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She visits him, at midnight.
He knows it is midnight because he hears the chiming of the bells far overhead, five cellars above. Time is of no essence, in the underground, for there are no clocks nor is there any indicator of daylight. He knows it is midnight, but does not know why she is there. She bridges the door he had thought invisible to her, between the Louis-Philippe room and the hallway connecting it to his own bedroom. She does not block any passageway he would have gone through, as he had simply traversed down the corridor to retire into the music room for the evening, and yet she stops him dead in his tracks. He had some idea of number of days since her taking, but assumes that it has been a little more than a week, or so; the fatigue in her figure is certainly indicative of such a long period of time. They both freeze where they stand, motionless but waiting. She must have been on her way to see him, but for what, he could not say. (And he very well may guess, but to guess means to give the very thing he wants and fears a tangible name.)
He regards her, but slowly, and finds shame in the act. His eyes in the creeping dark attempt to map wherever the silhouettes of the candle light cannot touch her, and it festers within him a longing that almost could very well frighten him. The pale yellow glow casts shadows over her face and the outer line of her body, and the strands of her hair are not simply blonde now, but a striking, gleaming gold. Her eyes, as blue as the ocean and as dangerous as any tempest could be, swallow him whole. And he would let them.
"It’s late, Christine." His words are ugly in his mouth, as horrid as the monster that makes them.
She still does not move. He tries again.
"You should be resting."
"I have trouble sleeping," she almost retorts.
Silence, again. The pipe organ should fill in this space.
"How so?" he asks, and he knows he should not pry. "Was it my music that disturbed you?" He had played the violin in the other room just moments ago, and was preparing to rest for the day. He was not aware that the Guarneri could carry on through the walls as the organ did.
She shakes her head, looking down at the floor. "No, it wasn’t that."
"Ah."
She is averting her gaze, and his mind tumbles into that abyss of dark thought. She loathes you, and loathes how you look, that face of yours which could not belong to any man at all. But not four days ago had she burned his mask, and they watched with a sombre silence as the porcelain melted into liquid ash into the embers of the fireplace within the Louis-Philippe room. She had not said a word, that evening, and went straight to bed. He had thought she was asleep, and if she had been, it may have been the first night that she slept in his home.
And he still remains unsure. It was nearing a count of two weeks.
"This place is…very isolating," she comments again, as if to fill in the space they left behind.
"I had been able to manage thus far," he replies, absentmindedly. "Though your company has made me realise that the sudden absence of my self-inflicted solitude can be worthwhile."
"Oh."
A pang of fear hits him. He did not mean to have such a deep truth escape him, and he clambers for a salve to his embarrassment, but she responds to him first.
"Even after…?" And she looks at him now, across the dark; though they remain a few paces away, he feels as if she is standing right before him.
He gulps. Even after I’ve seen your face? Even after I took your soul, and tore it apart?
"Even after that." To see her again, for another day more, he would have his soul shattered and put together over and over again.
Her expression is unreadable. His eyes must have said everything that his words could not say, for she fumbles with the cloth of an old nightgown (and it still puzzled him why she still wore it, when he had bough her a plethora of clothing to suit her needs for as long as she stayed here) and struggles with her words as he did with his own. It gives him some comfort.
"Can you stay with me?" she asks. "Just for tonight."
A shot of a thrill lances through his chest, and he is puzzled before he is left wanting. "Stay…with you?" he parrots dismally, as if the words did not leave her and would be better with him.
"I would mean just stay with me, as in, keep me company," she clarifies, obviously flustered; she sighs, and that nervousness releases itself as he approaches her carefully. "It’s very lonely here, Erik, and it scares me. And I thought maybe having someone with me wouldn’t make it seem so frightening."
He pauses to regard her, and it does not feel right for her to ask this of him. How much had he robbed of her, and how much has he yet to take away? What pitying, horrid creature is he to ruin something he loves so horribly?
"Very well," he answers, and he makes no sound as he follows her into the Louis-Philippe room.
It is not as dark as he left it the first time. In his absence, she had found a matchbox and managed to light a girandole that stood on the table, casting the room in a faint yellow glow that made it seem dimmer than it did in the hallway. A brief movement draws his gaze onto the divan where she now sits. The light now washes over her face, and though he had grown tantalised with that voice of hers on which angels mirror their own song after, he could not help himself when she looks at him with such beauty.
