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The morning sun hit the windows of Class 1-A with that specific, heavy golden quality that only seemed to exist on Fridays. It was the kind of light that felt like a physical weight, warm and lazy, promising freedom in exactly eight hours. The energy in the room was loose and vibrating, a distinct, low-frequency buzz of teenagers ready to mentally check out for the weekend.
Hanta had mastered the art of balancing his chair on its two back legs, hovering at the perfect tipping point where gravity and core strength met. He let the chatter of the classroom wash over him, feeling a rare sense of peace.
For one, he’d actually finished his English homework—or at least enough of it to not get yelled at by Present Mic—and he had managed to snag a solid seven hours of sleep.
So, life was good. Life was decent.
Mina was sitting backwards on the desk in front of him, kicking her legs back and forth with enough energy to generate wind. She was currently in the middle of a heated debate with Denki about a fighting game they had binged the night before.
“You can’t just spam the same move over and over!” Mina shouted, waving a hand in the air for emphasis. “It’s cheating, Denki! It’s literally broken mechanics. You have no skill!”
Denki grinned, looking entirely unbothered as he leaned his hip against Hanta’s desk, scrolling through his phone. “It’s not cheating if the game developers put it in there. It’s called strategy. Maybe you should just get good.”
Hanta chuckled, catching his balance with a quick grab of the desk edge before his chair could tip too far backward. “Spamming the lightning strike isn’t strategy, dude. It’s just annoying. You’re the worst kind of player.”
“Thank you!” Mina pointed a finger at Hanta, looking vindicated. “See? Even Hanta agrees with me. You have zero honor.”
“Honor doesn’t get you the high score,” Denki shot back, his grin widening into something smug. “Winners write history, Mina.”
The classroom door slid open with a violent, jarring rattle that usually signaled the arrival of one specific person.
The room didn’t quiet down immediately because everyone was Pavlovian-trained to expect Katsuki’s dramatic entrances. Usually, he walked in with a scowl deep enough to plant crops in, his uniform slightly disheveled in a calculated way, radiating an aura of “don’t talk to me” or “I’ll explode your face off.”
Hanta turned his head lazily toward the door, expecting the usual routine. He expected the aggressively spiked ash-blond hair, the red eyes narrowed in perpetual annoyance, and the customary shout of “Move it, extras!” as he stomped his way to his desk.
What he saw instead made his chair slip.
With a loud, ungraceful clatter and the sharp squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, Hanta’s chair legs slammed back onto the floor. The jolt rattled his teeth and jarred his spine, but he didn’t feel it.
He couldn’t feel anything, really, except the sudden, frantic seizing of his own lungs.
Katsuki was standing in the doorway. He was wearing his uniform properly, his bag slung over one shoulder with a casual looseness. His hair was slightly less spiked than usual, flatter and fluffier, looking like he hadn’t spent the requisite ten minutes aggressively wrestling it into shape with hair gel.
But none of that mattered.
None of that was the damn problem.
The problem was that Bakugou Katsuki was wearing glasses.
They were thick, black rectangular frames that perched on the bridge of his nose, framing those sharp, angry eyes in a way that should have been contradictory but was somehow devastating. He looked different. The glare was still there, burning with its usual intensity, but behind the glass lenses, it didn’t look as predatory.
He looked almost studious. He looked intellectual.
He looked unbelievably, unfairly soft.
The noise in the classroom died a sudden, painful death. It was like someone had opened an airlock and sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Nineteen pairs of eyes fixed on the doorway, blinking in synchronization.
Katsuki paused, scanning the room. He reached up and adjusted the frames on his nose with a scowl, clearly irritated by the sudden silence. He blinked, and the movement was slow, tired.
“What the hell are you staring at, you damn extras?” Katsuki barked. His voice was raspy, deeper than usual; the sound of someone who had just rolled out of bed and was already entirely done with the day. “Never seen a pair of glasses before? Quit fucking looking at me like I grew a second head!”
He stomped into the room, the familiar aggression present, but the visual impact was confusing everyone’s brain chemistry. He looked like a librarian who would kill you for returning a book late. He looked like the moody protagonist of a shoujo manga right before the makeover montage, except angry and radiating heat.
