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Which is where he was waiting for her--at the foot of the path--and thank god but he wasn't wearing the cow tie, although he was wearing a tie. And a collared shirt that wasn't falling apart or worn soft and threadbare, and a coat that he hadn't found the time to get to a tailor after all, although the five or so pounds he'd put on the interim made this slightly less urgent than it might otherwise have been. The usual messenger bag didn't exactly sell the image, but the idea of Taym going on leave--even if he had dinner first on the itinerary--without a book and a mess of pens and something to carry cigarettes home in was laughable.

He had, after a pathetic amount of internal conflict, opted not to shave for a few days. Taken together: thin (and he wasn't sure when it had happened, but thin was a sufficient descriptor, at least until the clothes came off), jacket, sweater, unshaven, bag, smoking the last of a cigarette, he looked unsettlingly academic, a young college professor with a functionally-useless liberal arts degree and strong opinions about Sartre, who smoked pot with his students at frat parties and went by an initial. He lacked glasses. Glasses would have helped. Thank god, he thought, there were no glasses.

He gave her a once-over, suppressing his disappointment at the kitten heels because he knew good and damn well why she was wearing them, and rather than offer up a canned compliment (he wanted to; he didn't have the words; he would memorize in two seconds for future pained reflection the shape of her shoulders freed of her hair) he said only: "Ready?"

He'd bothered to make an attempt to smell nice, too, under the cigarette smoke, although in truth Taym never smelled particularly offensive if he could help it, being possessed of a deeply-rooted, entirely habitual fear of seeing someone pass him in a hallway and wrinkle a nose in obvious disgust.

With an effort of will he did not shrink away from her when she took his arm, instead finishing his cigarette, stomping it out, and then, instead of stuffing it into his pocket as was his usual habit, kicking it absently into a clump of vegetation and hoping no one was around to see it before tugging her gently towards the portal.

"I figured we'd get there just a little early," he said, rudely ignoring the compliment and again failing to return it, although it might be chalked up to the obvious case of inexplicable nerves: his forearm trembling gently under her hand through his sleeves, and the fact that he was chewing on his lip the second the cigarette was gone. "I intentionally picked a place that had a reputation for not needing to give you a ******** dissertation on every course but in case they feel the need to preface the meal with a lecture on how ******** lucky we are to be eating there--" clearly there were aspects of the fine dining establishment that Taym took umbrage with "--I'd rather be one of the first people seated and get it over with. What's your criminal angle?" he added, without any segue, and then: "I'm pretty sure the girl who took the reservations thinks I'm in organized crime or something. Smuggling? Blackmail? I can see you in blackmail. You should project an aura of capable, dangerous blackmail expert, lest someone think that you've been hired--"

He did not finish, partly because he did not have to, partly because he realized belatedly this was not the most tactful thing to say, and partly because there was no time, because he had been, unaware of it, avoiding his feline leisure-stroll pace in favor of his usual brisk, jittery one.

"I couldn't afford you anyway. Or at least, I couldn't. Whoever made these reservations--he probably could. Top ********' dollar," he reminded her, sly for a second before the nerves resurfaced, as the techs uncoiled from their seats in a way that suggested they'd been impatiently waiting for Taym to show back up and get on with it.

They emerged in streets rain-slick but to early-dusk skies mercilessly dry, the air unseasonably breezy in a way that had him winding his arm around her waist instead in a way that was as thoughtless as such things normally were difficult for him, forgetting for a moment that a mildly cool evening was not a hardship to most of his colleagues.

"How much time did you set aside for this?" he asked her quietly, already gently steering her down a sidewalk freckled with pedestrians, some in damp clothes, others under umbrellas, others dry but casting wary glances upwards.

An older gentleman passing fixed them with a second glance that had Taym going wary and taut against her again before he realized that of course--of course it was--it was a glance for America, not just for the fact that she was wearing a dress that gave prominence to her tattoo but for the obvious everything else. He swallowed, visibly miserable, and unawares tightened his hand against her side as if he could somehow transfuse her with his own drab banality and ward off any further looks. It would have been easy to think he was ashamed of her, if she knew him less than she did, and knew his fear of being noticed even in Deus's familiar hallways, let alone here.

"Good," he said after a long pause. His usual quiet was even more pronounced here, as though his voice were inversely tied to the surrounding noise: it was low, almost a murmur, and it was against her ear and he was vaguely irritated that he didn't have to stoop to put it there. "I only got one room."

He steered her again--a block, two blocks maybe--and they weren't quite the first group of people in line but they were close, and he ushered her under the awning with good timing as seconds later drops began to patter gently overhead. He gave the "no smoking" sign a baleful look but didn't push it, and by now the arm around her waist felt less companionable and more like he was clinging to an especially fickle anchor.

"It's been a while," he said quietly, and it was the second time he'd ever said that to justify his nerves and the first time it had been delivered with a self-deprecating laugh, easy, joking; now it was terse and bitter. What exactly had been a while--a date? decent food? people? all of the above?--he did not specify. And now, finally: "I want to tell you how good you look but nothing I say can possibly live up to whatever you said to yourself when you looked in the mirror."

(And it had been easier, then, before he knew her; he was strange and secretive about his body now, a fan of dark rooms and of firm limits for other people's hands. With Taym intimacy broke some barriers and irrevocably fortified others.)

"Not a doubt in my mind," he assured her, hiding the smile.

