Fanfiction: Like Everybody Else (3/11) - Phantom of the Opera
Title: Like Everybody Else (3/11)
Fandom: Phantom of the Opera (Leroux, Kay)
Rating: Mature (sexual content)
Summary: A sequel to the events of the novel, Christine returns to Erik to live as his wife. But the promises Erik made are difficult to keep, and a kiss is not enough.
Notes: Thanks to
stefanie_bean for her editing help and
joy for her support and inspiration. Also available at the AO3 and The Fifth Cellar.
Chapter two
I wasn’t dead. Again. I could feel her hands pushing at me, and I opened my eyes to find myself still on top of her. I smiled, and I started to say something, anything, like “I never thought I could feel like this” or “I love you” or even “Thank you” but there were tears in her eyes, and tracks of them on her cheeks and I realized how heavy I must be. I pulled away from her and she gasped again, biting her lip to muffle the sound. I felt suddenly, awkwardly modest, but I looked down at her anyway, to where-Oh God, there was blood. No one had told me there would be blood. She was human after all was my first thought, and my second was to draw her into my arms, cradle her against me. I was sobbing now, tears splashing down my sunken cheeks onto her hair.
“Christine, my love, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. Please believe me, I didn’t know. I never meant to hurt you. I’d sooner kill myself than hurt you. I never should have… you should have said… Oh my God Christine what can I do? Tell me? What did I do?”
She was gripping my arm now, her eyes suddenly dry, that odd resolve appearing in her expression again. “Hush, Erik. It’s alright. I’m alright. I… I heard… I mean…” She blushed. “The girls said the first time, you…” She couldn’t finish. She was still trembling slightly. “You really didn’t know that?” she asked timidly.
I shook my head. “No. I never… My God, Christine, look at me. No woman’s ever…”
“Did I please you?” she asked, lowering her eyes from me, staring at the sheet next to her.
“How could hurting you please me?” I asked, appalled.
“No, not that. Before, when you… you looked strange. I’ve never seen you look like that. Did I hurt you too?”
Already the shame seemed to be melting away, like my resolve. “No, my dear. Far from it. I cannot tell you what a gift you’ve given me. But I can’t bear the thought of having hurt you. Or hurting you again. We don’t have to do this, you know. You understand, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “It’s my duty. As… as your wife. I know we can’t be married, Erik, but I chose to be your wife. And Raoul told me a wife’s duty is to… to her husband.” She still wasn’t looking at me.
“It shouldn’t be a duty to be my husband, Christine,” I replied almost automatically. Normally, the mention of the vicomte would have sent me into paroxysms of jealousy, but what I felt now was, for the first time, a real superiority where Christine was concerned. Her first. I had claimed her first, irrevocably, for all time, mine. The boy no longer mattered, and I had proof. Even if she ran back to him tomorrow, I would still have that. Not that I was going to let that happen.
I looked back down her form as she lay stiffly in my arms. A woman, then. Not a doll. Not a statue. The blood… the blood only marked her as mine. “Let’s get you cleaned up, then,” I said softly. I felt calm now, more relaxed than I had been in years, but that feeling was already beginning to dissipate. There were things I had to think about, things I had to remember. But I had to take care of her first.
I carried her, unresisting, to the bathroom and drew her a bath. She didn’t seem to be injured in any way, so I merely washed away the blood. It was such an intimate act but she seemed to have reverted to a doll-like trance I recognized from what seemed like a former life, before she knew me, before I was anything but an angel or demon or both to her. Now that I was a man, it should be different. I would make it different, I promised her silently. There had to be a way to make it different. “I love you, Christine,” I told her.
She looked up at me then and smiled wanly. “I love you too, Erik.”
My stomach did a childish somersault but I merely touched the side of her face. I wouldn’t let her see me cry, not again, but I felt my eyes filling with tears. Such simple words (and what were words, anyway?) but they had such power. “Should I leave you be for a while? Will you be alright?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“I’d like for us to have a nice dinner tonight. To… to celebrate.”
“I’d like that.”
After changing the sheets, I shut the door to her bedroom and leaned against it for a moment. So that was it. Such a silly thing, when you thought about it, but I’d been chasing it all my life it seemed and it was almost unbelievable that I’d finally caught up. I had not expected to feel this… frightened. My mind went back over events. I had silently accused Christine of acting like a doll whose mechanism has wound down, but I was the automaton. Was it always like that, frantic and unconscious? Was I no better than an animal? I had thought to experience something divine and blissful. I had blissful, had the feeling of it still suffusing my body, but divine?
