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“What do you look forward to most about working in my lab for the summer, Oscar?” Dr. Alonso asks, steepling his fingers on his desk.
Oscar swallows. “The sense of community, mostly. In Mark- uh, Dr. Webber’s lab back in Melbourne, I really liked the, um, environment? Everyone was friendly, no matter how experienced they were, and they kinda left me alone to do my own thing for the most part, but it was good to work with a group of people with similar goals.”
Dr. Alonso doesn’t say anything for a moment, which is frankly worrying.
“Well, I can’t promise that you’ll be left alone, but I’d say a community is certainly one way to describe the environment in my lab.”
Oscar perks up. He’s been a fan of the Alonso Lab’s work for a long time now, and getting an interview with the PI himself was already a feat in itself. An undergrad like him would interview with a grad student or postdoc instead.
And, sure, perhaps there was some nepotism involved to get a whole summer in Mark’s lab, which in turn, put him in this chair at this moment, but he more than proved himself as Oscar and not just ‘Dr. Piastri’s son’. Or so he hopes.
“Mark speaks highly of you, so I’m assuming I can expect the same?”
“Of course.”
Dr. Alonso smiles for the first time in the last half hour or so.
He doesn’t explicitly welcome Oscar to his lab, but he does say, “I’ll let Lando know that he’s going to get his first mentee on Monday,” and that’s just as good, if not better. “Oh, and call me Fernando. ‘Dr. Alonso’ makes me feel old. Any questions for me?”
“I think you were pretty thorough,” Oscar replies stiltedly. He doesn’t want to get too comfortable too quickly. “But if I think of any, I’ll definitely ask.”
“I like to hear that.”
Dr. Alonso- Fernando doesn’t exactly tell him to get the fuck out of his office, but it’s pretty well-implied.
So that’s what Oscar does.
“So you just finished your third year?”
If he’s being completely honest, when Oscar came in earlier this morning after being unable to sleep more than five hours the night before, he expected this “Lando” person to be old. Or ugly. Well, not ugly, but rather, unapproachable, which is why Oscar would be his first mentee.
Lando Norris is neither of those things.
He’s not even two years older than Oscar with a degree in biochemistry, not chemical biology, he’s a lab technician instead of a grad student, but he’s been around since his secondary school days, so he knows his way around better than most of the postdocs here.
And he’s really pretty.
Like, in a ‘will make straight guys question their sexualities’ way.
Fortunately, Oscar already had his gay awakening years ago, but if it’s possible to have a gay reawakening, his new mentor would absolutely be the reason for one. His eyes change colors and sparkle, for fuck’s sake. Oscar never even stood a chance to begin with.
Lando Norris, lab technician, reminds Oscar of a happy little cat weaving around his legs and meowing nonstop. Oscar wants to pick him up or something, but instead, he settles for awkward single-worded responses to every question fielded his way.
“Yeah.”
“Mint. Nando told me you’re majoring in chemical engineering, though. Why prostate cancer research?”
Oscar shrugs.
“I mean,” Lando continues, “I can’t really judge because I’ve been doing this since forever, it seems.”
“It’s interesting,” Oscar offers. “I pretty much only did analytical stuff in Mark’s lab.”
“Yeah, fair enough, mate. This is where my bench is, well, where our bench is now, I s’pose. You’re going to have to share with me because we’re a lot of people and severely underfunded like every other research facility, but we’ll improvise. That sound okay?”
“Yeah, that works.”
“Perfect. Nobody else is here yet because I like to get here early and leave early, but I’ll introduce you to some of the others as they start trickling in,” Lando says as he shoves a lab notebook and a large handful of colorful pens and permanent markers grabbed from a mug on his desk at Oscar’s chest. “We have, like, an online thing for protocols and vectors and stuff, but Nando’s pretty old-school, and we all prefer physical notebooks because it costs a lot less when accidents happen.”
Oscar is a little distracted by the little cat on Lando’s mug, so he looks away from it and hurriedly replies, “Makes sense. Nice mug, by the way.”
Lando beams at him. “Thanks! It’s cute, innit?”
“Yeah.”
“Now have a seat and write down what I’m about to tell you because, you know, everything I tell you is pretty important. Whenever something needs water, we use Milli-Q. It’s, like, ultrapure. So that’s broths, buffers, stock solutions, almost everything. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
Lando flips through his own notebook, which is full of little tabs of every color imaginable. Oscar is beginning to think that he has a thing for colorful stationery.
He snaps on a pair of gloves.
Oscar shouldn’t be attracted to that.
“I know every lab class you take places a lot of emphasis on safety, but we don’t really use lab coats here,” Lando explains as he shows Oscar how to make Luria broth. “But I can order you a couple if you want. It kinda poofs out on you and smells disgusting- wait, you don’t need to mix it. The autoclave does that.” He hands Oscar a piece of foil and striped tape and then a marker. “But make sure you initial, date, and label everything if you don’t want others stealing your stuff. It also really saves me a headache whenever we do lab clean-ups.”
