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She was crying again.
Iida hated when she cried. It wasn’t that her crying bothered him. She was his best friend, he could never fault her for something as harmless as expressing her emotions. The problem was that seeing her crying like this made all of his own unpleasant feelings begin to bubble closer to the surface. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about himself when she was the one in obvious distress. It was selfish of him, something he should be ashamed of.
He winced and walked quietly across the empty common room. “Uraraka,” he said as he approached her, a little more loudly and aggressively than he had intended.
She jumped before softening when her eyes finally focused on him. He wished she wouldn’t look at him so gently. It only made the unpleasant feelings stronger.
“Iida,” she sniffed. “Hi.”
“Hello. It’s late. You should be asleep.”
Usually, she might ask why he was awake, too - the answer would be that he woke up with a dry mouth and needed a glass of water. But there were clearly other things on her mind than whatever he was up to, and he didn’t need to ask what was wrong to know what that was.
She looked at the ground, scuffing the heel of her slippers against the carpet. “I know. I’ll go to bed in a minute,” she replied, gathering the sleeve of her sweatshirt around her hand to wipe her nose.
“Do you need a tissue?” he asked.
“Um. No, that’s okay.”
He frowned, tensing his arms to stop the urge to flail and flap them in frustration. Instead, he sighed and said, “You shouldn’t use your sleeve, it’s not -”
“It’s fine,” she said, her words pointed but not cruel. He didn’t think Uraraka was capable of cruelty. It was one of the many things about her that had drawn him to her friendship.
“Would you like me to keep you company until you go to bed?”
Her lips twitched into a smile. “Sure,” she said, tapping her slender fingers against the vacant cushion beside her.
Nodding dutifully, he circled the coffee table and lowered himself carefully onto the couch. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” he asked. “I will listen, if that would help you feel better.”
“Not really,” she mumbled, curling her knees into her chest.
Iida bit his lip, staring tiredly into his lap. He had known for some time that Uraraka had feelings for Midoriya. She had never told him that herself, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. It was hard to miss the way she blushed when she looked at him, stumbled over her words when she spoke to him, ran toward him in a flurry of excitement that made her trip on her own two feet. Someone who didn’t know her well might think she was just being herself, but he knew better. He had never seen her act quite so silly around anyone else. She certainly didn’t act that way around him. Therefore, the only logical explanation was that Midoriya was special to her.
He knew what that was like, because Uraraka was special to him.
His classmates didn’t seem to think he was capable of such feelings. Whenever there was talk of crushes, his name was always missing from the conversation. It wasn’t all that surprising. His classmates liked him well enough, but not in that way. They said he was too serious. He was too cold. He was too stiff. He was too awkward. Almost like a robot, they told him once. He had too many habits and mannerisms that crossed the fine line that separated endearing from strange. He cared too much about things that other people found tedious or annoying. The girls didn’t want to date someone like him, and they clearly thought he wasn’t capable of having any interest in them either.
It wasn’t entirely their fault, he supposed. In all honesty, he had never had feelings like this before Uraraka. He hadn’t even understood that he had a crush on her until Tensei had told him so, and he had denied it vehemently. But Tensei simply explained that he didn’t need to be embarrassed; crushes were natural, something a lot of people experienced simply because of the way their brains worked. It had taken some time to accept, but Iida eventually came around to the idea of having a crush on Uraraka. He let himself think about her, feel a surge of joy when she talked to him, imagine what it would be like to hold her hand or press a kiss to her lips.
Of course, with those nice feelings also came the miserable surges of jealousy whenever he had to see Uraraka fawn over Midoriya - or cry over him, as she was now.
“Uraraka,” he whispered.
She turned toward him, eyebrows raised over her puffy eyelids. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll be okay, Iida,” she said. “I’m just having a bad night, that’s all.”
“I don’t…” he started, swallowing his fears. “I don’t like seeing you sad. It makes me sad.”
“Oh,” she murmured, leaning closer to him. “Iida. I don’t want you to worry about me, not when you have so many other things to think about.”
“I can’t help it. You’re my… my friend. I care about you very much.”
“I care about you too,” she said, cheeks turning a faded pink in the dim lamp light. “You know, having you with me is making me happy. See? I’m not crying anymore.”
“That is true,” he affirmed. “But I wish that you wouldn’t have to be sad again.”
Her eyes widened and then flickered shut; she knew just as well as he did that Midoriya didn’t share her feelings. It was an unspoken knowledge that the two of them shared, one that would undoubtedly continue to go unspoken.
“Thank you, Iida,” she finally said, pulling a rogue strand of hair away from her face.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, feeling a twinge of embarrassment at his own habitual formality. “I think that we should both go to bed.”
“I think you’re right.” She stood up, stretching her arms over her head so that her sweatshirt rode up over the slight curve of her stomach. Reflexively, he tore his eyes away out of some mix of propriety and fear of feeling anything more tonight.
“Alright,” she said, yawning. “Ready to go upstairs?”
He looked at her, smiling after a moment. “You go ahead. I came down here to get some water. I don’t believe I’ll be able to sleep without it.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Iida, sleep tight,” she said, that familiar sweetness dripping from her words as she started to walk toward the elevators. He waved to her as she retreated into the darkness that enveloped the room around them.
“Goodnight, Uraraka.”