Lab Rats!

Chapter 1: Sally, When the Wine Runs Out ☆

You and Armin were tucked away in your favorite corner of the Paradis University library, a forgotten little alcove so quiet and secluded, it felt like your own private world. Hardly anyone knew it existed, buried deep in the farthest wing of the science stacks. You only stumbled upon it in your first semester, after getting lost somewhere between Genetic Recombination and Chromosomal Aberrations. And now, unless someone had a burning curiosity about the optimization of codon usage in recombinant protein expression (which, frankly, most people didn't), nobody would find you here.

Halfway through your second year of veterinary school, you were knee-deep in the endless, caffeine-soaked march toward your doctorate, equal parts dream and slow-burn romance with pure insanity.

A soft hush filled the space between you two, broken only by the occasional flutter of turning pages or the rhythmic scribble of pen on paper. Dust danced lazily in the shafts of sunlight filtering through the narrow window overhead, illuminating the two of you. You sat across from each other at a battered wooden table, your ancient chairs creaking every time one of you shifted, a sound you'd both stopped noticing after countless afternoons spent exactly like this.

Armin was supposed to be cramming for his CRISPR Technology midterm, a dense and complicated course that required all of his concentration. You, meanwhile, were trying (and failing) to focus on your Animal Physiology readings. Technically, you were both here to study. But only one of you was actually doing that.

You hunched over your textbook, completely absorbed, brow furrowed in quiet frustration as you tried to memorize the nuances of osmoregulation in freshwater fish. The world outside your notes might as well not have existed. You hadn't washed your hair in three days, as time management was a cruel joke during midterms, so it was pulled back with a worn-out claw clip, a few stray strands of hair escaping to fall into your eyes. You didn't bother fixing it anymore. You just didn't have the time, nor the energy. You'd been chewing on your lower lip all week, (a nervous habit you'd promised yourself you'd quit a hundred times over), leaving your delicate skin raw and chapped. Today, your newest attempt at self-restraint involved gnawing on the eraser end of your pencil instead, but the tension in your jaw betrayed your struggle.

Grad school, am I right?

Across from you, Armin watched.

He was supposed to be reading, flipping through journal articles on gene editing and Cas9 repair pathways, but his massive stack of textbooks sat unopened on the table beside him, his laptop screen dimmed from inactivity. He couldn't stop staring at you.

The way the sunlight kissed your skin, soft and golden, left him breathless. The quiet focus on your face, the scrunch of your brow, the curve of your lips against the eraser, all of it made his heart lurch. Even exhausted, unwashed, and worn thin from sleepless nights, you were radiant. Armin admired the flutter of your lashes against your cheek as your eyes bounced back and forth across the page you were reading, completely unaware of the effect you had on him.

It was stupid, he knew. Pathetic, even. But God, he was drowning in you.

So yes, the two of you were studying. But Armin Arlert was not studying his textbook, he was studying you. Meticulously. Reverently. Like you were the only thing worth learning about in the entire fucking library.

So lost was he in the sight of you, that he didn't notice another figure silently prowling the same aisle a few shelves away.

Eren Jaeger.

Of course, Eren was one of the few people besides you and Armin who actually knew this obscure corner of the library existed, but he wasn't here for a quiet study session. No, Eren Jaeger actually searched through these shelves with some regularity, when he was in dire need of niche and likely outdated academic papers for his thesis. This afternoon, he was hunting for a dissertation on viral vector optimization.