The elevator closed on George's face.
Gwen exhaled.
She turned to look at Locke, who was still standing in the doorway with the expression of a person who had just hosted a mildly unusual morning and was processing it.
"Why was my dad here?" she asked. "Car theft isn't his jurisdiction."
"He probably saw it was my car and came to follow up personally." Locke stepped back to let her in. "More likely to be recovered that way."
Gwen considered this and nodded. It tracked — an ordinary theft report was one of thousands in the weekly queue. A stolen vehicle connected to a Captain's daughter's classmate was something else. She actually felt a small wave of gratitude toward her father, which she wouldn't be mentioning to him anytime soon.
"So the car is definitely gone," she said, dropping her bag on the sofa. "Again."
"The insurance agent hasn't called back yet." Locke opened the refrigerator. "I think he's taking it personally."
Gwen laughed. "What do you have to drink?"
"Water. Juice. Something blue that I think came with the apartment."
"Water's fine."
They settled into the easy rhythm that had developed over the past week — Gwen spreading her weekend homework across the coffee table, Locke working through his half with the particular efficiency of someone who upgraded their academic skills by System rather than study. It was comfortable in the way that arrangements between two people become comfortable when neither of them is performing anything.
Around two in the afternoon, Locke's phone buzzed.
He looked at it. Set it down. Picked it up again.
"The insurance agent just called," he said.
Gwen looked up.
"He's downstairs."
The new R8 was silver. Same model, same color as the two before it — the insurance company had apparently decided on a policy of exact replacement regardless of circumstances. The agent handed over the keys with a smile that was slightly too bright for someone who had written two total-loss claims on the same vehicle in the same week.
"Premium won't go up next year," the agent said, took a photo, and left with the energy of someone who had made peace with something.
Locke stood on the sidewalk holding the third set of keys to the same car and looked at Gwen.
"I feel like I lost somehow," he said.
Gwen pressed her lips together, which was her version of trying not to laugh. "You did. But not the way you think."
She explained it — which she'd been piecing together since the agent arrived with the exact-replacement vehicle and the too-bright smile. The chase had been on every news broadcast in the city. The R8 had been prominent in all the footage. The insurance company that paid out instantly, in full, on a vehicle involved in the biggest Manhattan chase in recent memory — that was worth significantly more in advertising than what they'd spent. They'd turned a loss into a campaign. The agent's smile wasn't apology; it was satisfaction.
Locke absorbed this.
"If they use my name or my face," he said, "I'll hear about it."
"That's fair." She tilted her head. "Do you actually want them to?"
"No. But then I'd have standing to make it uncomfortable for them, which might be interesting."
Gwen looked at him for a moment. "You're very strange."
"You've mentioned that."
"It keeps being true."
He opened the passenger door. "I'll drive you home."
The Stacy house was warm in the way it always was — the particular warmth of a home that had been lived in fully, bookshelves and half-finished projects and the smell of something cooking from the kitchen. Locke had been here twice and it already felt like a pattern.
George was at the table with a glass of whiskey — his first, Locke noted, since getting home after a night of crime scenes and paperwork and no sleep. He looked at Locke with the expression he'd been developing over the past several days, the one that wasn't quite suspicion and wasn't quite approval and sat somewhere more unsettling than either.
"Where'd you park the new one?" George asked.
Gwen answered before Locke could. "The indoor lot on the corner. The one with the working cameras."
George nodded with the gravity of a man filing information.
Locke kept his expression politely grateful. George was doing cop work at his own dinner table, which was either impressive or exhausting depending on how you looked at it, and Locke suspected it was both.
Helen came out of the kitchen with food, set it on the table with the efficiency of someone who had run this household for many years and had strong opinions about meals happening on time.
"Sit down," she said to George. "You've been going since last night. Eat something."
George sat.
Helen looked at Locke. "You'll stay for dinner."
It wasn't a question.
Locke stayed.
They ate — Helen's cooking was the kind of cooking that communicated that someone in this house took it seriously, the food arriving in the right order with the right flavors and no drama about it. George ate with the mechanical focus of a man who needed fuel and had temporarily suspended the part of his brain that ran commentary. Gwen sat across from Locke and passed dishes and made small conversation about the Oscorp orientation, what Dr. Connors' lab was actually like, whether the other interns seemed like people she'd want to work with.
Locke asked the right questions. He was genuinely interested in the Connors detail — the trajectory of that particular situation was something he'd been tracking — but he kept the questions light, curious-student register, nothing that would flag.
Then Helen set down her fork and looked at George.
"You've been staring at him since he came in," she said. "Stop it."
George opened his mouth.
"He's a guest," Helen said. "At our table. Again." She looked at Locke with the calm warmth of someone who had decided on a verdict and was not revisiting it. "Locke isn't an outsider. He's welcome here."
Gwen looked at her water glass.
George looked at the middle distance.
Locke looked at Helen, who was already moving the serving dish to a better position, entirely unbothered by what she'd just said.
He said, quietly: "Thank you, Mrs. Stacy."
"Helen."
"Helen."
Gwen's face had gone the particular shade of pink that happened when her mother decided to be straightforward about something Gwen had been carefully not being straightforward about.
George took a long sip of his whiskey.
Locke picked up his fork and continued eating.
The dinner continued.