A/N: Alternate Title "Sex Scrambled Brains". Geddit.
WE OUT HERE! UPDATING RELATIVELY SOON! DAMN! Also, I just want to thank you all for taking the time to review this fic. Seriously, it means a lot to me that you all still support me even when I never update consistently, and I hope I can finish this on time. I had two final exams back to back today, so this chapter was my 'you deserve a break' present to myself.
Shout-out to xxSurfingDreamsxx, just because they sent in two reviews as I was writing this and I found it absolutely ironic and also A Sign. Mate, your review had me cracking up, because yesterday I was the one being distracted by fic as I studied for uni exams, and now I'm the one updating fic to distract you from uni responsibilities. Tis a vicious cycle.
Warning, this chapter alludes to sex. A lot. I don't even know why I'm warning you, but just to be on the safe side.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Six geese a-laying...
"If this was crack, this would be a druggies wet dream," Mest Gryder commented shortly after they exited the exam hall. "Actually, I knew this one dude in high school who tried snorting snow because he was so high already he thought God had gifted him with more. Which reminds me of when-"
If there was a thing worse than being catatonic, Lucy felt it would aptly describe her state of mind upon seeing the blizzard raging outdoors. She just wanted to go home dammit. It was bad enough that Crocus U had probably invented a weather machine for the sole purpose of making it snow during exam season and then denying them inclement weather days, but they always seemed to bring out the big guns after exams that left Lucy feeling like her brain had been sliced into itty bitty pieces by one of those Japanese kitchen knives they always advertised on late night infomercials.
"-and that's how we got Rockets and Pixy Stix banned in middle school," Mest concluded with a sigh.
"How am I gonna get home in this?" Lucy moaned.
"You didn't listen to a word I said, did you?"
"I'm gonna get hypothermia. Or pneumonia. Or both."
"I'd offer you a ride, but I don't think the streets are clear just yet. Guess we gotta stay on campus till it calms down," he said. "I'm gonna head over to the library, wanna come with?"
"No thanks, I'm gonna find an empty room to cry in," Lucy replied.
"Have fun." He waved and headed left down the hall. Lucy pulled out her phone and scrolled through her notifications. A couple snaps from Natsu and Gray, an email from the university about a mental health survey, pop-ups from YouTube...nothing pertinent. Bored, she opened up her messages and shot off a quick text to the one person she knew would likely respond within five minutes.
To: Dr Viv-ass
Time: 12:32 PM
I'm snowed in at the U. Any chance you can come save me from this based hell?
From: Dr Viv-ass
Time: 12:33 PM
I know you soft sciences don't get to venture into the grown-ups area, but if you can make it to the chemistry labs then I'll reward you with your very own lab coat. Monogrammed.
To: Dr Viv-ass
Time: 12:33 PM
Pissing me off and then inviting me to a room full of volatile chemicals sounds like something a hard sciences like you would do
"You know, I forgot to ask but why are you here?" Lucy asked once she was sure the beaker Erik was toying with was safely on the lab bench.
"The dean of the faculty asked me to come a do a triple point demo for the first-years," he replied shortly, pointing to the Florence flask full of a clear liquid sitting at the end of one of the benches. "Cyclohexane."
"That's the one where it's a solid, liquid, and gas all at once, right?" Her cheeks flushed as his eyebrow raised in subtle approval. It would have been a lot sexier had his safety-goggles not been the size of Mars, but she would take what she could get.
"Close enough. They exist in equilibrium at the same time, so it looks kinda like it's going through all the phases in order but not exactly," he said as he handed her a white lab coat. Lucy bit back a laugh at the Sharpie'd 'HONORARY CHEMIST LUCY HEARTFILIA' on the left side. The coat fit comfortably enough around her chest, which was a miracle in and of itself, but the sleeves easily touched the middle of her palms. Figuring she wouldn't be handling anything caustic, she rolled them up to her wrists and stuffed her hands into the deep pockets.
"Do I look science-y enough?"
