After Hours at the Nerd Lab [BH6: Captain & Blue]

[Blinking Blue]

Joy Martinez preferred to work in the evenings. If professor Callaghan was around, her parents didn't worry. Sure the man wasn't... actually always there, but she didn't tell them that and professor Callaghan hadn't ever ratted her out even though he almost certainly knew that she was fudging how often he was in the lab with her while she worked. Maybe he didn't know, but it seemed more likely to her that the man understood that what she needed was a little room to breathe. Hah. It was nice to have alone time though. Well not entirely alone because there were sometimes other people working, but she usually put her earbuds in and got in the zone. People respected the zone here, they got it. She paused her work to take a sip of tea from her heavy travel mug and then set it back down on the table, making sure the lid got sealed again so that nothing would get in it before she got back to work. Safety was important, and she couldn't afford to take extra risks. Sometimes it felt like pretty much everyone was out to get her, but under the clinical lights and well filtered air system of the lab, she found a place where nobody worried about her and nothing went wrong. Well, nothing that wasn't fault in her design work.

"Ah, dang it." She had put too much heat on the small segment of plastic she'd been attaching, and it had melted very firmly to the metal below it. That's what she got for working while anything less than entirely focused. She could have cut the metal, saved the bits of scrap to use for something else, but Joy was in a little bit of a mood. Her chest ached a little today and she'd had a little bit of a cough and those put her on edge. It was the kind of day where things went wrong and her parents ended up with more evidence about why she ought to stay inside and never experience anything ever just in case.

It would have been smart (and good lab safety) to actually go to the bin and put the metal and plastic combination into it carefully, so obviously Joy got close and then threw it in like she was angry with it instead. There was a nonthreatening 'boomf' and a puff of pink rose up in the air, an experiment that was supposedly dud triggered by the sharp pressure of being hit. It was delightful to look at, and she identified it immediately as one of Honey Lemon's projects. Not that Joy had ever seen them in person for obvious reasons, but she had seen the videos of the experiments and talked to Honey Lemon a few times. She should have known to immediately cover her nose and mouth but it had been such a surprise that she just stood there while the cloud began to settle, gently dusting her hair and sweater in pink, confused and uncertain. Instead of focusing on protecting her face she was trying to figure out what had happened. This wasn't what trash cans were supposed to do, this was basically the opposite.

The 'how' wasn't as important though, as the fact that it had happened. There wasn't even that much, it was barely visible on her clothing but it was enough to force a reaction. That wasn't fair, things had been fine for so long. The teen coughed, frowned, and then coughed again more aggressively. Her throat itched in a way that she knew all too well and she turned sharply, intent on getting from the bin back to her work station before things got too bad. The coughing got worse, and it felt like the breath was being torn out of her. It was the sort of thing that she could handle if she stopped it fast enough, something she could keep to herself and pretend had never happened. She was focusing hard on her breathing, fighting the panic that her body always flew into because that was going to make it worse. She needed long, slow, deep breaths, but it was hard when it felt like oxygen wasn't getting in. What Joy managed instead was an uneven combination of the two - sometimes she got enough air and sometimes it was the short, sharp gasps that came so much more easily between coughs. She put a hand on the table to balance and accidentally knocked her coffee mug over. It hit the ground with a bang that she barely heard, distracted as she was. Her ears were full of the sound of her heart beat and the gasps for air. It didn't matter how many times this happened, she never got used to it. She knew why, she had the objective facts about it, but that didn't help much when part of her brain was screaming 'not again' and the other part of her brain was just... screaming.

