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Chapter Text

At first, he's certain he has the wrong address.

He checks the directions on his cell phone, and then he looks up at the building again. Yes, the numbers match. He slips the phone into the pocket of his suit jacket and makes for the entrance of the women's dormitory.

Two girls burst through the double doors just early enough for him to avoid collision. At the sight of him they start, their conversation halting mid-sentence. He pays them no mind. He's used to this, used to living as a skeleton among men, with sharp ridges where his bones strain against pallid skin and shadowed hollows where they do not.

These things are scarcely visible beneath his white leather mask and his tailored suit and hat. But with the merest scraps of evidence—sinewy neck, fingers like spindles, rangy frame—one's mind can easily complete the missing information.

The girl working the front desk has a wide, toothy smile that falters for a split second as she watches him approach. He is only dimly aware of his words to her as he states his purpose, for his ears are instantly attuned to the residence hall lobby.

Through its open doorway drifts the purest, sweetest little singing voice he has ever heard. He doesn't just hear it, though; he feels it in his gut, and it unnerves him. It's as though a great wind has swept away the gravitational threads mooring him to the earth, and now he's drifting into the ether where not a soul can bring him back.

It's a young woman who's singing. He doesn't recognize the tune; it sounds contemporary, substandard. He's willing to overlook it. If the woman's voice were a tangible thing, he'd be able to see right through it, like crystal. Still, it's immediately apparent to him that its edges need polishing, its center more depth.

He could be that for her, he thinks. He could refine the edges of that voice; he could be the beam of light that permeates the prism just so, until it refracts a dazzling spectrum of color.

Or, or, he could curl up like a dog at her feet and bask in her voice forever, just as it is. Both options are equally appealing.

"The piano is in the lobby," says the girl at the front desk, and she points to the gates of heaven, which are flanked by bulletin boards designed to curb underage drinking. He nods and tightens his grip on the handle of his attache case, as though that might stop his hand from trembling. Just outside the doorway, he stops and peers in.

She is the physical manifestation of her voice, blonde-haired and blue-eyed and rosy-cheeked. Her nose is small and downturned, her lips soft and pink. She's sitting at the upright piano, and she smiles as she sings: free of inhibitions, he thinks, with the room to herself.

She is everything that he is not.

He should feel envious. It is, after all, his natural state of being. Instead, he is overcome by an urgent need to wrap himself around her and shield her from the atrocities of the world.

At the same time, he wants to pull her into his own darkness and keep her there forever, so that her radiance might chase away the shadows.

He guiltily pushes away the thought and steps forward. When his reedy frame fills the doorway, just within her periphery, she stops and rounds on the bench with a startled "Oh!"

They stare at each other. His heart pounds with such force that he hears it thrumming inside of his head. Her gaze flits over his frame, lingering a beat too long on the mask, and despite a lifetime of self-loathing he can't recall when he last felt such bitter despair over his ruined face. He stays rooted to the spot, waiting for whichever excuse she will offer to explain her imminent departure. He has heard them all.

Instead, her eyes brighten as they alight on his tool case. "Are you here to tune the piano?" she asks.

"I am." His voice crackles beneath the weight of his surprise.

"Finally! I've been begging the staff for months." She scoots off the bench and gestures to the now-open seat. "Please."

It is objectively the worst piano he has ever been called upon to tune. The keys are yellowed and chipped, the exterior marred with nicks and gouges and carved graffiti. The paneling is such a tawny brown that he begins to question whether it's actually wood. When he opens the lid to peer at the inner workings, he frowns.

"It is my understanding," he says, "that the college of music is quite esteemed. Surely there are far superior instruments there?"

He glances over just in time to see her smile. "There are," she concedes. "Some days, though, it's just more convenient and relaxing to come down here. And besides, the practice rooms in the music building are intimidating. Everyone there is so—" She looks down to the ground, her face reddening. "Everyone is so much better."