"Regular Bill Nye," Erik said dryly. "Now, would you like to stave off your boredom by doing something useful? Because I promise you these little shits didn't clean their equipment properly and I would prefer if they were as uncontaminated as possible for the next run."
"What makes you think I'm any better than them at cleaning it?" He trusts you! Inner Cana crooned. Pin him up against that lab bench and suck-
"They're little shits. You're a big shit. See the difference?"
"Ah, yes, one ends up with you in Dr Kaur's office again, regretting your life after meeting me."
"You say that as if I hadn't started after meeting the red-headed Xena bitch."
"Don't call Erza a bitch, she's fond of you."
"Fond of me?" Erik said incredulously. He pulled aside his lab coat and shirt, pointing to his exposed pecs. Lucy felt a lot like the chemicals in the lab at that moment - overheated and ready to implode. He had no right being this attractive. None at all.
"Do you see this?" He waved at the small scratches criss-crossing his skin. "Remnants from the Tinsel Terror. The dean thought I'd had a long night, and so did several students. Do you have any idea how invasive these kids can get? Between this and the tattoo, they'll be asking for wedding invites very soon."
Lucy pulled her hand out of her pocket to glance down at her matching half of the dopamine tattoo on her wrist. It had been a nice compromise between them - her favourite neurotransmitter ('the brain bit' as Erik had dubbed it) and his pristinely drawn chemical structure ('the boring bit' she had cheerfully retorted) split between the two. The benzene ring and hydroxyl groups covered his wrist, and the ethyl chain and amine group covered hers. It wasn't what she had imagined her first tattoo would look like, but in all honesty she couldn't imagine getting anything else. Minimalistic and meaningful.
"The horror," she deadpanned. "Married to me, a simple soft science. I'd corrupt our children with my wicked, qualitative ways."
"Exactly." He nodded sagely. "If our kids wind up in the soft sciences, I'm disowning them. Wait, kids? Plural? More than one? Slow down there, we did not plan for this. Also, wash with regular water and then rinse with de-ionized in the end."
Lucy picked up a beaker and poured a helping of the powdery soap into it, grabbing a nearby scrubber and setting to work. "The first one was an accident, the other two were planned."
"Three kids? Do I look like I'm made of money?"
"Yes. You're a money tree. Shed money like you grow grey hairs."
Erik ran his fingers through his hair, patting the edges self-consciously. "I do not have grey hair."
"Yeah you do, right there, see?" Lucy indicated his temples with a soapy hand. "Little grey's."
"You're going blind. Or projecting. Or both."
"Projecting is soft science. Do you accept us now, Erik? Do you?"
"I would have to be dead to-"
The room went black.
Lucy blinked rapidly to adjust to the sudden change in her visual field, slowly placing her beaker into the sink and stepping back to assess the situation.
One. It was dark. It was snowing outside. Snow outside plus no power inside meant that it was going to get very cold, very fast. Two. She was trapped in a lab with a guy she had the hots for. Three. There was no way for her to get home in this weather.
Lucy very dearly wished she could ram the cleaning brush down her throat and be done with it all.
"Well, I've seen this porno before," Erik broke the silence with his usual droll.
...ram the cleaning brush down his throat first, and then hers.
He perched his phone on the lab bench face down so his flashlight faced the ceiling and provided a soft enough light that they could look at each other without having to squint too hard. Lucy was taken aback by how tired he looked. Maybe it was the lighting that was casting shadows on his face and making his cheeks look hollow. Maybe it was the sudden lack of goggles to hide the dark circles under his eyes. Maybe it was nothing, but for a brief second she saw a glimpse of the toxicologist working long hours to solve some epidemic or the other underneath the perpetually bored elitist who enjoyed riling her up.
"You're disgusting," Lucy announced at the same time her stomach made itself known. Very vocally.
Erik raised a brow. "Uh-huh."
"I haven't eaten in, like, ten hours. Sue me."
"I have an idea."
"Erik, no. Whatever it is, no."
"Erik, yes."
"This is a horrible idea," Lucy said. "Have I mentioned this already?"
