Spoilers: None.
A/N: You'll probably hate me for what I don't say but hopefully everyone will enjoy it anyway. :D Thanks to Fanwoman for betareading.
Call My Bluff
Consequences
He tenses at the memory as he stares at the ceiling. He was trying to forget, to slip into sleep, but here he finds himself unable to. He started wondering as he lay there, in those minutes before you sleep, the time for what-ifs and it half evolved into a debate with himself. Those idle thoughts changed into real worries, real fear over what he'd done.
As he recalls the scene, he finds his heart racing just like it had at the time, the moment where he'd realised what he'd said, the exact words he'd said to her. Because he'd smiled at them for all of four seconds before finding his senses and really thinking them over like he should have done straight off, before he spoke them.
He's not sure what she thought of them. She turned back slightly, head to the side just so with an amused smile, but she does that so often he's hasn't a clue what that means. Did she humour him? Realise even that he didn't mean it like that? Oh, who was he kidding, she was a woman, of course she'd take it like that! It'd be a small miracle that she didn't.
Yet for all his certainty that he'd messed everything up, stuck his foot in his mouth - which wasn't too difficult considering his big mouth – he still didn't know what had actually happened there.
He'd said what he'd said and she'd smiled at him. They were the facts. But right now, nothing added up, you couldn't measure someone's interpretation of something by previous interaction, and he couldn't predict what she thought. In fact, he didn't want to predict, it got him nowhere; he wanted to know.
But what could he do? He'd felt sick as soon as he'd understood the possible consequences of it, a feeling only calmed partially by her mysterious reaction. He wanted to take the words back or explain what he'd really meant. Neither of which had he done. One was too insulting to try and the other too foolish, inspiring too much fear that he'd make things worse. Like give away that what he'd said was exactly true, just he'd not meant to say exactly that. Those words that she was only going to understand one thing by. That was the problem, and it wasn't going to go away.