When they come back from the autoclave room, there are a few more people in the lab. Oscar instantly feels more nervous.
Someone swivels around in his chair. “Oh, hi, Lando… wait, Oscar, is that you?”
“Hey, Guanyu. Didn’t expect to see you here, mate.” It’s a pleasant surprise to have a familiar face around, even if he only knows Guanyu through an online course he took through the university system in England.
“Yeah. Fernando never tells us anything,” Guanyu replies, smiling and clasping Oscar’s hand. “Welcome!”
Lando hums in agreement before gesturing at the other two grad students in the lab, the ones already bickering over reagents. “Well, I guess you know Guanyu already. That’s Max and Charles. They’re married.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Aww, Charlie.”
Oscar isn’t sure he wants to ask.
“Guys, this is Oscar, and if you scare him away, I’ll be really sad,” Lando says. “I’ve only had him for an hour, et cetera.”
Oscar swears his heart skips a beat.
Lando checks his watch and curses. “Actually, Charles, aside from flirting with Max, are you busy right now?”
“I’m not flirting with Max!” Charles is quick to exclaim before he calms down. “But no. Why?”
“I need to attend the LI-COR training in a bit in Lewis’s lab. Can you show Oscar how to make antibiotics?”
Charles nods. “Which ones?”
“Kan, amp, chlor. So all of them, basically.”
Oscar is pretty sure his face does something to make him look like a kicked kitten or a lost duckling, because Lando pats his shoulder comfortingly.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. In the meantime, you’re in pretty good hands… I think.”
“Hey! My hands are very good!” Charles squawks indignantly.
Like the devil, Max peers through the gaps between his and Lando’s bay, smirking. “I know that, of course.”
“Shut up, Max,” Charles and Lando say in unison, one flustered and the other exasperated.
Oscar is kind of terrified, but not in a bad way? He won’t let himself be scared off either, or else Lando will be really sad, if what he said earlier to be trusted.
Charles is nice, thank fuck, like a mother. He’s also insane… also like a mother. He watches Oscar carefully as he measures each compound out and looks about one second away from snatching the spatula with his bare hands when the scale tips over by a couple fractions of a gram.
He also talks a lot.
“Our postdocs are Pierre, who is my friend, and Carlos, who isn’t. There’s also Esteban, who’s always fighting with Pierre over bench space, but he mostly stays in the culture room anyway,” Charles is saying. “Oh, and we share a lot of our equipment with the Hamilton Lab next door. My idol, Yuki, is one of their lab techs, Lance is another, George is a grad student in mine and Max’s cohort, Alex just became a postdoc. Kevin and Nico Hülkenberg, not Rosberg, are also postdocs. I wouldn’t mention Rosberg to Lewis. And you’ll see Daniel, Checo, and Valtteri coming in and out, but they’re situated around the corner in the Core facilities.”
“Um.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll meet everyone and learn their names in no time, like during group meeting tomorrow. Put those in the minus twenty, by the way. Just wherever you see a free slot.” Charles’s eyes widen. “Shit.”
Oscar almost drops his tube. “What?”
“You need to tell me your lunch order for tomorrow!”
“Oh my God, I thought I did something wrong, and it was something serious.”
Charles puts his hands on his hips and says, “You’re a growing boy, which means being fed is something serious.”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“You’re practically a baby!”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
When Lando comes back, he nearly sits right on Oscar’s lap.
“Whoops. Sorry, mate. Forgot I’m sharing with someone now.”
“After the group meeting, I can show you where your plasmids are,” Lando tells Oscar as he collects his colorful notebook and another handful of pens and no less than three bright yellow highlighters from his ever-replenishing stock.
Oscar looks at him curiously. “Do you ever use all of those?”
“The plasmids?”
“No, the pens.”
Lando frowns. “Well, yes, Oscar. You should never underestimate how colorful I can make my notebook.”
Oscar’s beginning to suspect that not a single member of the Alonso Lab is normal. Why does the term ‘mad scientist’ even exist when regular scientists are crazy enough?
He also has a foreboding feeling that he’ll end up adopting Lando’s insane habits in no time. Just this morning, he borrowed one of his cat-shaped sticky notes to quickly jot down something Lando told him in passing.
“I don’t know if Charles told you, but we have joint meetings with the Hamilton Lab and the Cores. Yesterday, you left before you met, like, half the lab,” Lando points out as he nudges Oscar around the corner to the conference room. “Carlos told me that Alex got an undergrad too. You need to talk to more people.”
