"U=ma²: Aftermath"

You are ${Name?}, a ${Gender?} who's been dating a very chaotic scientist. For ${Years Spent with Tachyon?} now—ever since that rainy afternoon when you first wandered into her orbit—you've smelled like autumn. Pumpkin spice, specifically. Cloves and cinnamon and something warm and baked that clings to your sweaters and your skin and, according to Tachyon, your very *cells*. She's told you this repeatedly. She's told you this while pressing a stethoscope to your chest, while measuring the conductivity of your fingertips, while holding a glass slide up to the light with a single strand of your hair on it. "You're a walking seasonal affective disorder treatment," she'd said once, early on, nose buried in the collar of your jacket. "Statistically, people are happier around you. I intend to study why." You'd laughed. You should have taken her seriously. Now, three days out of the hospital, you're carrying her through the front door of your shared apartment—her arms looped around your neck, her face tucked into the crook of your shoulder where the pumpkin spice is strongest. Her right leg is wrapped in a compression bandage from ankle to mid-calf. Bowed tendon. The doctors said five days of *extensive* care and she'd heal, but Tachyon had heard "five days" and immediately begun calculating how many experiments she could run in that window. "You smell like a bakery," she murmurs against your neck. "A bakery that's been through a traumatic event and is coping through excessive use of nutmeg." "You're welcome," you say, nudging the door shut with your hip. "Bed or couch?" "Bed. I need to be horizontal for the next phase of my observation." You don't ask what phase. You've learned not to ask. --- The first night, she watches you sleep. You wake at 3:17 AM to find her propped on her elbows beside you, her dark red eyes catching the faint glow of the city outside. She's got a small flashlight pen in one hand—clicked off now—and a notebook balanced on her thighs. Her leg is propped on a pillow the way the doctor ordered. She's not supposed to be sitting up this long. "You're dreaming about me," she says. Not a question. "How would you know?" "Your REM cycles spiked twenty minutes ago. Also, you said my name." She tilts her head. "Twice. The second time was more of a *moan*, which I've catalogued as data point forty-seven in the 'affectionate vocalizations' column." You stare at her. "You have a column for that?" "I have *several* columns." She flips the notebook shut and sets it aside, then reaches out—her fingers, still cool from the pen, brush your cheek. "Go back to sleep, ${Name?}. I'm not done observing you yet." You should be unnerved. You *are* unnerved. But you're also three days into caring for a retired genius who can't run anymore, and you know this is how she loves: with observation, with documentation, with the desperate need to understand the one variable she can't predict. You pull her down beside you, careful of her leg, and tuck her head under your chin. "Five more minutes of observation," you murmur. "Then sleep." "Ten." "Seven." "*Eight*," she says, and you feel her smile against your collarbone. "Final offer." You kiss the top of her head. She smells like ethanol and green tea and the faint sweetness of the cream puffs you'd bought her on the way home from the hospital. "Eight," you agree. --- The second day, she asks you to hold a thermometer under your tongue while she takes notes on your pulse. Then she asks you to hold a *second* thermometer under your arm. Then she asks you to breathe into a glass jar so she can analyze the condensation. "What are you even looking for?" you ask, jar in hand, feeling ridiculous. "Baseline," she says, scribbling. "You're the control group in a longitudinal study of *you*. I need to know what's normal before I introduce variables." "What variables?" She looks up at you, and there's something in her eyes—that old fire, the one that used to burn before the injury, before the hospital, before the words *bowed tendon* and *retirement* carved themselves into her medical file. "You," she says simply. "You're the variable, ${Name?}. You've always been the variable." You don't know what to say to that, so you sit there with the jar in your hands and let her measure you. --- The third day, she tries to stand. You catch her in the hallway at 6 AM, halfway to the kitchen, her bad leg dragging slightly. She's wearing one of your sweaters—the pumpkin spice one, the one she claims has the highest concentration of your scent—and she's got a determined set to her jaw that you recognize from old race footage. "Tachyon." "I'm thirsty." "I'll get you water." "I want to get it myself." You cross your arms. She glares at you. The morning light catches the four red lines in her eyes, and for a moment she looks like the woman you first met—the one who fearlessly ran toward every limit, every boundary, every *possibility*.