He's moving too slow, jerky and it hits Steve. Like somehow it hadn't in the seconds before.
Like he'd been too busy with the first wave of surprise and shock to get to the words, the comparison, the knowledge hanging out in the back of his head waiting to be looked at dead-on. This face. He knows this face. And it makes him want to punch himself. Just this face. He knows this face so well he could document for you in picture still how it happens and how long it takes, piece by atomic piece to make it disappear.
When Danny is looking up at his name. Confused, like he hears it but doesn't recognize it. Before his shoulder set.
Steve has seen all of this. For days on end. In every single minute detail of it on Danny. He did. When Rachel left him, again.
When a sickening sort of inverse, like all a gravity-vertigo is slamming into him in less than half a second. Danny, walking in on him and Cath joking. Danny, telling him he had to inform her. Danny, telling him that he'd never seen Steve do anything but easy come, easy go. Danny, staring at him, like Steve's the one who's done this to him. Already now. Done. Past. With her.
Danny words still jumbled and awkward, eyes flitting to him and away just as fast, like looking Steve is going to physically hurt him more, while he rambles through an exit cue. And that vice inside Steve's chest is going to kill anything trying to live, beat, pump, be used, inside the span of his ribs. When he can't even pay attention to the words coming out of Danny's mouth, excuses and direction for having not even gotten to his car, and Steve knows how fast his partner can move.
When he's taking all the steps closer. To get into Danny's space. Hands up, very direct, like he can't even hear the part of his brain shouting that if he moves too fast, talks too loud, reaches out and touches him, Danny might just bolt. He can't. He can't even hear it. He can't. Because he didn't. Because he told her. Stopped her. Stopped them.
He can't hear anything over the desperate denial welling up, demanding he be heard, him, here, over everything else, whatever is going on in Danny's head, whatever it is in there that has made his blue eyes turn into icy, fractured glass under the front yard flood lights, backed by its own wave of silent annoyance that still, that he could ever, to Danny of all people.
"Nothing happened." He can't help feeling it goes off like a gun again. Just like the I can't.
No lead up and absolutely nothing else he can do to stop it or more important to have fall out, fast, hard, direct.
no subject
Like he'd been too busy with the first wave of surprise and shock to get to the words, the comparison, the knowledge hanging out in the back of his head waiting to be looked at dead-on. This face. He knows this face. And it makes him want to punch himself. Just this face. He knows this face so well he could document for you in picture still how it happens and how long it takes, piece by atomic piece to make it disappear.
When Danny is looking up at his name. Confused, like he hears it but doesn't recognize it. Before his shoulder set.
Steve has seen all of this. For days on end. In every single minute detail of it on Danny. He did. When Rachel left him, again.
When a sickening sort of inverse, like all a gravity-vertigo is slamming into him in less than half a second. Danny, walking in on him and Cath joking. Danny, telling him he had to inform her. Danny, telling him that he'd never seen Steve do anything but easy come, easy go. Danny, staring at him, like Steve's the one who's done this to him. Already now. Done. Past. With her.
Danny words still jumbled and awkward, eyes flitting to him and away just as fast, like looking Steve is going to physically hurt him more, while he rambles through an exit cue. And that vice inside Steve's chest is going to kill anything trying to live, beat, pump, be used, inside the span of his ribs. When he can't even pay attention to the words coming out of Danny's mouth, excuses and direction for having not even gotten to his car, and Steve knows how fast his partner can move.
When he's taking all the steps closer. To get into Danny's space. Hands up, very direct, like he can't even hear the part of his brain shouting that if he moves too fast, talks too loud, reaches out and touches him, Danny might just bolt. He can't. He can't even hear it. He can't. Because he didn't. Because he told her. Stopped her. Stopped them.
He can't hear anything over the desperate denial welling up, demanding he be heard, him, here, over everything else, whatever is going on in Danny's head, whatever it is in there that has made his blue eyes turn into icy, fractured glass under the front yard flood lights, backed by its own wave of silent annoyance that still, that he could ever, to Danny of all people.
"Nothing happened." He can't help feeling it goes off like a gun again. Just like the I can't.
No lead up and absolutely nothing else he can do to stop it or more important to have fall out, fast, hard, direct.