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Jillian Holtzmann, PhD.
The next obvious step.
It only makes sense. She's blown through a double major in physics and mechanical engineering, minor in electrical engineering for shits and giggles (mostly for giggles, to be honest; the bathrooms on campus are disgusting), and it took her two and a half years. She's a loner, wandering around in hiking boots and vests, living on pringles and coffee.
Science is what she's good at. Science is what occupies her every waking thought. She wants to study the most complicated systems that she can get her hands on, and the calculus profs all pitch her on various thought experiments, but thought experiments aren't what gets Holtzmann off (and then up in the morning to face another day).
Nah, Holtzmann likes tech. She likes tools and soldering irons and crackling electricity. She likes bending electromagnetism to obey her every whim. She likes late nights in the lab, when no one else is around, and she can flip on the radio and bob her head in time to the beat as she tweaks the robotics. By the end of her already shortened tenure at school, most of the professors are barring her from the lab whenever she can't be closely supervised because there have been too many explosions and too many fires crammed into too few semesters. They're afraid of litigation, or maybe bad press, or maybe they just want to keep that decrepit old building.
So it actually comes as a surprise to her when the dean of the department sits her down in his office. She slides down in her chair until her butt is out over the ground and her shoulderblades are practically touching the cushion, and she grins up at him. Then she watches him try to compose himself in the face of the hurricane named Holtzmann.
"You've got potential, Jillian," he says, and she bristles at the use of her given name. "We don't want you to waste it. I've put together a number of brochures for you."
"What," she says flatly, and then lets loose a single chuckle. "We living in the 80s? Was the internet just a dream? Where am I?"
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "These programs are highly recommended."
She hoists herself up and snatches the brochures from his desk. "I'll take a look then. Thanks, doc."
Instead of visiting campuses and meeting potential advisors, Holtzmann spends the remainder of her undergraduate career cutting class to study the manipulation of electrical energy. It's vastly simplified to call it a proton stream, but the term she's fond of - positively-charged plasma tentacle - scares off academics and laypeople alike, so she just calls it a proton stream and fries every electronic device in the room when she shoots it off for the first time.
The school isn't thrilled about the loss of the equipment in the lab, even if it was just a teaching lab filled with rejects from the research lab upstairs, so she commits the notes to memory and allows herself to be escorted out, saluting the dean as she goes. She applies to programs lazily, when she's bored, filling out ridiculous answers to personal essays.
When she receives the first acceptance letter, she's caught off-guard, but then a few more trickle in and she attends a rash of recruitment weekends, where she's plied with science and with all the booze anyone can drink (luckily they aren't checking IDs, because she's just shy of a cool two decades old). She tosses back a few shots of whatever the bartender has in his hand at the time and eyes the crowd, sizing people up with an unpracticed eye.
She hadn't realized how badly she wanted to belong somewhere until she'd met a bunch of students who are as fascinated with the inner - and outer - workings of the universe as she is. Which is how she finds herself with a void full of longing lurking just inside her ribcage.
"Mom," she says, "I'm going to New York."
Her mother looks at her with pride and also with the kind of sadness that only a mother seems to be able to muster, and she says, "Okay, sweetheart. Follow your dream."
She shows up for orientation and writes HOLTZMANN in all caps on her name tag, and then spends the rest of the day scoping the place out. Its facilities are far and away better than the research labs she's used to, and her kid-in-a-candy-shop wonder isn't showing any signs of abating.
The professors spend a few minutes each pitching their particular research, and most of it puts Holtzmann to sleep. She can size up each faculty member in seconds: too stuffy, too timid, too narrowly-focused, too soporific.
The ten minutes that change her life begin with a professor sweeping haphazardly into the front of the room, smudged grey pantsuit, blazer fastened shut in the front by a single button hooked into the wrong hole and a binder clip. Her hair is gloriously, crazily curly and pinned on top of her head, where it spills over, and her glasses are charmingly crooked.
"I'm Professor Gorin," she says, "And I study subatomic particles. But if I could actually summarize my work in four words, it wouldn't be worth doing."
Holtzmann's more than dabbled in sex before, of course - she's as hot-blooded as they come - but it occurs to her as she stares at Gorin, spellbound, that she might be in over her head. She wants to work for Gorin, but she also wants to touch her, and she's sure that the next four years are going to be the most difficult of her life.
When Gorin finishes flipping through the slide deck, Holtzmann applauds with vigor until the whole room is looking at her, and Professor Gorin's slightly unfocused gaze falls on her, and then she tilts her head forward to look at Holtzmann over her glasses and the look becomes razor sharp and shrewd.
Later that day, at the catered lunch, a couple of students sit around her.
"Hey," says a dark-haired dude, "Got a little academic crush on Gorin, huh?" He raises his eyebrows suggestively.
"Yeah," says Holtzmann. "I do. I'm gonna work for that woman."
Another girl says, "Apparently it's odd for her to take students. Isn't that weird? How can she maintain funding if she doesn't have anyone working for her?"
"I heard her class is brutal," says another. "I heard no one would pass it if they didn't make her curve it."
Holtzmann watches them, gaze flitting from face to face, and sometimes her face rearranges itself without her input.
"Her research is 'highly experimental,'" says the guy, making air quotes with his fingers. "Not always super legit, I bet, but someone is interested enough to fund it."
"I'm interested," says Holtzmann through a mouth full of pizza, pushing a shock of blonde hair off of her forehead. "I'm going to work for her."
"Good luck," says the first girl. "I think I'm going to go for something a little more widely accepted."
Holtzmann plops herself down in Gorin's office the first chance she gets. It's cluttered; every available surface is covered in stacks of papers and the bookshelves are overflowing with leather-bound books. There's a tangle of wiring strung across her windows like Christmas lights, and Gorin herself is tinkering with a little metal contraption, a set of miniature tools strewn across what small amount of her desk is visible. There are coffee stains in little rings across a couple of the papers on the tops of the stacks.
Gorin looks up as Holtzmann drops her boots on top of the shallowest pile on her desk. "Don't do that," she says. Holtzmann shifts in her seat and brings her feet back down to the floor, and Gorin keeps watching her.
They kind of have a little stare-off, and Holtzmann really wants to look away but she maintains eye contact anyway.
Finally, Gorin sets whatever it is she's working on down - it sprouts little legs and scuttles away, and Holtzmann can't choke back her delighted laugh - and says, "Jillian Holtzmann."