He pursued a course of desultory small talk, relieved to needle her into chatter about birthday plans, about town (discreetly, with glances at the burgeoning queue), steering her tactfully away from too much talk about Kostya and with remarkable shyness touching on the ideas he'd swapped with Cami (again discreetly; again the glances).

He grouchily dodged answering anything about his new apartment, and by the time the doors opened he was considerably loosened up, the touch of his hand against her back as they were led to their table (reservations, no wine, confirmed with a curious glance) thoughtless and casual. So, too, the conversation with the waiter, confirming (again, third time) that they'd be skipping the wine pairing, handling with deft and startlingly old habit the questions of special accommodations (none), of familiarity with a tasting menu (yes, albeit with a glance at America), of polite and reassuringly-casual small talk (the most at ease, maybe, she'd ever seen him when they weren't alone together; a joke cracked quietly, received in kind), and of whether they'd be wanting the lamb or the beef, the only option they were given (a polite deferral to America to choose).

The dining room was tiny, lit carefully and dimly; it was a masterpiece of dark wood and minimalism and crisp white table linens and tables arranged, just so, so that despite the lack of space and the rising murmur as the seats filled one never felt overly close to a neighbor.

The waiter departing, Taym leaned back, and he let his eyes wander over the room before they settled, almost accidentally, back on America. For an instant the nonchalance that he'd donned as comfortably as a old, much-loved coat clung to him--old cultivated habits from years ago, learned at his father's elbow and honed from early on--and then something about her jarred him visibly back to the present. His hands, hitherto peaceful, toyed, uncouth, with the hem of the tablecloth, his eyes dropping back to the table.

"I had a fear," he informed her, "that they'd switched to ******** seating. Everyone keeps doing that. God knows why. No one wants to sit with a dozen strangers for dinner. Maybe it's because those are the places inclined to ********' speeches with every course. Not like you have time for conversation anyway." He paused, lip caught in his teeth, shoulders tight, and he glanced at her from under his eyebrows in a way that was almost wary. "So what was the big break? Senator with a mistress? Corporate executives forming closed-door alliances? Divisional authority figure caught donning french maid gear? Not that he'd care." Blackmail.

He was more than looking at her. He was watching her, gauging her reaction to the room, to the waiter, and to him, a searching, rudely greedy, flagrantly assessing, hungry look.

He closed his eyes and held up a hand in a "spare me" gesture. "I don't want to know. I really don't. Anyway, it's bad strategy to share your intel. You're potentially losing profits."

The edges of the downcast grin clung to the pause that followed; the last shreds of it hung over his voice when he hazarded a look back up at her, needling. "It's not that formal a place," he pointed out gently. "You don't--"

And he was interrupted, by the arrival of a basket of bread and a bowl of butter that they were informed, cheerfully, was emulsified with duck fat. There was no speech, but then again bread wasn't exactly a course, and Taym gave the waiter's retreating back a skeptical look before glancing back to her, and then to the food which he was suddenly treating as if it might bite him instead of the other way around. Despite all his best efforts he was still strange and uneasy eating for an audience, as he thought of it: he'd hoped that the caliber of the food would remedy the problem, or his company, or being off the island, or merely the passage of time. It hadn't. Not yet.

He made, after a moment, a helpless "help yourself" gesture.

"Don't," he added, abruptly serious, "ever pretend to smile at me."

This time the only expedient for hiding the sudden flash of teeth was to put his hand over his mouth in what must have looked to every other diner in the room like a moment of deep and intense thoughtfulness while he considered his date across the table--looked that way to them, because they couldn't see the obvious suppressed laugh in his eyes, a sudden, painfully obvious surge of fondness.

He took pity on her, finally, unfolding his napkin into his lap and leading by example, and talking quietly throughout: casual conversation, to any onlooker.

"My mom always told me that in any social situation where you aren't sure what to do, wait for someone else in the room to go first and shamelessly ape them, because then you're either doing it right or you can blame someone else. I think you're overestimating," he added, "how formal this type of thing actually is. There's a guy two tables over wearing Converse with his suit. There's a woman at the table behind you who just took a picture of her food. It's a weekday; it's Chicago; the head chef is twenty-seven years old." And he knew this, of course. Of course he did. "Safe bet is any restaurant that offers a beer pairing along with the wine pairing, no one's watching you too close. All a chef that young in a place like this wants out of his guests is that you eat with intention and attention--just take the time to respect what you're eating and think about it. That said--"

And he demonstrated the socially-accepted way to go about the difficult matter at hand, her discomfort alleviating, somewhat, his own. If she'd been relaxed by his jitters at the lighthouse, he was eased by her unease here, although putting the bit of bread he'd torn off and buttered into his mouth felt more taboo than taking his shirt off for her so long ago had. He felt naked, exposed, disgusted, terrified; he closed his eyes and went very still.

She'd seen him eat dessert with relative enjoyment but rigorous self-discipline; she'd seen him battling infirmary food after the Sahara and spending every bite looking like he was about to throw up yet again; she'd seen him eat other things with difficulty and open guilt, as though he were committing a shameful act on the sly, retching over ice cream and stubbornly refusing a second bite of cake. Now she would see him eat with intention and attention, senses contracting down around the one he leashed even more often than the touch of his hands, a slow look of appreciative consideration creeping over his face. Taym was not a man inclined to do things by mild degrees and few knew this as well as she did: this, too, he apparently did with total devotion, with religious discipline, with focus.

"Just eat slow," he advised her, when he'd finished and hesitated over reaching for a second bite. "Don't bolt it down like a damned hyena," he added, with obvious fondness.