I went into my study. It was darker there, the walls hung with tapestries and drapes, and the familiar surroundings calmed me somewhat. I had to think this through. I had to understand what had happened, what I had felt. I had the rather comic thought of asking the daroga for advice.
And then I laughed at myself. What had thinking to do with any of this? What divine? The only divinity I believed in was beauty, and here I was worrying about my spiritual being when two rooms away there lay a creature who took away thought better than any drug or music or death. Here I was worrying about losing control when I knew quite well I’d been raving for years. So I had lost control. So I did not understand what I had felt. It had felt good. More than good; I hadn’t words for that too-fleeting sensation.
But I didn’t need words. I had the memory, and I replayed it again and again, the skin, the flesh, the blood. Even thinking about it seemed like too much, like even the shadowy touch of the memory was more sensation than I’d ever been allowed in my long life. She had no idea, I thought. She had no idea what she’d done for me.
I roused myself. She would be hungry, I thought. Unless… unless I had disgusted her. I had not thought of that. No, I wouldn’t. She had made her choice, and she must have thought it through. If she hadn’t (as, I feared, was more likely), she ought to have. She hadn’t flinched from me. She had absolved me of any wrongdoing. It followed then that she must be hungry.
I realized I would have to go out soon. There had been little to eat in the house to begin with, and the past week or two of derangement and grief had let spoil most of what had been here. I didn’t want to leave her alone right now, though. I managed to find some tins I’d secured away for an emergency, and decided that with enough spices the various barely-recognizable substances would taste fine. To me anyway. I would go shopping tomorrow.
It struck me that I really did not know what Christine was thinking now. Things had been simpler before. Not better, simpler. I hesitated outside her door, feeling a strange propriety despite the lowering of that last barrier mere hours ago. I didn’t know what I would find inside, I didn’t know if she would shout or cry or fall into my arms. I didn’t know what I’d entered into. But I wouldn’t have traded this day for all the celibate years she might have been willing to give me. Even if this day was the last.
“Christine? Are you… are you decent?” Decent… neither of us would ever be decent again, no matter how many layers of clothing we covered ourselves in, no matter if we never spoke of this day. Only the ignorant were ever decent.
There was a muffled sound I took for assent and I opened the door. “I’ve made us some dinner. You must be famished.” She was standing in front of the open door of the wardrobe, staring into the mirror which hung there. I had not been able to bring myself to put a mirror over her dressing table, despite my promise that the room was hers and hers alone, but I knew no woman would dress without one. In the wardrobe, I supposed, I would not have to encounter it. Now the mask I wore floated above her shoulder, like an imp whispering things in her ear, and there was no angel on the other side. I wondered what she had been looking at, because to me she looked more beautiful than ever. Just knowing, at last, what secrets had been hidden from me made her even more alluring, even when they had been covered again.
I felt a rush of tenderness at seeing her again, and a sense of wonder again at how this creature was mine at last. It didn’t seem real. She didn’t seem real. But what I had experienced in her arms was. She turned and her eyes seemed to be searching my face, only I didn’t have one, and she dropped them, suddenly shy.
“Erik.”
“Did you have a relaxing afternoon?” She nodded. “Are you hungry?” She paused, then nodded again. She was a delicate woman, but the way she was able to pack away food spoke volumes about her wandering, uncertain childhood. I presented my arm and she took it, finally smiling up at me. A tension I hadn’t noticed before melted away. “I’m afraid it isn’t much, but it was the best I could do with what I have here. I’ll have to restock tomorrow.” The Opera usually had food at the ready for use by the managers, visiting dignitaries, and the teas and dinner parties thrown for important patrons.
“I’m certain it’s good, Erik. You always took good care of me.”
“And I always will, Christine. You won’t want for anything.” She would be happy here, if I had to rob the Opera blind to see to it.
We sat and I watched her push her food around her plate for a few minutes before she decided she was hungry. I wondered how she felt, if she was sore, but I didn’t know how to ask a question like that. I didn’t know how it all worked, but my impression was that there wasn’t a specified length of time one had to allow between these things. I knew I wanted her again, even so soon. I could barely eat for thinking about her.
“Were you happy with me today, Erik?” she asked, and I felt heat rising to my cheeks.
