Pansies (Spires #4)

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

1 . Paragraph begins with: “What’s wrong, pet?”

Alexis: I think this is such an important moment for Alfie because this is explicitly his mother’s language, and he uses it without self-consciousness—essentially opening up avenues of caring for others that are not defined by either his father or his understanding of his gender.

2 . Paragraph begins with: “N-nothing.” Fen was still leaning away…

Alexis: This scene was tough to write, not just because of Fen’s grief (his acts of self-destruction, for better or worse, are consistently entangled with Alfie), but because I didn’t want their past to just vanish with an apology or two. I don’t think Fen is lying when he insists he’s not scared of Alfie, but I think those habits of fear remain—for a little while at least.

3 . Paragraph begins with: “Bloody hell,” he muttered, in a moment of despair.

Alexis: Getting unlikely rom-com references into my books is kind of an established theme for me at this point, I think.

4 . Paragraph begins with: “It looked nice, okay?”

Alexis: I love Pretty Woman, and I love this scene, but Alfie is absolutely right—this is an absurd amount of pressure to put on someone, and I always try to keep it in mind when trying to introduce people to things I’m into. I guess it might be different if I was more into opera (I mean, I quite like opera), but probably nobody needs Vampire: The Masquerade to become part of their soul anytime soon.

5 . Paragraph begins with: And for a moment, they were silent.

Alexis: Honestly, I kind of feel this too.

But I also think it hints at ways Alfie and Fen have more in common than they realise: this need for a form of self-articulation that is followed by catharsis/absolution and the possibility of moving forward. Right now, they’re both very stuck.

6 . Paragraph begins with: “Well, Audrey’s gorgeous, but she can’t sing for shit.”

Alexis: A+ choice of big goddamn hero from Fen here.

7 . Paragraph begins with: Maybe Alfie pushed him, or maybe he didn’t…

Alexis: This is another not-so-subtle attempt to provide Alfie (and, ahem, the rest of us) with a queer reimagining of a heterosexual trope. I mean hot lady on a car is, you know, quite the long-standing classic—although I did want to ensure, in this context, it was somewhat less objectifying. That Fen is inviting Alfie to behold him and desire him.

8 . Paragraph begins with: “You mean,” Alfie asked…

Alexis: Okay, I know I wrote this, but I wrote it many years ago, and “the misplaced optimism of the incredibly horny” is SUCH A MOOD.

9 . Paragraph begins with: “I dunno. But keep me around long enough…”

Alexis: Given how very complicated a lot of my characters feel about love—and love , the word, specifically—it seemed important to allow at least one of them to be pretty comfortable with the whole shebang.

I secretly kind of adore this straightforwardness in Alfie—I think I’d probably be quite swept away by it. The certainty, and the fearlessness of that certainty, is refreshing and contrasts with my own tendencies towards “everything is complicated help Barthes.”

Plus, given how destabilised Alfie feels about his own queerness, I wanted to show that how he feels about love and relationships has remained the same. Like, not everything about how you fall in love has to change with who you fall in love with.

10 . Paragraph begins with: Alfie was pretty sure this was a trap…

Alexis: One of the things that’s personally complicated for me with Pansies as a romance is that it’s nudging at ideas that are not necessarily my natural wheelhouse. Like, in my own way, I’m pretty practical. I like to sort of build up a body of evidence that people are good for each other, and they normally move towards emotional declarations and lifetime commitments at a pace that feels to some degree realistic.

Alfie and Fen essentially fall in love over the course of a single week together. I like to hope I still demonstrate that they are better off with each other than not, and I don’t want to say this isn’t “realistic” because some people do fall in love rapidly, but Pansies is as much about place as people. Or rather it’s about people in places. The way Alfie and Fen falling in love with each other is mirrored in and mediated through the way they fall in love with South Shields: how it comes to represent home for them, not just hurt.