Reed reentered the lab, his nose in his notes that were scrolling across the clear display of his tablet. He was frowning at it, walking with memorized strides back to his main hub where Sue had come to stand and he stopped short upon realizing there was another person inside.
"Sue!" He said, startled. A look of surprise was followed by confusion, then worry, then remembrance as he checked the date and the time. "You're back. How was the symposium?" Glad to see her and smiling warmly, Reed stepped towards his wife to embrace her as he customarily did when she returned from an absence, but their time together had been tense lately, riddled with lingering hurt and remorse and simple stubbornness from both of them. Reed was sorry to have hurt her, but he refused to back down on the argument over the MRA and he didn't know how to fix his hours logged in the lab. Granted, since their fight, he had been significantly less productive than normal.
Instead of embracing her, he laid a hand on her back and bent to kiss her blonde hair, spotting what she had been looking at as he did.