Inspired by canon and a lovely phan art on Tumblr by Ilustrariane. #notsorry #noregrets


Christine kicked off her slippers, tucked her legs underneath her gown and cuddled into her shawl. In the world beneath the opera, cool breezes crept lazily over the lake and found every chink and keyhole of the little house. The first day of a visit was always difficult, for Erik often did not stoke the fires in advance to chase the chill from the stones. The warmth from her bath had left her some time ago and left soreness from dance rehearsals behind.

Erik appeared suddenly at her elbow, a steaming cup in his hand. "Tea, my Christine?" She suppressed her surprise quickly and smiled.

"Thank you, Erik. That will help me warm up." With a faint grunt of effort, Christine sat up and moved her book from the side table to make space.

His eyes lingered, peering from behind the mask, flitting over her posture and the way she clung to the shawl. "Forgive me, my dear. I forget. Erik sometimes… forgets." He set the cup and saucer in her hands and turned to the glowing lumps in the fireplace.

It never failed to shock Christine, seeing her Maestro do something so human as roll up his shirtsleeves to tend a fire. The rising steam from her tea smelled lovely, and she inhaled as she watched him curiously, examining the delicate play of sinew and bone in his forearms as he rearranged logs and settled new ones into the coals. Natural, practiced movements.

Those hands seemed out of place away from an instrument. As though anything less than pure creation was unfit for his strange, remarkable limbs.

Within moments, Christine could feel radiating heat and she leaned forward to catch it on her face. But it wasn't her face that was cold.

"Is that better, my dear?" Erik continued to work at the stove, clearing away his tools.

"It helps," she said, "but I'm stiff from ballet. I think I may just-" She climbed down from the chair and sat on the thick carpet in front of the fire and shifted as close as she could while Erik nudged with his poker. In the warm glow, her muscles began to loosen minutely, and Christine sighed as she basked, her eyes falling closed to the rush and crackle of the fire.

The metallic scrape of the last tool sliding into its holder, then silence. No, not silence, faint movement, the sweep of fabric. Then an intake of breath. Not a gasp, but certainly a breath; quick and deep as if in the midst of song, but no melody came. Christine opened her eyes.

He was still. Completely still. Frozen. "Are you… comfortable?"

"I am only sore from ballet," she said, stretching her legs out in front of her. "The fire is lovely, thank you."

His inactivity began to break in his hands. They clasped and plucked at invisible keys and bow strings as his gaze refused to settle. "If you will allow, I would… assist you."

"The ballet mistresses help us. This is quite normal, I'm afraid."

Erik sat near her on the carpet. "When you are a diva, you will not train with the rats. Until then, I think I can do better than the ballet mistresses."

Christine blushed. "You do not need to bother. I'm fine."

"Oh please, Christine," he said softly, rising up to kneel at her side. "Erik did not prepare properly and now you are too cold to sing so… let your Erik soothe you." He raised his hands, sleeves sliding to his elbows as he twitched, wringing and restless. The cords and veins pulsed beneath his skin in a macabre dance.

It would be improper, surely, but she already spent so much time here. The guest room was misnamed, for her clothes occupied the wardrobe and drawers. Her toilette and ribbons cluttered the magical bathroom, and her dainty slippers, all five pairs, were tucked under the edge of the bed.

Each was a gift from the man who knelt by her side. His hands fluttered, petting the air near her.

"My Christine, let your Erik?"

She flexed her ankles and tried to spread her toes. The discomfort caught her off guard, and she drew in a sharp breath. Erik whimpered.

"I think I need your help, Erik."

Timidly, Christine tugged lightly at her skirts until her outer layers slid up. The blue stripes of her pretty stockings with the little flowers embroidered at the ankles came into sight. Again, Christine grimaced trying to spread her toes.

He threw up his hands. "No, no! You must let Erik-" He crept on his knees, reaching out and drifted his hands over her, skimming her hem, her fluffing petticoat, barely touching.

He scooted up until he knelt with Christine's overworked feet, sore ankles, and pained legs before him. He cooed, his hands restlessly playing the space around her ankles, and finally cupped the heel of her left foot in his palm while brushing a sparkling path from her ankle to her arch.

