Canon: Remove if not applicable.With fingers curled around the burner, J stared out into the dark night and down at the lights of the sprawling city. His gaze trailed slow streams of bubbles, and his grip around the phone tightened and loosened as his thoughts wandered.
Michael watched him from his own air pocket, where bubbles swirled and waterproof electronics hummed quietly. Talking to Otoya always made J stare off into the depths of the ocean and put him in a complicated mood; it was impossible to predict what mood he might be in, because of the mask that he wore, yet he seemed unhappy.
Michael opened his mouth to say something, to drag J out of his reverie, but he was not certain what to say, so he closed it again, and his teeth rubbed over his lip.
The door slammed open and both Michael and J snapped their attention toward it, hands going for their guns. J relaxes sooner than Michael, though the tension in his shoulders, invisible to anyone not as accustomed to the tiny fractions of movement shifts in J, remained. Michael slumped back into his chair with a sigh and a reprimand. “Don’t suddenly do that,” he told Abel, but the girl only gave him the type of glare specifically reserved to him.
Cain took one box from a whole stack Jacob was carrying, and she put it on the table beside Michael’s tech, and she pushed aside a lot of little bits and pieces that he would rather she didn’t shove around. Abel took another box; Jacob put down the rest on top of one of the hard drives.
Abel headed over to J, who blinked slowly at her, head cocked, and she made a motion to give it to him. He blinked a little more, then accepted the box with a word of thanks, and Abel headed back to her sister. Cain had opened her box meanwhile, and Michael shifted his attention between J and Cain; an air bubble rose like a dome out of the box, packed tight within the box to keep the contents dry. Sweets, a lot of them.
Michael’s gaze flicked back to J once more; he had opened the box he had been given and a dome of air curved out above the edges, and a slight, more honest smile had slipped over the controlled mask.