I turn my head to study Jamila's profile, admiring the elegant curve of her jaw, the slight upturn of her nose, the way the warm glow of her laptop casts kaleidoscopic shadows across her rich brown skin. A fierce surge of affection swells in my chest, almost overwhelming in its intensity.

"So, how'd it go the other day?" Jamila asks after a comfortable lull settles between us. Her tone is carefully casual, but I detect an unmistakable undercurrent of curiosity simmering beneath the nonchalance.

I shrug, aiming for a practiced indifference that feels increasingly forced with each passing day. "About as well as can be expected, I guess. Jerry Caldwell is certainly... thorough."

An unconscious frown tugs at the corners of my mouth as fleeting memories of the deposition drift through my mind's eye - Caldwell's relentless questioning, the inexorable push to revisit those traumatic final moments in agonizing detail. A tremor runs through me, my fingers instinctively clenching in the fabric of Jamila's comforter.

She must notice my sudden tension, because she shifts closer until our shoulders are just barely brushing. The hint of contact is electrifying, startling me from my momentary brooding funk. When I chance a sidelong glance, her expression is unreadable, those warm brown eyes regarding me with a curious intensity.

"Hey," she murmurs, voice pitched low and soothing. "You don't have to get into specifics if you don't want to. I know how much of a mind-job this whole thing has been for you."

My initial reaction is to deflect, to brush off her concern with a flippant joke or a reassuring platitude. But something in the gentle sincerity of her tone gives me pause. I find myself meeting her steady gaze, searching those fathomless depths for the empathetic understanding I know rests there, just waiting to be tapped.

With a slow exhalation, I feel the vice-like tension gripping my chest loosen ever so slightly. "Yeah, it's... it's been rough, for sure. But nothing I can't handle."

A wry smile tugs at the corners of my mouth as I nudge her arm playfully. "Besides, you know me - I live for dramatic confrontations and emotionally eviscerating legal proceedings. It's like a day at the beach."

Jamila snorts indelicately, rolling her eyes. "Ugh, don't even joke about that. I can only imagine how insufferably smug you'd be if courtroom theatrics were legitimately your calling in life."

"Oh come on, you know you'd find it incredibly charming," I shoot back with an exaggerated leer. "Just picture it - me in a crisp power suit, dominating the proceedings with my rapier wit and legal acumen. You'd never be able to resist my eccentric barrister energy."

She shoves me lightly, her expression caught somewhere between disgust and reluctant amusement. "Yeah, that's a real panty-dropper for sure. 'Hey baby, wanna come back to my place and subpoena these buns?'"

We both crack up at that, any lingering tension effectively shattered by the absurdity of the mental image. For a few blessed moments, we're just two giggly teenagers again indulging in some shameless low-brow humor, the weight of the world lifted from our shoulders.

But, like all reprieves these days, it's only temporary. As our laughter tapers off, a contemplative quiet settles over us once more. I can sense Jamila studying me out of the corner of her eye, gauging my state of mind.

"So was it... really bad?" she asks at last. "Like, worse than you were expecting?"

I let out a slow breath, rolling onto my back to stare up at the familiar pockmarked expanse of her bedroom ceiling. Jamila has always been able to cut through my bravado and bullshit like a hot knife through butter, disarming me with her intuitive emotional perception.

"It wasn't great, I'll be honest," I admit after a beat of consideration. "Having to relive those moments in such clinical detail, with Caldwell probing at every angle, looking for weaknesses to exploit... it was brutal. Like emotional sandpaper on an open wound, you know?"

I shudder, the phantom echoes of Caldwell's calm, measured intonations replaying in my mind. Beside me, I feel Jamila shift closer until her leg is pressed flush against mine, radiating reassuring warmth.

"Hey, you made it through though, right?" she says softly, resting her hand atop my own and giving a gentle, comforting squeeze. "That's what matters, darling. One step at a time, one horrendous experience closer to sticking that smug asshole behind bars where he belongs."

