[Sorry, bud. He's honestly happy to see him alive, really does understand the impulses that took him so long to show his face. (He gets it. Really does. Not wanting to rush through the working your shit out. Even the selfish hesitance that comes with showing your face if you can't keep from showing your hand at the same time. But if you can't do the latter without the former, then it just becomes a matter of what you're going to be prioritizing. When he remembers the pall it cast over the place, the rattle it put in Yusuke, the angry way Red regretted their arguments—well, he can be a little selfish, too. Nothing more frustrating to deal with than your own flaws mirrored back at you.)
But it's a shortlived jab. He takes the invitation to settle in with an ironic little cant of his head that's mostly just charmed that Richie still bothers worrying about doing the host thing on his account. With a clear don't-bother-I'm-good in his voice—]
You could pour me a drink if it would make you feel better.
[Even if it wouldn't do him much good to try and drink it. Maybe it would make the hazy smoke air and the muted mood a little less awkward. Like this was never a life and death visit at all. The cloth Rich is cut from is Cloudbank enough that it could even feel a little more like home. (Like any minute and they'll ease onto more familiar topics. Kicking back in Goldwalk and talking about the Channel climbing unexpectedly in the polls (largely, they say, by an unexpected showing of habitual nonvoters.) Placing bets on who's going to take the pennant game. The precinct announcing that Henter Jallaford's retired to the Country.)
He takes the corner of the couch that's closest to where Richie's gone and sprawled himself out and sets the Transistor to lean beside him on the arm of it. The navigation of it is near-thoughtless, by now—even when he's not watching from inside the thing (still a sizable and not always predictable fraction of his day, though he tries not to make that obvious to anyone who doesn't need to know it,) he has to keep it close at hand, lest he risk a premature overload and a prolonged stay inside. So it's not something he has the luxury of not addressing at all, not once someone hangs around him long enough to ask the right questions, or happens on him at the wrong time or when he's had the right kind of bad luck. Still, he avoids talking too close to it. Defers the explanations, offers them in wry and vague and self-effacing fragments. And mostly people are fine to let that lie. Either because they can't be bothered to remember to call him out on it, or they like him well enough to respect his privacy.
This is neither, because it's not really about him in the end. Which is, perhaps, part of what makes it easier to answer. He leans over to brace his elbows against his knees and watch Richie fidget.]
...not so much, no.
[On either account. His body is where they left it. Processed into a neat pile of stark white blocks, the last he'd seen it. Whatever temporary substitution the Transistor cobbles up for him, rendering in and blinking out these days with equal impermanence, it's...something else. And Richie's, at the end... He can't know for sure if Rich knows that Yusuke had roped him in to help with the unfortunate business of his untimely death. But that seems like a pretty pointed question. After a moment to let that settle—]
Sounds like it bothers you.
[Right? Honest leading question. He won't be offended, promise.]
I'm pretty pleased with it, ngl.
But it's a shortlived jab. He takes the invitation to settle in with an ironic little cant of his head that's mostly just charmed that Richie still bothers worrying about doing the host thing on his account. With a clear don't-bother-I'm-good in his voice—]
You could pour me a drink if it would make you feel better.
[Even if it wouldn't do him much good to try and drink it. Maybe it would make the hazy smoke air and the muted mood a little less awkward. Like this was never a life and death visit at all. The cloth Rich is cut from is Cloudbank enough that it could even feel a little more like home. (Like any minute and they'll ease onto more familiar topics. Kicking back in Goldwalk and talking about the Channel climbing unexpectedly in the polls (largely, they say, by an unexpected showing of habitual nonvoters.) Placing bets on who's going to take the pennant game. The precinct announcing that Henter Jallaford's retired to the Country.)
He takes the corner of the couch that's closest to where Richie's gone and sprawled himself out and sets the Transistor to lean beside him on the arm of it. The navigation of it is near-thoughtless, by now—even when he's not watching from inside the thing (still a sizable and not always predictable fraction of his day, though he tries not to make that obvious to anyone who doesn't need to know it,) he has to keep it close at hand, lest he risk a premature overload and a prolonged stay inside. So it's not something he has the luxury of not addressing at all, not once someone hangs around him long enough to ask the right questions, or happens on him at the wrong time or when he's had the right kind of bad luck. Still, he avoids talking too close to it. Defers the explanations, offers them in wry and vague and self-effacing fragments. And mostly people are fine to let that lie. Either because they can't be bothered to remember to call him out on it, or they like him well enough to respect his privacy.
This is neither, because it's not really about him in the end. Which is, perhaps, part of what makes it easier to answer. He leans over to brace his elbows against his knees and watch Richie fidget.]
...not so much, no.
[On either account. His body is where they left it. Processed into a neat pile of stark white blocks, the last he'd seen it. Whatever temporary substitution the Transistor cobbles up for him, rendering in and blinking out these days with equal impermanence, it's...something else. And Richie's, at the end... He can't know for sure if Rich knows that Yusuke had roped him in to help with the unfortunate business of his untimely death. But that seems like a pretty pointed question. After a moment to let that settle—]
Sounds like it bothers you.
[Right? Honest leading question. He won't be offended, promise.]