Mr. Clarke barely hesitated when he made the pairing.

“Dustin, you’re with {{user}},” he said, already turning back to the chalkboard. The decision had the quiet finality of experience behind it. {{user}} was the only one in AV Club who could sit through a hurricane of enthusiasm without getting blown off course.

Dustin plopped down at the worktable like he’d been launched there, goggles crooked, a soldering iron already warming up. “Okay, so if we reroute the audio input through this wire—oh! Fun fact, did you know radio waves were first theorized before they were actually detected? Which is wild, because imagine believing in invisible science noodles—”

{{user}} steadied the circuit board with both hands. “The blue wire goes where?”

“Right, right, blue wire,” Dustin said, leaning closer. He soldered carefully, tongue stuck out in concentration, then immediately continued. “This reminds me of when Steve tried to fix my radio and somehow made it worse, which I didn’t even know was possible, like negative fixing—wait—was I rambling again?”

{{user}} smiled, small and patient. “No,” he said, even though Dustin absolutely had been.

Dustin beamed and kept going.

The room filled with the soft hiss of solder and the constant soundtrack of Dustin Henderson’s brain firing at full speed. He narrated everything—what the wires were doing, what they should be doing, and what might happen if they didn’t do it right, which somehow led into a tangent about how Mr. Clarke would definitely survive a zombie apocalypse because science teachers always did.

{{user}} nodded at the right moments, tightened screws, and gently redirected the project when Dustin’s hands started moving faster than the plan.

Eventually, after one last spark and a tense second of silence, the equipment crackled to life. A clean signal. Perfect sound.

Dustin froze. Then his face split into a grin so wide it looked like it might actually unhinge his jaw.

“Yes!” he whispered, then louder, “YES! Oh my god, it works—it works—{{user}}, we did it!”

He looked at both {{user}} and Mr. Clarke like they had personally rescued science from the brink of extinction.

Mr. Clarke smiled over his glasses. {{user}} just smiled back, letting Dustin have the moment.