It's a good ten minutes before Steven texts him back.
Honestly, if I had to guess, it's probably closer to the last option. Which... isn't much better.
Steven types out and erases without sending his next text a couple times before finally settling on,
I think maybe a lot of my... I don't know what to call them. I think a lot of my ways of dealing with things are getting fucked up with you, I guess.
He stares down at the pokegear for a long, long moment before typing, I don't think it helps me knowing who to be for you when being through the same bullshit sort of forced this... god, I don't know... a feeling of intimacy, I guess, upon us? A sharing of things only we will understand. And you're very different than the last person who I had that kind of... platonic understanding with.
You're *not* Charley. And I know that. I do. Even with a very traumatic experience in common which gave us something that we understand and others don't, we don't... really know each other. And it makes it weird, I guess, to calibrate who I should be with you. Should I act as if we're colleagues or friends or what? I think sometimes I just... unthinkingly default to who I was for *her*. Ranting at you--god or Carly, I've done it to her too--like you're *her*. Going overboard with, like, proactive protection bullshit like I would have for *her*.
But you're not very much like her at all and the things she'd accepted or even welcomed from me aren't anything you want and God, I really didn't realize--
no subject
Honestly, if I had to guess, it's probably closer to the last option. Which... isn't much better.
Steven types out and erases without sending his next text a couple times before finally settling on,
I think maybe a lot of my... I don't know what to call them. I think a lot of my ways of dealing with things are getting fucked up with you, I guess.
He stares down at the pokegear for a long, long moment before typing, I don't think it helps me knowing who to be for you when being through the same bullshit sort of forced this... god, I don't know... a feeling of intimacy, I guess, upon us? A sharing of things only we will understand. And you're very different than the last person who I had that kind of... platonic understanding with.
You're *not* Charley. And I know that. I do. Even with a very traumatic experience in common which gave us something that we understand and others don't, we don't... really know each other. And it makes it weird, I guess, to calibrate who I should be with you. Should I act as if we're colleagues or friends or what? I think sometimes I just... unthinkingly default to who I was for *her*. Ranting at you--god or Carly, I've done it to her too--like you're *her*. Going overboard with, like, proactive protection bullshit like I would have for *her*.
But you're not very much like her at all and the things she'd accepted or even welcomed from me aren't anything you want and God, I really didn't realize--
Shit.