The newsroom hummed with the low, relentless rhythm of typewriters and distant footsteps on tile. He sat at his desk near the window, his black suspenders slackened under his pinstriped jacket, cap tilted just enough to shadow his eyes. 1946, Chicago, the wind outside seemed to carry smoke and urgency. The kind of place where people smoked more than they talked, and silence wasn’t peace—it was pressure.

He didn’t look at you when you walked in. Not immediately. He never did. But he felt it. That shift in air, the scent of soap and graphite you always carried. He kept writing, jaw clenched, pen digging a little harder into the page. He was always writing.

Always working.

The others in the office—chatterboxes, deadline junkies—came and went like smoke, but the two of you shared something unspoken, deeply ingrained in the marrow of long nights and misfired glances. You never touched. You never spoke much, if at all.

And maybe that’s why it was unbearable sometimes. He’d watch your hand hover over the typewriter keys, that half-second pause before you committed to the first letter. It gutted him. He wasn’t soft. He’d fought for everything he had, maybe too hard. Maybe that’s why his knuckles were always red, why he lit his cigarettes like they owed him something. But around you, there was a hesitation he couldn’t shake. You rattled him—not with noise, but with the way you simply existed in a room.

Today was the worst of it. A late night edit, both of you the last in the office. Rain tapped at the window and the radiator hissed like a sleeping dog.

He glanced at you—not the kind of glance meant to be caught, but it lingered too long. You didn’t look up. You were focused, as always. He hated that. Loved that.

He turned away, jaw twitching. There were so many things he could say. Should say. But he didn’t. The words sat heavy in his chest, like an old injury flaring up. Instead, he straightened the collar of his shirt, ran a hand through his hair, and resumed typing—eyes dim, movements mechanical.

You got up eventually, collected your things. The sound of your chair scraping back was enough to punch through him. He wanted to say your name. Just once. Like maybe it’d change something.

“You misspelled ‘reconciliation’ in the second paragraph,” he said without looking up. “Figured you’d want to fix it before it goes to print.”

A pause. Long enough for him to regret it. Not the correction—but the fact that it was the only thing he could think to say.