Work Text:
Technically, the scrap of lined notebook paper shouldn’t have weighed anything. It was a fraction of an ounce of dead tree pulp.
But in Bakugou’s palm, it felt heavy, dense like lead, radiating a heat that had nothing to do with his quirk and everything to do with the name written on it.
Bakugou stared down at it. He scowled at the jagged edge where the paper had been torn from the spiral binding (sloppy work, he thought, fighting the urge to trim it straight) and then turned his laser-like focus to the name scrawled in Mina’s bubbly, infuriating handwriting.
Sero Hanta.
Around him, the common room was a sensory nightmare of pre-holiday chaos. It was a disaster zone of tinsel that looked like a fire hazard and flashing lights that threatened to induce seizures. Hagakure was currently shrieking about drawing Mineta—a death sentence for any quality gift exchange—while Kirishima was beaming down at his own slip of paper like he’d just been drafted to the Top Ten charts.
Bakugou tuned them out. The noise became a dull roar, static against the pounding of his own pulse. He shoved the paper deep into his pocket, his fist clenching around it until his knuckles turned white, and marched toward the elevator.
His mind was already racing, cataloging ideas, discarding trash, and locking onto a singular goal.
He did not do half-assed.
That was the first rule of being Bakugou Katsuki.
If he was going to participate in this stupid, sentimental Secret Santa tradition, he was going to win it.
He was going to provide the best gift in the entire damn class, not because he cared about the holiday spirit, but because that was what he did. He crushed the competition. He dominated every metric.
But mostly, he was going to win because it was Sero.
Bakugou stepped into the elevator and punched the button for his floor with unnecessary force. The metal doors slid shut, severing the connection to the noise of the class, leaving him in a sudden, ringing silence.
He leaned his head back against the cool steel wall and let out a long, ragged breath that rattled in his chest.
Sero.
The name felt like a spark in a room full of gas.
The guy was infuriatingly chill. He was plain. He had a face that looked like it belonged on a generic soy sauce bottle, elbows that dispensed industrial tape, and a grin that somehow managed to disarm Bakugou faster than a villain attack.
For months, Bakugou had been feeling this weird, prickly heat in his chest whenever Sero draped a lanky arm over his shoulder or laughed at one of his insults instead of getting offended.
It was annoying.
It was distracting.
It was, and he’d rather choke on his own gauntlet than admit this out loud, terrifying.
It was love.
The elevator dinged. Bakugou pushed off the wall, stormed down the hallway, and kicked his dorm room door open before slamming it shut behind him.
Buying something was out of the question.
Store-bought gifts were for extras. They were for people who didn’t know quality, people who thought a gift card or a mass-produced video game constituted “effort.”
Anyone could walk into a shop and swipe a credit card.
That required zero skill. That required zero intimacy.
He sat at his desk, swept his homework aside with a violent swipe of his arm, and pulled out his heavy-duty sketchbook.
Usually, these pages were reserved for violence; hero costume upgrades, grenade bracer adjustments, aerodynamic calculations for his knee pads.
Today, he flipped to a fresh, pristine page.
It was a clean slate, one that required a different kind of precision than his usual combat notes. To do this right, he had to stop thinking like a soldier and start thinking like a creator.
He was, after all, the son of Bakugou Masaru and Bakugou Mitsuki.
He was the product of two people who understood that the way a person carried themselves was defined by the architecture of what they wore.
Before he knew how to throw a right hook, he knew the difference between a flat-felled seam and a French seam. He grew up surrounded by the smell of sizing starch and the hum of industrial sergers. Fashion and structural design were in his blood just as much as nitroglycerin was.
He knew how fabric draped. He knew how it breathed. He knew how it yielded to the body in motion. And as he visualized Sero’s lanky frame and the way he moved, the solution locked into place.
He was going to make Sero a hoodie.
