[ She hums a little note without comment, not entirely sure how to word a response. They spent a lot of time together, drifting in and out of orbit as the months went by, but for all Jaime may have felt about Ruka walking away, it feels like she was usually the one chasing after him in the first place. New Year's Eve was technically Kanaya's idea, but Ruka's the one who arranged Jaime's surprise-to-him commitment; she's the one who got on his case after his roommate ported out, or after that mess with the Negotiator, bulldozing her way through the walls he put up but making it seem only like pushing back a loose fabric curtain. She was usually the one harassing him at parties and other get-togethers, interrupting whatever else he had going on. Like that, maybe it's no surprise she was always the one pulling back. Why she felt more like an imposition than a friend.

But that — that loathsome, burdensome uncertainty — plagues her heart for every person, for every time and circumstance. It only weighs more heavily with Jaime because of how much more important he's been to her. With how much she's wanted to help him, with how much she wanted him to find some way to heal from all his agonies, with how much she's done, or tried to do, to accomplish that — it's more effort than she's spent for pretty much anyone. She was never willing to examine why. It is a little too late to examine why.

It is, in more ways than one, too daunting to examine why. It is too frightening to examine why.

Instead, she presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his jaw. ]

Sorry if I'm being weird, [ she murmurs, still close to... where his ear WOULD be if he..... still had them......... god the beetle suit is fucked up about the dumbest things. ] I know I should be used to this by now, but I don't know how to, really. It's never felt like this before.

[ didn't you have a boyfriend before ruka. didn't you date that guy for two fucking years ruka. what the hell. ]