"That's my name," says Holtzmann, grinning, "Call me Holtzmann."
"Jillian," says Gorin, and Holtzmann purses her lips at the immediate transgression, "My name is Dr. Rebecca Gorin."
"I know," says Holtzmann. "I was at your talk. And I've heard a lot about you. Built quite a reputation for yourself here." She winks, and Gorin just looks at her in that evaluating way that makes her feel like her skin is totally transparent.
"You want to work with me," says Gorin, finally.
"With you, for you, under you," Holtzmann says cheekily, "I just want to do what you do. I'm not picky about the particulars."
"You'll learn to be picky about the particulars. If you want to join my lab, you're going to have to sign a waiver," says Gorin, and procures a slightly discolored set of papers that have probably been living in that drawer beneath her desk for ten years.
Holtzmann draws a pen from her overalls pocket and immediately signs on the dotted line. "I don't like fine print," she says, handing the papers back.
"Reckless," Gorin comments, but instead of the disapproval Holtzmann is expecting - has been conditioned to expect for her entire life - she sounds almost impressed.
"So I'll see you tomorrow," Holtzmann says, so thrilled her body's buzzing with it.
Gorin nods, her attention already drawn back to one of the topmost papers.
"Don't trade me away to someone else," Holtzmann says, itching for Gorin to look back up, even if it's just for a second. She's craving more of that cautious respect.
Gorin looks up, and a little smile curls half of her mouth up. "I wouldn't dream of it."
Holtzmann stands, wants to pump both of her fists in the air, and settles for offering Gorin a high-five. "Awesome," she says.
Gorin stares blankly at her open palm. "I don't do that," she says, and then reaches over to take hold of the proffered hand with her own in an awkward but firm handshake. "Now get out of here, I have reading to do."
Holtzmann practically skips down the hallway, a bounce in her step. She runs into the dude from lunch earlier in the week and offers him the same high-five. He takes her up on it and the resultant smack reverberates down the hallway.
"Good one," she says, and then her grin widens. "I'm gonna work for Gorin."
"I'm not surprised," he says. "I'm not surprised at all."
The first day in lab, she's given her own workspace, her own set of voltmeters and potentiostats and a toolkit that she's only seen in dreams. She's given a desktop with enough cores to run incredibly powerful simulations in the office space, and she's given a laptop to carry with her if she wants to work elsewhere. She's given a lab coat that she immediately resolves never to wear. And, of course, she's given an arsenal of fire extinguishers, classes B through D, for the inevitable.
She's given a project, and Gorin sits down with her and a yellow legal pad and starts to talk her through the background. Holtzmann can keep up, but there are nuances to it that she's unfamiliar with, and also the shape of Gorin's face is very distracting to her, as are the myriad curls that are escaping her hairclip and falling down her neck and the sides of her face.
Finally, Gorin sets down a stack of papers that had to be partially responsible for the deforestation crisis. "Read these. You can get started on Monday."
Holtzmann tries to read them, but the machinery in the room just makes her itch, so she gives up halfway through the third and peruses through the projects in various stages of completion. When Gorin comes back, she finds her protege buried under snarled wires.
By a couple of months in, Holtzmann's mainly got the oral history from Gorin (still not much for the fine print), and they're working side-by-side, buried in circuitry. Gorin's convinced they can build themselves a mini-collider to study quarks, so Holtzmann's been developing a proton source. She's bent over it at the desk when Gorin approaches, and for once her mentor isn't wearing those yellow elbow-length gloves that remind her of the rubber gloves her mother wears to do the dishes.
But Holtzmann doesn't know that, of course, until Gorin drops a hand on her shoulder, startling her out of concentration.
"Anything?" her mentor asks.
"I'm close," says Holtzmann, but the warm weight of Gorin's hand on her shoulder is incredibly distracting. Gorin moves closer, and her hip brushes against Holtzmann's thigh, crowding every single thought right out of her normally jam-packed mind.
Holtzmann takes a breath, holds it, lets it out slowly.
"It's unstable," says Gorin.
"Well, yeah," says Holtzmann, "How else am I gonna get it to spit out protons at the rate you're looking for?"
A thoughtful expression rearranges Gorin's features, erasing the somewhat dour look that had been there before. "That's very good, Jillian. Very good. Sometimes we have to throw safety to the wind to make progress."
When she goes, Holtzmann has to consciously slow her heart rate, and then she tries to ignore the fire pooling in her belly that's definitely not the radioactive decay (which is probably but not definitely what's making her fingers tingle).
Holtzmann doesn't exactly fit in, not in the way she'd expected. She doesn't have a group of colleagues to eat with every day, and she doesn't have lots of chirping conversations in the hallways, but she's found a Holtzmann-shaped space that seems designed for her, and she belongs. She belongs to the science, she belongs to the institution - no one yells at her about safety infractions (they tried, once, to tell her that she had to wear more shielding, but she scoffed at them and told them that the fingerless gloves were the only ones that didn't interfere with her dexterity) - and sometimes, with a little frisson of excitement, she thinks that she also belongs to Dr. Rebecca Gorin.
Gorin starts to let her play music in the lab instead of working in silence, and sometimes Holtzmann catches her advisor watching her fondly as she bobs to the music. And their partnership, which might have started out a little bit uneasily, has grown convivial, and sometimes Gorin will lay a hand on Holtzmann's arm, and sometimes she leans in so close to check out the data that her hair brushes Holtzmann's face, and sometimes Holtzmann is sure that Gorin is looking at her more closely than she really needs to. So sometimes Holtzmann lets herself wonder. What is, what might be, what could be.
When it all gets to be too much to bear, when even being in the same room as Dr. Rebecca Gorin makes her head spin and arousal pool between her legs, Holtzmann has a bar that she goes to. She picks up the girl that reminds her most of her advisor - sometimes it's the hair, sometimes the eyes, sometimes the glasses, sometimes the height, but usually it's the demeanor - and she takes them home, to bed, and if they cry out beneath her it's all wrong. Most are willing to play, but they say all the wrong things, and in most cases, Holtzmann gives up before she really gets started, efficiently directs them both to completion and the girls almost never stay the night.
But in her research, she's doing extraordinarily well, making good scientific progress, sailing through her quals and her orals without a hiccup, and then one day, she's perusing a paper, looking for experimental details, when she realizes her work is fundamentally flawed.
