Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Christine met her childhood bestie while trespassing on his family’s property.

She met her soulmate – now deceased – in the looney bin.

And her newest [potential] friend she meets in the grief circle.

She hates grief circle. The old widows and widowers don’t like how frizzy her hair is, or how twitchy and awkward she sits in the uncomfortable metal folding chair. Middle-aged jerks who lost a parent for the first time smile down at her like she’s a total idiot. She wants to shout at them that actually, she’s an old hand at the whole orphan thing, so they should shove their condescending grins up their puckered assholes.

But ever since Erik went and dropped dead for no good reason, Raoul’s insisted she goes. “To commiserate,” he says.

Bullshit.

The jerks from grief circle didn’t lose like she lost. Their loved ones were.. Well, they were labeled! Mom and Dad and Husband and Wife. Christine lost somebody who didn’t have a label. He just was. He was her pea in the proverbial pod. Even when he screamed at her she loved him.

It’s the fourth time she’s there that she meets her newest friend. Christine used to think she could see the future. The state-funded doctor told her no, that’s what we here in the industry call a delusion , which really put a wrench in her plans on becoming a psychic. But today she sets eyes on this guy and feels a strange tug towards him. She’s been doing so good, though, so she pushes thoughts of fortune-telling out of her mottled brain and instead pretends Raoul is beside her.

Chris, the only reason you want to sit next to the stranger is because there’s a nine-foot radius of Empty all around him.

This is true. Sitting near one guy is better than sitting near more than one person. She hardly spares a look to the poor dude as she migrates from her usual spot to a spot closer to him, just one chair away, in fact. Crazy Girl and New Guy. They’re a perfect combo. No one will ever bother to go near them. Lana with the dead husband will never try giving Christine hair tips again. Come to think of it, this guy’s hair is the exact same kind of curly Christine’s would be if she gave a shit. She wonders what it’s like, to give a shit.

“Hello.”

Shit.

“Hi.”

She’s been staring. God, she’s such a jerk. The man shifts the chair so he’s facing her a bit better.

“How are you?”

When Christine thinks hard, that voice… almost sounds familiar. But the very same state-funded doctor told her that most of her deja vu episodes also weren’t real. So she thinks nothing more of it.

“Fine… Uh, you?”

“As well as one would expect,” he shrugs a single shoulder, “Is this your first time here?”

“Fourth.”

“Mm. How is it?”

“The coffee’s not bad.”

He almost smiles.

“Today must be a dud, then.”

She follows his gaze to the mostly-full styrofoam cup on the floor beside his chair.

“I didn’t say it was good ,” she mutters, “Just not awful.”

“How did you find this group, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“My friend made me come.”

“Has it helped?”

She gives him a look.

“This stuff never helps.”

He shrugs again.

“I went to one of these when my wife passed. It wasn’t so bad. But that was before… Hm. Never mind.”

“Before what?”

The Grief Specialist™ clears his throat. His name is Richard and Christine hates him.

“Good evening, everybody. How’s everyone doing?”

There are some vague murmurs.

“I see we have some new faces in the crowd tonight.”

Richard stares straight at Christine’s new acquaintance, leading everyone else to look at him, too.

“Great, now one of them’s here!” somebody groans.

“Now, let’s not get political tonight,” Richard says, “Sir, thank you so much for coming. Ignore Nelson, please. It’s just his sense of humor. Why don’t you introduce yourself, sir?”

“My name is Nadir Khan. Recently I lost a very close friend.”

“Wonderful!” Richard grins, “Thank you for coming.”

“Who wants the hacky sack first?” Richard continues. Lana raises her hand and Richard tosses it to her. She catches it, no trouble.

Christine stole the hacky sack last time and threw it off a bridge, but Richard must have a box full of them in the trunk of his car. She hates this part.

Lana says her high point this week was getting a call from her granddaughter. Lame. Her low was spending all night at the emergency vet clinic with her sick Schnauzer. Boring. 

Nelson’s high was going to some patriot’s march. His low was encountering his very own son among the crowd of counter protestors. Wow how cool no one cares.

Someone tosses the sack Christine’s way. It bounces off her face and lands in her new acquaintance's cup of mediocre coffee, while her glasses go skittering in the other direction. There are groans and sighs from the other circle members.

The man picks up his coffee, fishes out the hacky sack, and wraps it in something he pulls from his jacket. Christine can’t tell what it is.

“All righty, sir, you go ahead and tell us your high point and low point for the week. Somebody please help Christine get her glasses– no, don’t– awww.”

“What?” Christine’s kneeling on the cold hard gymnasium floor. She’s thrust back to high school volleyball practice. The captain of the team leapt up and performed the greatest damn serve in her whole career, just for the ball to smash right against Christine’s forehead. And she spent the next ten minutes playing Velma from Scooby-Doo. And she still has the scar on her eyebrow.

“I’m sorry, dear. I think I stepped on them a bit.”

Sounds like Nancy. Somebody shoves the destroyed pair of glasses into Christine’s outstretched hands. She gropes her way back to her seat and tries not to cry.

“Are you all right?” her acquaintance asks in a whisper, but his blurry form straightens up when Richard speaks again.

“Sir, please give us your high and low points. Other people need to go.”

“I suppose my lowest point was hearing a voice message from my deceased friend.”

“Why is that your low point?” Lana asks, “I’d give anything to hear Lionel’s voice one more time.”

“That’s a good point, ma’am. The problem is that my friend included so many little barbs and, what are they called? Inside jokes – that I wanted to respond to. By the time the message ended, I was hit with the reality that I couldn’t answer. After thirty-four years of banter, of fights, of jokes, of… to be frank, of more hard times than good times… after a lifetime of friendship, I can’t even call him back and tell him, For the last time, Erik. Antarctica is a desert. ”

“No it’s not. There’s snow,” Nancy interjects. Christine hardly hears her. How odd that this guy’s person has the same name as her person.

“There’s ice. There’s a difference. Anyway, my high point was getting a haircut.”

“A haircut,” Richard says.

“Mm-hmm. Usually when I get one, it turns out looking ridiculous. But I don’t want to tell the poor barber that. This time it turned out adequate. That never happens.”

“That’s true,” Nelson says, “Actually, this guy has a point there.”

The group collectively ignores the fact that Nelson is completely bald.

“It’s worse when you’re nearsighted,” Christine says, “Because sometimes it does look good when everything you see is a blob. Then you put your glasses on and you rethink your life a bit.”

“I said sorry,” Nancy says, her voice cracking.

“What?”

“Now, now, Christine," Richard interjects, "There’s no need to be passive aggressive. It was an accident.”

“Nancy didn’t cut my hair. What’s the ma– Oooooh.”

For a hot second Christine forgot her glasses were sitting in a broken heap on her lap.

“Nancy, I wasn’t trying to be mean to you. Seriously. I was just thinking about haircuts.”

Nancy is an abstract blur of light and color, but the sad gurgling sounds she makes indicates Christine is still in hot water.

“I forgot about the glasses thing. I swear.”

“How can you forget about it when you’re holding them?” Will With the Navy Vet cap snaps.

“I was thinking about my hair ,” Christine says through gritted teeth. But she doubts anyone hears her because Nancy’s graduated from gurgling to wailing.

“Come on, everybody,” Richard says, “Rein it in. Let’s take some deep breaths.”

“I believe Christine,” Will With the Ponytail answers.

“Of course you do. She’s probably your dope dealer,” Navy Will sneers.

“Christine couldn’t sell powder coke at the Met Gala,” Hippie Will half-shouts.

“Yes I could!”

“It’s quiet time,” Richard announces, “Ninety seconds of quiet reflection – hush, Lana, I don’t care. No talking, no fidgeting, nothing. Think about what your loved ones would say if they saw you acting like this.”

Christine hates quiet time. The first time it happened wasn’t so bad, but about halfway through her stupid brain morphed into Satan and went: Wouldn’t it be super awkward if you just started twitching like a freak? It’s a good thing you have total control of your nervous system and your meds don’t have involuntary movement as a side effect – OH WAIT!!!!

She squeezes the hem of her oversized jacket and focuses on breathing. Erik never cared about her weird tics. He knew what it was like to be painted as a freak. God, she misses him. They were so good together. He just… got her. And she got him. They didn’t even have to talk about their problems. There was just this inherent understanding between them both. If only he didn’t get so angry at her. If only he told her what she did that hurt him so much. Sure, that wouldn’t have saved him in the end. Although she’s sure if he survived he’d somehow blame her for the heart attack. She scoffs, but her smirk fades when she hears the crinkling of clothes and creaking of metal chairs: people are turning to glare at her.

Just stay perfectly still, Christine. They won’t be able to say anything if you’re completely, utterly – fuck, she did the thing.

It’s like her whole body spasmed a foot out of her chair. Curse her akathisia or whatever it’s called. Her broken glasses launch out of her lap somewhere to her right.

“Jesus,” she hears Nelson sigh.

She has to squint very hard, but it looks like coffee man’s coffee has spilled. She tries to read his expression, but his face is just a smear of brown and black and gray no matter how much she squints.

“That’s time,” Richard says, “Can somebody please grab the paper towels?”

Coffee man raises his hand.

“Great. Anyone else wanna go with the high and low points or shall we move on?”

There’s a noncommittal murmur among the group.

“Fantastic – thank you, sir. Christine, the towels.”

Christine sighs through her nose and takes the paper towel roll from coffee man, who returns to his seat.

“Who wants to help her?”

Nobody moves.

“I’ll help. It was my drink, after all. I shouldn’t have placed it on the floor.”

With a grunt, coffee man gets on one knee in front of her and takes a couple towels from the roll. He picks up the corpse of her glasses and dries them off.

“Good thing I didn’t put any sugar in it,” he murmurs, setting the frames on a nearby metal seat, “Do you have a spare pair?”

“That was my spare,” she says glumly.