 

[Prof. H. Xander Storm]

Late Thursday night at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, Tadashi Hamada sank comfortably in an ergonomic computer desk chair in the robotics lab. He kicked his feet up on an empty blue recycling bin turned upside down with his laptop powered on and resting on his thighs. He'd been working diligently on his thesis for the unwritten 5th Law of Robotics: under no circumstances should a robot be designed nor be commanded to inflict harm on any human and, through inaction, should it allow any human be harmed. His mentor and brilliant robotics professor, Robert Callaghan, developed the original foundations of robotics known as Callaghan's 'Laws of Robotics'. However, his laws only consisted of four, that he recites in every class session. Pushing boundaries in robotics and preferring the challenge as one of Callaghan's prodigies, Tadashi decided to write his thesis paper on a fifth law he developed from his kind-hearted disposition.

His friend, Wasabi, finished and edited his paper long before the due date and Go Go, another friend that also shares the same course chose to work on hers in the privacy of her apartment. For Tadashi, the lab after hours was the most private and quiet he could achieve where he did not have to worry constantly about his younger brother sneaking around to bot fights and his Aunt Cass asking for backup at the café. Tadashi was not entirely alone here; Joy worked on a project of her own in her own corner of the lab but she was quiet when doing so. Every now and again his curious eyes would wander over to her area and peek at her project. She was a wiz in the prosthetics department, he believed everything she built was amazing. Someday, her tech is going to help a lot of people. When he first entered the lab to work and saw she would be working too, he politely waved to her and smiled, his mouth full of an apple he'd been munching on. His hands were dormant on the keyboard when it came time to write the conclusion. It was surprisingly the most troubling part of the essay, leaving him stuck in writer's block for the past twenty minutes. He must have absent-mindedly readjusted his hat a million times in the meanwhile.

"Just have to look for a new angle on this... Ah! There!" Tadashi pondered then exclaimed to himself, as the ideas hit his mind he immediately typed them while they were fresh as to not lose his train of thought. Had it been his younger brother Hiro, he would have said the same to encourage that knucklehead to use his big brain and look for another way out. He couldn't help but smile at the irony. He looked goofy when he did so, his charming and contagious grin always stretching from ear to ear. While reading everything he had so far page by page and the conclusion tied in with it, his large, round eyes shifted line by line, the deep, dark brown color shimmering from the screen brightness. After long hours of effort, he was finished and could submit it and start heading home. He carefully placed his laptop onto the same recycling bin his feet had been just moments before and stood up to stretch. He was 6'0" even, only the third tallest among his friends with Wasabi ahead of them and Honey Lemon in second place when she wore heels and wedges. He glanced at the time on his phone and deemed it too late to video chat anyone. Only Go Go would answer but even then she was probably still working on her paper. He was so busy with his all day he hardly heard from anyone but he'd simply catch up with them tomorrow. Now he could start enjoying his weekend.

A loud bang shook Tadashi from his thoughts and his head whipped over to Joy who only just threw something away. She stood in front of the scrap bin awkwardly, he could hardly see with her back turned to him, but he went back to gathering his belongings into his beige colored satchel. She started to cough but thought nothing of it until it turned violent and harsh, Joy reached for the table to hold herself steady and knocked over her mug from what he saw and it was what he interpreted as a cry for help. Without thinking, Tadashi abandoned his things and ran for her, calling her name but she wasn't responsive, still coughing and struggling to breathe. His arm gently but firmly urged her further away from the bin still puffing out a thin cloudy mist of pink. It had to be the culprit, her clothes were covered in it. He had her turned to face him then grabbed a nearby stack of papers with all sorts of sketches and designs, using it to fan air into her lungs while wiping away the chemicals from her outfit. "Deep breaths, Joy! Through the nose... and out the mouth..." he instructed while demonstrating like he saw his Aunt Cass do to Hiro during one of his allergic reaction fits. "Can you talk?? I'm not sure what to..." but he kept fanning air her way.

