Re: [Webster's: Cris, Daniel & Sam]
Daniel's reaction to Sam's little shove was ragdoll, shoulder loose as she pushed on his. He fell back ever so slightly under the playful push, and blinked back at her with dark eyes of his own. His expression was no more aggressive than hers, smooth and without angry contortion, but he did not smile as she did. He peered back at her and blinked a couple times more rapidly than normal, and most of the darkness went away. He set his chin against her cheek, cold on cold, as she hugged him, and he compressed arms around her too. He made a clicking sound of grandmotherly distaste with his tongue when she started wailing for the cat. "She will not come out if you are shouting all the time," he said, with only a second's pause to ignore the comment about drinking, which was perfectly true.
Daniel let Cris fasten the door shut and turned the heat of his attention entirely on the other man was the two of them moved slightly to face the stairs and progress in Sam's wake. Daniel accepted the intimacy of the pat so well that it didn't register as such on his consciousness, a friendly kind of thing that Cris and Sam tended to do more than Daniel's antique British sentiment encouraged. Daniel was translating the "holding up" in his mind when Cris' touch brushed off the edge of his shoulder, and his thoughts screeched to most of a stop as his insides briefly lurched into motion. It felt like iced over veins getting flooded with scalding water, and he lurched to a stop if he had been hit by a truck.
"It's you!" Daniel accused, giving Cris a totally astonished look, as if the man had just sprouted wings.