Chapter Text
“She came in like a hurricane,
wearing boots and diamond rings.
With a fox fur on her shoulder,
she got me wondering.”
-Silver Heels, Fleetwood Mac
— ᨳଓ .
Day 1 of your doctoral research
— ᨳଓ .
The sharp, sterile scent of disinfectant instantly hits your nose as you walk into the lab. It is exactly 7:30 AM. You are operating on a mixture of pure adrenaline, a severe deficit of sleep, and a desperate need to establish absolute control over your environment. If you have to legally bind your PhD to a man who has managed to thoroughly infuriate you at every single turn, you are damn well going to ensure your workspace is an oasis of perfection.
The room itself is expansive, illuminated by rows of bright, humming overhead fluorescent lights that leave nowhere for shadows to hide. Everything about the space screams state of the art. Rows of heavy, chemical resistant benchtops run down the centre, flanked by gleaming stainless steel sinks and rows of empty, waiting electrical sockets. Along the perimeter walls, massive, heavy duty white metal incubators stand tall like modern sentinels, their digital temperature displays glowing a faint, electric green. To your left, a row of pristine fume hoods features thick safety glass panes that slide up and down with a heavy, satisfying mechanical click.
Through the large exterior windows, the sharp California morning sun cuts across the room, catching on the polished linoleum floor and reflecting off the pristine, white metal cabinets lining the walls. It is a completely blank, high tech canvas that is silent, cold, and waiting to be used (and you cannot wait to use it all!).
The sheer scale of the funding is obvious in every square inch of the space. It is a sterile cathedral of cutting edge research, packed with top tier centrifuges, neatly coiled gas lines, and expensive, brand new analytical balances that haven't even had their protective plastic film peeled off yet. The air is crisp and cool, kept at a constant, climate controlled temperature to protect delicate biological samples, carrying the faint, metallic tang of industrial air filters. Standing here in the quiet stillness, surrounded by thousands of pounds' worth of pristine glass and steel, the weight of the opportunity settles heavily in your chest. It is the perfect, clinical battlefield, and you have successfully claimed the best ground.
You dump your bag onto your designated chair on the right side of the long, central workbench and immediately get to work. You are completely locked in.
With methodical, deliberate movements, you unpack your pristine equipment out of the cardboard boxes which fill the cupboards and your desk ‘Oh wow,’ you think ‘they literally supply EVERYTHING!’. Your pipettes are lined up precisely by volume size; your culture plates are stacked in neat, chronological towers; and your notebook sits squarely in the dead centre of your desk, flanked by a row of perfectly capped, black fineliner pens. You even take a moment to wipe down the frosted glass shelving and plastic surfaces with an alcohol wipe, ensuring not a single speck of dust dares to ruin your setup. When you step back, your side of the lab looks like a beautiful, sterile masterpiece. You are ready for war, and your starting defence is an immaculate organisation.
And then, at exactly 7:55 AM, the lab doors swing open.
Ryland Grace stumbles in, and any lingering hope you had of a peaceful academic life instantly dissipates. He looks like he has been dragged through a hedge backwards, his hair a wild, static mess and his glasses slightly askew. He looks as though he has quite literally slept in his car. He is balancing a cardboard tray holding two massive takeaway coffees, a half eaten pastry, and a dangerously unstable stack of loose computer printouts that are actively slipping from his grip.
“Morning,” he mutters, his voice a low, gravelly mumble as he completely avoids eye contact and navigates toward the left side of the bench.
You do not answer. You just watch, your jaw slowly dropping, as the absolute desecration of the pristine workspace begins.
Within five minutes, Grace manages to transform his side of the bench into a literal natural disaster. He dumps the loose papers down with zero care, immediately spilling a few dark drops of coffee onto a data sheet without even noticing. He pulls a handful of Sharpies (many of which are uncapped) from his pocket and lets them roll chaotically across the surface, one of them marking the clean white benchtop. A neon pink sticky note with a hastily scribbled formula is lazily slapped onto the frame of his computer monitor, already peeling off at the corner. The contrast between your spotless, clinical oasis and his immediate hurricane of chaos is staggering.
You turn your back on the disaster zone, sitting down and pulling a stack of cell membrane protocols toward you. You are determined to completely tune out the chaotic rustling happening two feet to your left and focus on the complex mechanics of your setup. You need to read up on how a phospholipid bilayer could possibly hold its shape and control what goes in and out of a cell without water molecules pushing the hydrophobic tails together. It requires absolute, flawless concentration.
