I walked the six or seven blocks to his condo with him, conscious of the idea that if I went to get my car from the school lot my courage would fizzle out and I wouldn't go find his place. He carried my leftovers with his food, leaving me only my wallet and scarf to fumble with in my uncertainty. I was too nervous to say anything or want to answer any questions he might have asked just at that moment. He glanced at me every block or so, looking ever more worried, though I imagined this was reflective of the look on my face. At some point I had crossed my arms in front of my chest and buried my chin in my scarf; I was clearly uncomfortable with what was going on.

In front of one of the nicest apartment complexes in town he stepped ahead and put a hand on my arm to funnel me towards the door. I stopped in my tracks and looked straight ahead of me at his neck, unable to bring myself to look at his eyes. I shuffled my weight from one foot to the other. "I just have one more question, really it's what society makes me think of with this whole 'going home with a strange guy' thing… you're really not planning on killing me, are you?" I don't think I spoke anything so fast ever in my life. "And yeah even if you are, I feel like I have to ask anyway, and I really don't think you are an axe-murderer, but still." I inhaled and met his eyes.

One eyebrow shot up, but that was the only outside sign he gave that my question was odd or not. "No. I told you I would not harm you, and I will not." He used an old-fashioned looking key to unlock the outer door, though there appeared to be a card-reader near the lock as well, again holding it open for me to go through first. I shivered when the door closed behind us, and he craned his neck down to look at me to make sure I was still all right. I think the shiver was mostly just the difference between the warmth of the entryway compared to the chill and wind outside. Mostly. Part of it was being in a locked room with a man I didn't really know and couldn't entirely trust. That part of me was screaming at me that I was an idiot for doing this. There was another part of me that trusted him implicitly, and that was the part I was listening to. Curiosity and love for the ridiculous were always failings of mine.

For the first time, I actually looked up at him again; I was right, he was really tall. I'm not short, but he was nearly a foot taller than I was. And he was slouching so I smiled a little. He gave me a questioning look. "You're slouching." He rolled his eyes and turned to gesture to the stairs, mentioning he lived on the top floor. There was an elevator, but he was correct in his thought that I didn't want to be in such a small box alone with him. An apartment was one thing, but an elevator was something else entirely. We went up the wide wooden staircase, which narrowed once it got to the second floor and divided to go up on either side of a vaulted entryway.

He stopped in front of a door, his hand hovering over the doorknob with another old-fashioned key, glancing worriedly at me again. Given how much his hand was shaking, I think he was nearly as uncomfortable as I though I think he could hide it better. "You can leave whenever you want, I will not stop you." His voice had a distinct tremor to it as well. I nodded quickly.

He opened the door to a spacious and gorgeous apartment (he really did live on the top floor… the whole floor) and went inside, flipping on a light. I stood still, my toes just touching the edge of the hallway carpet. He waited, holding the door open before I felt ready and stepped inside. The door latched shut behind me and I took another deep breath. He went further inside and put the food boxes on a catch-all table but turned back to help me again with my coat, hanging both his and mine on coat hooks mounted on the wall. He slipped his shoes off, and I did the same. He told me to take a look around and I heard refrigerator doors as he put the food away. I stepped down two hard-wood half-stairs into a living room area, complete with all the normal things: couch, TV and entertainment system, coffee table and fireplace. There was a pillar as a partition that led to a dining room with a dark hardwood floor and gorgeous mahogany table. I looked towards the kitchen, where he was rifling through the drawers with a frustrated expression on his face. There were light cherry cupboards and dark marble counters surrounding stainless steel appliances, the countertops covered in various smaller appliances and what appeared to be the mail was stacked in a corner. The walls in each room were rich colors that matched with the furniture and overall, the rooms were well decorated, though not overly done. I watched him search for a moment longer, until he held up a box of matches with an "aha!" that made me smile.

He looked at me with an almost boyish grin, apparently quite proud of himself. I found myself relaxing around him when he was clearly as relaxed around me. "My propane lighter ran out last week and I have not yet bought another. Would you mind if I lit candles? I always have liked them more than electric lights."

