He’d sit with his laptop, pulling clips, the sharp crease between his brows that meant he was noticing something in the neutralzone no one else had seen yet. I’d stretch out with my feet in his lap, doing nothing of merit at all on my phone, sending Kieran edits of his own Instagram posts with more accurate captions.
“You can’t write ‘#grindneverstops’ on a photo of you holding iced coffee,” I said.
“I can and I did,” he texted back.
“Tell him it’s factually inaccurate,” I told Felix.
Felix, without looking up, said, “It stops every night at eleven when he queues up anime instead of doing his recovery stretches.”
“Wow,” I said. “Betrayal.”
“I’m being loud,” he said.
He didn’t blush. Not really. But I saw the flicker of awareness cross his face when he said it. The reminder. The agreement.
He was keeping his promise.
Sometimes it was small, like that , public teasing with just enough affection that even Mivo could read it. Sometimes it was bigger. A hand on my shoulder as he passed me in the hallway. A, “Good game,” with his palm at the back of my neck for a second longer than necessary, in front of the guys.
Once, after a win, when I came into the locker room late , extra interview, extra questions about the line , he looked up from his stall and said, easily, like it was the most normal sentence in the world, “Took you long enough, O’Brien. I was starting to miss you.”
The room went briefly quiet.
Then Kieran said, “I, personally, did not miss him even a little bit.”
The spell broke.
The frequency held.
I looked at Felix.
He looked right back.
Loud enough.
A week after the GM conversation, Charlie hosted dinner.
This time, when Henry took my jacket and handed me a glass of wine, he gave me a look that said,I know exactly what’s different and I am choosing not to say anything about it until dessert.
In the living room, Mivo and Reeves argued about something meaningless, Kieran was on the floor for reasons known only to God, and Hartley had the armchair nearest the window.
Felix was at the bookshelf.
I walked in.
He looked up.
He didn’t look away.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said.
Just that.
And underneath it, everything.
Charlie caught my eye from the couch. Henry caught his. A quiet relay. A team of people who had been watching this happen since the first gas station sushi text and had finally, finally seen the plot resolve.
