Point. It gets hard to keep everything straight with all...this. [He waves a hand at Rivendell, but he means all of it. Life-or-death battles, fighting side-by-side with teenagers, coasting on the kindness of strange cultures, the responsibility of having actual stakes to your success.

He smiles back, but it's a bit wan. He would have appreciated the squeeze, if he'd known the thought crossed Kal's mind. There's only a thin veneer of self-control between how he's presenting himself now and the abject neediness underneath, the desperate desire for approval from someone like Kal, someone he's cast as a higher arbiter.]

You're saying it's probably not a great idea to just do stuff without thinking it through, huh? [Dixon laughs - it's a joke, kind of, not really - but it sounds a lot easier than it is. His impulsivity has been his worst enemy. Revan had him pegged right: any time he runs into a difficult emotion he darts towards the nearest way to anesthetize it, either through explosive anger or alcohol.]