#i work in stem research

[averlym]

litany of the martyrs (click for better resolution!)

[lagunaseca2013]

pecco/luca #14

prompt from here! dearest anon thank u for prompting me. u are the only person who did so that actually means a lot LMAO. struggled profoundly with this which is why it took me over a month and it's 3k long and it's also inexplicably a soulmate au. i hope u enjoy ur library sex!

—

QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT — pecco/luca, 3k

Maybe elbow-deep in the gnarliest of the rat cages hadn’t been the best time to bring up Marc, but, well. Pecco had also been more sleep-deprived than usual after the several all-nighters he’d pulled, trying to finish the new section of his dissertation that Valentino had proposed before he ran out of steam. Neither of them were exactly their best selves. And it wasn’t even their lab. 

Pecco was getting paid two hundred euros to clean the cages every three days, while Dr. Stoner and all his—hah— lab rats attended yet another conference. But he wasn’t sure what Valentino’s excuse was, considering he complained pretty regularly about Dr. Stoner getting preferential funding because of STEM privilege. Pecco wasn’t exactly sure how helping out in his lab fit into that equation, and he wasn’t about to ask. 

All Pecco had wanted to know, really, was if Vale could still feel him at all times. If the throbbing in Pecco’s skull was ever going to go away, if notoriously pain-averse Valentino had somehow learned to live with the ache.

“Well you see,” Vale had grumbled, scolding #93 when it tried to nip at his fingertips through the gloves as it settled into its new bedding, “I do not think the bonds, they are—” he gestured vaguely, nearly knocking over the stack of ungraded reports piled on Dr. Stoner’s desk, “not so rigid, right? I think they are a bit, allora. . . .” he trailed off, staring somewhere in the middle distance. “I think they are often deceiving.” He’d said, finally, punctuating it with a spritz of the expensive unscented cleaner that Dr. Stoner insisted was the only one that didn’t aggravate his migraines. 

“Ah.” Pecco had responded, lamely, staring down at #10 as it slept quietly in its little holding tupperware. “I think I understand.” 

The thing is, Pecco doesn't even really know when he figured it out. Maybe he always knew what the deep thrumming in the back of his skull was, what the tight aching feeling in the pit of his stomach meant. Why he was always sort of looking for Luca, regardless of time or place or reality. He doesn’t know why he thought asking Valentino about it would bring any clarity, but well. Luca was still his brother, technically. Even if he had gone down a path Valentino didn’t exactly approve of. 

“It’s just a good opportunity,” Franky tells him, when he brings it up again over lunch. He’s hunched miserably over his protein bowl, texting with one hand under the table. For some reason, he thinks they don’t all know it’s Álex Marquez on the other end, when he hides his screen from them and grins all dopily at his messages. Pecco isn’t an idiot, but he isn’t cruel, either, so he says nothing, picking at his own cold chicken. 

“Of course, Maro knows that Vale would fund his research until the end of time,” Franky continues, placing his phone facedown on the table. “But Dr. Hernandez already has the grants and the equipment. He’d be stupid not to take Marc’s spot! Plus, they publish all the time, and you know he’s been wanting to get more exposure.”

“Yeah,” Pecco hums, downing the rest of his now-cold espresso and grimacing when the grounds stick to the back of his teeth. “A very good opportunity.” 

Pecco is still stewing about it when he shoves their apartment door open with a grunt, three books falling out of his bag in the process. Bez and Cele make no move to help him from where they’re sequestered on the couch, the entire living room littered with pages of Cele’s senior thesis, marked up in what looks like sparkly purple gel pen. 

“ Ciao , Pecco,” Cele sighs dejectedly, against Bez’s shoulder. 

“ Ciao , my roommate who lives here and pays rent,” Pecco groans, leaving the books in the doorway and making a beeline for the mokapot. He briefly considers suicide, when he finds it unwashed in the sink, then grabs the scrubber brush with a sigh. Bez comes up behind him, a moment later, draping his long arms around Pecco’s waist until he reluctantly leans back into his embrace, closing his eyes so none of the tears he’s been holding in all day leak out. 

