[Even like this, exhausted as he is — even when he'd been told not to move — Tseng still finds the strength to reach for him, to touch him like no one has ever dared to or cared to or both. It's more exertion than he should be putting himself through, and for a wild moment Rufus considers what might happen if he were to catch Tseng's hand in both of his own, bring it up to his mouth and press it against his own lips in an echo of how he'd fed Tseng the ice, like against like. It'd be more trouble than it's worth, maybe, with the risk of the IV pulling or the pulse ox getting jostled and alarming the machines. But in a way, he's almost grateful for the tubes and machinery, too — for how they force him to be deliberate, and careful, and methodical in every choice that he makes right now.]

Is that what I am? A natural disaster?

[Has Tseng always been one for poetry? Or is metaphor just the only vehicle he finds appropriate for trying to put his feelings into something that can properly be conveyed? Either way, the comparison sinks into his soul and becomes a part of him; how funny, he reflects, that of the two of them he would've identified Tseng as the force of nature, not himself. Yet Tseng seems to see things the precise opposite way.

Though, if he is a hurricane, then Tseng is a man who chases them, and that much feels fitting indeed. Maybe this room, this place, this moment, is the eye of the figurative storm — ephemeral at best, but eerily peaceful while it lasts.]

I don't deserve you, Tseng. I never have.

[His hand comes up slowly, spurred on by a moment of courage of his own, and within a passing moment his fingers are sliding along Tseng's cheek, resting gentle against his face as the pad of his thumb strokes the prickling stubble on his chin.]

You could ask me for the world and I would give it to you. [He pauses. Smiles, a little rueful.] — Well. I'd share it, at least.