trans_9 | You saw, as always, clearer than me [closed]

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You saw, as always, clearer than me [closed]

Even after his conversation with Luke, it took Steve a day or two to finally work up the courage to seek out Claire. He got close on the second day and then chickened out, then retreated to his room to try and figure out exactly how he was going to phrase this. It was all in the approach, after all.

So he decided today he'd stop by the precinct for... something, he'd probably find something he could do around there-- and if he ran into Claire, then he'd talk to her.

And he ran into her in one of the conference rooms. Shit. Why was it always a conference room?

"Hey- uh... Claire?" he said, clearing his throat. "Are you busy?"

Oh god. What was he doing? This was the worst idea ever.

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She glanced up at him, her eyes having drifted down to her lap.

"Steve, what is this about?" Things were always a measure of awkward between them, but she didn't know how this would affect her friendship with him.

Well, so much for the comfortable avoidance. His face went tense and he bit his lip. This was so frustrating. He'd psyched himself up for this and everything, but if he had to rate the conversation so far on a scale from one to ten, he'd probably put down "total disaster."

"Isn't it obvious?" he muttered under his breath. "I'm pretty damn bad at being subtle..."

Claire's flight instinct was kicking in big time, but she stayed rooted to the spot, slowly exhaling and tilting her head back to look at the ceiling.

"It's really easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment," she said slowly. Honestly unless he came right out and said it she didn't know if she could.

The frustration caught up with him and he very nearly snapped at her. "Heat of the moment? I was dying!"

As soon as he'd said it he regretted it and quite frankly wanted to smack himself for losing his composure. Or at least what shaky composure he had. Steve caught himself and shook his head, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I just... I didn't mean that. I'm just talking without saying anything."

After another second to get himself together, he steeled his expression and his voice. "Claire... I did mean what I said. You're-- you're really important to me. Really important." Then he actually managed to look up at her and look her in the eye. "I said I loved you, didn't I?"

Steve could try to look her in the eye, but Claire was finding it very difficult to look at him, right now. The lump in her throat tightened and worked its way up to her chest, while she looked slightly off to the side.

"Yes, you did." And she'd been trying very hard to avoid this.

Now Steve was watching her very closely, looking for some kind of indication from her. Anything that might have been a sign to the contrary of her body language. Though he knew deep down from the way she looked that he'd guessed right to begin with.

His expression sank a little bit and he slowly turned away, staring down at the surface of the table. "Let me guess," he said softly. "I'm... just kidding myself."

Claire closed her eyes, shaking her head minutely.

"You're very important to me, Steve. But, with the age difference and-" she hesitated at what to say next, opening her eyes again and continuing to look down at the floor, "-everything else. I don't feel the same way."

"Because I died," he said, trying to fill in the blanks that "everything else" left open. As if he didn't intensely hate the circumstances enough already. But he couldn't really blame her, he supposed. He was only 17 and hell, for all he knew, he might be stuck at 17 for the rest of his life. Of course she wouldn't be interested in him.

Steve had the feeling the whole wave of anger and sadness had yet to really sink in. It was being masked pretty well by embarrassment. He took the opportunity to turn away entirely so she couldn't see the look on his face or how red it was.

"I'm such an idiot," he muttered.

His death wasn't so much what she meant, but it was at least some of the everything else. She sighed softly, looking over at his back when he turned away.

"You're not an idiot, Steve." She was scrambling for things to try to make this a little less awkward, of course it was entirely unlikely she'd succeed at all. "Honestly, I'm flattered. But I'm not... really emotionally available right now." She thought that was safe, until she realized that he might take that as to mean that could change in the future. "Or at all, really."

Steve let out a deep breath and put a hand on his forehead like he was getting a headache. "Because you're with Leon," he filled in. There wasn't any doubt in his mind that's what she meant. Honestly, he didn't know how he'd remained unsure about it up to this point (aside from straight denial, of course.) They had a kid together, after all.

"You don't have to make excuses. I'm not a kid. I get it, okay?" He folded his arms over his chest. "I just... I'm stupid. I'm a total idiot. I don't know why I thought..."

"It's not just because I'm with Leon." Notice that she's not actually denying it or unsure about her relationship with Leon, anymore. She exhaled through her nose, reaching up to rub her forehead.

"Even if I wasn't dating anyone... I don't feel the same way about you that you do for me. You're like... my little brother."

Steve felt a another twinge in his chest, accompanied by a swell of sudden anger. She was with Leon? Why the hell didn't she say something before? It would have saved him a lot of grief and a lot of feeling like he'd just sacrificed his pride for no reason. He'd rather have just suffered out rejection in silence than have come in here and made himself look like a jackass. But he didn't want to say anything about it to her. He didn't want to lose control of his emotions. The fact he hadn't already run off or burst into tears was the only shred of dignity he felt he had left in this conversation, and he was going to hold onto it, goddammit.

Besides. He wasn't about to start whining about Leon. He didn't want to think about Leon at all. This was about him and Claire.

