[He doesn't like feeling trapped. Only through discipline does he remain calm, clamped down on nagging anxiety like a fist even as it threatens to boil up in his blood at the provocation of those words.

Because they are true. His interest doesn't matter, if the course of his thoughts—and his own actions so far—have told him anything. Yet yielding such a weakness to this man, whoever he is, is out of the question.]

Maybe not. But I have no intention of giving them the satisfaction of my compliance.

[The wear and tear of these last several days shows on his face, an exhaustion underwritten with uncertainty and shadowed with deeper, private helplessness. At least in the Netherworld, he could isolate himself and await the end. Here it's impossible. Even in the dead of night, in an empty room, another man has found him.]

Is that really what you're looking for? Then you won't have any issue elsewhere. Plenty are willing enough.