Chapter Text
Some days, even when the lecture material was interesting, and relevant to his thesis, Dazai still found his mind wandering to what kind of coffee he’d order as soon as the class ended. Three days a week, he routinely pulled himself out of bed before eight am, and dragged his body to campus, and half way through his second semester of his masters program, he could feel the familiar tug of depression ache in his joints.
A good student. That’s what everyone always said. Diligent, polite, well-spoken, and insanely intelligent. It was the same nonsense through his undergraduate degree as well, everyone was always impressed with him, but Dazai found it all so mundane. It was easy to excel when nothing was hard. Especially biology, the way the world worked, all of it clicked. Elegant solutions that evolution just made sense of, simple fixes to complex problems, that the laws of nature had found ways around. Even the class he was currently attending, Advanced Cell Biology, had nothing new or interesting to offer him.
The professor, a tall foreigner all the way from Germany, finally dismissed them with a wave of his hand, reminding them about the presentations they were meant to give in a week's time. Dazai’s presentation had been done for three days, slapping together some nonsense about differential sorting and motor proteins involved in synapses, and he’d gone back to waiting for a challenge.
Dazai packed his bag, and trudged along the sea of familiar faces to his lab, tucked in the corner of the state of the art science building, just above the greenhouses. Here, Dazai felt the surge of curiosity under his fingertips, in the way that no one else in the world was doing the research that he’d signed three years of his life away to. But, it was only nine am, and for Dazai to properly channel all the curiosity in his veins, he would need a coffee.
Luckily for him, the coffee shop just two blocks from the science building made great, cheap cappuccino’s. Well, maybe it wasn’t the coffee shop, but the particular red headed barista that seemed to hate him.
“We don’t serve arrogant bitches here,” The barista greeted him before Dazai could even order. “Get out.”
Dazai clicked his tongue. For years, Dazai had been fostering this little relationship. The barista, a guy his age named Chuuya, used to be in his intro bio lab group, but when he’d showed up behind the corner at Dazai’s favorite coffee house, Dazai had made a point to show up at least every other day. “Well that’s no way to greet a customer, chibi.”
“Ew,” Chuuya rolled his eyes, but grabbed a cup anyway, already writing his order down. “Cappuccino?”
“You know me so well,” Dazai shot him a smile, pleased that in the last three years, someone had remembered his order. “Can you make it with extra love?”
“I’ll spit in it,” Chuuya threatened him lightly, with no real heat behind the words. “I’ve got a nasty cough right now, and you’ll be benched from whatever the fuck it is you do in that fancy ass building.”
Dazai bit down on the response that Chuuya couldn’t make him sicker than he already was, and went for a shy smile instead. “I can always do my research here instead of that fancy ass building.”
“I think I’ve hit my limit on Dazai-related aneurysms today,” Chuuya turned his back on Dazai, walking over to the espresso machine behind the bar. “Please go back to that stupid building.”
Dazai rested his elbows on the bar and watched as Chuuya pulled the shots for his drink. “You’re just jealous because I graduated and you dropped out.”
To any other customer, Chuuya’s reaction would have flown over their heads. But Dazai had been trying to tease Chuuya about dropping out for years, and couldn’t miss the slight tense in the muscles of his shoulder. Chuuya stepped back out from behind the espresso machine, and made sure to look Dazai straight in the eye as he spit directly into the fresh espresso, before topping it off with the steamed milk. “Enjoy your drink, asshole.”
Dazai eyed the cup warily, and began weighing his options. He knew Chuuya would make him pay for a new one, and technically, spit was just a mixture of water, salt, and stomach acid, and had no effect on the caffeine content. Without breaking their strange eye contact, Dazai hummed to himself before taking a sip of his coffee, if only to watch the blush spread across Chuuya’s neck. “Oi, that’s fucking disgusting-”
“You followed my directions!” Dazai sang happily. “I can tell this one was made with extra love.” He shot a wink at the barista, before turning his back and making his way towards the door. “See you tomorrow, chibi!”
Dazai let the door close behind him, and continued drinking his coffee, unphased by Chuuya’s shock and disgust.
When he got back to lab, the professor he worked under was sitting in the back corner by the computer, with some recent article about microtubules pulled up on the screen. Dr. Sakunosuke was a nerd, in fact, if you opened the dictionary and looked for the word nerd, you’d see the same image that Dazai was seeing right now. The man was probably only 35, but he acted like he was much older. In one hand, he had a mug of sweet smelling tea, and in the other, half an orange. In this lab, it was never the students that got in trouble with the health and safety inspector, it was always Dr. Sakunosuke, with his oranges and tea, far away from the safety checkpoint.
Dazai rolled his eyes at the professor, knowing full well that sterilization was only a concept the man was vaguely aware of, and remained silent at his obvious breach in their molecular lab. “Good morning, Oda.”
“Ah, Dazai!” Dr. Sakunosuke turned in his chair quickly, nearly spilling his tea. “Good morning. Did you see the article I sent you this morning? I want a second opinion before I send in my edits.”
Technically, Dazai wasn’t qualified to edit articles yet, as he was only a master's student, but Dr. Sakunosuke always asked him anyway. He always said something about preparing him for the world of academia but Dazai knew he just didn’t want to read every paper that came his way. “Not yet, I was in class, I’ll get on it this morning.”
“And you got coffee I see,” his professor nodded towards the cup in his hand. “That poor barista is going to kill you one day.”
Dazai smiled to himself. He’d taken Oda to the coffeeshop multiple times, and even when Chuuya tried to keep himself professional in front of a world renowned researcher, they ended up at each other's throats anyway. “Chuuya would never, I pay his bills.”
Oda, who seemed to know as much about life as he did about cellular biology, smiled to himself and sipped his tea. “When I was a grad student, I could never afford coffee.”
Dazai finished his own coffee, before pulling his laptop out and pulling up the article Dr. Sakunosuke had sent him. “With the way you pay me, I’m surprised I haven’t starved.”
“I already told you, if you want more money, you can teach, and get paid by the university,” Oda reminded him sternly, pushing his chair over to look over Dazai’s shoulder as he began his edits. “Teaching isn’t that bad, Dazai.”
Teaching was Dazai’s own idea of a personal hell. He already struggled to understand how people in nationally accredited research programs were so stupid, imagine how he’d feel around a bunch of undergrads in introductory classes. “I don’t have time to grade.”
“Dazai,” Oda closed his laptop. “I’m forcing you to teach after you pass your proposal next month. It’ll look good on your resume-”
“My resume is flawless,” Dazai cut him off, “Are you trying to get rid of me, Dr. Sakunosuke?”
His supervisor's eyes rolled playfully, “I really think it’ll be good for you, Dazai. You are more passionate about this subject than most students your age, and that kind of love for the subject is tangible.” Oda paused, and waited till Dazai’s attention was back on him, as opposed to the offensively shut laptop in front of him. “We need more scientists like you.”
“I’ll light them on fire, and fail all of my students,” Dazai said dryly. “But whatever. Put me down for the advanced classes though, I don’t want to teach freshmen.”
Oda smiled at him and pat his back, “Good man, Dazai. Now, get back to those edits…”