"No." His reply is so sharp, so insistent, that she snaps her head up to regard him, and he knows that he must continue. "Your voice is magnificent."

She gives him what is clearly a forced smile. "That's very kind of you to say."

"It is a fact, not a kindness." He swallows. "I am...something of a voice expert." He immediately regrets his word choice; now she will think him arrogant.

Instead her face brightens, and it's as though the sun has chosen to rise that day for him and him alone. "Really?" she asks. "Do you give lessons? I've thought about finding extra help. The department is so competitive."

He's never given a lesson in his life. "I do," he says. "The first one is free. A trial period, if you will." The words spill from his lips faster than he can catch them, and he is left near-trembling in their wake. His palms sweat as he and the angel exchange introductions.

"I have class soon," she tells him, and if he didn't know any better, he'd say she sounded almost disappointed. "Do you have a card or something? Some way that I can contact you?"

"Ah. Yes. Of course." He plucks a spare business card from his wallet. When she takes it from his outstretched hand, her fingertips graze his and he nearly gasps at the flutter of contact. His insides turn to warm slush. She exits with a smile and a promise to call, and he is undone.

At home, he sets his attache case by the door and begins his evening routine: shoes on the mat, jacket and vest in the closet, tie on the rack. He unbuttons his shirt cuffs and, in a fit of daring, rolls back the sleeves to expose knobby wrists and a pale, sinewy expanse of forearm.

Then, and only then, does he try out her name on his lips.

"Christine."

A warm, heady thrill courses through every inch of his body.

He cannot have her. He does not deserve her. And yet, in her eyes and her voice and in the deepest recesses of his soul, he saw and heard and felt something so exhilarating, so unfamiliar that it takes him a moment to place it.

It is hope.

He is startled by the sound of his phone buzzing against the surface of a nearby desk. He snatches it up and tries to steady it in his shaking hand so that he can read the caller ID.

C. Daaé.

He accepts the call and raises the phone to his ear, and for the first time in a very long time, the skeleton grins.

Chapter Text

It's the first time that she has lingered after a voice lesson.

She slips the sheet music into her bag, as she always does when the pair of them wrap up, but instead of donning her coat she runs her fingertip across a row of spines in his bookcase. "You have so many books," she says. "What sorts do you read?"

"Everything." He stands stiffly beside the baby grand, with long fingers resting on the console. They grip its edge tighter with every title that she touches.

She smiles. "Well, what's your favorite, then?"

"I could not possibly choose."

When she emits a huff of mock exasperation, however, he indulges her. He moves to the bookcase, keenly aware of the discrepancy in their heights—he has at least a foot on her, he estimates—and he plucks a tome from the shelf to hand to her. "This one, I am rather fond of."

"Blindness?" She flips through the pages. "I've never heard of it."

"Dystopian thriller. A city is struck with an epidemic of blindness, and society quickly unravels, as you might imagine."

"It sounds...bleak."

"Yes, it's terribly bleak and gruesome. There are moments, though…" He trails off, preoccupied as she is with his untidy scribbles and underlines and dog-eared pages: a habit for which he should perhaps feel guilty, but he does not, so long as the book in question is his. There is something unsettlingly intimate about her perusal of his notes, as though she has walked in on him laying his soul bare.

"You were saying?" she asks, with a quick glance up at him. "Moments?"

He starts, clears his throat. "Ah...yes. There are moments so profound, so beautiful, that they transcend everything."

She has found his most-referenced page, and she reads aloud from the underlined passage, her voice crisp and sweet: "'Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.'" She looks up from the page expectantly.

"Indeed," he replies, clasping his hands behind his back. "There is something to be said for the potential of the human spirit when appearances are...inconsequential."

He averts his gaze, feigning interest in the other titles, but he can feel her eyes on him. The supple leather that masks his face is suddenly all too stifling. She has never asked him what lies beneath, but her curiosity is obvious. If there's one thing he has learned in their fifteen months of lessons, it's that even a mask of her own would not stop Christine Daaé from baring her feelings to the world. It endears her to him all the more.

