A/N: I never intended to continue this, but I've been thinking about it a lot the last few days and I couldn't help myself. Will there be a third chapter? Who knows? I certainly don't.

Edit: There is going to be a third chapter, and also a fourth, so stay tuned over the next week for them to appear.

Also, I want to dedicate it to Riene, in the hope her hand improves soon.


By the end of the second date he has fallen in love with her, but this he does not realise. Yes, he has been attracted to people before, he has certainly been infatuated (and it would be a step too far to say that his friendship with Nadir developed out of an infatuation, at least he tells himself that), but love? He has never been in love before, never been anywhere close to it, and he has no frame of reference for it.

But still. Christine occupies his every waking thought. She comes to him in his 3D Modelling seminars where he's trying to reconstruct an estate house, and John Henry (a man whose whole thesis is based around dentistry, so why is he wasting time modelling houses?) pries the mouse from his hand so he can take over and replicate the windows himself. It is enough for Erik to snap back to reality, for the visions of tumbling blonde hair to disappear, and he swallows, his throat dry.

He uses her name in his Modelling Humanities Data assignment, relating different songs to her that he knows she likes. 'Riverswim.' 'No Light, No Light.' 'Funeral Suit.' She sang that one to herself at the beginning of their third date, when she was waiting for him to arrive, and later that night stood on stage and sang it at the open mic, and he thought he would die, then and there, with all of the aching in his heart at the sight of her, hair tumbling back in waves and her eyes closed, her voice straight from heaven.

He did not realise he was crying at the beauty of her until afterwards, when she took his hand, stinging from applause, and kissed his fingers, and then gently reached up and brushed away his tears. A little of the heavy make-up covering the bad side of his face came away on her fingertips, and she did not ask, only leaned into him and pressed a light kiss to his good cheek, the faintest pressure, almost not there, but how his skin burned with it and how it still burns now at the memory, and it is only in this moment, brushing the spot where she kissed him, that he realises he has not input any data in the last ten minutes, too lost in thoughts of her.

Of her, and tonight. Their fourth date in two weeks, though they have met for coffee on six different occasions, and when he was in the library checking out biographies of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich for his lit review, he found her in the stacks, grumbling to herself about how English-language historians have neglected the Estado Novo regime in Portugal, and there's only one good book about Salazar, and she doesn't want to give in and write about Franco but she might have to and damn them all.

The passion that flared in her eyes took his breath away, and together they left and went for tea and it was the one time they haven't talked about music even in passing, as she continued her rant against narrow-sighted historians, and he nodded along only half understanding, and got her more tea when she stopped, and tried not to think that he will be still stuck here in thesis hell when she is abroad working on her own PhD.

But, he supposes, other people have made long-distance relationships work. And they always have Skype.

But none of that matters, not right now. Tonight is The Night, as Nadir keeps calling it, wiggling his eyebrows. Tonight he is going to kiss her, properly, on the lips, and maybe there will be some tongue involved (and he will not call it the shift, even though it technically is, because that sounds too casual, too disposable, and Christine is anything but disposable.) Tonight they will kiss (he hopes). And maybe kiss several times (he hopes desperately) and she will not ask about his face but he is going to have to tell her before and he knows he ought to be terrified, knows he would be terrified, if it were anyone else, but it is Christine, and when she looks at him, with all of the softness of the world in her eyes, he knows he can trust her not to scream.

(But still, the thought of telling her is enough to make his stomach roil with nauseous anxiety, and he doesn't know how he's going to be able to eat anything.)

And maybe, if tonight goes well, after their fifth date, she will be the one to take his make-up off.