Instead, you are driven thoroughly mad.
Every time you try to absorb a sentence, your eyes are involuntarily dragged back to his side of the desk. The sight of those uncapped Sharpies slowly drying out is literally making you twitch. A rogue breeze from the climate control vent catches the peeling corner of his pink sticky note, making it click rhythmically against his monitor. Click. Click. Click. He doesn't even notice. He just keeps typing away, completely oblivious to the fact that his absolute lack of organisation is slowly chipping away at your sanity. It is an administrative nightmare, and it is taking everything in you not to reach over and forcefully cap his pens for him.
“Oh fudge,” a frantic murmur suddenly breaks your focus.
“No, no, no, where did I put the amino acid sequence printout? I just had it. Oh, goodness.”
You close your eyes, taking a slow, deep breath to prevent yourself from losing your mind. You look over. Grace is practically tearing his desk apart, lifting up empty coffee cups and aggressively flipping through his chaotic pile of loose papers, his cheeks flushing a panicked pink.
Without saying a single word, you stand up. You step into his self inflicted hurricane, reach calmly past a stack of half drying Sharpies, and pluck a crumpled piece of paper out from behind his keyboard.
You drop it onto the centre of his desk with a sharp, lethal look.
Grace freezes, staring at the paper, then looks up at you. Up close, his eyes behind his thick lenses are wide and completely flustered. He swallows hard, thoroughly intimidated by how terrifyingly efficient and locked in you are.
“Right,” he clears his throat, his voice cracking slightly. “Thanks. I… uh… it got lost under the keyboard.”
“Clearly,” you reply, your British accent dripping with tight, pragmatic skepticism. “Try capping your pens, Grace. The fumes are killing my brain cells.”
He blinks up at you, his mouth opening as if to launch into a defensive academic counter argument about air circulation. But as he looks at your rigid posture and the absolute, pristine perfection of your side of the bench (in comparison to his), he stops. He shuts his mouth. With a slightly chastised, quiet compliance, he reaches out and begins gathering the scattered Sharpies, clicking the caps back onto each one with deliberate, rhythmic snaps. It is a tiny, silent peace offering, proof that despite the chaos, he is actually paying attention.
Hours pass in a blur of intense focus. By the time the sharp California sun finally dips below the horizon, casting long, amber shadows across the linoleum floor, the initial spark of morning tension has completely given way to a quiet, heavy fatigue. The relentless humming of the overhead fluorescent lights suddenly feels much louder.
You are thoroughly exhausted, your shoulders aching from hours of being tightly wound. With slow, rhythmic movements, you begin to pack up your pristine gear, wiping down your lab tables one last time.
To your left, the contrast is as stark as ever, though his pens remain dutifully capped. Grace looks entirely spent, his eyes glassy behind his smudged lenses. With a heavy sigh, he begins aggressively sweeping his chaotic mountain of loose papers and half peeled sticky notes directly into his satchel in one disorganised mass. There is no system, no order, just a man desperately trying to finish for the day (‘fair enough’). The silence between you isn't even angry anymore, it is now just the mutual, bone deep weariness of two people who have pushed their brains to the absolute limit.
The heavy doors click open, breaking the heavy silence as Rocky glides into the room. Because he’s an engineer from the adjacent department, his schedule keeps him far away from the biology labs during the chaotic daylight hours, making this late night drop off his first real chance to see the new arrangement. He carries a small crate of shared diagnostic tech, setting it down on a side counter before rolling over to the edge of your central workbench.
He stops dead, his round, dark eyes shifting from right to left. He evaluates the space with the cold, precise calculation of a structural expert, looking between your spotless, clinical oasis and the absolute hurricane of Ryland’s desk.
His fingers fly across the screen of his AAC device, and a flat, electronic voice echoes through the quiet room.
“Grace, your workspace looks like it has been struck by an earthquake. Miss ♡’s workspace looks like a hospital. Why do you live like this, question?”
A sudden, involuntary smirk tugs at the corner of your mouth, the exhaustion lifting for just a fraction of a second. Ryland looks like he wants the floor to open up and swallow him whole. His face burns a brilliant pink, and he instinctively glances at the neatly capped Sharpies as if they might save his reputation.
Spoiler…they won’t!
“It’s a functional system, Rocky,” Grace mutters weakly, slinging his disorganised bag over his shoulder.
You zip up your satchel with a highly satisfying, crisp zzzip, casting one final, triumphant look at his side of the desk. The ground rules for the lab had officially been laid down, and you were leaving day one completely victorious.