He clears his throat and retrieves from an end table the half-full mug of tea, now cold, that he brought to her upon arrival. "Might I replenish this?" he asks.

"Yes, please."

He strides into the kitchen, a sleek box of stainless steel and soapstone, to fill a clean mug with hot water from the electric kettle. When he returns with the fresh tea, she is sitting on the sofa, knees bent and legs tucked beside her, with thick woolen socks drawn up over her jean cuffs. She is perusing his copy of Bel Canto, looking so at ease in his home that his breath catches and he falters on his way across the room.

She sets the book down and takes the mug from him. Their fingertips touch—not for the first nor even the fifth time, but still his skin prickles from wrist to elbow. She thanks him sweetly, and he sits opposite her on the piano bench.

They do not speak. She takes small, hesitant sips of the tea as it cools, her hands cupping spartan gray porcelain. The mug is entirely unsuited to her disposition. He imagines her holding instead a handmade vessel of thick, teal-glazed ceramic, with subtle imperfections and asymmetries to add character.

He feels obligated to make conversation, and about something beyond their music lessons. But as she has not lingered like this before, he knows almost nothing about her, save for details gleaned by observation: she bites her nails and lets the polish chip; she prefers a paper planner over digital; she has a white cat, and it sheds. She is always heading off to class, with a swiftness to indicate that she has no time to dally.

Which gives him pause. "I do not mean to rush you," he finally says, "but don't you normally have class after our lesson?"

She shakes her head. "Not today. Because of the snowstorm."

He was awake in the early morning hours, when the air smelled of crisp new snow, and he glimpsed through the window the blanket of white powder still unspoiled by boot or tire. But he has clearly underestimated the weight of the snowfall, for university snow days are rare. It's likely that the roads are only half-plowed, the public sidewalks unshoveled.

He recalls her appearance upon her arrival: knee-high boots caked in snow; eyes bright and cheeks rosy from the biting cold; a pink knit hat that, when lifted, set her blonde hair on end with a burst of static electricity. He opens his mouth to scold her for her recklessness in coming here, but she cuts him off. "It's a shame, really, because I love that class."

She sips more tea; he finds his opening. "Which class might that be?"

"Ballroom dancing."

He suppresses his initial reaction, a sarcastic jab at the validity of ballroom dancing as a college-level course. He doesn't want to offend her with his particular brand of humor. More than that, though, he is unnerved by the way she is sizing him up; it makes his heart beat in triplicate. "Ah," he replies, his voice rasping. His throat is dry. "A shame indeed. But more time to catch up on schoolwork, I suppose?"

"We're doing the waltz this week." She looks down into her tea. "I don't suppose that...you...?" The pause that follows is the longest of his life. Finally, her gaze finds his face again, imploring.

"I do not dance."

"Oh. Okay." Her disappointment, slight as it is, still manages to crush him under its weight.

"That is, I...don't have experience. Dancing."

She does a poor job of hiding her incredulity. "Not even at weddings? Or school dances?"

"I was educated at home." He refrains from mentioning that, with two uninterested and overworked parents, he was largely the one doing the educating.

Her eyes soften. "Can I...show you? Or would that be weird?"

He nods in agreement. He hates himself for it, but when it comes to matters outside her music instruction, he craves little more than to appease her.

"Let's start with something slow," she says, her smile warm and promising. She scrolls through her phone until she finds what she's looking for, and then she places it on the end table beside the sofa. Soft, lilting piano trickles out of the speaker, the sound quality tinny and shallow. She crosses over to him, and he snaps to his feet, his heart thundering in his ears.

She places his right hand at her back, just below her shoulder blade; her left hand settles at his shoulder. His other hand she raises until it's perpendicular to his body, bent at the elbow. Her arm mirrors his, and her fingers curl over the expanse of skin and tendon between his thumb and forefinger. Instinctively, he wraps his own fingers around hers. Come away with me in the night, croons a woman's voice over the tiny speaker, at once both whisper-soft and husky.