“Christine, I… you…” What a thing for her to ask! I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or grateful or-
“My voice,” she cut in insistently. “How did I sound? I know it’s been a few days, Erik, but I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything.” Her eyes implored me, but I was a little confused, the train of my thoughts obviously having taken an alternate track than hers. Mine must have had a little too much coal added to the furnace, because in my head the dishes were cleared and the table was empty except for her.
“You sounded beautiful,” I said, then realized she was probably looking for more than that. Her angel of music, dispensing his divine wisdom. “A little shaky on the low notes; you have to pay as much attention to those as the high ones, you can’t just toss them off because they’re not as difficult.” She nodded, waiting. Frankly, I could hardly remember the specifics--subsequent events had thrown my thoughts into a welcome jumble of feelings and images. “Ah… you have to listen to what you are saying, the words. The music goes a long way, but the words are important too. Even if no one understands them, you must be able to convey exactly what the character is feeling. No one should have to hear the words, if you sing them properly. We’ll work on it, my dear.” She nodded again and I knew she was filing away everything I’d said. If I was going to teach her anything, I’d have to be more objective. I had been, up until now. I’d drilled her like an army sergeant. My brain was overloaded with her, intoxicated. I was, at this point, horribly biased.
It was a rather frightening thought, really. When had anything come between me and music? When had anything disturbed my objectivity? Even my first obsession with her I could put down to some ability to see her potential before anyone else. And that had come true. But had it all been an excuse to begin with? I wasn’t certain anymore. The way my body had reacted to her, the way I had lost all mastery of myself, the way I could even now smell her and feel her all over-could those things really have sprung from a purely impartial observation of her musical promise?
We rose from the table, but I didn’t know what happened next. I knew I could not have what I most wanted, not so soon. It was similar to the torture I’d endured for the past months, having her here but so far away at the same time, but it was different now that I knew what I’d been missing, what I now had. I didn’t know if it was better or worse but it was both more subtle and more demanding, more urgent and yet not, because she was here, she was mine, and there was nothing to keep me from her anymore.
Reading. I could read something, get my mind off of it, or at least fool my mind into thinking it was thinking about something else. I selected a book at random from the shelves which lined the walls of the sitting room and sat in the armchair. “Do you have something you can do, my darling?” She nodded and went to the piano, selecting the Aida score and settling down with it spread across her lap on the sofa. I pretended to read as she pored over it intently, her face a study in concentration. I smiled to myself. How different she was now from that timid, listless girl she’d been when we met. She’d wanted something then, but she hadn’t know how to get it, and hadn’t wanted it badly enough to find out. I’d made her want it. I’d made her want me.
Or at least if she didn’t, not in the way I wanted her, then I’d made her feel something for me. Even if it wasn’t love, pity strong enough to bring her back had to strike a similar chord, even if the timbre was slightly different. The ear could learn to accommodate many things.
And I could make her want me. Tomorrow, I would start.
Christine was yawning now, hiding it politely behind her hand. “Go to bed, love.” She looked up, flushing slightly. “It’s been a tiring day for you, I imagine.” Not tiring. Invigorating, life-giving, soul-confusing perhaps. And another question presented itself now: were we to share a bed, as I supposed a true married couple was wont? I remembered my mother’s large bed, although my parents had had separate bedrooms. Such a bed was a bit of a waste for just one. My own seemed suddenly cold and lonely-more lonely even than the rather spare life I’d built for myself before Christine would suggest. My house was an homage to erratic and rather uncomfortable genius, and the fixtures followed suit.
Suddenly, erratic and uncomfortable did not seem all that appealing.
“Christine,” I breathed. I could barely form the words, my chest in the same vice grip I had felt when asking her to choose between those blasted insects.
“Yes, Erik?” She had stood and now took a step towards me.
“Christine, I…” Oh, how did one say this? I had not asked her earlier, I had kissed her and carried her off like a savage in a cave, but I could not just follow her into her bedroom and watch her undress and slide into bed with her without comment. It wasn’t unpremeditated passion, but rather the most domestic of gestures. A symbol of the normal life I craved. I wasn’t used to asking for it. I had always either taken or tried to reconcile myself to never having things. “Christine, I want to sleep with you, like a husband and wife, like… I want to wake up and know you are here with me.” I held my breath for what seemed like hours but was probably for her merely a dramatic pause.
A nod. A slightly forced smile. “You are my husband, Erik. I am your wife. If you… if you will give me a minute to dress, I… I want this to work, Erik. I’m going to make it work.”
Chapter four
This entry is also posted at http://my-daroga.dreamwidth.org/272487.html. Feel free to comment wherever you want.
