Between the Lines 03 (futa on male)

**Authors note: I promise that next installment will contain actual payoff. I want to build this into something quite kinky but feel like it deserves proper context. The Christmas part will be a blast! Thanks again for your feedback. Stay tuned. ♥

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Between the Lines, Part 3

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Ben navigated the office corridor with the same precision he applied to debugging code - methodical, careful, and desperately trying to avoid unexpected errors. He found himself counting each step, a vain attempt to divert himself from yesterday's terrible gym encounter, as the early light passed through the half-closed curtains and created zebra-stripe shadows on the industrial carpet. Clutching his coffee mug, his hands were sweaty, yet he felt a warmth rising up his neck--an unpleasant heat he knew was shame just waiting to attack him once more.

Colleagues gathered around the coffee machine like worshipers at a shrine, the rhythmic beep of the microwave cooking someone's breakfast, quiet talks about weekend plans and project deadlines mixing into a faint hum of production buzzed around the break room. The normal morning enthusiasm. Ben anchored himself in the known by inhaling the reassuring fragrance of new coffee mixed with the faint aroma of someone's cinnamon bagel.

Under his breath, he said, "Twenty-three steps to my desk," a boyhood habit that returned every time fear threatened to override his well calibrated calm. " Twenty-three steps and I am safe."

Nearby the office printer buzzed to life, spewing what seemed to be quarterly reports. Gathering near the water cooler, a small group of members of the marketing team laughed somewhat too loudly for the still-waking surroundings. Ben admired their simple friendship and the way they shared space free from the electric tension he now carried within of him.

He was seventeen steps from safety when he spotted her.

Ava Green's blonde ponytail caught the sun as she stood at the junction of the main corridor and the one heading to the creative department. Ben's foot stammered, his coffee pouring perilously near his mug's rim. Her blue eyes focused on his with laser accuracy, and her slightly upward lip curl suggested she had been waiting for him.

The picture from yesterday flashed unbidden in his mind: Her inhumanely large penis, dangling between her legs and still wet from the shower. Something that changed all he believed he knew about her.

Ben had a short circuit in his brain. His meticulously arranged universe of ones and zeros, of logical operations and predictable results, lacked a framework for this circumstance. He thought of his alternatives: pretend he hadn't noticed her, turn quickly toward the restroom, or maybe stage a phone call. But his body deceived him; his mind battled for a suitable reaction subroutine while his body went onward on autopilot.

She pushed off from the wall where she had been reclining and moved deliberately but casually straight into his path. "Morning, Ben," she replied, her voice possessing that unique upward lilt that somehow made everything seem like both a question and a challenge.

"M-morning," he said, free hand adjusting his spectacles. It was only something to do; they were not sliding.

Ava looked around at their coworkers, then leaned in slightly to shorten the radius of their talk. She smelled of something warm and fruity, perhaps with vanilla. "So, are we buttoning up yesterday's mishap or leaving it hanging?"

Ben was not lost on the double entendre; his cheeks reddened a color most likely matching the emergency exit sign behind them. He opened his lips to answer, but he only uttered a choked sound--perhaps the distant cousin of a word.

He started once more, his brain sending emergency messages to his vocal chord. "That was - an accident." He cringed.

Ava's grin was constant, but something fluttered in her eyes: vulnerability, maybe, or worry. She replied, her voice low, "Look, I just want to check we're... okay."

A friend from accounting passed by nodding at each of them. Ben nodded back with too much fervor, his head bobbing like a dashboard ornament.

Once the coworker disappeared from earshot, he added, "We're fine. Absolutely good. I saw nothing." The falsehood landed flat between them like damp clothing.

Ava responded, "Right," with a little raised eyebrow. "And there wasn't anything to see."

To gain time, Ben drank some coffee; unfortunately, he underestimated his strategy and dropped some on his chin. He saw Ava's eyes tracking the movement as he wiped it away with the back of his palm; her expression was uninterpretable.

"It's just anatomy," she said, her voice so low he had to slant forward to hear her. The proximity produced a new heat wave over his chest. "Everyone has their own... configuration."

"Absolutely," Ben said quickly, now eager to cut off the exchange. "Configuration: Indeed. Really quite varied." He recognized it and sounded as though a failing diversity training lesson.

Everyone in the break room briefly turned to see the water cooler gang laughing once again. Ben and Ava both looked over then back at one another, the little interruption apparently bringing the moment closer.

Ava responded, "I just want things to be weird," moving her weight from one foot to the other. "We work together; I am still new here and - "

Ben interjected, "Not weird at all," the words falling out too rapidly. "Nothing odd. Two colleagues chatting casually about... their jobs. He started to clear his throat. "So, what are you working on right now?"

Blinking at the sudden topic shift, Ava stumbled. "Well - "

"Fantastic!" Good. I ought to give those bug reports Rich submitted some serious attention. Highly pressing. Crucially, really." He moved backward, almost running into an intern who scrambled to save her stack of papers.

