It was just who he was. Bryce’s personality was the kind that liked to joke. He joked with a humor that slipped small denigrations with smiles, sold as humor for a laughs equally intended to cut whom they were spoken towards. It was just who he was, and so long as you understood, there was nothing personal in his ways. It was how he spoke and treated everyone, and there is no reason to personal affront for what is another’s universal treatment to all.
Bryce stood with Ryan and Annie outside the bar. Annie had been smoking and Ryan followed out in company. Bryce, lighting up as well, started into the conversation thinking nothing on what the other two had shared before his interjection into their world.
He looked at Ryan and made a joke. “You always stand like that?”
Ryan was standing with his left hand raised tight against his chest. His hand was closed save for his index finger and thumb shaped distinctly in an “L.”
Ryan looked at his posture and laughed, “Probably more than I know.”
“What is that, some kind of gang sign?”
Ryan laughed more. He hadn’t even known he did it.
“No offense, but you look like a fucking idiot.”
“None taken,” Ryan answered still laughing and smiling. “I’ve been worse.”
Ryan’s hand rested at the point where his one-point sling always held. He was a left-handed shooter and his loose closed hand was around a pistol grip that wasn’t there; the vertical leg of the “L” his index finger straight and off the trigger and it’s bottom leg was his thumb on the backside of the pistol grip, touching to sweep the lever on the safety. He was standing and ready, and at the first sign of threat, it was a simple singular movement, of sweeping the thumb, setting to grip as the rifle rose to line of site where the target was acquired and it was focused fires center-mass moving forward until the target fell or safety of cover attained.
Some habits keep without us ever knowing they remain. Such habits die hard.