"Carmen, huh? I told you the rumors about Oklahoma were a lie."
Erik watched as Christine and Meg studied a flyer that had been posted to the bulletin board in the lobby of the university's music building.
"Thank God. I was in a performance of that in high school. Those songs were stuck in my head for years."
"So, are you going to audition for the lead?" Meg asked.
"I definitely want to try. It would be such a fun role! I adore this opera."
"Weren't you talking about maybe auditioning for a dancer spot this semester, since you've had less chances to perform with that? You are minoring in dance, after all."
"Well… Yeah… But, but… It's Carmen!"
Erik smirked at her petulant defensiveness, complete with lower lip stuck out in a pout.
Christine relaxed her pout quickly and continued. "Honestly I'll probably just audition for both and see what I get."
"Boy. You're gonna be busy these next few weeks…"
"The life of a performance major," Christine sighed melodramatically, holding a hand to her forehead for effect. Her eyes then strayed away from Meg's face and focused on something behind her. "Incoming."
Meg turned around to see what had caught her attention, a sunny smile spreading across her face as she caught sight of the handsome redheaded man strolling towards them with a french horn case in his hand.
"Hey, sweetie!" Meg chirped as the man leaned over and pecked her on the lips in greeting.
"Hey, baby. Hi, Chris," he greeted warmly in a thick Irish brogue. Erik assumed this was the famed 'Danny Boy' he'd heard so much talk of these past few weeks.
"Fancy meeting you here. What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" Christine remarked.
Daniel just rolled his eyes good-naturedly and deigned not to respond, so Christine turned her attention to the curly-headed man who had accompanied Daniel over to them.
"Hey, Nick!" she greeted brightly.
"Hey there, ladies. It's been a while." His good-natured smile then turned slightly mischievous as his glance settled onto Christine. "Christine, you're looking even more beautiful than I remembered."
Erik drew his upper lip back in disgust at the boy's blatant attempt at flirting, not bothering to question too hard why it irked him so.
Christine gave him a coy smile even as she shook her head. "Not gonna work, Nick."
"Ah, come on, Chris! Just give me a chance!"
"I already did, remember? You took me to a concert, then proceeded to get completely wasted, and I spent the rest of the night outside the arena, holding you up while you puked."
Nick blanched visibly at the reminder, quickly shooting her an endearingly sheepish smile. "Yeah, well… that was just a one-time mistake and I promise I'll never let it happen again!" he declared.
"Neither will I."
Nick deflated instantly, the hopeful expression fleeing his face.
Erik gave an appreciative-and more than a little smug-chuckle as Christine patted the boy's head dismissively and turned her attention back to Meg.
"Shouldn't you be leaving soon? I thought you and Danny Boy were planning a night out on the town."
"We are," Daniel interjected. "But there's no rush. We still have plenty of time before our reservation."
At this, Meg slanted her eyes at him accusingly.
"Reservation? Danny! You said we were going to the movies and then to that little pizza joint across the street! I'm not dressed for anywhere fancy!"
"What are you talking about, Sweetie? You look great!"
"Uh oh… Clothing crisis," Christine remarked side-long to Nick, watching with obvious amusement as Meg crossed her arms and stalked towards her boyfriend threateningly. "Someone's in trouble."
"Sure looks that way," Nick agreed with a smirk. "Hopefully the night he has planned for her will be enough to get him out of the hot seat."
Christine only raised an eyebrow skeptically.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I wanted it to be a surprise!"
"You know I hate surprises!"
"Hmm…" Christine cocked her head to the side. "It'd better be a damn good date."
"Let's go! I have to get home and change!" Meg demanded suddenly, grabbing Daniel's arm and starting to drag him towards the door.
"I, uh, guess we're leaving, then," Daniel stated, hopping forward and stumbling slightly in an attempt to keep up with Meg's frantic strides.
"Don't stay out too late!" Nick called out to them teasingly.
"And don't do drugs!" Christine added in. They received a rather crude hand-gesture from Meg in response, which only caused them to double over in laughter.
