I pass him the box.
He takes it, his fingers grazing mine—deliberate or not, I don’t know. But it lands like a jolt through my chest.
Focus, Roxy. You’re lying to a killing machine. Get it together.
We start working—him guiding, me following. I watch how his hands move. Deliberate. Confident. Like someone who’s rebuilt this system a hundred times, and each one was life-or-death. He doesn’t second-guess. Doesn’t hesitate. He knows what everything does.
I pretend I do, too.
“Hand me the torque wand.”
I look down at the toolkit. About twelve items, none of which are labeled. I pick one and hold it up like a student bluffing a vocab quiz.
He raises a brow ridge.
“That’s a pulse driver.”
“Right,” I say, swapping tools with a quickness that doesn’t help. “Just testing you.”
“Mmhmm.”
He doesn’t call me on it. But his eyes linger a fraction longer than they should. Another mental tally, I’m sure.
The tunnel forces us closer as we shift angles. At one point, we’re pressed shoulder to shoulder, his arm braced over mine to reach a panel. I freeze, breath catching in my throat like it’s trying to hide.
“You alright?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. “Just not used to small spaces.”
He grunts. Not quite sympathy. Not quite mockery. Somewhere in between.
We work in silence after that. Tools clicking. Systems humming. Our breaths the only real sound besides the occasional buzz of recalibration. My heart’s beating faster than it should. It feels like I’m performing surgery with a live audience and no anesthesia.
He pauses to adjust something and shifts again. His leg presses against mine. It’s nothing. It’s everything. I can feel the heat of him through my pants, like his body runs hotter than it should, like even stillness is effort for him.
And then, somehow, we both stop at the same time.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
For a second, there’s no job. No pretense. No weapons or missions or legends.
Just this stupid, quiet moment where my mouth wants to say something it absolutely shouldn’t.
The truth.
I almost do it. I feel the words trying to claw their way out. I’m not who you think I am. I’m just a girl with anxiety and a borrowed dress and a face too proud to flinch.
But before I can decide if dying is worth confessing, he shifts back toward the conduit and says, “Junction’s stable. Route the secondary and seal it.”
I move. Fast. Grateful. Embarrassed.
We finish the job in another fifteen minutes. My hands don’t shake. I don’t drop anything. I even reconnect the shielding array without needing to guess which cable is live.
When he seals the hatch and straightens to his full height, he looks at me for a long second.
“Not bad,” he says.
