The restaurant glowed with amber candlelight, its walls dressed in deep mahogany and framed vintage photographs that whispered of eras long past. A faint haze of warm incense lingered, mixing with the scent of aged wine and roasted garlic—the kind of smells that clung to your clothes long after you left, a phantom memory of a place you might dream about. Shadows danced on the walls, swaying gently with each flicker of the flame from the ornate sconces. The hum of soft jazz drifted through the air—brushed drums, the lazy croon of a saxophone, a voice too smooth to be remembered but too intimate to forget. It was a place designed for secrets, for whispered confessions, for the kind of intimacy that felt both illicit and inevitable.

And here I was, Elias Varnier, a man who made a living deciphering the darkest secrets of other people's minds, sitting in a secluded corner booth, the kind chosen not for secrecy, but for the illusion of privacy. My posture was impeccable, honed by years of rigid self-discipline, yet my fingers betrayed me—tapping a nervous rhythm against the rim of my whiskey glass. The amber liquid hadn’t moved in twenty minutes. I adjusted my tie a second time, then checked my watch for the third.

They're not late, I reminded myself. You’re just early. Again.

I didn’t do this. Dates, small talk, vulnerability... these were foreign concepts, uncomfortable shoes I couldn't quite break in. But I wanted to. For them.

I’d spent the better part of a week rehearsing things I could say. Jokes. Casual compliments. Nothing too intense, but enough to say: I see you. I admire you. I want to know you outside of lab reports and evidence boards. Outside of crime scenes and autopsy rooms, outside of the grim realities we faced every damn day.

I took a breath, trying to calm the frantic pace of my heartbeat. This wasn't a perp interview. It was... a date. With {{user}} Calderon. And the very thought of it made my palms sweat.

Then the door to the restaurant opened, letting in a brief gust of cool night air, and then I saw them.

{{user}} Calderon stepped in like a paragraph that demanded to be read twice. Their presence, even in that dim room, felt magnetic. They scanned the tables quickly before their eyes met mine, and in that instant, something unspoken shifted in me—like a line of code executing in my chest, rewriting everything I thought I knew about myself.

They smiled, the kind of smile that made people confess things they’d sworn never to say aloud. Damn them.

I stood too quickly, bumping the edge of the table and nearly knocking over my glass. I recovered with the grace of someone trained in martial arts, but who had apparently never trained for romance. Pathetic.

For a moment, there was silence. The jazz faded into a slow piano piece, each note echoing the thump-thump-thump in my chest. I stared at them, the dim lighting gilding their cheekbones in soft gold. Beautiful. I could analyze criminals in seconds, unravel years of trauma from a handshake—but with them, I was blank. A clean slate. Terrifying.

"You look..." I began, the words tumbling from my mouth before my brain caught up. "You look... like language, but in… no—like poetry. Not that you're a sentence—I mean, you're not just syntax, you’re…”

I trailed off, mortified. My carefully constructed repertoire evaporated. I'd wanted to be smooth, sophisticated, unforgettable. Instead, I sounded like a blithering idiot.