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The should-have-been-Vicomtesse finds herself unbearingly hot and bothered down below her abdomen, as her stocking-covered thighs lightly squeeze against the masked man’s groin, and if she was to know anything better, she would find her tutor trying to hide his utmost primal need, which now is hardening and grinding against her white linen petticoat.
In the most casual fashion, the petite brunette raises her inquiry, after a long, agonizing 15 minutes of sacrificing virtuous goodness for bodily intimacy.
“Why don’t you ever show your face, Sir?” asks Christine, her doe eyes gleaming, juxtaposed against her wandering hands and naughty thighs trying to abandon the last bits of her very dignity, if there was still any, right there and then.
“You’re a lovely young lady, my sweet. This monstrous, gargoyle of a man here wouldn’t even dare think of strolling with you, let alone sitting beside you, right now. The mask was a neccessity for your sake.” Erik answers, his words soft and tender, and should it conceptualize and physicallize, it shall become the sweetest and most saccharine of nectar, reserved for only Christine to taste.
“I see,” the soprano sighs, “I do not imply you’re hideous, though, Sir,” hanging for a beat, she continues. “If anything, you are the most charming and attractive man I’ve ever met. I hope you find my curiosity of good nature, Sir.”
Her naive choice of words manages to earn a chuckle out of Erik. For a milisecond there, he would pinch her rose-coloured cheeks with his hand, but then find it uncharacteristic of an upstanding bachelor to do so, so he stops halfway through and puts it onto her upper thigh.
“You’ve grown up as a ballet girl in an opera house, Christine. Forgive my boldness, but I doubt your knowledge of how a charismatic gentleman should be like,” exclaimed Erik, his words now dripping with sarcasm so much so he hopes that Christine would not find his opinion offensive.
“Well, I dare say people like you very much, Sir, and I suppose it is very much the truth,” says the young prima donna, her face now beaming with a smile, and for a heartbeat there Erik swears God has indeed, gifted him with the most ethereal of Angels up high. The man squeezes in his chair yet once again.
“I hate to disappoint, but the truth was very much the opposite, dear Christine. People called me names for my physical features. Mephistopheles, Devil incarnate, hideous beast, le mort vivant…”
“I…” astonished, Christine, to no avail, tries to mutter a proper response, her deer eyes drooping down low, eyelashes fluttering with every passing second. Not for once in her life, ever since that fateful day when her Father had entrusted the Angel of Music to Little Lottie, had she ever thought that the man whose lap she’s sitting on, the very same man with angelic voice, eyes that were shade of blue summer sky and dreams so intimate she only shares with Meg, was the object of obscenities and sacrilegious words of society. Not once, no! Struggling as she finds the truth hard to believe, within her heart Christine now bear feelings of pity for her man.
Oh poor, poor Erik.
The brunette swiftly tuck her soft, windswept curls behind her ear, and with those same delicate fingers, she touches the exposed right part of the Phantom’s face gently and tenderly, circling motions into his temple and cupping her hand onto his cheek. Her sudden gesture initially surprises the maestro who, at the time, was still trying to wrap around his head the concept of the Christine Daaé choosing to sitright on top of his lap, and one might deem the scene unseemly, but again, how gentle she massages his face as if he was the most prized possession of her world, much as he wants to believe, makes him lean into her touch, his hand moves from her thigh onto holding her hand, guiding her to explore, to feel his skin against hers, unbound by fabric, as well as unspoken chains.
One more of her advances, and she would see him coming undone, his body surrendered beneath her. His Goddess. This Angel of Music of him. The death of him.
It’s almost surreal how this deity of a woman is his, his tonight, his alone. She was his, not foolish, insolent Raoul’s, nor anyone else’s.
“Can you sing for me, my darling?” Erik inquires, his words trembling, already showing signs that he has already given in to her with the gentlest of touches.
The young soprano giggles. But all Erik could hear are fleeting notes of angelic melodies.
“If you insist, Sir,” she says, the honorific somehow still sustain, despite their current state-of-affairs.
“Nachtviolen, Nachtviolen, Dunkle Augen, seelenvolle,” and so she sings, her voice dreamy and cascading down scales like honey pouring from a jug, the resonance soon filling the air, enveloping them both into a fairy-tail scene like it was truly Eden on Earth. Erik finally uneases, his muscles releasing its tension with her sweet voice and her fingers still caressing his face and hair, “Selig ist es, sich versenken, in dem samtnen Blau.”
“Nachtviolen was certainly an exquisite choice,” he says, commending her singing with a fond, warm smile, “but why Schubert?”
“My Father used to tell me tall tales of strange places he used to go,” she replies, her brown eyes look into his blue orbs, “there was this Italian story of a girl who was so beautiful that she catches the young Prince’s eyes, and her sisters grew envy of her. Guess what her name was.”
“Violet?”
