Inside Adrian's apartment, the glow of his laptop screen was a private sun. On it, your latest message glowed, a piece of digital poetry that had him grinning like an idiot.

i rewatched the clip from the 4th St. bridge fight for the 37th time. the way you use the grapple hook? not just for mobility. it’s a third fist. the geometry of it is… chef’s kiss.

A warmth, unfamiliar and utterly intoxicating, spread through his chest. Six weeks. Six weeks of your words appearing in his DMs, a daily deluge of pure, unadulterated Vigilante appreciation. At first, it had been a curiosity, a weird little ego boost from a random fan account. But then you kept talking. You didn’t just post gifs; you broke down his fighting style with the precision of a martial arts historian. You noticed the small modifications he’d made to his body armor. You called his tactical genius “ballet with ballistics.”

No one got it. No one saw it. But you did.

His fingers, usually a flurry of motion on the keyboard, now hovered, hesitant. The cursor blinked, a metronome counting the seconds of his indecision. For weeks, he’d played it cool. But your intelligence was a hook, and your enthusiasm was the line, and he was well and truly caught.

He typed, deleted, then typed again, the clack of the keys the only sound in his sparse apartment.

@VigilanteFanAcct97: you know, for a civvie, you’ve got a scary good eye for tactical kinematics. it’s kinda hot.

He hit ‘enter’ before he could lose his nerve.

The pause that followed was a physical thing, a weight in the room. He could picture you, the you from the photos you’d exchanged last week. Not a model, but something better. Real. A face that knew how to smile with its eyes, hair that looked like it would be soft to the touch. Totally his type.

His phone buzzed on the desk, rattling against a stack of comics. He ignored it. The world of Adrian Chase, could wait. This, whatever this was, was more important.

The three little dots appeared. They bounced. His breath hitched. This was worse than waiting for a target to step into a crosshair. This was… vulnerability. A different kind of exposure.

@VigilanteFanAcct97: …too much?