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“Take food!” Amadea said, every time she caught a student shrugging on their coat out of the corner of her eye. No matter who was talking, no matter what discussion she was engrossed in, she would break from the circle and pull them over to the buffet line, shove a cardboard takeout box in their hands, and say, “Take food. Or else.”
And then she’d help them stack the containers into university-branded tote bags, and then she’d fill up all the spaces left with red-and-green foil-wrapped candies. She’d follow them a short way out into the hall, chatting. She’d tell them goodnight. Get some rest. Good luck on their finals. She was always like that; it was just made worse by the amount of wine she’d had, sipped absentmindedly while decorating sugar cookies or calling trivia questions.
Solas suspected the insistence that everyone take home leftovers was selfish, too -- and, behold, by the time the Claude Rebillard Library, a sort of pompous little room in one of the academic buildings where the classics department held all their events, was empty, her labors bore fruit in the form of a buffet table mostly free of food that any unlucky organizer of the event would have to clean up.
“Last call for leftovers,” she said over her shoulder, busy transferring raviolis from their hot pan into a cardboard container.
“No, thank you.” He lingered by the door, back against one of the wood-paneled walls, glanced over the slight disarray in which the room had been left. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Music crooned over the sound system, turned low -- low enough that he could hear her humming along to it much better than he could hear the actual music. She closed the ravioli container and stacked the hot plate with the empty ones. “Can you pick up any trash? And maybe put the chairs back?”
They set the room to rights mostly in silence, room full only of the music and metal clinking and wooden chair legs scraping against the floor. When the food was taken care of, he turned to find her sat at the stairs by the door, unbuckling her velvet heels and trading them for boots better suited to walking through the snow.
He sat down on the arm of one of the chairs, dug his heel into the rug. He used to talk to her so casually, and now he always felt like he had to chew over everything he said first, despite nothing having changed. Nothing except him, he supposed. “Did you drive?”
Amadea laughed a little. “I had the forethought not to. No, I took the train in.”
“Ah.” Silence. Soft rustling of her working her boots on, the little noises she made with the effort. “I’ll walk you to the train station,” he said after a moment.
“Oh -- but it’s snowing. Solas, you really don’t have to.”
“I -- I worry. It is late, after all. And dark.” And she was a pretty woman in quite a tight dress, and the university’s surrounding town, despite being quaint, was not free of less reputable sorts, and besides, he would’ve liked to spend any amount of time with her, alone, away from their students. Ah, that was bad to admit, even to himself.
She smiled, that soft, fond look that did something to his chest, and stood up, straightening her dress. “You know,” she said, “this department isn’t big enough for two mother hens.”
“I would never think to dethrone you.”
And she laughed again, and crossed to the closet, pulling out both their coats. She slung hers over one arm, bag of leftovers over the other, handed him his, gestured him out, and clicked off the light behind them. They walked slowly down the hall, across the clay-red tiles, past white plaster walls and closed dark-stained doors into empty offices -- all in neo-Elven style, charmingly antique, with the whole building smelling of old books. Their twin footsteps echoed off the walls.
They stopped just before the door to pull on their coats, fish gloves out of pockets, tie scarves loosely around their necks. Solas thought briefly about making some sort of gesture, taking her hand or offering his arm or something, but decided that would be both weird and corny, and instead simply held the door for her.
She recoiled when the cold air hit her face, scrunched up a little and pulled her scarf up to bury her nose in it. “Brr. Ugh.” She glanced over at him as they began crunching their way along the new snow that covered the paths criss-crossing the quad. “And why don’t you have a hat? Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m fine.”
“But your ears --?”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, you look cold. Looking at you is making me feel cold.” She stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Colder.”
His chuckle came out in a puff of condensation, caught in the warm street-lamp glow. And the smile that accompanied it remained long after. He wore it quietly for a few moments before he chanced a look back down at her and found her staring up at him, wearing a matching smile. Heart tightened again. It felt like a medical issue and he almost wished it was.
Solas cleared his throat and looked back over the quad, just to have anywhere but her to look. At the snow-topped roofs of Gothic buildings that lined the edges of the green, and their lit windows. He and Amadea turned down the path that led into town.
“The party -- it was really splendid, Amadea.”
“You think so?”
“The students seemed to enjoy it.”
“Well, good. They deserve a break.” A few seconds of silence passed, of matching footsteps, and then she nudged his ribs with her elbow -- barely felt through his coat. “But did you enjoy yourself?”
