A/N: Written for a Tumblr anon who requested something with Christine and Erik snowed in.
He is huddled on his piano bench, his cloak draped around his shoulders, playing to spite the snow outside. (You suspect that he would wear his gloves if they did not constrict his playing.) You brought him tea, and it sat there until it grew cold, grew a skin. You brought him soup, and he took a spoonful, fingers wandering back to tap out more notes, scratch them down. You draped a blanket on top of his cloak on top of his shoulders and he shrugged it off – blanket, cloak and all.
You snuck the cloak back on, and stoked the fire, and watched the snow swirling down from the sky, and contemplated, idly, what it might be like to dance with him in it, the way the flakes would dust his shoulders, his arms warm around your waist. Your gaze drifted back to him, your husband oblivious, playing as if he can play the storm away. And if he were a god, a demi-god, a Lord of myths and legends, you imagined he would. He would stand on a cloud, proud and elegant, the violin in his hands, and call the snow at his command, drift down to take you in his arms, a princess, his goddess.
(He whispers that some nights, calls you his lady, his queen, and swears that you give him life, keep the beat in his heart. He is made for poetry as well as music, and it has always been thus. In another life he might have been lauded, applauded, worshipped for his words, but you banish the thoughts from your mind as they cross it. It does not do to dwell on the might-have-beens, because if they were have-beens instead you would never have found him. There would have been others.)
The cold seeps into your own fingers, casts your nails blue and you keep them busy, with knitting needles, pens, spoons, hover them over the fire's flames to warm the colour back. You are used to snow. Your blood answers its call, as if it were twenty years ago, a Nordic siren's call to draw you back to that other home, those other days, before him, when tiny trolls hid behind each snowflake and ghosts whispered on the breeze. The air in your lungs feels purer, somehow, but you would not give this up to go back. It would not be the same, now, would always be tinged in darkness, in longing.
You shake your head to clear the thoughts, a faint smile twitching your lips. The fire is all you need, now, and him, and when he is done he will set down his pen, and turn to you, and enfold you in his arms in the fire's flickering golden glow, and together you will dance, slowly, softly, his breath humming a melody for you, the snowflakes dancing in his eyes. And it is all you dream of, all you desire. And you smile a secret, hidden smile, and smooth your fingers over your wedding band, and turn your eyes back to the sketch in front of you, take the pencil up again. He is not the only one to create art in the snow.
