#and i wanted to establish a solid dynamic for Five and his fellow survivors before i committed

[tempportal]

“You’ve got your decimal in the wrong spot.”

Five would love to say that he simply brushes off the voice coming from over his shoulder, to say that he coolly ignores her without even so much as a single second of doubt or hesitation—it’s pretty much a personal goal at this point to just never listen to Dolores about anything, ever, because she’s so annoying and insufferable about everything, and whenever she turns out to be right about something (which is so exceedingly rare that it’s absolutely not necessary to even discuss those particular instances at all, thank you very much!) she looks at him with that obnoxiously smug smirk playing at the corner of her soft pink mouth and a big I told you so plastered all over her face—but she’s just so unflinchingly blunt and unapologetically confident in her assessment that he has to double-check it anyway, just to be sure.

Maybe he should count himself lucky (that he survived a full four months in an apocalyptic wasteland all alone before he got here, that he has an actual shot at getting out of this hellhole, at going back home and saving his family before he even turns fifteen, that he found an entire camp of survivors, tiny and pathetic and ragtag as it is, and they didn’t turn him away the second they laid eyes on him, even with their scarce and dwindling supply of rations) that, by some complete and total miracle, he has encountered perhaps the only other person left on this scorched and dying earth who can even begin to comprehend the staggeringly convoluted calculus he has to contend with on a day-to-day basis—but whenever he looks at Dolores, he feels the exact opposite of lucky.

Why did the universe have to give him such a useful ally wrapped up in such an incredibly annoying package?

Five scans through that last string of numbers crudely and painstakingly scratched out in his own hand on the grim grey stone in front of him—and, because literally everything in the natural world hates him, it turns out that she’s right again, and the decimal is exactly one digit off from where it should be, glaringly obvious as a neon sign in the dark now that he knows where to look for it.

And it throws the whole entire equation off, which means now he has to redo that last line all over again or it’ll all be wrong, so that’s a full hour’s work down the drain, and he glowers silently at the decimal because he can’t glower at her or she’ll just hit him with that obnoxiously smug smirk and unspoken I told you so combo, and it will be. incredibly difficult. to tear his eyes off her mouth.

God, he just hates her so much.

“That one,” Dolores actually crouches down to point it out to him, like she thinks he’s too stupid to see it for himself, and her arm brushes lightly against his, and her long dark hair falls in front of her face like a curtain, and he has to literally remind himself to take a breath. “Right there. See? The decimal should be in front of the—”

“I know where the decimal should be,” he cuts her off, scratching out the mistake with a vicious slash of his black felt-tip permanent marker—she probably thinks he’s a total idiot who can barely count to ten, and he wants to snap at her that he is not an idiot and he’s the smartest out of all his siblings, and he’s got six of them, so he’s obviously smarter than her, too, but he doesn’t because that would require him to care about what she thinks of him.

And he doesn’t care about that. Absolutely not. Five has far more important things on his mind than the opinion of some silly teenage girl—even if it’s a teenage girl who actually knows what Planck’s Constant is, and who didn’t need him to explain superstring theory, and who’s written an entire thesis on Coulomb’s Law, and who debates with him on the legitimacy of Brane cosmology (which is obviously total bullshit, whatever she says to the contrary) and who has a really nice smile and soft pink lips and pretty dark hair and bright sky-blue eyes that light up like the sun when she’s excited—

—and she’s really annoying and stupid and infuriating and insufferable and impossible and he hates absolutely everything about her, from her nice smile and sky-blue eyes to her die-hard belief in Brane cosmology and breathtakingly brilliant mind that’s always running a hundred thousand miles ahead of everyone else, seeing things that no one else does and thinking about things in ways no one else will, and—

Look, he hates her, okay?!

“Yeah, you got it wrong up here, too,” Dolores frowns, tipping her head back to squint up at a portion of the calculation scrawled farther up on the wall—her hair spills down around her face in thick, curly waves, so black it’s almost blue in the silver-white glow of the stars overhead, and it’s very hard to look away from her shining eyes, lighting up at the math in front of her. “Where you got eight-point-seven, it should actually be eight-point-nine—so this is all way off-base. Here—let me—”

And then she just—she just reaches out and snatches the marker straight out of his hand (and her fingers brush lightly over his open palm when she does, and his skin is suddenly on fire) and she uncaps it with a soft click, presses the black tip firmly to the wall, and scribbles out her own equation right next to his.

Even the way she writes is pretty.

Five scrubs his palm on the ripped knee of his worn-out jeans to try and get his hand to stop the stupid tingling that’s all her stupid fault, and why can’t she just keep her stupid hands to herself?

(If she’d just stop touching him so much, maybe he could finally stop thinking about what it would be like to hold her hand.)

A frown twists the edges of Dolores’ mouth, her face scrunching up and her brows pulling together in a deep wrinkle, her teeth biting into her bottom lip—he can practically see all the different cogwheels spinning and clicking in her brain, hear her mind running a hundred thousand miles ahead of everyone else, seeing things that no one else does and thinking about things in ways no one else will, and his breath catches at the back of his throat.

She’s so pretty when she’s all caught up in her equations like this.

Objectively speaking, of course. It’s not like Five’s got any kind of opinion on the way she looks, or anything. It’s not like he’s ever really noticed the way she looks.

She leans in and jots down one final string of numbers before she pulls back again, blowing on the Sharpie tip like it’s a smoking gun. She caps it up and tosses him a smile that sucks all the air out of the room—and he’s staring at her, openly and obviously and like a complete idiot, all wide-eyed and stupid, and he has to force his face into a scowl and remind himself that she’s annoying and obnoxious and detestable and arrogant and absolutely intolerable, and that is not going to change just because she’s not a total dunce at math!

“Looks better, doesn’t it?” she says, all puffed-up and proud like she always is. Doesn’t she ever get sick of being so infuriating all the time? “Maybe you should try asking for a little help every now and then, boy genius.” And she has the—the sheer audacity to lean in and poke him in the forehead with the end of the marker, right on that narrow strip of skin between his brows that always crinkles up when he scowls (and it’s currently very crinkled right now, the way it always is whenever he has to deal with her).

Five sputters incoherently and swats blindly at the Sharpie, but he misses by about a mile—which is just fantastic, because now she thinks he’s a total idiot who can barely count to ten, and a complete moron with abominable hand-eye coordination who can barely string two words together ninety-nine percent of the time, and he does not care what she thinks about him even a little bit.

“I’m checking your work,” he tells her, and yanks the Sharpie back out of her hand.

“Knock yourself out,” she gets to her feet and dusts off the knees of her dark denim jeans before she heads back toward the maze of ragged, patchwork tents. “But it’d probably save you a ton of time if you just assumed I’m right.”

Five makes it about halfway through her calculation (which is—so brilliantly simple, and unbelievably elegant, taking all his loose ends and tying them all up so perfectly) and Dolores makes it about a hundred feet away before she spins around on her heel to holler at him—

“You’re welcome, by the way!”

Five flips her a one-finger salute—and she laughs out loud the whole way back to the camp, bright and bubbly, and he’s pretty sure he’s just swallowed a swarm of live butterflies because that’s the only possible explanation for what that sound is doing to his insides.

And it turns out her math is right—again.

Goddamn it.

#as promised!! here is the alternate apocalypse fic i've been talking about #i've been playing with the idea of writing a full-on multi-chapter AU based on this premise #and i wanted to establish a solid dynamic for Five and his fellow survivors before i committed #and Dolores was at the top of the list because i love her #v: the best luck is to die at the right time #I KNOW HOW TO DO EVERYTHING ; ( drabble ) #we always were an unlikely pair ; ( dolores )