He could see, in his periphery, her face turned toward him, moony -- moonlike, rather. Probably smiling. Probably waiting for him to smile at her again, too. “I did.”
“Good! Good.” She looked away, back toward the path ahead, the cavern of trees bending over the road, weighed down with snow. “I -- um, I like to hear that.”
The town fairly glittered as they climbed the hill up Main. The gas station across the street was fluorescent, but the rest of the lights were incandescent, coloring the snow, both what lie on the ground and what still fell, a deceptively cozy cream. Street lamps wrapped with garland and string lights, overlarge red glitter bows stuck to the top of them. There were displays in store windows, gone dark. Long past operating hours for all of them.
“When does the next train come?” he said.
“Um.” She pulled her hand out of her pocket, phone in it, and it lit up with the time. “So, the next one’s at 9:27.”
“Ah. And the next one after that?”
“Not until 11:08.”
“No chance of stopping at the cafe before it closes, then.” He nodded toward a near-empty coffee shop as they passed.
Amadea followed his gaze. “Not tonight.” He thought he heard regret in her voice. Or maybe he simply wanted to hear it there. “I didn’t think you drank coffee,” she said.
“I don’t. Particularly not so late at night.”
“Mm. I did have you pegged for more of a cocoa man.”
“Is that so?”
“I know a kindred spirit when I meet one.”
The inbound tracks were on the far side of the station from the town, necessitating passing through a tunnel that ran under them. The stairs into it had grown icy in the night, and despite the perfectly usable handrail running along the wall, he still offered his hand out to her, and she took it seemingly without thought. Their footsteps echoed loud in the tunnel, and she didn’t let go of his hand the whole walk across.
The wind felt worse when they emerged on the other side. Snow still managed to blow over them, even with the roof. Other passengers occupied the benches, and so they huddled beside a column, as though that would break the wind.
Amadea finally let go of his hand after a particularly strong gust of wind, only to immediately bury herself against his side. “Brr. Ugh,” he heard her mumble. He froze for about half a second, then swallowed hard and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, rubbing up and down her arm. Mind incapable, for a solid minute, of producing any thought beyond, “Wow.”
He cleared his throat when he recovered. “Perhaps it would have been better for me to offer to drive you home.”
She tilted her head up from where it was buried in his coat. “It would’ve been warmer, certainly.” And then she beamed, and his awful heart thundered in his chest until he had to look away, back down the line, searching for the dot of light that foretold an incoming train.
And then he felt Amadea shift beside him, heard the rustling of her coat on his, and felt the cold tip of her nose against his cheekbone, warm lips against his cheek. “Thank you for the company, Solas.”
The shock of it brought him back to her, at her face just a few inches from his, bright eyes in the yellow light, face flushed red in the cold, wind whipping those strands of red hair it had shaken loose from her bun. And then he made a very, very bad decision, and he closed those inches, and kissed her.
He fully expected her to jerk away, and she didn’t. He pulled back when the mortification began to set in, only to have her step closer, kiss him again, insistently. Only for her hands to drift from her pockets to his chest, to his shoulders, to his jaw, pulling him down toward her. And for his own hands to find their way to her hips.
She kissed slightly clumsily, from tipsiness or inexperience or both. But she was not tentative, by any means. Eager, pressing ever closer to him, as close as their thick wool coats would allow, letting loose soft whines from the back of her throat.
And soon, too soon, the platform began to rattle, and the train pulled in. The noise shook them from whatever had overtaken them, reminded them where they were and who they were. Who they were to each other. A split second of eye contact before Amadea covered her face with her hands and shook her head. His stomach dropped, and he took several steps back to give her room.
A mistake. A wonderful mistake, with how his heart hammered and his lips burned -- but a mistake, nonetheless.
Amadea dropped her hands and opened her mouth as if to speak, then shook her head with finality and took a few steps of her own away from him. The train’s brakes squeaked, the doors opened, passengers -- students, mostly -- disembarked. Amadea turned on her heel, without another word, without any acknowledgment, any farewell, and left.
He watched her board, tracked her as she walked further into the car and shucked her coat and took her seat. She didn’t look back out at him, but rather straight into her lap. He saw her press the back of her hand to her cheek to cool the burning flush.
The thirty seconds before the train pulled out seemed to last a decade, but did eventually end.
He watched the trail of windows, like stars in the darkness, retreat toward the city, and then began the walk back, the silence deafening, the cold seeping.