That marionette smile comes out. The one where you can all but see the strings. It pulls across Danny's mouth, like having another rough-shod knife jabbed into his stomach. Danny's hand finding his own face, then his pockets, then pulling out again. Like nothing is working. How Danny says that single word, like it's the most pointless thing to every contain letters or sound.

Like it doesn't matter. No, like it couldn't possibly ever be true. Whether it's a joke, or whether they're just going to pretend Steve said it and meant it, no matter what else totally must have taken place behind that door. And Steve. He might deserve to be called on the fact it almost did. He almost let something happen. He could have. He felt something, regardless, that hadn't been sponged from his system.

But not this. He didn't do this.

He pushed away the one person who would have asked for nothing in return. Who jokes about his tally, and had for as long as he'd known her, and would as long as they knew each other. But would never actively put him on the spot and make him pay up. Would never demand or guilt him. He pushed away any sort of situation without strings.

Strings like these ones, wrapping tighter than snake around his wind pipe and jerking into a hard knot so far back he can't reach.

When the only thing in his mind, his hand, his chest is to step forward, hands finding Danny's shoulder, brows furrowing in an anger, only narrowly overriding his desperation, and only then by a beat or two, jerk him close, demand his attention, that Danny look at him, and forget to even control his face or his voice, how rough it comes out, with the hiss of oil on a burning pan, "I'm serious."