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This whole thing happens because Nina doesn’t ask for help. Zoya had given her the name of a company when she mentioned that her bookshelves were in need of some TLC and of course she didn’t call them, because she can fix her bookshelves herself, thank you very much. And yes, the stepladder she has stashed under her stairs is perfectly suited to the job.
Zoya wasted no time in telling her ‘I told you so’ when she picked her up from the emergency room.
She walks into work on Monday with her wrist in a navy cast, fumbling a little with her lanyard in her left hand. The school day hasn’t even started and she’s already dreading it. It’s not even the fact she will have to type everything one-handed, or work out how to carry her planner, file and coffee to and from the staff room without dropping them that’s the issue. It’s that she is trapped in a building with 1000 nosy teenagers who treat her private life like it’s the hottest soap opera.
So no, she is not looking forward to this week. And when she’s standing outside her room awkwardly trying to pull her keys off her lanyard without dropping anything, she can feel her pride slowly begin to crack.
(Saints, she has to make it through 4 more weeks of this)
Her mug slips just as she turns the key. A small cry escapes her but before it can hit the floor, it lands in someone’s hand and Nina is just about saved from her heart attack.
“You dropped this,” Mr Helvar says. Nina laughs and brushes her hair away from her flushed face.
“Yes, I did,” she says. With some difficutly, Nina shifts everything else into the crook of her arm and holds out her hand. “Thank you for saving it.”
“No problem.” He hands it over, realisation dawning when he sees the cast on her arm. “Rough weekend?”
“DIY incident,” she replies. Mr Helvar chuckles as she leans on the door handle, ducking her head just as the door opens to hide the redness in her cheeks.
“Are you sure you’re okay with everything?”
“Perfectly,” she replies from her desk. He lingers in the doorway, huge frame taking up nearly the entire space. “Thank you though, Mr Helvar.”
“I wouldn’t want you to go a morning without caffeine,” he says. Nina’s ears prick up. It almost sounds teasing, which is hard to believe, given Mr Helvar is the most serious member of staff in this building. Even Mr Brekker isn’t above a little ribbing now and then.
She discards the thought and logs into her computer.
“Well, if you need any other help,” Mr Helvar says. “I will be in the history department.”
Nina turns in her chair to face him.
“Thank you, sir,” she says. “But really, I will be fine.”
He doesn’t press it. Instead, he smiles, nods stiffly and heads back down the corridor.
Nina is somewhat disappointed by that.
She doesn’t think of him much for the rest of the day. Granted, most of her day is taken up by students, so she doesn’t get to think about anything other than Fjerdan verb formations and Suli poetry. Inej comes into her room for lunch, as they often do, and Nina tells her the entire story over a pack of cookies. Inej, true to form, offers an empathetic ear the entire time she’s talking, nodding along and wincing as appropriate.
“I’m confiscating your stepladder until further notice,” Inej says as she’s packing up.
“You don’t even know where I keep it.”
“Don’t I?” she grins and Nina accepts her fate. She still doesn’t know what Inej did with her throw pillows.
By the day’s end, the weather has taken a turn for the worse. What started as a light drizzle has turned into full-scale downpour, gutters above the school gushing water. Her jacket is already soaked through before she’s even crossed the car park. And according to her phone, the weather means the bus is delayed and her journey home will be twice as long as her journey in.
She turns her coat collar up and sticks her hands in her pockets.
“Miss Zenik!” Nina groans. The last thing he wants to discuss is work, not when it’s bucketing down like this.
Mr Helvar appears beside her, blonde hair sticking to his forehead, breaths coming out in puffs of white smoke.
“Mr Helvar,” she sighs. “Is-”
“How are you getting home?”
Nina blinks. She pulls her coat tighter around her. There is a noticeable lack of her car in the car park and she holds up her broken wrist weakly.
“Bus,” she replies. “Unfortunately I won’t be driving for the forseeable future.”
“Let me drive you home.”
“Oh, no. That’s not necessary. Really, I don’t mind waiting.”
“No, please,” he says. “You can’t take the bus in this weather. I don’t even know if they’re running.”
