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It was Celine that made Sloane first curious.
"Are Michael and Lia in love?" Celine had asked her.
The two of them were sitting in the basement together. Celine had insisted she wanted to bond with the rest of the team given her late arrival to the program. She had said that, but Sloane’s internal clock logged that approximately seventy-two percent of Celine's free time in the house was spent solely with Sloane herself. Not that Sloane minded. Celine was nice, and pretty, and warm.
Sloane had paused at the question. In love? Honestly, Sloane wasn't quite sure. They were dating and they definitely liked each other, no matter how much either of them would deny it. They kissed, too, so it wasn't just platonic. But love? That seemed like such a strong term. Sloane thought they could be in love, at times, but then they fought and broke it off but then they just came right back. If Sloane was counting properly, she'd say that they broke up and got back together nine times in the year that they had known each other. Yet, looking at the underlying trajectory, Sloane knew they would always return.
Sloane never considered herself good at reading people. Facts and numbers were easy, objective data points that she couldn't get wrong. People, on the other hand, often said things that didn't correlate with their behavioral outputs. Michael and Lia were harder to read than most, especially considering that Lia lied on a daily basis and Michael could manipulate his microexpressions with absolute precision.
If Celine had asked about Cassie, Sloane would have had a definitive, factually sound answer. Yes, Cassie and Dean were in love. The baseline metrics were completely clear, and they had verbally confirmed it to each other on multiple occasions. Michael and Lia, however, were much harder to figure out.
"I'm not sure," Sloane had answered Celine in the moment, wanting to be entirely accurate. "I don't think I have enough data yet."
But after that day, she started paying closer attention.
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The first data point happened a week later on the driveway.
Sloane’s fuzzy striped socks lightly padded across the stone toward Michael’s car, which was parked at the front of the property. Michael was working on the engine, focused in deep concentration as he twisted a greasy silver wrench. Lia lay flat on her back on the roof of the car, staring up at the sky. Sloane couldn’t quite hear what Lia was murmuring, but Michael evidently did; he nodded along, offering a few low thoughts of his own.
Once Sloane drew near, Lia’s eyes slid toward her. Pushing herself up, Lia sat up, her legs dangling off the edge of the roof.
"Is it time?" she asked Sloane, her eyes glittering with an emotion Sloane couldn’t quite define. Only Michael seemed capable of decoding Lia's expressions with absolute certainty, but Sloane assumed it was mischief.
"Yes," Sloane nodded. It was exactly 6:30 P.M.
Michael frowned, pausing from where he was pulling at a cluster of wires. "Time for what?"
"Time to doll her up for her date with Celine," Lia supplied from above.
"It's not a date," Sloane corrected automatically. "It is a pre-arranged social outing between two friends at a high-end restaurant."
"It's totally a date," Lia countered, a smirk playing on her lips.
"Oh, is that tonight?" Michael said, wiping his hands on a rag. "Have fun, Sloane. Make bad decisions. Lots of them."
Sloane pursed her lips, a small habit when she was thinking hard. "When presented with a socially acceptable ethical option, you tend to pick the opposite sixty-two percent of the time," she told him. She wasn't entirely certain why she felt the need to share the statistic, but she was thinking it, and she liked sharing her thoughts with him.
"Precisely," Michael winked. "Follow my lead."
"Trust me, Sloane, if you use Michael as your role model, you’ll get nowhere good in life," Lia drawled.
"Yeah? And if you trust Lia Zhang, you'll get a knife through the back," Michael quipped smoothly which caused Lia to narrow her eyes at him.
Sloane blinked, processing the shift in dynamic. "Do you guys ever go on dates?"
"No," Lia scoffed, looking thoroughly offended by the suggestion.
"We don't do 'dates,'" Michael clarified, leaning against the car. "We do outings. Adventurous, reckless ones that usually require an alibi."
Sloane found the distinction illogical. Shifting her feet, she looked back at Lia. "Are you sure you have time to help me? Celine and I see each other approximately four times a week. I am confident she wouldn't object if I simply wore my regular clothes."
"I'm sure she wouldn't," Lia shrugged, sliding effortlessly off the top of the car and landing perfectly on her heels. It was very impressive but Sloane tried not to get hung up on the physics behind that. "But I want her to completely lose her mind when she sees you."
"Lia does have a habit of driving people crazy," Michael added. "But most times, I must warn you, it’s in a very, very bad way."
Lia gave him a half-hearted roll of her eyes.
"I wish for her to maintain her sanity, thank you very much," Sloane said, frowning slightly.