"Ben," Ava attempted once more, stretching out as though to grasp his arm but stopped just short. "We should most likely discuss this properly at some point."

"Definitely. Absolutely. At a point. In the future." Every syllable seemed to be straggling through a too-narrow tube. "Still, right now I have to..." He waved blankly with his coffee mug at his desk.

Ava's shoulders slumped slightly, despair spreading over her face. "Yeah. Later then."

Ben nodded, then turned what he had intended to be a casual move but seemed more like a military pivot. Feeling her eyes on his back like twin laser beams, he turned away with deliberate steps, resisting the want to run.

*Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.*

He concentrated on merely getting to his workstation, so the subdued chats surrounding him turned into white noise. The familiar weight of his nervousness pressed on his ribs, but there was something else there too: questions he wasn't ready to express, even to himself, curiosities he wasn't ready to recognize.

*Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.*

He went to his desk, laid his coffee down with too great care, then sunk into his chair, the wheels squeaking just under his weight. While the workplace carried on its daily ritual around him-- printers buzzing, keyboards clicking, distant phones ringing--in Ben's thoughts only the echo of Ava's words and the recollection of what he had seen in the gym prevailed. A puzzle piece that didn't fit his understanding of the world, yet somehow commanded his complete attention.

Turning to his computer, he started typing arbitrary characters simply to seem occupied. Delete. Start again. His fingers moved mechanically as his ideas stayed twisted in the break room chat, in the odd combination of guilt and curiosity that trailed him back to his desk like a relentless shadow.

Ben saw the lines of code swimming before him, their familiar syntax now as unintelligible as prehistoric hieroglyphics. Normally a haven of rationality and order, his cubicle felt cramped; the dual monitors glaringly at his lack of output felt as though they were only paper monuments to his failure to concentrate. He'd read the same function declaration seventeen times, and still couldn't make sense of it, his brain too busy replaying yesterday's encounter in high-definition embarrassment.

His desk showed his systematic approach in every element. The left monitor showed his darkly themed code editor with bespoke syntax highlighting blues for variables, greens for functions, soft purples for comments. The right monitor showed the company's bug tracking system, a spreadsheet of tasks organized by priority, and a small window with system diagnostics perpetually running. His desk included exactly three pens (black, blue, red) in a dated coffee mug from a tech conference three years ago, a notebook with graph paper for algorithm drawing, and a little rubber duck - a programmer's classic debugging friend.

His sticky notes followed a system: green for personal reminders, yellow for pressing chores, blue for meetings. Though it could as well have been written in a foreign language, today a yellow notice ordered "Fix pagination bug in user dashboard."

Ben took off his glasses and polished his nose's bridge. The office around him hummed with the regular activity: the clickety-clack of keyboards, subdued phone calls, the odd burst of laughter from the marketing division. While Ben's inner processor was locked in an endless cycle of social awkwardness, everyone else appeared to be running at normal capacity.

"Configuration," he said to himself, wringing at her word choice in their exchange. Who discusses anatomic variations as "configurations"? She might as well have spoken binary code. He replaced his spectacles and tried once more to concentrate on the current work.

The pagination issue should have been easy enough: simply a matter of API call offset calculation adjustment. But each time he tried to think through the logic, his mind wandered back to Ava's eyes, the way they had widened slightly when she'd realized he was there in the locker room, the flash of vulnerability before she'd attempted to cover herself. And what he had seen clearly despite the fleeting moment: an unmistakable penis, the size of which was unrivaled by any porn star. A measure he had ample experience with, according to the browsing history on his private laptop.

Ben typed a few characters, deleted them, then typed again. Delete. He groaned and reached for his coffee, now tepid and unappealing.

He was not particularly critical. The unintended breach of privacy, the knowledge he wasn't supposed to have, and the awkward dance they were now doing around his stomach knotted it in knots.

He made himself type a whole line of code then another. His frazzled nerves started to calm with the comfortable cadence of technology. Declared variables, invoked a function, handled an error. The deterministic cause-and-effect of code, in which inputs decided outputs in ways human interactions never could, brought comfort.

His focus was broken just as he was getting his footing by a faint chime from his computer. Although his instant messaging program had reduced itself to the taskbar, a little notification bubble showed a fresh message. He clicked to enlarge it, anticipating a colleague's inquiry on API documentation or maybe a reminder on the team stand-up meeting.

Rather, the name Ava Green showed boldly at the top of the chat window.

Ben's heart searched every conceivable message she could have conveyed, acting as though it were a SQL query devoid of optimization. He clicked on the conversation, an anxious habit that returned whenever he felt out of his comfort zone. He corrected his spectacles.

Ava Green: "Please, don't tell anyone."

Five simple words that contained volumes. Ben stared at them, watching the cursor blink rhythmically as he contemplated his response. On his screen, bare and exposed, the message sat there begging recognition.

He started typing then erased his words. Started over. Once more deleted. Writing code was simple; it complied with logical patterns and had unambiguous syntax. But this? This demanded a different kind of accuracy where the incorrect word may hurt instead of merely producing a compiler error.

