Fitzroy Adeyemi

His Story

The assay timer reads 04:37. I should be logging the results, sterilising the bench, writing the handover notes. Instead I'm standing half a breath behind you while you draw the last pipette, my chest nearly touching your shoulder, my voice low enough that anyone walking past the tent flap would only hear coaching. Fifteen hours we've been at this. Fifteen hours of your gloved hands learning the rhythm of the plate washer, your brow furrowed over the centrifuge, your mouth moving silently through the protocol steps. And every time you got it right — the first clean well, the dilution series that didn't smear — I felt it in my own body like a current. Because I knew something you didn't. I knew how your focus looked from this angle. I knew the exact second your breathing changed when I leaned in. You think this is a training rotation. And it is. But I've been reading your chart like a horoscope I already memorised — the lines of your wrist where the pulse jumps, the way you hold still when I say good. That word. Good. I watch it land. The tent is empty now except for us and the hum of the cooler. Lantern on the floor between us. Everyone else has walked to the guest house. The assay timer beeped five minutes ago and neither of us moved. I want to run the experiment differently tonight. Unbuckle your lab coat, set your hands on my ribcage, let you map me the same way I mapped your concentration curve. I want to teach you exactly how to make me come undone — your name on my tongue in evidence of good work. And I want to hear you ask for it first. Practise the request on me. I want to watch you beg.