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Francis noticed him first. And Francis would have made a move on him, too, except at the very same moment Francis set down the carton of milk he had been carrying, Antonio and a box of supplies backed into the room, and the stranger. Brown paper napkins floated down like autumn leaves, and sodium and water met for the first green-eyed time: Francis could tell from the heat.
He gracefully decided to be the better man.
Until Gilbert showed up to replace Antonio an hour later. Then Francis decided to be the better friend, and the rest of the Wednesday afternoon at the café in the far corner of the physics building was spent laughing through ways Antonio could introduce himself. The next morning, when Antonio stepped into the café, apron in hand, Francis and Gilbert revealed their grand plans in the form of 30 notecards.
#37 - My friends told me that I should ask you out because you can't differentiate. Do you need math help?
“W-what?!”
“Uh…” Antonio had the sneaking suspicion, at that moment, that Gilbert hadn’t been talking about math when he’d shoved the cards into Antonio’s apron pocket. Which was a shame, because Antonio liked talking about math, and he thought the student who’d walked into the corner and stayed there (“Can I get something for you?” “No.” “Really?” “Yes.” “…really?” “…espresso”) was kind of cute, and it would have been fun to talk about math with him.
And now the student was looking at him strangely and Francis was calling him back to the register, and Antonio beat a hasty retreat.
He remembered the student’s face, though, and that he drank his coffee black.
#39 - How much do you charge? My paper-grading job doesn't pay a lot.
“Francis! I can’t really say this!”
“B-bl…” Francis was half over the register, clutching his sides, barely able to stand for his laughter. Antonio thought that while sure, it was kind of funny, it wasn’t that funny. Antonio didn’t just have his paper-grading job, after all. He worked at the café on Wednesdays and Thursdays too! “Blame Gilbert.”
That made sense. And Antonio was fully prepared to turn back to the student and explain that Gilbert’s sense of humor was always like that when the words died in his throat. “I didn’t mean to—”
He was already gone.
#44 - How do you feel about group experiments?
…didn’t go over any better. And even though Francis denied it, Antonio was really damn sure the handwriting wasn’t Gilbert’s. Not that he could tell for sure after having a scalding cup of espresso dumped all over his apron. That had hurt.
#16 - A freak lab explosion left me with this 16-inch penis.
…should have gone over worst of all, except the research gods must have been smiling down at Antonio that week, because it hadn’t.
Instead of a slap, Antonio had gotten a name: Lovino Vargas.
#30 - Can I have your significant digits?
After the first week, Lovino only came in on Thursdays. Antonio couldn’t figure out why, mostly because he always forgot to ask until sometime in the middle of the next Monday, when he was supposed to be taking notes. The important thing was that Lovino kept coming in at all, to get his morning espresso and read the newspaper in the back corner, under the windows.
(And to get his weekly chance to hit “Hello my name is… Antonio!!” in the stomach for asking such asinine questions).
#2 - What's your resonance frequency?
Gilbert said he’d been asking around, and he’d found out Vargas was a first year art major and really nice to everybody. Antonio thought art suited Lovino, but that might just have been because he thought Lovino was beautiful. He said as much, after handing Lovino his drink and before pulling the next card out of his pocket.
That week, Antonio was hit twice.
#3 - Your lab bench, or mine?
It would be better if they went to Lovino’s lab bench, because Antonio hadn’t cleaned his up properly before rushing off to get to the café. The surface was littered with papers and wires and bolts and, Antonio thought guiltily, he’d kind of sort of left the power stapler out too.
He’d be really embarrassed if Lovino saw the mess, although he wasn’t sure why Lovino would be interested in seeing any of Antonio’s research, since Lovino was an art student and all. In fact, why would Lovino have a lab bench?
“Hey Francis…?”
#6 - Wanna couple our equations tonight?
Gilbert had told Antonio to wink whenever he read off a card with a star on it. This card had two stars. So Antonio blinked. A blink was two winks at once, right?
