A/N:Written for two prompts off a Tumblr prompt sheet, "I think I'm in love" and "I have never felt this way about anyone."
The precise feelings in her heart are ones she cannot untangle with any ease. She looks at him and feels the shiver of fear from the night she first pulled off his mask. She looks at him, and feels the aching desperation to hold him close and comfort him. She looks at him, and longs to protect him from this world that has hurt him so, that has been so cruel and driven him to the very edge of his sanity.
She looks at him, and wonders what his skin might feel like beneath her lips.
She looks at him, and wonders what his lips might feel like upon her skin, tentative and uncertain.
She looks at him and his fingers are so unearthly and graceful, and they would be gentle trailing along her skin. She looks at him, and his music wraps her in its embrace, and she is safe, nestled against his chest, his long arms wrapped around her. She looks at him, and for a moment all feels right with the world.
She looks away from him, and a cold chill thrills through her heart. And her throat is so painfully tight it would not be difficult to imagine it ruining her voice. She looks away from him, away from his elegant black-clad form hunched over the organ scribbling notes in red ink on staff paper, and feels so incredibly alone in the world, as if she has been cast adrift and will never find the shore again.
The words, the answer, weigh heavy on her tongue, and she cannot speak them, not yet. She needs to test them first, upon herself, and learn them before she pronounces them to him and watches his eyes light up, before she permits him to trace her cheek.
"Christine DaaƩ," she thinks, twirling a loose thread in her dress around her index finger, "I think you may be in love with him."
He can feel her eyes trailing over his back. It is a warm gaze, soft, stirs a gentle fluttering beneath his navel. She is so very beautiful, and she is not looking at him with condemnation. How can it be? What is it that makes her different from every other member of the human race he has had the misfortune to come upon in his miserable lifetime?
He does not understand it. He cannot understand it, but he does not need to, not really. It is enough to know that she is different. She is different, undoubtedly different, and it is not merely due to the difference in the feelings which she stirs in him. There is something inherent in her that ensnares him and draws him to her like a moth to a flame. He would be content to sit and watch her forever, to have her share his home. He would not impose his presence in her bed, would not so much as ask for a kiss unless she was willing to give it. But to have her with him, always, would be enough, would satisfy the aching inside of his heart.
She is so very precious, and though at first he was reluctant to confess such a thing, even to himself, now at last he can acknowledge that the feelings he harbours deep in his heart are ones he has never felt for anyone else before in his life, and ones that he will never feel for anyone else again. There is only her, now. And that is enough.
