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In the silence, Dawson stirred the bowl with a saddened look and put the pieces together. Shaking hands, cigarettes, rail thin and weary. "Love's love's love," he said. "Logic got nothin' t'do with the heart. Doesn' care how much it might hurt."

He used the spatula to help pour the mix into the tray, and then he offered the remnants of the batter to America. "You sayin' the bad outweighed the good?"

"'Cause losin' yerself in people don' sound like gettin' a lil' back, not t'me," he replied. "Or s'a slippery slope at least."

Dawson turned his back on her briefly to put the pan in oven, not aware that preheating it was in the recipe. He cranked the temperature up and figured it was the same difference.

"You really takin' things back, or you just givin' it up piece by piece 'til you don' feel nothin'?" he asked, turning back to America with concerned frown. Still mild, still somehow smaller despite his bulk. "'Cause y'know what, you sound like Maebe did when she got broked up with. N' y'know what, she thought it was better not havin' anythin' at all. No pain, yeah, but no carin' either, no good feelin's." He wrung one of his hands. "You hur'in bad, Meri, but I don' think this the bes' idea. You need yer friends, not some guy who's only gonna be there fer a night n' go."

He was so easy; tears brought the alarm bells, the instinct to protect. Immediately Dawson went to her, bringing America into a hug if she didn't resist. "Okay, okay," he crooned, slow and hushed. "Don' hold it in, hun. You here, you ain' missin' nothin'..." Tears were a good sign, it meant letting things go, or at least relieving the pressure.

"See...told ya I was s**t about sex stuff," he joked weakly after a moment. "M'a moron, ya gotta remember. Only good for holdin' n' blabberin'."

Somewhere in her breakdown he gently moved them to the floor to make it easier and held America close, his head perched over her shoulder and his eyes closed. He felt the inklings of deja vu from when she'd first told him about Lawr and wondered, Jesus ******** Christ, how much s**t did these people have to take on? Good people, even? Because despite America's behavior frightening him, despite her assertions that who she was with Taym wasn't the whole picture, she was still Good People.

(Ah, yes, deja vu. There was the urge to cry again just like before, but the loss of his beard was a big enough blow to his masculinity.)

So Dawson held her tight like he was trying to squeeze the sorrow out himself, and he talked. He talked about the stupid shenanigans he and some other Moons got up to trying to work on the plumbing issues upstairs. He talked about the time in the summer, as a pizza delivery boy, he'd seen what he swore was a swingers gathering of sixty-year old somethings by some rich guy's pool. He talked about the fact that he had seen some weird s**t as a pool boy (and that saying he hadn't had been a way to cover his a** after the story had gone too far), but the most he went into was how in the midst of checking that a spa's heater ignition was working, he caught sight of a big rubber strap on just floating in the water, and how the woman had tried so hard to grab it that she ended up falling into water fully clothed to get it. He talked about whatever stupid s**t came to mind, like bad jokes and puns and old stories about his crafty niece, anything and everything to fill the silence.

He glitched so to speak with the motion, a slight pause in the strokes at her back. "Uh, yer welcome," Dawson said sheepishly with the slightest inflection of a question. "Kinda rambled there, sawry. Feelin' a lil' better?"

"Um." There starts the blush. He takes a whiff, and his hands still. "I-I think you oughta lemme take care've the cake," Dawson replied hastily, "'fore we burn the kitchen down or somethin'. Wouldn' make fer very good friend support system-in', see."

Thank God he could breathe properly again. "You jus' hold on, baby girl, don' leggo..." Clingy, he could handle. Sultry, he couldn't.

He surveyed the burnt cake with a resigned sigh. Kostya would probably be so disappointed. "I'm guessin' you don' like yer cakes well done," he said, patting one of her arms in consolation. "We could cover it up with icin', or I could try makin' you a new one...Maybe just dump it with ice cream, let all the goodness soak in n' make it not so bad. Watcha think?"