I smiled a little and nodded, agreeing with him with respect to the lights. I offered to help and he went to a closet and grabbed a number of candles, which he dumped into my arms along with putting the matches in my hand. So much for him lighting candles. "You light those, and I will turn the fireplace on. Do you want any tea?"

"Tea?"

"Yes. Tea. As in the liquid steeped with leaves and herbs of various types?" He had apparently relaxed more than just slightly at being home rather than out elsewhere. I shot him a disbelieving glance and asked what type of tea. "Mostly mint." When I questioned him (with a raised eyebrow) on the "mostly" part, he smiled. "My mother used to mix her own tea, and this flavor was something she gave me the idea for." Was it caffeinated, I wondered. He raised an eyebrow, causing his forehead to wrinkle. "Is that a problem?"

The fireplace started with a click and a swish and I appreciated the gush of heat into the room. I set a few of the candles on the coffee table. "No, it's not a problem. You seemed more like an espresso or black coffee guy, is all. That mocha the other day didn't seem to float your boat."

He smiled pleasantly but shrugged, mussing with the remote control for the fire. "Tea is calming. I think both our nerves could use that."

I took in a sharp breath but quickly put the rest of the candles on the mantle and lit them. I was feeling relatively comfortable and he had to bring it up. I've always been good at selectively ignoring things I didn't want to think about, which has gotten people annoyed with me in the past, but alluding to the sticky conversation we were likely about to have did not help me. I heard him sigh though I didn't turn to see him walk off into one of the bedrooms.

"Blue or green?" he asked a few moments later, setting two folded microfleece blankets on the back of the couch and hopped into the kitchen to turn on the water kettle and pull down a teapot and two matching cups. I picked up the blue blanket and went to unfold it but found that it was whisked out of my hands an instant later; the man moved very fast. He held it up so I could step into it; I smiled and shook my head as I let him set it on my shoulders. It was impressive how gentlemanly he was being, as well as how he could throw me for a loop one second and be incredibly wonderful the next moment.

I wandered to the glass doors looking out first onto the balcony then over the street to the square, feeling comforted by the blanket around my shoulders. His apartment was so quiet and isolated-feeling that I had for a little while forgotten that I was in the middle of the city. I looked up this time, finding much of the ceiling was made of skylights where I could see the stars. The evening was much prettier now that I wasn't in the wind. The teapot whistled and I heard a pouring sound.

"It will snow tonight, I believe," he said, and I turned around to find him setting the tea tray (he had a tea tray!) on the coffee table. He grabbed the green blanket and threw it over his own shoulders like a cape before perching on the edge of the couch to pour the tea into our cups. It smelled amazing. He glanced up at me, teapot hovering above the second cup and I was struck with how domestic and adorable he looked. If I hadn't seen his rapidly changing expressions from happiness to anger I would have no problem thinking he was the greatest guy in the world. Here he was, this regal looking man, wrapped in a blanket holding a teapot in front of a fireplace in candlelight. "Floor or couch?" Oh yeah, and then asking if I wanted to sit on the floor rather than at some elaborate tea table (not that he had one), or at least on the rather normal looking couch.

"You're unbelievable."

His eyebrow rose. "I hope in a good way?" Was that flirting? Was he flirting with me? What? Some things my brain just had a hard time accepting.

I smiled and sat down on the floor. I shook my head at his ridiculousness. "Yes. It's a good thing."

He smiled back at me, pushing a mug in my direction. "Good."

I accepted the tea, holding the mug between my knees as I leaned backwards onto the couch. I was looking at the fire, but he was looking at me. I met his eyes. I guess I was getting used to him looking at me, but this time the expression on his face was very interesting. Usually I'd been able to tell what he was trying to emote, but this time I couldn't read it. Like at all. He was a stone wall with stone grey eyes. He opened his mouth and shut it a few times before actually speaking. "You still do not trust me, do you?"

