He doesn't seem at all put off by Alecto's apparent indifference, correctly interpreting the excited light in his eyes, but not doing anything to acknowledge it for the moment. He politely proceeds Alecto into his office, but stays standing, leaning against the wall next to the doorframe as Alecto walks past him to the desk.

"If I sent these to you in an email, you wouldn't even have opened the attachments before saying 'No,'" he replies wryly.

"Besides, some of your students heard our argument two weeks ago about the verba dicendi and word apparently got back to the department chair." He doesn't know why the man was surprised; he'd known about at least their correspondence in publications when he'd made Josh the offer, a correspondence which - while overtly professional - was certainly not indicative of a consistent alignment in perspective. "So I thought I'd make a public statement about not actually wanting to murder you."