It tickled and Christine's leg quivered. She tried to hold still, hoping Erik had not noticed, but it happened twice more and he only breathed deeply, concentrating. She was horribly ticklish, and was frequently teased for it, but this touch did not make her laugh, but only made her fidget. An itch, an urge to move, but she would not leave. Not when Erik was gently offering comfort. He was a capricious thing, prone to flights and temper, and he might shout at a score one moment and weep at her voice the next. He fretted at her displeasure, kissed her hem in repentance, and scowled when she gathered her things to return above.

When he pressed a thumb lightly to her arch Christine jumped, the echoing jolt rocketing up her leg to land somewhere low in her belly.

Erik looked up, cringing at how he'd made her jump. "Did Erik hurt his Christine?" he asked, his voice wavering as he cradled her foot.

"No, no! It was just… different." She chewed her lip and Erik traced a toe, watching her. "It is different from the ballet mistresses."

Erik relaxed and began to outline the bones of her foot through her stocking. "Poor Christine. Poor little toes." He pressed into the spaces between the joints, releasing the strain, softening the catches in her tissues. Christine sighed and leaned back on her elbows, until one particularly tender spot received his attention.

Like a gentle brush over a deep bruise or the slide of smooth fabric over a cut. Awareness, potent and immediate, focused sensations wherever his touch traveled. The strange knowledge of pain was there, but loosened and chased away. It crackled like lightning across her skin, and clouded Christine's vision. Her head drooped back.

"Erik," she moaned. He drew noises from her the ballet mistresses never did. Sounds she had heard in dark corners behind the stage long after the curtains fell. Afterwards, red-faced people with funny smiles emerged, dusty and disheveled.

She could not say when she had become so warm, but she let the shawl drop from her shoulders as he lingered over a tight knot, murmuring approval until she moaned again.

"See? Christine relaxes for Erik. She is so good, so lovely." He ran his thumbs up the sides of her ankles, just to the edge of her skirts. Each time she tensed, waiting to feel his touch rise to calm the twitching in her, even extending her leg as she squirmed. After a third sweep, sliding over her stockings but rising no further than her scalloped petticoats, frustration triumphed and Christine laid on her back and grasped at fabric, bunching the frills just above her knees. Immediately, he reached higher, kneading until her entire leg was boneless. He gently set it down and raised her right foot and did the same again.

"You are so good to your Erik. So kind to let him help you. To touch…" He skimmed from her toes to her thigh, like playing a glissando on a harp. Christine arched her back, each nerve plucked as surely as a string.

"But, my Christine, I can do more if I can see. Will you let me see? Let Erik's eyes see?"

Her head felt heavy as marble, and she strained to lift it back up. His words garbled in her distracted ears. "See?"

He plucked at the stocking, his lips twitching.

"Oh, of course." Christine began to sit up, reaching for the fastenings.

"No, sweet. Lie back and let your Erik tend you. You ache, my Christine. Will you let your Erik tend it?"

The aches in her legs were better but there was a new, desperate pulsing. Her feet tingled as if they were still being pressed and stretched in his hands though they were both braced on her leg, her foot against his chest. Little stripes against his fine white shirt.

She wiggled her toes against his chest and he clamped a hand over them, then traced paths from her toes to her ankle. "Please, angel," he begged. "Your Erik must tend you." His chest heaved as he slowly approached her skirts and reached under, hidden, forbidden, until he loosened first one stocking, then the other.

Cool fingers over newly exposed skin, barely grazing her thighs as a tremor shook her. Slowly, slowly he pulled, one moment skating over and the next pressing into her, not forgetting the thin excuse they clung to. The heat rose in her, an inferno under her skirts.

With a sigh, reverent and musical, Erik carefully slipped the stocking off her foot and let it rest in his lap. "Oh, sweet. Poor little toes." Light caresses in his cool touch. Weightless. Christine felt weightless, floating in his palm. How could so much sensation focus in one place? Chilled touch and fluttering warmth clashed, spiraling up her leg and focusing. Flutterings and heat chased tiny chills and it all seemed to land in one place. Christine gripped her bunched skirts, crushing the lace trimming and taffeta.

Thumbs pushed at the ball of her foot and spread it, stretching and warming the pains. His powerful hands dwarfed her little foot, made it disappear and reemerge like a trick.

