tags: eventual smut, power imbalance, military & jet plane related inaccuracies, small-ish age difference
Objective: Follow orders. Don’t fall in love with your commanding officer. And then—Commander Lila Monroe says jump, and Lieutenant Robert Floyd asks which altitude, ma’am?
Alternatively: Echo Six isn’t the place to fuck around and find out. “You give orders. I follow them. Doesn’t matter where we are.”
CHAPTER 11/12: landing gear
word count: 6057
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SUNDAY / 1930 / OUTSIDE THE HARD DECK
It doesn’t feel like a new beginning so much as an unfinished story.
The bar door keeps opening and shutting, each time letting through a burst of noise and laughter like the people in there haven’t got a care in the world; like the junior officers that come out, laughing and lighting their cigarettes with theatrical flair like they think it makes them look cool, have got nowhere to report to at 0700 Monday morning.
Bob stands beside his truck, keys still in hand.
He should just head back to billeting.
That much he knows.
But he’s spent six hours imagining a conversation that might never happen.
Six hours of driving south with the window down for the first stretch and then up once the air got colder, one hand on the wheel, the other drumming occasionally against it like motion itself might keep the whole thing from tipping too far into self-awareness. Six hours of freeway signs, gas stations, bad coffee, and the same looping set of possibilities: she doesn’t want to see him, she does, she tells him to go to hell, she looks at him like she already has. Six hours of trying not to reduce the whole thing to distance, mileage, geography, as if three-hundred and thirty-three miles were the sort of problem you could solve by crossing it once.
Six hours of that.
He thinks that’s worthy of a beer at least.
The door opens again.
Maverick steps out with a beer in hand and an expression that makes it obvious he saw Bob through the window and chose to involve himself.
Bob braces for impact.
“You lost?” Maverick asks.
“No.”
Maverick tilts his head towards the duffle bag sitting in the bed of the truck. “That bag says otherwise.”
“Transferred.”
Maverick doesn’t blink. Doesn’t smile, either. Just folds his arms and gives Bob the kind of look where it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s thinking, but easy to see he definitely has opinions. “To North Island.”
Bob nods.
“This is how you want to make career decisions?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No hesitation.”
“I’ve thought about it.”
That part is true.
He thought about it in the barracks. In the sim room. In the jet. In the shower.
He thought about it in every place she wasn’t.
And by the time the request went through and the transfer portal told him it would be at minimum a three-to-ten day processing period, he had thought about it so much it no longer felt like an impulse.
But strictly an inevitability.
Maverick’s gaze drops.
Not to the duffel. To the patch stitched onto it.
A lightning bolt cutting through a carrier silhouette. Clean. New. Still stiff at the edges.
“Stormbreakers,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Carrier strike.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be gone half the year.”
Bob nods again.
Maverick goes quiet, like officers often do when they’re about to move from facts into judgment. Lila’s name hangs in the air between them unspoken.
Like he’s trying his hardest not to bring her into this any more than absolutely necessary.
He fails.
“You think she needs you?”
“No, sir,” Bob says. “I just want to be where she is.”
“And if she doesn’t want you here?”
“I’ll still be good at my job.”
“She’s not just another pilot now. She’s not leading a squadron.”
“I know.”
“She’s under a microscope.”
“Always is.”
Maverick’s jaw shifts, just slightly. “She will not pause for you.”
“I don’t want her to.”
“She will not compromise for you.”
“I don’t want her to.”
“She will not apologize for choosing the job.”
“I know.”
And he does.
That’s the whole point.
Bob knows exactly what kind of woman Lila is, because she showed him more than she ever wanted to, mostly because he paid attention long enough to see what fell through the cracks.
She’s not soft. Not easy. Not built to reassure men who need to feel like the main character. She was never going to pause, or compromise, or suddenly become less herself just because somebody loved her hard enough.
The point isn’t to drag her away from the sky or make himself some soft landing she never asked for. The point isn’t that love will change her.