Though the human in him understood the implied message, the programmer in him wanted to ask questions to be sure his response addressed the right worry.

His fingers floated over the keyboard for still another instant before he answered.

Ben Jennings: "I would never. Your privacy is important."

He watched the "Ava is typing" sign show, vanish, then show once more. She was finding the talk challenging just as much as he was.

Ava Green: "Thanks. I'm not usually so careless. It's just, the gym was empty the whole time."

Ben groaned, picturing her anguish.

Ben Jennings: "I was entirely responsible. I should have been paying attention to where I was going."

Still another stop, more precisely this one.

Ava Green: "So... you saw?"

The directness of the question startled him. How could he not have seen? Though they had not changed, Ben corrected his glasses once more and thought about lying. But what was the point? The awkwardness between them existed precisely because they both knew what had happened.

Ben Jennings: "Yes. But nothing is changed by it."

He pushed submit, then feared right away that it was inappropriate. Change what exactly? Their non-relationship? How they engage professionally? He hurried to clarify.

Ben Jennings: "What I mean is, it's not something I would judge anyone for. It's personal; it's your business, not mine."

This time the reply arrived faster.

Ava Green: "I appreciate that. Most people aren't so understanding when they find out."

Ben felt a twinge of something - sorrow, perhaps, at the implication that she'd faced judgment before, or maybe pride that she considered him "understanding" despite his fumbling attempts at conversation.

Ben Jennings: "People should mind their own business. And I promise this stays between us."

Ava Green: "Thanks. That means a lot."

Ben assumed the pause would mark the end of the chat, but she then sent another message.

Ava Green: "And thanks for not being weird about it. Well, no weirder than you typically are. ????"

The little emoji at the end changed the meaning and added a brightness lacking from their previous conversation. A welcome break from the tension Ben had been carrying, a smile started to pull at the margins of his mouth

Ben Jennings: "I'm consistently weird. It is part of my appeal."

Ava Green: "Definitely charming in your own peculiar way."

Ben looked at the words, an unanticipated warmth rising in his chest. She was flirting? Alternatively just being friendly? Text communication's uncertainty was still another issue he couldn't exactly address.

Ava Green: "Still, I should let you resume work. Those bugs won't magically correct themselves!"

Ben Jennings: "Sadly, true. Talk to you later."

Ava Green: "????"

The conversation window went quiet, but Ben kept staring at it for a few seconds trying to make sense of what had just happened. The conversation had partially cleared the air, substituting a thinner mist of doubt for the dense fog of awkwardness. She wasn't angry with him. She hardly seemed to be avoiding him. She trusted him with a personal secret most importantly as well.

He reduced the conversation window and went back to his code editor; the function declaration suddenly made perfect sense once more. His fingers over the keyboard moved with fresh intent, solace in the known syntax. The pagination bug surrendered quickly under his concentrated attention, and he discovered he was moving on to the next job with exceptional quickness.

Sometimes his thoughts would stray back to their chat, to the emoji she had sent, to the remark that he was "charming in his own unique way." Each time, he'd feel that same warmth in his chest, followed by confusion about why her opinion mattered so much.

Ben realized he had gone hours without considering the exact anatomical detail that had sparked this whole scenario only much later, as he was remarking on a particularly graceful solution to a caching problem. Rather, he had been considering Ava personally - her confidence, her directness, the trust she'd placed in him. Though he wasn't entirely clear about why, that felt important.

Including a thorough explanation outlining his method, he saved his code changes and committed them to the repository. Order rebuilt and variables explained. Still, something had changed--a fresh component thrown into his orderly life. Not an error, not a bug, but a feature he hadn't anticipated - one that would require further exploration.

One week passed slowly, like a progress bar showing 99%. Ben kept his eyes on his computer whenever footsteps approached his cubicle; he scheduled his days around strategic avoidance: he arrived early to grab coffee before the usual rush, timed his lunch breaks to minimize the chance of elevator confrontations. The few interactions he couldn't avoid with Ava had been reduced to their most basic forms: a quick nod in the corridor, a murmured "morning" by the printer, the studied obsession with elevator buttons during their twelve-second shared journeys.

Just the two of them rising from the foyer to the fourteenth level, Tuesday morning found them caught in elevator purgatory. Ben stopped as he saw the single occupant nearly twisted an ankle running for the closing doors. Ava stood in the rear corner, her blonde hair as usual flawless, a tablet hugged to her breast like a shield.

She had said, "Hi," her voice flat.

"Morning," he said, turning to face the doors with such resolve that he may have been attempting to open them through sheer force of will.

As they ascended, floor numbers lit in turn and the elevator hummed its mechanical tune. Ben had counted each one, a meditation on numerals to deflect the weight of unspoken words hanging between them and the smell of Ava's citrus perfume.

He had indicated for her to leave first, a courteous response that backfired when she whispered "Thanks" near enough for him to feel the warmth of her breath, when the doors at their floor finally opened. He had followed a cautious three paces after her till she went toward her desk.

