Chapter Text
You figured if the universe was gonna be cruel, it could’ve at least given you a black hole to fall into instead of… homeroom physics with Warren Graham.
The lab smelled like whiteboard markers and cheap disinfectant, sunlight pooling in through those big Blackwell windows like it was trying too hard. You had your notebook open, page half-filled with equations and half-filled with little doodles of orbital paths and stars, your pen tapping the desk as Mr. Grant droned on about kinematics at the front.
Next to you, Warren was not listening. At all.
He was leaning over his desk, chin in his hand, phone under the table like he wasn’t obvious as hell. The screen kept lighting up with blue speech bubbles and you didn’t need mind reading powers to know who he was texting.
Max.
“So she, like, kinda confirmed?” Warren whispered, eyes bright, voice barely contained as Grant turned back to the board.
You didn’t look at him. If you looked at him, you’d have to see the excitement in his face, and then you’d have to either smile like a good friend or scream into a cosmic void.
“Kinda confirmed what?” you muttered, still pretending to care about the acceleration formula on the board.
“The drive-in, dude,” he said, like you’d personally forgotten the event of the century. “I told you. Friday night. ‘Planet of the Apes’ marathon. She said it sounded… and I quote… ‘cool.’”
You scribbled something that wasn’t even a number.
“Wow,” you said. “Be still, my beating heart.”
He nudged your elbow with his. “Hey, don’t mock my romantic progress. This is, like, huge.”
“It’s three apes movies in a row and a girl who doesn’t text you back half the time,” you shot back, quiet. “Huge is a word. I don’t know if it’s the right one.”
He huffed, but he was grinning. “Skepticism is very unattractive, you know. I thought science majors were supposed to be supportive of scientific breakthroughs.”
You finally glanced sideways at him.
Messy hair. Hoodie he definitely slept in. Big brown eyes all hopeful and puppy-like. You hated that your brain did that stupid little flip just from him looking at you.
“I am supportive,” you said. “Just more of the ‘peer review’ part than the ‘blind faith’ part.”
Warren’s phone buzzed again. He nearly launched himself out of his chair trying to grab it.
Your hand tightened around your pen.
Mr. Grant cleared his throat pointedly where he stood by the projector. “Mr. Graham. Unless that’s Newton texting you from beyond the grave, put it away.”
Snickers across the room.
Warren’s cheeks went pink. He slid the phone into his pocket, mouthing a silent “sorry” before leaning back towards you.
“Okay, but like,” he whispered, still undeterred because Warren had the perseverance of a cockroach and a golden retriever combined, “once this date is official, you gotta help me not look like a total idiot in front of her, alright?”
You stared at the equation on your page until the numbers blurred.
“Pretty sure that’s out of my jurisdiction,” you muttered.
He snorted. “You’re harsh today. You good?”
Yeah. Totally. Just listening to the boy you liked ask for help impressing another girl again.
“I’m fine,” you said lightly. “Just focused. Some of us are here to learn physics, you know?”
His expression softened a bit at that. “Right. My future world-famous physicist. Gotta respect the grind.”
The words hit somewhere stupidly soft in your chest.
You rolled your eyes to cover it. “Shut up and copy my notes before you fail the next test.”
He grinned, leaning closer so his shoulder pressed into yours as he peeked at your page, and you had to pretend your heartbeat didn’t immediately try to break the sound barrier.
---
By the time class ended, the Oregon sky had gone from annoyingly blue to that weird slate-grey you’d learned meant “something freaky with the weather might happen later.”
Students spilled out into the hallway, buzzing about homework, dorm drama, and the usual Blackwell gossip: Nathan Prescott did something, Victoria Chase said something, someone saw Max Caulfield looking dazed in the hallway again like she’d just seen a ghost.
You slung your bag over your shoulder, adjusting the strap so it didn’t cut into your neck.
Warren jogged to catch up with you as you headed down the stairs. “So. After school, science lab?” he said. “I gotta finish that extra credit thing for Grant. You in?”
“Obviously,” you said. “That man curves harder than space near a singularity. I’m not letting my GPA die because I forgot to add units.”
“Hot,” Warren said seriously. “Nothing sexier than correct units.”
You snorted despite yourself. “You need to get out more.”
He opened his mouth, probably to say I am, with Max on Friday, but his phone buzzed again.
You didn’t look, but you could tell from the way he froze that it was her.
You watched the shift in his face out of the corner of your eye: brightness flickering, lips pressing together, shoulders sinking just a bit.
