“Part of the job.”
“Still. Thank you.”
There was that politeness again. Careful edges. No sparring. No, ‘you’re reckless’,or ‘you’re cautious.’ Just distance.
Tilly spun the chair around. “Did I do something?”
Savannah blinked. “What?”
“You’ve been…” They searched for a word that wasn’tpulling awayorignoring mebecause both of those sounded ridiculous even in their head. “You’ve been… very professional.”
Savannah’s mouth twitched like she wanted to smile but wasn’t sure if she was allowed to. “Is that a complaint?”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“You said it like it was.”
Tilly exhaled, leaning back in the chair. “It’s just weird when people change their whole style in the middle of the week.”
Savannah stepped fully into the room now, letting the door swing shut behind her. “I didn’t change my style.”
“You stopped arguing.”
“I can argue if you want,” she said, dry. “I was trying not to be a pain.”
“You’re always a pain.”
That got the smile out of her, small but real. “Well. At least that’s consistent.”
The tension eased a fraction. Not gone, but softened enough that Tilly’s chest didn’t feel as tight.
“I wasn’t mad,” Savannah said after a moment, quieter now. “In the edit bay. The other day. I mean—I was, but not… at you. I just care how it looks.”
“I know,” Tilly said. “I care how it looks, too.”
“Yeah,” she said, watching them. “I know.”
They let that sit between them, warm in the humming blue of the monitors.
“Okay,” Savannah said finally, pushing off the door. “I’m gonna go write the tag. Text me if you need me to re-voice.”
Tilly snorted. “We don’t text. We work.”
Her eyes flashed—surprised, then amused. “You talk to Harper too much.”
“She talks too much.”
Savannah shook her head, still smiling as she left.
When the door closed behind her, Tilly stared at the blank space she’d left, then at the footage on the screen. It was just a parking ban story. Just another winter night, but their hands still remembered the weight of her sleeve, the quiet way she’d trusted them to fix the frame.
They turned back to the monitor, scrubbing through the footage again, even though there was nothing wrong with it.
She was good. Too good. Clean delivery, sharp pacing, instinctive awareness of the lens. Earlier in the week, she would have been leaning over their shoulder by now, arguing about timing, pushing for a tighter crop, asking if the background looked too staged. She would have made the edit louder. Harder.
Now she was careful.
Professional.
