The first day back in lab after the official start to an off-the-books relationship had a quality Noah could only describe as deceptively normal.

  The benches were the same. The fume hoods still hummed like disapproving librarians. The safety posters remained committed to their message that chemistry was fun unless you tried to treat it that way.

  Even Josh looked the same as he arrived several minutes late—hair slightly more chaotic than yesterday, lab coat thrown on like an afterthought, expression bright with the particular confidence of a man who had never been personally betrayed by a burette.

  And yet.

  Noah was sitting on his stool and felt, very distinctly, that his body had forgotten how to be casual about anything.

  Across the room, Rachel Ellis stood at the front bench with a clipboard and a calm, steady voice—her classroom voice. The one that made her sound like she’d never once lost her bearings, and certainly hadn’t lain awake at 2 a.m. staring up at the ceiling, looking soft and dazed and entirely unraveled.

  Noah adjusted his safety goggles, hiding his eyes. He’d spent those same hours staring at the same ceiling, too full of the memory of her skin to find room for sleep. Noah knew better, obviously. He also knew he wasn’t allowed to act like he knew better.

  That was the problem with rules: they were generally reasonable right up until they were applied to you.

  Josh dropped his notebook onto the bench with a slap that was technically within acceptable volume levels and said, “Okay. Here we go. Round five. Bennett and Sullivan versus the indifferent universe.”

  Noah didn’t start without Josh. He just pulled on his gloves and checked the reagent list again like he hadn’t read it three times already.

  Josh watched him for a moment too long. Then, very casually—too casually—Josh said, “So.”

  Noah didn’t look up. “So.”

  Josh leaned in slightly, the way he did when he thought he was being subtle. “You’re… not dying today.”

  Noah blinked once. “Nice of you to say.”

  “I mean it,” Josh insisted. “For the last two weeks you’ve been—” he gestured vaguely, rotating his hand as if trying to summon the exact image “—a husk. A husk of man. A sack of indifferent meat. And now you’re….” His eyes narrowed. “Normal-adjacent.”

  Noah’s mouth twitched before he could stop it. That was probably what Josh meant. Noah’s face had been doing that more lately—small betrayals. Brief moments where life didn’t feel like something he was merely enduring politely.

  “I’m still a meat husk,” Noah said, dry. “I’m just moisturized.”

  Josh made a noise of approval. “There it is. Humour. A pulse. The will to live.” He tapped his pen against the bench like a tiny gavel. “So. Talk.”

  Noah finally glanced at him. “No.”

  Josh grinned. "I’m going to assume this has something to do with that neighbour I used to hear so much about.”

  Noah’s brain stalled for half a beat.

  Neighbour meant Rachel. It meant Rae. It meant the person at the front of the room in a blazer like she didn’t have Noah’s hoodie at home and the audacity to look devastating in both. In Josh’s mind, though, the neighbour was just a girl Noah had mentioned a few times.

  Noah turned back to his bench. “It’s not about anyone.”

  Josh’s grin widened. “Sure. And I’m here because I love volumetric analysis.”

  “You’re here because the department won’t let you graduate without proving you can follow instructions,” Noah said.

  Josh gasped, wounded. “Miss Ellis, did you hear that? Bennett is bullying me.”

  Rachel was now a few benches away helping someone re-level their burette clamp. She did not look up. She didn’t even blink, which was either discipline or proof that she had developed selective hearing as a survival mechanism.

  Noah focused on his setup: rinse the burette, check for bubbles, record initial volume. The lab had that quiet, tense energy of a room full of people trying not to mess up in front of an authority figure.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  And Rachel was an authority figure, now. An actual one.

  Noah’s hand tightened around the stopcock for a second too long, then relaxed.

  Josh, unfortunately, was not done.

  “So,” Josh said again, quieter this time, “did something happen with the neighbour?”

  Noah’s pulse jumped—small, stupid. He kept his voice even. “Why would you think that?”

  Josh made a face. “Because you were sad enough last week that I considered bringing you soup. And now you’re not. Also, you’ve stopped staring into the middle distance like you’re hearing a piano soundtrack.”

  Noah huffed a breath that could have been a laugh if he’d let it. “Maybe I just got more sleep.”

  Josh’s eyebrows furled. “No, I’ve seen well-rested-Noah. You aren’t him. Well-rested-Noah is efficient and slightly terrifying. This is different.”

  Noah sighed. “What’s your deduction then, Holmes?”

  Josh leaned in with the intensity of a man watching a documentary about a rare animal. “What makes a man with love troubles both content and not well rested, hmm?”

  Noah cut him off, immediately, because there were boundaries and also because Rachel was roaming the room and Noah did not need Josh to invent a scandal.

  “Josh.”

  Josh blinked innocently. “What?”

  Noah lowered his voice. “Not the time.”

  Josh looked around, as if noticing the existence of other people for the first time. “Right. Professional setting. Of course. My mistake.”