Holtzmann is usually difficult to ruffle, but this gets under her skin in a way no one has ever managed to do before, and she kicks at the leg of her desk until the proton source topples to the ground, and then there's a minor explosion and she's blinded and deafened for a few minutes while green goo spreads slowly into a puddle on the floor.
Gorin bursts into the lab, all in disarray, to find Holtzmann knelt over the wreckage of the last three years, and she drops down beside her student, grabs her by the shoulders and looks into her face.
Holtzmann can only look back, dazed. She sees a couple of Gorins and she's not sure either of them are really here.
Then, to her eternal shame, her eyes spill over and she can't stem the flow of tears.
"What is it? Are you hurt?" Gorin has lost her usual disaffected tone and is nearly frantic with panic. She takes Holtzmann's hands in hers and examines them, finger by finger. Holtzmann, angry and disoriented, heaves a shuddering sigh as she continues to cry.
"What's wrong, Jillian?" Gorin asks, moving from her fingers up her arms, over her shoulders, to her neck. Gorin takes her student's head in both hands and turns her face so that Holtzmann has no choice but to look at her.
"Why didn't you tell me everything was wrong?" Holtzmann chokes.
"What?"
"My premise was faulty from the beginning. This work is going nowhere. I'm a failure."
Gorin pulls back, stunned. "Jillian, that's what research is. We're wrong more often than we're right."
"I hate being wrong." Holtzmann draws the sleeve of her jacket across her face.
"No one likes being wrong. But you're a far better scientist now than you were three years ago."
"I don't think so," says Holtzmann.
"You are," says Gorin, "I've been watching you, and you are extraordinary."
A dull red flush spreads across Holtzmann's skin.
"Come on," says Gorin, pulling her to her feet, "I'll order some sandwiches. You need a break."
After they've eaten, Gorin says, "You can't take failure so hard, Jillian. No one gets it right all the time."
"I want to get it right all the time," says Holtzmann. "I hate being wrong."
"I know you do," says Gorin.
It's a week after The Epiphany that The Incident happens. It's well after hours: Gorin is typing away at the instrument computers and Holtzmann is trying to use triflic acid to jumpstart the proton stream when there's a spark and some smoke; her hand shakes and she slops it down the front of her overalls, which immediately start to smoke and discolor.
Gorin is immediately by her side; she slices through the overalls straps and divests Holtzmann of her pants, which leaves her standing in a pair of boyshorts and a crop top, and then Gorin forcibly moves her - Holtzmann didn't know she had that kind of strength - to beneath the safety shower and yanks it on, and then she just watches as Holtzmann metamorphoses from quirky scientist to drowned cat.
"Are you okay?" she asks as Holtzmann steps out, dripping and shivering. "Are you burnt?"
"No," says Holtzmann. "I mean, yeah, I'm okay, and no, I'm not burnt."
Gorin steps forward and then drops to her knees in front of Holtzmann, who immediately forgets all of the excitement as she looks down at the tangle of curls atop her advisor's head. "What are you doing?"
"Making sure you're intact," says Gorin.
It should be maternal, Holtzmann thinks, but here is Gorin staring a line down the plane of her bare abdomen and her knees are starting to shake, just a little bit, with the effort of staying totally calm.
"Be better than okay if I get out of these clothes," Holtzmann says, and then with a boldness she's always known but never quite dared to exercise, she strips away her crop top. And Gorin, who is always watching her, is still watching, fascinated, frozen, as Holtzmann bares herself to her, water dripping down her skin.
Then she says, "We'd better go to my office," and Holtzmann almost trips as she extricates herself from her overalls. Gorin hands her a lab coat, and she wraps herself in it and follows her advisor down the hall. When they arrive, Holtzmann's losing her nerve - walking half-naked down a dark hallway in the bowels of a research building and in the wake of her straight-laced advisor, she doesn't know if she can go through with it.
So she can't believe her luck when Gorin pushes the door shut behind them and then eases the lab coat open.
"This is unusual, Jillian," she says, and Holtzmann has never quite heard her voice sound like that, low with excitement. Gorin touches just behind Holtzmann's ear, runs the fingertip down the side of her neck, across her collarbone, and then down her solar plexus, stopping just between Holtzmann's breasts.
Holtzmann literally can't breathe, her head is actually starting to swim and she thinks her vision might black out. Her nipples pebble, and Gorin smiles.
"Fascinating."
Holtzmann knows it's wrong, knows that if something goes sideways, if this comes to light, the power differential that makes heat throb between her thighs is going to maybe deny her degree, maybe even drum her right out of the field. She'd honestly believed that this situation was only going to play out behind her eyelids while she stroked herself to sleep, and now that she's on the cusp of it she expects Gorin to stop, but instead, Gorin brushes a fingertip across her nipple and watches Holtzmann fight to maintain composure.
"Aaah - listen," Holtzmann says, breathlessly, as Gorin does the same to the other nipple. "I gotta be honest, here. I really, really, really want to do this, but I don't want to get in trouble."
Gorin looks up, ghost of a smile on her face, and runs her hands down to Holtzmann's waist. "We'll just keep it strictly professional, then," she says, and Holtzmann hasn't actually read the rulebook but she's pretty sure this is basically the definition of unprofessional but she's not going to say anything because Gorin has leaned in and chastely pressed her lips to the side of Holtzmann's jaw, and come on.
She is soft and warm yet unyielding. She is treating Holtzmann like another experiment - input here, what's the output? Touch here? She places kisses to pulse points and Holtzmann can't prove it but she's pretty sure that Gorin is actually monitoring her pulse with her lips. And then Gorin's tongue flutters over her skin and she thinks she might be able to come without being touched.
But Gorin isn't going to let that lie for long. "Have you been with a woman before?" she asks.
Holtzmann, bless her soul, has been with women for years - was with a woman a week ago, who, coincidentally, was halfheartedly pretending to be Gorin - but something compels her to say no. And she knows her face is an open book - Gorin has told her many, many times, chiding her after attending useless seminars - but there's a softness (a curiosity?) behind Gorin's glasses and Holtzmann's committed to the premise so here they are and here they'll stay.
Gorin turns her around, pushes her down so that her knees are on the chair and her chest is balanced across the back, and she obeys and is exposed, dripping wet. Holtzmann wants to tell her that usually, she's the one who's large and in charge, but she realizes that she's surrendered the right by insisting on inexperience.
