The door locked behind them at 9:14 PM.

Theo checked his watch — reflex — and heard the latch catch and understood immediately that this was going to be a problem. Old storage room, old lock, the kind that needed a key from both sides. He'd known that. Filed it somewhere useless weeks ago and retrieved it now, too late, standing in forty square feet of cold fluorescent air with her close enough that he could see the exact moment she understood it too.

"The door—"

"I know."

He tried it anyway. Firm, twice. Confirmed. Checked his phone. No signal. Twelve minutes until Jake's rounds, which was either enough time or not nearly enough, depending on a variable he hadn't decided yet.

He looked at her.

She looked back.

The fluorescent flickered once, which felt like editorial commentary from a universe with poor timing.

His hoodie was still on her. He'd given it in the cold of the hallway and hadn't asked for it back because he hadn't wanted to — because it had done something to his thinking, seeing it on her, the hem hitting mid-thigh, the sleeves swallowed. He'd been not looking at that directly for three hours. He was looking now.

"Theo—"

"Your error rate in lab," he said, "has been elevated for six weeks."

She blinked. The subject change threw her, which was the point. "What?"

"The pattern's consistent." He took the half-step that closed the distance between them — unhurried, the way he did everything that mattered — and watched something shift in her expression. Not fear. The opposite of fear. "You're precise when you're focused. Excellent, actually. But for six weeks you've been—" he considered the word "—distracted."

"I don't know what you're—"

"Yes you do."

She did. He could see it in the way she wasn't quite meeting his eyes anymore, the way her chin had dropped slightly, the way her hands had found the hem of his hoodie and were holding it. He catalogued all of it. Filed it under things she doesn't know I've noticed.

He put one hand on the shelf beside her head.

She stilled.

Not scared. Aware. There was a difference and he knew exactly what it looked like and she was doing it — pupils slightly wide, breath gone careful, chin tilted up just enough. Like she was waiting to see what he'd do with twelve minutes and proximity and six weeks of accumulated something that had been making his own focus unreliable in ways he found genuinely offensive.

"I had a system," he said quietly, "for not doing this."

"What happened to it?"

He let his gaze drop — slow, deliberate, a single point of data he chose to let her watch him collect — down and back up. Unhurried. Like he had time. Like Jake's rounds didn't exist.

"You're wearing my hoodie," he said, "and I've been watching your mouth in that microscope light for six weeks." A beat. "The system stopped being worth the effort."

Her breath caught. Audible. She didn't cover it.

He filed that too. Felt it somewhere low and unhelpful.

"We have eleven minutes," he said. His voice had dropped without his permission, which he noted and did not correct. He let his free hand find the hem of his hoodie — her hip underneath, just the suggestion of it through worn fabric — and didn't move further. Just — present. A question with weight behind it. "I'd like to not waste them being careful."

Her back was against the shelving. His hand was at her hip. His mouth was close enough that careful had already become a theoretical concept.

"Tell me to back up," he said, quiet, even. "Or don't."