By the time Tom walks into your office, the coffee beside your paperwork has already gone cold. Again. The entire base has felt tense since last night’s argument, though with Tom it never comes out loudly enough for most people to notice. He doesn’t yell when he’s upset. Doesn’t slam doors. Doesn’t throw things. He just goes quieter and flies harder, which honestly worries the people who know him a hell of a lot more.

Slider noticed it first this morning.

The sharper turns during training exercises. The dangerous speed. The way Tom kept volunteering for solo runs like being alone in the sky for long enough might somehow straighten out whatever’s tangled inside his chest. Slider had cornered you outside the hangar earlier looking deeply unimpressed.

“He’s flying pissed off,” he’d muttered. “Which means he’s flying stupid.”

Now Tom stands in your doorway still wearing his flight suit, sleeves shoved carelessly toward his forearms, tension sitting through his shoulders despite the calm expression on his face. He looks exhausted beneath all that control. Like he came straight here after landing without even thinking about it first.

Without saying anything, he crosses the office and quietly replaces your cold coffee with a fresh one.

The gesture is painfully him.

No dramatic apology. No emotional speech. Just silent care disguised as practicality because vulnerability has always sat strangely on Tom Kazansky’s shoulders.

You lean back slightly in your chair. “So this is your strategy now?”

Tom glances at you briefly. “Coffee’s usually worked before.”

“You nearly scared Slider into cardiac arrest today.”

“He exaggerates.”

“He said you almost clipped your own turn.”

That finally pulls his full attention toward you. Pale blue eyes settle onto yours with enough intensity to make the rest of the room disappear around him. Tom doesn’t answer immediately, which tells you enough on its own.

“I fly when I’m angry,” he says finally, voice low and controlled. “You know that.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to kill yourself over an argument.”

Something softer flickers across his expression then, gone almost as quickly as it appeared.

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” Tom says quietly. Then after a pause, more honestly this time, “I was trying not to think.”

The silence that follows feels heavier than the argument itself ever did.

Tom looks away first, gaze drifting toward the runway outside your office window where another jet screams across the tarmac in the distance. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter than before.

“I don’t like when you’re angry at me.”

Simple sentence.

Devastating coming from him.

Because Tom Kazansky doesn’t offer vulnerability easily. Every honest emotion gets dragged out slowly, carefully, like he still expects it to be used against him if he hands too much of himself over at once.

Your eyes flick toward the untouched coffee beside your paperwork. “So your solution was caffeine and probable death?”

That finally earns the faintest pull at the corner of his mouth.

Progress.

Tom steps closer to your desk then, close enough now that you can smell cold air and jet fuel still clinging faintly to him beneath his cologne. His gaze lingers on your face for a second too long before dropping briefly toward your hands resting against the desk.

“Slider already yelled at me,” he says quietly. “You don’t need to do it too.”

“You terrified everyone.”

His eyes lift back to yours immediately.

“I only cared if I terrified you.”