Oscar is instantly reminded of the postdoc that seemed just a bit too friendly with Lando, and his face sours ever so slightly. It should be him, who gets to fleetingly touch Lando’s waist like that, not Carlos. It should also be him, who gets smacked in the nuts by Lando, not Carlos.
Wait, what?
“I guess that’s nice,” Oscar stammers. “You’re probably the only one I really need to talk to, though.”
Lando shrugs. “I mean, yeah, I’m amazing, but it’s good to make friends, Oscar! I know a lot, but when Fernando asks you to clone DNA, I’m afraid I suck at it a bit too much to be of any help.”
In the conference room, Oscar makes a beeline for the far wall, away from the table in the middle, where most of the postdocs and established members are seated. Lando takes the spot between two tall guys—Alex and George, presumably—and begins chatting animatedly with them, even as he gives Oscar pointed little glances and gestures to the seat across from him with his eyes.
Oscar shakes his head. He’s perfectly happy where he is.
“Oscar!” Fernando exclaims right as he enters. Everyone’s staring at Oscar now. Great. That’s just what he wanted. “Come, sit with me. That’s an order.”
It’s said jokingly, but Oscar cringes at the sudden attention on him before dragging himself to the table, wedging himself between Fernando and Max, who pats him on the back. The chair is admittedly much more comfortable than the bench at the wall, and he all but shrinks into it, hoping to hide from all the curious stares like a turtle.
But Lando’s smiling at him from across the table, even if he looks a bit too smug about it.
Oscar is too aware of himself and every move he makes throughout the entire two hours, barely touching his lunch in favor of staring really hard at the projector screen to try and understand what George is talking about.
At least his PowerPoint seems pretty interesting.
And then Lewis and Fernando talk.
A lot.
There might even be arguing.
Oscar looks down at his sandwich and then back up, meeting Lando’s eyes, which silently convey, They do this every time. Don’t worry.
Meanwhile, George looks like he’s about to cry.
That’s also normal.
Back in Australia, Mark was pretty organized during his group meetings, giving everyone feedback on their bimonthly updates over email a week ahead of their presentations and staying quiet for the most part during the actual meetings. Unless he had pressing matters to address, like broken columns, the only thing he would actually do is make sure everyone participated.
Oscar thinks he kind of misses that. But on the other hand, he wouldn’t be able to witness Lando faceplant on the table in exasperation, barely clearing his chicken burger, if he stayed at home.
Receiving text messages from Fernando has to be the strangest thing ever, Oscar thinks, as he scrolls through multiple long paragraphs of protocol and a couple cat GIFs.
“Uh, Lando?”
Lando is already right next to him, reading over his shoulder. To be fair, there is nowhere else for him to be, given that they’re sharing a bench and everything.
“Hm?”
Oscar, exasperated, asks, “Does he ever send things in document form? Preferably in an email?”
“Nah,” Lando replies. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Oscar just gives him a look while Lando giggles.
“Come on. I’ll give you a couple of my plates and show you how to transform bacteria.”
He slides off of his chair and pushes air back into his gloves by smoothly giving them a twirl. That move still boggles Oscar’s mind, but he supposes anything is better than blowing into used gloves like he's seen other members of the lab do.
Oscar trails after Lando like a duckling, following him to the cold room while Lando complains about how their lab should have the cold room that the Hamilton Lab uses because it’s closer.
“Look, I know it makes me sound lazy, but when you have to purify proteins, it adds up,” he explains, showing Oscar his smart watch. “Last time I purified a protein, at the end of the day, I nearly had ten thousand steps logged, and my poor feet ached like the devil. Here.”
It’s only been a handful of days, but Oscar is already getting used to being handed things, so he automatically accepts the two agar plates that Lando holds out to him.
“I’ll go hunt down the miniprep and some cells while you get ice, okay?”
“Um, sure. I don’t have access to the equipment room yet, though.” Oscar isn’t certain why he takes his badge out, but he blushes when Lando coos at his picture.
Lando digs around in his own back pocket and hands Oscar his own badge. It’s… warm. Oscar tries not to be creepy about it.
And, fuck, he looks like a criminal in his own picture, but Lando looks like a model. Life is, indeed, unfair.
“Ice bucket’s under the sink,” Lando says, snapping Oscar out of his simultaneously self-deprecating and immensely gay thoughts. “Get the purple rectangle one.”
“Any reason for that one, specifically?”
“Nope. I just like it. Emotional support ice bucket or whatever.”
Oscar shrugs. Fair enough.
Lando is breathing down Oscar’s neck. Like, logically, there’s no room for him to do anything but that, but Oscar can’t concentrate on pipetting when Lando’s attention is making his hands shake.
He’s fucking distracting, is what he is, and Oscar can’t help but notice in dismay that he smells nice.
“Don’t push all the way down,” Lando reminds him. “It won’t be accurate.”
