Sex-lethal

"...so you can imagine our delight that this seemingly innocuous mutation has in fact induced a dramatic shift in the helix..."

Jim held back a grin as Rosealia droned through her poster. She had shown him the missing data to confirm his new theory, just 48 hours before his keynote talk. And so Jim flirted, fawned, and slept his way into her good graces. Nothing was going to stop him from getting those results, decency be damned.

For weeks afterwards, Jim was still getting congratulations by email. Perhaps his actions were indiscreet--and Rosealia's furious glare from the front row suggested that she agreed--but he had just guaranteed his future career. And he had never placed much value on friendship.

Full term

"George...You should know that I'm carrying your baby!" Katrin's voice rang out over the din of bacterial incubators and overzealous air vents.

George's face blazed scarlet. "P-pardon me?" Papers flew out of the way as he scrambled to put his computer in sleep mode--and get to a room where six leering labmates wouldn't live-tweet the impossible accusation.

Katrin rounded the corner, cradling his newly printed thesis in her arms. His baby.

A thousand barbs leapt to George's mind. He forced a smile and silently swore vengeance...vengeance for a night he still regretted, when one-too-many vodka shots out of Falcon tubes had led to a confession. A confession and a kiss.

He would leave this lab soon, where drama was the rule, and where the tables in the cold room were perpetually getting messy (seemingly overnight). Leave the regret of a weak moment with a senior postdoc.

Vengeance. Bloodless, slow-moving, tenured scientific vengeance.

Syzygy at the work bench

Their eyes first met above the buffer rack. Margot's steel-blue irises rose to meet Joan's, and Joan couldn't find air to breathe. A short left-right flicker. An invitation? Joan ignored the ambiguity and hazarded a quick nod.

Two weeks, one day, three smiles and a fingertip on a shoulder later, and they were sharing a pitcher of Hefeweizen at Jupiter's, laughing into the warm spring night. The stars had aligned; yin had finally met yang (and mustered the courage to ask her out after the weekly seminar).

Many years later, Margot drunkenly confessed that she had just been scanning her bottle labels for some misplaced azide stock.

hearts burned hot in the cold cold room

"Meet me in the cold room," purred Ramon, "...as soon as you're done with those minipreps."

Julie spun her Eppendorfs for only five minutes instead of the usual ten. Proper procedure could wait for another day.

(Or, she added, for another ten minutes. She hadn't done any tests in this new arena yet.)

The gust of cold air as the door swished open couldn't quench the Bunsen burner of her passion...