“My cousin wore glasses when we were younger. He also got in a lot of fights. Heh, maybe that’s why I got along with Erik so well. I grew up with brawlers.”

“Erik with a -k?”

“I don’t know any others.”

“Is your Erik… my Erik?”

They’re close enough that Christine sees him tilt his head. Hell, they’re close enough she sees his face wrinkle in confusion, his eyes narrow slightly. Then it hits her: he smells like the ocean and roses.

“Oh my God, it’s you !”

Christine wouldn’t be Christine if she spoke at a normal volume. Richard was rambling about the stages of grief or something, but he falls silent when Christine voices her revelation.

“Who?”

“I know him, I know him!” she says, gesturing to coffee man like he’s an absolute marvel, “My Erik is his Erik!”

“That is so wonderful for you, Christine,” Richard says, “... Anyway , the next stage and my personal favorite is anger–”

Coffee man insists he’ll throw all the trash away since she can’t see anything, and she accidentally (not really it was totally on purpose) sits the next chair over so they’re sitting right beside each other without a space in between. Even though she feels excited to find a friendly face, as the minutes tick by she feels more and more embarrassed. He probably recognized her right away, and here she was forgetting about him until halfway through the session. She ruined his shitty coffee – twice – and then she interrupted everyone’s talk to announce him.

Hell, she didn’t even recognize his name. She could have sworn he never introduced himself at the funeral, if it could be called that with two people attending. He just said he was sorry and that Erik had told him a lot about her. Erik never mentioned him. She almost told him that but realized he might feel bad about it. She certainly would, finding out the other pea to her pod didn’t find her important enough to rave about to everyone he could. But she remembers as the stranger passed her, he smelled like flowers and beaches, like heaven. At that point she assumed he was an angel or a hallucination and moved on with life. But nope. He’s just some dude and she totally ruined his experience in grief circle.

“Has anyone seen the hacky sack?” Richard asks, “Who had it last again?”

Christine thought her friend of a friend had it last, but he makes no move to answer, so she stays quiet.

“Ah well,” Richard sighs, “We’ll just go in a circle. What are all of your resolutions this week?”

“I’m going to call my son,” Nelson announces, “And tell him I forgive him for being a liberal.”

“...Yeah, that’s a great start, Nelson, to reconnect with family. But remember to save the politics for outside of grief circle. Your turn, Nancy.”

“I bought tickets to a nice little music group for my grandniece. They’re called Gobsmacked, isn’t that cute? She and Harry loved going to their concerts, and I don’t want her to go alone just because he’s gone.”

“That’s very sweet of you. Lana?”

And so it went until it got to Christine. She wrote something on her arm before coming here so she had something to say, but she can’t exactly roll up her sleeve and subtly look at it when she’s legally blind.

“Um… I’m going to visit my parents, I guess.”

“Wonderful! Where do they live?”

“They don’t.”

“Okay! Let’s move on–”

Coffee man said he’s going to look into piano lessons, which interests Christine considerably. Maybe she can help him find a teacher to make up for forgetting about his entire existence.

After saying their goodbyes, Christine stuffs seven of the complimentary Walmart cookies into her jacket pocket and takes her leave. She hates this dark hallway. It smells like high school misery: missed volleyball practice because of missed homework because of missing her papa. Detentions from yelling at teachers because she knew, just knew they followed her home to laugh at her at night. Her only perfect grades in music and theater because her teachers thought her defunct brain gave her special artistic powers. Even Erik knew that was a lie. The tortured artist – please.

“Miss Daae.”

“Who?” she spins around. The hall is dark except for the exit sign humming red very, very far away. She catches a whiff of ocean salt. It’s coffee man.

“Oh, hi,” she says, tugging on the ends of her hair, “I’m really sorry about earlier. For… forgetting that you were there at Erik’s funeral, too. I get spacey sometimes.”

“No worries. I am only glad you are well.”

She laughs and shakes her head.

“... Are you well, Miss Daae?”

It’s like a dam breaks. She can’t stop the words from spilling out.

“No. No I’m not. He was– everyone I know is telling me it’s good . My best friend said I’m lucky he’s gone. Can you believe that? How could you say that about another person?”

“I understand,” he says, taking a deep breath, “Even mourning him is a lonely endeavor. He was a… complicated man.”

They stand there for a little while. Christine’s mostly thinking about how awesome it would be to see. She’s also thinking about how awesome it would be to have a normal functioning unmedicated life, which has been the constant recurring thought of her existence since she was in high school. And she’s thinking about Erik, because ever since she met him she’s thought of nothing but him. It’s not fair that he doesn’t have to think at all anymore and she’s stuck carrying all his sorrows and joys.

“How did you meet him?” she asks.

“In university. Well, he wasn’t in university. I was. He broke into my dorm and ate the sweets my girlfriend made for me.”

“That’s such an Erik thing to do,” she sighs fondly, hardly noticing that he starts walking and she tags along.

“I almost failed my final revisions because of him. He said the sweets were subpar.”

“Sounds like him, alright.”

“Mm. Here it is.”

They stand before a big glass trophy case. It’s all fuzz to her.

“Erik didn’t go here, did he?”

“Absolutely not. My son did. He played baseball.”

He points to a framed photograph. Christine practically presses her face against the glass, but she doesn’t even know which photo he’s pointing at.

“Do you have a lot of trouble without your glasses?”

“No, not too much,” Christine stands up straight and tugs the ends of her hair, “I just can’t see anything.”

“Oh.”

“Does your son still go here?”

“He graduated a very long time ago.”

“Wow. How old is he?”

“He would have turned… goodness, thirty-five! – this coming week.”

Of all the icky word combos in the world, would-have has to be one of the ickiest. Most of the people she loves will celebrate their would-have birthdays this year. But gosh, at least they all cleared middle age before they died.

“Do you wanna talk about him?” she asks softly.

“Another time, maybe. When you can see him in this picture. I’d lend you my glasses, but I take it you’re nearsighted?”

She nods.

“Mine wouldn’t help you, then. Can you drive without them?”

“Oh, no.”

She can’t bring herself to drive with them, either. Not since she saw a tarantula on the windshield and crashed into the brickface of a Hardee’s. But she’s found that people can only learn so much about her in one sitting before they start hating her. Everyone but Erik.

“How will you get home?”

“I’ll walk.”

“It’s a bit cold outside.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“You can get a cab–”

“ No . I don’t do cabs.”

He doesn’t react to her outburst the way others do. There’s no appeasing hand movements and slow commands to calm down, calm down, deep breaths .

“I could give you a ride?”

He sounds uncertain. Christine might even say he sounds nervous.

“You don’t sound like you want to.”

“Driving you somewhere isn’t an inconvenience at all, Miss Daae. But I don’t want you to feel forced into accepting.”

“But it might be out of your way.”

“It’s a repayment. You got me out of drinking that awful coffee,” he says with a little laugh.

“I… hm.”

Christine deliberates for like two seconds before making her decision.

It’s not the first time she's hitched a ride with a near-stranger twice her size and thirty years her senior, and you can bet your rosy ass cheeks it won’t be the last. She doesn’t have much going on for her these days so if she ends up in a river in several pieces… well, that’s life.

“You said you wanted piano lessons, right?” Christine asks as she buckles up. Even his car smells like the ocean. And it’s not a landfill like Raoul’s.

“Yes. I have a piano at home, and I haven’t a musical bone in my body.”

“That’s not true at all. Everyone’s musical. It just gets beaten out of most people.”

“Mine must have gotten beaten out early.”

“Well, I’m not great at piano, but I know the basics. If you want I could teach you sometime.”

“What are your rates?”

“Oh, no charge. My papa used to give free violin lessons to people in our apartment. He said music should be free.”

He doesn’t say anything to that.

It takes half an hour for him to navigate to her apartment. She’s not much help because the walking route is very different from the driving route. They do make it eventually. Christine thanks him a million and one times and offers for him to come inside for coffee the same amount, but he refuses and wishes her a good night.

Chapter Text

He’s met her twice – once at the burial and once at this bereavement group.

The more he speaks to Christine Daae, the angrier he gets – at Erik, mostly. Erik chose her for a reason; he did not just sink his claws into some new overly sympathetic sap like Nadir himself. No, he picked the Daae girl, someone young, alone, and helpless. Someone who very clearly has something wrong with her.

Nadir is also quite angry with himself, because damn him, poor Christine Daae is the most irritating person he’s ever met. It’s frustrating to feel so much annoyance at somebody he barely knows, someone who has never wronged him. Being incredibly, painfully annoying is not, in itself, a moral failing.

It’s the way she pulls on her own hair, which reminds him so much of Erik. It’s her voice, which always pitches up at the end of her sentences. What do they call that sort of affectation… valley girl. She talks like a valley girl. Why?? It’s the way she blinks a hundred times a minute, which isn’t her fault. Nobody would do that on purpose. But it drives Nadir crazy.

It’s the way she mourns Erik without an ounce of critical thought. His spell still holds its power over her, even beyond the grave. Those friends of hers, if they’re even real, who said it was good Erik died? They were right.

He doesn’t want to go back to that support group. He doesn’t want to do much of anything, apart from resurrecting Erik just to beat him back to death. But somehow he feels responsible for Christine Daae. Perhaps if Nadir did not encourage Erik with his unflinching loyalty, the man would not have assumed that anyone else could be treated like a dog.

What was it about Erik, Nadir wonders, that made him so appealing? If anyone else threw an entire drum set at him, he’d have snapped their arms in half. But after Erik did it, he found himself exchanging apologies with him. Exchanging! As if Nadir was responsible for Erik’s temper. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. Neither was Christine Daae.

Maybe that’s why he feels responsible for her. He needs to prove to her that Erik is better off in the ground.

Next week he returns to that bereavement support group. She is there with taped-up glasses and a jacket far too big for her. Nadir realizes that the jacket belonged to Erik, once. He can’t look at her.

