( WITH MY DARLING : JOININGish? )

[WANDERER]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;letter-spacing:.1px"]Their experiences aren't quite comparable, are they? Maybe that's a first for them. It's not something he realizes, pays attention to or anything, but — they'd been locked in the same building or most of their lives, they'd left together, Butch didn't have a dad and Val didn't have a mom. They could sit and laugh about Brotch's class and they saw this brave new world together, but now they were both alone. He wanders with his freedom being some sort of burden. No home, no friends, no goal. Then Butch's stuck in one place, and he's got too much. The collar and the orders and the people. He'd never been a slave like that but he knows what it's like to have too much on his shoulders and too little to support him. Maybe Val'd had a dad, maybe he learned fast, but Butch had friends and a sort of confidence he'd just lacked back then. He finds it pretty stupid too, now that they're so distanced from it. Butch is an egotistical asshole but he's charming and sweet (sort of) and not that bad. He's just not bad.

Some sour part of him says that he's not that great either. Even if he's over the particular sort of cruelty it took for clumsy fights and his sort of sneers, he still very much deserves the nickname dimwit.

The rest of him, however, is nothing short of elated when he's tackled for the second time that day. He yelps a little bit, the sound not as awful as it had been the first time. Like Butch, he had assumed that it was some trick of the sun until soft fur was practically smothering him. "'M not a walking dictionary," he snaps, though his protest is muffled as he pushes his face against the collie's shoulder. Whatever stupid argument had started all of this — for a moment, it doesn't matter. Then it does because he didn't stop talking and steps back instead. Val's expression darkens too, confused and strangely hurt for something that shouldn't bother him. "What the hell are you going on about? What are you wearing?" Maybe it would have been stupid to imagine, just for a bit, that he'd be leaving here with the one friend he had left, but he had hoped. Hoping for nonsense was apparently his specialty.