Trinity was having a heck of a day. She’d been bogged down removing a virus from the academy servers from the moment she arrived at work.

Poor Hawkeye. They’d had a great day together yesterday saving his brother. He’d been helpful as he could and even snuck off to bring her back coffee without her asking.

The big hunk had looked like a homeless kitten when she’d told him she wouldn’t be able to work with him today.

But that was nothing compared to the faces she was about to see now.

“Okay, cadets,” she said in a commanding voice.

She’d come to the dorm to speak with them in one of the common rooms during their lunch break.

They gathered before her now. Some looked confused, while others had already begun to cringe.

“I’m going to level with you,” she said. “You’re watching too much porn.”

There were a few gasps but way more giggles, and more than a handful of red faces.

“If you’re going to look at porn, you cannot do it on the academy server,” she continued after the reactions died down. “You need to use the proxy server that I set up. Does everyone know how to do that?”

No one wanted to admit that they didn’t know how to do it. Or that they wanted to learn how to do it.

Basically they all just stared at her, wild-eyed, clutching their hands together to keep from raising them.

“I’m going to show you guys, just in case,” she said, taking pity on them.

Though they hardly deserved it. Proxy or no proxy, they were watching way too much porn. How they had time for anything else, she had no idea.

Everyone watched her demonstrate. Then she dismissed them.

One cadet hung back.

“Um, you can’t, uh, see who looked at what, can you?” he mumbled.

“I could if I wanted to,” she told him. “Lucky for you I’m not interested in anything except keeping the academy servers clean.”

“Oh,” he said in a relieved way and wandered off.

She sighed and headed back to the desk where she’d been working all morning.

It was taking longer than she’d thought. There were some strange artifacts in part of the code of the virus - stuff that didn’t really belong in a simple malware program. But she didn’t really have time to digitally dissect the whole process. Once she was sure the server was clean, her job was done.

It was late afternoon by the time Trinity finally headed back to the chapel to work on digitizing records.

The whole day had been super frustrating.

She hadn’t been able to trace the exact purpose of the virus, but she pushed that aside. There was too much other work to do.

On a whim, she decided to walk the long way through the labyrinth. It might take more time, but she hoped it would improve her mood.

The sun was hot overhead but the fresh air tasted good and it was nice to hear the birds singing, even if they took flight as she drew near.

When she emerged at the chapel on the other side, she was feeling more relaxed.

But that feeling was short-lived.

As soon as her feet hit the marble floors she could see that something was badly wrong.

The chapel was like a Christmas tree farm lately, with stacks of boxes of files growing up to chest level at intervals through the room. But Trinity knew what was in each stack.

Now she stood frozen, gazing at the room in horror.

Someone had been moving the boxes.

Whole stacks were out of place. And a new row of boxes was in an area that was reserved for finished work.

Hawkeye came into view with a box of files in his hands.

“What-what’s going on?” she asked.

“I didn’t want you to get behind,” he explained. “So I got as much work done on my own as I could.”

Trinity’s heart dropped to her stomach.

He was trying to be nice - she knew that.

But the amount of work she was going to have to redo was staggering. And she had no idea how much of it was ruined and what could be saved.

“Thanks so much,” she said as politely as she could. “Let’s see what you did.”

“I started where I left off yesterday,” he said, showing her two full stacks of files.

She opened the hard drive on her computer.

They were all there, neatly labeled in digital folders.

“Then I finished your section,” he said, indicating the second stack in the newly finished row. “When I looked at the hard drive I could see how it was labeled so I continued.”

She opened the digital file and checked the top docs in two of the boxes - again everything looked like it was expertly done.

Finally, he showed her the new section he had just begun.

“I hope you don’t mind, I labeled it Temporary Tag 1 so that you could properly rename it when you arrived,” he said.

“You set this up?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I even read the manual for the scanner and realized we could save some time by adjusting the default resolution in the settings instead of having to choose it every time we start a new batch.”

She stared at him, amazed. He had done a really good job, even on the stuff she had been working on.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, standing. “I just…”

“Didn’t think I could handle it?” he teased.

“Oh, no, I…”

“You know, I did build and man an interstellar craft using technology the human race hasn’t even dreamed of.” He smirked at her, one eyebrow slightly lifted. “I can handle some data replication.”

Damn.

Maybe it confirmed that she was a nerd, but Trinity was pretty sure that sexier words had never been spoken.

“Are you satisfied?” he asked.

Maybe it was just the relief after a long, hard day, but Trinity suddenly felt as though her heart was light as air.

She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a hug.

His body felt so good against hers that it almost took her breath away. He smelled like heaven. She tried to breathe him in, just a little.

He held her carefully, as if he were afraid she was going to bolt. The contrast between his intimidating size and his excessive gentleness was intoxicating.

She soaked in the feeling for as long as she dared before pulling back slightly.

Hawkeye gazed down at her, his eyes twinkling.

Without thinking about it, Trinity went up on her toes and kissed the smirk right off his mouth.