Oh, she must have done something wrong. He'd gasped, like he wasn't expecting something, so something must have happened. But what? The only thing she'd done differently was putting her hands on his neck, so it must have been that, but... he'd put his hand on her neck first, so surely that was allowed? Why would he be able to do it if she wasn't?

It must have been wrong, though, and he must have been angry about it, because he'd grabbed her waist with both hands now and pulled her forward. The only thing she could think to compare this to was a heated argument, where two people closed the distance between them in order to deliver verbal jabs more effectively. It wasn't until he pulled back and she opened her eyes again that she realized he wasn't angry, which just left her even more confused about what had happened.

Was it over, then? Their lips weren't touching anymore, but his hands were still on her and he was giving her a look. She didn't know exactly what that look meant, but it wasn't his normal conversational expression. Juliana wondered if she ought to take her hands off of him, but he hadn't moved yet and she sort of wanted him to go first — as though they would become unbalanced if she moved her hands while he was still holding her waist.

"Oh," she said, because she felt like she ought to say something, but had not sorted through her own thoughts enough to know what. And she hardly had any breath left in her, apparently, so that was another obstacle.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to kiss her again and he couldn't, because she'd said only once, but his body didn't seem to think once was enough. She looked a little confused, a little dazed, but it didn't look the same way he was feeling so he didn't know whether to close the distance between them again or pull away completely, so he just - didn't do either, at least for the moment, and tried to catch his breath.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, finding that his voice was still a little raspy and breathless. His hands loosened their grip on her waist, but he didn't let go completely. He held them there, subconsciously committing the feeling and size of her to memory, along with the feeling of her lips and the little noise and the taste of her. The insecurities began bubbling up inside him again as he considered that perhaps she hadn't like the kiss, which is why she didn't look pleased. Maybe he should have kept it gentle and chaste, which would have been less memorable but also potentially less damaging to their acquaintanceship is she was willing to rebuild it. Which—was she?

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Juliana watched his eyes. Their breathing was out of sync, which was a little off-putting; it was adding too much noise to the moment, she felt. She was entirely incapable of changing the rhythm of her breath, though. She needed all the air she could get.

"You already stopped," she pointed out quietly. His hands may have still been on her waist but there was no doubt whatsoever that he was stopped, even if she'd been wondering a moment ago whether or not the kiss was actually over. She started to move her hands off of his neck, but realized she had no idea where else to put them. There wasn't enough space in between the two of them for her to resume fidgeting, but she couldn't put them behind her back without first brushing his hands off of her waist, and she was afraid that doing that might make him think she was upset about something. Which — she wasn't. She hadn't worked out how she did feel, yet, but she certainly wasn't upset. She'd asked to be kissed, and he'd kissed her, and she had no reason to suspect that he'd done anything wrong or unusual during the kiss.

She moved her hands to his shoulders and rested them there lightly, which felt a little less intimate than his neck, at least.

"Was that, ah —" she started, eyes sinking from his face down to the middle of his chest as she tried to find the right way to phrase her question. A part of her wanted to ask did I do it right? but she still wasn't sure that she had actually done anything, and — well, what would she do if the answer was no? Try to find opportunities to practice? Take notes about what had gone wrong and review them before her next opportunity to kiss someone? She'd gone nearly thirty years without kissing anyone. If she was really terrible at it, she could probably just go the rest of her life without it happening again.

No, she didn't want to ask about her performance, but about his. "Is that the way these things typically go?" she said. She looked up at him with a slight frown, but realized after a moment that she might have conveyed disappointment, which had not been her intention. "I mean — I don't have anything to compare it to. So I don't know," she clarified hastily.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

He had stopped, and he hadn't wanted to stop, but her comment made it clear that he wouldn't get to kiss her again. The disappointment seeped in even despite his attempts to tell himself how irrational it was. Maybe Art had been right; maybe he did need to be with a woman, because at this time last month he wouldn't have considered kissing Miss Binns in this way and then feeling disappointed when he couldn't do it again. (Of course, he could find women—he'd never liked the impersonality of brothels, but it was preferable to all the feelings swirling around in his chest.)

