"Erik!" she cried, waving the letter in front of his face. "You are insufferable!"
He merely tilted his head as though he didn't even understand her words.
"How many times have I told you to Inot interfere/i in the negotiation of my contract?"
"But Christine, I merely-"
"I am perfectly capable of negotiating a good contract on my own - thank goodness I found out about this letter before the managers saw it!"
"I am just helping, Christine, that's all," he straightened his lapels nervously.
"But I didn't ask for your help! Not in this!"
Frustrated, she leaned against her vanity table, crossing her arms. Erik was nothing if not helpful, but he very frequently took that 'help' too far. She watched as he fidgeted there in her dressing room, her annoyance starting to fade. She was struck, as she often was, with the question of whether or not he even realized when he went too far - did he know when he was misbehaving, and simply did it anyway, or did he truly think he was being helpful and good when he did these things? He hadn't been raised and socialized in any manner even resembling normal, after all. She sighed. She felt lucky, at least, that she had a few people who could help her in reigning in the Phantom and his antics - Madame Giry, whose will was just as strong as his, Meg, who was shy around him but listened to Christine speak about him endlessly and always offered good advice for dealing with him, and Raoul, who, Christine was certain, was secretly scared of him but offered good moral support to the women who had closer contact with Erik.
"Erik is sorry?" he offered, hoping these would be the words to soothe his Christine. She was so upset, but he couldn't quite put his finger on why - negotiations for her contract must not be going well, that must be it. All the more reason Erik should step in!
She rubbed at her temples.
"Erik, you don't even know what you're apologizing for."
He pressed his lips together. Why that should make his apology any less?
She stared at him a long moment.
"Just... just don't write to the managers about me again, okay?" she said, her voice softer now.
He nodded vigorously.
"Of course," he promised, just as he always did, and she wondered how many more times they'd have this exact same conversation.
She took her leave of him, and, needing to clear her mind a little, sought out Meg.
She found her in the ballet studio with her mother.
"We are not keeping it, Meg," Madame Giry said firmly. "And it cannot stay in the studio any longer. That is final."
As Christine approached she noticed Meg was holding some sort of animal on her lap and pouting. Her pout quickly turned to a smile when she saw Christine.
"Christine!" she said sweetly, innocently. "How would you like to be the owner of a dear little kitty?"
Madame Giry shuddered.
"A kitty?" Christine peered closer.
Meg held the animal up for her to see, and to Meg's credit, Christine did suppose it was - or at some time in the past had been - a kitty... of sorts.
The entire thing was hairless, wrinkled, and rather disgusting. It flattened its ears back against its bald head and peered at her with yellow eyes full of suspicion. It looked terribly familiar, in a way, and made her feel strangely.
"I don't think I have room for a cat in my little flat," she choked out, unable to take her eyes off the thing.
Meg frowned.
"But he's such a good little cat...
"Where did he come from?" Christine inched closer.
"Jammes found him wandering on the street! He was all alone, no one to take care of him. She brought him to her home but her mother turned him out, and then-"
"And then," Madame Giry interrupted. "Then she saw fit to try to hide him in my studio, as though I wouldn't even notice!"
"You didn't notice," Meg shot back. "Not for two weeks!"
Madame Giry sniffed.
"Regardless, he cannot stay."
The little creature on Meg's lap seemed to warm up to Christine, becoming curious about her. He craned his neck up, and she reached out a hand to pat him on the head. He leaned into her touch and began to purr, and her heart melted.
He wasn't such a bad little beast, she decided. He couldn't help that he lacked nearly everything that made cats adorable. At least, she thought with a wry smile, his skin was warm - unlike certain people.
She chewed her lip, thinking.
"I'm seeing Raoul later, you know he loves animals. Can I take him with me this afternoon and see if he'll take him?"
"Of course!" Meg handed her the cat.
"What's his name?"
Meg hesitated.
"Eric," she finally said, as though she were giving bad news.
Christine nearly dropped him. Madame Giry turned away and made the sign of the cross.
"It's what?!" Christine squealed.
Meg shrugged.
"Jammes named him! She didn't know!"
Christine groaned.
"It's spelled with a C and not a K, if that makes it any better," she added miserably. "I asked."
"That somehow doesn't make it much better."
"I know," Meg sighed.
Christine felt silly walking around the streets of Paris with a naked cat, so she wrapped it up a shawl in an attempt to not draw attention to themselves. That was how Raoul came upon them in the park, not even noticing she had an animal inside the bundle in her arms.
"Good afternoon, Lotte," he greeted her. "How are you this fine day?"
"Well, I'm a actually in a bit of a bind, you see - there's a poor little cat that needs a home, and I'm having a devil of a time finding it one."
