Mission Forensic
Part 24: The Weekend
The curtains breathed faintly with the movement of Saturday morning air, stirring the room with threads of sunlight that stretched lazily across the sheets. Catherine stirred first, half awake, shifting closer into the curve of Edward’s arm. He felt her before he opened his eyes—the warmth of her, the faint weight of her hand spread across his chest, the whisper of her hair against his jaw.
For a while, neither of them moved. The city outside had not yet fully woken; the occasional rumble of a bus, the distant cry of a vendor, but nothing that dared intrude on the stillness inside.
Edward opened his eyes at last. Catherine was watching him, her expression softened by the half-light.
“You look less serious when you’re asleep,” she murmured, tracing an idle line along his collarbone.
He smiled faintly. “That’s because I’m not dreaming about deadlines.”
“Mm,” she teased, shifting up onto one elbow. “But awake Edward… he thinks about workshops before breakfast.”
He groaned, burying his face briefly against her shoulder. “Don’t remind me.”
Catherine laughed quietly, pressing a kiss to the side of his temple. “You’ll manage it. You always do.”
***
They lingered in bed longer than the clock allowed. Catherine’s laughter threaded through the room, soft and unhurried, punctuated by Edward’s murmured replies, by the quiet rhythm of touches and stolen kisses. The world outside could wait.
It was nearly midmorning when they finally rose. The kitchen came alive with small domestic sounds—the clink of cups, the hiss of the kettle, the faint scrape of bread against the toaster. Catherine perched against the counter, hair tousled, eyes still heavy with sleep, while Edward busied himself with measured movements that looked far too precise for so early an hour.
“You’re making tea as if Ridhima ma’am is grading you for it,” Catherine remarked, watching him with a sly smile.
“Better her than you,” he countered, sliding a cup toward her.
She accepted it, curling her fingers around the warmth, then tilted her head. “Speaking of Ridhima ma’am…”
He sighed, leaning back against the counter. “The workshop. I keep thinking about it. Five days. Faculty, professionals. And me, the one student in the middle of it all.”
Her gaze softened, the teasing fading into something gentler. “She chose you because she trusts you. And because you’re good at this.”
He looked at her, the edge of worry easing in the light of her certainty. “You always make it sound simple.”
“That’s because,” she said, sipping her tea, “it usually is.”
***
After breakfast, Edward opened his laptop at the dining table, scrolling through the preliminary schedule Ridhima had shared the night before. Catherine leaned over his shoulder, her damp hair brushing his cheek as she read with him.
“Day one,” she murmured, “advanced crime scene reconstruction.”
“Day two… toxicological simulations,” Edward added.
Her lips curved. “Looks like both of us are going to be very interested.”
He glanced sideways at her. “Interested, yes. Overworked, definitely.”
She laughed and kissed the corner of his mouth before straightening. “Then we’ll make time. For us. For this.”
He nodded, the glow of her words sinking deeper than any reassurance from faculty could.
***
By noon, the flat had slipped into its weekend rhythm—a rhythm both ordinary and intimate, made of small tasks strung together like beads on a thread.
The living room carried the faint scent of detergent from the laundry folded neatly on the sofa’s armrest, cotton shirts stacked in a precarious tower. On the dining table, Edward’s open laptop glowed with the workshop schedule, its pale light mirrored faintly in the polished wood. Catherine’s notes spread beside it in a kind of chaos that only she could read—highlighter streaks, loose pages, and her handwriting looping confidently across margins.
She knelt on the carpet for a while, sorting through old articles, her hair falling forward in a silken curtain, brushing her cheeks. Edward watched her from the sofa, his gaze lingering not on the pages but on the easy concentration she carried, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when it slipped too far.
When she caught him looking, she arched a brow. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, though his mouth tilted into a smile. “Just… noise I like.”
She shook her head, trying to hide her grin, and returned to her papers.
***
Later, she stretched across the sofa with her cappuccino in hand, the froth leaving a faint moustache on her lip. Edward leaned back into the opposite corner, cradling his Americano, its dark scent rising sharp and clean. Between them, the coffee table was cluttered—an abandoned pen, two empty teacups from the morning, the sleeve of crackers they’d half-finished.
Catherine nudged his leg with her foot. “Still thinking about the workshop?”
He exhaled slowly. “It’s there. Like a hum in the background.”
“Then let it hum,” she said simply. “We’ll deal with it when it sings.”
Her words, tossed so lightly, settled into him like something heavier, something steady. He reached out, catching her foot before she could pull it back, his thumb tracing idle circles at her ankle.
She tilted her head, smiling. “Distracted already?”
“Always,” he said.
***
Outside, Delhi swelled into its usual cacophony—the rise and fall of horns, a hawker’s call echoing against concrete, the whirr of a distant scooter. But here, inside their flat, the air was slowed, gentled. The fan hummed overhead, the sunlight thinned through curtains into gold across the floor, and between their cups of coffee sat the unspoken truth: that in all the noise of their world—deadlines, workshops, expectations—this was the one place where everything fell into rhythm.
Catherine leaned her head back against the cushions, eyes half-closed, the ghost of a smile at her lips. Edward set his cup down and let himself watch her, memorising the moment in silence.
Balanced—between duty and affection, pressure and reprieve—this was what their life together had become. And as the afternoon folded slowly toward evening, Edward felt the certainty of it again: whatever waited for them outside, whatever challenges rose with the workshop ahead, they had already found the steadiness that mattered most.
The world beyond could clamor as it pleased. Here, time bent to them alone.
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