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The distress call from Veyra-9 reached Oa fourteen minutes after the colony’s primary containment field failed. By the time you and Hal arrived, half the eastern mining complex had already collapsed into the crater beneath it, and your ring was feeding you information before your boots touched the ground.
Structural integrity was dropping across six occupied sectors. The colony’s emergency shields were functioning at thirty-two percent, while something deep beneath the colony produced violent fluctuations in local gravity, strong enough to drag machinery across the surface and wrench support beams from their anchors. Twelve hundred and seventeen life signs remained inside the evacuation perimeter, and you were still processing the numbers when a cargo hauler the size of a building lifted three feet into the air behind you.
“Jordan.”
“I see it.”
Hal was already moving. Green light wrapped around the hauler before gravity could decide which direction it wanted to fall, his construct catching the vehicle sideways while you drove both hands forward and reinforced the nearest habitation block with a lattice of support beams.
The ground lurched beneath you, and people screamed somewhere beyond the dust as your ring projected the colony schematics across your vision. The original plans were already outdated by several collapsed corridors and a new rupture spreading through the eastern sector.
“Sector three’s losing pressure,” you said. “Eighty-six people inside.”
Hal glanced toward the transport suspended in his construct. “I’m a little occupied.”
“You’ve got seven seconds before the gravitational field reverses again.”
“Plenty of time.”
It wasn’t, technically, but you knew Hal well enough not to waste energy arguing about his definitions. You split your construct instead, keeping the support lattice beneath the habitation block intact while a second stream of green light punched through the debris sealing sector three’s emergency corridor. A reinforced tunnel formed through twisted metal and shattered plating, sealed against the vacuum beyond and leading directly toward the western evacuation point.
“Route established,” you told the civilians through your ring. “Move now. Stay inside the green field until you reach the surface.”
The cargo hauler dropped. Hal caught it six inches above the ground, and when he pointedly reminded you that you’d said seven seconds, you informed him it had actually been six point eight.
“You rounded down.”
“I was being generous.”
The gravity reversed before he could answer, and everything that wasn’t anchored tried to leave the planet at once. Debris ripped upward around you while Hal threw another construct over the evacuation route, reinforcing your shield as you dug your boots into the fractured surface and redirected power toward the colony’s damaged stabilizers.
This was the part you understood: pressure, variables, consequences, and systems that behaved according to rules even as they failed. A reactor could malfunction in twelve different ways, but twelve failures still meant twelve possible responses. Structures obeyed engineering, energy had measurable properties, and frightened civilians could usually be moved with clear instructions and a sufficiently convincing tone of voice.
You knew exactly what to do when the universe tried to kill you.
“Jordan, release the hauler.”
A pause crackled over the comm. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
The construct vanished immediately, and that instant obedience was one of the things you appreciated most about working with him. Hal could be reckless, infuriating, and occasionally so convinced of his ability to improvise that you wanted to introduce his forehead to the nearest hard surface. Still, when the situation became too dangerous for debate, he trusted you.
The hauler shot upward as gravity shifted. You caught its chassis in a narrow construct and used its momentum rather than fighting it, redirecting the vehicle toward the exposed machinery surrounding the ruptured gravitational regulator.
Hal understood what you were doing before you finished. “Oh, that’s clever.”
“Containment field. Now.”
A dome of green light formed overhead, catching the hauler and forcing it back toward the surface. It slammed into the regulator’s damaged outer casing with enough force to break away the plating that had prevented your ring from scanning the mechanism underneath.
The results appeared instantly, and you sent the relevant section of the scan to Hal. “There.”
Hal followed the data without wasting time asking what he was looking for. The regulator itself hadn’t failed; a narrow black device had been embedded within its central mechanism, almost invisible among the conduits and pulsing in perfect opposition to the colony’s gravity regulation system. Every automated attempt to compensate had only strengthened the disturbance.
Sabotage.
Hal’s voice lost its humor. “Can you pull it?”
“Not safely. If I remove it before the regulator shuts down, the destabilization becomes permanent.”
“Right. We’ll avoid that.”
Another tremor rolled through the surface while you expanded the schematics and located the regulator’s emergency cutoffs. Three had become inaccessible beneath the collapsed lower levels, another had been destroyed outright, and the remaining functional pair were nearly four kilometers apart.
You calculated the timing and sent Hal the coordinates. “I need you at cutoff six.”
