Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters!
AN: Wow...the summer's flying by. I meant to finish this story before I started school, but I'm starting to think that that might not happen. Well, here's the second chapter!
Kiku is sitting in the front row of his organic chemistry class, dutifully taking notes. His professor paces in front of the lecture hall. He stops in the middle of his lecture, looking at the back of the room. Someone is apparently asking a question, but Kiku can't hear it. Neither can the professor.
"Come down here and ask your question," the professor orders gruffly.
Kiku frowns, confused. This never happens. They don't have enough time to cover the material, yet alone stop for one question. But, his professor waits patiently up front for the student to walk down the stairs. Kiku corrects something in his notes, then looks up in shock when the student speaks.
"So, what you're saying is that these bonds can't be broken by any natural means?"
There's the British accent, the green eyes that are staring right at him. Kiku's heart skips a beat as Arthur smiles at him.
Kiku woke up disoriented and confused. He wasn't in his bedroom, but stretched out on an unfamiliar couch. He sat up, looking around. After a bit, he remembered that this was his new apartment, that he was in the United States, and that he started work later that morning. He picked his cell phone up off the ground and checked the time. Fourteen minutes after six. He had some time to unpack before work started. He'd moved in two days ago and he still wasn't fully situated. He kept reorganizing things, moving things around, and it was taking forever.
He wasn't sure exactly why he'd agreed to work in Dr. Roma's lab. Yes, it was a great opportunity. Yes, the pay was decent. Yes, the research was interesting. But, it was so far away from his home. Wondering about the what ifs was pointless, Kiku berated himself as he made coffee. This was to be his life for a while, so he'd better just get used to it. And maybe like it a little.
He showed up to work at precisely eight thirty and was very surprised to see how empty and quiet the lab was. He poked his head into the lab bench area, but it was mostly empty. There was one young woman working to the far right, in the part of the lab shared by Elizaveta and Roderich. He didn't remember her name, but did vaguely remember meeting her. He stepped out and went down the hall to Dr. Roma's office.
Dr. Roma's secretary, looked up when Kiku entered. "Hello."
"Hello," Kiku echoed. "I am Honda Kiku, I mean Kiku Honda. I am to be working in the lab, but I do not know..."
"Oh! Hello! I am Matthew Williams, Dr. Roma's, Dr. Hedervary's, and Dr. Edelstein's secretary. Dr. Roma told me about you. I have some paperwork that you need to fill out."
Matthew rummaged in a drawer before pulling out a thick envelope with Kiku's name on it in bold letters. He got to his feet and left the office. Kiku followed and was directed into a little break room with a big table and a few chairs scattered about, a huge white board that covered most of one wall with a detailed flow chart about genes on it. Matthew placed the envelope on the table.
"Fill these out, then bring them back to me. It'll take a day to get your ID badge, but you can probably start working afterwards."
"Thank you," Kiku said politely as he sat down.
Matthew smiled as he pushed his glasses further up his nose. "You are welcome. If you need any help, I'm right across the hall."
It took Kiku the better part of two hours to fill out the extensive paperwork. A few people came in to put something into the mini fridge in the corner. Kiku didn't raise his head and was ignored for the most part. He was all right with that. After he'd handed the envelope back to Matthew, he was referred to Dr. Roma, who looked like he was on his fifth cup of coffee of the day and it wasn't even eleven yet. Kiku was bombarded with more information and then Dr. Roma led him into the lab area. He then introduced Kiku to a young man with white hair and red eyes.
"Gilbert, this is Kiku. He'll be working with you on the project. Explain how the lab works, what the project is. How is the project going?"
Gilbert smiled broadly. "It's going wonderfully. Everything has been completely normal."
"Well, that's not what we want," Dr. Roma said cheerfully. "Perhaps this week will give better results."
Dr. Roma's phone rang and he picked up, walking away dreamily. Kiku glanced up at Gilbert, then at the ground.
"Hi! As you probably guessed, I'm Gilbert. I've been working on this project for two months now by myself, so it'll be great to have someone else to help."
Kiku shook Gilbert's hand. "Nice to meet you, Gilbert."
