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In the old days, the early morning hours in Heights Alliance were silent and peaceful. Serene dawn would break on the abandoned detritus of late night movies and study sessions, waiting to be filled with students who would render it briefly spotless before the day began in earnest. The kitchen would be nearly silent - the natural hum of appliances, heavy with the weight of soaking pickles.
Then, slowly and all at once, bursts of energy - students emerging from their dorms over the course of several hours, to prepare breakfasts and grab packed lunches, leaving for jogs and early training sessions. There are the stragglers who would stumble out of of bed when morning nearly reached its apex, before the day ticked down to noon - these kids who would run, stumbling, down the staircases, ties half undone, to grab an apple or toast before making their way to class.
The dorm gets its rest before the students take over.
Or at least, that’s how it used to be.
---
“The thing is,” Iida would claim later, “is that it all came from a place of honesty!”
“Whatever,” Bakugou would reply. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong anyway.”
---
It starts like this - Bakugou would not stop sitting on Kirishima’s desk.
(Or maybe it starts like this - Bakugou, as a child, would prepare himself breakfast before his parents woke up, only to scurry out of the house as they started to rise so he could train on his own. This paints the sunrise on his skin as he jogs along riverbanks and the ocean sand, and his quirk is blessed by the humble dawn.)
Iida had been scolding him for a week - “It’s unbecoming for young heroes to flout the rules so egregiously! Why have you not learned this lesson from young Tokoyami?”
But each time Bakugou would turn away from him, cross his arms over his chest, before meeting Iida’s eyes with a narrow look from his own and a matching smirk.
And each time that smirk - “More like a grimace, kero” - would send a wave of something down Iida’s spine - a glitch in his mechanical heart.
It was infuriating! It was madness! And the way Bakugou would, immediately upon Aizawa’s entrance, alight back to his desk, slouching in his chair like a delinquent and certainly not like a student competing with Iida for the position of second in the class! Exams are coming up; this is a crucial time in a UA student’s academic development!
“Oh, so that’s what this is about,” Uraraka says.
“I wouldn’t say Kacchan is a delinquent anymore,” Midoriya adds.
In desperate times like these, there was only one thing Iida could think of doing in response. Only one way to get Bakugou to cease and desist in his delinquent actions, and refrain from further acts of degradation!
And stop, of course, disrupting the cyclical, familiar hum of his engines.
Todoroki narrows his eyes. “You want to marry Bakugou?”
“No! I need to become like Bakugou so I can understand Bakugou!” Iida proclaims, cutting one hand into the other as he stands tall at the desk, loose pages of his abandoned study guide fluttering emphatically below him, like waves breaking on the shore. “It is the only way to get to the heart of his actions, and convince him to put a halt to his flagrant rule violations!”
His friends sit back in their chairs - homework abandoned, thoroughly - briefly cowed by his passion, before the giggles Uraraka has been hiding since Iida began his Bakugou rant several minutes ago burst out in an inelegant stream.
The light glints off of his glasses as he pushes them back up the bridge of his nose. “What is so funny, Uraraka?”
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” she says, waving her hand like she’s trying to shoo her laughs away. “What exactly are you trying to do with Bakugou?”
Midoriya, puzzling over Iida’s story, tries to recount it. “He wants Kacchan to stop sitting on Kirishima’s desk? And continue to be an academic rival? And the only way to do this is to act like Kacchan?”
“Don’t forget that he wants Bakugou to stop making his heart skip, kero.” Tsuyu adds. Ochako starts laughing even harder, tears in her eyes. Midoriya reaches out to rub her back, but she slaps his hand away.
Todoroki’s eyes widen imperceptibly in shock. “That’s very dangerous, Iida. You ought to visit Recovery Girl. I didn’t know Bakugou and I had the same power.”
Tabling Todoroki’s suggestion for a moment, Iida protests. “What you are describing certainly is not occurring! I do not understand what you are implying here, Tsuyu.” It’s impossible, after all, for Bakugou to make him feel like how she’s describing; flowery language like the maiden protagonist of the Shoujo manga he caught Sero reading before class one day. The explosive boy is merely a nuisance, disrespecting the hallowed halls of UA, and somehow studying his way to the top with supreme inelegance.