“What’s the matter with our Pecchino, huh?” Bez asks, pressing a kiss to Pecco’s cheek and then releasing him, leaning back against the counter with a tilt of his head that makes him look just like the puppy he’s been trying to ply Pecco with pictures of, lately. “Did one of Dr. Stoner’s evil rats try to bite you again? You could totally sue him for that, you know, let’s call up Mig and—” 

Pecco waves a hand at him with a sigh. “Leave Migno alone, you know he’s been too stressed studying for the Bar. And I’m not going to sue Dr. Stoner, the rats were fine. Allora, one of them did try to bite Vale but he—” 

“ Vale? What the hell was Vale doing there?” Bez interrupts him. Behind them, Cele pokes a curious head in the doorway. He’s wearing Bez’s boxers, Pecco notices belatedly. That probably explains the state of the living room, he realizes, resigned. 

Pecco shrugs, giving the moka a final rinse. There’s a stubborn burnt patch at the bottom which probably means that Cele was the last person to use it, but it’s the least of his problems right now. Everything feels like burnt espresso to him these days, it’s nothing special in the grand scheme of things. “I don’t know if they’re back together, honestly. They’re probably just fucking again.” 

Bez shakes his head with an exaggerated grimace. “I don’t know how Vale manages to bone so many of his colleagues,” he says, pulling Cele in with an arm around his pale neck. “Don’t the faculty meetings get awkward? Surely he could find someone he doesn’t work with to take on a date!” 

Against his will, Pecco thinks of the lab coat Valentino had been wearing when Pecco had walked in, the little Australian flag embroidered on the cuff of his sleeve, nearly invisible unless you were looking for it. These days, Dr. Stoner walks around in lab coats with the flag embroidered proudly next to his last name, impossible to miss. Vale must have been wearing an old one. Where he’d found it, Pecco didn’t really want to know. 

“I don’t think they’re doing much dating,” he sighs, dumping the espresso powder in and snapping the lid shut with a loud metallic clang. 

Cradled in Bez’s arms, Cele bursts into laughter. 

Pecco doesn’t know why he was the last to know that Luca was leaving them. The weeks leading up to Luca’s departure had been—euphoric, almost. If he ignored the sense of impending doom, which he had become very good at. They had been spending a truly unreasonable amount of time together that semester because Luca had still been living in the apartment, sharing his car, sleeping, working, eating together. 

Pecco had woken up from an involuntary library nap, one day last March, to find one of Luca’s jackets draped over him. He’d moved into the carrel next to Pecco while he was asleep, apparently. Valentino found them slumped over each other, napping on the couch in his office so often that semester, that he’d started calling them i dormiglioni , like they were little kids. 

It was easy to ignore, at first, because Pecco had been ignoring it for what was probably years, at that point. Since at least their second year of Laurea , when they’d been assigned partners for a semester-long project in Professor Nieto’s Modern Philosophy class. Pecco had known who he was, of course. Not even the different last names could hide that Luca was Dr. Rossi’s younger brother, quietly accepted into the Physics and Philosophy department an entire year earlier than they usually let undergrads declare. 

Luca wasn’t particularly popular, really. Whatever magnetic charm that Valentino, known mostly around campus as il Dottore , walked around with must have come from Graziano, because Luca didn’t attract the same kind of attention everywhere he went, and he’d kept to himself, mostly, their first year. Pecco couldn’t help but notice him. He was much quieter than Valentino, of course, but he was still every bit as beautiful. Pecco had never dreamed that Luca would ever pay him any attention, even after they were assigned partners. 

It turned out he was wrong, about Luca, anyway. He was just like Valentino, in all the ways that mattered. It was kind of impressive that people who studied their field so closely could be so blind about it. 

Or maybe, Pecco had thought, watching Luca leave, inevitably, after everything—that was the caveat. 

Pecco had spent so long ignoring it, that he didn’t understand what he was feeling, the first time Luca intentionally tugged on the bond. He was on the fourth floor of the stacks section of the library in late May, enjoying the sunlight peaking through the skylights while he combed through the shelves. Choking on dust and trying not to make noises every time he encounters a dead spider, on some fruitless mission from Valentino to find the original copy of Bell’s Inequality he swore was hiding around there. Pecco was beginning to suspect he was just trying to get him out of his office for an hour so he could hook up with—whoever it was who’d been leaving ribbed condom wrappers in the Philosophy Lounge trash all year. 

Then, all at once, he felt the little ember he’d kept tucked away, all this time, a little shard of glass pressed up against his heart. It was like all of his muscles and tendons, bones and sinew, every part of his body could feel it. Feel him. Luca, reaching through.

