Captured dust billowed at the cloth's disturbance. The resulting cloud sparked against shreds of moonlight as it drifted through the center of the standoff, both men unwilling to back down, Near not able to figure a solid why for either side.
“A long story?” he echoed, his incredulity measured but audible within a still carefully-moderated tone. “You keep saying there’s a long story, some long conversation, but I’m the only one who’s talking. All you’ve done is elbow your way in here and threaten to cut my throat.” It might have been an ill-advised move to remind the kid of his homicidal aspirations, but there was something bolstering in the lost, weary look that had settled across his features as the dust settled across the parquet. Hell if he was going to get the upper hand again: he’d only gotten away with it the first time because it had been unexpected. Now expectations were myriad.
“So you’re going to fuck off because, what, I didn’t crack up at your trick?” This while a suspicion endured that he might, in fact, be cracking up. Sort of. Quietly. Background cracking. Because he could tell himself with an internal voice practiced in the art of denial that it had been smoke-and-mirror bullshit, that daydrinking had inflated his sense of evening significance; and he could reshape each loop of the playback continuing in his head into something more consistent with reality; but it wasn’t as if he could just stop knowing that the unvarnished version had happened.
“I told you, if Courtland had a thing for special effects, whatever that was, I don’t. Here’s what I do want to know: Why. Are. You. Here?” Not upset, just slow, emphatic. He had been accused, more than once, of pretending at the whole unflappable Near thing; of wearing composure like a costume. And maybe it was true, and maybe it made donning an extra layer now less of a challenge than it should have been.
“A long story?” he echoed, his incredulity measured but audible within a still carefully-moderated tone. “You keep saying there’s a long story, some long conversation, but I’m the only one who’s talking. All you’ve done is elbow your way in here and threaten to cut my throat.” It might have been an ill-advised move to remind the kid of his homicidal aspirations, but there was something bolstering in the lost, weary look that had settled across his features as the dust settled across the parquet. Hell if he was going to get the upper hand again: he’d only gotten away with it the first time because it had been unexpected. Now expectations were myriad.
“So you’re going to fuck off because, what, I didn’t crack up at your trick?” This while a suspicion endured that he might, in fact, be cracking up. Sort of. Quietly. Background cracking. Because he could tell himself with an internal voice practiced in the art of denial that it had been smoke-and-mirror bullshit, that daydrinking had inflated his sense of evening significance; and he could reshape each loop of the playback continuing in his head into something more consistent with reality; but it wasn’t as if he could just stop knowing that the unvarnished version had happened.
“I told you, if Courtland had a thing for special effects, whatever that was, I don’t. Here’s what I do want to know: Why. Are. You. Here?” Not upset, just slow, emphatic. He had been accused, more than once, of pretending at the whole unflappable Near thing; of wearing composure like a costume. And maybe it was true, and maybe it made donning an extra layer now less of a challenge than it should have been.