Ugghh. Yeah, okay, if you're gonna argue semantics, I'm agreeing to work together. It's the same thing! But I can't promise getting along. That's not the kinda thing you can just control. You shouldn't be promising it to me, either. I might, and probably will, drive you insane. You'll probably drive me insane right along with you.

[It's already happening, isn't it! They've (he's) managed to make even this simple exchange of greetings and truce offerings into nitpicky bickering. Kadoc knows better than to think he can just promise to be a good coworker, at least in this situation. He'd promise that to Gundham or Crow. This is five thousand times more fraught.

But at least he feels on much more even ground than he did just earlier. This may be petty, but he can navigate it. Somehow he did manage to agree to work with her without the world or his head exploding, which had been a very real fear. His arms cross loosely now over his chest, less aggressively defensive and more . . . The Attitude.]

But I'm not gonna go out of my way to antagonize you, if that's what you mean. And if you'd sized me up and told me I wasn't worth it after all that? I'd know I deserved it, so I wouldn't even blink. I've heard worse that I didn't deserve, and I was fucking begging for it this time.