"Six times in the last eight minutes, yes," Erik replied.
Lucy had never been back to where the university's cafeteria stored their food, but with the way Erik was jimmying the lock, it wasn't his first time on this particular rodeo. She had only ever seen people attempt to pick locks with hairpins on TV, and they made it look as easy as breathing. Real life was disappointing because it had been five minutes, he had broken two of her bobby pins so far, and they were no closer to hijacking the cafeteria's food supply than they were when they had first arrived.
"Won't they notice we've stolen it?" she fretted. This would turn her into a criminal. God, she would get kicked out of university and she would have to move back home and then face her dad and have to explain to him she got booted for hijacking fucking food with a wayward chemist and he would have a riot telling her that he was right and she should have just stayed home because she couldn't make it in the real world like she said she could.
Perhaps she was being dramatic, but that was besides the point.
"Nah, it's like...a rite of passage for most grad students in chemistry. Ah-hah!" Erik turned to her with triumph written over his stupidly handsome face. He pushed the door open and gave an exaggerated bow. "After you."
The storage area was stainless steel from floor to ceiling, with firm shelves planted in equal rows, full of non-perishables and cooking utensils. In the back, she spotted what looked like an industrial sized vault-turned-fridge, which explained the chill in the room, though that could have easily just been the temperature outside sneaking its way in somehow. There had to be a chemistry law for this. She'd ask when she wasn't acting like a fugitive.
"What do we need to get?"
"Milk and eggs." He pointed to the fridge. "Probably in there, only one of us should go in and get it in case the thing shuts, so the person on the outside can open it. I'm in no mood to turn into a cobrasickle tonight, thanks. You get vanilla extract, if you can find it."
Lucy turned on her heel and headed towards the back shelves. Those were the ones with a million jars on them, so she figured vanilla extract would be in there somewhere. Mercifully, the jars were labelled with bright stickers and thick black letters so it was hard to miss her mark when she spotted it. She tucked it under her arm and headed back to the vault, which was still open and letting out a draft.
"Erik?" she called. "Are you dead? Because I'll let you freeze in there."
A horrible lie, but beautiful revenge for his cryogenic quip back when they had to bail out Natsu and Gray.
"These people are so cheap," he groaned as he exited the vault and slammed it shut. He had two plastic bags slung over his shoulders, one clearly heavier than the other. "I did a cursory check outside, they're missing, like, a whole fuck tonne of things we need. Like cloves. And peppermint."
"We can do without that," Lucy said. "Or find a replacement. There's probably extract somewhere."
"No, I have a better idea."
"Erik. No."
"Shh, sweet princ-blondie. Erik knows all."
"I didn't even know we had food growing in the greenhouses," Lucy murmured, moaning once she stepped into the room. God, it was so warm. The temperature in the building was so low it was almost like she'd gone numb and the greenhouse was oozing warm and fluffy air. She tilted her head to the side and saw Erik looking at her as if she'd just grown a third head or a second boob and wow the heat of the room and his eyes was killing her idioms.
"What?" she demanded.
"Do you always have mini-orgasms walking into rooms, or is this one special?"
Lucy squeaked and smacked his arm none-too-gently. "You're so gross, ew! No! I'm just cold and this place is warm and...ew!"
"Ah, virgin. You can always tell," he said sagely, heading down the rows and rows of greenery. "And to answer your earlier question, no, we don't technically grow food here in the same vein that the chemistry department doesn't technically distill alcohol for fun. That is to say, we totally do but we also don't. Schrodinger's food and booze, if you will. Now, help me find cloves."
"I'm so not a virgin," she asserted, whipping out her phone to google what cloves looked like in plant form. She began to walk through the aisles, lightly prodding leaves to see if the tell-tale black spice was poking out from any of them.
"Lies. Also, this area is done alphabetically by family, so look in M for Myrtaceae."
Lucy looked down to the little tabs on the shelf and saw she was next to something belonging to Lamiaceae and moved to the next row over to start her search again. As she mouthed out the Latin names, comparing them to the one her search had pulled up, she called back to him. "How can you tell?"