So she waits, and Gorin traces fingertips along the exposed skin, and then gently slips one partway in. Holtzmann gasps; she can't help herself. Gorin chuckles.
"Professor," Holtzmann groans as Gorin sinks deeper, rubs insistently against the tissue just inside, and she hears the intake of breath behind her and thinks that maybe Gorin isn't quite as cool as a cucumber, thinks that maybe they were actually made for each other, yin to yang.
"Normally I wouldn't try this so early, but you're so compliant," Gorin says, "and it's important to know if you understand your research subject."
Nothing changes at first, and Holtzmann's knuckles go white from where she's bracing herself on the back of the chair and she can't figure out whether or not she's embarrassed, but then Gorin adds a finger and murmurs, "Such a brilliant young mind."
Holtzmann is confused but also wetter, slicker than ever, doesn't understand the response of her own body as Gorin continues, "My very best and brightest. Such a good student, Jillian."
Validation hasn't actually kickstarted her libido before, but there's a first time for everything and besides, her advisor has a few fingers that are actually inside her, making her mewl, and then they twist and scissor and make her hips jump in response.
"Professor," she hisses, pushing back, "Professor, please," and then Gorin takes her other hand and rubs circles around the little nub and she comes so hard that Gorin has to catch her lest she fall from the chair.
"Very good," Gorin says, and Holtzmann is no less confused but she's okay with it, because they've just turned one of her roleplaying fantasies into an actual real life memory that she will presumably be able to carry around in her head forever.
"Let me-"
"Reciprocate? No, that won't be necessary," says Gorin.
Even for Holtzmann, this whole situation is weird, so she straightens up, pulls the damp shirt over her head and steps into the wet overalls, tying what remains of the straps around her waist to hold them up, and then she nods at Gorin. "Well, thanks for the orgasm," she says, and leaves for home, wondering what the fuck just happened as she walks all the way there.
The next few days should have been awkward, but Gorin doesn't shy away from eye contact or shared space, and Holtzmann decides it won't be weird for her either, then.
It's easy. It's so easy that Holtzmann wonders if everything else in her entire life has been difficult in comparison. It's not easy in the way she's used to: there are no casual touches during the day, no fingers trailing over arms and shoulders, no late nights over wine and takeout, no date nights and no phone calls. They avoid repercussions by throwing themselves into their shared work.
Dr. Rebecca Gorin is apparently also an expert in human sexuality because she can play Holtzmann's body like a fiddle. Holtzmann can't quite get the hang of it, whatever it is that hangs thickly in the air between them, because Gorin is always so disaffected that Holtzmann wonders if maybe she's just been doing it wrong all her life.
All she knows is that Gorin is now so completely dialed in that the next time a few experiments in a row fail and Holtzmann feels the frustration within her building to a silent scream, Gorin lays a hand on her arm. "Jillian," she says, and Holtzmann is pretty sure she's beginning to have a Pavlovian response to the sound of her own fucking name, "do you need to take five?"
Holtzmann can't help herself. "Maybe not five, but I could definitely take two." She winks.
Then Gorin is leading her out by the hand, and it's the middle of the day but the halls are quiet, and she closes the office door - the window has a poster of the Bohr model plastered over it anyway, because Gorin thinks it's funny - and Holtzmann bends over the chair, obeying the weight of Gorin's hand between her shoulderblades.
"Now, Jillian," Gorin says, "You've got to be very quiet," and then she leans over Holtzmann's back, slips warm fingers through the waistband of her pants, and it's as if Holtzmann's own body is betraying her, all Benedict Arnold style, turning her over to the enemy, because a little noise escapes her throat and Gorin's other hand twists fingers into the knotted silk scarf that Holtzmann wears around her neck.
Gorin isn't actually cinching it tightly enough to cut off Holtzmann's air ("don't worry," she whispers, "you're perfectly safe"), but Holtzmann finds herself effortlessly able to keep silent as Gorin's fingers slide through the slickness between her legs, even though her blood is rushing from her brain straight down to her clit so forcefully that she's dizzy with it. Voices pass by the door, and Holtzmann bites her lip so hard there's blood in her mouth but she clenches around Gorin's fingers, and when Gorin laughs in response ("fascinating," she says), she spirals further.
Gorin keeps her on the edge, teasing for ages until Holtzmann has entirely forgotten about the string of failed experiments, has even forgotten that she is a scientist, has forgotten her own name but she cannot forget that the hottest woman in the entire known universe is currently dragging her right up to the edge of her climax and then keeping her there, toying with her, daring her to scream.
"You an exhibitionist?" she manages to ask, because honestly, that's hot as hell, and there's no better time for candor than when her superior is relentlessly devoting herself to her pleasure.
"Are you?" Gorin asks, calmly stroking a fingertip over her clit.
A garbled noise - Gorin has long since abandoned the scarf at her throat - her fingers scrabble at the chair's back. "Please," she manages, "please."
Gorin concedes, and Holtzmann comes almost silently, breath rasping as her body contracts, and then the warmth of Gorin's hand is gone.
"Well, if you're not gonna let me touch you this time either, next time you might as well fuck me on the desk," she says with a smile.
Gorin returns the smile, so small that it's almost invisible. But Holtzmann is watching.
Two months later, the desk is suspiciously clear, and Holtzmann begins on her stomach but ends on her back (not quite brave enough to settle her legs around Gorin's hips, she just parts them and they tremble as she holds them obediently wide) and she's able to watch Gorin work her particular magic. Gorin is incredibly clinical, action-reaction, practically taking notes, but Holtzmann can see the pulse beating in her advisor's throat when she bends forward to close her lips around one rosy nipple (Holtzmann's back arches off the worn wood), and there's tenderness in her eyes and laughter in her mouth.
When Holtzmann comes, Gorin lays her palm across the spasming muscles in her stomach, and when they subside, she steps back, and Holtzmann stands on shaky legs like a newborn calf struggling to support herself. She reaches out and Gorin consents to the embrace, Holtzmann burying her face in Gorin's neck (she only smells like soap and shampoo), and then she kisses there, languid and open-mouthed, and she can feel Gorin shiver, and she smiles against her advisor's skin because Gorin is all tangled up in this particular spider's web now, too, and it's not that misery loves company (it's not even that Holtzmann doesn't want to be eaten alive because god, she does), it's just that at least maybe Gorin's a little vulnerable, too, maybe she's caught a little bit instead of just skittering from thread to thread.