But not just a hoodie. That sounded basic. That sounded like generic, mass-produced garbage bought by people who didn’t know the difference between warp and weft.
No, he was going to engineer a second skin. A garment perfectly calculated for Sero’s physiology, his weird elbows, and that relaxed, skater-trash aesthetic he loved so much.
It was going to be a masterpiece of textile engineering. Because words were cheap.
“I like you” was flimsy; it could be blown away by the wind.
But a heavy-weight cotton fleece with reinforced joinery? That was tangible. That lasted.
(It was going to be a confession stitched into the very grain of the cotton: a way to hold Sero, to protect him, and to claim him, all while keeping Bakugou’s pride safely zipped up inside.)
Bakugou picked up his favorite 2B pencil, twirling it through his fingers.
He didn’t write poetry. He didn’t write sappy love letters full of metaphors he didn’t understand. He worked with his hands. He destroyed, and he created. This hoodie was going to say everything he was too choked up, too proud, and too terrified to say out loud.
It would scream: I see you. I know you. I value you.
He started sketching the torso block, his pencil carving into the page.
The first challenge was the fit. Sero was deceptive. He looked tall and lanky, a string bean compared to the rest of the class, but Bakugou knew better. He’d seen him in the locker room; he’d sparred with him. Sero had a swimmer’s build; lean, ropy muscle buried under that slouchy posture.
Most commercial hoodies hung off Sero like potato sacks, bunching at the waist, or they were too short in the arms, leaving his wrists exposed to the cold.
Bakugou’s pencil scratched loudly against the paper. He needed to drop the shoulder seam, give it that relaxed, streetwear silhouette Sero gravitated toward, but he had to taper the waist just enough so it didn’t look sloppy. It needed to be structured comfortably.
And the sleeves. The damn elbows.
He paused, tapping the graphite rhythmically against his chin, eyes narrowed at the paper.
Standard sleeves were a nightmare for Sero. If he needed to use his quirk suddenly, the fabric would bunch up, get caught in the adhesive, or rip at the seam from the sudden expansion.
Bakugou frowned. He needed functionality. He needed high-performance tactical design disguised as lazy Sunday wear.
He sketched a modified raglan sleeve. Hidden zipper mechanism along the inner elbow? No, zippers were cold, scratchy, and prone to jamming. Magnetic overlap? Too heavy.
He sketched a new idea: a split seam with a heavy-duty elastic gusset. It could expand instantly when the tape shot out and snap back into place flush against the skin when he was done. Seamless. Aerodynamic.
It had to look like a style choice, not a medical brace.
Three hours later, the floor of his room was a graveyard of crumpled paper balls.
He had the silhouette, but the functional details were fighting him tooth and nail. The hood was a failure; it wasn’t deep enough. Standard hoods would crush Sero’s hair, flattening the spikes he spent twenty minutes styling every morning into a sad, helmet-like mess. It needed a three-piece construction for vertical clearance.
And the pockets. God, the pockets were pathetic.
Sero was a raccoon disguised as a human. He was a hoarder of random junk; loose change, konbini onigiri wrappers, rocks he thought looked cool, his phone, and usually a spare roll of tape. Standard side-seam pockets would tear under that abuse. They needed volume. They needed canvas reinforcement and heavy-duty bar tacks at the stress points.
He looked at the digital clock on his nightstand.
02:14 AM.
The exhaustion should have hit him by now. He should have been crashing. Instead, he felt a hum under his skin, a vibration in his fingertips that had nothing to do with his quirk.
He was wired on a specific frequency of manic perfectionism, his brain buzzing with seam allowances and tensile strength.
He tore the page out with a violent riiiip, crumpled it, and started again.
The following weekend, Bakugou stood on the doorstep of his childhood home. He hadn’t called ahead. He hadn’t texted. He just showed up, vibrating with a manic energy that he was trying very hard to package as “casual.”
