It happened on a Wednesday.
Three weeks and four days into his employment at Draxen Global Holdings. A document review that had been scheduled for forty-five minutes and had run to sixty-two. The kind of working session Seren had learned to prepare for — Caelan's attention to detail was exacting, his standards moving rather than fixed, the bar relocating upward each time Seren reached it.
He had learned to reach higher in advance.
They were going through the contract addenda for a property acquisition — Seren on his side of the desk with the physical copies, flagging inconsistencies, Caelan on his side with the digital version, annotating. The room was quiet in the specific way it was always quiet when they worked together — not empty, not comfortable, the charged kind of quiet that had a sound of its own.
Caelan reached for the secondary folder.
And rolled up his sleeve.
It was a practical gesture.
