[Paul's presence and the physical contact that comes with it is grounding and tethering. Though L's exposed skin is sunburned and tender, he's as covered as he usually is, so that essentially means his face, his hands, his neck down just past his jutting collarbones.

Even if he was covered with horrendous burns, third degree, skin sloughing away painfully, he'd probably linger here, selfishly soaking up something positive and gentle through touch.]

I think so.

[He confirms what he can, honestly. Of course he doesn't know, unless Paul is asking something else, in an extremely oblique way. Something about the man he names The Captain, perhaps, with eyes that devour light and a detached coldness that can mend or destroy with little more than a thought?

He responds to Paul's curling into himself with discreet pity. Unthinking, his arms go around him, outfitting him with a bony shell in addition to his stilsuit.]

What I know is that... if getting out means getting through, you've always possessed the resilience that requires. You're not going to spend your life running away, and you're not going to die so that others can stand on your shoulders and build on that death. You'll meet things head-on, and survive.

[Even the dangerous things; even the things that are blackly charismatic, that play on your need for approval and your hunger for acknowledgment and prestige.]

What would it take for you to turn away, or to let someone else meet those things head-on? I ask... trusting you, but still needing to know where a limit exists.

[Or whether it does, at all. What is he dealing with, with a man who would be called God?]