Wednesday had presented similar tense politeness: the awkward dance of two people sharing a workspace while pretending the other was little more than office furniture. Ben mastered the art of timing his movements, learning Ava's schedule through careful observation. She usually worked through lunch at her desk, had coffee between ten and two, and used the restroom on regular intervals. Information he cataloged not out of interest, he told himself, but for tactical evasion.

By Thursday the pattern had become somewhat normal. The tension stayed, but like an old injury, he had learnt to live with it.

Long rectangles of light spread over the gray carpet as the sun slanted across the high windows of the development department. Deep in the flow state that turned minutes into hours, Ben sat bent over his keyboard. At last the Merrison project had come together, its flaws corrected and its utility seamless. As he conducted last tests, lines of code scrolled by, each successful operation generating a little thrill of gratification.

As he was deeply focused, like a monk in deep trance, the outside office fading to white noise. Until a soft chime broke his concentration.

Ben blinked, dragging himself grudgingly from the depths of code to the surface reality of his messy desk and the afternoon light now heating his left arm.

Clicking on the alert, he hoped perhaps his sister with another tech assistance request or his mother with her weekly check-in. Instead, the name Melissa Hargrave appeared in the conversational window of the dating app.

His eyebrows slightly raised in reaction to the unexpected stimulus--a small natural movement.

Melissa: "Hello, Ben! Hope I'm not interrupting your Friday coding marathon. I was thinking we could have dinner. I found this amazing Thai restaurant that, as you pointed out, does not drown its cuisine with peanut sauce."

Ben studied the message twice to be sure he hadn't misinterpreted it. Was she asking him out? The idea made him feel surprisingly happy, which was a nice change from the knot of anxiety his interaction with Ava produced.

Melissa Hargreve. He recalled her portrait: Black hair cut in a reasonable bob, spectacles like his own but with tortoiseshell frames, a smile that appeared unusual but altered her austere face when it happened. She appeared nice, intelligent, and shockingly direct, free of complexity or embarrassing secrets.

While he considered his response, his fingers hovered over the keyboard. The workplace maintained its Thursday afternoon wind-down around him: developers finishing work before the weekend, the odd burst of laughter from the break room, someone pushing their chair across the floor to talk with a colleague. Typical workplace noises, a consoling background for an unexpected incident.

Ben: "Not interrupting at all. Dinner sounds fantastic. When were you thinking?"

Before he could think twice, he hit submit and worried if he had sounded too eager or not enough. These calculations tired him; the continual tuning of tone, the search for hidden meanings in simple words, exhausted him.

The response showed up quickly:

Melissa: "How about tomorrow? Unless you would like something next week?"

Tomorrow was Friday. Ben jumped through his mental calendar. This Friday was the office Christmas party; he had intended to make a quick visit before disappearing. Next Friday was clear

Ben: "Friday after next is better. Will that work?"

He put a smiling emoji in there, deleted it, retyped it, then deleted it once more before sending without it. Emoji semantics were still another social intricacy he had never perfected: the difference between friendliness and too familiar, between excitement and desperation.

Melissa: "Great! Should we say at 7:00? If you want, we could first meet somewhere. I could text you the address."

After hours of tense encounters and cautious avoidance, Ben found himself grinning at the screen--a real smile that seemed alien.

Ben: "Perfect at 7:00. I'll meet you there after you forward the address."

A pause, then:

Melissa: "That is a date then. :) Looking forward to it!"

A date. The term had weight and defined this as something more than a laid-back get-together among coworkers. Ben's smile grew a little wider. A date with someone simple, someone whose presence did not cause his stomach to tighten or send his thoughts whirling in disorganized circles.

The chat window became quiet, yet the conversation had residual impact. Ben leaned back in his chair, a strange lightness engulfing him. The office's ambient drone appeared to halt, as though the planet had stopped momentarily to honor this moment of ordinary human connection.

A date. With a plain, intelligent lady who recalled his peanut allergy and without secrets or difficulties. The possibility gleamed like a lighthouse of normalcy among the mist of the preceding week.

He turned back to his programming, fingers deliberately hovering over the keyboard. As the sun continued its arc toward nightfall, the afternoon light changed to create fresh patterns over his desk. The strain in his shoulders relaxed a little for the first time in several days.

Her hair swung with every confident stride as he looked up shortly later and saw Ava strolling by the development area. The tension in his gut seemed more controllable somehow. He observed her pause to talk with a colleague, her hands lively as she detailed something, her grin vivid and interesting.

Still lovely, still interesting, still difficult. But suddenly the draw he felt toward Ava seemed less strong, with supper with Melissa promised. Less intimidating.

Ben went back to his screen, where lines of code waited with their consoling logic and predictable results. He was looking forward to his date. A typical date free of the complex emotions Ava aroused. For now, that was plenty -- more than enough -- to make his face grin slightly but satisfactorily as he worked through the last few hours of the day.

