Chapter Text
Fitz hovers in front of Dex's bedroom door, wondering if he should have even come here. It's not like they've ever interacted willingly, and, beyond that, their unwilling interactions have never crossed the line out of uncomfortable. Fitz has yet to figure out the root cause of the aforementioned issues, and, at this point, he just kind of accepts that this is how it's going to be, much like everything else he does not understand.
When your choices are get angry at literally any small inconsistency or outwardly present as being fine with things like how recipes are literally never described with a sufficient amount of detail to not become an entire dumpster fire the moment it goes into the oven, you learn fairly quickly to choose the latter for your own sake, if nothing else. That works until you can't ignore it and then you become a menace to society for a while. A very long while. Some might say you never ceased being a menace to society.
But that's fine. It's fine. Everything is fine.
That's at least what Fitz tells himself as he knocks on the door.
An exasperated Dex replies, "Come in."
His entire attention is focussed on a bright screen lighting up his face, highlighting the dark circles under his eyes, though Fitz can't see what's on it from this angle, as he holds his chin so close to that screen it almost looks like he is trying to go inside of it. Several seconds later, he shakes his head slightly to break his concentration, though still looking at the screen, before he asks, in a flat voice, "What can I do for you?"
"Biana said I should come ask you about some new project you've started." The most likely reason for this is because she wanted to get him out of Everglen for a few hours. He can't exactly blame her, but there had to be something better to use. Resorting to bothering Dex Dizznee of all people to get some peace is not going to end well for either Fitz or Biana.
Dex's head snaps up and makes eye contact with Fitz. "Sorry. I thought you were one of the Triplets."
Fitz glances around the room, taking in the various gadgets strewn about the place. "You're fine. Don't worry about it."
"Cool." Dex glances back at his screen. "The Council told me either yesterday or the day before--and considering I don't know what day it is right now, that's the highest confidence interval you're going to get--but basically they want an image recognition system of the animals at the various animal preserves. So, like, Havenfield and the Sanctuary." Dex shrugs.
Fitz curls his toes inside of his shoes in an effort to not look like he's as much of a nerd as he is. Its success rate is questionable.
It's unfair just how well Biana knows him, given that she most certainly knew what he would be walking into. It also makes sense why she did not tell him the scope of the project, because he is not capable of acting normally now.
Not only is it a classification task, which are already inherently the greatest thing ever, but it also uses the taxonomic tree he's been painstakingly building in his mind for an embarrassingly long time now. It might finally be worth it. He might finally be justified in reading about animals that first developed hundreds of millions of years ago instead of dealing with the world's current problems.
Fitz realises that Dex has been saying something this entire time and tunes back in. "--I don't care. I don't think the Council cares. I have a feeling that they just want to keep me from hacking into the Registry, but joke's on them--I can do both. I doubt you care. If you want to sit here and stare at the walls to appease her majesty Princess Prettypants or whatever. I'm going to be here praying to the mods of Wikipedia that I can figure this out despite their lack of accurate reconstructions."
Fitz approaches the big glowing screen until he can just barely make out the rough outline of a long neck, his excitement disproportionately high when he already suspects he knows what it is. "Can you zoom in on its head for me?"
Dex does, confirming Fitz's mental hypothesis. "That's a Brachiosaurus." Between the general sauropod shape, the head being held high above the ground--in contrast to sauropods like Diplodocus that were much more horizontal, and the distinctive shape of the head with a ridge down the middle, there is no other reasonable answer. Even if it is a different genus, it has to be something incredibly closely related.
Dex starts typing, doing his absolute best to spell 'Brachiosaurus' and not having a good time. You can't really fault him for that though. "Wait--I should probably ask how specific you need it to be."
"How specific can you get? Are there multiple flavours of Brachiosaurus or something?"
"Well, I mean, sort of? Brachiosaurus is a genus, and I certainly don't have the entire taxonomy memorized, but there's probably more than one species in there. Like, I know I know too much already, but also it's probably impossible to know everything. Taxonomy is a mess. Sometimes I wonder if that's because things weren't meant to be classified like that. Anyway Brachiosaurus is part of the clade Sauropodomorpha, which is under Saurichia, which is under Dinosauria, which is under Reptilia--" --and sometimes Reptilia isn't even used in favour of Sauria, which includes the reptlies and the birds in one category, but that's beside the point.
"I think Brachiosaurus is enough." Dex interrupts. "I don't need this to be good. I just need it to be passable enough to throw it at the Council and then work on actually relevant things with Tinker before they give me my next assignment."
"Whatever you need me to do. I have too much dinosaur knowledge for my own good."
Dex clicks over to the next image. "Do I want to know why or do I just have to accept that this exists and I should have complained to Biana several days ago?"
