Shades of Blue

~{x}~

Erik looked up from his inventory clipboard at the sound of his shop bell going off, glancing down at his watch as he rolled his eyes. Ten minutes to close, he thought with agitation. He glanced towards the door. Past one of his display tables he could see a young woman browsing the shelves nearest to the entrance. She seemed to be searching for something in particular, and Erik very well knew it was his job to assist her. He kept quiet though, never one to wish to interact with someone unless he absolutely had to.

He turned back towards the wall he was working on, absentmindedly jotting down numbers as he maneuvered through his arrangements. Every few seconds though he found his eyes drifting back towards the woman in his shop. She was quite attractive, he realized as he admired her out the corner of his eye. Her hair was the color of dark chocolate, and as she turned her head he could see thick indigo highlights spilling overtop the bag on her shoulder. A black jacket clung close to her petite body, and her ripped jeans rode low on her hips. He could see a tattoo on one of her hands, and had no doubt in his mind that her ink stopped there.

Erik stepped to the side, intrigued, trying to get a better look at her subtly. He couldn't quite tell how old she was from across the room. The way she grinned and smelled the flowers gave her a childlike air, but her face was far too mature to be that of a child's. It was still soft in appearance though, and he could only wonder what it would feel like to caress her cheek with the back of his fingers.

What the hell is wrong with me?

He shook his head, trying to dissipate his bizarre thoughts. He usually didn't make a habit of ogling his customers, and with this one he wasn't sure where the inclination to do so was coming from. He blamed it on his lack of sleep and the fact that she was beautiful. It had been years since he had last dated a woman, true, but that didn't make him immune to their charms. Women would always be beautiful to him, just as he would always be ugly to them in return. It was the way of the world.

"Excuse me?"

Erik jumped, not expecting her voice to suddenly sound so close. It was pleasant, light and airy, and yet with no customers since noon it had been quite the unexpected noise. He felt his hip bump the nearest display, and heard the crashing of several vases as they rolled off the table and smashed to the floor. Water pooled near his shoes as bits of dark purple glass danced across the floor.

Great. Just great.

He bent down to pick up the larger pieces, and as he did so he felt the woman drawing ever nearer. He heard her mumble something along the lines of an apology as she squatted down in front of him, attempting to help. Those blue tendrils of hers were so close now, such a bold color. It matched her eyes.

She reached for a piece of glass and he immediately moved his hand to stop her, talking a firm hold of her wrist.

"Don't," he snapped, maybe a bit too sternly. Her face flashed with surprise as he realized how harshly he'd spoken. He quickly loosened his grip on her to be light as a feather, then pulled away completely. "I don't want you to cut yourself," he clarified quietly.

The woman nodded, standing up in unison as he rose with the shards of glass in his hand. He quickly disappeared behind his counter and dumped them in the trashcan there, continuing on towards the storage room. There he grabbed a broom, a dustpan, and an old towel before heading back out. When he did the woman was still standing beside his mess of a display, looking embarrassed as she bit down on her lower lip. He tried not to make eye contact with her as he began to sweep the wet glass into a pile.

She walked away after a thick moment of tension had passed, and he assumed she was leaving, much to his relief. When he looked up though he saw that she had disappeared behind his counter. Perplexed, he watched as she dragged his trashcan over, scraping it loudly across the hardwood floor as she went. Without saying a word she then knelt down before him and took hold of the dustpan, pressing it flush to the floor. Erik slowly pushed the shattered remains of the display forward and she dumped them into the bin, the sound of glass tinkling together filling the empty room with its bright, sharp melody.

Leaning the broom against the wall, Erik took the towel off his shoulder and bent down to wipe up the floor. As he did so he watched the woman picking up the flowers that had fallen, one at a time with small and gentle movements. She placed them on the table and wiped the water from her hands onto her pants as she stood up. It was only then that Erik realized he was holding a mostly dry towel. He wondered if he should have offered it to her.

"I'm sorry again that I startled you," she said, crossing her arms across her abdomen, "I thought you'd heard me come in."

"I did," Erik told her, "I was just distracted. Evening inventory," he explained, gesturing towards the clipboard he had set down.

The gesture was just as awkward as the way she stood, and he didn't know why he felt the need to defend himself over why he hadn't acknowledged her in the first place, only that he simply did. He stood up once more, draping the towel over his shoulder. Standing face to face with this woman he now noticed just how much he towered over her.

"Right." She shuffled her feet, glancing around the shop. "Again, sorry. If I hadn't come in so late you'd probably be done by now and on your way home."

Erik smirked, the corner of his mouth rubbing the thin paper of his allergen mask. "Don't worry about it. Breaking these vases was the last thing on my to-do list for the night anyhow."

Did I just make a joke?

He did, he realized, and it had made the woman laugh. Her laugh was short and simple, yet as clear and sweet as her voice was. He found he thoroughly enjoyed the sound of it, and even more so he enjoyed the sight of her smiling. When had it been that he'd last made a woman smile like that?

"Well then, I'm glad that I could be of assistance," she said, still smiling that dazzling smile of hers, "I'll just...leave you to close up then."

