at the moment, because it's the only form of reassurance Izuku can think of.
So he leans in, and realizes—wow, wow, even when his eyes are red and his glasses sit atop a shelf in the corner of the room, forgotten, he still looks beautiful. His face is chiseled and regal, even if his nose is a bit pink, and Izuku plants a kiss right there, trying to bring his distant look back into the bedroom. Shouto follows up with an "I'm sorry," whispered into his ear, and takes to his cheek, and then, then for some reason, Tenya sniffs, presses a palm against his eye, and croaks back, "Sorry."
They both stare at him in disbelief, and the closed gap breaks once more.
"Iida-kun, why...?"
Tenya wrings his hands in response. "I've, ahem—really brought a great deal of imbalance to our sleeping cycles with my emotional inconvenience."
"I..." Shouto looks on in wonder as Tenya suddenly straightens his back and desperately tries to suck in air to pull his lips taut. "You can't be serious. Emotional inconvenience?"
Before Tenya can even open his mouth, Shouto stares at him with a sort of ferocity Izuku hasn't recalled seeing since the sports festival.
"Iida-kun, listen to me," he says with such conviction that Izuku's spine unconsciously stiffens to attention as well. "You're not an emotional inconvenience. You're not an inconvenience, period." He says it as he closes in the gap once more, and the three of them meld into one, the rain dying out slowly as the clouds part and the four-A.M.-light now drifts in lazily through the window. A few words go unsaid because despite however many escapades they make in places like Hosu, they're still kids in the end with an unpolished sense of intuition and perhaps just a bit of social anxiety to boot, but it's really only the thought that matters as they both allow Tenya, Bottle-It-Up-And-Play-By-The-Rules Tenya, to break a few unspoken rules of his own as he lets his tears ebb, flow, then finally dry as the warmth returns to his body.
And to be nuzzled in between his two boyfriends, with his heart fluttering like a schoolboy's and his arms firmly grasped to Tenya and Shouto and refusing to let go with the authority of an adult, to smell the vaguely sweet scent of the slightly wilted flowers resting against his bedframe fill up the room?
It's cathartic to Izuku, almost.
He decides he'll change out the water first thing this morning.