A/N: Last-minute entry for Not A Ghost3's 2nd Annual Phantom Christmas Oneshot Contest. :)

"I think that this will be a better year," Christine declared over a shared bottle of cheap champagne. "It has to be."

"I shall certainly drink to that." Meg touched her glass to Christine's with a clink, and they both sipped at the bubbling liquor.

It was not long after when the Angel of Music first appeared.

Perhaps "appeared" was the wrong word, as he was only a disembodied voice, a commanding presence. But he had heard potential in Christine's singing, and he wished to tutor her, and he was nothing short of the answer to her prayers. She threw herself into their lessons and never looked back.

Then. Then! She landed her first starring role, thanks to a sheer stroke of luck and a mouthy friend. She managed to overcome her nerves and her nausea, and she sang Hannibal to a packed house (but not for the packed house—no, it was only her ethereal teacher for whom she sang). She was a starlet on the rise, and no longer would she be defined by her shyness, her foreignness, her lingering grief over her father's passing.

And then the Angel of Music, that most transcendental of beings, appeared in her dressing-room mirror.

He had not descended from heaven, it turned out, but rather ascended from the clammy bowels of the earth. He took her down there and shattered her every preconceived notion of him, and then he returned her to the Opera with her naiveté no longer intact.

She was still reeling from her trip to his lair when Meg rushed in to tell her the news: Carlotta was to play the lead in Il Muto, against the Opera Ghost's demands, and he now threatened disastrous consequences as a result.

When she was alone in her room once more, Christine paced with a nervous energy and considered how she might respond. They had built so much together, she and the Opera Ghost, over the better part of a year. She could not stomach the thought of it being demolished.

She was afraid of him, certainly. How quickly he had turned on her, once she'd removed his mask! But now, in hindsight, she saw how invasive her maneuver had been. She had stripped him of his safeguard, rendered him weak before her.

For he was not an angel, not a spectre, but a man: a man of blood and flesh, only the flesh was so grotesquely gnarled and bloated beyond imagination that he had elevated himself to a supernatural being, perhaps out of self-preservation. After all, there had been no mistaking the despairing hatred in his eyes and his voice as he spoke of his physical curse.

Yes, she feared his temper and—against her better judgment—his face, but this turn of events simply would not do. She knocked on the dressing-room mirror and called to him quietly. "Angel? Are you there?"

Silence.

"Angel, I must speak with you."

Again there was no answer. She huffed and drew closer to the mirror. "Very well, then. I shall simply have to determine how this contraption works." She began to run her hands along the frame, searching for some sort of latch or lever.

"I am no angel, mademoiselle." The muted reply seemed to drift from every shadowed corner of the room. Even now, with the man's distorted face fresh in her memory, she still found herself entranced by his tender voice, its silken authority. For several seconds, it robbed her of breath and movement.

She gathered the strength to reply, and she balled her hands into fists to still their shaking. "What is it that I ought to call you, then, monsieur?"

A pause. "You may address me as Erik, provided that you keep this information to yourself."

"Yes, monsieur."

There was a soft click, and the mirror opened to reveal his black-clad figure. He was still imposing in cloak and hat and mask, but his posture seemed softer around the edges, slackened by a sort of resignation. His mouth formed a firm line as he glared through the white half-mask.

Christine struggled to compose herself. "Is it true," she asked, "that you have demanded I play the lead in Il Muto?"

His expression went unchanged. "And if I have, what of it?"

She could barely control the trembling in her voice. "Then I must insist that you recant your demands at once."

He quietly stepped into her dressing-room, one heavy black boot after the other, and she forgot how to breathe.

"I will not be told how to run my Opera," he said, his voice laced with warning. "Indeed, is this how you show your gratitude to your tutor?"

"I do not mean to be impertinent," she assured him, "only fair. Carlotta has earned her place at the top—and so, too, shall I. I do not wish for anyone intercede on my behalf, and"—she swallowed—"and I will be forced to discontinue our lessons should such interference persist."

His irises flared, and his fingers curled inward at his sides. The sight made her heart beat in triplicate. She hastened to add, "I should very much like to continue our lessons otherwise, if you would grant me that. Though you've already done so much, and I scarcely know how to repay you."

"Do not insult me," he snapped. "I do not instruct you because I expect recompense."

"Then why?"

"Now you are most certainly being impertinent."

"I'm sorry." She quickly glanced down at her feet.

He was silent in turn. At length, he stepped back into the mirror, turning back to her in what seemed like an afterthought. "I will consider your terms," he said. "You may await my further correspondence."

He had just begun to seal the mirror when impulse seized her. "Angel?"

"Not an angel, my dear, as you have plainly seen." He made a slight gesture toward his face.

Christine nodded slowly. "Erik."

"Yes."

"Will you allow me to visit again?"

His lips—half-bloated, strangely wine-colored—parted, closed, and then parted again. "I suppose that would be...amenable," he replied, his voice strained. "One lesson in exchange for one visit."

It became an ongoing and unspoken agreement: he would instruct her one day, and the next she was invited into the underworld for tea, or for a stint at the piano, or—on some of the best days—simply a few hours of quiet, each of them lost in a book on opposite ends of the sofa to collaborate on a comfortable, shared silence. The mask, and what lay beneath it, remained an untouched topic of discussion.

She was not offered a solo again in those few months, but she did not care. And although she could tell that he did, he mostly kept quiet about it. It filled her belly with a tingling warmth to know that he fought against his every ill-tempered instinct in order to sustain her visits.

At Christmas she brought him a set of nice pens, and a mug that would not leave rings of liquid on his piano console. He stared at the gifts for a long time after, his long and sinewy fingers picking at the ribbons and the stripped paper wrapping.