Lia didn't respond to her. Instead, she sauntered over to Michael and grabbed the greasy wrench at his side. She twirled it in her fingers for a few moments before she reached forward and deliberately swiped the oil all over his shirt. On the bright side, the shirt was already black, so the stain was barely perceptible. On the other hand, Sloane had no doubt that this shirt was expensive, as most of Michael's shirts were.
Lia then smiled. She set down the wrench, looked at her stained fingers, and met Michael's gaze. Slowly, deliberately, she dragged her greasy fingertips down his pristine cheekbone, marring his skin with a dark trail of oil. Michael’s jaw clenched under her touch, a muscle leaping in his cheek, but he didn't say a single word of protest. He just stared at her, his eyes dark and intense.
Truthfully, Sloane had no idea as to what prompted Lia to do that but Lia seemed all too satisfied. Completing her goal, she simply turned and walked away, expecting Sloane to follow.
Ten minutes later, Sloane was sitting at the vanity in Lia's room. Lia was combing through Sloane’s hair, carefully pinning a small section back. The grease was gone from her fingers, replaced by the faint, sweet scent of vanilla hair perfume.
"Lia?"
"Hmm?" Lia muttered, leaning forward to inspect Sloane's eyeliner.
"Are you and Michael in love?"
Lia’s hand froze entirely. For a fraction of a second, the careful, effortless mask Lia always wore completely slipped, leaving her looking wide-eyed and stunned. Then, just as quickly, she recovered, letting out a sharp, defensive laugh as she went back to fixing Sloane's hair.
"Why on earth would you ask that?" Lia questioned, her tone light and teasing, though Sloane noticed her fingers were brushing Sloane's hair just a little more gently than before.
"Celine asked me," Sloane explained earnestly, looking up at Lia's reflection in the mirror. "And I want to give her an accurate answer."
"Celine is too nosy for her own good," Lia murmured, pinning a stray strand of hair. "And to answer your question, Michael is a nightmare, Sloane. He's manipulative, he's theatrical, and he drives me absolutely insane."
Sloane tilted her head. Those were all negative traits. "So you don't love him, then?"
"I don't know what I feel for him," is all Lia admitted to, her voice dropping into a quiet, rare moment of sincerity. "I just know that he makes me feel... even when I don't want to."
Sloane filed that particular bit of information away.
"Anyways, let's talk about how you feel about Celine," Lia said next, a sly smile returning to her face, causing Sloane to blush a warm, deep pink.
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The second data point was much quieter.
"Do you want to watch a movie in the theater room?" Cassie proposed to Sloane a few nights later.
Sloane nodded promptly, her face lighting up as she immediately listed out a wide variety of current releases based on genre, to which Cassie simply laughed and told her to pick the one with the highest rating.
Technically, they didn't have access to paid streaming accounts in the FBI house. However, whenever new releases came out, Sloane had figured out a nifty trick to bypass the paywalls and get the media files for free. It always made her secretly proud to see how excited everyone got when her hacking skills allowed them to watch movies together. She loved being able to give them normal teenage experiences. She loved feeling valued.
When they pushed open the heavy door to the movie room, however, they didn't expect to find it occupied.
Michael and Lia were sleeping peacefully on the main couch, both dressed in their pajamas rather than their usual sharp, tailored clothes. The television screen was dark, displaying a static menu. The movie had clearly long ended, leaving the room illuminated only by the faint glow of the television standby light.
They were lying completely flat against the couch, tangled together in a way that looked incredibly comfortable. Sloane didn't normally see them sleeping, but it was nice. All their sharp edges and protective armor seemed to melt away in the dark. Lia had fallen asleep directly on Michael's chest, her cheek pressed against his shirt, looking very much like a sleeping cat. Though, Sloane was sure that Lia would get incredibly upset at her for making that comparison. Michael's arms were wrapped tightly around her waist, holding her steady. They looked significantly gentler than they did during the day and Sloane found herself quite liking the look on them.
"Let's watch it some other time," Cassie whispered softly to Sloane, a gentle, knowing look on her face as she tugged her sleeve.
"Living room?" Sloane proposed in a quiet whisper.
"You're on," Cassie smiled.
Sloane noted it down. Safety. Vulnerability when no one is looking.
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The next data point was fiercely intense.
When Sloane walked into the garage—the one that didn't serve as a gym for Dean—she heard the distinct sounds of moans echoing from Michael's car, both male and female. Sloane wasn't quite sure if this was considered intruding, but she certainly wasn't bothered by the display of affection. It was natural among couples, after all, but she wasn't sure if Lia and Michael would share the sentiment if they knew Sloane was right outside.
