The thing about living with your partner, your best friend, your fucking brother in all ways but blood... he tends to know every single button to push to get a reaction. Brannon knew exactly what to say to push Archer out from behind his battered emotional armor but it also meant he'd have to deal with the fallout of his choice words. Cold fury wasn't the only thing lying in wait behind the shields, but it would be the first thing to surface; it was safer to stay with anger, though even then he was still using it to hide another emotion, however unconsciously.
Doyle. Doyle Connolly. That was a name they didn't talk about very often. Sometimes Archer would gasp awake in the middle of the night, a curse clenched between his teeth, heart pounding as he struggled out of a nightmare where his own gun was pointed at him. Those nights often weren't as bad as the ones he'd had while he was recovering from his wounds at Connolly's hands; Brannon knew, though, in times of greatest stress that Archer's brain took him right back into the darkest moments for the both of them, when Archer had to try to reassure his partner that he was okay, while Brannon was trying to staunch the flow of blood, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. As controlled as Archer was in his waking life, his sleeping brain conjured up every horrible second he could recall from the moment Doyle Connolly got the drop on him.
Now, exhausted and overwhelmed, Brannon's words brought it all to the front of his mind, combined with his partner's scoff and his needling about tea time with Olinger to make Archer see red. Sometimes his partner could be a real fucking punk. No, he wasn't wrong about keeping shit to himself. Archer knew that. But it was a low blow, bringing up Doyle Connolly, that step too far.
Brannon was good with taking that step too far, just like he had when he flounced out of the room when Archer had to take the badge. Archer drew a breath that rattled in an attempt to keep himself some semblance of calm. Now his voice verged on his quietly dangerous tone, with a wry cast to the words. "Fuck, Bran. Tell me how you really feel." Archer rolled first one shoulder, then the other; the right one was a little stiff and it only served to irritate him more. "Since you keep bringin' it up? So appreciative, by the way, that you were so calm in that meeting. The one with the 'short motherfucker.' Because behaving like a four year old? Yeah. Really made it so that we were both taken real fucking seriously."
The sarcasm is telling but now that Brannon has figured out how to get him talking, Archer can't close the floodgates and more words tumble from him, whether he wants them to or not. A few more steps bring him half a dozen paces away from Brannon. "You're welcome, by the way," he adds, seemingly a propos of nothing. "For that night. There was a second there. Almost said no. To being chief. Then the badge would've been yours. And I wouldn't be hearin' you talk about me sending you out of the room -- which was a fucking strategic choice, to get the mayor alone. If you'd fucking trusted me, instead of stormin' off? We could've talked about that. But hey. That's my fault. Being chief."
And Archer's hands came up and set about unpinning the badge from the front of his work shirt. He held it out flat in his palm. "So you fucking want it now? You wanna be chief, Bran?" Archer's voice seemed serious, his pupils large in his blue eyes as they zeroed in on his friend.