A drive, and a revelation.
and then what follows
By the time they pull themselves together, it is nearly four thirty and only the cleaners remain at the school. The staff know better than to approach Erik's office when the door is locked, and thankfully Nadir, who he shares an office with, is off visiting his family in Iran for the month. Even after he is back to his usually tightly wound self, Erik is conscious of Christine, settled in the spare office chair, spinning aimlessly with a cola ChupaChup firmly between her lips.
And damn, if he hadn't just come hard enough to give him whiplash, that sight would be giving him something to think about.
But instead, mechanically, he marks assignments. Wading through the year nine poetry papers is enough to make him long for scotch or whisky or vodka straight out the bottle - anything to burn away the memory of an adolescent boy trying to rhyme 'tits' with 'bacon bits'. 'My Favourite Things,' indeed.
Five pm on the dot and Erik's setting down his pen, listening to his joints crack as he stretches fingers locked too long in the same position. There are streaks of red ink on his hands and Christine Daae is napping with her head on Nadir's desk. She hasn't said a word since she'd realised she'd deflowered him.
Fuck.
He should offer her a lift home. Should he? He doesn't fucking know. Other teachers give students a ride every once in a while, but not him. His students all shit themselves when he approach - sitting in a car with him for more than five minutes at a stretch might give them a coronary event. But Christine, bless her, is utterly unruffled, if eerily silent. Usually shutting her up is the problem.
"Er... Miss Daae?"
She starts awake with what can only be described as a grunt. "Back to that, are we?" she snarks, and he sighs.
"Christine."
"I get it, Mr Destler," she says quickly. "I'm just your student with a - what was it? Deeply inappropriate Oedipal complex?" He sneaks a glance at her. Arms folded, back slouched, shoulders tense and lips set in a scowl, she is the very image of a wounded teenager. He doesn't know how to make this right.
"I suppose," he finally murmurs, minutes too late, "you have more of a fixation for authority figures, than a - than a, Oedipus complex." Her eyes are curious, brows a question mark. "Oedipus complexes are more to do with, well, parent-child relationships." He is stammering like a schoolboy, well aware nothing that he is saying is adequate. The silence stretches on, punctuated only by the raw hum of a vacuum cleaner in the distance, until -
"I know," she says softly. "I'm in Psychology."
Well, it's not an olive branch, but he'll take it.
He waits in the parking lot while she fetches her schoolbag from her locker, feeling as though his deeds are written on his face - well, mask - for all to see. The last time he stood here, by the gate, he was a virgin. And now? What is he now, aside from thoroughly ashamed of himself and still a little weak kneed from the rush of pleasure through his body?
"How bad is it?" she asks after a silence that stretches thick, like strands of toffee. He winces, and is glad she can't see it.
"Bad," he offers shortly, and she snorts.
"Well, duh," she replies. "If it was just like, a tiny little birthmark or whatever, you wouldn't go to all the trouble of putting a mask on it."
"No," he agrees, turning into her street.
"Then how bad?" she persists. "Freddy Kruger bad? Ugly Betty bad?" Erik smiles in spite of himself.
"Sufficiently bad," he adds, but Christine doesn't give up.
"Like - " Erik snaps.
"I look like something that's spent too long in a grave!" he snarls, and Christine physically recoils.
"Ew!" she says with the air of someone unable to repress her disgust, and Erik nods grimly.
"Exactly." Christine is shaking her head in disbelief.
"Wow! I mean, what happened? Did you have an accident?" Erik chuckles darkly.
"The accident was being born, Miss Daae," he replies, but Christine bats away the use of the formality for further interrogation. He really does like her.
"Seriously, Mr Destler?"
"Seriously, Miss Daae," he echoes. "I have always looked this way." Christine looks fascinated. God damn curious fucking teenagers.
"So when you came out as a baby, you looked like you were kind of... rotten?" Jesus.
"Something to that effect, yes," Erik snips out, voice taut. Christine, to her credit, seems to look a little repentant for her interrogation of him. So she bloody should, Erik thinks savagely, his affection for his smart-arse student momentarily washed away by the tide of his own self-loathing.
"That... that really sucks. Sorry to hear that, Mr Destler."
He has long since been parked in her driveway, but she hasn't seemed to notice it. "Yes, well, we all have our crosses to bear, Miss Daae."
"Christine," she corrects, hauling her schoolbag up onto her lap. "Thanks for the lift, Mr Destler."
"You're welcome," he replies.
