Date Point: 9y 6m AV London, England, Earth
Ava Rios
”…so between your online portfolio and your material already being used by CAUD, you’ve popped up on our radar as somebody to watch. Would you mind-?”
“Is this guy bothering you, baby?”
The guy in the suit damn near swallowed his tongue when he turned around and came face-to-face with Adam.
“Adam!” Ava had learned not to throw herself too hard into hugging him nowadays. It was an awful lot like shoulder-barging a wall. Still, it was difficult to resist. “Oh my God, I didn’t think you had any leave left!”
“Just two days.” Adam agreed. “So, I’ve got a flight to catch in ten hours, but…come on, I wasn’t going to miss your graduation!”
She gave him a huge kiss. “Did you see the speech?”
“Yep, on the screen in the lecture hall upstairs. Saw you getting your scroll, too.” He beamed. “Who’s this guy?”
“Oh! Uh, Levaughn Thomas, this is my boyfriend Adam.”
“Staff Sergeant Arés, I believe.” Thomas shook Adam’s hand, regaining his composure.
“Uh…yeah! How’d you know?”
“I’ve got a working relationship with your father.” Mr. Thomas revealed. “He’s such a pleasure to work with.”
“Ahh, you’re the Byron guy.” Adam nodded. “You offering Ava a job?”
Levaughn managed a smile that was microscopically less confident than usual. “Well…I was just getting to that.” he confirmed.
Ava inclined her head with a ‘go ahead’ smile, and Levaughn cleared his throat and handed her a card. “My contact details.” he declared. “Please, call me whenever you’re next on Cimbrean and I’ll be happy to pencil you in for a little chat.”
“I’ll be glad to!” Ava agreed, shaking his hand before slipping the card into her handbag.
“Damn.” Adam commented, watching Thomas leave.
“What?”
“Nothing, I’m just…not used to guys like him.”
“You mean you’re so used to drowning in testosterone you forgot that camp dudes exist.” Ava teased, and grinned all the more when a blush darkened his face. “So oh my God, you’ve got two days leave and you flew over here just to see me and you’re going to have to fly straight back out again?”
“Is…that okay?”
“You didn’t have to, beef stock.” She kissed him. “But I really appreciate it.”
“And look at you! Getting job offers from the Byron group!” Adam retorted, and gave her an affectionate one-armed squeeze.
“Oh!” Ava pointed and raised her voice. “SEAN!”
To his credit, Sean apparently had genuinely not noticed them, and to his even greater credit, upon spotting Adam he didn’t show any sign of nerves or steeling himself—he just excused himself from his current conversation and trotted over.
“Hey.” He greeted her as they shared a chaste cheek-kiss. “Congratulations on the First.”
“So you’re Sean.” Adam stuck a hand out. “Heard a lot about you.”
“All good, I hope.” Sean winced a little at Adam’s grip, but kept his dignity on pure height. He was nearly half a foot taller than Adam, and while he easily lost out on mass, he won back in altitude.
“So good it’d almost make a guy jealous!” Adam boomed, and gave him a friendly, very gentle knuckle to the upper arm. “We’ll have to have a drink sometime, you and me.”
“Yeah?”
“Dude, you’re Ava’s best friend, that means you’re automatically, like, one of my favourite people.”
Ava hid a smile behind her hand and mouthed the words ‘he is such a puppy’ at Sean.
Sean laughed, and genuinely relaxed for the first time in weeks. “A drink it is, then.”
“So what are you up to, now that you’re a graduate?” Adam asked him.
“Oh, my uncle’s an investigative journalist.” Sean revealed. “I’ve always wanted to do what he does, and he promised to take me under his wing so long as I did well on my course.”
“Did you?”
“Well enough.” Sean looked forgivably pleased with himself. “Mostly I’m going to be carrying the bags and managing the phone numbers, but it’s all good experience.”
“You’re getting paid, right?”
“Please, I wouldn’t do an unpaid internship if you paid me.” Sean joked.
Adam chuckled. “I knew I’d like you.” he said.
Ava tapped him on the arm. “We need to go do the cap-toss and turn the caps and gowns back in. Are you okay waiting here?” she asked.
“I’ll be over there, under the aircon.” Adam pointed to an out-of-the-way corner.
“Okay.” she gave him a light kiss and tilted her head toward the doors, looking at Sean. “Shall we?”
