Trinity sat on the step outside the new admin wing and looked out over the garden while she drank her coffee.

She didn’t usually arrive early, but somehow this morning she’d been unable to sit around eating breakfast.

It’s not because of him.

But it was definitely because of Hawkeye. She hoped it was mostly because she was unhappy about wasting an entire morning showing him how to help her do something mind-numbingly simple.

And Henderson was in such a breakneck hurry to get her project completed.

She wondered for the hundredth time why she hadn’t been given an assistant if the task was so urgent.

But each time she made a written request it was kicked back.

The first time, she’d been super embarrassed that she’d completed the request form improperly. The error was tiny - a date field left blank next to one of the places she’d had to initial - but she had been determined to be much more careful in the future.

The second time, she was very sure the form was correct, but it was kicked back again on a technicality. Rex, the admin who had given her the form, let her know that Captain Henderson really wanted to see the request on an updated version of the same form.

She had agreed and completed it and then waited two weeks. When she went back to check, they had no record of the form. Rex just clucked and shook his head, telling Trinity that it was a shame, and the form must have been lost.

And so it went with all of Trinity’s requests. Even her request for a hand truck to make transporting all the boxes of files easier had gone unfulfilled. If it weren’t for Hawkeye, she wouldn’t have gotten anything done at all yet. She would still be lugging boxes over.

The mist began to clear in the garden, revealing the shape of the boxwood labyrinth. The warm breeze was just the same as in her dream. Trinity found herself searching the air for snow.

She knew it was only a dream, but she could still hear the echo of him saying her name before that kiss.

“Trinity,” a deep voice said from behind.

She nearly dropped her coffee.

“Hello,” she chirped, leaping up and turning around to see Hawkeye approaching.

Dear lord, he was even hotter than in the dream. His dark hair was a bit too long, which only drew attention to those soulful brown eyes. A black t-shirt stretched to bursting over his broad chest.

Just as she was about to faint with lust, he smiled at her, dark eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Thanks for letting me help today,” he said.

“You don’t have to say thanks. You’re the one helping me,” she replied. “Do you want coffee?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll keep you company.”

“I was just going in,” she told him. “Come on, let’s get started.”

Somehow, he got in front of her and held the door and she willed herself not to get drawn into orbit around his big warm body as she brushed past him to get inside.

Once she passed the threshold, she stopped to admire the room. It didn’t seem to matter how much time she spent in this space, the little chapel always took her breath away.

Pale stucco walls rose around her like a cloud up to the vaulted ceiling, which was beamed with wrought iron, and crafted in delicate spires. The chapel jutted out behind the rest of the monastery, most likely to capture the ethereal views. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows were set at intervals throughout the room, allowing a distracting panorama of the fields on two sides and the beginning of the boxwood labyrinth on the third. Elaborate tapestries depicting painstakingly detailed pastoral scenes hung between the big windows. The floor was made of large black and white marble tiles that never failed to make Trinity think of Alice in Wonderland. The old benches had been removed and replaced with a couple of oak tables that were covered in file boxes and computer equipment. But there was still something magical about the place.

“It’s very beautiful,” Hawkeye said softly. He had been here many times too.

“Yes, and there’s good light,” Trinity stated the obvious.

“Your job is very important,” he said.

“Sure, I guess,” she said. “Why?”

“You have the largest and most beautiful room in the whole building,” Hawkeye explained.

“That’s true,” she replied. “But I don’t actually have the most important job.”

“Oh,” he said, looking unconvinced.

“I used to wonder why Henderson gave me the chapel too,” she confided. “But I think it’s because the air conditioning doesn’t work as well out here as in the rest of the building. I don’t know if it’s all the windows or if it was too hard to get enough ductwork out here.”

“I don’t mind it being a little warmer,” Hawkeye said.

“Me neither, if it will get me this view,” she agreed. Though she shivered to think what winter would be like. She’d always preferred the cold, but the open, drafty area might be too much even for her.

She led him over to the table with the scanner. It was the best she could afford. She’d bought it with her own money when it became clear that her requests weren’t going through for a second machine. There was no way they could get anything done if they were hand feeding a page at a time. She only hoped it would hold up for the duration. It was designed for home use, and she figured it would get a lifetime’s worth of action in a month at this rate.

She was impressed when Hawkeye pulled a note pad out of his satchel. Was he really going to take notes?

“This machine scans an image of the paper copy and sends it to the place where the information is stored,” she explained.

“A hard drive?” Hawkeye asked.

“Yes,” she said, pausing to look up at him.

“I did a little research,” he explained. “I didn’t want to be completely useless.”

“Oh,” Trinity said, feeling a bit off balance. “That’s great.”

“So, we scan the images to the hard drive and then what?” he asked.

