"Don't make yourself miserable because you haven't suffered enough." he smiles but it's pain-sharpened and he closes sore, too-hot eyes reluctantly. "Needed... someone here."

He needed someone to be here. And if it hadn't been her then all his efforts in the desert would have been put into fighting her over it. This situation, those first few hours aside, is the preferable one. The fever will die out and he'll find a way to bypass the following weeks of infirmity, if it takes a cheap deal with something unsavory in the underground to accomplish it.

"Saved me having to club you. You never... never went for the caveman thing."