Sean nodded. “Good to meet you, Adam.”
“You too, buddy. Take care.”
Ava made sure the door was closed before asking him. “So…what do you think?”
“You could do a lot worse, duck.” Sean told her.
“You think so?”
“Look.” Sean stopped. “It’s obvious you two just…light up around each other. I get it, It’s the Ava and Adam show. And I’m happy for you, he really does seem like a great guy.”
“I hear a ‘but’ in there.”
”…Just…he seems so earnest, doesn’t he?” Sean chewed on a bit of loose skin on his lower lip as he thought. “I have this feeling like he’s the kind of guy who makes a plan and sticks to it and maybe doesn’t think through the consequences of that plan so very well.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Ava drawled.
Sean chuckled, but quickly became serious again.
“Just…be certain that he knows who you are and you know who he is. Okay?” He pleaded her. “Don’t rush in now that you’re on the last leg and fall at the final hurdle.”
“I think you’re mixing metaphors there.”
“Ava…“
She held up a peaceful hand. “I hear you, I hear you. And I promise, I will. I want to be happy with him, after all.”
”…And if you can’t be?”
“Sean…” she glanced back to make absolutely certain that there was no sign at all of Adam, then stole a last and tender kiss with him. “I know somebody else who’d make me just as happy.”
“The only difference is…he needs you more.”
“He does.” She agreed.
”…Alright.” he nodded. “Let’s go do that photo and get rid of these things, and then you can go be a hero.”
They followed the shouting and gestures out onto the steps in front of the building, lined up as directed by the photographer, and unpinned their caps ready to throw.
The countdown started, and Ava couldn’t resist one last gesture—just before they threw their caps into the air, she took Sean’s hand.
Date Point: 9y 7m AV London, England, Earth
Charlotte Gilroy
“Gosh. We really don’t have a lot of stuff do we?”
They really didn’t. Ben had sold off his course textbooks now that he no longer needed them, and between them their clothes and assorted possessions, carefully packed, worked out to two suitcases each and a half-dozen cardboard boxes.
“It’s just settling in, isn’t it?” Ben asked. “We’re graduates.”
“Yeah…Grown, responsible adults.” Charlotte laughed nervously, and raised a fist to face height with a scared smile. “Go us!”
Ben blinked at her, then put down the box he’d been carrying and rubbed her arms. “Are you okay?”
”…I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re doing.” Charlotte told him. “We kept forgetting to talk about it. Are we going up north, or over to Southampton, or…?”
“Oh!” Ben turned and dug through the box he’d just set down. “I had an idea there, actually…”
“You did?”
“Yep!” He replied. “Bear with…here it is!”
He handed her the kind of slim pamphlet so beloved of tourist attractions and the enthusiastically religious. She frowned at it. “Folctha?”
“Look, see?” Ben tapped the page, and his tattoos, with their usual immaculate sense of timing, chose that moment to animate the moon changing phases as it orbited the Earth. “They finished installing this big city-wide gravity generator last month, which means the whole of Folctha is constantly under Earth gravity now.”
“I don’t know…I mean, it would be nice to be close to Ava, but do we have any skills they’re going to want?”
“Well, I’m a civil engineering graduate, and you’re a midwife.” Ben pointed out. “Now, A: they’re building new structures and roads and stuff all the time out there, but more importantly…before that gravity generator was built, nobody in Folctha could have babies because of the low gravity being bad for child development.”
Charlotte blinked at him, then at the pamphlet. “But now it’s turned on…they’re going to need midwives!”
“Sounds like a plan?” He asked.
“It sounds like an excellent plan!”
“Well, there’s one more part to it…”
“Wha-?”
Ben was already on one knee, and Charlotte’s hands flew involuntarily to her mouth.
“I love you, Charlotte. Will you marry me?”
The word “yes” needed a full two minutes to finally find its way out of her.
Fortunately, she remembered how to nod long before then, and by the time it arrived, she was already wearing the ring he’d sold his textbooks to buy.
Date point: Christmas Day, 9y 11m 3w AV Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches.
Ava Rios
“So…Here it is! Merry Christmas!”
There were a couple of options here. Either Adam had gone completely nuts, or there was something special about the building that he was standing in front of and beaming about. Either way, it wasn’t immediately apparent what the big surprise he’d been talking about all day might be.
