Re: Atticus/Matt
"Good to know," he said. "I'll keep that in mind." Whatever Atticus thought of his feelings, one way or the other, Matt was clearly engaged in the conversation, and smiling more than he could remember doing in a long while. He liked talking to Atticus, he was finding, because Atticus didn't seem to care in the least about anything he might be or might have been. That was a pretty rare thing in people who knew even a little about him. He didn't feel as if he needed to meet an idea of himself, or answer to a person he'd been once, as he had for Steve. He could be what he was now, whatever that was.
He sighed at the question. Maybe Atticus wasn't getting the message after all. "There are no things with me and PJ," he said, taking the sandwich from him. He unwrapped it on the straightaway - hypocrite that he was, he'd skipped breakfast. "Not like that."
He imagined the ghosts behind the wheel, and he smirked. "Bet the old lady's a hellion behind the wheel." He didn't worry about joking about it. Wasn't that the point of a bad situation? Making a joke so it felt less heavy? "Your loss," he said, metal hand fixed firmly on the steering wheel. Sure, it chafed. It didn't matter how long it was a part of him - it was a reminder, a thing he couldn't leave behind. It was a weapon, he the inconvenient person attached to it. But it was also his, and now he had the power to turn it back on the people who built it. That meant something, however it got there.
"I think she liked slow dances," he said, with a small, fond smile for an almost disappeared figure, someone whose whole person consisted of a few concrete ideas, arranged into a silhouette of a human being. To live or see things clearly. "I don't know which one sounds better," he said. "Does anybody ever see anything clearly, really?"
When he was distracted, like this - with good company, with the dull roar of the car, the long straight road, the thump of the music - he didn't have to think about what to say. Atticus was one of the few people he'd come across who didn't make his words tangle, get thorny and dig in. He could forget he was talking for a little while, and suddenly conversation was as easy as it should be, delivered quickly and with that distinct hint of Brooklyn, still, after all those years.
It was argument for the sake of argument, really. Maybe people knew when you were down, maybe they were too self-involved to see past their own noses. "Maybe you're right," he conceded, as if he'd had something invested in the idea of each being on their own. "Or maybe some people get lucky enough to find a person that can tell when they need a hand without saying, and some people don't."
Matt looked at Atticus when he felt his fingers on the side of his face, the brief flick of surprise, and he watched him for a moment after he tucked his hair behind his ear, a second of intent interest before he had to put his eyes back on the road. It made him think a hundred things, but feel something simple - surprise, the good kind, and warmth.
"Nobody does that," he said, almost laughing, stupidly, immediately. He didn't even know if he should spin it out, but it was true. First turn-off. It would come up quick. Too quick. Nobody touched him, he meant. Nobody dared to put hands on him, not in violence, not in kindness, not for any reason.
Another long look, then eyes back on the road again. He couldn't look the way he wanted to while driving. There were only darted glances, checking Atticus' expression. He was without words again. "Good at that," he said, at last. Whatever 'that,' was, it didn't appear to be unwelcome.