Author's Note: Sorry for the delay, busy week here at university! Hope you enjoy and review!

Trigger Warning: Sexual content

In her dreams, a masked figure stalked toward her and pulled her tightly into a kiss. Erik. His name was merely a breath upon her lips before he was dazzling her, beautiful eyes caressing her skin as he scooped her into a dance. It was a waltz, where they spun and spun, her beautiful dress shining and billowing out as Erik guided her across the floor. Other couples surrounded them, all dressed lavishly and spinning in the same style that Erik lead her in. But none were looked on so lovingly as the way Christine was by Erik, with gloved fingers caressing her chin, bringing her into another kiss. When he pulled away, there was no mask. A scream broke from her lips. It was a travesty to look upon, even more horrible when pulled into another kiss. Ugly. This beautiful man was hideous, his skin gone completely to reveal red muscles and gore stretched across protruding bones. The face was there for merely seconds before she was left standing alone with the memory of its horridness burned into her memory. Laughter, loud and unruly, surrounded her as she shrank to the ground in the middle of the ballroom. Her dress was no longer the shining gown it had once been, but once more the restricting corset Madame Rouge had demanded she wore. Christine crawled about looking up at these tall dancers, hoping behind hope that she could find Erik, panic high in her throat and tears pouring from her eyes. What had happened? Why had he gone? Why was she alone again? The shreds of a skirt covered near nothing and the sneers of the crowd were going harsher as she remained searching for her love. She wanted Erik-

"Christine!" His large hands were shaking her awake and the sight of him so close brought immediate tears to her eyes. Why was she so overcome by such a ridiculous nightmare? She could not find a way to calm herself but to wrap her arms tightly around her masked lover, reveling in his warm skin, caressing the back of his flushed neck, pressing desperate kisses to every bit of skin she could reach.

"Oh Erik, I've missed you." She felt him shift above her before rejoicing in the sensation of his large hand brushing curls away from her face. Even in the darkness, he could see her perfectly, yet she was left with only the sensation of heated skin to work for her blind eyes.

"I've been here with you these past weeks, Christine, yet I feel as if your head is lost elsewhere."

"And have you missed me, Erik?" Where his voice was distant and proper, Christine's was airy and romantic. Rose colored cheeks burned at the sensation of his long fingers tracing the skin of her neck as she struggled not to urge him closer. The rustle of cotton sheets against her burning skin was an aphrodisiac with the combination of his cool gaze.

"I have missed peace in our lives since the Vicomte has been here. I want him gone."

"Gone?" Her concentration was slipping quickly from her grasp as those magnificent fingers trailed down to trace her breast.

"Yes, gone. Your conversation with him on the rooftop only stirred his curiosity with me, my love. He is a danger to our life."

"Our life." She had nothing else to say, her conversation with Raoul had been weeks ago and he still strolled through the theatre with a high-set chin. Lurking in shadows, cornering her in the wings, watching from the house seats with his fingers trailing along his silk scarf, Raoul was an annoyance that had slowly grown on her. Having him around was the comfort of constantly having a friendly eye watching after her, he knew all that happened with the theatre seeing as he seemed to spend more time there than even Christine.

"Yes, our life. You must be sick of this sneaking about, aren't you, darling?"

For once, Christine heard the anxiety in his voice. This was not the seduction of an annoyed lover, this was the fear of a man grasping onto the one thing in his life that made him happy. Herself. Christine was the one candle still burning in Erik's life and he was scared that one day, she would simply go out and never return again.

The sneaking about he spoke of was not as troublesome for her as it seemed to be for Erik. Christine rather enjoyed having Erik whisk her away and down secret passages after rehearsals. Wherever she seemed to be after a long day, large hands would grasp her about her middle and pull her into darkness. During the day, she was often caught giggling with the Vicomte over one rehearsal mishap or another. She avoided her ballet duties with the excuse of Raoul's light conversation and delightful impressions of the managers and Carlotta. Yet at the end of the day Raoul always wandered about wondering where Christine went, while Erik carried her off and down to their home for their nights filled with love and music. Apparently, her lover tired of this game.

"What are you proposing, ange?" Her breath caught around his pet name as he pulled her attention back to his hand, which was skimming the burning skin of her stomach, roaming up and down as she waited with bated breath for him to continue.

"You can make him leave, Christine, I know you can. If you truly meant what you said, if you showed him you have no love for him, the boy would be gone and I could have you to myself again." A sadness filled her with the thought of rehearsals filled with an empty house and only hours of dancing to look forward to. Erik sensed this and pulled away from her, the sudden absence of his hands pulled a feline whine from her as she was left alone on the mattress.

