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Donut, for lack of a better word, tolerates Carl.
Carl knows this deep in his soul, similarly to how he knows to keep his distance from Kerry Park on the weekends during tourist season and to take the second to last ferry running in the winter.
Donut had been a prissy little thing when Carl and Bea brought her home a few years ago—poofy as all get out and awkwardly fluffy in a few spots. Carl had spent the first couple days just watching her stumble around the apartment, obnoxiously hissing up at him when he was in the way and scratching the seams loose on every pair of jeans he owned.
She became calmer as she got older. More refined, in a sense. Weekend cat shows and trophies and ribbons and countless hours of grooming could suck the soul out of anyone, Carl supposes.
He doesn’t mind Donut, alright? She’s fine, as far as cats go. The cat prefers Bea, because of course she does, and Carl is more than happy to let the cat trot after Beatrice while he props his feet up after a long ass day.
Donut struts around the apartment like she owns the place, sure, and she likes to eyeball Carl from her perch on her cat tree like he’s some lowly peasant in her majesty’s castle, but she’s still a cat. An indoor, helplessly spoiled cat, but a cat nonetheless.
She purrs when Carl absentmindedly strokes her behind the ears and she meows at the bathroom door when he’s taking a piss and she hooks her goddamn talons in his nicest Carhartt shirts (the ones he got on sale) when he tries to get up from the couch. Donut doesn’t hiss at him as much anymore, especially not after Carl started hissing back at her when she was still a baby, but her animosity towards him has eased into something more neutral.
She tolerates him, when Bea is around.
It’s just when Beatrice is gone that things are different.
—
Bea’s weekend girls trips are abundant and often—a fact that Carl does not necessarily mind, if he’s being honest. She’s gone most weekends nowadays, either showing Donut or staying out with her friends, and Carl spends his own weekends in the comfortable, relative silence of their apartment.
Donut mopes for a whole two hours whenever Bea leaves. She sits at the door and cries, which Carl knows is performative, because after those two hours of utter devastation are up, Donut happily trots back through the apartment to the living room, tail swishing back and forth like nothing happened at all.
It’s one such weekend in the heart of spring that she does this: she wails and wails at the door, pleading for her dear Beatrice to return, to save her from the neanderthal in the living room (at least, this is what Carl fills in for her upset meowing), then gets over it right at the two hour mark.
The neanderthal in the living room snorts a laugh as Donut’s meowing cuts off sharply, and he turns just in time to see her jump onto the couch, hair fluffed up from her anguish.
“You done?” Carl says to the cat, because he’s not a monster. “That was almost less than two hours. Proud of you.”
Donut meows at him, and despite the fact that she does not have human features, she seems to regard him with a level of disdain that Carl is all too familiar with from his time contracting for rich assholes and the beautiful boats they don’t deserve.
Sometimes Carl wishes he knew what the hell was going on in her little pea-sized brain. It’d be fascinating to hear her thoughts, even though part of him knows she’s been raised to be a spoiled pageant brat. Nothing but the best for Princess Donut.
When Donut meows at him again, a little most insistent this time, Carl pauses his game and says, “Just gimme a second.”
With his game paused, Carl holds his arms up, and Donut doesn’t waste any time padding over to his lap. She hoists herself up onto his legs, steps on his junk for no reason other than she must be evil incarnate, then settles down. As hairy as she is—she’s not hairy, Carl, she’s a cat, Bea had once yelled—it’s almost impossible to see where her face is amongst all her tri-colored fluff, but as Carl pets down her back, her ears twitch then relax.
Carl hums absentmindedly, eyes stuck on the television screen while he cards his fingers through Donut’s fur, or whatever. She’s a relatively average sized cat, Carl assumes—not that he knows a whole lot about cats even after knowing Donut for four odd years—but she doesn’t take up much space on his lap, fluff included. She’s warm, and comfy, and—
She’s purring in his lap.
Carl smiles, if only because he knows Donut can’t see it and hold it against him, and gently scratches behind her ears. The rumble from her is equally as gentle, befitting a lady of her status.
“She’ll be back,” Carl tells Donut, for some reason. It’s not out of any sort of longing like they show in the movies—characters comforting other characters to hide the hurt they’re feeling on the inside. It’s just a fact, a statement. The truth.
