A wave of startlement - quickly followed by a wash of guilt - swept through Kerr as he looked at her, managing to school his features into an expression of curiosity, eyebrows raised. He\'d been in the process of taking off his own jacket - a black suit jacket, worn over a T-shirt with an arty motif scribbled over the front and blue jeans and boots below - when she\'d moved away and he hesitated now, before he continued the action. He spoke once the jacket was off and approached her, so that he could hang it alongside hers until he left.
"Not really," he lied mildly, "what makes you think there is?"
Again, he felt guilty, an emotion he was investing far too much time in these days. It came from being with Jenna, talking with Jenna, laughing with Jenna... and thinking of Ben. It was happening to him more and more and all because he was beginning to think he\'d made a very stupid mistake that he couldn\'t back out of. Now, he was at the stage where he felt himself sinking in indecision and the longer he wavered, the worse the consequences were going to be... yet he couldn\'t make a definitive move one way or the other and it was plaguing him.
Not just distracting him, plaguing his thoughts, every waking moment. Not even the astounding occupation of driving a foreign power out of the city via feats of before-unknown violence by him and a handful of compatriots had managed to stop him thinking about what he wanted to do, how he wanted to proceed, whom he should choose.
It had begun a couple of weeks ago now. He\'d had a discussion with Ben, in bed after they\'d had sex and he\'d felt the first real danger signs of slippage; of him teetering one way rather than the other. It had scared him silly, he\'d told Ben they needed to stop being intimate because he would fall in love with him and then dominated the conversation by telling Ben that it was all agreed, they would keep things platonic.
Only later, upon thinking about it, had he realised that he\'d been so scared by his own feelings that he\'d completely missed Ben confessing a few of his own; had entirely shut Ben down, in fact. Now, Kerr believed Ben had actually told him that he really did want to be in a relationship with him, that he was prepared to take back his past memories and give them a real go because he did want him... and he hadn\'t heard. Had pretty much, in fact, told him not to worry about that, that they were better off keeping it less intimate.
So now, on top of wondering whether he actually had rejected Ben - and he got the very strong sensation at times when his fledgling looked at him that he had - he was dealing with a mounting desire to renege on the stupid deal he\'d outlined for no-one\'s benefit in the first place. He trained Ben, they hung out nightly, they were cosy and friendly and then they\'d go to bed and there was just... tension.
Every pre-dawn lately, he wanted to roll over and open up the discussion again, but he felt stupid about it. Maybe he was imagining it all, Ben was placid enough about it. He certainly wasn\'t approaching Kerr physically any more, so that must mean he wasn\'t all that interested, that it had all been training from his abusive relationship with Themba that had convinced him to do it in the first place... right?
The Irishman was generally so busy trying to pare down Ben\'s actions, assign them motives, analyse them for signs of distress, danger or need and act accordingly, that he\'d wound himself into a knot. And he couldn\'t stop. Being with Jenna had been a relief at first, but the longer it hung in the air between he and Ben, the more it was beginning to impact on his time with her. Now she\'d noticed and he was terrified, hoping he was playing it cool.
How could he tell her that he thought he\'d made a terrible mistake when he\'d told his fledgling that they shouldn\'t keep having sex? That perhaps he\'d had entirely the wrong reasons for doing that? That he didn\'t know how damaged Ben was by his time with Themba but he was beginning to not care, because sleeping with him every night made him want to fix it from the inside? That he was now betraying their relationship in thought, if not deed, and he was wondering what sort of future she and he would have together anyway, when he had a blood bond that was so much deeper and stronger out there with someone who wasn\'t her?
He couldn\'t! But he had to. And that was what was on his mind. He\'d become aware that he was distracted at work in the past few nights and now she\'d noticed, so it was obviously leaking out of him everywhere. Fucking fabulous. He looked at her as blandly as he could while inside he was roiling.
