Christine
It should have been so easy. After a year of wondering, of longing, of wishing to hear his voice, he was there—just across the room. How could it possibly be difficult to simply walk through a room to a man who she had just given her soul to in song?
Yet here they stood. And he knew her better than anyone; he had seen her in every mood, every shadow, and she could see from the pain in his eyes, the way he turned away from her ever so slightly, that he knew exactly why she hesitated. After all they had been through, after the long and painful tapestry of their love, he still had the power to frighten her.
It wasn't much—the shadow of a shadow of doubt, of fear, but he knew it and she saw the hurt on his face before he looked away from her. For a moment Christine wondered if he would turn aside from her in silence, as he had done so often before, and let the unspoken shades between them pass. Instead, his voice came clipped and cold, and she knew that he understood—as she did—that if there was ever going to be a chance for them to be together, they would have to drag out all the old demons and deal with them. Now.
"A year in my house," he murmured, the sheer flatness of his tone hurting her almost more than his words did, "a year spent sleeping in my home, alone, utterly untouched and unharmed, and still you cannot trust me."
The thread of fear restraining her snapped, and Christine felt a well of anger and hurt rising to her heart. Without a thought she crossed to him, and without a thought did what she had never dared do, no matter how often he had deserved it.
She slapped him.
The face that had been turned away snapped back to her fully, and he caught her wrist with a graceful, lazy negligence. There was nothing lazy about the warning tilt to his eyes, however, as he regarded her with all the steady distance of a cat. "Trust? You sent me away!" Christine said sharply, not certain how the subjects of her fear and his dismissal were connected but certain there was a tie between them.
His laugh was short and harsh. "You chose to leave." With him Erik left unsaid.
"I chose to leave because you bloody told me to! Or had you forgotten the power of your own voice?" Oh, that wasn't fair, that wasn't fair and she knew that it wasn't. It was a good thing, Christine decided, that they had never had a fight before tonight. If she had known how painful arguing with him was, she wouldn't have come back to the hotel. For that matter, why were they fighting?
"There is much I wish to forget about that night," Erik retorted darkly.
She softened suddenly in his grip, sliding her wrist free of his fingers to wrap her arms around his neck. "There is much that I wish never to forget," Christine replied quietly, lifting her lips to within a millimeter of his. She would invite, but this time he would be the one kissing her, or she'd know why.
Then he closed that last tiny distance between them, and she could think of nothing but the ached-for feel of his kiss.