It's too late to apologize or back down - and she doesn't feel like doing either. Not that she really has a good baseline on how or when to apologize and it'd feel more like apologizing for his deafness — and at least in her own experience, she hated others commenting on her weaknesses. Was trying to do better at not punching into other's own.

So the answer is to treat him normally.

Even if that "normally" is a careful expectation he can at least read lips and a tilt of her head just in his direction, because showing she has more interest is not what she wants either. (It's all very complicated, isn't it, really?) But she is paying attention, stopping the knife with her (metal) hand as she watches him like a hawk.

Rolls her eyes at the proposed game with a barely arched brow, a gesture similar to "giving up now?" But he moves on without fully letting it process — a challenge of his own and she sneers at the rise. The knife flies and skirts the skin of the grape*, it does not puncture it fully but though the knife sails pass there is a nick into it.

"Again."

A demand, ever the sound of someone who didn't like failing (even if she didn't strictly fail).

[ * 1-10 fail and 11-20 pass; closer to the end point is the "worse" it is. ]