#12 - I know the spring constant for my mattress. Wanna take some data?
If Gilbert hadn’t known any better, he would have thought Antonio and Lovino were chatting about the weather over there, in the corner. But he did know better, and maybe Vargas the Art Student just didn’t understand what Antonio was trying to say.
That would make them a complete set. Gilbert snickered.
#7 - I'm attracted to you like the Earth is attracted to the Sun— with a large force inversely proportional to the distance squared.
“Why?”
That was a good question. “That’s what the card says, unless you meant, oh! So there’s this thing called ‘Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation’ and. Hey? Where are you going?”
The bell over the door chimed merrily after Lovino stomped off. “…you left your coffee…”
#5 - Your eyes have a perfect wavelength of 563.4 nm.
Antonio held up a colorimeter he might have stolen out of the introductory lab storage room. “I measured.”
#17 - You're more special than relativity.
Lovino blushed, and at the end of the day, while he was cleaning up, Antonio high-fived the large Einstein poster hanging behind the pastry display.
#29 - I might be a physics major, but I'm no Bohr in bed.
The day before Antonio had wondered aloud if Lovino would know what he was talking about. Did most art students learn about Niels Bohr? Gilbert had had the same concern, and they’d spent twenty minutes trying to make a cheat sheet for Lovi, about Bohr’s life and contributions to science.
They would have spent even longer on the sheet, since Gilbert had found crayons somewhere and Antonio really wanted his sketch of an atom to look nice for Lovi (what was he thinking, drawing to impress an art student…?), but Francis had had a gleam in his eye when he’d told Antonio the explanation wouldn’t be necessary.
#19 - Top quark or bottom quark?
“Sideways.”
#21 - That shirt would look even better accelerating towards my bedroom floor at 9.8 ms-2
Lovino had stopped hitting Antonio after the first few weeks. He’d stopped ignoring Antonio too. Antonio assumed it was because Lovino was slowly warming up to the idea of dating a physics major!
(The other grad students didn’t know why Vargas always took his Thursday break by himself, didn’t know why Vargas always came back from getting coffee looking like he’d tripped over a hornet’s nest. And Lovino Vargas was keeping it that way.)
#25 - Wanna dance? I can really put your inertia in motion.
Some stupid love song twisted its way through the empty chairs in the café, and Lovino took Antonio’s offered hand. Maybe the guy was weird, but he was really persistent too and… and… it was hard to find people who danced properly in this country. And since no one else was around, Lovino could begin to pretend nothing had happened as soon as he left the building.
#26 - Most men are so complex. They're always like ‘i! i! i!’ But you- you're just so real.
Lovino didn’t say anything for a second or two, so Antonio rushed to clarify. “It’s a joke. I meant ‘i’ as in the lowercase one, you know, the square root of negative one? It’s funny because numbers with ‘i’ are complex, and numbers—”
“I know.”
#27 - Let's exchange fermions!
Francis kept saying “Trust me, trust me!” whenever Antonio asked about the notecards. Sure Lovino had danced with Antonio, had given him his phone number and had gotten that smudge off Antonio’s cheek last week with his thumb, but that didn’t mean he understood all the other lines and what Antonio was trying to say with them.
But he hadn’t looked confused since the first day. Just annoyed (Lovi you’re getting so reeeedddddd!).
‘Maybe,’ Antonio thought, ‘he really likes painting physicists.’
#47 - In my bed, it's perpetual motion all night long, baby.
“Gilbert!”
“Ahahahahaha!!”
#23 - I have E = mc2 tattooed on my ass. Wanna see?
“Eh?” Antonio blinked at the double-starred card and turned to shout at the register. “Wait, Gilbert, that’s not true!”
#18 - Those other guys said that your eyes shine like stars. But can they explain how they shine with equal brightness?
Forehead creased in anger, Lovino looked up from shouting into his phone with murder in his eyes.
“Oh, okay. I'll leave.”
#31 - Hey baby, what's your sine?
