Chapter Text
He asked her to stay, and she did.
Even now, as morning light creeps upon them and her chest rises and falls with the gentle cadence of sleep, he can hardly believe it.
The previous evening is now a euphoric haze: hours and hours of talking, and kissing, and talking some more. There was takeout ordered, and wine uncorked, just enough to lubricate the conversation and prevent him from retreating too far into his head.
He can still taste it now: wine from his glass, wine on her lips and tongue. The flowery scent of her shampoo still wafts from the hair fanned out beside him.
He does not quite recall how they ended up here, this chaste cohabitation in such an intimate setting, except that he did not want her to drive home in her exhaustion and she was very persuasive in keeping him from the sofa. But he will not soon forget how his heart nearly skittered out of his chest when the pair of them lay down together, terrified as he was that she might seek something he was not yet ready to give.
Instead, she twined her fingers through his and held fast. "Tell me how you became a piano tuner."
And so he recounted his formative years spent holed up in the orchestra storage room, tinkering with the instruments, to delay his return home from school. He told her of his fondness for unlocking hidden potential, for drawing it out and polishing the pearl of the proverbial oyster.
"Is my voice one of those pearls?" she asked sleepily.
"Your voice is nothing of this earth."
"Mm. That is"—she pressed her lips gently to his—"the sweetest hyperbole"—another peck—"I've ever heard."
She drifted off on a whisper of a kiss. He watched her for a few minutes, aided by streetlight slivering in through the curtains, before succumbing to sleep himself.
By some miracle, she is still here: swathed in ivory sheets like a goddess, her pale hair charmingly disheveled against the pillow.
He can no longer imagine a life without her in it.
He'd be content to stare at her until she wakes, but it feels invasive. Instead, he slips out of bed and stretches. He winces as his usual cavalcade of cracking joints pierces the quiet, but she does not stir. He freshens up in the bathroom and changes into a clean shirt.
She squints at him groggily when he returns. "I didn't snore, did I?"
"No," he says, wrapping an arm around her waist. "But I've no doubt you would be a mellifluous snorer, were that the case." He leans in to kiss her, but she's quick to raise the bedsheet as a barrier. His lips brush against cotton instead.
Bright eyes peer over the sheet's edge. "I don't suppose you have a spare toothbrush?"
"Top drawer," he says. "On the right."
With a grateful smile, she scurries off to the bathroom.
She returns with less tousled hair, her face fresh and pink and damp at the edges. Before she can get in a word, he's pulled her against his mouth: proof, to himself, that all of this is real. She makes a small noise of approval at the back of her throat, and she moves her lips against his. Her breath is sweet and warm.
And her hands—oh, God, her hands: they twist into his hair, run the length of his shoulder blades, slip under his shirt cuff to trace the veins on the underside of his wrist. He is almost convinced those hands could do no wrong, until one moves to cup the leather on his cheek. His heart starts pounding when she breaks away from his mouth.
"Do you always have to wear this?" she whispers.
His stomach curls. "Medically, no."
"But around me?"
He exhales slowly, struggling to meet her gaze. "It is ghastly, Christine, this semblance of a face. Unfit for anyone's eyes."
"Shouldn't I be the judge of that?"
She gives him a wry smile, but he can't return it. He's trembling. She doesn't know what she's asking, could not possibly envision the brute horrors he's so carefully concealed.
His fear must be apparent, because her face softens and she reaches for his hand. "It's a part of you," she says, "and I intend to love every part."
"You—?" He stops breathing for a moment. He wants to ask whether there are parts she loves already, and how long she has loved those parts, and why, but her imploring face tells him he cannot avoid this forever, and none of those things will matter once she sees.
Slowly, with shaking fingers, he takes off the mask.
Her breath hitches. Her eyes widen—in abject terror, he knows, because he's seen it before—and she pales. Still, she does not look away, though it's clearly a struggle.
Chest burning with shame, he slips the mask back on. "I'm sorry," he says. "I did warn you."
"You did." Her reply is breathless, and she squeezes her eyes shut as if to will away the memory.
He almost leaves then and there—to give her a reprieve, to wallow in his own misery—but her fingers are still wound tightly through his, and it would be cruel to pry them apart. So he remains stretched out on the mattress, beside the woman he loves who can no longer look at him, steeped in the knowledge that he is eternally abhorrent.
A minute passes before her eyes fly open. "Again," she says.
He blinks. "What?"
"Show me again."
He's so caught off guard that he obeys without question. She flinches, swallows, closes her eyes once more. He replaces the mask. Another thirty seconds pass.
"Again."
"Christine."
Her jaw tightens. "Just humor me, please. I'm trying to replace the image of you in my mind with this one. The real one."
He sighs and removes the mask a third time. "And how is that working out for you?" he quips dryly, and she glares at him.
She glares at him. Eyes fixed, unflinching, staring down the ravaged horror that is his face. "Kiss me," she says, "and we'll find out."
A quivering breath escapes his lungs. Pulse hammering in his ears, he leans in, little by little, until that grisly flesh is a hair's width from her face.
She is the one who closes the distance. And with that kiss, her soft lips sinking into his, his life's trajectory is altered forever.