Rich dominated the conference area with his strong voice and crisp tone. "Innovate!" in peeling letters, like a commandment, a yellowed motivating sign behind him stated. Ben sat caught between Rich's imposing arm and the blue plastic lip of an overflowing recycling bin, caught in a melting pot of mumbled discontent. He took off his glasses and listened to Rich's comments bounce across the cinder brick walls of the room into a dozen reluctant eardrums. Ava concentrated on the artwork instead of the speech as she sketched something intricate in the margin of her notes on the table. Her lips drew into a barely hidden smile as their eyes locked, as if they were fellow conspirators in the stealing of one other's sanity. Ben almost whirled around as Rich said they would be working on the new employee onboarding strategy.

Rich stood in front a disorganized whiteboard, guiding the group with very honest, loud, muddled clarity. His voice repeated quarterly evaluations and project deadlines like a broken record. Ben tried to seem involved, nodding sometimes to indicate engagement, but his mind moved to the more pressing question of how he may endure the next hour without screaming.

Their employees had packed everything, computers and notepads strewn across the large table. A far-end coffee stain poured into a depressing ring of paper cups. People moved in their chairs, talking and noting; the background noise aggravated the claustrophobia. Rich insisted on perfect attendance, hence everyone--from top programmers to the summer intern--was crammed into the room like Tetris bricks. Ben was a prisoner to the conference and his own inner drama; each second passing dreadfully slow.

Ava sat right across from him, doodling something complex in her notepad and pretending to focus. Her blonde hair was pushed back, and her vivid green sweater seemed to counter the melancholy in the room. She glanced at Ben knowingly, silently noting the insanity of their circumstances. Ben caught her eye. He tried to smile back, but when Rich started giving tasks it died on his lips.

Rich said, "Alright, people, listen up," clapping his hands. "We have plenty to do before the next year. By the 15th, marketing needs to wrap their pitch; thus, I want engineers to work with QA on the updated feature list. People, we run a company here. Let's hustle!"

Ben blinked, attempting to concentrate, but his mind kept returning to dealing with Ava. The more he considered it, the more he felt like a bug caught in a self-made trap juggling feelings and doubts.

Rich stopped to draw everyone's attention before concluding dramatically. "I want Ben and Ava to team up on documenting and honing the employee onboarding process."

Ben's gut turned upside down. Expecting Ava to be as terrified as he was, he looked once again at her and instead she seemed fascinated--even aroused. She met his gaze with a spark in her eye, scattered his ideas like stones across a linoleum floor. His aim to keep a safe distance disappeared in a flash, leaving him to question how he would manage the close quarters of a real cooperation.

The chamber answered with a low murmur of voices and rippling papers. Rich, apparently happy with his masterstroke, progressed on other problems, but Ben was too focused on his own spiral to see.

Ava's pen stopped over her notebook, then she leaned head-first in Ben's direction, the faint smile playing on her lips. She was making fun of him? Or was it something else--a challenge, maybe? He was unsure, and it annoyed him practically as much as the work itself.

She wrote a message and passed it to the person next her, who gave it to Ben looking perplexed. He unfolded it gently, as though it could blow up, and perused the one phrase scrawled across the page: Guess you can't avoid me now, Mr. Configurations ????.

Ben's face flushed. Half expecting to find the entire room observing, he looked up but nobody seemed to have noticed his panic episode. Ava, meantime, seemed quite happy with herself and started to bite back a laugh. He wished he could be so casual about the whole thing, wished he could have even half her confidence. Rather, he felt like an animal--cornered and somehow exhilerated.

As he struggled to balance the anxiety and excitement, a fresh frenzy of ideas spilled across his head. Did she regard this as a game? Was she giving him tests? Examining them? Every question left him off-kiltered and disoriented, as perplexing as the last one. He tried to get back on his feet and pushed himself to see the work as just another project, something to be finished using rational processes and well defined deliverables. But neither a foreseeable result nor an algorithm for this scenario existed.

Rich's booming voice startled him back to the present, "Ben," he said, "you got all that?"

"Uh, yes. Indeed, naturally." Ben nodded fast, a bobblehead of energy. To seem occupied, he scribbled a few words in his notepad; but, his mind was elsewhere, driven by the idea of working so closely with Ava.

He turned once again to her. This time, she didn't look away. Rather, she fixed his eye with a consistent confidence that both startled and fascinated him. Although challenging, the project was more than that--it was an opportunity, an unasked-for chance to see if he could negotiate this jumble of emotions and professional obligation without self-destroying. Simply said, he wasn't sure whether he should thank Rich or blame him.

Ben's fingers hung over his computer, not quite touching the keys, hung in that transitional space between ideas and action. The work sounded easy enough--document an onboarding procedure with Ava--but his thoughts kept swinging back to their gym encounter and recreating it with the dogged accuracy of debugging code. He needed to approach this professionally and swiftly, with none of the uneasiness that presently stood between them like an unnoticed flaw in a pristine build.

