Disclaimer: Roswell, its characters and situations, are owned by the WB. No infringement intended.

Author's Note: This story is the part of an evolving future storyline. All the stories currently in this storyline are included in order on the Future Arc page.

For Kara, who kindly let me mangle her original idea beyond recognition

Some people, it is said, fall in love at first sight but that was not what happened to Leo Guerin and Athena Gray. They hated each other from the moment they met. The start of their mutual loathing coincided with the start of their first year of college. Both had arrived at MIT determined to study electrical engineering. Athena had been reliably assured by her high school teachers that she would be the star student of her year. Leo had been reliably assured by his father that he could accomplish anything he chose to accomplish, and ironically Leo had chosen to become the star student of his year. When Leo and Athena were assigned the same freshman advisor, a clash between them became inevitable.

To say that their freshman advisor had been surprised by their instantaneous antagonism would be an understatement. To say that he had been horrified would be only marginally better. To say that their clash of tempers and tongues had inflicted on their freshman advisor a headache that had required a total of eight acetaminophen tablets and strict bed-rest to rectify would be almost accurate.

Their first non-mediated encounter occurred approximately one week after their meeting in their unfortunate advisor’s office. Leo was standing in the Infinite Corridor, trying to figure out whether the 26-100 lecture hall was closer to Building 8 or closer to Building 16 and beginning to realize that it was equidistant from both, when he was attacked by a pile of books.

"You!" the books gasped.

Leo frowned and tried to figure out why he recognized the voice emanating from the books.

The girl from the advisor’s meeting popped her head out from behind the books. "Get out of my way," she said. "I’m in a rush."

"*You* banged into me," Leo pointed out mildly.

The books quivered in irritation.

Leo, whose mother had drilled into him the importance of helping damsels in distress no matter how annoying those damsels might seem at first, reached out to help steady the books. "You’re going to drop--" the tower of books crashed to the floor as soon as he touched them-- "them."

"Are you always this helpful?" the girl asked as she dropped to her knees and started to gather up her books.

Leo rolled his eyes and bent down to help her, cursing his mother’s attempts to install good manners in him when he would rather have remained a manner-less heathen like his father.

But as soon as he had picked up a notebook, she slapped his hand away. "I don’t need your help." Imperatively, she held out her hand for her notebook. "Give it back, and go away."

"Fine," Leo snapped and handed back her notebook, noticing as he did so the name scrawled across the top. "Your name is Athena? What kind of a name is Athena?"

Sitting back on her heels, the girl glowered up at him. "You are maybe the rudest boy I have ever met. I don’t even know you, and you’re insulting my name."

Leo ignored her. "You realize, right, that ‘Athena’ is the name of the student computing environment?" He gestured vaguely down the corridor in the direction of the nearest Athena cluster.

"Thanks for pointing that out," Athena said. "I might have missed that." She gave him a withering look and concentrated on picking up her books. Without looking up, she asked, "Since you know my name, what’s yours?"

"Leo Guerin."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "You’re kidding."

Leo frowned. "Why would I kid about my name?"

"Well. If you’re going to question my name, why can’t I question yours? After all, what kind of a name is Leo, anyway? It’s not much better."

"Leo’s a perfectly good name."

"Leo’s a horoscope sign."

Leo scowled at her. "My parents did not name me after a horoscope sign," he said, highly insulted. "I was named after a character in a book."

"Oooh, much better." Melodramatically, she clapped her hands. "Let me guess--"

"You won’t."

"Of course I will. I may have a bent to science and math, but I have read some books in my lifetime."

"Winnie-the-Pooh?" Leo suggested.

"You obviously have a great mind, Guerin, to have been accepted by MIT. Too bad it is obviously the size of an ant’s."

"Great comeback," Leo said admiringly.

She glared at him. "Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor, ant-boy. So what book?"

"James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses.’"

"They named you after Leopold Bloom?"

"You know the book?"

"Of course I know the book. ‘What incensed him the most was the blatant jokes of the ones who pass it all off as a jest, pretending to understand everything, and in reality not knowing their own minds.’ Page 655."

