It's all well and good as Sabine makes her observations because Blake is the kind of person that enjoys a deep dive, so to speak. But then Oscar becomes Oscar and that turns him a little green. Outside, the rain thickens, gusting winds rattling the door as it's pelted. Thunder rumbles and Blake swears he can feel it buzzing his chest with its depth.

Too real.

"You're right," he agrees, staring down into his cup. "—not nearly enough coffee." Which he takes steps to rectify, returning to the coffee pot to pour the slowest most careful refill to ever grace a gas station coffee bar.

Sabine can't know how her words feel so raw, that they enter like a slow knife burning a path to the unreconciled list of upsets stacked over the years.

(To have seen right through him, it's either too obvious or Sabine has a third eye. One seems more likely than the other, because it can't be both and he's failed enough in the past that he should know better in the present.

Had he left his guts on the ground? Is he made of glass?

Two months and change and years of progress squashed under the heavy hand of this new world.)

When he finds the cup full, he sets the pot back as carefully and quietly as possible, swallowing the grief, willing it away.

He keeps his distance.

"It's—" Complicated, he wants to say, but instead he says, "—nice to meet you, Sabine. Thanks for the—" He lifts his cup, now sporting a lid, only just noticing the rain has lightened to a drizzle. It might be the best time to go.