"...I'm backlashed so I can't give that question the blank stare it deserves! Why must it bottom out in some practical purpose to be put toward some other end?"

"...because... otherwise it is not social capital? It's just being nice?"

"I guess! Maybe it was a bad choice of words. But like - okay, fine, let's back up and start over, I do not have a very strong preference between it coming up all the time that one phone call blah blah or us talking around it. The thing I would prefer is a different thing. My preference to be nice is far stronger than any opinion I can generate on the object level. Does that make more sense."

"Sure. You have not been not nice thus far. Your preference for being nice all the time has been noticed." That's the whole entire fucking issue.

"- which is apparently wearisome somehow? I'm sorry?"

"—no, I'm sorry, I'm being a dick and you're backlashed, I didn't mean to."

God fucking damn it he did it again.

"You can just mentally edit out my backlashed apologies if you want, it's a symptom and I was Canadian to begin with also."

"...well, my apology was genuine, I am being a dick." Sigh.

"It would sure be great if I had some not just being generically nice thing to do as a fallback which would be less stressful or whatever but I sure don't know what it would be."

"...well I would say 'be normal instead' but, as you said, that's not the easiest to operationalise, and also it comes off as dickish and I don't mean it that way."

"I don't know how to be normal about this. I barely know how to be nice about it. Sorry."

"I don't mean about this. Just—in general. Be normal and not, not... always nice, like nothing matters, like we're only coworkers anyway and the only point of us ever interacting is so that our always-accidental concurrent visits to the break room aren't awkwardly quiet so we should fill them with absolutely nothing real or meaningful or important or, God forbid, negative."

"...I'm being a dick again. Sorry."

"...so like I'm not sure I understand what you mean, like, is the concordantly, uh, incautious, response to, for example, what you just said, something like, 'so have you considered not being a dick in the first place' or it is like - also I don't even know what counts as a real and meaningful topic? We have talked about my life's work and you know my mother's name and you gave me a transcript of what Nightmare said to you and - this isn't exactly 'sure is cold on this winter day in Canada' level chat here and I'm not sure what the thing you would rather have would look like."

"'So have you considered not being a dick in the first place' would have been a reassuring response. If you meant it."

"I mean I admit I do wonder whether you have considered that but I expect the answer to be something like 'unfortunately, as you probably already know, the horrors'."

Oh his "painfully endearing"ness is a lot harder to resist when it's being pointed right at his face in such concentrated doses. Not that "resist" is really relevantly the thing he's doing, here.

"That sentence, right there, sounded more like it could have been said by the guy who writes your blog than, than, than like ninety-five percent of what you usually say to me."

"Argh I'm coming off as dickish again! I'm sorry! That was hyperbole. I meant to gesture at, at—it's hard for me to not focus on the ankle bracelet situation, as you put it, if you, just..."

"If I just.... present the, uh, mass-market considerate-ness instead of the... um... breezy memeing?"

"Or of expressing a preference, or of saying—whatever it is you didn't say when you spent ten minutes not replying to my text and then just said 'well I'm glad you like the cottage at least'..."

"I considered and discarded several drafts all of which boiled down to 'wow, harsh' and settled on what I said when Cricket started threatening to learn your email address."

"...and did you not mean for that to come off as 'I don't really care enough to continue this conversation'?"

"I didn't actually have a ton of investment in keeping the balloon in the air for the text exchange, we see each other every day, but was not trying to loudly signal that! It was like, what am I supposed to say to that? Thanks for the compliment on my skills at cage-gilding but apparently they're sub-par? Fill out your customer service satisfaction survey so future work-release espers considering my custody will know I'm great at picking island silos?"

"'Wow, harsh' would have been pretty good, I think! If nothing else I didn't mean it as harsh. ...I think." He grabs his phone to reread the text. "Yeah I did not mean it as harsh."

"What did you mean it as?"