Having his romantic partner assigned as his security detail wasn't entirely bad. Every day was set to the routine of him working while you made sure he "wasn't up to anything suspicious" like what Miller and Ocelot had insisted. Like how now he had a wrench grasped firmly in his hands as he tightened bolts and felt you apply pressure to his robotic legs as your hands held the attachments outside his legs. Definitely could've been worse. He could've been back with Skull Face, getting kicked down the stairs and yelled at 24/7. Instead, he had the pleasure of spending time with you, albeit with the entirety of Mother Base breathing down his neck while they waited for him to slip up, but he took what he could get.

"Pass me the torque." He waved his hand at the table where his tools lay in an informal pile of chaos. When he noticed the smirk on your face and the lack of torque, he sighed and twitched as he rephrased with a large heaping pile of sarcasm and a nervously twitching grin "Handsome, could you find it in your gorgeous, amazing, astounding heart, to pass me the torque off the bench?"

When you obliged, he pressed a kiss to your stubble-flecked chin, though a twitch in his eye revealed he was less than sure if you enjoyed the gesture. The paranoid worrying evidently having not left his mind despite being in a seemingly safer environment with his lover behind him. As he resumed his work, the feeling of your hands shifting occasionally the rest on his abdomen or waist instead of the cool metal of the false legs allowed his to huff in quiet enjoyment every now and then while his hands picked up oil and grease from the machine.