  Noah tried to continue the titration process before he committed a crime.

  Josh watched him a second longer, then said, far too casually, “But you’re not going to deny it.”

  Noah kept his eyes on the meniscus. “I’m not going to confirm anything that gives you material.”

  Josh made a delighted little sound, like a cat finding an unattended piece of chicken. “Oh,” Josh whispered. “Ohhh, okay. That’s a yes.”

  Noah didn’t answer. Josh took that as permission, naturally. “Good for you,” he said, the grin audible in his voice. “Seriously. I take it things actually progressed? Or did she realize you were pining and took pity on you?”

  Noah felt his ears heat. “I wasn’t pining.”

  “You were pining. You were vibrating with pine. It was pine-scented in your general vicinity.” Josh leaned closer. “Did you cook for her? Is that how you got her? You baited a trap with perfectly diced vegetables?”

  Noah hesitated.

  Josh stared. “Bennett.”

  Noah held steady. “Sullivan.”

  “All I'm saying is that the last time you brought her up you said things were going well, then the past two weeks happened, and now you’re like this. Clearly something happened.”

  Noah’s brain produced a brief, vivid image of Rachel on her couch, hair down, eyes soft, asking him to stay without saying it. He swallowed and forced himself to sound normal. “We’re neighbours. Sometimes neighbours eat food together. They share.”

  Josh’s eyebrows rose. “Uh-huh. Responsible neighbours. Sharing resources. Very collectivist of you.”

  Noah started adding titrant, drop by careful drop.

  Rachel drifted down their row, pausing to check someone’s indicator colour. Her heels were quiet on the lab floor; her presence wasn’t. Noah did not look at her. He could feel her in the space like static.

  Josh, apparently emboldened by Noah’s refusal to combust, leaned in again and murmured, “Okay, but like… are you dating? Or are you just putting more furniture together in her apartment?”

  Noah’s hand stilled. That was a dangerous question, because it had two answers: the one he could say, and the one that was currently lodged in his ribs like a second heartbeat.

  He chose the only option available. “I like her,” Noah said, carefully.

  Josh’s grin spread slowly. “That’s not an answer to either of my questions.”

  “It isn’t.”

  Josh bumped his shoulder against Noah’s. “Bennett. Look at you. You’re glowing. It’s gross.”

  Noah began titrating again because murder was frowned upon on campus.

  Behind them, Rachel stopped at the bench next to theirs, answering a question about endpoint overshooting with calm efficiency. Her voice was steady. Normal. Instructor-appropriate.

  He lowered his voice to nearly nothing and said, in the reverent tone of a person discussing sacred things, “Okay. You don’t have to say anything. I’m just happy you’re not… dead.”

  Noah’s throat tightened unexpectedly.

  He kept his face neutral and said, dry, “I was never dead.”

  Josh snorted quietly. “Sure.”

  And then—because Josh could not leave well enough alone—he added, still very soft, “But I’m telling you right now, if my best friend is finally not a complete loner and I don’t get to meet the person who cured him, I’m going to be unbearable about it.”

  Noah’s mouth twitched. “You’re already unbearable.”

  “This is my baseline,” Josh whispered. “I can go higher.”

  Noah would have responded, but his reaction mixture chose that moment to shift toward the endpoint, demanding attention like a needy toddler. He focused. Added titrant. Watched the colour change.

  “Okay,” Noah murmured, more to himself than Josh. “There.”

  Josh leaned in, impressed despite himself. “Nailed it.”

  Noah wrote down the final volume, neat and exact. Across the bench, Rachel asked someone else how their trial went. The student mumbled. Rachel nodded kindly. Adjusted something with her gloved hands. Then she moved again, drifting toward Noah’s station. Noah kept his eyes down. He did not need to look at her. He could feel her attention in the air, light as a fingertip.

  Rachel paused at the edge of their bench like she was just doing her job—which she was—and asked, briskly, “How’s it going here?”

  Josh’s answer came instantly, overly innocent. “Great, Miss Ellis. Bennett is carrying the team, as usual.”

  Rachel’s gaze flicked to the notebook, to the recorded volumes, to the colour at the endpoint. A professional scan. Then—so fast Noah would have doubted it if he hadn’t been tuned to her the way he was—her eyes slid to his face.

  Just for a beat. Not long enough to be suspicious. Noah met her gaze without thinking. For a fraction of a second, her composure softened—an expression that belonged to Rae, not Miss Ellis. Then she blinked once, shuttered it, and nodded crisply.

  “Good,” she said aloud, to the bench. To the notes. To the lab. “Keep it up.”

  And as she moved on, clipboard tucked close, Noah felt something settle inside him—something small and steadier than the anxiety.

  The experiment continued.

  The lab stayed normal.

  And Noah, for the first time in two weeks in that lab, didn’t feel like he was simply surviving the day.

  He felt—quietly, privately—like he had something to go home to.