Watching that look unfold on Tucker's face is...well, it's sort of gratifying. She hadn't meant to set off this chain reaction, but there's a warmth to it that she enjoys bearing witness to. She isn't stupid, she knows Tucker is hardly the picture of solemnity and savoir-faire, but war weighs just as hard on everyone. And crass though he may be sometimes (which, frankly, is more amusing than anything else, if only because he is mostly terrible at it), Sonia knows there's more to Tucker than just his awful one-liners and utter lack of tact.

He's funny, for instance -- really funny, in a way Sonia doesn't often get. He has thoughts and feelings like anyone else, though she suspects he tries not to show it. But he shows it to her. And aside from those heavily critiqued one-liners he first tried on her, he's never treated her with any real disrespect. He's trying just as hard as the rest of them not to buckle under the crushing weight of this war, of this plummet in morale, and Sonia, she's lived like this for a decade now, but Tucker hasn't.

She smiles and breathes out a laugh at the compliment, because it really is one -- she's always been doubtful, at times resentful of her supposed role in boosting morale, but this is something real and tangible and, for Tucker, clearly very honest. She's smiling, about to say something in return, when he kisses her.

It's not even all that sudden -- it's not as though he grabbed her by the waist and dramatically dipped her -- but unexpected, and unexpectedly chaste at that. Not unwelcome, though; there's no recoil, no hand on his shoulder pushing him back. The pink glow to her cheeks when he draws back is not entirely from the cold, and she looks just a little stunned, blinking, touching her fingers to her lips.

"Tucker," she says, stupidly, because her brain fails to come up with any intelligent response.