"Tell what?"
"That I'm a virgin. Because I'm not, but how could you tell if I was?"
"You had a heart attack over me making an orgasm joke. You're not a prude, so the next logical step is virgin. Hey, did you happen to pass by Lamiaceae?"
"Yeah, shelf next to mine. Found the cloves, by the way! Syzygium aromaticum, yeah?" Lucy's voice was as steady as a surgeon's hands, which was a miracle in and of itself. How was she supposed to tell him the heart attack wasn't from the orgasm joke itself, but the fact that he had told it? There were limits to what her poor, hormone riddled, metaphorical-and-also-literal heart could take, and the object of her affections cracking a sex joke was not on the very short list. Why? Because with him making an orgasm joke came the association of Erik and orgasms, followed by off-handed thoughts about Erik and orgasms, and then from there would come daydreams about Erik and orgasms, and then before she knew it she'd be waking up in a cold sweat because her sleep-addled mind took 'Erik' and 'orgasms' and made a full blown prono out of it.
Oh, we don't have to wait for sleep, Inner Cana said slyly, there's aphrodasiacs in this greenhouse somewhere, no…?
"I got peppermint." His low voice rumbled in her ear. Lucy jumped, dropping the cloves she'd managed to pick. The spices lay forgotten on the ground with her dignity as she lost all the breath in her lungs at their proximity. He was so close holy fucking gods above.
She couldn't describe the expression on his face, exactly, which was odd because Lucy excelled at detecting micro-expressions; she aced the practicums. His face was blank, but there was a tilt to his mouth that suggested frustration and a furrow to his brows that...well, she'd only ever seen it in people confused but the heat in his eye made it very clear that he wasn't confused at all. Before she could open her mouth, his face was wiped clean of it all and replaced with a smug grin.
"You get to clean all that up. And pick up new ones. Probie."
Milk, cloves, vanilla extract, cinnamon sticks, eggs, sugar, cream, whipped cream, peppermint, nutmeg.
"Eggnog," Lucy said in abject disbelief. "We're making eggnog."
"Yeah, what did you think we were making?" Erik shot her a puzzled look over the glassware he was setting out. With both their cell phones shining their light onto their one lab bench, she spotted two 600 mL beakers and what looked like glass stir rods in them both.
"You grind up the spice, I'll get the hot plate ready," he said, sliding a mortar and pestle over. Lucy picked up the nutmeg and rammed the pestle down hard enough to land a sufficient crush. Satisfied, she continued to squish the nutmeg, wholly absorbed in her task. It was quiet for a while, just the steady thunk-thunk-thunk of her pestle, and Erik's soft grumbles as he fiddled with the dials on the hot-plate.
"I lost my virginity to Gray," she said suddenly.
"Motherfuck!" Erik hissed, pulling his hand back and sticking his index finger in his mouth. Lucy looked up quickly enough to catch the surprise on his face before it melted away into annoyance.
"Are you okay?" she asked, concerned. "There's a first aid kit here somewhere, right?"
"Fuck the first aid - I burnt - what the fuck - Fullbuster? What? I - you can't just say this shit out of nowhere!" He finally managed to sputter out. "Where the hell did this come from?"
"You said I was a virgin. I'm not. It was during our annual Christmas bash last year, we were pretty drunk and split a room because Natsu and Erza had passed out on the futon. One thing led to another, and…" she shrugged. "We agreed to never speak about it again."
If she wasn't mistaken, that was pity in his eye. "You lost your virginity in drunk sex? That's genuinely the biggest tragedy of this year. Whiskey dick is real."
"Ironically, it was more eggnog dick." She laughed. "I don't really remember much, but it wasn't awful as far as firsts go. At least it was to a friend, you know?"
"I was 17 when I lost mine," Erik mused, measuring out milk in a separate beaker. "Prom night. After-party was held at Hibiki Lates's house 'cause it was the biggest. He had this hot tub and me and this brunette, don't remember her name, got into it and the rest is history."
