"Ok."

It's a sharp, definitive sound against the silence, and he's unnerved when he realizes it's all she's going to say. She's almost reduced the weight of everything he's just told her into nothing more than that two-syllable word, and he'd feel silly for making such a big deal about it - calling her at 4am, guilty, insisting that she meet him outside her apartment block in the cold - if he didn't know the meaning of her sudden movement to cross her arms, or if he missed the way she keeps balling her fists, and how it's making her knuckles white. But he does know and he didn't miss it, and he knows 'ok' doesn't really cover her response to the news.

They're standing in her parking lot and it's dark, cold and uncomfortable, and he really can't think of a more fitting place for them to have this moment. She surprises him when she sits down on the pavement, and after pausing a moment to stare at the top of her head, he joins her.

He contemplates the fact that she's not berating him like before, and he thinks that maybe it's because she's keeping her promise to keep her mouth shut this time. Or, says another, more aggressive voice, it's because this time, she'd done something he's sure he was meant to interpret as a proposition, and he'd thrown it back at her, tied up in a messy, Camille-shaped package. He clears his throat.

"I know what you - " he begins, but she won't look at him and her shoulders are tense. So it's silence for another few minutes, until she decides to speak.

"So you're not helpless, huh?" She raises a challenging eyebrow and pauses, before,"I told you - as mammals, we're subject to the whims of our biological desires. Especially males." She points a finger at him.

He laughs a little, because he'd been wondering if she was actually going to pass up an opportunity to prove herself right, and looks down at his hands.

"Cam was a substitute, you know."

She nods so slightly it's barely visible. "Someone you weren't afraid of losing anything with."

He mutters a sound he had intended to be 'yeah', and silence slips over them again. They're a fair way from the grassed area alongside the parking lot, and so neither of them are particularly alarmed when a sprinkler system goes off to their right. He does take it as a prompt, however, and moves his hand to his knee so his knuckles come into contact with her wrist. They stay like that, and they both watch the wet patterns splashing onto the pavement while she pretends she doesn't care for the gesture, and he pretends he isn't doing it on purpose.

-fin-