“Got it,” Oscar replies from between gritted teeth.
“Oh, and pipette up and down twenty times to mix thoroughly.”
“Got it.”
“And don’t forget to close the lid of the tube you’re not using.”
“Got it.”
“Also-”
“Got it.”
Lando pouts, but he shuts up, resting his chin on his hands as he watches Oscar work. Oscar swears his heart skips a beat when he chances a glance at him and has to physically turn away from the devastating curl of Lando’s eyelashes.
“I love the ThermoMixer,” Lando says, when Oscar finally gives him the finished tubes. “Watch and learn, mate.”
Once again, Oscar is impressed with how deftly he swaps the inserts on the machine, triumphantly sticking the tubes into the holes and turning it on with a cute little, “Ta-da!”
The tubes don’t exactly respond to Lando’s theatrics, but they do begin spinning.
And Lando? Oscar needs to bite him. Or stuff him into the warm confines of his hoodie pocket.
“Here’s the protocol,” Lando says, as soon as Oscar walks through the door, and slaps a paper fresh off the printer against his chest. “We’re doing test expressions on those.”
Oscar follows the finger he jabs at the shaker, at the flasks of media they inoculated and induced yesterday.
“I need an ice bucket, Osc!”
When Oscar comes back from the equipment room with the rectangular purple ice bucket filled to the brim with ice, Lando is already standing by the benchtop centrifuge, carefully balancing tubes containing their cells.
“Basically, we do test expressions to make sure the bacteria we transformed and inoculated actually contain our target protein,” Lando explains. “That way, we don’t waste media on large scale purifications. The forkhead domain… is easy. Others…”
A haunted look overcomes his face for a moment before it’s once again replaced by his usual cheery expression.
“I don’t think I want to know,” Oscar jokes, handing him his emotional support ice bucket. Lando smiles gratefully.
“Hah, yeah. It must be the water here or something because Nando successfully purified the C-terminus domain back during his postdoc, but nobody’s been able to here. And I’m very good at purifying proteins.”
“I’ll have to trust you on that.”
Lando leans against the bench as the centrifuge finishes spinning. He hands Oscar a conical tube.
“Can you fill this with the wash buffer we made yesterday?”
“Which one?”
“High salt. Thanks. Oh, I started thawing our lysis ingredients, so if they’re done before I finish dumping the supernatant out, can you just take the tubes out of the water? The beaker’s on my- our bench.”
Oscar gives him a thumbs up, happy that Lando trusts him enough to give him instructions.
He’s pretty sure Lando just doesn’t want to make a trip to the cold room. The poor guy bundled himself in a puffer just to show Oscar where they keep all their gels, buffers, extra media, and literally everything else.
Oscar watches closely as Lando pipettes everything for one of their samples and carefully does the same when the pipettes are handed over to him.
And then he’s handed a pair of noise-canceling earmuffs.
“Mate, I know you think the cold room is hell on Earth, but this is overkill, don’t you think?”
Lando rolls his eyes. “Very funny, Osc. But no, I’m going to teach you how to use a sonicator.”
“Oh.”
“We use the sonicator for small scale expressions and the cell disruptor for large scale purifications. The cell disrupter’s faster and better at lysing, and- oh, Max is using it at the moment.”
Max is, indeed, standing on a stool in front of a very loud box in the little room at the back of the lab, but he still waves at Oscar. Next to him, Charles is chattering away while very obviously eyeing Max’s butt in his tight jeans.
“Anyway, the sonicator!”
It’s a glass box in the equipment room with a piece of tape on it, where someone has written ‘Hamilton Lab’ in capital letters. Maybe they don’t want anyone outside of their labs using it.
Lando sheepishly hands Oscar a wrench.
“You look quite strong,” he says, “so if you can get that little bottom of the metal rod off… yes, just like that, thanks.”
“Happy to help,” Oscar replies, watching as Lando replaces the piece he just unscrewed with a longer, thinner attachment.
It’s a struggle and a half to balance their ice bucket inside the box, and Oscar rips his left glove in the process.
Lando wordlessly hands him another.
He looks really cute in those earmuffs.
Oscar quickly loses track of time. It’s a lot of centrifuging and pipetting and making sure not to disturb the nickel beads and, most importantly, standing mere inches away from Lando for an entire day.
And just when he thinks there’s nothing left to do, Lando starts setting up a gel rig.
“Did you get my email?” Lando asks.
“The one about lab inspections, right?”
“Yup. So when we take our gloves off, they actually need to go in the bin. Oh my God, I’m going to see you in a lab coat for the first time!”
It’s… a lab coat. Nothing to be too excited about, in Oscar’s humble opinion.
But Lando looks good in his—of course, he does.
“Hey, guys.”
Guanyu comes in with a massive cup of coffee that he chugs and tosses in the bin outside the lab. On any other day, it would be sitting on his desk for an entire day, right next to his lunch.