“They are.” She bites her tongue and suppresses a shiver. “A little behind schedule, but-”
“Not surprising,” he says. “Please, Miss Zenik. You’ll catch your death out here. Whereabouts do you live?”
Nina hesitates before answering.
“Sankta Petyr Straat. Little Ravka.”
Mr Helvar-Matthias-nods.
“I’m not far from there. Please, let me drive you home.”
As he talks, the rain doubles down. Nina pulls her coat tighter around her. The protest is ready on her lips, but the cold has worked its way into her bones and this argument has already added five minutes to her journey. Plus, the idea of a heated car is very, very appealing right now.
“You won’t give up until I say yes, will you?” she asks. Matthias smiles and despite her exhaustion and the cold and the sliver of shame in her gut, she smiles back.
It’s nothing short of beautiful when he turns on the heating. Nina strips off her wet coat and rakes a hand through her hair, fingers catching on the knots made by the wind.
“Thank you for this.”
“It’s nothing,” he says. “Like I said. I’m not too far from Little Ravka.”
“What area?” Nina asks. Matthias shrugs.
“I think it’s called Dragsstrat or something? I don’t know how to pronounce it, really. Kerch names still confuse me.”
Nina nods. She gets it. She’s been in this country for four years compared to his one and she still trips up on syllables.
“Still. I’ll buy you a drink at the next night out.”
“No need, Miss Zenik,” he says. “I’m just doing the honourable thing.”
Nina toys with the strap on her cast. There’s an odd, warm feeling in her chest, one she hasn’t felt for a while, mixing up with the exhaustion and the embarrassment until it’s hard to untangle them.
“The honourable thing,” she mutters, and she watches him smile in her periphery.
So that is how it starts.
And then it just… keeps going.
He offers to drive her home the next day, because the weather is still shit. She asks him how his day was and he goes on a ten-minute long rant about one particular student who is driving him up the wall. It turns out that student is in Nina’s Kaelish class and they spend the entire time offloading to each other. Nina sinks into his passenger seat and remarks she needed that more than she realised.
Matthias laughs at that.
The day after, the weather is still shit, and they spend the drive complaining about how bad Kerch weather is, and how boring the food is. Matthias goes on a tangent about how it never really rains in Fjerda, only snows, and how if he could take one thing over with him it would be being able to stand on his doorstep in the morning and watch the snow falling.
“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. “I’m rambling.”
“No, it’s fine,” Nina says. He smiles softly, his cheeks now a rosy shade of pink that make his blue eyes shine. She finds herself launching into a speech about her own trip to Fjerda a few years ago, and how she still thinks about the peace of those snowy white peaks. Matthias never once interrupts her, just lets her go on and on without question.
“Well,” he says when she’s finished. “This is your stop, isn’t it?”
“Oh.”
Nina hadn’t even noticed.
The fourth day, she doesn’t question it. Matthias meets her at her classroom and they chat about their days on their way to the car park. Matthias mentions some slang that his Year 8s insist on using that he has no clue what it means and Nina doesn’t either, but it sounds so out of place in his voice that she bursts out laughing. Matthias quite indignantly asks her what is so funny, and by the time they get to the car park, she is laughing so hard tears are rolling down her cheeks.
At the end of the week, Matthias suggests stopping off somewhere. For surviving another week, he says. He pulls up outside a little bistro in central Ketterdam that Nina happens to love, and they get take-out hot chocolate and potato pancakes and eat them in the car park.
“The best ones are in Ravka,” she tells him. “But these are a decent substitute. The best ones in Ketterdam are in this place called Winter’s Palace on the other side of town.”
“I’ll have to go there someday,” he says casually.
Nina almost, almost, corrects him to “we”. She stops herself, just in the nick of time, because they aren’t a thing, they are just two coworkers carpooling home because one of them broke their wrist.
That is all.
“So,” Inej says at lunch on Monday. “What is the deal with you and Helvar?”
Nina looks up. They’re sitting in Inej’s classroom, the door locked and the curtain drawn. Nina is sitting on the front desk, like a civilised person, and Inej is sat on the windowsill with her legs pulled up to her chest. Nina tosses Inej a toffee, and she catches it without looking.