You knew that look.
You’d seen it enough times in the past month to categorize it like a meteor type.
“That bad?” you asked lightly.
He swallowed, thumb hovering over the screen. “She, uh… she says she can’t. Friday. Something came up.”
There it was. That little twist in your stomach. Not because Max cancelled. That part of you that was just your crush, raw and selfish and barely contained, was secretly relieved.
But the rest of you – the part that actually liked Warren as a person – hated seeing how fast his expression crashed.
“Oh,” you said. “Sorry, dude.”
He let out a laugh that didn’t sound like a laugh. “No, it’s– I mean, it’s Max. She’s got… stuff. She’s busy. It’s fine.”
He was lying. You knew he was lying. He knew he was lying. You both pretended not to know.
You pushed open the side door of the science building, the cold air smacking you in the face. Out in the courtyard, a few kids smoked near the fountain; the statue looked extra depressing under the heavy clouds.
“You could still go,” you said. “To the drive-in. The movies will be there even if Max isn’t.”
Warren shoved his phone back into his pocket like it offended him. “Yeah, but that was kind of the point.”
He fell into step beside you, kicking at a stray pebble. “I just… I don’t get it. One minute she’s all into talking about photography and weird phenomena and she actually laughs at my dumb jokes, then the next she’s, like, somewhere else. Like… somewhere I don’t have the coordinates for?”
You bit the inside of your cheek. Hard.
Because you had watched this boy build entire galaxies inside his head where Max Caulfield orbited like some cool, distant star, and somewhere in the background of that mental solar system he’d tossed you as the helpful moon who occasionally fixed his calculations.
And you were tired. God, you were tired.
“Some people are just like that,” you said finally. “Half in, half out. Foot in every timeline.”
“Yeah, but–” he started, then trailed off. “I dunno. Maybe I’m just being needy.”
“You are needy,” you said automatically. “Doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”
He huffed a laugh, looking at you properly now. “Thanks, I guess.”
You shrugged, eyes flicking away. “You use me as your emotional tech support, it’s whatever. Comes with a standard warranty.”
His smile faded to something softer. “Hey… I don’t just talk to you about Max, right?”
You stared at a crack in the pavement like it was the most interesting thing on planet Earth.
“You don’t,” you said. And he didn’t. You hung out, watched movies that weren’t about apes, argued about quantum mechanics vs. classical mechanics, shared fries at Two Whales. You were friends.
Friends.
You hated that the word felt like a downgrade.
“Just lately,” you added, despite yourself, “it’s been, like, ninety percent Max content. I’m basically your curated Caulfield podcast at this point.”
Warren winced. “That bad?”
You mimed a scale with your hands. “On a scale of one to ‘I throw myself off the lighthouse,’ we’re like… solid seven.”
He stopped walking. You realized what you’d just admitted and felt heat rise in your face.
“I’m kidding,” you said quickly. “Relax, I’m not actually suicidal over your love life. I’m just– I listen, alright? That’s all.”
He was still watching you, studying your face like you were one of the problems on Grant’s tests he suddenly realized he’d been doing wrong.
“I… didn’t realize I talked about her that much,” he said slowly.
“Well.” You forced a grin. “Congrats on being self-aware for once.”
He gave you a weak smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes the way it usually did. “I’ll… try to dial it back. I don’t wanna make you swan dive off of school property.”
“Good,” you said. “We have a lab to do after school. Hard to balance equations as a ghost.”
His shoulders relaxed a little. “Right. Speaking of. You free at four?”
“Yeah,” you said. “I’ll be there. With units.”
He held a hand to his heart. “You are my guiding star.”
You snorted. “Tell that to your other star, lover boy.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking vaguely guilty. It felt like a tiny victory and a punch to the gut at the same time.
---
The lab that afternoon was quiet, the sky outside properly going from grey to disturbingly stormy. Lightning flickered somewhere far off over the bay, like the world’s glitching screensaver.
You were set up at your usual table, dropping weights and timing their falls while Warren typed data into the old lab computer, the hum of the machine filling the silence between you.
He’d barely brought up Max. That should’ve made you feel better. It just made you feel weird.
“Okay,” he said, tapping the keyboard. “So, if gravity here stops being 9.8 meters per second squared, I’m blaming you personally.”
“Sure,” you said. “I’ll rewrite the laws of physics on my lunch break.”
“You joke, but I wouldn’t put it past you.” He leaned back in the chair, stretching his arms above his head, hoodie riding up just enough for you to catch a sliver of skin at his waist.