"I was a very weird child." Well, that's not the whole story, but Alvar's pet raptor had to have something to do with it. Fitz leaves it at that. "That's definitely a pterosaur--order pterosauria. Do you have a scale for how tall it is?"
"Not that I know of. I mean, there's a building back there, but I don't think that can really do anything for you. Sorry. I refuse on principle to pull out physics."
"You're fine. I'm just not great with pterosaurs down to the genus level. I mean, I only really know of Quetzalcoatlus that's like two storeys tall and Pteranodon which is closer to a person tall, but sorry. Best I can do is Pterosauria."
"That's better than I would have done. I would have said dinosaur and moved on with my life."
"Not to be pedantic, but a pterosaur is not a dinosaur. Yes, they first appeared in a similar time period and they're both reptiles, but yeah. Not the same thing."
Dex looks at Fitz, his expression a puzzle Fitz can't solve.
"So you're telling me I've been lied to my entire life? Unbelievable."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not mad at you." Dex clarifies. "I'm mad at the Council's education system. Multispecial studies could at least have that as a footnote in one of those horrible textbooks. Here, I'll give you the next one as a consolation prize."
Fitz can't help himself from pointing at the screen. "Megatherium! That's a giant ground sloth! Look at him! He's such a little guy! He's like six meters tall."
"That is absolutely heinous. Thank you. I did not need that mental image."
"Just wait until we get to the family Chalicotheriidae. Or the genus Platybelodon. You're going to enjoy Platybelodon. The Cenozoic has some new weird animals. It's great. I mean, I appreciate the old classics like the genus Anomalocaris, and, like, order Radiodonta as a whole but--"
"Hang on. Can you just, like, go over the taxonomic levels for me again? Like I'm sure I could go find it but I trust you more than a textbook and I do not remember these things well enough to follow that fast of a sentence."
Fitz consciously tells himself to slow down as he starts. "At the very top, you'll find some sources that have Domain and others that don't. No reason to worry. Your three domains are Bacteria, Archaea--prokaryotic extremophiles, and Eukaryota--you, and me, and plants, and fungi. The six kingdoms are Eubacteria, Archaebacteria--and those two are directly uner their respective domains--Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista--those are just an absolute wastebasket taxon for everything that is a eukaryote but isn't a plant, animal, or fungus."
"Wastebasket taxon?"
"Yeah, that's an actual term. Plural is wastebasket taxa, in case you ever need to know that. For example, the genus Glossopteris, which are some plants has been used as a wastebasket taxon before. It's also been used by humans to prove plate tectonics because how else would the same fossil exist in two different places?"
"Carry seeds on wind? Or in a pterosaur-bird?"
"This is hundreds of kilometres of ocean. The wind is probably not going to do great over that much distance, and pterosaurs appeared after Glossopteris went extinct in the end-Permian extinction. Anyway, under Kingdom depends on whether you're in Animalia or Plantae. Animals have phyla--singular phylum---while plants have Divisions. That's about as much as I know of the larger structure of plant taxonomy. We're lucky I'm not a gnome because it wouldn't go well. Animals have a whole bunch of phyla, so I'm not going to go through all of them for the sake of coherence. Like, you've got Arthropoda, which includes everything from bugs to crabs. A great phylum all around. Most things are in there. Probably because most things are beetles, order Coleoptera."
"Quick question just for my own confirmation of what's going on here. Are tomples in there?"
"Yeah, they're a member of the order Lepidoptera, weirdly enough, which is inside the class Insecta which is inside of the phylum Arthropoda. They're basically butterflies that forgot how to undergo metamorphosis, so their fuzz is the same as caterpillar fuzz because they are caterpillars."
"I feel like I'm going to be quizzed on this later, and spoiler alert: I will absolutely fail."
"Don't worry, I will too. We haven't even gotten to the most fun part."
Dex holds his head in his hands and clicks over to the next image, probably to keep Fitz from having fun.
A crested hadrosaur appears on the screen. "We're going to need a ten minute spelling lesson on this one."
"That bad?" Dex rolls away from the screen, leaving the keyboard open for Fitz.
"I'm going to accidentally break it. I'm very good at breaking technology."
"I believe in you."
One Fitz figuring out how to use a keyboard and one spelling of Parasaurolophus later, Dex says, "But, like, why is it shaped like that?" almost certainly referring to the large crest on its head.
"They make funny noises with it, actually. I, on the other hand, think it makes them the ideal shape. Actually, I take that back. Diplocaulus is the ideal shape. Its head has got a hammerhead shark kind of thing going and with little stumpy legs."
"I kind of hope one of those is in the data set. That sounds very funny."