Steve yanked out one of the chairs and sank down into it, very pointedly facing in the opposite direction of where she was. "Your little brother?" he repeated quietly, and then he had to shake off that kick in the ego, too. Claire obviously didn't mean it in a bad way. But god, was he sick of being seen as a kid.

Claire could tell she'd hurt him, and furrowed her brow, dropping her hand.

"You're an important part of my life, Steve. And I consider you a part of my family." She didn't mean to make him feel like she looked down on him as a child. Because while she did have a strong impulse to protect him, it wasn't in the same sense as the way she felt she needed to protect Sherry.

His shoulders tensed up and he lowered his head, as though he was afraid she'd be able to see his face. Claire's words seemed to sink through him, and he folded his arms tightly over his chest.

After an uncomfortably long pause, he spoke so quietly it was hard to tell if he meant to address her or not. "You really think I'm... part of your family?"

"Without a doubt." Claire smiled a little, although it didn't quite touch her eyes, glancing down and placing her hands on either side of her legs on the table.

"I don't really expect you to be totally okay with me right now, and I should have just... let you down earlier, but I hope you'll be able to eventually forgive me, because you mean too much to me for me to lose you, Steve."

Steve didn't move or give any indication that he'd heard her for a couple moments, trying and failing to come up with the magic words that would just halt this conversation and drain the awkward out of it and let them both go on and pretend it never happened. It might have been the only way he'd be able to look her in the eye for a while.

"I'm... I'm not mad at you," he said quietly. That wasn't precisely true, but he was far angrier at the situation at large that put him in this horrible, hopeless position. At himself, for ever thinking he had a shot. At Leon, irrationally, for being everything he wasn't and would never be.

He somehow had the mind to say something else, so she wouldn't make him clarify. Unfortunately, all his thoughts at the moment were pretty dismal. "How am I your family? I'm just... some kid. You only knew me for one day," he murmured. "You don't have to say things just to make me feel better, okay?"

Claire sighed, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.

"It's been three months, Steve. On top of that one day. You saved my life then, you've helped me here, you saved my little girl's life-" she shook her head, looking over at the back of his head. "And on top of that, you're a great guy. I like talking to you, learning more about who you are." She tilted her head to the side, slightly.

"When I say you're a part of my family, I'm not saying it just to make you feel better. Family is very important to me, and when I say you're a part of mine- I mean it."

Luke would have said he was reading too far into everything to try and tear things down. So Steve took a moment to try and shove everything in his head aside for now, if only so he'd stop muttering things like that, if just to get them out of his mind.

"Claire, you know that... that you were the only person in the whole damn world who cared about what happened to me?" he asked a few silent moments later, with remarkable clarity. It appeared he'd thought about this too. "My parents are dead. Everybody else thought I was dead. And you were the only person who bothered saving me. The only person who noticed me. You're still the only person who knew me when I was nor-" His voice seemed to disappear into a shaky breath around the last syllable.

"Normal," he said again.

She stared intently at the back of Steve's head for a long moment, her brows knitted tightly together, before without saying anything she slid off the table and moved over to pull a chair out beside him. She still kept behind him because she could tell he didn't want her to see his face right now, but quietly dropped down next to him, reaching out to brush her hand gently over his back.

"You're still normal to me, Steve."

His shoulders tensed up a little when she touched him, but after a second they finally relaxed.

"That's why you're so important to me," he said quietly. "You're the only one I really know I can count on. I just... I just want you to be able to count on me like that."

Then he sighed, folding his arms again. "But it seems like all I ever do is fuck things up and get in the way. Like I just fucked up everything here."

"You didn't fuck anything up," things had been weird for a while. She just hadn't wanted to say anything about it, and neither had he, from the looks of it. Sighing, Claire slid her hand up to his shoulder.

"To be honest, I'm glad we've talked about it now."

Steve actually laughed half-heartedly at that. "Was it really that obvious? Jesus, I suck at this."

Then he looked up towards the ceiling and brushed his hair out of his eyes. "But seriously. It's not gonna be really weird between us now, is it? Because I really don't want that."

"Steve, I've known how you felt for a long time," Claire laughed a little, shaking her head. "If anything, this will make things less weird." She imagined things would still be a little bit off balance until he managed to resolve his feelings for her.

"I'm actually really bad at this kind of stuff."

"I guess so. You should have said something," Steve said, just a bit irritably. "I've been going crazy trying to figure this shit out. If you told me sooner I would have just stayed quiet and then we wouldn't be having this conversation." And then he wouldn't have the urge to crawl under the table for a few hours. "You can just tell me things, you know? I'm not a kid. I can handle it. Just give stuff to me straight. I'm not that sensitive." Arguable. Very arguable.

He let out a little breath and then smirked. "But... it's okay. I'm no good at this kind of stuff either. And I've never even had a girlfriend."

Claire tilted her head, a little surprised at that. Granted, he was only seventeen, but...

"Really? I'd think you'd be all kinds of popular." He was a pretty good-looking kid. Not to mention she knew when he wasn't being sulky he was interesting enough to be around. If she'd been a little younger she might've been more interested in him.

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