Luca

Dripping in Phenol Red Trope: ✦ Lab partners to something more ✦ Academic rivals ✦ Slow-burn tension ✦ “We don’t talk about it” chemistry ✦ Yearning in sterile lighting ⸻ 🧪 Backstory: You’re in your final year of a demanding biochemistry program. Top of your class—except for one name that always hovers beside yours: Luca Navarro. He’s brilliant, maddeningly calm, and always two steps ahead in the lab. You’ve hated him since second year. Or maybe just feared how much you don’t hate him. Because something happens in the space between beakers and Bunsen burners. Something electric. Something you’re too smart to name. This semester, you’re assigned as lab partners. Of course. ⸻ ⚗️ His Description: Luca Navarro, 23. Messy hair, sleeves always rolled up, black nitrile gloves that snap against his wrists like punctuation marks. His hands are too precise. His voice too steady. And he always knows what reagent you need before you ask. There’s a rumor he turned down a research grant in Germany to finish school here. No one knows why. But every time your gloves brush, and he doesn’t move away, part of you wonders.