"A cat?" his eyes lit up. "Oh, I love cats."
The bundle in her arms squirmed, and his eyes landed on it.
"Is that it?" he asked excitedly. "Let me see."
Christine smiled nervously and pulled back enough of the shawl for Eric's face to be seen. Raoul's face fell at the sight.
"Christine... Are you- are you certain that's a cat?" he asked, horrified.
Eric meowed at him, yellow eyes staring intently.
"Yes, I'm certain," she put a touch of annoyance in her voice, as though she herself had not been consumed with that very question a mere hour ago. "Do you think you'll be able to take him? His, ah, his name is Eric."
Raoul shuddered.
"But you could rename him," she added hastily. "And I wasn't the one to name him, you know - it was Jammes."
Raoul fidgeted, scratched at his hair, adjusted his cravat.
"I'm so sorry, Christine, I really am, but... Philippe... is allergic to cat fur."
Christine looked down at little Eric.
"But he doesn't even have fur..."
"Ah, hmm, yes. I noticed."
Raoul reached out with a trembling hand, carefully covering the cat's head with the shawl again. He supported Christine's relationship with her strange tutor, but really - did the man have to haunt him even in cat form? Was it not enough to have to face cruel cackling coming from every corner any time he tried to enter the opera house? Did he have to live with those same yellow eyes peering out at him even in his own home? Raoul couldn't stand it. He breathed a sigh of relief as soon as it was out of sight, despite the muffled hiss that came from underneath of the shawl.
"I am sorry," he said ruefully.
"It's alright," she sighed, and hugged the bundle closer.
They talked for a while longer on subjects that were pointedly not about Eric or Erik, and when the afternoon was over he took his leave of her with a kiss on her cheek.
Christine, still holding Eric, went back to the Populaire, pinning her hopes on one last person.
She knocked on Box Five's door in the rhythm he had taught her, and after a moment it opened and she was ushered in, a second pair of golden eyes blinking at her.
"What's this?" he asked, staring at the wiggling bundle in her arms.
"A kitty," she said simply, not showing it to him.
"Oh?" he inched closer.
"Mm hm. The poor thing doesn't have a home," she pouted a little.
"Oh?"
He looked intrigued, and she hid a smile. She always knew how to play her cards with Erik.
"Oh yes, it's so sad. I wish I could keep him, but I can't. I just don't know what to do!" she hesitated. "Not even Raoul was able to take him."
Her mention of Raoul did the trick - he was constantly looking for ways to appear better than her young man.
"I'll take him, Erik will take the cat, give it to Erik, please-" he pleaded, reaching his hands for the hidden animal.
"You will?" she asked innocently.
He nodded vigorously. This was his chance! The boy had failed in completing this task for darling Christine, ah - but he would not fail! He would take care of kitty, just like Christine wanted!
"Erik would love a cat," he insisted. "Does kitty have a name, perhaps?"
Christine very nearly said that no, it didn't have a name, but she knew Erik was so peculiar about things that weren't given names (he had burst into tears once over an unnamed lizard that Meg had caught once, and no amount of explaining that she hadn't named it because she was going to put it back outside where it belonged in an hour had stemmed his tears or stopped him from lamenting the tragedy of a life that didn't matter enough to be named). She didn't particularly want to have to explain that he shared a name with the ugly little cat, but the only other male name she could think of at the moment was Raoul and that would never do.
She placed the bundle on a chair and pulled off the shawl.
"His name is... Eric," she squeaked.
He stared at the cat for a long moment, his expression blank before his brow started to furrow.
"Jammes named him," she added, wringing her hands and looking up at him nervously.
"Christine... Has... has Jammes seen me?"
"No, I don't think so - the cat's name is spelled differently, anyway."
He narrowed his eyes at the beast. It was... different. But the main takeaway was that he was in a position to do something for Christine that not even the boy could do.
He suddenly reached down to grab the cat and get a closer look at it. Startled, it yowled and swatted at him, causing him to drop it.
Christine gasped. There were red marks on his hands where the cat had scratched him.
"Oh, Erik! Your poor hands!" she took them in her own, fretting over them.
"It's alright, Christine, I'm fine. Besides, I'm sure he didn't mean it," he glanced over at the cat sulking in the corner, it's hateful gaze leveled at him in a way that seemed to imply that it most certainly did mean any harm it had caused.
She squeezed his hands.
"You don't have to take him if you don't want to," she told him softly.
"No, no," he shook his stubbornly. "I do want to."
She studied him a moment, uncertain.
"I get lonely, sometimes, Christine," he confessed. "And I know you cannot always be with me. It might be nice, though, to have something else living in my home as well."
