over the hill

"You're just going to leave us?"

"Well, not just."

Dillon sighed as if there were some kind of relief to be gleaned from this inculpable concession.

"Tomorrow, anyway."

Now it was Clarity's turn to sigh, and not half so somewhat-happily. "Do you think I should have expected as much?"

"Never expect the unexpected!" crowed Matthew, seemingly ignorant to the problem at hand. He stretched in place, shoving back shoulders by their own rotors' force, but he didn't quite bounce his usual.

So hardheaded, this one - and he'd always been that way, because Na'el's head had been harder and doubly determined not to be porous; Matthew? Just exactly how he'd come.

And Dillon wasn't quite that close to a brick. "Mate, you do see how we might not be so chuffed about that, right?"

"But you've got each other, it's alright."

The two who'd got shared a glance. First it was sarcasm and shared aggrievement, but then they swiftly began to wonder...were they the crazy ones? Had they interpreted something that wasn't at all there?

Matthew was still looking at them obligingly, neither anticipating nor denying a comment in response.

Clarity mirrored his tone: "But we want to have you. Alright?"

Oh? Matthew shrugged. "So come with!"

With little more than a rucksack, to be sure.

Clarity and Dillon were gentle sorts, trusting in nostalgia and the comfort of a warm bed and needing of promises toward gallant future work but indeed little more, from trustworthy friends. They would not be helpless alone in the City, nor would they be devastated. It was this moment right here, this lack of recognition, that irked.

They wouldn't hit him upside the head for it, but both studied that arrogant chin and the eyebrow slit far above to determine just how long it'd been since he'd gotten a good hard knock. From A? Probably from A. And A hadn't known him all that long.

All this, these earnest feelings for him, and Matthew didn't even know.