WARNING: The concepts for this story are shamelessly pilfered from the Rascal Flatts song "Skin," which is not dirty, like the title sounds; but is actually a very sweet song.
Rob Chase, seventeen and restless and scared to death, scuffs his black leather shoes on her welcome mat and doesn't ring the doorbell. Nervously, he reaches a hand up to adjust his blue ball cap, perching on his head in a stark contrast to the tuxedo he wears. She said she didn't want this from him. Said she didn't want his pity. He told her that wasn't why he asked her.
He kissed her softly, whispered over and over again in her ear that she was beautiful, but she didn't believe him.
He has one chance, one last chance to prove it to her. To prove that the loss of her long, soft curls, curls that she had prized as gold, did not matter. She had been skeptical, but he told her to find a dress and he'd pick her up at seven for dinner, and not to worry because she would look perfect even if she wore torn jeans and an old sweatshirt.
So here he is, standing on her doorstep, and he rings the bell. With a sad smile, her father opens the door, and he returns the smile; but his is by far the happier of the two. He moves towards her where she waits by the stairs, and she gasps as she catches a glimpse of the blue cap.
Never breaking eye contact, he reaches up and takes it off, grinning at her.
"What's so important about hair, anyways?"
She reaches out a hand to touch his newly-shaved head and, smiling softly, starts to cry.
Dr. Robert Chase, twenty-seven and tired and trying to concentrate on the cup of coffee in his hands, ignores Dr. Cameron as she enters the break room. She pretends not to see him, and he does the same to her. But as she turns to leave, she halts in front of him.
"Why did you kiss that little girl?"
He stares at the swirling dark coffee, and remembers dancing with the girl ten years ago, remembers her smile, remembers ten months later, crying by her bedside as the beeps of the monitors grew slower and slower and faded into silence.
He has his reasons.