So what if the engines in his legs seem to stall when Bakugou throws a smoke filled grin his way - as if his body can no longer bear the pressure of holding him together, his limbs feeling heavy and loose like jelly when he catches his gaze through his narrow, upturned eyes. As if someone has tossed a rock into the center of a still pond, sending waves through his very body.
It means nothing, except that Iida wants to help his fellow classmate see the beauty in orderly behavior! Nothing, except the way Iida almost wants to be disturbed.
Meanwhile Midoriya seems to have had a breakdown, and Todoroki is fanning the flames. Instead of half-audible mutters, the green-haired boy has entered an uncharacteristic state of complete silence as Todoroki discusses the ceremony (traditional Japanese, in deference to Iida’s family), the reception (Western style, so the Bakugou parents could showcase their fashion), the decor (orange and blue, to fit an ocean theme), and the best men (Kirishima and Tensei, sorry Midoriya) of the inevitable Bakugou and Iida wedding.
When Todoroki is about to begin describing their honeymoon - ignoring all of Iida’s attempts to implore him to “cease and desist, Todoroki!” Midoriya asks a question that sends Uraraka back into all consuming laughter, convinces Tsuyu to go back to her math and studiously ignore her friends, and leads Todoroki to nod knowingly and approvingly. To Midoriya, it’s the logical conclusion to everything that Iida’s said - but for the engine boy himself, it is the final straw in an evening of mockery and leads him to leave the room to set his plan in motion.
Midoriya asks, simply, effectively, cutting to the quick of Iida’s being: “Do you have a crush on Kacchan?”
---
“But why did Icyhot think you'd marry me?”
“Please do not encourage him,” Iida replies darkly.
---
Iida spends the rest of his evening going over what he knows about Bakugou, in between reviewing for their upcoming exams. He meant to ask Midoriya for suggestions, since the boy is a walking encyclopedia for all things Kacchan, but he knows it would add fire to the flames.
Instead, he realizes he’s gathered a surprising amount of knowledge without even realizing it - some of it must come as a function of living below him, but most of it is just offhand observation.
He knows, for example, that Bakugou goes to bed early when he can - he leaves the common room before most of them do, and when Iida chooses to study in his dorm he can hear the other boy wind down for the evening, the click of his lamp at the end of his night. A quick study in dorm life, Iida puts on headphones so his study playlist will not bother his upstairs neighbor.
Then there are things that everyone knows, but no one says out loud. To get Bakugou to do anything social with the class, you should ask Kirishima first. That the boy briefly flushes when Midoriya calls him Kacchan before turning to rail on him, but his cheeks don’t so much as pink when Kaminari does it. They all know that Bakugou is a skilled chef - the class eagerly awaits his turn to cook dinner, and watched with bated breath as he guided Sero through basic knife skills.
Bakugou is incredibly skillful with his quirk usage and dutiful in his studies. He's dedicated to being a hero in his own, abrasive way. He hates lying. And somehow he is Midoriya's 'Image of Victory.' To state that - shamelessly! Copious times! In public! In the light of day! And then to claim that Iida has a crush on Bakugou. Preposterous.
There's something about Bakugou, though, that Iida only knows because he lives below him. An American once said something about waking up and going to bed early and the explosive boy seems to have taken it to heart; Bakugou's alarm is loud and seems to vibrate through the floor and right into Iida, cradling him in waves of motion out of sleep.
Iida knows - vividly - that Bakugou is an early bird. In the mornings when Iida chooses to remain awake - rare that they are - instead of turning back over in his bed and getting a respectable extra sleep cycle in - he hears Bakugou get ready for the day, before stepping out to do god knows what in the early hour.
Sometimes he wakes up even earlier and seems to sneak out in the pre-dawn light.
That evening, as Iida practices (under his breath) emphatic calls of "Die!!" and "Shut up!!" He decides that it's time to make a change in his morning routine.
---
Heights Alliance gets hit with a creeping feeling of foreboding and has the sense that this is their last night of peace.
---
Getting up this early - truly being awake, enrobing oneself and dragging his humming, mecha-organic body out of bed, through the usual morning routine, and downstairs to breakfast - is, for want of a better word, a drag.