It’s weird, and a bit scary, how a lab that regularly bends the safety rules transforms in the face of inspections.
Oscar thinks Max looks strange in a lab coat, probably because he’s never seen him in anything aside from navy blue polos and skinny jeans. And it’s with great difficulty that he admits to himself that Carlos looks good in his.
At least Lando doesn’t say anything about Carlos looking good in his lab coat because he’s too busy dragging Oscar to the lounge.
“I need coffee if I’m going to survive today.”
“Is it really that bad?”
Even with bags under his eyes and slightly unkempt hair, he’s still the prettiest person Oscar has ever seen.
“The stress kept me up at night, like what if I didn’t put the carts in the autoclave room? Or what if I didn’t keep the doors closed but unlocked? Oh God, I need coffee.”
As Lando makes a beeline to the fancy machines, Oscar takes the opportunity to look around the lounge. It reminds him of a café with round tables. Perfect for studying or hanging out with Lando or-
“Please don’t burn yourself,” he blurts out when Lando starts downing his hot coffee like a madman. He receives a thumbs up for his troubles.
“Will you sign up for the FPLC later? I’m thinking of doing a purification next week of the proteins we expressed last week.”
“That’s the-”
“The one in the cold room,” Lando grumbles. He takes a slower sip and scrunches his nose. “Carlos already booked the one in the lab.”
“Oh.”
“It’ll be fun! We can suffer together.”
“It’s PPP day!” Lando crows as he unlocks the lab at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock in the morning.
Oscar only grunts in response and shuffles in after him.
They’ve been planning their PPP—that’s what Lando fondly calls their protein purification party—for a good week and a half now, even meeting with Fernando to figure everything out. Oscar still hasn’t got a clue about what they’re doing, but at least Lando seems excited, already chattering about the many tricks he’s picked up over years of purifying proteins.
“Aw, come on, Osc. Aren’t you excited to spend too many hours with me?”
“Not really, no.”
“Ouch!”
“I’m a bit scared about using the FPLC,” Oscar confesses, after taking a moment to yawn. “Fernando kept staring at me when he was talking about how expensive the columns are.”
Lando waves him off, lifting a pair of beakers from the drying rack and turning the warm water on. “You have me this time, so as long as you do as I tell you, you’re not going to run into any issues. But if it makes you feel better, Carlos broke a column a few months ago, and he’s still here, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”
“That… does make me feel better, actually.”
“Good. Can you grab the vortex? I want it at our bench.”
Oscar thinks Lando has gone insane when he snaps the ends off of two inoculating loops and hands one stick to him. And then he feels ridiculous, alternating between stirring and vortexing their thawed cell pellets in wash buffer into a viscous liquid.
“It looks like almond butter,” he observes. “Smells worse, though.”
“It’s just E. coli, Oscar.” Lando wrinkles his nose. “It could be yeast.”
“I’m going to assume yeast smells bad then.”
“Your hypothesis would be correct.”
The cell disrupter is both the best and worst contraption in this laboratory. It’s the best because it’s efficient, despite requiring too many cleaning steps, but it's also the worst because Lando’s standing on a stool to demonstrate, and Oscar is expected to just be completely normal about his mentor’s tight-ish jeans-clad butt hovering right in front of his face.
“Do you like chicken wraps?” Lando asks, startling Oscar out of his stupor. He fills the machine with the wash buffer and lets the remainder of their lysed cells flow through the spigot.
“Um, yeah?”
Lando passes him a beaker that’s a bit too close to overflowing for comfort. “Mint. Please pour that into two bottles and balance them. And then spin them at max speed for fifty-five minutes. You’re having lunch with me.”
“Oh.” Oscar doesn’t know what else to say, aside from, “Sounds good.”
“Aaaaand done.” Lando turns the cell disruptor off and sprays down every surface with ethanol. “Help me carry things to the cold room? We need to pack our columns.”
Oscar can’t help but think that the way that his mentor stands in front of their bench with his hands on hips and his lips pursed in deep thought is adorable.
“Columns, buffer, pipettes, tips, tubes, stir bars…” Lando mutters to himself. “Protease inhibitor tablets… please tell me if I’m missing anything because I don’t want to make another trip back here.”
“Your jacket?” Oscar asks, and Lando makes a little noise before grabbing two hoodies from his desk and then handing one of them over.
It’s warm and soft and smells just like him when Oscar tugs it on with a grateful smile.
Right before they depart for the very long, thirty second trek to the cold room with their arms laden with equipment, Oscar remembers the protocol, quickly turning tail and backtracking into the lab to grab the small packet of papers. He’s pretty sure that Lando doesn’t need it, but he certainly does for himself.