The space she leaves next to her prompts him to sit, which he does in a fluid motion. There is little proximity between them and though it should bother him, the silence of the room does much to attempt to preoccupy his mind with staves and notes he should apply to his work when the morning comes after, or when she finally falls asleep. But her presence here still is ultimately distracting, and when she rests her head on his shoulder, he feels his body tense. No, he would so much as break underneath her touch, but he lets out a shaky breath in an attempt to steel himself for any other thing she could consider mundane.
He does not know how long they sit in silence, but he finds himself growing accustomed to it. But before he even checks to see if she had fallen asleep on his shoulder, she stirs and her head moves, and his senses may have dulled entirely to miss the hand of hers that takes the marred side of his face and turn it towards hers. He stiffens; she should know what grotesque, unholy thing she touches, but her lidded eyes indicate she might have been in a stupor between waking and dreaming. What it is to die in this suspended envelopment of gnawing hunger, and the want to be closer than he already is. This must be the gates of purgatory: too close to heaven, but too far from being saved.
Then he realises that her mouth is moving closer to his. He makes no attempt to move back, but does he fight the urge to push her away. There is a tear between wanting this and being unsure of the fact she deserves such a taint upon her.
"Christine?" he asks softly, watching her lips.
"Yes?" she replies, stopping, softer.
"What are you doing?"
She inhales slowly and closes her eyes, as if she is suddenly aware of her actions, as if the spirit of her that had flown from her body suddenly possessed her again. She cannot blame the voice for this now, and neither can he. He had no desire to make her do such a thing, and though the thought of it lies dormant within him, it is a gift he knows he cannot have.
"I don’t know," she answers, earnestly.
But before he could respond or even stand, she leans forward, and takes his thin, gnarled lips in hers. His heart implodes in his chest, and his whole body stops; he cannot tell if it is panic that roots him there or a glee that completely ceases the function of the body, but he cannot relish in it as much as he would want to. For some time, there is no movement but the flickering of the candles.
Then he pushes her away, almost abruptly.
"No," he breathes, and the terror sets in, almost dead. "No, you can’t—"
"I’m sorry," she replies just as quickly, her eyes filled with something he would not want to name, but scattered with flecks of pity. "I just thought…"
"No," he retorts, voice returning to him. "You’re…you—you cannot be in the right frame of mind, not right now. You must be ill, or perhaps the sleepless nights have taken you—"
He interrupts himself with a choked groan, crumbling inward of himself as the sorrows of a held-back sob clench around his throat and begin to wet his eyes. He had done this: he had stolen something which had never been his and he had caged in in an attempt to make that bird of her sing for him, and only for him. That voice which he loved so dearly and the heart that it belonged to, they were no longer saved from the rotten grasp of his hellish music, of the force of him whose touch soils and makes rot away. And he had shattered it, in his hands! His angel clipped of her wings and loved by all that is unholy, and it had been his fault; this madness of hers and the ache of which consumes him wracks a painful sob from his chest and causes faint tears to roll down his disfigured face.
But a touch grounds him. His eyes fly towards her, and he is struck with horror once he learns she had held one of his hands in hers, and the other reaching up to trace the crooked jawline of half his face, that side which turned away from the light. But she had seen it, and he cannot bear to look at that face which may have struggled against herself to do just this. He did not deserve this compassion, nor the woman who owned its heart.
She leans forward again and kisses his cheek, catching the salt of his tears and matching the horrid shuddering he fights back. Then again, upon the tissue where half of his nose should have been, then finally on his lips, taking the protest of the confused sound he made with her.
"I don’t…understand…" he manages to sob out, against her lips. "I…I—"
He is interrupted by another kiss, and another sigh. She is moving towards him, actively pressing her body against his as she deepens that touch. He becomes too keenly aware of her movements, of the hands that snake up his chest and wrap around his neck to pull him down towards her. Oh, God—to lose herself in the grasp of her touch, in this feeling that no ecstasy can hope to replace.
"Christine…" he cries. It is not a call for her name, but a plea. Why him? Why now? But do not stop. For pity, for anything.
"Please, Erik," she says against him, stroking his jaw as she would a pet. "Touch me."
His eyes fly open at that command, fluster pulling him back as he burns red. "What?"
She looks just as embarrassed as him, but that gaze in her eyes does not falter. "Touch me."
There is an urgency in her voice that was not there before. Her skin against his face is warm, and he will oblige in her command, even if it kills him.
"If that’s what you want," he replies simply, then steadies himself, as if he is preparing to play an instrument. He thinks it rather fitting or haphazardly funny, in a way, that he will.