"Just power through it", he whispered to himself at last allowing his fingers to touch the keyboard. Grounded somewhat by the familiar clacking sound, he retrieved the project specifications Rich had emailed both that morning.

His inbox was a monument to corporate sloppiness--meeting invites, system upgrades, and the odd HR passive-aggressive note on kitchen behavior. But Rich's email caught attention; its subject line bolded and unread: "URGENT: Onboarding Documentation Overhaul."

Though he'd already read it twice, Ben clicked it open.

*Benjamin and Ava,*

*Following yesterday's quarterly review, we've identified significant gaps in our onboarding documentation. Being my newly hired assistant and most meticulous coder, you two are the ideal team to record the process from both sides. I want a thorough guide by EOD tomorrow. This is top priority.*

*Richard Jones*

*Project Manager*

Not "please," not "thank you"; simply Rich being Rich. Ben's mouth twitched into a fleeting, austere smile. The email was vintage Rich: unclear criteria, unrealistic deadline, and the faint insinuation that your weekend plans were less essential than whatever fire he'd suddenly found required quenching.

Ben looked at the clock on the screen corner. It was already past two. They had to start right away if they were meant to finish this by tomorrow. Hence he had to get in touch with Ava. That meant...

His throat went dry all at once. He grabbed his water bottle and deliberately sank a long gulp.

Since the gym incident three days ago, he had avoided more than minimal contact with Ava. A nod across the hall. A nominal "morning" at the coffee maker. Still, this project would need hours of teamwork. Many hours of sitting, chatting, working through the specifics.

Ben raked his fingers through his hair, leaving it more untidy than it had been. He adjusted his glasses and weighed his options. They could work at his desk, but the idea tightened his shoulders. His desk was his haven; everything was set just so--monitors at the ideal height, keyboard positioned just, desk free of extraneous objects. Her presence in that place would be disturbing.

They could work at her desk, although that caused certain difficulties. More crucially, any choice would imply side by side sitting. Close enough that their elbows might touch. Close enough to perhaps detect her shampoo or perfume aroma. Close enough to be brought back to what he had seen in the gym--what he had been striving so hard not to think about since.

"A meeting room," he said aloud, the clear elegance of well-written programming offering itself the solution. Meeting rooms stood as neutral ground. Professional. Roomy enough to sit across from one another rather than side by side.

He clicked through the choices on the corporate room booking system. Most of the smaller rooms were packed solid--last-minute meetings before the weekend break, most certainly--but Conference Room D was free. Usually used just for client presentations or all-hands meetings, it was among the bigger rooms. For just two people, it would be practically ridiculously large. Ideal.

He reserved it for the afternoon's last half, then stopped, cursor hanging above the "Invite Attendees" field. What was the correct behavior here? For a teammate he would have to spend several hours directly working with, a formal calendar invite sounded strangely rigid. After the discomfort between them, a casual message could sound too familiar though.

At last, he chose a straightforward message:

*Hi Ava, Rich gave us that assignment on onboarding materials. We should work on it this afternoon in Conference Room D. It's already booked. Tell me whether that would work for you.*

Professional. Straight Forward. Not one mention of showers or gyms or anything else unrelated to work. He sent before he could consider it more closely.

Her response came almost immediately, a single thumbs-up emoji. Ben experienced a slight release mixed with fresh anxiousness. At least she'd agreed. Now he just had to get through the next few hours without making things more awkward between them.

He gathered his laptop, notebook, and a pen--the smooth-writing gel one he reserved for important tasks. He glimpsed his reflection in the darkened screen of his secondary monitor as he stood, ready to leave. His hair was a mess, his sweater slightly rumpled. He smoothed both as best he could, then straightened his glasses.

He reminded himself, "professional. Effective." Just focus on the task."

He passed the break area on his way to Conference room D, where a small gathering of developers crowded around the coffee maker giggling about something. Past the finance department, where spreadsheets glowed on every screen. Past Rich's office, mercifully empty, the blinds drawn.

With each step, Ben rehearsed how the interaction might go. They would greet one another politely. They would talk about the project criteria. They would split the labor logically. Not one personal detail would be mentioned. No acknowledgment of the tension between them. Just two people cooperating on a designated project.

As he pushed open the door to Conference Room D, his palms felt clammy; but, he felt a warmth in his chest, an unpleasant heat he knew was anxiousness. He was overreacting. It was just a work project. Just a few hours of collaboration. He could handle this.

He sat close to the door at the far end of the long table, an unconscious posture that provided a clear path of exit. He arranged his laptop, started a fresh document under "Onboarding Documentation." He typed his name and the date then stopped, cursor flickering eagerly.

Right now all he had to do was wait for Ava to get here. And try very hard not to consider what was beneath her business attire.

Conference Room D yawned around Ben like an emptied stadium, its faded navy walls seeming to recede into the distance. Under fluorescent lights, the large wood table shone brilliantly, reflecting his nervous posture back at him as he mechanically positioned his laptop and notepad. Twenty-four seats stood around the table: twenty-two of them absolutely superfluous for a two-person conference, but the extra space was precisely what he had been looking for: room to breathe, and to keep professional distance.