He looked at the information and then at you, understanding settling almost immediately. “You’re taking two.”
“I’m closer.”
“Two’s underneath the collapse.”
“I noticed.”
His jaw tightened. Hal disliked plans that required someone else to take the more dangerous position, but his feelings about a plan weren’t among the variables you needed to prioritize.
“You’ll have four-tenths of a second after my signal,” you said. “Any longer and the regulator restarts before I can extract the device.”
“That’s a tight window.”
“You can do it.”
The tension around his eyes eased, subtle enough that you might’ve missed it from anyone else. You always noticed those changes in Hal.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “So can you.”
That was considerably less useful.
You turned before your brain could examine why four ordinary words had lodged somewhere underneath your ribs and headed for the collapsed lower level. Eleven seconds later, you’d drilled through three layers of debris, reinforced the passage behind you, and emerged inside what had once been a maintenance corridor. The entire sector had buckled around the regulator below, leaving the walls pitched at odd angles beneath the flicker of emergency lights.
Your ring directed you toward the cutoff while Hal confirmed that only eleven civilians remained in sector three’s evacuation tunnel. You ordered him to maintain the shield until they were clear, and he immediately pointed out that your ring had already dropped to forty-three percent.
“I have enough.”
“I can see your charge level.”
“I’m aware.”
You found the cutoff buried behind a collapsed bulkhead and formed a wedge beneath it, green light straining against the weight as you forced enough space to reach the controls.
Over the comm, Hal sighed. “You always say that like I’m annoying you.”
“You usually are.”
“That almost sounded affectionate.”
Your concentration slipped for half a second, and the bulkhead dropped three inches before you caught it again. You could hear his amusement even after you warned him to focus, which only reinforced your longstanding opinion that emergencies would be considerably easier if Hal occasionally found something useful to do with his mouth.
You connected your ring directly to the regulator’s failing control network. Each pulse from the sabotage device sent another distortion through the colony, but the last civilians cleared sector three’s evacuation tunnel just as the emergency system accepted your override.
“On my mark.”
Your attention narrowed to the regulator, your remaining power, the delay between the two surviving cutoffs, and Hal’s position four kilometers away. Variables became numbers, and numbers became manageable.
“Three.”
You disengaged the first safety.
“Two.”
Your construct wrapped around the sabotage device.
“One.”
You killed the regulator.
“Mark.”
Hal hit his cutoff.
The gravitational distortion vanished. For one disorienting instant, debris hung at the apex of its upward motion before normal gravity dragged it back down. You ripped the device free while the regulator attempted to restart, flooding its control system with a replacement sequence and catching the damaged machinery in a temporary loop as Hal rerouted power from the colony’s western grid.
Green light flashed through every conduit in your scan, followed by the steady confirmation of emergency stabilizers coming online. You remained crouched beside the cutoff until your ring reported normal gravitational readings across every occupied sector.
“Status?” Hal asked.
“Stable.”
His exhale came through the comm loudly enough for you to hear. Only then did you realize you’d been holding your breath too.
“You?”
You glanced automatically at your ring. “Thirty-one percent.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
You looked down at yourself properly. Dust covered most of your uniform, a shallow cut ran along one forearm where debris had gotten through your shield during the descent, and your shoulder had started aching from holding the collapsed bulkhead above the cutoff.
“I’m fine.”
“You know, when you say that, it usually means—”
“Jordan.”
“Fine. Debrief first, lecture later.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to a lecture.”
“You don’t have to. I’m very generous with them.”
You smiled despite yourself and immediately tried to hide it, only to remember Hal was four kilometers away and couldn’t see you.
Thirty seconds later, your ring announced the arrival of the Corps support team.
The crisis was over, which meant you were rapidly approaching the part you didn’t know how to handle.
You were very good at debriefings because debriefings had structure. You provided timestamps, casualty figures, technical assessments, and an explanation of the sabotage device now sealed inside an evidence construct, then answered Salaak’s questions about the regulator failure and identified three procedural changes that could prevent similar attacks on colonies using the same model.
Hal interrupted twice. One interruption genuinely clarified part of your report; the other accomplished nothing beyond reminding the room that Hal Jordan remained Hal Jordan regardless of setting. You ignored that one so efficiently that Kilowog laughed from the other side of the chamber.
