Jim craned his neck every ten seconds or so to sweep the campus cafeteria with his eyes. As his eyes found the clock, he noticed that his mostly punctual friend was now more than ten minutes late. Sighing, he turned back to his own box of French fries, stabbing them with his fork. Maybe it had been too weird to ask a friend he had just made if he “wanted to meet up for lunch?”
A figure slid into the seat in front of Jim, knocking him out his reverie. Jim looked up to see Leonard fumbling with his backpack as he placed the salad he had bought on the table in front of him. Jim snorted. Fucking life science kids and their health-nuttery.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m a terrible person,” Leonard apologized, wincing. He popped the lid of his salad bowl open, and stuffed a forkful of lettuce into his mouth.
Jim just grinned. “Nah, it’s cool. What kept you?” he asked, leaning forward in his chair.
A bright smile took over Leonard’s face. “I was at my virology lecture, right? And so we were talkin’ about Reoviruses today. And they’re a pretty shitty class of viruses as in, they don’t do much on the disease causin’ lethality stage. And so you’d think that ‘cause they don’t do much, no one would really study ‘em, right?” he babbled, gesturing widely with his hands. His salad lay on the table, forgotten.
Jim nodded, a stupid smile taking over his face. He was majoring in History and English, he didn’t have a clue what Leonard was talking about. But just seeing him talk so animatedly about something he was so clearly passionate about was enough to make anyone fall in love. Not that Jim was in love with Leonard or anything, Jim thought, with a shake of his head.
“So what they found out was, that if you tried to grow a Reovirus within a regular ol’ cell, nothin’ much would happen. But stick it in a transformed cell, one that’s dependent on Ras or an active EGF receptor, and bam! You get a shit ton of replication just like that!” Leonard said excitedly.
“What’s Ras?” Jim interjected.
“Oh, it’s a protein within cells. When it’s workin’ normally, it switches on other proteins and genes, to cause cell growth, differentiation and stuff. But if it mutates, what happens is, the Ras is never shut off and causes uncontrolled growth. Cancer,” he replied, with a wicked glint in his eye.
Jim nodded, completely enraptured again.
“Now, I bet you’re thinkin’ okay, so Reovirus only grows in the presence of Ras. And Ras causes cancer. So if you injected a cancer patient with a Reovirus, it wouldn’t grow on normal cells, ‘cause there isn’t any Ras there. But once the virus gets to the tumour, it can start to properly replicate itself and target the bad, cancerous cells!” Leonard finished, grinning triumphantly. “And so I had to talk to my prof after lecture about that, because that’s just insane. This could be our cure for cancer, Jimmy!”
Jim just gazed at Leonard, nodding. “Fascinating, that’s amazing Bones,” he said, in complete agreement. Although Leonard was probably more fascinating to him than the Reovirus.
Leonard raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been friends with you for like a month and I still have no idea why you call me that,” he said, turning his attentions back to his now soggy salad.
“Because you wanna be a doctor. You’re gonna be an ol’ sawbones,” Jim explained.
“You’re a strange kid, you know that?”
“Bones, you’re only a year older than me, if I’m a kid, so are you,” Jim said, rolling his eyes.
“Yeah, but I’m an older kid,” Leonard retorted, grinning.
“You sure you wanna come sit in my lecture with me?” Leonard asked, glancing at Jim as they walked. “Eukaryotic Gene Expression is as dull a course as they get.”
Jim nodded his head. “Yeah, I wanna see what a science course is like. Plus I’ll entertain you through the dullness,” he said, grinning.
“You’ve been warned,” Leonard replied, holding the door to the lecture room open for Jim.
They got seats near the back. Leonard pulled out his laptop to take notes, and Jim a novel for one of his English classes. Leonard looked at the book Jim had taken out of his bag, and raised an eyebrow.
“Only if it gets too boring,” Jim whispered hastily. “I’m here for the science, promise.”
Leonard just rolled his eyes, and turned his attention to the professor who had begun speaking on the finer points of gene silencing via DNA methylation.
Jim looked at Leonard, who was completely engrossed in the lecture, fingers flying over his keyboard as he tried to note down everything the professor was saying.
“Cytosines in a CpG dinucleotide typically are methylated, which helps to distinguish newly synthesized DNA from older DNA during the proofreading process in DNA replication…” the professor explained, his German-accented voice soothing to Jim’s ears, despite the fact that whatever he was saying was Greek to him.
Except not really. Jim was fluent in Greek.
So he watched Leonard taking notes for a while, smiling whenever Leonard smiled at something particularly interesting the professor said. Smiling when Leonard frowned, getting the tiny crease between his eyebrows as he typed something down, adding about five question marks after it to remind himself to look it up later.
In doing so, he eventually drifted off to sleep within the first half hour of the two hour lecture. Leonard shook him awake after the lecture ended, an amused look on his face.
“Told you it was dull,” he said, helping Jim put his stuff back in his bag.
“You didn’t think it was dull,” Jim pointed out.
Leonard’s face softened into a smile. “Yeah, ‘cause it’s my major. I complain about it, but I really do love this stuff.”
Jim just smiled back. “Yeah, I know.”
Jim took the elevator to the eleventh floor of the library in the early hours of the morning, still bleary eyed and half asleep. He needed books for his history essay, because the professor didn’t believe in web-based sources like the ancient old bat she was.
Perusing through the stacks on the nearly empty floor, he glimpsed a familiar figure, frantically writing out notes on one of the study tables.
“Didn’t expect to see you here, Bones,” Jim said in hushed tones, striding towards Leonard.
“Been here since about 5am,” Leonard said, yawning before he spared a small smile for Jim. “Got my neuro midterm later today, thought I’d get some last minute studyin’ done.”
Jim sat down in the seat in front of Leonard. “What are you studying?”
Leonard’s face lit up. “BDNF! It’s a neurotrophic factor, basically helps your brain strengthen synapses and stuff. It improves memory, concentration and it’s even implicated in stuff like depression, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia,” Leonard explained, gesturing at his notes. “But, the gene that makes BDNF has got two different polymorphisms, which is what I’m readin’ right now.”
“Polymorphisms?” Jim asked, nonplussed.
“Yeah, different types of the gene, essentially. Some people have the regular type, with a Valine at position 66. But others have got the type with Methionene at position 66. An’ that’s the type that’s not really that good for you,” Leonard said. “People who have the Met66 version of the BDNF gene have a visible reduction in hippocampal dependent memory, and it’s thought that’s because the Met66 version of the gene has a more difficult time in being secreted, so it can’t spread from cell to cell…”
Leonard kept talking, explaining the differences between then Val66 and Met66 polymorphisms of BDNF, but Jim had zoned out. All he could see were Leonard’s excited eyes, the way he was gesturing with his hands, so completely engrossed in what he was talking about that Jim couldn’t stand it anymore.
He leaned across the table and grabbed Leonard’s collar, pulling him forward and kissing him soundly on the lips.
He fell back onto his chair with a dazed look on his face after Jim pulled away. He looked at Jim and blinked, confused.
Jim just shrugged. “You talking science does things to me. Also, I’m kind of in love with you, just so you know.”
Leonard’s face relaxed into an easy smile. “Dinner tonight, after my midterm? I can tell you all about the Red Queen hypothesis, and why scientists think sex may have evolved.”
Jim leaned forward and kissed Leonard again. “It’s a date.”
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