(no subject)
"I." Danny frowns, turns the picture to the right, then the left, like that will make it any less strange. "What."
Steve isn't paying attention, busy going through one of the other boxes that had arrived earlier. Things Steve had kept in storage somewhere, or some friend or other had been keeping for him that Steve finally got around to having sent to Hawaii. Home.
"What 'what'?" he asks.
Danny stares at the picture and then, very carefully, slides it across the floor to Steve. There are no words, in any language, Danny's sure, to even begin to describe -
"Oh," Steve says, when he looks at it, surprised. A slow, crooked smile. "Oh, my God," softer.
Danny watches him, helpless against the look on Steve's face.
"Eagle pirate," Steve says, proving that maybe there are words to describe the picture after all, even if they don't make sense to people who aren't Steve. There's a certain tone in his voice, one that is clearly, Don't ask, please, for the love of God, don't ask.
"I have no idea what that even means," Danny says, because. Seriously, how is he not supposed to ask? Especially when Steve laughs, embarrassed, wiping a hand over his face like that will keep Danny from seeing the big, stupid goofy smile of his.
"It's." Steve laughs again, eyes darting up to Danny and back to the picture, stupid, goofy smile widening. "There was this guy I knew," he says, and just the way he does lets Danny know that he's not going to get the whole story out of Steve, that he can't because it's something to do with Steve's time as a SEAL. "No one knew how or where he got him, but he had this eagle."
Danny can't help the way his eyebrows hit his hairline because, seriously, but then again, this is Steve. Steve knowing someone who has an eagle as a pet or mascot or whatever isn't outside the realm of possibility.
"Go on," he says, making an accompanying hand gesture when Steve looks at him, obviously expecting to be interrupted.
Steve eyes him for a moment, and then looks back down at the picture. "It was just. Stupid. Downtime between missions." Steve frowns, picks the photo up. "Messing around."
It probably says something, Danny thinks, that he can figure out where Steve's mind went when faced with an eagle and some indeterminate amount of time in between blowing shit up. "So what," Danny says, asks, hardly believing the words that come out of his mouth, but this is Steve. "Air cover?"
Steve snorts, ducking his head and, oh, God, Danny's right. He's right, and Steve is a goof. A big, ridiculous goof who knows someone who has an eagle for a pet or mascot or whatever and at one time had plans to use it for air cover on a mission armed with a combat knife, or maybe, given the whole "eagle pirate" thing, off somewhere pillaging the seven seas, what the hell.
"I worry," Danny says, after a long moment of watching Steve looking at the photo he's holding. "I seriously worry about you sometimes." There's no doubt in his mind that Steve was the one to think of weaponizing an eagle, like its talons and beak weren't enough, it needed a combat knife.
Steve lifts his head, and there's that crooked little smile of his again.
"Goof," Danny says, although he's not really sure if he's talking about Steve or himself anymore.
Steve makes an agreeable noise, like he's okay with things either way, which. Okay, yeah.
Posted at http://kitsune-tsuki.dreamwidth.org/360563.html. | You can reply here or there. |