Author's Note: Chapters 13, 14 and 15 have decided to shake hands and call it a day.

To him, words have always been messengers, stamped with purpose and forever void of incoherence. He played with them often, and he played with them gracefully. He would summon them when he was in need of an armor, and he'd resort to them when he wished to show kindness. Quantity and quality were united in a successful marriage inside his sharp mind and their offspring were the words he so loved.

So, when he stopped talking to her altogether, she knew it was time to act. To make a fool of herself. Truly, anything. She wasn't about to let him discard his love for her. It was hers to keep.

"You haven't spoken to me in two days. We're working together, aren't we? We need to be functional at work," she tried one evening when an opportunity for discussion presented itself inside a surveillance van at the end of a successful mission.

"If you're so insistent on carrying out a DIY therapy session, why don't you share how comical it was to observe an old man getting himself off?" there they were, his words. Summoned to execute her once and for all.

He'd assumed she thought of him as pathetic, old and perverted. She did not. He needed to know.

"I shouldn't have done what I did. I thought about giving you your privacy, but I decided to stay put and watch," the truth could be her salvation if it didn't finish what his words had started.

He looked at her incredulously, still unaware where she was headed. She recognized it'd never occurred to him he could be an object of her desire, the silly man.

"I stayed because I wanted to watch you. Because I want you. How can you not see it?" she accused him. He looked so surprised, the fool. His cheek was hard at work in between his teeth. She felt so hopeful then, and so very light.

She was going to give him his privacy this time, at least.

The van door slid open and she was out, out of the nightmare she'd caused.

"If anything, you're middle-aged," she announced with cheer.

He smiled.