Fandom: Phantom of the Opera (Leroux, Kay)
Rating: Mature (sexual content)
Summary: A sequel to the events of the novel, Christine returns to Erik to live as his wife. But the promises Erik made are difficult to keep, and a kiss is not enough.
Notes: Thanks to
stefanie_bean for her editing help and
joy for her support and inspiration. Also available at the AO3 and The Fifth Cellar.
Chapter two
I wasn’t dead. Again. I could feel her hands pushing at me, and I opened my eyes to find myself still on top of her. I smiled, and I started to say something, anything, like “I never thought I could feel like this” or “I love you” or even “Thank you” but there were tears in her eyes, and tracks of them on her cheeks and I realized how heavy I must be. I pulled away from her and she gasped again, biting her lip to muffle the sound. I felt suddenly, awkwardly modest, but I looked down at her anyway, to where-Oh God, there was blood. No one had told me there would be blood. She was human after all was my first thought, and my second was to draw her into my arms, cradle her against me. I was sobbing now, tears splashing down my sunken cheeks onto her hair.
“Christine, my love, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. Please believe me, I didn’t know. I never meant to hurt you. I’d sooner kill myself than hurt you. I never should have… you should have said… Oh my God Christine what can I do? Tell me? What did I do?”
She was gripping my arm now, her eyes suddenly dry, that odd resolve appearing in her expression again. “Hush, Erik. It’s alright. I’m alright. I… I heard… I mean…” She blushed. “The girls said the first time, you…” She couldn’t finish. She was still trembling slightly. “You really didn’t know that?” she asked timidly.
I shook my head. “No. I never… My God, Christine, look at me. No woman’s ever…”
“Did I please you?” she asked, lowering her eyes from me, staring at the sheet next to her.
“How could hurting you please me?” I asked, appalled.
“No, not that. Before, when you… you looked strange. I’ve never seen you look like that. Did I hurt you too?”
Already the shame seemed to be melting away, like my resolve. “No, my dear. Far from it. I cannot tell you what a gift you’ve given me. But I can’t bear the thought of having hurt you. Or hurting you again. We don’t have to do this, you know. You understand, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “It’s my duty. As… as your wife. I know we can’t be married, Erik, but I chose to be your wife. And Raoul told me a wife’s duty is to… to her husband.” She still wasn’t looking at me.
“It shouldn’t be a duty to be my husband, Christine,” I replied almost automatically. Normally, the mention of the vicomte would have sent me into paroxysms of jealousy, but what I felt now was, for the first time, a real superiority where Christine was concerned. Her first. I had claimed her first, irrevocably, for all time, mine. The boy no longer mattered, and I had proof. Even if she ran back to him tomorrow, I would still have that. Not that I was going to let that happen.
I looked back down her form as she lay stiffly in my arms. A woman, then. Not a doll. Not a statue. The blood… the blood only marked her as mine. “Let’s get you cleaned up, then,” I said softly. I felt calm now, more relaxed than I had been in years, but that feeling was already beginning to dissipate. There were things I had to think about, things I had to remember. But I had to take care of her first.
I carried her, unresisting, to the bathroom and drew her a bath. She didn’t seem to be injured in any way, so I merely washed away the blood. It was such an intimate act but she seemed to have reverted to a doll-like trance I recognized from what seemed like a former life, before she knew me, before I was anything but an angel or demon or both to her. Now that I was a man, it should be different. I would make it different, I promised her silently. There had to be a way to make it different. “I love you, Christine,” I told her.
She looked up at me then and smiled wanly. “I love you too, Erik.”
My stomach did a childish somersault but I merely touched the side of her face. I wouldn’t let her see me cry, not again, but I felt my eyes filling with tears. Such simple words (and what were words, anyway?) but they had such power. “Should I leave you be for a while? Will you be alright?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“I’d like for us to have a nice dinner tonight. To… to celebrate.”
“I’d like that.”
After changing the sheets, I shut the door to her bedroom and leaned against it for a moment. So that was it. Such a silly thing, when you thought about it, but I’d been chasing it all my life it seemed and it was almost unbelievable that I’d finally caught up. I had not expected to feel this… frightened. My mind went back over events. I had silently accused Christine of acting like a doll whose mechanism has wound down, but I was the automaton. Was it always like that, frantic and unconscious? Was I no better than an animal? I had thought to experience something divine and blissful. I had blissful, had the feeling of it still suffusing my body, but divine?