Twenty-three minutes after the debrief began, Salaak dismissed you. Hal rose at the same time, close enough that your shoulders nearly brushed, and you moved two inches to the left before you consciously realized you were doing it.
You’d made it six steps toward the exit when Hal asked, “Food?”
“I’m going to medical.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“That’s unnecessary.”
“Probably.”
You looked at him, and Hal answered with the easy smile that had caused an unreasonable number of problems in your life.
You’d met people who found Hal Jordan irritating, and you understood them intellectually. You even agreed with them on several specific points. Unfortunately, none of that had prevented you from falling in love with him eight months ago and immediately making the sensible decision to do absolutely nothing with that information.
The strategy worked reasonably well when you were on assignment. You and Hal could spend eighteen consecutive hours together without incident because work had rules, and your attention remained exactly where it belonged. You knew what he needed before he asked, while Hal knew when you wanted him to follow your lead and when you were relying on him to improvise.
Off duty, those rules disappeared.
Hal stood too close. He touched people casually while he talked to them, a hand landing on someone’s shoulder or fingers closing around an elbow as though physical contact required no greater consideration than breathing. He flirted with the same natural ease he used to fly, and trying to determine whether any particular smile meant something had driven you so thoroughly insane that you’d eventually stopped attempting it.
Avoiding situations in which the question might become relevant had seemed much more efficient.
“I can find medical by myself,” you said.
“I know.”
Hal fell into step beside you anyway. During a mission, you could’ve ordered him somewhere else and expected him to listen. Unfortunately, you had no authority over what Hal Jordan chose to do with his free time.
You’d checked.
Medical confirmed exactly what you already knew. Your arm needed less than a minute beneath a tissue regenerator, your shoulder was strained rather than damaged, and the attending medic recommended rest, hydration, and several hours without throwing yourself through collapsing buildings.
Hal sat on the edge of the examination platform beside yours while you were treated despite having no injuries of his own. You knew that because you’d already asked him.
When the regenerator finished, you thanked the medic and stood. Hal immediately followed.
“Dinner?”
You nearly sighed. “I have reports.”
“You gave the report.”
“I have additional reports.”
“What reports?”
You paused, and Hal waited with the patient expression of someone who knew you well enough to recognize when you were inventing work.
“There are always reports.”
“That might be the saddest thing you’ve ever said.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover.”
You left medical, and he followed.
That had been happening more often lately. For the first few months after you realized how you felt, your avoidance had remained subtle enough to pass as circumstance: you timed longer assignments for when Hal was due back from Earth, volunteered for patrols whenever he returned to Oa, and remained perfectly pleasant when you were stationed together until the work ended and something urgently required your attention somewhere else.
You still spent time with him, as long as other Lanterns were around. Sitting across from Hal in the mess hall while Kilowog argued with someone nearby was manageable, as were group flights over the eastern citadel or conversations after training. What you couldn’t seem to handle was Hal specifically asking to spend time alone with you.
The distinction had seemed entirely reasonable when you created it.
Increasingly, you suspected you’d underestimated Hal’s ability to recognize patterns.
“Come on,” he said. “One meal.”
“I eat meals regularly.”
“With me.”
“We’ve eaten together.”
“With half the Corps.”
“There were twelve people.”
Hal stopped walking.
You made it another three steps before realizing he was no longer beside you, and although continuing down the corridor briefly seemed like a viable option, you eventually turned.
He stood with his arms folded, the easy amusement gone from his expression. “You know, you could just tell me if you don’t like me.”
Your brows drew together. Of all the conclusions Hal could’ve reached after months of observation, somehow you hadn’t prepared for that one.
“What?”
“If you don’t like me.”
“I heard you. I’m trying to understand how you got there.”
His mouth tightened slightly. “You like working with me. At least, I think you do.”
“I do.”
“You’ll spend days with me on assignment. You trust me in the field. You’ve dragged me out of collapsing buildings, and I’m pretty sure you threatened a Khund commander because he shot me.”
“He’d already ignored two warnings.”
“He surrendered pretty quickly after the third.”
You waited, because none of that explained how he’d reached such an obviously incorrect conclusion.
Hal’s frustration became more visible. “Every time we finish the job, you leave. I ask you to get food, you suddenly have reports. I ask if you want to go flying, you’re training recruits. Last month I asked if you wanted to come to Earth for two days and you accepted a patrol assignment in another sector before I finished the sentence.”