But at the end of the day, Donut is a cat. She doesn’t respond, she doesn’t say I know that, Carl, like he can almost imagine.
Donut just curls up a little tighter, a little closer, and doesn’t stop purring.
—
“Have you seen my keys?”
Meow.
“No, seriously,” Carl says, fixing the cat with a stare. “Where are they?”
Donut looks at him like he’s crazy—which, he supposes, is valid. Carl pats his pockets for the fifteenth time, face scrunching up. He never loses his keys, which means on top of slowly going insane for talking to a cat, he’s also properly losing it.
Donut meows again, and it sounds exasperated somehow. She makes this trilling noise—half-inquisitive, half-irritated—before she stalks away, tail swishing. Busy with emptying his pockets for the sixteenth time, now, Carl almost misses the way Donut stops halfway down the hall.
She yells at him as much as a cat can yell, and Carl looks up. Donut’s tail flicks, then she sits her ass down to lick at her paw demurely. Waiting.
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Carl grunts, stuffing the insides of his pockets back into their rightful places, then follows Donut down the hall.
The cat has her own bedroom, decorated in shades of lilac and littered with all of Donut’s shining trophies, ribbons, tiaras, keys to the city, and whatever the fuck else, and Carl isn’t even allowed to keep his PlayStation on the TV console. In his own goddamn apartment.
Fifty-something pictures of Donut looking all fuzzy and pissed-off stare back at him from every angle as he follows Donut into her room. The cat doesn’t seem bothered by it, of course, because Carl has no doubt that she adores the attention even from still images of herself, but the room is almost creepy in how silent it is. As much as she defers to Bea whenever she’s around, Donut doesn’t spend a whole lot of time in here even when her favorite human is home.
Carl doesn’t fucking blame her.
Donut meows again to get his attention, and Carl steps over a landmine of deceivingly sharp brushes to crouch next to her. She sits again, the picture of nonchalance, and stares up at Carl expectantly, waiting for him to inspect the… cat-sized settee Bea bought online, somewhere.
Carl squints at the glint of something between the pillows and reaches in. He’s relieved for a whole half second when his fingers brush metal before he pulls his hand out.
“Is this my wrench?” Carl deadpans, staring at it in dismay. He turns to Donut, who looks far too proud of herself. “I’ve been looking for this for six fucking months, Donut.”
Donut meows at him.
It’s almost unsettling how she stares at him with an intelligence he doesn’t know what to do with. Donut is smart in her own way, cunning like a cat should be. Carl can’t remember what the hell he did six months ago to deserve this punishment—because seriously, he’s been looking for that wrench for forever, tools aren’t fucking cheap—but it must’ve been bad enough to warrant grand larceny of his tools.
“And I still don’t have my keys,” Carl realizes with an edge of dread. He’s going to have to call Bea, which is a whole other can of worms he’s really not looking forward to opening.
Donut meows at him again, more insistent this time. She looks pissed, her face all scrunched up angrily, but she always looks like that, so Carl doesn’t take it personally. Instead, he watches the way Donut circles the cat-sized settee and follows her.
Behind the chair he finds a veritable hoard of items. Hair ties, bread clips, makeup brushes, an entire box of tampons, three different shoelace strings, at least fifty dollars in cash, all the pairs to Carl’s gold-toe socks, and an assortment of other oddities.
Including Carl’s keys.
Carl and Donut meet eyes over the stash.
“Why are you like this?” Carl asks.
Donut blinks at him slowly and doesn’t even bother gracing him with a response.
She does, however, do her best approximation of a scowl when Carl tries to reach for his keys. She bats his hand away, fluffing up.
“What?” Carl demands. “You brought me over here just to look at my own keys?”
Donut circles her hoard protectively.
“Fine,” Carl says, settling down on the floor. He’s since given up on making it to work on time. At least now he knows where his keys are. It’s just a matter of… reasoning with a cat. Easy. “I’ll make you a deal.”
As if listening to his offer, Donut sits down opposite him, watching attentively as Carl rifles through his pockets.
“I will trade you…” Carl purses his lips as he pulls out a wad of zip ties. “Four zip ties for my keys.”
Donut does not look impressed.
“Five zip ties.” Carl places them in the center of the hoard. “Listen, dude. I really don’t have time for this, alright? I’ll be back for dinner, but I just need to—”
When Carl reaches out again, Donut smacks his hand away.