The steel underpinning her words lends them a grounding potency, providing me an anchor to latch onto amidst the roiling tide of unpleasant recollections. I nod, turning to meet her gaze with as much conviction as I can muster. "Yeah, you're right. I just have to keep my eyes on the prize, you know? As much of a battle as these pre-trial hurdles are, they're nothing compared to what's coming."

Something flickering behind those luminous eyes, some unspoken emotion I can't quite parse, but it's gone in an instant. Jamila squeezes my hand once more before reluctantly withdrawing, her expression settling into a look of fond exasperation.

"Well aren't you just a regular little Templar, storming the breach against injustice and villainy everywhere you go." She flashes me a quick grin, all sparkling teeth and mirthful confidence. "It's seriously impressive, you know. Your tenacity, I mean."

I can't quite stop the flush of warmth from spreading across my cheeks at the sincerity behind her words. Jamila has never been one to deal out excessive praise or empty platitudes. If she's saying something like that, she genuinely means it.

"Thanks, Jam," I murmur, holding her intense gaze and pouring every ounce of my gratitude into those two simple syllables. Then, I ruin the moment with a whisper. "I think it's weird to call a Jewish girl a Templar, though. Just FYI."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

She bursts into laughter and swats my shoulder back and forth, with love taps, none of them even breaching the threshold of an itch, much less pain. "Fine. Now we're even."

For a long, suspended heartbeat, the world around us seems to compress down to this single point of connection between us. Everything else - the looming legal showdown, the specter of Illya's lingering menace, the entire churning cosmic clusterfuck that is my daily existence - falls away into blessed insignificance.

Then, like the shattering of a fragile soap bubble, the moment passes. Jamila blinks and just like that, the spell is broken. She leans back, putting a sliver of polite distance between us that feels utterly alien after the closeness we've shared so many times before.

My subconscious prickles with unease at the subtle shift, a swirling intuitive disquiet that sets my nerves jangling in that frustratingly ineffable way. But on a conscious level, I can't discern anything overtly amiss, nothing solid enough to put my finger on. Just... something in the quality of Jamila's smile, maybe. Or the arch of her brow. Little microfractures in the facade that whisper of some deeper, unknowable fissure lurking beneath the surface.

For a few seconds, uncertainty wars with willful obliviousness in my mind. There's that nagging urge to pursue the matter, to dig and probe until I unearth the root of that simmering unease. But the easier path, the well-trodden rut of willful ignorance, ultimately proves too tempting to resist. Easier to rationalize, to brush aside those vague, insubstantial twinges of doubt rather than risk unearthing some unpalatable truth I'm not ready to confront.

So I swallow my trepidation, forcing a casual half-smile in response to Jamila's own slightly too-bright expression. "Don't get too impressed just yet, sparky. The real fireworks are still to come."

She snorts indelicately, tension fracturing as the façade of normalcy reasserts itself. "Please, you live for putting on a show. I wouldn't have it any other way."

And just like that, the current shifts once more into the warm, familiar waters we're both so accustomed to navigating. I relax into the flow of our easy back-and-forth, bantering and teasing and steadfastly ignoring the dull, insistent pulsing of unease still lurking at the very edges of my subconscious awareness.

For now, at least, I can keep those niggling doubts buried beneath the comfortable fiction we've so carefully constructed around us. The illusion that everything is still fundamentally okay, still tenuously under control despite the enduring madness swirling at our periphery.

A comforting lie, perhaps.

But a necessary one, nonetheless.

----------------------------------------

The night outside Jamila's window has deepened to an inky, velvet blackness by the time our musings drift to the latest crop of up-and-coming heroes making waves on the national scene. We're curled together amidst the rumpled blankets of her bed, voices pitched to conspiratorial whispers so as not to disturb the rest of the sleeping household.

"Okay, but be real - how badass would it be to have Stellarion on the team?" I murmur, unable to contain the fangirlish edge of awe from creeping into my tone. "Dude's basically a goddamn human sunbeam. We'd never have to worry about stealth or night ops again."

