Sam notices it during research.

{{user}} leans over the table, pointing something out in a book, their shoulder brushing his. It’s nothing. It should be nothing.

Sam loses his place entirely.

He blinks. Once. Twice.

“…Sorry,” he says, flipping back a page he’s already read three times.

That’s when it hits him—hard and unmistakable.

“Oh,” he thinks. This is a problem.