Title: Ten More

Summary: "Ten" flipped; 10 small things about her Wolf that make Chiisai happy…sort of.

Word Count: 660

1. There are moments when she wishes she could ignore him, but she stopped trying a long time ago, admitting ignoble defeat: she figures that if after all this time she hasn't even been able to get close, it's useless to keep trying.

2. Even when he's being insufferable (which is often), she loves to listen to his voice. If she were a tiny bit less cowardly, she might tell him he has a great voice; the truth is, she's far more afraid of her own embarrassment and his reaction to the revelation than of his (over-inflated) ego.

3. She doesn't like to share things about herself with him because she's afraid that he'll stop treating her the way he does. Because, obnoxiousness aside, he's the only man (Papa doesn't count) who ever treated her like a dainty woman, and she enjoys it and appreciates it and doesn't want to lose it yet.

Or ever, actually.

4. Despite the fact that he guards himself when they speak the way that she does, she gets the feeling that his reasons are very different. He seems years older than her, like he's seen decades and decades of stuff, so she's shocked to learn he's only got two years on her…

…and also relieved, because while she has nothing against old men, she doesn't really want to be lusting after them either.

5. She's astonished by what he knows when she learns how much older he is than her. It doesn't seem possible that he should be so knowledgeable about so much—because his mind is home to millions of odd facts that are entirely useless in the day-to-day grind—but she knows better than to admit to any kind of admiration; that wouldn't be in keeping with her generally disdainful attitude towards his antics at all, and she has a reputation to protect.

6. He's still far too tall. But she doesn't really see it as anything more than an obstacle that isn't so hard to surmount with the right pair of heels.

7. That. Smirk. Would. Be. The. Death. Of. Her.

…but Tokio can't honestly find it in herself to care as much as she knows she should.

8. He asked her, once, why she always let him know if she was going to be coming by the luncheonette for lunch on her day off or not. She blinked, surprised, and said she'd have appreciated the same consideration, if it had been her, so she just…did. He eyed her for a long moment before slowly grinning in a way that made her heart flop over and said he appreciated the consideration.

She has since made it her life's mission to get him to smile at her like that more often, and if it means being the most thoughtful person in the history of ever, well, damn it, so be it.

9. It eventually strikes her one day that despite the many people he could spend his time talking to, he only talks to her and Shiori. And once she comes in, he almost exclusively speaks to her, unless there is prompting from the older woman. That realization does strange things to her: it makes her nervous to think that she has so much of the man's undivided attention (and how in the world had she missed that, anyway?!), but it also flatters the hell out of her that he considers her important enough to pay attention to.

10. She doesn't actually hate the Chiisai thing nearly as much as she seems to. She doesn't particularly like the reminder that, compared to him, she's basically a midget, but there's a certain amount of affection in the way he says it that diffuses the worst of her anger at him over the slight against her height—just enough to forgive him and accept her new position in his life.

It isn't really such a terrible place to be, she reflects with a smile.