Dan starts making marks in chalk along the places he intends to hem and trim the coat. He doesn't suspect it'll take him terribly long; he has a good eye for shape and measurement, and he had Elle's form closer to accurate rather than further. He's got his suspicions that that's something else he inherited from his father, who always had a sort of gift with being able to visualize things before they were completed, of being confident with ratios and angles, that served him so well as a carpenter.

Dan takes a lot of pride in it, the same way he takes pride in being a polyglot or memorizing audiobooks of classic poetry. He feels like it's a foothold for his ego. No matter how often he gets dismissed for being illiterate, for having a tar-thick drawl and a dialect with its own arcane grammar, for all his markers of being working class and impoverished, he knows he's smart in ways others struggle to keep up with. He holds onto that.

Elle, though, has never once made him feel inadequate. He's never worried that she looks at him and thinks of him as stupid. He doesn't need to prove himself to her by calling attention to how close he was.

"I'm trying. I'm going completely stir-crazy whenever Bunny don't got me on a case. It's too damn cold outside." Dan sighs. "I don't want to complain too much but not being able to just go run around under the sun is..."

Dan sighs and laughs. "I mean, I told you I was done raised in a bunker half the year, right? This is like all the worst parts of that without none of the benefits. You can't be feeling much less cooped up."