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"Yeah, I know. Always s**t somewhere, though," Evan replied, pushing his way into the kitchen.

It was a good thing that he was neck deep in the fridge when Tuck asked his question; if Evan was lucky, Tuck wouldn't have seen the way his shoulders stiffened the second it came out of his mouth. He used the excuse of looking for ingredients to hide in there for an extra minute or two, using that time to school his features into something more neutral. Tuck had just come back, and it wasn't ******** fair that he should have to deal with bad news right off the bat.

More than that, Evan didn't want to give it to him despite the fact that this kind of news should come from a friend and the only other person on the island who would have thought to tell Tuck was the one person Evan didn't want to have to. When Evan finally emerged from the fridge, his face was carefully blank. He didn't say a word as he set down the ingredients he had gotten out, didn't even look at Tuck as he went to the pantry and got out a mostly-full bag of potatoes. He put it and a peeler on the kitchen island between them and finally said, "Sit down and peel."

Evan distracted himself from looking at Tuck by methodically slicing an onion, taking the extra time to make sure all of the pieces were even.

The atmosphere in the kitchen was stifling, the silence between them brittle and charged with anticipation, no longer comfortable. "Nevada," he finally replied, ripping off the band-aid without any hedging or useless platitudes.

Evan's knuckles turned white as his fingers tightened on the handle of the knife. He very carefully didn't look up so as not to see Tuck's easygoing smile lost to pain and sadness. Seeing it in Stormy had been bad enough, and he hadn't been able to spare her the pain any more than he would be able to spare Tuck. He gave the other man the time he needed to get over the initial shock, cowardly taking what small comfort he could in his own task and using it to help him focus.

Only when Tuck spoke did Evan carefully put down the knife. The onion wasn't going to get any smaller, anyway. "KIA," he replied. "Or so I assume. I wasn't here when it happened." Hesitantly, he reached out to squeeze Tuck's shoulder. "There's a stone. We can go after breakfast, if you want."

"Yeah, man," Evan replied with a wan, sympathetic grin. "Anything. I've got some whiskey, too," he offered. "Out of vodka, though." Numbness, more than tears or rage, was familiar enough to be comfortable. He could give Tuck a little bit of oblivion. The need for vengeance--when it came, if it came--could be dealt with later.

Evan glanced at the finely chopped onion and the overabundance of potatoes they were unlikely to finish off by themselves. "Anything," he said. "I'm up for suggestions." That, too, was a concession to the other man; food, he knew, could be just as much of a comfort.

And just like that they were back on the same page, sorrow pushed aside for the moment in favor of more mundane things. Evan had no doubt that they would get back to it when the time was right, but for now: breakfast.

"Better start grating if you want hash browns. I could do sausage gravy," he suggested, abandoning the cutting board for the fridge. "Put the rest in an omelette or something. Maybe put some potatoes in there, too. We've got enough." Not the most original of ideas, but he didn't feel any particular need to impress Tuck, not with how fast the other man was likely to wolf it down anyway; he remembered Tuck's appetite.

"Booze for dessert," Evan agreed. "We're not drinking it in my room, though. That's off the table."

"Yeah? That'd be a nice change," Evan remarked, getting out the things he would need to make the spread Tuck had asked for. Maybe now that Tuck was back, he could teach the other man how to cook a little bit. Maybe actual cooking was pushing it--maybe he could start with showing Tuck how to measure ingredients and they could work their way up from there. Baby steps. Hopefully they would have enough time to make progress before one of them got deployed again.

Evan hesitated as Tuck inquired about Stormy, the cup full of flour he had measured out hovering between the bag and the mixing bowl it was going to end up in. "She's doing," he replied carefully. "She's not on the island for now--she's a full Hunter, now, and she got tapped for some mission. I'm sure she'll be happier to see you than I was. She understands that we can't always be here."

He should have left it at that. Anything more was beyond his business to tell Tuck, but he felt that Tuck deserved fair warning. "Look, don't bring up Nevada to her, okay? She didn't deal with it well," and wasn't that an understatement, "but I think she's finally starting to move on."

Evan accepted Tuck's gratitude with a nod, drawing comfort from mixing a bowl full of ingredients into dough. He had gotten used to having breakfast with--rather, making breakfast for--Tuck, and it almost felt like no time had passed at all. They could have been green trainees again, smacking each other around after a sleepless night and shrugging it off with copious amounts of food.

"Soon, I hope," Evan said on a sigh. "Don't really like her being where I can't keep an eye on her," he admitted. All the more reason to make Hunter, so he would be in a position to go where she went. Not that he was at all overbearing or overprotective or anything like that, not at all.

His lips twitched into a frown as Tuck mentioned Stormy's little friend. "Yeah, she is. Don't know why he's not out there with her, but she already warned me off of him. She's got a blood cousin here now, too."

Trust Tuck to ask the loaded questions. Evan wasn't about to tell him about the specter that lingered on the fringes of his mind and the corners of his eyes that he was more convinced than not existed. He certainly wasn't going to mention the fact that he had just gotten off probation for nearly killing a girl--a friend, even, or at least she had been--because they had dared to express disloyalty to Deus. No, he loved Tuck like a brother, but there were some things Evan was better off keeping to himself.

"Bet you did, without anyone else out there willing to cook for you," Evan teased. "Just the same old bullshit around here. We went up against the Horsemen a few months ago. Got our asses handed to us." He sneered and shook his head in disgust, shaping biscuits to go into the oven. "No more discipline here now than there was before you got deployed. Surprised any of us came back from that one."

Evan paused to wash his hands, planning the rest of breakfast out in his head. Start the gravy, first, then put the hash browns on, fry up some bacon and shove it into some eggs, all before the biscuits burnt. Not a problem. "Why the hell would I settle down?" He asked over his shoulder. "Too many beautiful women on this island, and life is too, too short." He smirked at Tuck, turning to flick the excess water on his hands at him before finding a towel. "Speaking of, you heard from your sister at all?"