At pristine and perfect, a sharp bark of a laugh burst out of him, a stark, explosive hah - cut just short as he dodged that smash and cascade of crystal. It was so important to be able to keep a sense of humor.
And it gave him a second to sort through the confusion surrounding Bucky - and it was still confusion, still just a web of lies and pretenses that seemed to catch on him every time he tried to turn and view it from another angle. Protecting her from what? Well, he sure wasn't going to slow down enough to puzzle it out now, or give up his offensive posture to ask her a fucking question. Forget it. "If you've got that kid protecting you, baby," he said instead, throwing all that mockery right back in her face with as much contempt as he could fit into one word (there were places in the universe where the mass of an entire Earth sat stuffed into the space of a thimble - he was hovering around that level of proficiency), "then you're plenty fucked without my help. Pristine and perfect, you're so full of shit. Don't pretend I ever asked you for a damn thing."
He seized up the tablecloth in his fists and yanked, dragging the place settings, the centerpieces, the food all toward his end of the table in a bid to deprive her of ammunition. There was a deafening report of metal, glass, ceramic crashing and clanging and crunching together as some of it skidded and rolled, some fell, some wobbled in an endless spiral back into place on the table. A massive tower of red poppies toppled out of its vase like a waterfall, scattering everywhere. His mouth tightened; he hauled the cloth the rest of the way into the floor, sending every last piece with it. He fucking hated flowers.
Alive was all he'd ever asked of her, he was pretty sure. He hadn't even realized he was asking for it, until it had started to seem like there might be a chance she wouldn't deliver. Alive was all he'd ever been prepared to give in return, and now - well. Let's see how that works out for you.
"And you know what," he pressed on, jabbing his finger at her, one hand crushingly tight on the back of the chair in front of him. "You know what - I'm not asking now. I don't care what you do." It was such a lie; the list of things he didn't care about was shrinking so quickly these days that he was starting to wonder how long it had ever been. "You want to spend your time getting into whatever stupid mess it is you need Barnes to haul you out of, you want to pretend you never heard a word I said, you want to take pot-shots at me with teacups - go ahead. - You could use the target practice, by the way, butterfingers. Because I am telling you - I'm not asking you for anything!" Something about those words scraped too close to a live wire, bringing up a pulse of - what was it? Rage? Mourning? Triumph? It felt like something almost coming unstoppered, about to bleed out in critical fashion, like something big that he'd buried and forgotten where it was and that he'd just inadvertently split in two with a shovel. It felt good, and it felt awful, and he wasn't even sure it had very much to do with her - she wasn't the one he wanted to shout it at, to drown in it. But she was on the other side of the table. She was here. And he wanted so badly to be done with asking for things. "I am not asking!"