He unlocked the door and walked in. The house smelled the way it always did; like scorched steam iron, expensive tea, and the faint, metallic tang of ozone.
“I’m home!” he shouted, kicking off his sneakers and lining them up perfectly parallel to the wall.
“Katsuki?!” Mitsuki’s voice boomed from the living room, loud enough to rattle the light fixtures. “You didn’t say you were coming! Did you finally blow up a teacher? Are you expelled?”
“Shut up, old hag! I didn’t get expelled!” Bakugou marched into the living room, scowling.
His mother was sprawled on the couch with a chaotic spread of fabric swatches covering the coffee table, while his father, Masaru, was quietly sketching on a tablet in the armchair. It was a familiar scene of domestic industry.
Masaru looked up, adjusting his glasses. “Welcome home, Katsuki. Is everything okay at the dorms?”
“I need access to the studio,” Bakugou announced, ignoring the pleasantries. He crossed his arms over his chest, widening his stance. “And I need the good fabric. Not that cheap polyester blend you used for the spring athletic line. That stuff was garbage.”
Mitsuki’s eyebrow twitched violently. She sat up, her eyes narrowing. “Excuse me? That ‘garbage’ is a high-performance moisture-wicking blend that sold out in three days, you ungrateful brat! We’re running a business, not a charity! What do you need the studio for anyway?”
Bakugou looked away, his jaw tightening until a muscle feathered in his cheek. He stared at a potted plant as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. “Secret Santa. For school.”
The room went dead silent. The kind of silence that usually preceded an explosion.
Then, slowly, a smirk spread across Mitsuki’s face. It was a dangerous, shark-like expression that made Bakugou want to detonate the nearest wall. “Oh? You’re coming all the way home, demanding access to our professional industrial equipment, just for a high school gift exchange?”
She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. “Must be some... special classmate.”
“They’re not special!” Bakugou snapped, the tips of his ears turning a furious shade of pink. “I just refuse to give trash! I have standards! Unlike some people who use polyester blends!”
Masaru smiled gently, the peacemaker as always. “Of course you do, Katsuki. The studio is free this weekend. What kind of material specifications are you looking for?”
Bakugou took a breath, centering himself. He dropped the angry son act and slipped into the persona of the designer.
“Heavyweight French terry,” he said, his voice dropping to a serious, clipped register. “At least 400 GSM. I want a 100% long-staple cotton face for the texture; it needs to be soft but rugged. Maybe a 3% spandex content in the ribbing for shape retention. I need it in black. But not a flat, dead black. A reactive dye black that won’t fade to gray after two washes.”
Mitsuki let out a low whistle, her eyes gleaming with genuine professional respect. “Specific. You’ve been paying attention.”
She pointed a thumb toward the hallway. “We have a bolt of loopback terry from the Osaka mill in the storage room. It’s top-tier, leftover from the premium line. Go check it out.”
Bakugou nodded and turned to leave. But he stopped in the doorway. He hesitated, his hand hovering over the frame. This was the part he hated. Admitting he didn’t know everything.
“Hey,” he grunted, not turning around completely.
“Yeah?” Mitsuki asked, her voice surprisingly soft.
“If…” Bakugou struggled with the words, gripping the doorframe. “If you wanted to make a lining that was... comfortable against the skin, but also moisture-wicking for someone who... sweats? Or has a quirk that changes their skin texture? What would you use?”
Masaru stood up and walked over. He placed a warm hand on Bakugou’s shoulder.
“Bamboo rayon jersey, Katsuki,” his father said instantly. “It’s softer than cotton, naturally antimicrobial, and it breathes perfectly. It regulates temperature better than synthetics.” Masaru paused, his eyes twinkling behind his lenses. “We have some in a deep, vibrant orange. Would that work?”
Orange.
The color of the weird tape dispenser helmet he wore. The color that Sero always gravitated toward.
“Yeah,” Bakugou said, his voice quiet, almost swallowed by the room. “That works.”