"You don't want him to leave, do you Christine? You like his boring dialogue and cursed beauty as much as you like the sinful delights of my hands and body pressed into your own!" His anger was mounting in a rage filled storm that had Christine cowering slightly against the pillows,

"All is well in the dark where you can have all that I give with your imagination spinning visions of his beautiful body above your own, isn't that true?"

"Erik, of course not-"

"Do not lie to me!" His voice boomed before a silence fell between them, Christine sat staring in the general direction she assumed he stood at, for quite some time. He could leave her, she realized with horror brewing in the pits of her stomach, Erik could leave her forever alone to rot in this cave.

A candle was lit and the light shocked her, burning her eyes slightly as she glanced around for Erik. She blinked back tears as her eyes adjusted to the new light. In the corner, near the dresser, he stood in complete shadow. The white of his shirt beneath his dressing robe had given him away, for once it was his clothing not his mask that had betrayed him, and then Christine realized he wore no mask. There was no sliver of white to cover the shadowed face and a nervous excitement coursed through her. Leaning up in bed, the sheet falling to her waist and exposing her pert breasts, Christine wanted to be as vulnerable as possible in Erik's eyes to even the playing field between them.

"Erik?" For a vain moment, Christine ran her fingers through her curls and attempted to tame them about her, but the messy hair framed her face as it liked, and with her attempts soiled she remained still as his eyes roamed her.

"Erik what are you doing in the dark, let's sit and talk about this." A smile spread across his face at her weak attempt for peace.

"Your wish is my command." And with those whispered words, Erik moved into the light. Step by step, coming closer to her with a proud smirk resting across that face, the ugliness of it sending cold shivers down her spine as the man she loved towered over her. His face hovered only inches from her own, a threatening glint in his eyes daring her to deny the horrors he'd lived with, as her mouth hung uselessly open before him.

"Is this what you imagined, Christine, when I told you I was an ugly man?"

"N-no."

"No, no. You had expected what? A large mole perhaps? No, my love, I hate to disappoint you, but my beauty mark is much larger than a misplaced mole."

Her eyes took in his savage face with a look of dread in them that she could not remove. She had not expected a mole, but nothing could have prepared her for this. The usually covered half of his face was a horrible sight of pinks and blues that painted sunken and stretched skin into an ugly disarray of colors. It was horrible; the skin was not just scarred but bloated and daubed with what could be seen as bruises but she knew to be discoloration. God was a colorful artist, using splashes of blues and purples on the sagging skin that held his magnificent eye in place, pinks and browns were the color of the canvas overall but whites and yellows and reds dyed the skin until it looked like melting wax. As if his own skin wanted to escape the horrors he was forced to live with. The shallow of his cheek was practically grey, the skin at his hairline was burned yellow from the friction of his mask, and the entirety of his deformity was irritated with red patches of skin that looked hot to the touch.

It was worse than she could have ever imagined it, yet she remained still as she took him in. A snicker erupted from him as she reached a shaking hand up to touch his cheek; he claimed it in his grasp before tossing her wrist to the side with a cackle. The same hand that had abused her wrist ran up to tangle in her hair, pulling viciously at her scalp until she was mere inches from his face, her cry of shock was silenced with another tug for obedience,

"Do not touch the beast, darling, he is not tame."

"This changes nothing, Erik."

"This changes everything!" With his desperate holler he grasped her thin shoulders with a bruising ferocity and shook her in her place, "This ruins everything! I am not the same man who stole you away, don't you see that, Christine? We've changed! I am a monster!" His frantic ravings frightened her more than the way he pushed her back onto the middle of the bed, sending her sprawling naked atop the sheets. But she continued to reach for lucidness, for him to understand the reality of their relationship.

"No Erik, you are still the angel who saved me in the park. You gave me music, you gave me a voice-" When he interrupted her she dare not move from where he had thrown her.

"Yes, I gave you my music and you stole my heart." It was a depressed murmur as he stared down at her. The candle on the bed stand flickered new light onto his scars, the waxy skin appeared silky under the yellows of the light.

"Just as you stole mine. I love you, Erik." The man before her averted his eyes to his long fingers, which were fidgeting about in front of him. Seemingly ashamed for his brute violence, she could practically feel the pain and horror of the situation radiating from him.

"What do you know of love?"

"I know what it is like to lose the only person who loves you, Erik; do you forget how often I have been abandoned?"