Instead, the next image of the data set delivers on that promise even more, and Dex bursts out laughing at its goofy little face.
"That's a Sacabambaspis. It's a jawless fish from back when jaws didn't exist yet in the Ordovician."
"Yeah, but like, why?"
"The question is not why. The only criterion for a species to exist is whether or not it can reproduce. It does not even have to be that good at it--it just has to be passable. Anyway, they've got a head shield, so I don't understand why I can't affectionately smack its little head. I think it deserves that much after what it's been through."
The image clicks over to a rolled-up Trilobite, and Fitz swears at the photographer.
"What?" Dex asks innocently. "Isn't that, like, a pillbug?"
"That is a Trilobite. And the fun part is that the order Trilobita has over twenty thousand species in it."
Dex pauses for a second. "That's just a few."
"I might describe that as slightly more than a few. I do not have the necessary skills to confidently narrow it down further. If I had to guess, it might be in the genus Calymene? They're very often rolled up, and the tail tapers off in a similar way, but, then again, twenty thousand species. Best I can confidently say is that is a Trilobite. It's got three lobes."
"Wait, is that actually why they're called that? That's actually so funny."
Fitz points at the screen. "Exactly, tri- means three, and the -lobe part is referring to the three lobes on the thorax. The middle one is called the axial lobe, and the other two are the pleural lobes."
When Fitz looks back at Dex, he's not looking at the trilobite, but is instead studying Fitz's face. "I am getting progressively more afraid of the amount of information you just have in your brain at any given moment."
"I'm...sorry? It's, uh, not very useful in most everyday contexts, so it makes sense that it hasn't come up before."
"Yeah, no, but like, if I had to randomly guess a topic that you know a concerning amount about it wouldn't have been dinosaurs, you know? I would have probably picked, like, human literature or something. That seems like it would fit better with what I already know about you, but you're being very helpful right now and I am incapable of being mad about that."
Fitz shrugs. "You're not wrong; that does sound like something I would do. Also, you're just drip feeding me a very enjoyable task. I would do anything to continue classifying your dataset for you."
Fitz realises immediately after saying that sentence that it's just a bit excessive. Don't mind the fact that it's also accurate.
Dex smiles, his dimples peeking out from his cheeks.
"Then by all means, don't let me distract you from the real source of entertainment here."
Fitz clicks over to the next image. "That's an Archaeopteryx. They first--"
"I'm sorry, what is it called?"
"Archaeopteryx? Archae- means old and pter- means wing."
"I don't believe that's a real word."
"Just because it rhymes with your name doesn't mean it's one of your siblings. Unless...?"
Dex stares at Fitz in mock outrage. "I'm not a bird, Fitzroy."
Fitz replies casually, "I mean, technically neither is that."
"You're not doing this to me again."
"Relax, it's not a pterosaur. If you'll allow me to say a sentence that is scientifically blasphemous, it's about halfway between a bird and a dinosaur. Although, if we're being pedantic, birds are dinosaurs because you can't evolve out of a group. That probably explains some things about birds, honestly. I don't trust them. I know it looks a lot like a bird but it's got teeth like a dinosaur and three claws on each hand--wing?--upper appendage-thing."
Dex pauses for a long moment, opening his mouth to argue several times before settling on a simple string of swear words.
"I could use the same logic to argue that we're fish because our ancestors from millions of years ago were also fish, so that's fun. Also, just to make it a little bit worse, Archaeopteryx is a dinosaur-bird-whatever, but there's also a plant called Archaeopteris that's just, like, a really old tree until Wattieza came in and took the top spot."
Dex holds his head in his hands while Fitz just sits there msotly shuffling through his pile of fun facts in an effort to find something to make this a less painful process, but it turns out that the more one knows, the worse it gets, and all you can do is inflict psychic damage on others in an effort to share the misery.
"Why? Not even on anything specific--just everything always and forever. Why, Stars, why? I'm almost certain the Council just wants a facial recognition algorithm to find a certain someone over in the Forbidden Cities and that's not even how this works. Why do I have to go through this?"
Before violence becomes the only answer, assuming Dex's suspicions are true, Fitz pauses for a moment to clear his emotions and take a deep breath. "Am I allowed to ask how it works?"
"Yeah, so you split the data set into training and testing data. Basically you put some problems on the study guide and then have similar ones on the actual test. The neural network reads the study guide and tries to figure out why those answers are correct--which is why I need the images to be labelled because otherwise there's no way I'm going to get anything that even remotely works. I don't have an answer key, it doesn't have an answer key, nobody knows what's happening. There are ways to do it, it's just that it's possible to supervise the data set, so you get the fun activity of making the answer key for me."
