Re: log: grant/matt, the woods
It would be very easy to take his hope and shred it. He could say no and walk away, but he had a feeling this man was too stubborn than that, that he'd need to completely crush his hopes of finding a lost friend who he wasn't really directly looking at anyway.
His expression didn't change, not in a marked way, not as Grant's did. It didn't slide neatly through from one emotion to the next, here surprise, here gladness. Instead it slowly fell from surprise to something more confused.
Grant had come a lot closer to him in that one long step.
"Matt," he croaked, finally. Owen was like a rock on a long drop into a deep well. It hadn't made a ripple, and maybe it never would. "And you're Grant," he said. He sounded more sure of that, more concrete, than he was about his own name. He knew the man in front of him, even if the past was submerged. He knew him enough that he hadn't ever really forgotten him, he didn't think, just buried him, saving him there, preserved, while the surface was scorched with fire.