Somewhere between half-drunk coffee mugs (because we both know Nat and Miles LOVE LOVE LOVVEE their coffee. Jesus?!), paused documentaries that were supposed to be background noise (scoffs), and bookmarked pages they’ll never admit they reread, Nat and Miles continue their greatest pastime: silently gatecrashing each other’s thoughts from across offices, across cities, across every sensible boundary. He’s in a meeting trying not to scream at someone for confusing brand loyalty with Instagram engagement. She’s drawing a roofline and questioning why anyone ever thought corporate bathrooms deserved that much grey tile.
These conversations? They’re not scheduled. They don’t need WiFi. They happen in those absurd moments when the world is being painfully practical and your brain decides to flirt instead. Call it emotional piracy, call it synaptic nonsense, but between architectural indignation and strategy-induced eye-rolls, what unfolds is a caffeine-fueled, wordless rendezvous you’d absolutely watch a series about. Probably with subtitles, and definitely while clutching a book you swear you’re not reading for the sixth time.
- Nat’s Office – 10:47 AM
Nat (thinking, aggressively clicking):
“If I rotate this damn wall one more time, it might legally qualify as foreplay.”
Miles (in her head, mid-financial review):
“You say that like you didn’t once flirt with a cantilever.”
Nat:
“Don’t act like you didn’t name your conference rooms after types of coffee.”
Miles (smirking in a glass box labeled ‘CEO’):
“They’re timeless. Come on, I mean Fianca deserves more respect than some of these quarterly numbers!”
- Miles’ Boardroom – 10:48 AM
Someone’s droning about KPIs. A pie chart that looks suspiciously like a pizza is on screen. Miles zones out.
Miles (telepathically):
“I want to fire someone just for using Comic Sans in a report. Am I becoming a monster?”
Nat (grinning):
“Only if you start saying ‘design thinking’ with a straight face.”
Miles:
“I already did. Twice. My soul is halfway to hell. Save me.”
Nat:
“You’re on your own, pal. I just told a client that their layout dreams were ‘functionally optimistic.’”
Miles:
“That’s what I call our Q2 projections.”
Nat (laughing quietly):
“You’re impossible. Also, I need help deciding if this exhibition entry should feel like a poem or a punch in the face.”
Miles:
“Why not both? You’re very punchy-poetic. Like Neruda with brass knuckles.”
Nat (pauses):
“...Say that again but slower.”
Miles:
“Neruda. With. Brass. Knuckles.”
Nat:
“You should stop talking like that. You’ll end up as a metaphor in my project brief again.”
Miles (mentally raising an eyebrow):
“Oh no. Anything but the briefs.”
Nat:
“You deserve that for saying ‘synergy’ last week without irony.”
Miles:
“Low blow. I was under duress. Someone presented a bar graph shaped like a dolphin. I blacked out.”
- Nat’s Office – 10:53 AM
She’s now balancing a model on a stack of unpaid invoices and chewing the pen cap like it owes her rent.
Nat (murmuring):
“Why is this layout not giving? It’s reading ‘municipal hospital,’ not ‘modern marvel.’”
Miles (soothing):
“Because you’re exhausted. And brilliant. And you skipped breakfast again.”
Nat (softly):
“Shut up. I didn’t ask for emotional support and a vibe check.”
Miles (smiling mid-eye-roll):
“And yet, here I am. Full-service mental chaos, free of charge.”
Nat:
“You really are the human equivalent of a well-dressed glitch.”
Miles:
“And you’re the woman who once redlined a floor plan with lipstick and didn’t blink.”
Nat (smirking):
“Red is efficient. And dramatic. Like me.”
Miles (to self):
“She’s going to be the end of me.”
Somewhere in the background, a printer jammed with the passion of someone who’s simply had enough, and Nat threatened a floor plan with deletion for “emotional reasons.” Meanwhile, Miles accidentally nodded at the phrase “gamify the engagement funnel” and immediately regretted everything that had led him to this moment. It was one of those days where productivity wore a trench coat and sunglasses, pretending to be present but clearly fleeing the country. Naturally, that’s when the volume in their heads dialed up again because when professionalism fails, telepathic flirting steps in like a smug understudy ready to steal the show.
- Scene: Nat’s Office — 1:24 PM
Nat (sighing, forehead on table):
“If I rotate this one more degree, the entire exhibition flow turns into a maze for emotionally unavailable men.”
