Lt. Catherine Rollins

Steve is really good at avoiding her.

Normally, she probably wouldn't even call it "avoiding."  Normally, she would call it his usual M.O. and chalk it up to being a side effect of being halfway around the world from each other.  There are times they've gone for months with no contact, and two weeks is barely the blink of an eye, particularly when she's busy and he keeps getting high-profile, high-priority cases.

At least, that's what she hears, when she hears anything at all.

But those weeks and months of zero contact, running silent, off the grid: those days aren't exactly applicable when there are extenuating circumstances such as A. they are living on the same island and B. she knows there's something he really doesn't want to talk to her about.

Ergo, avoidance.

She's not an impatient or nosy person, though, so she lets it slide, for a little while.  He clearly needs to get used to the idea himself, and, frankly, so does she.  It's not that they haven't stumbled across a situation where one or the other of them was out of commission for their normal arrangement, but in general, those interrupting factors were not potentially career-threatening.  Not to the extent of sleeping with a subordinate.  Not to the extent of sleeping with a partner.  Not seriously.

And it is serious, whether Steve is admitting to it, or not.  It's splashed across him like someone doused him in paint and sticky sunlight, in the way he'd magnetized towards the door, the way he'd run out after Danny.  Maybe even more because he didn't bring it up until he absolutely had to.

So Steve is avoiding her, and she can sympathize, because this is not a conversation she particularly wants to sit through, either, but it still needs to happen, because, knowing Steve, he hasn't told anyone else and is shutting it back into compartments poorly designed for a situation of this magnitude and complexity.  

Which is why, when she called him on the next weekend inferred to be Danny's weekend with Grace, she's given him the benefit of both giving her the slip for two weeks and the peace offering of meeting at a place with really excellent drinks, one of which she has in hand as she sits at a table by an open window, chin in her hand, looking out at the quietly rolling ocean.  It's early evening, and she's come off a twelve hour shift, so it's nice to sit, let her thoughts unhinge, ebb and flow with the waves and mild breeze.  Wrangling an affirmative had proved to be difficult, but she'd managed it, pointing out that they might as well meet out, seeing as they're definitely going to make it to the restaurant this time.

It strips him of the home field advantage, too, but he's not the only one who knows how to keep a wall at his back and a few tricks up his sleeve.

She's never liked this sort of duty.

Windows. A wide porch. Blind spots in the bushes and trees outside. She makes one circuit, checking all the entrances, going upstairs to check windows and whether any trees are close enough to climb into the house from. Testing floorboards to see if they squeak.

Fifteen minutes later, she does it again.

Fifteen minutes after that, a third time.

She's just come back in from the porch, and is leaning to look out the window in the empty living room for the fourth time, her tea long since cold and barely touched. This isn't teatime, no matter how casual Doris is being about it, sitting there, still-- no, not reading, doing a crossword puzzle, lips pursed as she taps the eraser of a found pencil on the paper, looking like she's waiting at the dentist's office.

At least she hasn't said anyth--

"Hey. The perimeter is secure."

Well. At least it took a while. She straightens, turns to look at Doris, who's smiling at her, leaning to put down the paper, and looking like nothing so much as the schoolteacher Steve always believed she was. "Come join me."

"I really shouldn't, ma'am."

It's not a social hour, and she doesn't feel particularly inclined to sit down and chat with Steve's mom. It's not dislike, really, more a deep sense of being unsettled, down to her core, mixing with the tension of being on guard. She can't afford to make any mistakes. How would she ever look Steve in the face, if something happened to his mother on her watch?

So she heads to the next window, hoping the flat, if not unfriendly, refusal will work, but it doesn't.

Of course.

"Oh, cut the ma'am crap, Catherine. Neither of us is in uniform." Which rankles. Doris, thus far, is blunt and a little crass, and Cath has spent the last few months at sea with increasingly far-too-comfortable-around-her sailors, but it just sort of rubs her the wrong way, the way Doris just brushes off, not only duty and her rank or respect, but Steve's wishes. They both know damn well that Steve didn't put them here so they could talk, and yet Doris is distracting her from rounds, and she won't take 'no' for an answer, apparently. "Now come on." Wheedled, like Cath is a childhood friend of Steve's still in high school, and not a grown woman and member of the United States Military.

