Focal Length
By – Hime no Ichigo

Genre: Humour
Rating: G
Pairings: Masaomi x Mikado
Story Type: One-shot
Summary: Wearing glasses has its pros and cons.

Disclaimer: Durarara! is the intellectual property of Narita Ryougo.

Spoilers: None.

Notes: Written for the Durarara! kink meme, the prompt being "Mikado, due to excessive computer screen staring, now needs to wear glasses. Kida is extremely turned on by this, and goes somewhere private with Mikado's stolen glasses to masturbate, and only returns the glasses after school, claiming he 'found' it."

This is the same stupid anon who got bunnied by Mikado's POV first, before clarifying with OP about it being from Masaomi's POV. Sorry? orz

It's rare, but not unheard of, for Mikado to show up on some school days with a wrinkled uniform jacket and loose tie, fumbling with his messenger bag and stumbling past the school gate just a minute shy of the bell ringing. His excuses are usually not acceptable in an academic context – after all, how do you make your teachers understand your position as a gang leader, let alone it's a gang that tries to avoid trouble (but gets into messes anyway), and that you've just spent a good chunk of your night monitoring your people? No teacher would buy that excuse, and he'd be lucky if he's not sent to see a rehabilitation facility soon.

Being leader, however, meant sacrificing something personal. It's not the lack of sleep that Mikado grows weary of, but the fact that he has to save a few months' worth of money to get an optometrist appointment, because the chalkboard in class keeps getting blurrier and blurrier every day. When he gets back his prescription, he's not as shocked since he's already resigned himself to the worst. So what more are a few more thousand yens for a pair of rectangular, black-rimmed glasses?

It certainly makes a difference in his life. His glasses aren't exactly light, despite the plasticity in touch. Sometimes he forgets to take them off before he sleeps, or before he washes his face. He's not used to the constant pressure on the bridge of his nose and at the backs of his ears, but it's oh so glorious to finally see things clearly again.

The downside to all this, Mikado grimaces, is that he finds a few more heads turning to his direction. He doesn't like being at the centre of attention; he's the type to work more easily and comfortably in the background.

Unfortunately, Masaomi is one of them.

More often than not, he'd catch his best friend staring at him for a little too long. Mikado notices a pattern; it usually starts with the sharp averting of Masaomi's eyes and a light blush before the blond rushes headlong into a ramble, from weather to schoolwork (the last thing Masaomi would talk about is his homework, it's a sign of desperation to hide his embarrassment, isn't it, Mikado muses), and ends with him being confused because he'd have absolutely no idea what just happened.

But it's Masaomi, so it's to be expected, and Mikado drops the issue.

Until he notices another problem.

Its occurrence is far apart at first, maybe once every two or three weeks, a month if he's lucky. But when his glasses start to disappear more frequently, sometimes to the point of missing for a few days, he starts to get a little worried. It's not like him to leave things behind and then forget about them, so he figures it must be someone playing a prank on him. They must think it's funny for him to squint in class, or ask the teacher for permission to sit in the front every single period, or—okay, his memory isn't that horrible, is it?

So he visits the optometrist again, asking for a prescription for contact lenses. When he puts them on for the first time, he curses and jinxes every possible hex he knows the person who took his glasses, because oh my god these contacts aren't co-operating at all.

Come Monday morning, and he wakes up an hour earlier to wrestle the contact lenses into his eyes with three hours of sleep. Obviously, Sunday nights have to be when people are the most restless – don't people ever sleep in Ikebukuro? He brings his glasses case with him just in case his pair miraculously turns up, and he rushes off to school because he can't possibly be late on the first day of the week.

Much to his disappointment, his glasses aren't on his desk, and his eyes are irritating him to no end – thanks, lack of sleep and internet. His face seems to be permanently drawn into a frown, to the point of like a scowl that even Sonohara-san asks him if everything's all right.

During break, nothing out of the ordinary happens, and he eats his lunch with Sonohara-san because for some reason Masaomi is nowhere to be found. The blond is rather elusive these days...

"Ryuugamine-kun!"

The voice of Sonohara-san draws him back to the present to find the rice of his onigiri tumbling down from his hands.

"Is something bothering you?"

"No, not really..."

"Is it because Kida-kun isn't here?"

Mikado chokes. Is he being overly apparent? "No, not at all, Sonohara-san! Your company's great...!" He does a little flail, struggling to find the right combination of words and intonation to get his message across.

Sonohara-san smiles a little, understanding Mikado's awkwardness.

"I guess I'm a little bothered about my glasses, they've been missing for a while now. I was hoping that whoever found them would return them but I guess not..."

Out of the corner of his eyes, Mikado sees Sonohara-san start, but before he can ask, she's already putting away her lunch and mumbling, "Don't worry about your glasses, Ryuugamine-kun, they'll turn up soon."

Does Sonohara-san have some spy network going on?

The bell rings, and Mikado is forced to push the question to the back of his mind in favour of coping with his itchy eyes and far away blackboard.

Fourth, fifth, and sixth period go by with no progress. He's about to give up when Kida pops up beside him at his locker with an exuberant expression on his face.

"Mi~ka~do! Guess what I found on the fourth floor boy's washroom!"

The brunet's a little confused, since he's never been anywhere above the third floor, so he chalks it up to pranksters who have too much time on their hands. He's just happy to see his pair of glasses sitting flat on Masaomi's palm. The lenses need some cleaning—there are a lot of fingerprint smudges, a few droplets of water, and what is that? Mikado squints closer. Is that—

"Masaomi, is this what I think it is—"

"Did you hear about the new crêpe shop opening at Sunshine Sixty? Let's go try it out, Mikado, Anri-chan!"

Sonohara-san politely declines with a mysterious smile on her face, and before Mikado can protest and inquire further about exactly what Kida was doing in the fourth floor washroom, the blond is off and talking about his latest conquest (failure).

Mikado sighs. This is one of those things he just has to overlook because it's Masaomi, isn't it?

- Owari -

Authoress' Notes: I'm sure you can interrogate him later, Mikado, if you catch my drift. /shot