How small her hand feels in his, and how soft, with the warmth of the teacup still lingering on her skin. His own hands are wretchedly thin, almost sharp in their boniness. But they are long, and the hand in question envelops hers completely.

Come away with me
And I will write you a song

The lyrics make him ache. He considers excuses for her to leave, if it means that this yearning will ebb in the slightest, but then she's walking him through the box step in triple time and his mind can't cope with the distraction.

He has all the finesse of a robot, with shuffling feet and unyielding legs. "It might help to be a bit less stiff," she suggests, and though he nods his understanding he has no idea what to do with this advice, how to change his natural state of being. His partner, on the other hand—she appears to glide across the floor, even in wool socks, balancing on the balls of her feet.

"You are awfully skilled for someone who has not yet covered this in class." He stumbles the moment he opens his mouth; he should have known better than to try and multitask.

"My father taught me."

"Surely he would be a more suitable dance partner?"

She gives him a wan smile. "He would be, if he were alive."

His face grows hot, his heart drops to his feet like an anchor, and he forgets about the task at hand. They stop mid-step. "Forgive me," he says. "My sincerest apologies...and condolences."

She shakes her head. "It's fine. I'm used to it now."

"How long has it been?"

"A couple years," she replies, and she eases him back into the box step. "It's why I'm older than the others, at school—because I took some time off, near the end, to help him. And then to grieve." Again she manages to smile through dark clouds. "It's not because I'm slow."

He resists the urge to pull her into an embrace, instead managing a feeble smile that he hopes looks less unnatural than it feels. "I would never have made that assumption."

"I wouldn't blame you if you did. I started doubting myself the moment I registered." She evades his gaze now, and he senses that she is stating fact rather than seeking reassurance. "The lessons have helped, though. Music is restoring my soul."

"Good."

They continue the waltz in silence. The music that plays thinly from her phone is soothing, yet it also mocks him with its romanticism. The closer he gets to her, the more untouchable she seems. Her hair smells of cheap botanicals; it intoxicates him, and he breathes it in.

He still struggles to mimic her movements, always half a beat behind. Inwardly, he curses himself. He should be able to do this; he is a musician, and rhythm thrums in his veins. But his long legs have hardened into shaky, lumbering stilts, and soon enough, one thwarts the other. He trips, and he only manages to regain his balance by slamming a hand down on the piano lid and stepping hard on her foot. She winces and draws back.

"I'm so sorry," he says, still recovering from his blunder.

She stares at him for a moment, and then she laughs. "You certainly weren't kidding about your abilities."

"I'm afraid not. I should never have..." His hands curl into fists. "My sincerest apologies, Christine."

She stops laughing at that, her blue eyes suddenly wide and fixed on his face. His cheeks grow even hotter: in fifteen months of lessons, he has only ever called her Miss Daaé. "I'm sorry," he mutters, the repetition of apologies making him sound all the more awkward to his ears. "I meant...Miss Daaé."

"No, please; I like it." Her delicate hands find his, and she guides his arms back into waltzing position. "It seems only fair that you call me Christine, since you've had me address you as Erik."

The song has just ended, but she has set it to loop, and soon the piano intro starts up again. He is calmer now, having suffered such thorough embarrassment only to emerge still in her favor. His heartbeat stays rapid, but his arms are looser, his legs more compliant. His gradual mastery of the step gives him leeway to study the points of contact between her body and his.

Her left arm is stretched across his right, lavender cardigan against charcoal suit jacket. He relishes the weight of it, as slight as it is. And her opposite hand—he could hold it forever, and it would still not be enough. He longs to bring her knuckles to his lips and kiss every one of them. And then he is thinking about nothing but her lips, and how they might feel against his knuckles. His mouth.

