Nobody had told Felicity that the morning after the end of the world could smell like butter and jam, and yet here they were.
Real eggs, still steaming in a dented pan, bread torn open and glossy, and someone had found jam, actual jam, thick and dark in a jar that had apparently decided it was going to survive the apocalypse through sheer stubbornness, and Felicity sat at the table with a plate in front of her and the very specific awareness of approximately fourteen men who were all pretending extremely hard that they were not aware of her at all.
One was studying his spoon as it owed him money. Another had found the grain of the wooden table genuinely riveting. A third had developed an urgent and apparently absorbing interest in the middle distance. The silence had a texture to it, thick and loaded and careful, and Felicity kept her eyes on her plate and took small bites and told herself firmly not to think about why.
She knew why. The walls were concrete and steel and not even slightly soundproof, and Victor had known that, and the way he had looked at her this morning when she'd realised it had made very clear that the knowing had been entirely intentional, and she was going to have feelings about that later when she had somewhere private to have them.
Finch looked up, met her eyes, grinned, waved a piece of toast at her, and went back to eating like it was a completely normal Tuesday. She could have kissed him.
Rose arrived in the doorway, took one long look at the room, and pulled out a chair with the energy of a woman who had decided to be entertained rather than bothered. She served herself eggs without asking anyone and let her gaze travel the table with the patience of someone waiting for someone else to acknowledge the obvious. Nobody did. Several men found new reasons to look elsewhere.
"I went to bed in a mercenary compound," Rose said pleasantly, spreading butter with neat surgical strokes. "I woke up in a monastery."
A chair scraped loudly, someone coughed, and a man at the far end stood abruptly and muttered something about checking the perimeter despite the sun having barely cleared the roofline.
Rose watched him leave. "So let me guess," she continued. "Something happened last night that made everyone extremely aware of their own thoughts."
Felicity's ears burned, and she opened her mouth, and Rose pointed her fork before a single syllable escaped. "Don't," Rose said.
Felicity closed it.
Voss stood and poured himself more coffee with the careful movements of a man keeping himself very occupied and not looking at anyone.
"And Voss," Rose said casually, the way you mentioned weather.
Voss walked out of the room without a word, and Rose watched him go and smirked with the satisfaction of someone whose hypothesis had just been confirmed.
"Thought so," she said, and Finch looked up, genuinely confused, and Rose pointed her fork at him. "You're fine," she said. "Gold star."
Finch beamed like she'd given him something real.
Victor came up behind Felicity and set another plate beside her without comment, and Rose looked at the food, then at Victor, and said, "Your space is ridiculous" in a tone that was almost a compliment, and Victor's mouth curved at the corner, and Rose pointed the fork at him too. "Don't look pleased about it, I can be irritated and well fed at the same time."
She finished her eggs, stood, grabbed another slice of bread, and paused in the doorway with the timing of someone who had been saving this exact moment. "Next time you accidentally make the entire team feral," she said to Felicity, holding her gaze a beat too long, "give me a warning. I like to emotionally prepare before becoming the least ogled woman in the room." She glanced around the table with magnificent composure. "Keep the food coming. If I'm going to be ignored, I refuse to do it hungry."
Then she left, and the room tightened instead of relaxing.
Felicity stared at her plate and took careful bites and told herself not to make it weird, which wasn't working, because every time she glanced up, she caught someone looking and then immediately not looking, and the cycle was making her ears go flat in a way she couldn't quite control. She looked at Victor once, quick and guilty. "I didn't mean to make it weird," she murmured.
"You didn't," he said.
She punched his chest lightly, which did absolutely nothing to him. "You're the one who made everyone stare," she whispered, and then, quieter, with a poke that was softer than the first, "and Rose was kind of mean. She said I reset the chain of command, and I don't even know what that means."
Victor caught her wrist gently, not pulling, just holding, and she stilled and then leaned into his side without deciding to, her shoulder pressing into his arm while she focused very hard on her toast and pretended the room wasn't full of people being extremely loud about being quiet.
Finch slid the jam closer to her without a word.
She took it without looking up, and then said "Rose was being kind of mean" in a voice barely above a breath, and every head in the room turned toward the door Rose had left through with looks that were flat and direct and not entirely warm, and it didn't matter that Rose hadn't been cruel, the point was that Felicity's ears were drooping and that was apparently sufficient.
Victor shifted until his frame blocked her from the wider sightline of the room, and the others looked away, and the message landed without anyone needing to translate it.
Whatever else this was, it was not optional.
Voss had heard everything the night before, which he was not examining in any detail because the wolf in him had already drawn its conclusions, and the man in him was still several steps behind trying to catch up. He had told himself he was running perimeter checks until that stopped being a story he believed, and then he had just stood in the dark and let the wolf understand what had changed and filed it away under things he wasn't ready to name yet.
Now he watched her blink too quickly at the table and felt something shift behind his sternum that had nothing to do with hunger and nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the specific small way she was trying not to be sad and failing at it, and his jaw tightened and he flexed his fingers and didn't let the growl in his chest reach his throat because that was a conversation for another day.
He looked toward the hallway Rose had taken and ran the calculation automatically, not violence, just thresholds, just the specific line that would constitute too far, and he filed the answer without examining what the filing of it said about him.
Felicity finished her breakfast, tucked against Victor's side, unaware of the quiet agreement settling around the table, and Snow Team held it without speaking because some things didn't need to be said out loud to be real.
No one was allowed to make her feel small in this space again.