“Hey!” Carl gently smacks back at her paw, and Donut looks so offended Carl can't help but laugh. “You smacked me first. I’m just trying to get out of your hair. I gave you five zip ties, what more could you want?”
Donut meows at him.
“Where did you even get all this shit?” Carl mutters to himself even as he starts to dig through his pockets again. “You better give me those zip ties back if you don’t want them… Hey, look at this—”
Carl can’t believe his goddamn luck. The gods don’t often smile down upon him, but just this once, they’ve blessed him for being a slight slob.
Carl brandishes a sock, pulled from the deep recesses of his cargo pockets. It’s crinkly from being put through the wash too many times, and there’s a hole where the pinky toe should be—which is, no doubt, why it’d been forgotten in his pocket in the first place—but it might just work.
Donut leans over to sniff at it. Her little nose twitches with distaste and she makes a hacking noise.
“Thanks,” Carl deadpans. “Do you want it or not? I ain’t got anything else.”
Donut glares at him, and, not for the first time, Carl wonders why he’s even indulging this. He has no doubt that if Bea were here she’d be chastising Donut for her hoarding problem. It’s not ladylike, or some shit. Whatever. Carl knows the truth, and the truth is, despite all the fanfare and adoration from her fans and Beatrice alike, Donut is a little freak that hoards tampons.
When Donut sighs at him, obviously disappointed, Carl simply shrugs. Takes back his zip ties and his sock. Smiles a little.
Then he lunges forward, grabs his keys, and books it out of the room, Donut’s loud squawks of alarm lost under Carl’s own laughter.
—
Donut’s morning routine rivals Carl’s entire life routine in more ways than one, though the situation with her hair—she uses eighty-dollar conditioner, Bea, it’s fucking hair—is perhaps the most stark in contrast.
Carl has bought a whole two bottles of shampoo in his entire adult life—giant jugs of the stuff he’d found at a wholesale store his buddy used to deliver to—and that’s only because he’d lost the first one overboard the Stratton in a freak, drunken accident he can barely remember. His hair is short enough that he doesn’t have to do anything with it; he washes it, he lets it dry, he goes to bed, he wakes up, combs his fingers through his hair, and he’s done.
Donut, on the other hand, is an entirely different monster. Carl would joke about Donut needing to come with a manual but she had, in fact, come with a massive binder full of instructions on keeping her show-ready. It’s bigger than his head and color coded to death.
Along with her eighty-dollar conditioner, matching shampoo, the tear-tangle-bullshit that smells like the lobby of a fancy five-star hotel he’d scoff at, and the facial cleanser, Donut also has an army of brushes. Each of them have a specific purpose, and through trial and error, Carl has managed to figure out what each of them do. To a degree.
Memorization, unfortunately, does not translate to skill.
“Listen,” Carl is saying, the round, undercoat rake in his hand probably looking far more menacing than he’s intending. “I know Bea isn’t here—”
Donut doesn’t so much as hiss at him as she makes a dejected shrieking noise.
“But it won’t be that bad,” Carl lies, because he’s talking to a cat, and she can probably smell his fear or something. “Come on, work with me here, Donut.”
Donut scrunches her fluffy body up against the corner she’s fled to. Her ears haven’t flattened against her head, and as annoyed as Carl is to admit it, he can tell from her body language alone that Donut isn’t as angry as she’s acting. Dramatic, yes. Terrified, no.
“I know you’re faking it,” Carl says, much to Donut’s very vocal objection. “Don’t bullshit me—the faster we get this over with, the faster it’s done and we can put all this junk away!”
Donut meows at him.
“I don’t like this any more than you do,” Carl says. “You think I wanna spend my afternoon brushing you? Fuck no.”
Donut glares at him as if to say, Then why are we doing this?
“Because Bea’ll have my fucking head if she comes home and you’re all matted,” Carl deadpans.
Donut turns her head away, huffing as much as a cat can.
Carl huffs just to match her, then drops to the floor to sit cross-legged. There’s an array of brushes in front of him, and while he knows their purposes, it’s hard to figure out where to start. Carl stays as far away from Bea as possible when she’s brushing Donut because he knows he’ll just get yelled at for being in the way, but it’s left him with a hole in his knowledge. Like an idiot, he hadn’t asked before Bea left for her week in Barbados. He could consult the binder, but he has no fucking idea where it is, and there’s no way he’s going to risk looking through Donut’s perfectly organized bedroom for it.