“Hi Nadir,” she whispers loudly. Another thing to add to his list of her slights: she speaks to him like a friend.

“Miss Daae,” he replies.

“How are you?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“Bad?”

He doesn’t answer. Best not to complain out loud. Complaining never helps.

“Hello everyone,” Richard says, “I have some very bad news. I’m fresh out of hacky sacks.”

Oh thank God. Nadir tossed that thing in the trash last week whilst dumping the weak coffee and all the used paper towels. What a waste of time, tossing a poorly-made toy around on a Thursday night like they weren’t all adults.

Everyone else appears to be upset, apart from Christine Daae, who says “Darn!” in an exaggerated tone.

They go around clockwise to relay their “high” and “low” points to the group. The old woman who shouted at Daae last week goes first.

“My low point was going to that stupid concert with Hilda. She fooled me. That band was named Godsmack, not Gobsmacked.”

“Oh, I hate those guys. Such posers,” the man with the long hair says.

Nadir eyes the clock across the room. This is going to be a long hour.

After the group is dismissed (somehow Richard’s platitudes and Nelson’s dog whistles are even more egregious than the first time), Nadir finds himself asking Christine Daae what she has been up to over the past week.

“Oh, I’ve just been working. I think I’m gonna quit pretty soon.”

“You work at the opera house, no?” Nadir asks, recalling Erik’s elaborate and dubious plans to secure her the best parts.

“Yup. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great honor to work there. I mean, I never ever thought anyone would ever give me a chance. But I guess art people like it when their artists are crazy,” she laughs.

“You’re not crazy,” Nadir offers uncertainly. He finds the word distasteful, but then again she thinks Erik was a saint. She ignores his remark.

“It’s like when my papa died. I never thought I’d sing again. But I did, and then I met Erik and he made me really sing. Better than ever. But now he’s dead. And I just feel sick every time.”

“He’s not the keeper of music, Miss Daae.”

She frowns and Nadir realizes his tone wasn’t as measured as he thought.

“I know that,” she says in a small voice.

And then she pulls on the end of her hair again.

They’re quiet until they pass the hallway where Reza’s trophies are. To Nadir’s surprise, she brightens and beelines to the trophy case. The wrong trophy case, but he supposes it’s the thought that counts. 

“Do you remember last week you said you’d show me your son’s prizes?”

“I do. The case is this one, though.”

She grimaces.

“Sorry. I’m bad with spatial… everything.”

Nadir decides to not acknowledge the self-deprecation, instead putting on his glasses and scanning the shelves for his boy’s photographs.

“Ah, there it is. That’s him.”

She leans forward and gasps.

“Whoa. He has good hair. It’s like yours.”

She smooths down her own hair, or tries to.

“That’s dumb. Of course it’s like yours. That’s how genes work… Baseball! What position did he play?”

“Second. But he could play anywhere. He could pitch, bat, catch, run – everything.”

“Cool. To tell you the truth, I don’t know much about baseball.”

“I didn’t either,” Nadir shakes his head, “It wasn’t so popular where I’m from. But Reza really liked it, so I went ahead and learned the basics.”

He doesn’t mention he only bothered learning about it after Reza was cold and gone. She doesn’t give him a chance to ruminate.

“It’s just so complicated. There are too many numbers involved with the home runs and the strikes and bases. And the innings? What’s an inning, anyway? That’s why I liked volleyball. You just hit a ball over a net. No math required.”

“You played?”

“Mm-hmm! My school didn’t have any gym class, so everybody had to do a sport. Someone told me I’d be good at volleyball. Looking back, I think they were making fun of me. But I wasn’t the worst ever.”

“I’m sure you were a fine player.”

“Don’t be too sure.” She runs her hands over her hair, which remains obstinately unruly. Nadir looks back at Reza’s smiling face.

“He didn’t only excel at sports, you know. He always got top grades. And he used to tutor his classmates.”

“Did he, um, graduate?”

“You mean did he make it through high school alive?”

“Yeah,” she shifts her weight awkwardly.

“He did. First in his class. Then he went to Oxford.”

“Isn’t that in England?”

“It is.”

“Wow. What did he want to do? In life, I mean?”

“He majored in biochemistry.”

She doesn’t notice he never answered her question. Her guess is as good as his. 

“But,” he adds, “He could have done anything, I think. And I would’ve been proud. I’m very proud of him. He’ll never know how much… how proud I am.”

Nadir stares at Reza’s image as he speaks, trying somehow to convey that sentiment across time and space and life and death.

“Gosh, I’m proud of him and I never met him!”

Nadir exhales sharply; it’s something like a laugh. He can’t do much else without his voice breaking.

A few minutes later they’re in the parking lot, and he offers to walk her to her vehicle. She has an odd look on her face, and he realizes she might take the offer the wrong way.

“Call me old fashioned, but I was taught to walk ladies to their cars or front doors, or – you get the idea. It’s like how I walked to your apartment door with you last week.”

“I don’t have a car,” she murmurs.

“A bike then? A scooter?”

“Nope. Just one leg, and another leg. But a bike is a good idea. Maybe I’ll try and get one.”

“You plan to walk?” he asks in disbelief. After learning the route last week, he wouldn’t even walk from here to her apartment.

“Yup.”

“That’s dangerous, no?”

“Not really.”

“But… Miss Daae, how do you cross the highway?”

“I just cut through a few ditches,” she shrugs, “It sounds worse than it is.”

This woman is going to end up dead in one of the ditches she walks through.

“Are you okay?” she asks, “You look… is there something behind me?”

She whirls around.

“No. I’m just concerned–”

“No?”

“No, Miss Daae, there’s nothing there.”

“Okay. You sure?”

“Do you see something?”

She takes off her glasses, immediately puts them back on, and turns around to face him again.

“No, there’s nothing real back there. What were you saying again?”

“I was just saying that I can’t in good conscience let a young lady walk through fields and ditches in the middle of the night.”

“I’m wearing old sweats and I had a cold hot dog for dinner.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m no lady, is what I mean.”

“Can I just drive you home?” he sighs.

“Okay... But can we stop at a convenience store on the way?”

“Sure, fine.”

She insists he stay in his car when she goes inside. He isn’t averse to the idea. It’s late, she’s her, he’s him. It’s not unlikely someone will phone the police with a charge of kidnapping.

He thinks little of the stop as he walks around his parked car to open the passenger door for her. It’s an old habit, one he probably should shed at some point in this new millennium. She doesn’t notice and swings the door open herself. He stops it short with his hand. He feels a bit of resistance, like she’s trying to open it more, before she looks up and sees him there.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, “I didn’t notice you.”

An identical exchange happened last week. At least last week she had no eyesight.

“No worries,” he responds. He doesn’t have it in him to give her a false smile. They walk up to the front door.

“Do you want anything to drink before you go?” she asks, jamming the wrong key into the lock.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

She finds the correct key and opens the door.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Good night, Miss Daae.”

“Hold on! Close your eyes. I have a surprise for you.”

“A what?”

“It’s not anything bad, I promise. Hold out your hands. No peeking!”

Reluctantly he shuts his eyes, hoping he’s not about to get stabbed or something ridiculous. He hears the squeaky crumpling of cellophane and then something drops into his palm.

“Open.”

It’s one of those cheap packaged pairs of factory-made cupcakes.

“You said it was your son’s birthday this week! It’s not much, but I hope it helps you celebrate.”

Her hands are clasped together, smile crooked but bright. Nadir feels like someone’s trying to forcefully expand his chest cavity. He looks up so she doesn’t see the watery film form over his eyes.

“You okay? I’m sorry, I thought it’d be–”

Nadir coughs, forces himself to be a grown man and not a childish whimpering mess. Only Erik cried so readily around others.

“Thank you,” he says, “Really, thank you, Miss Daae. That was very kind of you.”

“Oh, no problem!” she chirps, grinning big, “See you next week!”

He puts the snack cakes in a drawer when he gets home. There’s no point in eating them, and not just because they’re 40% shortening and 60% corn syrup. There’s no point in celebrating a meaningless birthday. Reza will always be twenty-four years old. Why pretend time means anything to a dead man?

Still.

It was kind of Miss Daae to remember.

Chapter Text

Christine dunks the metal cups into the scalding water and scrubs.

“Stop that.”

She looks up, glances around, then keeps going.

“Stop that.”

She huffs and scrubs harder.

“ Stop that. Stop it. Stop it. Stop. Stop that.”

“No, you stop,” she mutters. Bits of her hair fall into her face. One strand in particular tickles the bridge of her nose. She shakes her head until it moves away, but as soon as she looks back into the filled sink, it returns. She really needs to scratch her nose, and her eyebrow, and her cheeks. Her whole face, really. How come when her hair is undone she doesn’t have this problem?

“Stop that. I mean it.”

“Shut up,” she whips her head in a tight circle, trying to get her hair to move. Instead her too-small green visor flies into the wall behind her, and her glasses plunk into the sink. Damn.

It’s a bit like that game she used to play with Raoul in his family’s pool, where they’d race to the bottom to find the red rings. Raoul always had the advantage because he could see. Even then Christine was blind as a brick. If she was lucky, those rings would be little blurbs of color against the blue-tinted concrete. Usually she didn’t see them at all.

Raoul’s pool wasn’t Volcano Degrees Fahrenheit, either, unlike this water. By the time she manages to salvage the glasses, her whole arm is tingly, too hot and too cold at the same time. Even half-blind she can tell that her skin is a shade of pink it really shouldn’t be. She gropes her way through the room until she finds the paper towels. All the while, the orders continue:

“Stop that. Stop it. I mean it. Stop. Stop it. Stop that. Stop stop stop. Stop it, I said. Stop that. Please stop.”

“Did you spill Americano all over your arm?”

Christine jumps.

