“Yes, that too, but I was talking about you being neither insane nor scary. When I’m through with you, I hope that you will be both, as well as irrevocably in love with me.”
Uh. “You want me to be crazy and scary?” I ask. Irrevocably in love with him I can do. I’malreadydoing it. Insane and scary, though…
“Yes,” he confirms. “And obsessive, if you don’t mind. Codependency is the goal here for me.”
“Um,” I mumble. Obsessive, also, I have down. “How scary are you wanting?” I could probably muster up a jump scare or two. “And how insane?”
“Ideally, you’d be willing to help me torture men in my basement,” he answers breezily. “We can work up to that, though. How do you feel about mailing severed phalanges?”
I recoil. “Like severed fingers?” I ask. “As in actively rotting flesh?” There is a lot I would do for Archie. Dealing withactively rotting fleshhas not made that list.
He hums. “Maybe we start smaller. Locks of hair?”
“Starting me off with not mailing rotting flesh sounds good, yes,” I agree. “May I ask why you’re torturing people in your basement?”
“They’re bad people, and it’s fun to watch them suffer,” he answers, oh-so-casual.
I stare at the man sitting next to me at his beautiful, chicken-covered table, and I wonder if this is what they mean when they say that everyone has flaws. Not that I view wanting bad things to happen to bad people as a flaw, exactly, but I am also not imagining doing such things to the bad people myself in my basement, then mailing their severed bits when I’m finished.
Is this something I am willing to live with? As mentioned, when it comes to Archie I’d do alotof things—embarrassing, humiliating, awkward, terrifying things. Is one of those things ignoring his fantasies of torture?
His sweet, if manic, brown eyes stare back at me above an equally sweet,if manic, smile, and I think… yeah. One of those things is definitely ignoring his fantasies of torture.
“I suppose I could mail a lock or two of hair,” I concede.
His eyes go glassy. “My Sarelia, so willing to please,” he murmurs. “But, alas, we’ve gone off track. Marriage, yea or nay?”
Truly, nothing could have convinced me more that this is real than that lackluster proposal. A fanfiction wouldnever, and my wildest dreams would not dare to insult me in such a way.
Marriage of convenience or not, I have more romance in my left thumb than what the man before me has exhibited in either of his proposals to me.
I should not, I know, be disappointed. Because itisa marriage of convenience, even if the only convenient thing about it is that we can more easily stalk one another.
He did claim he wants codependency and love, though…
No. No, Sarelia,no. He said it outright, “marriage of convenience.” He did not say “a marriage arranged by us for the purpose of falling in love” like the character based on him did in my eighteenth century royalty alternate universe fanfic, also known as fanfic journal number sixteen.
I chew on my cheek and consider how low I am willing to place myself just to be in proximity of Archibald Pine. The answer is, of course, Hades.
“Yes,” I say, a blush washing over my face. “A marriage of convenience.”
He sucks in a ragged breath, and goosebumps rise on the skin of his forearms. “A marriage of convenience,” he echoes.
“Can I ask…” I hesitate, wringing my hands together in my lap.
“Yes, love?” he prompts. His calloused fingertips brush my ear as he tucks a strand of hair behind it.
I clear my throat. “It’s just… you didn’t really answer me. Before.”
“Hm?”
“Whyme? You know all this stuff about me, and you say you’ve been watching me, and I’m… well, I’m just messed up in the head enough tolikethat, but…whyhave you been watching me? Why am I here? Just…why?”
His head tilts, and his finger traces across the slope of my cheek and down to my jaw. “Because, my dear Sarelia, you caught my eye.” He drops his hand, sighing as he leans back in his chair. “You were at a convention in Louisville, once, to see me, but you didn’t come to talk to me. I saw you sitting not even twenty feet away from me, but you never stood. Never approached. You watched. You took pictures. You took videos. You wrote in your journal. But you didn’t come up to me, and that made me curious. Then, the more I dug up about you, the curiouser and curiouser I got until, eventually, I ran out of research I could do. There were no more records to scour or books of yours to read, there was onlyyouleft. So I hired Stone, and together we went about satiating my curiosity. Except, it never was satiated. Every day I discover something new about you, or something old but that hits me in a new way. I came to realize that I would never, ever, stop being curious about you. The plan was always to bring you here—bring you home. I can’t say the plan was to marry you, but… the plan was not ever to live without you. What’s the line… ‘You have bewitched me, body and soul?’ I have been bewitched by you since the moment I laid eyes on you.” He caresses my face, his thumb sweeping over my chin, then back. “And that iswhy, my love. Because it being anyone else but you would never have crossed my mind.”
I gulp.
I suppose I should not have complained about the lack of romance in my proposal. He was, apparently, storing it up so that he could sucker punch me with it all at once.
