Needless to say, it wasn't the reaction he was looking for. He felt her tense against him, and could hear the stunned confusion in her voice... but it was in her silences that he could all but feel her discomfort, and her mirthless laugh served to crease his brow and wipe his characteristic smirk from his face. He immediately dropped his hands away from her, using them to push himself up onto his elbow to better regard her. Where moments ago there had been taunting playfulness, there was now a softness in his voice when he addressed her, the kind used to soothe spooked animals or frantic children. It was clear that his joke had overstepped a line, and while he did not necessarily feel guilt over what he had done, he did feel concern.
"Hey... Look, I just thought, you know, that you wanted to. I didn't mean to make you feel bad." Her story about the roustie made him bristle; had that been her first kiss? Some joke that was forced on her out of the blue without her consent? He pushed that thought aside for now, one hand gesturing vaguely in the air at her side; he didn't want to touch her and make this whole thing worse, but he certainly didn't want her categorizing what had just happened in the same light as all that. Ava was his friend, and had been for some time. He probably should have known her flirtation was just that. "Listen, A, that roustie sounds like an asshole. But I hope you know I wouldn't do something like that. I'm sorry. I mean it."
He reached up to awkwardly scratch the side of his nose. The mud was drying, and it was starting to itch. "Look, we can pretend it never happened. It was stupid."