“He’s giving me lifts home,” she says. “On account of this.” She waves her cast in the air for effect. “Not like I can drive anywhere.”
Inej unwraps the toffee and pops it into her mouth. The silence goes on for a long time, longer than it should take to chew a toffee, and Nina braces herself. She’s known Inej long enough now to see what’s coming.
“He picks you up from your classroom.”
“Well, he walks by me anyway. He’s a gentleman.”
“A gentleman.” Inej wiggles her eyebrows
“You know what I mean,” Nina says. She looks back at her food, picking through bits of salmon and avocado while Inej watches. She very much makes a point of not saying anything, instead takes a long sip of her coffee, has a biscuit, checks her emails on her phone. Inej doesn’t say anything, the woosh of her opening a drink filling in the silence.
Nina looks up at the clock. Ten minutes until the end of lunch. She finishes her food and takes a swig of water.
“He bought me hot chocolate,” she says casually.
“Put a ring on him.”
Nina blushes and throws Inej another toffee.
So it just keeps going. They drive home together and as they do, Nina uncovers more and more about Matthias Helvar. She finds out he grew up in Hjar, a small town in the north of Fjerda. She finds out that he has a dog called Trassel (“Troublemaker” she observes before he has the chance to tell her) and begs him for pictures. He takes his coffee black and his breakfast plain and he hates lunch duty, despite running it like a freaking army base. He gets along with his exam classes and if he is honest, Year 7s freak him out a little because he has no idea how to talk to someone that young.
He has a dimple in his right cheek and goes completely still when he’s thinking. He prefers ballpoint pens and will never use a new page if there’s more than six lines left on the old one.
Everyone else knows these things too. Inej, Zoya, Jesper, even the barista at the coffee shop near her. Because he manages to sneak into almost every conversation Nina has, even when he isn’t around.
“So when are you asking Mr Helvar out?” Zoya asks her one day. “So that I can be spared this endless gushing.”
“You will never be free of my gushing,” is Nina’s reply. Then she pulls her sleeve over her hand and settles down on the couch beside her. Zoya goes quiet, brown eyes gleaming from over the top of her book. As always, Zoya gets it.
“It could be fun,” Nina admits slowly. “Me and him.”
“Fun is one word for it.” Despite her frown, she can feel Zoya beginning to smile. She turns another page in her book, reading glasses perched on her nose. “As long as I don’t have to hear anything.”
“You will hear every sordid detail,” Nina promises.
Zoya groans and presses her face into a pillow.
The days keep passing. Nina’s favourite song comes on the radio and Matthias nearly bites his tongue off trying not to laugh at her voice. She marks books in his passenger seat because she has left nearly all of it to the last minute and her classes are getting impatient. Matthias rants to her about his asshole of a neighbour complaining about Trassel again and how he doesn’t know if he should ignore her or allow Trassel to defecate in her “damn petunia patch”. Nina remarks that that’s the closest he’s come to swearing in the entire time she’s known him. Matthias laughs and says it’s ungodly to swear. Nina laughs and tells him that in Ravka, many Saints are known to have mouths like sailors.
On Thursday, it’s different. He doesn’t meet her at her classroom, and after ten minutes she swallows her disappointment and decides to head home herself. She passes his classroom and happens to spy him inside, sat at his desk, his head in his hands, his mouth half open.
She should leave him alone. Rides home are one thing, but this?
She knocks gently. When she comes in, she can see the dried tear tracks on his cheeks. She doesn’t say anything, just pulls up a chair and sits next to him. He says it quietly, a Year 9 girl disclosing something he can’t unhear.
She sits next to him while he logs it.
They wait a while before driving home that day.
Of all people, it’s fucking Kaz Brekker who gets it.
Matthias is on lunch duty, so she’s sitting in the staffroom catching up on planning for next week. Inej sits beside her, offloading about her exam class and how unprepared they are. Brekker came in quietly, an unusual sight in the staffroom, sure, but he’s only there to fill up his coffee.
(And yes, she is ignoring the small look passed between Inej and Brekker. It’s Thursday lunchtime; she’s too tired for this)
“Anyway what’s happening tomorrow?” Nina asks. “Am I coming to yours or are you coming to mine?”
