it was more than worth it

let's take a chance (take it while we can)

For Pete's sake. Third time really should've been the charm.

And who knew, maybe it had been? Maybe Adam was jumping to conclusions about the way Claire and Jack's eyes would meet a second too long, how they sat just far enough apart to salvage a claim of propriety, how their hands would linger on each other's forearms when they thought no one was looking.

Adam bit back a chuckle. Right. Discreet, but not subtle. That's what Jack and Claire were.

But officially, Adam knew nothing, and as long as he officially knew nothing, he would say nothing official.

The elevators opened on the first floor, and Adam stepped through, adjusting his hat as he walked. He thanked the officers at the front doors of the building as he headed outside, only to be met with the biting chill of Manhattan fall and the unmistakable sting of a nighttime drizzle.

Of course he'd left his umbrella in his office.

Adam sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Eager as he was to get home, and short as his walk through the rain would be to get to the parking garage and his car, he was far too old to risk hypothermia, no matter how slight said risk was.

Adam turned around, resigning himself to a trip back upstairs to retrieve his umbrella.

"Back so soon, Mr. Schiff?" one of the officers said with a smile, and Adam chuckled.

"I didn't think to check the forecast before I left."

Adam stepped past the officers and went back up the elevator he had come down only minutes before. The silence of the normally bustling building seemed more pronounced on his return, where the only sound was the humming of the elevator's gears and pulleys as it raised him back to the appropriate floor.

With a level of stealth that surprised even himself, Adam retrieved his umbrella from his office without interrupting any of the remaining attorneys still hanging about, of which there were not many besides Claire and Jack. As Adam began his return trip to the elevator, he habitually glanced at Jack's office.

Claire was now pressed into Jack's side as they sat on his couch, a position intimate but not indecent, and Jack had an arm around her shoulders. Claire held a manila file in one hand, tiredly explaining something to Jack with the help of vague gestures from her other hand.

Oh, did Adam recognize the softness in Jack's eyes as he watched his best EADA stare with ill-disguised affection at his brightest ADA.

Damn.

Round and round they went.

Jack said something that made Claire do a double take before covering her mouth with her hand, presumably to muffle a laugh. Jack grinned at her reaction, an expression that became softer when Claire—her upper body still shaking with silent laughter—dropped her head onto his shoulder.

When Jack gently ran a hand up and down her arm before pressing a chaste kiss to the top of her hair, Adam took the actions as his cue to leave.

"Good grief," he muttered as soon as the elevator doors slid closed before him. He sighed, shaking his head with thinly veiled exasperation. "Here we go again."

For Christ's sake. Now Adam had received confirmation of the very matter he'd actively sought to avoid knowing about.

Well, perhaps he didn't 'know' by the letter of the law. The anti-fraternization policies in the district attorney's office didn't have the sharpest of teeth, and in terms of their literal articulation, intra-office romances were heavily discouraged, not affirmatively against policy. For one, Adam did not know the extent of Jack and Claire's relationship and whether it could be classified as a 'romance.' And secondly, 'discouraged' was the key implication—outright forbidding such romances was impractical if not impossible, and those who had initially drafted the relevant policies were aware of that.