Iida has spent his life carving out a respectable routine for a legacy hero. One with a healthy amount of sleep for a still growing teen, a morning that isn’t too leisurely or too harried. His parents have been a model for this; Tensei, though an idol in his own right, had too many late nights and later mornings for Iida to feel comfortable emulating him.
This is madness. It’s 4:30 AM; dawn has yet to even think of breaking, and there is Bakugou in the dim light of the kitchen, quietly and gently stirring eggs with chopsticks.
The teen is dressed for a run - black shorts over long leggings, black tank, a grey hoodie wrapped around his waist and his socked feet in slippers. He’s holding his hair back with a Red Riot headband Yaomomo made for everyone to celebrate Kirishima’s birthday his year, and his characteristic feral grimace has been replaced by a pouty frown.
On the counter is a cutting board covered with a small array of fillings - enoki mushrooms, green onion, and sliced pork leftover from the night before. Iida can smell the finished rice resting in its nabe on the stovetop. Bakugou must have rinsed the knife before he arrived, Iida realizes.
Bakugou yawns widely, catches Iida from the corner of his eye, and in his shock drops the bowl of eggs. It clatters to the counter’s surface, and miraculously does not fall. Heights Alliance bristles.
There’s a moment of serenity despite the echoing bowl while Bakugou takes Iida in - he’s in workout clothes as well, blue shorts and a half-zip to ward off the inevitable early morning chill. He’d planned to work on his upper body with the extra morning hours, and had planned to grab fruit instead of his usual smoothie to start the day.
Like this, Bakugou seems - dare Iida say it - softer somehow, in his socked feet. Slower to react. His eyes take a moment to catch up to the rest of him - wide almost like Midoriya’s as they slowly fall into narrows. It’s when Bakugou’s mouth opens to strike that Iida interjects.
“Good morning Bakugou!” he says, in his best whisper, as he picks out an orange from the fruit bowl. “I am glad to see you up and about at such an early hour! What an excellent example you must set for your friends!” Iida knows for a fact that Mina, Denki, and Sero all stay in their beds until the last possible moment, before racing each other to class, almost like a competition to see who can make it there last. Kirishima, meanwhile, rises early, taking after the example said to be set by Crimson Riot.
The side of Bakugou’s nose - just over his lip - is rippling, trying and failing to suppress the urge to snarl. “What the fu-frick are you doing here, Robot Arms?” he asks, as he begins heating up a pan for his eggs.
This early, the reactive side of Bakugou that would curse at a leaf for daring to fall on him hasn’t come online yet. Instead, here is a boy with some bark and even less bite, waiting to gain the energy to snap. Bunny, Iida thinks, bizarrely. A bunny posturing at being a predator, unaware that its little heart couldn’t bear the pressure.
Why couldn’t this Bakugou be the one who inhabits the classroom - just between classes, just introspective enough to be respectful. When does he get the energy to Be This Way.
Iida pours water for tea as he considers his answer. Honesty is something Bakugou respects - and what heroes should aspire to - but he can’t outright admit to his whole plan. He sidesteps the truth instead.
“I thought I would adjust my schedule! Many heroes I admire and respect wake up at or even before the dawn!” There, that will do. Iida stands at the counter of the kitchen to eat, mechanically peeling his orange as his tea steeps. A change, but a welcome one. Bakugou focuses on his eggs instead of reacting, rolling and layering them in the pan.
As Bakugou plates his breakfast and washes his pan, he looks to Iida and mumbles, from the corner of his mouth, “What heroes are you admiring to drag you outta bed this early?”
Iida considers and responds. “You,” he says.
What. He thinks.
Bakugou stills.
They finish breakfast in silence.
Before homeroom, Bakugou still sits on Kirishima’s desk.
---
“The spirit of Icyhot haunted you at that very moment,” Bakugou cackles.
“Todoroki is very much still alive, Bakugou! Please do not insinuate otherwise!”
---
The next day, Iida’s alarm - one that tracks his REM cycle - wakes him up before Bakugou’s alarm goes off and vibrates him into wakefulness.
Because he is refreshed, at peak wakefulness, and crucially has a solid 20 minutes on Bakugou’s usual start time, he’s able to greet Bakugou in the kitchen with two bowls of Danish style porridge topped with fruit.
