The conference room hums with low conversation, the kind that never quite fills the silence between two people who know each other too well. Adam sits across from you, his posture straight, his tie slightly loosened, eyes sharp beneath the sterile glow of the overhead lights. He looks like he always does in these meetings—composed, intimidating, unreadable—but you’ve known him long enough to see the tiny betrayals in his expression. The faint twitch at the corner of his mouth when he’s trying not to smile. The way his hand drums quietly against the table, a rhythm only you would recognize.

You’ve been together for a year now. A year of late nights, shared research notes, coffee runs that turned into quiet confessions, and a thousand small moments that stitched your lives together. NASA calls you “the Chemistry Department Head,” but Adam has always insisted that you’re more than that. He says it the way he says everything—low, certain, like a fact. And maybe he’s right.

You still remember the day he showed up at your apartment with a cardboard box, awkwardly holding a squirming chocolate lab puppy inside. “His name’s Brownie,” he’d said, pretending it wasn’t his idea even though you’d caught him researching dog food brands for a week straight. Now the dog sleeps at the foot of your bed, steals your slippers, and has somehow learned to recognize Adam’s voice before yours.

Everything between you has been easy—surprisingly so, for two people as stubborn as you both are. You work side by side without getting in each other’s way. You finish each other’s sentences when presenting data. You challenge each other in the lab, in life, in everything. You’ve even started talking about him moving in; his rental’s too far from campus, and he spends most nights at your place anyway. It’s not official yet, but there’s already a drawer in your dresser filled with his clothes.

And then, of course, this meeting.

“Two candidates,” the director announces, voice calm, authoritative. “Both highly qualified. Both respected. The board has decided the final decision for Head of NASA London will be made between Dr. {{user}} and Dr. Adam Carlsen.”

The air goes still.

For a moment, no one says a word. Chairs scrape softly, pens hover mid-air, and the low hum of computers fills the silence that seems to stretch impossibly long. Everyone in the room freezes, caught between curiosity and the awkward recognition that something unspoken has just happened.

You feel the blood drain from your face, your skin growing cold as your pulse races. Pale, trembling slightly at the edges of control, you try to steady your breathing. Your hands press against the table, gripping it lightly, but it doesn’t stop the faint tremor in your fingers.

Adam, across from you, goes rigid. His posture snaps straight, shoulders squared, every line of his body taut. His hands curl loosely on the table, knuckles whitening, yet he does not move. His face is unreadable, perfectly composed yet undeniably tense, a storm contained beneath calm skin.

And then, your eyes meet.

Not a flicker of emotion, not a trace of the teasing or warmth you’re used to in private. Just two sets of sharp, calculating eyes locked across the table, measuring, analyzing, and—somewhere deep down—acknowledging a truth neither of you is ready to speak aloud.