She turned away, starting towards the door. That should have been the end of their conversation, right then and there. The end of their story. She would have walked out the door and probably never come back, her entire being simply a pleasant memory for him to hold onto. As it was though, that wasn't enough for him. For some unexplainable reason he called out after her.

"Wait, before you go," he prompted, "Was there something I could help you find? You seemed to be looking for something specific when you came in."

She turned back towards him, a playful look on her face. "So you did notice me when I came in." Her voice was teasing, and for a moment it almost sounded as though she were flirting with him. It was odd, for him to even contemplate that being true. No one had flirted with him since his accident, most woman too distracted by his mask to ask anything more than the price on a bouquet, all the while either avoiding his eyes completely or downright gaping. "But it's late. I wouldn't want to keep you-"

"Its fine, really," Erik interjected, "What can I help you with?"

The woman shifted the bag on her shoulder. "Well...I need a lily actually, if you have them."

Erik was pleasantly surprised by how specific and simple her request was. Most of his customers were much more vague, simply stating they were looking for a certain color scheme to build off of. He thought about how she would look then, holding a bouquet of blue orchids to match her hair and eyes.

"What size arrangement?" he asked quickly, blinking away that distracting thought.

The woman shook her head. "Oh no, I don't need a lot of them. I have no one to give flowers to. Just one will do. I need it for use as a reference. I'm working on a tattoo design for one of my clients."

Erik paused, surprised. "You tattoo?"

She nodded. "Not far from here actually. I work at Annette's. Do you know that one? We're right around the corner from you."

Erik nodded. He did know of Annette's Emporium. The shop was visible from his upstairs window. Their sign was made of red neon and it glowed brightly, even after hours. When he worked at his piano and got lost in thought he often found himself staring towards that glow, if for no other reason than to fixate on a certain point while his mind attempted to wander.

"One lily then," he clarified, moving towards the back of his shop. He walked towards his wall of fresh clippings behind the counter. When the shipments came in he sorted them into the water buckets he had built into the wall, segments that made selections far faster and easier for him to search through. He couldn't stand the disorganization of simply keeping flowers in their original shipping crates and misting them twice a day. His parents had done things that way when they'd owned this establishment, and it had always frustrated him how frivolous a system it had been, even as a child.

He perused the wall, looking over his stock with a careful eye. Leaning over his shoulder he asked what color she needed and was glad he had a large stock of the red and white variety she desired. He took five different flowers in his hand before deciding on the one he thought was best, holding it up to the light to look over it one last time before deciding it would do.

When he turned back around she was waiting at the counter for him, a bright orange debit card in her hand. He held out the flower for her to take. She did so, their fingertips touching slightly in the exchange. She couldn't see it but he smiled at that small touch, savoring it.

"What do I owe you?" she asked.

"I'd settle for your name," he replied. He wondered if that rebuttal was as smooth as it had sounded in his head. It probably wasn't, and immediately he felt his face flush red, waiting for her to laugh at him. She didn't though. Instead the corner of her mouth twitched upwards and a soft pink color arose in her cheeks.

"It's Christine," she said softly, "Christine Daae."

"Christine," he repeated, tasting the way the name sounded, coming from his own lips. He held out his hand. "Erik Wells."

She took it in hers briefly before releasing it, far too soon for his liking. He watched the way she handled the lily then, taking close hold of it with both hands, as if were precious to her and she feared she would drop it.

"Well then, Erik," she said, turning towards the door, "I guess I'll see you around sometime. Have a goodnight."

I'd like that.

"You as well."

With one last smile she closed the shop door behind herself, giving a small wave over her shoulder to him as she did so. He watched her through the glass as she continued on down the street, admiring the glow of the setting sun outlining her gentle silhouette.

It wasn't until she rounded the corner that Erik realized he had been holding his breath. He released it, wondering just what had caused him to act like such a fool in Christine's presence. Normally he didn't bother trying to connect with people, but with her he had found the process nearly painless, almost natural even. She had been simple to talk to and, more surprisingly, she'd never once stared at him. Which was baffling. Normally everyone stared at him, an oddity, or at the very least avoided eye contact with him as they spoke. They found it perplexing, a man wearing a paper mask that covered most of his face, and sometimes would even shy away, figuring he must be contagious with something.

The mask served two very important purposes though, and so he was never seen without one. The first was a barrier against the pollen in his shop. Years ago, he had inhaled a large amount of smoke, and his lungs had been badly damaged from it. So much so that the initial injury had caused him to go into respiratory arrest. Even after they'd healed though, prolonged obstructive pulmonary disease had stayed with him. His asthma was severe, with triggers to almost everything in his damned shop. Delivery each day always left him wheezing, the crates he carried through his loading dock causing clouds of dust and pollen to stir in the air. As such, he had to keep one of his inhalers in the drawer below his cash register, where it would always be easily accessible to him when an attack started.

The second reason was his face, that distorted barrier of flesh which truly separated him from the rest of society. Ten years ago, an unfortunate turn of events had caused his parent's shop and the home above it to go up in flames, badly burning him. He'd been in college at the time, a mere man of twenty-two, and had been visiting his family over the Christmas holiday.