He spent the entire weekend in his parents’ studio.
The space was his sanctuary. The air smelled of sizing spray and dust. The hum of the industrial sewing machines was a familiar, rhythmic comfort, like a heartbeat. He moved with practiced efficiency, stripping down to his black tank top as the room heated up.
Usually, Bakugou sewed like he fought; fast, aggressive, relying on instinct. Today, he was agonizingly slow. He double-checked every measurement against the notes he’d stolen from the costume support department’s files on Sero. He tested the tension on the serger three times on scrap fabric before he dared to run a single seam on the good material.
Cutting the fabric was nerve-wracking. The heavy black cotton sat on the cutting table, daunting and expensive. Once the shears sliced through, there was no going back.
He laid out the pattern pieces he had drafted — the oversized hood, the slightly dropped shoulders, the custom sleeves with the hidden elastic gussets.
He treated the fabric like it was a live bomb he was defusing. One wrong snip, one slip of the wrist, and the whole mission was a failure.
By Sunday afternoon, the shell was constructed. He sat at the large worktable, the black hoodie laid out before him.
It was good. The construction was solid. The seams were reinforced with wooly nylon thread for comfort. The stitching was straight as an arrow. It was a high-quality garment that would retail for thousands of yen.
But it wasn’t finished. It had a body, but it needed a soul.
He pulled out the wooden embroidery hoops and a skein of silk thread.
He could have used the programmable embroidery machine in the corner. He could have punched in a vector file and let the computer spit out a perfect design in ten minutes. It would be mathematically precise. It would be flawless.
But that felt like cheating. That felt cold.
He threaded a thin needle with the vibrant orange thread. He wanted to do this by hand. He wanted every loop, every pull of the thread, to be a deliberate action. A conscious thought. A transfer of energy from his hands to the cloth that would sit against Sero’s skin.
Stitch.
Sero’s laugh was stupidly loud, echoing off the cafeteria walls, but it always made the heavy weight in Bakugou’s chest feel a little lighter.
Stitch.
Sero was the only one who could keep up with Bakugou’s aerial maneuverability during training. He didn’t get in the way; he adapted. He created pathways of tape that Bakugou could pivot off of.
Stitch.
Sero had knocked on his door last week at 11 PM, holding a volume of some obscure shoujo manga. “You look like you need to read something where nobody dies,” he’d said. And he’d been right.
Bakugou worked on the design for hours, hunched over the hoop.
He decided against putting Sero’s hero name or face on it. That was tacky fan merchandise. Instead, he designed a geometric motif for the back; sharp, angular lines that intersected and flowed like tape, creating an abstract shape that resembled a rising sun. It was subtle. It looked like high-end streetwear branding, but the meaning was there if you knew the language of them.
On the front, right over where the heart would be, he stitched a tiny, minimalist orange. Just a circle with a single leaf. It was small. Private. An inside joke that wasn’t a joke at all.
His fingers ached. He pricked his thumb, a bead of bright red blood welling up. He swore, stuck his thumb in his mouth to keep the blood off the fabric, and kept going. He didn’t stop until his eyes were burning from the strain and the natural light in the studio had faded to gray.
The door creaked open. Mitsuki walked in with a tray of tea. She set it down on the table, moving unusually quietly. She didn’t yell. She didn’t tease. She leaned her hip against the table and looked down at the embroidery hoop in his hands.
“Hand satin stitch,” she observed, her voice low. “That takes patience. You hate patience. You usually set things on fire if they take longer than five minutes.”
“It needs to be durable,” Bakugou muttered, not looking up as he tied off a microscopic knot on the inside of the garment. “Machine stitching can snag if the tension is off. This... this holds better.”
“It’s beautiful, Katsuki,” she said softly.
Bakugou stiffened. He cut the thread with a sharp, definitive snap of his scissors. “It’s just a hoodie.”