A shiver ran up his spine when her hands came to a rest on his shoulders, and he felt compelled to move his hands, too, but really he could only take them off and he wasn't ready to break that contact yet. He watched as her gaze drop, and suddenly she was talking and he was very alert to her words but more specifically her tone, because he needed to know how she was feeling—towards the kiss, towards him. She didn't make any comments about how terrible (or conversely, how nice) it was, and instead asked him if this was normal, as if he was the authority on kissing.

Lach had kissed his fair share of women in his life. He was at Hogwarts when he had his first, but his second didn't come until he'd entered the quidditch league, and unless he counted the strangers he'd kissed while in America and Fallon after that... there weren't many really base his answer off of. "Every kiss isn't... the same," he answered. He was trying to be honest, but he felt the heat rising up his neck; it was an awkward thing to talk about right after kissing, but she wasn't experienced and deserved the truth at the very least. "And I've - I've kissed women before, but - I don't know, you can't really compare them. Kisses aren't meant to be the same each time." Some people were worse kissers than others, but he didn't think that's what she was asking; she wanted to know if their kiss was a normal kiss.

"I - I liked it, though," he said through a shaky breath. Her frown suggested she might have not felt the same way, and now that insecurity was creeping in, and he felt a little silly. His hands left her waist, but didn't find another place to rest, instead coming back to his side.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Her brows knit together in confusion at his response. She didn't respond to his last sentence, about liking it. That was immaterial. (Well, not entirely immaterial; it made her feel a little good about herself, as though maybe she had done it right, which was — thrilling, but not something she had time to focus on at the moment).

"What do you mean, they're not the same?" she asked. From her rather limited sample size, there had been a few differences, but also a significant amount of overlap — the softness of his mouth, for instance. But she'd been so flustered the last time, and she hadn't even closed her eyes, so she wasn't sure whether or not it really counted. She'd been expecting this second experience to be a much more representative one, but she hadn't accounted for this particular wrinkle. "What would be different, if you kissed me again?"

Did he mean every kiss, or did he just mean that it was different when you kissed different people? Maybe she was being stupid, asking a question like that. Or, not stupid — Juliana was not stupid — but inexperienced. She was certainly inexperienced in this particular area, and although she had more or less admitted to that already she felt a little self-conscious about the idea that it might be showing in the way she talked about it.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

It was sort of funny, really, but not terribly surprising, that Miss Binns' analytical nature extended to something as purely emotional as kissing. In fact, he was probably silly for thinking she'd allow herself to fall victim to her emotions, which might help explain why he still hadn't figured out whether she liked it or not. "Kisss have... different purposes. Some are chaste - like when you're seeing some off for the day," he explained. His parents had always been affectionate with each other, so Lach had been exposed to that sort of kissing from the time he was a child. "But some are more intimate." That was a good word. Their kiss, he supposed, had fallen somewhere between the two; it was not a hungry and desperate kiss, but between their wandering hands and their increasing closeness, it might have reached it. Might have.

"I mean, if I were to kiss you again, I would -" Lach took a breath and lifted his hands from his side, considering whether this was a good idea or not. But she'd asked, and he wasn't going to do anything, so maybe... "- put my hand here," he said, one arm snaking around her waist, where his hand came to a rest on the small of her back, while the other one went to the back of her neck, where his fingertips tangled into the little strands of hair that had already fallen from her updo. "- and this one, here." He looked at her, and let a moment pass. He could kiss her again, physically. He had done so before without asking, but he'd felt a little bad about it once she'd reacted so poorly, and if he had even just a smidgen of a reason to think she might want him to kiss her again, he would. There was tension in the air—at least for him, since he had no idea how she was feeling, still—and he could feel his stomach tightening.

"I don't think I would - what I mean to say is, I would wait to see how you responded before I did anything unexpected, because I respect you." Which, upon saying it out loud, helped explain why he didn't really kiss women often. Kissing women who weren't doing it willingly made him feel a little weird, and when it felt weird he tended to perform less than enthusiastically.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Oh, Juliana thought as he moved his arm around her, it's like dancing. She had never particularly cared for dancing, preferring conversation when she was forced to attend social events, but she knew some young women were crazy for dancing. Maybe those women were also the sorts of women who kissed people. Or — did women kiss people, or was it always men starting these things off? She tried to picture doing to same things to Lachlan that he had done to her, but it seemed ridiculous. Was that just because he was so much bigger than her? She thought if she were to put her hand on his back and another on his neck it wouldn't have at all the same feeling.