Leo stared at her in astonishment. "That’s my dad’s favorite passage."

"Mine too."

They looked at each other awkwardly.

"I need to go," Leo mumbled finally. Completely forgetting that he had been looking for 26-100 just a couple of minutes before, he turned on his heel and trotted down the Infinite Corridor towards Lobby 10.

So ended their second meeting, which marked the first and last time that Leo Guerin and Athena Gray were reasonably civil to each other in their freshman year.

Due to the stringent requirements for freshman courseload, Leo and Athena had almost all their classes together. And they soon discovered that they were each other’s rivals for the status of star student in EECS. Soon they were competing with each other in all their courses. The more intense their rivalry became, the harder the one tried to outdo the other. When they couldn’t find a way to outdo each other obviously, they called each other, just in earshot, names like "that annoying cluster girl" and "that arrogant ant-boy." By the end of their freshman year, they were almost unable to remain in the same room together.

They both worked all summer long: Leo, at home in Roswell for his Uncle Alex’s computer security consultancy; and Athena, at home in Seattle for her father’s computer security company. And when they returned to MIT for their sophomore year, they found that absence had made the heart grow even more hostile.

It must have been coincidence or fate that assigned Leo and Athena the same faculty advisor at the beginning of their second year. Perhaps destiny also had a hand in their faculty advisor’s preference for seeing his advisees in alphabetical order. Whatever forces were at work, Leo and Athena found themselves once again in their shared advisor’s office at the same time on the day before Registration Day of their second year of college.

Athena hesitated a fraction of a minute when she pushed open the door to the professor’s office and saw Leo already seated amongst the professor’s piles of papers and what looked like trash. "Observe the twit in his natural habitat," Athena announced to no one in particular as she sat down beside him.

Leo rolled his eyes. "Can’t you even think up decent insults? I mean, as an insult, that one was worse than the insults provoked by the great nut famine of 1992 that the squirrels experienced."

Athena stared at him, her lips twitching a little as if she were trying not to laugh. "You weren’t alive in 1992," she pointed out. "And I had no idea squirrels had a reputation for rudeness. And, I hate to break this to you, but you’re not a squirrel."

"Hand the girl a prize," Leo said sarcastically and turned away from her, determined to ignore her. Rubbing a hand over his forehead, he glanced at his watch and tapped his foot in irritation at being kept waiting.

"Keep rubbing your face," Athena suggested genially. "Maybe some of the twit will come off."

"Much better," Leo nodded in approval. "The squirrels would’ve been proud of that insult."

"*Why* are you fixated on squirrels?"

"I’m not. They were the first animal that came to mind. It must be something about your appearance."

"You know," Athena said, fuming. "You have more guts than a Seattle fish market."

Leo sat back in his chair, feeling like he had the upper hand in one of their arguments for once. "Oh, you’re from Seattle?"

"Yes. Not that it matters to you."

Leo snickered. "Home of Starbucks and the Evil Empire."

"I have three words for you: seek professional help."

"I don’t need professional help. But thank you for caring."

Athena glared at him. "If you believe that, then you probably believe that aliens exist too."

Leo choked, half-leaping out of his chair. "They might," he said cautiously.

"You’re kidding?" Athena laughed at him outright. "You actually believe in aliens?"

"Well, people used to believe the world was flat, didn’t they? And it wasn’t. If Columbus hadn’t had the courage to believe that his ship wouldn’t sail off the edge of the world--"

"What does Columbus have to do with aliens?" Athena interrupted.

"Well ... aliens might’ve been looking for a new world too."

Athena stared at him. "You’re certifiable. You know that, right? Completely certifiable."

Having recovered his composure, Leo sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. "The squirrels disapprove of repetition. It’s beneath you, Athena. And it’s so beneath me that I won’t even deign to respond."

"The squirrels disapprove?! You won’t deign to respond?!" Athena practically shouted. "You know what, Leo Guerin? I hate you."

