Submitted by Sayer on Tue, 02/14/2017 - 23:16
He’d had to come the moment he’d heard. He might never have another chance.
He had the access code, but he knocked after he’d entered it anyway. He was on shaky ground already and definitely didn't want to deal with the consequences of surprising sleeping Aegis.
His thoughts swirled. What was his plan? He had no idea how he was going to actually do this.
The door slid slowly open. It wasn't her. This was someone he didn't recognize, her eyes luminous with what he desperately hoped was just apprehensive flash.
"I need to see—"
She cut him off, with a wave of her hand and the hint of a smile.
"I’ll get her."
He’d taken flack from the other guards about their familiarity and had even threatened a few, so that they'd leave her alone, but it hadn’t occurred to him that the Aegis might also have taken note.
He tried to think of ways to word what he wanted to say, but she was there too quickly and he wouldn’t have been able to remember any of them anyway.
"Alex?"
"Hi, Kate."
"What are you doing here?" Her voice was a frantic whisper.
They’d spent enough time together in the last year for her to know his schedule. There were rules for what guards could and couldn’t do - and she knew being here at night had to be breaking them.
"They're shutting down the camps."
"What?"
"Tomorrow, I heard it on the news."
She smiled. "Really? That’s—" Her smile faded suddenly. "You came to tell me that?"
He sighed and shook his head. "I’m going to miss you Kate."
He wanted to tell her that spending time with her had been the best part of every day - He wanted to tell her he had no idea what he’d do if he never saw her again – but he thought that would have been too much.
She closed the door behind her and stepped down unto the grass with him - close enough for him to count the flecks of green in her eyes. She’d heard everything he’d wanted to say.
She’d spent nearly every one of his shifts with him in the year since they’d met, always keeping her distance because being close to him made it hard for her to think.
Meeting him was the only thing that had made these camps bearable - and she’d been attracted to him since that first day – but she didn’t know what the cultural rules were for baselines – or guards, and there was too much at stake.
But now he was here, on a night when he wasn’t supposed to be, to tell her that he’d miss her.
She smiled.
And this close, her flash was breathtaking. Everything he thought of saying seemed to just vanish into the sparkling green of her eyes. He should really have given this some thought before he’d come.
But it didn’t matter, because then she leaned in and kissed him.