“That patrol needed coverage.”
“It had six volunteers.”
You finally understood the problem, which unfortunately did nothing to provide a solution.
“I don’t dislike you.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re doing a pretty good impression.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
You opened your mouth, but every possible explanation led somewhere you weren’t prepared to go. This was exactly why you’d avoided having the conversation in the first place.
A battle offered choices. You could advance, retreat, defend, redirect, or evacuate, and even in a terrible situation, there was usually some action that improved the odds.
Hal took a few steps closer, stopping before he entered the distance where your thoughts usually became unreliable. “You don’t owe me your time. I know that. If you only want to be partners when we’re working, fine, but I’d rather you tell me than keep coming up with reasons you can’t stand being around me afterward.”
“I can stand being around you.”
“That sounded convincing.”
You rubbed your forehead. “Jordan.”
Hal’s expression tightened. “You’ve been calling me that a lot lately.”
“You’re annoying me.”
“I’ve always annoyed you.”
Whatever argument you might’ve made disappeared.
You could deal with Hal being irritating because irritation was familiar. What you hadn’t expected was the hurt underneath his frustration, badly hidden despite the casual tone he was trying to maintain.
You’d caused that.
“It’s different,” you said.
“What is?”
“Working with you.”
“Different from eating dinner?”
“Yes.”
Hal blinked. “You flew into an unstable gravity field with me half an hour ago.”
“I knew what I was doing.”
“And dinner?”
“I don’t.”
He went quiet long enough that you could practically watch him attempt to process the answer.
“You don’t know how to eat dinner.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’m trying really hard to understand.”
“I know,” you said. “Explaining it is the part I’m bad at.”
The admission came out more frustrated than you intended, and Hal’s expression shifted enough to make you close your eyes for a moment. You’d negotiated ceasefires under conditions that required less careful phrasing than this.
“When we’re working, I understand what’s expected of me,” you said. “I know what you need and what I need from you. If something goes wrong, I can usually identify the problem and correct it.”
“Okay.”
“You’re predictable in emergencies.”
Hal looked offended. “You’re calling me predictable?”
“Your decision-making patterns are extremely consistent.”
“That might be worse.”
You ignored him. “I know what you’ll do when someone’s in danger. I know which risks you’ll take and which ones you won’t. I know when you’re actually confident and when you’re pretending because everyone else needs you to be.”
The indignation disappeared from his face.
You wished it hadn’t. Talking was easier when Hal wasn’t looking at you with quiet concentration.
“You trust me,” you continued. “I trust you. That part is easy.”
“And dinner isn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
You could feel the conversation approaching a point you’d spent eight months deliberately avoiding, so you made one last attempt to redirect it.
“That’s irrelevant.”
“You’ve been avoiding me for months. It feels pretty relevant.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.”
One raised eyebrow forced an immediate amendment.
“I haven’t been avoiding you professionally.”
“That somehow makes it worse.”
You groaned and began walking again, but Hal caught up within three strides. “You can tell me to fly into an exploding reactor, but you can’t tell me why you won’t have dinner with me?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“To you.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what worries me.”
You stopped so abruptly that Hal nearly walked into you. “I’m good at my job.”
His expression softened immediately. “I know.”
“I’m very good at my job. I know how to handle a crisis, I know how to make decisions when everything is going wrong, and I can keep track of a thousand civilians and three failing systems while someone is trying to kill me.”
“I’ve seen you do it.”
“I know what I’m supposed to do when a planet’s evacuating. I know what to do when somebody opens fire on us. I know how to contain a collapsing wormhole.” You spread your hands in frustration, the explanation feeling perfectly logical right up until the final sentence escaped. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when I’m in love with you.”
Hal went completely still.
Your brain caught up with your mouth slowly enough that you had time to replay the sentence before the full horror arrived.
Surely you hadn’t just said that, but Hal’s stunned expression confirmed that you absolutely had.
You briefly considered whether leaving the planet fast enough would technically end the conversation. Your ring needed recharging before any long-distance trip, but there were several other sectors on Oa, and at least one probably contained work.
“I have reports,” you said.
You turned.
Hal caught your wrist without pulling, his fingers closing just firmly enough to stop you. When you looked down at his hand, you discovered that fighting a gravitational catastrophe had done considerably less damage to your ability to think.
“You absolutely do not have reports.”
