The couch of the teachers' lounge was, all in all, very comfortable. Honestly, it beat most beds Toshinori had been forced to slot into, simply by virtue of being almost exactly as long as he was tall. He could lay his head on one armrest and prop his calves on the other and he would fit just right, his shoes sticking out just far enough not to soil the fabric. Perfection.
Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to afford him the bliss of a short pre-afternoon-lessons snooze that day.
There was a mosquito in the room. Midoriya had once told him (among the many, many diverse things that Midoriya regularly told him) that only people up to 25 years of age could hear mosquitoes fly, due to age-related loss of hearing range. This particular mosquito must have been aware and spiteful of that fact, because it was trying its damnedest to make its presence known regardless, mostly by bodily shoving itself right into Toshinori's ears and nostrils at close intervals. Not that it even needed to, since Toshinori's eardrums must have missed the physiology memo and were still perfectly capable of picking up the annoying buzzing even when the dastardly creature was frolicking on the opposite side of the room, instead of actively trying to penetrate his skull.
"Might Ears", Nighteye had called it, with that utterly straight-faced humor of his that Toshinori had taken at least a whole year to learn to parse correctly. It was incredibly useful to track down trouble nearby and sometimes even far off, a naturally keen sense of hearing bordering on a proper sixth sense that had alerted him of many subtle crimes and undetected victims over the years. On the other hand, it was incredibly detrimental to his ability to rest. Every little sound, every distant voice, every sudden variation of the noise level of the environment caught Toshinori's attention completely, setting him on edge until he'd grasped the exact nature of the disturbance, and made sure it wasn't a threat to anyone's safety. Sometimes it was hard enough to fall asleep at night at the overall quiet altitude of his Tokyo penthouse; it was often impossible to catch some shut-eye in the middle of the day in the country's top ranking, bustling high school in Musutafu. Steps echoing in the corridors, youthful shouts, a vast assortment of quirk-related blasts and booms and thuds and thwacks, and of course-
"HEY, GUYS! WHAT'S UP?"
From several rooms and corridors over, Present Mic's voice rang with all the discretion of a fire alarm, loud enough to make Toshinori flinch with his whole body. He rubbed his hands over his face with a low groan as he finally gave in and sat up. It was a lost cause. He scratched his head with a sigh as his eyes fell on the yellow sleeping bag curled up on the floor on the opposite side of the room.
"How do you do it…?" Toshinori mumbled, mostly to himself.
"Habit." Was the unexpected, gruff reply. Ah, he hadn't managed to sleep through that either then.
Aizawa had such an odd relationship with sleep. He always seemed to rest way too little and way too much at the same time. He likely had extremely poor sleep quality, for whatever reason. Or, as Midnight had once put it with her peculiar flair, he relentlessly courted Morpheus like a fervent suitor, but he never quite managed to consummate the act.
Toshinori chuckled. "I applaud your experience then. Is there a trick to spending more than ten years in close quarters with Mic without going completely deaf?"
"Earplugs and earmuffs. Try those."
"Ah, they don't do the trick for me, I'm afraid." There was something that disturbed Toshinori on a very visceral level about being unable to hear things happening right under his nose. He simply couldn't relax enough to doze off with the knowledge that someone might be passing right beside him, tinkering, working, existing, and he'd be none the wiser. He wouldn't go as far as to call it paranoia, just… a deep-seated appreciation for situational awareness.
"Chokeholds then."
Toshinori smirked. "His speaker protects him quite well against chokeholds, doesn't it?"
"You smash it first. He doesn't mind, he has spares."
"Anything that doesn't involve egregious property damage or bodily harm?"
"Too many caveats." The bean-shaped, padded mass shifted with what Toshinori assumed was a shrug. "Nothing you can do about it then."
Toshinori still felt a tad guilty taking up the couch all for himself when his coworker was huddled on the cold, hard floor few meters away from him, but Aizawa seemed to harbor a certain disdain for sofas anyway. On his second day at UA, Toshinori had pointed out (politely, as far as he was aware) to a sleepy Aizawa on the ground that the couch nearby was unoccupied, only for the other man to reply with an icy and laconic "I know" and proceed to remain exactly where he was for the next two hours. Toshinori hadn't brought up the matter again.