"At least I remember who took mine." Lucy rolled her eyes and moved on to the cinnamon. She was amazed at how easily she was able to have an actual conversation about sex with Erik fucking Vivas and not spontaneously combust. Perhaps it would be one of those delayed reactions where she would wake up two days later in terror at three am because what the fuck she talked sex with her crush.
"Fair point. You done with the spices?" Lucy nodded and slid the petri dish with them over. She watched as Erik planted the biggest beaker he had, roughly 1000 mL, onto the hot-plate and poured four cups of milk into it, followed by the crushed cloves, vanilla, and cinnamon, stirring it gently with a glass-stir rod.
"You know how to separate egg yolk from the whites?" he asked.
"Yup. How many do I need to do?"
"12 sounds good to me. There's a plastic water bottle in one of the bag lockers, just make sure to empty it before you get to it."
Lucy searched through three bag lockers before she found one half-empty water bottle available for use. She dumped out the water and made her way over to where the eggs lay next to yet another beaker and what looked like a misshapen mixing bowl. "What's this thing?"
"A desiccator. We use it to keep things from drying out. I got rid of the silica so there's nothing in there. Put the yolks in and then whisk them with the stir rod."
Lucy cracked an egg open into the beaker and then grabbed the bottle and pushed it in nozzle-first towards the yolk, coaxing it into the hole. Once it was in, she tapped the bottle against the side of the desiccator until it dropped in. One down, eleven to go.
"Do you regret it?" Erik asked. "Drunk sex?"
"Not really," Lucy said, cracking open another egg. "I mean, it wasn't what I imagined but it was with someone I trust, so…"
"How did you imagine it would pan out? Wait, let me guess. Bed, flowers, wined and dined…"
"I always imagined I'd lose it in the backseat of a car," she mused, snorting when she caught his scandalized, but still approving, stare. "What? I'm not a prissy princess. What about you? Hot tub a thing of your dreams?"
"Nah. Sofa. But, you know, the lab benches don't look too terrible…" he trailed off suggestively, cackling when Lucy accidentally dropped a whole egg into the whites. "Blondie's having dirty thoughts!"
"Says the man discussing his fantasies when making eggnog with lab equipment," she shot back. He wasn't wrong in the slightest, because Lucy distinctly remembered Inner Cana making a dry comment about pinning him up against a lab bench and sucking his soul out of his dick.
Today was not her fucking day.
"Uh-huh. You done whisking the eggs? Good, put in a cup and a half of sugar. Eyeball it, I don't care, but for what it's worth, a cup equals about 237 mL, so if you wanna grab a beaker…"
Lucy dutifully snatched another beaker and poured out the requisite amount. It was a lot harder to 'whisk' things with a stir rod, but Lucy was nothing if not vastly determined, so she kept at it until it was frothing and even all the way through. Erik made his way over with the beaker of milk held firmly within the grasp of tongs, which he tilted to pour into the bowl. Lucy bit back a soft sigh as steam rose to fluff her hair and waft up her nose, bringing with it the sweet smell of eggnog.
Erik took over the mixing from her, stirring slowly so as not to slosh any of the hot liquid over the edges. After a few minutes, he handed her the rod and went back to his end of the bench and dragged a much larger hot-plate over and plugged it in. Once it was sufficiently heated, she helped him heft the desiccator onto it and thus began the stirring process once more.
"Hey, you wanna get the peppermint leaves and toss 'em in? It ain't eggnog without the minty touch, in my humble and factual opinion," Erik announced with the same tone one might take when accepting a Nobel Peace Prize. Lucy took a few leaves and shoved them between his lips before tossing the rest in the desiccator. Erik kept a perfectly straight face as he chewed on the leaves and swallowed them.
"My mouth tastes like what I imagine a diabetic elf's piss tastes like," he deadpanned. Lucy burst into a fit of giggles at the image that sprouted to mind. Erik, dressed like the Grinch, chugging down the 'apple juice' some health conscious little girl had set out for Santa, while the elves who'd peed in a cup hid behind the Christmas tree and laughed as he drank the minty death.
