[His interest is piqued. He’s going to have to go talk to that lady. Maybe become her best friend. This seems like destiny, and also a good reason to purchase more bug-themed items. But then, that’s something for another day. Right now he’s just . . . happy. It’s a very simple and uncomplicated emotion that he doesn’t feel very often, even with the added extras tangled up in the background of this whole interaction. Those barely matter. He’s able to stand apart from them and enjoy the moment on his own terms.]

[He hugs the beetle to his chest and watches, with a smile that lives mostly in his eyes, as Alder immediately snaps up the tissue paper and then looks extremely consternated by the taste of tissue paper stuck to his tongue. Mleh.]

Thank you, Steve. [Which isn’t enough, really. But at the same time, he doesn’t want to go into all of the rest of it out of nowhere. Not like he did with Riley, who has walked far enough down this path with him that it was only very difficult, not impossibly difficult. Riley, who’s all wrong in ways that align far too neatly with his.]

[Fortunately, he did come up with something else, a way of at least halfway explaining how significant this is to him without going into all the details. Showing, not telling. He digs in his shirt pocket and pulls out a dragonfly brooch, bright and gaudy and fitting perfectly in his hand.]

[Holding it up by the tail:] Riley got me this for Christmas. I think she was confused that I got her something, so she brought me cookies and this, even though I wasn’t expecting anything, either. We got into an argument about bugs in the tunnel when we first got here, so I suppose she thought of me.

[With a twitchy smile, he shrugs.]

It’s just fitting. That you both think the same way. So I wanted to open them in the same place, since they go together.