A/N: Hi again. Okay so I think I won't be able to update the other fic for a few weeks because I have A LOT of stuff coming up, but I'll still be working on it when I can to get it up ASAP. With that said, this idea has been annoying the crap outta me for a while. Stats gave me inspiration! Who knew! Five and Vanya are probs OoC, but eh. Yolo. I enjoyed writing it, that's all that matters. Song inspiration from I'm In Love With A Girl by Big Star. Will probably continue with more one shots in the same vein. Lemme know what y'all think!

Disclaimer: I don't own Umbrella Academy or I'm In Love With A Girl. This is for fun and not for profit.


2002~

The first time he noticed it was when he was in the library with her.

Five was working on his time travel calculations and Vanya was reading a book that she had borrowed from Ben. It was a habit for them to do things like this together during their free time, a comfortable silence hanging in the air as they went about their own work. Only the sound of pages turning, pencils scribbling, and soft breathing echoed in the library.

It was unintentional, really.

She went to set her novel down on the table just as he dragged his pencil to the edge of the page in his journal. It was the briefest of moments when their hands brushed up against one another, but something had changed.

Five had jerked his hand away in surprise, leaving a line of graphite across his paper in the wake of his movement. Vanya had let her book slip from her fingers to hit the counter with a thud as she froze at the contact. They stared at their respective pages, their bodies remaining unmoving and the atmosphere shifting from a pleasant quiet to a deafening silence.

He didn't understand why there seemed to be a problem. It's not like they hadn't ever touched each other before. They had their fair share of hugs, although those were quite rare and hadn't happened in a while. Their fingers had grazed one another when they handed each other things as well, but those moments were also infrequent and not recent occurrences.

Huh.

Actually, Five couldn't think of the last time he and Vanya had touched before then.

He knew that he came into contact with the other children, Sir Reginald, and Pogo on a daily basis due to the physicality of their training exercises. Grace also tended to pat his hair or squeeze his shoulder as signs of affection that he reluctantly accepted, not to mention the countless times she had to stitch up any wounds.

But Vanya? There didn't seem to be any need for them to touch at any point in their day-to-day lives, so it was no wonder that their fleeting touch just now was their first in a long time.

It also happened to have him all kinds of fucked up.

He wasn't sure why.

He had a good poker face when it came to emotions, so it wasn't difficult for him to act like their touch was no big deal. He could play off the jolting of his hand with ease. However, no amount of sheer willpower could dispel the red that flared across his face. That was the only visible indicator that didn't even begin to express his inner turmoil.

His skin tingled where her small smooth hand had lightly bumped his. His breath caught in his throat and his heart thumped swiftly in his chest, which he hoped that she couldn't hear and realize how much she had affected him.

He wasn't used to reacting to…well, anything in this way. It was an unusual feeling, one that was foreign to him. He'd never felt this way before, and if he was being honest, he didn't know that he could even feel this way about anything. It was strange, to say the least.

What the hell did Vanya do to him, exactly?

Wait.

Did he know for sure that it was touching Vanya that made him like this?

The reasonable part of Five's brain knew that of course, the contact between their hands had certainly led to his erratic physical response. It was a simple cause and effect relationship. Statistics couldn't get any more straightforward than that.

Unfortunately, his logical reasoning was ignored in favor of irrationality. He banked on the fact that correlation was not causation, at least in many situations. Just because he and Vanya happened to touch each other before he reacted the way he did didn't mean that it was the cause of his unfamiliar feelings.

No, there definitely could've been numerous other factors that did…whatever the hell this was to him.

The air conditioning in the room must've been malfunctioning, which led to his face heating up in the warm atmosphere. He had a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich just an hour before their free time, so his increased heart rate must've been due to his sugary afternoon snack. The pollen count was high that mid-spring day, meaning that allergies could account for the constriction in his throat. The tingling sensation in his hand…did that happen whenever he touched anyone else?

It had to. Why else would there be this strange feeling in his skin? It wasn't because of Vanya, that's for damn sure.