The rake in his hand is for her undercoat, but there’s also a less-brutalist brush that can be used for combing out the undercoat. There’s a fine-toothed, positively shiny steel comb in the mix—a greyhound comb, if he remembers correctly—that’s used for the entire coat as well as the undercoat. That could work. Or maybe the slicker brush? There’s a teeny tiny flea comb in the pile as well. The bristle brush is saved for the end, that much he’s absolutely certain about, but the others are a mystery.
Donut headbutts his knee, chirping to get his attention. Brushes momentarily forgotten, he watches as Donut smushes her little face against his leg, rubbing her cheek down his sweatpants.
“If you had opposable thumbs you could brush yourself,” Carl says.
Donut meows. Carl interprets it as: I wouldn’t brush myself even if I had thumbs, Carl. That’s peasant work.
“Yeah, that’s probably true,” he mutters, looking back at the brushes. He really hopes the tiny flea comb isn’t the winner here. For the brush’s sake. “Fuck this. Bea comes home in a few days. It’s just hair, who gives a shit—”
Donut scowls at him, somehow, and plops her ass down without another meow. She blinks at him slowly like he’s an idiot.
“What?”
Donut blinks at him again.
Carl looks down.
Donut has situated herself beside the shiny greyhound comb. Carl narrows his eyes at it suspiciously.
“You better not be lying to me,” he says. “That’d be a real dick move.”
Donut meows at him. You’re a dumbass, she does not say aloud.
“Alright, let’s get this over with.”
—
Carl is late.
He knows this before he gets in the door, but Donut very helpfully reminds him the second he steps inside. Her angry meows echo up the ceiling.
“Alright, alright, I fucking hear you,” Carl says, dropping his backpack by the door and kicking off his work boots. Donut meows at him louder, admonishing in peak Donut fashion. “Got caught up with that asshole at the shipyard—you know him—”
Donut meows again, stomping her little feet like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
“Fine,” Carl says, digging through his backpack for his water bottle so he can leave it out for tomorrow. “Hold your goddamn horses, I’m working on it.”
Donut swerves between his legs impatiently, tail curling around his shin.
“Fucking hell, Donut, are you trying to trip me?” Carl says, narrowly avoiding stepping on her. She squawks at him. “No one’s feeding you for another three days if I brain myself on the counter and bleed out.”
Donut meows at him again which Carl interprets as, Nonsense, Carl, I would eat you before I ever went hungry.
As Carl carefully steps through the kitchen, absentmindedly tossing his water bottle back and forth, he briefly wonders if Donut would even resort to eating his corpse if the opportunity arose. A rather morbid thought for nine o’clock at night on a Thursday, but it’s been a long day working on boats and listening to a bunch of rich assholes, alright?
At least Donut, who is a rich asshole by proxy, isn’t paying him. Carl is more than happy to accept her disgruntled squawking. It’s an improvement to the idiots trying to order him around all day.
Which, speaking of being a rich asshole, Donut has the fanciest goddamn food Carl has ever seen. He’s used to seeing those Fancy Feast commercials, the mountains of dry food bags he’s hauled on odd trucking jobs every now and then. Whatever the fuck Beatrice buys for Donut, however, is nowhere near that level of peasantry.
Donut’s food is so natural that Bea could probably feed it to him and he wouldn’t even notice. Not that that says much; Carl spent most of his childhood and a good portion of his teenage years living on microwave nachos and gas station hot dogs. Anything he could get his hands on when things at home got a little too bad. His palate is relatively open to whatever is edible and, preferably but not necessarily, hot and fresh.
Donut makes a beeline for her food dish before Carl can even get to the fridge. He trips over her, because his years of working on a ship somehow couldn’t prepare him for this, and drops his water bottle. It clangs nosily against the tile, and it’s loud enough to make Donut hiss and poof up defensively. She doesn’t dare leave her food dish, though.
“Goddamnit, Donut.”
Downstairs, Mrs. Parsons bangs a broom against her ceiling in warning as Carl scoops up his bottle.
Donut meows again, still just as impatient.
Carl sighs and opens the fridge.
