It's hard to keep it up when he talks to her like that. Steph was never made much for pretty lies, fooling people into believing she felt one way when she really felt another. She had to learn that for the show, lessons sudden and demanding, now now now. And given the slightest opportunity, she'll drop the facade without warning.

So the fake smile is replaced with another, smaller if far more genuine.

And not only because she's sorry for teasing him, if he blushed like that for it.

"There's a lot more showing to do yet, I'd wager. But you..." She pauses, weighing the question in her mind, how she wants to phrase it. Her fingers play idly with a roughly cut pencil, pushing it back and forth between two stacks of paper. "You're all right?"