Frost had never met Bryce, and so when she met him, she greeted him with suspicion. He smiled at her charmingly as he offered her a piece of cake, and she could see that he was a spy all over.
This was the man that yanked her son - both her children, really - into a world that she had tried so hard to keep them away from. There was a coldness in him, a commitment to the mission, a conviction that as long as one protects life, broken hearts and abandoned love didn't count enough to change your road.
She saw, at once, her own worst and best qualities in the man who was now sharing a life with her son.
She smiled, jaw tight, and told him with her eyes that she would be watching him.
And she did.
And she was right about him.
Partly.
What she didn't expect - what she had no way to prepare for - was that Bryce would turn out to be so much like Orion.
Like Stephen.
Watching him speak his science fiction language with Chuck, watching him talk animatedly about the future of technology and whether the movies had it all wrong, watching him sneak a kiss when they passed each other... it reminded her of her own husband.
She remembered that they were friends, Bryce and Orion. They had protected each other and believed in each other while she was off after Volkoff and Chuck was trying to forget the people who had left them. She thought they probably liked each other. It must have been strange, each man befriending someone who was closer to Chuck than they were (in their minds at least), each man trusting the other because no one in their circles could be more decent than Chuck's father or the best friend and boyfriend who had protected Chuck at school. Frost wondered if Stephen would approve of what was going on now - with Bryce and Chuck trying once again to put the past behind them (it never worked for her and Stephen), with Chuck a spy and proud.
She suspected that Stephen would find a kind or witty way to suggest that she just let her grown son pick his own relationships.
One would think Chuck's personality would be half from her and half from Stephen. Instead, he got smarts and spycraft from both but all of Stephen's good personal traits - his integrity, his warmth, his appallingly stubborn persistence on matters of principle. Ellie, got that same balance too.
It turned out the only who really seemed equally like her and Orion was Bryce Larkin.
But she figured there were worse things than having something in common with her new son in law.
AN: Written for A on lj.