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EightHer Superheroine Name Would Be “The Persuader”
She wasn’t sure how things had shifted between them. Or even to what extent they really had. But she knew it was happening, at the very least, because when he suggested shetake her bloody coat off for fuck’s sake, she didn’t hesitate. She let him take it and hang it up on the special hanging thing.
And it didn’t even bother her when he turned back and saw what she was wearing and had this to say: “By Christ, what look were you going for there then?Blue Peterpresenter from 1987? Are you about to show me how to make a spaceship out of a toilet roll tube without getting my good clothes messy?”
Despite how much it should have.
It should have made her feel like she’d failed at looking like anything but bright and cute and fluffy. But instead, she just felt a little rueful. And kind of relieved.
And after a moment, she realized why:
It was the fact that he was gruff, and often irritated, and they squabbled constantly. But he’d yet to say a single truly cutting thing to her. In fact, this was probably the closest he’d come—and somehow, it still wasn’t that mean. He hadn’t said she looked poor or slovenly or a million other things he could have gone with.
He’d gone with something that maintained his blunt, cranky persona.
But wasn’t cruel in the least. It didn’t hurt her.
And that felt so strange and new she didn’t quite know how to process it at first. She wasn’t used to men—and in particular,men like him—being whatever this way was. She was used to getting shanked in the back when she was at her most vulnerable. Which she indisputably should have been, here.
She was inside a fancy museum with its attractive owner.
But she still felt pretty comfortable. She felt okay being thatBlue Peterpresenter. She even let herself get out the biscuits she’d baked the night before and vowed to eat only when he wasn’t there. The ones that were shaped like bunnies, and always broke the ice for her when she was sort of nervous.
And when she offered him one, he grumbled and groused.
But she could see him eyeing them.
In fact, he only stopped when she sat down, and crossed her legs, and started getting out her pens, and her notepad, and her research files, and her phone, to record him. Most likely because all this made him realize that thegetting comfortable with each otherpart was now over.
And they were into thetell me all your secretspart.
Even though he very clearly did not want to tell her any secrets.
It was the reason he was currently stalking around as she got sorted. As if he were never going to settle into this. So when she finally did ask something, she considered what had kept things light and easy before. What had given him space to talk freely with her.
And tried to go with the same thing again.
To be a little bit cheeky with him, a little bit silly.
But in a way that would never really hurt him. That she knew didn’t really matter to him, or even that he’d said to her himself. “So. Alfie. We’ve established that you’re an easily conned Luddite who may actually be the ghost of a Victorian child who died down the mines,” she said, with her tongue just ever so slightly in her cheek. Then got her reward: he stopped stalking.
And she could see it all over his face again.
He was trying not to seem amused. Even as he acted put out.
“Oh god. You’re not really going to put that in the book, are you?”
“That depends entirely on you.”
“Yeah, but depending on me is a recipe for disaster.”
“Not if you’re willing to share other things I could put in instead.”
“And you know full well I’m not. So Christ knows what this is going to be.”
He rolled his eyes on the end of that.
But she noticed he sat down as he did it.