He reaches to mirror her actions, and traces her face with his own hands, taking a strand of her golden hair that had fallen from the way she had pinned it at the back of her head and strung it back behind her ear. His fingers do not stop there, but instead move to follow the curvature of her neck, the white column of her throat and down to the collar of her dress. His gaze does not leave that of his actions, for he fears all will be gone if he looks at her.
He swallows.
"Erik?"
He notices that he had stopped. She is looking at him now, with an expression he cannot comprehend. What he does see, however, is bits of concern.
"Do you want this?" she asks again.
Yes, he wants to answer, yes; I have hungered for this touch like nothing I have ever felt before, and the thought of it is consuming me whole. I hunger for your music, for the sensation of you.
"I…" his stuttering is what comes out. "I…do. But…"
"But?"
The sobs threaten to break again. "Christine, how can you want this? Want me to do this to you?"
She sighs silently, and takes his hands again. "I don’t know. But the thought of it had overcome me, and it manifests in a physical ache, at times."
"How long?"
"A few days." She looks up at him, and he does not miss the way her eyes gravitate to the ruined side of his face. He fights the conscious effort to hide it, but she smiles weakly, and he is lost. "Perhaps I should admit that your hands are very distracting."
He cannot help himself; he chuckles, she laughs as well. The candles seem to flicker with the welcome disturbance of the air.
"Oh," she whispers, and it may have been the residue of the heated air between them now, but he takes careful note of every movement of her lips when she speaks. "It might have been selfish of me to want that. I shouldn’t have asked it of you so suddenly."
"No, it wasn’t," the speed of his reply alarms him. "It isn’t wrong. But forgive me, it’s simply that…it requires me to accustom and pace myself to it."
She smiles again, ever-patient, ever-waiting Christine. "Then take your time."
Her hands had folded themselves unto her lap, and she looks at him expectantly before he realises just what she had meant.
His hands curl inward, then out, then inward again, as if he is testing the bounds of his consciousness. He reaches out over the small distance between them and touches her neck once more, pressing with a slight firmness against her flesh. It elicits a breath from her, tilting her head back to let the light catch more of her porcelain skin. God, the hunger grows, and it is almost from an instinct where he leans towards her and lets his lips graze the soft skin there.
"Erik…" she sighs his name, and it goads him on more.
To hear her say his name, like that. Oh, it is too much, Christine, to love you.
He does not fight it and pulls himself towards her, and the fact that her arms had quickly wrapped around his body when he did pushes him further into this chasm he wanted to fall deeper and deeper into. He inhales, smelling that scent of her that he had only caught whiffs off, and it envelops his lungs with a heady feeling, to the point where his head begins to spin.
To my slumber, he prays to himself, if this is a dream, do not wake me.
He hears her laugh when he kisses her skin again, and she pulls herself from him slowly, to the point where the lack of her warmth frustrates him. She stands in front of the divan, unfurling her hair from the pins that bind it. From the candles behind her, they appear like shimmering sunlight when they come undone, cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall of molten gold. He must have sat there, gaping like a fool at every small movement. Every curl of her finger, every twist of her wrists and slither of her arms, and the warmth of her beneath that dress that he wants to explore. Whatever decorum that held him back is now red-hot and aching, burning through his throat and chest like a fire that could not be extinguished. Damn himself, he could be desperate.
He attempts to ground himself, though he knows the effort is futile. When she feels her hands hold his face, the lack of focus nearly kills him, and what escapes from his throat is a sacrilegious sound, but something sacrilegious enough to make her eyes glimmer with a sort of hunger he had never seen before.
"Please, ” he begs, and for what, he does not know. "Please, please…"
"Please what, Erik?" she asks; her tone had changed. There is a subtle difference to it he would not have otherwise caught if he had been drowning more and more in this sensation, but it is one that commands him to answer her. It is confidence that he had not seen earlier, but one he wishes to obey.
"I…" he begins, but he is at a loss. "I want you…"
"To?" she presses.
The words struggle to come out of his mouth. "Have…me…"
As if she had diagnosed the problem, she tilts his head up, presses her lips to his and feels his tongue free itself. But this was not the kiss of earlier, no; this one brims with a hunger that both of them share, something they both want equally. He feels her tongue brush against his, and he knows well that he is already dead. He is conscious of her hands, even then, when the move down to fiddle with the lapels of his tailcoat. The sudden urge to stand and tear himself from her overtakes his body again, but it dulls itself slowly when her fingers undo one button of his shirt first, then another, and another, until there is enough skin there for her hands to roam over.