The blond blinks angrily at him, but accepts the bowl and asks him about the recipe as they wash up afterwards.
Iida is delighted and thinks - for a brief, spectacular moment - that this will work. He will lead by example, and Bakugou will fall in line with the most very basic of respectable behaviors.
---
Iida is, was, and will forever be wrong. Katsuki Bakugou is a gremlin, a feral demon, whose mind could only have been fostered deep in the pits of hell. Iida is the unfortunate fool seeking this wellspring of madness.
It’s been two weeks since Bakugou accepted the breakfast Iida made for him, and they’ve been in an unspoken stand-off ever since.
Every day for the last two weeks they’ve been in a silent competition to be the first to awaken and arrive downstairs and - crucially - have some form of breakfast prepared.
Sometimes Bakugou beats Iida by a thin, thin hair - he can hear the other boy on the stairwell in front of him, footsteps soft but swift. When he gets to the kitchen, Bakugou is panting - chest heaving - as he reaches for a carton of eggs.
Other times it is Iida who wins, by a landslide, at the mercy of his own REM cycle. In those precious minutes he can leisurely cut fruit, brew tea or sometimes coffee using the system Tokoyami has painstakingly drawn out and labeled for the class, accented with stickers he claims are Dark Shadow’s addition.
They have - unfortunately for Iida, but good for Bakugou - found that the best way to beat the other is by letting their wake-up times creep earlier and earlier, until they’re both downstairs and wide awake well before the gym is open, before dawn even has a chance of breaking and going outside would risk a run-in with Aizawa, for these are the hours he most often haunts.
To compensate for the slow shift in their schedules - and their earlier bedtimes - they study together after eating. They’re quiet - uncharacteristically so, and both of them have to work hard at it - but they work together well.
Bakugou can - with a glance - figure out where Iida has messed up a math problem. In response to the questioning eyebrow raise Iida delivers as he corrects his mistake, Bakugou shrugs and says that his flying is all arcs and parabolas.
In return, Iida quietly breaks down complex sections of Hero law to the other boy, providing diagrams and writing out the drafts of flash cards. As dawn starts to break across the common room, casting a gentle orange tinge across Bakugou’s hair, they quiz each other on their topics.
In their next set of exams, they tie for second place behind Yaomomo, but Iida was never competing for first, anyway.
---
“You were competing for first in his heart!” Todoroki yells out.
---
It is, of course, after exams that things go off the rails a bit. They sat their tests on Friday - scores revealed on Saturday - and, in celebration (or perhaps to give their teachers a bit of a break) there’s very limited homework assigned over the weekend.
Class 3-A is too exhausted from studying and wrung out from their own work-study jobs or extracurricular training to actually throw a party to celebrate, but the atmosphere in the common room that night is a little louder, a lot happier, and definitely a little raucous.
Jirou is handily beating the don’t-tell-him-we-call-them-the-Bakusquad at a rhythm game. “She’s only winning,” Kaminari weeps bitterly, “Because our beloved Kacchan went to bed at six o’clock! He abandoned us to suffer without him.”
She cackles. “You’d be losing to both him and me if he were still around, Denki!” she crows as he misses a beat on a long combo and loses his rhythm.
Most of the rest of their class is scattered around the room as well. Bakugou is the obvious exception, and Tokoyami is nowhere to be seen. Kouda was called out to assist with an operation involving an unlicensed vet, while Hagakure dragged Yaomomo out into the city on a ‘secret mission’ that likely includes a visit to an athletics store and a chemistry supply shop, along with artful shots for the invisible girl’s instagram.
Satou and Ojiro are comparing notes on a recent quirkless MMA championship match, while Shouji is quietly reading through a manga series Sero has been recommending in the groupchat. Shinsou - the late but welcome addition to their class - is sitting on the couches next to the gamers, serenely flipping through cat pictures, while Aoyama takes pictures of him and edits them to include glitter and cat ears.
Iida and his friends have claimed one of the study tables so that Midoriya can show off some recent additions to his collection of hero trading cards, while Uraraka attempts to bully them to look into a murder cold case with her. So far Todoroki is the only one of them to be meaningfully convinced - but whether it’s because he’s interested in crimes or thinks it has a link to one of his latest absurd conspiracy theories is unclear.
