[Mephisto could probe him. He could push and pull at the threads Stephen gives, break him down to nothing just as he'd always planned. He could ask why Stephen's feelings didn't matter in the face of Mephisto's own, follow that strand until it's wrapped tightly enough around his fingers to make a proper marionette out of the doctor.

He won't lie to himself. A good portion of that idea is still compelling. He wants to see into Stephen's very core, understand how this man, this friend ticks at the barest of levels. The problem, Mephisto finds, is that he doesn't want to do anything with it.

Laziness. Sloth, he could call it. None of it would be true.]

Enamored. [He repeats his thoughts out loud this time.] That was what I told you last week. That is still true now. Obsession, you could say.

[Speak plainly, he'd only just said. But now he's dancing around in circles, pirouetting out of control in this waltz he and Stephen have chased since the moment they met only a few weeks prior.]

I cannot give you a word. I do not understand it myself. [But. But] But I do not want to see this place break you or take you. You have made a deal with me, and this place will not take that, take you from me.