Miles (in her head, mid-bite of an aggressively dry quinoa salad):
“So… perfect then?”
Nat:
“Miles. I swear on Carl’s last leaf—”
Miles:
“Poor Carl. May his roots find peace in the great compost bin of ambition.”
- Scene: Miles’ Office — 1:26 PM
Miles (telepathic whisper):
“Why is this chart shaped like a frog? Nat, they’ve broken me.”
Nat (muttering while sketching a curved façade):
“Hold still, I’m channeling every ounce of mercy not to suggest corrugated metal. I’ve become my own villain arc.”
Miles (grinning):
“You’re hot when you’re designing like you’re mildly threatening.”
Nat:
“Hot? Bold of you to flirt while your Q3 budget is held together by a wishlist and vibes.”
Miles:
“It’s called visionary austerity.”
Nat:
“It’s called winging it in Gucci shoes.”
- Scene: Nat’s Office – 1:30 PM
Nat (softly):
“Do you ever just… wish we were making pottery in some obscure town instead?”
Miles (sincerely):
“Yes. But only if you’d still yell at me for misaligning the vase with the dining table.”
Nat:
“I would. With love.”
Miles:
“I’d let you. With grace.”
Nat (smiling despite herself):
“This is why HR worries about you.”
- Scene: Miles’ Office — 1:35 PM
Miles (leaning back, loosening his tie):
“I need a drink. Or a Nobel Prize. Whichever’s easier to get today.”
Nat:
“Both require sacrifice. One ruins your liver, the other ruins your relationships.”
Miles:
“Bold of you to assume I have either left.”
Nat (typing softly):
“I’m still here.”
Miles (smiling):
“I know.”
Between passive-aggressive calendar invites and espresso shots that tasted like budget cuts, the day limped along. Nat had just convinced a zoning consultant that “vibes” do matter in structural flow, and Miles had internally eulogized a spreadsheet that betrayed him mid-projection. It was that golden twilight hour where ambition starts taking off its heels and everyone’s pretending to still care. Which, naturally, meant the brain static turned back to each other. Because when the decks are cleared and the coffee’s gone cold, what’s left to do but wander back into the one voice that’s always louder than logic?
Miles (half-sighing, half-smirking, watching his team fumble through their closing slides):
“Well, another review survived. No one got publicly executed. Growth.”
Nat (wiping graphite off her palm, stepping back from a half-finished sketch):
“I didn’t throw a scale at anyone today. We both deserve cake.”
Miles:
“Let’s call it emotional kale. Grown-up resilience with no flavor.”
Nat:
“Speak for yourself. I seasoned mine with quiet spite and passive aggression.”
Miles (grinning faintly):
“God, you’re beautiful when you weaponize sarcasm.”
Nat:
“And you’re tolerable when you don’t talk in bullet points and execution matrices.”
Miles (stretching, tired but still sharp):
“This was nice. The unspoken telepathic nonsense. Felt like jazz for the brain.”
Nat:
“Jazz, but make it foreplay.”
Miles (laughs, softer now):
“See you when I see you, architect.”
Nat (smiling to herself, already mentally drafting a floor plan she’ll pretend isn’t inspired by him):
“Until then, genius boy.”
They didn’t say goodbye. That would be too dramatic, too finite, too unlike them. Instead, it was the kind of almost-ending that sits quietly at the edge of your screen like a tab you forgot to close. A smirk here, a line about deadlines there, maybe a lingering thought about how his hair probably still looks annoyingly perfect even after twelve hours of meetings. Miles signed off with that classic “see you when I see you,” which roughly translates to: I’ll be thinking about you at exactly 11:47 p.m. when the jazz kicks in and the silence gets too loud. Nat, of course, didn’t say anything back. But she left her music on just a little longer, just in case someone was listening from a few cities away.
And somewhere between a cortado and emotionally evasive metaphors, they both knew the truth. That maybe, in another timeline, she’d be designing buildings that whispered his name in their blueprints, and he’d be restructuring strategy decks with bullet points that somehow always looped back to her. But for now, it was enough. The banter, the glances across a city they didn’t share, the occasional mind-intrusion during a monthly review or a mold sketch. It wasn’t everything—but it was something. And for two people who never really planned on staying, they sure had a funny way of never quite leaving.
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Until next time,
Love always.
S
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