“You don’t put twenty hours of labor into ‘just a hoodie’ for a classmate,” Mitsuki said. She reached out and brushed a stray scrap of orange thread from the table, her eyes knowing. “He better appreciate it.”
Bakugou stood up, cracking his neck. He ran a hand over the finished embroidery, feeling the raised texture of the thread.
“He will,” Bakugou said, his voice rough with exhaustion and absolute certainty. “Or I’ll kill him.”
The return to the dorms was tense. Bakugou carried the gift box like it contained highly unstable nitroglycerin. He had wrapped it in matte black paper, crisp and sharp, with a simple orange ribbon tied in a flat, masculine knot.
No glitter. No festive Santas. Classy.
He shoved the box deep under his bed, behind his weights, where no one could see it. Where it would wait, pulsing like a second heart, until Friday.
The days leading up to Christmas were a slow, agonizing form of torture.
Every time Bakugou saw Sero, he felt a wave of nausea roll through his gut.
What if it didn’t fit? What if the style was too aggressive? What if Sero, being the chill guy he was, just wanted something normal, like a video game or a gift card to a boba shop?
He watched Sero in the common room like a hawk. He analyzed how he moved, how he sprawled across the furniture. He noted the way Sero tugged at the stiff collar of his uniform when he was stressed over homework.
The neck opening needs to be wide enough not to choke him, Bakugou thought, mentally checking the specs of the hoodie currently sitting in the dark under his bed. Did I make the ribbing too tight? No, I used a 1x1 rib knit; it has plenty of mechanical stretch.
“Yo, Bakugou!” Sero called out, waving lazily from the sofa. “You staring at me? Do I have something on my face? Or are you just admiring the view?”
Bakugou flinched, nearly dropping his protein shake. “Hah?! Don’t flatter yourself, Soy Sauce Face! I was looking at the... the clock behind you! You’re just in the way with your big head!”
Sero laughed, that easy, rolling sound that always made Bakugou’s shoulders drop an inch. “Sure, sure. You excited for the party on Friday?”
“I don’t get excited for parties,” Bakugou scoffed, turning sharply toward the kitchen to hide his face. “I’m just there for the food. And to make sure none of you idiots burn the dorm down.”
“Right,” Sero grinned, leaning back and lacing his fingers behind his head. “Well, I hope whoever got you got you something spicy. You’ve been extra grumpy lately. Even for you.”
I’m grumpy because I spent three weeks hand-stitching your stupid present until my fingers bled, Bakugou thought furiously as he yanked the fridge door open. I’m grumpy because I’m terrified you won’t understand what it means. I’m grumpy because I want you to understand exactly what it means.
Friday arrived with the force of a hurricane. The common room was decked out in tinsel, blinking lights, and a tree that Yaoyorozu had created, which was arguably too perfect and symmetrical to be natural. The class was buzzing with a high-frequency energy that made Bakugou’s teeth ache.
Bakugou sat in the corner, clutching his black box like a shield. His hands were sweating. He wiped them discreetly on his jeans. He didn’t want to leave grease marks on the matte paper.
“Okay, everyone!” Iida shouted, chopping his hands through the air with robot-like precision. “It is time for the exchange! Please proceed in an orderly fashion according to seat number! No running! No quirk usage!”
“Boooo, just let us pick!” Mina yelled, diving for a present wrapped in glitter.
The chaos began. Paper flew everywhere. Uraraka squealed over a high-end tea set from Yaoyorozu. Kirishima flexed with a new set of weighted wristbands from Sato. Kaminari got a gag gift—a whoopee cushion—from Mineta and looked visibly crushed.
Then, it was Sero’s turn.
“Oh, sweet,” Sero said, standing up and stretching. “Who had me?”
Bakugou stood up.
The room went quiet. The chatter died down instantly. The dynamic between Bakugou and the rest of the class was... volatile. Him giving a gift was always a toss-up between something surprisingly thoughtful or something literally explosive.
