[ Ah, the bite in those last few words isn't quite hard to notice. Part of him aches a little. It really isn't about anything like that, and no doubt Miles knows that already, but after everything he's had to live through. He can't say he doesn't understand what that might come from. He has his own self-revulsion he struggles with, after all, even if it's a different kind.

And as for the question, well. Maybe he hasn't been clear enough. He'll try, pointedly as he can to drive it home, but the fondness in his voice is hard to miss, too. ]

Because you've a self-admitted weakness to any kind of attention. Because I think you just might be the most singularly romantic person I think I've ever met, and I mean singularly. Like you've managed to avoid all the weary cynicism about love in the entire galaxy and gathered up everything still hopeful left and had it collapse into an actual singularity that you keep in your back pocket.

[ Look the closest thing to people having a stable romantic relationship he's personally seen in his life are soldiers with partners back home they inevitably failed to get back to, or Carolina and York, and those two are special. ]

You get attached quickly. You do things without thinking. You want and hope for something out of the people you're with, and I don't think you can help it. And none of those are terrible things at all, Miles, except love or a relationship or anything past a meaningless fuck in the back alley of a spaceport isn't something I really think I'm capable of.

[ A bit of a sigh, leaning back heavily in his seat, raking a hand through his hair again. ]

Is that clear enough? [ . . . He hopes you'll remember this, sober. ]