It won’t. It hasn’t.
And none of that makes him want her less.
Maverick’s eyes sharpen, and for a deeply absurd second Bob thinks he’s about to get some old school threat dressed up as advice—some mob movie monologue about staying out of her flight path, about men who come between Lila Monroe and altitude tend to end up at the bottom of the Pacific with cement boots.
That doesn’t happen.
Bob clears his throat.
“Respectfully, sir, I’m not here for your approval. I just came for a beer. I report for duty at 0700.”
At that, Maverick laughs. Sort of. It’s more like air and tension exiting through his nose.
“Alright,” he says.
“Welcome to North Island.”
MONDAY / 1347 / OUTSIDE COMMANDER MONROE’S OFFICE
Lila steps out of her office still talking.
“No, I don’t care,” she says, handing the folder back without breaking stride. “They will follow the new metric. Period.”
Lieutenant Commander Greene makes a careful, noncommittal noise and nods, accepting the folder like a mission he’d rather not take.
Ensign Brenner is already halfway to standing when Lila clears the threshold.
“Commander—”
Then Lila sees him.
Bob is sitting in one of the plastic chairs outside her office with his hands neatly in his lap, like this is a perfectly ordinary place for him to be. Like he checked in. Like he belongs on her calendar.
Brenner follows her line of sight.
“I told him you were in a meeting, ma’am,” he says carefully. “He said he’d wait.”
Of course he did.
And of course he stands up.
Like he’s allowed to?
God.
Greene throws a weird look at Brenner who shrugs like he has opinions and theories already on why some random lieutenant from another base is sitting and waiting for Commander Monroe.
Lila keeps her face level. Looks at Greene, then Brenner.
“You’re dismissed. Both of you.”
Neither man argues. Greene gives the smallest possible nod, professional enough to be invisible, and Brenner vanishes with the speed of someone who has correctly identified live ammo in the hallway.
When they’re gone the walls seem to close in. Fluorescent light. Beige paint.
Too much emotional damage for this hour.
She stops in front of Bob.
He doesn’t say anything.
Her pulse trips.
And God, she hates that. Because it’s like he’s waiting for permission. Like he’s supposed to.
“What are you doing at North Island, Lieutenant Floyd?”
“Transferred,” he says.
Of course he says it like that. Calm.
He taps the patch on his flightsuit. She recognizes it immediately.
“Stormbreakers,” she says. “You’re under Captain Harrison.”
He nods.
“That’s not a promotion.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You’re stalling your career.”
“Consider it a lateral move.”
She stares at him.
Blue eyes. Broad shoulders. Clean hair. Crisp flight suit.
And—what? What is this?
A grand gesture? A last ditch effort? Or just youthful stupidity?
Whatever category of bad decisions this falls into, this is not a hallway conversation.
This is a locked office conversation. Door shut, blinds drawn, no witnesses.
This is—
Not a conversation that should be happening at all.
“Why?” she asks.
His eyes stay on hers. Offensively steady.
“You know why.”
Her jaw tightens.
“Explain yourself, Lieutenant Floyd.”
“I’m pushing back.”
“On what?”
“On the idea that you’re the only one allowed to choose.”
Her pulse jumps again. She doesn’t let it show.
But it hits. Because his answer isn’t stupid or messy or impulsive or even romantic.
It’s defiant.
And precise.
“I made the right call,” she says. “You don’t get to take that from me.”
“I’m not arguing that.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I made mine.”
No.
No.
Absolutely not.
He is not allowed to do this.
He is not allowed to take her decision—the necessary fucking call—agree that it was right and then just obliterate it like this. He does not get to look at all the damage and distance and discipline that it took and act like his decision matters just as much.
It doesn’t.
It can’t.
That is not how this works.
She made the call. She absorbed the fallout. She did the ugly thing and then lived inside it. He does not get to arrive after the fact with a new patch and a straight face and inform her that he, too, gets a vote.