He had gone out that night with his fiance, Susanna, to take a walk through the freshly fallen snow, and had returned to see the blaze roaring sky high, reflected brightly on the surface of the ice covered streets below. He had heard the sirens in the distance and knew rationally that he shouldn't have ventured inside. But right as they'd arrived he'd heard his younger sister crying out from within, and all he'd found he could think in that moment was that he had to help her. Upon entering the building though the flames had been everywhere, the stench of charring plants and ashy smoke filling his nostrils with a scent like decay. He'd run straight for the staircase, but it had been no use. It had collapsed under his weight about halfway up, the wooden structure giving way as the upper half of it caved in, burying him in the scorching rubble six feet below.

His memories from that night were vague after the fall. He remembered firstly the feeling of suffocating, a feeling worse than anything he could've possibly ever imagined beforehand, and then nothing - simply darkness. He had been in and out of consciousness as the firefighters pulled him from the soot, and sedated soon after by the paramedics so they could tend to him. The next thing he knew it was two weeks later and he was waking up in the ICU, broken to bits and far too sore to move. Besides the burns and the damage to his lungs he'd also suffered three broken ribs, a crack to his femur, and a spiral fracture to his wrist.

The bones themselves had healed well enough, and with with the help of the rehabilitation staff it hadn't taken him long to get walking again. The damage from the flames though, that had stayed with him forever.

Over forty percent of his body had been burned that night, and as hard as the hospital staff had tried, parts of it just never healed right. Even after the extensive grafts he'd received the scars were still horrendous from the infection that had set in afterwards. It had spread across his face from his left jaw all the way up to the skin surrounding his right eye, effectively leaving a gaping hole in the middle of its destructive path, the cartilage of his nose having rotted away during the septic advancement.

His scars also covered the majority of his chest and back, as well as smaller splotches spread across his arms and legs. He knew very well he looked the sight of a leaper in the nude, and hadn't blamed Susanna in the least for leaving him when all was said and done. Because at the end of the day there had been nothing he could do to fix himself after that. He had been told the healed deformities held no further risk of infection, and so further grafts and recoloring would have to be done by a cosmetic surgeon, a specialist not covered under his insurance, or any insurance he could ever dream to afford.

Over the years he had dreamed of one day truly looking like himself again. Of looking normal. He'd tried saving up the money for the surgeries, he really had, but something had always seemed to get in the way. Whether it was medical bills or a roof that needed fixing, he quickly learned that money management was a fruitless endevour. For no matter how hard he worked, his goal never seemed to draw nearer. And when the bad days would come, when the self-loathing would became too much to bear, he would always end up doing something stupid and impulsive that would send him sliding backwards.

Once he had all but crashed, drunk and desperate, and had fallen as low as gambling, losing four grand in a single night. After that it seemed as though it were hopeless. Even now, eight years later, he only had about half of the needed funds tucked away in his savings. It was why he shied away from people. Why he shied away from the world.

He locked the door to his shop and flipped the closed sign over, rubbing the back of his head with a sigh. He swore he could still see Christine standing there in front of him, her blue eyes meeting his gaze as she smiled that dancing smile of hers. She hadn't averted her eyes from him once, nor had she fixated on the small bit of pink scar visible around his eye where his mask ended. She had simply seen him, something he wasn't used to in the least. Something he had cherished.

As he climbed the stairs to his apartment he wondered if he was brave enough to go to Annette's and ask for her. He figured he could play things off with the receptionist and say he was a client, giving him the chance to speak to her again. But why? To what end? What was he possibly hoping to find in this woman? A friend? Something more? It had been years since he'd entertained the idea of something more between himself and a woman. Years ever more since he had actually been with one.

He stepped into his living room and flicked on the lights, noticing the very real stillness that stared back at him. When the insurance money had come through to rebuild his parent's apartment he'd had the division walls taken out, turning it into a studio. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, not having those two extra rooms to remind him of where his family had once slept. Yet after a while, he'd realized all that had done was make his once happy home seem all the more empty. More lonesome.

He felt numb as he walked towards his bathroom to ready himself for the night, not at all in the mood to try and cook anything for dinner. Then as he laid down to go to sleep he found himself tossing and turning, unable to rest. This was normal for him though, the never ending insomnia that came each night. For even when he did sleep he usually found his rest riddled with nightmares, plagued by images of flames licking a snowy sky and a scream he would never forget drowning out any sense of peace he'd try to find.

Yet as he closed his eyes and pictured Christine that night he found an odd sense of peace washing over him. He felt that tingle of electricity once more that he'd experienced when their fingers had brushed earlier, and again saw her kind smile as she held up the flower he had given her.

Slowly he felt himself finally begin to wind down. His breathing fell to a steady pattern and his eyes closed shut. He swore the next morning he had slept soundly throughout the entirety of the night, dreaming of nothing else but the shades of blue that rippled throughout her hair.

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Did we like Erik and Christine's little exchange in his shop? How about the parts of his backstory we've learned? Let me know by dropping a review!