"Is he normally a quiet one?"
"Yeah. He observes everything, says nothing for hours, then drops some perfectly timed comment that makes everyone lose it."
She shifts on the couch, angling toward me. "Tell me about your team."
So I do. Tell her about Sullivan's terrible jokes and worse timing. Garcia's medical obsession and his running commentary during training exercises. Santos's ability to blend into any environment and his unexpected dry humor.
She asks questions, laughs at the right moments, and somewhere in the conversation we both relax. The strangeness of having someone in her space eases. The awkwardness of protective detail becomes something closer to companionship.
"You miss them," she observes. "Being on ops with them."
"Yeah. But this matters too." I meet her eyes. "Keeping you alive matters."
Color touches her cheeks. She looks away, picks up her book again. This time she actually reads, or at least does a better job of pretending.
I watch the parking lot, the street, and the approaches to her building. Run threat assessments. Plan responses.
But I'm also aware of her curled on the couch, turning pages, occasionally glancing at me when she thinks I'm not looking.
The afternoon fades toward evening. Light shifts, shadows lengthen. Normal sounds of base housing settling in for the night.
"I'm hungry," Gwen says eventually, closing her book.
"I can cook."
"You've already cooked once today."
"Your point?"
She almost smiles. "My point is you don't have to take care of me."
"We've been over this. Working together means both of us being functional." I stand, head to her kitchen. "Besides, I'm hungry too."
I make a chicken Caesar salad—simple, fast, filling. She watches from her perch at the counter, asking occasional questions about technique that suggest she's genuinely interested in learning despite her claim that cooking is beyond her.
We eat at her counter, shoulders almost touching, easy conversation flowing between bites.
"This is good," she says.
"It's a salad. Hard to mess up."
"You'd be surprised. I've burned water before."
That makes me laugh. "How do you burn water?"
"Left it on the stove and forgot about it. Pot was ruined." She grins. "Surgery I can handle. Cooking is apparently beyond me."
"Good thing I'm here then."
"Good thing," she agrees.
After dinner, we clean up together. She washes, I dry. Domestic routine that shouldn't feel as natural as it does.
Evening stretches toward night. Gwen settles back onto the couch with her book. I take my position by the window.
The difference is now she looks up occasionally and makes comments. About her book, about something she remembers from the hospital, about nothing in particular. And I respond, and we exist in the same space without it feeling strange anymore.
This protective detail isn't what I expected.