Fascinating, she says every time Holtzmann responds to her hands and mouth. Fascinating.
Holtzmann can't believe how lucky she is, can't believe she belongs to the creature. She spends seminars watching Gorin listen to the speaker, each tilt of her head, each less-than-impressed blink, studying her mouth and the set of her shoulders. Every time she crosses campus, she watches for the telltale messy head of curls. When Gorin enters the lab and says hello to her in the morning - or in the afternoon, or in the evening - her chest feels tight with barely-contained happiness, as though the universe sets itself right each time she's in her presence. She asks Gorin questions about theories that she already understands, just to hear the way her mentor's voice falls into that easy cadence, because science is simpler than people, because the expertise that threads between those technical tongue-twisters is the sexiest thing she's ever known. And when Gorin offers her even the tiniest knowing smile across any room at all, she feels as though she might sprout wings and leave the ground behind.
In short, Jillian Holtzmann has it bad.
"Jillian Holtzmann, PhD," says Gorin on the night after her successful defense. Gorin's house is much like Gorin herself. Cluttered yet efficient, quirky and fascinating. But the bed is soft, and she's pushed Holtzmann down into the middle of it where she waits, stomach taut with anticipation.
"We can finally blow this joint," says Holtzmann, with Gorin beside her, tracing her ribcage. "We made it."
"You made it," says Gorin, fondly.
"Do you ever think about the future?" Holtzmann asks, all starry-eyed, drunk on the possibilities that the world is unrolling before her.
"I think about the future every day," Gorin says crisply.
"I mean us," Holtzmann says, forging ahead. "I mean, now that I'm graduated, what do we have? Where are we gonna go from here?"
"This isn't love, Jillian, it's science," says Gorin, her fingertips not stilling in the slightest, and Holtzmann deflates like a pricked balloon. She bites her lips before contorting them into the brightest smile in her arsenal.
"I know, Rebecca," she says.
"Professor," Gorin insists, and strokes the inside of Holtzmann's thigh.
"Professor," she sighs, and her heart is unraveling inside her chest. Gorin works her, slowly and surely, toward orgasm, her fingers curling expertly between Holtzmann's thighs.
There's an emptiness inside her, the heartbreaking silence between them, and Gorin, who has reliably coaxed her through each failure and every breakthrough by supplying a heady flow of endorphins, has her lower lip caught between her teeth and is watching her own hand between Holtzmann's legs. Holtzmann wants to beg her advisor to see her, but instead, she stays as still as possible and tracks every movement.
She wonders (oh, just there) what will happen when she leaves the university. Will Gorin (please, more) take on a new student? Have there been countless, nameless others just like her, a parade of human experiments?
Gorin takes hold of her chin with her free hand, the other still twisting fingers slickly inside Holtzmann (sharp intake of breath). "What are you thinking about?"
"You," says Holtzmann, and she holds the eye contact for as long as Gorin will look at her.
"If you need me, I'll be here," says Gorin.
And how can Holtzmann tell her that that's not enough, that this sick dependence is her undoing, right here, that when she comes undone beneath Gorin's hands that she is also coming undone inside, that five years is not enough and too much and that half-a-decade has ruined her if this was what it all came to. But instead she sits up - "I need you now," she says - and kisses Gorin full on the mouth, which she's never done before but now is her chance to assert herself as an equal.
Gorin's hands flutter against her skin, almost pushing back, and then she's kissing Holtzmann back - she's really kissing her, and Holtzmann parts her lips and feels Gorin open to her, and Gorin's fingers find their way back between her legs, and there's a rising tide of emotion in her newly-emptied chest and then, without warning, she's shoved over the edge, sobbing as her mentor doesn't let up - Gorin drops her head into the hollow between Holtzmann's neck and shoulder - Holtzmann's head drops back, helplessly - Gorin closes her teeth on the muscle there, firmly - and the pleasure that had been receding comes back in full force, contorting her body as Gorin supports her.
"God," whispers Holtzmann, falling back into the pillows, and then she begins to cry, huge ragged sobs that pull something secret and primitive out of the depths of her soul.
"Fascinating," says Gorin, and that's what finally convinces Holtzmann to get up, put her clothes on, and walk out the door, leaving her heart somewhere in the dark expanse of Gorin's house.
She doesn't go back for it.
She's taken a faculty position without doing a postdoc - how could she possibly work under someone else's tutelage now? - at a small no-name university that will let her do whatever she wants to do because they aren't fighting for the prestige of the scientific arms race, and when she shows up for the first day, she is shown to the dilapidated basement, and Abby Yates comes stumbling out of what appears to be a makeshift clean room.
"You're the associate who's going to be sharing my space?"
"Associate professor, yeah," says Holtzmann, yellow goggles perched on top of her head.
"My science is considered unorthodox," says Abby, and Holtzmann grins.
"I have issues with authority," she says.
"Join the club," says Abby with a laugh, and Holtzmann figures they can work together.
The first few weeks, they keep to their sides of the lab space, but by the time they're a month in, they're thick as thieves. Abby is brilliant and funny and kind, but sometimes, when Abby doesn't know she's being watched, Holtzmann thinks she recognizes the hollow look of someone who has been hurt very deeply.
Holtzmann herself grows more and more aggressively cavalier, as if covering up the gaping wound in her chest where her heart should be with crude jokes and weird quips can keep the world at arm's length, can keep anyone else from being able to peer into it and see the scratch marks, indelible, left there by Gorin during the unceremonious removal of everything inside her that let her feel.
At the end of the day, they're all just looking for mirrors, and Holtzmann recognizes just enough of a kindred spirit in Abby to become very attached. The paranormal angle is just a bonus, because Holtzmann thinks she might finally be able to have a practical use for proton shotguns, and that is awesome.
"Who hurt you?" she asks one day, when Abby has grabbed the wrong book off the shelf and pauses, staring at the dust jacket.
"It was a long time ago," says Abby, and the naked sadness in her face makes Holtzmann uncomfortable.
"Pretty sure there's no expiration date on pain," says Holtzmann, and Abby hands her the book. There's a picture of Abby and another women - Erin Gilbert, the jacket says - on the back cover.
"What happened?" asks Holtzmann, staring at their faces. They're so happy, there, immortalized on the cover.
