Author's Note: For a Tumblr prompt asking for Gregor/Miriel. Their supports are a lot cuter than I thought they would be-I like that Gregor is able to make Miriel slow down a little bit (and is secretly also a genius?! GREGOR IS MAN OF MANY TALENTS apparently).
It was bamboozling, really.
She sat directly opposite him at tea-time, hat politely removed, and permitted him to fixedly observe the way her hair brushed against her mandible.
She should not have developed more than a professional relationship with Gregor. More was partial and egregiously removed the control of her experiment, which Gregor himself had provoked: an inquiry into common factors of attractiveness in human women to men of that singular orientation.
"Miriel is very pretty," Gregor said for the eighteenth time in three days. (Or, to be specific, the twelfth, for two of those times he had said "very beautiful" and four times he had said "very lovely.") "Gregor could be looking at her face all day."
"I still do not fully understand," she had to admit. "Exactly what data are you hoping to obtain in this scrutiny?"
"No data. Gregor just likes to look. He is man of simple pleasures."
"There must be some function to this desire," she insisted. "An evolutionary purpose, perhaps."
Gregor's terse look indicated that she was behaving in an unintelligent manner, which she found equal parts disgruntling, motivating, and compelling.
"Is because Gregor is feeling the love, of course. Is this not obvious to Miriel?"
An unexpected reaction: her heart stuttered and her face grew warm. Inserting a personal opinion into the midst of an experiment was unprofessional, yet…
"I am delighted to learn this," she told him. He, too, deserved to know as much as possible.