The brush of her hand against his hair separated his touch from her side and drew his eyes up to hers. Her expression was- well, it wasn't oddly genuine, but it was- it didn't seem as though she held it against him, at any rate.
Breaking apart her statements in his head took a moment of mulling over. It wasn't his fault, so he knew he really oughtn't feel responsible, but that awareness was more intellectual than anything else. She was an Auror, and it was a dangerous job; but it did little to diminish the nagging feeling that he should have been able to do something, anything. And really, it was probably him shoving her around a bit that had exacerbated things. So he was at least a little bit at fault. His father wouldn't have liked it, the idea of James pushing her around, too caught up with himself to notice that she was hurt. Still, it was good of her to say it out loud. The other part, the other part James could have done without.
James didn't think he wanted to know why it was stupid, didn't want to hear about how it somehow would have been smarter to... leave them another couple of days? Let them try once again to mark their flesh? A hope he wanted to trust told him that couldn't be how she meant it. He didn't want to talk the protocol of that place. Talking about any of it at the moment seemed like a bad idea. No desire for an argument or a fight bubbled in James' chest, but it was difficult to simply ban a topic from discussion - especially when they would have to talk about it eventually.
"Let's not..."
He didn't know how to finish the sentence properly, but he knew they needed to be talking about something else, doing anything else. Unwilling to let himself get angry again, to let himself do something stupid, he gave on bothering to think overly much about it. It was obvious she was trying to make feel better. And that was nice. It was what he needed to focus on: what they were doing now, now the mess of Spain.
James didn't even realize that he'd lifted his hand to the nape of her neck, that he'd pulled them closer to each other, until his lips were breaking over hers. They'd kissed before and things had turned out fine, so there was no reason to worry over it this time. And it was so much nicer, to let his mind relax from the task of regulating his words. It was an easy trade, giving his mouth something else to do. His fingers inched higher, almost slipping into her hair. This, he decided, was a much better way to communicate.