Work Text:
Lawrence had moved a pair of chairs over carelessly, about an hour or so ago, to give himself a bit of breathing room.
He hadn't bothered to move them back before he'd left for a quick run to the campus cantina.
In the hour or so it had taken for him to return, Oppenheimer slipped through the double doors (unlocked, as he knew they would be) and set up camp on the lot of them. Lawrence had returned, freshly fed and cheerful from a brisk walk through the arb to find he had spawned on the unorganized mass of furniture.
Entropy, he thought to himself cheerfully, but didn't say. It was the sort of joke that wasn't really worth saying. His jokes landed with Oppenheimer (Oppie, if you wanted something that rolled off the tongue easier) about half the time, and it was usually only when he was jabbing at one of them.
Oppenheimer raised his head in acknowledgement, before he sank back.
There was a companionable bit of space the two of them had, that had begun when some routine cleaning (imagine) had ousted Oppenheimer from his office. Unwilling to go home and unable to stand shuffling around whatever workers were in his holy space, dusting his desk and spraying down his board, he had slouched for the first time, irritated, into Lawrence's laboratory with his folders in one hand and his hat in the other.
His sudden appearance was unexpected but not unprecedented. A good description of Oppenheimer as well.
He had no folders now. His icy blue eyes moved, now and then, to the newest version of the newest idea of the cyclotron, which had Lawrence giddy with some new potential.
"She'll be real sooner than later." Lawrence said companionably, absentmindedly, petting the newly unwrapped chassis part like a cat. "A 100 MeV cyclotron with the potential to create artificial chain reactions and unlock the vast storehouse of nuclear energy."
"Rolls right off the tongue," Oppenheimer replied flatly. He was folded up like a judgemental sphinx.
"Now, now," he replied, halfheartedly. "Someone has to give the snappy sounding little speeches that keep the lights on."
Oppenheimer snorted at the nonstatement, and seemed surprised he had. He slipped a bit ungracefully off his perch but braced with his left hand, so his tumble turned into a sort of slide down.
"Shit," He said. "You know I was never any good with lab equipment."
Lawrence's amusement turned into concern when he gave up on returning, and made no effort to stand up from his prone position on the floor.
There was the sharp, distinct smell of liquor on him that had not registered before.
Oppenheimer worked with paper, and white boards. Lawrence was glad to do the laboratory work that had Oppie turning the corner of his mouth down derisively. He made it clear when he stepped in he would rather watch, like some sort of factory overseer. Lawrence laughed at the sight of J. Robert Oppenheimer standing in the corner of his lab with his hands in his unnecessarily baggy jacket while Lawrence and his students droned around.
"Two left hands," Oppie told him, conspiratorily, as though they at an after-hours event and not work. "Blackett...nearly put me off quantum physics before I'd even begun."
Lawrence couldn't imagine endless theoretical work, all that monotonous what-if without the satisfaction of machinery purring to life beneath your hands, the physicality of having a fruit to your labor.
"And where would the field of theoretical physics be then?" Lawrence offered, clapping him bracingly (he hoped) on the back. "Let me get you something substantial from the cantina. I'd bet my firstborn cyclotron that you haven't had your lunch break yet either."
Oppenheimer made a noncommittal noise. He'd come here to sober up, presumably. Lawrence set a glass before him, but didn't move to leave. Oppie had a poor apetite at the best of times, and if he threw up in his poor laboratory Lawrence would never recover.
He was loathe to report anything. Oppenheimer, who he considered a friend, shouldn't have to answer to any sort of board. He was already chafing at the bit as it was, with endless talk of unions and the great Red elephant in the room.
Besides, it wasn't as though Oppie had difficulty with alcohol regularly. The vice was one more ascribed to his wife.
Trouble in paradise, the recreation room gossip channel had said. But Lawrence had never probed. Should he have?
Oppie's wife. Kittie. He had met once, briefly, at an otherwise unremarkable department function. Her eyes were flat and hard when they ran over him, but she had said nothing, nor extended a gloved hand. Her glass of wine was bone dry, but she still had her fist closed over it, protectively, close to her chest. She had known who he was.
He couldn't blame her for her bitterness. Lawrence knew the rumor, vague, unsubstantiable, but always persistent, that Oppenheimer was a bad husband and an excellent womanizer. He had phases of darting around with flowers, but Lawrence had never seen any vases at his home.
The worst of the gossip was less frilled. They said Oppenheimer had a habit of speaking in low, quiet tones at social engagements to women who were married to men who he worked with. He was scrawny, moderate height, and he could be easily provoked to a state of bristling irritation, or vice versa.
But there was an undeniable pull to him. His hair, carelessly curly, would fall over his face just so and the way he spoke with his hands could become charming so easily. The full force of his focus felt like an tractor beam you didn't the escape from. His close personal friend, a man of great integrity, great intellectual caliber, a man of fine character and personality. Oppenheimer, an incorrigible playboy, with a middling interest in being either a father or a husband. Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer watched him flatly. His cold, ice chip gaze was hard and scrutinizing before whatever he had drunk glazed him over and they slid away.
What was he watching for? A thousand potential futures the two of them had never known? Or was he trying to see past him to the cyclotron, the key to the soul of the atom? They were empty space, the two of them. Dominated by the electron cloud, the dense atomic nucleus exerting itself over the nothingness.
When Oppenheimer woke, it was 3, and the shades to the lab were drawn. His coat was folded over him clumsily.
Gone. For office hour.
Something moved in his pocket and he felt, without looking, a packet of biscuits. Jesus.
He got to hid feet, stiff, uncomfortable with the idea of facing Lawrence and his spatially challenged heart.
Itching to call a cab, to slink away and lick his wounds at a hotel, some place that wasn't the claustrophobic righteous indignation of home.