Pressing his lips together again, biting them as if to keep words from sneaking out before Barnaby is ready for them to, he lowers his head, hiding the angry heat of his face behind the thick fall of the fringe of his bangs and the frames of his glasses. He doesn't feel worse for having said what he did to Kotetsu, though he thought he would have. Neither does he particularly feel relieved, either. He just feels a little at a loss, unsure how to step forward. The look on Kotetsu's face makes it clear Barnaby can't go back.

"Maybe," Barnaby says. "But I knew when you were ready you would come back I didn't know I would come back with you until that night. But something happened. And I did. But if I'd have come to visit, would you have come back because you felt guilty? Or because it was time, and because you wanted to? I didn't have the right to insert myself into your life with your family, did I? That's what this was, for a year. Proving to myself that I deserved to have this. That whatever it was that I was feeling was capable of being reciprocated. It's a strange feeling to worry that someone is more important to you than you are to them."

By the end, Barnaby is speaking to himself, more than the other man He'd wondered why he hadn't gone to visit, himself.