Christine doesn’t respond, but her skimming on his neck and her lips curling into a sweet smile already gives Erik enough clues of an answer. The candlelight trembles, throwing long, wavering shadow between them both, and in that half-lit sanctum Erik feels the world narrow to the quiet cadence of her breath, of the heaving, rising motion of her chest, and of the weight, so light yet devastating, of her body upon his. The man yearns for the moment to still and freeze in time, to bask in the faint scent of soap and roses, candlewax and mahogany, warmth and youth, and to allow himself—just once, to exist not as a specter or a monster detested and outcasted by society, but as a man held by a woman who has just undone him so effortlessly.
The candle has burned low enough that wax weeps down its spine in pale rivulets, pooling like milk at the brass holder’s base. Shadows climb the stone walls, stretching Erik’s silhouette into something taller and more inhuman, yet the man himself sits utterly still beneath her, as if afraid the slightest movement would shatter the fragile miracle of her warmth.
Christine remains perched upon his lap, her skirts gathered just enough to reveal the soft line of her stockinged calves, her breath brushing his cheek each time she inhales. She does not sing now. Silence, Erik realizes, could be far crueler than sound.
Oh how the table has turned. Should this be any other day, Erik would not let that side of him be exposed to her that easily, for he believes only by maintaining his dominance over her as her tutor would he deserve to stride along her, not as a man watching from afar, but her man. Her Knight and his Princess. The beautiful ending for their story, and certainly the long-awaited outcome he has yearned for since the world has treated him so devastatingly.
But tonight. Tonight was different.
And yet.
Dignity clings onto him like an old, tattered garment.
“Christine,” he murmurs, every syllable wrapped in reverence. “You tested me cruelly.”
Her lashes flutter. And with a slow yet deliberate motion, he feels her body shift, no more than settling of weight, the slight press of herself closer, and his breath caught despite himself. The sound betrays himself. She must’ve heard that. Of course she did.
“I do not mean to be cruel,” she whispers. “My words only mean… honesty.”
Her fingers trace from his temple to along the white rim of his mask, lingering, hesitant there, as if waiting for permission. She presses her lips into a thin line, doe brown eyes yet again look into his, pupils dilated, swallowing every feature, every acne scar and signs of time smoothing over his skin, and Erik closes his eyes.
Honesty is indeed a dangerous artifact.
On Erik’s face places an unfathomable complicated look. He suddenly shifts his eyes away from her steady gaze, again, much against himself. Nothing to see there, save for unsaid desires and unwavering longing for intimacy to initiate into words so fierce only with years of disciplined solitude could it be contained. Not that after many years spending down below the L’Opéra Populaire, he has never written himself into a plethora of arias and magna opera of his life, though, especially ever since the day he’s met Christine.
He finds himself again the strength to put his thoughts into words when Christine was trying to move her hand from his face, down to his neck, and down to his half-open-shirt. Naughty.
“You must know,” he says, carefully measured, “that I have spent my whole life mastering restraint. It is the only virtue ever afforded to men like me.”
“And is it a virtue,” she asks softly, “if it causes you pain?”
The question she presses onto him was one so sharp it causes pain onto an old wound long forgotten. Erik draws in a long breath and swallows, his gloved hand tightens around her waist once, then loosens, as if aware of his own strength. He does not push her away and what sits between them, aside from the flickering strides of candlelight and the faint scent of red roses, is again, silence. He knows the girl wasn’t of ill intention with her questions, though he finds the silence hard to bear and the subject difficult to swallow. If dissecting him apart like a laboratory rat is all she wants, then so be it. He wants to hide nothing from her anyway, even that fucked up brain and the fucked up deformity of his, in its very own fucked up way. The tension between them burns through like hot sand dripping and slipping through in an hourglass, and the space between desire and discipline stretches thin as wire.
“You should not concern yourself with my pain,” he says.
“But I do,” Christine replies at once, without shyness nor coyness in her words. It almost sounds truthful. Enough. Or that’s what he wants to believe.
Her palm slides to his chest, resting there unwaveringly, just above his heart. He feels it hammering beneath her every touch, traitorous and loud, much to his dismay. Her face is now a look of complexity—one that the masked man cannot see through, though she does not comment further, and she leans into him, her ceramic forehead resting briefly against the cool edge of his mask. The belle fille sighs, contented.
For one splitting second, Erik allows himself to imagine removing it. Just show enough of him. For her. And he wishes she would embrace him and his cursed, disfigured face with open arms and see the beauty underneath this spoiled gift of nature, when the world has casted him aside, threw him away despite the things he had done. It’s one thing to love and another thing to be loved and desired. Would she love him for who he is? Would she reciprocate his feelings, still? Would this monster of a man be able to get close to her and defile her (the word left a bad taste in his mouth), as he will? But oh fate was sinister in its game of cards, and he was dealt a bad hand.
Christine Daaé was Aphrodite, or some nymph in some Greek tragedy, in her every own fleeting ways, and he was Hephaistos, not even close, just a mere disciple sitting at her altar, waiting to implore. He was Icarus and she was the sun. If he gets too close, the scorching heat will swallow him whole.
The thought is nearly his undoing.
“Look at me,” she breathes, distracting himself from the thought.
He opens his eyes. Her gaze does not waver, but stern and steady, fixed on him.
