Nicey nice is fakey fakey. Sincerity helps change people's minds the best anyway.

[He gestures again with the sandwich, which has become just as much a part of this conversation as Peter has, and clearly has things on its mind.]

[His expression goes a little softer, frown lines smoothing out, brown eyes wide and kind. Under the crusty, crunchy outer shell and grime there is a softer man, slowly being excavated from where he'd been buried for a while.]

I'm better at that.

[A little shrug.]

Maybe if we focus the most on being sincere, it'll change things here instead of letting the place change us.

You know how it is: put a grain of sand in an oyster and you get diamonds.

[He knows that's not what you get, but diamonds are fancier than pearls so he likes how it sounds; he leaves the mixed metaphor the way it is.]

[He takes such a big bite of his sandwich that his words are garbled.]

I'b radder be lige dat.

[Somehow he swallows it all in one big gulp. He idly picks at some lettuce, trying to nudge it back in place with his finger so it doesn't fall out, and says the next words with the quiet ache found in the voices of very few, the kinds of people that give and give until there's there's almost nothing left of themselves.]

See if maybe it does some good.

[Peter is a rainbow fish. He hands out his shiny scales compulsively and somehow survives without any left.]