I went into my study. It was darker there, the walls hung with tapestries and drapes, and the familiar surroundings calmed me somewhat. I had to think this through. I had to understand what had happened, what I had felt. I had the rather comic thought of asking the daroga for advice.
And then I laughed at myself. What had thinking to do with any of this? What divine? The only divinity I believed in was beauty, and here I was worrying about my spiritual being when two rooms away there lay a creature who took away thought better than any drug or music or death. Here I was worrying about losing control when I knew quite well I’d been raving for years. So I had lost control. So I did not understand what I had felt. It had felt good. More than good; I hadn’t words for that too-fleeting sensation.
But I didn’t need words. I had the memory, and I replayed it again and again, the skin, the flesh, the blood. Even thinking about it seemed like too much, like even the shadowy touch of the memory was more sensation than I’d ever been allowed in my long life. She had no idea, I thought. She had no idea what she’d done for me.
I roused myself. She would be hungry, I thought. Unless… unless I had disgusted her. I had not thought of that. No, I wouldn’t. She had made her choice, and she must have thought it through. If she hadn’t (as, I feared, was more likely), she ought to have. She hadn’t flinched from me. She had absolved me of any wrongdoing. It followed then that she must be hungry.
I realized I would have to go out soon. There had been little to eat in the house to begin with, and the past week or two of derangement and grief had let spoil most of what had been here. I didn’t want to leave her alone right now, though. I managed to find some tins I’d secured away for an emergency, and decided that with enough spices the various barely-recognizable substances would taste fine. To me anyway. I would go shopping tomorrow.
It struck me that I really did not know what Christine was thinking now. Things had been simpler before. Not better, simpler. I hesitated outside her door, feeling a strange propriety despite the lowering of that last barrier mere hours ago. I didn’t know what I would find inside, I didn’t know if she would shout or cry or fall into my arms. I didn’t know what I’d entered into. But I wouldn’t have traded this day for all the celibate years she might have been willing to give me. Even if this day was the last.
“Christine? Are you… are you decent?” Decent… neither of us would ever be decent again, no matter how many layers of clothing we covered ourselves in, no matter if we never spoke of this day. Only the ignorant were ever decent.
There was a muffled sound I took for assent and I opened the door. “I’ve made us some dinner. You must be famished.” She was standing in front of the open door of the wardrobe, staring into the mirror which hung there. I had not been able to bring myself to put a mirror over her dressing table, despite my promise that the room was hers and hers alone, but I knew no woman would dress without one. In the wardrobe, I supposed, I would not have to encounter it. Now the mask I wore floated above her shoulder, like an imp whispering things in her ear, and there was no angel on the other side. I wondered what she had been looking at, because to me she looked more beautiful than ever. Just knowing, at last, what secrets had been hidden from me made her even more alluring, even when they had been covered again.
I felt a rush of tenderness at seeing her again, and a sense of wonder again at how this creature was mine at last. It didn’t seem real. She didn’t seem real. But what I had experienced in her arms was. She turned and her eyes seemed to be searching my face, only I didn’t have one, and she dropped them, suddenly shy.
“Erik.”
“Did you have a relaxing afternoon?” She nodded. “Are you hungry?” She paused, then nodded again. She was a delicate woman, but the way she was able to pack away food spoke volumes about her wandering, uncertain childhood. I presented my arm and she took it, finally smiling up at me. A tension I hadn’t noticed before melted away. “I’m afraid it isn’t much, but it was the best I could do with what I have here. I’ll have to restock tomorrow.” The Opera usually had food at the ready for use by the managers, visiting dignitaries, and the teas and dinner parties thrown for important patrons.
“I’m certain it’s good, Erik. You always took good care of me.”
“And I always will, Christine. You won’t want for anything.” She would be happy here, if I had to rob the Opera blind to see to it.
We sat and I watched her push her food around her plate for a few minutes before she decided she was hungry. I wondered how she felt, if she was sore, but I didn’t know how to ask a question like that. I didn’t know how it all worked, but my impression was that there wasn’t a specified length of time one had to allow between these things. I knew I wanted her again, even so soon. I could barely eat for thinking about her.
“Were you happy with me today, Erik?” she asked, and I felt heat rising to my cheeks.
