He was sprawled on your rug, because he preferred the floor to the furniture, methodically field-stripping and cleaning his Glock while you made tea in the kitchen. This was their Tuesday night ritual. He’d show up, sometimes with takeout, sometimes with a new, hyper-specific theory about a local crime lord, and you’d listen, you’d ground him, you’d make him feel less like a weapon and more like a person. You were his anchor.

“So I was running the numbers,” he was saying, squinting at the firing pin, “and if you account for crosswinds and the Coriolis effect, a sniper shot from the old Grundy building is totally viable. It’s a thing of beauty, really. A perfect, parabolic arc.” He looked up, expecting your usual fond, slightly exasperated smile.

But you weren’t smiling. You were frozen in the doorway, two mugs of steaming tea in your hands, your eyes locked on the disassembled pieces of his gun on your floor. Your face had gone pale.

“Ads,” you said, and your voice had a strange, tight quality he’d never heard before. “We need to talk.”

A cold knot tightened in his stomach. That was a break-up line. Or a ‘I’m dying’ line. His mind, a well-oiled machine for catastrophic thinking, immediately supplied a dozen worst-case scenarios. “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Did someone threaten you? Just give me a name. I’ll make it look like an accident. A really, really unfortunate accident involving a… a falling piano.”

You didn’t laugh. You just set the mugs down on the coffee table with a soft clink. The sound was unnaturally loud in the quiet room. You took a deep breath, like a diver about to plunge into deep water.

“Remember that case you were obsessed with last month? The one with the Russian mobsters and the missing weapons shipment? The one that got solved because someone… intervened?”

Adrian blinked. “The Sparrow? Yeah, of course. That was… that was epic. The way they took out six guys in the warehouse district with nothing but a handful of customized shurikens and a tactical grappling hook? The precision was… chef’s kiss. It was art. It was better than art, it was… optimal.” He sighed, a dreamy look on his face. The Sparrow was a ghost, a legend. His personal Batman.

You winced. “Right. The Sparrow.” You walked over to your bookshelf, the one filled with mundane novels and photo albums, and pressed a hidden catch on the side. A small, seamless panel swung open with a soft click.

Adrian sat up, his cleaning forgotten. “Whoa. A secret compartment. That’s so cool. Is it for, like, your diary? Because I would never read your diary. Unless you wrote about me. Then I might be ethically conflicted.”

You didn’t answer. You reached inside and pulled out a bundle of dark, matte fabric. With a practiced flick of your wrists, it unfurled. It was a suit. A combat suit. Sleek, black, and terrifyingly familiar. And in a specially designed holster on the thigh, was a set of custom-made, razor-edged shurikens.

The world stopped.

The hum of the fridge became a roar. The lavender scent turned cloying. Adrian’s brain, the one that could calculate bullet drop in a hurricane, simply blue-screened. He stared at the suit. He stared at you. At your hands, the same hands that had just made him chamomile tea, now holding the tools of his idol. The two images—you, his soft-spoken, normal, tea-making best friend, and the Sparrow, the mythic, silent, ass-kicking vigilante—smashed into each other in his mind with the force of a tactical nuke.

He made a sound. It was a small, choked, utterly undignified squeak.

“You,” he whispered. His eyes were so wide they ached. “You’re… you’re the Sparrow?”

You gave a weak, hesitant nod. “Surprise?”

He scrambled to his feet, nearly tripping over the pieces of his own gun. He pointed a trembling finger at the suit, then at you, then back at the suit. “You! The… the thing with the shurikens! The… the takedown of Borislav’s crew! That was you? You did the… the thing with the zip-line from the rafters? That was my favorite part! I have a favorite part of something you did!”