You looked away so fast you nearly gave yourself whiplash.
“Data,” you said. “Focus, Graham.”
“Bossy,” he muttered, but he scooted closer to the screen anyway. “You know, if we survive Blackwell, I’m calling it now: you’re gonna be at some giant observatory, yelling at grad students about their decimal places, and I’m gonna be, like, your nerdy lab assistant.”
You poured the next weight into your hand, metal cool against your palm. “You think I’d hire you?”
He looked genuinely offended. “Excuse you. I’m charming. I’m competent. I know how to not blow up beakers.”
“That last one is debatable.”
He grinned. “You’d hire me. You’d miss me if you didn’t.”
Something in your chest stuttered. You dropped the weight. It thunked against the floor instead of the sensor.
“Nice drop, NASA,” he said.
“Shut up,” you muttered, but there wasn’t any bite to it.
Because that was the thing, wasn’t it? You would miss him. If he woke up tomorrow and decided that Max had finally looked at him the way he wanted her to, and suddenly all that time he spent orbiting your desk, your lunch table, your life, was redirected somewhere else– you’d be stranded. Drifting.
It wasn’t that Max was better than you. You knew that objectively. She was just… different. Soft-spoken and artsy and stuck inside her camera. You were loud about the things you loved, equations and stars and sci-fi and how the hell gravity even worked. She disappeared into her head; you disappeared into the math.
It didn’t make either of you more deserving. It just hurt that you wanted him and he didn’t even see it.
---
By the time you finished the lab, the storm had properly rolled in. Rain slapped against the windows in sheets, thunder rumbling somewhere overhead like God was rolling a bowling ball across the sky.
The campus looked washed-out and surreal. You packed up your bag, shoving your notebook and calculator inside.
Warren hesitated by the doorway, squinting out at the downpour. “Crap. I was gonna go to the parking lot, grab that DVD from my car.”
“You’re gonna get absolutely obliterated by that rain,” you said, amused.
“Sacrifices must be made in the name of cinema,” he said solemnly. “Besides, I promised you ‘Blade Runner’ night for, like, two weeks.”
You blinked. You’d actually forgotten about that.
“I thought you were saving that for…” You trailed off, not finishing the sentence for Max if she ever says yes.
Warren shifted from foot to foot, then shook his head. “I said I’d watch it with you first. Director’s cut deserves someone who won’t spend the whole time texting.”
Your stomach did a weird lurchy thing. You tried to play it cool, shrugging.
“Well, at this rate, we’re gonna get electrocuted before we finish the opening credits,” you said.
“We could wait it out at the dorms,” he suggested. “Or Two Whales, if Joyce hasn’t kicked me out permanently for taking up a booth to do homework.”
You thought about the walk there in the storm, the smell of diner coffee, the way Warren would inevitably go on a tangent about replicants and souls. You thought about how many times you’d sat across from him while he talked about Max. The way his eyes lit up, the way your heart sank.
You took a breath.
“Okay,” you said. “But ground rule.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Ground rule? For ‘Blade Runner’?”
“For you,” you said. “Tonight, no Caulfield monologue. No breakdowns about why she didn’t answer your text, or how mysterious she is, or how she’s the only one who gets your time travel jokes. Just… chill. Watch the movie. Be here.”
He stared at you for a second like you’d just startled him awake.
“Wow,” he said softly. “You really have been keeping score.”
You cursed yourself internally. “I told you, I listen. It’s like permanent damage at this point.”
He didn’t deflect with a joke this time. He just nodded slowly.
“Okay,” he said. “Deal. No Max talk. Just… you and me. And synthetic humans questioning reality.”
“Romantic,” you said dryly.
He smiled, and something about it was different. Smaller. Realer.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
Lightning flashed, lighting up the hallway. For a second, the world outside looked almost frozen.
You shoved your hands deeper into your jacket sleeves. “Come on, Graham. Before we drown.”
He pushed the door open and stepped out into the rain with a ridiculous little salute, and you followed, the cold drops soaking your hair, your clothes, your shoes, everything. You shivered, laughing despite yourself as the wind whipped at your face.
“Ten bucks you get sick,” you yelled over the storm.
He bumped his shoulder into yours as you ran. “Then you’ll have to bring me soup and complain the whole time. It’s a win-win.”
You rolled your eyes, heart pounding from the sprint and from him and from all of it. “I hate you.”
“You don’t,” he said easily.
And that was the problem.