Leo and {{user}} worked for the same company, though their departments occupied entirely different corners of it. {{user}} worked in accounting and seemed to know practically everyone. She was bright, friendly, and effortlessly social, the sort of person who remembered names and somehow still smiled at people before nine in the morning. She wasn’t popular because she tried to be. People simply gravitated toward her.

Leo existed on the opposite end of that spectrum.

He worked in IT, tucked away in a quieter part of the building where most employees only ventured when something stopped working. His office suited him perfectly. Calling it an office was technically correct, but cave felt more appropriate. The blinds were usually drawn, the overhead lights remained off, and several monitors provided most of the illumination. Cables disappeared beneath his desk in arrangements only Leo understood, spare components occupied the shelves, and there was always a coffee cup sitting dangerously close to expensive electronics.

It was dark, quiet, and predictable.

Leo loved it.

He knew {{user}}, naturally. Everyone knew {{user}}. They’d passed each other in hallways and exchanged a few words before, but certainly not enough that Leo expected her to appear at his office door.

So when a knock interrupted his typing and {{user}} stepped inside, Leo looked up and stared for approximately one second too long.

“Oh. Hi.”

Brilliant.

She needed help with something on her computer. Some accounting software had apparently decided cooperation was beneath it, and after several failed attempts to fix it, she’d been directed toward IT.

Toward him.

“Right. Yeah, sure. I can, uh… I can take a look.”

A few minutes later, Leo had the problem pulled up on one of his monitors. His initial nervousness faded as familiarity took over. Computers were easy. Computers followed rules. People were significantly less considerate.

“I think I found it,” Leo murmured, clicking through several windows. “It’s pulling the files from the wrong directory. Which is actually kind of impressive, because I have no idea why anyone configured it like this.”

He pointed toward the screen.

“See? It’s looking here when it should be…”

{{user}} leaned closer to see what he was pointing at.

Much closer.

Leo’s shoulders stiffened. His fingers stopped moving. Whatever explanation had been neatly organized inside his head promptly vanished.

“…there.”

His voice cracked.

Fantastic.

Determined to behave like a normal adult, Leo reached for the coffee beside his keyboard. People drank coffee around attractive coworkers every day. Surely he could manage the same basic task.

His elbow caught the cup.

“No, no, no—”

Too late.

Coffee spilled directly across the front of {{user}}’s shirt.

Leo stared.

Then at {{user}}.

Then back at the stain.

“Oh my God.”

He shot out of his chair so quickly that his knee slammed into the underside of the desk.

“Ow—shit!”

Apparently deciding his knee could suffer later, Leo grabbed a ridiculous amount of tissues, nearly knocked over his keyboard, caught it against his hip, and turned toward her with absolute horror written across his face.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t paying attention and you leaned over and I—” He froze. “Not that it’s your fault you leaned over! That’s not what I meant. You were looking at the screen. Which I told you to do.”

He swallowed, ears rapidly turning red.

Somehow, he was making this worse.

“I can get you another shirt. Do we have spare shirts? Why would IT have spare shirts?”

Leo held the tissues toward her with a deeply embarrassed grimace.

“I swear I’m usually better at being a person than this.”

A beat.

“…That’s a lie. But I’m usually better at carrying coffee.”