—
Carl is expecting Bea to be gone for the holidays. He’d known she’d be away for Christmas itself and for the New Years fireworks.
What he hadn’t realized, however, is how normal it would feel.
Christmas comes and goes without much of a fuss. Carl stays in—of course he does, who would he visit for Christmas?—and he and Donut spend the day watching the first two Die Hard movies. Donut eats her fancy-ass food and Carl cracks open a can of chili.
It’s not weird. The apartment does not feel empty. The silence does not feel stifling, not like it used to when Carl’s dad let things get a little too quiet. Not like the calm before the storm. It’s just peaceful, in an odd sort of way.
Carl doesn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it.
The day after Christmas he goes back to work, because there’s nothing worse than restlessly sitting around in the apartment, and when he gets back, Donut is waiting for him. She meows when he steps inside, but it’s not insistent. Whether it’s because she can sense the somber bullshit on him or if it’s because Carl isn’t late this time, he doesn’t know. He bends to scratch her behind the ears before he drops his backpack at the door and beelines for the bathroom.
A hot shower can fix just about anything, honestly. Even if Carl doesn’t spend a whole lot of time in the shower, the warm water is heaven on his stiff shoulders, his cold skin.
Singing also helps, though it’s not like Carl would admit this.
Donut barges into the bathroom when Carl is halfway through a very good rendition of “Chiquitita,” the bathroom door squeaking with her arrival. Carl pauses scraping off the boat-and-other-related-vehicle grease from his skin to pull back the shower curtain and poke his head out. Donut is on the floor, staring directly at him, eyes narrowed.
“What?” Carl asks.
Donut’s tail flicks irritably. She grumbles.
Carl snorts. “You got something against ABBA?”
Donut turns away to lick her paw and Carl turns back to the water, humming a new tune this time. It’s the worst goddamn earworm the world has ever heard: “Wonderwall” by fucking Oasis. He groans through it, already annoyed with himself and the fact that he’s accidentally dug that godforsaken song out of the recesses of his brain.
When Carl pauses to grab his jug of shampoo, though, he hears another meow. Jug in hand, Carl looks out once more to find Donut staring at him, ears perked up happily.
“Really?” Carl scrunches his nose in disgust. “Oasis?”
Donut meows at him defiantly.
Carl turns around and refuses to sing, showering in relative silence until he’s all clean and sparkly. Steam rises against the chill in the apartment and follows him as he towels off.
Donut is waiting for him in the hall, this time with her tail swishing back and forth against the floor like a feather duster. Carl stops in the doorway, towel slung over his shoulder and boxers hanging low on his hips.
Donut is… a spoiled little thing. But she’s also a sweetheart, when it comes down to it. And maybe it could be argued that she’s only this sweet when Carl is the only one around—when Bea is gone and Donut has no one else left to love on—but he doesn’t really mind. He might be the second choice, but it’s a choice she makes all the same.
Carl doesn’t love the cat. He barely knows how to take care of her, and he knows if Bea goes through with her plan, he’d never be able to give Donut the life her new owners might. Anyone with the cash to score an international grand champion of a cat is sure to be enough of a rich asshole to give her the life she deserves.
It feels wrong, though, to let her slip out of his hands like this. Without much of a fight. Carl has no right to fight for her, he knows, but as she stares up at him like this—as she waits for him by the door, even if it’s only when Bea is gone, Carl can’t help the anger flaring in his gut.
When Donut chirps up at him in question, Carl allows a small smile.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, chuckling as Donut leads the way to to the kitchen. “I’m coming.”
They eat in the kitchen: Donut with her fancy ceramic dish and Carl with the sandwich he hadn’t bothered to have for lunch earlier. Carl sits on the floor with her, back to the kitchen cabinets and legs spread out in front of him.
It’s stupid.
All of this is so stupid.
Every fight he’s had with Bea lately has been so goddamn stupid.
You don’t even like her, Carl. Why do you care?
Donut is purring in his lap by the time he finishes his sandwich.
“How do you do it?” Carl asks the cat, because he’s given up on pretending not to sound insane. “How do you just not give a shit?”
Donut doesn’t respond, because again, she’s a cat. It’s not like she’s listening. She does start to purr louder, though, pawing softly at Carl’s bare legs.
