When the tension finally breaks, it is more a matter of being an inevitable occurrence than a moment of maddening passion. By this time, both sides have been teasing one another for so long that it becomes anticlimactic. It is more a game than it is anything else, and whomever gives in first loses the round.
The repeated request from one to the other that they just stop thinking and act on what they really want becomes incredibly irritating after about the fourth repetition. At this moment, it is merely a matter of who gives in and starts it first.
Then afterwards, it becomes a blur of several things happening very quickly, there are a few games of blackjack, several cigarettes, and the obligatory questions that must be asked, facts established. The answers are surprising, but welcome. One side does have the grace to inform the other that their impressions of themselves are wildly wrong, and they should start believing it.
It could be dangerous, this believing someone about themself. It could be dangerous to believe that it stops when they want it to, and not otherwise. It could be dangerous to play these games to begin with, in all real honesty.
But both are only human, and following rules aside from their own is not something that humans do very well.