The weight on his arm is lifted, drawing him out of his reverie. He snaps to attention just in time to intercept her outstretched fingers as they reach for his mask.

Her arm freezes in midair, his long fingers clamped on her wrist like a vise. Though the music still plays, it seems the only sound in the room is his shaky breathing.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, eyes wide. "I only wanted to know what it was made of. I wasn't going to...to..." She is fighting back tears now, and she shakes her head as though that will deter them. "I'm sorry," she repeats. "It was rude, and thoughtless."

He releases her wrist, and she rubs it. The notion that he's caused her discomfort pierces his chest like a lance. "No," he says. "I'm the one who should apologize. My response—it's become a reflex."

"Why?"

"This face," he replies, gesturing broadly to the masked area. "The product of an...unfortunate accident." He watches her reach out for her phone and turn off the music; not once does she break eye contact. He adds, "I would rather people keep their distance out of fear than out of revulsion."

"And does everyone keep their distance? Truly?"

He nods. She sizes him up, arms crossing, and her mouth twists into a dubious frown. "Are you sure it's not because you hold them at arm's length?" Immediately her face slackens, and she claps a hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry. That's none of my business, either."

The corners of his lips curl back ever so slightly. All this time he has longed to know her better, and his now-realized dream is little more than a string of awkward blunders and apologies.

"It is undoubtedly because I hold them at arm's length," he concedes. "Better to never know the touch of another than to know it and lose it, hmm?"

"No," she whispers, shaking her head. "No, I don't think that's how the sentiment goes." She takes a step toward him, hesitates, and then forges ahead. Before he can guess at her intentions, she has slipped her arms around his thin frame and hugged him.

For a moment, he is too stunned to move. He can only gape and stare down at the golden crown of her head, unconvinced of her realness despite how solid she feels against him. His pulse has become a continuous thrum, so intense that it hurts. He is drowning in surreality.

Then, with one tremendous gasp for air, he surfaces. The arms limp at his sides move of their own volition; they curl around her small figure until she and he are locked together. His eyes water until his vision blurs and he is forced to close them. The pair of them remain, unmoving, while all notions of time slip away.

He pulls back first. He is quick to press her hand to his face, trapping it beneath his own palm. "It's leather," he says. The way her eyes light up then—he would dance a hundred waltzes, if it meant he could see that again.

Chapter Text

Springtime.

At least, it is officially—and yet it is not. The snow and ice have thawed, but the sun is shy and the trees still bare, the earth gray and barren, reminiscent of a dystopian wasteland.

It hasn't deterred her, though; she has begun wearing lighter fabrics in soft pastel pinks and blues. Her boots she has cast aside for floral-patterned flats. "I'm dressing for the weather that I think it should be," she once told him with an impish smile.

Today, however, there are glimpses of sun, and the redbud tree outside his window is finally living up to its name. Soon, its branches will be flocked with clusters of tiny lavender petals. He is certain that she'll adore it.

But when she arrives for their lesson, she has none of her usual cheer. She wears a gray hoodie with tattered jeans and sneakers, and her hair is swept back into a limp ponytail, her eyelids red and swollen. He immediately knows what has happened, but it's somehow worse to hear it from her lips.

"I didn't get a part."

"Pardon?" It's a ridiculous question. He knows that she had an audition—they spent weeks preparing—but his brain can't process her statement. He ushers her inside and closes the door.

She unzips her hoodie to reveal a collegiate t-shirt beneath. "I mean, I'm in the chorus, but it's an off-season production. They'd probably take walk-ins for the ensemble."

"Don't be melodramatic."

She stares at him; her gaze is empty, longing, and he can't sustain eye contact. Perhaps he ought to be softer, more sympathetic, but it's too easy to slip into the instructor mode he's clung to since the day she danced with him. They've since grown more comfortable around each other, certainly; conversation is easier. But that occasion crossed a line that he can't bring himself to negotiate again.

She exhales through her nose. "I'm sorry. I just—maybe I shouldn't have come today."