“Sorry,” Meg, her coworker, says through a mouthful of pre-made breakfast sandwich.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to eat those unless you’re on break,” Christine replies, sticking her glasses back on her face. No matter how much she wipes them down, they still feel slippy and slidey, and now they smell like dishwater. Meg crams the last of it into her gob and tosses the wrapper in the trash.

“Ea’ whah’?” she blinks innocently.

“I dropped my glasses in the sink. Had to get them out.”

Christine pokes her arm. Her finger leaves a white mark that quickly fades back into pink. Her skin feels rough and thick, like a bad sunburn.

“Mm. Sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna try and get out of work?”

“Nuh-uh. I need the money.”

“Maybe you can sue,” Meg shrugs, “Then you won’t need money. There’s like four different law firms upstairs.”

“Stop that.”

Christine grits her teeth.

“D’you hear me?” Meg inquires.

“Yeah. I heard you.”

Christine got the job a couple days after she left the opera house. If she had it her way she’d languish in her room, mourning the end of her still-gestating singing career, but Raoul nagged and nagged and nagged her that she still needed to leave the apartment every once in a while now that she decided she was sick of grief circle (her only friend stopped going a few weeks ago without any further notice; and last time, Nelson said the gap between Christine’s front teeth made her look like a sideshow freak, so she told him when he dies none of his kids will come to his funeral; Richard suspended them both). Plus there was the whole making rent thing.

This particular coffee chain has a high turnover because it’s on the ground floor of a building full of business and law firms. Most of the people working there aren’t known for their kind and understanding demeanors. Christine’s manager, Caroline, said it’s unusual for a whole shift to go by without some employee breaking down in tears.

It’s nearing the end of Christine’s shift, thank goodness. And tomorrow is her day off – she’ll have all day to languish. All the dishes are done, and she’s pretty sure she did the inventory right. Now she just has to look busy another forty minutes befor–

“Kristen.”

“Christine,” Christine whispers, stifling a sigh. Her manager always has a clipboard and never takes her eyes off it, even when she’s the one on register.

“Uh, I’m gonna need you up front,” Caroline motions with her chewed-up pen to the counter. Christine hears the faint roar of caffeine-withdrawn stockbrokers and pales.

“Can’t Meg do it?”

“Meg is doing it, with Joe. I need another one. Sorelli hasn’t shown up in three days – I think she’s dead – and I have to fax this stuff to corporate,” the pen is back in her mouth, and she moves it around so that it points to the clipboard.

“But they’ll yell at me.”

“Eh. It’ll put some hair on your chest. And put your visor back on, for Christ’s sake.”

Somehow Meg is calm, almost cheery, as she fills the orders. Joe, one of the meaner ones with bangs covering half his face (how can he stand his hair tickling his nose all the time?) stands at the register impatiently while a guy in a crisp suit yells at him about oat milk. Christine tries not to faint.

“Oh, hey,” Meg says, shoving a handful of receipts into Christine’s hands, “Go ahead and grab the pastries. Make sure not to warm up Oat Milk’s cookie or he’ll call you names.”

There are like eight receipts but Christine feels like she’s going through a triathlon. In one ear is that voice telling her to stop it, whatever it is, and in the other ear is the impatient huffing and sighing from the prosecution attorneys. She must have gone into a fugue state because she barely remembers packing all the orders up. Next thing she knows she’s watching the French press do its thing in a notably quieter store. She hears Joe and Meg murmuring to each other somewhere to her left.

“How much you wanna bet that guy’s wearing a vest?”

“He is wearing a vest, stupid.”

“No not a suit vest. Dumbass. You know, one of those vests they wear with the bombs.”

“What’s he doing bombing a Starbucks?”

“They hate Starbucks. We sell ham sandwiches.”

“So?”

“And besides, it’s too American. It’s too… descendant.”

“What.”

“That’s not it. My dad used it the other day. He’s like, they think we’re too deck… decath– no, that’s not right.”

“Decadent?” Meg offers.

“Huh, yeah that’s–”

“That’s quite enough,” somebody says sharply, “I’ve lived here since before you were born, and I won’t stand for your idle speculation and childish jokes.”

Christine squints at the drink as the last of the coffee drips into the cup. That voice sounds familiar. Now the store really is quiet, except for the occasional “stop it” coming from her brain and her fighting with the drink to put on the lid.

“I was just kidding,” she finally hears Joe speak. He sounds mad. She turns around with the lid finally on and triumphantly calls out the name on the cup.

“John!”

She winces as her voice echoes in the small shop. There’s no one around except her coworkers, that old couple in the corner who practically live here, and… her good pal from grief circle?

“Oh, hi Nadir!” she grins, all annoyance from him ditching her melted away. When they make eye contact he looks a little less annoyed and a little more afraid, and Christine feels her stomach plunge – everyone always looks afraid when they see her – and she wipes the stupid smile off her face.

“Miss Daae,” he says eventually with a little nod, “I didn’t know you worked here.”

He steps forward, hand outstretched, and she realizes the drink is for him.

“Oh shoot,” Christine says, “Did I get your name wrong?”

She wasn’t the one to write on the cup, but maybe his name’s been John this whole time and she just heard Nadir that first time at grief circle, and he’s been too polite to correct her.

“ John is an easier name to spell for some people.”

Nadir shoots a look at Meg and Joe. Meg is pretending to count the empty cups, but Joe is glaring back.

“Wait a second,” Christine pushes the cup into Nadir’s hand, quite suddenly. The lid pops off and coffee sloshes onto Nadir’s hand. For a second she swears she smells barbeque. But it can’t be that hot.

“I really can’t do anything right,” she mutters, zooming over to the napkin dispenser and getting a dozen, “But wait, Joe, what were you saying about bo–”

She cuts herself off, and just in time. Even Christine knows it’s not great to yell about explosives right now.

“I was kidding. You don’t even know what you’re talking about, so just mind your own business. God.”

Christine isn’t one to get into confrontations. Not unless all hope has been lost and she’s accepted the fact that everyone thinks she’s outright batty. Joe’s called her insane in so many words every shift they’ve had together. Maybe he mixes up psychosis with deafness, or maybe he just doesn’t care whether she hears. But nothing ticks Christine off more than when somebody tells her she doesn’t know what’s going on around her. So she smacks the napkins on the counter and crosses her arms indignantly.

“No, you mind your own business. You’re saying that stuff about– about vests and other stuff. Nadir doesn’t even turn right at a red light. That’s how much of a square he is. So stop saying stuff that isn’t true before you get him in trouble… Jackass! ,” she adds for good measure, feeling positively alight with righteous fury.

She sure showed him. Look at how he’s shaking in his store-mandated slip-proof sneakers.

Joe calls her a crazy bitch and skulks to the back. 

Probably to hide in the walk-in like he did when his mom came in last week to grill him about his report card, Christine thinks venomously. She watches him leave before turning back to her friend.

“I hope I didn’t burn you too bad,” she says, patting his hand dry with a napkin.

“You didn’t.”

He slips his hand away and Christine nearly sighs in annoyance. That’s what the voice was trying to tell her. Stop that as in, “stop holding that guy’s hand, you weird weird creep, you crazy bitch, etc.” But wait, that can’t be right because the voice started like twenty minutes ago, and this only happened just now. Unless that state-funded doctor was wrong and actually she really can sense the future. Just a little bit, as a treat, maybe.

“Miss Daae,” Nadir says sharply.

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll get you a new coffee. Free, ‘cause I ruined your last one.”

“That’s not what I was asking,” he almost laughs, “Your arm. It looks like you dipped it into hot oil.”

Christine looks at her arm, but it looks the same as ever.

“The other one,” Nadir says patiently. And you know what? He’s right.

“Ouch,” Meg says from her spot by the cups, “It looks even worse than before. You should get that checked out.”

“It’s just a little warm. It’s not like it’s blistering or anything.”

“How did that happen?” Nadir says, leaning forward and bracing his hand against the counter. Christine notices that the ring on his pointer finger has a gem in it that matches the color of his eyeballs. She wonders who bought it for him. They must have excellent color-matching capabilities.

“Yo, Christine. Your friend’s asking you something,” Meg snaps her fingers in Christine’s face.

“Ah! Oh, sorry. I dropped my glasses in the sink out back. So I fished them out.”

“How hot is the water?” Nadir asks, head tilted.

“Hot enough to kill germs, I think.”

“It’s one thing to burn the back of a hand.”

Almost by accident, all three of them look at Nadir’s hand that’s still resting on the counter. Man, Christine’s a pyromaniac except with scalds instead of burns.

“It’s another thing to burn a whole limb. It doesn’t just affect the limb, Miss Daae. It interferes with homeostasis, with temperature regulation, with–”

“Yeah, I know how burns work,” Christine says, sopping up the coffee that got on the counter, “I went to nursing school, you know.”

She actually did, and she was three semesters away from a nursing degree when ironically had to drop out to care for her papa full time.

“You need to see a doctor, is all,” Nadir says.

“It’s not even blistering or anything. It’s just a bit warm.”

Christine sees a gnat from the corner of her eye. She valiantly ignores it. It’s just a little spec of movement her big stupid dumb brain made up because it has nothing better to do.

“Ew, another one?” Meg shoulders past her and grabs the speckled bunch of bananas, “I told Caroline that these are just gonna attract bugs. Who eats fruit, anyway? We have danishes.”

Meg holds the bunch of bananas by their stem like they’re crawling with bugs and chock-full of mold, and then marches into the back. Nadir clears his throat.

“I think you should go to an urgent care.”

“I’ll just put water on it when I go home.”

“Have you gotten a car yet?”

“...No.”

“Who’s your ride?”

“City bus.”

Nadir scowls suspiciously.

“Those buses are held together by duct tape.”

“So?”

“Look, I’ll give you a ride home. But can’t we just make a quick stop at urgent care on the way there?”