"Christine—" he manages through the tight space of their lips, and it sounds too close to a moan.
"Your voice, Erik," she breathes, kissing him again. "You have such a beautiful voice. I love it when you say my name." And again. "Would you say my name again, for me?"
His eyes are closed when he whispers. "Christine."
Her hands are over his neck, over his collarbone then over his shoulders, and the touch of them drives him mad. "Again."
"Christine."
She huffs in a smile, or what he can see from the corner of his half-lidded eyes. She kisses the edge of his gnarled lips and sighs, the fluttering of her breath on his rotting skin like a touch from heaven. Something predatory envelops him, an ache to move and explore the rest of her body, and it is only aggravated when she shifts and he feels her straddle his legs as she sits on his lap, kneeling so the heat of her was just hovering there, almost out of touch but too close to be ignored entirely. The weight of her body is like a sword through his chest and a conflagration burning its way up to his head. What wretched monster is he to deserve this? This is a dream, he is asleep, and right now, at this stroke of midnight, she is far away and does not know him, in another life where both of them could not find each other. God help him, he is not strong enough to withstand this.
"Good, Erik," she says, her fingers on his neck, over the collar of his shirt, enough to make him wild. "My Erik."
Is this a game? It seems a game to her, and his senses have not dulled enough for him to not pick up the rules. If she had commanded him to do something, and he obeyed, she would reward him with some relief. For is this not what this sensation is? Relief? Or the hunger for more of it? Oh, how wonderful it felt to be called hers. Her Erik.
How could she know, where to touch him and how to make his head spin? Perhaps she had not been as naive as he had considered; but even if she was, nobody could not have been as clueless of the pleasures of the body as him. Not that he had been completely devoid of any sort of knowledge regarding how to elicit such reactions, but that his lack of experience had completely kept these things in the dark. And her—the wondrous, beautiful feeling of Christine—had turned everything he had ever known into a reality falling apart beneath him. Oh, he wanted more: he wanted to listen, to follow, to be obedient to the shrine of her light, a devout follower of her command.
"Would you kiss me?" she asks, and the coy tone from which she says it is enough to make him faint.
It is like she makes him miss on default, and towers her body higher than his so his lips would come into contact with her neck. That sound which leaves her when he kisses her body—oh, heaven could never have that. The hunger for that warmth overtakes him entirely, and those hands of his which she had praised him for set out to work on the folds holding the front of her nightgown closed, mapping the folds of her camisole once that first layer loosens. He shudders when his hands move at her back, tracing the lines of her skin through the fabric when she takes his lips again and his paralysis with it interrupts him.
He is eager for more but patient for her. "Oh, I’m lost."
"Did you forget what I asked of you so soon?" she returned.
He had not forgotten.
Touch her, she wants you to touch her.
"Anywhere?" he asks, his voice dropping octaves low, and he did not miss the way it sent delight coursing through her. "I may touch you anywhere?"
She hesitates, as if pondering exactly what it was he was implying, and then nods.
He holds back a shiver. This is definitely an illusion, and she would melt into mist just when he was beginning to convince himself it was not a mere fantasy conjured up by the curse of loneliness he had damned himself to. But when his fingers touch her legs, the flesh is still warm, and solid, and she is still there. When they slowly snake up her thigh inward, under the clothing of her nightgown bunching up at his arm, and she moans as she clutches his shoulders with a grip too tight it almost hurts, she is still there. And when he meets that heat, warm and succulent, slick, almost sweet, when he brushes his fingertips against it, and she gasps, heavens above—she is still there.
"Oh, Erik—" she sighs, and he marvels at the way her hips bucked towards him and her back arched.
It takes every fibre of his being not to collapse at the sight and sound of it. He watches her carefully, glowing eyes intent when he presses one finger in, causing a sharp burst of desire to shoot through his arm, surrounded by the wet and shallow warmth of her. She whimpers in response, head tilting back towards the light. This is a sort of experiment, then; not that he had a lack of them, but this one felt more treacherous and smelt of danger and lust, as he was at a risk of particularly hurting her. He begins by twisting slowly, and fear strikes him when the sound she makes is one of discomfort.
"I’m sorry!" he immediately stops moving. "I-I’m sorry, are you…?"
