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For all the analysis that Izuku did on Rody's quirk, there was one thing that it took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out about Pino.
To be fair, for a while he just didn't have the opportunity to notice that there was something to figure out. Maybe he could have noticed at the hospital after their ordeal with Humarise, but they were all on some degree of painkillers at the time so they weren't always as lucid as they could be.
So if Pino had at any point been awake while Rody slept at the hospital, Izuku hadn't noticed.
He did notice about a year later, when he had taken a week off of his summer work study to visit Otheon. Rody had eagerly offered Izuku a place to stay, with the caveat that their trailer was a bit cramped.
"I'm working some better jobs now, but I'm kind of saving up for flight school, so we've gotta stay in the slums for the time being." Rody had laughed it off, but Pino seemed a bit embarrassed by the living conditions, so Izuku assured him that he liked it, it was cozy, and there was nowhere else he'd rather be. And if he had had Rody's quirk, they'd know that it was the truth, too.
Izuku had taken the floor, not wanting to kick the entire Soul family off of their only bed. He figured that it was the better sleeping configuration, anyway—this way, it was far less likely he'd disturb anyone's slumber or, even worse, step on a small child while sneaking out for his early morning jogs.
For the first few days it worked out just fine, no hiccups or abnormalities to speak of. But one morning a little more than halfway through his stay, as Izuku tried to creep out of the bedroom, Pino gave a loud trill and zipped over to perch happily on the hero's shoulder.
"Pino, shh!" he reflexively whispered, clapping a hand over the bird's beak just before the strangeness of the situation fully registered.
Why was Pino awake?
He glanced immediately to Rody, but he was still in bed with his siblings, his breathing steady. Izuku returned his gaze to the small bird nuzzling his cheek. He'd never seen Pino awake at the same time that Rody was asleep; he was a representation of Rody's feelings, so normally Rody and Pino would fall asleep in tandem—sometimes Pino would even fade away completely while Rody slept. If their sleep was ever out of sync, it was at times when Rody forced himself to stay awake over thick tomes of aerodynamic theory while Pino candidly gave into exhaustion and dozed off. Izuku had never seen the opposite to be true.
Still confused, he gently placed the bird back on the bed before tiptoeing out. His jog that morning was accompanied by swirling thoughts about what could have caused the anomaly, but by the time he had returned for breakfast he had settled on the simplest explanation: Rody had been awake, but knowing how apologetic Izuku would be over waking him up, had pretended to be asleep out of consideration. It made the most sense, and Izuku had no doubt that Rody knew how to feign the steady breathing of sleep if needed.
Izuku didn't give the issue any further thought, and indeed, with overnight stays few and far between, he had no reason to—until a few years later during another visit to Otheon, while Rody was enrolled in flight school.
This time, Izuku and Rody had shared the bed. Lala had her own bed by that point, having grown too old to want to sleep with her brothers, and Roro took the couch in the living room, saying that he wanted to stay up studying for exams. (He had grinned mischievously at the now well-established couple, though, earning himself a light cuff upside the head from his brother.)
There hadn't been anything out of the ordinary, really, but at some point during the night Izuku was awakened by a quiet wailing in his ear. He groaned, opening his eyes to see Pino on his pillow, awake, teary-eyed, and visibly distressed. Alarmed, Izuku sat up and turned to Rody, who was stirring and moaning in his sleep.
"Rody! Hey, Rody!" Izuku whispered harshly into the darkness, placing a firm hand on the brunet's shoulder to shake him awake. "Rody, wake up!"
With a gasp, Rody's eyes snapped open, and from the limited light seeping in from under the door, Izuku could see terror in those gray depths.
"Hey, are you okay?" he said gently. "Were you having a nightmare?"
Rody blinked, taking a moment to realize that he was somewhere safe, then he sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and breathed out a single word. "Überlingen."
Confused, Izuku blinked in return. That didn't sound like English, and he wondered if he was supposed to hear it in the first place. "Sorry, what does that mean?"
Rody closed his eyes for a second, and when they opened again his face was bright and cheerful, grinning up at his boyfriend. "Don't worry about that. Just this lakeside town in Germany, right on the border with Switzerland. Hey, we should go to Germany sometime, me and you!"
"Um... okay..." Izuku lowered himself back into bed, his brows furrowed. "Rody, you've been to Germany?"
"Not since before Lala was born," Rody said with a dismissive wave. "It's great, though! I'll fly us there someday."
"I'd like that..." As Izuku settled himself under the covers again, he chanced a glance at Pino and noted with concern that the little bird was still trembling and terrified. Whatever had caused Rody such distress was still bothering him.
Rody was unable to lie, and obviously Izuku knew that. So it was an unwritten rule in their relationship that on the occasion that he wasn't being entirely truthful, there was likely a good reason for it, and Izuku shouldn't try to pry unless necessary.
That didn't mean that he had to ignore it, though. Without a word, he shifted closer and wrapped his arms around Rody, pulling him close in a warm embrace.
