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"But then why- would he look at her like that, if he's already in a relationship?" Damian asked, head tilted at an angle as he eyed the glowing, cracked screen of Colin's ancient second-hand iPhone.
Colin snuck a look into pine green eyes, watching the very small furrow between his eyebrows, hiding a quick smile. To be honest, he didn't actually know either.
"Well, the part that makes it all funny is probably the girlfriend's reaction," he offered, subtly taking the moment to casually lean over Damian's surprisingly slender small frame, careful not to test his luck and get too close. He might not be able to see them, but Colin knew firsthand that Damian was hiding a knife sheath somewhere in his clothes. Multiple in fact.
Damian remained unsatisfied, mouth in a tilted straight line, sort of like the :/, only presented as a strange sort of concentrated frown. Damian, Colin had learned, could make about 50 separate variations of the same single facial expression to avoid learning any new ones. Maybe he should've been a little more concerned about it, if Damian still didn’t manage to be so expressive in all his own little ways.
Leaning in just the slightest bit closer while he was distracted, Colin carefully brushed the corner of his mouth against Damian's forehead. Dami looked up questioningly, rolling his eyes when Colin simply grinned in response, blowing his wispy, too-long bangs out of his face.
"I still don't get why you think this is funny," he complained, most definitely not pouting. Colin, feeling braver than he should, leaned in further, resting his arms around Damian's front, pulling him closer and taking back his phone.
"Well maybe," he offered, "By itself, the picture doesn't convey much, but if you take situations where the reactions could be usable, say the lady in blue as something you, the man in blue, wish to do or accomplish, and the lady in red being what you actually end up doing instead, it's funny because it essentially puts an entire cause-and-effect chain of reaction into a single picture."
Damian frowned again, but this time it was his contemplative frown, different in how it was softer around the edges, the sharp, near-permanent cat-like glint in his eye relaxing, lower lip blowing away his bangs again.
Without thinking, Colin tucked the stray lock of hair behind his ear, Damian immediately turning stone-still. Holding his breath in worry that he'd gone too far, Colin exhaled silently when Damian simply looked away, batting his arm against the side of Colin's jacket.
Colin didn't know it, but it was cold out, so the heat gathering on Damain's cheeks didn't leave the impression it should have.
"-tt-", Damian spared a glance up at the pale gray sky, " I still don't like the idea of using someone's discomfort by itself, as a way to convey your own problems. But go off then, it's going to rain soon. We need to get inside."
Colin took the out as he was given, gesturing to the nearby coffee shop, "Wait out the rain then, I've still got time to change your mind."
The corner of his lip twitched upwards for a quarter-second, too fast for Colin to point it out, but enough for him to know that Damian wasn't taking this seriously. "Good luck then, if you really want to convince me that these 'memes' are a usable form of communication Colin, you're going to need to find something better than this one."
Colin sharply stifled a laugh, wrapping an arm around Damian's shoulders as he guided him into the warmly lit Starbucks. It would be a cold day in hell before he let Dami know that he was pronouncing it wrong. Damian side-eyed him, a single eyebrow arched in question.
"It's nothing," Colin waved off, "C'mon, wait till I tell you about the one with the FBI agent."
" Excuse me?"
This time he really did laugh, head thrown back in delight as his stomach chose the most opportune time to rumble loudly. Damian sighed, rolling his eyes again, elbowing him in the gut.
"You eat like a whale," he complained. "I'll save us a seat, go get me a coffee Wilkes, I'll need it if I'm going to survive another hour with you."
"You love me," Colin teased, purposefully squeezing Damian into a hug, "Go on."
"Absolutely not," Damian bit back, pushing him away, "Get off me, you fool."
He didn't mean it, both of them knew that. And if Damian leaned in for a moment before floating into the crowd, Colin didn't mention it. Now how to break this to the FBI agent...Or how to break the FBI agent to him. Damn it, he chose the wrong meme.