In the cold room, the first thing Lando does after unloading everything is pull his hood up and yank on the strings until he resembles a cozy blue marshmallow.
Oscar’s heart aches at the mere sight of him, which is weird because Lando is currently cursing out the height of the shelf as he struggles to pour nickel slurry into the columns.
“Um, here, I can do that,” Oscar offers, stepping behind him. Lando gives him a grateful look as he gives him the bottle, and Oscar swears there’s something electric as their fingers brush.
Through their latex gloves.
Around noon, Lando clicks ‘run’ on the computer as soon as Oscar finishes injecting the last ten milliliters onto the FPLC column.
“So, just to recap, we’re doing a Heparin run, then, uh, running a gel for every fraction that the chromatogram shows us to see if the protein’s there, and then cleaving the tag off overnight?” Oscar asks as he shakes his hand out. He never expected that pushing a syringe would require so much force.
Lando nods, dislodging his hood. He clicks a few buttons and lets Oscar take a picture of the screen before nudging him out the door and immediately stripping out of his hoodie. Oscar tries not to stare at the strip of skin where his T-shirt rides up.
“Gel filtration and then concentration tomorrow after our gels de-stain. Hopefully, we won’t have any degradation.”
When their gels are loaded and running, Oscar nearly falls asleep on Lando. He blames the chicken wraps and sitting so close to each other that their thighs brushed because Lando wanted to show him cat videos. He tips sideways, just barely managing to catch himself before his head makes contact with Lando’s shoulder.
“Let’s add the stuff and then equilibrate the stuff and then stain the stuff, and we’ll be done for the day,” Lando mumbles, yawning. He looks one minute away from falling asleep on Oscar, and Oscar would honestly let him. “It’s only… four, so we were pretty good with our time.”
The cracking noise that Oscar’s back makes when he twists silences both of them.
Lando: lmk when ur here so i can let u in
Oscar: 👍🏻
It’s a Sunday afternoon, when Oscar finds himself standing in front of the main entrance to the medical center.
Quite frankly, he’s not sure why he agreed to meet Lando on a weekend for the sake of beginning a starter culture of a full-length protein, but he’s always up for taking advantage of time.
But once he catches sight of Lando waving at him from the elevator, he isn’t so sure anymore.
“That can’t be, uh, lab-safe,” Oscar blurts out, staring at Lando’s… outfit the moment he opens the door for him. Is he even wearing shorts under that hoodie?
Lando makes a dismissive noise. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s the weekend, and I’ve run into Fernando doing experiments in flip-flops. Thongs for you, mate.”
The choking sound that escapes Oscar’s mouth is not exactly his proudest creation. He doesn’t want to imagine Fernando in thongs, Aussie or otherwise.
Oscar nearly trips over nothing and lands on his face the moment his mentor turns around.
So Lando is wearing something under that hoodie, after all.
“Oh my God,” Oscar wheezes.
“Huh? Oh, hah. Funny, isn’t it?” Lando pops his hip and places a hand on it. “George got it for me for a Christmas exchange, but it’s quite comfortable, so I wear it every once in a while. Nobody’s around on the weekends anyway.”
At least he doesn’t mention that Oscar had to have been staring at his butt to react the way he did. But in his defense, he would’ve noticed the black lettering spelling out, ‘I PUT THE ANAL IN ANALYSIS,’ even if he wasn’t trying to eat Lando’s arse with his eyes.
Oscar physically has to cover his eyes when Lando bends over to open the bottom shaker- the incubator, that is.
“You like him,” Max says bluntly, nearly causing Oscar to spill his buffer all over the bench that he and Lando share. “It’s really obvious, of course.”
Oscar glances around, panicked. “W-what?”
“You heard me. But don’t worry, Lando’s too dense and blind to see when someone’s drooling over him, even when they’re as unsubtle as you. And trust me, that happens a lot. Did you know that his inbox gets flooded daily with questions from people in other labs about the mass photometer? Like, they should be able to operate it themselves at this point, but I’m pretty sure they just want an excuse to talk to him…”
He quickly loses Oscar after that, as he continues rambling about every annoying person in their department.
“Leave the poor undergrad alone, Max,” Charles chides gently. Oscar is ashamed to say his buffer misses the opening of the bottle completely, and he curses under his breath before scrambling for paper towels. “Look how overwhelmed he is!”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, Lando’s too nice to say no when someone wants him to do something, so you might as well try your luck,” Max says with a shrug. “He should start saying no more often, actually.”
“That… doesn’t really help,” Oscar replies weakly. “Besides, I’m only here for one more month, and he’ll forget about me.”
He has never been filled with so much dread about returning home, but he has spent so much time in the Alonso lab—more time than he spends in his small flat here anyway—that it feels almost like a second home.