"And I am having so much fun doing it." Fitz clicks over to the next image and, without narration, labels it as a Plateosaurus, an early sauropod.
"There's a whole lot of maths going on in the background when it trains on that study guide, and it doesn't actually learn the material. I'm sure you've crammed for a test before and just tried to write the information on the walls of your brain only to be immediately forgotten. Take that and then imagine if all of that was in a language that you don't understand. That's basically what's going on in there."
A Lystrosaurus passes by Fitz--a Synapsid that survived the end-Permian extinction and made up ninety percent of land vertebrates during the early Triassic. Modern-day mammals are descended from Synapsids, possibly including Lystrosaurus, even though it was not yet a mammal itself.
"So, you know what dinosaurs look like. Are you using the exact same neural pathways in your own brain to recognise them as you are to recognise a person?"
"Applying lecture theory, I strongly doubt it.--Psittacosaurus! Look at the little guy! He is one of the most Ceratopsians of all time."
Dex nods in mildly confused agreement.
"He's named Psittacosaurus because he's got a little parrotlike beak."
"Where, exactly, do you get 'parrot' out of Psittacosaurus?"
"Parrots are part of the order Psittaciformes. I would expect the reason is something to do with etymology and loanwords, which is something I am deeply afraid of falling into. Also keep in mind that this did not evolve into a parrot."
"What happened to 'birds are actually dinosaurs' from earlier?"
Fitz feels the slightest bit of apprehension because the proportions of fun and psychic damage in this fun fact are...not great.
"Birds evolved from the group of dinosaurs called Theropods. These include things like your classic Tyrannosaurus all the way down to the little guys like Microraptor. I have to be careful here because this is heavily debated at the moment, but Theropods are part of the clade Saurischia. This means lizard-hipped because they look like modern lizard hips. Sauropods are up for debate right now, but, historically, they have also been included as Saurischians. Ceratopsians like Psittacosaurus are part of the clade Ornithischia. This means bird-hipped. These did not evolve into birds. They simply look like modern bird hips."
"So what you're saying is that a bird is a T. rex?"
"No. A T. rex is a very specific species of Tyrannosaurid. I am saying that birds are more closely related to T. rex than they are to Psittacosaurus. However, there are some similarities between modern birds and Ornithischian dinosaurs not present in Saurischian dinosaurs that are a result of convergent evolution."
"My brain hurts."
Fitz clicks over to the next image, a Wooly Mammoth of the genus Mammuthus, not to be confused with the Mastodons in the genus Mammut. "I'm sorry about that. If it helps, my brain hurts too."
"It doesn't sound like it."
"That's just because I have enough fun facts to pass as fine, but trust me when I say it's a never-ending wormhole." A shark tooth appears on the screen and Fitz lets out a dejected cry. "Sharks? Why are you like this?"
Dex tilts his head in confusion, not daring to actually ask the question.
"Basically, I have no clue if Megalodon--you've heard of those, I trust--I don't know if they belong in the genus Otodus or Carcharocles, but just to make my memory as bad as possible, Great White Sharks--you've also heard of those, I trust--are in the genus Carchardon. I'm sure there's some deep philosphical reason why those are so similar, but I, frankly, do not care. I don't need this in my life. You're getting labeled as Elasmobranchii and I'm not going to try any further. I'm not doing this today."
"Do you need a break? We can pause for the evening if you've had enough for one day."
"No, it's just that sharks annoy me because of the Megalodon thing and nothing else. Stethacanthus gets a pass though. They look so goofy and that deserves some credit."
Several days of this process pass, the pile of images barely receding as Fitz slowly runs out of new fun facts to share and it devolves into monotony. There are hundreds of images of the same creature, which makes it difficult to keep talking about them. Like, we get it. You're a Trilobite. There's only a hundred million gadjillion more of you in this thing.
Sleep becomes more elusive, and Fitz finds himself in the kitchen baking at 3am more often than not. It doesn't even seem to relieve as much stress as it once did, and suddenly he and Sophie need a whole cognate inquisition.
It's not something that he can put coherent thoughts to, but every session he goes in hoping that she isn't going to mention Dex. There's no logical reason--all they're doing is tell a magic technology thing what a picture has in it, but...maybe it's leftovers from when Dex hated him. That'd be a good answer if it wasn't completely wrong. That would be frustration and annoyance. Whatever is going on is very much neither of those things, though narrowing it down further is worse than trying to narrow down what kind of worm something is. There are so many worms and a lot of them aren't even closely related to each other.
Being a worm sounds nice.