And the worst part—the truly fucking intolerable part—is that in some ugly corner of her mind she knows this is not absurdity.
It’s logic she just doesn’t want applied to her.
“You go after what you want, Lila,” he says quietly. “Please let me do the same.”
No.
She almost says it this time.
Almost.
He steps a little closer.
“Because the thing is, ma’am,” he says, “I love you.”
Absolutely the fuck not.
That is her first coherent thought.
Not because she doesn’t understand what he means. Because she understands it too well, and because once those words are in the air they make everything else feel small.
And none of it is small.
None of it is tiny enough to be squashed down by something as simple as love.
Her throat tightens.
Her pulse goes hard.
And all at once the only thing she’s capable of is not denial, not an order, or even anger.
But simply inability.
She shakes her head. “I can’t deal with this right now.”
“Okay,” he says. “Then tell me when.”
She doesn’t answer.
Can’t.
Because her eyes meet his and for a fleeting second the option of never goes away.
So she turns. Walks away.
Slams her office door shut behind her.
Like that’ll do it.
Like that’s final.
1550 / COMMANDER MONROE’S OFFICE
The office is too small for the amount of work currently spread across it—three folders open, one half-finished eval draft on her screen, a stack of certification sheets she already sorted once and is now sorting again because apparently her hands need a task more than her brain does. The fluorescent light overhead is one flicker away from causing a migraine, and the air conditioner kicks every seven minutes with a mechanical noise that sounds like a tired groan.
She should be getting more done.
Objectively, she is being productive. Emails answered. Notes revised. One horrible draft on instructor readiness salvaged from whatever illiterate idiot wrote the first version. But it all feels slightly off.
Like the whole island has shifted half an inch to the left and she’s the only one noticing.
She signs her name at the bottom of a document, pauses, and realizes she has used the wrong date.
“Fuck,” she mutters under her breath.
Starts again.
There’s a knock at the door. Light, inoffensive. Definitely not Halpern.
Lila doesn’t look up as the door opens.
“If this is about the sim block,” she says, still writing, “the answer is no.”
“The sim block is excellent, ma’am. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Lila looks up.
And there, leaning against the doorway in flight gear, sunglasses hooked into the front of her suit, expression balanced somewhere between concern and disbelief, stands Phoenix.
Lila caps her pen with more force than needed. “Not your place, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll take the write-up.”
Phoenix says it easily, like she has already calculated the consequences and decided they’re worth it, which is, unfortunately, not only infuriating but also one of the things Lila respects about her most.
Phoenix steps inside without being invited.
“I saw Bob.”
Lila doesn’t respond.
“For the record, I didn’t know he was gonna do this.”
“Good for you.”
Phoenix shuts the door behind her and stays standing, arms folded. “You’re mad?”
“Yes.”
Lila signs another document, too hard, the pen catching slightly on the paper.
“You told him that?”
“I told him I don’t have time for this,” Lila says. “And I really, really don’t have time for this, either.”
That makes Phoenix’s mouth twitch.
“I know,” she says. “But it’s still happening.”
“I fail to see how this concerns you.”
Phoenix holds her gaze. Doesn’t sit. Doesn’t back down. “Do you?”
Lila says nothing.
Phoenix exhales through her nose.
“I can spell it out for you.”
Still nothing.
“Because he’s my friend.”
Lila puts the pen down and leans back in her chair, crossing her arms.
“And because you are my mentor, whether you like that word or not.”
Lila shuts her eyes, briefly. Like it’s hard to hear.
It shouldn’t be. But—
Phoenix isn’t phased.
“I never supported this at Lemoore. Not for a second.”
Lila says nothing. Again.
The office is full of her silence.
“He was in your chain of command. It was wrong. End of discussion.”
Lila’s jaw locks into place.
“But now he’s not.”
“Now he’s not,” Lila repeats.
They sit in silence.
Again.
Not long.
Long enough.
Phoenix watches her. Perhaps an attempt to coax a reaction through sheer annoyance.
