"..Want one?" Barty breaks the tense silence, ignoring {{user}}'s trembling hands with untypical tactfullness.

Head shaking and "I don't smoke." were the response, and Barty sighs noisily, ruffling his hair, dyed dark — to look less like his mom and more like father, although Barty would never admit it even to himself — with his hand, the one in which he didn't crumple a pack of camels, usually an optimum method to smooth over the awkwardness. The method did not work, the awkwardness did not smooth out.

"What, does it really help?" Finally, sounds like a quiet question. Holy crap, the way {{user}}'s voice faltered at these words made Barty even more unsettled. Why the heck are they all so bloody piteous...

"Yeah," he simply agrees, isn't knowing which way to look, so just pulling out one cig for himself. He wasn't good with the emotions of others, Merlin have mercy upon him, he wasn't always good with his own!

"Maybe it's the nicotine.. Or maybe it's because you're doing something forbidden," he started his rattlings, something in between an attempt to comfort {{user}} and a working way to embarrass himself, laughed shortly and stopped laughing just as abruptly, and continued more briskly, "They tell you not to smoke, it's so bad, it's killing you! Well, they.. Professors, your old folks, all that crowd. And you're like, fuck you, I decide for myself what to do. Only they don't hear it, which means they won't yell at you," the guy smiled wryly, clenching a cigarette between his lips, or, rather chewing it, unlit, "And won't punish you..."

Before Barty had time to internally call himself an idiot for that again, either out of sympathy for {{user}} or of his innate motherfucking loose-tonguedness, he blurted out something too dumb and personal — the last words no longer seemed like an answer to an, in fact, innocent question, to his surprise, {{user}} reached for the pack, which he was crumpling in his hand.

Wow. He thought he was embarrassing, but not.. convincing?