Extra chapter turned into me going out of town to a land without internet, but here! This is... early-ish, right? *hangs head* So I'm terribly sorry! As usual. Goodness, I sound like a broken record...
Okay, so enough of me. Onward!
"Erik?" Christine murmured, unsure of what she'd felt and how he had reacted. "What is..."
"You should not have touched me!" He had lurched away so violently that she feared he'd hurt his neck, and the way his shoulders hunched it was almost as if she'd wounded him somehow. Was he hurt?
There was something odd about his skin. It did not feel like normal flesh—at least, not like her own did. She'd not had time to investigate thoroughly, but her overall impression that something was very wrong with it. And though she did not like to admit it, his reaction to her hesitant touch hurt her feelings.
"I'm sorry," she tried to soothe, backing away slightly. She wasn't afraid of him, of course she wasn't, but posture reminded her of a cornered animal, frightened and ready to lash out at the smallest movement.
She didn't know what she'd done, but evidently it was a terrible thing. "Erik? What did I do?"
He did not answer, the only noise he made, huffed breaths as he sank down on the corner of the bed. "Why did you have to touch?"
She'd touched him before. His hand, his arm. Now that she thought of it, however, she supposed that in reality he'd been covered. He had a fondness for gloves and long sleeves, and she remembered how shockingly pale his feet had been when he'd joined her on the beach. Evidently he liked to keep every part of himself out of the sun. "Do you... do you have trouble with germs?"
He snorted out a laugh, though she could not detect any humor in it. "Silly, foolish, Christine."
She bristled at that. "Well, some people do and they don't like their skin touched."
But that wasn't skin that you felt, was it?
A voice that was not her own drifted through her ear, and she fought down her confusion. She had only come to his room to see what was going on with Detective Nadir—with the case. Erik had called from her room but had left soon after, and she'd rather been looking forward to hearing the conversation. A part of her had hoped that he'd still be speaking to him so perhaps she could catch a snippet of their dealings, but instead she had missed all of it.
Only to somehow have instated some kind of fit on Erik's part.
She hadn't meant to. Truly she hadn't.
She wanted to go to him, to put her hand upon his shoulder and ask him to tell her of his troubles, but he'd rejected her so completely that she doubted her welcome now. "Do you... do you want me to go?"
It seemed wrong to offer as it was the last thing she wished. He was still breathing strangely, a hoarse, gasping sound that was contrary to the cool and stoic man she had come to know.
He laughed again, rocking slightly on the bed as he shook his head. "Of course she wants to go. No one ever stays for long when they see. When they know."
Know what?
"Erik," she stated firmly, proud that she managed to keep the tremble from her voice. "You're starting to frighten me. What did I see? What do I know?"
His hands which had gone to cover his face, suddenly fell, and he turned to her, his eyes haunted by demons she couldn't possibly begin to understand. It hurt just to look at him. "Do not pretend. You felt it. You know that this is a farce." He gestured over his face, his frustration evident, and Christine grew all the more confused.
She took a careful step forward, trying to gauge his reaction as she did so. He did not recoil, did not yell at her to leave the room, and she took that as a positive sign. "I don't know anything of the sort."
And she didn't.
His face was perfectly normal. There was that odd smudge—a seam?—that she'd seen when she'd hugged him earlier, but she had never thought to question anything about his features. He was simply... average.
Yet apparently not everything was as it seemed.
With a bracing breath, she closed the remaining space between them, cautiously taking a seat beside him on the bed. She did not touch him, merely allowed silence to linger between them as he fought for his composure, and she to make sense of any of this.
She had not expected for him to be the one to speak first. "I thought of lying," he told her, his voice tight and raspy—almost as if he held back tears. "If ever you discovered, I was going to tell you that I had been hurt doing something noble. Perhaps I was badly burned saving one of my charges and this was the unfortunate result." He chuckled, a thin, reedy sound. "Maybe you would have admired me for it."
Christine shook her head, not understanding. "I don't want you to lie to me." And she meant it. She valued honesty, even if the truth was a difficult, complicated thing; yet in this she was coming to realize that it held more pain for him than she had initially thought possible.
"Of course you do not. For you are a good, honest girl, who would not wish to have dealings with anything less."
She wondered if he was mocking her, but he continued before she could question him. "I was born this way, you see. And none loved me for it. My mother," he said the word with barely concealed contempt, "thought me hideous, a bur and a blight, unworthy of even the smallest affection."
She needed to be sure, even though her mouth was dry as she formed the words. "Are we talking about a deformity?"
A barely perceptible nod was his only reply.
She had seen some, of course. Her home had been in a large city, with all sorts of people living in it. But he seemed so ashamed of it, so absolutely certain that she would spurn him if she knew what he truly looked like. And if what he said about his mother was true, such had been the case before. But there was no doubting him, so sincere and harrowed was his tone, his eyes. They pierced her heart and made her wish to weep for him. "What about your father?"