She’s successful.
Lila tilts her head to the side. “What did he say to you?”
“He asked me to keep my opinions to myself.”
Lila lets out a small breath through her nose. “Well, you’re doing a really good job at that.”
“He’s my friend,” Phoenix repeats. “I want him to be happy.”
“You don’t think I want that?”
Phoenix doesn’t answer immediately.
Because there are nothing but wrong answers, perhaps. Answers that would push too hard.
Lila holds her gaze.
“I hope he finds what he’s looking for,” she says. “It’s just not me.”
“Right,” Phoenix says. “Copy that.”
“Close the door on your way out.”
2230 / LILA’S QUARTERS
There’s a knock at her door.
Of course there is.
Lila stands in the kitchen in an old raggedy t-shirt from Annapolis and a pair of black panties, barefoot on cold tile, staring at nothing. The apartment is mostly unlit except for the kitchen where the faintly yellow government issued overhead makes everything look sickly and old.
She hasn’t bothered to change it. It serves a purpose.
Another knock.
She closes her eyes for half a second.
There’s really only one person it could be—and how he found her housing block isn’t even a question at this point. Of course he found it.
Of course he would show up. At this hour, when the base is finally quiet and dark.
Because this is when they used to exist.
The third knock doesn’t come right away.
He waits.
Like he’s certain she’s gonna open the door.
The patience makes the whole thing unbearable.
Lila walks across the tiny apartment in a few steps. Unlocks the door.
Bob stands there in blue jeans and a white t-shirt and there’s something unnerving about it. She’s seen him in civvies before, sure, but usually with enough context—bar noise, formal event, adult activities—but this version of him feels dangerously easy to imagine in the wrong places; barefoot in her kitchen, half-asleep in her bed, taking out the trash like some obscene display of domesticity.
She leans one shoulder into the frame to block the entrance.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“That’s fine, ma’am.”
The words come out fast. Calm.
Too calm.
Like he came prepared for impact.
He doesn’t ask if he can come in.
He doesn’t leave.
Somewhere down the hallway a door closes. Lila blinks.
Then she steps aside.
And he steps inside. She closes the door behind her, blocking the hallway light and leaving the two of them standing in the darkness of the tiny entryway.
She slams her hand against the light switch. The overhead crackles before filling the space with bright white light, sterile and clean like a dentists office.
He looks up at it like it offends him.
He looks older like this. Not necessarily in age, but just—something.
Lila leans back against the door. “It’s been three months, Floyd.”
“I’m aware.”
Her hand is still on the door handle, like it doesn’t even make sense to let go because this is going to be quick. Her grip tightens.
“You think you love me?”
“I know I do.”
Lila blinks.
And then she shakes her head.
“You spent six weeks between my legs. That’s not love.”
“That would be easier, wouldn’t it.”
Yes.
The answer pops up in her brain so fast it almost comes out.
Because it’s true. It would be easier if he was just infatuated. If she could call this lust and be done with it.
She drops her hand from the handle and folds her arms across herself, sharp and fast.
“You should be over it by now.”
“Like you are?”
His voice is still level. Flat. Like he’s just asking for clarification on a brief.
Lila laughs, once.
And then she hates the sound of it.
“You have everything figured out, don’t you?” she asks.
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” he says. “I just know this isn’t nothing.”
The words land like a dull blow to the head. The certainty, the irritatingly level tone of his voice and the fact that he’s still calm—
Lila laughs, again. Barely. It’s more air than sound, but it is a laugh.
An untrained ear might call it nervous.
That’s the part she hates.
Because it is exactly the kind of reaction she trained out of herself years before Bob Floyd ever entered the picture.
“You don’t even know me and you think you can show up and—”
“I know you’re scared.”
“Fuck you,” she spits out.
“Lila—”
The certainty in him catches, briefly. His voice drops when he says her name, like he’s trying to keep her from breaking apart.
“No, actually, you’re right,” she says. “I am scared.”
She steadies herself again.
