#hope 04

It takes Matt less than an hour to realize he’s acted like an asshole. It takes him a few hours to realize that he should apologize, one more hour to decide that he wants to apologize, and then it takes him three days to decide how. What he wants to say, how he wants to say it. What he wants to do.

It’s enough to keep him busy while he slips back into his daily routine, back into avoiding Hope as much as he can. Which isn’t easy, their daily schedules seemingly overlapping just enough to cause frequent near-misses. He feels bad about it, but knows that he would probably feel worse if he left without warning again, once again caught in some crisis of conscience, stuck between what he knows he wants and the fact that he’s spent years not allowing himself to want.

What he settles on eventually isn’t ideal, an uncomfortable moral compromise, mostly carried by the unreality of the Ark and the vague understanding, based on the experience of others and himself with alternate dimensions and space travel, that whatever happens here will most likely be without consequence. And for the consequences that it may or may not have on his immortal soul, well. It’s been years since Matt has really had any hope for his. Not that he actually believes in that particular brand of homophobic rhetoric, but being raised by nuns did leave its traces.

After four days, Matt realizes that he wants to stop avoiding Hope. And because he’s never been good at managing his impulses, especially not when Hope is concerned, he takes out his phone, navigates to the messaging app and dictates.

[txt] Hey, I don’t want to bother you, but can you talk?

[txt] Or rather, do you want to talk.