“Thanks, Darjeeling would be great if you don’t mind. I’m not much of a tea drinker but I know I like that one at the very least.”
The small talk was polite as possible but Danny didn’t need to interrogate people to understand the messages in body language. He’d grown up in a house with two Deaf cousins and an aunt. It was little surprise that he look words with a grain of salt sometimes and but invested quite a bit of value in a dialect of a person’s frown, or the linguistics of posture, Morse Code in someone’s fidgeting. He smiled, leaned against the arch of the kitchen entry while she assured him that it was ‘no problem’ then became flustered at the realization her lingerie – and it was her lingerie – was all over the place.
He didn’t have much use for pretending things much, but he kept his attention politely away while she cleared up, saying, “Oh, it’s fine. Mess doesn’t much bother me and even if it did, it’s not exactly the place of the soaking wet interloper to start complaining of the décor.” He tossed a casual but not exactly innocent look over his shoulder at her. “Not that I’m complaining,” he said.