The media lab didn't just smell like technology; it smelled like a deadline. It was a thick cocktail of ozone from the internal fans, old wires, and the lingering ghost of Maya's microwaved noodles. The windows were structural relics, sealed shut decades ago, trapping the heat of humming projectors until the air felt heavy and over-processed.

Reyhaan had shed his outer layers an hour ago, his checkered sleeves shoved up to his elbows. Beside him, Aria was a study in grey—a deep-toned turtleneck and hair that had gradually surrendered to gravity, loose strands catching the blue flicker of the monitor. They sat in that specific proximity unique to partners in a trenches-deep project: close enough to share oxygen, but far enough to respect the invisible borders of personal space.

The lab had emptied out. Maya had finally dragged Kian away to "save" him from a font-induced meltdown, leaving the two of them alone with the flickering timeline of the tram scene.

Reyhaan watched the render bar crawl. It was tedious work—trimming audio peaks and adjusting tone curves—the kind of invisible labor that, if done correctly, no one would ever notice.

"You know," he said, his voice sounding low and gravelly in the empty room, "I used to think being a film student would be a little... sexier."

Aria shifted, a small, amused huff escaping her. "You mean like, glamorous?"

"Exactly. I had this vision of intense debates in smoke-filled rooms and café-lit editing suites. Instead, I have seven folders labeled final_final_tram_ver3_real and a headache from a flickering fluorescent bulb."

She leaned back, her eyes catching the screen's light. A smirk played on her lips. "You're forgetting the existential breakdowns, Reyhaan. That's the real glamour. It gives us the edge."

He chuckled, the sound vibrating in his chest. "Right. When Professor Meijer told us to 'storyboard our feelings,' I didn't realize he meant 'spiral with style.'"

They shared a laugh—a soft, easy sound that bridged the gap between their chairs. It wasn't a loud burst of energy; it was the kind of laughter that comes from shared exhaustion, worn smooth by the hours they'd put in.

As the video looped, Aria leaned forward, her finger hovering near the screen. "Wait. Pause it there. That cut is too clean."

Reyhaan arched a brow, keeping his hands on the controls. "Is this the part where you critique my editing or my life choices?"

"Neither," she smiled, her focus remaining on the timeline. "Look at the transition between the second tram pass and her head turn. The moment slips away too easily. It's too polished. We need a snag there. Just a breath of hesitation."

Reyhaan pulled the playhead back, scrubbing through the frames in slow motion. He saw it now. The technical perfection had sterilized the emotion.

"You have an ear for the gaps," he murmured, genuinely struck by her intuition.

She glanced at him, her expression unreadable but warm. "And you have an eye for the stillness. It's the same frequency, just a different output."

The comment sat between them, comfortable and familiar. It was that recurring alignment—a feeling that they were reading the same script without having to say the lines aloud.

They settled back into the rhythm of work. Aria offered him half a granola bar with a silent nod; he traded her the last of his dried fruit. His lo-fi playlist provided the background radiation for the night—a tapestry of soft strings and layered hums. Tucked within the tracks were his own field recordings, the secret textures of his life: the rustle of a page, the distant chime of a bell, the grit of gravel.

He looked at her, the secret of his voice sitting heavy but not unpleasant in his throat. He hadn't told her—or anyone here—about the studio he'd rebuilt in the wake of the diagnosis, or the project that was slowly bringing him back to himself.

Maybe someday, he thought.

"I'm still stuck on that screenwriting piece," Aria said a while later, her pen scratching rhythmic patterns in her notebook.

"The song-to-scene assignment?"

"Yeah." She tapped the pen against her chin. "I picked this old folk-fusion track. It starts wistful and ends raw—it feels like disorientation. Like a long train ride where the windows are too fogged to see the stations. You know you're moving, but you don't know where you are."

Reyhaan turned fully toward her, impressed by the casual poetry of her mind. "You realize people pay for insights like that, right? You can't just drop metaphors like that and expect me not to steal them."

She shrugged, though a faint flush colored her cheeks. "It's just how I process things. Everything has a texture."

"Fair enough. My brain mostly processes things in terms of bad food comparisons."

"Okay, Michael from Mexico," she teased, referencing their earlier joke. "What does this scene feel like to you?"

He looked at the blue-tinted footage of the tram. "This? It feels like burnt toast left out in the rain. Bitter, soggy, but still somehow the only thing you want to eat."

Aria's laugh was sudden and bright, a spark of genuine heat that seemed to cut through the stuffy air of the lab.

Reyhaan found himself watching her longer than he intended.

There was a peculiar quality to her presence—a way of being quiet that felt like an active form of listening. It was a thread he hadn't noticed being tied to him, but tonight, in the suspended animation of the media lab, he could feel the tension of it.

She stretched, her neck arching as she looked at the ceiling. "In my script, the characters are messy. I don't want them to be tragic. I just want them to be... unfinished."

"And how do you write that without trying to provide a resolution?"

"I don't try to fix them," she said simply, her voice dropping an octave. "I let them stay jagged."

Reyhaan stayed quiet, absorbing the weight of that. It hit closer to home than she could possibly know. "That's harder than it looks. Most people want to sand the edges down."

"It's more honest this way," she replied. "And a lot more real."

The following silence wasn't a void; it was a bridge.

Reyhaan leaned back toward the console, intending to ask if the new 'snag' in the edit worked for her. He opened his mouth to say her name, to draw her back into the technicalities of the frame.

But the words died in his throat.

Aria's head was resting in the palm of her hand, her elbow propped on the desk. Her eyes were closed, her breathing having shifted into the deep, rhythmic pull of sleep.

The screen light played across her face, softening the sharp angles of her glasses, which had slipped slightly down the bridge of her nose. She looked entirely unguarded—a rare sight in the high-pressure environment of the university.

A strange, protective warmth eased through Reyhaan.

Moving with the practiced silence of someone used to navigating a recording studio at night, he stood up, shrugged off his overshirt, and draped it gently over her shoulders. He moved with surgical care, sliding her glasses from her face and placing them safely by her laptop. Adjusting the scarf she'd been wearing, and bunching it up to serve as a makeshift pillow so her neck wouldn't ache in the morning.

He stood there for a moment, watching the render bar finish its journey. 100% Complete.

He didn't wake her. Instead, he did the final file management, labeling the folders with a clarity that would make Professor Meijer proud.

Before he left, he grabbed a blue sticky note from his bag and scribbled a quick message: "Render's finished. You were right about the snag—it gives the scene a pulse. See you tomorrow. – Rey."

He stuck it next to her glasses and shouldered his bag.

The walk to the parking lot was sharp with the bite of autumn wind. The campus was a ghost town of amber streetlights and long shadows. His boots struck the pavement with a steady, lonely rhythm that he found himself mentally recording for a future track.

Aria's words looped in his mind: I let them stay jagged.

He thought about the audio project on his hard drive—the one made of broken sounds and beautiful imperfections. Maybe he didn't need to wait until he was "fixed" to show it to her. Maybe the jaggedness was the point.

He wasn't ready to speak it all out loud yet. Not tonight.

But as he reached his car and looked back at the glowing windows of the media lab, he didn't feel the usual weight of his withheld secrets. He felt steady. He felt seen.

And for now, that was plenty.