Christine feels centipedes crawling down her spine, and for once, it’s in the figurative sense. Why’s this guy want her to go to a doctor so bad? After he abandoned her to fend off Nelson and his baldness all by herself.

“I barely know you,” she says, and is shocked at how shocked he looks.

“I wasn’t– I didn’t– Okay. Fair. I– just… Burns are very dangerous. It would do you good to get it looked at. That’s all.”

He levels his gaze at her. She notices that when the light hits him just so, there are very thin scars starting above his eyebrow and ending at his cheekbone, like he’s a rogue from a movie with a tragic backstory. She wonders how he got them. She almost asks, but then she remembers she barely knows him and he ditched her at grief circle, so she just shakes her head and looks away.

“Stop that.”

“Go away,” she mutters. He must think she’s talking to him. He gathers all the napkins Christine used to clean up the spill and had left scattered all over the counter and tosses them into the trash, and then she watches him hightail it out of there. It makes her want to cry, watching him leave. Everyone leaves.

She spends a whole delicious day languishing in her apartment, feeling misery so intense she can’t even muster the will to jump off a bridge or a building or even a very steep hill. It’s one of those flavors of misery that makes her want to rip through the scratchy skinsuit of her own existence so she can just… chill.

In oblivion.

Forever.

Something tells her that even if she didn’t exist she’d manage to feel awful, though. Maybe it’s the psychic/not-psychic part of her that told her to stop it a hundred billion times the day before.

That evening Raoul asks if she wants him to take her to grief circle. She says no. A couple minutes later he says somebody’s on the phone asking for her. She says nobody would do that unless Erik’s turned into a bona fide poltergeist who can dial phone numbers with ghostly fingers. Raoul scowls at the mention of Erik – they hated each other, and it was the thing she liked least about both of them – but doesn’t bother her again.

Chapter Text

It was many decades ago.

He and his cousins were playing where they should not have played.

An uncle shouted at them to get out of the pen, and Mahmoud, his least favorite cousin, pushed him to the ground to get out before him.

Nadir maintains to this day that Azazil could smell his fear. That’s exactly why he attacked so viciously, pecked at and clawed at.

In the end, though, Azazil was dinner, and Nadir lives to tell the tale.

Stupid rooster.

+++

Nadir wonders whether the girl is dead sometimes, in a ditch or at the end of a rope. When he walks past the front room and sees the dusty piano in the corner, he thinks of her. He takes the stairs in his building so he doesn’t have to walk by the coffee chain in the lobby.

Meanwhile he is unraveling.

Every lunch hour he visits his son. He ignores the stares from the decent folk who stand towards al-Ka’bah while he faces the opposite way, looking right at his boy’s headstone, like if he stares at it long enough nothing bad will happen to it. Coming back to work, he finds the floor where he usually parks closed off. They’re repainting the stripes, he is told. So he goes down a level to Floor 4 and parks in a dark corner, and triple-checks that his doors are locked and tries to make himself look small. He almost envies Christine Daae. Were she not so… unaware, she could slip anywhere she wanted to without notice.

The hours rip away one chunk at a time, measured in meetings and memos, billing and discovery. Sometimes he notices he is staring at nothing. He can’t even be disturbed by it. Too much to do. He used to work through lunch. Before that he used to eat lunch. He was happy once. He thinks.

Were he not so unaware , maybe he’d have noticed what was happening in the dark corner of the garage where he parked. He could have called the police or at the very least, been quiet. A few feet away from the vehicle, he hears a scratching sound, and then a shadow rises.

“Erik?” he asks before he can think. The shadow darts off, keeping to the wall and out of the light. But the clumsy sound of its step confirms for Nadir that it isn’t Erik. As if the death thing wasn’t confirmation enough.

Nadir is wary of his car now. How has it been tampered with? He takes a tentative step forward, then another, and soon he’s in arm’s reach of the driver side door. There’s something there... He puts on his glasses and snorts. There it is. He tears off his glasses. A few moments later he’s unsure whether he returned them to his pocket or threw them onto the asphalt, but they’re gone.

He turns around, ready to pull a Christine Daae and cut through ditches and valleys to get home, weather and traffic and nighttime be damned. His willpower and energy fade with every step. Now he sits on the top of a flight of stairs, looking at the yellow-brown shade somebody painted the wall.

He hears a door open and close far below him, and then footsteps. He can’t be bothered to move, although he knows whoever it is might have to pass him to get to their vehicle. Oh well. There’s room enough for two on these filthy stairs.

The footsteps halt suddenly.

Then the screaming begins.

It’s a sound that tears from somebody’s throat and fills the air like mustard gas, so loud and haunted it makes Nadir dizzy. He freezes, waiting for the noise to turn into words, into anything, but it continues, so steady in volume and pitch it turns less into a scream and more into a drone after a few more seconds. Maybe it’s a recording, Nadir thinks, or a siren?

The volume lowers suddenly, and then it ends altogether. He hears somebody gulping for air, and then another scream echoes up and down the stairwell, louder than the first. He leans over the railing, trying to catch sight of whatever horror is happening causing someone to screech so desperately, but he sees nothing. He grits his teeth and climbs down, taking two, three steps at a time and praying he won’t slip and break his neck – at least not before he stops whatever crime is happening a few flights below.

He sees a battered pinkish sweater draped over someone far too short for it, and a bramble of yellow hair growing in every possible direction. He rounds another corner and sees her face.

“Christine?” he asks, his voice positively anemic compared to hers. He has no idea how she hears him, but the screaming stops right away.

“Oh, hi!” she says without even stopping to breathe. Nadir coughs, blaming the stale cigarette air and not the fact that he hasn’t moved so fast since 1991.

“You okay?”

“Why are you screaming?” Nadir gasps, grabbing at the railing.

“Oh,” she picks at a frayed sleeve, “Just ‘cause.”

“I thought–” he coughs, “you were being murdered.”

“Not this time,” she smiles, and Nadir doesn’t like the morbid gleam in her eyes.

“Let there not be a next time,” he answers, about to run a hand over his face until he remembers he’s been touching a railing that probably hasn’t been cleaned since it was installed. He shakes his head instead.

“I figured it’d be empty by now. It’s almost ten.”

“Why scream at all, though?”

“Sometimes I just need to scream,” she shrugs. Nadir looks around.

“Did you see something?”

“No.”

“Did– nothing? Really?”

“Really,” she says impatiently, “I don’t scream at my hallucinations. Anyway, I just got put back on my meds so I shouldn’t have them as much… I can’t be on them all the time or I’d have a stroke or something.”

Nadir isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he nods.

“I’ll let you be, then,” he says, glaring at the six upward flights he must climb.

“I thought I’d see you more at Starbucks,” she says, “Did you stop coming ‘cause I was there?”

“I don’t go there if I can help it. The coffee’s terrible.”

“Is there any coffee that isn’t awful to you?”

“I make my own coffee. I just forgot it that day.”

“Oh. Well, if you ever wanna get free stuff, just come back when I’m on shift. I’ll give you all the discounts.”

“That’s very generous of you, but I’ll have to pass.”

He’s up two and a half flights now, and hasn’t looked back at her once. Yet she refuses to take the hint. All that’s keeping his burning legs moving at their current speed is the hope that she cannot catch up and the fear that the vandal has returned to finish the little project he started on Nadir’s car door.

He reaches the fourth floor and sees no movement from across the lot. He does see movement from his right, though. Christine Daae remains. He grits his teeth.

“Do you need a ride?” he asks, cutting off her latest round of blathering. She looks a bit hurt when she realizes Nadir hasn’t been paying any attention, and Nadir must look away so he doesn’t feel bad. He has enough to feel bad about. Christine Daae is not his responsibility… So why in heaven’s name did he offer her another ride??

“No, I like the buses. But thanks.”

She doesn’t look at him as she answers. She’s annoyed.

“Miss Daae, I don’t think the buses run past eight on weeknights.”

She freezes, then swings her oversized purse off her shoulder and digs through it. Nadir hears clanking and rattling and all manner of noise coming from that thing, like an entire construction site fits snugly in her thrift store bag. She finally pulls out a bus schedule and flips through it.

“Aaw man,” she sighs, “Yeah, I guess I do need a ride, if it’s not too much trouble. And I’ll pay for gas,” she adds quickly.

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it! I–”

Nadir tunes her out again, wondering whether she’ll even notice the message someone left him.

“Wait, what’s that?” she taps his car with the back of her hand.

“A love letter,” he says.

“What language is it in?” she kneels down to get a better look at it in the dim light, “Uh… im? What does im mean? Im… the number four, and… raghe. Is this German?”

“The ground here is filthy. You’ll get tetanus if you stay there,” Nadir nudges her aside to unlock the door. She rises and dusts off her jeans. To Nadir’s surprise, she starts speaking fluent German. It takes him a moment to realize it’s a poem or nursery rhyme.

“Where did you learn that?” he asks when she pauses.

“My papa taught me. His farmor was German.”

“His who?”

“His dad’s mom. Far. Mor. What’s raghe , anyway?”

Christine Daae pronounces it like it’s an actual Germanic word and not the incomplete slur that it is.

“What’s funny?” she demands, following him as he rounds the vehicle to open the passenger door. He just shakes his head.

“It’s not German, dear,” he says.

“Then what is it?”

Nadir shuts the door and takes the long way, around the back of the car. His keys dig into his palm and he tries not to make like Christine Daae and scream in a stairwell. He called her dear . In what dimension is that appropriate? And more importantly, just why the hell did he do it?

When he gets in she seems more upset that she isn’t sure what the scratched-up writing means than anything else.

“What does it mean?” she demands again, “If you don’t tell me, I won’t tell you how to fix it!”

He turns the key in the ignition, keeps his eyes on the steering wheel, and explains. He dares to look at her from the corner of his eye as he looks behind them to pull from the parking spot.