Bakugou walked over, his face set in a scowl that could curdle milk. He shoved the box into Sero’s chest with enough force to make Sero stumble back a step.
“Here,” he grunted. “Take it.”
Sero blinked, balancing the box. “Whoa. Thanks, Bakugou. You look... intense. Is there a bomb in here?”
“Just open the damn box, Tape Arms.”
Sero sat back down on the couch. Kirishima, Mina, and Kaminari gathered around like vultures.
“Ooh, fancy wrapping,” Mina cooed, poking the box. “Matte black? Classy. Looks expensive.”
Sero pulled the orange ribbon. It came undone smoothly. He tore the paper carefully, not ripping it to shreds like the others, revealing a sturdy, white apparel box. He lifted the lid.
Inside, nested in crisp white tissue paper, lay the hoodie.
From a distance, it just looked like a black hoodie. But as Sero lifted it out, the quality became immediately, undeniably apparent. The fabric was heavy, draping with a liquid weight that spoke of density. The black was deep, a void absorbing the festive lights.
“Whoa,” Kirishima said, leaning in and poking the fabric. “That feels soft. Like, really soft.”
Sero held it up. He ran his thumb over the fabric, feeling the loopback texture. “Is this... did you buy this at a designer store? There’s no tag.”
“I didn’t buy it,” Bakugou said, his voice rough, scraping against his throat. He shoved his hands into his pockets to hide the slight tremor. “I made it.”
The room went silent again. Dead silent.
“You... what?” Sero looked up, his eyes wide and unblinking.
“My parents are designers,” Bakugou said defensively, shifting his weight. “I know how to sew. It’s not a big deal. It’s a basic skill.”
“Dude,” Kaminari whispered, awe in his voice. “That looks pro. That looks like something a celebrity would wear.”
Sero stood up and immediately pulled his school blazer off, tossing it aside. He pulled the hoodie on over his dress shirt.
It settled onto his frame like a second skin. It didn’t hang; it fit.
The shoulders hit exactly where his deltoids ended.
The length was perfect. It was long enough to cover his belt, creating a clean line, but short enough not to look like a dress.
The hood was structured, standing up slightly around his neck, framing his face instead of flopping down lifelessly.
But then Sero moved his arms.
He flexed his elbows, instinctively expecting the fabric to pull and restrict him. It didn’t. The hidden gussets expanded smoothly, revealing a flash of the vibrant orange bamboo lining, like a secret fire, then snapped back into place flush when he straightened his arms.
Sero froze. He looked at his elbows. He flexed again.
Open. Close. Open. Close.
“The sleeves,” Sero whispered. “They... they work with my quirk.”
“Obviously,” Bakugou scoffed, looking determinedly at a stain on the ceiling. “Standard sleeves restrict your tape deployment speed by approximately 0.4 seconds due to friction drag. I added a dynamic tension gusset to eliminate the resistance. It’s basic physics.”
Sero looked at the chest. He saw the tiny embroidered orange. He ran his finger over the stitching, feeling the bumps of the thread.
Then he turned around to show the others.
“Whoa!” Ashido gasped. “Look at the back!”
The abstract design caught the light. It wasn’t flashy, but it was undeniable.
The sharp, angular lines intersecting and flowing; it was Sero. It was his essence captured in thread.
“Bakugou,” Sero said. He turned back around. His face was a mixture of shock and something softer. Something raw that made Bakugou’s heart hammer against his ribs like a bird trying to escape a cage.
“It’s... it’s amazing,” Sero said. “This fits better than my hero costume.”
“Hero costumes are mass-produced trash unless you pay for the top tier,” Bakugou muttered, his cheeks burning. “Wash it on cold. Hang dry. If you put it in the dryer, I’ll blow up your room. It’ll shrink.”
“You made this,” Sero repeated, as if he couldn’t process the information. “For me.”
