[Paul brings his hand to Kaworu's wrist as his head is lifted, a tentative touch that neither captures or forbids. He's the one caught, fixed under Kaworu's heart-red intensity of focus, his skin so heated he imagines the places Kaworu's thumb brushes as incandescent blue-white.]

This is where I say I don't know.

[The words bubble up and over his lips like foam, the soft residue of tumult. The spice simmers in skeins in his blood.]

Or I think of what you want me to want, and I tell you that.

[This isn't what they came in here for. This is a conversation for another day, and that day is never. This isn't the answer anyone would ever want to that question, not while they're flushed and joyous in anticipation.

He's ruining this, some part of him knows. They haven't even begun, and he's ruining it, treacherous honesty coming to him unbidden and unwelcome.]

If I tell you what I want...what if you don't want to give it to me? Or what if you do, and you shouldn't? What if it hurts you?

[His other hand rises from his side, his knuckles brushing under Kaworu's jaw along the tender, vulnerable skin there. He unfolds his half-closed fist to curl around the side of Kaworu's neck, feels the thrum of his life under his palm, and Kaworu could shatter him like glass with a thought, but it doesn't feel that way. It never feels that way.]

I don't want to hurt you.