“Oh gosh. That’s awful.”

“Mm.”

“I would’ve helped you fix it anyway, you know. Even if you didn’t tell me.”

Her hair is tied back, but she swings it over her shoulder and starts to tug.

“It’s fine, Miss Daae. I don’t expect you to help with this unless you’re a secret mechanic.”

“My friend’s brother owns a dealership. They repair scratches a bunch. I can put in a word so you can get it fixed for cheap.”

“I’ve a friend who works with cars. I think I’d rather go to him this time around.”

“Oh. Okay.”

They’re quiet most of the way. He wonders whether he can take the morning off and have Darius fix it by the afternoon, or whether he’ll have to rent a car, or whether anyone will really notice. No, of course they’ll notice. It’s evident even in the dark garage.

“So, where’d you get those scars?” Christine asks suddenly. Nadir wonders whether she’s talking to someone who isn’t there until she turns to face him.

“What scars?”

She traces a few lines over her eye, down to her cheek.

“Oh, those. What made you think of them?”

“Your car got scratched up. You got scratched up. I’ve been wondering about them since the other day when I saw them.”

“When was that?” he asks, perturbed.

“Starbucks. When you were telling me about burns – by the way, my arm’s fine, thank you.”

“Good.”

“So, how’d you get them?”

“A fight,” he begins, “About forty kilometers from Tehran. I was very young.”

He leaves it at that.

“Did you win?”

“In the long run, yes,” he nods solemnly.

“I like winning in the short run,” she says, “I mean, I think I would. I don’t win much so I couldn’t say for certain.”

They pull into her apartment complex and park in front of her unit. She unbuckles before Nadir even puts the car in park and opens the door.

“Sorry for rushing. I just remembered they’re marathoning Gunsmoke .”

He isn’t sure what that is, but he nods, and she smiles slyly, which concerns him, and runs off. It’s not until he gets home that he sees she left one of the prepackaged danishes her store sells, still wrapped in plastic, in one of the cupholders.

An hour later, back at home, he tries to find any evidence that those scratches are still on his face. Maybe his bathroom lights are inadequate, or his glasses cover them, or his eyes no longer work, but he cannot. He wonders whether she’ll ever find out the truth of those scars.

Stupid rooster.

Chapter Text

Christine’s meds have made her eat like crazy, and Joe with the emo bangs called her a fatass for eating three sandwiches on her lunch break. She doesn’t tell her friends (all two of them) about it, because Raoul came from the womb looking like a gold medal gymnast, and she’s pretty sure people from Nadir’s generation don’t know what body image even is.

And Erik… Still dead. No new developments there. No necromancy spells or time machines. No ghostly visions. She sits cross-legged on the dewy grass, the cold quickly seeping into her sweatpants.

“I always have this problem,” she mutters, swiping a bit of condensation off the polished headstone with her finger, “I don’t ever get hungry when I’m off them, ‘cause I have dreams where I eat. Really vivid dreams, you know?”

She draws a smiley face on the top edge of the headstone, then runs her hand over the whole thing to erase it. Her palm feels slimy.

“I’m not hearing that ‘stop it’ voice anymore at least. I still don’t feel anything, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt something the way real people should… Gosh, I’m sounding more like you every day.”

She pats the headstone and chuckles.

“I hope it’s going good, wherever you are. Hope you’re not too bored.”

To nobody’s surprise, the fancy rock does not respond.

“I have some Twizzlers in my pocket.”

She isn’t sure why she tells him this. He hated candy.

“I’m starting to think I shouldn’t’ve quit opera. I don’t wanna say I regret it but I don’t not regret it. It’s kind of like when you wish you weren’t alive but you really don’t feel like dying, either.”

She hears a siren in the distance, and a train from somewhere else. Maybe it’s a message from above; Erik’s trying to tell her something. Pretty soon the siren fades. The train keeps on chugging.

“Do you think trains are getting longer or time is getting slower?” she leans her elbow on the top of the headstone, tugging on a strand of her hair.

“I guess they could just be getting slower. You know what would’ve been neat? If we dressed up as Bonnie and Clyde for Halloween. I know that sounds random, but I was just thinking, trains, train robbers, Bonnie and Clyde. I would’ve stuck up a train with you, if you asked me.”

Still no response, but she’s not too bummed about it. The quiet is comforting, in a way.

“I’ve been getting to know your friend Nadir. He’s pretty cool. But he doesn’t like me too much. He’s like, real. A real adult. With a job and a car and everything.”

She pulls out one of her Twizzlers and gnaws on it. It’s been in her jacket pocket for a couple days so it takes some work to chew.

“Mm. Tastes like plastic.”

She holds the candy in front of her face. It looks like plastic, too. What is she doing here, talking to no one?

“I wish you were here for real,” she says quietly. There’s a new thought slinking through the back corridors of her dumb brain. It’s wondering what the body looks like now that it’s been eaten by a few months of decay. If the embalming helped any. If there are worms living in the ribcage. If the jaw’s fallen off the face. She can’t think of her Erik like that. She smacks her temple with her palm a couple times.

But the thing in the ground isn’t her Erik, not really.

But if he’s not Erik, where is Erik?

“Where’d you go, man?” she punches the rock in frustration, “I’m sick of this.”

+++

“All the dishes are good,” she tells her manager Caroline, “And everything’s ready for tomorrow’s prep.”

“Mm,” the woman doesn’t even look up from her clipboard.

“So… can I leave?”

“Uuhh… did you finish the dishes?”

“Yeah, the dishes, inventory, all that stuff. Can I leave?”

“Yeah fine. Good night Kristen.”

Still not her name, but okay.

“Drive safe,” Caroline adds. Yeah, Christine just lets all her coworkers think she has a car that she drives. She gives her a thumbs-up that she doesn’t see and grabs her fake-fur parka. She got it at Goodwill for like four bucks because the zipper’s broken. It looked pastel pink in the fluorescent warehouse lighting, but Raoul told her it looks like a washed-out neon orange. She was like, no, it’s still pink even in weak light, but he didn’t budge. Maybe Nadir can be the tiebreaker.

Christine hasn’t told Raoul about Nadir, not really. He knows that she made a friend at grief circle, and they work in the same building, but that’s it. Also, he thinks Nadir’s name is John. It just kind of slipped out. That boy tells his brother everything, and if Philippe hears a name like ‘Nadir,’ he’ll flip out.

It’s a long trek to the parking garage, just because of how icy the sidewalk is. It takes a lot not to slip, and then she thinks too hard about not slipping and her legs stop working right. So she has to stand there and remember how to walk and then keep going.

“Hello? Hello?”

Christine’s head snaps up, and she sees a few middle-aged women huddled near the entrance of the parking garage, around the vending machines. They’re all staring at her. The tallest one holds a cell phone to her ear. She tries waving at them but they all pretend to be real interested in the Coke machine. She hopes they all use it and the machine eats their money without giving them anything, like it did to her the day before.

It’s not icy on the stairs, at least. She sits on the first landing and checks her watch. This part of the day’s always testy for her. She expects Nadir to not show up. She probably wouldn’t if she were him. Like, who would want to be a crazy woman’s private cab service? Free cab service? It’s not that she can’t get home otherwise. She just hates anticipating the day he wakes up and realizes she won’t get more interesting or less annoying, and barring divine intervention, she’s gonna blink ninety times a minute until she’s in the ground like Erik.

Man, life sucks. She pulls a Twizzler out of her pocket and gnaws on it gloomily. The door opens.

“God, it’s cold,” Nadir says, “Almost March, and everything’s iced over.”

“It’s not even Valentine’s yet,” Christine returns the Twizzler to her pocket and stands.

“It’s practically March,” he insists, “and I was this close to breaking a hip on that sidewalk. I hate this weather.”

“I like it,” she lets him walk up first because he’s faster. For someone who’s always nagging about seatbelts and flu shots, he’s really tempting fate taking four stairs at a time.

“You strike me as someone who prefers the warmer months,” he says, waiting for her to get to the next landing before taking off again.

“Heck no! I hate it when it’s hot. My hair gets even worse, and I either have to die of heatstroke or wear short sleeves.”

“Then wear short sleeves.”

Christine’s hit with a whole-body flinch when she realizes what she said. And what he said. But she recovers well enough to lie.

“I burn way too easy.”

“Even with sunblock?”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’m Swedish. Why would you think I like it hot?”

“The word escapes me. You’re… hm, what’s the wo– Oh! I have it. You’re sunshine.”

Christine tries to respond with actual human words, but instead she makes a squawking sound that’s probably an expletive in several bird languages. Nadir looks over his shoulder looking like he’s seen a ghost, or her own uncovered wrists, or that awful vending machine that steals people’s hard-earned cash, or– She’s getting distracted.

“I’m guessing that was the wrong word?” he asks.

“No, it’s fine,” she stammers.

“You’re very red.”

She presses one hand over her cheek and points the other at him accusingly.

“So are you!”

He laughs.

“I am– no. No. It’s the stairs. Exercise.”

“Same. It’s like a workout climbing these stairs.”

“Yes. We’re here now.”

She pulls a Nadir and only uses every other stair to get to their landing, thanking her stars it’s too dark to see blushes in the parking area.

“Did I make you uncomfortable?”

“No.”

“I did, didn’t I? I’m sorry. English isn’t my first– it’s… what, my third? Fourth? I meant to say you’re sunny. Bubbly, that sort of thing.”

“Ah, thanks. My dad used to say I was too happy for my own good. If only he could see me now,” she grins, forgetting about that butterflies feeling she got just a second ago. Yep. Any minute now she’ll forget. She’ll forget so, so well.

“It goes beyond happiness. You’re–”

He swings his arm in front of her. There’s a few fuzzy figures, way on the opposite side of the lot. The only reason she can spot them is because of the blinding shoes they wear… the white ones look a lot like the ones Caroline wrote Joe up for wearing this past weekend.

