Chapter Text
It was no secret that Narancia was bad at math, or rather, school in general. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t grasp simple concepts or just simply didn’t pay attention. It all began in primary school and as he grew older it became a bigger issue. He still struggled with basic multiplication at times. Needless to say, it could get embarrassing to be called on in a class where you’re expected to remember formulas when you barely know the difference between a divisor and a dividend.
When his math teacher recommended a tutor who was a year below him, Narancia couldn’t help but feel conflicted. He was ashamed of himself in a way for even needing a tutor, and for whatever reason having someone in a grade below him do the job felt like an insult. Advanced placement and honour student or not, Narancia was offended.
Narancia had been familiar with his tutor, Fugo Pannacotta. He was a year beneath Narancia, however, incredibly intelligent. Fugo was in all the advanced placement classes available to his grade and passed all of them with ease. Narancia even had the boy in some of his own classes now that he thought about it. Fugo never spoke to him until he began to see him every other day of the school week. From what Narancia could tell, he was quiet and somewhat reserved. Although, when Fugo got miffed or irked about something he wasn’t afraid to express it. This intimidated Narancia to a degree… When the two first met up he feared Fugo would snap on him for his basic mistakes.
Soon enough the two began to spend more and more time together for their tutoring. Narancia never attempted to get to know Fugo more, still slightly scared of him, and yet Fugo seemed interested in him. Narancia couldn’t help but feel as though Fugo only started small talk so he could to distract himself from the mental exhaustion that is teaching a high school student how to multiply. Then again, the more often they spoke the more Narancia became relaxed. After all, talking about your weekend is a lot less tense than being harshly glared at from the sidelines for the inability to multiply sixteen and fifty-five. Narancia got annoyed by Fugo’s tendency to look down on him, though he began to get used to it.
He couldn’t pinpoint when, but there was a day where Narancia’s heart began to skip a beat at praise and he got excited for his Monday, Wednesday, and Friday study sessions. Narancia would stare at Fugo instead of paying attention to the process of how to find the square or cube of a number. He admired the other, even. Narancia did his best for Fugo. ...He still barely knew his multiplication tables and had a hard time knowing how to subtract negatives. Before he knew it, Narancia was fantasising about Fugo during almost all of his spare time. Even now. He couldn’t shake the thought of them holding hands, cuddling, sleeping in the same bed, kissing, being on top of--
“Narancia, are you listening?” A familiar, seemingly honey dripping voice called. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah.” No, he didn’t. The older boy tried to keep his head up, a weak attempt to prevent nodding off. “Repeat it again anyways.”
Fugo sighed in frustration, inhaling audibly as he tried to regain his composure. “Do you take any of this seriously? We’ve been doing this for four months and yet you can barely say what five times eight is off the top of your head.”
“It’s twenty five!” Narancia huffed dramatically, offended. A small smirk was plastered on his face as he patted himself on the back for such a quick answer.
Fugo stared for a moment, unsure of whether or not the other was joking. Sometimes Fugo wanted to laugh and other times he wanted to ram the mechanical pencil between his fingers into Narancia's face. The younger one’s eyes grew hazy with disappointment. The two remained silent for a moment. Fugo finally opened his mouth to give a curt response.
“Fourty.”
The smirk faded. Narancia flinched in his seat at the correction, exhaling softly. How humiliating. He was still ticked off that Fugo was younger than him.
Fugo tilted his head in curiosity. It wasn’t exactly unnatural for Naracia to be bummed out about his mistakes, but he usually got more dramatic. A pensive look developed as he studied the older boy in an attempt to figure out why he was so genuinely upset.
Narancia caught on, furrowing his brows at the mentor. He didn’t speak, averting his gaze. He noted that he couldn’t make direct eye contact with Fugo, and when he did it felt like a small victory when he could maintain it. A shade of red began to manifest from the tips of his ears to his cheeks. Unfortunately Fugo did notice his odd behaviour. The two came to a silence for a moment once more.
“What’s wrong?” Fugo was the first to speak up, as Narancia predicted.
“It- It’s nothing,” Narancia started, “not a thing.”
“What a terrible liar.” A loud, exaggerated groan escaped the other’s lips. Now it was Fugo’s turn to be playfully dramatic. Narancia pouted at his mentor, resting his chin in his hand and facing away. “For real, though, what’s wrong?”
Narancia hesitated. How was he supposed to just tell Fugo he couldn’t pay attention because he was thinking about them dating, being together, holding each other… It was damn near impossible. The two knew each other enough to be friends, but not lovers. If he professed his undying love right here and now everything would be awkward.
“It’s nothing. Let’s continue, sorry for zoning out like that.” Narancia apologised uncharacteristically, a small and genuine smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
Fugo blinked with a skeptical look, but continued. “Ah, alright. The square of a number is…”
Fugo went on and on, and before he knew it Narancia was zoned out all over again. When would this be over?