All the frustration and bluster and confusion kind of melts in that moment, staring at Cougar for a long time without saying anything. At length though, he nods and smiles. It's a tight smile but he manages it.

"Thank you," he murmurs, glancing down and back up at Cougar. "I don't know if you know how much I needed to hear that."

Because much as he's rushed into everything, this place stripped him of the one thing he knows he's good at. There's no tech, little he can scrape together, and others here who make him seem like a kindergartner with a chemistry set where everything is just plastic anyways. Hearing that though, that helps more than he realized until he heard it.