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It did, palpable, but aside from perking up eagerly at the sound of America's babytalking voice Tubadiah didn't make any moves to escape Taym's deathgrip affectionate cuddling and Taym made no moves to release him. A childish urge to do what she was doing and address his reply to Tubadiah rose and was stifled, and so there was no lilting, sing-song, passive aggressive commentary. There was nothing, instead, just Taym smoothing his thumb along the treat's forehead, face buried in the fluffy ruff of its neck.

It was obvious at this point that if the movie served as anything better than background noise Taym was just going to fall asleep again, and he had made the conscious decision to be less comfortable around her because he is literally the worst person on the planet and everyone should hate him, so instead after a pause he sought out, desperately, a thread of conversation.

"Have you been reading your books?" he asked quietly, his eyes trained on the screen despite the fact that he was obviously far from invested.

He paused, filling up the gap with shamelessly nosing Tubadiah's fluffy cheek.

"I was working down at the school the other day," he said softly, handling the topic gingerly, fearfully, because he'd never mentioned it to her and felt reluctant to do so now, lest she interpret this as some tacit approval of all her other plans, "and I was trying to figure out whether the space under the auditorium stage was useable at all--you know how sometimes there's those little alcoves for changing rooms or whatever--and there's ******** down there, of course; you have to bend double, but anyway.

"I was kicking some s**t around down there trying to route out any squatters," this, drily, because Taym had had just about enough of being surprised by shadowlings in backyards and corners and the occasional disused toilet, "and I found this spot in the back corner that looked like the back wall but if you squeezed around it there was a little space on the other side. Like, I don't know--five feet square. And there were ******** rotted-out pillows on the floor and some rusted old Coke cans and a cache of cigarette butts. Some s**t carved into the walls too, the usual--initials in hearts, probably whoever was banging in that little space," he said flatly, more disapprovingly than was strictly warranted given his own personal history, "crudely drawn dicks, you know the drill. Some resourceful little assholes making use of overlooked space, at some point. I bet there's s**t like that all over that ******** building. Probably all over this Island." A pause: "It'll still be there, even after--after the place gets cleaned up." Another, and then: "Jupiter's a pretty great name."

He took care of Tubadiah while she took care of the cats, scooting over to the bed and leaving the chair there, close--he let him go reluctantly, with a shameless kiss between the eyebrows and a fond shake of his tiny paw--and where he'd been curled up around him he instead curled up around himself, knees drawn boyishly up to his chest with his arms huddled between over a stomach that was noticeably, even through his clothes, less hollow than it had been months before.

He was looking at her, when she turned, his eyes not averted but instead studying her with detached curiosity. He thought of Ceres and of Bix, and far more gently than he'd intended to he asked her: "Does it bother you? That you left that." A half a beat of a pause, broken by a voice gone painful and just as quiet. "You'd be a good mom."

A long, long silence, and then an abrupt twist of his mouth, a tell-tale look of sudden anguish just as suddenly repressed.

He understood, suddenly, what he hadn't while Bix went on an angry tirade about which of them was blessed: he'd made his entire life into an apology for his daughter, whether consciously or unconsciously; he hadn't been enough to be a father to her but he was enough to feel guilt, and there was always that insignificant but present shred of hope that one day she'd know it. And then, if she didn't, still her presence in his life was its own set of what-ifs and could-haves, but it was also a presence of tangible memories and a ferocious, horrible love beside which anything else he'd ever felt paled in comparison. He knew. America didn't--at least not this America, who'd found a decision easy to make at eighteen, and made it.

He wanted once again to reach out and take her hands and press the backs of her fingers to his lips, and this time it was not an urge of needy closeness nor even entirely an urge to provide and console, but to see her consoled. He tangled his fingers in the sides of his shirt and he swallowed, hard. He had no platitudes, no small comforts to offer, no soothing words. For once he found himself completely unable to lie to her and he thought of that hazy future she carried around in her head, of picket fences and happy households and in a pinnacle of misplaced optimism a school full of the clamor of small voices.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, too afraid to speak any louder.

He watched her settling, aching to crawl in next to her, aching over that sad little laugh and wanting to whisper into her ear that it was easier, always easier, to just turn the laugh into a cry. But she was America Jones, and she wasn't Obadiah Thompson, and she was stronger than he was--he knew this--and she would not break down over something like this, not for him and maybe not for anyone.

(Maybe, he thought, she will cry for Konstantin. Maybe she already does. He was unsurprised by the twist of hateful jealousy accompanying the thought, but taken aback by the thread of I hope she does, it's better than hiding it.)

So he turned his glance to the gleaming eyes watching from the top of the bookshelves from between the bars. "Maybe you--" he started. Can come with me. Match a drizzly stroll around Chicago with his arm around her waist and their fingers tangling in a shared pocket. The only stupid insignificant offer he had to make for her right now, because Taym had never understood the idea of offering anyone comfort that didn't come from him.

The need to touch her was desperate. He reached for his cigarettes to occupy his hands.

"Maybe I will," he said instead.

"What's what like?" he asked, hung up on the craving to be next to her and thinking for a moment she meant this, and then with bewilderment jumping from smoking, as he exhaled, to Fiona and walks in the woods, before he realized what it was that she meant. "Oh," he said.

Maybe she was asleep; he wasn't sure, and he certainly gave her time to get there as he sat in silence, turning the question over until the cigarette was half-gone, an arm slung over the back of the chair while the rest of him remained huddled.

