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He let her fall still, and he swallowed the urge to wrap his arms around her, to weave his fingers into her hair and rock her against his shoulder. Instead he simply held tightly to her forearms, trembling not from emotion but because he always did and because he was suddenly cold.

"I'm sorry," he whispered finally, "that it's not enough. I am. I am so ******** sorry. I--I've tried. It's hard, America." He thought of shepherding her hands a lifetime and a few days ago, of the way he'd tried to avoid flinching and how he'd gone tense under her touch anyway. "I've tried. I've given you more than anyone else here. I tried to--no one else knows my daughter's name. No one else even knows she exists. No one else--do you remember that night after the Sahara when you stayed by my bed and I--I went to--" his voice broke; he tried to steady it. "You could have put anyone else into that room and I'd have gone alone, America. And that's all I ******** have. This is why I wasn't asking," he repeated, strained. "This is why I wasn't asking."

Give me what I want, was the nasty thought. Give me what I want and the problem goes away.

"I don't either," he said quietly. "I just--all I wanted was to tell you was that when I wasn't proud of it I didn't mean you. You do make me happy. Not even happier, just happy. OK? And we just need to--we need to--"

It grated. This was where she was supposed to come around and suddenly decide he was worth it, and he knew she wouldn't. Had gone into this conversation knowing she wouldn't. He gone back to the hotel room hoping she'd be there and knowing she wouldn't. Had spent two days in his room, miserable, waiting for the door to be flung open and for her to throw herself into his arms like she'd been craving them, and knowing she wouldn't.

He reached as if to abruptly kiss her and thought better of it, turned away and gently moved to pry her hands out of his coat.

"You make me happy," he repeated, and to his unutterable shame a tear fell from the end of his nose onto her arm and he'd kept the shaking out of his voice but what good was it faking, when he'd done that? So he let it in, and with the allowance came the sudden unstoppable humiliating torrent of words.

"Please let me talk. Please let me just say everything. Please don't--don't think you have to just, just leave me--like you said. I know it's ******** terrible. I know I always ask for more than I deserve. I know. Please. And I'm sorry that I feel so ******** ******** selfish about you; I'm sorry that every time I think about you with someone else it makes me so jealous it's ******** sick, and I just wanted so badly for you to feel that way about me. I picked up some girl on my last leave and I wanted to tell you and I wanted you to hate me for it but I knew you wouldn't so I didn't even bring it up. I thought, with Cee--I hoped, I hoped it meant something, that you got pissed, but it didn't. But I don't want to stop seeing you. Every single time my phone goes off and it's your name it's like--I don't know. ******** fanfare. Just like Wonderland, confetti. Every single time. And I don't want to think that I'm never going to listen to you tell me drunk stories about your uncles again. I don't want to think you're never going to ask for my help, when it makes me so ******** happy to help you. I already know what I'm giving up. And I don't--I'm not asking you to give me the things I do want, and I know that we'll never go running again and I'm never going to wake up because you elbowed me in the ******** ribs again, but please don't take away the best friend I have here. We can figure it out. I promise we can. I promise I can. I promise I can behave myself. And I know it's not fair to ask you for that, even, but I'm doing it anyway."

He was stopped, finally, the rushed, panicked, pleading, humiliated rant cut short by a sudden ragged inhale and an instant expression of regret. This was very definition of "I've said too much."

He brushed the handkerchief away with a watery: "Who the hell carries those around any more, really?" It was an olive branch, of sorts: an attempt, badly-timed and even worse-performed, to be normal. Instead he wiped his face on his sleeve, visibly made an attempt to steady himself, and shrugged off the flicker of irritation and shame at Fiona's unimpressed assessment that he was a little too old for heartfelt confessions of infatuation, wasn't he?

Where were you two minutes ago? he demanded silently as he began gathering up the broken bits of porcelain cat scattered on the floor.

"You're not going to make anything worse. That's not me saying what you want to hear," he added flatly. "It's just--true. Just maybe we need to pare back the--the physical side, obviously, and--and--maybe we need to work on the whole... exceptionalism thing." This was, not that she'd know it, also a tiny, tiny joke. It was also, although he wouldn't know it, a spoken answer to her unspoken concern. "I need to--to--I don't want to give other people what I give you," he said miserably, "but I either need to try or--" or stop giving it "--or stop lying to myself. Maybe it'll help me not--be... terrible," he finished lamely.

Except that he hadn't, of course. If he'd remembered it wouldn't have taken an act of extreme willpower to let her rest her hand on his hipbone, or to tell her a stupid story about his sister; if he'd remembered he would not still feel, even though she'd stopped touching him long minutes ago, the weight of her head on his shoulder. If he'd remembered, he thought with a pang that nearly reduced him to tears again, maybe they wouldn't be having this conversation.

Maybe if he'd remembered he'd be enough, but he hadn't and he wasn't and down below the turmoil of conscious thought some small, bitter part of him had already been set into motion that would ensure that he went to sleep both drunk and starving; it was the part that would wake him up before the sun and force him into a tortuous hungry run and tell him that a cup of tea would be enough to get him to lunchtime because the hunger pangs were all he deserved and they, besides, shunted smaller feelings aside, muting human emotion and allowing him to work uninterrupted until the shaking and Fiona's pleading dictated that he stop.

(And maybe tomorrow when he woke up hung over with his head pounding he'd do what he'd done for the past month, and he'd listen to that little part of him and then cage it, and eat a meal he didn't taste, and work only until he was tired and not exhausted. He could never know until the moment came whether today would be a day of weakness.)

But he said none of this. What he told her, instead, was what she wanted to hear. "Yeah," he said. "I--thank you."