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Vinny excelled with bombs, both building and disarming them. To the untrained, uncaring eye that panicked at the mere thought of an explosive, a bomb had two states of being: big boom or might go big boom. To Vinny, however, one look at a bomb told him how it was built, exactly when it would detonate, where the blast radius would be, and the best way to disarm it (or the best way to accelerate the result).
Vinny had never been the best with people. Verbal cues and body language were lost on him for the most part. People were never as precise with their warning signs as bombs—which was why Vinny immediately felt at a loss of what to do when he saw Milo sitting on the stone steps of Atlantis, his shoulders hunched and his head low.
“Hey, Milo, you okay?” he called out, breaking the silence of the night. Milo jumped and whirled around as soon as Vinny spoke, but his tensed shoulders slumped down once he recognized Vinny.
“Yeah, yeah, I—I’m fine,” he muttered. His voice was strained, and experience told Vinny that wasn’t a good thing, but Vinny didn’t know how to approach the situation. He settled down on the step next to Milo and glanced about at the peaceful city.
“Nice night,” he said instead of commenting on the way Milo’s hands shook when he pushed his glasses up. “Nice city for nighttime, you know?”
Milo’s nerves seemed to worsen at the comment. He shifted restlessly and pinched the bridge of his nose, and then removed his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. A spasm of his shaking hand sent them clattering across the stone. Vinny leaned over and picked them up.
“Here,” he offered. Milo took the glasses and made to return them to his nose, but stopped halfway through the motion and lowered his hand again, letting his glasses dangle from his right hand while his left pressed into his eyes. Concern swept through Vinny.
“Milo—”
“I’m sorry,” Milo got out, with great effort. His face pinched with agony behind his hand, and Vinny worried that maybe he was hiding broken ribs from Sweet—but then Milo let out a shuddering breath, replaced his glasses, and swept a long gaze around the city.
“There’s just so many people here,” he murmured. “People who almost—they almost—”
“Yeah,” Vinny returned, trying to avoid the massive weight of guilt that he’d been grappling with for the past few hours. “But they didn’t. Thanks to you.”
Again, it was evidently the wrong thing to say, and Vinny could almost see the retroactive burden of responsibility settle on Milo as the linguist’s head sank down again. Shaking hands rubbed his temples, and his shoulders shuddered again with the next breath.
Vinny wasn’t good with people. He was good with bombs. He could build a bomb in half a minute, and disarm one in even less time—but when he thought about it, Milo with his too-fast breathing and shaking hands was a lot like a bomb waiting to go off. Not in the way people carelessly equated anger to explosions, but a more refined destruction of a sophisticated, complex bomb, one where the direction of the damage could be controlled—for Milo, that direction was inward. Each breath that hitched his shoulders was like another second counted down on a clock, counting down to the inevitable explosion that would shatter him from the inside out. It would have been fascinating to watch unfold, if Vinny hadn’t grown to care about and respect Milo so much over the course of the expedition.
Milo’s breathing had almost reached hyperventilation in the time it took Vinny to have this realization. Vinny prided himself on only dealing with refined bombs, so he really wasn’t all that surprised, after making the connection, that he knew how to disarm this one; any bomb required gentle, precise movements when handling it, so with a deliberate, steady motion, Vinny reached over and placed a hand in the back of Milo’s neck. The other man jumped slightly at the contact, but Vinny didn’t pull away. He squeezed gently as he inhaled, and relaxed as he exhaled. After a few minutes, Milo followed in suit.
“Sorry—I’m sorry,” Milo muttered under his breath.
“Don’t be sorry,” Vinny said. “It’s been a long day.”
Milo let out a breathless laugh.
“Yeah, you can say that again,” he agreed.