Cleaning out my computer and I've realized I have a lottt of suuper old, sup-par unpublished drabbles, so I figured I'd post them instead of just deleting the files forever. This one's kind of cracky:
"Alek, I…"
He waits patiently, his green gaze unintentionally piercing.
"Blisters, this is hard…"
She turns away, suffocating, scared to death. And if there's anything Deryn Sharp will not stand for, it's fear.
"I'm…"
Deep breath.
"Well…"
Force the shaking from her hands.
"I'm a girl."
He blinks, she waits.
He smiles, she's puzzled.
"I know."
Now she's really barking puzzled.
"I beg you're pardon?" That sounds much too polite to her ringing ears. "You barking knew? You sodding KNEW and you let me go on this long thinking I was carrying this sodding awful burden? Thinking that I was going to blow everything, betray you like a barking bible ninny and be forever shunned by his dead posh princeliness?"
He frowns. "I thought I was doing you a favour. I felt so foolish when Dr. Barlow found out my true identity, and I didn't put half the effort into it that you have; I wanted to keep you from feeling the same humiliation." He shakes his head, smiling humourlessly. "I didn't think you'd be so offended."
"You knew," she says again. She laughs. "You knew." Her grin is mirthless.
So, with her own personal brand of swagger and swiftness, she raises a hand and smacks him across the face with a resounding crack!
Then she leans in, very closely, and presses her lips tenderly to his smarting cheek.
When he's good and stunned, she brushes them down to his gaping mouth. She kisses him there, grinning for real now. It's gentle and wet and oh my. Just about makes up for that bitch slap.
"You're a dummkopf," she mutters against his lips.
Somehow he's still able to form sentences. "I was trying to be a gentleman. It was your secret to dispel when you were good and ready."
Something else occurs to her. "You touched me a whole lot."
He smirks a very unprincely smirk. It makes her insides quiver. "Got away with it, didn't I?"
HA HA Alek would never.