After a while he starts singing.

"This is horribly depressing and I don't think we can meaningfully progress on it right now and I'm going to go find and hug my boyfriend."

"Seems reasonable." Cam's boyfriend is right here to be leaned on and wing-wrapped and listened to singing.

And Edie's boyfriend is outside leaning against a tree skipping rocks.

"Hi. That sucked in a wide variety of different ways."

"What happened after I left?"

"Well, Cam bugged him, and then he went back upstairs and the transcripts were kind of horrible."

"...in, like, the obvious way, or -"

"Less with the explicit more with the horribly manipulative."

"Guess it is a Maitimo. Why the fuck -

like, even if ours were evil, I can't see him toying with his prisoners, that's not even challenging -"

"...I didn't get the impression he was doing that to any other prisoners..."

"So he just. Has a thing for our cousin. That's weird."

"I wouldn't know, I don't have any."

"It's not really the most important thing about the situation, but." He tosses another rock into the lake. "Remind me why we didn't just kill him -"

"Findekano might have had horrific contingency orders on that and his country might be set up to fall apart without him."

"What a mess."

"No kidding."

Hug?

Hug.

"Remember when we started this and I said I was liable to fall in love with you? That happened a little while back. I wanted to wait for--something special--to tell you, but I couldn't think of anything, and right now I need to be able to say it..."

"Love you. Sorry things are - less than gloriously romantic."

"I'll live. And we aren't obliged to think about this problem 24/7. We can make time for ourselves."

"We should, we'll go nuts otherwise - so will Maitimo and Cam but that one might be again above my pay grade -"

"Yeah. I mean, it would probably be worse if they didn't have each other, I'm really glad I talked Maitimo into talking about his feelings like a grownup."