She got up the courage to ask him while they were lying in her bed together, watching something mindless on the telly. She'd been thinking about it for a couple of days now, the question niggling at the back of her mind ever since Martin, eavesdropping where he definitely was not wanted, had teased her about it after Harry had muttered it to her as he kissed her goodbye. He'd made it sound almost dirty which hadn't sat right. Piper loved when Harry called her petal. She'd say that she didn't at the start, that she'd had to warm to it, but that would be a lie.
She'd stopped being curious about it after the first couple of times he used it. It just became the name that Harry called her. She identified with it almost as closely as she did with her proper name. She would hear someone on the street use it in context and she'd actually make a full-stop, wondering if someone was talking about her. Her eyes would dart around looking for Harry instinctively before she reminded herself that it was a word that existed in normal conversation. It felt, sometimes, like it belonged only to her and Harry, like the word was theirs alone.
"Harry?" she asked, tilting her head up to rest her chin on his chest. His eyes drifted down to meet hers and he smiled lazily.
"Yes?"
"Why do you call me petal?"
His brow furrowed gently as he considered the question for a moment. "Well, I didn't know your name when we first spoke and I had to call you something?"
"You could have asked my name."
"Covert mission, remember?" Harry's hand drifted up her side, sliding under the hem of her shirt so his long fingers were splayed over the skin of her back. It was a protective gesture. He had a tendency toward those whenever either of them brought up a situation where one of them had almost died. "You weren't supposed to know my name and I wasn't supposed to know yours."
"It could have been anything, though," Piper pushed, wanting to get to the root of it. After all, the name had stuck. She hoped to god it hadn't started off as some dirty joke or something. "You could have just called me agent - although technically I wasn't an agent yet. Or some other name like babe, or sweetheart, or kitten."
"Kitten?" Harry repeated back, chuckling at the way she dramatically rolled her eyes. "No, it was always petal."
"Yes, but why?"
"Honestly?" She nodded her head so vigorously that her chin hit his chest and made her teeth clack together. Harry tried to keep the wry smile off his face but it slipped on against his will, poking those precious dimples into his cheeks. "I'd just finished a long mission, I was injured, I was being shot at, everyone around me was the enemy in my eyes. And then I heard your voice on the line, which was sarcastic and dry but also warm and comforting. Your voice was like a summer day - like a warm breeze, sunshine and flowers. It just felt right."
Piper told herself she wasn't going to blubber like a baby. She was going to pretend like her heart hadn't grown five sizes in her chest and was practically bursting out, thumping hard against her ribcage.
"And then I saw you," he went on, "sitting there at your desk with that feisty look in your eyes and that fiery red hair and I though to myself, maybe you were wrong. Maybe she's too hard for a name like petal. But you're not." He looked back down at her with a bright glint in his eyes, a full smile that lit up his face. "Maybe on the outside but with me you've always been warm, kind, gentle. To everyone else you may be Piper, but to me, you'll always be my petal."