Hanta felt his face catching fire. Heat rushed up his neck and settled violently in his cheeks, burning the tips of his ears.
He stared. He knew he was staring. He knew it was rude, and he knew Katsuki was going to blast him into the sun if he caught him, but he physically could not look away.
Oh no, Hanta thought, his brain short-circuiting as he watched Katsuki squint slightly at the chalkboard. Oh no no no no— oh my god. This is bad. This is catastrophic. This is a disaster.
Katsuki looked cozy. He looked like he belonged in an oversized sweater, holding a mug of tea, sitting on a window sill while rain pattered against the glass. He looked domesticated.
Hanta gripped the edge of his desk, his knuckles turning white. The urge to walk over there and wrap his arms around the explosive blond was so strong it was almost painful. It was illegal for someone that scary to look that huggable. It was a glitch in the matrix.
It was unfair to Hanta’s heart, specifically.
Denki, who had recovered from his initial shock much faster than Hanta, turned to look at his friend. He took one look at Hanta’s face—slack-jawed, eyes wide, pupils blown completely wide—and a wicked, knowing delight spread across his features. It was the look of a man who had just found ammunition he could use for the next three years.
“Dude,” Denki whispered, nudging Hanta’s arm hard enough to leave a bruise. “You’re broken. You’ve completely crashed. Do I need to get a paperclip and hit the reset button?”
Hanta couldn’t even defend himself. He just blinked, his brain trying to reboot and failing miserably. “Shut up,” he managed to croak out. It sounded weak even to his own ears.
Mina swiveled around in her seat, her eyes widening as she connected the dots. She looked at Katsuki, who was currently shoving his bag under his desk and swearing under his breath about the strap getting caught on the metal leg, and then back at Hanta, who looked like he was witnessing a religious event.
“Oh my god,” Mina whispered, her hands flying to her mouth to stifle a squeal. She vibrated in place. “Hanta. You are down so bad. You’re, like, in the trenches.”
“I am not,” Hanta lied. He was. He absolutely was. He was six feet under, actually. “I’m just surprised. I didn’t know he needed glasses. And hey, you guys are surprised too! It’s a valid reaction!”
“Kacchan actually has pretty bad myopia,” a voice piped up from the other side of the room.
Izuku was organizing his notebooks, aligning the corners with annoying precision, looking entirely unsurprised by the development. “He usually wears contacts because he thinks glasses get in the way of hero work. Plus, he says they make him look… well, vulnerable. But if he forgets to take his contacts out at night or wears them for too many days in a row without a break, his eyes get really dry and irritated. So he has to switch to glasses for a day to let his corneas breathe.”
Katsuki slammed his hand on his desk, the sound echoing like a gunshot. He whipped his head around to glare at Izuku. The sudden movement made the heavy frames slide slightly down the bridge of his nose. Katsuki scowled and aggressively pushed them back up with his middle finger, a gesture that was meant to be intimidating but mostly just drew attention to how big the glasses looked on his face.
“Shut your damn mouth, Deku!” Katsuki roared. “Stop muttering my medical history to the whole class, you creepy stalker! I’ll kill you! I’ll turn you into fertilizer!”
“I wasn’t muttering! I was just answering a question!” Izuku defended, shrinking back slightly but seemingly used to the verbal assault. “You’re supposed to rest your eyes, Kacchan! Recovery Girl said so!”
“Nobody asked you!” Katsuki turned back around, huffing like an angry bull. “Stupid damn nerd. Talking about my eyes like he owns them. Shitty contacts were scratching the hell out of my corneas this morning. Felt like I had sand in my eyelids. Hurt like a bitch.”
He slumped into his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. The posture was pure defiance, radiating his usual “don’t touch me” energy, but the glasses ruined it. They made him look like a grumpy owl. They made him look like a sulky college student cramming for finals.
Hanta swallowed hard, his throat dry. He thinks they make him look vulnerable?
The thought hit Sero like a physical blow to the solar plexus.
Katsuki, who prided himself on being the toughest, strongest, most untouchable guy in the room—the guy who literally sweat nitroglycerin—hated the glasses because they softened his edges.
And yet—and yet that was exactly why Hanta was currently fighting for his life to keep his heart inside his ribcage.
