No you don't understand what the "Are you courting me?" scene does to me. As funny as it is, as soon as Thara thinks that he thinks "If he said no, I would have embarrassed myself beyond bearing. If he said yes, I would be trapped into having to insist that he had made a terrible mistake and having to leave."

In his mind THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. Of course Iana saying he's not into Thara would suck, but Thara insists that the other possible outcome is even worse because it would force Thara to straight up take himself from the building.

Even in his own head there is no safety, there is no good outcome to interacting with other people. He can't even think about a man being attracted to him without immediately moving on to the part where he has to insist that he isn't gay, he isn't into this guy, and he thinks he might have left the oven on.

And like. I get it. Obviously. You grow up knowing something is Wrong with you, but you think maybe you can make that not matter, or at least matter less when compared with all the other stuff you've done with your life and then you fall in love and it is amazing and beautiful and actively destroying your carefully built life from the word 'go' and you're thinking maybe that's not so bad until your minor affair has an actual body count.

I don't know how you recover from that. The Thara we see in Witness for the Dead certainly hasn't. He's not okay with what has happened. Until like the last thirty pages he can't even reconcile his love for a man who became a murderer. He is so deep in his hole of self-loathing and fear of his own choices and desires that he can't even think about perusing reciprocated interest.

And he says this perfectly matter of factly, as if the obvious response to an attractive man taking you to dinner for possible getting-into-your-pants reasons is that you have no idea what he's talking about and you have to go.

I'm sorry, I just have something in my eye and a brick on my heart