A Perfect Arrangement of Atoms

Summary: Doug asks Evie to the Auradon Prep prom in the best way he knows how.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Descendants (2015) film nor its characters. I only own this one-shot.

The atmosphere throughout Auradon Prep was humming with activity and excitement as the date of the annual prom drew closer. With the largest event of the school year only a month away, the girls were discussing what they planned on wearing to it as well as who they were going with or who they hoped would ask them to it. The guys, meanwhile, were either at ease because they had dates or were nervous because they had yet to find one.

In the girls' wing of the residence quarters, Mal, in an A-line gown, stood on a wooden platform in the dormitory that she shared with Evie. The top half of the gown was fitted and black with a sweetheart neckline, a corseted bodice, and a coating of rhinestones. The bottom half was a skirt of purple taffeta that flared outwards and down to the floor with layers of black taffeta that also flared out over it in such a manner that the skirt of the gown appeared to alternate in vertical strips of purple and black.

"So?" said Evie from behind her purple-haired best friend, "what do you think?"

Mal rested her hands on her waist, silently admiring her reflection in the full-length mirror before her. Her lips slowly curved into a smile. "I like it. It's me."

"It is, isn't it?" said Evie as she pulled back from lacing the corset segment of her latest design. "Ben will faint when he sees you in it."

"Then I'll have to get a new dance partner," Mal remarked with a smirk.

"You're looking at her," said Evie, jabbing her thumbs towards herself. "Is there anything about the dress that you want me to alter?"

Mal paused for a moment before she asked, "Can you loosen the corset a bit? I feel like I'm going to cough up a lung."

"Sure thing," said Evie as she began fingering at the black laces of the gown.

A brief knock interrupted Evie's task and caused the eyes of both girls to dart to the door. Evie was about to walk over to answer it when she saw a small, white envelope get pushed underneath it and into the dormitory. Eyes widening in surprise, Evie hopped off of the platform and made her way to the door to pick up the envelope.

"What is it?" Mal asked, not moving from her place on the platform.

Evie traced the elegant cursive writing on the envelope. "It's for me."

"Open it!" Mal said eagerly.

Evie nodded and sliced open the side of the envelope with a flick of one of her carefully-manicured nails. She slid her fingers inside the slot and pulled out a white card. She rested it against the envelope to read the message written on it only to frown in confusion.

Mal raised an eyebrow at Evie's shift in facial expression. "What does it say?"

"You tell me," said Evie, walking back over to Mal to show her the card.

Mal leaned forward to peer over Evie's right shoulder to read the neatly-handwritten message on the card:

59 + 8 + (25 – N)?

Mal furrowed her purple brows in confusion. "Is this supposed to be mail or someone's algebra homework?"

Evie frowned. "If it's Chad's, I'm not doing it."

Mal shook her head. "The writing is too pretty to be Chad's chicken scratch though."

"True," Evie agreed, pulling out the envelope to compare the writing on the card with that on the envelope.

Mal's eyes widened slightly when the back of the card caught her eye. "What's that on the back?"

Evie flipped the card over to find a metallic image of a silver atom on a navy blue background. What made the atom unusual, the blue-haired girl noted, was the cherry red heart at the center of the atom where a nucleus would normally be.

"Isn't there something like that on the cover of your chemistry textbook?" Mal asked.

Evie nodded. "Yeah, it's an atom."

Mal smirked. "Well, looks like you've got yourself an admirer."

Evie nodded again. "Yeah, I guess." She flipped the card over to stare at the equation again. "I still don't understand the numbers though."

Mal paused for a moment before she said, "There's a question mark at the end of it, right?"

"Yeah," Evie replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Look, I know I have the algebra skills of a wooden spoon, but I'm pretty sure question marks aren't used in math," Mal pointed out.

Evie gave her roommate a puzzled look. "And your point is?"

"The question mark is probably a sign that the admirer is asking you something," Mal explained. "Maybe the numbers are coding the message."

"So you're saying I have to decode the message by matching up the numbers with letters?" Evie asked.

Mal shrugged her slender shoulders. "It's worth a shot."

"Well, how am I supposed to know which letters the numbers stand for?" Evie asked.

"Beats me," said Mal with another shrug of her shoulders. "I'm no chemist."

"Chemist," Evie murmured. She rested one of her French tips on her chin in thought as her eyes shifted to her chemistry textbook that lay open across her desk. She let out a brief hum and walked over to her desk.

Mal watched Evie flip briskly through the textbook pages. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for something involving both numbers and letters," Evie answered as she continued to turn pages.

Mal rolled her eyes. "That's literally the entire textbook, Evie."

Evie ignored Mal and continued to peruse the pages of her textbook. She paused when she came across two pages side by side that displayed a large table of squares whose tessellated design greatly resembled an unfinished game of Tetris. She inspected the table carefully, taking in the information printed before her.

