“Nah, kid, I don’t like that stuff. Anyway, Price is the only one to go into that stuff too deeply. Don’t worry about it with me.” York explains, his voice slow and easy, a calming drawl. York has had his time for panic, he had been a new recruit once upon a time.
He also remembers being a kid fighting to be the best, always using that honorific without asking. He remembers dropping it after the first time he killed something. Back home, no one had really seen shit like that, felt like that. So calling some old guy Mister didn’t feel right when York felt as old as he did. Instead, he dropped it altogether, well when he was off duty. The cigarette hangs on the corner of his lips.
“Don’t think too hard, kid. It was nice of you to ask, but not with me, okay?” York is trying his best to keep the kid from shaking with the fear that seems to take lead.
“Yeah, we were always lit up where I lived. The city never knew how to just stop. Maybe that’s where I learned it. The weather didn’t help much. Stars were a gift when I was kid. Sometimes we would drive miles just to get a peek.”
⎧ “---I am no kid, Fahyay!”
It may, or may not, sound a little offended. In truth, he isn’t very fazed by it, and is only meaning to be playful, but his accent and lack of general inflection make it hard to tell.
Such is the struggle of an autistic moonboy.
“I am nearly TWENTY, I will have you know.”
He blows smoke out with the words, flicking ash. His eyes trail it as it gently falls, and a faint smile crosses his features. (It is perhaps the only hint of his intentions.)
“I may not look it, but I can get into bars!
---Ah... depending on the colony, I suppose.”
“...Living somewhere with no stars sounds very boring,” he laments. “Why would anyone live there? Stars are so important...”
(Where he comes from, anyway.) ⎭
