Curate, connect, and discover
* Sorry if this ship isn’t your cup of tea, but I have been in love with it ever since the Provisional Licence Exam
Anyhoo, you know how Aoyama eats alone in the classroom?
One day at lunch, Iida walks in the class to get something he forgot and sees Aoyama eating in there by himself as usual. Then his mind is like ‘okay, time to go. We grabbed the thing’ but his body doesn’t move, so to relieve the awkward silence, he invites him to eat again. Like before, Aoyama declines but thanks him anyway and gets back to eating with the expectation that Iida will leave like every other time. Iida does but when he gets to the door, he looks back in and for a reason that he doesn’t understand, he feels like he can’t leave the boy to eat alone. So, considering the pattern of Aoyama refusing to go eat around everyone else, he asks Aoyama if instead, he can stay in the classroom with him. Aoyama is taken aback but nonetheless agrees, resulting in Iida not eating with the others anymore - much to Aoyama’s concern.
At first, the gesture was purely out of pity and kindness, but like during the provisional licence exam, Aoyama changed his opinion of him. Like, Iida finds himself making more time to hang out with Aoyama when they’re in the dorms, before/after class, training, anything. He even suggested tutoring to help with the latter’s grades. Of course, he still makes time for Uraraka and Midoriya but it’s more commonplace for everyone to be wondering where he is when he’s hanging out in Aoyama’s room. Iida’s desire to hang out gets to the point where whenever they’re apart, he feels like he needs to bridge the gap, which at first startled Aoyama. Thankfully after a while of it, he got used to hearing Iida politely knock on his door and settled into the routine of having him there most of the time.
And then it happened.
The more Iida hung out with Aoyama, the more he felt he needed to. And after having the pretty french blonde run up to him excited and beaming because he got an A on a test, Iida realized the urge came from his crush on him. At first, he tried to deny it by distancing himself from Aoyama, but he can’t resist those alluring indigo eyes for long, especially when he’s upset about the lack of interaction. So plan B was to just act like everything was normal, but when you’re a mess every time your crush smiles or winks at you, it becomes difficult. With that in mind, he seeks out Uraraka and Mina to find out what he should do as they were the ones who had spent the most time with him, aside from himself. It turns out to be the most successful plan as they are very enthusiastic and give him great pointers he wouldn’t have ever realized without them.
Many attempted flirts and subtle hints later and he found himself convincing Aoyama to spend the night with him in the common area. When he did, they watched movies, ate cheese, and talked about life, while Iida fought urges to kiss Aoyama and do more. He only gives in when Aoyama falls asleep on his shoulder and he kisses the latter’s head. It turns out that Aoyama was still kind of awake and felt the action, which led to a very awkward attempt at denying it ever happened. That changed, however, when Aoyama pouted and said “aw, that’s too bad. I was just about to kiss you back”, causing Iida to immediately take it back and confess his love for him to get that kiss.
They ended up falling asleep together on the couch with Aoyama’s head on Iida’s chest, thus, the beginning of their relationship.