"Nonsense." He pretends not to notice how she flinches at his clipped response. "This is when it is most critical that we go over your performance. Set down your things."

With weary reluctance, she hangs her hoodie and sets her backpack by the door. When she arrives at her usual place beside the piano, he is seated on the bench, waiting. "Now. Tell me everything."

But he knows. He is precisely aware of her strengths and her flaws, of the way her mind and vision tunnel when she's anxious. He can picture her audition with stunning clarity, down to each nervous tell: compressing her lips, wiping her palms on her slacks, her legs going stiff as she addresses her audience. She is doing these things now.

She gives him an honest assessment of everything he could ask for: breathing, pitch, posture, diction. Her technique has always been sufficient, though—perhaps too sufficient for a production of this caliber. There is nothing in her report to betray her. He must draw it out.

"You're hedging, Christine," he says. Her cheeks go pink, and she looks down at her shoes. He presses on. "You are not satisfied with your performance."

She shakes her head and whispers, "I'm sorry."

The way her lips tremble is a punch to his gut, and he wants to shake her by the shoulders and tell her that he has failed her, and not the other way around. He should have spent less time on technique and more on overcoming her nervousness. More on how to emote, how to tear through the flesh of a song to get at the meat, to drown herself in it until it fills her lungs and she breathes it in and out, and she and it become the same entity.

"We will do the excerpt again," he states. "This time, don't focus on the technique. Focus on your interpretation and phrasing. We'll go from there." She swallows, nods. He leads her through a warmup, and then he launches into the piano intro to her piece.

The selection is "I Have Dreamed" from The King and I. It is not what he would prefer, but musical theater is what she loves and what this production demands. Her voice rings out as sweet as ever, but he can almost feel her curling in on herself. He cuts her off halfway through. "You are not fully embracing the music," he snaps.

"I don't know how." Her voice quivers, but it's defiant.

"I think that you do. I think that you are making a choice here."

She shakes her head and she is near tears, but he can't back down. There's a sudden flood of adrenaline urging him on, and he has to keep pressing her, has to ride this out despite its potentially devastating consequences. "Why do you hold back, Christine? What are you afraid of?"

"I ought to ask you the same thing!"

He stares at her; she does not shy away from his gaze now. A thick silence curls around them, buzzing with tension, and he moistens his lips. "What," he says crisply, "is that supposed to mean?"

Again she shakes her head, and he wishes that her hair were down so it would brush against her shoulders, frame her flushed cheeks. "Nothing. Never mind. It was a mistake, coming here today." She crosses the room to the coat rack, but her fingertips manage only to graze her hoodie before he intercepts her, his bony fingers clamping down on her hand.

"Please," he says. "Stay." Her eyes flick from his hand to his face, still wary, and he presses on. "My anger was...misplaced. I apologize."

Her face softens; his heart quivers and balloons with hope. "But you weren't wrong," she concedes. "What if—" An errant tear has escaped the corner of one eye, and she quickly wipes it away. "What if I give it everything I have, and it's still not enough?"

His chest constricts sharply. "Impossible." When she eyes him curiously, he adds, "You are already enough, by virtue of existing." How empty the sentiment sounds to his ears, but he would apparently rather drown in his own hypocrisy than confess anything more meaningful. She is quiet; her mouth twists into the slight frown that appears when she's lost in thought.

He still has a hold on her hand. How easily it yielded to him, warm and soft and trusting. Before he can stop himself, he has absently brushed the pad of his thumb over her knuckles.

Her lips part, and she draws a sharp breath. He goes rigid. There must exist somewhere in his mind an excuse to explain this all away, but rational thought has abandoned him in his hour of greatest need.

"You, ah..." He clears his throat. "You said your father was a violinist, correct?" She nods, and he releases her. "Wait here one moment."

He silently berates himself all the way to his bedroom. When he returns, it is with his violin and an expressionless set of jaw to indicate that he has moved on, that such tenderness of touch was nothing of consequence. He hopes it is convincing.

