He is relieved that she falls asleep again, if she ever even truly woke up.

He finds it difficult to do the same, creasing the corner of a page back and forth, watching the sky through the open windows without really seeing it, and he extends, finally, a tentative wordless question to Fiona, who replies with a tentative wordless sigh.

You have not been adhering to your promises, sir.
I know.
I mean the ones to yourself.
I know that too.
She is very fond of you, sir.
I know that too. I just don't know why.
I worry that you are so lax about your promises because you feel unworthy of having the reputation of a man who keeps them.
If I had that reputation I wouldn't be unworthy.
You'd find some way to be, sir.
It's not wrong of me to care about her, though.
No, sir.
It's just wrong of me to expect what I do.
Yes, sir.
I could make her happy.
So you've said, sir.
Do you think I could?
I don't know enough about people to say, sir. But I suspect that making her happy isn't the concern, anyway.
What is?
Could she make you happy, sir?
She does.
She makes you--joyful. Or relieved. And these things momentarily. I am not certain that this is the same thing as being happy, sir.
By the definition of sustained optimism nothing makes me happy.
I know, sir. That's my point, sir.
Thank you for not making fun of me for that.
I wouldn't, sir. You have a theatrical streak but I--
OK, OK. Thank you.

A pause while he replaces the book on the nightstand, moving slowly and gently so as not to disrupt her, before curling up closer, nosing the artfully-tousled strands lying across her temple until his breath against her ear makes her stir and he withdraws.

She is going to ask you again, sir. When she isn't asleep.
I know.
And what will you tell her?
You want me to tell her that it was a lapse in judgment. That it'll be the last one.
In an ideal world, sir.
Why?
You are--you perceive her in a way that is dangerous.
What way is that?
You invest her with more capacity to improve you than she has.
You think I want her to save me, or something.
I don't know if save is the right word, but you want to cling to her.
Is it wrong to want an anchor?
It's wrong to want this one, sir.
Why?
You know why: because she is unsuited to the task, and because you wish to be an anchor in turn, sir, and she already has that. You are turmoil for her and she for you and you know this.
But maybe it wouldn't be, if I just--just stopped trying to complicate it.
Whether you add complications or not, sir, the situation is already difficult.
I know.
You will still be afraid, sir. Maybe more afraid.
I know.
She will not leave him for you.
I know.
You know but you don't accept. Even now you're telling yourself that if she just had time you could make yourself indispensable. You think that you can displace her other influences by effort.
I can't ******** co-exist with them.
I know, sir.
I should never have slept with her.
I agree, sir. If you recall, I agreed at the time.
Yes, thank you, you've reminded me that you told me so many times. I think it's a matter of record now.
What will you say to her, sir? When she asks again.
You tell me.

A long silence is punctuated by a restless shifting in the back of Taym's thoughts, an uneasy, shivering undercurrent of Fionnghal thinking.

Tell her yes.

He is stunned into silence.

Tell her yes, sir. There will be grief and misery at the end of that road but I suspect that it will grant you respite.
What a miserable ******** cynical assessment, Fiona.
I believe it to be an accurate one, sir.
And you're probably ******** right. She won't leave him for me.
No, sir.
And she loves him more than me.
I suspect she does, sir. He is very--cerebral. Perhaps she finds this refreshing. She, like you, feels very intensely.
I am not a man who can share.
I know, sir. Nor do I think you ought to, although my solution would be to find a different mate.
You know very ******** little about people.
As I've acknowledged, sir.
It'll come to a head there one day.
You hope despite yourself that she will create a home with you and only you.
I do.
I do not think that that is reasonable, sir, but I cannot deny you that hope. You will cling to it anyway. As you have been already, sir.
But you think I ought to--to take respite, as you put it?
I do, sir. You are allowing yourself hope, as I said. Perhaps it is not a false hope. If it is, you have at least spared yourself some weeks or months of anxiety and grief over immediate fulfillment of emotional needs.
Your rosy ******** optimism about my--
I am being realistic, sir. I do not advocate for living in the right-now. But I have long since learned that that is where your heart beats. You refuse to see the--
Fiona.
Perhaps you are incapable, then, of looking to the future. Perhaps it is not a refusal. In any case, she is a distraction to you here or apart, and less of a distraction here, provided you continue to be unwilling--or unable--to look ahead.
You hope that if I'm getting laid I'll get more work done.
I am hoping, sir, that if you go to sleep and wake up on some note other than one of loneliness--because that is the last thought you have, sir, before you sleep, and the first you have on waking--that you will see some compelling reason to do more than simply adequately function.
So after all that bullshit about how you don't think she can fix me, you want her to fix me.
No, sir. She can't do that. I want her to stop affording you an opportunity to break yourself further.

He is awake for some time. When sleep returns it is halfhearted and fickle, and when she awakes for a second time it is with violence and grief. The question is forgotten, pushed away until later, much later, after he's made his clumsy efforts to soothe her fears, after being supplied with encouraging words partly of his own and partly from Fiona.

The light coming through the windows is the pink-grey of early morning. Her mascara's flaked; her eyeliner's run a bit at the corner and when she wakes this time it's from a fitful doze. She does not ask him again. He does not know if she remembers. He is afraid, and kisses her as if he can plant the words in her mouth, all need and terror, and he still does not know how he will answer her.

It is not, despite her apologies, her fault that she gives him so many opportunities to do what he does so effectively and from such old habit. He breaks himself on her because she is there, and because she matters, and perhaps it would be easier to keep his promises--for a little while, at least--if they were promises to be with her, rather than promises to be alone.