"Pity." Toshinori fixed his loosened tie and donned his jacket again. "I could have really used some extra energy today. Rescue training is going to be taxing for us both, I bet."
Aizawa finally deigned to roll on his side to face Toshinori, and graced him with his fifth unimpressed glare of the day. "Go to the quiet room if you need your beauty sleep that badly."
"The quiet room?" Toshinori looked up curiously as he finished buttoning up his suit.
"Has no one shown you yet?"
Toshinori shook his head negatively, clueless as to what the other man might be referring to. With a long-suffering sigh, Aizawa pulled down the zipper of his sleeping bag and started shuffling out of it with blatant reluctance.
"Oh please, don't inconvenience yourself." Toshinori objected, raising and showing his palms to reinforce his words. "You can tell me about it another time. I have some marking to catch up with anyway, I may as well take care of it now…"
"Mh." Aizawa hesitated, weighing his options carefully. No doubt the prospect of Toshinori actually keeping up with his intended duties for once was an enticing one. In the end though, he shrugged and stood up. "Never mind that. The sooner someone shows you, the better."
"Oh?"
"Teach a man to fish…" Aizawa elaborated as he folded his sleeping bag haphazardly and deposited it on the nearest chair. "...And maybe he'll stop adding his moaning and groaning to all the background noise you're trying to block."
"Ah." Toshinori couldn't help but grimace. "My apologies, I didn't mean to-"
"Come." Aizawa walked out of the lounge without further ado, and Toshinori was left with no choice but to trail after him.
The Eraser Hero still puzzled Toshinori to a considerable degree. Luckily, their relationship wasn't nearly as belligerent as their first interactions had made Toshinori fear. As it turned out, putting their own lives on the line to protect a whole class from a villain attack not even a week into the new school year was quite the effective icebreaker. They had proved their utmost dedication to the kids' well-being without a shadow of a doubt, and they had earned each other's lasting respect in the process.
Still, Toshinori wasn't sure whether that meant that Aizawa had properly warmed up to him yet. Granted, his baseline level of interpersonal warmth was pretty chilly to begin with, if his habitually brusque behavior with Midnight and Mic, who'd apparently known him since high school, was of any indication. Any attempts at small talk on Toshinori's part systematically fell flat, and any offers to help or ease his troubled recovery were met with just as much ill-concealed dislike as Toshinori himself would have probably had in similar circumstances.
Of all the possible activities that could have made for some sort of peaceful common ground between Aizawa and him, Toshinori never expected catnapping to be the one they'd end up somewhat bonding over. Normally, Toshinori wouldn't even conceive of sleeping in the workplace, not even during the free periods between lessons and planning, no matter how exhausting keeping almost two dozen adolescents at bay for hours on end might be. He would consider it disrespectful towards his hard-working colleagues, and a frankly demeaning display of feebleness on his part. However, when an ostensibly healthy thirty-year-old teacher regularly spent the better part of his free time snoozing in the office, and all the rest of the staff treated that fact as if it was just part of the natural order of the universe, you couldn't help but question your beliefs, in some measure.
The USJ debacle had forced Toshinori to change his stance on the topic drastically. Stuck with barely one hour and a half of muscle form per day, he simply couldn't handle his pre-established workload. Aizawa and the other teachers had to step in and cover for him almost on a daily basis, and… Toshinori hated that, plain and simple. And as much as he loathed to admit it, putting up his feet and resting even for a little while throughout the day did afford him the ability to keep up appearances for a few more minutes during his lessons. And if power naps allowed him to do what he was supposed to do for a little longer, and a little better… then by God, for the sake of his students, he would swallow his pride and crash on the communal sofa like the decaying wreck he was. He owed those bright youths that much, at least.
