He doesn't even stop at the apartment, after he drops Gracie off.
After sucking up every possible second of the weekend with her, like each drop is the only water he'd have before six months in the desert. Starting with breakfast, where she had French toast and drenched it in coconut syrup and the fake maple that still reminds him of the diners back home (and man, he misses those diners, misses the corned beef special, piled high on rye and stuffed with coleslaw and Thousand Island. The closest thing here is Spam, and that just, really. Doesn't cut it.) and he had sunny-side-up eggs, because, as he explained, this was a sunny-side-up sort of day, getting the be with her.
It's not even one hundred percent a lie. Just picking her up, catching her in a hug she'd run into and feeling her arms go around his neck was enough to improve his outlook on life by about a thousand percent, while simultaneously reminding him why he has to fight this thing, why he has to try and keep her, because she is the single best part of his life, the single best part of him. Smiling and beautiful, looking forward to their weekend together. Rolling her eyes at him when he made that stupid joke about the eggs, but her smile curling and pleased.
It's enough that the ache is manageable, for the day.
A day he spent at the aquarium, and then a park, until blue twilight began falling and it was time to take her out for a nice dinner, dressed up, at a properly adult restaurant, because she's getting to be a young lady now, and this, Grace, this is the sort of place you should hold out for, thirty years from now, when you start dating.
Do you like it?
It's nice, Danno.
Even when it led to questions about Gabby, and the explanation he gave her, sober-eyed over shrimp cocktail and her Shirley Temple, about how he and Gabby decided not to see each other anymore, and it's no one's fault, okay, they just decided they wanted different things, which he does not specify, because Gabby wanted him, and he wanted, well...
Steve.
Which does not come up on the lists of recommended topics for discussion with your pre-teen daughter, none that he's ever seen or considered, so he skated past it, hands folded on the tabletop, against fine white cloth, acutely aware of the phone not ringing in his pocket.
She took it like a champ, disappointment and all, but her wistfulness all but disappeared once they were home and he commanded both of them into pajamas before pulling out the sofa bed and tossing her, shrieking, into a nest of pillows and blankets. Held up DVDs one by one, for appraisal, to be sorted into piles, first, of 'definitely could watch' to 'maybe if we're desperate' to 'never again, why do I own this movie to begin with, are DVDs flammable?'
(The answer to which is a resounding...not really. More melty than anything.)
The process for picking a movie was long and intense, but they agreed on one (Grace's choice), and she curled into him, ice cream and popcorn balanced in the folds of the blankets, and she fell asleep there, too.
He managed to even make it through most of the night without admitting that was his plan all along. Not bad, considering there hadn't been a second of the day where he wasn't wondering about Steve, thinking about Steve, wishing Steve and Steve's ridiculous mass were taking up the entire fucking pullout bed.
But he wasn't. He was alone. In a way that would drive Danny crazy. To drink. Up a wall and over the edge. In a way that Danny wasn't, all weekend. Through Saturday and into Sunday, which turned faintly gray at the edges after lunch, when the countdown to dropping her off started and ended with a last hug and her goodbyes still in his ear.
Leaving him feeling slightly like the sidewalk was tilted under his shoes, before finding his keys, his bearings, the car, and driving away. World in a blur, driving by instinct and memory as much as paying attention, until he snaps out of it, and makes the turn that won't bring him back to his house. Pushing the pedal down with sudden urgency, heart thudding hard and worried in his chest. It's been all weekend, and he's heard nothing, gotten only one brief text. Guilt is shoving itself into the cracks between his ribs, lengthens his steps when he pulls up to the gate, lets himself in.
The lights are on, and he can hear the TV, and, crap, maybe he should have brought some beer, or something, or gone home and changed out of weekend clothes, t-shirt and jeans from going outside and trying to coax Grace into playing catch, but he's here and it's already been way too long, so he just opens the door instead, and strolls in with an acerbic greeting already on his tongue before it dies there and dries to leather.
Steve's there. Yeah.
But Steve is not alone. Not at all. Not like Danny's been thinking he was. Not even a little. Because Steve is sitting on the couch, with Catherine tucked comfortably next to him, smiling at something she's saying. With an empty plate in front of them, scattered with the remnants of, oh, that looks like it was pretty good. Noted, in a daze.
Just like he notes the way Catherine smiles, sudden and bright and beautiful, and, God, she really is. Beautiful. And smart and strong and in the Navy and everything a guy like Steve could want, or any guy, really, she's great, Cath, and she doesn't deserve the way he suddenly hates her like she's actually a swarm of locusts, and he is actually losing it, seriously losing it, right here, half out of Steve's doorway, as she's saying Danny all pleased and how was your weekend with your daughter? and he's got nothing at all. Can't even reach into the gaping hole that was his brain and pull out words.
