Alastor shook his head because it was all just so ridiculous. He didn't understand why the fundamentals of how they communicated had to change because the way they recognised their feelings did. He wasn't one for talking about his feelings. He hid them and let his actions speak for him. 'Strong, silent type' his mother had teased him once. It worked for him.
"No, I don't want you to stay away. I never wanted you to stay away. But, I'm not in the habit of forcing my friends to spend time with me when they don't seem to want to do so."
Rubbing at the back of his neck, a nervous gesture he hadn't done since they were in school, yet had caught himself doing more these last couple of weeks, Alastor sighed. "The words are never going to be easy for me." Chuckled ruefully. "I've said them now. It might be another twenty-some years before you hear them again.
"But, I always mean what I say. The problem is that simply admitting what I feel doesn't change the fact that I'm still married to my job. I still worry that getting involved would be dangerous for us both. And with Dumbledore wanting to plan for a future where I could end up with the responsibility of all this on top of everything...I need time to think about what I want means exactly that. I need to figure out what I want for my life before we can figure out how that fits in with what we want." And that had been difficult to do with the way they'd continued to talk around things in circles, misunderstanding each other. "It means, no matter how much I dislike the idea, I don't want you to change who you are or how you behave, who you sleep with, for me."
He reached out to cup her chin in his hand. "It means I've already lived through losing you once, and that was before this. This..." he leaned forward and kissed her softly. "This scares the hell out of the big, bad auror."