The vulnerability was the killer. It was the contrast. It was the idea that Katsuki was human, that his biology failed him sometimes, that he had bad eyesight and had to deal with dry eyes and mundane annoyances just like everyone else. It stripped away the “God of Explosions” persona and left just… well— Katsuki.
“He looks so soft,” Hanta whispered. The words slipped out before he could run them through a filter.
Denki snorted loudly, nearly choking on his own spit. “Soft? Are you hearing yourself? He just threatened to turn Midoriya into fertilizer.”
“Yeah, but look at him,” Hanta insisted, keeping his voice low so the explosive blond wouldn’t hear him and actually follow through on the murder threats. “He looks… cozy. Like he should be wearing a turtleneck.”
Mina leaned in, her grin predatory and terrifying. “You want to cuddle him. You want to wrap him in a blanket like an angry little burrito.”
“I do not,” Hanta protested weakly, though his face was rapidly approaching the color of Eijirou’s hair.
“You totally do,” Denki agreed, delighted. “You want to tell him he’s a pretty boy and fix his crooked frames.”
“I hate both of you,” Hanta groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I hate you so much.”
The rest of the class had started to pick up on the vibe. It wasn’t exactly subtle.
Eijirou, sitting a few desks away, caught Hanta’s eye and gave him a sympathetic, emphatic thumbs up. Even Kyouka, usually too cool to care about romance drama, was hiding a smirk behind her earphone jack, tapping her finger against her desk in a rhythm that felt suspiciously mocking.
They all knew about Hanta’s massive, hopeless, tragedy-of-a-crush on the class hothead. And today was apparently going to be a collective, synchronized effort to torture him about it.
Katsuki was currently squinting at the chalkboard at the front of the room, even though nothing was written on it yet. He seemed hyper-aware of the foreign object on his face. He kept touching the frames, adjusting them, aggressively rubbing the bridge of his nose where the plastic pads were likely pinching. Every movement was sharp and jerky, but the effect was weirdly domestic. It was the body language of someone trying to get comfortable, not someone trying to start a fight.
“Hey, Bakubro!” Eijirou called out cheerfully, breaking the tension. “The glasses look manly, dude! Cool look!”
Katsuki turned in his seat, baring his teeth in a reflex snarl. “Hah? I didn’t ask for your opinion, hair-for-brains! They’re just for seeing! They aren’t a fashion statement! They’re medical equipment!”
“They suit you though!” Ochako added from her seat, leaning her chin on her hand, looking amused. “You look smart! Very studious.”
“I am smart, Round Face! I’m smarter than all of you damn extras combined! The glasses don’t change that!” Katsuki snapped, but Hanta noticed how Katsuki didn’t actually blow anything up. There were no sparks popping in his palms. He seemed slightly less hostile than usual, his shoulders hunched up near his ears.
He’s self-conscious, Hanta realized belatedly.
Mina took this opportunity to jam her finger into Hanta’s ribs. Hard.
“Go talk to him,” she commanded.
“What? No.” Hanta recoiled, rubbing his side. “Why would I do that? I choose life, thank you very much.”
“Because you’re staring at him like he’s a tall glass of water and you’ve been wandering the desert for a week,” Mina whispered, her voice insistent. “Just go say something nice.”
“I can’t just walk up and compliment his glasses! He’ll bite my head off. He’ll think I’m making fun of him.”
“He probably won’t,” Denki said, his tone surprisingly serious. “Think about it. He’s feeling insecure. He thinks he looks weak because he has to rely on a vision aid. If you tell him he looks good, maybe he won’t feel like he has to murder everyone to prove a point.”
That… actually made sense.
God, did Hanta hate it when Denki of all people made sense. It felt like a glitch in the universe.
Taking a deep breath that rattled in his chest, Hanta stood up. His legs felt a little wobbly, like he had just gotten off a rollercoaster. This was ridiculous. It was just Katsuki. He talked to Katsuki every day. They were friends. He was part of the squad. This shouldn’t be so hard.
Hanta walked over to Katsuki’s desk. The walk felt miles long. Katsuki was currently digging through his bag, muttering curses as he hunted for a pen. He sensed the movement and looked up, the glasses sliding down his nose again. He peered over the black rims at Hanta, his expression guarded and sharp.
