The city at midnight is…strange, it’s so quiet and everything is so slow that it doesn’t even feel like a city and everyone still away is looking at everyone else like they’re the crazy ones for being up and out so late. The rain had stopped, but these was this heavy hanging fog that seemed to mix and swirl with the steaming sewer gas making the entire world around me seem like I was standing in the darkest, coldest forest with velvet thick fog, so quiet you could hear a mouse crack through a twig and the patter of collected dew drip into puddles below the leaves where it collected.
As my booted footsteps seemed to echo out into the deep, dark vastness of the city, the soft splash of puddles around my feet only making the silence more overbearing by how the sound of my footsteps were the only sound you could hear. I looked down at my phone as Aden had texted me that he would be outside the hospital, though he did only send it a handful of seconds ago. I heard this sound that could only be described as like a steam valve releasing with this hiss of steam as the void of darkness between two buildings seemed to become a void in time and space itself as a second set of footsteps followed and…Aden stepped out of the darkness.
“Evening” he said, breath fogging in the cold, dank air, he wasn’t dressed in a full suit like when I saw him last, but he was still dressed…fairly nicely, probably having yet changed from work, a tucked in black dress shirt with a navy sweater, the shirt cuffs and collar over that of the chunky cable-knit sweater, black trousers, and heavy boots.
“I hope I wasn’t being intrusive when I suggested dinner” he said as he walked over. “Hungry?”
“I am…starving. I haven’t eaten sense six am yesterday” I said as we started walking
“Did you not get a lunch break?”
“That surgery I told you about earlier started when I should have taken my break…but that’s what happens when accidents happen.”
“Understandable” he said, I yawned as we walked, tucking my gloves in my jacket as I softly rubbed my hands together to warm them a bit, glancing at my golden markings of the suns and demonic runes across my hands and fingers, it was just…muggy and cold for some reason. “Cold?”
“Just a little…I’m a being of the sun, not the moon.” I said with a soft laugh
“I like the cold” he said as we walked, the hazy shapes of shadows streaking across the roads and buildings from the amber streetlights breaching through the thick fog, shifted, and swirled as our shadows were thrown out massive and dark against the rainbow sheened street. “Ashdale is absurdly hot, I’ve always been more comfortable with the cold.”
“Must have been comforting when you were in school and got to avoid those brutal summers.”
“Godsend” he said, in the darkness of the world around us, his eyes…seemed different, it was almost like out of the corners of my eyes I could see…light just crackling across his eyes, a sickly neon green tone that was there for so short that by the time you’ve realized you’ve seen it it’s gone. I was still a little confused as to what he is by how little of himself he is showing, no strange eyes, no horns or antlers, no wings or tail, no nonhuman feet, the only thing nonhuman I can get from his appearance is the sharp teeth and what I am guessing draconic features. The people I’ve seen that are not draconic, but serpentine usually have much softer, much more sleek and gentle features: softly sweeping cheekbones, a sloping nose and usually thinner lips and larger eyes and often no brows, but…Aden’s features were that of dragons: the angular high cheekbones, the strong straight nose, sharp teeth behind full lips and very, very nicely kept slightly heavier brows, the way his eyes tilted was without a doubt reptilian…there was just so little shown that it made looking at him an enigma for me.
“If anything, I should be apologizing to you for intruding, it’s so late and you’re a teacher, I was probably keeping you up late.” I spoke
“Nonsense, I was still up actually. Just doing some grading.”
“Already?”
“Pre-exams.” He said with soft laugh, “Usually when I had to grade essays, I use the weekend and every-time a student says something stupid I drink.”
“Well, then you’d be seeing me for alcohol poisoning at some point” I said making him laugh, another pang went through my chest like a singular beat of my heart was so much stronger than the rest that it should have broken my ribs.
“Sometimes I read essays and I question how those students got past elementary school let along got into Miskatonic. This way.” He said before leading me down a smaller side street. There were still colorful lanterns on some buildings and strings of bright red ones crossed across the narrow walking streets, there were still some places open with soft lights filling their glassy storefronts with pale light as Aden led me to a building that had this pergola like front made of thin roasted bamboo slats with growing bamboo between the slats and vines across the top, twin large red lanterns hanging flanking the front double door with Japanese characters across the front above the front door that translated in my eyes to The Tiger Paw. Aden took a few shorter faster steps ahead of me as he grabbed the door for me and opened it, the sign said that they were open for at least a handful more hours, nearly dawn.
“Thank you” I said
“Anytime” he said as his hand just softly rested on my lower back as he closed the door behind us, but the moment his hand touched my back it was like I got electrocuted, my pulse thundered in my temples for a split-second making my vision double then triple for that same moment as my lungs seemed to stop knowing how to work for that moment of contact. As a woman in casual, comfortable dress that was still along the lines of a kimono, maybe more of a yukata walked over, Aden just softly bowed his head before asking for a table for two in quite formal sounding Japanese, the woman nodded a bit enthusiastically as she ushered us off into the restaurant.
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