“It was the assignment!” Bakugou snapped. “Secret Santa! I fulfilled the requirements!”
“You spent weeks on this,” Kirishima noted, grinning like a shark who smelled blood in the water. “I saw you sketching in your room. I thought you were working on a super move.”
“It is a super move,” Bakugou said, then realized how that sounded and clamped his mouth shut so hard his teeth clicked.
Sero wasn’t smiling his usual goofy grin. He was looking at Bakugou with an intensity that matched Bakugou’s own. He looked at the stitching again. He appreciated the details. He saw the work. He saw the time.
“Thank you,” Sero said. His voice was low, cutting through the chatter of the other students. “Seriously, Katsuki. This is the best thing anyone’s ever given me.”
Katsuki.
He used his first name. No nicknames.
Bakugou felt the heat rush all the way to the tips of his ears. He turned on his heel. “Whatever. Just don’t ruin it.”
He marched away toward the kitchen, needing to put distance between himself and the raw vulnerability of the moment. He grabbed a cup of punch and downed it in one go, his hand trembling slightly.
He had done it. He had put his heart on a plate (or rather, in a box) and Sero hadn’t laughed. Sero had accepted it.
Later that night, the party was winding down. The trash bags were full of wrapping paper, and most of the class had drifted off to their rooms or were dozing in heaps on the couches.
Bakugou was on the balcony, leaning against the railing, breathing in the cold December air. He needed to cool down. The adrenaline of the exchange had faded, leaving him exhausted and hollowed out.
The balcony door slid open.
Bakugou didn’t turn around. He knew who it was. He could smell the faint scent of the spiced punch and the specific, crisp smell of the new fabric.
Sero stepped up beside him. He was still wearing the hoodie. He had his hands in the front kangaroo pocket.
“It’s warm,” Sero said quietly, looking out at the campus lights flickering in the distance. “Like, really warm. But it doesn’t make me sweat.”
“Bamboo lining,” Bakugou said instantly, automatic. “Thermal regulation. Hydrophilic properties.”
“Right. Science.” Sero chuckled. He leaned his elbows on the railing. The gussets expanded silently. “You really thought of everything.”
“I don’t do things halfway.”
“I know.” Sero was quiet for a moment. The wind ruffled his hair. “That’s what I like about you.”
Bakugou gripped the railing tight. The cold metal bit into his palms.
“I saw the stitching,” Sero said softly, his gaze dropping to the tiny orange over his heart. He ran the pad of his thumb over the raised thread. “The satin stitch. That’s hand-done. I’ve spent enough time patching my own gear to know that a detail that tight takes... it takes forever, Katsuki.”
Bakugou didn’t look at him. He focused on a single distant streetlight, his jaw set.
“It took as long as it took,” he grunted, the dismissive words doing nothing to hide the fact that he was vibrating with a strange, nervous energy.
Sero shifted, turning his head to look at Bakugou’s profile. The wind caught his dark hair, but his eyes were steady. “Why?”
The question was simple, but it felt like a physical weight in the air between them.
Bakugou stared straight ahead at the dark, frozen treeline of the campus, his throat tightening. “Why what?”
“Why go to all that trouble?” Sero asked, his voice a gentle prodding in the quiet of the night. “You could have bought me a comic book. I would have been happy with a bag of chips and a half-decent card, honestly.”
Bakugou finally turned his head.
The sight of Sero in his creation hit him with the force of an explosion.
Sero looked good.
The deep black of the French terry framed his face, making the dark angles of his hair look sharper, more defined against the winter sky. The vibrant orange lining of the hood caught the ambient spill of light from the common room behind them, casting a warm, honey-colored glow along the line of his jaw and neck.
He looked exactly how Bakugou had envisioned him while hunched over that sketchbook at two in the morning.
“Because you’re not an extra,” Bakugou said. The words felt like gravel in his throat—heavy, rough, and hard to force out. He took a breath, his gaze fixed intensely on Sero’s. “And I don’t give generic trash to... to people who matter.”