"I…" she starts, hands roving towards his nape to anchor herself again, "I’m fine. Keep going, Erik, I didn’t say you could stop."
He nods at the sudden shift in her tone, and he feels more obligated to follow her request, and to release her from the tightly-wound heat she finds herself in. Now more conscious of his movements and that every nerve of her pleasure depends on him, he slips another finger inside, making her purr.
"Does that hurt?" he asks, and she shakes her head; it is enough for him to continue.
Carefully, he begins to move his hand, and it becomes an active battle for him not to immediately release himself when he does. The heat of her tightens around his fingers and he swears under his breath, gliding up and down as her breaths quicken, her hips moving in slow, languid waves that quicken in urgency. That old hunger wells in him like a malaise, a sensation of weightlessness that is both putrid and welcoming but that takes his veins in a fire that he thought he could not feel. He squirms under her as she does above him, his hips wanting to meet with hers as if her movement had coerced within him a dark desire to lose himself.
He is about to speak to her, plead her for more of those sounds she made when she kisses him again, roughly, and hard. His fingers leave from within her and she moans into his mouth, pressing with an unmatched ferocity her soft lips to his own decaying ones. Her body beats against him like a wave against the shore, and it takes him moments of delayed thought to register that the ache from below him is slowly being set free from his trousers by her hands. He nearly cries out once she touches him, painfully slow as her lips against his mouth form a rounded shape, breathing into him. Heavens help him, he cannot take much more of this.
"Christine…" he whimpers, "please…"
"Yes, Erik?" she coos, and it pushes him to the brink of what he can manage.
"I’m sorry if I…oh…"
Her heat hovers right there, above the tip, just barely out of his reach and against the soft skin of her thigh, and it is killing him. This heady rush of insanity, the ache and throb of his whole body. What a blissful demise, this feeling; the split of wanting to stay in such an excruciating state and the release is a fight he could gladly lose his sanity to.
"Stay with me," she says, then she lowers herself onto him and he may have simply ceased to exist.
He had considered those wanton, foolish targets in his long dark past of murder the easiest of prey, for the lust of the body was something all men fell privy to. He had thought he was the only cursed exemption, but now does he understand why it was something worth dying for. His words could not do this sense of elation justice. And when he thought it could not feel any better, she moves against him, the friction sparking heat and causing fiery flowers to bloom and sprout. His hips buck up to meet hers, and if not for her hands gently cradling his face, he would have drifted into the loss of his wits. It is hot, when he had thought his own flesh cold, and he is enveloped in these embers that strike at him from every angle, tensing his muscles in such a delectable way.
A loud moan escapes her lips as she moves, clawing her fingers across his nape, and he still cannot believe for the life of him that it was his body causing such pleasure with her, that it was him—this disgusting, despicable creature—that gave her the same sense of elation he felt now.
His name is a mantra on her lips, and he drinks it up selfishly. Then a wild rush of euphoria rises in him, building up to a point, and his voice does not feel like his own anymore. "Christine, Christine I…ah—!"
And he is lost. Everything is simply white-hot and aching, and then it settles into pure, indescribable bliss.
Fatigue hits him, and it slams against his body hard. She had removed herself from him but still sat on his lap, leaning against him, panting, her hands still at his nape. She had screamed his name, and he had failed to fully ravish that sensation, but it had been enough for him. Tonight had been too much, but he thanked fate, in whatever way he could, for this kindness.
The silence that follows is comfortable, and it is broken in slight movements when she stirs, the fabric of her nightgown shifting against his tailcoat.
"Erik," she says tenderly, her voice just as drained as he expected it to be as she leans into his body in a chaste manner compared to how they had been positioned before. "Are you tired?"
"Quite," he answers honestly; now it is his turn to ask. "Did I hurt you?"
"A little, but I’m fine." She nuzzles herself against him, sighing. "Thank you for tonight."
The silence moves over them again, and overhead the clocks of the opera house tick on. He is about to ask why she suddenly thought tonight had been the perfect time for them both to experience such a memory together, or to admit again, that he loves her, but when he attempts to move, he realises that she had fallen asleep on him. Carefully, he picks her body up and stands, laying it back down over the divan before finding enough feeling back in his legs to stand; it is still quite some effort to look for a blanket to tuck her into, but there is some accomplishment in the deed when he too finds a cushion from the couch for her head to rest upon. He is silent throughout the tasks he does for her, even when he blows out the candles of the girandoles and leaves the room in silence. He leaves the door unlocked.