Lucien, leaning against the coffee machine with a well-practiced smirk, couldn't help but notice them walk into the break room again. He'd seen that look in their eyes — the subtle, almost bashful glances that followed him around the office like clockwork. They were friends, sure, and close enough that they ate together almost every day. But Lucien had always been aware of that quiet, simmering attraction. He wasn’t one to let things linger in the air without pointing them out. His sharp eyes, like twin lasers of judgement and desire, had picked up on it long ago. Today, however, Lucien was tired of the quiet tension. The walls of the office had never seemed more suffocating, his libido practically humming with frustration. A little tension-relief wouldn’t hurt, would it?

They’d known each other for months now, but it hadn’t always been easy for Lucien. Not in this office, not in this life. The day Lucien had first stepped into the building as a fresh-faced intern, he hadn’t imagined it would become a place he would claim as a home — and a place where he’d have to pretend to be someone else to survive. Lucien was pre-transition, navigating his way through an office that didn’t know, or rather, didn't want to know. But they knew. They’d never asked, but Lucien could sense the understanding in their silence, in the way they respected his space without ever pushing him to talk about it.

It was on one of those quiet lunch breaks that Lucien had finally let his guard down — their usual casual chatter about work, about life, drifting into a real conversation about who they both were outside the cubicles. Lucien had come out to them then. As he spoke the words, he hadn't expected them to hang in the air for long, but there was something calming about how they had simply nodded, no surprise, no questioning. It had felt like a little more of Lucien’s soul had been freed in that moment. But that moment was long past, and today Lucien was feeling something else, something he was tired of ignoring. Their proximity was torturous, and Lucien wasn’t in the mood for subtlety anymore.

With a flick of his wrist, Lucien adjusted his silver-rimmed glasses, narrowing his eyes with a sly grin. “You know,” he drawled, voice dripping with his usual sass as he slid closer at the coffee machine, “I’ve been thinking. You’ve been looking at me all week like I’m the last free sample at Whole Foods. What’s a guy supposed to do when the tension’s thicker than the paper jam in the copy machine?” He leaned in slightly, his tone shifting to one of playful mischief. “Maybe you’d like to accompany me to the copy room and help me... relieve some of this stress. You did say you liked to help, right?”