So where would her hands go, then? Presumably somewhere different. She glanced down at his chest, his shoulders, his arms, trying to figure out if she had any instinct for this buried within her somewhere. Before she could make a decision, however, he said something that surprised her.

"You do?" Juliana asked, looking up at his face again. It wasn't just that it was a compliment. The specific word he'd used — respect — had a bigger connotation than any of the things he'd said during their last conversation. "You hardly know me."

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

She didn't comment on his hands or where they were placed, and it bothered him more than he thought it would have. She wasn't really commenting on anything, he realized, but rather making a stream of questions as if trying to wrap her head around the philosophy of kissing (which, once again, was in-character for her despite how impatient he found himself growing).

And then she went and questioned his respect for her, which - gave him pause. He did respect her, but he didn't think it was rooted in how long he'd known her. He'd never really thought about respect in those terms, because for hi it was something that he decided quickly whether to give to a person or not. His initial impression of her had not been a particularly good one, but for as argumentative and stubborn she'd been, she'd proven to have her head on her shoulders and a strong mind—which, as someone who didn't always have either of those things, he could appreciate.

"I know enough about you to respect you," he countered, his hand at her neck sliding down to the middle of her shoulder blades, "And anyways, you're a woman—you deserve respect regardless of how well I know you."

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

"Oh," Juliana responded, face falling. She hadn't even realized how invested she had become in this new idea of him respecting her until he'd said that. That wasn't the sort of respect she was after. The word meant different things in different contexts. When men said they respected each other, they meant that they considered the other person's ideas and opinions valid, sound, worthy of consideration. It was a word that conveyed you are worth my time, and Juliana had been striving for that more or less her entire life. She'd started to find it, with her research, but that was only by writing under a pseudonym. Everyone assumed Marlowe Forfang was some wealthy old man with decades of research under his belt, and that was who they respected. When men said things like women deserve respect, they didn't mean that. They meant that men ought to offer women their coats when it was cold, or walk on the street side of the path to block splashes from passing carriages.

She had naively assumed, probably due to how well her interaction with Mr. Abernathy had gone that weekend, that he had meant real respect. It had been enticing to think that he might have seen something in her that he thought was really valuable on its own merit, not just valuable for a woman. She'd thought, for just a fleeting moment when he'd said it, that he'd seen her and understood her and that he was saying you're worthy. What he had actually been saying was you're weak.

"Well, then," she said briskly, using her hands to brush his arms away. She took a step back and blinked, trying to determine the fastest way to extricate herself from this situation.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

He didn’t immediately catch onto what he’d said that caused her to push him away—he could not focus on that when he was suddenly overwhelmed by disappointment—but it didn’t take long to figure out what part of his words had offended her.

He’d said it to be gallant, of course, to reassure her that he hadn’t intended to take advantage of her. He wanted her to think he was a gentleman, despite his rugged appearance and not-always eloquent way of speaking. But obviously she didn’t care about that, and she’d taken offense.

“You’re upset,“ he said matter-of-factly. “but I didn’t mean it like - like that.” He was nervous again, because Miss Binns had a way of trying to run away whenever she was upset and was never willing to talk things out.

He resisted the urge to step toward, to close to space, because he knew she would try to flee.

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"Nevermind," Juliana said, taking another step back. She looked around, trying to find another thing in the room to anchor herself to besides him. This was all his, though, so it wasn't helping. Her eyes found the tea cup she'd discarded a few moments ago and for half a beat she considered picking that back up, as though a teacup in her hands was as good as a shield to prevent any further advances from him, but that was ridiculous. The last thing she wanted at the moment was to sit down and drink tea.

"I'm not upset with you," she said tersely. Despite her tone, she wasn't. She was upset with herself, for feeling so disappointed about this. It wasn't surprising that he might say some banal thing like you're a woman—you deserve respect regardless, and she shouldn't have allowed herself to hope for anything deeper. He wasn't a villain; he was typical. Everyone felt this way, and she had been fighting against it for so long in secrecy, and it had been stupid — stupid — to think that she might meet someone by chance at a garden party and then have two conversations with them and come to discover that they were different from everyone else in the world. She had gotten too optimistic, after the conversation with Mr. Abernathy, but that was different. He'd known her, because they'd been exchanging letters for over a year, and he knew her work — he'd read her research and her book. So he understood that she was more than just a girl, in a way that Lachlan MacFusty could not possibly have done. This was not his fault; it was hers, for setting her expectations too high.