"Nice to meet you, Kiku." Gilbert smiled. "Now, allow me to welcome you to the lab. This is a place of wonder and opportunity and utter chaos. Nothing will be where it's supposed to be! You will sit down to flip some flies and find out that all the vials are gone and the flies have all died! You will live in fear of Yao's flies! The word 'normal' is bad!"
Kiku stared at Gilbert, unsure if he should laugh or not. He's saved from making a decision by Arthur's appearance. Arthur hit Gilbert on the head with a rolled up paper. "Stop acting like git and explain what you're doing here."
"But Arthur! That's no fun!" Gilbert whined, rubbing his head where Arthur had hit him. "I'm telling him about the lab!"
"You need a lab tech, so stop blowing this!" Arthur sighed, then turned to Kiku with a smile. "Good morning, Kiku. Don't mind Gilbert. He doesn't like flies."
"I like flies! I just dislike the ones we have to take care of," Gilbert pouted.
Kiku covered his mouth as he laughed. "Good morning, Arthur."
"Don't you have a paper to be writing?" Gilbert asked, rounding on Arthur. "Go shoo! I'm taking care of the new lab tech."
"Taking care of? I think you mean being a nutter."
"Careful! Your British-ness is showing."
Arthur loftily hit Gilbert again with the rolled up papers. "At least I have some semblance of manners, unlike you, you prat. Kiku, I shall see you later. Any problems with the dog, come and find me."
"Thank you," KIku said as Gilbert called after Arthur's retreating back, "Lunch at twelve thirty! Feli's staining."
Arthur raised a hand in acknowledgement before turning. Gilbert turned back to Kiku. "Well, let's get started."
Gilbert showed Kiku to his desk, which was close to his. He then proceeded to hand Kiku a ton of different items, not limited to forceps, ten millimeter tubes, a thermometer, and a wrench. Kiku blinked at the wrench. "What do I use this for?"
"Surprisingly, you will find a use for that wrench," Gilbert said wisely. "You probably don't need it at your bench and can put it in the fly kitchen along with all the other random things we find."
"Fly kitchen?"
"It's where we make fly food. We don't make food until tomorrow, so you'll see it in great detail tomorrow."
Gilbert then showed Kiku how to log onto the computer and opened up a bunch of power points. "Go through these and then we'll discuss them later, okay? This is what our project is."
Kiku nodded as he took out a notebook and pen.
"Welcome to the lab."
Kiku had been going through the presentations at a good clip when there was suddenly a loud beeping noise. He looked up and stared at the flashing lights for a minute before realizing that it was the fire alarm. He slowly got to his feet, rather confused.
Gilbert appeared. "Hey, come on. We've got to get out of the building. Once again, only half of the building is on fire."
Kiku followed Gilbert and some other people out of the lab and down the stairs. They turned into a different part of the building and the fire alarm wasn't going on anymore. Gilbert sat down in one of the arm chairs in the atrium. Kiku followed suit.
"Now, you're probably wondering why we haven't left the building. It's not actually on fire. Someone in one of the other labs probably left a bunsen burner on. They do that all the time. It's happened what, three times in the past week?"
There was a murmur of consensus from Matthew. He appeared to be looking around. "Where is everyone?"
"Well, Feli's in the middle of a stain, so he refused to leave. Arthur's in the microscope room and probably didn't notice the lights or the sound. Frances and Antonio both decided to pretend they hadn't noticed. They're in the small fly room, so they technically wouldn't have noticed unless they went into the hall."
"They still should come out...what if it was a serious fire?"
"Then we'd all die! Lighten up, Mattie!" Gilbert said cheerfully, grinning at Matthew.
Matthew shook his head, smiling all the same with a faint blush. "The flies need you all to be alive."
"And you don't need us to be alive? You wound me so!"
"Stop that!" Matthew laughed.
"Got you to smile, didn't it?" Gilbert got back into his chair. "You've been looking so grim lately."
They were interrupted by the blond Kiku had seen the first day. "Matthew, I have some things that need to be ordered."
"All right, Vash. When we're allowed back upstairs...well, I think we can go up now." Matthew got to his feet and led the way.
Kiku spent another hour going through the presentations. Then, Gilbert returned with a couple of other people, Arthur, Feliciano, and Vash notably. "Lunch?"