He’d written it on the menu board, underneath the price of the biscotti. Lovino didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, because even though Antonio hadn’t taken any offense after walking in on one of his fights with Feliciano, Antonio had scribbled a giant graph of y(t) = 5sin(4t + 9) (complete with two stick figures underneath, holding hands oh God) over the list of different types of tea.
In pink chalk.
Lovino ended up walking Antonio back to his dorm (feeling like some sort of pervert the entire time, dammit!) before the café even closed, because the idiot had had the gall to go to work when he was too sick to even talk.
#32 - Heisenberg was wrong. I'm certain about what you're doing tonight.
“And I’m supposed to say ‘me’ after that, but I don’t think that’s right, because if I know what you’re doing, I can’t know who, can I?”
#34 - Like the ideal vacuum, you're the only thing in my universe. No, it's alright, I'll just go over there.
“Ve, brother, what was that about?”
“Shut up if you want to live, Feli.” Why the hell hadn’t Lovino hidden when Feliciano had pranced into the room? “Just shut up.”
#36 - I saw your empty valence shell from way over there. Did I mention that my nickname is Sodium?
Antonio paused and took a seat. “Do you want me to explain that one?”
Lovino paused too, cup in midair. He let Antonio continue to wait by taking a long sip before finally speaking. “Fine.” So what if Antonio looked happiest when he was talking about science (“And, you know, I have to know how to explain this stuff really well to people who haven’t heard of it before because I really want to be a teacher, and…”)? Basic chemistry was nothing new to Lovino, and he took the time he might otherwise have had to use to listen to what Antonio was saying to appreciate Antonio’s smile.
Fuck.
#38 - I'll make you dinner. I'll make you breakfast. But in between, we'll have to have some dessert. And I'm a physics major.
…was the stupidest way to begin a date ever, oh God if any of Lovino’s colleagues saw him now he might just have to lock himself in the lab forever.
Antonio took Lovino’s silence for acceptance, took Lovino’s hand for his own, and ran further into the park.
#15 - I love you. Please don't turn away from me just because I'm a physics major.
The chair of the department coughed lightly while Lovi slowly began to turn blue from his seat next to her. Antonio wondered if he’d said something wrong? Was Lovino embarrassed? “Oh, okay, I'll leave! See you on Saturday Lovi!”
Lovino fell off his chair.
#49 - Does your skin feel burnt? Because I think you must have just fallen down from heaven, and re-entry would have caused some problems for you.
“The fuck is that supposed to mean? Are you saying they’d kick me out of heaven?! Why the fuck would they be kicking me out of heaven, huh?!!”
“No, what? Lovi? I don’t get it— stop hey, put your cup down that’s not very cute!”
Francis took one look at the scene in the café and decided it would be better not to go to work that day. Instead, he backtracked to the elevator, pushed the button for the third floor and wondered how he could get away with telling their research professor that Lovino was going to be late without telling her why.
#46 - Would a loser be able to recite pi out to 50 decimal places? Huh? Would he?
Lovino arched his eyebrows and held out his empty cup. “Yes.”
Antonio visibly deflated (he’d spent all night memorizing!) “Oh, okay. I'll get that for you.”
#40 - Your smile is warmer than hydrogen plasma.
It was three minutes before midnight, soft under the covers in Lovino’s apartment and Antonio was in love. And because of that, Lovino would forgive him for using such a fucking cheesy line.
#48 - I swear I'm not a physics major?
Lovino couldn’t take it anymore. He huffed, and yanked down on Antonio’s apron until their faces were at the same height. “Look, why the hell would I care about that? I was a physics major too before I graduated.”
Lovi’s serious face was really adorable, he was like a little dog, all bark and no bite and Antonio just wanted to give him a hug whenever he saw it and— “Wait. Graduated?”
#50 - You make me want to be a better physicist.
Antonio wasn’t sure if Lovino heard him properly, because he’d whispered it into Lovino’s hair and hair wasn’t the part of the body people heard with. When Lovino squeezed his hand, though, Antonio knew.