"I'd say she sold out," says Abby, "But that's not the whole story."
The whole story is beautiful and complicated in a pattern that Holtzmann recognizes, and it drives her own misery right out of her mind until Abby turns it around on her. "So, Holtzmann, what's your deal? Who've you been moping over?"
"I loved someone," says Holtzmann, "And she didn't love me."
Abby pulls a little face in sympathy, and then she orders takeout and lets Holtzmann eat the fried egg roll wrappers while she bemoans the subpar wonton-to-broth ratio.
A couple of weeks later, when the prototypes are all falling to pieces, exploding and singeing her eyebrows, Holtzmann finds the frustration building, and this time there is no one to save her. Abby sympathizes, but then she's back to tweaking the EVP headset and doesn't understand how to indulge Holtzmann's petulance. Holtzmann needs an outlet - needs one very particular outlet - but instead she stumbles to the nearest bar, hooks the nearest girl in glasses, and takes her home.
The girl is young, eager to please; she kneels above Holtzmann, who finds herself tongue-tied when she tries to articulate what she wants. The facts of it make her cheeks burn red with shame. The girl flips Holtzmann over in the bed, tells her she's been naughty and she'll have to stay after class to make up for her transgressions.
Holtzmann digs her fingernails into her palms, but when the girl brings her palm down and spanks her ("Who's been a bad girl? Do you need to be punished?"), she can't take it anymore because it's all wrong, it's just so very wrong and it will never be what she needs, will never even begin stitch her back together into a whole person.
"Sorry," she says. "You have to go."
She feels bad, because the girl rocks back on her heels, naked except for the glasses, and asks, "What did I do wrong?"
"It's not you," says Holtzmann. "I'm fucked up. I'm sorry."
When the girl goes, Holtzmann finds herself stumbling down the street and hailing a taxi, and she hasn't even had that much to drink so she really can't justify any of this, but the taxi deposits her at Rebecca Gorin's doorstep and she climbs the steps, already fighting to hold back tears, and she rings the bell again and again and again until her mentor's face appears, bleary with sleep, in the half-open door.
Holtzmann pushes her way past the entrance and hears Gorin shut the door behind her. She turns, and Gorin is just staring blankly at her through crooked glasses, curls corkscrewing crazily around her face.
"Do you not remember me? I'm Holtzmann, I worked for you for years, you gave me a PhD - I haven't seen you in a couple of months but we knew each other pretty damn well-"
Gorin presses a palm to her forehead. "Of course I haven't forgotten you, Jillian, I just didn't think you'd show up on my doorstep at two in the morning."
"I need you," says Holtzmann, and Gorin takes her face in both hands and looks at her. "I don't know how to do this without you."
"You are more than capable, Jillian," Gorin says, her voice soft. "You are the best student I've ever had the pleasure to teach."
Holtzmann swears she's twenty again in the moment, twenty and eager to please, heart pounding in her chest, but she can't help the horrified question that tumbles past her lips. "Were there others?"
"You know I've had other students."
"Other students like me," Holtzmann sobs, "Were there other students you had like me? Other students that you learned to do those things to?"
Gorin, stunned, doesn't answer, and Holtzmann doesn't know how to interpret the silence, but she's pretty sure her chest is caving in because she can't seem to draw a full breath.
"There has never been another student like you," Gorin says, "Come to bed, Jillian. I remember," and heat flares, liquid and roiling in her core, and Gorin is everything she wants, beautiful and sleep-sated and promising salacious encores of their past. She takes Holtzmann's hand in her own, and she peers into Holtzmann's face, and she smiles, just a little bit. "I remember what you need."
Holtzmann shakes off her hand.
"I can't," she says miserably, "I can't keep doing this to myself." She can hear Abby in the words tumbling from her own mouth.
And Holtzmann, who, to her own knowledge, has only cried three times in her life before today, catches the same taxi home.
The next day at work, Abby hugs her.
"What?" asks Holtzmann.
"I don't know what happened to you last night, but you look beat. You need a hug."
Holtzmann fights to keep her eyes from filling with tears again, because she does need a hug and because she has never had a friend like Abby before, someone who encourages and challenges her and doesn't expect anything back in return, doesn't treat her like some circus freak. So she hugs her back, and later that day, for the very first time, she manages to cobble together a successful proton pack.
When, a year and change later, Erin Gilbert shows up at their door, they take her under their wing, too. Erin is very compelling; she dresses like a schoolmarm from the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and takes science very, very seriously ("that's what the Ivies'll do to you," says Abby, but she only half-means it), and she turns brick-red when Holtzmann winks at her, which makes Holtzmann do it at least twice as frequently as she would have otherwise.
And then Patty Tolan joins them, completes their circle, and Kevin becomes a constant(ly inept) presence, and Holtzmann now has a family to protect, and they take care of her, and she starts to feel at home even after she gets fired from the university and they set up shop above the Chinese place. A paycheck's a paycheck, and she gets to do the science that keeps her occupied from dawn to dusk.
Her experiments have started to meet with more success, and she has a corner dedicated to pet projects that are in various beta stages, and ghosts are definitely a thing that exists now, so all in all, things seem to be improving.
"Hey, Holtzy," says Patty, tossing her a full-sized can of Pringles. Holtzmann catches it without looking, pops the lid and immediately starts munching. Patty understands that anything other than plain-flavored Pringles are nearly as much of an abomination as the snack-sized cans, and Holtzmann loves her for it.
Holtzmann likes Patty. Patty is loud, but in an assertive way. Patty pays attention to everything happening around her. Patty knows the city, but more than that, Patty knows people. Patty knows her. And knowing that Patty knows her is kind of setting her teeth on edge right now, because Patty is smiling in a way that Holtzmann is definitely reading as stay calm we're gonna have a completely benign conversation right about now.
Which of course means they are going to have the opposite of a completely benign conversation.
"Hi Patty," she says through a mouthful of chips, spraying crumbs down the front of her shirt. She brushes them off absently, dialing the RF shield on a proton phaser up and down, up and down.
"What's eating you?" asks Patty, sliding into the booth across the room.
"More like what's not eating me, am I right?" Holtzmann returns, grinning.
"What in the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm looking for some good old-fashioned relief, Patty, and I don't care who knows it." She waggles her eyebrows at Patty across the room.
"Great," Patty says, "Thanks. But that ain't it, and you wanna know how I can tell?"