It’s fun , Iida thinks, to hang out with his friends in this downtime so rare. Focused on fun instead of their classes or work studies. Time to just be kids. But it would be more fun if Bakugou were here.
He blinks. No clue where that thought came from. Not a single one. Although it does remind him; he looks at his watch, sighs, and starts packing his things into his backpack.
“Friends!” he says. “It has been incredible, as always, to spend time with you all. However I find it prudent to head to bed now!”
Uraraka, in the middle of drawing the layout of the garden where the murder occured for Tsuyu, narrows her eyes at him. “Iida,” she says. “It’s eight o’clock. Why are you going to bed now? The night is young!”
“Yeah!” Midoriya smiles. “If you go to bed now you’d be just like Kacchan! And we’ve missed spending time with you.” He’s rubbing nervously at the edge of an All Might card - a duplicate, he explained, and not a very rare one - as though scared that Iida will claim that he doesn’t want to spend time with his friends. That won’t do!
So Iida, carefully, explains the whole saga. He hasn’t kept his friends updated at all since that one study session, busy as they’d been with exam preparation. Starting from the beginning - knowing Bakugou is an early bird, for example - means that the story takes some time, but tell it he does as his friends sit enraptured.
He walks them through the original breakfast challenge - how it seemed illogical that they should dirty up two full sets of pots and pans when they were both awake. He describes how they started studying together a few days in and explains that the highlighter color coding system he had debuted in their own study group last week was actually Bakugou’s.
Iida doesn’t mention the way Bakugou’s hair seems to soak up the colors of the sunrise, or how soft he looked when he would stumble down the stairs wrapped in his oversized hoodie. He also definitely doesn’t mention how the low growl of his voice in the morning - sleep rumpled, sure, but also soft in deference to the early hour - has invaded his dreams.
When he mentions that Bakugou bet him a week of fresh orange juice that he would come in third on their exams, Midoriya squeaks. When he mentions - casually - that he called Bakugou a hero he admires, Uraraka levels her head into her hands and doesn’t remove them.
He’s brought them up to speed - the exam results this morning, before delivering the kicker. “And despite all my attempts to calm him down and demonstrate acceptable standards of behavior, he has yet to stop his unruly behavior!” Which means, of course, that he keeps sitting on Kirishima’s desk in the mornings, keeps smirking at Iida, and keeps making the Class Rep falter as he reprimands him.
Midoriya is staring at Iida as though he’s grown seven heads and personally told him that he thought Stain was right. Coming from behind Uraraka’s hands is a steady stream of muffled mumbling that he can just make out - she’s saying, over and over, “Stupid. Stupid! They’re so stupid.”
Todoroki is reaching out to shake Midoriya’s arm, while Tsuyu - the only one of his friends with sense - drops her observation. “So that’s why you tied with Bakugou, kero. Because you studied together so much.”
“Yes!” Iida gestures excitedly. “That’s exactly it! Although I would have preferred a clean second, ultimately it is our grades and not our relative ranking that matters.”
Tsuyu nods. “But,” she begins thoughtfully, “he’s still upsetting you because he’s paying more attention to Kirishima than you.”
“Midoriya!” Todoroki whisper-hisses at his green-haired friend, who has been once again shocked into stillness. “Midoriya! That is dating. Iida and Bakugou were on study dates. You cannot tell me I’m wrong here - Mina explained exactly what dating is to me! They’ve been having breakfast and study dates this whole time!”
Iida sputters, but cannot form words. The rest of the class was ignoring them - but Mina, who must have a secondary mutation to know when her name is called, has turned to watch them. She’s not subtle about it at all. Maybe Iida should recommend more reconnaissance training to Aizawa.
Todoroki’s frantic jostling of Midoriya’s arm finally brings him back to reality. Stopping Todoroki’s movements, he turns only his head towards Iida - slowly, like one of the haunted dolls in the horror movies Sero and Kaminari pretend to love so they have an excuse to cuddle - his eyes wide with terror now, mouth a moue of concern. “Iida,” he begins. “You have a crush on Kacchan.”