“There are almost certainly reports somewhere.”
“You just told me you’re in love with me.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you?”
“Unfortunately.”
Hal smiled.
The bastard actually smiled.
“You think this is funny.”
“I think you confessed your love for me while trying to explain why you’re emotionally incapable of having dinner.”
“When you phrase it that way, it sounds bad.”
“I don’t know how else to phrase it.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
His fingers shifted slightly around your wrist, and your entire nervous system noticed the movement.
“Can we pretend this didn’t happen?”
“No.”
“I expected that.”
“Nice to know I’m still predictable.”
You glared at him, but the smile on his face softened into something far more dangerous than amusement. You’d built up resistance to Hal’s grin over the years, but the quieter expressions still went straight through every defense you had.
He released your wrist, and disappointment had barely registered before Hal stepped closer again.
“You really thought avoiding me was the solution?”
“I didn’t have another one.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“I accidentally told you less than a minute ago, and I’m considering fleeing Oa. Voluntarily telling you was never a realistic option.”
Hal laughed quietly, but his hand settled just below your elbow with far more care than humor. He gave you plenty of space to move away.
You didn’t.
“How long?”
“That feels unnecessary.”
“How long?”
You considered refusing and realized he’d probably keep asking. “Eight months.”
Hal’s eyebrows lifted. “Eight?”
“Yes.”
“And your solution for eight months was to avoid being alone with me.”
“It prevented complications.”
“Did it?”
“It did until this conversation.”
Hal’s mouth twitched, but whatever joke had occurred to him went unsaid. After a moment, his expression sobered.
“Do you know what I’ve been thinking for the last four months?”
You were beginning to suspect you didn’t want to know.
Hal glanced toward the empty corridor before continuing. “For the last four months, I’ve been trying to figure out what I did wrong. I figured I pushed too much, or said something you took seriously when I didn’t mean it that way. You were already hard to get alone before that, but once I started actually asking, you always found somewhere else to be.”
Guilt settled heavily in your stomach. “Hal.”
“You started calling me Jordan all the time.”
You frowned. You hadn’t even realized you’d been doing it more often.
Hal shrugged, though the movement looked more uncomfortable than casual. “I thought you trusted me with your life and didn’t actually want me around.”
“That’s not true.”
“I know that now.”
“I’m sorry.”
Hal exhaled. “So we’ve spent the last six months mutually pining while you avoided me and I kept finding excuses to be around you.”
The words took a moment to register.
“Mutual?”
Hal’s mouth curved. “Yeah.”
“You said mutual.”
“I did.”
“You’re in love with me.”
“Yes.”
You looked at him before asking the only question your brain could assemble. “How long?”
“Six months.”
Your thoughts scattered. You’d already been two months into your own carefully managed avoidance by then, which meant Hal had apparently started trying to get closer after you’d already committed yourself to keeping him at a safe distance.
Hal watched realization move across your face with growing amusement. You were, unfortunately, reviewing the evidence.
“You remember when we finished that assignment on Mogo?” he asked. “I told you we should stay overnight in case the situation changed. It had been stable for six hours.”
You closed your eyes. “You invented a monitoring period.”
“I was trying to spend time with you.”
That was somehow worse.
When you finally looked at him again, he was infuriatingly pleased with himself.
“There was also the Vega assignment,” Hal continued. “I volunteered because you were assigned.”
Your disbelief must’ve shown, because Hal kept going.
“And the training rotation.”
“You hate training rotations.”
“I do.”
Understanding arrived in increasingly humiliating waves. “You spent almost three weeks teaching recruits because I was assigned to Oa?”
“Two and a half. Kilowog kicked me out before the third week ended.”
“I thought you were being responsible.”
“That was your mistake.”
The laugh escaped before you could stop it, and some of the tension that had been winding through your chest since he stopped you in the corridor finally loosened.
Hal smiled at the sound.
You were never going to survive this.
“I really am bad at this,” you admitted.
“Yeah.”
You frowned. “You could disagree.”
“I could, but apparently subtlety hasn’t been working for either of us.”
That was fair enough that you couldn’t argue.
His thumb brushed once over the inside of your forearm, and your attention snapped immediately to the point of contact. Hal’s gaze flicked down, then back to your face.
“For someone who’ll grab me by the uniform and throw me across a battlefield without warning,” he said carefully, “you get really nervous when I touch you off duty.”
