Work Text:
“Oi, Round Face! Are you paying attention?!”
“Y-yes! I swear! I just got distracted by a notification on my phone, ehehe. I’m paying attention, don’t worry!”
She wasn’t very convincing. Bakugou’s eye twitched in irritation. He knew she wasn’t paying attention because whenever they studied together, or rather whenever Bakugou agreed to hole himself up in her dorm room to tutor her in math, he watched her like a hawk. Uraraka had a way of keeping his attention, it wasn’t fair that it wasn’t the same case for her.
Or at least, he didn’t think it was. “Mhm. Eyes on me or else I’ll leave you to figure this out on your own, and you can study for the final exam by yourself. Or worse, with Racoon Eyes and Ears.”
Uraraka puffed her cheeks, and he had to fight off the urge to pinch them. How was it possible for someone to be so vexing and so adorable at the same time? He was hopeless with his silly little crush.
“Hey, Mina and Kyouka are great study partners!”
“The three of you would never get anything done.”
Uraraka flushed. Of course, Bakugou knew that he was right because he’s seen that group in the common room attempting to study but getting nothing done. “Back to work. Where are you getting lost in these equation steps?”
“Uhm, at the halfway point. I forget to apply one of the steps.”
Bakugou nodded and started outlining a clear-cut rewording of the steps for solving for unknown variables. He was three-quarters of the way through when he noticed her not looking at what he was writing again. Bakugou was going to have to get creative if he was going to be the best tutor. Which he was, there was no competition. Obviously. It wasn’t like he was nervous around his crush at all.
Oh. Wait a minute.
Maybe he could kill two birds with one stone here.
What if he set up an equation that would end in a confession that he had Uraraka work through? That would both grab her attention and get something off his chest. If she didn’t get the meaning in the end then, well, maybe she wouldn’t want to.
Bakugou wrote out the equation he had in mind: 9x - 7i > 3(3x - 7u).
“Earth to Squirrel Cheeks. Walk through this, and we’ll call it a day. It’s a simple equation, I only need to know you know the steps.”
Uraraka looked like she was scrambling for words to explain herself. “Huh? Oh, okay. I’m sorry, I admit that there’s been something on my mind that’s keeping my thoughts occupied. N-nothing to do with you, nothing bad!”
“Oh,” Bakugou tried to keep that out of his head. “Look here. Tell me what the first step is.”
“Hm, let’s see. Take the 3 on the outside of the parentheses and multiply so you can get rid of them.”
Bakugou nodded. Good, he had her attention now. He intended to keep it. “Yep. That leaves you with 9x minus 7i is greater than 9x minus 21u. Now what?”
Uraraka scribbled on the scratch paper while she thought. “Subtract the 9x from both sides to get rid of it?”
“Don’t ask me, you know the answer. You’re right. Stop doubting yourself.”
A light glow on her cheeks, Uraraka stuck her tongue out and teased him. “Oh my god, Bakugou-kun, is that a compliment?”
Immediately Bakugou feels his face flush with embarrassment. She was right again, it was, but he didn’t think she would out him like that. Now he was paying the price with a too-warm face and sweaty hands. “Do you really need me to clarify that? Yes, alright. Now let’s finish this.”
He didn’t miss the extra shade of pink on her cheeks either.
“R-right. Okay! Next step. Divide by negative 7x into both sides to get rid of the negative 7, flip the sign and isolate the variable.”
“Mhm. What are you left with? Write it out for me.”
Bakugou studied her face as she worked it out in her head. Uraraka lifted her pencil to write out the answer to the equation, which would conveniently also be his confession. She wrote the isolate i variable first, and then the less than sign. He noticed her pause as she wrote half of the three down. It was only a bit of hesitation before finishing the entire answer.
Which was i < 3u.
To anyone not paying attention, the answer’s unsubtly coded message could be missed, but Uraraka was indeed paying attention. He watched as her face lit up, the blush on her cheeks now nearly identical to the red of his eyes. Bakugou had to force himself not to gulp, worried he may choke on air.
“B-B-Bakugou-kun?! Why is your face so red?! It’s scorching in here, isn't’ it? Ahaha, wow, did you just…? Was this a confession?”
Fortunately for him, Uraraka was as smart as he believed her to be. It was a natural hint if you knew what you were looking at. He took a breath to take his nerves down a notch. “What else is it supposed to be. Do I have your attention now?”
Uraraka dropped her pencil entirely and decided that was what she needed to hear to forget anything holding her back as she got so close to him that he could see flecks of amber in her brown eyes. She was looking at him like there wasn’t anything he could hide from her. After all, there probably wasn’t. She was the one to call him out on his nonsense on more than one occasion when no one else dared to.
“You always have my attention, you know. I notice things. After you gave me my destroyed sports uniform jacket, I knew that you weren’t a bad guy. Well, I didn’t think you were one before that either, just rough around the edges. As much as I might have tried not to because we’re here to be heroes and not to be distracted by puppy love, I started to crush on you. And here you are! Tutoring me!”
Well then. Bakugou was an observant person, but he never caught onto anything that would suggest to him that Uraraka mirrored his crush.
He would count his lucky stars later, for right now he was too taken by her sweet face to give much of a care. “Yeah, here I am.”
Before he could let his awkward teenage nerves get the best of him, before his palms got so hot and sweaty that they would start smoking, Bakugou leaned into Uraraka’s space to hover his lips over her own.
Not needing to get any other hint than that, Uraraka followed his lead and softly pressed her lips to his.
Neither of them knew really how long their first kiss was, but it felt like forever in the best way to them.
Bakugou pulled back first, wanting to see her face. Uraraka had on the sweetest angel smile. He knew he was in deep when he could feel his heart hammering in his chest. “At least now you’ll remember the steps for the exam.”
Her smile grew broader and more mischievous. “Oh? Yeah, I think I will. I had a good tutor. A tutor that should also take me on a date.”
Bakugou was quick to step up to that. “I’ll make food on Sunday, and you pick out a movie. Good?”
“That sounds lovely! I can’t wait to see your amazing cooking abilities again!”
This time he didn’t fight the urge to pinch her cheeks.