It was strange, he found, to sit across from her with nothing to review. No annotated model between them, no legal pad, no prep list of anticipated panel questions — just two cups of tea in his own kitchen on a Sunday evening, snow starting outside the window, and the specific, unfamiliar novelty of time together that didn't need to justify itself as work.
He'd cooked, badly, a pasta dish he'd learned from his mother that had never once required this much concentration when he wasn't also aware of someone watching him do it, and Zarina had laughed at his fumbling more than once, easy and unguarded in a way he hadn't gotten to see nearly enough of across a desk or an office.
"This is nice," she said, some time after the dishes were cleared, curled into the corner of his couch with her tea
