"This doesn't need to be complicated," Starling said, teeth clenched; he kept his hands to himself for the moment. "That's what I was so frustrated thinkin' about before. I have no idea what Jochy thinks of me, probably he just thinks I'm just a little lovestruck kid who'll get distracted by somethin' shiny and wander off like Curr, or somethin', but the point is, I don't think he's seriously afraid of losin' you for me. I am."

Elaine listened with a growing expression of dread. "You...Starling? Yesterday, when I left you? I spent hours trying to talk Jochy out of a hole because he thinks you're the only one I actually care about and I'm just using him for sex. And he? Was a lot more dramatic about it than you're being. This is why it's hard," she told him. "If one of you wasn't scared, I'd know he was the one I didn't need."

She paused for a moment. "Does that sound horrible of me?"

This was more serious than Starling usually cared to be, and under any other circumstances the temptation to joke about nipping around and throwing himself over a cliff would be overwhelming if he didn't have the inkling that Jochy might have hinted at it for real. "I don't know," he said soberly. "I'd say it were a shite decision to put on anyone else's head, if I hadn't just said almost the same thing."

He grimaced, sensing his steady movement toward fucking this up. "I mean, I'm not gonner go off me feed and die if you pick Jochy over me. I would probably spend a week or two wishing I could, but that's different. It's more like I find meself wonderin' how much of a claim on your time I even have, and I don't like that idea. It's a little--right, so it sort of pisses me off, when I don't want to be pissed off with you."

She reached her hands out to him. "I don't want you to be pissed with me, either. I..." she grimaced. "I like being with you, Star. Whatever we're doing. I've always liked being around you. You make me feel happy just to be alive. And...he's sort of right," she admitted. "I mean, not completely. I'm not just using him for sex. But you...even if we weren't fooling around, I know I could talk to you for hours. We'd always have something in common. With him...well, we can talk for hours, but it always happens to be in bed. It's not that we don't have conversations, it's that they always involve ripping each other's clothes off. And it's not like I don't want to rip your clothes off sometimes," she said, giving him a shy smile. "It's just that I know I don't have to to relate to you."

"I would rip your clothes off right now but for that we'd be havin' this conversation again in another three days, and it's hard enough as it is." He took her hands when she offered them. "I like to think that's kind of separate from everything else. Even though I want to do it all the time now." He gave her a shy, fleeting smile. "I were out on the Sintilla all day thinkin' to meself, 'that's it, I've had it, soon as I get off this tub I am gonner find that girl and tell her I've had with bein' in the middle of this,' and then tryin' to plot out what I was going to say and halfway through it just tapers off into us havin' sex again. You have completely disrupted my ability to talk. I'm no good at anything else."

Elaine grinned. "You talk just fine," she said. "You string words together like it's a gift, Starling. I want to eat them up, the way you talk." She pulled him closer. "See, if it was Jochy? It would've tapered off into sex. Sometimes I think he's incapable of having an intelligent conversation without it. I mean, with me, at least," she added. Then she gave him a very earnest look. "I want to rip your clothes off, too. But I'm thinking we'll have plenty of time to do that on the ship if we can figure out how to sneak around." She took a deep breath. "I've had it with this, too," she admitted. "I don't like feeling like I'm making you both miserable. But I don't know how to do this. I don't. If somebody put a gun to my head and told me to pick one of you, I don't know if I could do it."

He took a deep breath almost at the same time she did, but held his tongue until she was finished speaking. "I don't know if I can do it," he told her frankly. "I know I told you I could, but I think I got ahead of meself. I wish I could. And I don't know what to do about it either. Part of me wants to just get out of this before it gets messier. And the rest of me is like, to hell with that." He gave her a ghost of a grin.

She squeezed his hand. "I did this the wrong way," she said. "I should have tried to work out whether I can have a relationship with Jochy before bringing you into it. I don't know if I can, and if I can't, then the answer's a lot easier. You, I'm less worried about. Even now, we're not fighting. I don't think we've ever fought except on account of both being afraid we'd just be friends forever."

He looked a bit more doubtful. "I kicked over a pail of tar thinkin' of you earlier," he admitted. "I've already got a mark against me because I hollered at Ceallaigh when he told me to get me head out of me arse. I mean it. When I said I don't know if I can do this, I meant I don't know if I can do this." He summed up the two of them, the whole situation, with a downward gesture. "I think you went about it in the wrong way and I might've agreed to it for the wrong reasons, but . . . " He inhaled. "If you're still decidin', I think it might be best if we just . . . stopped."

Elaine blinked. "I..." She frowned. "I thought I just asked you if you wanted to...you know. And you said you didn't. How come you're changing your mind?" Her voice was shaky.