Patrick presses the fingers of his left hand to his forehead and hopes his brain isn't leaking through his ears. Doctor Wentz is a genius, a wonder in infantile genetic disorders.

Also, Doctor Wentz is an asshole. He delights in trying to trip Patrick up, but Patrick only looks stupid. He's a fucking doctor, too, and if it wasn't for this very important paper that needs to be presented in a few days, he would probably stuff Wentz's head into the autoclave over there and just leave.

Wentz is sitting right next to him, eyes shining in fake innocence.

"Let's go again," Patrick says slowly, and Wentz'a grin is large and blindingly smug.

"Simply put, it's a cure for Batten disease," Wentz says patiently, and Patrick checks that he has Spielmeyer-Vogt-Sjögren-Batten disease written out carefully in his notes. He'll check it later, but he knows what it is. Fuck you, Wentz, he thinks with a baring of mental teeth. Wentz looks at his notes and raises his eyebrows appreciatively.

"Go on," Patrick says and writes furiously as Doctor Call-me-Pete Wentz chats lazily about autosomal recessive patterns and his work on the infantile versions of the disease, and how he will attempt apply the cure to the late infantile versions. Patrick writes and makes notes for himself, mentally putting Pete's arching genetic-speak into simple, straightforward language, so that the news articles don't feel like they're talking down to people.

'Cause that would suck. Patrick hates that.

"So basically we just built on the Phase 1 Clinical trials that had been done over at Cornell, for the symptoms, remember, delivering AAV2CUhCLN2 right to the old brain mass--"

Patrick writes previous experimental drugs that had functioned through delivering a gene transfer vector... and glances up, expecting Wentz to detail how his own experiments had taken the whole immune-suppression process into account.

He flushes when he finds Wentz's eyes resting on him contemplatively.

"Is the explanation for the use of cloned neural stem cells in my face, Doctor Wentz?"

Wentz says, quite abruptly, "Can we finish this over dinner? Or lunch? But dinner is better for me, I just... are you hungry?"

Patrick blinks. What?

"What?" he says out loud and Wentz looks away, a far cry from the previously teasing and confident man Patrick disliked up to fifteen seconds ago. It's... endearing.

"Forget it, it's--"

"I think I am hungry," Patrick says smoothly, and closes his folder and puts away his pen. "Let's have lunch."

"Awesome," Wentz grins, and it's back to that smug expression, but Patrick doesn't want to punch his teeth in anymore. Well, not much, at least.

"You did a good job," Patrick says when they're going out the door and Wentz looks a little startled. He might get a lot of accolades, but apparently quietly encouraging words are few and far between. "Those kids that your cure is going to help, I'm sure they're grateful."

"Me too," Pete says, looking at him as Patrick has the sun shining out his lab-coat. Patrick blushes again and then rolls his eyes when Pete's expression melts into a leer. "Maybe you can show me some gratitude in their stead, you know?"

"Fuck you, Doctor Wentz," Patrick snaps and stalks out, Pete's horsey laughter following him out.