Re: quicklog: atticus/matt
[PJ's reason for coming sobered him.] Yes. [It made sense, and he should have thought of it.
Matt didn't know PJ had feelings for him. It might have been blind of him, but he'd spent the last two years trying to get his footing again in conversation and human interaction. It wasn't that he didn't remember what it looked like when someone had feelings for you, but more that PJ was his friend, and knew him pretty well. He couldn't picture himself as the object of anyone else's interest, yet. He had vague memories of swanning around the five boroughs with some flavor of the day girl, distant and colorless as the movies he took them to see at the movie theatre for a quarter a ticket. His memories of Steve, on the other hand, were full-color masterpieces. The ones he still had, anyway. And there had been some others, too, under the radar types, on the quiet. Those were more scattered, furtive, and all were totally out of place in the world he lived in now. He'd been undercover in the last few decades, but mimicking interest was different from feeling it. He could sight it in the enemy, but in a friend, it had gone totally over his head.
He sat on the edge of the bed, on Atticus' left, and watched him smoke with a peculiar, flat expression. He had seen the scars on the other man's arm before, but now seemed like the time to find out where they came from.] What happened?
[He snorted.] I can't look young, I'm not young.
[Atticus looked almost peaceful if it wasn't for the slide of thumb on bone. At this angle, it was a simple thing to slide his shoulder up through the collar of his shirt, exposing the ring of thick scar tissue surrounding the seam where metal met flesh. If Atticus didn't open his eyes, his thumb would slide over rigid nodules and thick ridges. Some were in clean, surgical lines, and some followed the uneven trail of a gash. They knotted together like roots bursting from smooth metal, which he'd reach eventually.] Nowhere good.