At least her reaction makes sense. A kind of surprised that is so low key it isn't surprise, like sympathy without cloying, closed in edges. Nothing like Danny's. Nothing like the sudden quiet and almost cold that made Steve sure he'd done something else wrong. Something he still wasn't sure wasn't a fault line waiting trap his heel whenever he wasn't expecting it.
Or that maybe Danny was storing each of those moments in a file somewhere until there were too many of them.
"I hadn't really planned on company." Danny had only left a handful of hours earlier. He was still catching up on his team. He was still playing punching bag to the rapid appearance and then disappearance of the mother who died in teens, and set off the whole chain reaction of his life.
All of which was easier than trying to even think of the words he said to Danny, or the fact Danny had stayed.
"Or having to tell anyone that soon." Or ever, is somewhere in his tone. But it's lighter, a tense kind of acceptance.
Like staring down the barrel of another gun pointed right at you. Right along with, "Or there being anything to tell," since the moment he broke it, they broke it down together, even he and Cath, there wasn't and there shouldn't have been.
But he couldn't pull up Danny's face -- Danny's face that was nothing like a gun, but maybe everything better and worse than it at the very same second -- and not feel that insane rush that clenched every muscle deep in his stomach, like he was digging in his heels.
Like he was going press the barrel, blue eyes and pink lips and five million words and sounds, with that crazy endless loyalty and goodness and always moving hands, like a dye splashed around for good measure, burning through his skin, his life, his world, worse than acid or cattle prods or heated knives or volts of electricity, right up against his forehead, right up against his heart, with no single hope the release wouldn't take everything he had left now.
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Or that maybe Danny was storing each of those moments in a file somewhere until there were too many of them.
"I hadn't really planned on company." Danny had only left a handful of hours earlier. He was still catching up on his team. He was still playing punching bag to the rapid appearance and then disappearance of the mother who died in teens, and set off the whole chain reaction of his life.
All of which was easier than trying to even think of the words he said to Danny, or the fact Danny had stayed.
"Or having to tell anyone that soon." Or ever, is somewhere in his tone. But it's lighter, a tense kind of acceptance.
Like staring down the barrel of another gun pointed right at you. Right along with, "Or there being anything to tell," since the moment he broke it, they broke it down together, even he and Cath, there wasn't and there shouldn't have been.
But he couldn't pull up Danny's face -- Danny's face that was nothing like a gun, but maybe everything better and worse than it at the very same second -- and not feel that insane rush that clenched every muscle deep in his stomach, like he was digging in his heels.
Like he was going press the barrel, blue eyes and pink lips and five million words and sounds, with that crazy endless loyalty and goodness and always moving hands, like a dye splashed around for good measure, burning through his skin, his life, his world, worse than acid or cattle prods or heated knives or volts of electricity, right up against his forehead, right up against his heart, with no single hope the release wouldn't take everything he had left now.