Oscar has to admit that in just a few short months, he’s felt at home with these people, Carlos included, and he’ll miss them when the summer is over. He sees Fernando almost as a father figure, solidified by his usage of passive-aggressive smiley emojis in his many text messages, who cares more about his trainees than he lets on, and the grad students and postdocs have all been polite, at the very least. He’s pretty sure he can call Logan, the undergrad that the Hamilton lab next door took on, his friend after having lunch together a few times, and there’s Guanyu, who’s always up for a chat in the lounge before Fernando calls him into his office to give him more tasks to do.
And there’s Lando. Perhaps Oscar is a bit delusional for thinking he has received special treatment from him, but it’s not completely unfounded from the way his mentor sasses and pokes fun at the other members of the lab and then turns toward him with sparkling eyes and a soft smile… as he proceeds to completely roast Oscar for his uneven bands and slightly degraded protein.
Despite all that, Oscar just likes him so much.
Lando pouts during the group meeting, when Fernando says the bench that previously held the mass photometer has been cleared and that the machine has been moved to a different room in the core facilities.
Oscar is about to ask why, but Fernando beats him to it, saying, “You have your own bench for the remaining few weeks, Oscar, so you do not have to bump elbows with Lando anymore.”
“Oh, uh, I don’t mind-”
“It’s good to have your own space.”
“Um, okay.” Oscar spares another glance at Lando. “I’ll move my stuff and whatnot.”
Lando’s pout only grows, and Oscar’s glad he’s not the only one completely thrown off. Saying he didn’t mind was an understatement because he actually enjoyed being mere millimeters away from Lando at any point in time, occasionally brushing against each other when they both reached for the same stock solution stored above the bench.
“You’re taking my Osc away from me!” Lando cries, flopping backwards dramatically and just barely managing to catch himself before his chair tips all the way onto the floor. Nobody else in the conference room bats an eye, already used to his antics. “Before he’s gone forever too!”
Oscar can’t help the way his heart flutters in his chest. Or the way his cheeks heat up.
Is Oscar the only one who finds it sad that he no longer relies on Lando to tell him what to do, where things are, and to guide him with a gentle, but big, hand?
That’s just a hypothesis in the very complicated research dedicated to Oscar’s feelings.
And he’s a terrible conversationalist and even worse at approaching people, so he finds himself sitting in the corner where the mass photometer used to be and staring blankly at what’s meant to be his summer recap presentation instead of having a fun conversation with Lando about… what should or shouldn’t go in a sandwich.
(Oscar thinks salmon in a sandwich is fine, but Lando vehemently disagrees with him.)
“Hi, stranger.”
Oscar spins around in his chair.
“My bench feels soooo empty without you there,” Lando continues, dropping a pile of snacks in front of Oscar’s laptop and then stealing the chair next to him, spinning around twice before bracing his elbows on the bench. “The grids I ordered arrived, and the company sent these along with them. So.”
“Uh, thanks?” Oscar offers. “I like this corner, but yeah, it’s weird having a centrifuge to myself.”
Lando tears open a bag of crisps and shoves a handful into his mouth. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be over here putting my tubes in your centrifuge all the time.”
Oscar blinks.
Huh.
“Oh my God!” Lando shrieks, tossing a crisp at him. “You’re so immature!”
Right at that moment, George walks in with the bottle of kanamycin from the Hamilton lab, his lab coat flapping behind him with each long stride. He points his spatula at Lando. “No, you’re immature, Lando. And a bottom. Don’t even pretend otherwise.”
“Unprovoked?!” Lando squawks, flailing a bit. “Go away, George.”
George salutes them and disappears in a flurry of pristine white fabric.
Oscar blinks again.
Huh.
This is clearly all for the sake of research.
And the conclusion is that his crush on Lando isn’t going away anytime soon.
For the remaining weeks, Lando continues dropping by to leave snacks and trinkets on Oscar’s desk, some from various research companies, and others… well.
On the Tuesday of Oscar’s penultimate week, he’s so generously gifted a pack of Tim Tams, and he nearly cries the moment he sees it just sitting atop his lab notebook. In his defense, he’s been absolutely consumed by his nerves for his presentation all day, so if he ends up shedding a tear or two while biting into a chocolate biscuit, well, he deserves it.
“Oh God, they weren’t meant to make you cry, mate,” Lando frets as he wanders by to take his tubes out of the centrifuge. “Fuck, you’re going to do well! And Nando will jump in if anyone has questions, I promise.”
“Hahhh. Can’t wait for it to be over.”
Lando gives Oscar’s shoulder a small pat. His fingertips linger against the sleeve of Oscar’s shirt for just a moment longer.
“I mean, we’ve all been in your position, so there won’t be any judging from anyone else, I’m sure, but if someone does, I’ll kick them under the table.”
“You’re too short for that to work,” Oscar says dryly. “I appreciate the sentiment, though.”
