Work Text:
Prompt: Catra and Adora are uni students, and one of them ends up tutoring the other. Except Adora wears reading glasses, and Catra just can’t function with how cute she looks wearing them.
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Strolling over the sun-bathed campus with her bag slung over her shoulder, Catra checked her phone one last time. Adora’s most recent text was, against all expectations, still the same as the last time she’d checked half a minute earlier.
“You still on for this afternoon? Stellaria, 2nd floor, 2 ‘o clock, right? :)”
Catra didn’t think she’d actually been on a study date before. She never studied together with people – her studying sessions usually involved herself, coffee, headphones, and oceans of notes. She’d tried studying together with Scorpia a few times, but that had always ended up being distracting for her. And back in her first year there’d been a few ‘buddy-sessions’ where the study association had set up meetings with people in the same course with a higher-year, but that hadn’t been quite a match either.
So really, studying together with people wasn’t her thing. And yet now she walked into Stellaria around a quarter to two, greeted by the cool airconditioned air of the building. She couldn’t help it – her first date with Adora had gone so darned well, and Adora had looked so enthusiastic about the chance to help out with her electrodynamics coursework, and had offered so sweetly, that Catra could hardly refuse. So, second date study date it was. Catra had it bad.
She rode up the three escalators to get to the second floor. The floor was about fifty-fifty studying spots and departmental offices. She’d never been here much – being in a place where so many department staff worked always made her feel a bit out of place.
After looking around all tables for students, she had to conclude that she was early and Adora wasn’t there yet. Blast. Hesitantly, she put down her stuff at an empty table, some distance away from the nearest other students. Would this be fine? Probably – this wasn’t a library, and some other people were quietly talking to each other as well. Actually, the open design of the building gave the entire area a degree of rather pleasant white noise. This might actually work.
“Catra! Hey!”
Her heart skipped a beat when she turned around and saw Adora approaching her, smiling wide.
“Sorry I’m late, I was still in a meeting with my supervisor.”
“Not at all! I’m pretty sure I’m just early.” When Adora came to a halt in front of her they both hovered awkwardly – they’d ended their last date with a peck on the cheek, but how could they follow that up in greeting now? After a second or two, Catra bit the bullet and went in for a slightly awkward hug before clearing her throat. “So, I unpacked here already. I hope that’s okay with you?”
“Yeah, absolutely fine! I do about half of my thesis work here – my supervisor has her office on this floor, in the astrophysics department? So it’s convenient to be near her when I’m working. The rest of the time I usually sit down wherever – in the library or in the faculty’s thesis student room. Anything goes for me, to be honest. And I’m rambling again, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay.” Catra said, chuckling. To be honest, Adora’s rambling put her at ease, reminding her that they were both equally nervous about this whole dating thing – both equally afraid to mess something up.
“So. Principles of Electrodynamics, huh?” Adora asked as she dragged a chair over to the table and started unpacking her own things.
“Yeah, unfortunately… I can’t believe you said you actually enjoyed following this stuff – it’s pretty rough so far.”
“Good thing I’m here to help, then! I didn’t just enjoy it, but actually use the stuff I learned in my thesis as well.” Adora proclaimed smugly.
“Well, lucky me.” Catra replied with a smirk, lowering her voice to slightly flirty. “Best explain me how to Maxwell’s stress tensor works then, princess.”
One thing she enjoyed about dating Adora so far was – besides that she was cutely excitable and kind – how easy to tease she was. She could be gung-ho and self-confident one second, and as red as a beet the next.
“Well, I will!” Adora said decisively. The blonde cleared her throat, took a box out of her bag and took out a pair of glasses.
Reading glasses.
Wait, what?
“Alright, let’s just start with what topic you’re stuck on. Maybe show me an exercise that you don’t get?”
Oh, this is just unfair.
