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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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.

It finally looked like he was starting to relax a little bit. Though he still felt too ashamed to look at her. "Well, I had plenty of friends. And some of them were girls. I went to prom with one of them last year. But they were all just friends," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"There was a girl I liked in my science class. I was gonna ask her to homecoming but... well, I don't think it's gonna work," he said dryly. "She's probably in grad school now."

She sighed a little at that, leaning away from him and propping her elbows back against the table.

"Well, there are girls your own age around here, too."

Steve went silent for a moment at that. Yeah, obviously there were other girls around who were his age. But his feelings were way too raw to even think about that right now. Claire saying it really seemed to drive this all home.

Finally he looked over his shoulder at her with the smallest traces of a smile. "Expecting me to go kind of fast, aren't you?" he teased.

Claire winced at that, covering her eyes with her hand briefly.

"I was just making an observation, I didn't mean it like that." Although it would be nice if another pretty girl came along and helped him get over his feelings for her. She sighed, dropping her hand and looking over at him, glad he was at least kind of looking at her again.

"Take your time, all right? And I'll try not to... make things tough on you." IE she would look around before kissing Leon in public.

"That doesn't mean not talking to me at all, does it?" he asked, staring down at the floor again. Now that his feelings for Claire were effectively blown to pieces all over the place, the chiefest worry in his mind was that she'd think it easier on both of them if she just cut off all contact with him. That was actually a fairly common worry for Steve, even though she had already expressed multiple times that he was important to her, she considered him family, and she didn't want to lose him.

Ah, adolescence. Such a wonderful time in a young person's life.

"I don't want you to treat me like a hypersensitive little kid. I'll be fine. I always am." Arguable, Steve. Pretty damn arguable.

"You can't get rid of me that easily," she replied, smiling a little and reaching over to ruffle his hair.

"I just don't want you feeling like I'm trying to step on your feelings." Any more than she already had.

"It's not like that," he assured her, shaking his head. "You're not just being mean. You wouldn't do that. It's just..."

He sighed and then reached up to fix his hair. "Well, I don't want to talk about it with you. But it's fine, okay?"

Claire frowned a little at that, but figured it was probably not something she wanted to ask him about. Maybe eventually he'd be okay with talking about it with her, but things were pretty raw, right now, and she could sense that.

"Okay. I'm always around if you want to talk, though."

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