The silence was bordering on awkward now.

It was an accident, truly— you didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the word had slipped off your tongue so easily; it felt right in the moment.

For J’onn, however, it must have meant something different entirely. Something deeper, because he had paused amidst his actions, lost in thought with what seemed like a pained expression; as if revisiting a bad memory.

Or perhaps he was pensive. You could never tell what exactly the Martian was feeling. It was suffocating, in a way, just as the atmosphere was now.