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Daniel wonders why he ever even enrolled. It’s frustrating, you know. Not knowing, not understanding at times. It has been happening for a while now, and with increasing frequency.
If it isn’t this, it’s that and if it’s not that, it’s this. Now? Right now though? It’s botany. It’s always fucking botany. A mind numbing subject that he has to subject himself to. A giant fucking roadblock that won’t let him be where he wants to be. Too bad Armand can’t literally blast it to pieces with his powers. The subject’s not even that it’s difficult. It’s not. What it is, is tediously long. To the dirt roads of Modesto and back.
Honestly, why does he need to understand how plants make food and breathe or whatever, anyway? Bet that’ll come in handy in the future. What with all the growing interest in the field. Use it to really connect to people. (Nothing like a good plant lecture to bring people together.)Okay, maybe it’s a little difficult.
The weed probably didn’t help his capacity to understand. It does help him calm down and relax his racing mind. Enough that he slowly drifts off to sleep sprawled on his single bed with the book on his chest and the coffee cooling on his bedside table.
It’s a few minutes later when he wakes to a soft knock on his door.
He gets up and moves towards the door with heavy steps. It’s Armand. Well, speak of the devil. Or, he guesses, think of the devil.
“Hi, love.” Armand says as he stands there resplendent, with his head crooked a little to the left with a playful smile.
“Hi babe.” he says, returning the smile. It's the fastest thing he’s done when he takes a step and grabs Armand’s hand, pulling him in the room. Armand’s smile widens.
As they turn around though, it becomes evidently clear that Armand will just have to stand there for a minute, while Daniel tidies up. Yeah, sure, and Linneaus was thrilling.What Daniel does instead is put his arms across the bed on one end and slide them across violently, dropping all the stuff that the bed was covered in onto the floor. He turns back to Armand and sits on the bed, with a grin on his face that he hopes says, ‘See? Come sit.’
Armand doesn’t look impressed, as if he were saying, ‘Really, Daniel?’. Whatever.
They sit as close as they can, with their legs folded and knees touching. They talk for a while, mainly of books, of films, of the technology that Armand has been devoting most of his time to. Daniel gives the clock a glance. Hm, 7pm. He goes on about the bars, the music, the experiments, and circles back to the artists, the surgeons, as always. At one point, Armand goes on a tangent about how sensitive and inventive the humans are today. Even as he points out the inadequacies, there’s a light in his eyes as he talks about them. It makes Daniel’s chest hurt. He glances at the clock. Quarter to eight, hm. Procrastination was never really his thing.
“Is something the matter, beloved?” Armand says.
“Huh?”
“I said, is something the matter? If there is something bothering you-”
“I don’t know, you tell me. You never leave my mind even though-” if there's one thing Daniel knows how to do, it’s pick a fight. God, he wishes he was high.
“I would like you to tell me. Could I deny myself your voice?”
Daniel sighs. “It’s nothing, I just have a test coming up, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“I could kill you. Make it go away.”
Daniel smiles, all teeth. He opts for rolling his eyes, but isn’t quite convinced that he was able to hide the affection in them. “Promises, promises.” he sighs.
“Tomorrow, beloved” Armand says almost dreamily and then reaches across and plants a chaste kiss on Daniel’s forehead. The proximity between them is over quicker than both of them would like. As soon as Daniel does try to lean in, Armand picks up his text book up off the floor with a slickness that shouldn’t even be possible for a movement so awkward.
“Now, the given topic at hand.” A pause. “The functions performed by the membrane system and the stroma in the chloroplast are called the light or photochemical, and dark or carbon, reactions. Which is the catalyst of photosynthesis. Despite the latter’s name, it is in no way not-dependent on the former. Hmm. Humanity is good at a lot of things, names are not one of them.”
Daniel gives him a look. What does that even mean?
“There are approximately four pigments at play here, though, the chief is chlorophyll a, because of it’s ability to absorb blue and red wavelengths. The rest act as young fledglings to the chief for eternity, if you will.” Armand won’t make him a fledgeling-
He continues, “Now, the pigments form two discrete light harvesting complexes, which are referred to as ps-one and ps-two. There, a single molecule of chlorophyll forms something called the reaction center which is what differentiates ps-one and two. One hits the absorption peak at seven hundred, while two hits it at six-eighty. The almost twins are not named in the sequence that they work in, but rather their discovery. Again, humankind.”
Wait. How- “How does the light complex thing work?” Daniel asks.
“Light harvesting complexes, dear. They are only a part of the light reactions I mentioned. The two of them are made up of impertinent fragments that are later used in the electron transport system. The reaction center, as I said, is an antennae or light harvesting system which is composed of all pigments except the chief, hundreds of them, bound to proteins, and a primary acceptor. The primary acceptor’s only function is to accept electrons and pass them on.” Armand has stopped talking and stared at him, boring holes into him. Well, Daniel?
In lieu of trying to focus, Daniel stops staring at Armand, which physically hurts, and turns his gaze to the book in front of him, flipping to the thing Armand is talking about. “The electron transport system?”
“The electron transport system is sort of the meat of it. It gives us what we truly require, what we could use. Energy. It has several ways it goes about that, namely photo-phosphorylation and chemiosmotic phosphorylation. These are the steps that you really have to keep in mind.” Armand said, tapping his dainty finger on the open page between them.
Again, he continues, “Phosphorylation is- ”
“Come on, man, I know what that is.” he blurts out. And just like that, the present slaps him in the face. Jesus, what he must think of Daniel. No better than a toddler. An idiot, who has to-
“A toddler? No no, you’re much worse.” Armand was smiling now. Teasing edge to his voice. He sighs, “I will not have you worry over such absurdities, my love. It’s alright to want to understand the things you don’t.”
Daniel would very much like to kiss him. Preferably, until the end of time. He starts with kissing him for now.
“Screw the test.” He says as he leans in, ripping the book out of Armand’s hands. Thank god, he thinks, as Armand just lets him.