How did he…? I cocked my head to the side, as if a slightly altered vantage point would give me an insight. I studied his face a little harder. If anything, he looked hurt now. I took a few deep breaths and tried to plan out my words. I sat up and put the steaming mug on the table in front of me to look directly at him.

"William, I am a scientist. I've spent most of my life reading through science books and I build molecules from the ground up for a job. I live in a world where everything I do has a purpose and makes physical sense. You are essentially an anomaly to me. You don't make sense. Everything I've been taught in society has told me not to trust people I don't know, namely men I don't know." I paused a moment to look at him again. He still looked hurt. "As you mentioned in the restaurant, I've known you for such a short amount of time. Three hours now, or something like that. That's not enough time to know anyone enough to really trust them. And here we are in your living room and I know barely anything about you. I don't know your real name." He looked about to protest, so I cut him off. "Which is fine, I asked you for what to call you and you answered. William is a name, but it's not your name, it's a nickname. Kinda like Aly is the nickname I picked up when I came here. I don't use my actual name all that often, so I can understand being called something else. I have no problem with that. But I don't know how I know that your name isn't William because I know so little concrete about you. I… I know other things as well, things that we never talked about, but somehow I feel like I know them." We were staring at each other, comprehending this was another of those important moments. I felt my stomach knotting up, glad I hadn't eaten much. "I know that you have brothers. I don't know exactly how many, but more than four." He was nodding, a little awe-struck. "I know that you are older than you look," I paused, feeling sheepish for even thinking what I was thinking. "You are likely really, really old. But I have no idea how old, or how you managed to keep from aging." I had looked away a moment, feeling my face glow red, but he kept staring at me and waiting for me to continue. He was sitting with his legs crossed in front of him and was tightly clutching the mug on the table in front of him, paying rapt attention to me. I think if he had held the mug any tighter, we would have spent the following few minutes picking ceramic pieces from our hair.

"Part of what makes me trust you is knowing deep down that I'm right about those things. That part of me knows you won't hurt me, and you're just as interested in what this is as I am." He smiled at my silly motioning between him and me, made awkward because of how I was sitting and the blanket over my shoulders. "But there are things about you I can't ignore or disregard, that scare me. You've killed people. I feel like it was people I knew." I felt my voice falter at this point and I spoke the next part in a whisper. "I don't know anyone who has died like that, so I can't explain this at all, even though I'm just as sure of that as I was the rest of it." His mouth dropped open and his face went very, very pale. I had just accused him of murder, so I can totally see why. What I couldn't rationalize, however, and what scared me even more, was that he didn't try to deny it like he had clearly disagreed with me calling him a traitor. I blanched a moment, but I knew if I stopped talking for much longer I wouldn't be able to start again.

"I know that you have a hard time trusting people, and then you take it a step further. Your whole manner changes instantly at what you perceive as a threat, even when there isn't the remotest chance of one. Though they didn't see them, I didn't miss the glares you shot at both Chris the other day and our waiter today. Your face went from mild-mannered gentleman to serial killer and back in less than two seconds. That and I definitely felt the one you sent in my direction when you thought I called you a traitor." I paused to breathe for a moment.

"William, I have no rational explanation for any of that, and I live through rationality and being able to explain things. I really can't understand how I know any of that. And I know it's true. More things about you just appear in my head when I'm not expecting them. Like this: you really don't like the color orange. How can I feel comfortable around you with all that going through my brain?" He looked at me, his face pale and almost… scared. He stood up and walked behind the couch where he started to pace back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. I grimaced at my presentation of all of that; I usually did and said things in the wrong order.

I gave him a moment to calm down but when he surpassed that moment, I had to call his name three times before he stopped. He looked very troubled when he did turn to me, placing both hands on the back of the couch and staring down at me with a very intense look on his face. Though clearly uncomfortable with the situation and still wrapped in a light green microfleece blanket, he looked rather noble and yet oddly ridiculous.

"For all of that, William, I'm sitting on your floor wrapped in a blanket that you put on me and drinking tea that I didn't watch you make." I took an obliging sip of the fantastically mint tea and held it up to him in a mock toast. "That's a pretty decent mark in your favor."

William's shoulders slumped at this and he looked to relax a bit. He came over and sat on the couch next to where I was on the floor so my face was even with his knees and only a foot or so away. I was a little uncomfortable with how close he was, but I tried to ignore it, especially when he leaned closer and past me to reach his mug. I sneaked a peek at him when his face was level with mine: William looked very sad. We sat that way with me on the floor and him on the couch next to me for a few minutes, taking sips of tea every little while.

When my tea was nearly half empty, he asked me what kinds of music I preferred. I gave him a questioning look (because so random) and he leaned backwards to pull a smartphone out of his pants pocket. He used it as a remote to turn on the surround sound stereo, which started with a characteristic few tones. He offered to put whatever I wanted through the system.

"Uh, well, anything really, what do you listen to?"

We apparently had similar ideas. You can sometimes tell things about a person by what music they listen to. "I prefer to listen to classical or orchestral arrangements, and I have been known to listen to more modern things." This seemed fair and very much like what I would have expected him to like, so I suggested an internet radio station based on one of my favorite composers (I was a semi-decent cellist from gradeschool through college). With suitable music in the background, we talked on a number of mundane, random and otherwise "safe" topics for something like an hour or two while the music played in the background. Periodically, one of us would shush the other and we would be silent through a favorite passage or moment. He brought over a bowl of grapes at one point, as neither of us had eaten a full dinner and we were both hungry. I have to say it was nice having a normal conversation with him, and it went a long way to me trusting him. There was something about the openness of the conversation, and how animated and comfortable he could be in his own home rather than how he was elsewhere.

At one point, I unsuccessfully stifled a yawn. He gave me a small smile, as if acknowledging my frailty. He sighed, a fleeting look of pain clouding his face as he clasped his hands in his lap. "I feel like I should explain so many things to you, Aly, but I need to think how best to phrase everything." I opened my mouth to reply to this odd comment, but he held up a hand and I stopped. He paused, his face becoming desperate. "Will you be willing to meet me again?" I could feel, rather than hear him say please.

I scooched closer to him, having moved up on the couch sometime earlier, to look directly at his face. I studied him. He looked as if to be pleading me, but I needed to know what this was too and I nodded to him.

He gave me a broad smile that lit up his otherwise attractive face, also showing his relief and I managed a small smile in return. William's smile again fell to a slight frown when he glanced up at the skylight, seeing the snow starting to melt into small droplets on the glass. "May I walk you back to your vehicle? Or perhaps drive you home?"

"Well, I can walk back by myself. You don't have to bother." I shrugged the blanket off of my shoulders and set the mug on the coffee table next to the teapot. It was almost immediately apparent when I looked back at him that his request was really a choice of the two and not an option. "Err, we can walk back to my car, thanks. I like snow." He nodded and stood with an impressive amount of grace in his steps went back to the kitchen where I heard the fridge open and him muss with the leftover containers again, no doubt determining which one was mine. I folded my blanket and put it on the back of the couch.

By the time I had put my shoes back on, he was holding my coat up for me, somehow already shod and coated himself. I shot him a confused look but put my arms into my coatsleeves. He shrugged and grinned at me and clearly stopped himself from working at the buttons on my pea coat, earning him another even more confused glance. He backed off to open the door with a contrite look on his face though I was amused by his clear levity.

"Ah! Just a moment," he exclaimed, reaching towards his wallet and searching through the bill section. "Here." He handed me a set of two cards, one clearly a business card and the other a door-key like from a hotel. "My contact information and a guest key for the front door. Just in case. Swiping this at the front door is coded to ring a doorbell in here." I stared at the two things in my palm, not having expected either of them, and aware of the, well, intimacy involved in giving me a key to his apartment after so short an acquaintance. Again, he apparently understood the look on my face and gently closed my hand over the cards, the first time he touched me intentionally that evening apart from when he grabbed my arm in the restaurant. "It is for the entry door to the complex, I do not have a spare for my door for you." Yet.

I glanced at him, my expression clearly communicating that I had heard his "yet" and I wasn't entirely all right with his inflection. He grinned a little, trying to make me feel better again. "Perhaps both of us will have to be careful what we think around the other."

I scoffed and rolled my eyes, reaching for the door. He beat me to it and held it open for me, gesturing for me to follow him, earning a chuckle and another eye roll in his general direction. As we made our way downstairs, out the main door and down the street in the direction of my parking spot on campus, I felt him steer me with a light touch to my mid-back followed by him walking on the street side of the sidewalk which he had also done on our way there. We came up to the dodgy part of the street where the drunks and homeless usually congregate outside of a church and the public library. Without asking, he hooked my arm in his and pulled me towards him, but I realized he was simply being protective of me rather than trying to do anything. It was a weird feeling, having a bodyguard. We walked the mile or so back to my car in silence.

In the parking garage, I pulled my keys from my wallet and put his cards inside the billfold section, not ready to give them a second glance. Though he had, well, deposited me in front of the driver's door, he walked around my car, inspecting it from a number of odd angles. "Incredible! We have almost the same automobile," he mentioned from behind and underneath the passenger's side back bumper, leaning down to look at the tailpipe with his hand on the top of the trunk. I raised my eyebrows at him, though he couldn't see me.

I stood there shivering but patiently waited for him to finish his inspection of my car. I have a habit of blinking really fast when I was bemused by a situation, which I was definitely doing now. He popped up from behind my car with a grin and hopped around to open the driver's door for me while I shot him a skeptical and questioning look. I rolled my eyes as I walked past him and sat down, putting my wallet on the center console. Looking back out at him, I realized just how tall he was from this angle. I moved my knees and hands further inside the car to let him shut the door. I turned the key and started the engine so I could open the window, craning my neck to look up at him outside the door. "Tell you what," I put my hand on the doorframe, "get in and I'll drive you home. We can talk about, err, next time." With an incredible amount of speed, he appeared on the opposite side of my car and opened the door. I grabbed my coffee mug from that morning and tossed it in the back. He fwumped happily down, looking decidedly cramped even though the seat was as far back it could be… tall. I heard his seatbelt click and I backed the car up and then moved out of the garage, turning down the one-way street that would take me towards where he lived.

"The parks department has been working on the lights around the Canopy," he mentioned, playing with the temperature in the car as the heater warmed up, being kind enough to aim the vents at me rather than himself. The Canopy was the town's festival of lights around Christmastime, and from his fourth floor condo the view would be spectacular. The reason for him fiddling with the controls was clear when he was trying to mask his own nerves as I could see him wring his hands once he no longer had the occupation. I at least could avoid my nerves by driving. "They are planning on turning on all the lights on Saturday evening, I believe. Would you mind coming over if I cooked…? Or we could go eat somewhere else, I mean, whatever you would prefer…."

I glanced at him, seeing his face being lit by oncoming headlights and darkened again when they passed. "I, uh…"

He cut in quickly, sensing my discomfort. "I can make a reservation… what do you say to Chef's?"

"No, no. It's fine. I mean, you can cook, that's uh, okay. Err, can I bring a dessert or a salad or something?" I may have felt rather uncomfortable eating a meal cooked entirely by him, but even more than that I didn't feel like subjecting another round of waiters or waitresses to his unhappy looks or our awkward pauses. We agreed on the day and time and he pulled out an additional paper from his wallet. He put it on my car's dash: a guest space permit, apparently.

I dropped him off and waited for him to make it to the stairs inside his complex before driving away. I turned around the block and pulled into a space on the street, for once parallel parking perfectly, before taking a few deep breaths and pulling away again.

Holy crap on a stick, Batman.

Hello! Thank you to my reviewers, favoriters and followers.

I have been having a dickens of a time figuring out where I want this to go, and to be honest, I'm not entirely certain yet. It's a little creepy through parts so far, but I think that's unavoidable. Please let me know what you think.