"Ditto," Leo shot back without thinking.

And there, on that rather ominously reminiscent note, ended the first meeting of their sophomore year.

Leo and Athena’s second year at MIT followed the pattern set by their first. They saw each other nearly all the time, and they were almost never civil to each other.

But all that changed when they found out that they would be on the same team in the 6.270 Autonomous Robot Design Competition. One day, they were bitter rivals. The next day, they were Team 42.

As soon as he found out, Leo decided he hated the number 42, and he wouldn’t stop hating it even if Douglas Adams proclaimed it was the meaning of life, the universe, and everything to all of Massachusetts Avenue and the rest of Cambridge and Boston from the top of the Building 7 Dome.

As soon as she found out, Athena charged out of the classroom to accost Leo while he was putting up posters in the Infinite Corridor. "This is all your fault, Guerin!" she accused, waving the sheet of team assignments under his nose. "You are such an--"

"Whoa!" Leo grabbed the paper out of her hands and ripped it in two. He dropped the two pieces into her stunned hands. "*This* was *not* my fault. I do not want to spend any more time with you than you obviously want to spend with me." He gestured to his box of push-pins and his stack of posters. "Now I’m busy. Go away."

"I will not go away until...." Her eye was caught by Leo’s poster, and her voice trailed off.

"Until what?" Leo prompted impatiently.

Ignoring his prompt, Athena leaned in to read the poster. "‘LOST GOLDFISH ... Kind of Gold Colored ... Answers to name "Flushy" ... Obviously, we love and miss him dearly ... If found, please call: 555-0000,’" she read. She frowned at him. "What the heck are you plastering on the wall, you lunatic?"

Leo stuck another pin into the poster. "It’s a hack. In the time-honored tradition of MIT hacks." He snorted in disgust. "Some double-E student you are if you can’t figure that out. Now go away."

"I know what a hack is," Athena remarked acidly. "And this hardly qualifies. Try putting a goldfish bowl filled with water from the Charles River and a live goldfish on top of the Great Dome with ‘Flushy’ spelled out in flashing Christmas lights all the way around the Dome, and maybe it’ll be worthy of being called a hack."

"Obviously you’ve been reading up on hacks," Leo said, unimpressed. "Please go away and inflict your hobbies on someone else."

Athena shrugged, waving the sheet of team assignments under his nose again. "Just tell me when we have to meet. So I can time my ceremonial hara kiri accordingly."

Leo glared at her. "Let’s meet in the Student Center tomorrow morning. Ten-ish."

Athena glared back. "Fine," she snapped.

"Fine," he snapped at Athena’s retreating back.

That night, Leo worked on getting his ideas for the robot design competition down on paper. He had little success. Stephen and Matt, his twin brother and cousin respectively who were also his roommates, kept interrupting him. And when his sister Molly, who happened to be Matt’s girlfriend, and his cousin Anna, who happened to be Stephen’s girlfriend, arrived on the doorstep, expecting to spend the weekend in Boston (a fact that everyone had obviously neglected to tell Leo), he gave up entirely on his robot design and went to bed. Unfortunately, bed for Leo turned out to be the bathtub because Stephen and Anna needed privacy in the apartment’s single bedroom, and Matt and Molly needed privacy on the sofabed in the living room.

Feeling literally like a fifth wheel, Leo punched his pillow a few times and tried to rearrange his sleeping bag so that he didn’t feel the cold porcelain of the bathtub against his back. He found it impossible to sleep. His uncomfortable sleeping arrangements didn’t help. The two sets of moans coming from the sofabed in the living room and the double bed in the bedroom definitely didn’t help. And the fact that he couldn’t get Athena Gray out of him mind absolutely didn’t help.

Sometimes when he was with Athena, Leo thought unexpectedly, he felt something, although he wasn’t sure what it was. It wasn’t exactly a spark, and he knew that there were supposed to be sparks. There were always sparks. It was a Czechoslovakian thing. Everyone in his family had sparks. His parents, his aunts and uncles: they all exhibited sparkiness. Sparks were what Stephen had found with Anna, and what Matt had found with Molly. Setting off sparks was the sign that would mean something, Leo knew; sparks would mean the one, the one who was destined for him or whatever....

