Ben was hesitant at her suggestion, because Elliott looked so peaceful asleep in his crib, and because this felt... very intimate. It was one thing for Elliott to have fallen asleep in his arms before, when he'd already been sitting in his lap to read and play, but to just hold him while he was sleeping... it was unbalanced, was the thing. Elliott wouldn't be getting anything out of that, so it would just be for him, for Ben's own peace of mind, and he didn't know that he deserved that. He didn't really have a relationship with his son to speak of; he was just a man who'd visited one time and talked about broomsticks with him. If he was going to keep coming and visiting him moving forward, Ben wasn't sure it was a good precedent to set, using the boy for his own emotional comfort like that — he wasn't his parent, didn't have the right. If he wasn't going to visit anymore — if something unexpected and terrible happened on Friday — he certainly didn't have the right to share that burden with a sleeping toddler, or with his mother.

"That's alright," he deflected, taking a step back from the crib. "I don't want to risk waking him, if he's tired.