Work Text:
Braids were a necessity of Erik’s lifestyle. When one lived five floors below the living world, when one possessed a face such as Erik possessed, one could not stroll into a barber’s and ask for a trim. And Erik refused for any part of his personal presentation to be unruly. So he wore his hair in braids, and he braided it himself.
When he lived with his parents, they had kept his hair short, but after he ran away, there had been nobody to trim it. Erik’s hair had grown longer and uncared-for, until, at one of the fairs where he exhibited himself, he saw an elderly man selling trinkets – one of the few black men he’d seen since he’d set his feet to the road.
The man’s braids seemed so very neat and tidy to Erik, so he made sure his mask was secure and asked, as politely as an eleven and a half-year-old could, if the man would teach him how to do braids like that.
By some miracle, the man said yes.
Erik memorised the styles he was taught, and had elaborated on them through the years, making them more intricate, more impressive. Anything to distract from the mask.
Which was why he hesitated a little before admitting to Christine that they would have to cut their practise short the next day, because he needed to re-braid his hair. It called attention to his body; called attention to the fact that he was not an angel, but a man with physical form, deeply flawed, and a face best avoided.
Christine said, “I could do it for you, if you like?”
Erik froze. Braiding his hair would mean removing his mask, and Christine had only been subjected to that particular view a handful of times. Yet it would mean Christine’s hands running their way over his scalp... He had never been able to resist Christine’s attention. And if she was braiding his hair, she would be behind him, not looking at his face.
“Very well.”
Which was how Erik came to be sat on the floor, Christine sat on the sofa behind him, the sofa cushion arrayed with a tub of pomade, and a comb, and all the other necessaries for attending to one’s toilet.
He felt the urge to lean back, rest his head against her knees – or move back further, and rest in her arms.
But not without his mask. He could not be so close to her now that he’d taken it off.
Christine was about to begin when Erik said, “Wait.”
He replaced his mask, left the room, walked to his bedroom, and retrieved a box from the chest of drawers there.
When he returned to Christine, he set the box down on the sofa beside her and opened it, revealing the gold beads within, neatly organised by the box’s inner compartments. “Could you put some of these in?”
Christine picked one up and examined it. “Where did you get these? They’re beautiful.”
“Gifts from the sultana of Mazenderan.” Whenever he’d pleased the sultana, she’d send him a new set of different designs. He’d built up quite the collection. Each piece was a masterpiece of filigree, though Erik had not worn them since he’d fled from the Mazenderan court.
A little nervously, he sat back down in front of Christine. Was it too much, to ask her to put the beads in? Would she think it ridiculous, a man as ugly as he was, asking for beautiful beads in his hair? He could change the way he wore his hair, but he could never change his face.
Once he was sure Christine was settled behind him, he removed his mask so that the ribbon at the back would not get in the way of her work.
She unwound his old braids carefully, never pulling too hard on his hair. Erik’s yellow eyes fluttered shut with pleasure every time her fingertips brushed his scalp. He was intimately aware of her presence behind him, her hands on his hair.
With his old braids undone, Christine began dividing his hair into sections for the new braids, working with the comb.
“I haven’t done this in so long,” said Christine. “I used to wear my hair in braids, but when I started at the opera, they said it didn’t look right for the stage.”
Erik would never have criticised Christine’s waterfall of black curls, but he felt the familiar sting of irritation. He knew why people had said such things to her.
The same reason why Gustave Daaé had never received more acclaim during his lifetime. The same reason why it took so long for the managers to admit that Christine’s singing was superior to Carlotta’s. The same reason why they told Christine to powder her face paler and stay out of the sun, never mind that her brown skin glowed onstage. The same reason why it took so Meg Giry so long to be promoted to the end of a line.
Sometimes Erik told himself that, if he had been born with an ordinary face, he could have been as famous a composer as anybody. If the Chevalier de Saint-Georges could do it, he could do it too.
But Erik had lived too much in the world to pretend that there wouldn’t have been barriers, even if he’d been born with his own scrap of beauty.
By all accounts, the Chevalier had been handsome. That hadn’t stopped the way people treated him.
Christine was putting a bead in now – he heard the clink of her searching through the box. Erik had not specified a style with her in any kind of depth, only to ask that she keep it close to his usual way of wearing his hair.
If he was honest with himself, it was only an excuse to let her touch him. Let her fingers ghost the back of his neck.
He had been touched so rarely in his life, and even more rare were the gentle touches of someone he esteemed. He savoured each moment, fixing it in his memory.
Erik had intended to memorise every moment of this, but as Christine continued to work, he found himself almost drifting, calmed by her gentle ministrations.
He felt that she was done all too soon. Erik heard the click behind him as she closed the box of beads, then started as Christine placed her fingertips under his chin and tilted his head slightly to the side.
“What are you doing?”
She’d be able to see his face – part of it, at least, from the side. The unhealthy greyish cast to his brown skin. The sunken eye sockets. The empty wrongness where his nose failed to exist.
“I’m checking the view from the side,” said Christine. “I want to make sure it looks right from all angles: you can hardly check yourself, since you don’t have any mirrors in here.”
Nor would Erik allow a mirror anywhere he could risk seeing his unmasked face reflected in it.
He was frozen by her touch. Her fingers were warm. His breath caught in his throat.
“And… how do I look?”
“Very regal. I like the beads.”
Christine leaned forward and kissed him on one prominent cheekbone.
Erik turned away from her, feeling the heat rise in his face. With hands that shook just a little, he replaced his mask and stood. “Perhaps I ought to ask you to braid my hair more often."
"You should," Christine agreed.
It was a few days later, as Erik prepared for the evening, prepared to watch Christine’s performance as he dressed himself in evening suit and polished shoes and billowing cloak, when he touched his hand briefly to his braids and said to himself, “Regal!”