Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Erik did not sleep.

He wondered if there was some exquisite punishment in the insomnia, if he had angered some ancient deity to earn such a punishment. That...plus the face, well. It was all a bit overkill, wasn’t it?

He bent over his papers in the office that sat above the world that he inhabited. Phantasma: occupying 75% of Coney Island's famous, historic boardwalk, it was a monument to his genius, according to the New York Times. It was also, according to himself, a monument to what he couldn’t do: sleep.

Below him, only a few lights twinkled; even the city that never slept had a bedtime, and it was far past it. Long gone were the ride operators, the visitors, the beachgoers, the sideshow barkers. He eyed the tattered sofa in the corner of the room. Perhaps if he sat, or lay down, it would be enough to lull his body into resting. He certainly wasn't going to get any composing done.

There it was again – a sound of metal hitting wall, or ground or....something. He crept up from his desk to peer out the window, as though seeing the pitch-black night would help him hear better.

A raccoon, then, if not rats tumbling the trash cans in the alley. They should have been chained together tighter...

Another smash – louder, harder. No, this would be no cat, not even a racoon; and the raccoons were dog-sized these days. Something bigger was loudly rifling through his park.

He reached for his worn jacket, the black half-mask that covered the more...unsightly side of his odd visage, and headed for the door. He tapped the pocket, ensuring his phone was still there, his keys jangling against his belt loop, the thousands of locks in the park ensuring he looked ridiculous whenever he carried the enormous keyring.

He left the light on. At the last moment, he turned and grabbed the old baseball bat he kept behind the door.

He plodded down the iron staircase to the ground floor of the aerie, hopeful that by the time he reached the door the disturbance would have already left. He would not call the police; he liked to maintain an unofficial border between the NYPD and his park as much as humanly possible. The macabre, the fanciful, the decadent, the experimental...all of these looked the same to the dull-witted people of the police force, which was: a threat. No, he had certainly been adequately harassed by them for the crime of wearing a mask enough to know they would not make this, or any, situation better.

His phone was for the flashlight, and he flicked it on before opening the door to the outside. The enormous April moon was vibrant enough, but still he pointed the light at the ground and carefully stepped to where he heard the commotion.

The Wonder Wheel creaked eerily in the distance, and he made a mental note to check it tomorrow. The park was silent, save for the tapping of rat feet scurrying away from his feet on uneven boardwalk planks. The looming clown-faced entrance to the fun house glowed in the moon, and he tried not to focus on how the shadows of the buildings made it seem more ominous as it was.

He had come here, once, as a child with his Aunt Marie on a rare day out, and had always loved the odd, vintage charm of the place. Of course, the park had burned down half a dozen times from when it had been built in the late-1800s, but some of the buildings seemed like they had always been there, some dark-minded Poseidon erecting them from the sands to serve as temples of joy. Tiny, maskless-for-the-day Erik had found himself at the top of the wheel, at the bottom of the haunted house, and through the oddly erotic sideshows. He clutched his aunt's hands as he looked up at the murals of two-headed twins, a mermaid, a giant...his aunt tried to pull him away from the freak shows, an odd relic of the old times, but he pulled her onward, insisted they pay their quarters to see. There was something comforting in knowing they had always been there, would always be there, that there was a history of people who knew what it was to be stared at, to be mocked. He had never seen so many usual things in one place, and when they returned uptown on the train, sticky with cotton candy, he made his plan known.

"I want to live there."

Several failed business ventures later, a music school dropout found himself with his mother's meager inheritance and the chance to stop the city from bulldozing the whole thing. That was the early 2000s, and now he sat on a park that threatened to turn a profit...any day now.

Only, of course, if people did not stop trying to break in.

"Oi!" Erik threw his voice, a trick from his clown school (also dropout) days. His own voice echoed back to him from the empty alleys. Perhaps it was no one. Perhaps they had already moved on, seeing the trash picked through already.

"Hello?" He called. "Show yourself. If you're hungry, there's food for you, just-"

A snarl from behind him told him his hunch was wrong. Not only was he not alone in the park, but it was not human.

He turned slowly, hands up.

An enormous...bigger than any cat, most dogs...was something...furry. A...bear? Were there even bears in the city? What did you do, for bears…was it to make yourself big, or to play dead? He cursed his city upbringing for not preparing him for this. His flashlight flickered in his hand on the thing, his body betraying him by shaking slightly.

Pull yourself together Erik.

It was...brown? Not black fur, that was certain. A tail...not a bear, then. It turned from where it ate at the overturned garbage cans.

Erik sucked in a breath as an enormous wolf snarled back at him.

Chapter Text

Erik didn't like this at all.

Didn't like how...goddamn serious Raoul de Chagny looked. That, and the fact he was leaving through a book of all things...it was positively bone-chilling. The boy had even rolled up the elbows of his jacket as though to focus better.

It would be less annoying if Christine did not insist on pressing the cold washcloth to his forearm with such force.