In a lot of cultures, soul bonds were likened to strings, in mythology. When Pecco let himself wonder what theirs might feel like, he always pictured something like a ribbon or a cord, their connection loose and free-flowing. When Luca touches their bond for the first time, it feels nothing like that. It doesn’t really feel like anything else, or anything he could describe with words, though his whole job, his whole life, he’s been trying to describe what this moment might feel like. It’s not accurate, but he pictures himself getting struck by lightning through the library skylights, instantly engulfed in flames.

Luca finds him like that, rounding the corner of the H-K shelves, his eyes bright. A strange, manic energy to him that Pecco has never seen before. It’s hot, watching Luca stalk towards him like a predator, every nerve ending in his body lighting up, the closer he gets. Suddenly, Luca is right in front of him, breathing a little heavy, caging Pecco in, against the hard metal of the shelves. If soul ties were visual things, Pecco thinks theirs would probably be a neon red cloud, hazily encompassing them. As it stands, the only proof Pecco has that this is real, that Luca is going to stop pretending he doesn’t know and finally fucking do something about it is the tension he feels flowing through his body. It’s their bond, it’s Luca , wrapped around his chest like a vice.

Pecco’s always imagined their first kiss being a little awkward. Maybe a peck in the back corner of the campus cafe that Cele works at, or tiredly making out on the floor of Luca’s bedroom, where they both prefer to study at home. Something slow, intentional. The weight of the bond unburdened.

There’s nothing slow or soft or sweet about the way Luca kisses him for the first time, almost bruising. His tongue is hot and slick in Pecco’s mouth, brushing against the back of his teeth. Pecco whines into it, helpless, a hand finds purchase on his waist, the other tangling in his hair. He can barely tell if he’s kissing back, so lost in the sensation. He only realizes when Luca pulls away, ducking his head to suck marks onto Pecco’s flushed neck, that he’s been holding his breath.

“ Fuck, Luca ,” he gasps, his hips twitching up involuntarily when Luca finds a pressure point. He’s half hard just from kissing, but Luca’s no better. Pecco can feel the heat of his length straining against his thigh from where Luca had wedged a leg between them. “I need—” he cuts himself off with a hiss when Luca grinds them together.

“Shh, Franci,” Luca whispers, a little meanly. “You don’t want anyone to hear us, right?” Reaching down between them, he pops the button of Pecco’s corduroys with deft fingers. Pecco jolts forward, muffling his moan with the soft collar of Luca’s shirt between his teeth when Luca wraps a calloused palm around his weeping cock and gives it a dry tug. It’s equal parts pleasure and pain, and Pecco can’t help but sigh in relief when Luca pulls back just far enough to spit directly on the leaking tip. His breath catches at the sensation of it, Luca dragging his hand up and down until he’s wet everywhere, saliva and precum dripping down his balls.

“Luca we can’t —” Pecco gasps, when he brushes a blunt, dry fingertip against his hole. His whole body shudders as Luca does it again, circling and stroking until Pecco is clenching down on nothing; he can feel himself soaked everywhere . 

Luca drags his fingers down through the stickiness between his thighs, chuckling. “So wet, Franci, like a girl.” 

Before Pecco can even react to that, Luca flips them around pressing him against the cold metal of the shelves with a firm grip. His pulse is hammering in his throat and he wonders, absurdly, if Luca can feel it, every erratic beat. 

Luca is everywhere on him, all at once. His breath is hot against Pecco’s ear, his fingers digging into his hips, both grounding and overwhelming. The bond thrums between them, heavy, tightening around Pecco’s rib cage. It feels like a separate animal, alive and red and wild . “Tell me now, if you want me to stop,” he murmurs against the back of Pecco’s neck, his lips brushing against his skin, teasing.

Pecco whimpers again, pushing his ass back up against where Luca is hard. “Please.”

Luca pulls away, this time to fumble with his belt. The clink of the metal buckle as he undoes it rings louder than a gunshot in the stillness of the library. Pecco keeps forgetting they’re in public , that any moment someone could walk in and see him bent over the periodicals, squirming as Luca feeds his cock between his slippery thighs. Whimpering as Luca drags achingly slow up against the sensitive skin of his balls. It’s filthy , the wet heat of it, the lewd slide of skin on skin. Luca fucks between his thighs like he doesn’t care if Pecco gets off, like he’s just a means to an end.

