Note: I decided to continue it after all. I'm not sure if there will be more after this vignette or not, but if inspiration strikes me again, there could be. There's nothing explicit here, but the relationship presented is both sexual and unhealthy. I see where it might make some people uncomfortable. I upped the rating to M for that reason, even though I feel like it's probably only a T.


"So soft," Erik murmured more to himself than to her as his bony fingers caught the ends of her hair.

She had turned away from him on the bed, though experience told her that it made no difference. She could not pretend he was not there when he insisted on playing with her hair, or running his cold hands down her arm and laughing softly when he raised goosebumps along her flesh. There was no pretending the wetness leaking down her thighs wasn't there, either. Just once, she wanted him to hand her a towel and leave after he had finished. Instead, he insisted in prolonging their encounters with this sort of contact. He reminded her of a hungry kitten Mamma Valerius had taken in years ago. Long after the danger of starvation had passed, the cat had continued to eat all of the food he was given, as well as any he might find. Even once he had grown very fat and lazy, the mere possibility of food had brought him waddling at full speed, anxious to get whatever he could. Only instead of food, Erik gorged himself on touch.

Oh, what a terrible wife she was - that was the knowledge that got her through it each time. In her heart, she knew she was cold and unfeeling, but her body was not, and she could share that at least. It was the perfect punishment for her failure to properly love her husband. It was not that he was cruel during their intimacies, though he was sometimes rough with her, it was that despite her disgust at his physical appearance, and how much he annoyed her, he could coax her into doing things she never thought she would. He could debase and humiliate her without realizing what he was doing. It was his revenge, though he did not know it, and she would let him have it. She only wished she could ask outright for punishment, and unleash the monster completely. Yet she knew that if she did, all she would unleash was a lost little boy whose own mother would not kiss him. It was better that he did not know.

The mattress moved as he shifted closer, wrapping her in his thin arms. She snuggled into his embrace, her back pressed to his chest. This was much less irksome than when he fiddled with her hair, or petted her as though she were an animal. When he held her like this, she felt like she could be absorbed by him, become a part of him with no will of her own, and then she would love him and finally be a good wife.

"Are you sad that we've never had a child?" Erik asked, his voice slightly muffled as his face was buried in her hair.

"No," she replied. It had been nearly three years, and she was relieved that they were not a fertile couple. A child did not need a lump of ice for a mother, or a father who often moved from sorrow to rage to manic joy and back again in the space of a few minutes. "Are you?"

"No. You are enough for me." His words fell heavily upon her, raising her guilt and self-disgust. "I only thought it might make you happy. You are always a little melancholy."

"That is just me, Erik." She turned in his embrace, settling her head against his shoulder while being careful to breathe through her mouth. "I think that you are enough for me, too," she lied in a voice barely above a whisper.

As he gently tilted her face upward so he could place his malformed lips on her forehead, she wished she could tell him the truth.