“I had to leave, Floyd.”
He says nothing. Of course he doesn’t. He’s not dumb enough to argue with facts.
“I had to remove myself before they could do it for me,” she says. “And while I was out on a bullshit personal fucking leave,” she continues like the concept of leave alone is insulting to her very core, “for a private matter that didn’t exist, they reassigned me.”
He looks into her eyes.
It’s clear he didn’t know.
It’s clear nobody told Echo Six anything until this billet was set in stone.
It’s clear command knew she would never return there. This way they could frame it as a career move instead of a cleanup operation.
She had seen the look in their eyes. The immediate stamp of approval for leave.
They suspected. Or thought they knew. Mostly they didn’t want to know.
And she had made sure they didn’t need to.
“And now I’m here and I can’t sleep,” she says and immediately regrets it, because it sounds too human.
So she keeps going before he can touch it.
“This job is awful. And difficult.” She inhales through her nose, sharp. “I work with ungrateful egomaniacs who think rewriting doctrine to match reality is just progress for the sake of progress.”
The corner of his mouth almost curls up.
“And it’s amazing,” she says. “I’m amazing at it. This isn’t a punishment. It’s not a reward. It’s just a highly accurate allocation of my skill set.”
Bob’s expression doesn’t change, but she can feel the way he listens, the way he always does—like he’ll remember every word she says like it’s scripture.
“And every day I feel like a fraud, because I made a stupid mistake that should be on my record and isn’t.”
She swallows whatever is trying to crawl up her throat, tight and hot and too much, and looks at him and hates that he looks exactly the same. Not indifferent or cold or like he wants to pick a fight.
Just steady.
That’s the part she can’t stand.
“So, yes,” she says. “I am scared. Not because you’re standing there telling me you love me. Not because I care.”
Her grip tightens on her own elbows.
“But because I can’t afford to make another mistake.”
For a second Bob says nothing
He looks at her.
Really looks.
Then, calmly:
“I think you’re scared I’m not one.”
She shakes her head. Immediate. Too fast. Too obvious.
“When are you going to get it?” she asks. “This isn’t about you.”
He says nothing.
Of course he doesn’t.
He doesn’t have to say anything, because it’s clear by now she can’t handle the silence and will rush to fill it. It’s human. It’s not how she operates, but tonight it apparently is.
“You were just there.”
The words land clean. Emotionless.
Bob’s expression barely shifts. And then:
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“Define just there.”
Lila’s eyes widen, barely. Her pulse jumps up against the base of her throat. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
His voice stays even. He gestures between them.
“Convenient. Available. Replaceable. Whatever version you’re going with.”
He pauses.
“Define it.”
She scoffs. “Don’t you dare debrief me.”
“Why not?” he asks.
Because it’s not how this works. Because it’s not your right.
Because you are not going to make me admit—
Anything. Because there’s nothing there.
He presses on before she can respond. “You taught me to defend my read.”
And then, still steady: “Defend yours.”
He takes one step closer.
“You want to tell me I was just there? Fine. Say it. Say I could’ve been anybody.”
Something shifts. Her spine straightens like on instinct. Her face smooths over. Not calm, not really, just untouchable.
Command mode.
“Fine,” she says. “You want a debrief? Let’s fucking go.”
Bob says nothing.
That, too, feels like a challenge,
“It was a high pressure situation. New command. New squadron. High scrutiny. Zero margin for error. Killer track record. Promotion timeline intact and aggressively impressive.”
The words come out fast, like she’s reciting bullet points. It’s easier. Conditions and variables, like her whole stint at Echo Six was nothing more than systems failure instead of—
Whatever it was.
Whatever it felt like.
“I ran. I went to the gym. I worked. I didn’t want to take up drinking or fighting, so—”
Her eyes lock on his.
The rest of it sounds flat. Mean.
True.
“You were smart, obedient and conveniently devoted.”
Bob nods once. “So, that rules out just there.”
Lila blinks.
