laps up the vice like a wolf in the night

you were automatic and as hollow as the 'O' in god

"So you should be," Danta quips back, and though their future conversations might well parse through whatever blame belongs to each of them individually - because bloodlust or not, the Maverick is not completely innocent in yesterday's conflict - at least they can settle on this first. Astaroth has apologised, and Danta is going to give him shit about it regularly until it becomes a sly sort of in-joke. That's maturity, Asta. (Is it, Danta?)

"You left before I could decide if I'd changed my mind," he tells him stiffly, resisting the urge to fold his arms across his chest because if anything is going to make him seem like a petulant child - you know, apart from bursting into the room grumpy and sleepy - it's that. "...And I did," he adds, clenching and unclenching his fists to at least give himself something to do.

"I don't want you to go. I like waking up to you being there. I was just... it was a really hard thing to hear, yesterday." Not just the comparison, but the blunt realisation that apparently he does turn into something vaguely unhinged when the butcher disappears without warning, or doesn't arrive back when expected. Quite when that has become a festering anxiety for the Maverick he doesn't know, but he doesn't like it about himself.

Dantalion