yes, i know you want to hug me for updating relatively earlier than i usually do. i just got excited! well, i think i went a little overboard with this chapter but i couldn't stop myself. i had to continue...in this chapter, the italicized portion is a flashback of Erik's. that's all im going to say for now!

lots of fluff, lots of my favorite kind of tension, and lots of sadness too. but i can say that this, i think, is my favorite chapter =)

disclaim, disclaim, disclaim

Three weeks had past and Christine was gaining her strength back at a remarkable rate. Everyday, more and more machines were taken out of her room as they were no longer needed. Christine's prescribed diet of mostly fluids was turning into a menu of more concrete foods with more protein and carbohydrates to support her exercise. Her physical therapy sessions were helping her immensely and Dr. Andres reported that after just a couple more days, Christine would actually be able to go home. Of course, Erik, Meg and Raoul, and her parents were by her side supporting her also. Being surrounded with all kinds of love, Christine believed that she was living in her happiest moment—despite the reason why they were all behind her, anticipating her to fall.

She didn't want to be obvious but she could notice how they—including her doctor, would have hushed conversations when they think she's sleeping, or when she's in the bathroom being really quiet. The only good coming out of these secret talks was that her father and Erik were finally getting along if not on the same page. Somehow, Christopher had finally accepted that his daughter was no long the round-faced little angel he could bounce on his knee, but was now a beautifully grown young woman who was getting so serious with a boy that he could do nothing but stand down.

It was in the way they looked at each other. The strong connection with their eyes was so strong that it was almost palpable. It was in every little movement either one of them made. When Erik shifted in his position in his seat, Christine would follow suit or vice versa. They were tied to each other and one could only imagine what life would be like if one of them would be fated to die.

-oOo-

"Tell me the truth," said Christine, getting out of the shower. Today she was going home. Erik was in the patient's room, packing some of Christine's belongings. Her parents left early; their flight back home had been moved up. It was a while before Christine got them to ride in the cab because Emma made Christine promise that she would be more careful this time. Christine vowed to her mother and hugged her goodbye. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her father shaking Erik's hand and muttering something unintelligible to her but she saw Erik listening intently.

"What?" Erik was in the middle of packing Christine's shirts and he raised his head up indifferently.

"Oh, come off it. I know you and everyone else would be gossiping behind my back every time you think I'm not listening. What is going on?" Christine walked over to Erik, making him drop her clothes.

Erik cocked an eyebrow. "Love, we're hardly gossiping about you," he continued to pack, while watching Christine folding her arms over her chest. "You know, I've grown quite fond of your father, and I hope he feels the same way. In the short time that we got to talking, I've gotten onto some common ground with him."

Hearing Erik say that he was bonding with her father was almost enough to make Christine crack a smile and forget what she was asking of him. She knew better though. "Don't change the subject! What have you been talking about with them? Is something wrong? There's something wrong with me, isn't there? "

Erik sighed in defeat. He shoved the clothes-bag out of the way so that he could sit on the edge of the gurney. He motioned with open arms for Christine to sit on his lap but she refused. Erik chuckled at her stubbornness and pulled her flush against his body, causing her to melt into his warm embrace. She sighed and clutched at the front of his chest while he stroked her soft, brown hair.

"We only talk about how we want you safe, Christine." Erik breathed into her hair as she closed her eyes. "To tell you the truth, Dr. Andres is a brilliant doctor, but none of us are convinced that you truly are healed. We're just trying to anticipate everything so that we can be ready; whatever happens."

Christine pulled away to look into his eyes which were glowing a soft green color like the rippling leaves of summer. She could see years of wisdom in those green pools of light and his profound love for her. She wondered why it wasn't enough.

"Why isn't my being here in your arms enough? Must everyone question the good? I'm the one here with the sickness; I should decide whether to be nervous or happy. I don't need anyone to be worried for me. It just makes me believe that this is all a bad dream and that I'll wake up only to close my eyes forever. Then I'll never be able to see your beautiful face again." Christine stroked the soft contours of his mask and this by far was always the most intimate gesture for Erik. It made him believe that she loved him unconditionally.

He was stunned into silence for a moment. No one had called him beautiful until he'd heard it uttered from the angel sitting on his lap, resting in his arms. Somehow, that embrace wasn't enough so he pulled Christine's face nearer to his and caught her lips in a searing kiss with his own. It seemed to last forever: the steady, synchronized way their lips and tongues moved against each other; the careful way Erik shifted Christine on his lap so that she was straddling him; the innocent, hesitant way Christine pushed her body against Erik's until both of them couldn't take it any longer.

"Oh my God, Christine. I need you." Erik breathed against her swollen lips, breaking the kiss momentarily. Christine responded with a moan and a more confident rocking of her hips.

"Wait, stop. Oh, Christine," Erik voiced out more strongly. His head was spinning but now wasn't the time. He gently pushed Christine away from his throbbing lower abdomen and held her face in his hands—the rejection evident in her eyes.

