He let that fact process in his mind for a couple of minutes before taking another drink. He wasn't surprised, not really. The conversation they'd had was fuzzy in his head, at times, but he remembered enough to know that had been the exact thing he'd been terrified of, even if the terror the inebriation had left him feeling wasn't as raw and omnipresent as it had been before.

He turned to give Vash a small, weak little smile, shaking his head gently. There wasn't any risk of choking over that fact, either. He hadn't been paying him much attention last night, once the other Vash had started talking to him in earnest, but he hadn't noticed him leaving, either.

"Still lookin' out for me, huh?" His eyes went unfocused, the smile fading. On some level, he knew why Blondie did it. Not doing it would have gone against his nature. It still felt undeserved, though, sometimes unbelievable, especially given that he wasn't even the man he knew properly. "I owe you a lot, you know? More than I can ever repay."

And then he was looking down at the bottle in his hand, closing his eyes against the light that was still trying to bore a hole in his brain and letting out a long, resigned sigh.

"I am really not lookin' forward to today...I'm...I'm not gonna leave Needle-Noggin out there on his own. Even if he did have it in his head to go. Least I can do to make up for what I did is try an' actually help 'im now that I'm back. But...we...we still gotta...take care of other business first, don't we...?"

And on a hangover, too. Fuck, this was gearing up to be just as bad a day as yesterday had been, tearful reunions notwithstanding.

"...At least my bike should hopefully still be back at the orphanage. Sure have missed her. You don't know how often I wished I had her, these past two years. And she'll make catchin' up t'Spikey that much easier. Unless he's learned t'fly, 'r somethin'."