He checked his watch and then looked at his phone. Ava sent no messages past that first thumbs-up. He paused suddenly, angry at his own nerves, then tapped his fingers on the table. Nothing more; this was a job assignment. Quickly typing "In Conference Room D whenever you're ready," he said.

Three minutes later--he'd been watching the clock on his laptop--the door swung open. Ava entered and her blonde hair swung with her momentum. She stopped, blue eyes widening as she looked about the large cavernous area.

Her voice resounding off the lofty ceiling, "this room's so big, even our ideas get lost in here. Are we expecting the whole development staff to join us?"

Ben's mouth's corner twitched involuntarily upward. "I wanted to be sure we had room to, um, arrange our ideas."

"Mission accomplished," Ava remarked, pointing to the distance between them as she sank into a chair, not quite across from him but at a diagonal that seemed both respectful of his space and not blatantly far-off. "I believe our ideas, their extended families, and maybe a small orchestra have room."

Ben's shoulders somewhat relaxed. Her sense of humor helped the room seem less empty and less uncomfortable than he had anticipated. He watched as she unpacked her laptop--a well-worn MacBook covered with stickers--mostly design logos but also a few vibrant cartoon creatures he didn't know. She had stickers on her laptop.

"Rich has an urgent paperwork dilemma," she said, glancing up at him with a somewhat strained grin. Do we think the company would fail if we neglect to record every detail on how to access the system by tomorrow?"

Ben said in a voice dry as sand, "Absolutely. I'm surprised he didn't categorize it as 'apocalypse-level urgent' instead of merely 'urgent.'"

Ava snorted, a rather inelegant sound given her perfect appearance. "I've been here three months and I still can't tell if he's always like this or if I'm special."

"Oh, it's not you," Ben said, lounging back slightly in his chair. "Last quarter he had me rewrite the entire debugging protocol documentation over a weekend since, and I quote, 'the font seems inconsistent.'"

"You're kidding." Ava's gaze became wider.

"Not really. I found out he was viewing it from a browser that did not support the embedded font."

Ava's sincere, unvarnished chuckle filled the large room. "That explains the email I got last week asking me to 'jazz up' the Powerpoint templates. He just answered 'make them pop' three times, when I asked for specifics."

Ben laughed, a rusty sound he seldom heard in himself at work. "The Rich Jones School of Feedback: vague, urgent, normally solved by closing and reopening the application."

Their eyes locked across the table, and for a minute the discomfort that had dogged them since the gym incident appeared to vanish. Just two coworkers bonded in their minor annoyance with their demanding manager.

Pulling himself back to focus on the current work, Ben added, "so onboarding documents. We may start by outlining the present method, then find the holes and--"

Ava interjected, "Oh wauw, you're actually one of those types who has a method," yet her tone was warm, playful rather than condemning. "Usually I just toss stuff at the page until something sticks."

"Let me guess--you're a 'move fast and break things' type?" Ben adjusted his glasses, although he seemed to be smiling just slightly.

"More like 'panic and produce under pressure,'" Ava answered, unlocking her laptop. "But I'm willing to be methodically guided by your superior documentation expertise."

After that, they settled into a rhythm more at ease than Ben had expected. While Ava concentrated on the viewpoint of being newly hired, identifying pain spots and unclear pieces from her previous onboarding experience, he described the technical elements of the onboarding process--system access, repository permissions, development environment configuration.

After they had been working for about an hour, she stated, "The toughest part, was attempting to figure out the VPN setup with zero instructions. Not able to connect to the server, I ended up studying YouTube lessons at 2 AM certain I would be fired on my second day."

"That's exactly the kind of thing we need to document," Ben said, noting. "I forget how frightening that can be for fresh hires."

Ava looked up from her laptop and her face became instantly more austere. "You know what would truly scare you? trying to pay off college loans while affording rent in this city on an entry-level income. She laughed a bit, not quite sure where to look. "This is the reason I'm back living with my parents at twenty-four. Talk about a failed onboarding program."

The intimate admission took Ben off-target. He stopped, not sure how to handle this abrupt change into personal space.

That's... difficult," he said at last. Right now, "housing costs are insane."

"Tell me about it," Ava said, leaning back in her chair. "Exactly three months before I realized I was eating ramen for dinner five nights a week just to make rent, I had this lovely little studio apartment." She shook her head. "Although it was embarrassing to move back home, at least I could afford vegetables. And occasionally my mother helps with my washing, which is an odd advantage of adult failure.

Ben remarked, startling himself with his swift defense of her, "That's not failure. That's quite pragmatic."

Ava's smile returned, warmer this time. "That's very generous of you. Try telling my date last week, though, that I had to recommend we return to his house since my current décor consists of posters of bands I loved when I was fourteen and my childhood stuffed animal collection."

