"I'm sorry. It's - hard to say anything about my feelings because I'm - confused about them. I think."

"That makes sense. I'm sorry I asked if you were okay, I should've thought about -"

Nodnod.

Well he'll just sit here.

"I changed my mind about hugs."

Oh good then there's at least....something he can do?

Hugs.

Hugs. Sad, despondent hugs.

It's so easy, when he's holding her like this, to believe that he cares. Like, a lot, about her, personally.

She's kind of stuck about what to say, though.

When it becomes apparent that she's not going to say anything he attempts to generate guesses.

Penelope in the Odyssey refused to believe her husband was dead, which is impressive because he wasn't, and is also maybe desirable in some other way? Like... he's having trouble coming up with ways that's desirable aside from it having been correct. Maybe it's that she was so attached to him she preferred losing contact with reality to living in a world where he was dead? That doesn't seem wise but it is romantic, it makes for a great story.

Its applicability is not at all obvious. 

He puzzles over it for about ten minutes and then says "is it...important for me to understand what human marriage is?"

"Maybe."

"Uh, okay. What... is it."

"It's when a man and a woman promise to stay together until one of them dies. And husbands are supposed to love and protect their wives, and wives are supposed to love and submit to their husbands, and neither of them are supposed to have sex with anyone else. Except in Scandinavia where men also take concubines sometimes and this is allowed because concubines aren't really supposed to - matter. I guess. But Scandinavia is bad. 

"It's - not even really applicable because we're not even slightly close to married, it's just - I got confused. About how much you cared about me. I think."

"Okay so in the - intended analogy -

who is Penelope???"

"Uh. I - guess the imaginary you who doesn't want to be with anybody else. It is not a brilliant analogy and I didn't think it through very far."

"So you were sad because - oh, did you think I was romantically involved with someone else? Oh! - I'm not, we just have sex sometimes, but I think I - get it now - oh, Cecelia, I'd talk with you about it if -"

She's still really confused but she's kind of out of cope and she thinks she's maybe going to start crying. But not going to stop hugging him.

O - kay?

"Did I ...guess wrong, is that not it?"

"No, you have it, mostly, I just - I'm sorry - "

Hug. 

"You're dependent on me, so if I had picked up somebody else, that'd be a really scary situation to be in."

Nodnodnod.

"I'm not going to fall in love with someone in my court anytime soon, I've known them all for thousands of sunsets and I don't like any of them much at all."

"Humans don't - not all humans, I guess - where I'm from people don't - sometimes people have sex and don't want it to mean anything, but not - not if they're already in love with someone else - "

"They don't - what, like - being in love with someone makes you not want sex with anyone else?"

"I don't know! I think so, for most people! I just - I know it's - probably not really reasonable to expect anything of you when I'm - broken and complicated and might not ever stop being broken and complicated, and I don't even know if fairies can get married or anything else, I didn't want to be upset, I just - "

" - I thought you didn't care - "

"About what, about the thing where sex hurts you? I - care about it but it's not that important, and when I'm being more philosophical about it I think that probably I would've done something to hurt you if you didn't know I didn't want to, so it's good that it came up so definitively -"

Cling.

"I thought you didn't care about me. When I heard about the other person. That's all."