Adora was already pretty cute a she was – flannel shirts, ponytail-with-uppercut, muscular as hell, basically the textbook example of Catra’s type. The first time she’d laid eyes on her, Catra had actually panicked pretty bad and decided Adora was way, way, way out of her league. And although she’d gotten a little more confident, she wasn’t ready for this. With thick-rimmed reading glasses and a serious expression Adora was suddenly up there in the list of cutest things she’d ever seen in her life.
“Catra?”
“Oh, uh…” Catra snapped back to reality, looking through her course reader, pointedly away from Adora. “Okay, to be honest, most of it’s not exactly my strong suit, but I think I really started losing it around here.” She pulled up the chapter she’d gotten trouble with the most. “Jokes about Maxwell’s stress tensor aside, it’s really my Achilles’ heel.”
“Okay, understandable! I get that that can be tough.” Adora scooted closer to her, looking over the text on the page. “This is where you start getting lost? Well, it all starts with…”
And there she launched into an explanation about different forces and vectors and derivations. Which Catra appreciated – honestly, she did! But there were two issues. For one, Catra had technically passed all prerequisite calculus courses. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t forgotten how exactly multi-dimensional vector notation worked again. And perhaps more importantly: All efforts in trying to remember were distracted by Adora and her stupid glasses. As the explanation went on, Catra noticed how she absently pushed them back onto her nose every now and then, and tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears when she leaned back for a second, and-
“…and the by substituting it like this you arrive at the regular expression of the Maxwell stress tensor. Get it?”
Oh shit.
“Uhm… Yes?” Catra smiled sheepishly, yet felt her heart sink. She really got none of that.
“Do you really?” A smug grin crept onto Adora’s face. “Were you paying attention to what I was saying, or only to me?”
“Shut up! I just-“ Catra blushed, punching Adora’s shoulder lightly. “You look cute with those glasses.”
“Distracting you, are they?” The grin got more smug.
“Shut. Up. Princess. They’re not distracting at all. And if they are, it’s only because…” Catra looked away, feeling herself blush deeper and her expression sour.
Adora seemed startled, backing away slightly. “Sorry, was that too much? Did I say something wrong?”
She shook her head, taking a deep breath. “No. It’s because I had trouble with the calculus courses and I could use a refresher on how all the vector notations work in this setting.”
“Wait, really?”
Catra nodded, still avoiding eye contact. “I’m just… I get what the mathematics does. It’s… All the numbers and symbols just get away from me if I haven’t used them for longer than, like, two weeks. It’s stupid. And I don’t want to ask my classmates, since no-one else seems to be having issues.”
Still looking away from Adora, she felt a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Hey, that’s okay. It’s not stupid at all! It really is difficult – we’re not all natural born mathematicians.”
Catra scoffed. “No, but if I’m not, why the heck am I doing a bachelor in astronomy?”
“Hey, don’t be like that! You did pass the course, so you’re good enough at it to do this course! It’s okay if you need your memory jogged every now and then.”
“Thanks. It’s just… All those operators and symbols sort of blur together sometimes.” When Catra finally looked up at Adora, she somehow still expected an incredulous expression, but was met with only a kind smile.
“That must really suck! But don’t let it get you down too much. Maybe it’s an idea to see the student councilor to see if there’s options for extra help, or extra time on mathematics exams?”
“Maybe…”
“And, uhm, for now I don’t mind helping you out, either.” Adora continued, almost shyly. ”Maybe instead of Maxwell we can start off with a refresher on some intermediate-level vector algebra. How does that sound?”
Catra nodded gratefully. “Good. That sounds good.”
“Do I need to take the glasses off for you to actually pay attention this time?” And the kindness was replaced by a shit-eating grin again.
“Don’t you dare, princess.”
“Alright, then I won’t. So. Maybe just a small refresher on vectors? Laplace’s operator?”
With that, Adora launched into another explanation – this time slightly slower. And in the end, Catra got it all – even with Adora’s glasses there to distract her.