“Nadir–”

“Ssh. Let them leave.”

“I think–”

“Ssshh. Please.”

They stay like that, two frozen idiots, and watch them get away. They sneak over to the stairway door nearest to them. As they slip through one by one, they let in a sliver of light that touches Nadir’s car for a handful of seconds.

All she can wonder is where they went to get so many bricks. After the door closes, Nadir tells Christine to wait, and counts from five on his hand before creeping forward. Whatever butterflies were hanging around Christine’s stomach have been shredded into a fine dust and replaced by hornets. She doesn’t know how Nadir’s being so calm about this.

It feels like they’re moving at a snail’s pace. Heck, at a pace that snails whiz by and look backwards laughing at.

“Careful,” Nadir says. They’re maybe twenty feet from the car and already their shoes are crunching on broken glass. A few feet further, and they stop.

“We shouldn’t get any closer. Just in case.”

“In case what ?” Christine asks. Nadir just shakes his head and rifles through his pockets.

“Of course I lose my glasses tonight of all nights,” he makes a sound like laughter, but he’s grimacing, “Dial the police on this, please.”

Christine dials the number and shoves the cell phone back at him. Her eyes are trained on the door they left through.

“I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Where are you– Hello? Yes, this is..”

Christine doesn’t stick around long enough to see whether he keeps talking to dispatch or goes after her. She half-sprints, half-tumbles down the stairs until she gets to the floor right below, then scrambles to the elevator. It takes forever to get to the ground floor, but apparently Joe and Co. (that rhymes but she doesn’t have time to appreciate rhymes right now dammit) aren’t used to half-sprinting, half-falling down the stairs, because right as she steps out, she sees the stairway door pop open and four jerks trudging in a single-file line. The one in back is Joe.

“Hey!” Christine shouts with her full chest. That doesn’t have the intended effect. They all jump to attention and sprint away without even looking in her direction. She goes after them, gasping for breath and wiping her burning runny nose with every step. She exits the garage and makes it three steps down the sidewalk before faceplanting. Ice! It’s always freaking ice. Maybe she will prefer summer instead, just to spite the frozen sidewalk.

There are murmurs from above – either concerned people or God’s angels finally here to mercy kill her.

“This is her?”

“Yes, that’s her.”

“All righty. Miss, can you stand?”

She flops onto her back and gasps when she sees the cop.

“That was fast,” she says, “They went that way, Officer. The car’s on the fifth floor. I was trying to catch them– Wait, I know you. I know all of you.”

Those three women she saw earlier are all here.

“No, sweetie. We’ve never met you,” one of them says, loudly and slowly.

“Yeah, I get that!”

“Don’t get agitated ma’am!” the cop barks, “We’re just having a chat right now. No need to make things hard.”

Christine wants to cry.

“Look, those kids who ran down the street just came from destroying my friend’s car.”

Two of the women give each other sad, knowing looks. Christine gets to her feet and they step back.

“What did those boys use to, ah, destroy this car?”

“Bricks!”

“And where are those bricks?”

“They’re on the fifth floor with the car.”

“Mm-hmm. Ma’am, can I ask you a few questions?”

She folds her arms.

“What?”

“Don’t get snippy with me,” he holds his hands over her like that Star Wars guy does when shooting lightning, “Tell me now: who is the president of the United States?”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“No! No, no, no,” all four of them say in chorus.

“Bush. Bush is the president. It’s 2002, February 8. It’s about seven o’clock. And the alphabet backwards is ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA. Now will you please follow me?”

“Sure, sure. But just a few more questions, m’kay? Let’s head over to the patrol car so my partner can run a few tests.”

“No! Someone needs to go check on my friend.”

“We will if you just follow my instructions. It’ll take two minutes. I promise.”

Those women look at her like she’s being arrested for stealing bread: pitying, sad. One of them has a hand over her heart.

“This is ridiculous,” Christine mutters, “You’re ridiculous. All of you are fucking ridiculous!”

“Okay, I didn’t wanna do this. But if you’re going to be that way, then,” the officer spins her around and grabs one wrist at a time, locking them in cuffs.

One time Erik told her he knew how to escape handcuffs. She said she didn’t want to know. What a weird thing to regret not learning.

Chapter Text

If he weren’t cool-headed by nature, this night would have ended with him in prison and those two men’s faces smeared all over the rough concrete wall they had her pinned against. God. That’s a violent thought. But she seemed mildly annoyed at the whole situation, as if she often got handcuffed in parking garages. Maybe she did. She’s in a shivering, speechless state for quite another reason. They had to call a cab. He remembers near the beginning of their acquaintanceship that she expressed a dislike towards cabs. She wasn’t kidding.

Had the cab driver not pulled up to see the gaggle of police apologizing to Nadir and Miss Daae for the broken car and the attempted arrest, Nadir is certain the driver would have gone straight to the station to get him arrested for kidnapping. Miss Daae has herself practically folded in half, her torso parallel with her lap, and she’s shaking like a leaf. The cabbie shifts in his seat, looking almost as uncomfortable as Nadir feels. Nobody says anything until the taxi pulls over to the first stop.

“This isn’t it,” Nadir frowns.

“What isn’t?”

“We need to go to the apartment first.”

The cabbie puts the car in park and turns around.

“That doesn't make any sense.”

When Nadir doesn’t answer, the man huffs through his nose and fishes a napkin out of his glove compartment. He scribbles God knows what on the thing and shoves it in Nadir’s face. For his part, he plucks the napkin out of the other man’s hands and pretends he can read it without his glasses.

“What’s your point, then?” he asks.

“Mister, you’re askin’ me to drive all the way south, just to swing back north to get you back here. That’s a waste.”

“I can’t– you’ll get a higher fare if you do it my way. What’s the problem?”

“Problem is it’s gonna snow in an hour or two,” the cabman sniffs, “I got a home to get to, too.”

He’s not wrong there. The wind is picking up, and the sky is heavy with clouds. Maybe Nadir can call Darius to get them to her apartment. Or she can call a friend once they’re inside. Or… well, if she must, she can take the spare bed for the night, he supposes.

“Fine. Forget about the other stop. Here.”

Nadir places a wad of cash on the center console, along with the napkin map the driver so helpfully drew up, and assesses the state of Miss Daae. How did he snap Erik out of these sorts of fits? Usually he either held the man in a bone-crushing embrace, or if he started biting, he’d slap him once or twice. (Hindsight is telling him, perhaps, he and Erik both needed therapy.) He has very little desire to do either to Christine Daae.

“You gonna leave, or what?”

“Just a minute,” Nadir huffs. He unbuckles, then unbuckles Daae so he doesn’t have to reach over her to get to her seatbelt. Then he gets out of the car and picks a path along the icy road to open her door. Tentatively, he puts a hand on her shoulder. She freezes.

“Christine? Come on, we’re here.”

She raises her head, and he sees a single pink-rimmed eye staring wildly at him through tear-spotted glasses and a curtain of hair. He’s trying to remember the name of that show she liked watching. Gunshot? Gun Control? No… Gunfire? Gunfire. That sounds right.

“I’m sure we can watch some Gu–”

She grabs the front of his coat and tears out of the vehicle like a bat from hell. The way she clings to him makes his heart ache. He’s not sure whether it’s out of concern for her or because he himself hadn’t encountered this much physical contact in a very long time.

“Uh, thanks,” he tells the driver gruffly, shutting the door and waving as the cab drives off. He pats Miss Daae’s shoulder, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around her entirely.

When she pries herself away, Nadir is chilled in a manner not even the brisk air could be responsible for.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, scrubbing her face. Nadir winces at her tone.

“Don’t say that, dear. Let’s get inside before we freeze out here, hmm?”

It’s quite possibly colder in the house than outside. Nadir forgets how unusual this would be to a visitor. She notices it quickly.

“You didn’t use a key,” she says. Nadir purses his lips. “You just opened the door?”

“Must’ve forgotten to lock it. Come on.”

“Nadir. That window’s open.”

“My mistake. An old habit of mine.”

“Wait. Wait a minute, how come all the windows are open?”

She grabs his arm.

“Oh my God, did someone break in?”

If only.

“I doubt it.”

He goes through the house, closing every window, and she follows him like an overcurious Labrador, marching the perimeter of each room like somebody might be hiding behind the bookcases.

“No one’s here, Christine. I assure you.”

“Then how’d all the windows open?” she demands, voice tremulous from her crying in the cab.

“I left them open,” he says slowly, “Do you want tea? We should have tea.”

He leads them to the kitchen.

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Whoa. Wait… What?”

“I have coffee too,” Nadir adds.

“What’re you leaving them open for? Oooh, is it insurance fraud?”

Her whole face lights up.

“That’s not how insurance works.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then what’s up?”

He shrugs and mumbles something, not even he knows what.

“Nadir.”

“It’s a compulsion of mine, is all. Something foolish.”

“What?”

“It’s not important.”

She doesn’t pry any further. Not in words, anyway. But as he makes his rounds through the kitchen, gathering everything needed for tea, it’s like her silent stare is burning a hole through him. His back is to her as he measures out the water.

“Erik used to break into my house. A lot,” he says to the sink, “I… a part of me thinks maybe if I make things easy for him, he’ll come back.”

Maybe it’s the shame rushing through his ears muffling all other sounds. Maybe Christine Daae is secretly a master of stealth. He doesn’t sense her approaching until she’s right beside him, leaning against the counter. Startled, he nearly drops the samovar.

“How did you–?”

“Erik’s gone, Nadir.”

Her tone is like someone soothing a child. It annoys Nadir. He isn’t some lunatic, like– like. What a horrible thing to think. He turns off the water.

“I know that,” he says, “You just… you get so used to somebody. It doesn’t make any sense, at first. When they’re gone.”

She nods.

