They weren’t words he was particularly expecting to hear. They weren’t unwelcome by any means, but they still left a sour taste in his mouth. It wasn’t anything to be thanked for - not when it could have been avoided from the beginning. Still, when Baptiste thought of the words that had been said, of the look in the raider’s eye - he felt his stomach churn with anger.
Frowning, he focused his attention on the whiskey, taking a somewhat shaky sip while he let her appreciation hang in the air between them, not sure how to respond. Not sure if he should. Eventually, once he let out a wavering breath and blinked, he nodded in acknowledgement.
“You don– you are welcome,” he eventually murmured, still uncertain of how to respond. Baptiste could tell from how she angled her face that she was wanting him to look at her, and for a moment he couldn’t. After another swallow of whiskey, he managed to meet her eyes, briefly at first, before finally settling on them.
“I don’t try to make a habit of that kind of behavior,” he explained, wanting to make it clear that he wasn’t entirely pleased with his actions. The Boomer gritted his teeth, looking away from Casey and closing his eyes for a moment, clenching his jaw while he tried to remain calm.
“But the things that were said… they were not things to be taken lightly and I let them get to my head more than I should have.”
The anger he felt, she assumed, was the sort of blinding, white-hot anger she could relate to. The same sort of anger that made you remove people and then left you wondering if it had been necessary. Seeing Baptiste like this caused her to frown with sympathy, and she listened intent to what he was saying. “I know I’m probably just talking out of my ass right now, but you don’t have to justify anything for me. I won’t judge you,” she told him calmly, in a soft and quiet voice, then added “I’ve done a lot worse for a whole lot less.”
Her previous comment about how he was hot when he was angry was clearly not the best way to try and lighten the mood, and it left Casey feeling like she had stepped in a piece of dog shit. Judging by the look on Baptiste’s face this was something she should have taken more seriously.
Casey made eye contact with the Mr. Handy behind the bar before she reached across it to retrieve a clean rag and a bowl of tap water. “Let me see your hands,” she said and expectantly held out her own so he could lay his in them for inspection. She shifted on her stool, propping on of her legs on the foot rest of his stool, and laid one of his hands on her knee while she examined the other. She assumed from the lack of cuts and lacerations on his knuckles that he’d had something between his fists and the raider when they had gone toe to toe - or rather head to fist, if the amount of blood on his hands was anything to go by.
After inspecting both of his hands, Casey poured some of the water onto the rag and used it to wipe away the drying blood from Baptiste’s knuckles, occasionally dipping it back into the bowl to rinse it.