Her leg was straightened, and she gasped his name as he gripped her ankle and pressed her into a stretch. "Do you still ache, my Christine?" He pushed, bracing her leg to his body, then rubbed himself against her thigh.

"Do these, my sweet? So pretty..." Before Christine could open her eyes, wet heat wrapped itself around her middle toes. Cool hands and a warm mouth, tongue sliding between and over until she could feel her pulse echoing from between his strange lips to the fire under her skirts.

He clutched her leg and fondled her ankle, stroking along the hollows and tracing her bones. "Do these torment you, Christine? How can they not- Erik suffers but his Christine, his Angel, is here!"

After he stripped the stocking from her other leg, more quickly but with no less care, he suckled her toes and trailed his mouth over her ankle in hot kisses. Christine writhed and clutched her skirts, reaching for him, his mouth, the fire between her legs. How could he be everywhere but the one place she needed?

With an indulgent lick, Erik let her toes slip from his mouth. He looked down at her, wide eyed and slack jawed.

"My Christine needs, oh, she needs me, her Erik, don't you?" Words she tried to say caught in her throat when he stroked her thigh and thrust himself against her. "Do you need me?"

"I need you, oh please Erik, I need you," she cried, clawing and wrenching at her skirts, her blouse.

"Where, my dove?" His voice trembled and he pressed a palm to the front of his trousers. "Where do you need your Erik?"

The heat, the licking wet heat. Mindless, Christine pulled her skirts up and bent her knees, spreading herself open. "Here! I need you here."

"So beautiful. Christine is so beautiful to her Erik." He lifted her feet to his lap, her knees far apart, and unfastened his trousers. "Show me, my angel. Show Erik how to ease your ache. How to please his angel. "

Her face burning, she parted her drawers and gasped at a grazing touch. Erik's cool, quivering fingers joined alongside hers. Hoarse breaths dragged reluctant air from the underground as they slid and parted slick, overheated flesh. Christine gripped Erik's hand and stroked herself with it while he dipped the other into his trousers, then wrapped it around her feet, holding them together.

"Christine!" he cried, his manhood, hard and insistent, surging up between her soles. Pulsing, she could feel his wild pulse in her tender arches. He clenched them tight while Christine clung to his arm, clamping his hand to her swollen sex.

Their motions harmonized. Christine pressed her feet together to feel him slide, ridges soft and tender over a core of pulsing heat. Erik panted praises in a polyglot of languages, then thrust his fingers and curled them inside her with a wet swirl. Her entire body began to tremble as he crushed his palm against her.

"Forgive me, Christine! Forgive your Angel!"

"Please! Oh, please Erik! I need, I need, please!"

An explosive crescendo and bruising force. Christine heard nothing but a roar as her vision went white, blind and deaf to everything but the savage waves of clenching and relief her body had screamed for. Erik curled, gripping her hard around his shaft as he released over and over with hoarse cries and spasms that attacked his thin frame. Christine felt the bones in Erik's forearm bend in her grip, and her feet were wet and sticky with spent passion. He fell backwards, collapsing away from her, and scrambled to rearrange himself.

Shaking and limp, her ears ringing, Christine stretched her arms languidly and sat up. "Erik?" As the ringing passed, she heard nearby shuffling. Erik collapsed at her side and began to wipe her feet with a cloth, keeping his face turned away.

"Forgive me," he repeated, carefully cleaning between her toes. "Erik has polluted his Christine, but you are still good! So good to Erik! He has never… never," he lingered over her arch, then raised his eyes to search her face. "Did Erik ease his sweet Christine? Did he please you?" He wrung the towel and swallowed, vibrating with anxiety.

Christine placed her hand over his and set the towel aside. "Of course, mon ange. But," she began.

"What? What can Erik do for his queen? His angel? Please, anything!" he begged, kissing her hands and wrists.

"Erik," Christine said, gently taking one hand from his grasping, then she rested it on his exposed cheek. "Erik, you did not kiss me."

He froze, a violent tremor rolling through him. "A kiss?" He reached up, touching his strange lips, tracing where the mask's edge cut a bright border over them. "Christine would kiss her Erik?"

She nodded. "But first," she spread her toes against his thigh. "I would like you to tend me once more."