"The truth is that Martinez started the bear thing, and I've been trying to kill it for three years." But he's grinning now, and the grin makes his whole face younger, less guarded. The morning version of Noah—hair sticking up, stubble darkened to near-beard, voice still rough from sleep—is possibly my favorite version.
"Can I read what you've got so far?"
The question surprises me. "It's rough. First-draft rough."
"I don't care about rough." He takes a sip of coffee. "I care that you're writing about my guys. I want to make sure you see them the way I do."
Something shifts in my chest. This isn't about control or approval. He wants me to understand the thing he loves. The way I'd want someone reviewing my work to understand why a particular sentence matters.
"Okay," I say, and angle the laptop toward him.
He reads in silence for a few minutes. I study his face, watching his expression change—pride when he hits the section about their response times, a flicker of grief when he reaches the paragraph about the firefighter they lost two seasons ago, a quiet nod at my description of the community's relationship with the department.
"This is good." He says it simply, without performance. "You actually get it."
"That surprises you?"
"A little." He sets his coffee down. "The last journalist who came through wanted a hero story. Brave firefighters, dramatic rescues, flag-waving in the sunset. You wrote about the boring stuff—the maintenance, the training, the grant applications. That's where the real work is."
"The boring stuff is always where the real work is," I say. "In everything."
He looks at me, and I know we're not talking about fire departments anymore.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "It is."
The air between us shifts—thickens. He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his thumb brushing along my jawline. The touch is light, almost absent, but my body remembers his hands from last night and responds with a full-voltage shiver.
"I have a proposal," he says.
"That's fast. We haven't even discussed china patterns."
He laughs—a real one, surprised and warm. "Tomorrow. You set an alarm. We have breakfast together before you start working. That way I get morning-Riley, and you still get your deadline."
"Morning-Riley is a disaster," I warn him. "She's nonverbal until caffeine, and she has opinions about people who talk before seven a.m."
"I'll make pancakes. That usually helps with opinions."
"You make pancakes now?” I narrow my eyes. "Is there anything you can't do?"
"Plenty." He leans in, and his mouth brushes mine—soft, coffee-warm, unhurried. "But I'm working on it."
The kiss deepens slowly, his hand sliding to the back of my neck, my laptop listing dangerously on the cushion between us. I save the document blindly with one hand and set it on the coffee table without breaking contact.
"We have time?" I murmur against his lips.
"I don't have to be at the station for an hour."
"That's not what I asked."
He pulls back enough to look at me, and what I see in his eyes is want, yes—but also tenderness. The specific tenderness of someone who spent a decade imagining this exact morning and can't quite believe it arrived.
"We have time," he says.
What follows is slow and unhurried and nothing like last night. Last night was urgent, desperate, two people trying to close a ten-year gap in a single evening. This is something else. This is lazy morning sunlight on bare skin. This is his mouth tracing the line of my collarbone while I run my fingers through his hair, and neither of us is in any rush to get anywhere.
He pulls me into his lap, and I wrap around him, the flannel shirt riding up, his hands warm on my thighs. We kiss until we're both breathless, until the coffee goes cold on the table, until the birdsong outside becomes the only soundtrack we need.
"Noah." I press my forehead to his. "I need to tell you something."