In a last-ditch effort to make himself focus on anything at all that isn't a problem, he finds himself making croissants. This was a good plan until he remembered that they look like the genus Mucrospirifer, which are very common fossils in middle Devonian rocks. The fact that he doesn't even have to try to access this information anymore is a sign that maybe this is not the greatest task he has embarked upon.
Nonetheless, he spends the rest of the night trying to form the croissant dough into various marine molluscs. Yes, this includes the suture lines on the Baculites-inspired ammonite one. Yes, he regrets this decision. That one alone took at least an hour and a half, so it is not particularly surprising when the sun starts to come up over the horizon.
Fitz wonders, knowing his sleep schedule is equally bad, if Dex is looking at the sun as well. More probably, he is cursing at it for bringing in the next day. Fitz's heart's faint echo aches with those emotions accessable at this time of day, a yearning for...something. Likely a decent sleep schedule.
It's a few hours still before the criossants and Fitz are ready to leave the house, sort of ready for another long day of classification. He barely knocks on Dex's door anymore, their schedule becoming so routine it's kind of just automatic. That is kind of concerning.
Dex smiles, his dimples almost outshining the dark circles under his eyes.
"Okay, hear me out," Fitz says conspiratorially, "We have you do some classification."
Dex sighs. "Have you not realized that I don't know what an anything is?"
Fitz holds foward the basket of croissants. "Yes, but consider there are only two options and those options are 'Fitz can bake good' and 'Fitz cannot bake good.'"
It takes a solid five seconds before Dex parses that sentence. "You brought me snacks? You didn't have to do that."
"Trust me when I say I was already awake."
"That good? Alright. I'll make that sacrifice for you."
Dex takes the basket and opens it up to find the formerly intricately-detailed croissants. Most of the minutae was lost while baking, which probably should have been considered. Dex makes direct eye contact with Fitz. "There's something deeply wrong with you. I mean that in the most affectionate way possible, but there's something deeply wrong with you."
"Yeah, I came to that same conclusion while I was working on the ceratitite. I don't actually know the species, but the round suture lines indicates it's part of the order Ceratitida and that's as far as I know."
Dex takes one of the Rafinesquina-inspired ones. "I don't care what order it's in. It's in my face, and that's what counts."
Fitz opens his mouth to argue but decides it's probably not worth arguing about mollusc taxonomy. He cannot summon the courage to care enough. You can only stare at these things for so many hours before ceasing all ability to bother dealing with them any further.
Dex's official review reads, "I will be eating all of these today, I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all. There's more where those came from. Well, there's more normal croissants. No more ammonites. For the love of stars, I'm not doing that again."
"Don't worry. I'll get rid of the evidence as quickly as I can." Dex smiles.
Fitz sits down at the big giant screen that will burn itself into his eyes soon, if it hasn't already.
"Oh, yeah, one more thing--it's not anything changing on your end, but I realised that the data would make more sense in a TreeMap instead of an Array. It just means that I can access it faster on my end, but if I have to hear about one more different kind of coral, I'm going to lose my mind. This is my payment for that. It speeds it up from O(n) to find something up to O(log (n)) and I, at about four in the norming, thought it was the funniest thing that a Tree was log(n) time. Because actual real-world logs come from actual real-word trees. That's even worse said out loud than it was in my brain."
"Okay. Whatever you have to do. I'm just here to point at the--diplocaulus! My child! Look at the little guy! I told you his head was the most shape to ever exist. I want to pat his little head. I think he deserves all the treats."
"Well, he's not getting my croissants, regardless of how pattable his little head is. But, yes. That is the ideal shape. I think we should collectively tailor the Matchmaking System to make us return to that shape, because clearly it's been all downhill since then. That's the only thing that could get me to support the Matchmaking System as a government office. I mean, yeah, I'd still be eugenics, and, don't get me wrong, that's not good, but, at the very least, it'd be funny."
What's also funny is the pit of suspicious, icky emotions that bubble up in the pit of Fitz's gut at the idea of Dex with a Match List. Whatever. It's probably from the same place that all of his other weird Dex-related emotions stem from.
"To be completely fair, I'm not convinced they're our direct ancestors, but that doesn't mean we can't adopt them anyway. That is most certainly not how taxonomy works, but at this point, I do agree with you that it would be quite funny, and that's what really matters."
Fitz clicks over to the next image. "Ah, yes, Opabinia. Anomalocaris's weird cousin. Or maybe Anomalocaris is the weird cousin considering its name is literally abnormal shrimp."
"I think they're both the normal cousin and we're the weird ones."
"Yeah, you're probably right, considering that vertebrates were, like, the size of your thumb and had figured out neither jaws nor fins at that point. Actually--I don't remember if Haikouichthys and Pikaia are vertebrates or just chordates."