"They said to apply pressure," she said as the pink stain bloomed beneath the white cloth. He tore his eyes from the Twilight Zone over there as Raoul did his best impression of...God, an academic?...and directed his attention to the worried lines above her eyebrows.

"I'm...I'm fine," he said. "Just got a little spooked, that's all." He had already said this, and just like the last time, she seemed not to take his word for it.

Erik had spent hours over the last year complaining about the way his stretch of Coney Island boardwalk had seemingly been adopted by Christine Daae and her boyfriend as their home away from home: they did not work there, nor did they help run the park in any meaningful way. In fact, often times his part-time music student and her infuriatingly optimistic jock of a boyfriend got in the way of what it took to run a busy theme park with their endless need for his attention, whether it was music related or, more recently, social in nature. Lately, they seemed to think that Erik was their…friend.

He hadn’t realized that they were, really, the closest thing he had to “friends” until he found himself, bleeding and terrified, locked out of his apartment high above the park and calling Christine for her help. He had already sheepishly thanked them a dozen times as they treated his wound.

He attempted humor as she continued to dab at it. “You should have seen the other guy,” he chuckled.

“Erik…”

Raoul perked up. “You hit it? With what?”

In another world, Erik was sure Raoul would have been the star quarterback of some over-funded suburban high school, perhaps a Division I athlete. Here, his pedigree was more than an Ivy League legacy admit, though Erik was sure the de Chagny money could manage it. No, here his name meant that he was the heir to a long-line of “hunters:” those who tracked and killed whatever supernatural creature that was menacing the local human population. Erik had laughed when he first heard his title; now, he found himself wondering if the thing that had attacked him fell under Raoul’s jurisdiction.

He recalled the night before. “An old baseball bat.”

“Silver? Titanium?”

“Wood,” he winced as the antiseptic tried to do its work. “Fat lot of help that did. The pieces are somewhere in that alley with my ruined trash cans.”

Raoul seemed to consider this before returning to his book. Erik looked up at Christine, who was rifling through the first aid kit hastily bought at the nearby Duane Reade. She had given him an ear full when she got the call that he needed their help…and that he didn’t even have any bandaids.

“Unbelievable,” she hissed over his wound. “For a human, you are very accident prone.”

Erik ignored this. "Isn't there, like, a healing spell you could do? Is that what witches do? Heal?"

This only served to upset her further. "No." Her face got scrunched up even worse. "I mean, yes, some witches can - God, I can only do music, I'm useless-"

Ah fuck.

He tried to put out his good hand out to stop her spiraling, but it was too little too late.

“Christine, no, you are not - you’ve healed me in other ways –”

It was true, the way she could infuse magic into his music to make the listener feel any number of emotions beyond what he could write had been instrumental in inspiring him to compose for the first time in years. But then she removed the compress and he saw the slash across the inside of his forearm, threatening to bubble up with blood again. If they didn't quell it soon he would have to go to his second least favorite place after the 60th Precinct: the Emergency Room.

Christine seemed to read his mind, tutted over the cut. If need be, he could stitch himself up, had done it before in less sterile conditions. He had a feeling Christine didn't want to hear that at the moment. A sound from Raoul made them both look up.

"So no shapeshifting?" The hunter clarified.

"Uh..." Erik remembered back the green eyes, the teeth...God, the teeth! "Not that I saw."

Raoul nodded, as if going through a checklist. "No wings."

"No."

"Ok, that rules out...perytons, griffons..."

Erik rolled his eyes. Christine placed his own hand over the compress, left to go look behind Raoul. She gave a gasp.

"No way."

"I know," Raoul murmured. "But I can't see –Erik, you're sure it wasn't just a normal animal? I hear the raccoons are bigger this year."

"I know what I saw," Erik said. "It was the same thing from April, only –" Only this time the thing didn't just snarl – it had lept at him, and only putting his arm up had stopped it from tearing his mask and face completely off.

Christine and Raoul exchanged an expression that made him temporarily forget the sting in his arm. "What?"

Christine was still shaking her head when Raoul closed the book. Even more startling, the boys blue eyes met his with sad pity.

"Erik, what you've got is a werewolf problem."

"What?"

What ensued was a small explosion of debate between the supernaturals in the room, Erik unable to stand without feeling woozy.

"There hasn't been a sighting in decades, certainly not in a big city-"

"Christine, I know, but its never a zero percent chance-"

"But that means-"

"I know, that means there's a family-"

"Not necessarily-"

"Who would risk it-"

"They're predators, Christine," Raoul spoke more sharply to his girlfriend than Erik had ever seen him before. It seemed hunting supernaturals brought out the...worst? Most aggressive? Part of the boy. He was mildly impressed.

"What are you going to do?" Christine asked, in the same tone one might ask someone with a spider trapped under a glass. Raoul was already reaching for his things, throwing his jacket on.

"Erik - go to the hospital," he ordered. Erik didn't feel it was in his best interest to argue with the furious version of his student's boyfriend. Not right now. He nodded.

