[But whatever guilt Alex feels, when his eyes lift again Ben's are right there to catch them, engaged here in the privacy of the chapel like he has learned not to be just anywhere that others might see, where others might know. There's a moment where the corner of his mouth curls like other peoples' mouths do, a smile, a proper smile, and the mischievous humor that Alex has learned to identify amongst the ashes left behind by Manticore plain in the flickering candlelight.
Then it's gone and he's turning away towards the candles, gaze searching for the play of the shadows and light, critical. He skirts around the edge of the line of light he's created, flexing his fingers and extending them straight again as though familiarizing himself with how they work as he considers.
Ben's hands, like the rest of him, are almost unseemly in their delicacy for someone designed from birth to be a killer and a tool of war; he's put together in clean, crisp lines and angles, and he knows how to use every one of them with the understated, precise movements of true efficiency. Normally this manifests in mundane tasks, pulling a book off a shelf, moving a chess piece, slicing onions, picking apart the wires of a radio; in times of crisis it's the killing blow or the incapacitating hold, swift and lethal and decisive; now, he raises his hands and hesitates, as though he's not certain how they fit together to do what he wants.
It's right there, though, when he sifts his mental fingers through the powdered glass covering the distance in between. He still does this sometimes, alone in his room, to comfort himself. His hands know the shape, fingers splaying, thumbs crooking to hook together, wrists crossing.
It takes him a moment to find the right distance from the candles, the angle where the light is strongest in the direction he needs it. And then the shadow of his hands on the wall resolves into a bundle of haphazard limbs and lines and then, when he turns his wrists just so, a dove bursts into flight over the dark stone.]
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Then it's gone and he's turning away towards the candles, gaze searching for the play of the shadows and light, critical. He skirts around the edge of the line of light he's created, flexing his fingers and extending them straight again as though familiarizing himself with how they work as he considers.
Ben's hands, like the rest of him, are almost unseemly in their delicacy for someone designed from birth to be a killer and a tool of war; he's put together in clean, crisp lines and angles, and he knows how to use every one of them with the understated, precise movements of true efficiency. Normally this manifests in mundane tasks, pulling a book off a shelf, moving a chess piece, slicing onions, picking apart the wires of a radio; in times of crisis it's the killing blow or the incapacitating hold, swift and lethal and decisive; now, he raises his hands and hesitates, as though he's not certain how they fit together to do what he wants.
It's right there, though, when he sifts his mental fingers through the powdered glass covering the distance in between. He still does this sometimes, alone in his room, to comfort himself. His hands know the shape, fingers splaying, thumbs crooking to hook together, wrists crossing.
It takes him a moment to find the right distance from the candles, the angle where the light is strongest in the direction he needs it. And then the shadow of his hands on the wall resolves into a bundle of haphazard limbs and lines and then, when he turns his wrists just so, a dove bursts into flight over the dark stone.]