Correlation was not causation.

Vanya had recovered from her shock, or at least enough to move again, and started fumbling with her novel when she picked it up. He noticed there was a light blush dusting her cheeks, and her chest rose and fell with heavier breaths than usual. She also chewed on her bottom lip nervously. She was obviously trying to get back into the story, but her eyes darted around the page, not focusing on what she was looking at.

Their momentary contact had clearly flustered her as well. Five felt relieved that he wasn't the only one, and he was perhaps even a bit amused by her reaction. He found that he kind of liked the way she looked when she was flustered, rosy cheeks and all.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Where the hell did that come from?

He needed to stop reading into this so much. She was just facing the same symptoms as he was from the higher temperature in the room, the sweet sandwich she had shared with him earlier, and the loathsome pollen permeating the air. He already established that Vanya didn't do this to him, so it only made sense that he didn't do anything to her.

Right?

Correlation was not causation.

Five tried to get lost in his calculations again, but he couldn't get his hand to move.

That's just…an unfortunate side effect.

His hand lamely sat in the middle of the page. It loosely held his pencil that he willed, to no avail, to start recording the ocean of numbers in his brain. Alas, even if his limbs were functioning properly, it seemed that all the equations in his mind had left him high and dry. It must've been low tide, the formulas pulled out to sea for the time being as he had lost inspiration.

That's what he had tried to tell himself, anyways.

He didn't linger on the fact that the paralyzed hand was the one that had touched Vanya's, and that the numbers that had disappeared had been replaced by thoughts of the girl next to him.

Which, none of that meant anything.

Correlation was not causation.

Five glanced at her again and was startled to see her looking at him already. She smiled softly when he met her eyes, her cheeks still pink. She then turned back to her book, finally reading the words that lined the pages. Although she still appeared partially fazed, she had considerably calmed down and moved on, whereas he was still stuck on thinking through the situation.

He liked when she smiled. He felt a weird fluttering sensation in his stomach when she did.

Seriously?

He needed to get himself together. He also needed to stop eating those unhealthy snacks so that he wouldn't have that stomach problem…that he's never had before.

There's a first time for everything, though.

Correlation was not causation.

"I like when you smile, too."

Five jerked his head in her direction.

What the fuck did she just say?

Vanya didn't look up from her novel when she spoke or when he turned to her. She just giggled and continued reading, as if her words didn't have any real weight to them. Or because she already knew what they would do to him.

Oh shit.

He had said it out loud. He had said he liked when she smiled out loud.

And she had heard him.

She had responded, too, but he wasn't about to get ahead of himself with speculations on what she had meant. He was a little occupied at the moment with an internal meltdown that he couldn't explain.

So much for being an expert at keeping his composure.

If it was possible, his already speedy heart rate kicked into double time. His face felt like it was ablaze and his throat tightened again. The tingling in his hand had morphed into a burning sensation, as if the touch of her hand had seared a mark on his skin to remind him that she had done this to him, that she was the one making him feel these things.

Stop it.

Five squeezed his eyes shut tightly and tried to reason away his reaction. The room had only gotten warmer as the sun was at the perfect angle to shine through the library windows and onto them. The sandwich had given him a worse sugar high than he had previously thought. The pollen had slipped in through an open door and was now assaulting their sinuses worse than before.

Yeah. That seemed plausible.

So why was he still worrying over a simple touch?

He pushed all thoughts of Vanya out of his head. He could figure this shit out later. Maybe he could run a few experiments, ultimately proving that she wasn't making him feel some kind of way and correlation was not causation. He really had to stay focused on the task at hand for the time being, though. There was only so much free time they were allotted, after all.

Five dove back into his time travel theories, his hand finally mobile again and the equations rushing back in with the high tide of his mathematical brilliance.

That's much better.

Perhaps he could get through the rest of free time without thinking about Vanya and how nice her giggle had sounded.

Goddamnit.


Hope y'all enjoyed!

~SOS~