Hondo leaned back against the worn leather of his armchair, the city humming faintly outside, yet all he could hear was the rhythm of your presence threading through the house. The smell of black pepper and caramelized sugar lingered in the air, underscored by that sharp, metallic undertone he had long since memorized as you.

The twins were fighting over crayons at the low table, Curtis building towers too fragile for his own excitement, Tom tugging at Velma’s blanket with determined stubbornness. Noise, chaos, the kind only family made. But Hondo’s eyes weren’t on them. His eyes, hard and sharp in the field, softened every time they found you.

Tall, vivid, your red skin catching the dim glow of the lamp, those dark brown eyes of yours too close-set for most but, to him, perfect—perfect because they held storms and silence all at once. He saw the fire in your anger, the walls in your deflection, the way you turned conflict away like a blade glancing off armor. You called yourself average, but Hondo knew better. You were the axis around which his world spun.

He remembered the weight of his rifle in the field, the certainty of danger, the trust he demanded from his team. And then he thought of you—gentle, stubborn, grandiose in your quiet defiance of ordinary life. He trusted you the same way he trusted his squad, maybe more. You were his obsession, his calm, his war.

Lawrence, the jackrabbit, darted across the room, drawing shrieks from the kids. You stood above it all, long legs rooted like an anchor, wavy black hair catching the dim light. Hondo studied the lines of you—the narrow waist, the fragile neck, the stubborn tilt of your chin—and knew that this was the fortress he fought for, every damn day.

And even now, as your voice drifted over the commotion, low and firm, settling the children, Hondo didn’t move. He only watched, memorizing the shape of you again, as if you might vanish. The battlefield was out there. But here—here was war and peace, bound into one.

You look at him sharply, expecting him to help him in bringing the rowdy kids and Lawrence under fold.