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A thud.

The back of my head. A closed door. 

Big ouch.

I wasn\'t shocked, what I just heard didn\'t exactly have me being shooketh to the core. Fact was, aside from being blown back from the initial impact by such a sudden turn of events, I really couldn\'t find it myself to clap my cheeks and scream my lungs out in a panic.

Maybe it\'s just cause I was processing it still, I just kept thinking perhaps it wasn\'t as bad as she was wording it out. I like to think that… but just taking a glance at Irene, rapidly unraveling by the seams, I\'m not so sure I should be making any more assumptions too bright and nice.

"So, I formed a pact with a Succubus," I said, going through it piece by piece. 

Irene kept scratching her forehead. "No, no, I coerced you into a pact. Nothing to do with you… you didn\'t know. That credit\'s all mine." 

"Nevertheless, I still agreed."

"To a pinkie promise." She scoffed. "Not to a magical binding covenant with a mythical inept being."

"What happens if I don\'t hold my end of the bargain?" I asked.

Her answer was blunt. "You die."

"If I try to loophole it?"

"You die."

"Worm my out?"

"Dead."

"You can\'t just break it?"

"I can."

"Oh?"

"But you\'ll die."

"Oh."

Okay. Demonic promises are as strict as they get, aren\'t they? Christ almighty… You\'d think maybe these beings of deception would be a little lax on their rules and restrictions considering their fondness of breaking the no-nos of others. 

On the bright side, if there ever was such a thing present still, \'least now I finally get why she was so apprehensive towards me, more so than I expected her to be. 

The show of guilt, the veering of eye contact. Yep… signing someone\'s death warrant would do that to a person, and she had her name all over the fine print… bright, bold, and sealed firmly with a little not so innocent promise.

"I don\'t get it though," I said, trying to unclutter the growing clutter in my already cluttered head. "You trusted me, right? Why the pact, then? Why was it necessary to even have to use it on me?"

Irene, I just noticed, when nervous and unsure, tends to get rather touchy with herself. Be it rubbing her forehead, clamping a hand on her lips, crossing arms, and touching elbows… it was a tell, it was a very obvious tell for when something truly bothered her.

And my question wasn\'t exactly designed to soothe one\'s soul in the first place.

"Is it complicated too?" I asked.

"No! Look, I did it because I wanted - I wanted to - it\'s because I just wanted you!" Irene snapped, blinking rapidly down to her feet. "I figured I needed assurance, I didn\'t want any takebacks in case I couldn\'t get you… and I was gonna get you… one way or another."

She finished, her voice trailing away into silence. She was crossing her arms again, shaking her head again. I\'ve never seen her lose this much composure before, even back when our lives were truly at stake, even then, she still had her head held high.

Not here. Not now.

"I\'m sorry I didn\'t tell you this sooner," She said, sighing. "Wish I didn\'t have to tell you this at all. Look, you\'re free to despise me for it, I won\'t hold it against - "

"I\'m not angry at you," I said.

"You\'re... not?"

I shook my head. "No point. Lashing out at you isn\'t gonna make the problem disappear by itself, and you\'re not exactly going easy on yourself about it too. I rather we just focus on resolving this."

R-resolving this," Irene gave a short disbelieving chuckle, batting her eyelids bemusingly. "You… you do realize what we\'re going to have to do in order to resolve this, right? You do know what the pact requires of you… yes?"

There was no use trying to sidestep the elephant in the room, we\'ll be better off just facing it head-on.

"That I have to have sex with you," I said.

"No, it\'s not just sex, I - ! " Her hands went a full round around her again, before she continued. "This is not as simple as a quick one-night stand… the things that you need to… "

"Take you, hold you, kiss you, ravage you, embrace you…"

"I said stop repeating it!"

"Love you..." I finished, staring right at her bright pink face. "I think I kinda get the gist of it."

Irene slowly settled to calmer levels, taking in a deep breath. "You shouldn\'t have to be doing this."

"Well, I kinda have to now if I don\'t want to end up biting the dust a second time," I responded, leaning away from the door once more.  "Do I have a time frame or something?"

Irene continued to stand at the center of the room, never once moving an inch, yet still managing to writhe and squirm her body enough for a full workout session. 

The way her eyes looked into mine, I could sense the questions piling into her narrowed lips - then they parted open, voicing out what I have been asking myself this whole time.

"Why are you so accepting about this?"

I was trying to figure out the answer to that myself. 

Why was I taking it all in stride? 