They were silent for a long moment, finding comfort in each other's presence.
"Think Roro's still up studying?" Rody finally whispered, nodding toward the light under the bedroom door.
"Hmm. Maybe he just fell asleep without turning the light off."
"Little twerp. Our electricity bill's gonna be through the roof if he keeps that up."
By this point Pino had settled down, cooing softly as he began to nod off in Rody's hair, and Izuku smiled. "Let's just get back to sleep," he suggested before dropping a soft kiss on Rody's shoulder.
"Yeah. G'night, Izuku."
"Good night, Rody."
The nightmare incident had been enough for Izuku to begin solidifying a hypothesis: whenever Pino was awake when Rody was asleep, it likely meant that Rody was dreaming.
It made logical sense, once the possibility occurred to him. Pino was a manifestation of Rody's emotions, so if Rody's dreams were affecting his feelings in any way, it stood to reason that Pino would wake up with the purpose of expressing how he felt.
Over the years, Izuku took any opportunity to analyze the phenomenon further—and after Rody earned his commercial pilot's license, those opportunities increased in frequency. With his siblings still fairly young, Rody had talked his way into being assigned to Otheon for his base airport, but a few times a month Izuku would come home from patrol to find his boyfriend spread out on his couch, sleeping away an overnight layover in Japan. Sometimes Pino would be snoozing on Rody's chest, and Izuku quickly learned that those were times when he'd need to tiptoe through the house to keep from waking them. If Pino wasn't present, then Izuku didn't have to be nearly as careful, as Rody would sleep through even gentle rattling of pots and pans as he prepared dinner.
And if Pino was awake, then Izuku would immediately pull out a notebook, feeling a little bad about studying his boyfriend like some sort of specimen but also feeling vindicated that he could observe rapid-eye movement.
So, after years of analysis, Izuku finally came to the conclusion that Pino indicated Rody's stages of sleep. While Rody slept, Pino would only ever be awake during REM sleep, asleep during light sleep, and gone completely during the deepest stages of sleep.
It didn't really matter, all things considered, but Izuku was pleased to have figured it out. Almost as pleased as he was to see that Pino was nearly always in good spirits whenever Rody dreamed.
Eventually, Rody switched his home base to Japan. His siblings weren't in Otheon anymore, after all, at least for the time being—Roro was attending university at Oxford and Lala had enrolled in UA as an exchange student. (When Lala had first expressed interest in becoming a hero at age nine, Izuku had worried how Rody would react, but it turned out that he was thrilled. "Did she tell you this, Izuku?!" he had gushed over video chat. "She wants to protect the slums that other heroes tend to overlook! And she's not thinking about this part, but I just know she'll make absolute bank on merch...")
With Izuku and Rody more or less on the same sleeping schedules at last, save for the days that Rody was on international flights, he didn't have as many chances to observe Pino's condition during Rody's slumber. But sometimes, when he let Rody sleep in as he left for his agency in the mornings, Pino would see him off with a cheerful chirp, and Izuku would smile in return, patting the bird on the head.
"I'll see you later," he'd say. "I'm glad you're having good dreams."
One day, he had apparently given this greeting a bit too loudly, because Rody stirred and yawned before sitting up in bed. "Izuku?"
"Ah, did I wake you? I'm sorry!" Izuku gestured with his hands that Rody should lie back down. "I'm just going to work, you can go back to sleep."
"Nah, it's fine." He grinned sleepily at Izuku, who wanted to argue that no, it wasn't fine—REM sleep was a terrible stage to wake up, especially for a pilot—but he found that he had more pressing questions to ask.
"So what were you dreaming about? Seemed like a pretty good one."
Rody's expression was blank for a moment before he saw Pino in Izuku's hands and barked out a laugh. "Man, you figured that out? Did Lala tell you when she called for advice yesterday?"
"No, I figured it out for myself. A while ago." Smiling, Izuku sat back down on the bed. "So what do you normally dream about? Flying?"
Rody shrugged. "Sure, there's some of that, of course. Mostly I guess I dream about Roro and Lala, and sometimes Dad. Sometimes Mom too, a little." He looked at Izuku with a sideways grin. "And I dream about you, too."
Izuku felt his cheeks go warm. "You dream about me?"
"What are you so embarrassed about, Hero?" Rody's grin widened. "Of course I dream about you. A lot."
That was a good question—what was he so embarrassed about? "Well... thanks," Izuku muttered, still flustered. "Or— well, I guess you have no control over that, but still, you know..."
Rody laughed and slapped Izuku on the back. "You're welcome, I guess. Now get yourself to work, and I'll busy myself with dreaming about you some more."
Izuku cleared his throat as he stood, trying to keep himself from going too red. "Ah... right. You do that. Sorry for waking you, then."
"No problem. Getting to see the real thing is way better, anyway."
"R-Rody!"
It was just a little difficult to concentrate on work that morning.