She began to fall apart at times, suffering from silent nervous breakdowns that she rarely told anyone about, but he would be there. He was not the most effective of comforts, but he cared, or seemed to care, and they would talk of other matters until the breakdown passed and she was, relatively, all right.
It was after one of these times that he said, uncharacteristically perhaps, awkwardly, that she could call him, any time she was bored or… needed to talk, that he’d probably find her more interesting than whatever else he might be doing at the time. He seemed to babble to cover up the silence, immediately trying to play it down when she didn’t answer for shock, and then she thanked him, more deeply than the words on the screen could convey, and she was able to sleep that night.
