” It’s not like I was worried or anything. Besides, I knew you’d make it back.”
Guilt twinged in his stomach as he caught the look in Becker’s eyes. Maybe Danny had been gone for a year, but it was Becker who’d had to deal with the repercussions of that back at home. He’d been the one allowed to do nothing, just to sit still and know that somewhere out there, there were a group of people trying to make their way home.
“You need to stop doing that, Hils.” He whispered the name not known to anybody but him, but nothing his tone was anything but mischievous now. It felt like a lifetime ago that the name had been a taunt the likes of ‘soldier boy’. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Despite the man’s obvious pain, Danny wouldn’t have traded it. He was all right with Becker’s pain even if he wanted to take it away. It was for the simple fact that it meant something – it meant that Becker hadn’t been the one in the rift valley, and while he’d gone through a hell of his own, he hadn’t been alone. He hadn’t been the one fighting to survive, not in the way that Danny had.
He wouldn’t want Becker to go through what he had. If that meant he’d dealt with losing Sarah, worrying over them … it was something entirely different from the hell of being completely on one’s own.
Danny wanted nothing more than to lean against the wall, sink against the floor, sleep where he stood, forget the shower or a change of clothes or even a bed, but it was hardly a time to look weak. Connor and Abby were one thing – he had to be strong for them to show them that he was all right, because he could see the guilt in Abby’s eyes whenever she looked at him. Despite what she might have thought, it wasn’t her fault that he’d been the one to go after Helen.
Someone had needed to do it, and he’d never regretted that it was him.
Quite simply, it had meant that it wasn’t her.
But being strong in front of Becker… that was something entirely different.
”Nice haircut, by the way.”
“I’d like to see you do better.” He quipped, a mischievous smile hiding the way worried blue eyes had followed Abby and Connor down the hall. He managed to turn his eyes away with the next comment despite the harrowing fear that if he blinked, all of them would disappear – each and every one of them. Becker, Connor and Abby, even Lester.
“Finding a barber in the Valley was a nightmare. The hominids really haven’t got a hang of the opposable thumbs business, and scissors were a disaster in their own right.”
Danny was no stranger to hiding unsavory emotions with humour. He’d only just got back, and despite feeling as though his own two feet were no longer able to hold him up, he wanted, needed, to make them believe that he was all right.
”Look, Danny.” The change of tone didn’t go unnoticed. ”If you need a place to stay…”
He could feel the direction the conversation was heading in, and it struck a chord of fear in the pit of his stomach. No, staying at Becker’s place couldn’t just be something he’d do because soldier boy felt bad for him. Not after a year of being stranded away from any of them, knowing that it had changed his opinions on the matters between them exponentially.
And there was another thing – because he felt the nightmares creeping up on him, felt the terror and the pain and remnants of his time spent in the past that Becker would undoubtedly see if he stayed at his place.
That wasn’t something he could let Becker see. It wasn’t something that Danny himself wanted to acknowledge or deal with, so how could he shove that onto Becker’s shoulders? The man was already feeling guilty… if he showed him just how much he’d unraveled over the past year, he’d only blame himself more.
“No,” He said, though his voice was only a croak. He cleared his throat. “I’ll find somewhere to stay.”
”I’ve got a guestroom. It’s yours if you want it.”
He felt his hands shake. “I couldn’t intrude,” Danny said as he opened and closed his fist, feeling the nails bite into his palm, distracting him from the way his heart was beating. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want an old sod like me living in your flat, even temporarily.”