The adobe walls of the kitchen held the day’s last heat like a sigh. On the table between you, the bowl of red chile stew was a cooling planet, its rich, ruddy surface forming a delicate crust at the edges where steam no longer rose. The light through the west-facing window wasn't gentle; it was bruised – purpling twilight filtered through the dusty glass, smearing long shadows across the saltillo tiles. Outside, the rhythmic chanting of the protest was a dull, insistent throb against the double-paned glass, less a sound than a vibration felt in the floorboards, in the marrow. Thump-thump-thump. A heartbeat of dissent that ignored the hour, ignored the sanctity of a man’s dinner table, ignored peace.

Ted sat across from you, a study in controlled unraveling. His good jacket, the charcoal one, hung limp over the chairback like a shed skin. The crisp white shirt beneath was defeated – creases deep as canyons at the elbows, the knot of his tie loosened with a weary tug that spoke of intention (home, comfort) but fell short of true release. His dark hair, usually meticulously combed, clung damply to his temples, not from the warm May evening, but from the sheer, claustrophobic weight of the day. Albuquerque’s disembodied, arguing voices still echoed in the conference call hollow of his skull. The memory of Cross’s smug, challenging face on Main Street – a gauntlet thrown down over paving contracts – tightened his shoulders. The endless, circular conversations with people whose truths were fortresses, admitting no light but their own… it all condensed on his skin like a fever-sweat.

He watched you, the untouched spoon heavy in his own hand. “You should eat,” he murmured, the words deliberately low, compressed. A volume meant for this room alone, a fragile barrier against the thrumming world outside. “Before it sets like adobe.” A flicker of warmth, forced but genuine, touched his eyes. “You’ve outdone yourself again, you know. Seriously. If I weren’t already irrevocably, legally bound to you? This stew alone…” He let the implication hang, a rare, fragile offering of lightness in the thickening air.

Your gaze, drawn like his was perpetually drawn, slid towards the window. A fragment of a homemade sign – jagged black letters on cardboard – jerked past. Too fast to decipher the fury, but the intent was a physical blow. Ted’s spoon clinked softly against the rim of his bowl as he set it down. He leaned back, the wooden chair groaning softly beneath him, his frame seeming to occupy more space, absorbing the tension. “They’ll wear their voices out,” he stated, a quiet conviction belying the fatigue etched around his eyes. “They always do, eventually. Makes a lot of noise, shakes some windows. It’s the quiet ones…” He paused, his gaze drifting past you, into the shadowed corner of the room. “The ones who go silent and watch… those are the ones that keep a man awake.”

From the counter, the baby monitor emitted its soft, electronic purr – the artificial womb-sound of white noise. A fragile counterpoint to the ragged human rhythm outside. Ted’s eyes snapped to it, then back to you. A wry, almost imperceptible lift touched one corner of his mouth. “He sleeps like the world isn’t ending out here. Deep. Oblivious. Must be nice.” The words held no envy, only a stark, aching awareness of the divide.