By the time we finish the first trial, the room is twice as loud and three times as tense. Collins is making his rounds, commenting on technique and occasionally grilling a student for their “theoretical yield.” He pauses behind us, hands clasped behind his back.
“How’s the progress here, gentlemen?” he asks, eyes sharp over the rim of his glasses.
Aaron answers first. “Just finished our first run, Professor. Results look… normal?”
Collins inspects the burette, then the color of the flask, then the notebook where Aaron’s numbers are scribbled with theneatness of someone who’s been through the wars. “Good work. Consistency is key in titrations.” He gives me a look, then adds, “Let Mr. Montgomery take the next run, please. I want to see how the results compare.”
Aaron nods, then steps back, rolling his shoulders as if the simple act of moving is a relief.
I take the pipette and start over, trying to replicate the method exactly. But now I’m hyperaware of his presence next to me—the way he keeps glancing at the data, the way his knee bounces under the bench, the way he chews the inside of his lip when he thinks no one’s watching.
We finish the second trial, the numbers almost identical. I start to clean up, rinsing the glassware with distilled water and stacking it in the drying rack. I expect Aaron to bail—he usually does, as soon as the heavy lifting is over—but he lingers, fiddling with the cap on the indicator bottle.
I look up. “Something else?”
He hesitates, then shakes his head. “Nah. Just… thanks, man.”
“For what?”
He shrugs, the movement small. “For not being a dick about all of it.”
I want to ask what “all of it” means, but I don’t. Instead, I dry my hands and pack up my notebook, making a conscious effort not to rush.
He’s still standing there when I zip up my backpack.
“You want to get out of here?” he asks, voice soft.
I freeze, half-crouched over the bench. “Now?”
He grins, the real one, a flash of teeth and trouble. “Yeah. Unless you want to do another trial just for fun.”
I shake my head, feeling the first genuine smile of the day tug at the edge of my mouth. “No. I’m good.”
He slings his bag over one shoulder and gestures toward the door. “Let’s bail before Collins ropes us into cleanup.”
We slip out of the lab, leaving the roar of noise and the stink of chemicals behind. In the corridor, the air is cold and clean, almost anemic by comparison.
Aaron walks a step ahead but slows so I can catch up. He glances at me, then at the floor, then at me again.
“You ever get the feeling you fucked up so bad you’ll never get back to normal?” he asks, not looking at me.
I laugh, but it’s not funny. “I think that’s just called being alive.”
He snorts, then grins again. “Guess we’re both screwed, then.”
We walk together in silence, neither of us saying what we really want to say. But for the first time all week, it doesn’t feel radioactive.
At the stairwell, he pauses, hand on the railing. “See you Thursday?”
“Yeah,” I say. “See you.”
He nods, then heads down the stairs, two at a time, the old confidence back in the set of his shoulders. I watch him go, my hands still buzzing from the experiment, and wonder if it’s possible to be both the villain and the hero of your own story.
Maybe it is.
—ΠΩ—
We don’t talk about it for three days. Not the lab, not the memes, not the fact that half the campus now refers to the Pi Omega party as “the Great Deadpool Disaster.”
