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I get up from the sofa. I cross the room. I stand in front of him, not touching, just there, in his space, and I look at him and I say, as quietly and as directly as I know how:

"Please tell me what's happening."

He looks at me.

"I'm not…” He stops. Something in his face does something I have not seen before. A crack in the composure, small but real, something structural giving way. "I'm not—"

He stops again.

And then, and I will remember this for the rest of my life, Jan’s eyes fill.

He doesn't cry. Jan Novak does not cry, or has not, in all the months I have known him, he is a person of enormous self-containment and I have respected that and never pushed against it. But his eyes fill and his jaw tightens and he is doing everything in his considerable power to hold it and it is not quite working and the sight of it does something to my chest that I don't have a word for.

"Hey," I say. Softly. "Hey."

He turns away. One hand up — give me a second — and I give him the second and I wait and I don't touch him yet because I don't know if that's what he needs and I am trying very hard to read this correctly.

He takes a breath. Then another.

Then he turns back. His eyes are still bright. His jaw is tight. He looks like someone who has been holding something very heavy for a very long time and is not entirely sure he can set it down gracefully.

"I don’t…” He stops. Starts again. "You could have…” Another stop. He presses on. "The life. The one the world already has a template for. Children without…without having to explain anything to anyone. A partner you introduce and nobody has to… nobody has to adjust."

"Jan." I look at him. "What are you talking about."

He looks at me. "You know what I'm talking about."

"I don't. I genuinely don't. You've been… everything has been fine. We've been…” I stop. "What has been happening? When did this start?"

He makes a sound that is almost a laugh and isn't. "It started with the comment," he says. "The one Tomas sent me. And then Finn, and then the DM, and then New York and I…” He shakes his head. "I've been carrying it. I didn't want to say it because…”

I feel something tighten in my chest — not anger, something more like grief. I step toward him. "Why didn't you tell me."

“Because…” He stops.

"Jan." I look at him. I am confused and I am worried and I am trying very hard to follow this. "I've been here. Whatever this is, I've been right here the whole time."

Something in his face shifts at that. He looks at me and his voice is not steady and he does not stop. "I know," he says. "That's the problem. You've been here and I have spent my whole life being the thing people have to adjust to and you just, you didn't have to choose the harder thing and you did and I…”

He stops.

"I trust you," he says. Quieter. "I do. That's not…” He shakes his head. Then he looks at me directly and says the thing. The actual thing, plainly, the way Jan says things when he has decided to stop editing himself.

"You can go be with a woman who can give you children. I can't do that. You could have a simple life — a life nobody questions, a life that moves through the world without friction. And instead you're here with me, which is complicated and it will keep being complicated, and I don’t…” His voice breaks slightly. He pushes through it. "I don't understand why you would choose this when you don't have to. I don't understand what I have to offer you that is worth all of that. And I have been trying to understand it for weeks and I can't stop thinking that one day you're going to figure out that it isn't worth it and you're going to leave and I…”

He stops.

A breath.

"I can't make myself stop waiting for it."

Silence.

The apartment. The canal outside. The Thursday evening.

He looks at me. Something moves in his face — the movement of someone who has gone past the point of managing anything and has arrived, finally, at just the thing.

"I love you," he says. A beat. "And it scares me. Saying it out loud scares me."