Ben felt a weird twinge at the reference of her dating someone, which he promptly filed away to never investigate. "At least you have a justification for unusual decor. I have no design sensibility hence my place simply looks like that."

That brought her laughter once more. "You know, I could assist with that. Professional expertise and all." He said, in earnestness and oblivious to how cheesy it sounded.

"My apartment is beyond professional help, in my opinion." Ben looked back at Ava then at his papers. "What the craziest task you have been required to complete at work is? Apart from this project, I mean."

Ava gave it some thought briefly. "Well, I once worked for a company where the CEO requested me to create a logo for his son's garage band. Paid work rather than a favor; he wanted it to 'capture the essence of rebellious youth while remaining appropriate for a college application portfolio.'"

"That's... specific."

"The band was called Murder Bot Kittens, so I had some creative challenges," Ava said straight forwardly.

They both began to chuckle, and the sound filled the large area, lending less formality and emptiness.

Ben fidgeted with his pen, rolling it over between his fingers, and suddenly a thought that had been troubling him all day came to mind.

"About what happened at the gym," he began, his voice lower than normal. "I wanted to apologize once more for walking in on you. I didn't intend to--"

"Oh god," Ava said, a flush of red building on her cheeks, but her smile stayed constant. Are we going back to that? Using mutual workplace avoidance, I believed we could pretend it never happened."

"I just wanted to make sure things weren't... weird." Ben sensed his own face growing heated. "Between us, I mean. Professionally... and so."

Ava leaned forward to study him with an expression he couldn't understand. "Bet you don't see something like that every day," she finally said, her voice light but with a smirky undertone.

The air between them seemed to thicken, loaded with something neither comfort nor shame. Ben's mind flew aimlessly to the picture of Ava leaving the shower, water running down her curves, the surprising disclosure of what hung between her legs.

He cleared his voice, maybe too loudly. "I, um, didn't mean to. I was not paying attention to where I was going."

"At least you didn't knock your head against the door," Ava said, gladly guiding them back to safer territory. "That may have been a warning, though. Perhaps the next time you should verify which door you are entering."

"Deal," Ben replied, relieved.

Thanks to their shared laughing and now common decision to move on from the gym episode, the uneasiness of the past was mostly gone when they returned to their paperwork job. The afternoon passed, broken occasionally by the quiet clicking of keyboards and questions or comments.

By five o'clock, they had written a comprehensive onboarding manual including technical setup and user experience issues, together with detailed step-by-step instructions and troubleshooting advice for common problems.

Ava said, saving the final form of the document, "I think Rich might actually be impressed. Though, he'll most likely just groan and assign us something equally urgent for next week."

Surprised by how honest the comment seemed, Ben added, "at least we work well together." Though first uneasy, the afternoon had been really successful and surprisingly fun.

"We do, don't we?" Ava closed her laptop and started sorting her stuff, grinning. "Must be your systematic influence balancing my anarchy."

Feeling better than he had in days, Ben returned the grin. "Or your imagination balancing my rigidity."

The massive meeting room no longer seemed like an unusual choice, but rather like a space they had somehow created during the afternoon as they strolled together to the door.

Ava stopped and turned to face him as they neared the threshold. Her tone was apathetic when she asked, "Are you going to the Christmas party tomorrow night?" Yet her eyes locked on him with something more than mere inquiry.

"I was intending to show up," Ben said, gently. "Are you?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Ava remarked. "Save me a dance, would you?"

Ben's pulse accelerated slightly when he heard a playful tone in her voice - one not heard before. This seemed like flirtation, not just polite chat.

"I'm not very much of a dancer," he replied, fidgety with his glasses.

Grinning wickedly, Ava added, "Everyone's a dancer when there's an open bar."

Their eyes held for a second longer than was strictly necessary, and Ben felt something unusual unrelated to the overzealous heating system of the building.

"I'll think about it," he said. Quickly realizing that he meant it.

As they parted ways in the corridor, Ben found himself reliving their talk, carefully examining the minute changes in tone and expression, wondering if he had imagined the spark in her eyes when she suggested dancing.

He reminded himself sharply; Melissa was his date next week. One he had been looking forward to, a suitable date with someone basic and straightforward. Someone who made a straightforward offer to dance and failed to get his heart pounding. Someone who did not question his conception of attraction and desire in ways that confused and intrigued him.

And yet, it was Ava's laugh that echoed in his thoughts, Ava's eyes that he saw when he closed his own, and Ava's invitation that stayed like a promise--or a warning - of something unexpected on the horizon as he gathered his jacket and shut off his computer.

As he entered the parking garage, he turned toward his own car, keys cold in his palm as the winter air nipped at his exposed skin. Tomorrow was the Christmas party. Ava would be there, maybe expecting the dance she mentioned. He would have to confront what these contradictory emotions meant tomorrow as well as what, if anything, he meant to do about them.

His unresolved thoughts seemed to be punctuated by the quiet clink of his keys against his phone, a small, discordant note in an evening that should have been simple but had somehow become anything but.