She examined it as his proud smile wilted slightly. It was a four-storey new build, clad in the distinctive local pale grey stone that Folctha’s architectural planning board had settled on to play an important role in their vision for the city’s aesthetic. The whole of Folctha was going to look clean and shiny, and mercifully characterful, with its organic nest of curves rather than straight, bland lines.
This one was on Demeter Road, which hadn’t even existed when the pair of them had left Cimbrean. Now it was one of the town’s major thoroughfares, leading in one direction toward Delaney Row and Palace Hill, and in the other towards an outlying agricultural town called Demeter, which in turn had road connections on to Big Bay and New Bristol.
The ground floor was all windows, and plainly unfurnished, but the sign was in place: “The Dog House.” and below that, in slightly smaller letters: “Strength, Nutrition, Fitness.”
“A gym?” she asked.
“Yep! Titan’s always wanted to have one, so I chipped in the money to buy the building alongside him.”
“You own a building?!”
“Well, we both had that big homesteading grant to draw on and, y’know property prices are so cheap round here right now we figured we’d probably be able get something else each, too if we joined forces on this one…” Adam shrugged. “So, he owns the gym and the basement, and I own the rest.”
“Holy shit Adam!” She looked up and down the street calculating. “You realise that by the time you’ve paid the loan off this thing’ll be worth, like, triple what you paid for it?”
“Yep.” He beamed that big puppy smile. “It’s an investment.”
“So what’s the rest?”
“Come and see.”
He led her round the side of the building, to a well-lit parking area and a door with a number pad. “Code’s three-three-eight-six.” he said, entering it. The door buzzed and admitted them into a clean stairwell with a nice tiled floor, plus the fire exit from the gym and the door down to the basement.
Ava shrugged and followed him as he bounded up the stairs, to the top floor.
“Penthouse suite!” he announced, unlocking it with a key.
“Holy…Adam, this is gorgeous!” Ava stepped into it and looked around. The penthouse was a studio apartment, with the bedroom partitioned off from the open-plan kitchen and dining area by means of the bathroom. Adam must have accidentally intimidate the contractors or something, because the fittings and décor were amazing—white counters with dark wood surfaces, wood flooring, and warm indirect lighting throughout. It was maybe missing a few personal touches like artwork and furniture, but other than that…
What was more, it had stairs leading up to the roof which Adam rushed to unlock with a grin, beckoning her to follow.
“And the view from the roof…” he said, gesturing out across it.
It took Ava’s breath away. She could see the Palace, and the still-lit smart fabric spike of the Thing hall, currently pulsing through festive green, white and red. The alien quarter, protected from harmful Deathworlder diseases, pollens and spores by a triple layered dome of filter forcefields that glowed very faintly in the dark and dominated by the Gaoian enclave slash monastery. She could see the New World Plaza where this year’s Christmas tree was a beacon of warm light, and from which music could still be heard drifting over the streets and rooftops.
“You can see the lake from here too during the day, and: good news. From what I heard, it’s going to be getting a clean bill of health from the Reclamation Project pretty soon.” Adam told her, then turned to her. “What do you think?”
“I think…wow, you really got this right. You’re going to have a tidy fortune in a few years…What’re you going to do, rent this out, or…?”
“The two apartments downstairs, yeah.” Adam said. He took her hand and put something small, metallic and jagged in it. “The penthouse is yours.”
Ava was so surprised that she almost dropped the key. “You’re-? Adam, you’re kidding?!”
“Nope. You need somewhere to live, right? So, live here. If you want to pay rent on it, I can shove it in a savings account or something, whatever.”
He took her hand and gently towed her downstairs again—she was so stunned that she followed him automatically.
“Furniture’s coming day after tomorrow.” he said. “Sorry, I’d hoped to have it all in, but the timing…”
“It’s…don’t apologize, I…Adam, are you sure?”
“Totally sure.” he told her. “And, um…I was thinking…y’know, I’m back here now, you’re back here now, and I thought we could…” He brought his hand into view. It had a little black cube in it, which split down the middle. “…make up for lost time.”
It was a beautiful ring. A delicate moebius loop of white gold, spun back on itself so that it was almost two rings, joined by a blue diamond. It was exquisite, and she stared at it sadly.
