If she knew his internal monologue on what’s deserved between either of them, if it was more than subtext, she’d say something about it being far from the truth of how the world works. Care isn’t dedicated by a measure of what’s deserved. Care isn’t given out on a scale of what someone’s worth, it’s belief. Belief for how the world should be. Belief that people need more. If Flynn or Emme were given what they were deserved, they’d lead far different lives (far different backstories without the mention of orphans. Him without a world or people that needed protection, her without a world she had to love so she wouldn’t first run away.)
She doesn’t miss the turned down gaze. If they were somewhere else, before there was a murder, before either of them were thought to be the culprits, they both could be more of the person the other needed them to be without making another uncomfortable, without feeling out of place when they sit here among talks of a dead man and blood on someone’s hands. She could be more herself if away from this place.
And maybe her words are a bit much, but the world changed (regressed) when there was as a death right in front of her, she needs trust here, trust in the people she knows well, that there is something she doesn’t have to fear. So she speaks to Flynn the way she does, doesn’t complain when he doesn’t step back away from her.
She doesn’t miss either the quiet way he says her name, the change in his voice. And her lips purse as she hears him, concern here too for where he’s found himself. She doesn’t believe Flynn would believe her if she spoke of the gentle parts of him, who he was. That people are more than what they think they are.
She leans far enough forward where she sits so she can look him in the eye, so he has to see her, and maybe look her way instead of a crowd searching for someone to blame, those with violence on their tongues. Her voice is definite, decided, “Because I know you,” is all the evidence she feels the need to share, even with all that’s happened and she knows she could be wrong about any of them. But unsure on so many things, she’s still someone that stumbles into the unknown with some odd determination, even here. She’d prefer to be in an unknown than a comfort zone, even if she does search for security.
Even serious, there’s warmth in her expression, eyebrows raised, “Can you try to be safer here, Flynn?” a pause, still leaning forward, “If not for you, than for the rest of us that want to see you after this - without you being arrested.” Once said, she finally leans back, her gaze turning back to the small crowd for a moment.
That’s what he wants to say, and he knows it applies so much more than she will ever realize. The two of them, they were stuck in that state of the great perhaps, teetering somewhere between friend and family, love and lover. They’d been swept up in the warmth of it all, a familiar face to spend the night... well, not with, but near. Somewhere between divine and devastating.
Is this what being a sinner tastes like? To feel innocence so soft and pliable between calloused fingers and watch all that glitters turn to stone?
Flynn, the sinner, Emme leans forward and looks into his eyes like he’s some kind of saint that’d she bow down and pray to. That’s the kind of faith he sees when she looks at him, and the weight of it furrows his brows, makes his already heavy shoulders slump ever so slightly more. With exhaustion, he pushes himself away from the table, needing space, needing a breath of air, of clarity. If he was anyone else, if he was watching from a bird’s eye view and he wasn’t the man he was, he might have chided himself from putting that distance between their bodies, for not leaning into her warmth. His exhale is shaky when it comes, slow and heavy as he lifts his hands and runs them through his hair.
For a moment, he drinks in the sight of her, looks at her while she looks at the crowd, but it doesn’t do him any good, and with his hands still resting there on the back of his neck, he looks away again. Looking at her hurt, and he was selfish enough to not endure it. Selfless enough to not let her catch him watching the purse to her lips, to not let her see how deeply the exhaustion creasing her face affected him. Were she anyone else, someone less soft, someone less breakable, someone he didn’t care for as much as he did, he would’ve commented on that exhaustion, would have chastised them for letting the death of one bad man tire them so.
But this was Emme. And this was Flynn.
She deserved better, deserved more than the suspicion a friendship with Flynn would bring.
He drops his hands and crosses them over his chest, forces himself to look into her eyes.
“I can’t make any promises, little dove.” He pauses, nearly bites his tongue, but goes on. “You know better than anyone what a restless heart does when it’s backed into a corner, and half this town thinks I should be behind bars.”