“What do you want, Soy Sauce?” Katsuki grunted.
Hanta froze. Up close, the effect was ten times worse. The prescription lenses magnified his eyes slightly, making his eyelashes look impossibly long and thick. Why does he have such long eyelashes? It was unfair. It was actually offensive.
“I, uh,” Hanta started, jamming his hands deep into his pockets to hide the fact that his palms were sweating. “I just wanted to say… the glasses. They’re cool.”
Katsuki stared at him. The silence stretched for a beat, two beats. Hanta wanted the floor to open up, swallow him whole, and deposit him in another dimension.
“They’re prescription, dumbass,” Katsuki muttered, looking away and finally locating his pen. He slammed it onto the desk with unnecessary force. “They aren’t supposed to be cool. They’re annoying. My peripheral vision is trash. I feel like I’m looking through a damn tunnel. I can’t see shit unless it’s directly in front of my face.”
“Well,” Hanta persevered, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He decided to just go for it. “I think they look good. Different. But good. You… you don’t look weak.”
Katsuki paused. His hand stilled over his notebook. He looked back up at Hanta, his eyes narrowing slightly behind the glass. He seemed to be scanning Hanta’s face, searching for a lie, for a hint of mockery or pity.
When he didn’t find any, the tension in his shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.
“Tch,” Katsuki made a dismissive noise, sharply turning his head to look out the window. But Hanta saw it. He definitely saw it. The tips of Katsuki’s ears were turning a violent shade of pink. “Whatever. Don’t think this means I’m going to start wearing them all the time. As soon as my eyes stop feeling like sandpaper, these things are going in the trash.”
“Right,” Hanta said, a goofy, lopsided smile spreading across his face despite his lingering anxiety. “Got it. Limited edition look.”
“Damn straight,” Katsuki grumbled, refusing to look back at him. “Now get back to your seat. Sensei’s gonna be here any second and I don’t want to get detention because you’re hovering over my desk.”
Hanta turned to walk back, feeling lightheaded. He had survived. And he had gotten a blush. He slumped back into his chair, letting out a long exhale that deflated his entire body.
Mina and Denki were waiting for him like vultures.
“I saw that!” Mina hissed immediately. “The ears! Hanta, his ears turned pink!”
“Shut up, Mina,” Hanta whispered, burying his face in his arms on the desk, hiding his own smile and trying to cool the heat in his cheeks against the cool laminate of the desk.
He thought he was safe.
He thought he had earned a moment of peace to process the fact that Bakugou Katsuki—the Bakugou Katsuki—had just blushed at him.
But peace, unfortunately, was not an option when sitting next to someone like Denki.
“Nah, man,” Denki said, leaning in until his mouth was uncomfortably close to Hanta’s ear. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial, devilish whisper. “You aren’t getting off that easy. He definitely liked it. And you know, since he can’t see well without them… just think about the logistics.”
Hanta kept his face hidden, but he turned his head slightly. “I don’t want to think about the logistics.”
“Too bad,” Denki continued, relentless. “Imagine if you guys were studying late at night in the dorms. Everyone else is asleep. It’s quiet. He takes the glasses off to rub his eyes because they’re tired, right? And then he leans in close to read your notes because he’s blind as a bat without the lenses. Face, like, two inches from yours. Just squinting at your handwriting.”
Hanta closed his eyes tight. The image was unfairly vivid. It was a high-definition assault on his brain. He could see it perfectly. Katsuki, bathed in the warm light of a desk lamp, his defenses down, leaning into Hanta’s personal space. Hanta could almost smell the signature scent of nitroglycerin and burnt sugar that always clung to him, mixed with the smell of laundry detergent.
“Please don’t put that image in my head right now, Denki. I am begging you,” Hanta groaned, his voice muffled by his sleeves. “I’m weak. I can’t handle that.”
“And then,” Denki pressed on, sensing the weakness and going for the kill, “he realizes he can’t read it because he’s too tired, so he just grabs your hand to pull the paper closer. But he forgets to let go. He’s just holding your wrist, thumb rubbing over your pulse point while he reads.”
“I genuinely, actually, literally hate you so much,” Hanta mumbled into his palms, his heart doing a traitorous double-time rhythm against the desk. “You’re evil.”
