cobbledtogetherenvy

Yes, I thought that might be the case. I'll make some tea.

If it makes you feel better.

[But. He turns up. Radiating a very teenaged sort of "I was loitering outside this door anyway."]

And when he opens the door, Daniel...doesn't look great. Zhenzhen is curled up in a very serene, kitten-like ball on his pillow, but the rest of his room looks a mess. Unfinished wood and metal projects, gears, books, and an assortment of notebooks lie all over his floor and desk, though he does make a space for Envy as he boils water in the electric kettle.

"Hello."

"The cat's not going to like me being here," Envy says flatly, knowing her serenity won't last if he walks in. It's a neutral fact as far as he's concerned. He leans in the doorframe, taking in the mess as he would any little shift in the landscape. Probably means something. Does he care what?

"Then don't go near her," he says sharply before realizing it and wincing. "I'm sorry. That - was uncalled for."

He takes two cups.

One never knows with Envy, and this display of nerves, couched in anger rather than cringing, seems to meet with his approval. He nods with a chipper little shrug and walks in.

The cat does seem instantly a bit edgier. "Normal animals don't like homunculi. Better senses than humans, I guess."

He decides to sit beside her, hopefully to try and calm her nerves. It's not as if he can simply let her roam free. "And yet, we consider ourselves above them." He glances quickly at Envy. "Don't comment on that."

"You do what you want. It's not my problem how humans organize their little egos." But he does stay on the other side of the room. She's not as bad as Black Hayate. Possibly because her owner doesn't want him dead.

"Because you are so above humans?" he mutters. "I know, I know." And when the tea is finished, he stands up again, leaving the cat briefly before bringing a cup to Envy. "It's too late in the evening for your holier than thou nonsense, isn't it?"

Envy's thoughts were on the utter alien-ness of humans in that particular moment, but if Daniel's going to be prickly about it, he can, too. He crosses his arms. "I can leave."

"No," he tells him. "I don't mean to be rude. But sometimes you talk about humans and - and it gets tedious."

"You brought up being above the animals that you keep around on purpose," Envy points out, a bit testy. He doesn't care about the news from the admiral, but he's not really above being affected by the general mood, and some patterns are getting to him. "It was more justified than usual, honestly."

"Perhaps. I'm - I don't like being here like this," he says softly. "Just because you want to end your life with blackness and darkness doesn't mean that it's easy for me to accept that. Xie Lian said that it's a possibility and - and I don't want that." He knows that Envy is the last person he should go to when he wants comfort, but his presence is that way anyway. Even if he spends most of his time being grumpy.

Envy has, reluctantly, been giving this subject actual thought lately. "That's because you're a human. And don't get snotty about it. I have a point. You have limited time and a big fuss when you come into existence and another one when you go, and all that growing in between. Of course you're sentimental. I'm a tool. I was built exactly as I am. We get used until we break, and if we can't take it anymore, we break ourselves."

He doesn't get snotty with him. He just nods in agreement.

"You were - an experiment, right? Gluttony, too?"

Envy's snide remove is abruptly replaced with something entirely else. The black of his eyes shifts red before he can do anything about it. He doesn't show any other sign of agitation, which is itself quite foreign to his demonstrative (if repetitive) habits. "Where'd you hear that?"

He is completely taken aback by that, sitting up a bit straighter and holding his own cup close.

"Greed said it."

Of course he did. Envy's unnatural calm persists, less out of any concern for Daniel than because he doesn't really know what to do with his current state. Shrieking and lashing out have relieved his feelings historically, as has tearing out his stone in what was supposed to be a final refusal of the whole situation. But he doesn't really want to do either to Daniel. "Gluttony is what's left of an attempt to create an artificial Door of Truth. If he ever turns up, don't let him eat you. It's unpleasant. Well. The mouth that's in the human spot is only as unpleasant as it would be in any event. Father used humans as the framework for the rest."

Daniel's starting to realize that Greed might have mentioned more important information than Daniel originally thought. But there's no way to tiptoe around it now.

"And what - what about you?"

He doesn't actually know. But now that the initial shock is wearing away, he's pretty sure he can weather this. Daniel knows experiment. If he had more specific information, wouldn't he have led with that?

"My stone's put together differently. It stores more energy than anybody's but maybe Pride." Energy here meaning screaming ghosts. "I don't know if it was so I could shapeshift or if I can shapeshift because Father needed to store some excess." All true. All mostly meaningless.

"Is - that why he said you were more Father's mess than the others?" he wonders. If Envy is going to be calmer about it, then Daniel isn't going to worry about how his questions come across.

"That just sounds like Greed." Also true. Also meaningless. The hollow flatness remains in the words, but he's starting to put things together in a way that suits him.

Daniel watches him a moment. "Was I - not supposed to know that?" Envy so rarely gives him information that he's suspicious now.

"If you were, I'd have told you, not that reject." Annoyance flickers again, which at least makes him look more like himself and not an Envy robot, idling.

"Why?" he wonders, standing up to put away his cup. And when he sits down, it's closer to Envy than he had been.

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