And it had been stupid to come here, too. She'd been turning over what Camilla had said about how you know whether or not you want to kiss someone, and she had thought — what? She had thought that because her mind had drifted to him more often than she would have liked over the past few weeks, that maybe she was — what? In love with him, after only having three conversations and a handful of letters? That she would get here and ask him to kiss her and everything would just fall into place, and that she would realize it did feel nice and she did want to be kissed more and — and what? What would it even have changed, if that had happened? What had her plan even been, even if it had all gone exactly according to plan? And why had she let herself be so disappointed a moment ago over the objectively trivial realization that he was just a man like every other man in the world, not some sort of dashing secret soul mate just waiting to be uncovered?

This was stupid. Coming here was stupid, and she was angry at herself for having done it.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

She was stepping away, trying to put more distance between them, and he wouldn't have minded as much if he didn't know that she also tended to withdraw emotionally when she did that. He stepped forward, his stride at least twice the length of hers, and sought her hand—not in a affectionate or romantic way, but in a comforting way, like he was trying to anchor her to the floor before she tried to run. If he could just talk her down, get her to stop and listen, he might be able to explain himself better. But even though she insisted she wasn't upset with him, she sounded it, and more than that she looked upset, which struck him, because he'd seen her look confused and conflicted and frustrated, but never with that specific expression.

It would help if he knew how to verbalize exactly how he felt. He didn't think she was just a woman, because she definitely wasn't some wide-smiling debutante who pretended to trip over her own feet to secure a suitor; she was witty and smart in the most confusing of ways, but he couldn't say anything that might be interpreted of depriving her of her femininity.

"No - you're allowed to be," he said with a frown, wishing he'd be able to undo the last twenty seconds and rid himself of the specific insecurity that led him to say what he'd said, "but - I can't do this, you shutting down. Tell me what I can do to fix it." He may not have been as clever at her, but he could be practical about this; he liked to solve conflicts, even when she made it difficult.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Juliana pulled her hand away from his the moment she realized what he was doing. She moved to take another step back, but she hadn't had much room to begin with and her shin bumped up against the edge of the sofa's seat. Trapped, again, the way she had been in the kitchen the last time when he'd been advancing towards her and trying to trick her into kissing him.

"You don't have to fix it," she insisted, pulling her hands up as she tried to decide what to do with them. She felt like she needed to do something, because he had just reached for her hand and he might do it again and she wanted to deter him, but she didn't have much space to move and her dress didn't have pockets. She could have just shoved them behind her back, but that would have looked silly, and made it obvious that she was putting a good deal of energy into avoiding touching him, which she didn't want him to catch on to.

She'd said he didn't have to fix it, but it might have been more accurate to say you don't get to fix it. Juliana fixed her own life. She was exceptionally capable of doing so — in the weeks since they'd last spoken she had coldly destroyed yet another unsuspecting citizen and now, she imagined, no one would so much as remember her name when it came to society gossip. She'd fixed that, and she'd found a way to publish her research, and she could do all of this herself. She did not need a man to swoop in and save her. She didn't need him to be the voice of reason when she was wrestling with inappropriate emotional responses to imagined slights.

Besides, even if she'd wanted help, she couldn't have asked for help from him. That would have meant explaining everything that she'd been thinking, leading up to her decision to come here today, and it would mean explaining what she had been thinking and feeling during today, and she couldn't even begin to fathom sharing those things with him.

She wanted to move away from him, but there was nowhere to go. She started to reach towards him with one hand, to push him out of the way like she'd done the last time she'd been in this situation, but she realized that would require her to touch him and she didn't feel up to the task. She pulled her hand back and left it in the air at her side. Her cheeks flushed. "Can you let me past, please?"

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

She was avoiding his touch, avoiding him, and it was clear that this was going to be just like the last time, where he did something stupid and she closed herself off from him and then left him sitting there wondering what he could have done different. He hated it, the feelings of insecurity, fear, and loneliness that he ended up feeling whenever he allowed himself to feel things for a woman. He didn't love Miss Binns—he hadn't figured out what exactly he felt to her, even though he could admit that liked her a little, at least enough to be sad when she left—but she'd managed to evoke same confusion, guilt, and sadness from him that Fallon had the left time they'd spoken.

