Pausing doesn't come naturally to the Chief, but he obliges when asked. Only then does he realize what he was doing might have been rude.

"Alright."

The Chief takes a long, deep breath. He releases it. There. Pace slowed. He tries to focus on the song, to really listen to it in good faith this time instead of quickly writing it off as noise. It's always been difficult for him to assess the quality of music or art. They never interested him when he was small, and Spartan training did nothing to change that.

The song gets upgraded from "not actively unpleasant" to "actually maybe good" in his estimation as a result of this effort, but it's still a digital product of a lie they're telling. Perhaps this is good. If it balances this well, the lie is all the more convincing.

That line of thought reminds him. Right. Married. He's a normal person who's loved another normal person for a long time and he's supposed to be performing that completely alien scenario now. At least Wash leaning into him isn't really new, or even uncomfortable. It might be the only part of this that isn't.

Funny, how that's happened.

He shifts his arm down off the shoulders and around Wash, and makes a concerted effort to be relaxed.