God, she needed sleep.
"Hey, go open the fridge door." He jerked his head towards the glass cabinet looking thing in the back. She supposed having a fridge was rational - different chemicals needed to be stored at different temperatures to keep from going crazy. She remembered that lesson from high school when she was Natsu's unfortunate lab partner. In fact, she probably still had a bit of a scar on her hip from the Test Tube Incident…
Lucy watched as he poured the contents into yet another desiccator and brought that one over to the fridge. Once it was safely on a shelf, she shut the door and looked up at him expectantly.
"We'd have to wait a few hours normally, but I dicked around with the temperature of the fridge. It should be ready by the time we're done cleaning everything." Erik barked out a laugh at her groan. She hated huge clean up ops…
He was lucky he was cute.
"Okay, last step." Erik pulled out a bottle of clear liquid and poured out a sizeable amount into both their 500 mL beakers of eggnog, before cracking out the whipped cream and squeezing out a healthy dollop onto both their drinks.
"I present to you, eggnog chez...the internet." He tapped his beaker to hers and brought it back to his lips. "Cheers."
Lucy took a deep swig and bit back a cough. The eggnog was strong. It burned going down her throat and the cinnamon and mint combo left her tongue feeling tingly, though she suspected that had more to do with whatever he had dropped into the drink than the spices.
"Yeah, should've warned you, the alcohol percentage on that thing is through the roof. Ish. Okay, maybe, like 55%, not that bad in the dilution but…" he quickly took another sip. Lucy laughed and pointed at his face. "Santa's got a brother!"
His cream-moustache only emphasized the visible effort it was taking him to hide a grin of his own. "Mrs. Claus has a sister."
Lucy poked her tongue out and licked off as much off her own moustache as she could. It would be pointless as with the next step there would be more, but she did find the sudden flush to Erik's ears in response to her movements amusing, if she was to tell the truth.
"So, you mentioned earlier that this whole thing is a rite of passage for grad students," Lucy said, biting into one of the gingerbread cookies Erik had nicked from the cafeteria when she was digging around for the vanilla extract. "How many people have you made eggnog with?"
"Nobody. The person who led me through my first grand-theft was some PhD candidate, I never took on a probie myself. Congrats, you're my first." Lucy choked on her drink. Judging by the twinkle in his eye, he knew damn well what kind of game he was playing.
Bastard. Adorable, annoying bastard.
"How'd I do?" She held her free hand out to her side. "Give me my final grade. Did I earn my white coat?"
"Well…" he eyed her critically. "Out of ten each...six-point-five for willingness to do the job, eight for effectiveness, seven-point-seventy-five for lab procedure, nine for participation...overall? Seven."
"Hey!" Lucy protested. "That doesn't even add up!"
"Grader's discretion." He shrugged nonchalantly. "But, hey, for what it's worth, that's the highest overall grade I've ever given out in my life."
"I feel so bad for your students when you were a GA."
"And a TA. And a PhD candidate. Eight glorious years of making people cry at all levels."
"Ha!" Lucy cheered. "I didn't cry once!"
"Congrats, you've definitely earned your white coat then." Suddenly, his easy grin turned sharp. "How was your foray into the hard sciences, Miss Heartfilia? Finally ready to concede we have more fun here?"
"Listen, I'm standing next to something labeled a hydroxide and while I don't know if that's as bad as an acid, I'm ready to test it out on you. For science."
Lucy didn't know if it was the spiked eggnog or the sheer ridiculousness of the whole day that was piling up on her, but in that moment, Erik's laugh was the most beautiful thing she'd heard in a long time.
A/N: Please do not actually ever cook in a lab. You don't know half the things that go on in there. I've seen people in my lab wash their equipment. Don't do it. No matter how clean it looks, it's not.
Look, I know it's six eggs but the recipe I found called for 12 so like. Roll with it. I guess.
Read and review?
-Eien