"Question one: when was the team founded?"
"2018."
"And you've been here since...?"
"2019."
"So you're one of the original players."
"Second season. Not original."
She waited for an elaboration, but none came and she sighed.
"Okay, let me try this differently. What's your favorite memory from playing with the Enforcers?"
He considered this for a long moment, toweling off his face with the same efficient movements he seemed to apply to everything. "2022 championship."
"What happened in the 2022 championship?"
"We won."
"Yes, I assumed that from the word 'championship.' Can you give me some details? Color? Emotion? Literally anything I could translate into visual imagery?"
His brow furrowed. "It was... good."
"'It was good.' That's your contribution. 'It was good.'"
"It was very good."
She buried her face in her hands and groaned. When she looked up again, he was watching her with an expression that was almost amused.
"You're doing this on purpose," she accused.
"I don't know what you mean."
"You absolutely do. You're being difficult because you think it's funny."
"I'm being efficient. You asked questions. I answered them."
"You answered them like a robot with a word count limit." She hopped off the bench and walked closer, close enough that she had to crane her neck to maintain eye contact. This close, she could see the individual drops of sweat glistening on his biceps, the way his chest was still rising and falling from exertion, and the tiny scar that bisected his left eyebrow. "What did it feel like, Tarmek? When you won? When the final buzzer sounded and you knew you'd done it?"
Something shifted in his dark eyes. A tiny crack in the armor.
"Like everything made sense," he said quietly. "Like all the work, all the sacrifice, all the—" He stopped, and shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
"It does. That's exactly the kind of thing that matters for art." She reached out without thinking and touched his arm, a brief contact that made his muscle tense under her fingers. "The feeling. That's what I'm trying to capture. Not just 'team wins championship' but the meaning of it."
He looked down at her hand. She pulled it back, suddenly aware of how close they were standing. His musky scent surrounded her, earthy and distinctly male. a, how warm he was, how the weight room suddenly seemed very small and very quiet.
"You're strange," he said.
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"I'm choosing to take it as one anyway."
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but something adjacent to one. Something that made her stomach flip in a way she absolutely did not have time to analyze.