"So, since we've been so abruptly abandoned…" Nick began hopefully, slinging an arm around Christine's shoulder. "How about we go out for some dinner of our own?"
Christine slid out from under his grasp, softening the sting of her rejection by grasping his hand as she did. "Sorry, Nick, but I really need to get home and start working on my audition piece."
He made a petulant face at her. "Seriously? You can't just put it off for a few hours?"
Christine only gave him an apologetic smile, releasing his hand and turning to walk away.
"Wait! At least let me walk you home. I've read the newspaper reports about all the stuff going on with your dad, and I wouldn't feel right just letting you go by yourself."
Christine turned to face him, her expression softening at the genuine concern in his voice, and squeezed his hand reassuringly. "Don't worry, Nick. I promise you I'm a whole lot safer at the moment than you are!" And with that enigmatic piece of information, she headed out the door of the music building and onto the street.
"Your confidence in me is overwhelming," a voice remarked dryly to Christine's left. She jumped, unable to stop her head from turning instinctively to locate the source of the voice even as she realized it would be useless.
"Dammit, Erik!" she exclaimed irately, clutching at her chest. "Give a girl some warning, would you?"
"My apologies. It was not my intent to startle you."
"Uh huh… I'll just bet it wasn't…" His darkly amused chuckle seemed to float around her, not coming from any particular direction. "I'm starting to wish I'd have taken Nick up on his offer to walk me home. It might have kept you from scaring the life out of me and then laughing about it."
"Not to mention it would have made his day. The boy seems quite taken with you." Erik's voice held a strange tone in it that Christine couldn't quite place.
"Nick's taken with anything possessing breasts. I just happened to be the closest thing to him which met that criterion," Christine remarked with a shrug.
There was a pause as Erik digested this. "You seemed to be on quite friendly terms with him," he then said, making it sound half-way between a statement and a question.
"Well, sure. Nick's a sweetheart," Christine explained, wondering what had caught Erik's interest enough to have him actually initiating a conversation outside of the apartment. "But he's also a total party-boy, and much too interested in girls to narrow his focus down to any particular one."
"And yet you went out with him…"
"Well, sure! I didn't see anything wrong with going to a concert with the guy."
"So all one has to do to gain your affections is bribe you with concert tickets?"
Christine searched his voice for any signs of disapproval or contempt, but Erik was extremely good at masking his emotions and let no hint of what he was feeling bleed through. Still, his comment had raised her hackles, and she found herself responding rather defensively.
"It was just one date! I didn't screw him for his tickets or anything, if that's what you're trying to insinuate. Not that it would be any of your business if I had," she snapped. "And those tickets were fourth row center to the Rolling Stones, for the record, so really I could think of worse things to prostitute myself for," she declared, pointing a finger accusingly in the general direction his last comment had come from, somewhere in the vicinity of a large trash can.
A middle-aged couple that had just turned onto the street stopped in their tracks and watched Christine's outburst nervously. She dropped her arm, blushing, as soon as she noticed her audience.
"Um, sorry. Those dumpsters can just get so cheeky with you! Though it's the recycling bins that you really have to worry about. Pretentious bastards, the lot of them." She gave them a cheerful smile and then hurried past before they could respond.
"Should I be freaked out by the fact that I can actually feel your incredulous stare?" she asked as soon as she had gotten a safe distance away from the couple.
"I'm sorry," Erik responded after a pause. "It's just that your reaction surprised me."
"You expected me to be mortified and stammer out some kind of excuse?"
"Perhaps. I certainly wasn't expecting you to make a joke of your seeming schizophrenia and then skip merrily away."
"Eh, it's not like I'll ever see those people again, so why not make a joke out of it?" Christine asked, shrugging indifferently. "People waste their lives away, worrying too much about what everyone else thinks of them."
"An easy enough statement to make when all you have to do is smile and people instantly adore you," Erik murmured bitterly to himself, too quietly for Christine to hear.
They walked on in silence for a while before Christine suddenly raised her head questioningly. "Why is it that no one but me seems to actually hear your side of the conversation, anyway?"