She has returned to her place next to the piano, and her eyes widen at the sight of the instrument.

"Let's try something different, shall we?" he asks. "We'll do the entire piece."

"But it's a duet!"

"Indeed." He lifts his bow to the violin strings and slips right into the song. His voice, rich and sonorous, fills the room.

I have dreamed that your arms are lovely
I have dreamed what a joy you'll be

It's more difficult to sing with the violin cradled under his chin, but he's still quite proficient, and her gaping mouth confirms it. He's never sung anything for her, nothing beyond a few notes at a time to illustrate a teaching point. Her incredulity over his voice is so reverent that he has to look away.

When he finishes the tenor's solo, she nearly comes in late with her own lines.

Alone and awake, I've looked at the stars
The same that smile on you

Her delivery is rushed and timid. Perhaps it was too much to add his own voice, and instead of emboldening her, he's only intimidated her further. His suspicions are confirmed when she closes her eyes. He wouldn't allow this under normal circumstances, but he did tell her to forget technique and so he will overlook it, just this once.

But gradually, her lovely voice unfurls. It gains confidence, then momentum, and her hands—previously clenched at her sides—come alive. By the time her solo steers into their duet, she is soaring, and he leaps to join her in midair. Her eyes flick open at the sound of his voice, and she looks right at him, her gaze heady and unwavering.

In these dreams, I've loved you so
That by now I think I know

The affection that he has worked so hard to suppress burns a hole in his chest as their voices build and curl around each other, tighter and tighter, until her voice, her very essence, thrums in his veins.

What it's like to be loved by you
I will love being loved by you

The final note is momentous. She belts it out with such passion that he can almost believe she is in love with him, and his chest seems to cave in even as he matches her fervor. Does she now realize, then, how achingly in love with her he is?

Both voice and violin go silent at the conclusion of the song, but eyes remain locked. For a moment, time is suspended. Her eyes shimmer and her breathing is weighted, a counterpoint to the breath that has frozen in his lungs.

Finally, he clears his throat. "The, ah...the violin was effective, then."

"It wasn't the violin."

Hope flutters in his breast. "Stay with me," he says, the words rushed and breathless, not at all the nuanced critique he intended to deliver. "After the lesson, that is." He does not break eye contact as he sets down his instrument. "Please."

She hesitates. "I...I have class."

"And I have work."

The wall that he's so carefully built around himself has crumbled, dissolving into dust, and he sees it in her eyes the moment realization dawns. He is suddenly lightheaded, sick to his stomach. Perhaps he has just ruined everything. Still, he can't stop staring at her face, nor at the astonished blue irises that reel him in at the same time they draw closer, and—oh God, she is suddenly right there—he tilts his head down just in time to meet her lips as they settle on his, light and soft and perfect. His whole body hums.

The kiss is over as quickly as it began. She draws back and peers up into his face. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "Was that wrong of me?"

He does not respond. He is still replaying in his mind the feel of his lips against hers, how it echoes the moment when his fingers first touched the keys of a piano: there is nowhere else he is meant to be. He snakes lithe fingers through the hair above her ear, until his broad palm cups her head, and then he gently pulls her mouth back to his.

His lips ply hers, tender but unyielding, until she emits the tiniest whimper. He drinks it down and kisses her harder, spurred on by the way she's grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. Every breath he takes from her seals some part of him that has long been cracked and broken.

He kisses her until his lungs burn. It is with great reluctance, and a small groan, that he releases her mouth. He looks down to find her all smiles—her default disposition—and it's all he can do not to assail those pale-pink lips again.

She finds his hand and threads her fingers through his. "I suppose I could skip class," she says. "Just this once." She has the proud glow of someone who has emerged victorious from a challenge—someone who has proven her worth.

And for the first time ever, he begins to entertain the notion that perhaps he is enough, too.

Chapter Text