Work Text:
It’s about an hour after dinner, two hours before lights-out on a school night in the dorms. Tenya’s pen pushes against the edges of his ruler as he traces lines into his English notebook. Crisscrossing, they form a chart.
The last of the lines connect, and Tenya lays his ruler adjacent to his notebook. His English textbook lays open next to him, and he begins to copy a conjugation chart Present Mic-Sensei had told them to study in class.
The lights in the room are bright. The closet door is shut. The bed is made. His phone has been silenced and it lies on his nightstand.
It’s quiet. Tenya’s hand shakes, ever so slightly.
He finishes the chart, and reads it over before closing his notebook. Both it and the textbook go in his backpack, propped up against the legs of his desk. He switches his feet so that his left ankle rests on his right.
He sets the pencil down. His skin itches.
Tenya has exactly an hour and a half before lights-out. He’d like to read a bit before bed, so that gives him a solid hour of study left. He doesn’t technically have any work to do, but he really should do the recommended reading for Midnight-Sensei. And it wouldn’t hurt to look over the math work, too, especially since that’s due in two days, but Tenya doesn’t technically have to.
He switches his feet.
His hand clamps around his Modern Art History textbook. He lays it on the desk, and checks the page numbers before flipping it open and beginning to read.
His feet cross over each other again and again as he reads. When he notices, he slams them down against the floor. Belatedly, he looks back down to his textbook to find that he doesn’t understand a word of what he’s seeing.
Tenya shakes his head, and starts from the beginning.
Thirty minutes later, he’s made it through three pages- out of seventeen. His heart is picking up speed, and it feels like a snowball, gathering volume as it rolls.
A shiver runs down his spine, and he slams the book shut. The sound is loud and dissonant and much too brief in the stillness of his room. The textbook goes away in his bag, and Tenya zips it shut.
He feels fragile, almost. His chest is a butterfly, and rises and falls somewhat erratically.
Tenya’s breath is shallow.
He stands, shoving the chair back and tucking it under the desk. He should get some tea, and perhaps check on his classmates and see if he can assist them in their studies.
When Tenya steps out of his room and shuts the door behind him with a click, he finds it’s rather difficult to walk; almost like wading in quicksand. His body is heavy, his breath comes in gasps, and he gulps down air like the oxygen is running out.
No. No, he cannot do this. Tenya squeezes his eyes shut and holds his breath until he feels light headed. Then he begins to allow himself the luxury of shallow breaths that barely brush against his lungs.
When he looks down, his chest barely moves with each inhale.
Tenya pushes himself off the wall, and continues walking. Down the hallway, into the elevator, past the living room, and into the kitchen.
The lights are bright. The counter is messy; tools and ingredients scatter across it. Satou is stress baking. His classmates are loud in the living room.
“Good evening, Satou-san!” Tenya says.
The lights are bright. The counter is messy.
“Good evening, Iida-san. Are you looking for something?” Satou replies, still busy with the batter.
“No, thank you, I am just making a cup of tea.” Tenya starts towards the stove, intent on boiling the water, but Satou stops him.
“I’m sorry, I have a few things here. Let me get the water for you.”
The lights are bright. The stove is cluttered. Tenya has backed up against the counter, and Satou looks at him with concern.
“Are you all right, Iida-san?”
Tenya clears his throat and realizes he’s breathing fast again. He struggles to wrestle himself back into control; there is a vacuum in his chest and it hurts his lungs.
The lights are bright.
“Yes, thank you, Satou-san! You don’t have to do anything, I just—remembered something I need to do!”
Satou clearly does not believe him. He looks at Tenya dubiously, but decides to not push it.
“All right. Let me know if you need anything, though.”
“Of course. Thank you for the offer,” Tenya replies as he backs away. His back hits the entryway and he realizes he must look like a mad drunk, stumbling around the kitchen like he can’t see his feet.
Oh, Tenya realizes. He can’t see his feet. His vision is fine but it’s as if his brain is faltering, and he cannot process what he’s seeing.
The lights are bright. Tenya makes his way down the hallway, passing by the entrance to the living room. He’s just about to the elevator when he hears Uraraka’s voice call out, “Iida-kun! Wait up!”
Tenya’s heart falters for a moment, then slowly picks up speed. He turns around, and hopes his face is calm.
“Yes, Uraraka-san? How may I help you?”
Uraraka smiles. “Well, me, Deku-kun, and Tsu-chan are going to relax and hang out in my room if you would like to join us!”
