He never got less infuriating. Alex's jaw clenched slightly as she listened to him, and okay, maybe he wasn't quite as obtuse as all that, maybe he did have a clue and had been trying to gently ignore it, the way she felt about him, all of it.
"Okay, fine," she half nodded, looking away, around, at the ground, anywhere but at him. "So you maybe have noticed stuff, but you think this is easy for me? You think I haven't tried to not... care about you?" Yes, there was a pause there, a pause as she so nearly said 'love', catching herself just in time before she humiliated herself further. "I nearly lost you before I came here, and you think I don't remember every single fucking day here that it could happen all over again and how much easier my life.... my death would be if I could just poof away from you and all of that, and yet I can't, I just can't, I apparently can't so much that I sassed the fucking Devil here because the idea of him hurting you just hurt me that fucking much and...." She trailed off and began pacing around, frustrated beyond belief.
"But you, you with the mixed messages and driving me fucking crazy." Pausing in the pacing, gesturing like mad at him with the look of irritation on her face. "You say one minute that you don't want me to care about you like that, that I should walk away, but then you get so urgh over a fucking joke of a kiss that wouldn't even mean anything to anyone and start going on about inappropriate when you should know by now that I am fucking inappropriate and I'm sorry I can't be all proper the way you think women should be, like you thought Lady Mary was, like Katherine so obviously is and fucking hell, Hal."
She closed the distance between them, stepping up closer until she had to raise her head to look Hal in the eyes. "You want to know what the easy option was? You really want to know? You didn't need to go on about appropriate or what I do or don't deserve, you just needed to say you didn't want me to kiss anyone else. Because I can't do this any more. Either you let me try to kiss Sherlock fucking Holmes or you tell me you don't want me kissing someone else, anyone else and stop giving me these fucking mixed messages."