"Maybe we could try making a run for the outside again," Aster suggests. Getting out, and getting help, is always a tactic on the table, as long as they have vehicles. "You sure you never done anything like this before?"
He asks it jokingly, but he's asking himself as much as Dan. This all feels very intuitive. It probably shouldn't. But Dan's as quick to make practical suggestions on this as he is.
He thinks about pointing out all the other things he's noticed Dan's done, the details of it, the way he expected Dan to toss everything into boxes and move it into town and be done with that, take direction around the farm, not appear to take real pride in making the house feel like it's a house again, instead of a dusty memorial. Like it matters to Dan that the work is done right. Like it matters to Dan that the work is done right for him.
He might be reading too much into it. He might be still feeling the way he felt earlier tonight, when he came in from the fields hungry and dirty and tired at the end of a long day, but on the porch looking through a clean window into a lit kitchen with the smell of something good already coming from inside, seeing Dan making vegetable stew in the kitchen, the impulse to keep on walking in and put his arms around Dan from behind to hug him at the stove was so strong and felt so unconscious that he had his hand on the door handle before he remembered he couldn't do that. That Dan was making the house a home because it was his job, and if that made Aster feel some kind of way, that was his business to handle.
He didn't come into the house for another twenty minutes, composing himself from the way that made him so sick with longing he almost couldn't contain it. Sad that for a moment everything had seemed so bright and warm and - and like he's been in a house since he got back in town, his house, but not until then in all he can remember has he felt like he was coming home.
Dan's not an antidote to being as alone in the world as he will be, no matter who he meets, for the rest of his life. Dan's an employee of his doing a job he hired him to do and doing it well, and Aster's got to honor that by doing his job as Dan's employer well back.
"Hey, uh, I just wanted to let you know, you're doing a great job. With the house." He thinks he's doing a good job of not sounding choked up about it. "I, uh. Probably should have already told you that."
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He asks it jokingly, but he's asking himself as much as Dan. This all feels very intuitive. It probably shouldn't. But Dan's as quick to make practical suggestions on this as he is.
He thinks about pointing out all the other things he's noticed Dan's done, the details of it, the way he expected Dan to toss everything into boxes and move it into town and be done with that, take direction around the farm, not appear to take real pride in making the house feel like it's a house again, instead of a dusty memorial. Like it matters to Dan that the work is done right. Like it matters to Dan that the work is done right for him.
He might be reading too much into it. He might be still feeling the way he felt earlier tonight, when he came in from the fields hungry and dirty and tired at the end of a long day, but on the porch looking through a clean window into a lit kitchen with the smell of something good already coming from inside, seeing Dan making vegetable stew in the kitchen, the impulse to keep on walking in and put his arms around Dan from behind to hug him at the stove was so strong and felt so unconscious that he had his hand on the door handle before he remembered he couldn't do that. That Dan was making the house a home because it was his job, and if that made Aster feel some kind of way, that was his business to handle.
He didn't come into the house for another twenty minutes, composing himself from the way that made him so sick with longing he almost couldn't contain it. Sad that for a moment everything had seemed so bright and warm and - and like he's been in a house since he got back in town, his house, but not until then in all he can remember has he felt like he was coming home.
Dan's not an antidote to being as alone in the world as he will be, no matter who he meets, for the rest of his life. Dan's an employee of his doing a job he hired him to do and doing it well, and Aster's got to honor that by doing his job as Dan's employer well back.
"Hey, uh, I just wanted to let you know, you're doing a great job. With the house." He thinks he's doing a good job of not sounding choked up about it. "I, uh. Probably should have already told you that."