Chapter Text
A couple of things ran through the mind of Dr Adam Carlsen as he stood glued to the spot in that hallway.
Firstly, his mind was taken back to a day almost three years prior, where he had stumbled across a girl crying in the bathroom of his lab. It wasn’t uncommon, but she wasn’t a student - he didn’t recognise the face - and little did he know at the time, that face would be locked in his memory to this day.
He thought of the reagent that needed to be dumped out - the reason he had entered said bathroom on said day - and his mind was very briefly brought to the test that he was currently running, leading him to be in this very hallway at this very moment in time. His quick hopes that the results be sufficient for him to call it a night distracted him enough to forget the present moment, and he felt his hands moving without conscious intention.
Shit.
The soft feel of her ribs under his palms brought Adam back to the reason he was fixed on the spot in this hallway with a bang, and that was the girl that he was currently kissing, against his better judgment - not that he’d had much say in the matter.
Shit.
He pulled away, and what he already knew was confirmed again, and that was that he had just been kissed by the same girl from the bathroom he had just been thinking about. The girl he thought about daily.
Olive.
He looked down her, mind still reeling over the way that she had rushed over to him and didn’t even give him the chance to answer her request before her lips were on his. Her soft, sweet lips. No, stop it.
‘Did you.. did you just kiss me?’
Way to state the obvious, asshole. His brain was clearly fried from feeling a lot of things that he was certain he’d never felt before. Especially below the belt. Stop. Concentrate on her, dipshit. What just happened?
His mind must be playing tricks. Clearly none of this was real because she had just denied it with a one word response to his still very stupid question. Just walk away, he thought as he turned towards the water fountain, then he thought better - or perhaps, worse - of it.
‘Are you sure?’ He heard the words slip from his mouth, again without meaning them to.
He watched her with curiosity, waiting for an answer to make sense of all this, but as she hid her face in her hands, a new feeling came over him. An urge. He wanted to take hold of her wrists and pull her hands away from the face that inexplicably surfaced in his dreams. He wanted to protect her, but he didn’t know exactly from what. He wanted to know every thought inside her head.
‘What’s going on here?’
She took a breath, as if gathering herself to prevent spilling over. He concentrated on her face, as if the more intently he watched, the more of her inner thoughts he would be able to decipher.
‘Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but this is really none of your business’
He was taken aback at her sudden ferocity. Had she been anyone else in the world, except for maybe his oldest friend, Holden, that response would have had his blood boiling. But not her, so all he could muster was ‘yes, of course.’
Say something to keep her here. Don’t let her walk away and lose the first opportunity you’ve had for an opening in over two years.
‘I’ll just go back to my office and begin to work on my Title IX complaint.’
What? For fuck’s sake Adam, why would you say that?
He was almost too busy berating himself to here the start of her sentence, getting out of his head just in time to here her say ‘your what?’
‘Title IX is a federal law that protects against sexual misconduct within academic settings.’
‘I know that a Title IX is.’
‘I see. So you wilfully chose to disregard it’
‘I- what? No. No, I didn’t.’ She looked bewildered, and beautiful.
He wished this wasn’t the way this conversation had been going, but he had her attention and he wanted to keep it. He needed to know why she kissed him, and he had already taken it this far. ‘I must be mistaken, then. Someone else must have assaulted me.’
‘Assault- I didn’t ‘assault’ you.’
‘You did kiss me.’
‘But not really.’
‘Without first securing my consent’
‘I asked you if I could kiss you!’ She had. That was true.
‘And then did so without waiting for my response.’ It would have been yes, but equally he probably would have also talked her out of it by opening his mouth.
‘What? You said yes.’
‘Excuse me?’ He was genuinely confused for a split second that maybe he had lost his mind at the sight of her coming towards him. But no, he wouldn’t have been so reckless. Not when it came to her.
‘I asked if I could kiss you, and you said yes.’
‘Incorrect.’ He remembered how he had responded now. ‘You asked if you could kiss me and I snorted.’ That was true. It had been all he could manage.
‘I’m pretty sure I heard you say yes.’
Had she wanted to hear me say yes?
‘Listen, I’m really sorry.’ She looked it, her big eyes looking up towards his face, and he felt the muscles automatically soften and relax, which was perhaps even stranger than the situation unfolding before them both. ‘It was a weird situation. Can we just forget that this happened?’
She looked embarrassed, and that urge to touch her, to protect her, resurfaced. He watched her for a moment. Her eyes had dropped from his face and she seemed to be scanning his broad shoulder, his chest. Suddenly Adam was very aware of their size difference, which he now realised could be intimidating as they stood in the empty hallway of the dimly lit, and equally empty biology building. He wanted to make her feel safe, concerned that the thing that might be making her uncomfortable was, in fact, him.
‘Is there something wrong?’ His words came out softer than he thought possible. She did that to him.
‘What? No. No, there isn’t?’
‘Because kissing a stranger at midnight in a science lab might be a sign that there is.’
She wasn’t a stranger, not to him, but he doubted that she remembered their meeting all that time ago.
‘There isn’t.’ She seemed to be shutting the conversation down.
‘Very well,’ he nodded, and then couldn’t resist, ‘expect mail in the next few days, then.’
It was meant as a playful jab, but he didn’t do playful, and he wasn’t known for playful. She probably thinks you’re even more of a dick than most people generally do, he thought. He started to walk away before he made it worse.
‘You didn’t even ask my name!’ She called after him. That confirmed his suspicion; she thought they really were strangers. He wouldn’t blow it by coming clean now.
‘I’m sure anyone could figure it out, since you must have swiped your badge to get in the labs after hours. Have a good night.’
At this point, he just needed to retreat and clear his brain. It kept circling back to the feeling of her waist in his hands. Stop.
‘Wait!’
Had she really said that? Was he imagining the feeling of cool skin and soft fingers that had just wrapped around his wrist? He was frozen on the spot again, and for just a moment he stared at his arm as her hand dropped away. He wanted to memorise the feeling of the touch that was already gone. His brain, once again, was fried. He could hear her apologising but he cut her off with a demand that he couldn’t hold in any longer.
‘The kiss. Explain.’