"You say those words like I remember what they mean."
"Vertebrates have a backbone, chordates have the spinal cord. You're both a chordate and a vertebrate. Most things that are chordates are also vertebrates. It just got a little funky in the early Cambrian oceans."
Fitz moves on to the next image. "It's the Tully Monster. Look at this guy. He's such a shape. I know I say that every time, but he is such a shape. And his fun fact is that we can't figure out if it's a vertebrate or invertebrate."
"That thing looks like someone tried to draw a squid from a vague memory of a textual description. How could that possibly be a vertebrate?"
"It has a particular kind of eyes and a particular kind of melanin that are usually found in vertebrates."
"Okay, but like--" Dex gestures vaguely at the picture.
"I hear you, but we can't just go off of vibes. We have to start at the vibes and find evidence to prove or disprove those vibes."
"No, you just throw chemicals together and hope that you can clean up the explosion fairly easily."
Fitz sighs and moves on, the myriapod appearing in front of him causing him to freeze.
"You know I'm still sorry about that, right," Dex asks, voice low.
"Stop saying you're sorry," Fitz snaps, the foggy memories of the Arthropleura lit up in neon lights in his mind. Choking as his blood turned to applesauce in his veins, the unrelenting ache of his chest, and the utterly disgusting week after. "That was not your fault."
They sit quietly for a long few moments before Fitz breaks the tension, quietly. "That week I had Forkle bring me whatever books he could find on Arthropleuras in an effort to keep myself entertained." Fitz takes a breath. "It wasn't long before I ran out, and Forkle found me a book on the Carboniferous period, which was--"
"When Arthropleura first appeared?"
Fitz smiles painfully. "Yep. I think we've probably spent too many hours in the same general vicinity if you know my phrases that well. But, as you might have guessed, that one book turned into more books, which turned into..." Fitz trails off, searching for an adequate word and not finding one. "Sometimes I feel like I should get bonus points for the world's weirdest response to stimulus."
"I don't think you'd win that though. Hagfish make ooze. A lot of ooze. So much ooze." Dex pauses slightly. "You're just quietly downloading textbooks into your brain. I would rather that than ooze, but that's just me."
"Yeah, I guess so," Fitz concedes. "Ooze would be funnier though."
Dex nods as he advances the image to the next, brushing against Fitz's arm in the process. A shower of sparks eminates from the barely perceptible point of contact, and Fitz is confused for a very long half a second before things start making sense. Too much sense.
Blood rushes to his cheeks as he focusses his entire tension on the image in front of him in an effort to keep Dex from realising anything, but his visual processing system is too busy with the implications to identify the Dunkleosteus right in front of him.
...What does this mean?
It's the only thing rattling around the inside of his skull, his brain feeling like it was reduced to smaller than a Stegosaurus's to make extra room for it.
He can barely breathe through the aching in his chest.
Would Dex ever speak to him again, if he ever were to find out? They've only just now gotten on decent terms. This would destroy any chance at a truce they could ever have.
What will happen to the Vacker Legacy? It's already in shambles. If anyone were to find out--his family would be done. It's not bad enough to have that traitor but now? Even if he doesn't actually act on it--because there's no way that Dex of all people would ever, ever do that--it'll set fire to everything that remains.
How is something this deeply wrong with him? What part of him is so determined to disregard the entire institution that is the Matchmaking System?
Were his feelings for Sopihe ever real? Or were they just what he was supposed to feel?
Maybe that's why he was so willing to end things when they weren't advantageous for him anymore. The first sign that things wouldn't go well and he immediately runs away. Add that to the list of reasons why he regrets everything about that relationship. He should have stayed. Things could have worked out.
But, instead, he gets to grapple with the fact that he's fundamentally broken.
"Okay, I know this. It's probably a ray-finned fish because why would it be a lobe-finned fish? Most of those are on land nowadays."
Dex's musing snaps Fitz out of his spiralling just enough to choke out, "Placodermi."
"What?"
"It's not a bony fish. It's a placoderm."
"I know this, I know this, I...don't know this."
Dex's sigh of resignation makes goose bumps spread over Fitz's forearms. That's probably not a great sign.
"Dunkleosteus," Fitz says, trying to sound tired so it doesn't seem like he cares too much. Whether or not it works is unverified.
"I would have gotten there eventually," Dex says, smirking.
This is not going to work. There is no way in Exile that Fitz is going to be normal for several hours on end like this.
He clicks the image over, wishing that focussing on the task at hand will get him through. It's the only hope he has left. He takes the next few in a lightning round, not even bothering to go over the overwrought fun facts between them. A bright purple Lambeosaurus barely registers in his mind, he just sees the shade and enters the genus.
