[fanfiction] - Adam Carlson's POV of the Love Hypothesis

a kiss

It's late. Precisely two hours later than usual for me to stop working and get dinner. 

But fuck usual. 

It's the very first time that I'm at the lab and Olive too. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm fairly positive, that this had happened before. But never, I repeat, never has it happen, that it was ONLY us. No other person around at all. 

And I'm rehearsing what to say, how to casually approach her, for an hour, before officially giving up and turning my computer down. It's no use. 

There will be no ideal approach - because no matter which enticing words it might entail, the approach itself will inevitably be made by me. So, it's a failure by default. 

And while I'm convinced, I could be a tremendous help, a truly helpful second set of eyes to her project development, I know myself well. I will probably not be able to find the right tone (calm without icy, encouraging without eager). That's why I'll be leaving in a second. Just a very, very brief last glance. 

I'm truly pathetique, but I can't help myself. 

The view of Olive Smith, cowering over petri dishes, will be my companion over this weekend and probably also the next week forward. 

Or so I thought. Because, right around the corner with the water dispenser, in clear view of her workplace, I freeze to a complete halt, absolutely motionless and even more absolutely ridiculous. Because her place is empty. Abandoned. 

A sudden feel of chill runs through my veins. It's closely followed by disappointment. It's a heavy feeling, pressing down on my chest like a real weight and a brief gulp reports back to me that my throat is dry, to a point, where it's almost achy. 

I missed her. 

I missed an opportunity to collect one more image for my vast collection. 

And this awful mixture of regret (pointless) and disappointment (as said, ridiculous) clocks my brain for a second. That must be the reason, I miss it. 

Miss the movement in my peripheral vision and am totally surprised, when a figure just plops up right in front of me. Close. Immediate vicinity. 

It takes me by surprise, spikes my heartbeat, my pulse suddenly a very present entity in my selfawareness. But I don't get any chance at all to recognize, who's said person, that's so immediately invading my personal space. 

"Can I please kiss you?" 

I spaced out. In front of the laptopscreen again. That's the most logical conclusion. That's the ONLY conclusion and my brain is very eager to tell me, that daydreaming is a real thing and should be embraced. Indulge yourself in a fantasy, you're allowed to have. At least, that's what I kept telling myself, after I felt like shit for almost a year of halfawake-halfasleep dreaming of Olive Smith lying next to me in my  bed, sharing an intimate hollow under my sheets with me. 

Yes. 

She can. She can kiss me. Of course she can. But I'm not able to articulate that, because one very important synapse in my brain wires reality, fiction, presence and wishful thinking correctly back into their intended places inside my brain. 

Olive Smith IS standing right in front of me. 

I'm not daydreaming. I'm not at my desk. I'm not hallucinating. 

Or I am. 

Because her movement towards me never stops. As it should. It should stop at least five feet away from each other. That's where the comfort zone of distant work colleagues starts. 

But she doesn't. She doesn't stop and then her lips are on mine. 

Which I immediately identify as NOT a daydream. 

It's too real. It's smell and taste and touch and it's an astonishing invasion of every atom of my body to experience a five-senses overkill. 

Olive, pushed up on her toes, leaning against me. Pressing her lips onto mine.

They're dry and soft and a very difficult to classify combination of smells reaches my nostrils. 

Coffee. Ethyl alcohol. Green Apples. A hint of musk and nutmeg. 

My brain really tries to ty these odors to their origin, because that's easier than to confront itself with the most urgent question:

WHY is Olive Smith kissing me? A pressured one, too, where her hands settle on my shoulders and her face is tilted up, up, up. Mainly, because i'm way to caught off guard, to lean down towards her. 

And my hands develop their own mind, leaving my control, climbing determined to capture-and-hold-tight from the small of her back to her ribcage. Ten fingers spreading wide, deliciously capturing her within. How could I not? How could I ever miss the opportunity to hold on to her with all I have?

And then I see it. Next to the westside exit. A silent plop, when the glasdoor moves shut. The shadow of a departing person. 

And I tense. 

An avalanche of findings hits me, just in the exact moment, Olive stops pressing her lips to mine. 

There was a third party. Right here, with us, in this room. There was a reason for Olive to sneak up on me and press her lips to mine. Has she asked me, to be allowed to kiss? Seems like my mind didn't make up that part at all. But what kind of situation, especially in academic workenvironment, could be so dramatic, that a kiss with a literal bystander would ease the situation? 

"Have you just kissed me?" A very breathless version of my own voice reaches my ears. 

Her answer is dripping with indifference. 

"Nope?!?"

Alright then. Movee on, Carlsen. 

"Okay, then." Move around. Walk away. Do it. Just do it. 

And I would, I really would, my feet are already on the get-go. But that's when the revelation hits me.

I tense. Emotionally. Physically. Visibly. 

A threat. 

My throat suddenly works overtime. That's the only result to my empiric datacollection of that whole situation. 

Olive is threatened. By whoever just left the lab through the westside exit. 

So threatened, that it appeared to her, to make herself physically vulnerable to ME was the better option. 

Christ. 

"Are you sure?" Are you okay? Are you threatened in any way?

"I - " Her bold demeanor crumbles right in front of me. She's smacking her hands right into her face. With vigor. Such much so, that it makes a sound and I flinch. 

"It's not the way it looks."

"Okay, I..." dont know what to do. To say. 

"Okay." It may sound like I'm trying to calm her, when in reality I try to calm myself. I mean - IS there a thread? Is there any kind of pressure on Olive Smiths fragile shoulders, I need to know about? 

"What's going on here?" This seems like a good question. Asking her instead of jumping to conclusions. Very smart, wrong-wired brain, who's still in total defeat because

HER LIPS

WERE ON MINE

MINE

I will definitely never recover from this.