Kiku got to his feet with a smile. "Just finished."
"Perfect timing!" Gilbert grinned. "You can help me flip in the afternoon."
Lunch was a raucous affair. Arthur and a man named Frances got into an extremely heated argument that Vash ended up finishing.
"You two shut up or I'll shut you up!"
Gilbert and Antonio, a carefree young man with a Spanish accent, then took center stage, playfully recounting a story from the previous night at a bar. Arthur joined in when they started talking about some blushing med student who hadn't been able to manage a single word, so 'dazzled' by Gilbert's 'awesomeness.' Apparently, a fair amount of people from the lab hung out after work and went drinking together.
After lunch, Gilbert was true to his word. He set Kiku up in the small fly room with a few trays of vials and three trays of Yao's flies, helpfully labeled with 'YAO' and a number.
Gilbert plucked out a single vial from Yao's flies. The food was turning black, flies were sticking to the walls. "These flies are notorious for wanting to die. You have to be very careful when you flip them. When I say flip, I mean put them into a new vial. It's called flipping because you flip the old vial upside down into a new vial."
Gilbert demonstrated on a few vials, then left Kiku to his own devices. Kiku understood what Gilbert had meant about living in fear of Yao's flies. These flies seemed not to want to get out of the vial. In many vials, a lot of the flies were dead. He came across two vials where there were no flies at all. Kiku followed Gilbert's instructions and put those vials aside. They'd be dealt with and kept alive.
Gilbert came by later to take away the trays Kiku had flipped and put down more. It was sort of relaxing after a while, flipping. Kiku was working without really paying attention: take out a vial, get a new vial, add yeast, flip, put the label on the new vial, throw out old vial, put new vial in tray. Repeat. He didn't notice time passing. The radio played NPR softly in the background.
"Kiku? You're still here?"
Kiku jumped turning around. Arthur was in the doorway, looking curiously at Kiku.
"H-Hai. Should I not be?"
"It's half past five."
"Really?"
"Gilbert's in a meeting and probably won't be out for another hour. You can go."
"I need to finish this tray, then I can. Thank you, Arthur."
He didn't expect to hear the door close and for Arthur to grab one of the chairs, bringing it over. "I'll help you."
"T-thank you." Kiku lowered his eyes with a small smile.
They finished the rest of the tray in twenty minutes. Nothing exciting happened, except for Arthur's snide comments to the people on the radio ['he's a real twit, you can tell' or 'America's really going down the drain']. There was the last vial which they both reached for at the same time, hands brushing against each other. Their eyes met for a second, before Kiku blushed and shyly pulled his hand back, looking down at the table. Arthur flipped the last vial, then together they walked down the hall to put the trays away. Arthur was whistling cheerfully.
"Sign the paper while I put the trays away, won't you? Just so we know who flipped what when."
Kiku carefully initialed the spot for the trays he'd done in the proper date column. He didn't notice Arthur standing right behind him watching and so turned quickly, right so he and Arthur were face to face. Well, almost face to face. Arthur had a few inches on Kiku.
Kiku blushed, attempting to look anywhere but at Arthur's eyes. Of course, where he ended up looking was Arthur's eyes. They were a remarkably brilliant green color. Kiku blushed and tried to say something, but he couldn't really form any words.
"Rather cramped in here, isn't it?" Arthur was smiling. He put his hands on Kiku's shoulders, carefully steering him out of the eighteen degree room. He walked Kiku back to his bench to get his stuff, then took the elevator with him, talking brightly about his research and how it wasn't going the way he'd hoped. That struck Kiku as odd: if it wasn't right, shouldn't Arthur be more upset about it? Arthur was in a very good mood regardless. He waved goodbye with a broad smile.
Later that night, after Kiku had finally finished unpacking and was sitting in bed, he tried to reason out why Arthur had been so happy. He couldn't figure out a reason, just that Arthur's mood had suddenly lightened after they'd finished flipping that last tray.
Kiku lay back, looking at the ceiling. He inexplicably smiled. He couldn't wait for work tomorrow.
AN: Any guesses as to why Arthur was so happy? ;)