He was determined to do this for her... And what he had said was not a lie.
"Thank you, Erik," she smiled at him, and he leaned down and kissed her forehead before she left.
With Christine gone he was faced with the task of corralling the unruly animal back to his house. A number of scratches later, including a few rips in his sleeves, little Eric was hiding somewhere in the house on the bank of the underground lake.
With Christine busy upstairs for the next few days, it was just him and the cat, which proved to be... interesting.
Truth be told, he very nearly put the thing out on the streets on more than one occasion, but each time he stopped himself, thinking of the look Christine's face if he told her - and besides, how could he ever turn a poor Eric away on the cold, unforgiving streets of Paris? All alone, with no one to care for him? It nearly brought a tear to his eye even as it tempted him.
It was that Erik didn't like animals - he did! - but there was something so unsavory about Eric that it set Erik's teeth on edge.
He would try to pet the little beast only to receive a scratched hand and a hiss, then not twenty minutes later Eric would be brushing up against his ankles while he was trying to focus on writing his music.
Erik would see yellow eyes gleaming at him from a dark corner or atop a bookcase, and no amount of offered food morsels or inviting hand gestures and gentle pspspsps noises would entice Eric to come out - but moments when Erik needed his absolute concentration on a project, those were the times Eric saw fit to come out. Erik would turn his back for a single moment to grab an ingredient to add while cooking dinner, and suddenly there was Eric putting his nasty little paw into Erik's food. Or, after being scorned by Eric all day, Erik would be writing a note to the managers when suddenly Eric would jump up to the table, knocking over a bottle of ink, sniffing at it innocently as though he hadn't just ruined everything.
Erik once awoke at night to see those terrible eyes staring at him from the doorway, and it gave him a terrible fright. What was the little monster planning? His fears seemed confirmed when he rose the next morning to find a dead rat left on his bedroom doorstep, a gesture which he was uncertain how to take - a gift, or a threat?
It was all very confusing for Erik. When it was good, it was very good! Eric curled up on his lap once by the fireplace, letting him pet him, and, to Erik's delight, he even began purring. Erik supposed he would have rather been able to pet something with fur and not just skin, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and he preferred this over nothing. He had hoped that the fireplace incident was the mark of things turning towards the better for them, but alas - this was not the case. Puzzlingly, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how Eric felt at any given moment. After being amiable for a little while, later that day Eric sat on the mantel and slowly pushed breakables off of it, all while maintaining direct eye contact with Erik, who pointed a finger at Eric while firmly saying, "No! No!" over and over to no avail.
Despite what he had told Christine about wanting company in his home, he almost grew to regret asking to have the cat.
He was quite relieved, then, when Christine finally came down to his house for a visit and a lesson - at last, someone to talk to other than terrible Eric.
She sat on the couch with Erik and watched the horrible little animal as it lay curled in a ball by the fireplace.
"Oh, he looks so sweet," Christine sighed.
"Sweet?" Erik scoffed. "He's not so sweet when he spies on me."
She quirked an eyebrow.
"Spies on you?"
"Hiding behind curtains, standing on top of shelves, always waiting around the corner to pounce and bite poor Erik," he grumbled.
She giggled.
"Have things not been going well with him, then?"
He sniffed.
"It's terrible, Christine. He has horrible mood swings, he only wants attention when I can't give it to him, he follows me constantly - I can't have a moment's peace, it seems sometimes - and he does the most wicked things no matter how often I try to make him stop!"
He paused and frowned, thinking of how Eric had stuffed another dead rat down one of the organ pipes - a most unpleasant surprise when he had begun playing - only one of many sins the so-called sweet cat had committed.
"Eric is- is insuffera-" Erik cut himself off, realizing what he was saying.
He hung his head a little.
"Erik is rather insufferable at times, do you think?" he murmured.
Was that how Christine thought of him sometimes? Moody and intruding and exasperating? He didn't mean to be - yet he managed to be those things all the same.
"He doesn't mean to," he continued. "But... he is. Frequently. But surely- surely if we give Erik time, he might become better, do you not think?" he added hopefully.
Christine nodded and smiled.
"Yes," she said encouragingly. "I would like to think he could become better, with a little time... and a lot of effort."
Erik breathed a sigh of relief.
"How, ah, how is your contract negotiation going?"
She pressed her lips together, considering.
"They didn't offer me the part in the next show I wanted, but I'm going to discuss it with them tomorrow. I'm sure I can work something out with them."
Erik very nearly piped up that he would fix this for her, he would get her the part, and then he remembered.
"My dear," he said. "I'm certain you'll be able to work it out with them."
She smiled at him, that bright, sunny smile that lit up his entire life.
"Thank you, Erik."