“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. It’s none of my business. I know your world’s complicated.”
He keeps his tone level, but is pretty mortified at almost making her cry again. Even once it's clear she’s not actually on the brink of shedding more tears, he’s still choosing his words carefully and watching to make sure she’s not getting upset again.
“I just thought if it were me, I might not know how you felt, but I’d still want to know how you were doing... and to apologize, even if I didn’t actually do anything wrong. It’d probably take a while, and I’d have to figure out how to go about it, but I’d still want to...” That would be the right thing to do, and he figures that most people would feel similarly. “We don’t have to talk about him anymore, though.”
He actually winces with the mention of the case. “Yeah, of course, which is why I didn’t.” But then what went down was such a disaster, just about any other turn of events would be preferable in hindsight.
He’s bad at talking about his emotions, or else maybe he would try and explain that it’s one thing to like someone, but it’s rare that anyone genuinely gives a shit about what happens to you in return. And it’s not like everyone’s a rotten evil bastard with no sympathy, but just that everyone’s got priorities, and you’re usually not one of them. Which is fair enough, honestly. But then when you meet someone who’s not like that, and you let them down so terribly, whether they’re a hardened criminal or not, it feels really... shitty.
“I know we can’t help who we like,” he says instead. “I liked all those guys I worked with when undercover. I had nothing personal against any of them. Shit, I even liked the goddamn gangster.” He laughs, a little rueful. For someone who's basically a nice person, he sure gets along with scumbags awfully well. But then they’d been such likable scumbags.
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He keeps his tone level, but is pretty mortified at almost making her cry again. Even once it's clear she’s not actually on the brink of shedding more tears, he’s still choosing his words carefully and watching to make sure she’s not getting upset again.
“I just thought if it were me, I might not know how you felt, but I’d still want to know how you were doing... and to apologize, even if I didn’t actually do anything wrong. It’d probably take a while, and I’d have to figure out how to go about it, but I’d still want to...” That would be the right thing to do, and he figures that most people would feel similarly. “We don’t have to talk about him anymore, though.”
He actually winces with the mention of the case. “Yeah, of course, which is why I didn’t.” But then what went down was such a disaster, just about any other turn of events would be preferable in hindsight.
He’s bad at talking about his emotions, or else maybe he would try and explain that it’s one thing to like someone, but it’s rare that anyone genuinely gives a shit about what happens to you in return. And it’s not like everyone’s a rotten evil bastard with no sympathy, but just that everyone’s got priorities, and you’re usually not one of them. Which is fair enough, honestly. But then when you meet someone who’s not like that, and you let them down so terribly, whether they’re a hardened criminal or not, it feels really... shitty.
“I know we can’t help who we like,” he says instead. “I liked all those guys I worked with when undercover. I had nothing personal against any of them. Shit, I even liked the goddamn gangster.” He laughs, a little rueful. For someone who's basically a nice person, he sure gets along with scumbags awfully well. But then they’d been such likable scumbags.