"You look as though you have never received a gift before," she teased. Erik's gaze shifted, and his mouth tightened, and only then did she realize that her quip was not actually a farce. "I'm sorry," she whispered, but he waved her words away.

"The masked ball is next week," he said thickly, an obvious effort to change the subject. "To celebrate the new year."

"Yes." She sighed. "I suppose that I ought to attend."

"Mm. Yes, I suppose you ought to." His reply was a distant echo at first, and then her words seemed to catch up to him. He skewered her with a glance, his head cocked slightly. "Do you mean to imply that you would rather not?"

Heat rose in her cheeks. "I find such extravagant social functions tiring," she answered, because she could not voice her actual thoughts: I would rather ring in the new year here, with you. He studied her face; she averted her eyes. "What will you do?"

"Ah, well. Down here, it is a night like any other, I'm afraid."

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, and she hastily wiped them away before he could see. "I wish you could come," she said quietly.

The masquerade was a breathtaking whirl of color and gilt, ruffle and lace: the most splendor Christine had ever witnessed in one place. The company and patrons—and who else was anybody's guess—went far past rubbing elbows, laughing as they goaded each other into heightening levels of inebriation and raucousness, their identities concealed for this one glorious night.

Christine sipped at a glass of champagne and made one or two halfhearted attempts at dancing, but for the most part, she drifted aimlessly along the outer wall of the grand foyer and tried to ignore the hollow ache in her gut. The hall was so crowded that no one noticed when a black-gloved hand shot out, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her through a door leading out onto the loggia.

It was the first time that she had been on the covered terrace, which ran the full length of the foyer. It was huge, supported by massively wide columns, and it was dark save for the surrounding city light that bled in. Even in the dark, though, the white mask glowed.

She might have gasped to see it here, of all places, but she could only feel relief. "What are you doing here?" she asked instead.

"You said you wished that I could come." The darkness and the tilt of Erik's hat made it difficult to make out his expression. "So I came."

Her eyes watered as she whispered, "Yes. I did say that."

He offered her an elbow, and they sauntered over to the balcony to look out at the city. The rest of the loggia was empty, save for a pair of gentlemen chatting and smoking at the far opposite end.

Somewhere nearby, heavy bells began to toll the hour. Midnight.

Her heart fluttered in her breast. Inexperienced though she was, she knew that midnight on New Year's Eve was when couples kissed.

But the holiday was also a time to celebrate with loved ones, and she had spent many such occasions with her father, exchanging gentle pecks on the cheek as they toasted to the new year. Here and now, she had all that she could have wanted in that moment: Erik's company. She reached out to where his gloved hand gripped the balcony rail, and she set her hand on top of it.

She heard his swift intake of breath. He looked down at her, eyes shining bright and soft, and he spoke at a volume just above a whisper. "Christine?"

It liquified her insides, the way he said her name. It was always with a silken sort of reverence, but now it held something even more potent, more promising: a hesitant sort of yearning. She nodded.

He released his breath now, slowly, and amid the building anticipation, her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. She did not even realize she was doing it until his eyes widened and fixated on her mouth.

It was unclear, in the haze that followed, who leaned in first or when—but there was no mistaking the arm that curled solidly around her waist. He pulled her in so that their chests touched at the same time their lips did.

The kiss was delicate and safe: a gentle exchange of pressure, his mouth pillowy and yielding against hers. For this she was glad, since she had never kissed a man before, and though every fiber of her being had cried out for it, she was also terrified. What if she did not like it? What if he did not like it? What if they both liked it too much?

She nearly gasped as his bottom lip shifted to swipe at hers. She let the force of his kiss part her lips before she closed them again, pressing back, and she felt as well as heard the resulting moan in the back of his throat. Oh, yes, liking it too much was now a legitimate concern.

A hand cupped her cheek. There was a rasp of callused fingertips against her skin, and she shuddered at such tender roughness. Abruptly, he drew back to study her. "You are chilled," he said. "I shall take you back inside."

She grabbed his tailcoat lapel and held fast. "No," she breathed. "Not yet." She snaked her arms around his neck, and she revelled in how much his eyes widened as she pulled his mouth back down to hers.

He came at her with a grander sweeping motion this time, mouth angled opposite hers, and she did not shy away. In fact, she inched even closer as he wrapped arms and hands around her bare shoulders, sealing in their shared warmth. Their lips met again and again, compressing, exchanging heat, and it was though their happy fervor sealed every crack and flaw in her existence until she felt whole: a newer, stronger version of herself, one that would weather misfortune so much stronger now.

Oh, what a year it had been. True, Carlotta still reigned supreme, and the Angel of Music had not been real, but everything was still perfect. Everything, that was, except for the mask that dug into her cheek as she and Erik kissed.

She pulled back. "Will you grant me ten seconds," she said, "without the mask?"

Erik's mouth fell open. "I—no. No, Christine."

She had gotten quite good at reading him by now, and the vehemence with which he shook his head spoke more of his own insecurities than of his fear for her reaction.

Christine placed a hand on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her. "I would like..." Her voice shook, and her heart rattled against her ribcage. "I would like to look upon the face of the man I love."

He went utterly still. His eyes bore into her as though she had sprouted a second head, and amid his stupor she decided to try her luck. The mask came off easily, without intervention, without any reaction save for a choked whimper at the back of his throat. She did not waste a moment in pressing her lips to his ravaged skin. Soon, her tongue tasted wetness and salt. She only kissed harder, wrapping her arms around him once more.

"Happy new year, Erik," she murmured against that red and twisted flesh. His arms suddenly came to life, gathering her up as though he might never let go. She smiled and buried her face in his coat, confident that this year would be the best yet.