Still. Like there's no question. Like there couldn't possibly be a question. Because Danny is an idiot even for joking about it, and okay, mostly, it was, is, a joke. Right? Steve already said. He's already naked, for God's sake. This isn't like slinking back, half-dressed and rumpled, to sleep at home. Hasn't been since the first day. Stay. Said now in five or six different ways, at five or six different times.
"I don't know," he says, and he pretends it's actually as light and disinterested as he wants it to be, doesn't snag on that awkwardly placed tine in his chest that keeps twirling everything tighter and tighter. "There's something sort of classy about a written invitation. Not that I'm suggesting you have that kind of class, alright, that's just the sort of wishful thinking I sometimes indulge in."
But Steve's hand is curling light just behind his ear, and his skin is still tingling from the path it took up and over his shoulder, and they're just words, anything, whatever he can toss at Steve to make him find the faces Danny's used to: the frowns and eyerolls and smugly arrogant smiles. Because this --
This is. It's Steve softened. Steve lightened. And it strikes like a match against all the parts of Danny left rough and sandpaper-abrupt. A tiny signal flare, bursting into small, steady life. Things Steve keeps touching, like fingers are brushing straight through skin into all the twisted up miserable thoughts tacked like torn, crooked photographs on the walls of his skull. Tugging them straight, or bypassing them completely, and leaving him in this strange, confused spin that leaves him blinking and bemused, staring at a completely different view than he'd thought was in front of him.
Steve's specialty, he guesses.
Steve, leaning down, towards him, close enough that all it would take would be an inch forward and up, and that shouldn't still make his mouth feel dry, should it? "But thank you for the offer."
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-21 08:16 pm (UTC)"I don't know," he says, and he pretends it's actually as light and disinterested as he wants it to be, doesn't snag on that awkwardly placed tine in his chest that keeps twirling everything tighter and tighter. "There's something sort of classy about a written invitation. Not that I'm suggesting you have that kind of class, alright, that's just the sort of wishful thinking I sometimes indulge in."
But Steve's hand is curling light just behind his ear, and his skin is still tingling from the path it took up and over his shoulder, and they're just words, anything, whatever he can toss at Steve to make him find the faces Danny's used to: the frowns and eyerolls and smugly arrogant smiles. Because this --
This is. It's Steve softened. Steve lightened. And it strikes like a match against all the parts of Danny left rough and sandpaper-abrupt. A tiny signal flare, bursting into small, steady life. Things Steve keeps touching, like fingers are brushing straight through skin into all the twisted up miserable thoughts tacked like torn, crooked photographs on the walls of his skull. Tugging them straight, or bypassing them completely, and leaving him in this strange, confused spin that leaves him blinking and bemused, staring at a completely different view than he'd thought was in front of him.
Steve's specialty, he guesses.
Steve, leaning down, towards him, close enough that all it would take would be an inch forward and up, and that shouldn't still make his mouth feel dry, should it? "But thank you for the offer."