Fuck.
“Go on,” he says.
“Fine. I had criteria. You fit the criteria,” she says. “Don’t assign meaning to it.”
His expression doesn’t shift. “Confident in that assessment?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then walk me from there to this.”
Her jaw tightens. “That’s enough.”
“No, it’s not.”
Heat prickles under her chest, crawling through her skin and reaching for her throat.
Her voice is clipped. “Lieutenant Floyd—”
“I’m not in your command anymore.”
The thing that resembles a nervous laugh escapes her lips again, briefly.
“You are still speaking to a senior officer,” she says.
“And you’re still not answering the question.”
She inhales, sharp.
“Maybe I was just there. Maybe I fit the criteria,” he says. “Maybe you picked me because you knew I’d let you do anything.”
She blinks, again, because that one gets under her skin.
Because a part of her wants to ask—him, herself, or a higher power if one exists—if she’s really capable of such things; if she’s really standing here arguing that he was simply a coping mechanism, that she used him because he was fit for purpose—and how that’s supposed to make any of this cleaner and better?
Because coming from him, the words sound meaner, though there’s no accusation in his tone. There’s nothing but the version she’s trying her hardest to make true.
Because that’ll buy her absolution?
Or—
Because it’s the only way she’ll survive.
“Maybe I could’ve been anybody,” he continues.
And then he takes two steps forward.
“But you couldn’t end it until you put three hundred and thirty-three miles between us.”
She goes still.
It’s not an approximation. Not rounded. Exact.
Because of course he would know. He’s a systems guy. A numbers guy. The kind of man who looks things up once and remembers them forever.
Of course he looked up the exact mileage between her and the place she left him.
“I had to.”
Her voice comes out smaller than she means it to. More defensive.
And now he’s close enough that she has to tip her chin up to meet his eyes.
That’s a problem.
He leans in, carefully, making her suddenly hyper aware of the nonexistent space between her and the door. His hand lifts and for one humiliating second her whole body reacts, shuddering stupidly in anticipation, and she hates herself for it but he only plants his palm flat beside her head.
“I know,” he says.
That should make her angrier.
Because if he really knew, he wouldn’t be here
But instead it makes her breath catch—or maybe it’s the fact he’s close enough that she can feel the heat coming off him, close enough that she can smell coffee on his breath and government issued soap on his skin, close enough that her body is betraying her and leaning in like this is already over.
“I was a mistake, Lila,” he whispers.
The words land with sick familiarity.
She’s said it before; he’s said it before—in one form another.
As if calling it that made anything simpler.
“That doesn’t mean I still am,” he says.
Fuck.
And then her hand grips the front of his shirt. Her lips find his.
It’s almost violent the way she kisses him to shut him up, to take back whatever control she still can, to make this about anything other than what he’s actually saying.
It’s almost violent the way she kisses him like she’s thought of nothing but this for the last three months.
It’s almost violent until it isn’t.
Until he kisses her back.
And the whole thing starts slipping out of the category she meant to keep it in.
That’s the first warning.
The second is how quickly she stops trying to force it back.
TUESDAY / 0612 / LILA’S QUARTERS
Two takeaway coffee cups sit on her little kitchen table.
Iced americano. No sweetener. No milk.
“Are you trying to be cute?” she asks.
“No, ma’am,” he says. “I just thought you’d want to be properly caffeinated before we have the same fight for the hundredth time.”
She shakes her head. “This wouldn’t be a fight if you had stayed at Lemoore.”
“This wouldn’t be a fight if you didn’t care.”
“Fine,” she says. “I care.”
He nods.
He doesn’t smile.
The words don’t tell him anything new.
But the fact that she’s choosing to say them out loud—that’s the part that gets him.
Because it is a choice. At this hour, even if she hasn’t slept that much or had her coffee yet, she’s sharp. She’s in control. She’s—
She’s wearing the same raggedy t-shirt as last night.
But it’s inside out.
And she’s barefoot.