The windows were tinted, so Sloane couldn't see anything, but the doors didn't block the sound. Sloane considered walking away, but Agent Sterling had explicitly said to bring Michael and that it was important. Making up her mind, she decided to be helpful and announce her presence.
"Hey, Michael, Sterling needs you," Sloane called out.
The sounds paused instantly. It took a long time before she heard a response.
"Um, can you give me five minutes, Sloane?" Michael's voice came from inside, rougher and more breathless than Sloane was used to.
To her knowledge, this was the fourteenth time Michael and Lia were intimate, though she assumed the true number was much higher than that.
Before Sloane could respond, she heard hissed, hurried voices from inside the cabin.
"Make that ten!" Michael corrected himself loudly.
Sloane bit her lip, thinking of Sterling's strict face. "Okay," Sloane agreed before she headed back inside.
Just as the garage door was about to close, Sloane heard another low groan from inside - Michael’s this time.
Physical chemistry, she added to her list.
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The fourth data point came the very next day.
Sloane had been sitting at the kitchen island a few mornings later, eagerly sharing a collection of statistical anomalies she had found in the local county database. Michael had walked in to pour a cup of coffee, looking unusually exhausted, the dark circles under his eyes prominent. When Sloane started to explain a secondary set of data points to him, Michael had snapped.
"Not right now, Sloane," he said, his voice unusually sharp and cutting. "I really don't care about the numbers today."
Sloane froze, her lips pressing into a tight line as a familiar, heavy knot formed in her chest. She hated getting things wrong, and she hated feeling like an annoyance. Michael immediately took a look at her face and looked regretful. "Sorry," he mumbled to her before taking his cup and leaving the room.
Sloane stared down at her computer, her eyes stinging slightly, until a hand gently dropped onto her shoulder. She looked up to find Lia standing beside her.
"Ignore him," Lia insisted. "It's been a weird day for him, and his head is an absolute disaster today."
Sloane blinked. "Do you know why?"
Lia looked toward the empty doorway where Michael had disappeared. A shadow of profound, quiet sorrow crossed her face—an expression of complete recognition. "Better than anyone," she murmured.
Sloane filed that away immediately, the sting of Michael's words dying down in her chest as she processed the new information. Maybe Sloane didn't really understand people, but Lia certainly did and she understood Michael better than most. They understood each other's hidden pain on a level that required no explanations at all.
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The fifth data point was with all the naturals in the room.
The atmosphere was dense with afternoon boredom until Michael strolled into the living room, a dangerous, bright spark in his eyes that Sloane recognized as a precursor to trouble.
"Is anyone up for an adventure?" Michael asked, leaning against the doorframe and looking around at the room. "I need to clear my head, and I have an excellent idea that requires zero rational thought."
Celine paused from where she was sketching. "Is it illegal?"
"Most certainly," Michael replied, flashing a brilliant, unbothered grin.
”The no,” Celine determined.
Dean didn't even look up from his plate. "Pass."
"Boring," Michael chimed. He shifted his attention to the couch. "Care to live a little, Colorado?"
"I'd rather not," Cassie muttered apologetically, eyes returning to the case file in her hand. Michael rolled his eyes at the lack of enthusiasm.
His hazel eyes then met Sloane's own. She gave a light shake of her head. "Your spontaneous ideas tend to lead to long-term regret sixty-eight percent of the time."
“Only sixty-eight? I must be losing my touch,” Michael sighed dramatically. His gaze then shifted across the room, locking directly onto Lia, who was lazily filing her nails at the coffee table.
"Zhang?" he challenged, raising a single eyebrow.
She looked up from her glossy plum colored nails, a wicked, matching grin spreading slowly across her face. "I suppose I can take a risk on sixty-eight percent. Let me grab my jacket."
Sloane watched them leave the house together a minute later. Nobody else in the house understood why they would willingly risk getting in trouble with Judd just to cure a moment of boredom, but Sloane noted the behavior down.They possessed an identical tendency for chaos.
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The next data point happened in the hallway, born out of a fight.
Sloane didn't mean to eavesdrop, not really, but she couldn't help but pause from her position at the corner. She also needed more evidence for her conclusion so it was a necessary evil. At least, that's what she told herself.
"I'm not doing this with you right now," Michael stated, his voice tight as he tried to walk past Lia. He always got more upset with her than with anyone else, something Sloane had observed long ago. Michael had never yelled at Sloane the way he did with Lia; if he ever let out a snappy comment, he made it up to her immediately. It was nice for Sloane, at least. It made her feel special. Perhaps Lia was special as well, though, if she was the only one who could make Michael this passionate and agitated when he was usually so collected with everyone else.
