Chapter Text
Her hand is on his shoulder. She'd placed it there a moment ago for some comforting purpose, the way she has done so many times before without consequence. She knows herself, and she knows she'd never dare to do such a thing if her touch didn't have the capacity to draw some of his strife away, or to soothe it like medicine, or to numb it like ice. She has never had a different intention than that.
But there is something in the air now, something she cannot name, and because it can't be named, it can't be abated. So, slowly, too slowly not to notice, her hand travels. It drifts down to his chest. Her fingertips trace their way across his collarbone, which she can plainly feel under the thin fabric of his t-shirt. He'd come to her that night dressed for bed, with a last minute thought on his mind he felt the need to share, and somehow they'd ended up here one hour later, carried away by conversation, their bare feet pressed into the carpet as they sat on the edge of the bed, speaking low. All at once, Nathalie forgets what they spoke about, whether it was work or magic or pain or all of it or none, because she hadn't realized, until this very moment, how close they were.
She usually has the sense to keep herself from even thinking about this. She knows better, she knows the cold sting of reality, and for months she has tried to help it heal. But now, her palm is sitting above his heart, and she can feel it beating. She can feel it beating swiftly, and it makes her own beat faster in turn. She is too focused on the placement of her hand to know the look on his face, but she hears him inhale briskly as if he has noticed what she has noticed, and then –
And then he leans down. Nathalie hardly has the chance to react before he has cupped her jaw and lifted her head higher, so at the last second she can watch his gray eyes press closed, his mouth descend to meet her own.
It's madness, how quickly, how instinctually, she returns the kiss. Nathalie kisses him like she has kissed him a thousand times before and will kiss him a thousand times again. She kisses him like his lips belong just as much to her as they belong to him. The hand on his heartbeat joins the other to hold his face between them, as if she is trying to draw him closer, closer. He cannot be close enough. Gabriel must think the same because he takes her by the waist and pulls her against him. Everything about him is warm and solid and she never wants to let go.
Madness, utter madness.
Nathalie sighs as he deepens the kiss. She can see every inch of him, even with her eyes closed, the visible and invisible things, things he's shown her and things he has tried to keep hidden. It all appears at once in the darkness behind her eyelids. Nothing but Gabriel and everything he holds close enough to be a part of him. She already knows more than she's ever believed she could, so much that they feel all too close to being one.
It feels so good. It feels too good. She wants him everywhere when she shouldn't have him at all.
It's a thought that lights up at the front of her mind in blinding colors.
And as fiercely as she'd yielded to desire, Nathalie resists again. She stops. Cold.
"Gabriel."
He opens his eyes.
"What are we…?"
A glowing gaze darts between her lips and her eyes. His expression wavers as if he doesn't understand, as if he's coming out of a trance.
They are still so unbearably close. If Nathalie doesn't want to crash back into him again, she has to move. Slowly, she slips back. She'd practically been sitting on his thigh. She takes her hands off his face, and it's only when all contact has been severed that it seems to click in his brain.
"Nathalie –!"
There's a wreck of thought that spirals across his countenance. Nathalie can't count the emotions she sees before he springs to his feet like the bed is on fire.
"I'm so sorry, I…"
She tears her eyes away from him and faces the wall. Anything is easier to look at right now than he is. Unable to bring her voice far above a whisper, she stammers, "No, it – we both – we shouldn't have – it was a mistake."
"A mistake…" he repeats, expression going rigid.
"I don't know what got into me." A pathetic lie. Nathalie can name exactly the force. She's utilized it so much better up until now, to do things that have actually helped him, to carry him gradually closer to what she knows he truly wants more than anything in the world. More than her. So much more than her, in fact, that it makes her actions a moment ago all the more wretched and worthless. She sinks her teeth into her lip and turns even further away from him, fixing her pillows which don't need fixing.
He stands there for several seconds longer, and his silence is crushing.
"You should probably…" Nathalie can't finish her sentence. Her voice breaks, and the word dies on the tip of her tongue, Go. She doesn't want him to go. She's never even admitted it to herself before, but every time he leaves her it hurts. It's a dull and widespread pang blooming out from her chest and rippling across her entire body. It makes her go stiff. Her fingers clench the pillow, and she pleads herself not to cry while he is still in the room.
Another moment passes. Her frantic pulse and his burning stare are the only things she can feel, until at long last his voice thickly rasps a frigid, "Good night, Nathalie."
She does not say it back. She listens to the soft footsteps carrying him out of the room. The door whines shut, and the moment the handle clicks, Nathalie feels a tear slip from her waterline to streak coolly down her cheek and drop like a bead of blood or paint or something else that stains onto the crisp white stripe of her pillowcase. She fears she has tainted everything she has worked so hard to keep pure, her intention just to be there, to do right by him, to do everything in her power to make him happy the only way she knows he can be. She's crossed a line slashed into stone, a line that couldn't be erased, and now she feels it scored into her own heart.
She's so stupid.
With a shudder, Nathalie lays down, curling in on herself. She wants nothing more than for all of this to have been some dreadful, incredible dream. The pieces are already so mismatched, and it feels like a false memory when she pictures him closing the gap between them, being the first to press his lips against her own. She thinks her head must be lying to her. And if it isn't, then she must have done something to cause this. Something to get into his mind and do what Gabriel Agreste could never, in all his life, think to do.
"I came in here for a reason."
Suddenly, in the cold chill of aftermath, Nathalie starts to remember what she'd forgotten in the moments before their mistake, the exchange that had taken place in practically whispering voices.
"I came in here for a reason."
He'd waited over an hour to say it. She thought he'd shown up to mention a detail of his earlier conversation with Madame Tsurugi, that they'd merely gotten carried away on the waves of other topics that meant nothing at all, but here he was telling her he hadn't even breached the reason for knocking on her door that night.
She'd looked at him expectantly.
"I needed to tell you I'm concerned."
"Concerned?"
"About you."
Nathalie tilted her head. They've had these conversations before, all while she's been recovering, where he's asked for reassurance that she is feeling better, getting enough rest and food and water. She expected he'd ask her to tell him again, but instead he said:
"I'm concerned that I haven't been honest enough with you."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. There's this…impression that's been weighing on me. I feel like you don't – understand. I feel like I don't understand –"
"Gabriel," she'd interrupted. "Slow down. Is something wrong?"
Now. Now she'd put her hand on his shoulder, thumb at the end of his collar bone.
"I can't put it into words," he told her, "But I know I –" She remembers his gaze had been on the wall, and here, he looked to her, his words cutting off on their own. He looked perturbed, like he intended to shrink away from her, but he stayed perfectly still. "I'm sorry I'm not making sense."
"No, it's fine," she said, holding his gaze, searching for clarity within it. "We can talk it out. That's what I'm here for."
In her head, she sees him smile, but now she isn't sure if he did. What she knows is that he whispered, "I'm lucky to have you."
And every so slightly, he'd moved closer.
From then on it dissolves.
Nathalie is left in the bed, staring into the space where all of this had appeared. She doesn't realize how tight her jaw is until she releases it along with a quivering sigh. As the breath passes out of her mouth, she can feel the pressure of his lips lingering.
There's a dangerous thought on her mind – dangerous because it could be true – that maybe, despite everything she has drilled herself to believe, Gabriel's feelings for her have changed.
"A mistake…"
That look on his face, the way all his features set, forcing impassivity…
In a panic, Nathalie sits upright and switches off the light to let the blackness of night flood in. For the first time, she has seen a glimmer of hope, and she knows it will blind her if she lets it.