"Because my words are only for you, Christine…" he whispered, pitching his voice directly into her ear and smirking in satisfaction at the slight shiver that rolled down her spine.
"So you're a ventriloquist, then?"
"Among other things, yes." This time his words came from below her, as if he were lying on the sidewalk beneath her feet. Christine actually stumbled slightly in an attempt to keep from stepping on him before she realized what she was doing and crossed her arms with a huff.
"Other things?" she echoed once she'd regained her balance, cocking her head to the side in interest. "Such as…?"
"Throughout my life I've worked as a stone-mason, architect, composer, musician, artist, magician, pick-pocket—"
"Hold up. A magician? As in, pick-a-card, any-card, watch-me-pull-a-small-fluffy-rodent-from-my-hat magician?"
"Honestly?" Erik questioned incredulously. "Out of all those, that is what you choose to comment upon?"
"I'm sorry, it's just a little hard for me to picture you pulling a quarter from somebody's ear!"
"Which is good, because I would never stoop to such demeaning parlor tricks. And I happen to detest small fluffy rodents." His voice came out of the branches of a nearby tree, seeming for all the world as if the squirrel that was warily watching Christine pass it by had just spoken.
Christine's spirited laughter startled the squirrel into scurrying up to the top of the tree for refuge.
"Wow, Erik," she gasped out once her laughter had died down a little. "That's amazing! Ever considered working as a professional ventriloquist or something?"
Erik was unable to take his eyes away from the luminous smile across her face. "I'm actually rather content with my current line of work right now."
Christine glanced down and bit her lip, cursing, not for the first time, that her fair complexion made her blushes so easily visible. They had made it to their apartment building by that time and walked through the entrance in silence, the only sound that interrupted their reveries coming in the form of some sort of vicious snarl from directly behind Christine as she passed by the door of a neighbor who was known for her notoriously unfriendly Rottweilers. The noise had her bolting up two flights of steps, thinking that one the dogs had gotten loose, before she realized it was just Erik messing with her again.
She was still panting from fear and exertion by the time she rounded the corner that threw her apartment into view, unsurprised to see Erik holding the door open for her like he did every day. The only noticeable difference about him was the satisfied grin plastered on his lips.
"Sneaky rat bastard…" she muttered to herself, walking up to him with her eyes narrowed threateningly and shoving lightly on his chest. "Don't do that!"
Erik froze in place, the smirk instantly flying off his face and all his muscles tensing until his chest felt like marble beneath Christine's fingertips. She winced internally, having forgotten his discomfort with physical contact, but kept her face trained in a playfully irritated scowl and let her hands remain on his chest as she continued to lecture him.
"And don't look so smug about it, either! I'm an extremely jumpy person, so scaring me is no great accomplishment, I assure you!" With an indignant snort, she carefully drew her hands back and stomped away to set her things down.
Erik stood where he was, letting his shock at her touch slowly ebb away, before he finally relaxed his tense stance. "I'm terribly sorry I upset you, Christine, but, really, your reaction was priceless."
"I swear… How the hell did I end up with a ventriloquist ninja wannabe as my bodyguard?" Despite her angry grumbling, Christine had to turn away to keep Erik from seeing her grin.
"Overwhelming luck?" Erik asked, throwing his words to come from a photo of Meg and Christine sitting on the entertainment center and mimicking the brunette's voice to perfection.
"That's it! I'm banishing you to your room! And I'm not letting you out until you promise to stop screwing with my head!" Christine shouted, placing her hands on her hips and trying not to choke on her laughter.
"As you wish, ma chère," he stated with a dignified bow, shooting her one last grin before he turned and shut himself into his bedroom.
"Though I honestly don't see what good putting a door between us is going to do you," his voice declared from behind her.
Christine slapped a hand to her head with a groan, then shoved a CD into her stereo and turned it up full blast to drown him out.
Erik reclined onto his bed with a grin, bringing his hands up to rest against the part of his chest that Christine had touched and trying to remember the last time he had smiled so much in a single evening.