In that gaze, he saw not fear nor curiosity alone, but a quiet resolve—a woman grown, a soprano who had learned the weight of breath and discipline, of holding a note until it aches, a ballet girl moulded and seasoned she has known the taste of gracefulness and brutality of the arts like it was blood coursing through her veins. She understands restraint more than he has given her credit for. His protégé is not one to be underestimated.
“I want to touch you,” her confession as light as a plea. “As you are.”
His throat tightens.
Should he allow it, should he allow her—it would become a problem. There will be no going back. He knows with a devastating realization that he would be addicted to it and will crave for more. One touch is not enough to satiate Erik’s hunger. Night after night. He would unravel. The revelation comes as daunting as it may, but he finds himself heavily against it. Logically. But emotionally, he yearns for her touch. The heart yearns for where it belongs. And he knows he belongs to her. He takes another look at her, again, at her brown, dilated pupils, at her windswept curls, at her fitted bodice, complimenting her silhouette and yet enough to lift her breasts a bit, at her white linen petticoat and à la mode muslin skirts draping over her white stockings that were gossamer thin, and he draws in a sharp breath.
So when she slips her bare hand beneath his glove, brushing bare skin at his wrist, he does not stop her.
The contact was minimal. Chaste, even.
For him, it feels like salvation.
Erik exhales shakingly, his composure fracturing at the edges. The sound was low, almost imperceptible, something between a breath and a confession, and it seems to ripple through Christine all the same. She stills, as though afraid to disturb him, her fingers resting lightly at his wrist where his pulse betrays him with frantic insistence. It is there, in that fragile point of contact, that he feels himself laid bare more thoroughly than if she had torn the mask from his face.
“Do not,” he murmurs hoarsely, though he does not finish the thought. Do not what—touch, look, feel? The words dissolve before they can take shape.
Christine tilts her head, studying him with that same infuriating gentleness, and slowly, so slowly, she laces her fingers with his. The gesture is domestic, almost innocent. It devastates him still.
Her thumb strokes once over the inside of his wrist. Once.
Erik’s shoulders tense, spine drawing taut as a bowstring pulled too far. For a fleeting, humiliating moment, he must look away, jaw clenched, blue eyes shuttered as though he might master himself through sheer will alone. His telltale crack is showing through, and he must remain. Erik has faced mobs, endured ridicule, survived solitude so profound it hollowed him from the inside out—yet this, this, is what undoes him.
“Christine,” he says again, her name unraveling on his tongue. “If you continue, I will not be… myself.”
She does not withdraw.
Instead, she shifts her weight minutely, her skirts as if whispering, her body warm and unmistakably present against him. Her free hand rises, hesitant only for a breath, before resting against his chest once more. She feels his heart race beneath her palm, the erratic cadence of it, and something in her expression softens further, deepening into something almost solemn.
“Then be,” she replies simply.
The words strike him with more force than any cruelty ever has.
Erik’s hand lifts of its own accord, ungloved fingers brushing her waist, the curve of her corseted form fitting far too perfectly beneath his touch. He does not pull her closer. He should not. He knows he should not. Yet his thumb presses there, just enough to confirm that she is indeed really there just inches away from his face, hands touching and faces a shade of beetroot, burning with desires and realizations, that this warmth is not another elaborate, cruel figment of his imagination.
She inhales sharply. He makes sure that he has not gone overboard with his reaction and disrupt the moment.
The candle sputters, flame guttering low, dimming the room in a deep shade of sunset orange, shadows swallowing the stone and dancing onto slates of rock and water ripples, leaving only the two of them suspended in a world narrowed to heartbeat and unsaid desires. Erik leans forward until his forehead rests against hers, mask brushing her skin. He trembles, the control he prizes so dearly slipping like sand through his fingers.
“I have wanted this,” he admits, the words wrenched from somewhere deep and long-buried. “Not… this precisely. But to be touched without revulsion. This almost feels like a fever dream.”
Christine’s hand slides upward, fingers threading briefly into his hair at the nape of his neck. The contact is reverent, worshipful, almost.
“There is no pity here,” she whispers.
Something inside him gives way, yet not entirely, but enough that his breath shudders free, his hold on himself growing perilously thin. He turns his face slightly, pressing the unmasked side of his cheek into her palm, eyes closed, surrendering to the simple truth of her touch. The dignity he clings to, he wants to believe, does not vanish completely but merely bends, reshaping itself around this moment that he was permitted to just feel. To be human.
If this is his ruin, Erik thinks dimly, it is certainly a gentle one.
And for now, this suspended, candlelit heartbeat, he allows himself to remain exactly where he is: not a tyrant completely but a mere man trembling on the edge of being undone, just barely held together by the warmth of a woman who does not yet know how deeply she has already claimed him. Not even words, not even music notes are enough to put this moment and the fuzzy feeling growing bare in his chest into words.
Oh Christine. His love. His saving grace. The burning desire deepens, wavering yet, despite the silent moment and their lack of a verbal conversation and an exchange for words, and so he dreads that this physical intimacy between them two is a finite moment and wouldn’t stretch till the end of time. Logically, as a wise man beyond his years he is, he knows it would happen. But for this moment and this moment alone, Erik wishes that Christine wouldn’t draw her hand away but see him for who he is.