"By all means, spill your secrets," says Holtzmann.
"Because if all you needed was a little lovin', you could have it any time you wanted. I see how people look at you. And ever since I met you, you've been hiding something big and bad behind those baby blues."
Holtzmann lifts the phaser, aims at the clock above the door, and looks at Patty. "You ever watch Star Trek, Patty?"
"Sure," she says, "I especially like the one where Captain Picard changes the subject every two damn minutes."
Holtzmann squeezes the trigger and the clock explodes in a rain of springs and screws and charred plastic casing.
"Holtzmann," screeches Abby, "I don't replace that clock every week for decor. You have to stop using them for target practice!"
The next day, Patty puts up a dartboard. "I don't think it'll last you, but it might save Abby's mind. Now tell me what you were going to say before Picard interrupted us yesterday."
"I'm a hollowed-out shell of a human being, Patty," says Holtzmann, and she thinks she's joking right up until she feels her own lip quiver, and then she's only horrified.
"Oh, baby," says Patty, crossing the room and wrapping her up in her arms. "I got you."
She doesn't ask again.
Erin is staring again.
Usually when she stares, she's staring at Kevin, but Holtzmann's pretty sure she's got a petite-blonde-scientist-shaped soft spot, too, because she can feel Erin's gaze from fifty paces.
"You watching me, Dr. Gilbert? What's your professional diagnosis?"
"What?" Erin bursts, flustered, "I - what? I wasn't - I wasn't watching you."
Holtzmann touches a screwdriver to her lips. "Pretty sure you were."
"That's ridiculous." Erin scoffs when she's embarrassed, gets all red and can't figure out what to do with her hands. "I was just looking out the window, that's all."
"Well, you're lookin' at me now," says Holtzmann, firing up the acetylene torch.
"Be careful with that," says Erin, tugging anxiously at her too-tight collar.
Now that she's back, Abby seems happier, and that makes Holtzmann happier, too, because there's only really room for one hopelessly pining scientist in here and she figures she's got dibs now. But Abby also seems kind of cautious, skittish, even. She's still angry even though they've mostly made up. Probably mourning lost time, or maybe she's still mourning the collective loss of three faculty positions.
("No bigs," Holtzmann usually says when it comes up, "I hated that place anyway, and I hate the stuffier places even more. They didn't know what they had when they had you. We'll prove 'em wrong.")
"So - Holtzmann -"
"You want this gun?" Holtzmann asks, brandishing it in front of her hips. "Yeah? You want my gun?"
Erin has fully recovered and is now laughing through the frown she's been trying and failing to plaster to her own face. "Safety first, Holtzmann."
"I don't believe in safety," Holtzmann says loftily, and promptly sets fire to a stack of papers with the torch that she'd forgotten was on. Erin just kind of points to the leaping flames as Holtzmann puts them out with an expertly aimed jet from the extinguisher.
"What do you believe in?" Erin asks, laughing.
"Long walks on the beach, fluffy lil kittens, and science," Holtzmann says.
"Speaking of science," says Erin, "Who'd you train under?"
"Rebecca Gorin, pee aytch dee," says Holtzmann, and the name is elusive, slippery, too-familiar on her tongue, so the smile drops from her face as she tries to reconcile totally over it, completely 100% over all of it with still not over it even a little bit at all.
Unsurprisingly, there's a compilation error.
"Never heard of her," says Erin.
"Yeah, well, you wouldn't have," says Holtzmann.
"So," says Abby, sitting down next to her at the table.
Holtzmann has been perusing an article and thoughtfully chewing at the end of her straw.
"Your mentor, huh?"
Holtzmann's head snaps up so fast she cracks about six vertebrae. Abby recoils, just a little bit.
"You wanna talk about it?" Her voice is soft and kind. Holtzmann scoots her chair away, a bit at a time.
"Nope," she says, "Really don't. Really interesting article I got here." She sucks at the straw even though the cup is (loudly) empty.
Abby looks like she wants to tell Holtzmann about how it wasn't her fault that the bad woman touched her, and Holtzmann wants the floor to swallow her up. But instead of denouncing the faults of her ethically faulty relationship with the woman who taught her how to be who she is today, Abby just leans in and drops her arm around Holtzmann's shoulder.
"We love you, Holtz. We want you to be okay."
Holtzmann doesn't have anything to say at all.
They save the city.
Of course they save the city. At the end of the day, it couldn't have been any other way. They save the city, Patty saves Holtzmann, Erin saves Abby, and they all save Kevin. Erin dyes her hair fire engine red on accident and leaves it that way until her roots are showing. To her relief, they don't grow in white.
Kevin starts to learn how to answer the phone because their prank-to-legitimate call ratio has entirely inverted. They start to earn a steady income, from ghost hunting and also because Erin and Abby's book is flying off the shelves, and the royalty checks are fat at least for the time being. Holtzmann spends her days developing new tech: containment units, weapons, armor, traps. Erin is applying to faculty positions, having regained the respect of the field. She doesn't apply to Columbia, and Holtzmann privately thinks she's waiting for Columbia to beg for her back, which might never happen (Holtzmann also privately thinks that Columbia doesn't deserve Erin). Erin isn't going to leave the team, but she's a quantum physicist at heart and she needs to be able to teach in the big hall.
Abby and Patty don't pick up day jobs; there's more than enough work to be done around the firehouse, and Abby is more than happy with the lab space they've established here. The fire marshall is less happy - he doesn't seem to see the humor in it - but they're allowed to stay, because, after all, they saved the city.
And then a storm walks right through the front door and into her lab space.
"Hello, Jillian."
She's wearing a long gray coat over a black vest over a white collared shirt. She's wearing glasses and her curly hair is pinned up behind her head. She is beautiful and she's here and she's exactly the way Holtzmann remembers her.
"I saw what you did. I would have recognized your handiwork anywhere. Very impressive."
Holtzmann just stares at her.
"Will you give me a tour of your workspace?"
It's like a dream, all hazy and not quite right. Gorin follows Holtzmann around until they reverse their roles and Holtzmann is following Gorin, who is opening drawers and tapping on surfaces and making little noises of approval. (Fascinating, she says, and Holtzmann burns.)