Being co-teachers of the same subject for the same class, Toshinori's and Aizawa's free periods tended to match, so it wasn't long before they ended up heading to the lounge for the same purpose. Surprisingly, after an initial threat of violent repercussions in case Toshinori snored (which he did not, thankfully, despite the less than optimal state of his airways), Aizawa hadn't put up any resistance, hence their current arrangement.
Unfortunately Toshinori would soon discover that deciding to allow himself to enjoy a refreshing nap at the faculty did not translate to actually managing to enjoy a refreshing nap at the faculty.
Toshinori followed Aizawa down the stairs into the underground floor, where he'd been only once or twice before to retrieve some stocked office supplies. They stopped in front of a large, heavy metal door, the kind that, in Toshinori's imagination, might lead into a vault or a cold storage room. However, when Aizawa swung it open, it was immediately obvious it was something different.
"Oh!" Toshinori gazed around the large area in awe as they stepped in. "I didn't know we had an anechoic chamber!"
Toshinori had never been into one before, but he was familiar with the basic mechanics and rationale of its structure, courtesy of some passionate ramblings of Dave's back in college. Hypnotic patterns of tridimensional geometry covered walls and ceiling, while the floor consisted of a metal grate suspended over an unassuming expanse of concrete. There were a small table, two plastic chairs, and a small recliner shoved all together next to one corner of the room.
"The hero course never really needs it, but we've had a couple of students over the years with sound-based quirks that found it useful." Aizawa's voice sounded very odd in that new environment, muffled and clear at the same time. It became harder to parse when Aizawa wasn't facing him, so Toshinori stuck close to his side as the man walked to the sparse furniture.
"Was Mic one of these students?"
Aizawa shook his head. "It was built more recently. The support course requested it, they use it to run tests and try out new equipment. Still, it's empty and available most of the time. It makes for a good napping spot on Mic's high-energy days."
"I see." That definitely sounded like first-hand experience. Toshinori watched as Aizawa fetched the only item on the table, a little black remote, and held it in his palm for him to see.
"You can rearrange the layout of all surfaces as you see fit." He tapped one of the buttons, and the wall to their left slowly started to recede deep into the earth, until it was far back enough for an entirely different wall, made of smooth concrete this time, to slide in its place from some unseen crevice. Aizawa proceeded to demonstrate the same process with the other walls and then the ceiling, until the entire room became basically one big box of concrete, and their voices echoed loudly in that wide emptiness if they raised them too much.
"This is pretty impressive." Toshinori commented, feeling a little uneasy at the idea of taking advantage of such a refined technological asset for the sake of a short doze.
"This one turns the lights on and off." Aizawa continued to illustrate each function by pointing at the respective buttons in a quick sequence. Toshinori had already decided he was going to fiddle with the controls as little as possible, to reduce the risk of accidentally damaging anything, but he paid close attention anyway. "These two control the room's temperature. Air circulation. Emergency call-"
"Emergency call?"
"There have been malfunctions during equipment tests, and some people tend to find the full anechoic layout stressful. At any rate, it isn't safe to leave potentially injured people trapped in a room where they have no hope of alerting outsiders unless they have a mobile on them." Aizawa pointed at the entrance, unperturbed. "Same reason why there's no lock on the door."
"...Very good point." Those were indeed wise precautions, Toshinori thought. A capable director could make one hell of a psychological thriller on such a striking premise.
"Hm, what else…?" Aizawa paused, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Don't touch the wedges. There's fiberglass under the surface layer. It hurts."
"I wouldn't dream of it." Toshinori tried not to bristle at the man's condescending tone. Sure, it was good to know, but he wasn't going to start poking and prodding at obviously delicate and probably costly gear like a nosy toddler sticking his fingers in a socket.
"Right. Have fun then." Aizawa turned his back to him and moved to leave, having consumed more than his fair share of thoughtfulness for the day.
"Thank you for showing me around, I appreciate it." Toshinori took care of adding, polite, ever polite, especially polite in the face of Aizawa's perplexing brand of half-assed mockery. The day Toshinori would stoop down to respond in kind to win one battle would be the day he'd lose the war.
"Don't hoard the place for yourself though." Aizawa said as he closed the door behind him. "Lots of people use it."
