Once upon a time...
Ochako swore she wasn't there for him.
She wasn't. There was no way she could've known he'd be there!
Though, if she did, she couldn't say with confidence that she wouldn't have run over at first chance. Because when she saw Bakugo standing directly in the elongated patch of sunlight pouring in through the multi-colored window of the library, the blues and greens refracting in the air to bath him in a jeweled halo, she was immediately rooted to the floor with a sharp gasp at the scene.
He was leaning against one of the shelves in a casual slump, eyes flitting across the pages of the thin, yellowing book in his hand to skim its contents for… she didn't know what. But god, she wished she could know what was going inside that unfairly attractive head of his.
Before he could catch her openly gaping at him, and never let her live it down, Ochako forced her feet to move. Heart thumping wildly in her chest, she hid behind a towering wall of books as old as the city grounds the school was built upon.
What started as a respectful, strictly platonic, admiration for her peer eventually snowballed into a somewhat-sizable crush. Which would've been entirely manageable if it weren't for the fact that they were together almost every moment of every day.
On top of being in the same homeroom and sharing identical class schedules, they were constantly paired up for assignments in their intern positions due to pre-existing inter-agency partnerships. So not only did she know how incredibly smart and strong he was, she was also privy to a collaborative, protective side few others were privileged enough to witness.
Then at the end of the day, they would trudge up the same flight up stairs up to the 4th floor of the dorms, leaning on one another in exhaustion, just to meet up the next morning, half-asleep, to do it all over again.
She spent practically all day, every day, watching how amazing he was.
It was impossible to escape him.
Not that she wanted to. There was something nice, thrilling, about the way they circled each other. She didn't dare assume he liked her back. No, that would just be cruelly setting herself up for failure. But she was content, for now, with her position firmly in the upper half of his list of people he tolerated.
It meant she could sneak pats on his cheek and squeeze his bicep and openly smile at him without raising suspicion. It was the little victories that kept her tiny hope alive.
Still, none of that meant she purposefully meant to run into him at the library! All she wanted to do was find a book for her research paper. How was she supposed to know that the one time they weren't required to be in the same room together, the universe would conspire to make it happen anyway?
She knew him enough to accurately predict he'd think she's stalking him or something. That stupid, annoying man.
Ochako failed horribly at trying to relax the corners of her traitorous smile, giving away just how not irritated she was at the situation, and poked her head out into the aisle to make sure he hadn't seen her.
But since whatever deity in the heavens above chose to be especially generous with their torture on this particular day, Bakugo glared up at her just in time for them to meet gazes.
His red eyes burned into her brown ones from across the room.
"Eep!" She squeaked and hurried to grab a book, any book, in an attempt to conjure up an excuse for what she was doing there. Completely forgetting that she had a perfectly valid one in the first place.
She pulled an old leathery one that was the exact color of a lush meadow floor under the shade of a large tree. The edges were framed with an impossibly thin line of gold, deeply embedded and intricately patterned at the worn, creased spine. Her fingers dug into the soft cover, which was void of any words or any other indicators of what the artifact hid away inside.
Though, it was pretty appropriate, actually. Seeing as when Ochako began to thumb through its pages, each one was completely blank.
Huh. What a peculiar book. But it didn't matter. It wasn't like she was going to actually read it-
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Oh my god!" Ochako nearly jumped out of her skin as Bakugo leaned towards her in unyielding accusation. His face close enough for her to count each individual eyelash and freckle. "I-I was-"
"Why're you following me, cheeks?" He began to smirk in that oh-so-infuriating way.
She knew he'd do this.
"I am not following you!" As if she wouldn't at a second's notice if he were to ask her to. "You're not the only one allowed in here, you know! I'm here to check out a book, obviously. It's a library. So. Books… yeah." She added unnecessarily, her mouth compensating for where her frazzled brain lacked.
"That one?" Bakugo's eyebrow quirked. Equal parts suspicious and amused.
"... Yep."
"It's empty."
"Yes, I know that. Thank you."
He tugged at it from her stubborn grip to call her out on the horribly-veiled lie. But then words began to form on the rough, mottled paper. Black ink seeped through the page, bleeding into existence letter-by-letter before their very eyes.
"The fuck?" Bakugo vocalized her own astonishment as he shifted his body so he wouldn't have to crane his neck.
Now standing shoulder to shoulder, Ochako read the words aloud as they slowly materialized, loopy and dark.
"Once… upon… a time…?"
A faint golden glow radiated from the strange volume in their hands, enveloping them both in its warmth and lulling them into a false sense of security before the pair realized this development wasn't something to welcome.
"Shit!" Ochako heard Bakugo say above her as they jointly dropped the book to the floor.
But it was no use. The light was now blinding, pouring out relentlessly against their frantic yells. What was most alarming was the fact that there was no librarian shushing them or any warnings to evacuate. In the span of only a few seconds, Ochako found she could no longer see or hear anything, completely consumed by the excruciatingly bright light.
All she could feel was Bakugo's arms wrapped around her, his hand shielding her head protectively as the rest of the world burned away.