"It Takes Two" is a science fiction short story by Nicola Griffith, about love and neurochemistry. It was first published in the anthology Eclipse Three, in 2009.
After a businesswoman falls in love with a dancer, they discover that they were both participants in an experiment.
"It Takes Two" was a finalist for the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.[1]
The Wall Street Journal called it "neatly constructed, intellectually challenging and smoothly written", and described its theme as "(h)ow much control should our bosses have over us?"[2]
At Strange Horizons, Abigail Nussbaum felt that the story was structurally flawed, but nonetheless "brilliant" for noting that if true love can be chemically induced, then it can also be commodified; Nussbaum further lauded Griffith for not concealing "the fact that Susanna [the dancer] has sold herself in the most profound way possible, and that Cody [the businesswoman] has bought her", concluding that the story is "simultaneously satisfying and horrifying" due to the "tension between romance and revulsion".[3]