You know what it's like to be nervous around people. Know how claustrophobic it can be, how overwhelming it is. Humans are complex, hard to read sometimes. You've known these things your whole life, having experienced it first hand. Which is why you show so much patience towards Idia. You know what it's like, to feel isolated and different to some extent. To feel as if nothing you do would change anything. You know what it's like, you lived it. Which is why you do what you do with Idia.
You treat him like the others. Extend a hand to him or leave it up to him to choose whether he wishes to join you or not. You give him patience and space, yet always let him know in that quiet way of yours that if he needed someone you were there. Never pushing him too hard, but not giving up on him either. A constant friend should he want to be. You engage with him, learning about him in the little ways that mattered most. Because you cared about Idia Shroud more than you were willing to fully admit. So really it shouldn't have surprised you as much as it did when he started extending those same actions in return.
In some strange way, Idia seemed to know that you were like him to an extent. Seemed to sense that you could get awkward and uncomfortable with people like him. Though you seemed to have gotten a better grip on it than him, there were moments. Where it slipped through the cracks. And he noticed it every time. So just as you have done, he began to do the same for you. He gave a comforting shoulder to you, never being loud with it. But much like you, it was softer. Gentle in a way that he only used for Ortho or Azul on occasion. A soft reassurance that responded to your own, letting you know that if you needed someone he wouldn't mind being that for you.
While on the surface you both did your usual banter or slight jokes but beneath it there was a mutual patience and understanding that had grown. Two people who in a way felt lonely, their experiences vastly different yet the feeling similar. A supportive refuge for one another in the quieter moments when the other needed it. Paying attention to the little things that made the other feel more at ease, extending that patience when it was needed. So it really wasn't a surprise when those feelings of friendship. Of care and affection, became a bit deeper.
Little things holding deeper meanings, silent exchanges that spoke a thousand words. Tender shy touches between hands that just happened to brush too close to one another. Falling in love with him, and him falling in love with you was as easy as breathing. It was natural, organic and real in a way that romance manga could only touch on. It was something that neither of you even realized that you loved the other in that way until both of you sat beneath a starry sky. Ortho and Grim a bit further away talking about the stars and their constellations. You and Idia were seated on the grassy hill, one of the rare occurrences you'd managed to get the Ignihyde house warden outside. The two of you slowly drawing closer to one another until your head was on his shoulder. And his head rested on the top of your head, his blue flames tinted rosy pink from being so close.
Yet he didn't mind and neither did you. Because in the moment, with Ortho and Grim's chatter filling the late spring evening and the stars twinkling their shimmery glow. You both felt it, that deep thumping of affection and love for the other, perfectly content to be exactly where you were. For in that moment there was no place neither of you would rather be other than by the other's side. And it was then it became crystal clear for both of you that you loved the other.
And you wouldn't have it any other way.