“Ooh, imagine him waking up,” Mina added, swiveling around again to pour gasoline on the fire. Her eyes were sparkling with mischief. “Morning hair. Not the spiked stuff. The soft, flat, messy bedhead. He’s wearing one of those oversized black t-shirts that hangs off his shoulder, even better if he’s wearing one of your t-shirts.”
Hanta made a pained noise in the back of his throat.
“He walks into the kitchen,” Mina narrated, using her hands to paint the picture in the air. “He’s squinting because the world is a blur. He puts the glasses on first thing just so he can see you clearly enough to yell at you for making the coffee wrong. Domestic Bakubabe. Soft, grumpy, sleepy boyfriend mode.”
Hanta shot up in his seat, his face burning so hot he felt like he was radiating radiation. He looked between his two friends, who were grinning like Cheshire cats.
“You guys are terrible friends,” Hanta hissed, running a hand through his own hair in frustration. “You’re just torturing me for sport at this point.”
“We’re motivating you!” Mina insisted, poking his arm again. “Look at the material we’re working with! He’s right there! Go ask him to study later! Use the ‘I need help with English’ excuse! He loves proving he’s smarter than everyone!”
“If I ask him to study now, I’m actually going to pass out,” Hanta argued.
“Coward,” Denki whispered.
Before Hanta could respond, or die of sheer embarrassment, the classroom door slid open again. This time, there was no dramatic rattle. It was a smooth, ominous slide.
The playful energy in the room evaporated instantly.
Shouta shuffled into the room, looking even more haggard than usual. He carried his yellow sleeping bag under one arm like a weird, puffy clutch purse. His hair was messy, his eyes bloodshot and dry. He walked to the podium with the enthusiasm of a man marching to the gallows.
The class scrambled to sit up straight. Hanta quickly fixed his posture, trying to look like a model student and not someone who was just fantasizing about holding hands with his classmate.
Shouta paused at the podium. He blinked once, slowly. His dark gaze swept over the room, checking attendance in a single glance. Then, his eyes landed on Katsuki.
Shouta paused.
The silence in the room grew heavy. Katsuki stiffened in his seat, his shoulders hiking up defensively. He pushed the glasses up his nose, glaring at the teacher as if daring him to say something.
“Bakugou,” Shouta said. His voice was flat, devoid of any inflection.
“What?” Katsuki snapped, his voice cracking slightly. He cleared his throat, looking ready to fight. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Shouta said, though Hanta caught the tiniest, microscopic twitch at the corner of his mouth that might have been amusement. “Just make sure those don’t fall off during training this afternoon. I don’t want to fill out the paperwork for broken glass in your eyes. The forms are tedious.”
“I know that!” Katsuki yelled, slamming his hands on his desk. “I’m not an idiot! I have a strap in my bag!”
“Could have fooled me,” Shouta muttered, turning his back to the class to pick up a piece of chalk. “Homeroom is starting. Sit down, shut up. We have a lot to cover before the weekend.”
The class settled into the low hum of academic misery. Shouta turned to the board, the chalk making a dry, scratching sound as he began to outline the logistics for the upcoming midterm exams. It was important information. It was vital for his future as a hero.
Hanta knew this. And he really, genuinely, did try to focus on the diagram Shouta was drawing.
But his eyes were traitorous. They kept drifting, pulled by a magnetic force that he was apparently too weak to resist. He had a direct, unobstructed line of sight to the back of Katsuki’s head, and right now, that was the most fascinating thing in the universe.
He watched Katsuki tilt his head slightly to the left, listening to Shouta’s monotone lecture. He watched the way Katsuki’s index finger tapped rhythmically against his chin, a silent beat to a song only he could hear.
Then came the moment that nearly ended Hanta’s life.
Katsuki let out a heavy sigh, his shoulders rising and falling. He reached up and slid the glasses off his face for a moment. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, the skin around them crinkling, and rubbed the heels of his palms into his sockets. He scrunched his nose up—an expression that usually signaled impending violence, but in this context, stripped of the glare, it just looked exhausted. It looked human.
He blinked a few times, his red eyes slightly watery from the irritation, before sliding the thick black frames back onto his nose. He pushed them up with a single finger, settling them into place.
