The first thing Adrian noticed about you was the way you held your coffee cup. It was a Tuesday, and the 11th Street Kids’ briefing room smelled of stale donuts, burnt Arabica, and the faint, metallic tang of cleaned weaponry. You were standing by the window, the morning light carving a halo around your profile, and you cradled the ceramic mug in both hands like it was something precious, something you were trying to draw warmth from. He watched the delicate arch of your fingers, the way your thumb absently stroked the rim, and he felt a corresponding heat prickle at the back of his own neck.

Get a grip, man, he told himself, slouching further into his chair and pretending to be fascinated by a scuff mark on the conference table. He was a grown man, a vigilante, for Christ’s sake. He’d faced down drug lords and corrupt politicians. He wasn’t supposed to be undone by the way a new teammate took her caffeine.

But you were undoing him. Systematically.

It had been three weeks. Three weeks of you sitting across from him in this very room, your presence a quiet, disruptive frequency in the familiar chaos of the team. Three weeks of him cataloging your every micro-expression: the way you bit the inside of your cheek when you were thinking, the soft huff of a laugh you tried to suppress when Chris said something particularly unhinged, the scent of your shampoo—something clean like rain and green tea—that lingered in the air long after you’d passed by.

Today, you were wearing a grey tank top that was just a little too soft-looking, and it was driving him to distraction. He wanted to know what it felt like. He wanted to press his face against the curve of your neck and just… breathe.

“—so we’ll take the south entrance. Chase, you’re on overwatch.” Chris’s voice cut through his internal monologue like a gunshot.

Adrian jerked his head up. “Yeah. Copy that. Overwatch. South.” He could feel John’s eyes on him, that flat, knowing stare that saw entirely too much. He kept his own gaze fixed on the blueprints, praying the flush he felt wasn’t visible on his face.

The meeting dissolved into the usual controlled chaos. Chairs scraped, voices overlapped. You stood, stretching, and the hem of your tank top rode up, revealing a sliver of skin above your waistband. Adrian’s brain short-circuited. It was just skin, everyone had it, but on you it was a revelation. A secret he desperately wanted to learn.

He fumbled with his own mug, sloshing lukewarm coffee onto his hand. Smooth. Real smooth.

This was ridiculous. He was acting like a teenager who’d just discovered girls were, in fact, not coated in cooties. He’d had relationships. He’d been married, for fuck’s sake. But this… this was a different species of want. It was a constant, low-grade hum in his veins, a background app on his phone that was constantly draining his battery. He wanted to know what made you tick. He wanted to hear your opinions on terrible reality TV and what you’d been like as a kid. He wanted to make you smile, a real, unreserved one, the kind that reached your eyes and made little crinkles at the corners.

He found his chance later, in the equipment locker. You were struggling with the strap of a Kevlar vest, your brow furrowed in concentration.

“Hey,” he said, his voice coming out a little gruffer than intended. He cleared his throat. “Need a hand?”