"What did you find?" Mal asked when she noticed Evie had stopped flipping pages.

"A copy of the periodic table of elements," Evie replied.

Mal just stared at Evie. "A copy of the what?"

"The periodic table of elements," Evie repeated, walking over to show Mal the table. "It lists a bunch of chemical elements and their different properties."

Mal glanced at the table in confusion. "What's with all the letters?"

"Those are the chemical symbols of the elements," Evie explained. "Some of the elements have some really long names, so they are listed in short forms on the table."

"So, is there a symbol for every element on this table?" Mal asked.

Evie nodded. "Yeah, that's how they're all written on the table. The letters of the symbols stand for the elements and these numbers here," Evie pointed to the numbers at the top of several of the squares, "are the atomic numbers of the elements."

There was a moment of silence that followed in the dormitory, a silence that was shattered soon after by the simultaneous gasps of realization from both Evie and Mal.

"Letters and numbers!"

Evie bolted back to her desk and threw both her chemistry textbook and the card down onto it. She ran her fingers along the periodic table to find the element with the atomic number that corresponded with the first number on the card. "Praseodymium!"

"Bless you," said Mal.

Evie shook her head with a laugh. "No, that's the name of the element with an atomic number of fifty-nine." She grabbed a pen from the glass jar sitting on the desk and wrote down the letters P and R, so the card read:

59 + 8 + (25 – N)?

PR

"The chemical symbol of Praseodymium is PR," Evie stated gleefully. "We're on to something!"

Mal grinned broadly. "What's the next number?"

Evie looked down at the card. "It says to add eight."

"So, what's eight on the table?" Mal questioned curiously.

Evie ran the top of her pen along the table in search of the element whose atomic number was eight. "Oxygen."

"Which letters stand for oxygen?" Mal asked.

"Just one," Evie answered, scribbling down the letter. "O."

59 + 8 + (25 – N)?

PRO

"What's next?" Mal asked.

Evie glanced down at the card. "It says to subtract N from twenty-five and add what I'm left with to the equation."

"Subtract?" Mal questioned. "Like, take away the N from twenty-five?"

Evie nodded.

"So, what's twenty-five on the table?" Mal asked.

Evie shifted her eyes over to the table and ran her pen across it again until she found what she was looking for. "Manganese."

"Sounds like a language," Mal remarked, looking amused. "What are the letters?"

"M and N," Evie answered.

"But the card said to take away the N," Mal reminded her.

"That just leaves M," said Evie. "I'm left with M."

"Then that's what you add to the other letters," said Mal. "Are there any more numbers?"

Evie shook her head as she wrote down the letter M. "No, just the question mark."

"Add that too," Mal told her.

Evie did as she was told. The moment she pulled back to read what she decoded, her jaw dropped open in astonishment. She put down the pen and slowly picked up the card for a closer look to make sure she was not misreading anything.

Mal's eyes widened in excitement. "Does it say what I think it says?"

Holding the card delicately between her fingers, Evie walked over to Mal to show her the card:

59 + 8 + (25 – N)?

PROM?

Mal beamed at Evie. "It's a prom invitation for you!"

Evie smiled widely, her eyes not leaving the card. She had to admit that the coded message was such a creative way for someone to ask her to the prom. It was also very romantic. She was flattered that someone had put a lot of effort into her prom invitation. It showed that the person cared and Evie found that commendable.

"Now, the question is, who is the admirer behind the invitation?" Mal questioned with an air of curiosity.

Evie's smile grew as she flipped over the card to gaze at the atom. She knew of only one guy who would be clever enough to ask her to the prom in the manner that he did. The same guy, her lab partner in chemistry class, who most likely returned the feelings that she had for him.

In the boys' wing of the residence quarters, Doug was diligently working on his chemistry homework at his desk. His roommate, one of the players on Auradon Prep's tourney team, was out with one of the school's cheerleaders, so Doug decided to take advantage of the temporary tranquility within the dormitory to make some progress on his homework.

A knock at the door caused Doug to look up from his sheet of stoichiometry word problems. He looked to the door to see a small, white envelope slide in from underneath. He put down his pencil, stood up, and made his way to the door to pick up the envelope. He turned it over and smiled when he saw the shiny seal of a mirror that was quite similar to one that Doug knew all too well.

Without a single moment of hesitation, Doug ripped the side of the envelope off and pulled out a scented card with an image of a glass beaker on a baby blue background. The beaker, filled with red liquid, was steaming and emitting bubbles in the shape of hearts that were as red as the liquid. A quick sniff of the card caused the scent of strawberries to fill his nostrils, a scent that, like the mirror seal, was also very familiar to him.

Feeling his heart pound against his ribcage, Doug flipped over the card and grinned at the message written on it:

39 + 99