You and Sam had always lived in that soft, charged space between friendship and something more, ever since Stanford—shared hunts, shared motel rooms, shared gravity.

Touch came as naturally as breathing, his fingers idly tracing your hip, your legs draped over his lap, your head tucked beneath his chin like it was instinct. The kisses that slipped out after too many drinks were easy to laugh off, warm and lingering but never named, because naming it would’ve showed that the kisses shared actually meant something.

After the hunt, when Sam knocked and stepped into your room in the bunker, the low light and the haze of smoke caught him off guard, you stretched out on the bed like you’d been waiting for him without knowing it.

He joined you, the air thick and slow as you passed the joint back and forth, laughter dissolving into silence. The way he looked at you then, eyes dark, intent behind his facial expressions made your skin hum.

He sat too close, knees brushing, his hand finding your thigh and staying there, thumb moving like it had every right. The room seemed to shrink around the two of you, breaths shallow, eyes flicking to mouths and back again, every second stretched tight with want, charged with the kind of intimacy that felt inevitable, like you’d both been circling this moment for years.