7 | ☕️ Expresso Yourself, Atlas ☕️ #3
Anya frowned, thrown off by the question.
She hadn't expected this. "Notice what?"
she asked, her voice laced with confusion.
She didn't know what he was getting at, didn't understand why he was bringing this up now.
The silence in the car felt deeper, darker, as if every word hung heavily between them.
Atlas's jaw tightened ever so slightly, his eyes narrowing just enough to show the hint of something more beneath his calm exterior. His fingers moved again, sharper this time, more clipped, the motions more forceful.
Anya blinked. Then blinked again, her mind refusing to process the words that had just been signed. "Wait, what?" she snorted, shaking her head in disbelief. "Atlas, come on. Chris was just being nice."
She almost laughed it off, as if it was some ridiculous joke, but the silence that followed stopped her cold. The air in the car felt even thicker, like it had solidified into something she couldn't escape.
There was no sound. No response. The heavy silence seemed to stretch on forever. The longer it lasted, the more unnerving it became.
Atlas didn't laugh. He didn't react at all. His face was unreadable, as usual, but there was something about the stillness that made the tension between them feel more like a physical weight, pressing down on her chest.
Instead, he simply stared at her.
It wasn't his usual unreadable stare—the cool, detached expression he always wore, the kind that made it impossible to tell what he was thinking.
No, this was different. This was... personal.
His eyes were locked onto hers with a sharpness that felt almost predatory.
There was something behind his gaze, something dark, quiet, and utterly unreadable.
It made Anya's stomach tighten, a cold shiver running down her spine.
It wasn't anger. It wasn't frustration. But whatever it was, it felt dangerous in a way she couldn't quite define.
Anya's heart began to race, her breath catching in her throat as the weight of his gaze pressed down on her.
The air between them was so thick now, it was suffocating.
She tried to maintain eye contact, tried to break the tension, but something in the way he looked at her made it impossible to look away.
For a split second, she wondered if she was in over her head.
Atlas exhaled slowly, a soft, almost inaudible breath that barely disturbed the stillness of the car. Without a word, his hand moved toward the cup of coffee sitting in the cup holder between them.
But he didn't drink it.
His fingers curled around the cardboard cup, the grip tightening just enough to make the edges crinkle, the faint sound sharp in the quiet car. The movement wasn't aggressive. It wasn't violent. There was no force behind it—just pure control. Measured. Precise.
Anya couldn't help but watch, her eyes lingering on his hand as he gripped the cup, his fingers knotted with quiet restraint. The subtle tension in the way he held it sent a ripple of unease through her.
It wasn't the coffee. It wasn't the gesture itself.
It was the way his fingers flexed, as though he was holding back from doing something, from unleashing whatever it was that burned behind his calm exterior. She felt the weight of that restraint like a palpable force in the air.
It was restraint, but it was also tension.
The realization sent a shiver down her spine, and she immediately looked away, her thoughts spiralling, trying to make sense of what was happening.
And then, as if to answer the question that was building in the air between them, Atlas signed again, his hands moving slowly, deliberately. The motions were clean, sharp.
The words were simple. A command. Dismissive, almost. But the way he signed them, the way his hands moved with precision and calm, told her that there was more to it than just a casual instruction.
The words stung in a way she hadn't expected. They were dismissive, sure, but they were also... final. As if he wasn't just suggesting she drop the conversation, but rather telling her—no, commanding her—to focus on something else. Something safe. Something she knew.
Anya opened her mouth, ready to argue, ready to demand why he was suddenly acting like this, but the moment she thought about speaking, she hesitated.
The way his hands moved, so fluid and controlled, made her pause, make a snap decision to hold her tongue.
There was a quiet but firm weight to his every action that told her this wasn't a suggestion at all.
It was a command.
A quiet warning.
A chill crawled down her spine, and her stomach twisted uneasily. She couldn't place why this moment felt so much different from all the others. She didn't understand what was happening—why Atlas was acting like this, why he was suddenly so... present in a way he never had been before.
She had always known him to be cold. Distant.
The kind of man who tolerated her presence, humoured her with a few clipped words or dismissive looks, but never did he intervene like this.
He never stepped in when someone else was involved, never made it clear in such a physical way that he had a stake in her life, in her choices.
This wasn't like all those times before.
Her breath caught in her throat as something clicked inside her.
This wasn't nothing.
She turned her head toward the window, staring out into the street, her mind a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions that she couldn't untangle. She didn't even know where to start.
Because for all her light-hearted teasing, for all the ways she poked at him, pushed at him, she had never stopped to consider the possibility that Atlas—silent, unreadable, detached Atlas—might actually care.
Not in a casual way. Not in the indifferent way that he often treated everything else around him.
But care in a way that made his hands tighten around the coffee cup like it was the only thing keeping him from snapping.
Care in a way that made him stake a claim on her in front of another man, without hesitation, without explanation.
Her fingers curled into fists in her lap as the weight of that realization settled deep in her chest. The force of it was heavy, pressing against her ribs, impossible to ignore.
She thought back to the café, to the way his expression had darkened the moment Chris had leaned in, to the way his hand had slammed down on the counter, taking control of the situation in a way she had never seen before. The way he had... claimed her.
That was the only word for it. He had claimed her in front of Chris, in front of everyone in the café. And it wasn't jealousy. It wasn't just possessiveness. It was something far more primal than either of those things. It was claiming.
Anya's throat tightened as she let the word linger in her mind, feeling its weight as it settled into place.
She turned back toward him, hoping for some kind of answer, some kind of explanation. Her heart was racing as she searched his expression for a crack, for some hint of the man beneath the ice. But Atlas was as impassive as ever, his gaze fixed on the road ahead, his face as unreadable as ever.
It was as if nothing had changed. As if nothing had happened. As if the universe hadn't just tilted on its axis, upending her entire sense of what was real.
But it had.
And deep down, Anya knew something in her had shifted irrevocably. Something had snapped, and there was no going back from it. She couldn't unsee it. She couldn't forget the way he had looked at her, the way he had claimed her.
Because whatever this was between her and Atlas, whatever this line was that had just been crossed—it was no longer a harmless game.
It was spiraling into something far more dangerous than she had ever anticipated.
And no matter how hard she tried to resist, she couldn't shake the growing certainty that she wasn't getting out of this unscathed.
She was already in too deep.