Surely there was someone. Please, let there have been someone who had loved him in his youth.
Yet Erik merely scoffed, his expression hardening. "Gone. Another crime on my part, at least according to the miserable woman who had the misfortune to birth me. Evidently if she had not become pregnant, he would not have left."
Christine closed her eyes. She knew that not everyone had a happy childhood such as hers. But to hear of it, of rejection and pain since infancy...
Her poor, unhappy Erik.
He had thought to call it the result of a burn, but that did not give her a very good impression of what might be wrong. Scarred flesh could take on many appearances. How much of him was affected? "Do you… will you show me?"
Erik leaned away from her, his eyes narrowed, his posture defensive. "Why? So you may think me a monster as well?"
Christine held her tongue, not wanting to further insight his ire when it clearly was so close to the surface. All she wanted was to understand, but clearly he had a lifetime of memories that suggested otherwise. "No. Because I'd like to know you. All of you. And obviously this is something important."
He gave her an incredulous look. "And it would not be to you? To appear as a living corpse, so thin and pale and ugly, an abomination of the most dreadful sort—you would not seek to hide it?"
Christine swallowed, hoping that he was exaggerating. She couldn't imagine what he'd described, visions of poorly funded zombie movies coming to mind. But his tone, though derisive, was in earnest, and she could not ignore that. "That's not what I said. Please don't put words in my mouth. I'm just trying to understand you."
He appeared sullen, not quite accepting her claim, and she felt helpless at how to proceed. She wanted to put her arm around him, to assure him that it didn't matter, yet her mind reeled all the same. How had he hidden this for so long? She wanted to touch his face again, to try to uncover his secret, but he had reacted so poorly before that she dare not attempt it again. "Does it hurt?" she finally asked, hoping he'd grow more comfortable if he spoke of the particulars that did not have to do with how his deformity actually appeared.
Erik did not seem keen on speaking of it at all, but eventually he offered a rather begrudging reply. "The mask is... uncomfortable. It is applied with a new adhesive, one that evidently I do... not react well to."
Christine winced. Her skin had always been sensitive, rashes appearing when she tried new products, certain fabrics rubbing and irritating if they had any sort of rasp to them. "All this time? Every day, when you've been fretting about my comfort, you've been suffering?"
Erik shrugged. "I do not wish to alarm you. This mask provides me the most coverage, the most normalcy, and I did not want..." He stopped, hanging his head, as if the remnants of his anger had been all that was holding him together.
Tentatively, she put her hand upon his arm. "What didn't you want?"
"I didn't want you to see me that way. As a monster. I wanted you to know that I could take care of you, protect you. And you... you seemed to actually like my presence." His tone suggested how unbelievable he found that to be, and she felt another pang of sympathy for him. "I did not want for that to change."
"Erik," she murmured, her arms nearly aching to wrap about him. Finally, she lost her will to fight it and leaned closer, his arm rigid and unyielding against her as she wrapped herself about it. Their position on his bed was too awkward for her to hug him properly, but she would settle for this. "What if I told you that I won't be able to rest easy now unless I know you're comfortable? That I'll worry and fret about what that mask is doing to you until I won't be able to think of anything else?"
She'd tucked her head against his arm, so she could not see his reaction, but his voice was thoughtful. "I do not want you to think of it at all."
She was sure he didn't. For a time she'd simply been able to accept him as she would any other man, but things had changed. There was no ignoring that.
"Do you have anything that's easier to wear?"
"Yes," he admitted, although his voice suggested he did not appreciate her continued prodding. "But you would not like to look at it."
"Forget about me," she insisted, pulling away slightly so he could see her sincerity. "What's important is that you aren't harming yourself just because you're afraid of my reactions. If it would help I'd say that we could stay here for a few days and you would wear nothing at all, but somehow I don't think you'd agree to that."
His eyes widened, and belatedly she realized what she'd said and she hastened to clarify. "Not wear a mask," she explained, a blush staining her cheeks. "Obviously you'd still have... clothes."
Erik watched her closely, and she could have sworn that she saw some form of amusement in his expression before it clouded over in despair. "You are sweetness itself to think that, Christine. But I have the benefit of knowing what is underneath the mask, and you would not be so generous if you had that same knowledge."
They seemed to be at a standstill, and Christine hated it. He wouldn't trust her, not fully, until she'd seen it, but he wasn't willing to risk her rejection by allowing her to do so.
"Take a picture," she blurted out, not giving much consideration to her idea before speaking of it aloud. Her blush deepened when he looked at her with sheer alarm. "Take a picture of you without a mask and I'll go into my room and look at it. And I promise you, Erik, you won't be unhappy that you let me see."
Sooo... there's a bit of a different solution! Think he'll go through with it? Or maybe he'll just bolt...