Steve might be a hardass. When the job needs it. Might know how to turn anything in the backass end of a joke only broke glass and beaten minds could laugh hard at even in the middle of hell. When he or his men or the situation needs it. But it's that, and those people, and those times, that also have these. The moments he knows better than to do either. When what you're hearing is someone's bare and beaten truth. Awkward and honest and ripped from whatever dark place people shove these things.
The kind of thing it's impossible to find words for, or for anyone else to understand on the same line.
But he likes to think he does get this one. At least as much as he needs to.
Danny, with his inability to keep look anywhere, like he can't quite sit right with himself over it, and a devotion to his kid that Steve's dad never had for either of his kids. This willingness to move half the world away, to a paradise he hates, to keep doing a job he thinks he's good at even if everyone around him hates him, and to keep going anyway. For her, and for the job. Put together and torn apart by those two magnetic forces.
It's not a problem Steve's ever had, but it's not one that's ever been missing from a team. Not even this part, where Danny rounds out those few hard, pried words, while Steve isn't looking away, for a sharp, more spiking edge to an insult at him. Which isn't. Sharp, or spiking, or an insult. Well. Maybe it is. But what it's not is put like it was earlier. Like when Danny was snapping in the car. Or those vicious, low words right after punching him.
This one where Danny barely looks at him until just the end. Just calls him the next mountain Danny Williams has to get by. He gets that. He might even respect it. That might be what that glimmer of a thing at the edge of his mind is when he's nodding to Danny and raising his beer toward the man, like it's a backwards tacit agreement. Maybe a better one than this afternoon by far.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-13 02:35 pm (UTC)The kind of thing it's impossible to find words for, or for anyone else to understand on the same line.
But he likes to think he does get this one. At least as much as he needs to.
Danny, with his inability to keep look anywhere, like he can't quite sit right with himself over it, and a devotion to his kid that Steve's dad never had for either of his kids. This willingness to move half the world away, to a paradise he hates, to keep doing a job he thinks he's good at even if everyone around him hates him, and to keep going anyway. For her, and for the job. Put together and torn apart by those two magnetic forces.
It's not a problem Steve's ever had, but it's not one that's ever been missing from a team. Not even this part, where Danny rounds out those few hard, pried words, while Steve isn't looking away, for a sharp, more spiking edge to an insult at him. Which isn't. Sharp, or spiking, or an insult. Well. Maybe it is. But what it's not is put like it was earlier. Like when Danny was snapping in the car. Or those vicious, low words right after punching him.
This one where Danny barely looks at him until just the end. Just calls him the next mountain Danny Williams has to get by. He gets that. He might even respect it. That might be what that glimmer of a thing at the edge of his mind is when he's nodding to Danny and raising his beer toward the man, like it's a backwards tacit agreement. Maybe a better one than this afternoon by far.