And irritated.
“You really don’t know how to quit,” she says.
“No, ma’am.”
She hasn’t sat down.
That, too, is a choice.
He’s leaning back against the chair, ankles crossed on his outstretched legs.
He half-expects her to tell him to straighten up. To stop taking up so much space.
To stop acting like he belongs.
She doesn’t.
In fact she has said very little this morning.
She didn’t comment on the fact that he stole her keys to slip out for a coffee run while she was still sleeping and then came back like he’d been doing it for years, hanging them neatly on the little hook by the door.
She didn’t object when he opened the blinds in her kitchen to exactly halfway like he’d decided, on his own authority, that the apartment should have more light in it.
She didn’t even react when he set the coffees down on the table and popped back into the bedroom to unplug her phone from the charger and replace it with his.
She just watched him. Silent. Irritated. Observing, like she used to observe Echo Six.
It didn’t feel like indifference. Bob knew what indifference looked like. This was too focused. Too sharp. More like she was tracking him and arguing with herself at the same time, and he had the uneasy sense that he was winning some ground he had not meant to take.
He takes a sip of his coffee.
By his standards it’s a weird order but it’s grown on him.
She watches.
And then—
She sits down. Takes the coffee.
“What are your expectations?” she asks.
“I just want to have coffee with you.”
She blinks.
Doesn’t respond.
And he knows maybe she was expecting something bigger, something more consuming. A future together. A life.
Something that would warrant transferring.
So, he clarifies: “Every morning. If you’ll let me.”
“Every morning?” she asks, amused as if he’s asking for the moon and the stars.
“You’re deploying in two months,” she continues. “You’ll be gone for six.”
“I know.”
He isn’t confused about his new assignment or deployment schedule. He knows. He’s read the timeline, the workup schedule, the likely detachments, the windows where contact will be patchy and the ones where it’ll be worse than patchy.
This is not ignorance talking.
This is choice.
He could have picked an easier billet. Less deployment. More time on land. He didn’t.
She determined the where. Not the what.
So, every morning might not mean literally every morning. It just means every morning he can have with her, he wants.
“I don’t know where I’m going to be when you get back,” she says.
“You’ll be here.”
Her eyes narrow. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“You psychic?”
“You’re on the next O-6 board.”
Her face changes very slightly. Not soft, not really. More like discomfort, like she’s suddenly superstitious. Like saying the thing out loud will make it disappear.
“That’s not official,” she says.
“As good as.”
He sips on his coffee. She doesn’t reply. She’s looking at him like belief, in this context, is either deeply attractive or a punishable offense.
“When I come back, there’ll be another stripe on your collar,” he adds.
“You really believe that.”
“I do.”
He can see it, her breath catching in her throat.
It’s small. Barely there. But he sees it anyway.
It’s not the praise that gets her, he knows. It’s the fact that he can already see her there. Another stripe. Another impossible thing she’ll wear like it was nothing but an inevitability, even though he knows she’s spent her entire career making herself too competent to deny.
Her mouth tightens.
And she pivots to another thing on whatever mental list she’s compiled. Logistics, excuses, reasons to walk away.
“You’ve set yourself back at least six months by transferring. If I make O-6—”
He interrupts. “When you make O-6.”
She ignores that. “—you’ll be up for O-4.”
“Probably.”
“I’ll always outrank you.”
“Yes.”
She waits.
“And?” she says.
“And what?”
“And that’s not a problem for you?”
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
Bob looks at her.
Really looks.
At the bare feet on her kitchen floor. The iced coffee in both hands. The expression she’s trying to keep neutral and failing by fractions.
At the way she says outrank like it should solve something. Like it should scare him off if he has any conventional male ego worth speaking of.
He doesn’t.
He shrugs once. “I’m sure some men would find it humiliating.”
Some, most. Perhaps his choice of words gives too much credit to his gender.
“I don’t,” he says. And then:
“I like watching you be good at what you do.”