I knew the risk, understood the implications, yet I never found myself hesitating once. It was strange… it was really, really strange. I didn\'t know how to respond to her, so I gave her the only answer I had to offer right then.

"It\'s complicated."

She blew a breath, her disbelief ever apparent. "You can\'t just brush this off. These things… what I\'m asking of you… these are things you should be doing with someone you actually love. Not me. Not just because I want it. What of… what about the Elf? What about her? Don\'t you like her?"

"Look, Irene," I sputtered. "What - what do you want me to say?" 

"Just the truth," She said, her voice gentle. "How do you really feel?"

I was walking, I was scratching my head, I was sputtering unintelligibly mumblings, and then I was collapsing into my little swivel chair, spinning and swaying… till finally settling right across from her gaze.

Was doing my utmost trying to suppress the thoughts of any Ashen-haired maiden from coming to mind, then Irene just had to go cracking a hole in the dam… now here comes the flood.

Honestly, I didn\'t know what to think. I felt like I just got plopped into the set of a romance film… wasn\'t even all that good, to be honest. All those years of movie night with mom have led up to this pivotal point, and now that it was here, I was drawing a blank.

Thinking of Ash hurt. At this point in time, I\'m willing to admit I\'ve grown mighty fond of the dumpster-dwelling Elf, I wouldn\'t go as far as saying that I\'d die for her but, hey…

I already had, haven\'t I? 

It\'s time to fill in that blank with words.

"Yes, I like Ash," I began, sitting upright on the seat. "But you, I like too. In my own special way, I like you all, including Adalia." 

Irene nodded, listening intently. "Some more than others though, yes?"

"True."

"Yet still you\'re going to go through with - "

"I am," I said. "We\'ll do it… for my sake and yours. This is standard rom-com 101, the reluctant lovers, the fake lovers, you know? We\'ll follow the trope and we\'ll be home-free."

"Fake lovers," Irene muttered to herself. "You\'re loopholing." 

"No I\'m not."

"The pact stipulates that - "

"That I have to love you," I interjected, standing up to my feet. "Nothing there about ever being IN love with you."

Irene cocked her head back, furrowing her brows. "And the difference?" 

"So long as you\'re convinced that I\'m in love, and that you feel loved… then I\'ve fulfilled my end of the bargain, right?"

Slowly but gradually, the detective was regaining back the traits that made Irene, Irene. Her cool composure, her aloof gaze, and her distant demeanor… less touchy-feely now, less squirmy now.

Apparently, my suggestion was reeling her back to how she usually was. She stood there for a moment, her hazel eyes lost to me in deep contemplation, before I saw her glance back at me and give a single approving nod.

"Hoodwink a Succubus," She said, smacking her lips. "It\'s clever."

I shrugged. "Thank you."

"Well, now you just made it harder for yourself. You shouldn\'t have told me that. Now how am I ever supposed to believe that you\'re ever in love with me?"

"Well, I mean… you already like me, don\'t you?"

She blinked. "No, it\'s - It\'s complicated."

"Not really," I muttered, and then I did something that I never want, for the life of me, to ever do again.

I started small. A simple stare, basic eye contact, my eyes on hers. Confusion settled in almost immediately but I kept my eye straight. Then a smirk, a subtle curl in the corner of the lips had her tilting her head at me, but I wasn\'t done just yet.

I started to approach her, slowly, confidently, never once steering away from her. Still with that smile, still with that stare, I placed myself just mere inches away from where she was standing.

The results?

A step backward, a reddened face, and Irene once more with her gaze astray, touching elbows and crossing arms.

Thank you, Movie-nights. Thank you, Mom. It\'s gonna be a cold day in Hell before I ever do any more bad-boy shenanigans ever again.

"Now that we have our answer," I said, stepping away and giving her back some semblance of personal space. "I don\'t think it\'ll take too long to have you convinced."

Irene looked a little annoyed, the tomato-red hue of embarrassment draining of her face. But admittedly it was hard to deny the hard evidence when it was literally staring right at her in the face.

She was truly a maiden in love. 

Why, though? I\'ve yet to figure that out. Stay tuned.

"And what if the exact opposite happens," She asked. "What if you end up falling for me instead?"

"If I fell for you? Huh, well... " I looked at her, giving a crooked smile "That\'s what you wanted, right?"

Irene, much to her surprise, couldn\'t find a response to that.

"So…" I said, rubbing my hands. "What\'s my deadline?"