[It would've been easier if he'd showed up sooner, Wash catches himself thinking. He aborts the thought before it metastasizes into something he can recognize as resentment or envy or something worse - packages it away, compressed and compartmentalized and annexed down into a shape he can safely tuck away where he'll never have to look at it again. Unwanted memories and unwanted dreams can go the same place as every other memory that he was never supposed to have.]
[The problem is just that he's never - he'd adjusted to things without realizing that he had, and now there's a new spanner in the works and what's worse is that it's not just any spanner, but one that he owes for all the shit he pulled, the guilt and disgust and blame and everything. Can't just walk away and say, fuck it, deal with things your own damn self. It doesn't work like that. He's not allowing himself that, for all that it might make shit easier.]
[Right now, he's out of armor - a rarity at home that's come to be as standard as anything else here. His current wardrobe isn't the most tactical or tasteful, but...]
[She gave it to him.]
[So he's not about to get rid of it.]
[Hands in his pockets, halfway toward moving to check his allotment of coffee plants from Ignis, and he thinks it's safe enough to say:]
no subject
[The problem is just that he's never - he'd adjusted to things without realizing that he had, and now there's a new spanner in the works and what's worse is that it's not just any spanner, but one that he owes for all the shit he pulled, the guilt and disgust and blame and everything. Can't just walk away and say, fuck it, deal with things your own damn self. It doesn't work like that. He's not allowing himself that, for all that it might make shit easier.]
[Right now, he's out of armor - a rarity at home that's come to be as standard as anything else here. His current wardrobe isn't the most tactical or tasteful, but...]
[She gave it to him.]
[So he's not about to get rid of it.]
[Hands in his pockets, halfway toward moving to check his allotment of coffee plants from Ignis, and he thinks it's safe enough to say:]
She likes you.