As far as rises went, Mac actually didn’t get too much of one. Certainly nothing approached an outburst. It did get Aoba’s eyes up off the table, brows drawn down as the disparaging remarks piled up and weighed against confusion of, wait, wasn’t Mac supposed to be Declan’s friend?—but there was nothing for Mac to interrupt.
Aoba ended up averting his eyes again, though now with more tension in the lines of his expression. What was this, all of a sudden? If he hadn’t known completely better, he’d have wondered if this was why Declan had proposed that he could stay with Mac. Except he did know better, and apparently Mac had volunteered, and the Mariner had been left behind so that Aoba could ‘escape’ to it if need be.
“He’s not on a pedestal, but I’m down in the ditches,” he countered. Declan was extraordinary and Aoba did view him as someone so much better than so many other people around him, but he didn’t consider it to be a pedestal. To Aoba, it was a level he simply couldn’t rise to right now. It was different.
“I don’t know…who I am, or what I am. I haven’t done a single thing for myself since he started helping me. Right now, it’s just…it’s better for him to keep thinking I couldn’t like him,” Aoba slowly pieced the words together, staring down at his hands, clenching into tired fists in his lap. Ren gazed up at him mutely, gazing out of his carry-bag, but Aoba held back from reaching to his fur for comfort.
no subject
Aoba ended up averting his eyes again, though now with more tension in the lines of his expression. What was this, all of a sudden? If he hadn’t known completely better, he’d have wondered if this was why Declan had proposed that he could stay with Mac. Except he did know better, and apparently Mac had volunteered, and the Mariner had been left behind so that Aoba could ‘escape’ to it if need be.
“He’s not on a pedestal, but I’m down in the ditches,” he countered. Declan was extraordinary and Aoba did view him as someone so much better than so many other people around him, but he didn’t consider it to be a pedestal. To Aoba, it was a level he simply couldn’t rise to right now. It was different.
“I don’t know…who I am, or what I am. I haven’t done a single thing for myself since he started helping me. Right now, it’s just…it’s better for him to keep thinking I couldn’t like him,” Aoba slowly pieced the words together, staring down at his hands, clenching into tired fists in his lap. Ren gazed up at him mutely, gazing out of his carry-bag, but Aoba held back from reaching to his fur for comfort.
“It’s one less…complication.”