His hips stutter, his grip turning bruising on Pecco’s waist, like he’s afraid to let go. With a grunt, muffled against the damp curls at the nape of Pecco’s neck, he spills onto the shelf beneath them. He doesn’t even glance down, uncaring of the carnage. He just flips Pecco around, still panting, eyes blown, looking like he wants to run or maybe sink his teeth into Pecco’s throat.

Instead of softening, instead of giving either of them a breath, Luca crushes their mouths together. The bond between them is electric, fraying, tightening—too much. Pecco feels like he’s being squeezed from the inside out, like something is about to snap in his chest. For a brief moment, he thinks, hysterically, maybe he wants it to. 

Luca is still hard against his thigh, still wanting, still taking . His hand snakes into Pecco’s hair, pulling, tugging, keeping him exactly where he wants him.

“Luca, this—” Pecco gasps against his mouth, fingers twitching at Luca’s wrist, nails biting into his skin. “This isn’t—I don’t want. . . .”

He bites down on Pecco’s bottom lip, just enough to make him flinch. “ Tesoro .” His voice is low, almost coaxing. “We don’t have to.”

As if they haven’t already. As if Pecco can’t look down between them and find Bell’s Inequality , covered in the evidence of their desperation.

But the thing is, Pecco still wants . He wants Luca to get him off in here, the AC blowing dust around and the motion sensor lights flickering off every ten minutes. He wants to see Luca’s face when he finishes, this time. He wants Luca to kiss him, gentle, and be there in the morning when he wakes up. It doesn’t feel anything like Pecco imagined, holding Luca in his arms. It feels like the end of something, instead of the beginning.

The bond isn’t soft, like threads of fate weaving them together—it feels like a chokehold, also, like a noose. Luca presses him back against the cold metal shelves like he wants to imprint him there, leave fingerprints on his soul as much as his skin. Pecco wants to do anything in his power to keep Luca here, in this moment, for as long as he possibly can.

“Say it,” Luca murmurs, dragging his lips down Pecco’s jaw. His hand tightens in Pecco’s hair, yanking his head back so their eyes meet. There’s something frantic in his gaze, something uncertain and desperate.

Pecco swallows, pulse jumping under his skin. Heat and hunger and fear tangled together. “I can feel it,” He whispers into Luca’s open mouth. 

Really, Pecco had thought, as Luca had sunk to his knees on the faded carpet, pulling Pecco’s pants all the way down with something like reverence , that zing at the base of his spine practically singing when he’d taken Pecco into his mouth. He’d known then, that it was a feeling you could only get when you were physically, mentally, emotionally connected to your soulmate.

It kind of just felt like Luca was running away.

[faynthearted]

school is back in session. free time is 100% gone. 😀

[non-un-topo]

Applying for my Master's in gender studies kind of feels like shooting myself in the foot, but then again, it's not a useless discipline if it's being systematically censored and erased.

[wonder-worker]

"[Elizabeth Woodville's] piety as queen seems to have been broadly conventional for a fifteenth-century royal, encompassing pilgrimages, membership of various fraternities, a particular devotion to her name saint, notable generosity to the Carthusians, and the foundation of a chantry at Westminster after her son was born there. [...] On other occasions she supported planned religious foundations in London, […] made generous gifts to Eton College, and petitioned the pope to extend the circumstances in which indulgences could be acquired by observing the feast of the Visitation. [...] One possible indicator of a more personal, and more sophisticated, thread in her piety is a book of Hours of the Guardian Angel which Sutton and Visser-Fuchs have argued was commissioned for her, very possibly at her request."

— J.L. Laynesmith, "Elizabeth Woodville: The Knight's Widow", Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty

[lillazyboithings]

No fandom art today (still busy with academics) but have this eye I drew while I was bored while the teacher is teaching bioinformatics (if I see the stupid website again my stupid brain is going to explode<3)

[catscomputerscreativewriting]

theory of computation/computability and complexity/whatever your institution calls it is the universal computer science hazing ritual.