"Oh? That's it then? The great Michael Townsend is running away from a conversation," Lia laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. "How typical."
"Lia, can you stop being so irritating?" Michael seethed, turning on her.
"Yeah? And can you stop being a fucking asshole who—"
Lia didn't get to finish the sentence. Michael stepped forward and yanked her into him, crashing his mouth onto hers while cupping a hand firmly at the back of her head.
They are kissing, Sloane thought, freezing. She never really understood them, honestly. Their communication style seemed entirely counterintuitive to conflict resolution.
After another moment, Lia gave a hard shove at his chest. Michael didn't budge. Instead, he walked her backwards until she hit the wall with a firm thud. She pushed again, much more forcefully this time, managing to wedge a mere inch of distance between them.
"Let me finish! What is wr—" Lia started again, breathless and furious, but she was interrupted once more as Michael pressed his lips back onto hers. This time, he didn't give her room to move, shifting his weight forward to keep her thoroughly pinned against the wall.
When he finally broke the kiss this time, both of them were panting. Lia glared up at him, her chest heaving.
"You can't just—" Lia started. Michael cut her off once more with a searing, deeper kiss that lasted several seconds longer.
"If you do that again," Lia warned against his mouth, "I will-"
Another kiss.
"Let me fin-"
Another kiss.
He pulled back just an inch. "Still mad?" he teased, his voice low and rough.
"Yes," Lia spat. "As I was sa—"
Another kiss.
"I can't—"
Another kiss.
"You better s—"
Another kiss.
"Michael!"
Another kiss.
This time, when Michael pulled away, Lia just pressed her lips together into a fine, silent line, glaring daggers at him.
Michael reached up, his thumb brushing over her cheek before he tucked a dark strand of stray hair behind her ear. His eyes still held twinkling amusement in them. "Calm down?"
"Yes," she hissed—a singular, clipped word. Sloane wasn't sure if it was because Lia had actually calmed down, or if she just didn't want Michael to kiss her into silence again.
Either way, Michael smiled, flashing the same rakish, charming grin he usually gave to everyone else when he was trying to smooth things over. "Good. Because she doesn't mean anything to me."
Sloane wasn't quite sure who "she" was, but Lia paused, letting the words register. The fiery anger in her expression drained away, replaced by something tired and heavy. She sighed, looking up at him. "Why do you always do this to me?"
"Maybe it's because I like knowing you care," Michael murmured softly.
Sloane wasn't quite sure whether that was a lie or a rare moment of honesty, but looking at the time on her watch, she figured she had been here far too long.
"Michael?" she called out hesitantly, stepping into view.
Michael's eyes immediately slid to her. He instantly dropped his hands from where he had been pinning Lia's wrists to the wall and stepped back, creating a respectable distance. He ran his tongue over his lower lip, which was bleeding slightly. Had Lia bitten him?
"Hi there," Michael said, trying to fall back into his usual easygoing demeanor. "How much of that did you see?"
The last nine minutes, Sloane wanted to say. But she had been practicing reading social cues, and she knew that truthfulness wasn't always what humans preferred in awkward moments. She wanted to keep things normal for them. So, instead, she settled on a mild distortion of the timeline. "Just the end. I think."
"Okay," Michael nodded, running a hand through his mussed hair from when Lia had tugged at it moments ago. "What did you need?"
"You promised to take me out to coffee at noon," she reminded him gently. Michael said it was his way of making it up to her for snapping at her a few days ago. "But if you're busy, we can go later."
Michael slid his gaze back to Lia, checking her expression.
"By all means, take him. He's bothered me enough for the day," Lia said, rolling her eyes as she smoothed out the wrinkles in her shirt.
"Let's go, then," Michael told Sloane, before glancing back at Lia one last time. "You want anything?"
"A better relationship," she threw over her shoulder.
"I'm trying to be nice. Don't make me regret it," Michael stated, though the edge was gone from his voice.
"No, I'm good. Have fun," Lia replied before she walked into her room and closed the door.
Sloane followed Michael out, thinking about how Lia's anger always melted the moment Michael validated her place in his life.
Sloane followed Michael out to the car. As he started the ignition, she buckled her seatbelt. Her mind was practically overflowing with the data she'd collected over the last ten minutes, and she decided to verify it against the conversation she'd had with Lia.
"Michael?" she asked quietly, turning her body to face him.
"Yeah?" he asked, navigating the car down the long driveway.
"Are you and Lia in love?"
The car swerved for a fraction of an inch before he gripped the steering wheel tighter. He cleared his throat then stared straight ahead at the road as if nothing had happened. "Where—where did that come from?"