Quite a lot of this follows, with Dex just barely leaning over his shoulder. The only form of time that exists is the interval between Dex's breath brushing past Fitz's ear. It makes concentration extremely difficult, and Fitz does everything he can to just block it out. If it works for thoughts, it works for the entire world. All that remains is him and this computer screen begging him to get these photos categorized before he can have an entire breakdown.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Dex asks quietly, after who knows how much time.
No.
"Yeah. Why?"
"I miss my random facts."
"Really? Even I've gotten tired of them, and I'm the one giving out the unnecessary information."
"Yes, really. I have pretty much zero knowledge retention when it comes to them, and that means every single time that they're brand new."
Come on, Fitz. You know this.
"This is a genus called Hallucigenia. I want you to guess which bits are the legs and which end is the head."
Dex leans closer to the screen, which was very much a bad decision on Fitz's part.
Fitz can barely think straight as he points at the picture. "Those are the legs and that's the head."
"Hey, you did better than the people that discovered the type specimen washed up on the beach one day. They thought it walked on stilts and those wiggly bits were stinging tentacles, so you deserve bonus points for that. However, the other end is the head."
"Fifty percent is better than none. I win."
"And your next task is to guess which time period its earliest fossils date back to."
"You know, the first one."
"The Hadean eon?" Fitz asks incredulously.
"No, the first one with big animals."
"Oh, you mean the Cambrian. That makes more sense."
"If you say so. I just know that's the weird one. There is almost no logical basis to my guess."
"Although, if I want to be difficult about it, there were some multicellular animals in the Ediacaran right before the Cambrian, but I haven't seen a Dickinsonia in here yet and I'm so bad at sponges that you know I've just been calling them phylum Porifera and moving on with my life."
"You say that like you expect me to be disappointed in you but you don't realise that I would also call them sponges and move on with my own life. We have been over the fact that I do not care enough about the Council to actually make this a good image recognition system. I can just complain about the unlabeled data I was given when it turns out bad."
"Alright. This is what we do. Everything else just gets labelled as kingdom Animalia and suddenly we're magically done with this."
Dex smiles, stopping Fitz's heart.
"I like how you think. I kind of wish you would've thought of it a while ago, but progress is progress."
"On the other hand, this keeps me entertained." It also keeps giving him a reason to look at Dex. Which is not the best motivation he's ever had, but, at this point, his mental walls keeping him from making a fool of himself crumbling. Stars, he's pathetic.
He somehow maintains this fragile façade for the rest of the day, and a few more subsequent days, until, of course, a certain someone decides to be a plague on the Lost Cities once again. Fitz, in return, resolves that he will not let go of this particular project until it's complete. If Dex's theory is correct, the Council may not want the database anymore, but he's afraid to admit that he doesn't want to lost his only excuse to speak with Dex in a cordial manner.
Stars, he is pathetic.
This also happens to be the only thought echoing through his mind as he climbs up the stairs to Dex's room once more.
Dex, working on one of his gadgets, looks at him, emotions quickly flickering across his face. "I'm sorry I forgot to hail you, but I've been given some new fun activities." The bitter sarcasm on the word 'fun' makes it incredibly clear that whatever he is currently working on is not going according to plan. "You can head on back to Everglan if you'd like and get back to doing literally anything more interesting."
"At least that means you were right," Fitz shrugs.
"Yeah. That means I won the wonderful prize of getting yelled at by the Council for reading into their master plans too much. I proceeded to explain in detail why their master plan wasn't going to work."
"I'm sure that was a fun conversation for you at least. I hope at least one of them got an information aneurysm."
"Believe it or not, it's much more fun explaining technical concepts to someone who actually pretends to be interested."
"Hey, I'm interested," Fitz retorts. "It's not my fault that I lack the prerequisite knowledge to understand anything."
Dex throws his hands up into the air. "That's still better than active hostility." Dex pauses for a second. "Though it probably didn't help that I was glaring at Zarina and Clarette the entire time."
Those names can pretty much only mean one thing, and that one thing is a very large Myriapod from the Carboniferous.
"I'm sorry for having to bring that up again."
"It's not your fault it was in the dataset. I doubt even the Council knows what's in there. They just gave me a dumpster and told me to have fun with it."
Fitz smiles. "And then I proceeded to jump into your dumpster and make it my new home for a while."
"And I thank you for that because I would have just sat sadly in there without you."
Fitz shifts his weight to break Dex's eye contact. "If you ever find yourself in another one, let me know. I wouldn't want you to be alone in there."
Dex blushes a pale shade of pink. Fitz is probably no better, judging by how warm his face feels.