Doris gestures to the couch. "Please, just sit down for a few seconds. You're making me nervous." Laughed, and light. Because there is nothing to be nervous about.

She shakes herself, mentally. It's Steve's mom. She doesn't mean any harm. She's been doing this for years, and is probably so used to hiding out that it has become normal life again, and Cath pauses. Steve wouldn't like it. But maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea, getting to know his mom, a little. She's a mystery now, to him and everyone else, and it can't hurt, getting more information.

Right?

Besides, she probably shouldn't piss Steve's mom off, or come off as cool, or unfriendly. She's right that the perimeter is secure, though it takes her another look out the window to actually force a step in the other direction.

It feels wrong immediately. No. Go back to duty. Get back on guard. Training and instinct kicking up in the back of her head, but she's not going to focus if Doris insists on talking to her, anyway, so she may as well humor her for a minute or two.

Then back up, for round five.

She can do this. It is not an impossible mission, sitting on a couch and making small talk for a few minutes. Right? People do it all the time. Constant chatter. And she's not unfriendly. Right? Sure. She feels awkward and edgy, every step away from the path she's been taking a step that makes her feel like a shaken compass. But she can smile. Kind of. It's a weird, forced smile, like the ones from her old elementary school photos.

Nope. She knows as soon as her butt hits the sofa, it was a bad idea. Doris has her mug of tea, sips it, looking knowingly at Cath over her glasses like some kind of jovial librarian, and Cath presses a -- that's a smile, sure -- into her own lips. Folds a leg over the other, folds fingers together over her knee so she doesn't twitch and knock something over.

"So," she says, and Cath nods, feeling like a deer in headlights.

This was such a mistake. She wonders if she could get away with pretending to have heard a noise. "So," she agrees, foot bouncing gently up and down in the air. Doris is looking at her expectantly, like somehow sitting down is going to just magically make Cath's mouth open, and small talk come out, but there is nothing. She's scrabbling into every corner of her head, and drawing a perfect blank, because what is she supposed to say to this woman? Should she talk about Steve? How would that even be possible without mentioning the fact that is was his mother's death that made him into the perfect paragon of a soldier and sailor, to his mother?

She's still wrestling with that conundrum when Doris, apparently searching for the right button to push to make words come out, goes on, and Cath, for a second, thinks that maybe they have all dropped into the Twilight Zone, because the question is not so, Catherine, what drew you to the Navy? or s how did you two meet? which would have been bad, but not terrible.

No. It's: "Do you love my son?"

Her first reaction, after checking to see if her head is still on straight, is to open her mouth, eyes wide, because -- "Do I--?"

"Love." With a little encouraging nod. Like this is. What. What is that phrase. Girl talk. A chat with Steve's mother, who --

Words get all caught, except they just aren't words, they're a weird combination of shock and stress and her throat doing this strange, choking, thing, and her tongue suddenly too big for her mouth. "I -- Wow."

It's just that it's nothing she's had to think about in years. Love Steve? Of course. It's the immediate answer, before surprise, before awkwardness strangles her and makes her forget how to make words and how they work for normal people. Of course she loves Steve. Everyone who knows him loves Steve, in one way or another. He is impossible not to love. Unfailingly loyal and brave, the perfect soldier and sailor, who will never give up on anyone, who will fight for every person who needs it, because he can, and they can't.

But that's not the question. She isn't asking about the devotion Steve inspires, because he is, himself, so devoted. She's not asking about the years they've been friends, that still surprise Cath when she looks back on how many there have been. This is the same question as before, with different words, and Cath is still trying to figure out how to put what they have into any kind of contextually understandable definition and drawing a blank when there's a commotion outside and she leaps straight into a thankful clarity of action, pushing off the couch and finding Doris in less than a heart beat. "Go to the bedroom, lock the door."

Confusion locked away, behind business and professionalism. Because she does love Steve, and she promised him she'd take care of his mother, and because it's her duty, right now, to take care of Shelburne.

No matter what.