He normally might have pressed farther, because he usually didn't have the sense to stop until he'd gone overboard. He'd regretted trying to push her the last time she'd left, but he would have done the same now, except he was so done feeling like this that he tore his gaze from hers and looked around the room, trying to reign in his emotions before he said or did anything he'd regret once again. It must have been the vulnerability in taking her offer to kiss her, and then actually doing it—it had to have been that, because his insecurities were beginning to materialize on his expression, and he didn't like that. He felt the straining in his face and his eyelids drooped as he tried to figure out what to do or where to go. He chewed on his bottom lip, whether to keep himself from speaking or to keep it from wavering with unexpressed emotion, and after a moment of contemplation he did as she asked.

The image of her leaving would just stick in his mind (he knew, because it had the last time) and he didn't want to fuel the emotions threatening to spill out of his chest, so instead of stepping backwards to let her pass, he shook himself to his head, resolving not to say another word more, and turned away and started towards the hallway.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

For half a second she thought he might not let her through, and she looked up at his face. He wasn't looking at her, but his features were incredibly expressive in that moment before he moved away, and it sent a pang of guilt through her. He was very put out by this turn of events, and it had never occurred to her that he would be. In retrospect that had been incredibly short-sighted of her. Whatever she had been hoping to learn from their second kiss was evidently something he'd already figured out and come to terms with, since he'd already kissed her once and had been willing to do it again. He'd even warned her about this, in a way: if you're doing this to mess with me, don't. She'd only been thinking of her own feelings on the subject, but evidently a kiss meant something significant to him. She'd offered it, and then not followed through — just as he'd unwittingly done when he teased her with the word respect and then fallen back on because you're a woman. She hadn't done it maliciously, of course, just as he hadn't. They were speaking different languages.

"I'm sorry," she called after him as he moved to the hallway, not moving herself yet. She felt the impulse to add Lachlan, but she'd never said his name out loud before (not to him, anyway) and it felt like crossing a line that perhaps she didn't have any rights to cross. A part of her did wonder what it would sound like to hear him say it, with his accent which was so markedly different from hers as a Londoner, but — this wasn't really the time for that.

"It's not you," she added, glancing down the hallway after him. She felt very exposed all of the sudden, despite being fully dressed, so found herself crossing her arms over her chest. Her shoulders slumped inward just slightly, making her look a little smaller.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Lachlan paused at the end of the hall in front of his bedroom door, his hand a few inches from the handle when she spoke, it isn't you. He froze in place and closed his eyes, considering whether he ought to continue fleeing into his bedroom or if he ought to respond. He'd never been good at that, keeping his mouth shut when he should've; he always said the wrong thing, always made it worse. Some emotions were better keeping in his heart, and he knew that, but when the time came to put it into practice he failed miserably. He should go into his room; she was unlikely to follow him, and there he would be safe to let his feelings show without anyone to bear witness.

But she spoke, and it was an opening to respond, and he remembered that he'd been the one who wanted to talk things out and he'd been the one to accuse her of shutting down and walking away. He opened his eyes and turned around, his back pressed against his door. She looked miserable as well, but he didn't know why—and wasn't that the root of the problem?

"You would have had me fooled," he said, his gaze on her crossed arms instead of her eyes, knowing that if they made eye contact she'd be really able to see him. He should never have kissed her, should not have let his hands wander in a way that left an imprint on his mind, because even looking there he could remember how it felt to have her arms around his neck, and it made the reminder of how she'd brushed him away all the worse. "But if you're just saying that - I am sorry. Truly. I do respect you, it's just -" His tone was even—maybe even too even, like he was making an active effort to keep it that way—and his expressed unnaturally still. Now he felt silly again, as though she was going to tell him that it wasn't his comment about respect that had upset her, but some way he touched her or the tone of his voice.

"I'm no mind-reader, Juliana. I wish I was." She'd insinuated that he had trouble keeping up plenty of times since they'd met, but really he thought she did a poor job of explaining herself and her intentions. He didn't mind so much when it was about the way she handled her scandal, but now there was kissing and feelings involved, and - it made it more difficult for him to cope with.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —