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Souls of the Night Vol 3

24.

The crackling sound of Lexington's petrification, which I had heard in my own inner ear as a gargoyle just one night before, before all my senses faded due to my own petrification, now triggered a very bizarre feeling. As if ... I was falling. I even felt my stomach drop abruptly like on a rollercoaster. I stared at Lexington's statue and remembered exactly how happy, almost jubilant I had been when he had been petrified - with a very similar smile - in my closet in the Flatlands. I had even masturbated to his statue. That thought seemed absurd to me now. Seeing his statue here - lifeless, "soulless", vulnerable - now only triggered the deepest despair in me and the feeling of not being able to breathe.

I gasped for air and jumped off this absurdly large bed, which, even if Lex were to lie down next to me for a few minutes out of love and mercy, would be infinitely wide. And I was supposed to sleep in it? Alone? He would never spend a night in it next to me. We would never wake up next to each other at the same time like we had done on the battlements. The best thing he had to offer me was to petrify behind his showcase because he might forget the time and I had the choice of pulling the door shut or leaving it open. I was suddenly so cold. I looked from the snow-white walls to the white furniture, the silver bedstead, the seemingly infinitely high ceiling with the silver spotlights. I turned to the window. No longer being afraid of heights didn't mean I felt comfortable. The first rays of sunlight cast a wonderful play of light on my skin, the hue of which just looked wrong, but I didn't feel any warmth, maybe because of the internal cold, maybe because there was something in those futuristic Wow!-panes that blocked the heat and cold and turned everything into a feeling of pleasant, comfortable temperature. Maybe that's how it was meant to be. It just didn't work for me at all. The sunrise was so gorgeous, the skyscrapers around the Eyrie building wrapped in a golden glow where the piece of Central Park I could see and the canyons below me lay in blue impressionistic shadows. I SAW that everything was beautiful, I SAW that this loft contained only the best and newest! I knew it and where I should be humble but grateful and happy that my lover was taking such care of me - he had called it "taking care" of me, I couldn't help but dash out of the room. I ran across the wide hallway and barely made it to the toilet bowl where I yanked up the lid and threw up my last meal.

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Sometimes it bothered Elisa that she had refused to become a gargoyle permanently back then. Of course, she was connected to Goliath in a way that was just as magical, but because she simply didn't petrify and had to sleep normally (ideally at night - Goliath had been insisting on this for years), she missed out on a lot. Just like this night. The messages on her cell phone had informed her, but she still felt like the aunt who missed the birth of her nephew (again) when she stepped out of her apartment an hour after sunrise to greet her new neighbor.

She didn't ring the doorbell, even though all the apartments had doorbells, and she didn't bother knocking because the door was ajar. Not only had the gargoyles picked up some bad human habits over the years, but the people around them had also adopted some gargoyle-typical quirks. Ringing a bell or knocking and waiting outside a door were options - not necessities. She entered with the small basket of bread and salt (as she still didn't know if Nathaniel drank alcohol, she had left out the wine) and felt her brow furrow. Not enough wrinkles for the age that outsiders thought she should have and therefore accused her of visiting the plastic surgeon, but certainly enough for her own taste.

Although she lived next door and had noticed a little of the renovation work, which thankfully was mostly done by the time she got home from work, she shuddered at the sight of the result. Where she had only suggested a few "carpets and pretty curtains" to make the bell tower feel homey, this place needed a general overhaul after the general overhaul. She had rarely seen such a spacious and at the same time frosty-looking living space. Even the cushions on the monstrous couch didn't help, they even emphasized the impression of sanitized practicality. The only adornment was the phenomenal view, and even though her own view was a stunner, she smiled sarcastically in the knowledge that she had been scammed by Xanatos when she had been allocated a new home. She knew from before the modernizations that this apartment was no bigger than hers. But it seemed bigger - and not in a good way.

Puffing discontentedly, she put the basket down on the kitchen island, looked in the huge fridge (yawningly empty, of course) and spontaneously decided to invite Nathaniel to breakfast at her place to show him that these apartments could be beautiful if no computer and technology genius with a passion for cold, sterile surfaces had his claws in them. It looked like the most expensive operating room in the world. Those high-gloss fronts alone! How impractical! Nathaniel was far too modest to have these fronts constantly cleaned of his fingerprints by the house staff. He would constantly wipe them himself. Was Lex trying to keep him busy so that he wouldn't fall into depression again now that he had been banished to the human quarters out of love?

Surely Lexington, in his big-wit way that had become his own over the years, had arranged everything the way he thought it would be perfect for the first and probably only great love of his life and his mate - but someone like Nathaniel could see that as banishment. He had seemed content in his tiny room in the castle, which was almost entirely taken up by the bed. Of course, that was too small as a permanent solution. But THIS was the other extreme. She really hoped Nathaniel had told Lexington the same thing... even if she didn't think he'd had the balls to do so. She rubbed her arms. It was a comfortable temperature in here - maybe 70 degrees - but it felt colder. If Nathaniel had been smart, he'd gone straight to bed instead of worrying about the daunting task of making this oversized nightmare of high gloss, marble surfaces and steel pillars stretching up the walls and across the ceilings comfortable. Elisa would just ... have a quick look in the bedroom and if he was asleep (as would be perfectly understandable for someone who had had a hard night and no longer petrified) she would leave him a message that he was welcome to come to her apartment for a snack and get some interior design inspiration while she was at work.

The floor plan was largely the same as hers, so she walked through the hallway. But she didn't get as far as the last door because she heard soft whimpering and wheezing from the room, which was most likely the bathroom.

"Oh man," she mumbled, sighed and knocked there.

"Nate?" she asked gently.

Briefly, the air-snatching crying was interrupted.

"Yes?" the former enchanted gargoyle replied, his voice pitched higher.

"It's Elisa," she said cautiously.

She rolled her eyes at herself and thought Who else? at the same second Nathaniel said just that in a tight voice. That made her grin.

"May I come in?"

Short silence.

"I ... am not really ... presentable ri-right now," Nathaniel stuttered hoarsely, sounding like a prissy English girl from one of Jane Austen's novels. Elisa heard him blow his nose loudly and continue to gasp for air.

"Is it a panic attack?" she inquired, but already suspected he wouldn't be able to talk to her like that if it was a fully-fledged attack.

"No," he said. "Just ... a break-down. It's all good. Please don't tell anyone," he panted, sounding increasingly breathless.

"I'm coming in now," she said firmly and opened the door.

She stared open-mouthed at the floor. Nathaniel was lying on his back on the floor tiles, but with his legs stretched up and against the wall between the toilet and the high-gloss white vanity unit, surrounded by dozens of pieces of soggy paper from the toilet roll.

He was wrapped in a huge, gray bath towel, wrapped so tightly around himself and his head that he looked like he was wearing a coat. Only his legs, stretched upwards, and his ruddy face, soaked with tears, were visible. He looked at her briefly and then turned his head away again, gasping for air.

Oh God, Elisa didn't know where to start. She somehow understood ... but she should have paid more attention at the last training for dealing with mentally unstable people (she organized these trainings, why didn't she pay more attention? Bad Elisa, bad).

She cleared her throat and looked out of the window behind the huge bathtub, which could easily hold a human and a gargoyle much larger than Lexington (he might have been a Tin Man, but Lex obviously thought the same way she did because her bathtub had been chosen by her according to the same standards). She assumed that the windows here were also opaque from the outside.

Nate had to interpret her thoughtful silence differently.

"Please don't tell any of the others. Especially not Lex," he begged, sounding so pathetic that Elisa's maternal feelings grew even bigger. But Nathaniel wasn't a child. He was a grown man, and cuddling him and whispering comforting things to him might make him feel a little better, but it wouldn't solve anything.

"I won't tell anyone," she promised and sat down on the toilet seat after closing the lid. However, she couldn't help but notice that it smelled a little like vomit. "Nathaniel, why did you put your legs up?" she asked, avoiding the vomit topic for the moment.

The man on the floor next to her sighed. "I thought ... it would get more blood to my brain. It felt like there wasn't enough in there. Everything feels so ..." he squinted his eyes, shook his head and gasped breathlessly several times again. His lips had a bluish tinge from lack of oxygen. Elisa stood up and pulled him to his feet. Despite Broadway's nursing, he was still slim and light enough for her to manage, and it helped that he was too weak to put up any kind of resistance. Before his shaky legs could buckle, she pulled him out of the bathroom and out of the apartment. In the main hallway, she leaned him against a wall.

"Stay on your feet," she ordered in her boss voice.

"Okay," he whimpered still holding the towel tightly around him. Elisa cringed, realizing that THIS was supposed to be his replacement for his wings. Goliath had texted her about "the echoes" but seeing it in real life almost brought tears to her eyes.

"Don't move. I'll be right back," she said more softly before disappearing into her apartment. She gathered what she needed, grabbed her handbag and was with him in less than a minute. He lifted his head and looked at her with gassy eyes, still panting softly.

"Here, put this on," she ordered.

"What is that?" he asked, pressing the soft, tightly woven light brown fabric against him.

"A knitted poncho with a hood. Put it on and come with me." He hesitantly put his towel away and slipped into the oversized poncho with the batwing sleeves. Now it paid off that he was slim and small - it fit perfectly, even if it was for women (especially those who wanted to wrap themselves up in something at least a little closer to wings on cold winter nights lacking temporally a dutiful gargoyle husband.

In the elevator, Nate immediately leaned against the wall there, but his eyes widened again when he noticed that they were going down and not up into the castle.

"We're going out?" he asked, rubbing his still red eyes. Elisa rummaged in her handbag and handed Nathaniel a large pair of sunglasses. Not only so that nobody would see that she was walking around with a man who was totally teary-eyed (someone would end up calling the men's protection society) but also because Nate hadn't seen the sun for months. Literally.

Nathaniel pushed his glasses on and pulled the knitted hood over his head and strange but true - now that his puffy eyes were hidden, he somehow looked a bit like an eccentric superstar who didn't want to be recognized but stood out for that very reason. Like his gargoyle form, he had damaged cartilage on his left ear but what you could see of his face - looked good, handsome somehow. His face shape was delicate but not too feminine, the hint of a stubbly beard giving him the appearance of calculated unkemptness, his skin was a healthy color of different ethnicities like Elisa's own, his lips were thin with stress but rosy and strangely sensual. Just as he licked those same lips and sighed, Elisa managed to turn her gaze to the elevator door, which was about to open. Main lobby. The elevator that went up to the ninety-ninth floor and higher was only for "friends of the clan or close associates of David Xanatos" - and Elisa was an often-seen passenger, but not Nathaniel. The latter ducked under the scrutiny of the more ordinary people coming and going, just as he had done on his first nights as a gargoyle. Something that caused Elisa to actually grab his hand and pull him through the hall like a mother would do with her child.

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Half an hour later, Elisa and Nate were sitting on a sunlit park bench in Central Park, Elisa had a large latte in her hands and Nate had finally calmed down and was sipping his coffee-banana smoothie. Now his sighing was no longer suffering but rather calm and content.

"Good?" Elisa asked.

Her little in-house nursing case nodded and under his hood and large sunglasses, only the small smile showed that he was no longer physically or mentally miserable.

"Thank you very much, Elisa."

"A coffee-banana smoothie is filling, but not heavy on the stomach. It's my go-to when I'm in a hurry. I knew it would be something for you."

Nathaniel lowered his head so he could look at her over the lenses with his mesmerizing ice-blue eyes. They were still quite puffy but dry. "I meant that you got me out of ... there. Thanks for that."

Elisa nudged Nate a little with her shoulder in a buddy-like manner.

"We're clan, Nathaniel. We help each other. That doesn't change just because you're human again. Aside from that," she murmured, sipping her

breakfast, "-interior design is finally something Lexington can't claim to be capable of. Your new place looks like it was decorated by R2-D2."

Nate and she burst out laughing at the same time. Here, in the bright morning Central Park with the joggers, the dog walkers, the people taking a shortcut to work and where no one paid attention to them because they were just two people sitting here in the morning sun, everything seemed so much lighter. But the stunning (some would have said menacing) Eyrie Building with the amazing (all but Lex would have said intimidating) apartment loomed behind them among the other skyscrapers like a big brother.

And maybe that's why - right after he finished laughing at Elisa's joke, Nate pulled the poncho tighter around him. And pulled off his borrowed glasses.

"Elisa..." he said, staring into his cup.

"Yes, Nate?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"The answer is no."

Nathaniel looked up with wide startled eyes.

Elisa smiled warmly.

"The answer to your question is no. No, you're not a bad boyfriend. This ... gift from Lexington. It was too big, too sudden. When Gargoyles love, they love unconditionally and so intensely that it can be frightening. That apartment up there is his expression of love for you - quite techy and cold-looking, but love nonetheless. But even though he's the smartest of us all, he forgot the most important thing - to include you. I know he'd argue that would have ruined the surprise - but damn, this isn't a surprise dinner or a concert date where it's all over after one night - this is your life - and you should have a say in matters that affect your future as well."

"I feel like a total asshole. He ... he gets me an apartment that's probably worth a hundred million dollars and the first thing I do is puke and bawl."

Elisa laughed softly and patted his knee, which was peeking out from under the wing replacement poncho. "You're not an asshole, Nathaniel. Your reaction was understandable, I think. That place gives you the creeps, you have to put your stamp on every single wall, every single yard. You don't have to like anything in there just because it's expensive and Lex thinks it's appropriate. And you're Lexington's first love, to whom he's truly and totally devoted. His heart is gigantic- but you don't have to have the same taste as him and you can tell him if his displays of affection don't meet with your approval or even scare you. I've been a cop for decades and damn- that up there almost made ME puke."

"It's not about taste. Not about ... rugs and pillows and a new wall color. That bed in there is monstrous and I - I can't sleep in there-"

"Alone."

"Yes! I freeze to death just thinking about it and you can't get rid of that with a warm color or a soft blanket and pillows. And the view is breathtaking, but it just reminds me that I'm no longer... that I'm not-."

"That you can't glide anymore?"

Nate rubbed a hand over his forehead - no horns and no massive brow bone ridge but soft eyebrows. "I wanted to become human again- for different reasons. I need to get my life back on track and escaping into being a gargoyle doesn't help. Really. I, I don't regret it ... but ... everything is so sureal now. And the rooms are so huge that I feel like I'm in a sacred space where you're not allowed to touch anything. It's not a living space, but I'm supposed to live in it? Every minute in there scares me. Lex has been SO generous to me but the vastness and isolation makes me desperately lonesome and roby my breath. I can't live in there, Elisa."

She pulled a tissue out of her jacket and handed it to her seat neighbor, who had started sniffling again. He blew his nose loudly and it sounded like a trumpeting elephant.

"You don't have to live in there, Nate? No one's forcing you, you know. I held on to my old apartment for years, even though it wasn't pleasant to live in for a long time."

"Why?"

"I think ... it had a lot to do with my belief that I would have lost the last bit of my integrity. Mainly because I found it strange to live under Xanatos' wing. He'll always be shady, even if he and his family are now basically clan members themselves. And it's somehow not a good public image when a civil servant accepts so many benefits from a citizen."

"As far as you can call David Xanatos a normal citizen," Nate stated astutely.

"Oh, what an insult. He would vehemently disagree."

"But ... Lexington went to such lengths. He was so proud of every gimmick in there. I don't mean to be ungrateful. But the worst thing is somehow ... "

"Yeah?"

"This apartment. It's like a symbol - I think. Lex said he would "take care of me" and this apartment is the most intense expression of that so far. But ... I don't WANT someone to take care of me. I love it when he's kind to me and I'm grateful if he leads me but I want to be able to ... take care of myself. I want..." he turned his cup in his hands and shook his head slowly.

"I'm talking nonsense. Everything Lex offers me on a silver platter, I trample underfoot. I'm just an ingrate."

"You want to be able to be his equal. There's nothing ungrateful about that. On the contrary. You value him by wanting to be on an equal footing with him. Not a project he's working on and not an appendage. I understand that very well."

"Yes?"

"Well, Nate- for years I was the perverted gargoyle fucker who betrayed her own colleagues in favor of monsters and after that I was often just "Goliath's girlfriend", depending on the occasion or event. So ... yes, I understand that well." Elisa stood up and drained her cup, looking down at Nathaniel smiling.

"I have to go to work now. But you Nathaniel, you have to think about what you want to do and how you want to live. We are humans. We are allowed to live human lives and we can find ways to combine clan and day life without almost giving up on ourselves. Straighten your back and talk to Lexington. Even if gargoyles seem overpowering in their protectiveness and bonding needs - our mates love us - they can tolerate it when we have needs and express them ourselves. This urge comes up to live according to their ways and their schedule - but they can also adapt to us. If everyone meets each other halfway, the whole path can be walked. I had to become seriously ill before I realized that."

She leaned over to Nathaniel again and kissed him on the cheek. If he hadn't already blushed at her last words (mainly because she had called Lex his mate), he was doing so now. Elisa grinned at that, slipped him the key card for the elevator, then wandered off to her day life. He remained seated. It was a warm May day, the sky wonderfully blue, the fresh green of the trees lush, the slightly more relaxed mood of the people passing by almost palpable.

Nathaniel Sharif sat on this bench in Central Park for hours, watching the people. He wondered if he felt connected to them now that he was human again. He wondered if he'd ever felt close to them. He wondered if he had missed the sun during his time as a gargoyle, which now warmed his flesh where the thicker gargoyle skin no longer did. Had he still been a gargoyle and been a little more attentive, he would have noticed the repeated clicking of the camera of the Leitz Leica IIIg from 1957, which had already captured Elisa on film. Even after she had left, a whole film was shot of the man with the dreadlocks, who sat brooding in the sunlight, rubbing his frayed ear, lost in thought. The man who looked so much like the blue gargoyle that seemed to be Lexington Wywern's object of desire.

Thanks for reading Q.T.