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“Well you certainly look like your life is in shambles.”
You peeped open an eye from where you had been resting your head on the table and let out an agonized moan as if agreeing with the teasing remark yourself.
“My life is officially over. I can kiss my future good bye,” you lamented as you sat back up against your chair, throwing a colored booklet at the man in front of you while doing so. “Did not do so hot on that biochem exam,” you bitterly chuckled, sighing loudly as you continued wallowing in self pity.
Kuroo took the crumpled sheets into his hand as he slid into the spot next to you, flipping through the pages to try and uncover the reason behind your grade. It was odd, uncharacteristic even, for you —you, who had beat him out in every single chemistry test since second year began— to get such a low mark. Perhaps he’d be less surprise if it was an upper level biochemistry course, but this was an introductory course; it was practically just your expertise.
Maybe your exam papers got swapped? Or you filled in the multiple choice section one question off? Or maybe they printed the wrong test for you? There had to be a reason why—
—Wait, never mind.
He figured out the reason.
“How did you even get this question wrong?” He asked, pointing at the arrows you had drawn in the question asking you to label the direction of proton flow in the electron transport chain. “I swear I saw you studying this right before your test.”
He peered down to keep a closer look at the answer you had pencilled in. “Wait, how did you get the complete opposite of the right answer?”
“You can’t pump out protons, those are subatomic particles,” you grumbled with a roll of your eyes. “Electrons can move though, so I indicated the accumulation of negative charge instead, but apparently it didn’t fly with whatever fake scientist marked the test,” you complained, throwing your arms up in defeat.
He let out an exasperated sigh in response to your stubbornness, but he figured that you did have a point. You could probably argue for some marks back with that line of reasoning —after all, the charges in your answer were still theoretically correct. Theoretically.
He flipped to the next page, and innerly groaned when he saw that someone had practically ravaged the entire page with red pen.
“Aren’t you a chemistry major?” He sighed, noticing you nod your head frantically from the corner of his eye. “If you’re a chemistry major, how did you even get the electron carrier question wrong? It’s just a redox equation.”
You crossed your arms together as you stubbornly countered Kuroo’s interrogation. “How was I supposed to know that you weirdos,” you jabbed a finger at his direction, "think that electron movement was the same as hydrogen movement? They’re completely different things! One’s an atom, and one’s a particle so small that it can pretty much be anywhere at any given time!”
“Surely your professor explained it in class—” He started, trying to reason with you, but he found himself interrupted by you as you powered through your rant.
“—redox is the movement of electrons, not hydrogen. What a disgrace!” You fumed, paying no heed to the less than amused look on Kuroo’s face. He sighed again as he flipped through the pages. Your answer for that was completely wrong, so there was no point fighting you on the matter, but surely there had to be more areas where you could pick up lost marks still…or at least he hoped so.
His eyes landed on a particular question and Kuroo raised an eyebrow skeptically as he looked at you, your test paper, and back at you. He turned the sheets in his hand over to you, pointing a finger at the blank you had crossed out with a large confident “X”.
“(f/n), why did you cross out the space for the answer?”
“It was a trick question. You’re not supposed to write anything in the blank, obviously,” you said with a shrug, acting as if you were speaking to a toddler.
“It’s ATP hydrolysis. Hydro-lysis. The lysis of water. Breaking of water. Where is the water?”
“No one in their right mind would write water in the equation! It’s assumed! If it wasn’t water then you indicate it, but it’s always assumed to be water!”
Kuroo shoved the test back into your hands and groaned into his palm. You were an absolute lost cause, he decided. There was absolutely no helping you. Were all chemistry students like this? Were they all so insistent on the so-called conventions? Were they all convinced that biochemistry was just a subset of chemistry?
He looked back up at you, his mouth opening in preparation to lecture you on the importance of terminology and the difference in convention in biochemistry, but managed to stop himself just in the nick of time. In spite of the snarky and cynical retorts you had thrown back as he went through your exam, your face was marred by an expression so crestfallen that Kuroo found his own heart wrenching in pain: the usual spark of curiosity in your eyes extinguished, the smile that he always caught himself lost in stolen from your very lips.
He sighed. He was going to regret his choice. He could feel it.
Oh, the lengths he would go for you.
“How much is this worth?”
You looked over at Kuroo and flipped the exam back to the cover “10% apparently,” you mumbled, reading off of the front page.
“That’s nothing then.”
It was your turn to sigh now, though unlike the one from Kuroo earlier, it was one of hopelessness rather than annoyance. He looked on at your slumped form in worry, though he had expected as much of a response from you. He had taken the biochemistry major equivalent to your course just last term, and if your syllabus was anything remotely similar to his, if you had trouble with the topics in this exam, your chances of making it up in the next were high as carbon’s atomic number. He could understand exactly how doomed you must have been feeling in this exact moment.
“How about I help you then,” he offered, folding his arms onto the table, a soft smile finding its way onto his face. “Let’s make sure you can turn it back around.”
“Really?” You exclaimed in excitement, jumping back up and reflexively grabbing hold onto Kuroo’s hands in the heat of the moment. Kuroo laughed as he nodded his head, trying to focus his attention on the smile that had returned to your face rather than the fact that the two of you were literally holding hands right now.
Stay calm, Kuroo. This is nothing. Don’t you dare freak out or she’ll find out about your dumb crush on her.
“Yeah, as long as you let me record a video of you saying that I’m the god of biochemistry, and then swear that biochemistry is the most important science of them all,” he teased, hiding his nervous excitement behind his usual smug grin. As he watched your expression slowly transition from one of hope and thankfulness to one of complete utter disdain, he took the opportunity to immediately withdraw his hands from yours before anything worse happened and blew his cover completely.
He’d hold your hand properly one day, and he would be the one to initiate it, he decided. He propped his head against his palm, observing the fit of rage you had since launched into. He chuckled —he always did get a kick out of your responses to his provocations.
“You know what, I’m sure Yaku can help me out,” you decided after you recollected your temper, slinging your bag over your shoulder as you walked in the direction of the door.
“Hey, come back here!” He hollered, quickly grabbing his bag off the table and chasing after you as you looked back and childishly stuck your tongue out at him.
How insufferable you were sometimes.
Though he wouldn’t have it any other way.