Short short drabble for you guys, been busy at work but I'm currently working at my request list. c:

He'll never say 'I love you', and perhaps she prefers it that way.

She sees it in the way he walks shoulder to shouler with her, and when he passes up a single open spot in the parking garage in favor of two side by side. Occasionally it's take-out on the couch, nitpicking the details of the day's reports and sitting just a little too close together. Sometimes it's a low rumble of a sound close to laughter at something particularly amusing meant only for her ears.

It's never stolen kisses and soft-spoken words, and that's all right. If it were it wouldn't be him… and besides, she isn't sure she'd want it that way.

Once it a while it's a soft hmm and the hiss of medical foam while she patches him up in the field. He's too stubborn to ask for her help but he'll get quiet and she just knows that he needs a hand. It's her delicate touch against bullet wounds and burns and the way his jaw clenches but he otherwise doesn't let on that he's in pain. Usually it's her shoulder against him while he dabs at scrapes and cuts that she insists she can take care of herself (he mostly ignores this).

Above all it's how he doesn't slow down for her, yet allows her as the anomaly in his life as long as she can keep up with him. He'll never change for anyone, and that's the only way that it should be. It's unspoken, but she's not sure that there are even words to describe the kind of affection that hangs in the air between them. It doesn't need a name, but she's pretty sure it's something close to love.