Scientific Soulmates: An Adam Carlsen and Olive Smith fanfiction
I would like to apologize as I haven't written a proper fanfiction since 2018 so I am a little rusty. Also I am not a biologist but a chemist so if I made any biological mistakes I apologize again.
The auditorium in Utrecht was modern in the aggressively minimalist European way—glass walls, pale wood panels, rows of tiered seats filled with scientists wearing sensible shoes and conference lanyards. Olive stood just behind the podium, fingers clasped around her clicker like it might float away.
Then inhaled again, smaller.
“You’re doing the breathing thing,” Adam murmured beside her, his hand touching the lower part of her back.
She shot him a look. “I always do the breathing thing.”
“You’re doing the *panicked* breathing thing.” Adam corrected.
“…Okay. Mildly panicking.”
Adam’s mouth twitched, which meant he was suppressing a smile. He leaned in, voice low so the moderator couldn’t hear. “You’ve given twelve talks this year.”
“Twelve talks in front of people I knew. Or people who didn’t include the entire Dutch oncology research consortium.” Olive replied, looking directly at his handsome face.
“You bullied three Nobel laureates during Q&A in Stockholm.”
“That was different. I was fueled by spite.”
She squeezed his hand once before stepping aside as the moderator introduced them. “Presenting joint research from Stanford University and Erasmus MC on predictive bio-modeling for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma—Dr. Adam Carlsen and Dr. Olive Smith.”
Applause rippled through the room.
Adam sighed under his breath.
“I hate conferences,” he muttered.
Olive whispered back, “You love conferences.”
“I love *data*. Conferences are a necessary evil that stands between me and the science.”
She smiled despite herself.
Adam walked to the podium first—tall, dark suit jacket abandoned in favor of rolled sleeves, posture loose but precise in the way that screamed *I have dominated rooms like this since grad school*. The first slide appeared behind him.
Within seconds, he was in it.
Neural network training sets. Organoid scaffolding. Vascularization models. The collaborative pipeline between Dutch computational simulations and Olive’s lab bench work.
Olive stood off to the side, hands folded, watching him talk about *their* work like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And somehow still… wasn’t.
Because he was brilliant—obnoxiously so—and careful with his words in a way that made complex systems feel elegant instead of overwhelming. He gestured at graphs with long fingers, voice steady and low, pausing at exactly the right moments to let the room catch up.
And every time he said *we*—
“Our model predicts treatment response with eighty-three percent accuracy in previously unseen samples.”
“We validated the microenvironment parameters using Dr. Smith’s data—”
Olive felt something warm and stupid bloom in her chest.
She could not… stop gazing.
Her brain, traitor that it was, supplied the extremely unhelpful thought: *That’s my fiancé.*
Which was not relevant to pancreatic cancer.
She forced her eyes back to the slide.
Then immediately flicked them back to Adam.
When he finished, the applause was louder.
He stepped back, and Olive swallowed before moving forward.
Her part. Methodology. Constraints. Why pancreatic tumors were such a nightmare to simulate in silico.
She adjusted the microphone.
Hi. Hello. Don’t throw up.
Her voice wobbled for exactly one sentence.
Then she found her rhythm.
She always did—once she got past the part where her body tried to flee the building.
She explained training-validation splits, adaptive learning rates, and the decision to incorporate spatial transcriptomics.
And from the corner of her eye—
Not in the neutral, academic way.
In the *I would commit felonies for this woman* way.
He leaned against the table, arms loosely crossed, gaze soft and unbearably proud.
When the panel opened for questions, a man in the second row raised his hand. “Dr. Smith—how scalable is your model for multi-center clinical trials?”
Clear. Confidence. Even threw in a tiny joke about tumor heterogeneity being “the universe’s worst practical prank.”
He just looked at her like she was the eighth wonder of the world.
Another question—from the back. This one for Adam, about error margins in hypoxic environments.
He stepped forward again, resting one hand on the corner of the table.
At the exact same moment—
Olive felt her foot nudge something.
Her water cup had tipped.
She crouched to retrieve it.
Without looking—shifted his hand slightly, covering the edge of the table so she wouldn’t bonk her head while he kept talking about vascular perfusion gradients.
Like this was a thing he did every day.
Like he’d done it a hundred times before.
Olive froze for half a second.
Her face felt warm when she straightened.
Adam didn’t even glance at her.
Which somehow made it worse.
Their hotel room that night smelled faintly of citrus cleaner and expensive soap.
Olive collapsed onto the bed in socked feet and opened Twitter while Adam changed.
She wasn’t even searching for herself.
The algorithm betrayed her.
**@OncoNerd42:** okay but the way those two speakers LOOKED at each other???
**@labratlife:** carlsen/smith collaboration is incredible scientifically but emotionally i was not prepared
**@academic_gossip:** not to be dramatic but if someone doesn’t look at me the way adam carlsen looks at olive smith what’s the point
**@PhDandChill:** they answered questions like normal humans but made eye contact like soulmates
**@cancerresearchnl:** incredible panel. also… are they married? because WOW
She pressed a hand to her face.
Adam emerged in a soft T-shirt, toweling his hair dry. “What?”
“…The internet has noticed us.”
He frowned. “Not scientifically, I hope.”
“They think we’re soulmates.”
He scoffed. Weakly. “Ridiculous.”
She stood and crossed the room, grabbing the front of his shirt.
“They’re not wrong. Scientifically speaking we are highly compatible, though soulmates have a better ring to it.”
Adam slid his hands to cup Olive’s cheeks, smiling at her like she hung the stars.
“And lucky for us, we have implemented our research and the results are in fact pointing in that direction.”
Olive giggled before the two of them leaned in for a kiss.
The kind that made him sigh into her mouth and drop the towel onto the carpet, hands immediately finding her waist like gravity had opinions.
When they pulled back, his forehead rested against hers.
“You stared at me,” he accused quietly.
“You covered the table so I wouldn’t hit my head.”
“You were answering questions.”
“You hate conferences,” she murmured.
“I hate conferences,” he agreed.
“But you love presenting with me.”
“And being tweeted about.”
Adam smirked before he kissed the corner of her mouth, voice low. “Come here, Dr. Smith.”
Olive smiled, wrapping her arms around Adam's neck before he picked her up and gently laid her down on the hotel bed.
She traced Adam's bottom lip with her thumb, their eyes not seeming to leave each other's gaze for a while.
“They might write a paper on us: Soulmates in Science -Real or Not?” Olive teased.
Adam smirked as he pushed back the loose hairs from Olive’s face. “I’d read it. For peer review purposes. However, writing about it isn't exactly the same as experiencing it.”
He leaned down and kissed her lips, softly and tenderly. Olive could feel herself melt into his embrace, her heart fluttering like first love.
Oh how she loved him and oh how he loved her.
