"This seems an important step on the road to saving the galaxy together," Miles agrees.
"My alternate plan was wandering around the school, calling 'MILES! THE GALAXY IS NOT YET SAVED!' into crowds. This is quite an improvement."
"...Although that would have been hilarious, I think I have to agree."
"Potentially also hilarious, but less easily imagined since I've never met her."
Giggle. "This is true. Oh well. I can introduce you to her sometime, I think you'd like her."
"Hmm, want me to help spell check the essay to see if you missed anything? ... I promise not to try to space the terminal."
"That is good. If you space the terminal I'll just have to write the whole thing again. Sure, go ahead."
"Looks good to me. Time to send it in?"
He submits the essay.
"Alas, I will probably never find out if he cried."
"Maybe not, but you do get to watch his in class reaction to seeing you after getting the essay."
Yvette considers how to politely and non-condescendingly mention that if he is having a self hating moment he can call her and she can insist that he's awesome. This is a harder problem than it should be.
She considers how to tackle it.
And this time Miles has no essay to distract him, so he notices her considering things. But he isn't quite sure what to ask or how to ask it - 'what's wrong' would seem to slightly overstate the extent to which something appears to be wrong...
She notices him looking at her, and looks down, embarrassed.
"Sorry, um. I was. Trying to figure out a way to say 'You are free to call me if you would like to talk,' without being. The term I am going to use is too Betan."
"I wasn't going to assume that the contact information was strictly for museum-related correspondence and galaxy-saving emergencies," he says, half-smiling.
(... She noticed that dodge there. There is nothing she can do about it though. Not without pressuring him more than she thinks she should.)
"Although if I do have a galaxy-saving emergency, I now know where to turn."
...
Gosh she is tired and would like to go curl up in her bed and not do things. Entertaining as talking to Miles is. (She has a brief visual of getting to talk to Miles while in bed, possibly with him, and then that thought is evicted, no no no, wait until there is less freakout associated.)
How to gently extract herself from a conversation without implying that the conversation isn't fun. .... She has no fucking idea. Uh.
"...And thank you," he adds, a little awkwardly. "For - not being too Betan."
Whoops he didn't quite mean to get that serious.