Leo sat up abruptly, nearly banging his head on the faucet. Either the late hour or the moans outside the bathroom door were making him maudlin. Shaking his head to clear it, he stood up and leaned his ear against the door, hoping to hear quiet finally. And there it was -- blessed silence.

But Leo still couldn’t sleep. So he decided to take a walk. As he passed through the living room on his way out of the apartment, Leo saw his baby sister cradled in the arms of his best friend and closest cousin. Feeling a weird sense of loss, he looked away. He thrust his hands into his pockets, automatically falling into the Guerin slouch, and slipped out the door.

Leo walked until the brightening sky and his grumbling stomach urged him back home.

When he walked into the apartment, he immediately recognized the voices in the kitchen; Molly and Matt were up. Leo listened for a minute to their conversation, and smirked when he realized Molly must have found the sign he’d left on his papers before he had gone to sleep the night before.

"‘If you are Dad or Mama,’ Molly was reading out loud; ‘Do anything you want to anything in this apartment, including moving these papers. Who am I to say anything? If you are not Dad or Mama, you can move these papers at your own risk. I’m not kidding. I am the paper police, and I got a can o’ whoop-ass ready to go. Leo.’" Molly laughed then called: "C’mere and read this, Matt. Leo’s cracked. The stress has finally gotten to him.... He’s officially going crazy."

"For Lee, it’s a short trip," Matt sighed.

On that note, Leo chose to reveal his presence. "Whatcha guys doing?"

Matt looked up in surprise. "Where were you, Lee? Molly and I were worried." Leo’s little sister sat on top of the kitchen counter. She had obviously gone back to watching Matt cook bacon as a side dish to the stack of pancakes already sitting on the counter.

"Ste and Anna weren’t worried obviously," Leo observed.

Matt’s answering grin made Leo roll his eyes. Stephen had definitely inherited the Guerin genes for horndog … or was it the DeLuca genes? he wondered.

Just then Molly and Matt leaned in for a kiss.

Leo groaned. Evidently Molly had inherited the same genes, whoever’s they were. "Can you guys not do that?"

Molly tore her lips away from Matt’s. "Do what?"

Leo sent her a mock-glare. "You guys and Ste and Anna keep going at it like rabbits," Leo said in disgust. "At this rate, I’m gonna go around the apartment rubbing your feet for good luck in the robot competition. It’s disgusting. I can only take so much. You guys are driving me out of my own home."

"Don’t you want some of the pancakes I made before you leave?" Molly asked.

"I hate to tell you this, Molly Ky, but your pancakes always taste like they were made by Dupont." Leo smiled his usual charming Guerin grin to soften his words. "I need to get going in any case. I’ll get something in the Student Center."

"You’re a jerk," Molly remarked, not bothered by her brother’s blunt way of speaking.

Leo grinned. "I know. I’ll see you guys tonight. Have fun, lovebirds." Leo grabbed his jacket and left for the Student Center and his meeting with Athena and Team 42.

Later that morning, Leo showed Athena the few ideas for the robot design that he had managed to get on paper before the hordes had descended on his apartment the night before.

She turned his notes and drawings over in her hands, studying them from every angle, first right side up, then upside-down. "This is very good," she told Leo.

"Really? You think that?"

"No. I really think that a million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed to create anything as cretinous."

Leo almost laughed, but caught himself just in time. "That’s good," he said instead. "I was worried for a second there that you might actually like something I did."

Athena gave him a sidelong look. "Well, actually ... you might be on to something. Not that I like anything you did. But if we could just change this ... and this ... we might be able to get somewhere." She glanced at him. "Do you mind?"

"Nah. Let’s get to work."

They worked quietly and efficiently together. And their strangely harmonious productivity coming on top of Leo’s restless night soon sapped his energy enough that he needed an energy boost.

