"Yeah, it's hard." What else can he say? Anything else not only would be a lie, but an easily seen through lie, at that. It'd be disrespecting her intelligence, which she does possess at times, and their friendship. But...

He ruffles her head again. A good bit like in that memory, but from the other side again. "But with friends, you stick around for the hard shit. Anyone who only wants sunshine and rainbows can't really last for a good friendship, right?" Because friends are the people who recognize when you're stupid. Who are there for you when the stress is so much. He's hard a lot of time to learn about good friendships, especially in a place where it seemed like they could be rare compared to all the sex intermingling with it.

But it didn't. Just like he told her then. Their relationship was something he was perfectly happy with, just as it was.

And as it is now.

"Anyway, I kind of figured you would make those kind of assumptions, and I figured it might come up sooner than later... but hey. It was never that big a deal." Especially without a leaderboard for sex around. Angeal smiles at her. "Trust me, if I wanted to back out of things with you, I could have done it a long time ago, Rosie. I'm more than happy to keep knuckling my way through this."