The coffee mug slips from his fingers and clatters onto the empty plate, rocking and spilling a little but not falling onto its side. Andrew's face has gone white again, and he can't make himself look Max in the face.

"No," he says, almost soundlessly, beginning to shake his head side to side as though to say it with gesture if he can't with voice, again and again.

(What he wants to say and can't: please don't make me.)