“Christine, I… you…” What a thing for her to ask! I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or grateful or-
“My voice,” she cut in insistently. “How did I sound? I know it’s been a few days, Erik, but I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything.” Her eyes implored me, but I was a little confused, the train of my thoughts obviously having taken an alternate track than hers. Mine must have had a little too much coal added to the furnace, because in my head the dishes were cleared and the table was empty except for her.
“You sounded beautiful,” I said, then realized she was probably looking for more than that. Her angel of music, dispensing his divine wisdom. “A little shaky on the low notes; you have to pay as much attention to those as the high ones, you can’t just toss them off because they’re not as difficult.” She nodded, waiting. Frankly, I could hardly remember the specifics--subsequent events had thrown my thoughts into a welcome jumble of feelings and images. “Ah… you have to listen to what you are saying, the words. The music goes a long way, but the words are important too. Even if no one understands them, you must be able to convey exactly what the character is feeling. No one should have to hear the words, if you sing them properly. We’ll work on it, my dear.” She nodded again and I knew she was filing away everything I’d said. If I was going to teach her anything, I’d have to be more objective. I had been, up until now. I’d drilled her like an army sergeant. My brain was overloaded with her, intoxicated. I was, at this point, horribly biased.
It was a rather frightening thought, really. When had anything come between me and music? When had anything disturbed my objectivity? Even my first obsession with her I could put down to some ability to see her potential before anyone else. And that had come true. But had it all been an excuse to begin with? I wasn’t certain anymore. The way my body had reacted to her, the way I had lost all mastery of myself, the way I could even now smell her and feel her all over-could those things really have sprung from a purely impartial observation of her musical promise?
We rose from the table, but I didn’t know what happened next. I knew I could not have what I most wanted, not so soon. It was similar to the torture I’d endured for the past months, having her here but so far away at the same time, but it was different now that I knew what I’d been missing, what I now had. I didn’t know if it was better or worse but it was both more subtle and more demanding, more urgent and yet not, because she was here, she was mine, and there was nothing to keep me from her anymore.
Reading. I could read something, get my mind off of it, or at least fool my mind into thinking it was thinking about something else. I selected a book at random from the shelves which lined the walls of the sitting room and sat in the armchair. “Do you have something you can do, my darling?” She nodded and went to the piano, selecting the Aida score and settling down with it spread across her lap on the sofa. I pretended to read as she pored over it intently, her face a study in concentration. I smiled to myself. How different she was now from that timid, listless girl she’d been when we met. She’d wanted something then, but she hadn’t know how to get it, and hadn’t wanted it badly enough to find out. I’d made her want it. I’d made her want me.
Or at least if she didn’t, not in the way I wanted her, then I’d made her feel something for me. Even if it wasn’t love, pity strong enough to bring her back had to strike a similar chord, even if the timbre was slightly different. The ear could learn to accommodate many things.
And I could make her want me. Tomorrow, I would start.
Christine was yawning now, hiding it politely behind her hand. “Go to bed, love.” She looked up, flushing slightly. “It’s been a tiring day for you, I imagine.” Not tiring. Invigorating, life-giving, soul-confusing perhaps. And another question presented itself now: were we to share a bed, as I supposed a true married couple was wont? I remembered my mother’s large bed, although my parents had had separate bedrooms. Such a bed was a bit of a waste for just one. My own seemed suddenly cold and lonely-more lonely even than the rather spare life I’d built for myself before Christine would suggest. My house was an homage to erratic and rather uncomfortable genius, and the fixtures followed suit.
Suddenly, erratic and uncomfortable did not seem all that appealing.
“Christine,” I breathed. I could barely form the words, my chest in the same vice grip I had felt when asking her to choose between those blasted insects.
“Yes, Erik?” She had stood and now took a step towards me.
“Christine, I…” Oh, how did one say this? I had not asked her earlier, I had kissed her and carried her off like a savage in a cave, but I could not just follow her into her bedroom and watch her undress and slide into bed with her without comment. It wasn’t unpremeditated passion, but rather the most domestic of gestures. A symbol of the normal life I craved. I wasn’t used to asking for it. I had always either taken or tried to reconcile myself to never having things. “Christine, I want to sleep with you, like a husband and wife, like… I want to wake up and know you are here with me.” I held my breath for what seemed like hours but was probably for her merely a dramatic pause.
A nod. A slightly forced smile. “You are my husband, Erik. I am your wife. If you… if you will give me a minute to dress, I… I want this to work, Erik. I’m going to make it work.”
Chapter four
This entry is also posted at http://my-daroga.dreamwidth.org/272487.html. Feel free to comment wherever you want.