Hanta felt a little piece of his soul leave his body and ascend to a higher plane. It was too domestic. It was too intimate.
Suddenly, Katsuki turned around.
It was fast. Predatory fast. Hanta didn’t even have a fraction of a second to look away or pretend he was staring at the clock. He was caught red-handed, staring like a complete creep.
Katsuki glared at him from across the rows of desks. The thick frames magnified the intensity of the gaze, making Hanta feel like an ant under a magnifying glass on a sunny day. Katsuki’s lips moved, forming silent, sharp shapes.
What?
Hanta blinked, his brain offline. He just stared back, frozen.
Katsuki rolled his eyes, a movement so exaggerated and annoyed it was almost a physical action. He raised his hand. He pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then snapped them forward to point directly at Hanta’s face. Then, he drew his thumb across his throat in a slow, deliberate slicing motion.
I see you looking. Cut it out or you’re dead.
Hanta felt a nervous, hysterical laugh bubble up in his throat, threatening to burst out and ruin the silence of the room. He nodded quickly, jerking his head up and down like a bobblehead, and held his hands up in a gesture of total surrender.
Katsuki held the glare for another second, letting Hanta sweat. And then, the expression shifted.
He smirked.
It wasn’t a nice smirk. It wasn’t friendly. It was arrogant. It was cocky. It was the smirk of someone who knew exactly what kind of effect they were having. It was the look of a predator who knew he had the prey cornered and was enjoying the panic.
Katsuki turned back around to face the front, his posture radiating a sickening amount of self-satisfaction.
Hanta slumped forward, burying his face in his arms on the cool surface of his desk.
“I’m cooked,” Hanta whispered into the darkness of his own sleeves. “I’m absolutely, one hundred percent cooked.”
Beside him, Denki was shaking with silent, vibrating laughter. “Bro. He caught you. He totally knows.”
“Shut up,” Hanta moaned, his voice muffled.
“But hey,” Denki whispered, sounding far too delighted. “He didn’t blast you. He smirked. That’s basically a marriage proposal in his language.”
“Denki, if you don’t stop, I’m going to tape your mouth shut with my elbows.”
“Worth it,” Denki wheezed.
Hanta turned his head to the side, resting his hot cheek on his arm so he could still see the back of the blond’s head with one eye. Katsuki was writing notes now, his posture surprisingly perfect, the picture of a diligent student.
Maybe Denki was right. Maybe the glasses were a good thing. Maybe they made Katsuki feel a little more human, a little more approachable. Or maybe Hanta was just delusional and blinded by the aesthetic of an angry boy in thick library frames.
Either way, Hanta knew one thing for sure.
He was absolutely going to fail whatever quiz Shouta sprang on them today. His brain had evicted all knowledge of hero laws and math formulas and linguistic rules to make room for a looped montage.
He imagined Katsuki exhaling a puff of steam to clean the lenses with the hem of his shirt, inadvertently exposing a sliver of pale, toned stomach that Hanta definitely shouldn’t be thinking about in a classroom. He imagined Katsuki biting the end of the plastic arm while deep in thought, his teeth grazing the black frame, completely unaware of what that image did to Sero’s blood pressure.
He imagined the glasses fogging up instantly when Katsuki walked into a warm room from the cold, blinding him and making him swear while he frantically wiped them off with clumsy, cold fingers. He imagined taking the glasses off Katsuki’s face late at night, folding them carefully, and setting them on a nightstand while Katsuki blinked up at him with unfocused, sleepy, trusting eyes.
And, God help him, he imagined leaning in to kiss him. He imagined the clumsy, endearing click of the plastic frames bumping against his own cheekbone. He imagined Katsuki not pulling away, just tilting his head back, his eyes fluttering shut behind the glass. He imagined the way he would have to reach up, his fingers brushing against Katsuki’s temples, to gently slide the glasses off his face just to deepen the kiss, leaving Katsuki blind and breathless and clinging to Hanta’s shirt for guidance.
Ah, fuck.
Hanta buried his face deeper into his arm, groaning into the fabric as the heat in his cheeks turned into a full-body fever.
It was going to be a very, very, very long Friday, wasn’t it?