He thinks he says something like "good" or maybe it's "sorry to interrupt" or maybe it's both, but either way he's backing out the door and closing it soldily before the words hit the floor and shatter this suddenly tissue-thin icicle of a thing that had been racing back here.
no subject
After sucking up every possible second of the weekend with her, like each drop is the only water he'd have before six months in the desert. Starting with breakfast, where she had French toast and drenched it in coconut syrup and the fake maple that still reminds him of the diners back home (and man, he misses those diners, misses the corned beef special, piled high on rye and stuffed with coleslaw and Thousand Island. The closest thing here is Spam, and that just, really. Doesn't cut it.) and he had sunny-side-up eggs, because, as he explained, this was a sunny-side-up sort of day, getting the be with her.
It's not even one hundred percent a lie. Just picking her up, catching her in a hug she'd run into and feeling her arms go around his neck was enough to improve his outlook on life by about a thousand percent, while simultaneously reminding him why he has to fight this thing, why he has to try and keep her, because she is the single best part of his life, the single best part of him. Smiling and beautiful, looking forward to their weekend together. Rolling her eyes at him when he made that stupid joke about the eggs, but her smile curling and pleased.
It's enough that the ache is manageable, for the day.
A day he spent at the aquarium, and then a park, until blue twilight began falling and it was time to take her out for a nice dinner, dressed up, at a properly adult restaurant, because she's getting to be a young lady now, and this, Grace, this is the sort of place you should hold out for, thirty years from now, when you start dating.
Do you like it?
It's nice, Danno.
Even when it led to questions about Gabby, and the explanation he gave her, sober-eyed over shrimp cocktail and her Shirley Temple, about how he and Gabby decided not to see each other anymore, and it's no one's fault, okay, they just decided they wanted different things, which he does not specify, because Gabby wanted him, and he wanted, well...
Steve.
Which does not come up on the lists of recommended topics for discussion with your pre-teen daughter, none that he's ever seen or considered, so he skated past it, hands folded on the tabletop, against fine white cloth, acutely aware of the phone not ringing in his pocket.
She took it like a champ, disappointment and all, but her wistfulness all but disappeared once they were home and he commanded both of them into pajamas before pulling out the sofa bed and tossing her, shrieking, into a nest of pillows and blankets. Held up DVDs one by one, for appraisal, to be sorted into piles, first, of 'definitely could watch' to 'maybe if we're desperate' to 'never again, why do I own this movie to begin with, are DVDs flammable?'
(The answer to which is a resounding...not really. More melty than anything.)
The process for picking a movie was long and intense, but they agreed on one (Grace's choice), and she curled into him, ice cream and popcorn balanced in the folds of the blankets, and she fell asleep there, too.
He managed to even make it through most of the night without admitting that was his plan all along. Not bad, considering there hadn't been a second of the day where he wasn't wondering about Steve, thinking about Steve, wishing Steve and Steve's ridiculous mass were taking up the entire fucking pullout bed.
But he wasn't. He was alone. In a way that would drive Danny crazy. To drink. Up a wall and over the edge. In a way that Danny wasn't, all weekend. Through Saturday and into Sunday, which turned faintly gray at the edges after lunch, when the countdown to dropping her off started and ended with a last hug and her goodbyes still in his ear.
Leaving him feeling slightly like the sidewalk was tilted under his shoes, before finding his keys, his bearings, the car, and driving away. World in a blur, driving by instinct and memory as much as paying attention, until he snaps out of it, and makes the turn that won't bring him back to his house. Pushing the pedal down with sudden urgency, heart thudding hard and worried in his chest. It's been all weekend, and he's heard nothing, gotten only one brief text. Guilt is shoving itself into the cracks between his ribs, lengthens his steps when he pulls up to the gate, lets himself in.
The lights are on, and he can hear the TV, and, crap, maybe he should have brought some beer, or something, or gone home and changed out of weekend clothes, t-shirt and jeans from going outside and trying to coax Grace into playing catch, but he's here and it's already been way too long, so he just opens the door instead, and strolls in with an acerbic greeting already on his tongue before it dies there and dries to leather.
Steve's there. Yeah.
But Steve is not alone. Not at all. Not like Danny's been thinking he was. Not even a little. Because Steve is sitting on the couch, with Catherine tucked comfortably next to him, smiling at something she's saying. With an empty plate in front of them, scattered with the remnants of, oh, that looks like it was pretty good. Noted, in a daze.
Just like he notes the way Catherine smiles, sudden and bright and beautiful, and, God, she really is. Beautiful. And smart and strong and in the Navy and everything a guy like Steve could want, or any guy, really, she's great, Cath, and she doesn't deserve the way he suddenly hates her like she's actually a swarm of locusts, and he is actually losing it, seriously losing it, right here, half out of Steve's doorway, as she's saying Danny all pleased and how was your weekend with your daughter? and he's got nothing at all. Can't even reach into the gaping hole that was his brain and pull out words.
He thinks he says something like "good" or maybe it's "sorry to interrupt" or maybe it's both, but either way he's backing out the door and closing it soldily before the words hit the floor and shatter this suddenly tissue-thin icicle of a thing that had been racing back here.