The moment attenuated until Adam finally inclined his head slightly and asked, in a vulnerable tone she hadn’t heard since he’d asked her on their first date, “…Ava?”
She had to wind up into her question, her head moving in a slow shaking movement before she tore her gaze off the ring and looked at his face. This was all so amazing that part of her was sorely tempted to just hold her hand out, say yes and have done with it.
But Sean had still been right.
”…What am I to you, Adam?” she asked.
He frowned, lowering the box unconsciously. “I don’t…uh, what do you mean?”
“What am I to you?” she repeated. “What do I mean to you?”
“Well, you’re…” he began, then seemed to trip mid-thought. “You’re my-”
“I’m your? Your what?”
He shook his head again. “No you’re…you’re you.”
“I’m your me?”
“No, you’re your you!”
She nodded fiercely. “And what. Am. I?”
He spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know what you want from me.” he confessed.
She spelled it out for him. “Do you love me?”
She could see his instinctive response coming and snapped up a hand to stop him. “I know you do!” she added. “But there’s…look, over the last five years we’ve barely seen each other, and that ‘barely’ was mostly getting together every few months to…to screw as much as possible between your training sessions!”
“Can you stand there and honestly claim to love me, really love me, if that’s all we’ve had for so long? Do you even know who I am any more?” She waved her hand up and down him, gesturing to everything that had changed about him since they had been seventeen. “I mean…Do I love you or a memory of you? You’ve changed a lot, and so have I. If we’re going to work, if we’re going to be together, then we both need to know that we love each other for who we are now.”
His mouth closed, and very, very slowly, he looked away. Ava deflated. “Then…Adam, corazon, I’m so sorry, but…this is all amazing, but…no. I can’t marry you. Not yet, not until…” She trailed off, knowing that she had to leave that door opening, but not knowing what more to say.
Adam pocketed the ring. “I’ll, uh…” he coughed. “I’ll…stay on the base tonight, I guess.”
She nodded, and stepped aside. Adam squeezed past her and out the door.
“You, uh…this place is still yours, for as long as you want it.” he told her. “I’ll…see you around I guess.”
Ava nodded. “Yeah.” she croaked. “See ya.”
He turned away and creaked unsteadily down the stairs, so she shut the door then leaned against it.
That done, she let go and slid down to the floor in tears. He’d looked so broken.
“GONE!! It’s all gone! All of it’s gone bye-bye WOOWOO seeya!”
“What happened to you?”
“One minute you’re defending the whole galaxy, and suddenly you find yourself suckin’ down darjeeling with Marie Antoinette and her little sister…”
Movie night for the Operators was frequently an exercise in cramming ten men onto a single oversized three-seat couch, custom built to SOR requirements by Rebar and crew. It was huge, strong, and comfy, with plenty of room for even their massive frames to sit and spread out.
At least, on a normal day. Movie night, on the other hand, taxed even its over-engineered limits when ten Spaceborne Operators crammed onto it in a tangle of limbs, using each other as pillows, sitting on each others’ laps, and thinking nothing of being so wrapped up in the puppy pile that it would once, in their younger civilian years, have made them deeply uncomfortable.
Nowadays? It was fraternal, and comforting. All of their training, the constant physical closeness, the team-building and the end result of all they had been through together meant they were entirely comfortable with almost too high a degree of physical intimacy.
This created occasional problems.
“Whose legs are these? Yo Titan, these yours?”
“How the fuck are they mine, I’m all the way over here!”
“Well one of you assholes needs to move his feet, I gotta piss!”
A few of the guys wiggled their feet experimentally while a crazed astronaut ranted on the screen. “You see the hat? I am MRS! NESBITT!!”
“Oh. Shit. Sorry bruv.”
“Man, get off me!”
The knot untangled enough for BASEBALL to squeeze out from under it and roll over the back of the couch, and they collapsed back inwards as the guys found new comfortable spots to fill the void.
“But…the hat looked good? Tell me the hat looked good…the apron is a bit much but-“
“Man, even Toy Story isn’t cheering him up.”
Adam sighed. “Nah, it’s…helping.” he promised.
“Pull the other one, pal.” Legsy admonished him.
Adam just snuggled into the couch a bit further and tried to watch.
”“I just…can’t figure it out.” he said. “I was away from HER for all those years as well, you know? It wasn’t like being away from her for that long was easy for me either.”
