a_nice_phantom
She came to Chicago with two suitcases, a thousand dollars, and a thesis that her committee called a masterpiece.
He came with an IQ of 233, a Fields Medal, and absolutely no interest in inefficiency.
Janan Aryan didn't expect her first day at UIC to include sleeping on a couch, forgetting the name of the project she was literally funded to research, and being informed - at 8:01 AM - that she had already committed her first strike.
Dr. Julian Archer doesn't do warmth. He does systems, optimization, and the quiet, devastating precision of a man who has never once been wrong. To him, Janan is a variable in his research equation - one that arrived fifty-four seconds late and needs to be brought up to standard.
To Janan, Julian is simply beyond the scope of anything human. A moving brain. A theorem with a jawline. Definitely not someone she needs to worry about.
She is wrong about that last part.
Maximum Power Transfer: a slow burn about the world's most efficient man and the Iranian PhD student who was absolutely, completely, not falling for him.