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He caught her hand in the particular way that indicated the beginning of the shutting-off process, even though it was too soon for it, even though he hadn't even subjected her to his every-single-time need to curl around her with her shoulder in the curve of his arm while he did something that entirely ignored her, burying his nose in a book or his phone.

And then he said nothing, the words sticking in his throat despite Fiona's constant subvocal mantra of stop avoiding it just do this yank off the bandage stop tormenting yourself this is bad for you stop torturing her you can do this. Twice he visibly hesitated on the edge of speaking only to succumb again to silence, and then when he finally managed to force words they were not the ones he'd meant.

"This is what I meant," he said, tired and faintly incredulous at his own stupidity, "by a normal day."

He closed his eyes, battling the urge to snap at her for not just knowing instinctively what was wrong, for not anticipating every stupid thing he needed to ask and answering him.

"You didn't get--it's fine. It's really fine." He squeezed her hand, the trembling faint but present (it had been coming and going most of the evening), and whispered abruptly, strained, something else he hadn't meant to say at all: "I'm really bad at the friends with benefits thing, America. Really, really ******** bad at it."

A long, pained silence. "She isn't interested," he said finally, lifting the backs of her fingers to kiss them distractedly: clingy, needy, unwilling.

Just say it, break it off, stop doing this, please stop, sir, it'll be better after you let it go, you can't police yourself, you need to do this.

It was a heartbreak and a relief, that one little oh that kept him from having to say a hundred things, from having to sort out some way of saying what he didn't want to in a way that didn't make his voice break in the middle. Instead it broke before he even answered her, his fingers tightly laced with hers, and he was never more grateful for a dark room, because it was enough that she would have to hear the weakness, let alone see it.

"I just--need... you make me stupid. Stupider," he amended, with a bitter, angry cough of a laugh. "I tried to fix it once but I can't... I've never been good at--at being my own keeper. I don't know what I was--I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I just ******** this entire evening, I don't know, as an excuse to--to--" pretend. He couldn't say it. He paused and swallowed, hard. "I need you to just say it: that us isn't a thing. That it isn't going to be. And I need you to--to remind me of it. The next time I get stupid. Because I'm so bad at this," he repeated, his voice all twisted up and boyish and hurt. "And I told--I want to stop doing s**t that I'm not proud of. And I'm not ******** proud of this. So can you do me that favor? Please."

"No. No, no no. You don't--you don't have to. I can go back," he whispered, hauling himself up onto an elbow. "I want to go back. I don't--I'm sorry. I'm sorry I made you waste half a leave day. I'm sorry it's right before your birthday. I'm sorry. Please. I already paid for the room, you can keep it. Chicago is--you said you'd never been. There's a great diner around the corner for breakfast, that one we walked past, they make--you have half a day left. Please let me go instead," he finished, resorting to begging because the guilt was already swallowing him up and her fumbling around for her clothes with tears in her voice was more than he could stand, until he realized, abruptly, that maybe part of the reason that she wanted to go was to go crawl into the comfort that he couldn't give her, and that he had no one to give to him.

"Unless you want to go," he said, defeated. "I'm sorry. I won't--I'm sorry." He would have said it a dozen more times, if she'd let him, but he bit it back, and instead he managed, with a thin, pained smile: "I really did--thank you. For today. For dinner. For--everything."

He was dressed before she was done having already been halfway there when she'd gone to brush her hair, tucking the room key into a pocket.

"I'm going to--I'm going to take a walk," he said shakily, fumbling for his cigarettes. "So don't feel like--please don't just rush out like you have to hurry. Please don't feel like you have to go back right this second, please don't hurry, please--and if you ever--you won't, but if you--change your mind..."

He opened the door. "Goodnight," he said without turning around. Always had to have the last word. He wasn't proud of that, either. And if he hesitated there in the doorway before the door closed behind him he told himself that it wasn't to give her the opening to have it instead: that it was just a moment to get his bearings, to try and remember where he was, and where he was going, just a moment to do that and not at all a hopeless second of realizing what he'd already known: that she wouldn't stop him, would never stop him, and that he would not pretend that she would be here when he returned to creep, exhausted and too numb to cry (and maybe, treacherously, a little bit relieved), into a bed that was always, always empty.