"Celine asked me," Sloane explained, her voice entirely sincere. "So I asked Lia, and I wanted to ask you, too."
Michael eyed her from the side. "What did Lia say?"
"She said you were manipulative, theatrical, and drove her absolutely insane," Sloane answered, recounting the adjectives with clinical precision.
Michael rolled his eyes, which was normally a sign of annoyance. "Did she?" he mumbled.
"But she also said that you make her feel something, even if she doesn't want to," Sloane added.
"She said that, huh?" he murmured, thinking. He fell silent, watching the road for so long that Sloane wondered if he’d forgotten she was there. When he finally spoke, his tone was heavy. "With Lia... it's complicated. We're both pretty messed up. We fight too much, and we hate letting each other in. When things get too intense, we don't lean on each other, we push more."
Sloane frowned. "I don't understand."
"No one does," Michael sighed softly, looking straight ahead. "But even when we're screaming at each other, I don't think there's anyone else for either of us." He glanced over at her, a rare flash of vulnerability breaking through. "Just, uh... don't tell her I said that. She'd never let me live it down."
Sloane nodded, logging the request. "I can keep a secret."
Neither of them had given her a definitive "yes," but as Sloane looked back at the road, she knew she had her answer.
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The final data point came at 1:00 A.M.
Sloane couldn't sleep. Her brain was whirring with a bunch of random thoughts, so she decided to walk down to the library to find a textbook to distract herself. The house was completely dark, the hallway illuminated only by the faint, cool moonlight coming through the windows.
As she approached the library, however, she noticed a warm, narrow sliver of light spilling out onto the hardwood floor from the cracked door.
Sloane paused and peeked through the gap.
Michael and Lia were sitting together on the large leather armchair by the corner lamp. The chair wasn't technically large enough to sport two people but Lia was half sitting on Michael's lap to make it work. They were quietly reading through a thick FBI case file spread across Michael’s lap. Michael was tracing a line of text with his finger, his shoulder pressed against Lia's as she leaned in close to read over his arm.
Sloane hovered in the shadows, watching them work. Usually, Michael and Lia were so loud, so chaotic, constantly throwing up walls or trading sharp, exhausting banter to keep everyone else at an arm's length. But right now, it seems the dark had withered down the sharpness in them.
As Sloane watched, Michael reached the bottom of the page. Without looking up, he muttered a quiet question about a witness statement, and Lia provided a brief reply, her index finger tapping the corner of the folder. Then, Michael leaned in slightly, his lips brushing the edge of her hair as he whispered something low and private directly into her ear. It was meant just for her, and it made Lia let out a rare, light puff of laughter—a soft, genuine sound.
Michael let out a smile at the melodic sound before his hand absentmindedly drifted up, his fingers gently brushing a dark, stray strand of hair behind Lia's ear. It was a practiced, intimate gesture. Lia just looked at him for a moment longer with an expression Sloane couldn't quite decipher before they both turned their attention back to the folder in their lap.
It was a quiet kind of comfort that Sloane had never seen them share with anyone else. It made her chest feel unexpectedly warm, seeing them look so peaceful in a domestic world of their own making.
"Stalker."
Sloane nearly jumped out of her skin. Her heart leaped into her throat as she spun around, coming face-to-face with Celine. Celine peered over Sloane's shoulder, trying to see what was so interesting inside the library to catch her attention like this. The sudden, intense proximity caused Sloane's heart to give another violent thud.
An amused smile played on Celine's lips as she withdrew, the moonlight illuminating their lush curve. "What are you doing creeping around at one in the morning, blondie?"
"I could ask you the same thing," Sloane whispered back, a little embarrassed at being caught.
"I couldn't sleep," Celine replied smoothly. "I was too busy thinking about a certain beautiful mathematical genius."
For a second, she considered asking which mathematical genius Celine meant—perhaps Maryam Mirzakhani or Ada Lovelace? Instead, she settled for, "I was collecting data to answer your question."
Celine tilted her head, a hint of genuine confusion softening her features. "What question?"
"The one from the basement," Sloane explained earnestly. "You asked me if Michael and Lia are in love."
A slow, knowing smirk spread across Celine's face. She stepped directly into Sloane's personal space, her eyes twinkling with dark mischief. "I'm flattered you put so much time and thought into a random question I asked two weeks ago." She leaned in a fraction of an inch, her tone dropping into a velvety, playful purr. "So, did you reach a verdict?"
Sloane looked from Celine’s gaze back toward the warm sliver of light from the library door. She had all the data she needed.
"Yes," Sloane determined, a small smile tugging at her lips as she looked back up at Celine. "They are."
Michael and Lia were absolutely, undeniably in love.