“I’ve known him longer than I’ve known anyone. Longer than my parents. My wife. My… my son.”

That rushing shame of his has bled out of his ears and settled on his shoulders. Suddenly he feels too heavy to stand straight. He grips the edge of the counter.

“And really,” he laughs harshly, “I wouldn’t put it past him to fake it all. As some kind of joke. Maybe he’s not dead, you know?”

She smiles wryly.

“Oh Nadir, you reeeaaaally shouldn’t tell a psychotic person something like that.”

“Right. Er, my mistake… I mean, if it were just him and me, I wouldn’t put it past him. But he wouldn’t do something like that to you. You were the stars in the sky for him, Christine.”

Her face reddens, and she wraps her arms around herself and bites the inside of her cheek.

“He was kind of a jerk to you.”

“I suppose.”

“Can you promise me something?” she asks, and doesn’t wait for an answer, “Promise to stop leaving your whole house open? I don’t want something happening to you.”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

“I hope not. But could you just… try? Like, just start with keeping your windows closed at least. It’s freezing in here!”

He stays quiet for a long while. Finally:

“I’ll try. In the meantime, why don’t I turn up the heat?”

He does so, and as he crosses the living room to return to the kitchen, he glances out the now-closed window. Whatever hope he had of getting Miss Daae home that evening is dashed by the rapidly-growing blanket of snow piling in his yard, on the sidewalk, in the street. At least he has no car to worry about, he thinks darkly.

“Mmm, I better get going.”

He turns from the front window, brow furrowed.

“Going? How?”

She tilts her head.

“Uh, just putting one foot in front of the other?”

“Absolutely not. It’s bad enough being in a car. You’ll get pneumonia walking out there.”

“Raoul’s gonna be worried.”

“Who?”

“Raoul. I told you about him, right? He always stays up till I come home.”

There’s a nearly crippling urge to ask her whether this Raoul is a partner of some sort, or just a friend, but Nadir wrestles it down with a much stronger feeling of horror. That is not his business . 

“Is he a good driver? Could he pick you up, you think?”

Christine’s eyes narrow into a grimace, and she slowly shakes her head.

“He’s making a collage of all his traffic tickets.”

Collage. Traffic. Tickets??

“No,” Nadir breathes.

“Yeah.”

“Parking? Or… speeding?”

“Speeding, mostly. In school zones.”

“School zones??”

“One time he drove the wrong way and didn’t notice till a semi flicked its brights at him,” she chuckles.

“And he still has a license?!”

“Yeah.”

“I… that’s… please tell me he uses a seatbelt.”

She shrugs.

“Tell me you use one when you’re in the car with him.”

“No, I do!”

“Good,” Nadir sighs. This Raoul sounds like a maniac.

“Maybe it’ll clear up in a couple hours?” she suggests, “Then I can go. I’d hate to invade your house all night.”

“Hardly an invasion. In fact, I’d prefer it – if, ah, if you do, too – that you stayed. The night. Maybe.”

“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all. It’s safer that way, I think.”

Unless, of course, some new joker decides to brick his house in addition to his car. He hopes it’s too cold for them to come out.

“Aaw, thanks, Nadir.”

She grabs his hand and gives it a squeeze. Then she taps on the ring on his index finger.

“Did I ever tell you this ring matches your eyeballs?”

She certainly has a way with words.

“Yes, I believe you did.”

“Did someone give it to you?”

“My mother, on my wedding day. It was originally her father’s father's.”

“Shoot,” she drops his hand, “I guess I shouldn’t be putting my grubby hands on an heirloom.”

“It’s survived a couple civil wars, Miss Daae. I think it’ll be fine if you touch it. Are you hungry?”

The water is hot. He steeps the tea leaves inside the samovar.

“A little, I guess.”

“Sandwich sound good?”

“Yeah, sure. Here, I’ll help.”

Just as Nadir is pouring two cups of tea, she begins to hum, and then her humming turns to singing. Truly, Nadir forgot she was a musician. That was stupid of him. They’d never have met had she not caught Erik’s interest with her voice. He never heard her sing before.

Nadir has the musical talents of a broken fender, but he knows how to appreciate a good song. The tune cuts off abruptly when she glances in his direction.

“Sorry."

“What could you possibly be sorry for, Miss Daae?”

“It’s way too late for Bizet,” she shrugs, “More of a morning thing.”

“Is that what that song is called?”

“No,” she tries to stifle a laugh, “No, that’s the guy who wrote it. The song is Toreador.”

“It’s a lovely song. What’s it about?”

“How it’s really badass to fight bulls.”

“...Interesting.”

“It’s a man’s part. I transposed it a few octaves, obviously. Sometimes I wish I could hit the lower registers, you know?”

He nods, only vaguely understanding what she’s talking about.

“Anyway, dinner’s ready.”

It’s been a very long time since Nadir ate dinner at a table with another human being, apart from work meetings. Then again, lawyers could hardly be called human beings, could they?

“Do you know how you’re gonna get around?” she asks.

“My friend’s family owns a dealership. They’ll give me a rental at a discount, I’m sure.”

She nods. They eat in companionable silence for a few minutes, after which she puts down her sandwich and tugs on her hair.

“Something wrong?” Nadir asks.

“No, I… I just need to call Raoul if that’s okay.”

“By all means. The landline’s in the hallway in the back.”

She smiles brilliantly and rushes from the room. Nadir looks down at his sandwich and considers throwing it away, and hiding the evidence with paper towels. He’s eaten better at the Tunisian refugee camp they fled to during the Revolution. He smiles faintly. Reza used that line to complain about the school lunches, once they came here.

Miss Daae returns and descends onto the remainder of her meal like a vulture.

“Watcha thinkin’ about?” she asks through a mouthful.

“Not much.”

“You feeling okay?”

“Yes. Why?”

She shrugs, “It’s been a long day. And your car, and everything.”

“I suppose I’m still in shock. I’ll have my mental breakdown tomorrow, don’t worry.”

“You do strike me as the type to schedule your mental breakdowns.”

“I try to avoid them entirely, but if they must happen, they must happen.”

“I don’t think I have breakdowns. I think it’s more like a bunch of breakdowns came together and had me. Just a walking, talking, singing breakdown.”

“You sell yourself short.”

“Could be worse,” she shrugs, polishing off her sandwich. He offers her his second half, to which her face turns pink and she refuses. For a second he assumes she’s just being polite.

“No, really, I insist.”

“I really don’t want it.”

“You sure?”

She wraps her jacket around herself and chews the inside of her lip. Nadir blinks. It's as though a switch flipped in his brain for a second there.

“Sorry, I just… my mind blanked and I thought you were saying no but you meant yes.”

“Why would I do that?” she asks icily.

“It’s a Persian thing. Taarof. There’s a whole system of etiquette and– it doesn’t matter. I’m mixed up today, I’m sorry.”

Her gaze softens, then she grins.

“I thought you were calling me fat.”

Now Nadir feels his cheeks heat up.

“No, of course not. Of course not.”

Nadir doesn’t know what else to say besides that. She is… well-fed, but he certainly is as well, even after the months of picking at his food and waiting for Erik to return.

The dishes take longer than they ought to because Nadir is reminiscing. Or rambling. Pick one.

“On my wedding day, my wife was– I don’t remember what had happened, but I said something about how much she had eaten. I wasn’t trying to be rude, but we were both so nervous and if she got sick it would have been embarrassing. She took it the wrong way, and then my father took me outside and threatened to throw me off the balcony.”

“That’s awful.”

“I know. I learned to keep those kinds of comments to myself.”

“I mean your dad trying to throw you off the balcony.”

“Oh, yes. I suppose."

Once the dishes are done, Nadir suddenly wants to go straight to bed, although he knows he won’t be able to sleep. He can’t, though, not yet.

He shows Miss Daae the spare room and the washroom, and then he asks if she wants to watch that Gun Control show.

“The what?”

“Gunfire? Gunpowder?”

“Gunsmoke?”

“Yes. Is that on?”

“Maybe! Let’s see.”

She practically dives for the remote control and flicks through the channels, until she lands on a very saturated-looking image. Nadir pokes around until he finds a spare pair of glasses and sits next to her. They manage to catch the very beginning of this episode, and the cold open shows a man with a near-offensive country accent.

The cold open ends with another man, who looks identical to the first man, who is wanted for murder and theft, and who frames the first man for his own crimes. Then it cuts to commercial.

“I’m so confused,” Nadir says.

“How?”

“Are they twins?”

“No. They just look alike.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s a TV show. It’s not supposed to make sense.”

They watch the mindless advertisements in silence. The drone of the infomercial announcer is putting Nadir to sleep, until she taps his arm and asks him something.

“Pardon?” he asks, sitting up straighter.

“I was just wondering how you met her? Your wife?”

There’s a wedding ring commercial on the television.

“Wedding,” Nadir says, hesitant.

“That’s cool! How’d you know the couple?”

“We were the couple.”

“You what now.”

“They didn’t do love marriages back then, not in my family. Rookheya was at least told what was going on. I thought we were going to a cousin’s wedding and didn’t know why I had to dress up like a groom, but I just accepted it. I wasn’t very bright.”

“Is that even legal?”

“Sure it is. Maybe even here, depending on the circumstance.”

“So you never met her till your wedding day?”

“That’s why I was nervous.”

“Did you love her?”

Nadir smiles fondly.

“I did. I do. We were lucky in that we were good for each other. She’d have been an amazing mother. Maybe then our boy would… But no point dwelling on what might have been. Yes, I loved her. I can show you our wedding photos on the next commercial break. You have to promise not to make fun of me. I was barely twenty. Imagine taking wedding photos in your sophomore year when that morning you didn’t think you’d be married by that evening.”

“That sounds like an actual nightmare.”

“Oh, it was. But it’s sort of funny now. Much worse has happened. Much worse... Anyway – show’s back on.”