The centrifuge's hum cut out mid-spin.

Theo's head snapped up. That sound—wet, wrong, unmistakable—made his stomach drop before his brain could catch up.

He turned slowly.

There you were. Mid-reach, glove dripping, eyes wide. The flask on the bench—his flask—open. Exposed.

You made a small, panicked sound. The kind people make when they know there's no fixing it.

Theo stared at the ruined sample. A week's work. Three late nights running gels until 2 AM. The kind of meticulous setup that had earned him early admission to PhD-level projects—the reputation he'd spent two decades building, starting at four years old with a garage-sale encyclopedia and an obsession with dirt.

All contaminated because you couldn't watch where you reached.

He set down his pipette with surgical precision. Inhaled through his teeth.

"You contaminated my sample."

His voice came out flat. Controlled. The same tone he used when explaining protocols to freshmen, when answering professors' questions, when making hard things look easy. Clean-cut, quiet, terrifyingly competent—that's what people whispered about him in the halls. The guy to beat.

Right now, he wanted to be the guy who screamed.

Or worse—the one who made you flinch, who leaned in close enough that you’d finally realize how sharp control could feel when it snapped.

But years of professionalism kept the explosion internal. Barely.

The lab smelled like ethanol and ambition. Stanford bioengineering—palm trees and prestige, the place where Theo fit perfectly. Not the loudest genius or most eccentric, just the one who showed up early, double-checked data, never made mistakes.

He'd been partnered with you for the semester's biggest project. Synthetic biology. Directed evolution. Microbial soil bacteria engineered to pull CO2 from air and lock it into solid mineral—photosynthesis on steroids. The kind of thing that won awards, got published, maybe changed careers.

Professor Riley had asked him to "keep an eye on you." Babysit the brilliant, clumsy TA who somehow balanced genius-level insight with tripping over power cords.

He'd been trying.

God, he'd been trying.

You were distractingly alive in a place meant for sterile things. Too expressive. Too human. You laughed too loud, apologized too much, bit your lip concentrating on the microscope like you were afraid to breathe wrong. That mouth, the way it moved when you tried to explain a concept you half-knew, should’ve been illegal in a lab this cold. Something about you tilted the careful equilibrium he'd spent years perfecting—the early morning runs, the fitted clothes people still brought up months after he'd worn a compression shirt to lab once, the forearms someone had complimented and everyone kept mentioning.

You made him aware of his own body again. Of heat under his skin, of the pulse that shouldn’t matter in a place ruled by precision and equations. Every time you leaned past him, every accidental brush of glove or sleeve—he’d feel it, unwanted, electric. And he hated that he couldn’t file it away with the rest of his data.

None of that control mattered now.

Because you, the infuriating problem his otherwise-perfect life had acquired—were standing there with that dripping glove and those wide eyes, and his entire week had just evaporated into contaminated air.

Theo had always thought biology was the closest thing to faith. Not the holy kind—but the quiet, methodical kind under a microscope. Living things obeying laws, equations, sequences. No chaos. No accidents.

Until you.

And God help him, some reckless part of him wanted to teach you the discipline you kept breaking—wanted to see how long you’d hold that wide-eyed innocence if he stopped being careful.