Hot-Headed (Now also a podfic on spotify!)

Chapter 6

A/N: This and the next chapter were going to be one chapter that just completely encompassed the Sports Festival but this went waaaay longer than I expected and I had to cut it off somewhere so sorry about that. These next few chapters are gonna be fun, though, I promise!

The first day of the UA Sports Festival was finally here! Ochako and her peers were competing in the third-year stage which would take place on the third day of the festival and be the main feature of the whole event. For today, they were able to mill about and talk with pro heroes or watch their kohai's matches.

Ochako was particularly excited to watch because her suggestion of an extreme version of dodgeball was accepted as a qualifier competition for the first years. Mina and Toru had invited her to come wander around the vendor stalls outside of the arena, then sit and watch the games with them. They seemed to be more excited to hanging out with her after the crazy fight that had gone down a few days before. Rumors had spread fast and all of them were getting more attention for the parts they'd played in one of the most explosive (pun probably intended) fights to go down on UA grounds. They probably attributed a good deal of their newfound popularity to her.

So she met up with her friends early in the morning and they looked around at some stalls. Ochako definitely knew she had to pick up some sakura mochi to snack on. 

There were some stands that even had flags to wave for popular students. She noticed that a few even had her own name printed on them, which was a much-needed confidence booster.

When they'd gotten their fill of food and memorabilia, they found their seats for the main event. Class 3-A had been given reserved seats to watch with a good view of the whole stadium. There were already a handful of students in seats includingMomo, Todoroki, Sato, and of course Deku.

He looked up at her as she and her friends stepped down the stairs to take their own seats. His eyes met hers for a quick second and she frowned. He looked away. Her lips thinned into a line of irritation and she too focused her attention on something else.

The night that she had fought and won against Bakugo in their combat training, Deku had finally decided to talk to her. He had waited for her outside of Recovery Girl's office, where both she and Bakugo had been taken to fix any injuries they had sustained. Good thing too because, while she walked away with some ugly bruises, Bakugo had gotten himself a couple of cracked ribs from that final fall he'd taken the brunt of. She wanted to say she felt bad for going that far and injuring him but she wasn't. He'd fought just as hard and would've done the same to her in order to win. She knew this. He knew this. There was no need for regrets.

When Ochako had walked out of Recovery Girl's office, Bakugo was still laying in bed, fatigued from using a good deal of stamina to fix his ribs. Deku was standing just outside the door, like he'd been considering opening it and hadn't quite gotten up the nerve.

"Oh, Deku, hi," she'd said shyly, her cheeks getting hot already.

Deku looked down at her, embarrassment that he'd been caught written on his face. Then his face had become more serious, his jaw tightening, and he'd looked up and past her, presumably toward Bakugo, still resting in bed but not sleeping. A cool anger hitting his verdant eyes that she had never seen in him before. So he was troubled.

"Can I walk you back to the dorms?" he'd asked, his eyes softening as they shifted away from the person behind her and back onto her.

She'd nodded nervously, shifting from foot to foot.

So they'd walked down the halls and out onto the campus grounds, awkward silence consuming them.

Just when Ochako had been about to say something herself, Deku had finally spoken, "I was really worried about you, watching you fight Bakugo."