R's not sure if he's ever seen Neil cry before. Well: yes, he has, but only under much, much different circumstances. The collision of memories, the vulnerability of it and the pure strangeness of someone being that overwhelmed to be asked by him -- it all tugs hard at his chest. "Stop that," he says in a tender faux-order, "or we'll both be at it," and leans in to kiss him again, a little more fiercely.

"I love you," he says, when they part, looking between both of them and feeling a little overwhelmed. They tease each other sometimes, joking about who's talking to who exactly when that gets called through a hallway. But they both know. They all three know.

They're different, Edgar's ready-as-ever attitude toward this as with so many things, and Neil all reaction, but as he looks at them, it makes such perfect sense, and both right for them, and that's the amazing bit of it, isn't it? They're all three so strangely alike and different at the same time, broken pieces of other things that fit.

"Anyway, there's a part I haven't got to yet," he says, and puts a hand to each of their jaws, then steps back a little to encourage them to come with him. "In the room."

It sounds like a line, a little bit, but ah well.