“That’s different.”
“Because it’s a battlefield?”
“You’re usually about to be hit by something.”
His amusement faded into something gentler. “You could touch me when I’m not about to be hit by something.”
Your breathing stuttered for a second. “You’d be okay with that?”
His eyebrows rose. “I just told you I’m in love with you.”
“Yes, but feelings and physical boundaries are separate considerations.”
Hal looked genuinely surprised before warmth settled across his expression. “You know what? Fair. Yes, I’d be okay with that.”
You nodded once, strangely relieved by the clarity of the answer.
“And you?” he asked.
“You can touch me.”
Saying it felt somehow more difficult than receiving fire from an entire battalion.
You lowered your arms, and Hal waited without closing the remaining distance. He could be patient when something mattered to him, a fact that did nothing useful for your heartbeat.
Eventually, you reached for his hand.
Your fingers slid between his, simple and manageable despite the way your attention fixed instantly on the warmth of his palm.
“This is okay,” you decided.
“I’m glad.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m trying very hard not to.”
That was probably the best you were going to get from him.
You squeezed his hand without thinking, and the expression that crossed his face made it obvious you were going to need far more practice with this.
“So,” Hal said after a moment, “dinner?”
The original problem remained. Dinner had no tactical parameters, no mission brief, and no clear division of responsibilities, but you were beginning to think you could survive the uncertainty.
“Yes.”
Hal blinked. “That easy?”
“It wasn’t easy. I had incomplete information before.”
“You had six months of me following you around the universe.”
“You follow people around the universe professionally.”
He considered that. “Okay, that does make it harder.”
You started walking again, and Hal stayed beside you with his hand still wrapped around yours. Every few steps, you became conscious of the contact all over again, but the sensation was already becoming less alarming.
“Earth?” he asked.
“For dinner?”
“Yeah. I know a place.”
“That sentence has never led anywhere good.”
“You’ll like it.”
“You don’t know what I like.”
Hal looked at you.
You immediately realized your mistake.
He knew exactly how you took your tea. He knew which training rooms you preferred because their artificial gravity controls were more responsive, that you hated assignments requiring ceremonial uniforms, and that you always checked civilian casualty figures before reading the tactical summary.
Apparently, he’d also spent six months engineering excuses to remain in your vicinity.
“Fine,” you said. “Earth. But I’m choosing the route.”
“Control issues.”
“Survival instinct.”
“You flew into a collapsing gravity field today.”
“I understood the gravity field.”
Hal laughed, and you let him.
Before leaving Oa, you both stopped long enough to recharge your rings, a routine task that provided several welcome minutes in which nobody needed to discuss feelings. Once you were ready, you crossed onto one of the open terraces overlooking the city, green and silver stretching beneath a sky filled with unfamiliar stars while Lanterns passed overhead on their way between assignments.
Hal lifted from the terrace.
You followed.
He didn’t release your hand.
Flying one-handed was inefficient, but you decided the reduced efficiency was tolerable.
For several minutes, neither of you spoke, and the familiar concentration of flight settled over you as Oa receded behind you. You calculated the route toward Earth automatically, accounting for distance and the nearest safe points to divert if another distress call came through.
Beside you, Hal adjusted his trajectory to match yours without being asked.
You understood this part.
The rest would take practice, but for once, the absence of a clear procedure didn’t seem quite so threatening.
Hal glanced over. “Just to confirm something.”
You narrowed your eyes. “What?”
“This is a date.”
Your trajectory shifted several degrees before you corrected it.
Hal laughed hard enough to lose altitude.
“I’m reconsidering,” you informed him.
“No, you’re not.”
“I could.”
“You’re holding my hand.”
You looked down.
You were, and when Hal deliberately loosened his grip a fraction, your fingers tightened around his before you could stop them.
For once, Hal had enough self-preservation to keep quiet.
You continued toward Earth together through the dark, hand in hand after months spent carefully avoiding exactly this possibility. Somehow, an invitation to dinner had become a confession of love because apparently that was easier for you than admitting you didn’t know how to navigate a date.
You could contain a collapsing wormhole, coordinate an evacuation while gravity tore a colony apart, and make decisions under fire faster than most people could understand the problem.
Figuring out Hal Jordan was going to require a different skill set.
Hal squeezed your hand, and you squeezed back.
You could learn.