"No! Never, each day I am reminded that it is all that you know, all that you are capable of repeating." Embarrassed pain coursed through her, sending tears to prick her eyes as Erik once again turned his gaze to her.

"You think I'll leave you." The tears that coursed down her face were not of terror or shame, but of the true heartbreak that comes from a loved ones' distrust.

"I would not blame you, not now that you've seen me. I want you to know who you lay with, who you claim to love, and who you are leaving. When you are gone I do not want regretful tears of what could have been, I want you baring his children and laughing at the disgusting creature you left behind. I want you to sob with the thought of allowing this animal to claim you," Erik's voice remained level but as he spoke, he crawled toward her naked form on the bed until he was pinning her down with his weight. The voice that seductively swam in her head held an edge of danger under its silkiness. He stroked her face as tears began to trail down her cringing face beneath him, "and I want you to puke at the idea of me controlling your every pleasure because you are mine, Christine. Body and soul, I own you and no matter how far you go or how long you are away, you will never forget the pleasures I have ripped from you." Gentle fingers stroked her forehead and wiped at her tears as his menacing words continued to weave through her head.

"I love you." Her whisper was nearly lost through her tears, her chest was heaving for air as he remained astride her, a grin spreading across his face but not meeting his eyes.

"I wish you were blind, Christine. Have I ever told you that?" His thought process was impossible to follow and she was growing more and more exhausted with each passing moment. Her tears were hot on her neck and tangled in her shining curls.

"No, you haven't." Heavy eyelids fell closed, but Erik's cool hand upon her cheek yanked them back open to meet the horrors of his deformity once again. Not even closed eyes brought relief from the horror, the inside of her eyelids were scorched with the sight of him, and she realized that what he had said was true. She would never forget him or his face.

"Do you know why I would like to blind you, angel?" Shaking her head in negative, Christine felt no true fear, not even as his fingers returned to stroking the skin of her face with a gentle possessiveness that screamed of danger.

"Well, I would like to have blinded you months ago. So you could never see my face, so you would rely solely on me for living. I considered it, honestly, but was not confident I could pain you like that and have you know it was I who had done it to you…So I searched for other options. I would sit in my composition room and play for hours as I contemplated other options, and when I found one that I loved I would play it again and again until I came back to find you weeping. It was as if you knew, Christine….did you know?"

"No Erik, I don't know what you're talking about-" And she was being honest, even as memories flooded through her and she was reminded of nights curled in his arms before awaking alone again to the sound of sorrow coursing through their home.

"I wanted to deform you, my love. Until no one could ever want you, until you couldn't even recognize the beautiful woman you once were, until you were even more hideous than me. And then I would remove my mask and show you that we are meant for each other, that I love you through your ugliness, and that as horrible as I was I could still see your inner beauty….What do you think of that, Christine?" There was no denying her pounding heart that sat in her throat, the vision he had spun for her was horrifying and she did not doubt he was capable of it. Erik was a man on a ledge and even the smallest shift of the wind could send him tumbling into madness.

"I don't believe you." Christine called on the bravery her father had told her that her mother was famed for, if she could be half as brave as her mother was than she could keep her Erik. He was a troubled man, a tortured man, a difficult man—but he had a good heart and she would not let him take that from her.

"No?"

"No, you would never hurt me. If you love me even half as much as I love you, you could never hurt me." And with that as a warning, Christine arched up and pressed a kiss to his misshapen lips. She remembered their first kiss then, how thrilled yet nervous he had seemed by her forwardness. Oh but she had wanted him then so badly that she felt scorched by his every gentle touch. Now was the same, he resisted only slightly as she moved her hands to grasp his damaged face. Little whines of protest escaped him as she rolled them until she was in control, straddling his hips and coaxing him to fill her with little thrusts of her hips.

Erik gasped as he filled her, shocked at Christine's boldness as she rode him in the candlelight, hands gripping his shaking fingers to her breasts as she bounced above him. Every uncontrollable jerk of his hips sent her sprawling above him as she greedily moaned for more of his touch. Eyes wide open and lips spread in a smile, Christine made love to him as she whispered words of adoration against his ear. Soft kisses were placed against his cursed cheek as she found completion, calling out his name again and again as he lay practically frozen beneath her, finding his own completion with eyes staring straight into her own. His mind was surely playing tricks on him, but as she curled against him exhausted in their shared sweat and pressed more kisses to his deformed jaw, Erik broke down into sobs of horror and apologies.

"You can't be blamed, my love, you are forgiven." Her words echoed through him again and again as he watched her eyes slide shut and her body drift into a fretless sleep.

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