“Can you come to mine?” Inej asks. “I’ve got some stuff coming for the kitchen I need to sign for. Oh, and I can show you my new sink.”
“You do know how to charm a girl, don’t you, Ghafa?” Nina asks. “That’s cool. I might have to taxi it though; yours is a bit out of Mr Helvar’s way.”
“Not entirely.” Their heads snap up. Mr Brekker stands against the counter, sipping coffee so nonchalantly despite the two pairs of eyes on him. Nina’s not sure if he’s deliberately making them wait or isn’t aware he is meant to.
“What do you mean?” she asks when the silence gets too much. Brekker raises an eyebrow.
“Helvar. He’d be going through Inej’s street anyway to get home.”
“Uh, first off, why do you know where Inej lives?”
“I know where everyone lives-”
“Clearly not, Brekker. Matthias lives near me. On Dragsstrat.”
Something quite scary happens after that. Brekker smiles. Nina understands why kids call him ‘the grumpy teacher’-if her smile looked like that she’d hide it too.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He blows on his coffee. “Just either Helvar moved in the past year and admin never updated his details, or he’s been spinning a lie. He lives in the bloody Fjerdan district. On the other side of town.” He shrugs. “Check his staff profile if you don’t believe me.”
“Those are classified,” Inej says. Brekker just smiles.
“They were.”
Nina nearly falls off the couch. Brekker takes another sip of his coffee and exits as quietly as he entered. The quiet of the staffroom is almost suffocating. Pieces fall into place, one by one.
“Nina?” Inej asks.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she says softly. “I need to speak with Mr Helvar.”
She knocks over her pile of books on the way out.
“Helvar!” Matthias nearly knocks his coffee over, his big frame flailing in his chair. Nina marches inside and closes the door. Mercifully, his classroom is empty and Nina realises she didn’t check if he has a free period today.
“Miss Zenik,” he stammers. “What can I do for you-”
“You lied to me.” He stops short. “You told me you live near me.”
“I do live near you” he says.
“You told me it was no problem to drop me home.”
“Because… it wasn’t.” His brow creases. “Nina, is there something you-”
“Then why, Mr Helvar, have I just found out that you live not on the Dragsstrat like you said, but in fact on the other side of the bloody city, closer to the fucking harbour than to this school, let alone me!”
Mr Helvar-Matthias-blinks. His mouth has fallen open, his face two shades paler. Somewhere underneath the shock and the confusion and the saints-know-what-else, Nina is tempted to laugh.
“How… did you?”
“I have my ways,” she says. “So why did you lie to me?”
“I… knew you wouldn’t take the lift if it was so out of my way,” he sighs. “So I told a tiny white lie.”
“That tiny white lie has lasted for four weeks.”
“I am aware. Initially I had thought it would only be one time.”
“But then you kept doing it?” She scoffs, runs a hand through her hair. “I’m not-I’m just… why?”
“Well, because….” Matthias squirms, actually squirms. He looks up, down, around, anywhere but at her. “Because… I like spending you.”
This time, Nina can’t help it. She does laugh. Thank the Saints none of the kids are around because word would spread fast. Miss Zenik has finally lost it.
“Nina?” The chair rolls and Matthias is up, striding over to her. Nina is still laughing, until her cheeks are pink.
Zoya was right. Oh Saints, Zoya was right.
“What… the… fuck, Helvar?” she wheezes. “Seriously, what the fuck? Whatever happened to asking me out to dinner or something?”
Matthias presses his lips together.
“Would you like to get dinner?”
“Yes!” she groans, fully exasperated. “When was the last time you asked a girl out before?” Matthias doesn’t answer, just ducks his head, but she can still see the blush on his cheeks. Sees the dimples indented in his cheeks and yeah, her stomach flutters.
“Friday. Pick me up at six.” She cocks an eyebrow. “Sorry for making you drive.”
“It’s okay,” he says. The sunlight in the window catches his eyes. She’s never seen blue quite like it. “It’s not that far.”
Nina has just enough self control to hold back her squeal until she’s in her own classroom.