Well that makes his heart sink a bit. In a perfect world he would've gotten a joke back, even if it was a barbed one, but it seems that's not the game they're playing.
"Sure."
Charlie's voice is trying to keep it going, but he sheds his coat robotically.
"Means I come back to the warm, so I got no complaints."
He thought long and hard about how to address... this. Pretending is not what he decided on. He doesn't know why he's fucking doing it anyway, letting the elephant in the room get bigger and bigger.
(He also thought about telling them both exactly how he survived in the pits, maybe scrape it out from where it's been biting into his conscience for the last two or three years. He also thought about packing a bindle and walking all the way to that coastal town without leaving a forwarding address. He thought about fucking off and becoming a wildman in a cave, eating raw deer. He thought about a lot of things, some less seriously than others.)
Re: what lies beneath
"Sure."
Charlie's voice is trying to keep it going, but he sheds his coat robotically.
"Means I come back to the warm, so I got no complaints."
He thought long and hard about how to address... this. Pretending is not what he decided on. He doesn't know why he's fucking doing it anyway, letting the elephant in the room get bigger and bigger.
(He also thought about telling them both exactly how he survived in the pits, maybe scrape it out from where it's been biting into his conscience for the last two or three years. He also thought about packing a bindle and walking all the way to that coastal town without leaving a forwarding address. He thought about fucking off and becoming a wildman in a cave, eating raw deer. He thought about a lot of things, some less seriously than others.)