Jamila snorts softly, waving a dismissive hand. "Please, that pompous ray of sunshine wouldn't last a week before driving us all certifiably insane with his lofty sermons on the cosmic glory of truth and justice or whatever."

I arch an eyebrow, feigning wounded offense. "Hey now, the guy still seems pretty legit! Sure, maybe a tad... grandiloquent in his vernacular, but you can't deny his raw power is off the charts."

"I need you to know that you just used the phrase 'grandiloquent in his vernacular'. I'm just pointing that one out while also agreeing with you. Just so we're clear," Jamila concedes with a slight incline of her head. "Although if we're talking sheer devastation potential, nobody's topping Maelstrom these days."

I shudder involuntarily at the mention of the Seattle-based elemental juggernaut, my mind automatically conjuring footage of her apocalyptic rampage through the ruins of Portland last year. Jamila must sense my unease because she gentles her tone, draping one reassuring arm across my shoulders.

"Hey, it's all good, babe. No way a big fish like that would have any reason to come sniffing around our sad little pond, right?" She punctuates the rhetorical question with a playful squeeze, coaxing a reluctant chuckle from me.

"Ugh, I sure as hell hope not," I groan, rolling my eyes dramatically. "Pretty sure the only effective countermeasure we peasants would have against that kind of biblical fury would be to, like, beg for a merciful death or something."

"Oh ye of little faith," Jamila tuts with an air of exaggerated affront. "Don't sell yourself so short, darling. You got Chernobyl to turn himself in, remember? I'm sure you could figure something out with her. Don't you have, like, saltwater immunity or something?"

I cough a couple times, blinking. "Illya is not quite the same as Maelstrom. And, yes, but, you know, I still have to breathe water and stuff. No gills. You would know more than anyone else!"

We dissolve into breathless snickering at the sheer ludicrous absurdity of the notion, our hilarity no doubt fueled in part by the late hour and the comforting cocoon of Jamila's bunker-like sanctum. For a few stolen moments, there's nothing but uncomplicated mirth echoing between us, a fleeting respite from the crushing weight of our day-to-day existences.

Eventually, though, the laughter peters out and a more contemplative lull settles over us. I can't quite smother a jaw-cracking yawn, the bone-deep weariness of recent days finally catching up to me now that my guard has been lowered.

Jamila stifles a sympathetic yawn of her own, leaning over to plant a soft, lingering kiss on my forehead. "Sounds like someone's run out of steam," she murmurs affectionately, carding her fingers through my sweat-damp hair. "We should probably call it a night, huh?"

I open my mouth to protest on reflex, loath to surrender these increasingly rare pockets of serenity and levity we've managed to carve out for ourselves. But the words die on my lips as another potent yawn wrenches its way free, robbing me of any semblance of conviction.

"Yeah, I... yeah, you're probably right," I mumble, flushing slightly at how petulant I sound. Like a cranky toddler resisting naptime rather than a young woman rapidly approaching the rigors of legal adulthood.

Jamila simply smiles that soft, enigmatic little smile of hers and gathers me close, her strong arms surprisingly gentle as she enfolds me in their protective embrace. I go willingly, allowing the comforting solidity of her presence to dispel any lingering wisps of reluctance.

As I nestle into the contours of her body, fitting against her like two long-separated puzzle pieces at last reunited, a stray thought niggles at the back of my mind. A tiny, innocuous query that nonetheless carries the faint whiff of potential awkwardness.

I let it percolate in silence for a few beats, relishing the languid ebb and flow of Jamila's breathing, the steady thrum of her heartbeat against my ear. When at last I can't resist voicing it any longer, the words slip out in a hushed murmur against the shadowed stillness.

"Hey, uh... it's cool that I'm crashing here tonight, right?" My fingers pluck absently at the fabric of her sleep shirt, a nervous tell I can never quite shake. "Like, your folks won't mind or anything?"

The question hangs in the air for a few suspended heartbeats, suddenly seeming to smother the space between us with its weighty implications. Jamila's body goes rigid against mine, every muscle abruptly taut as an over-tuned guitar string.

I have a very sudden feeling that I shouldn't have asked that.