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He managed not to betray his relief at this, because he was a man who had long since learned to lie. His lack of plans notwithstanding, hers were comforting--it was always easier to disappear.

He was, however, quiet in response to the question--quiet for a long time, and it might have looked like he was thinking about the answer but he wasn't, really, his mind wandering in the exact way he hated to let it.

And he shrugged, finally, hands spreading helplessly; they shook, and she knew it now better than most, not constantly but enough, and maybe it could have been passed off for nerves then, given the way he'd steered her own hand around, but it was harder to explain why they might shake now.

"Not really good at planning ahead," he said finally. "Nowhere else to be and making enough to keep a roof over my head, so no real reason to leave." No reason not to, either, but he didn't say it. "Would be easier if I had a tin can of my own, but then again I--"

And here he was interrupted by the arrival of Chinese food--paper bags bearing more calories than he'd seen in one place for a long time, with rangoons and donuts and rice and broccoli and mysterious sauces and a little half-pint of hot 'n sour that will be all he eats. Ivy ineffectually boof boofed a few times from the comfort and safety of the bed, apparently for the look of the thing, while he transacted at the door, pushing it closed with his heel before depositing the loot onto the nightstand and making a generous motion of his hand.

He paused, apparently uncertain of what to do, before folding up indian-style on the foot of the bed, stooping to retrieve his hat from where it was lying on the floor and absently pulling it on before blurting, suddenly: "Is it better or worse that she isn't a person?"

Another long, quiet pause; he'd reached to take the soup but he was just cradling it in his palms, unopened.

"Are they nice ideas, at least?" And then: "Does that matter?"

And he relaxed a little, then, but only a little, because of the two reasons she might not have been a person only one would have left a perfect shadow and it's not the one he needed to know about.

He watched her picking at the food, still not touching his, and turned the answer over in his head.

"Are you looking because you don't know what her flaws were or because you feel like you need--"

And he hesitated, because this was too personal. And the question was there, hanging heavy and unasked, and so he didn't pretend like it wasn't as he shifted gears, gently prying up the cover of his soup.

"If you've ever seen a video of a pelican trying to eat a fish too big for its mouth," he said, "that's what watching you eat a donut is like."

"Trust me, I've noticed," he said drily, averting his eyes from the reptilian display of food intake he was being made to witness (and, frankly, from her own eyes. He hadn't met them once on purpose, and only fleetingly by mistake.)

He chased the soup around with his spoon and it'd probably be best if he left it to the awkward silence, but he felt compelled and so after a moment added: "If it's the second thing--parents have a pretty deep well for forgiveness, in my experience. Maybe an inexhaustible one," he added wistfully. "So maybe that part would have been a wash anyway."

He looked--with his ragged face and his scar-flecked arms (more easily felt than seen, her hands steered away) and his beaten-up backpack and run-down motel room and lonely silent phone--like someone who maybe knew too well what the limits of paternal forgiveness were.

"Sorry," he added quietly. "I can go back to making pelican jokes and showing you a bunch of pictures of Ivy instead. Or I can--proofread your resume, if you'd rather I make myself useful. Wasn't this supposed to be a meeting about job skills? What happened there?"

To his credit he barely paused, even if inwardly, wretchedly, he felt himself cringing back and back and back. The common boundaries of intimacy were already fuzzy in a situation like this but his ability to sense then was long since dulled from disuse anyway.

(I'd forgive mine for that, he thinks; but the comparison isn't really fair.)

"That's a big pool to draw from," he said instantly, smoothly, unhesitating because he was a man who'd long since learned how to lie.

And he tells her, and then it's her turn, and this is safe: horrible customers and strange managers and covert romantic liaisons in back offices are safe. Dwindling Chinese leftovers and he doesn't want her to walk back alone in the dark either he goes with her or she stays another hour and a half Christ it's late when did that happen. All that's safe, inasmuch as anything is for him, but with the jolting reminder that he's forgotten how to navigate these currents nothing else is, and tension is rough around the edges of the easy act as reality sets back in and shakes.

"You tell a good story," he tells her, and it's half envy. "Really good," he says.

She succeeds only briefly, although she might catch all the wistful sidelong glances at what must be a very warm and comfortable cuddle puddle. He excuses himself out of it to smoke and never quite makes it back in, which is maybe not surprising given how uneasy and tense he gets whenever some part of her idly bumps into some part of him, even if his own hands are wandering and nosy and restless in a way that suggests he's one of those people that needs to touch everything in the store (temple, collar, shoulder, neck).

He eats half the soup and by the time he manages that it must be frigid cold. There's no fridge; he tells her to take the leftovers. And he laughs a couple of times, a noiseless little laugh that he always aims away from her like it might be as obtrusive and unwanted as exhaled cigarette smoke. He likes asking her for stories more than he wants to tell his, but he has a few, and by the time he's waded through a couple of them he is noticeably more at ease, relaxing into the idea of speaking and being heard like an old habit. Learning to do that fancy hibachi grill thing with the egg and the spatula and having to explain why there were a few dozen eggs on the write-off in the morning. That time Alex found a possum in his car.

When he kicks her out--and that's the phrase he jokingly uses; kicking her out--he touches his fingertips to hers as if to confirm that she was here and real but manages to avoid anything else, except asking if she needs him to walk back with her, because he can. If she wants. But the world is early-morning grey and it feels snug and safe and all the gossip feels very far away, and so he hesitates before he asks it, remembering what she'd said about stripping the world back.

He hesitates perhaps longer than is strictly flattering before obliging, but he does oblige. And then tells her she tastes like five-spice and MSG.