[He nods, feeling a bit glad that Roy is willing to listen, but he hesitates again. It might be harder to say than he had thought.
No. Stop. Take a deep breath. All the cards on the table.]
...you know how much you mean to me, right? I'm— No— Shit— Screw the easy route. Roy, I love you. You're my best friend. I can't not feel really attached to you. As much as I love Gracia and Elicia, you were...are always different. I love those two more than anything, but they don't know what we've seen or been through or been forced to feel. No matter how much I love them, they don't know me like you do, and that makes you mean so much more to me than you could ever possibly imagine.
[He pauses and tries to sort out his thoughts so that he does not make a huge mess of this.]
I'd be lying if I said I never thought about it. Shit, I'm male, and it's not like I can help it. It doesn't help either when we're stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to...well...fuck. [He is getting a bit too on edge... Don't fuck this up, idiot. Deep breaths.] ...and you know how attractive you are. It's something I can't exactly ignore when I'm around you all the time.
I couldn't do it though. I didn't...want to damage the understanding we had. You mean a lot to me Roy, but... I know I can't be that person for you. From the start, I knew it would only fuck things up. But—shit—it was really difficult to withstand that temptation. I can't claim to know why the Hughes you knew did what he did, but, hell, it wasn't exactly easy for me to avoid either, even though I didn't do it.
But...especially because I care for you, I had to make sure it never happened. I didn't want our friendship to turn into something we couldn't control, and it would have. It would have been too easy. After the shit that happens in the day, all you want to think about is anything else, and, hell, if you're going to get a good lay, then it's a helluva lot better than sulking in your cot and wishing you didn't have to do what you were doing to innocent people. And knowing someone—having your best friend there with you—it would have been so easy for us to fill up that emptiness we wish we didn't have to feel. But if I let that happen...that's all our friendship would turn into. We would turn it into a replacement for that peace of mind that we crave but can never really have again, and it would only hurt us when we got back to the real world.
[He pauses again. There is a little more he wants to say, but he does not want to intermittently scare Roy away by being too brutally honest about what he had felt. Ultimately, that was why he had never wanted to actually tell Roy any of this before. He tries to gauge if he should continue or not.]
wall of text OTL
No. Stop. Take a deep breath. All the cards on the table.]
...you know how much you mean to me, right? I'm— No— Shit— Screw the easy route. Roy, I love you. You're my best friend. I can't not feel really attached to you. As much as I love Gracia and Elicia, you were...are always different. I love those two more than anything, but they don't know what we've seen or been through or been forced to feel. No matter how much I love them, they don't know me like you do, and that makes you mean so much more to me than you could ever possibly imagine.
[He pauses and tries to sort out his thoughts so that he does not make a huge mess of this.]
I'd be lying if I said I never thought about it. Shit, I'm male, and it's not like I can help it. It doesn't help either when we're stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to...well...fuck. [He is getting a bit too on edge... Don't fuck this up, idiot. Deep breaths.] ...and you know how attractive you are. It's something I can't exactly ignore when I'm around you all the time.
I couldn't do it though. I didn't...want to damage the understanding we had. You mean a lot to me Roy, but... I know I can't be that person for you. From the start, I knew it would only fuck things up. But—shit—it was really difficult to withstand that temptation. I can't claim to know why the Hughes you knew did what he did, but, hell, it wasn't exactly easy for me to avoid either, even though I didn't do it.
But...especially because I care for you, I had to make sure it never happened. I didn't want our friendship to turn into something we couldn't control, and it would have. It would have been too easy. After the shit that happens in the day, all you want to think about is anything else, and, hell, if you're going to get a good lay, then it's a helluva lot better than sulking in your cot and wishing you didn't have to do what you were doing to innocent people. And knowing someone—having your best friend there with you—it would have been so easy for us to fill up that emptiness we wish we didn't have to feel. But if I let that happen...that's all our friendship would turn into. We would turn it into a replacement for that peace of mind that we crave but can never really have again, and it would only hurt us when we got back to the real world.
[He pauses again. There is a little more he wants to say, but he does not want to intermittently scare Roy away by being too brutally honest about what he had felt. Ultimately, that was why he had never wanted to actually tell Roy any of this before. He tries to gauge if he should continue or not.]