Chapter 72: The Gate

POV: Niko

Eight thirty and she was not here yet.

He checked his phone. No texts. He put it back in his pocket and looked at the gate and then at the path leading from the main building and then at the gate again.

He was not panicking.

He was standing at the gate in a suit he had not worn in over a century with a cigarette burning down between his fingers and his jaw slightly tight and he was not panicking.

He took a pull of the cigarette and exhaled slowly into the cold Black River Falls night air. The fog was sitting low tonight, thicker than usual, softening everything beyond the gate into shapes rather than specifics. The amber path lights made small warm circles in it. The campus behind him was mostly quiet. Weekend. Most students home or indoors.

Good.

The last thing he needed was an audience for whatever expression was currently on his face.

He pressed his back against the tree and looked at the sky.

No stars tonight. Just the deep violet of the cloud cover and the fog and the specific quality of a Black River Falls night that never quite got dark enough to feel like anywhere else he had ever been.

He had been places.

He had stood in streets in cities that no longer existed and looked at skies over water and over mountains and over plains that stretched so far they became theoretical. He had watched centuries of nights from windows and rooftops and the sides of roads and had stopped paying attention to most of them at some point because when you had seen enough of something it stopped registering as anything except backdrop.

He was paying attention to this one.

He dropped the cigarette and pressed it under his shoe.

He thought about this morning.

Her room. The bookshelf. The record player filling the space. Her on the other side of the bed pretending to read while he pretended to draw and neither of them pretending successfully.

The sketchbook.

Her hands on his chest. The specific look on her face when she was learning something new about him and deciding how she felt about it and not hiding the process.

He had been drawing her.

He had been drawing her the whole morning and she had not managed to get close enough to see it and he was not going to think too hard about what that said about him because he already knew what it said about him and had accepted it.

He had sent the dress because she would not have known what to wear and because the color was exactly right for her and because he had wanted to give her something that had nothing to do with impressing anyone and everything to do with the fact that he had been thinking about this evening for days and had wanted it to be right.

He pulled out his phone again.

Eight thirty two.

He put it back.

He had been stood up exactly once in his life. 1887. Paris. He had waited outside a theatre in the rain for forty minutes before accepting the obvious and going back to his apartment and spending the rest of the evening with a bottle of wine and his sketchbook which had honestly been the better option anyway.

This was different.

He knew this was different.

He knew she was coming and that she wanted to be here and that the reason she was late was almost certainly Katy Spears requiring more time than expected with the accessories and he knew all of that and was still standing at the gate at eight thirty two doing the specific internal negotiation of someone who had been left enough times that the knowledge of a thing and the feeling of a thing had stopped being the same thing.

Everyone always leaves.

He had heard that voice his entire life in his father Victor's specific register and had worked for decades to build a life where it did not matter because he did not give anyone close enough access for the leaving to register and had been mostly successful until this semester.

He exhaled.

He was being an idiot.

He looked at the path.

A figure was coming down the stairs of the main building.

He watched it move into the amber light.

Golden blonde hair up with a few strands loose. Diamond studs catching the path lights from fifty feet away. Long pale legs below the hem of a blue dress that was exactly the right shade against her skin. Silver heels she was managing with a specific confidence that meant Katy had made her practice.

The sapphires on the dress catching the light.

The sapphire in his necklace that he had been wearing for one hundred and forty years.

He stood up straight.

He had specifically not sent her the dress because of the necklace. He had not made that connection until this exact moment and now that he had made it he was going to pretend he had not.

She was close enough now that he could see her face. The nervous smile. The lip gloss. The way she was turning the strap of her purse in her hands which meant she was anxious and covering it.

He had said numerous times in his life and meant it entirely that he had never seen anyone more beautiful.

He said it to himself now and meant it more than all the other times combined.

She reached him.

She stopped.

She looked at him.

He was aware that his mouth had opened slightly and closed it.

She started talking immediately. Katy and the blue eyeshadow and the eyelashes and the whole look being too much and she had wanted something more modest but she was rambling because she was nervous and she did not know that her nervous rambling was one of the things about her he had been cataloguing since October.

He smiled at her.

"You look ravishing." He said.

The blush. The freckles showing underneath it. The specific way her eyes went soft when she did not want them to and they did anyway.

"The dress is perfect on you." He said. "As I knew it would be."

She shook her head shyly. "Thank you. You look pretty handsome yourself."

He looked down at the suit. "Haven't worn this in over a century. Literally."

She laughed and stepped forward and tilted her face up and kissed him once. Soft and certain.

He felt his entire chest settle.

He had been panicking.

He was done panicking now.

He offered his arm.

She took it.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two cards and held them up briefly. Off campus passes. Properly acquired. Every form filled in. The headmistress's signature on both.

She raised her eyebrows. "You actually did the paperwork."

"Every single page of it." He said. "Deeply unpleasant."

She laughed again and he held the gate and they walked through together into the Black River Falls night and he did not look back at the campus and he did not think about his father's voice and he did not do anything except walk beside her with her hand on his arm and the fog around them and the amber lights of the town beginning ahead.

He had one more thing.

He waited until they were through the gate and onto the path toward the road and then he stopped.

She looked at him.

He looked at the road.

A black car was pulling around the corner.

Long. Glossy. Unhurried.

She made a sound.

"You didn't." She said.

He said nothing. Just put his hand on the small of her back and guided her toward it as the driver got out and opened the door and the warm interior light spilled out onto the fog.

She looked at the car.

She looked at him.

"Niko." She said.

"In." He said pleasantly.

She shook her head with that smile she could not manage and got in and he followed and the door closed behind them and the car moved through Black River Falls toward whatever the night had planned for them.

He put his arm around her.

She settled against his side.

Outside the fog moved past the windows and the town lights made patterns through it and she said nothing for a moment and he said nothing and it was the specific silence of two people who were exactly where they wanted to be and knew it.

"Where are we going." She said finally.

"You'll see." He said.

She made a sound of pure frustration that he found enormously satisfying.

He kissed the top of her head.

She stayed exactly where she was.