[The trouble is, Gregor wants to tell him he's pretty in a thousand articulate, well-chosen words. Pretty is the least of it, pretty is juvenile and shallow and stupid and most of all effeminate, and there is nothing remotely feminine about Miles and that is the problem. Because Gregor is hopelessly, head over arse obsessed with him, anyway.

There's huge swathes of pain Miles is ruthlessly subjecting himself to as if it's his due course, and the worst of it is how little he shows outwardly, so much like Gregor himself with that coping mechanism that seeing it scrapes along his nerves. Because with that one bare hint Gregor can see the whole, abhorrent scope of it: he's trained in understanding people on an intuitive level and the whole mess unfolds before his eyes, practically, though of course he doesn't know what lengths it'd driven Miles to, that he can still see the reverberations is telling enough. That he thinks Gregor can't say anything here because he'll confirm that damn woman who raked him over the coals and didn't come close to appreciating him--

The whole dam breaks at once.]

You are so absurdly blind, [bursts out of him roughly, and his hand shoots out and snatches the wine bottle away from him, eyes blazing.] I can barely think for how bloody attractive you are sometimes and you think I agree with whoever did that to you?