Tenya’s throat is dry, and he clears it before saying, “Thank you very much for the offer, but I’m afraid I’d like to get some more work done tonight. Another time, perhaps?”
Uraraka’s smile is sad and soft, but her face is sweet as she says, “You’re so dedicated, Iida-kun. Remember you can relax, too.”
Tenya’s body replies on autopilot. “I—Yes, of course. Thank you.”
She thanks him and bids him goodbye, and Tenya barely manages to make it into the elevator on trembling legs.
When the doors slide shut, he sinks to the floor. Without meaning too, his legs have gone numb.
His vision is blurry. The walls of the elevator fade in and out of focus. Tenya’s chest hurts, and he belatedly realizes it is because he is not breathing.
The elevator slows to a stop, and Tenya scrambles to his feet. Thankfully, there is no one standing there when the doors slide open, so Tenya stumbles down the hallway, wrenching open the door to his room and collapsing to the floor.
He wheezes. The air seems to be devoid of oxygen, and he’s given up on the futile endeavor of attempting to suck in a breath.
The lights are bright.
Tenya’s skin itches.
He is twitching and trembling as he hauls himself over to the door, locking it before turning out the light.
The room is pitch black, and Tenya feels the barest hint of air in his lungs, and it’s like a sanctuary.
He crawls his way over to the closet, feeling his way against the wall. His legs are useless and limp as they drag behind him. His entire body shakes with suppressed tremors. Halfway there, he doubles back to get a pillow from his bed.
It takes him twice as long to make it back. The trek across his room is long and hard, like walking on an incline with aching legs.
When he gets to the door of his closet, he reaches for the handle with trembling fingers. On the first try, they slip off, and it takes him three more attempts to get the door open wide enough for him to pull his body into the small space.
His shoes take up half the closet floor, set out in neat and orderly pairs.
Tenya holds his breath to stop from hyperventilating. The room is dark.
He sets the pillow carefully against the right side of the closet wall. He then stacks his shoes, one on top of the other, until they take up less than a meter of space.
The lights are off. The room is dark. Tenya shivers as he crawls pathetically into the closet, pushing the door shut behind him. His body curls into the tightest ball imaginable, hugging the pillow to his chest. He buries his face in the soft cotton, and finally, finally allows himself to break.
Tenya Iida is many things. As an Iida, as a legacy, as the brother-of-Ingenium-turned-embodiment-of-Ingenium—Tenya is Iida and he has engines in his calves. Tenya as Iida Tenya is class president, brother, son, nephew, student, and friend—and everyone knows him differently. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and Tenya as Tenya does not know who he is.
He knows that he likes it when the pictures on the wall are even and spaced equally. He knows that he likes it when his agenda is filled with handwriting that imitates typed letters. He knows that he likes it when the rules are followed and the lines are clean and the lights are bright.
(Tenya does not like to think about the fact that the light hurts his eyes.)
The pictures on the walls are straight, and they make his stomach roll. His agenda is full, and it gives him a stress headache. His handwriting is neat, and his fingers cramp up.
But the rules are never followed. There are exceptions to every rule, and all Tenya can see is exceptions, so why are there rules? Why are there lines if they’re only meant to be erased?
In the dark, the lines disappear. Tenya is floating, but there’s a floor beneath him. He presses his head against the back of the closet, his palms flat against the walls to either side of him. His feet stretch until they reach the opposite side of the closet. There is a pillow on top of him, and Tenya feels real.
There are no lines. There are no rules. There is a floor and four walls and a pillow on Tenya’s chest.
There is pain, there is relief, and then there is both. This is both — relieving pain, painful relief— combined, and it’s all the more agonizing for this fact.
His hyperventilating slows to shallow, quick breaths, then speeds back up to harsh pants which die slowly, fading into breaths that are long and slow and deep— one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four — and the hole in his chest is even larger. He is sobbing, and the tears run down his cheeks, his jaw, his neck, and into his shirt— and it is messy.
Tenya feels—Tenya feels wrecked.
He doesn’t have a name for this, doesn’t have a label. It doesn’t fit on a three-by-five index card, and it cannot be dictated with a 0.5 ballpoint pen. It is messy and shaky, and for now, here, Tenya is not Tenya Iida.
He is not brother-son-nephew-legacy-hero-president-friend-student. Tenya is not Iida. He is only Tenya, and the grief of this reality is the most liberated he’s ever felt.
Hidden in a closet, hands pressed against the wall, breathing slow and long, and having fallen, Tenya cries.
The room is dark.