In their line of work, tomorrows weren't always promised - he'd watched too many friends die too young, suffered too many personal tragedies, and uprooted his life in a moment too many times. Repetition, consistency, unending tomorrows - those were something new, a new challenge to contend with.
Routine setting hadn't become a norm until her, and it ended as it began: without warning. Regardless, what they'd found in those before days (before she flipped a switch, before she became what he'd fought so hard to unlearn) was something comfortable, something smooth, something almost, but not quite, monotonous.
Moments that broke up the monotony weren't gunfights or car chases (no, those were to be expected), but the seconds that followed: lingering glances across the bullpen, light fingertips over scraped foreheads, brief embraces in the embers.
Explosions weren't jarring, but a minute of shared breath, shoulders brushing in too-narrow doorframes, impending "talks" - those scared the shit out of him day in and day out. And it wasn't because he was too worried about potential, or breaking the rules, but because each of those moments was a promise of another. He'd learned, at too young an age, that hedging your bets on the next day was bad practice.
Yet, somehow, tomorrow seemed to drift further away with her - not being alone has a tendency to do that. Together, they grabbed their gear, learned things, and solved the case in time for dinner and drinks. It was how they operated, and quickly, the unpredictability of his previous lives began to slip into the past.
Like he'd learned from her - take the day by day, find moments worth remembering - perhaps she'd learned from him; learned to compartmentalize, to put the operation first, to pack up and not to look back.
If she'd really never meant for them to happen, then what did that mean for him? Was he just the gomer that got in over his head, lulled by a false sense of security and a desire for home? Is this what too many years alone does to someone? Maybe, all along, he'd conflated consistency with safety.
No matter what had happened, something had, without a doubt, changed within him. His peripheral vision grew obstructed by blonde flashes, girly music and flavored crisps imported from London filled his car, and what it meant to live for the future became less of an abstract idea.
He had begun to imagine a tomorrow, and tomorrow had become a given, until it wasn't.