#figuring out

He couldn’t figure her out. Moments would come and go that would leave him stumped, ideas and theories shattered with a second’s glance and those damnably enigmatic eyes. His delicate house of cards, each one a piece of empirical evidence that he’d carefully assembled from the things she would do, the things she would say, would flutter in a downwards anticlimax when she would do something new, undermining everything that had come before.

Had it not been her, this one, singular person, he would have been frustrated. His ire would rise, heartburn of the worst kind, and he would even be fundamentally worried. He wasn’t used to being thwarted, wasn’t used to not knowing. But she was a riddle that he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to solve. Like a monster in a horror film, it was only scary for as long as it stayed off camera, fleeting glimpses of something glistening in the blackness, but never the money shot. 

But she didn’t scare him. Excitement was the closest word he could get to without falling over himself and retching at the cliché of it all. Intrigued, perhaps, fit a little better. The corners still stuck out, and it was all a bit hap-hazard, but it was as far as he would allow him to go, just yet. 

“You’re day dreaming.” It sounded almost like an accusation. His eyes shifted from the middle distance to her face, and his lips broke into a smile.

“Only of you.” He smirked, the saccharine remark burning on his tongue, but the sarcasm made it easier to swallow. She rolled her eyes. 

“Naturally.” She drawled, and took a sip of her water, her eyes narrowing on him for a moment.

“Would you like to see me naked?”

And the house of cards came crashing down.