[ It's so incongruous, so alien to what his life usually contains, that it raises only confusion and not alarm. Nathaniel finds it hard to speak when he's drinking, a fact which Nate tries very hard not to abuse, so he turns — and it's like he's in an elevator with the cables cut. How the fuck has this guy found him, and other silently gibbered questions, have to be ignored and worked past. Nate forces himself to sip his drink like everything's normal, not taking his eyes off of Petre. ]
Yeah. Guess so.
[ His deadened voice is barely audible over the music, weighed down by social calculations that can't be calibrated by looking at his friends because it's not a huge leap of logic to understand how he's afraid of what they'll see, but he's not going to show obvious weakness about it. You just don't. All he can do is crawl into the boring armor again, to have as little reaction as possible, and wait until it's possible and less socially awkward to leave. ]
no subject
Yeah. Guess so.
[ His deadened voice is barely audible over the music, weighed down by social calculations that can't be calibrated by looking at his friends because it's not a huge leap of logic to understand how he's afraid of what they'll see, but he's not going to show obvious weakness about it. You just don't. All he can do is crawl into the boring armor again, to have as little reaction as possible, and wait until it's possible and less socially awkward to leave. ]