Akiyama spoke up. “Women are high maintenance, man.” he shared.
Price snorted. “Fuck off, you’ve got less experience with women than WARHORSE does.”
Akiyama took the insult with a smile “You wanna talk about getting laid, little man?”
Price shrugged.“Okay, what d’you want to know?”
There was a collective “WOOAH!!” and a round of high-fives.
“Nah, boys, fuckin’…” Legsy tried to chime in as it died down, but Adam plainly wasn’t in the mood. He lifted half the guys off him at once, slithered out from under them, and stood up.
“I’ll…be in the gym.” he announced.
There was a long moment of silence after he’d gone. Nobody was paying attention to the movie anymore.
“He’s real tore up, ain’t he?”
“They were together a long time.” Legsy said. “This shit’s not helping, he doesn’t need a puppy pile, he needs advice.”
“You’re the one to give it then, Legs.” Price noted. “Go be big brother.”
”…Yeah. Think you’re right.”
Legsy waited until the movie was done before he intruded in the gym. Adam was casually swinging a bulky jerry can around one-handed like a kettlebell, working up a good sheen of sweat.
“Going kinda light aren’t you?” Legsy asked him. The gravity was set at 1G, Earth Standard, and if that can was full of water then it was far below Adam’s potential.
“You think so?” Adam asked. “There’s a spare right there if you want to join in.”
Legsy shrugged. His own fitness regime focused on speed and explosive force as a rule, but this wasn’t about him, right now. He picked up the can.
Or at least, he tried to. It wasn’t full of water, that was for damn sure—he barely rocked it when he tried to grab it, and he didn’t get it off the ground until he stood over it properly and treated it as a lift.
“Fuckin’…CHRIST!” he dropped it again. “What’s in that?”
“Buckshot.” Adam’s trademark goofy grin put in a cameo reappearance, a good deal more melancholy than usual but at least it was – finally – a break in his bad mood.
“You little shit, there’s no way you’re swinging THAT around like that, put it down let me…”
Adam shrugged and did so. Legsy had been half-right—the one he had been using was a bit lighter, but still far heavier than Legsy could have used for endurance training like that.
“Two thirds full.” Adam revealed. In the meanwhile, he’d picked up the big can and was now slowly and deliberately performing stiff, one-armed shoulder raises. The motion was much like a kettleball swing, but without the use of momentum to aid the lift, making it a much more difficult exercise. Legsy watched in silent admiration as, in the space of about a minute, he went from merely sweaty to dripping.
He set the can down, huffing with a satisfied expression. “I’m not heavy enough to swing the the big one without the suit. Not yet, anyway. Hell, even in the tighter and heavier midsuit ‘Base and I switched to, and even with the added armor plating we wear now, and even with a full combat load, swinging it is tricky. The momentum just throws me around, man. Which…y’know, hurts.”
“Aye,” said Legsy. “Seems to drain you right quick, too.”
“Uh huh. Liftin’ really heavy makes me sweat so much I can get dehydrated in just a couple of minutes if I ain’t careful. But that’s only when I ain’t wearin’ the suit, and only if I do something big like this. So without the suit I work intervals and switch off between the two cans.”
“You been at this since the movie?”
“Yup. This is my eighth set.” He picked up the lighter can and start swinging again. “Slowly gettin’ better. A few months ago? This woulda practically killed me. Now it’s just a good workout.”
Legsy said nothing for a long moment, then made a disbelieving little noise and shook his head. “Fuckin’ Christ mate, just how fuckin’ strong ARE you?”
Adam shrugged, put down the can, then burrowed around in his open locker and produced a little hand-sized notepad. When Legsy flipped it open, what he found pencilled in was a list of exercises, and numbers. They were all crossed off.
“What’s this?”
“World records.” Adam shrugged again. “It’s the Crude, man. Thanks to that shit, I’m probably the strongest person in the galaxy.”
“Yeah, maybe. Probably. I met that Saunders bloke we learned about Cruezzir from in the first place. He looked about as big as you, but taller. Longer bones, less mechanical advantage.” Legsy mused, then handed back the notepad. “And he din’t train like you, neither.” He added. “Is this…wise?”
