It was a small consolation when Lydia didn’t start yelling at him. Matt couldn’t be sure if it was a good sign or a bad one, if he wanted her to yell or not. Yelling was easier, in a way. Yelling meant there was no time to second guess himself. He was good at yelling, and really good at getting Lydia to yell at him. But this? A rational conversation about a job between adults who’d been worse romantic partners than they were co-workers? This he wasn’t so good at.
He was doing that same thing he’d done before, a lifetime ago when Matt’s position in Combat kept him closer to home (or the castle, anyway) and almost every briefing he attended included Lydia. He spent half those meetings trying not to stare at her and the other half being the biggest asshole in the room so she would end up staring at him. Most of those stares were so cold they would’ve stopped Darth Vader in his tracks, but back then, Matt was desperate. And stupid. And incapable of admitting to himself why he was acting like a kid trying to get her attention. But there was one thing he knew, at least: a death glare was better than nothing at all.
Practice made perfect, they said, and in the time since, Matt had plenty of practice figuring out what got the good reactions from Lydia and what got the bad ones. Maybe he was out of practice now, because he couldn’t tell if her holding back and staying professional was the best possible outcome for this conversation or the worst. He couldn’t tell if it was worth it to dig in harder, see if he could break through that icy mask just one more time, like she used to want him to. That was the hardest thing, now. Not knowing what she really wanted from him.
That sinking feeling in his gut that she didn’t want anything from him at all, that a stupid job was the sole reason she came back to the Falcon, only got stronger as she kept her cool. It made him twitchy inside, restless, and suddenly he couldn’t sit still anymore. Somehow he managed not to leap out of his seat and start pacing around the Falcon like his feet wanted him to. Instead, he casually walked past her to the other side of the common area, scoffing as she sent him one of those confusing compliments that was all tangled up in an insult, and pulled out a drawer, pretending to look for something. Not looking at her helped, so he figured he might as well stretch out the not-looking while he could.
But, just like it always was with Lydia, that was never very long at all.
“What do I need a promotion for?” Matt shot back at her over his shoulder, his body automatically following his head until he was turning back to face her once more, completely in spite of himself. He waved another tool around without thinking, his agitation showing in his hands more than it did in his face. “I’m already where I should be, and you know that.”
His voice was a little harder than he intended, holding back everything he wouldn’t let himself say. The missions he did for Camelot weren’t for the faint of heart. More than that, though, they weren’t for the people who still had things left to lose. Matt’s life was small. He had Gabe, he had the Falcon, and that was it. He was uniquely suited for the most dangerous missions, more than any other person in Combat he could think of off the top of his head, with their families and their partners and everyone else waiting for them back home. If Matt didn’t come back from a mission some day, it wouldn’t be so tragic. Not like what happened with Andrés.
Matt looked away and bit his lip, then shrugged with a laugh he didn’t feel. “But, sure. What the hell. Tell me what the job is." He threw the tool back in the drawer, then slammed it shut. "The sooner you do that, the sooner you can do us both a favor and leave.”