“Well, it’s more complicated than that,” she explained. “There are so many files and they have to be organized. Luckily it seems like most of the academy admins over the years knew what they were doing. Each file is color coded, that will tell us which folder to save it in. And we’ll title the file with whatever is written on the tab.”

She pulled the first folder to show him the tab with a green sticker and the words Janitorial Budget - Quarter 1.

He watched as she completed the process on that file, nodded and jotted down some notes.

She bent to pick up another and felt his eyes on her posterior. When she straightened and turned he looked quickly down at his note pad. But not before she caught his cocky little half-smile.

Trinity took a deep breath and willed herself not to notice. He was here to help.

But she didn’t retrieve the next file.

When Hawkeye bent to grab it, she couldn’t help returning the favor with a quick glance at his ass. She was secretly hoping some part of him would be less than godlike, but once again she was foiled. Every inch of him was utter perfection.

And matters were only worse when he turned back to her and she felt her cheeks burn at being caught.

He seemed to take pity on her, looking back down at the file and handing it to her.

Their fingers brushed lightly and Trinity felt as if she had touched the live power coupling inside her laptop. Her heart raced and her fingers buzzed.

She rushed to demonstrate the scanning and digital filing process one last time.

“May I try one?” he asked politely.

“Sure,” she said, looking out the window this time when he leaned over to grab a folder.

When she had watched him scan two complete files on his own without incident, she returned to the table opposite his to begin working on her own stack of files.

The chapel was quiet with only the sounds of their typing and the whirs of the scanners.

She was both disappointed and relieved that they weren’t chatting. Scanning could be lonely work. She hadn’t realized how lonely until Hawkeye had begun carrying files for her. He only went back and forth but it was a nice feeling to have him stopping in and out throughout the day.

She looked over at him.

He was concentrating fully on the task at hand, dark eyes fixed on the screen of the scanner as if he wasn’t convinced it was going to do his bidding unless he kept a sharp eye on it.

He was working efficiently and doing a good job though. He was way more tuned in than she had given him credit for.

Maybe they all were. She really didn’t know much about them - only what everyone else on the planet did.

She smiled thinking back to the day the news had broken online. She and Veronica and Brooke had huddled around her laptop to read about the men and then wig out over their pictures. Brooke had been convinced the pictures had been photoshopped.

They knew better now.

The whole idea was incredible. Alien life forms migrating into gorgeous human bodies, arriving quietly on Earth and judging its population based on whether the alien-men could mate with human women and become human themselves… It was like something out of a movie.

But the public only knew about three aliens who had been deposited on Earth, and their leader who came to intervene when they ran into some troubles.

No one knew about the guys in the lab, or about Lobo, Conan or Hawkeye, here at the academy.

And Trinity found herself wondering if their guys were the only ones out in the wild, or if there were others outside the lab.

So far, the world was in love with the men - they were polite, gorgeous, and had clearly studied human culture at length, even if that study concluded with the 1980s.

But, being who she was, and doing what she did, Trinity knew that they couldn’t enjoy this level of popularity or privacy for long.

Sooner or later some clever person or destructive group would start hacking and leaking. And no matter how awesome the boys from Aerie were, there would be something that the public wouldn’t like.

And Trinity couldn’t get involved in that.

She had a mission. And it didn’t allow her to put personal relationships ahead of the cause. That was part of the unspoken white-hats code. Hacktivists like her, who fought for good instead of evil, were too few to be sacrificed on the altar of public scrutiny.

No, if Trinity wanted to keep quietly protecting bullied kids and struggling non-profits from being hacked and blackmailed, she would have to keep her own life nice and boring.

So, she might look at the tasty alien - but she would not touch. At least not in real life.

Feeling content with her decision, she finished the file she was working on and decided to have a nice stretch before starting the next one.

“Want something to drink?” Hawkeye offered from his table. “I brought some iced tea.”

The late morning sun had suffused the room with both light and heat. The chapel was like a greenhouse on hot days.

Hawkeye reached into his satchel and pulled out two bottles.

“I’d drink anything cold right now,” she confessed.

He stood frozen for a moment with a faraway look in his eyes, like he was concentrating on something important. An involuntary shiver ran down Trinity’s spine. Then he strode over and handed her a bottle.

“Thanks,” she said, trying not to notice how easy it would be to flow into his arms, just like in her dream. Her decision was final.

But, wow, part of her wished she didn’t have to keep working with him - it was going to be so distracting.

She looked down at the tea.

Peppermint - her favorite kind. And there was a thin coating of frost on the bottle.

“My favorite - and it’s still cold,” she said wonderingly.

“I’m glad you like it,” he smiled down at her, looking very pleased with himself.

She twisted off the lid and took a sip of the sweet cold liquid.

It left a trail of brightness as it slid down her throat.

And it tasted like an epic play of the game, in beverage form.

Maybe working with Hawkeye wouldn’t be so bad after all.