1/2
There's something ritualistic about covering her up that relaxes Robert. It makes things feel right again. Like sliding on a pair of comfortable, well-worn shoes. His hands are warm on her shoulders through the fabric, reverent. With so much subterfuge and deception and illusion that pervaded the world, he had always been soothed by the undeniable. Concrete things. This is his wife, and she is still right here, steady and touchable. Unshakable. He'd arranged this confrontation to happen at a time where she'd be at her most vulnerable and her she was, calmly setting up hoops for him to jump through. Demanding a performance. Giving him nothing more than raised brows and an attentive stare to let him know that while he hadn't failed yet, there might not be a net to catch him if he did.
God, how had he found a woman so perfectly intoxicating? How could there be gratitude in the midst of so much frustration and pain and fear?
He shouldn't smile. He knows that he shouldn't be smiling at her, not after what she's done, but he does it anyway. Mouth quirking upwards in an expression that was fast and fleeting. Hopeful. Oh, where to start? He hadn't prepared anything for this. Hadn't been intending to make a presentation on his value as a protector. There was no meticulously compiled file of pertinent facts to reference. Just the overwhelming spiderweb of information housed within his brain, where everything seemed connected by threads that weren't always visible to anyone but him. Where a recently tidied and reorganized shoe rack that had once housed a pair of baby boots -- a spot of gray no longer present in the neutral spectrum of their family's sensible footwear -- would raise alarms, and a recently dusted silk ficus in a meeting room would have him searching for recording devices that weren't his.
It was why he kept his accounts, the files and notes and recordings. So he could separate fact from speculation, edit and map out clear paths of logic to bring to others so they wouldn't have to sit through hours of explanation for why all these little separate lines running parallel to one another might spell success or disaster for a thing that was miles away from them. Over the years, he'd become good at breaking information down into easily digested bites. But he needed to do the prepwork first.