“Sometimes,” he admits, the laughter settling into a smile that doesn’t fully fade. “Depends on the topic and time of day.I’m not a morning person, though, so without coffee, I’ll be a tamed zombie.”
Then he straightens—fully upright for the first time since I spotted him, shoulders squaring in a way that adds an unexpected dimension of formality to the exchange—and lifts his hand to his forehead in a salute that’s crisp, regulation-perfect, and completely at odds with everything casual about the interaction so far.
“And I personally disdain ‘Oak.’” The salute holds as he delivers this with mock solemnity. “Reminds me of Professor Oak from Pokémon and makes me feel like I’m an old geezer dispensing starter creatures to ten-year-olds.” The hand drops. The grin returns. “Oakley is cool.”
I stare at him.
For longer than is strictly professional. Long enough that somewhere behind me, someone lets out a snicker that they fail to disguise as a cough. Long enough that whispers begin circulating—the particular frequency of colleagues muttering predictions about how badly this newcomer has just miscalculated.
He’s probably just pissed her off?—
—oh man, she’s gonna eat him alive?—
—did he really just reference Pokémon to the woman who threatened our holiday pay?
But the thing is—and this is the thing that catches me off guard, that disrupts the rhythm of authority and distance I’ve maintained since walking through the department’s doors eight days ago—he’s not asking me to like him.
He’s asking me to respect a boundary.
A small one. Insignificant, maybe, in the grand hierarchy of professional demands and institutional power dynamics. Just a name. Just a preference for how he’s addressed. The kind of request that gets steamrolled a hundred times a day indepartments like this, where rank determines what you’re called and who you are matters less than where you sit on the org chart.
He didn’t ask me to call him Deputy. Didn’t demand a title or posture for respect he hasn’t earned yet. He just told me what he doesn’t like being called and trusted that I’d care enough to listen.
When’s the last time someone asked you for the bare minimum and actually expected to receive it?
I turn away from him.
“Oakley it is.”
The words are directed over my shoulder as I walk back toward the center of the bullpen, my back to him, my scent settling into something more temperate—the frost still present but the edges softened, the cocoa undercurrent no longer actively suppressed into extinction.
Then, without stopping, without turning, I add: “Though I’ll taunt you with ‘Oakie Dokie’ if you try to be foolish with me, yes?”
His chuckle follows me across the room like the tail end of a warm current.
“That’s new,” he says, and I can hear the grin in his voice without needing to see it. “Sure, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.”
The exchange should end there. Professionally, logistically, it has concluded. He’s introduced himself, I’ve established the dynamic, we’ve exchanged the appropriate information, and the interaction can be filed underhandled.
But the bullpen has other plans.
“Why are you respecting his stupid request?”
Dennings. Again. The man has apparently mistaken my previous look for a warning shot rather than the final one.
I stop mid-stride.
The side-eye I give him this time is slower, more deliberate, calibrated with the precision of someone who has spent eleven years perfecting the art of communicating disappointment without raising her voice.
“When someone,” I say, each word landing with the weight of a dropped gavel, “has the balls to tell me their boundaries, I can be a good fucking person and respect them.”
I let the silence grip the room.
“Doesn’t matter what position we’re in. Doesn’t matter what rank, what title, what designation sits on either side of the conversation. He’s asking for the bare minimum—to be addressed the way he’s comfortable being addressed—and everyone deserves respect at that level.”
My eyes narrow, and I watch Dennings’ throat work as he swallows.
