"What the hell are you doing here?" she asks as she falls into his apartment. She has a key, so she's let herself in. She's had it for about five years, ever since he asked her to water his plants while he was away on business. She never returned it.

Gil is sitting silently in his leather armchair, watching the view out of his living room window. She can see barely his arm and the empty glass in his hand.

"You should be out. It's Las Vegas. I doubt you'd find more parties in Manhattan tonight," she says as she walks up to him. Standing behind the chair, she looks over his head and they gaze out together. Slowly, his right arm moves back and up, searching for her hand, and when he finds it their fingers intertwine.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he says mostly to himself as some fireworks go off half an hour too early and fill the already colorful panorama. "Why aren't you out, Catherine?"

"I am. I'm here." She smiles and he sees it in her reflection in the window.

"One day off a week. It's pleasant to be in the silence at night and to let it occur without needing to intervene constantly."

She turns her head to the side and finds the muted TV showing footage of Time Square and it's oddly comforting.

"Get back here," she hears him say, and he gently pulls her arm. She complies and glides back to him and sits with him on the chair, on his lap. The cold leather at her back causes her to shiver.

He brushes her hair out of her face and kisses her gently.

"You're-" She checks her watch. "Twenty two minutes early."

"We've been in exactly the same place for the past three years."

"There's just something about kissing someone with a doctor title on the stroke of midnight that makes a girl's head spin," Catherine says with a slight grin.

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close so that her head rests on his shoulder. Together, they watch the lights in silence and when the clock says 12:07, Gil undresses her while the fireworks sprinkle the sky with metallic blue rain.

~ fin. ~