The tension practically cracks in the air between the two of them, Mark feeling his nerves thrum and the jitters passing through his shoulders, like he's overdosed on coffee or had a few too many Red Bulls. (It's happened before. Buying a few packs of Red Bull before finals and chugging them down in the last few hours they have left. Mark never does it for the finals that matter the most, knowing that the Red Bull just happens to derail his trains of thought more than anything else, but they're useful for some things. The snore subjects. Classes where all he has to do is memorize element after element.) He just wants everything to go quiet. He's reached his quota for this kind of talk, and it's not a matter of who deserves or doesn't deserve it, just that his mind has limits and everything feels very, very raw now. Like he's being made to analyze something that he'd avoided thinking deeply about for so long, reevaluating some parts, finding himself still anchored to others. He. Just. Can't.
"I never said I was giving up because of you," he snaps, or as close to it as he ever gets, a brittle quality to his voice even as it still quietly taps away like a typewriter. "Don't you— you are feeling your very equivalent of it right now, don't you get it, I just don't understand. Sure, we had some fun with Magic: The Gathering and, I don't know, we have bizarrely similar senses of humor but you wouldn't, for instance, befriend Mel Gibson just because he laughed at a few of your knock-knock jokes. It's not a perfect analogy but I think you should be able to see what I'm getting at, seeing as how you straddle perfectly between the liberal and the mathematical arts. You can see both sides of the picture."
He's shaking. He notices it now that he has the time to catch a breath, that his entire body is shaking and there's this inexplicable desire to just head to his bed and sit there with a few beers that he can steadily down like they're medicine. Maybe do a bit of dummy code on his computer (the one that Wardo's still holding right now, why's he doing that?) and figure out how to program something that can do all of the homework at once for those kids in differential equations. There's a whole lot that can be solved with enough code, sparing people time and resources, it's just that some people don't try and some people care nothing for the purity and— well, he's not sure why he's thinking about that all of a sudden, like he's just avoiding the more pressing matters. It's starting to become a troublesome habit.
"Also, if by 'you're not the one with a reason to give up' you mean that you have a reason to give up, know that I'm not going to pin you down and force you into something that you don't want. I don't want that on my shoulders. Actually, it's probably not even healthy for you, either. We should get food."
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Date: 2011-05-20 05:28 am (UTC)"I never said I was giving up because of you," he snaps, or as close to it as he ever gets, a brittle quality to his voice even as it still quietly taps away like a typewriter. "Don't you— you are feeling your very equivalent of it right now, don't you get it, I just don't understand. Sure, we had some fun with Magic: The Gathering and, I don't know, we have bizarrely similar senses of humor but you wouldn't, for instance, befriend Mel Gibson just because he laughed at a few of your knock-knock jokes. It's not a perfect analogy but I think you should be able to see what I'm getting at, seeing as how you straddle perfectly between the liberal and the mathematical arts. You can see both sides of the picture."
He's shaking. He notices it now that he has the time to catch a breath, that his entire body is shaking and there's this inexplicable desire to just head to his bed and sit there with a few beers that he can steadily down like they're medicine. Maybe do a bit of dummy code on his computer (the one that Wardo's still holding right now, why's he doing that?) and figure out how to program something that can do all of the homework at once for those kids in differential equations. There's a whole lot that can be solved with enough code, sparing people time and resources, it's just that some people don't try and some people care nothing for the purity and— well, he's not sure why he's thinking about that all of a sudden, like he's just avoiding the more pressing matters. It's starting to become a troublesome habit.
"Also, if by 'you're not the one with a reason to give up' you mean that you have a reason to give up, know that I'm not going to pin you down and force you into something that you don't want. I don't want that on my shoulders. Actually, it's probably not even healthy for you, either. We should get food."