Holtzmann feels like she has been forcefully slammed back in time, five years, watching this glorious woman work, only the woman is examining Holtzmann's work. When Abby and Erin enter, she is fully distracted, moves to the front of the room and demos the newest trap for them. She laughs, just a little, when they both jump back, startled, when it slams shut, the beam-teeth interlocking, and as she's explaining the various dangers of the plutonium core in the containment unit, Erin's gaze shifts over her shoulder.
"Uh, hi, hello - sorry - I didn't realize anyone else was here."
And just like that, Holtzmann finds herself introducing Dr. Rebecca Gorin to her friends, and Erin and Abby's mouths drop open and she can't quite meet their eyes.
They eat in near silence, all of them crinkling the paper of their deli-sourced sandwiches and not making eye contact, and thank god Patty is away this weekend because she would not have put up with this bullshit but the last thing Holtzmann thinks she could possibly stand right now is someone confronting Gorin over their shared past.
After many obvious questioning glances exchanged with Erin and Abby, Holtzmann manages to convince them that she is going to be just fine, they don't need to stay around and make sure everything is okay, she's an adult and is capable of handling herself like an adult.
And then they leave, and the door closes behind them, and Gorin looks at Holtzmann, and Holtzmann has never seen her look tentative or vulnerable but she seems to be managing both at the same time right now.
"Jillian," she says, uncertainly, "you came to my house some time ago."
"Ancient past," says Holtzmann, too loudly. "Forget about it. Everything's cool."
"Jillian," she says, chiding, and Holtzmann shifts in her chair.
"What do you want?" she asks.
"I thought I should tell you that you were the only one."
"What do you mean, the only one?" asks Holtzmann, her breath coming shallow.
"What we did. I've never... never with another student."
"What?"
"I've had lovers before, of course," Gorin says, matter-of-factly, as if they were discussing the weather and not their three year long affair. "But I never - well - it wasn't a habit of mine."
"What, systematically breaking down your students and pulling their hearts from the wreckage?"
"Lovely, Jillian," she says, dryly.
"I'm not being funny," says Holtzmann. "I loved you."
"I was very fond of you, too," she says, peering at Holtzmann from above her glasses.
"No," Holtzmann says, and she's surprised by how angry she is. "No. I was in love with you. I was grateful for every moment that I was in your presence. I was living for every word you spoke to me. I was addicted to you - I loved you."
Gorin studies her, and her silence is horrifying. Holtzmann is out of control, careening down the highway in a car with the brakes cut, the pedal to the metal, and she can't stop sifting through the year-old wreckage of herself that Gorin has brought right to her doorstep. She doesn't know what she'll find.
"Despite everything, I still love you," she says, wretchedly. "It's not a sex thing - I mean, it is a sex thing, but it's more than that."
Gorin places a cool hand to the side of her face, and Holtzmann leans into it. "Jillian," she says, "You are extraordinary."
And then she leans in and kisses Holtzmann, and Holtzmann kisses her right back while she undoes the tie at her mentor's throat, the buttons down the front, and she slips her hands into that shirt and lays them against Gorin's skin, right where her heart beats. Where both of their hearts beat. "Professor," she whispers, and Gorin tangles her hands into Holtzmann's hair and pushes her down onto the table.
"My sweet, smart girl," she says, smiling, and blood runs hot across Holtzmann's face and between her thighs as Gorin bends over her. "I remember you," she says. "I remember."
And then her hands are hot on Holtzmann's skin, drawing familiar patterns here and there, and she kisses the inside of Holtzmann's wrist, right where the gloves end, and she peels off the gloves and kisses Holtzmann's fingers, and then she traces fire to her breasts, stripping her of shirt and pants, and Holtzmann reaches up to run her hands back across the skin beyond where Gorin's shirt hangs open.
And without any of the patience that Holtzmann remembers her having, Gorin runs a hand down to where her blood throbs hardest, runs her fingers through the wetness there, and Holtzmann gasps.
"You weren't my first, you know," she says, breathlessly. "I told you you were, but you weren't."
Gorin smiles more widely than Holtzmann can remember having seen her smile before - it makes her heart ache, but in a good way - and she says, "I know, Jillian."
And she'd always known how closely Gorin had been studying her, marking every preference, remembering every reaction, but the undeniable fact is that this sex is still the most mindblowing sex she's ever had, and yes, Holtzmann realizes that part of it is that this is what she's been craving for two years, that she's been building it up in her mind, that every time an experiment fails she remembers what it was like to let Gorin make the frustration melt away, but the other half of it is that the sex exceeds its own expectations.
Gorin's wrist twists; the heel of her hand grinds up against Holtzmann's clit, encouraging Holtzmann to push back, help to fuck herself on her former professor's fingers, and as her hips rock, she reaches down to where she has never quite dared to touch and Gorin's breath comes hot against her mouth.
"Mine," she's saying, "mine, mine, mine," and Holtzmann presses deeper, and Gorin is fighting for composure and mostly losing when her hand lets go of Holtzmann's hair and then there's a low, insistent buzzing, a thrumming that runs through Holtzmann's body.
"Cheating," sighs Holtzmann as Gorin presses it against her and her hips snap immediately, violently in response.
She redoubles her efforts until Gorin is gasping above her, and the long, low moan that Rebecca Gorin finally releases catalyzes her own free-fall, the world going dark around her just for a second, and Gorin falls forward, across her, the warm weight of the woman she has loved and hated for all of the most important reasons, and Holtzmann touches her, splays her fingers out at the small of Gorin's back, and she breathes, "Professor," waiting for the shiver.
Gorin doesn't move much, but turns her head and whispers, "Rebecca."
"Rebecca," says Holtzmann. Her chest is overfull, unused to the sensation.
They lie like that for far too long, sweat turning to salt beneath what remains of their clothes, and when Gorin finally stirs, rolls over and sits up, Holtzmann grins.
"You brought a vibrator? Just because you thought you might need it when you came to see me? Just what kind of game are we playing here?"
"I can improvise, Jillian," Gorin says. "Innovation is the mother of science."
"So it's not a vibe."
"It vibrates," says Gorin, "but you probably shouldn't use it for more than an hour."
Holtzmann laughs.
She laughs because Rebecca Gorin is here (and she is mostly naked), because she is flooded with endorphins, because she loves her and is not afraid to lose her, not anymore, but mostly she laughs because her heart is back, thumping safely in her own chest cavity. And if Rebecca walks out the very next day, she will still have her own heart. She will still know who she is.
Jillian Holtzmann, PhD.