"It's terrifying," he said finally, softly, and his eyes were turned now towards the screen but in a glazed, unfocused way, his attention somewhere else entirely. "I've always--I had so many little siblings, I guess. And at first you think it's just like that, you just hold her and you love her like you didn't think you could ever love anything, but that's not it, not really. It sneaks up on you instead. One day she'll smile or she'll cry or I guess in my case it was when she got sick--not bad sick; just a little baby cold--and you go from scared to terrified. This door opens somewhere inside you that you thought you opened the first time you held her and she was all ugly and wrinkled and bloody and you thought she was the ugliest thing you'd ever gladly die for, but you didn't, not really, and you know it this time. It's--it's this huge, huge fear; it's bigger than anything. I'd sit up at night and listen to her coughing on the baby monitor and I have no ******** idea how April slept. She was--she was better at managing the fear, I think, than I was. I don't--at the time I think I thought she cared less, but I think she just... handled it differently." He paused, and he fell quieter still, and now it didn't matter if she was asleep at all; he found that he had been wanting, without realizing it, to say this, and that it didn't matter if anyone heard.

"And you spend all your time worrying about the smallest stupid s**t and when they get a little older it's just--frustration and boredom, all the time, because they're daddydaddydaddylisten and you just want ten minutes of peace. And they cry and you have no idea why, but sometimes they laugh and you don't know why either. When Tuesday was a baby she spent an entire afternoon cracking the ******** up over the fact that she'd learned how to cross her fingers, and it's contagious.

"And then one day you realize that they love you and if you thought you were scared before you had no ******** idea. One day you'll hand them to someone to hold and they'll reach out for you instead and you just--" and finally, finally, his voice faltered. "Now you're not just afraid of what's going to happen to them. You're afraid of what's going to happen to you. You thought your whole life was in orbit around them but it's just the other way around and you realize everything for them is centered on you. I couldn't--I was so scared of letting her down. And then I did, and I thought maybe that would make the... the fear go away, but it didn't. It's not something you can run away from even by realizing it. She'll never--she'll never know about any of the s**t I've done here but I always--I always think about her. I always think: let me do the sort of thing that I would be proud of my daughter for doing. And sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't.

"So that's what it's like. It's terrible. It's not just terrible because you're scrubbing baby s**t out of the bathtub and getting all your s**t ruined and having to listen to screaming fits and sit through the most agonizingly dull playdates and other people who won't shut up about their kids because they think you give a ******** just because you have a baby, because you're going to do all that s**t too and it sucks, but it's terrible because you're afraid that--that one day you won't have to any more. By the time they're three you're already having these moments where all you can think about is that one day they're going to move out and leave you and sometimes you're so pissed and frustrated you say that you can't wait for it but you know that it's going to destroy you when it happens and for me I was--I knew I wouldn't be there for it. I didn't want... I didn't--it's terrible. It's ******** awful," he finished, his voice breaking, his composure shattered, "and I wanted it so ******** much, and I still do. I just--"

He didn't finish, no longer trusting his voice; ugly and unashamed he wiped his nose across the back of his hand, his eyes bright in the light of the screen.

Her silence convinced him that she had fallen asleep, that he'd been opening his heart to an empty room, but the relief of this thought was swept away when he finally dared to glance at her, and saw in the lines of her back under the blankets the tension of wakefulness.

He hesitated, seized by the guilt of To my daughter on a dedication page and a dozen stories of aunts and uncles and almost none of her father, and by the guilt of you'd be a good mom.

So he pretended, if she wanted to pretend, or if it was easier for her to pretend, and he unfolded himself with a cautious quiet, as though trying to avoid waking her. He put out his cigarette and found his coat to the strains of the classical music that had undercut his entire answer, shrugging into his sleeves and almost silently hushing one of the cats when it meowed quizzically, pawing through the bars.

It only took a second to jot a note on the outside of a folded-up page in his pocket (the inside lined with his tidy, tiny handwriting, lists of alphabetical words according to the rules of some obscure game or mental exercise unexplained): Didn't want to wake you. Stay as long as you need to. He hesitated on a third line, willing himself to fill it but leaving it blank. A second more to gather up his keys as quietly as he could, to leave the note on the nightstand, all the while knowing, horribly, that she was awake, and that she had heard everything he had to say, and that, being America, she would remember it with that uncanny memory she had for shared words.

He paused to compose his face, to wipe his eyes again on the sleeve of his coat and to try and fail not to inhale shakily in a way that she'd hear before he turned to go, to give her his room because it was all that he could give her: a place to sleep or pretend to, away from him.

He paused, but he turned back around, pointing out quietly: "Neither have you."

When he sat back down it was neither near the popcorn nor in the indicated chair, instead sinking down (a scant pressure; a far too slight weight, even now) on the edge of the bed near her. His hands fidgeted restlessly in his lap for a few seconds before he reached for her, moving as if crawl into the nest she'd made to curl around her back, undoubtedly to bury his face in the curve of her neck as he always did, undoubtedly to twist a strand of hair back and forth around the fingers of one hand while the other greedily tangled up with hers, undoubtedly to pursue the dozen little things he always had any time they'd nestled up close to one another, as tightly wound around her by choice in a spacious hotel bed as he'd been by necessity on a narrow dorm mattress.

The gesture was swiftly aborted before his fingers even had a chance to brush her shoulder, and he moved resolutely, ruefully, back into the chair, safe as though it were a cage.

"I'm sorry," he said again. For talking. For trying to leave. For trying to touch her. For not touching her at all. For being a horrible father, and for any way, any way at all, that he'd further opened her wounded feelings. "I thought you--I thought you just... I figured you'd want me to go."