❝ sorry i cannot hear you, i'm k-kinda busy ❞ | ic contact

[polygrapher]

❝ — nate pierce. not here, leave a message. ❞ — ☏ — ( CALL | TEXT | ACTION )

Comments

( action )

[pertinent]

[ someone has to check the spectrometers every morning, just to make sure they're still calibrated properly, and that job? usually goes to davor, because he is genuinely terrible at playing nose-goes (and the lab is secretly full of twelve-year-olds in charge of hideously expensive scientific equipment, so of course that's how they make decisions). davor is not, however, expecting to find someone else in the spectrometry lab when he walks in—and he very definitely does not let out a girly squeak and slam his free hand against the closed door in panic. nope. not him. ]

Jesus Christ, what are you—you can't be in here!

[ excuse him as he sputters for a second, trying to get his brain back in gear... and waiting for his heart to start beating normally again. it's not that he's not used to agent pierce looming in random corners (although he isn't), but random heavily-armed government agent in the spectrometry lab is not the kind of thing one can generally brace oneself for.

and a quick, only semi-panicked glance around says that gabe's not in here, which is. unusual, given that it's his job to babysit escort said government agent. ]

What are you doing in here?

[ davor gently sets his papers down and braces a hand on the nearest table, taking in and letting out a deep breath. he's moved past panic into suspicion by this point, since as far as he was aware agent pierce didn't have even the remotest interest in the actual science done in the lab. (hey, his parents are bosnian political refugees. suspicion of heavily-armed government agents—even the really attractive ones, and agent pierce definitely qualifies for that category—is a crucial survival tactic in the pavlović household.) ]

☞ ACTION

[capacitor]

[ it would be nice if, at some point, gabe got a little bit of advance warning before being shoved in front of a group of bored undergrads and told to lecture.

just once.

really, that's all he's asking.

it's not that he minds filling in for savage during his 10am—he doesn't, although he's a little jealous they have a "special topics in quantum physics" course for undergrads at all; thanks, harvard—but he'd appreciate more than ten minutes' notice next time. quantum entanglement is the kind of thing that needs props to make sense, and throwing markers at people just isn't the same. ( and—what's your name? a'ight, cohen is gonna spin in a circle, and you, with the pink hair—alvarez?—you're going to spin next to him. no, together. yes, really. trust me, it'll make sense in a sec. )

but it's not a complete disaster, as usual, and he manages to get them actually discussing and moving and talking amongst themselves on the way out of class, which he counts as a success. he notices a small clump of girls file in five minutes after he starts lecturing and take a seat in the back corner, silently texting amongst themselves and batting their eyelashes down at him. that's actually starting to become a regular thing, but hell. might as well give them some science if they're going to be in here.

still, he can technically only keep them for an hour, and gabe sets them free to wreak havoc on the slushy winter campus at about forty-five after. once they're all out of the way, making more noise than really ought to be possible for a clump of twelve students plus visitors, he picks his way through the maze of desks to where cambridge is perched with this week's novel, leaning backward and bracing himself casually against a nearby chair. ]

You know, you sitting in the back of the class making faces at my analogies isn't exactly helpful. The basketball thing made perfect sense in context.

[ technically they weren't faces so much as "variations on the theme of lineface", but gabe's gotten very, very good at telling a judgmental lineface apart from an exasperated lineface at fifty paces. ]

So, what are we reading this week?