Work Text:
The clock ticks softly overhead as the fluorescent lights of the science lab hum lazily. Outside the windows, Peach Creek High is alive with the colors of autumn; but inside the science lab, it’s just Tracey, a battered lab bench, and a half-assembled experiment on chemical reactions.
Tracey scowls at the sheet in front of her. Numbers blur. Formulas tangle. She scratches the back of her head in frustration, dislodging a piece of her hair that falls into her eyes. When, suddenly, Edd walks into the lab.
“Tracey, are you alright?” Edd asks. His voice is gentle and cautious, like he’s afraid to disturb her concentration.
Tracey groans theatrically and slumps over the bench. “Not unless you speak fluent ‘gibberish,’ Double D.”
Edd chuckles under his breath; it’s low and self-conscious, but warm. Tracey peeks up at him. He’s already sliding his own, careful, precise notes toward her. He taps lightly at the page with the eraser of his pencil.
“Here,” he says. “It’s about balancing the charges across the ionic bonds.”
Tracey squints, unimpressed. “Yeah, so you say, but these elements look like they’re just throwing electrons at each other and hoping for the best.”
Edd smiles, soft, and a little conspiratorial. “In a way, they are. Atoms form ions when they gain or lose electrons to achieve a stable octet, eight electrons in their outer shell. For example, sodium (Na) loses one electron to become Na⁺, while chlorine (Cl) gains one to become Cl⁻. Opposites attract by donating or receiving electrons, thus forming a bond.”
Tracey frowns, tapping her pencil against the table thoughtfully. “Okay… but how do you know who loses and who gains? Seems like it could go either way.”
Edd brightens, visibly delighted by the question. “Excellent observation! That depends on their positions in the periodic table. Metals, on the left side, tend to lose electrons, becoming cations. Nonmetals, on the right, tend to gain electrons, becoming anions. Electronegativity, too, how strongly an atom attracts those electrons, plays a major role.”
He flips open his notebook and quickly sketches two rough atomic models. “Look, sodium only has one valence electron, way out here," he points. "It’s easier for it to lose that one than to try and gain seven more.”
Tracey leans over, studying the diagrams. Her shoulder brushes against his, just a little, but neither of them moves away.
“And chlorine,” she mutters, half to herself, “has seven… so it just needs one more to hit eight. Full house.”
Edd beams at her. “Exactly!”
Tracey smirks. “Alright, so, chemistry’s just like really intense speed dating.”
Edd splutters, flushing pink. “I- well- in a sense- if you insist on such a- ah- colloquial analogy… then, yes.”
Tracey laughs. The sound is bright and easy, cutting through the sterile air of the lab. She flips her pencil between her fingers. “Sneaky little electrons,” she teases. “You’re gonna ruin my bad science grades if you keep explaining stuff like this, Professor.”
Edd ducks his head, blushing furiously.
It’s then that Tracey notices the way he fiddles with the edge of his notebook when he’s flustered, the way his lashes brush his cheeks when he looks down, the way his voice gets a little tighter and softer when he’s trying to sound composed but is absolutely not composed.
Something inside her clicks, something electric and reckless and giddy. She leans in, just slightly, and smirks at him.
“Careful,” she murmurs. “Talk nerdy to me like that again and I might just combust right here in the lab.”
The effect is immediate. Edd’s eyes go wide. He makes a soft, undignified sound; something between a cough and a whimper, and nearly knocks over the beaker between them.
Tracey just grins wider, spinning her pencil with ease as she turns back to the worksheet. “Speed dating,” she repeats under her breath. “Got it.”
Edd spends the next five minutes staring at his own notes like they’ve spontaneously rewritten themselves in a foreign language.
-
Edd stares at his notes. Or he tries to.
It’s difficult when his brain is short-circuiting so badly that words like valence shell and covalent bond start swirling into Tracey’s smile and Tracey’s eyes and Tracey leaning way too close and saying things he will absolutely have to explain to a therapist someday.
Tracey, for her part, is casually filling out her worksheet, pencil flipping between her fingers, smirking every time Edd accidentally knocks something off the lab bench, which is often.
Very often.
First it’s his eraser, then a beaker, then a pencil sharpener. At this rate, he’s going to end up knocking himself into cardiac arrest.
“So…” Tracey says, keeping her tone maddeningly casual as she copies the balanced equations he set up earlier. “When sodium throws its electron at chlorine, does it buy it dinner first? Or…”
Edd chokes. Audibly. He fumbles the test tube in his hands, nearly sending it spinning onto the floor. Only Tracey’s quick reflexes (and an alarmingly graceful lunge) save it from disaster.
She snatches it out of midair with a triumphant grin.
“Relax, Professor,” she teases, setting it gently back in its rack. “You’re gonna scare the atoms into un-bonding at this rate.”
Edd can’t answer. He’s too busy trying to remember how breathing works, how words work, what oxygen is and why his lungs don’t seem to want it anymore. His hands are shaking so badly he has to clutch the edge of the table just to steady himself.
Tracey leans back in her seat with a lazy, feline stretch, tugging her off-shoulder shirt even further down one arm without seeming to notice (she absolutely notices).
“You know,” she says thoughtfully, “I think chemistry might finally be starting to make sense to me after all.”
Edd makes a noise that might generously be described as a squeak.
Tracey glances at him out of the corner of her eye, smirks wider, and goes back to pretending to concentrate.
Meanwhile, Edd— poor, brilliant, overwhelmed Edd— sits there silently, reciting the Aufbau principle, the Pauli exclusion principle, and Hund’s rule inside his own head like a mantra, desperately trying to focus on anything except the fact that Tracey smells like sunlight and bad ideas and that he’s probably going to combust before the bell rings.
And all of a sudden, Tracey is leaning in again, shirt slipping scandalously down one bare shoulder, eyes glinting with lazy mischief, voice low and warm and dangerous.
“Talk nerdy to me,” she purrs, “and I'll have to run an experiment on you myself.”
Edd short-circuits completely, blushing so hard he practically bursts into flames. He finds himself stammering incoherently about ionic bonds and electron configurations, while Tracey just smirks and leans closer.
Her hand brushes his.
Her breath fans his neck.
Everything is spinning, slipping, burning,
And then,
-
Edd bolts upright in bed.
His heart is hammering against his ribs like it’s trying to escape. His pajama shirt is plastered to his skin with sweat. His face and stomach feel like they’re on fire. He stares blankly into the darkness of his bedroom, panting.
“Dear sweet Galileo,” he gasps.
He shoves the covers off, feet hitting the cold floorboards with a wet slap. Stumbling into the bathroom, he flicks the light on, and winces at his own reflection.
His hair is disheveled, eyes wide and wild, face and ears crimson. When he looks down, he realizes that the heat runs further than expected, causing his throat to drop into his stomach.
“Get a grip, Eddward,” he mutters furiously, splashing cold water onto his face with both hands. “It was merely a dream, a… a grotesquely vivid neuronal misfire!”
Another splash, colder this time. He clutches the sink, breathing hard, dripping onto the porcelain.
In the mirror, he can still see her: Tracey’s smirk, Tracey’s lazy stretch, Tracey’s voice curling around him like smoke. Edd groans and buries his burning face into a towel.
“You’re supposed to be resting for midterms, not- not- whatever that was!”
The faucet drips softly. The clock ticks. The house creaks with the heavy silence of an autumn night.
And somewhere in the back of his racing mind, he knows with a horrible, sinking certainty:
He is not getting over Tracey Foxgrove.
Not anytime soon.