Erik listens to this elaboration patiently, outwardly calm, and moving only to lift his arms into a slow fold across his chest. He did ask, he has to remind himself. He asked. Pietro did not burst in here and start announcing suspicions without prompt. This does nothing to loosen what feels like a fist clenched hard in his guts, but it does assuage the instantaneous knee-jerk impulse to tell the man to get out.

Perhaps now that ticking clock moment can occur, if only briefly.

"I can think of no such reason." Unlike his alternate, perhaps, Erik is not (yet?) capable of putting on an air of complete dispassion, but he is definitely becoming unresponsive. Wilfully so. "And since neither can you, apparently, this begs the question: why are you here?"