"No, baby, it's not that I don't want you now. It's just that we're in a hospital, you just got out of recovery, and—I don't want to lose control with you." Christine looked up at him then, and inwardly groaned to see that his eyes had turned a shade darker, the lust in them mirroring Christine's.

"And I know that it'd be your first time. I just, I need to be sure that you'd want it—with me."

"How could I not want it with you?" Christine punctuated her rhetorical question by leaning closer and grazing the tip of her tongue along the column of Erik's throat. He audibly groaned, fighting the little self-restraint he had left.

"Christine, be serious. Now is definitely not the time." Erik said with a more final tone in his voice. Slumping against his thighs, Christine sighed softly. Erik chuckled while running a hand through her hair, attempting to smooth it out.

"Love, one of us has to have control."

-oOo-

In less than an hour, they'd checked out of the hospital and piled Christine's bags into Erik's Vios.

Watching Erik close the trunk, Christine nodded approvingly. "New car?"

Erik stretched out his arms a bit, exposing the band of his boxers, and the enigmatic v-line that lead to—

"Yeah, I figured it was time to let the other car go. Vios, it's environment friendly."

Christine's eyes shot back up and she hoped that he didn't notice her ogling. "Vios? That's a girl car." She suppressed a giggle.

"It is not," Erik said indignantly while Christine laughed. He walked over to her near the passenger door and backed her up until her legs hit the cool metal. He trapped her by resting the heels of his hands on the car and smirked when he noticed Christine gasp softly. "But if it is, do you take an interest in it?" Erik said; his voice unnecessarily deep and velvety.

Two could play at his game.

"If I did, what would you do about it, Mr. Destler?" Christine replied, her voice dripping with sweet, flirtatious notes. She ran a finger along the collar of his shirt while looking up at him through her lashes. He was much taller than she was so it wasn't a problem.

"I was actually thinking of giving it to you one day."

In disbelief, she looked up at him fully. "What?"

Erik backed up and put his hands in his back pockets, casually. "Yeah, you heard me. If you're nice to me, of course." He said, his voice sounding foolishly businesslike.

"I-I don't know what to say! I can't believe you! Wow, this is amazing!" She lunged forward and hugged him tightly, laughing joyously.

"I love you." He heard Christine mutter in his ear and he nuzzled further into her neck.

Reluctantly, they broke away and climbed into the car. The sun was setting on the horizon so Erik asked her if she was hungry.

"Ooh, let's go to Teriyaki Boy! C'mon my treat." Christine suggested while wiggling her eyebrows playfully. Erik refused to let her pay.

"Why not? It's the least I can do for this wonderful gift you've given me."

"Please, Christine, you're flattering me. I'll take you to wherever you want to go, but let me pay, okay?"

Christine scoffed. "Do you always have to be the gentleman?" She buckled into her seat and crossed her arms. Erik started the engine and turned the air on, chuckling.

"In these cases, yes, ma'am, I do." But there are other cases, too, love, Erik hesitated to add but didn't.

Fifteen minutes later, after a car ride that consisted of fighting over the radio station, they finally arrived at the restaurant. The sun was fully rested upon the edges of the mountains far away and the waning moon took its place as guardian of the sky. Erik and Christine were lucky to get seats because it was rush hour and everyone was out to get some dinner on a Thursday evening.

They were ushered into the restaurant and seated near the indoor gazebo. The restaurant had a very rich Japanese setting, with mats and cushions as seats and bamboo-paper walls dividing parts of the room. A banzai tree was the décor on each of the low, wooden tables and the atmosphere was fragrant with tea leaves and cherry blossoms. From the menu, Christine chose her favorite don buri while Erik decided to try something more interesting—chirashidon.

"Chirashidon?" Christine smirked.

"Something wrong with that, missy?"

"No, no. Nothing's wrong." Christine replied, suppressing laughter. He obviously didn't know that chirashidon was a rice bowl filled with different kinds of raw fish, ginger, and delicately pickled papaya and bitter gourd. When their orders arrived, Christine noticed how Erik's eyes widened in shock. She couldn't contain her laughter.

"You should really read the fine print." Christine managed to say through her laughs.

"What are you talking about? I love this stuff!" Erik replied rather unconvincingly, while using his chopsticks to pick through what he could eat. This caused Christine to laugh more and she started to hold her stomach, shaking her head non-verbally asking Erik to make her stop laughing. This felt nice for Erik. For once in their relationship they were carefree. Each moment wasn't so intense and he was able to show Christine how playful he could be despite the imposition of the shroud over half of his face.

When the laughter simmered down, Christine began to eat her rice bowl and Erik asked her what she wanted to do now that she was out of the hospital.

"I'll be going back to school, most probably. I don't know how much I've missed but I know that it's enough to postpone my graduation for a little while." Christine shrugged.

"But you're at the top of you classes! Surely your professors would be willing to reconsider detaining you from your block." Erik suddenly looked serious, his eyes settling into his normal, piercing gaze. Christine looked amused.

"Surely my professors will not be so kind as to allowing me to receive my diploma with the rest of my block mates." Christine mocked Erik's formal use of words. He would talk like this every now and then, but it didn't bother Christine so much. It did, however, get her thinking how a proper-speaking, car-gifting, gentleman ended up as the maintenance guy at a bowling stadium.

