Who: O'Brien, Thom, and Emile
What: APOLOGIES AND STUFF LIKE THAT
Where: someplace in Kurzweil
When: after
thisWarnings: Profanity, mature themes no homo well actually...
[ Two months. It's been two goddamn months since he lost his shit and freaked out on Emile, and they've hardly spoken since, because O'Brien knows when he owes a fucking apology and he knows that he needs to be the one to start it. But. Apologies don't fix everything. Some things stick with a person, and for all that he'd made those vague noises to Thom that he'd apologize and make this right, that didn't mean Emile was willing to let it be made right.
It couldn't be made right anyway because fuck, all the fraternization going on in that base. He'd hoped distance would do the trick. Time.
But no, all he did in the interim was shoot himself in the foot, first with the Master Chief and then with that other asshole, and the Spartans didn't make his gut any less of a complicated wreck. He doesn't care what they do in their spare time. He doesn't care what they do in their moments of weakness. He's a goddamn hypocrite, sneaking from Rookie's room in the middle of the night and smoothing his fingers nervously over the marks completely covered by his uniform.
He's sorry he's too much of a psych case to just grit his teeth and deal with it, go back where he belongs and take his place in a Spartan's shadow. He's fucking sorry but he can't, he can't, they're too much for him too soon after Cal.
At least he sleeps a little better at Shepard's, which is a huge fucking joke considering how many aliens are sharing the roof with him. The completely unfamiliar is somehow more comforting than the only vaguely familiar, because at least he doesn't start to get comfortable and then get jarred loose by the reminder that he's not with his men, not with his squad, not even with other humans. He'd give his arm for Cortez to be here, to tell him what to do and how to feel. Hell, at this point he'd even take Dutch. He'd hated being ordered around and looked down on as the baby of the squad, the one they all kept an eye on, but he'd kill for the chance to be put in his place now. To know his spot in the order of things.
All he's doing now is flailing. Drowning. Nothing to stand on and no one to pull him out, because even Thom and Rookie and Emile aren't his squad, and Emile might hate him now anyway. O'Brien would understand.
Anyway he's not in a damn ice cream parlor this time, at least, just a little courtyard in an open part of the city with some concrete benches and a fountain and a little band of holographic birds that skitter over the ground, pretending to peck for crumbs that didn't exist. It's quiet and serene, which is not why he'd picked it. He'd picked it because it was relatively close to a teleporter and the exact equidistant location between the Spartan base and Shepard's. ]