"I mean, if you want to sit there as like, emotional support or something, someone at the Registry decided to make my life exponentially harder. Installed a new firewall around the files and everything after restoring some information that I would rather not have on their servers. Icky personal life garbage. I can edit yours down too, if you'd like."
"I mean, if you want to, I'm not going to stop you, but most of my personal life is already a spectacle for the public's enjoyment, so I'm not sure how much it really matters."
Fitz finds himself a nice seat in the same chair that he's sat in for these many long days right next to Dex as he releases a barrage of swear words at the gadget in his hands. No doubt it's a part of the Technopath process, and, as such, he dare not question it. Even more swear words are unleashed when it appears to be successful.
Fitz leans over to find an imparter screen filled with text, most of which he can't parse between the angle brackets and Dex's scrolling through the pages at a pace only justified by Dex's apparent familiarity with their contents.
One line, however, causes both of them to stop: "In recent weeks, Dex appears to be developing an interest in one Fitz--"
Dex deletes the paragraph before Fitz even has a chance to read all of it, but the possible implications make his brain feel funny. So much so that he doesn't even really want to process it. It would give him the barest sliver of hope, something he most certainly cannot afford to have if he wants to get over this anytime soon.
Dex glances at Fitz, probably checking to monitor Fitz's reaction, even more probably hoping that he hadn't seen anything at all.
Whatever is or isn't on his face, Dex whispers, "That doesn't mean what you think it means, I swear."
The crushing despair that fills Fitz's chest cavity is even worse after that brief rush of hope, but he still has to try. This might be the only chance he has to work this into a conversation, and there's a massive chance that he'll talk himself out of it if he doesn't just burn this friendship to the ground and see what ashes are left. It's an incredibly bad decision, but it just might be his only chance. He'll figure out the consequences later.
Fitz whispers back, "I wouldn't be diametrically opposed to the general concept."
Dex's brow creases and he crosses his arms. "What, precisely, do you mean by that?"
It's the first time Fitz actually has to string a sentence together admitting everything that has been swirling through his mind, and, unsurprisingly, it takes a very long moment to compose. "It means that you're the only one I want to see on my Match List. Trust me, I know there are extenuating circumstances that will prevent this from happening, but I want it...I want you."
Stars, that might be the cheesiest way to end a sentence anyone has ever said. That doesn't stop Dex from blushing deeper and smiling into his lap.
"Well. I was not expecting that. This calls for drastic measures. I have to admit that, unfortunately, the Registry's conclusions are correct for the first time probably ever."
Fitz snort-laughs. "I mean, at least it's deleted now?"
"It'll be back in a day or two. I'll keep an eye on yours and make sure it stays pristine. I don't know about you, but I, personally, am not super thrilled by the concept of the Council being this aware of my presonal life."
"Wait, so is this, like, official now?"
Dex pauses for just a moment. "Unless you have any remaining reservations, I think so? Like, if you need a day or whatever to figure some things out, then go ahead. I'm mostly just waiting to be told you're just executing an elaborate prank."
His expression tugs at Fitz's heartstrings.
"I would never do that to you." Even Fitz is surprised by the amount of conviction in his words, but it makes logical sense. He would rather endure a thousand tea parties with Alvar than even think about playing with Dex's emotions like that.
Dex nods slowly.
Fitz hesitantly takes Dex's hand in his own, entangling their fingers. "Just, can I ask one favour?"
"Sure," Dex concedes.
"For the love of stars, don't ask me to interact with trilobite taxonomy ever--"
Fitz gets cut off by Dex's other hand cradling his cheek, causing his entire brain to cease function for the fourth time in probably as many minutes.
"Don't start with that again. I already want to kiss you so badly it's absolutely unreal."
Fitz, in return, decides that he doesn't know how to respond to that with any sane answer, so his backup plan is, of course, "It's because they existed throughout the entire Palaeozoic--"
His master plan pays off as Dex presses his lips into his own, the soft, gentle sensation sending a shiver down his spine. He leans into Dex's hand, his own free hand burying itself in Dex's coppery curls. He doesn't realise that he has stopped breathing until Dex pulls a millimeter away, leaving him gasping for air.
Fitz's automatic annoying response comes back online first, saying, "Well, if that's all I have to say to deserve that, you're going to be getting a lot more fun facts in the future."
"That sounds like a threat, but I think I'm okay with that."
Fitz smiles and kisses Dex again, melting into his embrace once more.
"Then it's only fair I offer the same for you. Just, like, with technology."
Dex thinks for a second, probably choosing a topic out of his many. His eyes glitter as he asks, "Have I ever told you how web servers work?"
Fitz shakes his head. "No, I don't think so. Tell me in as much excruciating detail as you can possibly manage."