The quiet lingers like a third presence, taking up all the air between them and through the rest of the car. Swallowing down the seconds between their words, like they don't all sounds stilted and forced. Makes it feel like all that air, empty and black with the shadows of night, except for the brief moments when they pass cars going the opposite way, swamps the car. Humid and sticking cloy against his skin, making him stay tight.
Until Danny speaks, again, and it flashes through Steve's head, again. The first undercover that brought this damnable grey suit into his mind. Occasional dreams. Ones he'd been glad stayed inside his head. Never came out. Or that Cath never let on, if they ever had. Maybe once they could have. But that once was a long time ago. A lot longer than a year ago. It wasn't what last year had been, and she'd never been a stand-in, or a second choice. Not in all of his life.
They were and were not a lot things, that a lot of people didn't get, Danny included. But she was never that.
Cath was her own whole ship; and ship wreck. Steve pushed it away, pushing back into Danny's words, as he said, "I don't know. You were a lot less annoying when you were out cold." But it's not the chair, the zipties, or the warehouse he's seeing suddenly. Again. It's Danny limping his way out of the prison only a few months ago. Hands around his sides. Body jagged and sharp in every step. Ginger as though even a breath in or out was hell. Another place, where more people who shouldn't touched Danny. People who had more right (than him), and every lack of it.
Things he couldn't tell himself tonight were about the physical state of his partner. His friend. Or. Not only.
Making him force forward as his eyes never leave the road. Watching the stripes, and the lights, and everything in front of him, that blurs by unnoticed, that isn't Danny to his side, filled in perfectly with his training, even peripheral awareness at all times, instead of his choice. "Even if you were holding up the whole investigation getting your beauty sleep."
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branchandroot
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Date: 2015-10-21 02:25 am (UTC)The quiet lingers like a third presence, taking up all the air between them and through the rest of the car. Swallowing down the seconds between their words, like they don't all sounds stilted and forced. Makes it feel like all that air, empty and black with the shadows of night, except for the brief moments when they pass cars going the opposite way, swamps the car. Humid and sticking cloy against his skin, making him stay tight.
Until Danny speaks, again, and it flashes through Steve's head, again. The first undercover that brought this damnable grey suit into his mind. Occasional dreams. Ones he'd been glad stayed inside his head. Never came out. Or that Cath never let on, if they ever had. Maybe once they could have. But that once was a long time ago. A lot longer than a year ago. It wasn't what last year had been, and she'd never been a stand-in, or a second choice. Not in all of his life.
They were and were not a lot things, that a lot of people didn't get, Danny included. But she was never that.
Cath was her own whole ship; and ship wreck. Steve pushed it away, pushing back into Danny's words, as he said, "I don't know. You were a lot less annoying when you were out cold." But it's not the chair, the zipties, or the warehouse he's seeing suddenly. Again. It's Danny limping his way out of the prison only a few months ago. Hands around his sides. Body jagged and sharp in every step. Ginger as though even a breath in or out was hell. Another place, where more people who shouldn't touched Danny. People who had more right (than him), and every lack of it.
Things he couldn't tell himself tonight were about the physical state of his partner. His friend. Or. Not only.
Making him force forward as his eyes never leave the road. Watching the stripes, and the lights, and everything in front of him, that blurs by unnoticed, that isn't Danny to his side, filled in perfectly with his training, even peripheral awareness at all times, instead of his choice. "Even if you were holding up the whole investigation getting your beauty sleep."