[The contact alone wouldn't bother him-- touching, say, Ivan this way, if for some inexplicable reason Ivan felt beset by woes over failed attempts at finding a wife, would not bother Gregor at all. He's not that besieged by his own nightmares. But when he touches Miles, he always wants more. Always feels the urge to increase, to go further, and it scares him because he doesn't know where or if that would stop.

Sometimes his desires scare him. Turned on Miles, on a real person instead of just an abstract, awful fantasy, scares him twice as much. It makes his stomach twist, but he doesn't pull away.

That Miles thinks this is the most indefensible topic is laughable to Gregor, in the most horrible of ways, because he knows why Miles think that and he also knows just how easily his own brain is preoccupied with him physically these days. Such as three seconds ago, point of fact. Gregor has to struggle with himself on what to say and how to say it without stepping over a line he doesn't dare to cross.]

There's nothing wrong with you, [he ends up saying, again as he has before, in curbed frustration. You're driving me crazy with how much I want you, and you think no one else is going to see what I do? Thankfully, he manages to keep that in the corner of his mind that he now keeps from Miles.] You wouldn't want to be with someone who bought into rot like that, anyway. You're not a curiosity.