John was not the definition of a sensitive man, but he had to be a brick to not realise that something had changed about Evey. He wasn't sure if it was because she was acclimatising to life in the City - perhaps she was still trying to find her feet, find her own way now that survival dictated nothing to them - and for that he had little comfort to offer. He had yet to find something to redefine his own purpose with in idyllic city life. He was fashioned out of bullets and blades, not made for indolence. Where he suspected others would have found solace, hung up their uniform and happily gone about with what they presumably had actually wanted to do with their lives, Preston had no such inclinations.
Nevertheless, he kept himself busy. In part Evey had seemed to want to be left alone, even though he knew somehow that he ought to deny her such an unspoken request and keep her company, even if that meant being in another room in the same house, he would not sit down with her and have a soulful conversation about the troubles that weighed heavily on her mind.
Over the course of the past few weeks the tension mounted and abated, like undulating waves on the island's shores. The silence was sometimes comforting, sometimes overwhelming - but Preston's concern manifested in making sure the window wasn't wide open in the middle of the night and her blanket covered her lithe frame. Food was always available in the fridge and in the pantry. They were never short of toiletries and there was always clean clothes and linen. And if ever, she decided one day to break her silence, it would not be through an awkwardly initiated bout of small talk. She knew how to contact him if he was out of the house and she knew - though there had never been a need to make any overt promise when he wrote down the number and left it on the kitchen table not two days after she moved in - that he would come running if she called.
His domestic life back in Libria had never felt stifling. Even when he'd pinned down Vivianna's wrists and moaned against her ear, grappling with foreign sensations he didn't quite know how to make sense of, it had never felt the way it did now when he stepped into the flat and inadvertently broke his silence with the sound of stepped-out shoes and the rustling of plastic bags. He didn't know if it was because he couldn't feel it before or if today was going to be the day where the weight of her troubles bearing down on their inclination to do rather than talk might grow to be too much for one of them to ignore.
"I brought salad," he said when she caught his gaze. Today, he didn't try on a smile.