What a fun story! Your Nine/Rose was perfectly in character and had just the right amount of romance/non-smut. Not that I wouldn't mind a chapter 5 including hot pink..

And I'm always the last one to get undertone for some reason. I knew Mal Wolfe was referencing something but was racking my brain trying to figure out which of your other fics he was a character in. I thought maybe he was a spouse of one of the chars in the Vortex series. Duh "Mal" "Wolfe". Okay. Now I get it ;-)