 

[Blinking Blue]

Someone was calling her name. The voice broke through the panic but she didn't respond to it, didn't really connect it to the person she knew was there until suddenly Tadashi was there. Joy didn't dislike him - obviously, everyone adored the guy and he was incredibly friendly - but at the tail end of the relief of having someone there to help her and call an ambulance if things got bad so professor Callaghan didn't find her on the floor a few hours later dead or something came the stress of having someone there to see what was happening. Someone who could end up treating her like her family did. His presence was mostly a comfort though, especially once he was taking up most of her vision. She tried to say his name, her intention was to tell him that things were fine and he didn't need to worry, but she got out a weak "-dashi..." and that was about it. Almost certainly going to have the opposite effect of what she was going for.

He said to take deep breaths and she responded with a short, sharp gasp. Not on purpose obviously, it was just a hard direction to follow right now.

The fanning was useless, but she'd be able to appreciate the sentiment later when things weren't super crazy. Would have been helpful if the issue was just breathing air that wasn't contaminated, but right now it wouldn't have mattered if he'd put an industrial air conditioner in front her there'd still be about the same amount actually getting into her lungs. She reached up and grabbed his sleeve, fingers curling into the soft fabric to try and get him to stop, thought it wasn't exactly easy to communicate much of anything right now. It also pretty promptly became her using him as partial support, because it was hard to feel stable when she was coughing so hard she was shaking and mostly wanted to be doubled over. That wasn't a position that really helped that much, at least that she had ever been able to tell. She needed things to relax, and there was only one way to do that. She'd reached the point where this wasn't something that could be solved with the basics, it was going to be time to break out the emergency equipment.

Her bag was on the other side of the long steel table she'd been working at, and when he said that he didn't know what to do Joy gestured in that direction. "Backpack. Inhalers." Her voice was raspy, a far cry from her usual cheerful and gentle tone. There were two in there, entirely identical in size and color. To offset that issue they were numbered with '1' and '2' and frowny faces. The first had a simple one like might be drawn on the side of work that was done poorly by a teacher who wasn't encouraging, and the second had a much more concerned face with a deeper frown. For just in case of... something, Joy wasn't sure what. If she was in such a bad state that she couldn't comprehend numbers she would probably be in too bad a state to comprehend the drawings but it had felt like a good addition at the time. It had also been made four or five years ago, so she had that defense.

Him getting her medicine required letting go, and that was hard. Her slender fingers fell to the table and she closed her eyes for a moment, focusing on her breathing. She was lightheaded, and the realization that losing consciousness was a possibility was something that made it harder, put her right back in that fight against a panic that was only being at all held back by the presence of Tadashi. If she passed out she'd have been mortified, which was basically enough to keep her hanging on.

((for reference I imagined Joy as about 5'6" but if you'd prefer taller or shorter I can adjust without issue))

 

[Prof. H. Xander Storm]

Tadashi was there for Joy with his arm draped behind her shoulders, almost cradling, to support her entire body if she needed. From under his clad figure, it felt that he was more than capable of supporting twice her weight but for as long as she remained conscious, she carried most of it. There was a light illuminating directly over his head, casting a shadow as his face absorbed most of her view. Even in a situation like this one where worry plagued his expression, one could find comfort in the softer features of his face. He'd been looking down and searching for help in her eyes, a sign of what to do, or maybe even permission to contact more adept personnel. He would hate to abandon her, even if just for a second, to call for help but fanning the air about her neither helped nor worsened her condition. While she tried to reassure him, a gesture he could not comprehend with her at this state, it seemed things only escalated. Joy whispered the last syllables of his name, somewhat of a good sign that she was very aware of his presence but not exactly disarming. What she could not say, she decided to take action, the weight of her hand clinging to the dark fabric of his cardigan bid him to stop fanning. She drew his attention to her bag on the other side of the table, claiming there to be inhalers. The young man hesitated to let her go but there was a heroic trait within that inspired him to take action without thinking, throwing the papers to the ground and leaving her to hang onto the table while he sprinted to her belongings, unzipped every pocket of her bag and shook the items out onto the table before sifting through the organized mess to grab the only inhalers he could see.