[polycyclic-aromatic-homocarbon]

It makes me kinda sad that my undergrad thesis is only 8 months, especially since the project has a 1 year timeline and we’re only just about to start it. I’m going to do and learn a lot from it in those 8 months of course, I already have after just two and all I’ve done is background research, but I dunno it’s just. Sad that a project I’m going to pour my heart into has to end without me.

I had the same problem with my summer research and I’m really glad that I got an extra month to actually finish up what I was doing for it but I sunk so much time and energy and passion into that research and now it’s just. Done. And I feel like a Master’s is going to be the same, especially since I could be doing an accelerated, 1 year MSc. Like that’s. Nothing. In research terms. Now, the whole point of doing the 1 year program is that I do it in my undergrad thesis lab so I can kinda skip past the bulk of the training and orientation stuff, so it will be a fairly solid 1 year of research, but it would in no way start a project and honestly, I don’t know that it would end one either.

I dunno I just don’t like leaving things unfinished and it makes me very sad to know that I have to let the research I do go so that someone else can finish it while I move on to something else. I do wish I got to see some of these things through to the end more. I guess this is what parenting feels like??

[demonslayedher]

You know, I went into the anime adaptation of the Swordsmith Village Arc knowing it just wasn't going to have the same punch as previous arcs due to the pacing (primarily being a vehicle for flashbacks as opposed to slowly building tension), lack of impactful villains (Hantengu's back story simply does not have the impact or emotional draw of Rui or the Shabana siblings, and Gyokko is... he's just Gyokko), and incomplete-feeling character arcs (this is all set-up for pay-off on Mitsuri, Muichiro, and Genya, whereas Uzui & Rengoku had more satisfying arcs contained within single story arcs).

I knew this, and despite not totally sticking the landing with filler, I think Ufotable did a fine job with the material they had to work with.

I do have one criticism, though.

IT NEEDED MORE SWORDS.

Swords!!! Are!!!!! Beautiful!!!!! And!!!!!! The craftsmen!!!!!!! Are!!!! Amazing!!!!!!!!!! And!! Nichirinto!!! Are!!! So!!!! Special!!!!!!

GIVE US MORE SWORD LORE, GOTOUGE!!!!!! GIVE ME ALL YOUR TAISHO SECRETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[idlingsomewhere]

so much for the self-imposed midnight deadline

[whentherewerebicycles]

i really and truly believe that there are only two genuine human superpowers, both of which can be actively cultivated:

the ability to find anything interesting, ie the ability to reframe and reflect on any situation or encounter, even/especially negative or boring ones, so as to make what is happening to you interesting, engaging, and personally meaningful to your human experience. this habit of mind is mostly curiosity but it's also woven through with psychological flexibility, especially the ability to regulate your own emotional reactions so that you can respond to challenging or tedious situations in more thoughtful and values-aligned ways that develop your sense of self instead of making you feel trapped or bored or fragmented

the ability to teach yourself new things. idk maybe as a teacher i am biased but i really believe that the single most transformative gift you can give any human being is a deep understanding of how people learn and improve at things. what is more hopeful, more inspiring, or more life-affirming than the realization that you can learn new things at any age, and that the new things you learn (plus the joyful process of learning itself!) can utterly transform the way you experience the world and understand yourself? what is more amazing or incredible than the realization that learning things is not a mysterious & passive process that happens to you but a reasonably consistent set of steps and tools that you can learn how to master and apply to virtually any skill or domain of human knowledge? the superpower of being able to learn/improve at anything you set your mind to… but also the superpower inherent in that quiet unwavering certainty that even if you feel stuck at various points in your life, you have within yourself the capacity to get unstuck through learning and changing and growing and experiencing new things. wowowowowowowow!!!!! what an extraordinary gift!!!!

[freakystinky]

the way tumblr talks about medicine makes me wonder how many of us here actually have critical thinking skills

[ruvviks]

so massively unwell about nathan x ru/vik

[olliup]

I saw a post that was like "you're not researching, you're just looking shit up" and I want to let yall know that the most dedicated researchers writing thousands of papers in is still only "looking shit up" for the majority of those papers.

Not everything requires you to go outside and measure the dirt on a specific time and day. Sometimes scientists already have that data and just haven't put it together yet, thats what researchers often use. And they do most of it in front of a computer. Google Scholar is a thing for a reason.

[astrxealis]

hiii :333 i think i am alive !! ( small update in da tags )

[thebigqueer]

realizing i actually have no useful interests or ambitions