It was hard to watch her from across the room. There was only six feet between them, but it might as well have been an ocean. His insides tugged towards her, wanting to comfort her, wanting to touch her. He was a physical person by nature and he felt frankly impotent trying to have a conversation like this from so far away.

On the other hand, Art's directive on the subject could not have been any clearer. Don't fuck her until you know for sure. At the time Ben had thought there was no chance he'd ever want to be intimate with her again, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility, now. If he moved to comfort her, to hold her, and she nudged things in that direction... he probably wouldn't have stopped her, even after everything that had happened over the past two days.

Ben shot a quick, guilty look towards the front door. He was already letting Art down. He couldn't throw all his advice away, too, even if Ben personally believed wholeheartedly that there really was a baby.

"That's all I thought of, when she told me," he admitted. "I was — terrified. I thought you might've felt like you didn't have any other options. I thought... I thought you weren't even going to tell me. Because you wouldn't want to —" his throat was so dry, and his voice was noticeably hoarse as he concluded quietly, "— trap me."