Yes, He will take a Mile from an Inch

Good thing Sean was recording this. Better still, he could edit out every trace of the questions afterward, because however satisfying this was becoming, even he knew what it would look like without context.

“Ms. Thomas...” Sean let the concern into his voice now, playing the part of an employee who had just been told considerably more than he had ever wanted to know.

“Don’t be like that, Sean.” Rebecca straightened as though dignity alone could rescue the situation. “I’m smarter than you, better qualified, higher up, I earn more, and I’m going further. A woman like me wanting you is something you should be flattered by.”

Sean had to work not to laugh. Somehow she had taken workplace harassment and arrived at you should be grateful.

“Would you rather everyone here knew about this,” he asked, “or would you rather it stayed between us, with every promotion you blocked and every attempt to get rid of me having really come from wanting to keep me for yourself?”

Rebecca’s expression hardened as soon as he said everyone here. “Keep it between us.”

No hesitation. Of course not. Sean had already learned how much Rebecca valued appearances when given the choice between an ugly private truth and an ugly public one, and apparently her career worked the same way. She would swallow almost anything before allowing the office to see her as compromised.

Then her brow pulled together.

“Because I...” Rebecca looked away from him, and Sean watched the certainty begin to fray as the rest of what she had chosen settled into place. “Because I wanted to keep you here.”

The harder part came when Rebecca started following the new logic back through everything she had done to him. The promotions she had blocked, the complaints she had encouraged, the constant scrutiny and every petty obstacle she had once justified as keeping an arrogant subordinate in his place now rearranged themselves around a motive she plainly preferred not to examine. Sean watched her work through it in silence, content to let her memories do the damage for him.

“I wasn’t trying to get rid of you,” Rebecca said eventually. “Not really. I was making sure you couldn’t go anywhere.”

Sean let the silence sit between them, and Rebecca predictably filled it by straightening in her chair and reaching for the authority she usually relied on when an admission left her exposed. “That does not mean I was obsessed with you. I simply preferred having you where I could keep an eye on you.”

“And blocking my promotions helped with that?”

Rebecca hesitated just long enough to betray that she knew how it sounded. “Yes.”

“And trying to have me fired?”

That was harder to reconcile. Blocking promotions and keeping him under scrutiny could be bent into keeping him close, but actually getting him fired should have removed him from her reach altogether. She looked away while she worked through the contradiction.

“I wanted you frightened enough to stop trying to leave," Rebecca admitted. "But I also didn't want our rleationship to progress while we were in teh same company.”

Something in Sean's expression must have slipped, because she looked back at him and immediately bristled.

“You should be flattered,” Rebecca stated.

Somehow, even after reducing years of professional sabotage to an attempt to keep him within reach, Rebecca had still managed to make herself the prize. In her version of events, blocking his advancement, threatening his position and making his working life miserable had become evidence of how badly she had wanted to keep him close, and therefore something Sean was apparently supposed to take as a compliment.

And that was something they couldn't have. Rebecca was a lesbian, a staunch lesbian, and her wanting a man was not something she would want people knowing about, much less her lover finding out. Sean let that thought settle for a moment before pressing exactly where he knew it would hurt. “Would you rather have your lover learn about this while you're having sex, when you say my name instead of hers and leave your romance rather frosty, or would you rather she share your attraction to me, but be far less arrogant about admitting it?”

That was one humiliation Rebecca had no intention of allowing outside the room. It was bad enough that she had somehow developed an exception for Sean at all; letting her lover discover it because Rebecca had said another person’s name while they were together would turn a private aberration into something she would actually have to explain.

“Keep it between us,” she said before Sean had quite finished laying out the choice. Whatever else she might tolerate, she was not going home to explain why another man’s name had come out of her mouth in bed.

The answer settled quickly enough that Rebecca was already trying to make sense of the rest of it. “She’d understand. She has eyes, Sean. She notices attractive people, and unlike me she doesn’t spend half her life pretending that noticing someone means she’s somehow lost an argument.”

Sean kept his expression neutral and let her talk herself further into it.

“She’d probably think you were attractive too.” Rebecca looked him over more critically, as though reassessing him on someone else’s behalf. “Actually, you’re probably exactly her type. Not that it means anything. Finding someone attractive is not the same thing as throwing yourself at them.”

“You sound very certain,” Sean hummed htoughtfully.

“I know her. She’d notice you, yes, and she might flirt because she thinks she’s charming when she does it, but that’s all.” Rebecca folded her arms and held his gaze for a moment before adding, with rather more emphasis than the point seemed to require, “She is not going to start flirting with you.”

Sean’s eyebrow rose in challenge.

“She won’t,” Rebecca said firmly not backing down.

“Well,” Sean drawled, glancing around the office, “I think this has gone somewhat beyond regular workplace discussion, Ms Thomas—”

“Rebecca,” she cut in. “I have told you thousands of times to call me Rebecca.”

A slow smile touched Sean’s mouth. She kept handing him exactly where to press, “Would you rather I never call you Rebecca, despite that being what you so clearly want from me?" Sean asked her, "or that I do call you Rebecca and our workplace relationship becomes that of work spouses, only romantic and sexual rather than platonic?”

“You call me Rebecca,” Rebecca answered without a moments hesitation.

“We already spend more time together than half the married people in this office,” she continued. “You know how I work, I know how you work, and apparently I have spent years making sure you stayed close enough for that to remain true.”

The romantic and sexual part of the choice did nothing to shake Rebecca's certainty. If anything, it seemed to settle something that had been waiting for permission to become explicit. “So yes. If those are the choices, you call me Rebecca.” Sean’s smile told her exactly how much he was enjoying the admission. Her eyes narrowed. “And stop looking so pleased with yourself. You’re the one who should be flattered.”

Apparently deciding the warning had failed, she caught his tie near the knot and pulled him down across the desk. Her mouth met his before he could decide whether she meant to threaten him again, firm and deliberate, holding him there for several seconds before she let the tie slip through her fingers.

“There,” she said, settling back into her chair, the colour still high in her face. “Now perhaps you understand the arrangement.”