He immediately made it back to her hunched over figure, "Okay, okay, Joy this is the first inhaler," Tadashi hastily said while bringing the inhaler level with her eyes so she could see, and even rotated it so she could examine the oddly drawn frown, "And this is the second, okay?" And he held up the second one, twisting it back and forth to show the differences between the two. He felt it necessary to lower his posture so he could speak directly to her. It seemed the medicine would do the trick for now but Honey Lemon's latest pink project powder was still layered on her clothing. "Do you need a chemical shower? Should I call 911?"

It was a bad day to choose to do maintenance on the security cameras in the laboratory. They were usually on every corner inside and outside of the building, being monitored at all hours of the day by reliable campus security. Tadashi did not dare to think what might have happened if he weren't here, just thankful he was. Any other day, security would have taken action to help her instead.

 

[Blinking Blue]

He stepped away and Joy felt suddenly much more alone and stressed out. The coughing had slowed a lot, but that wasn't exactly a great thing, it more because she couldn't. She dropped herself heavily into the chair because it was there and that seemed like it might help even though she knew it wouldn't. It would help her keep from falling over so there was that, at least. Tadashi returned with the inhalers and she took the first one, snapping the cap off with trembling fingers and lifting it to her lips. Press it once, inhale the medicine and then keep trying to breathe. It opened things up a little bit, enough that she'd be able to better breathe the more heavy duty medication properly. It was what she used for the little issues, like when she ran too hard. Or in case of cold, but deep chills weren't exactly common in San Fransokyo. It got set aside, cap still off because she'd handle that later, and she reached for the next one. Things were already a tiny bit easier, but instead of leaning against the slender metal back of the chair the teen leaned herself against Tadashi if he was close enough, not seeming to really be paying attention to what she was what she was doing.

Focusing on breathing was a little more pressing.

The other medication was sprayed and inhaled and a second later Joy let out a deeper gasp afterwards, followed by a tiny flurry of coughs that were at the very least weaker and much less harsh sounding. Yep, that was the hardcore stuff. The tingling started in her fingers and behind her eyes and worked through her body. Well, she could breathe again. The airway had been more or less beaten into submission by medication and things were mostly working the way they were supposed to. It took a few seconds before she straightened though, having at least some of the same thought he did because Joy held her breath while she tugged her sweater up over her head, making sure to fold it quickly while it was inside out. The shoulder straps of her thin undershirt were a little slimmer than her bra, but that wasn't exactly a thing to bother herself with. She folded the shirt a few more times just to make sure it wasn't going to cause problems. She had modesty, of course, but even if it hadn't been for the fact that this was necessary to make sure she didn't end up breathing something that set her off even through the drug-forced relaxed state, this wasn't something she would have been embarrassed about.

There might be a plastic or paper bag around somewhere, she could stuff the shirt in there. Or bury it in her backpack and wash everything later was the thought running through her head more than worry about if Tadashi could see her bra a little.

Call the 911? “No.” Her voice was a little raspy and tired. “My parents will try and make me stop coming. Or ask professor Callaghan to waste his time watching me like a child whenever I’m here.” And a shower would probably just make her cold at this point. Plus then she'd have to take the light rail home in clothes that were at the very least damp. Or... call her parents, admit something was wrong, and get pick up. No. She shook her head and added “and don’t tell Honey Lemon.” The other student would feel guilty and she knew it. And while technically yes, her work should have been disposed of more securely, Joy knew she should have paid more attention to her surroundings. “She’s such a good person and she’d feel so bad.” She wished she could be a little more like the blonde student. Maybe get to spend more time with other students when they (and she, a little bit) wasn’t afraid she was about to die.

"Thanks. And... sorry." It couldn't have been a great experience for him. She wanted to crack jokes and make this seem like no big deal, but she didn't think she could right now. Maybe tomorrow, she was tired and didn't really know how to try and make it so things didn't turn out like she was afraid they would.

((I'm sorry this took so long!
She'll try and leave him some cute gifts for helping next time she's at school, which we can use for more conversation))