“I don’t fucking get it,” Carl says, leaning back to knock his head against the cabinets. “She spends all this time—loving you to death, treating you like a goddamn baby, taking you to those shows, all for what? A wad of cash? Is that all you are?”
Donut doesn’t respond. Carl isn’t expecting her to. He sighs, closing his eyes.
“I just don’t get it,” he repeats, quieter than before.
When Carl opens his eyes a few minutes later, Donut is staring up at him with her own big, amber-colored eyes. Carl deflates a bit, curling a hand around her head and down her back. Donut doesn’t make a fuss when Carl scoops her up and carries her back to the bathroom.
They brush their teeth together. Carl does most of the work, because Donut doesn’t have thumbs but somehow still has her own toothbrush and toothpaste. She allows him to brush at her tiny teeth, barely, then eyeballs him as he does his own.
She’s your cat. She’s a living thing, and you took responsibility for her. I don’t understand how you can just give her up. I don’t care if you get another cat, but why do you have to give Donut away?
Carl climbs into bed soon after, bone-tired. The cold is exhausting, and the constant fighting with Bea is exhausting, and work is exhausting, and all he really wants to do is face-plant into his pillow, so he does. Donut trails after him, kneading her paws into the sheets as Carl pulls his blanket up to his chest.
It’s only once he himself has settled down that Donut approaches him. He takes a heavy breath as Donut walks all over his chest. She’s purring before she curls up against his neck like a furry scarf. The rumble of it echoes in Carl’s ribcage.
Do you know how much money she’s going to sell for, Carl? She’s a former international grand champion. She’s past her prime. I don’t understand what you’re not getting about this.
“I’m gonna miss you,” Carl says quietly, softly petting down Donut's spine. “Even though you’re a pain in the ass.”
Donut presses her cold as fuck nose to the underside of his jaw, just to be an asshole, and Carl chuckles at her inadvertent retaliation.
Donut can’t understand what he’s saying. Donut can’t properly listen to the words he tells her. It’s no use to tell the truth, or to lie, or to say anything at all. She’s a cat, for fuck’s sake, it doesn’t even matter.
And yet—
Carl turns his head, buries his face in Donut’s soft fur, and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
—
Carl fights for Donut.
Not in the way he expects to, obviously, because he never gets a chance to do any of that normal shit. They fight their way through monsters and rot and a corrupt corporation hellbent on destroying what's left of their humanity, barely stopping to breathe the entire time.
It’s only when they’re about to die that Carl realizes something important—something he should have realized at least a few weeks ago.
There’s a crystal floating in the center of the room, a screaming bird-man in the corner, and gore surrounding them, as usual. Carl slumps against the wall and sits, legs outstretched, and Donut doesn't hesitate to curl up in his lap. Together they watch as the crystal thrums and vibrates inside the case doing its damn best to contain it.
Their death is certain, and despite the thundering of blood in his ears and the despair at knowing he has about fifteen seconds left to live, there’s a bit of relief there, too. As he strokes his fingers through Donut’s hair—and it is hair, because she’s his now, whether Bea’s soul likes it or not—all he can think about is how much they’ve grown, how much time they’ve spent together. More than Carl had anticipated, given the fight he and Bea had hashed out on their ride home from that Christmas party.
Donut’s little paws press into the sore muscles of Carl’s thighs. “Carl?”
Carl scratches behind her ear—there’s a mat there he’d like to comb out, but he supposes it doesn’t really matter.
“Yeah?”
“I’m not as dumb as I pretend to be,” Donut says, staring up at him with those big eyes of hers. “I know she’s dead.”
Donut is smart. Has been since she was a kitten, if Carl is being honest. As prissy and spoiled and high-maintenance as this cat is, she’s been perceptive since the beginning. Maybe rash in her decisions, maybe quick to dramatics, but she’s also a goddamn cat. Of course she is.
And perhaps if Carl had a moment longer to think about it, he’d realize that Donut has always listened. Even before the dungeon and her sudden, freaky ability to talk, she’s always responded in her own way—meowing back at him, twining her tail around his leg, blinking her big eyes up at him, purring in his lap when he was at his worst.
Carl curls an arm around her, hugging her close to his chest. It won't matter how much he tries to shield her, not with the concentrated power of that crystal, but he does it anyway. He always has.
“I know.”