As if reading her mind, Erik spoke up. "I wasn't always a mechanic, you know."

Intrigued by what the open-endedness of Erik's statement, Christine felt happy that she was going to learn more about Erik's past. He knew so much about her from their own experiences that she deemed it only fair that he shed some light onto his history.

"I'm not as old as you might think I am but I am old enough to have had enough to deal with for a lifetime." Christine almost felt guilty for coming into his life. Her sickness must have really added up to his miseries in life.

"And I didn't always have this mask, either. I was born in South Carolina—yeah, I'm guessing that's where my good manners came from, I still have them now," his voice trailing off as he remembered how he'd ambushed Dr. Andres weeks ago. "Anyway, yeah, I was an only child and my parents ran the textile factory of our town and owned a couple farming lands nearer the countryside—typical Southern royalty, I guess."

"But I wasn't ever interested in all of that. No, I loved the arts. Literature, paintings, but above all, I loved music. I remember when I was about twelve years old, my mother had our old, family organ restored and tuned. I was so happy! I asked them to hire me a piano tutor and that's were I got really serious about my passion. My mother supported me, but to this day, I can still hear my father's disapproval of me. He wanted me to take over the family business."

Christine didn't even notice how she wasn't taking bites from her bowl anymore. Her eyes were stuck on Erik's face, concentrating on what he was saying. Erik continued.

"About a year later, my parents divorced. It was a really messy thing. They fought over everything, including who rightfully owned the house and everything. Well, technically, the house belonged to my mother but my father insisted to the judge that he should have the house and the lands and the textile factory. Not once did he mention wanting me. Naturally, with my father being the very eloquent and persuasive man that he is, was granted the house and everything else. Luckily, the prenuptial agreement gave me and my mother enough to survive in a small, but good house just twenty minutes away from where my father was.

"One day, my mother took me to my father for the routine switch that they did every two weeks. They'd decided on a joint custody. Well, we went into the house and it smelled awfully like gin and hard liquor. We were about to leave when we heard my father careening down the stairs, drunk."

"Martha! Erik! Have you come here to beg me to take you back?" Ronald slurred over his words, laughing as he nearly tripped his way down the grand staircase.

"Ronald, I'm here to drop off our boy. What's gotten into you?" Martha replied strongly, though the fear was evident in her wide, green eyes. Young Erik was standing tightly against his mother's side, bending his head down so that he wouldn't have to see his father.

"What's gotten into me? I'm just here enjoying the spoils of my fortune! You'd be here with me, too, if you hadn't slept with my best friend."

"You take that back, you sack o' wine!" Martha shrilled, her accent emphasizing her emotions. "You and I both know that I did not sleep with Perry! It was you who always dallied with the women workers while I was at home, helping to take care of our baby!"

"Don't you dare talk shit about me, woman!" Ronald came closer but in his drunkenness bumped into the organ, jarring it a little. He yelped in pain and began hitting the wooden piano with the nearest vase.

Erik peeked out from behind his mother and ran towards his father who was destroying his most prized possession. "NO! Stop it, you're hurting it!" He cried, while attempting to pull his father from the organ. Ronald turned towards his son, hoisting him off the ground and throwing him into the organ where Erik lost consciousness and half of his face.

"Luckily I got out of that situation alive, if not whole, but my mother wasn't so fortunate." Christine had tears in her eyes. Erik didn't want to make her feel any sadder but bringing up buried emotions wasn't easy and he felt that he had to finish what he started.

"In her efforts to pick me up from the pile of what used to be my beloved piano and run away from my father, he got to her first and—," Erik surprised himself when he heard his own voice break. Christine grasped his hand, letting him know that he didn't have to say anymore.

"So then I left South Carolina with child services and they brought me here to Boston. Christine you have no idea how shaken up my entire teenage life was. I later learned that my father had shot himself out of depression and in his will—he must have forgotten to edit it or whatever—he left me everything: the lands, the business, the money. Knowing that I would need it in the future, I took the money but I left everything else with my mother's relatives.

"That's why I have this mask which I had custom made in Australia, my face had never fully healed to what it used to look like. My life was so dark, Christine. I graduated college with degrees that would allow me to enter in almost any profession but I was at a loss. I didn't know what else to do with my life. Bowling had always been an enjoyable past time so I decided that for a little while, I'd do that.

"Life was so unsatisfying. I realize now that for almost 17 years, I haven't touched a piano. Then you came into my life, Christine and oh, how you revived me! From living a bleak existence, you restored in me the passion of life and every rejuvenating breath I've taken since I first saw you, I've thanked God for giving me you. You're my new music, Christine. You're my new life."

And in front of the other costumers, the waiters, Christine, Erik wept.

you KNOW that this is worthy of a review! i don't know when i'll be able to put up another chapter cuz this is my exam week and i'm actually really really lucky to have gotten the inspiration to write. must have been the reviews i got for my last chapter. you guys are BOMB! i love you all so much!