Steve watched the reaction. The smile, smothered in glass, lip wrapped against dark glass, thinking that it was both a marvel he wasn't thinking worse of the second. Well. Before this second. When it slips barely, translucent and hazy memories. But the small smile might be worth far more than his own passing reaction. Private and personal, very nearly smothered in glass, like Danny was trying to keep it to himself.
Which splashes warmth, watery and unrushed, up across the insides of his chest, like gently crowning waves.
He doesn't really mind either. Some place that isn't his office or his house. The office is too public, with too many people who don't know things. But as much as there are seconds he feels the sting of frustrated patience with glass walls here, there's a part of him that is relieved not to be in that house. That house that had always screamed its history, with so little changed in nearly two decades.
And now it did even more. The lives of three people shattered and scattered over a murder that never happened, cased in ice there. Everything has always reminded him, but now it does, again. Trips him up in wholly new, different ways. Simple things like a cup, or furniture in a room. Everything and all the memories he lived with and in and through suddenly all that much clearer, louder and more demanding again.
Like the desk his father sat working late into nights after, before separating and shipping off he and Mary, working so diligently to keep them safe from an event that never took place. Like a punishment that either had no crime to lay its feet, or a deeper one than Steve wanted to keep facing. When there was no escaping it no matter which way he looked, room he chose, place he came or went there.
Which he didn't have to, here. Sitting with Danny, somewhere completely innocuous, with obvious boundaries but still Danny's smile.
When Steve can easily, wrap back to where they were, digging into Danny's smile and his words in both. Letting his gaze narrow in plain, and very bland, speculative cynicism. With just the hint of blankness laid out over all of it, like perhaps, he couldn't be sure at all: of the answer to the question or the likelihood. Like it wasn't the other of his jobs. Land and Sea. "Because it's not just as likely you'll get held at gun point or hijacked at a bar in a busy city?"
Though not as many people were found dead with cut motors at bars, admittedly either.
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Which splashes warmth, watery and unrushed, up across the insides of his chest, like gently crowning waves.
He doesn't really mind either. Some place that isn't his office or his house. The office is too public, with too many people who don't know things. But as much as there are seconds he feels the sting of frustrated patience with glass walls here, there's a part of him that is relieved not to be in that house. That house that had always screamed its history, with so little changed in nearly two decades.
And now it did even more. The lives of three people shattered and scattered over a murder that never happened, cased in ice there. Everything has always reminded him, but now it does, again. Trips him up in wholly new, different ways. Simple things like a cup, or furniture in a room. Everything and all the memories he lived with and in and through suddenly all that much clearer, louder and more demanding again.
Like the desk his father sat working late into nights after, before separating and shipping off he and Mary, working so diligently to keep them safe from an event that never took place. Like a punishment that either had no crime to lay its feet, or a deeper one than Steve wanted to keep facing. When there was no escaping it no matter which way he looked, room he chose, place he came or went there.
Which he didn't have to, here. Sitting with Danny, somewhere completely innocuous, with obvious boundaries but still Danny's smile.
When Steve can easily, wrap back to where they were, digging into Danny's smile and his words in both. Letting his gaze narrow in plain, and very bland, speculative cynicism. With just the hint of blankness laid out over all of it, like perhaps, he couldn't be sure at all: of the answer to the question or the likelihood. Like it wasn't the other of his jobs. Land and Sea. "Because it's not just as likely you'll get held at gun point or hijacked at a bar in a busy city?"
Though not as many people were found dead with cut motors at bars, admittedly either.