"Wanna get some coffee?" he asked, almost hesitantly.

"Sure. We can review the morning’s work in the café." Athena led the way to Toscanini’s on the first floor of the Student Center where they bought two cups of coffee.

They had just sat down to review their morning’s work when Leo took one sip of his coffee and nearly spat it out. Athena stared at him as if he had lost his mind. He pointed to her untasted cup. "Be alert. Be very alert," he said weakly.

Athena raised her eyebrows. "Sometimes, Guerin, you talk in hyperlink. It’s hard to follow."

"The coffee’s really bitter," Leo attempted to explain. "Try it."

"You’re a very weird person," Athena observed as she sipped her coffee. Immediately she made a face and spat it out. "My god. That stuff’ll grow hair on my chest."

Inevitably her words drew Leo’s eyes to her chest. When she saw where his eyes had wandered, Athena turned away, her cheeks reddening slightly.

"Let’s get back to work," she said, her voice slightly husky.

"Upstairs?" Leo suggested.

"Sure." She handed him their papers and drawings and blueprints. And when their fingers touched, the light above them began to flicker. And a tiny shock ran up Leo’s arm, which he dismissed as static electricity, the result of plastic-soled shoes on rubber flooring.

She looked down at their hands then gave him an odd look. "Did you just see sparks?" she asked curiously.

Leo stared down at their hands and reconsidered his original rationale for the tiny shock. Suddenly he grinned at Athena, an all-out charming Guerin grin. "Yup, I saw sparks." He grabbed her arm and felt another little shock, and wondered how he had missed noticing them before. "C’mon. Let’s get back to work. We are so going to win this robot design competition."

And they did.

And the number 42 had nothing to do with it.

Or did it?

END

Author’s Notes:

This story started out as a brilliant idea that Kara had, which I mangled almost beyond recognition. I can’t thank her enough for letting me play with it! Parts of Kara’s original story are sprinkled in different places in this story (especially in the bathtub and breakfast sections), so a lot of credit for this story needs to go to her.

This story is also a tribute (if you hadn’t noticed) to my beloved Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT quirks and locales were my main inspiration (although M&M banter figured prominently too). EECS and double-E are affectionate nicknames for the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. And I should note that all buildings are indeed numbered, not necessarily named, at MIT. It is a matter of "nerd pride" that true MIT folks can tell you that the Infinite Corridor (which *is* really what the main corridor in the main group of buildings is called) runs through Buildings 7, 3, 10, 4, and 8, if you start at the 77 Mass Ave entrance to the Main Group of buildings. (True MIT folks can also tell you on exactly what day the sun shines directly from one end of the Infinite Corridor to the other, but that’s a whole other story.)

A large part of the MIT experience inevitably focuses (unlike the Hubble telescope *g*) on hacking, so of course I had to include it in this story. Leo’s goldfish hack would indeed be a minor hack in the history of MIT hacks (apologies to the real MIT folks who came up with the poster *g*). If you’re interested in the history of hacking at MIT, visit the MIT Hack Gallery at this URL:

http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/

If you’re wondering what the aitch a hack is, the Hack Gallery website starts with a helpful definition of the word "hack" in MIT-usage. A hack is a "clever, benign, and ‘ethical’ prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which MIT-ers call ‘cracking’)."

A last note on hacking: If you’re ever in Boston, you may want to visit the MIT Museum’s permanent exhibit of MIT hacks. The following URL describes the exhibit, with photos of the various Great Dome hacks (the inspiration for the improved goldfish hack Athena suggests in this story), as well as a photo of my favorite hack, the famous weather balloon incident at the Harvard–Yale football game that MIT won. *g* This is the MIT Museum URL:

http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/org/m/museum/exhibits/hacks.html

My final note is bibliographical. The opening of this story (and much of its tone) was directly inspired by a short story by Jeffrey Archer, "Old Love," from his 1980 collection, "A Quiver Full Of Arrows." Homage, not infringement, intended.

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