“Probably not.” Adam conceded. “But, how long have we got until the resistance kicks in? I guess if Ava thinks I gave up on her for this, and maybe she’s right. Maybe I did…”
He trailed off, then reset. “I guess if she thinks that then maybe that’s all I have right now, is getting the best out of this stuff before I start to become immune.”
“Fuck me, you’re a stupid twat sometimes, pal.” Legsy shook his head. Adam frowned at him—it hadn’t been the typical laddish insult between brothers-in-arms, but had sounded like a genuine appraisal of his intelligence.
“What?”
“If she thinks you gave up on her, then that means she wants you to start workin’ on her again, doesn’t it!”
“Does it?”
Legsy sighed and laughed, shaking his head. “Siddown, Adam.” he said. “Let me tell you the ways of the women folk.”
Adam frowned at him, but obeyed, perching atop the same can he’d just been training with.
Legsy sat opposite him. “What exactly did she say to you?” he asked.
“She asked me…’what am I to you?‘. Uh…what is she to me, you know?”
“Right…?”
“And then, she, uh…she told me to tell her honestly that I still love her after all those years going away and…that kind of thing.”
“Well that wasn’t exactly fair of her…” Legsy opined. “But alright.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…okay, gut response here, one word, first one that springs to mind…” Legsy suggested “…DO you love her?”
“Yes!”
“Good. Right. but here’s the next question: What IS love? And none of that ‘Baby don’t hurt me’ crap.”
”…huh?”
“Eh, that’s maybe a bit before your time.” Legsy allowed. “But go on, try and answer it.”
“Well, it’s…” Adam thought about it. “Love, it’s an emotion, right?”
“Half right. You can feel love, and you can love, right? You can do love, not just feel it.”
“A verb.” Adam nodded.
“Fuckin’ right. You’ve got love the, uh…” Legsy clicked his fingers as he searched his memory. “Whatsit, the noun?”
“Yeah.”
“So….yeah. You love her, but you don’t love her, see? Noun love versus verb love.”
“You’re saying she needs both?” Adam asked him.
“Secret one about women, mate: A lot of the time, the verb counts for more with them than the noun, like. And, secret one about blokes: by and large, we’re the other way round.”
“Come on!” Adam protested. “They’re more complicated than that. SHE’S more complicated than that!”
Legsy shrugged. “How d’you know somebody loves you?” he asked.
Adam scratched above his ear. “Well…I…I guess you…”
Legsy just raised an eyebrow at him, waiting.
Adam deflated. “I guess because they…show it. They do stuff for you.”
“Fuckin’ right! And ANY woman, complicated or not, needs to KNOW that you love her. Needs to have it SHOWN. Because blokes, y’know, we’re stupid buggers, we feel it and we’ll just go ahead and fuckin’ assume that they feel the same way, and carry on. Women, though? They think about love, a lot. They…a lot of the time, they love you so much they worry that they’re loving you more than you love them. See? They don’t just assume it.”
“Ava’s not insecure, though.”
“It’s not insecure, mate. It’s…” Legsy’s gaze flickered about the room and he spread his hands, marshalling his words. “They don’t want to get ripped off. Right? That’s actually smarter than how we do.”
“They want to know they’re getting a good return on their emotional investment.” Adam translated.
“Right! You got it!”
Adam sighed. “Yeah…I got it.”
”…so?”
Adam frowned. “…So…what?”
Legsy looked down and rubbed his forehead. “How fuckin’ dense ARE you?” he asked. “I’ve just told you that what she wants is to be SHOWN that you love her.”
“But she broke it off!” Adam exclaimed. “And…she’s right, we hardly know each other any more! It’s not going to be as simple as…as flowers and chocolate!”
“So start. Over.” Legsy suggested. “Get to know her again, let her get to know you again. Go on a new first date! If that relationship’s over, then start a new one with her!”
”…You think we can do that?”
“Adam, pal…I reckon that’s what she wants more than anything.” Legsy told him, gravely.
He let Adam sit and think, until the younger man finally nodded. “I’ll…give it a few days. I need to work up my courage and…figure out what I’m gonna say.”
“Good idea. But if we get to Saturday and you’ve still not done it, I’m draggin’ you down there myself. Fair?”
“Fair”.
Legsy stood up. “I’ll let you get on and think, then.” he said.
”…Thanks, Legsy.”
Legsy just clapped a hand on his shoulder and left him alone.