Settling in to her chair at the ADD, Jess made herself comfy. Being the first one to arrive at the ARC in the morning, aside from the night shift, had its benefits. She could get that little bit more work done in the almost complete silence of the deserted Hub as well as looking forward to seeing one person in particular arrive for work in his military uniform with his deep hazel eyes and slicked-back hair...
'Stop it Jess! For god's sake! He is a co-worker, a friend and nothing more!' Jess scrutinized herself under her breath.
He always seemed to be able to distract her, send her careening off from her train of thought just by looking her in the eyes, cause her body to completely short circuit whenever their fingers brushed together reaching for the same black box or exchanging report files. And although Jess had always loved chocolate, it always seemed to taste like the most delicious kind when it was the man himself, Captain Becker who had brought it to her. She always savored every mouthful of that chocolate and was always disappointed when she reached for the crumpled up paper and shortly realized it was only the paper that was left.
Suddenly she felt two hands reach from behind her and cover her eyes, only leaving the occasional streak of light from the computer screens to shift through the gaps between the mystery person's fingers.
'Connor? Is that you?' Jess quietly asked. She felt the face of this mystery person come closer to her ear and as they shook their head, Jess felt a patch of short stubble gently graze her cheek.
'Becker!' She exclaimed
'Haha! What gave me away?' The captain replied chuckling and removing his hands from covering Jess' eyes.
'Well Connor hardly ever shaves and Matt wouldn't really do something like that unless I was Emily and he was in an exceptionally good mood so you were the only logical choice' Jess replied very matter-of-factly even though the insistent butterflies in her stomach made her extremely glad that she was already sat down. Becker lifted his hand to his jaw and ran his fingers down his jawline towards his chin before gently shrugging and leaning with one hand on the top of Jess's chair and his other hand resting very close to hers on the desk of the ADD.
It was then that he noticed her hand.
Blistered and red and, by the looks of it, very painful. 'Jess, what did you do to your hand?!' He exclaimed, his eyes widening with worry for the Field-Coordinator.
'Oh, I spilled a little coffee on myself this morning, it's nothing serious' she replied.
'Are you sure? It looks quite bad Jess, I could get you a bandage or an ice pack fro-'
He was interrupted by the flashing of red lights illuminating the whole ops room, accompanied by the significant sirens they both knew all too well. They gave each other knowing looks and Jess swivelled round in her chair to be ready to read the latest anomaly location to the rest of the team.
Matt, Abby and Connor came running round the corners of the corridors and into the ops room, headed for the ADD. As they gathered around Jess, Lester strode over to join them around the monitors.
'What have I said about running in the corridors!?' he bellowed.
Abby and Connor shied away from his gaze and Abby muttered a 'Sorry Lester' whilst Connor subtly cleared his throat.
'Hey, no more coffee until I get back, okay?' Becker said as he leaned over Jess's shoulder as the team started to gather their black boxes and run towards the lifts.
'Fine' Jess groaned 'Just stay safe okay?'
'Always' he winked at her and sprinted after the others who were already out of the Ops room.