Rolling his eyes, Lando tucks his ice bucket under an arm and shuffles away. Oscar truly hates to see him leave, but he certainly loves to watch him go.
Fuck. The presentation.
Lando’s arse is only so effective as a distraction. Oscar can feel his hands tremble again, and they’re so clammy he can see his veins.
He swears he blacks out during the entirety of the group meeting.
When Fernando brags about how diligent and resilient he’s been all summer, complimenting his vigor even after his purifications failed, Oscar can only offer a shaky smile and a shy duck of his head. He still doesn’t love being the center of attention, but he’s done, and that’s the most important thing.
“That was good, mate,” Max says. “You’re coming back next year, right?”
“He has to,” Charles responds for Oscar. “I need to teach him how to clone DNA next.”
The table erupts into conversation about potential projects that neither Lewis nor Fernando seem willing to stop. Oscar glances around, overwhelmed.
He should be used to this by now.
Lando gives him a broad grin and an enthusiastic double thumbs-up the moment Oscar meets his eyes, and, well, that’s actually more important than having finished his presentation.
Oscar is really going to miss this slightly dysfunctional, academic family when he has to leave next week.
“Hey, Lando.”
Lando glances up from his gels, surprised to see Oscar hovering by his bench. “What’s up?”
Oscar takes a deep breath, steeling his nerves, and that all proves to be in vain when he stutters, “Would you- I mean, will you, uh. If you’re not too busy after your experiment, we should have dinner together. Obviously, you don’t have to! It’s just that today’s my last day, and…”
Fuck, he should’ve picked a better time, when everyone else is out of the lab to have a late, late lunch. Instead, there are no fewer than five pairs of eyes on him.
Panic rapidly settles in, even as Guanyu offers him a supportive gesture behind Lando’s back. “Um, actually, sorry to disturb you and your gels. Forget I said anything-”
“I like spring rolls.”
Oscar’s mouth closes with a snap, and Lando’s cheeks grow red.
In the cell disrupter-centrifuge-FPLC room, Max screams, followed by shushing, presumably from Charles.
“What?”
The gel in Lando’s gloved hand breaks, but he ignores it, mumbling, “As long as it’s not seafood, then I’d love to have dinner with you, Oscar.”
Relief floods him so fast, his knees actually feel a bit weak.
“I, uh, don’t get paid enough for seafood anyway,” Oscar replies, a bit dumbly. “So spring rolls, it is.”
Is this a date? Oscar wonders, as he sits across the table from Lando, who isn’t chattering his ear off about chemicals that he can barely pronounce for once.
Is this a date? Oscar wonders, as he watches Lando put away a concerning number of spring rolls and moan a little over how delicious they are.
Is this a date? Oscar wonders, as he weakly protests that he should pay since he was the one to bring up dinner together.
He doesn’t have enough time to conduct this experiment.
Like a lost kitten, Oscar trails after Lando back to his flat, partially because Lando hasn’t stopped talking to him and partially because he doesn’t want him to stop.
His flight is tomorrow, but he’s considering missing it if it means he gets to spend more time with Lando.
“Oh, this is my building.”
Oscar nods blankly. “So it is.”
“I had fun, yeah? And not only tonight. The entire summer was fun,” Lando says.
Feeling a bit choked up, Oscar can only surge forward and hug him tightly. Lando giggles a bit, reaching up to play with the hair at the nape of Oscar’s neck while Oscar continues his attempt to squeeze him into a ball tiny enough to slip into his pocket and smuggle to Australia.
“I had fun too,” he replies.
“Don’t be a stranger, okay?” Lando mumbles into the fabric of Oscar’s shirt.
“Like I could even if I wanted to. You’re going to have to make room for me in between purifying proteins.”
“Always. And if you decide to come back-”
“When,” Oscar corrects.
Lando blinks, and then his face morphs into a smile as he pulls away. “Fine. When you come back with your shiny new degree, I’ll still be here. Waiting. You owe me a second date, after all.”
Ah. So it was like that, after all.
Approximately nine months later…
Freshly graduated, Oscar walks into the lab, glad to see that nothing much has changed. And just like his first day last summer, Lando is at his desk, as pretty as ever.
“Hey, Lando.”
Lando looks up at him and smiles. “Hi, Osc. You’re back.”
“I am, yes.”
“So according to Fernando’s email—email, I know—I’m meant to teach you how to run gel shifts. Can you grab my emotional support ice bucket?”
Oscar nods.
“Sure, but first,” he begins, crossing the distance to Lando’s desk and stopping just in front of him, “I believe I made a promise.”
It’s a wonderful thing to witness, the blush that slowly grows and covers Lando’s face.
Oscar reaches out to tug him out of his chair and into his arms, relishing in the minute hitch in Lando’s breathing right before he leans in and kisses him.