Sero’s eyes widened, the pupils blown wide in the dim light. He searched Bakugou’s face, looking for the usual deflection or a hint of a joke, but he found nothing but raw, terrifying honesty.
Sero wasn’t stupid. He knew Bakugou better than most. He knew that for someone like Bakugou, time and effort were the most valuable currencies on earth, and Bakugou had just spent weeks of both on him.
It was more than a gift.
It was a confession, structural and sound, stitched into every single seam.
I love you was written in the perfect tension of the silk thread.
I want you to be safe was written in the reinforced, dynamic elbows.
I know exactly who you are was written in the abstract geometry on the back.
Sero didn’t laugh. He didn’t tease.
Instead, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t his usual, boisterous grin, but a small, intimate thing that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made the air between them feel ten degrees warmer.
“I hear you,” Sero said, his voice barely more than a murmur, yet it carried perfectly in the crisp night air.
Bakugou blinked, his breath hitching in his throat. “Hah?”
“I hear you,” Sero repeated, turning fully toward him now.
The soft yellow light from the dorm windows caught the curve of his smile, not the wide, goofy one he used for the cameras, but something private and steady.
He took a hand out of the kangaroo pocket and reached out. Slowly, deliberately, he pressed his warm fingers against Bakugou’s knuckles, which were still white-knuckled and frozen against the metal railing.
Bakugou didn’t pull away. He couldn’t.
“Loud and clear,” Sero finished. He slid his hand over the back of Bakugou’s fist, a silent acknowledgment of every hour, every stitch, and every unspoken word hidden in the heavy cotton of the hoodie.
Bakugou stared down at where their hands met, warm skin against cold, trembling knuckles, then looked back up at Sero’s face.
He looked for any sign of mockery, but there was only a quiet, shining clarity in Sero’s eyes. The anxiety that had been coiling in Bakugou’s gut for weeks, tight and jagged like a pressurized spring, suddenly unspooled. It left him feeling lightheaded, a strange, hollow relief washing through him as the weight of the secret finally lifted.
“Good,” Bakugou managed to choke out. His voice was thick, but the edge was gone.
“It fits perfectly, Katsuki,” Sero said. He moved half a step closer, closing the gap until their shoulders brushed. The heavy, premium cotton of the hoodie rubbed against Bakugou’s arm, a physical reminder of the labor he’d put in. “Seriously. I’m never taking it off.”
The sincerity was almost too much. Bakugou felt the heat returning to his face, and he scrambled to find his footing, reaching for the familiar armor of his own irritation.
“You have to wash it, you gross dispenser,” he snapped, though the bite was missing from his tone.
“I’ll wash it,” Sero promised. “On cold. Hang dry.”
“Damn right.”
They stood there in the cold, shoulder to shoulder. Sero didn’t say I love you back. He didn’t have to. He was wearing it. He was wrapping himself in Bakugou’s effort, in Bakugou’s protection.
“Hey, Katsuki?”
“What?”
“Next year,” Sero said, looking at him with a mischievous glint in his eye. “I’m forcing the hat so I draw your name. I don’t know how to sew, but... I’m gonna beat you.”
Bakugou let out a sharp, barking laugh. He smirked, the first real, unburdened smile he’d worn all day. “In your dreams, Tape Face. You can’t beat perfection.”
“Watch me.”
Sero bumped his shoulder against Bakugou’s again, harder this time. Bakugou bumped back.
The cold wind blew, but Bakugou didn’t feel it.
He looked at the hoodie—his creation, his confession—and felt a fierce surge of pride. He had designed it to protect Sero, to comfort him, to make him look good.
And looking at Sero now, bathed in the soft light of the dorms, wearing Bakugou’s heart on his sleeve, Bakugou decided that it was, without a doubt, his best work yet.