Uraraka - freeing herself from her hand prison - snorts. “And Bakugou has a crush on Iida! Everyone knows.”
“I didn’t know!” Denki yells somewhere below the couches, but everyone else nods in agreement.
“It’s really true,” Mina says. “Blasty thinks you’re neat! He mentions you all the time!”
“Yeah Iida!” Kirishima agrees. “Having a crush is super manly too! And one on Bakugou? That’s like plus ultra manly!”
Gesturing at their friends and classmates Uraraka spells it out. “You have a crush on Bakugou. Bakugou has a crush on you. You have standing early morning breakfast dates. Do the math Iida!” Mina nods with her, in solidarity and support.
Iida pushes his glasses up his face, takes in the eager and smiling faces of his classmates - and Kaminari’s pouting visage - and nods. “I see,” he says, and pauses. “I… have to go to sleep now.”
As he heads upstairs, his classmates cheer.
---
The next morning - it’s early enough to be very late the day before, honestly - Iida is sure he wakes up before Bakugou. He takes a few moments to lay in bed, thinking. He thinks about the other boy lying in his own bed just above him. He thinks about Bakugou’s smart hands, about the way he gestures with his pen to point out errors in his math and holds his phone carefully with his fingertips.
He thinks about what it might be like to spend more time with Bakugou - not just in the early mornings, but later in the day when Bakugou is at full tilt chaos mode. How much it might break up the monotony of the day if he could be there when Bakugou threatens to fight the sun, or reflectively gets spooked by something Midoriya does, or watch him aggressively julienne vegetables into aggressively thin slices for dinner.
That morning Iida also thinks about how enjoyable it was to spend time with his friends, even if he had to leave them early. He thinks that maybe - even though they’re on the cusp of their hero careers, and need to be working incredibly hard - they all deserve something nice and good. He thinks that maybe he could be something nice and good.
When he goes down to the kitchen in the morning, he doesn’t dress in workout clothes, but instead wears his usual pajama set. He doesn’t set out to make an elaborate breakfast, but he does cut some fruit and arrange it very nicely on a plate. Instead of tea or coffee, he uses Tokoyami’s milk frother to make them mugs of hot chocolate, and uses a stencil to top them with a cocoa powder heart.
He places the mug in front of Bakugou’s place at their usual table when he makes his own appearance. If he’s shocked by Iida’s more devastatingly casual attire, it doesn’t show on his face. Instead, he wears a smirk and lowered eyelids as he slides into the chair, and his gaze catches on the mug and what’s inside.
He faces Iida - eyes wider now, crimson locked on blue - and Iida can only smile, softly, nervously, and hesitantly reach out with his hand. He’s vibrating so hard he can see the cocoa hearts jostle in their ocean of milk.
Bakugou looks between the plate and the mug several times before meeting Iida’s gaze again, but this time his head is turned away and he’s definitely got the beginnings of a blush in his cheeks. Bakugou is a boy with the sunrise painted across his face, and Iida can’t believe it’s taken him this long to realize. The sun reaches out to the sea - kisses its surface to keep it warm - and Bakugou takes Iida’s hand.
It feels like victory.
---
Later, Bakugou and Iida move to sit together on the couch, and Bakugou leans against Iida, adjusting his large arms so that he’s cradled in it, soothed by the gentle hum he admits, before lifting his feet onto the couch to cuddle in deeper. Iida feels soothed by the warm tattoo of Bakugou against his side, and both boys fall into a nap that way, safe and comfortable as Heights Alliance breathes a sigh of relief. To break is not even on Dawn’s radar at this hour. Night reigns supreme - the moon hanging heavy in the sky in its nest of stars.
As they sleep, the shadows in a corner of the room seem to shift a little, and the shape of Tokoyami emerges. He sips a homemade latte in a cauldron shaped mug while Dark Shadow affixes stickers to a colorful sheet in front of him. Tokoyami flips to another page in the crime novel he’s reading - the third in a series, about a detective with a quirk that allows her to understand the history of any object she touches - but casts his gaze upon the resting forms of Bakugou and Iida.
“Courtship in the dark,” he mutters under his breath, and tries to solve the crime before the narrator.