"Christine, don't look at me like that - Christine," he put his hands on her arms, took a breath, and encouraged her to look at him. Erik looked away. Raoul spoke softly to her. "This is what I've been training for, remember?"

"I know," she mumbled. "But it's dangerous." She was whining but he was already heading for the door.

"Get stitches. Seriously."

A thought occurred to Erik. "Wait-"

Raoul paused.

"I'm not...this isn't like..." He searched his mind, trying to understand. "This isn't a…radioactive spider, Spiderman thing, right?"

Raoul frowned back. "Uh…"

"As in, I'm not going to turn into-"

The boy laughed. "Oh! Oh, no. No...it's not vampirism. It's more like-" he reached into his bag and handed him the huge textbook. "Here, you can read for yourself."

"It's like a Twilight thing," Christine piped in.

Both men stared at her blankly.

"Ok, Raoul, I know we watched it, so don't give me that. Erik - don't make me give you homework." She shook her head. "I'm just saying...in Twilight the werewolves, it was like...a family thing. The gene was passed down from generation to generation. You know, like Team Jacob and stuff.”

Raoul stared at Christine a minute longer. "Right..."

"I know I'm right."

He ignored the comment. "So, you aren't going to turn into a wolf with the full moon from a scratch, or even a bite. But they are very vicious creatures, and will kill you as soon as look at you."

Erik nodded.

The boy sighed and looked down at his phone. "Let me make a couple of calls. If you really have a werewolf in your park, this is some serious shit. I'll need," he swallowed. "Back up."

Erik saw the slight change in Christine's expression. Erik wondered, not for the first time, what kind of hoity-toity folks could have possibly raised such an entitled, arrogant...

"I'll call you," he promised Christine and left them with the textbook and blood all over the floor of the rehearsal room.

Erik got his stitches; Raoul left on the next flight back to Michigan to what he called the "family compound."

"That's ridiculous," Erik said when Christine relayed the information. She looked up from her phone.

"You think he's joking? These people..." She shook her head. "It's like they're preparing for a supernatural war the way they're armed up there by the lake. They're very...intense."

Christine fidgeted with her half-dozen necklaces, all varying in size and purpose, some for decoration and some, she once explained, for their magical properties. Something stirred in the back of Erik’s mind.

“Aren’t you supernatural? How does your loverboy explain that?”

Christine paled and bit her lip. “Ah-”

“You haven’t told them.”

“We will!” she protested. “When the time is right.”

Erik nodded, did not ask when a multigenerational family of supernatural hunters, trained to kill anything they considered “abnormal,” would be coming around to their golden child dating a witch. He felt for Christine, regardless of his feelings about the boy.

She cleared her throat. "So…if he's going up there voluntarily, that tells me this is serious."

"What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Wait for our knight in shining armor to come to rescue us?"

Christine looked back at her phone and read Raoul's instructions.

"Tell Erik to not fucking leave the house at night." Christine reddened. "Oops. Maybe I should have read that myself first-"

"How am I supposed to do that?" Erik snapped, the stitches already itching. "I run a business! I have to lock up! I'm not putting others at risk in my stead."

Christine seemed to relay the information based on the speed of her thumbs. The device vibrated.

"Idiot." Christine reddened again, having not learned her lesson to read silently first. "Tell him it's his funeral, but he should technically be safe until the next full moon on the 19th. In the meantime, Christine -"

She stopped reading. Erik looked up. "What?"

"Nothing," she scowled.

"Christine..."

"He said I shouldn't come to our lessons anymore."

"Oh. Well. If that's what you want –"

Things had been alarmingly normal since he had almost kissed her in a moment of weakness. Still, he would understand, considering...

"I don't!" Christine exclaimed. "You're the only one who understands composition."

"You certainly don't need my instruction to compose," he pointed out.

"Maybe..." She bit her lip. "But you are my friend, Erik. A little werewolf isn't going to stop that." She smiled. "Besides, I don't think you're at your best when you're left alone too long."

"I'm not alone," he reminded her. "I have –" Ah shit. He looked at his watch. "Rehearsal – Meg!" She was going to kill him. Death by choreographer: what a way to go.

His black coffee sat cooling on the edge of the piano when he got into the theater. He began to apologize, anything to head off her meltdown. "I'm sorry, I had a …night, I was at the clinic, and then-"

Meg sat on the edge of the stage in yoga pants and a Columbia sweatshirt, the crew neck cut to leave it hanging off her bare shoulder. She sipped at one of the largest coffees Erik had ever seen.

"Is that a...triple venti?" He hazarded a guess.

Meg nodded blearily. "A trenta, I think. Don't ask."

"I'm sorry I'm late," he repeated.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "We all got a slow start this morning."

Erik frowned. What had happened to the intense choreographer who kicked out girls for anything less than early attendance? "Are you...alright?"

"Yes," she nodded absently. She seemed to register something. "Clinic?"

He reached for his sleeve, made sure it was covering the bandage. "Just an occupational hazard," he attempted to smile. "Shall we begin?"