She looks down at her coffee. “You know what’s funny?” she asks, and when he shrugs, she continues, “I actually believe you.”
“I know.”
Because he has never once wanted her smaller. Or easier, duller, less exacting, less formidable. And some part of her, he thinks, is still startled every time she realizes that’s true.
He can see the line of tension in her mouth soften, just slightly, then come back as if caught it happening and resented herself for it.
He loves that, too.
God help him.
She takes a sip. The ice rattles around in the cup.
“You brought me the wrong coffee three times before I told you my order.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Because I didn’t know you yet.”
“Now I do.”
“You think you do.”
“I know enough to want the rest.”
She goes still.
Just a little, just enough to notice. Enough to see the sentence land before she has time to decide how to react.
She’s looking at him like he’s just stepped over some invisible line and had the nerve to do it gently.
“Do you actually want me,” she asks, “or do you just like fixing things?”
“Taking care of you isn’t the same thing as fixing you.”
Because there’s nothing to fix, he almost adds, but decides against it.
She says nothing.
Just looks down at the coffee in her hand like it might offer a better answer, then back at him, as if she’s irritated by the fact that the conversation has drifted this far from manageable. He can see the next turn coming before she makes it—away from feeling, towards something measurable.
“And what happens when I start counting on you and you’re halfway across the Pacific?”
There it is.
Not career math. Not rank.
But the actual question, sort of. Hiding behind logistics.
But closer to the bone.
Bob looks at her for a second before he answers.
“Then I’m still yours to count on.”
Her expression doesn’t change much, but he can feel the shift anyway.
“That’s a big promise,” she says.
It should sound dismissive. It almost does. But there’s something more frail behind it, something akin to fear that has nothing to do with the size of the thing.
“Not really.”
Her eyes narrow. “Not really?”
He shakes his head.
“You’re annoyingly steady,” she says.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not the one who’s scared.”
The kitchen goes very quiet after that.
Morning light. Beads of condensation gathering on the takeaway cups. Hum of the fridge.
And her.
Out of excuses.
That, too, is a choice.
“I’m not built for relationships.”
She doesn’t say it like another excuse, like another thing that’s supposed to push him away.
She says it like a warning.
Like she has finally stopped trying to make this sound impossible and is instead deciding, with visible reluctance, to tell him exactly what he’s insisting on walking into.
“Sharp edges,” he mumbles.
“What?”
“You’re right. You’re not.” He looks at her. Sets his cup down. “But I am.”
She blinks.
And he can almost see it—the moment where she realizes she might have lost the argument, the control, the right to make unilateral decisions.
The moment she realizes that losing might get her exactly what she has been trying not to want since the first time he fell asleep next to her and had the nerve to suggest she had crossed the line.
And because Lila is Lila, and he loves her enough by now to understand what comes next won’t be words of softness or love or even anything resembling a yes.
But simply terms.
“You can’t move in,” she says.
“I’m not asking to.”
Her eyes narrow, like she distrusts his answer on nothing but principle.
“You can’t use my keys.”
“Okay.”
“You can’t leave things here.”
“Okay.”
He says it the same way each time. No argument. No smile. No push.
And that’s what seems to get under her skin.
Not because she wants the fight, exactly, but because he keeps responding like none of this scares him off—and she is starting to believe him.
“I’m not introducing you as my boyfriend,” she says.
At that, he can’t help but smile.
“Lieutenant Floyd works fine.”
She nods.
And then, something in her voice changes. Softens. Barely.
Her face remains steeled.
“And you can’t ask for every morning and act like that’s a small thing and not forever.”
He looks at her.
Really looks again.
Because she knows every morning was never about coffee.
It was his clumsy, honest way of asking for forever.
And this—
This is her unsentimental, conditional way of saying yes.
I honestly don't know what the hell I'm doing. Whether I should stay or go, or where I should go, or why I'm even here.
LEWIS PULLMAN as Cameron Cassmore
REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES (2026) — dir. Olivia Newman
