After all their goodbyes to their friends have been made, Erik retreats through the secret door with Christine. Alone at last, she wraps her arms around his neck and, color tinting her cheeks, whispers in his ear.
"Take me to bed with you, Erik."
He swallows hard. He does not need to be asked twice.
He grabs her hand and practically runs with her towards his home. They manage to keep the jogging pace up for most of the way, but when they draw closer he insists on carrying her over the threshold. She remains in his arms, giggling, as he carries her towards his bedroom, pushing the door open with his hip.
Once inside, he stops.
He had forgotten.
Her laughter stops, and all the color drains from her face.
He slowly lets her feet touch the floor as she slides from his arms, and she stands there staring for nearly a whole minute before she turns to him again and bursts into a fit of tears.
In all the rush surrounding their wedding, it has managed to somehow slip the minds of both of them that Erik's bed was less a bed and more of a coffin.
Perhaps he had managed to forget because he honestly did not think it would get this far - she loved him, yes, she had married him, yes, she had certainly never shied away from kisses or touches during their engagement - but he had not taken any of those things as a guarantee that there would be something more. She had already promised to be by his side for the rest of his life, he didn't dare ask for anything more. If she had never brought the subject up, never made to join him in the evening, he certainly never would have pushed the subject. But they had not even been thirty seconds into being alone as husband and wife before she had asked... And now...
He pets her hair and pats her shoulders and tries to reassure her as he slowly walks backwards and leads her out of the room.
"Oh, Christine, it'll be okay, we'll buy a new bed, a bigger bed, a big soft one and you'll love it, it'll be alright. Everything is okay."
Everything is not okay. He shuts the door behind him, hoping to block the offending room from sight because Christine is still crying her eyes out. Her carefully applied makeup is running down her face and he inwardly cringes that he has caused this. He had slept in that box for so long that it was normal to him - he had forgotten how upset the idea had made Christine the last time she had caught a glimpse of it.
For her part, the very last thing she wanted on her wedding day - her wedding night! - was a reminder that her undetermined-number-of-years-older-than-her husband was going to die one day. She hated that morbid ersatz bed of his, and couldn't believe she had managed to forget about such a thing. She knows she should stop crying, knows how terribly uncomfortable seeing anyone cry makes Erik, but she simply cannot help it. She can't even stop crying long enough to explain to him what is wrong, and that makes her cry all the harder. Her makeup is surely ruined by now, and from a faraway place she's viewing herself with a mortifying embarrassment that she's let herself get in such a state - Erik is fine, for Heaven's sake! - yet still she can't pull herself away from the spiral of sorrow she's found herself falling into.
Erik is peeved at himself for letting something happen to shake his wife so. He also find himself peeved - perhaps oddly so - at the realization that two people would not even fit in the coffin anyway. He sighs as he takes her to the couch, hoping to comfort her into ceasing her sobs, and mentally plans to send for an actual bed frame and mattress the very next day.
He sits next to her, arms around her shoulders and begins to hum a song. She stops sobbing, thankfully, but she is still crying, her tears showing no signs of stopping even if she has quieted. Guilt presses down on him the longer it goes on - he's hurt her, just as he feared that he would. Why did he dare to imagine that there could possibly be any outcome to this night that did not end with her in an inconsolable puddle of tears? It was a mistake to think otherwise, a mistake to bring her here, a mistake to think she could ever be happy with one such as him. He cannot even be a normal man for her in this one way. Already the wedding was pitiful because of him - Christine deserved a grand affair with half of Paris in attendance, at the very least to be able to invite more than one friend! But that had been ruined because of him, and now she couldn't even have a normal wedding night because he was a monster that had to sleep in a coffin instead of a bed.
Much more of this and he will start crying too. So he pulls away from her and stands up, intending on taking her back upstairs because he can't bear her tears or his own thoughts. But she tugs on his sleeve before he can say anything, trying to keep him from leaving.
She looks up at him with watery eyes and gives him a wobbly smile.
"Will you read to me?"
Dumbfounded, he nods and asks what book she'd like to hear. She points out one of her favorites, and when he sits down again beside her she gently coaxes him into reclining against the arm of the couch so that she can lay across him with her head on his chest.
She's lulled into peacefulness by his voice and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. She can't help but think of the times she's come so close to losing him - when Raoul was fighting him in the graveyard, when he disappeared after she told him she loved him, and then those long months when she was in the countryside not knowing his fate. Months of waking up in the middle of the night being unable to breathe, waking up screaming from the images of possible aftermaths in her nightmares, long days of trying push down the little voice in her head that said all these things were true.
She sighs. She never wants to leave here, never wants him to stop tracing gentle circles on her back with his fingers, never wants this book to end so that they can both simply lay here for eternity, safe and together at last.
She knows he will continue to read for the rest of the night if she lets him, but when he pauses to turn the page she knows she must speak up.
"I'm sorry I spoiled our night, Erik."
"The fault rests entirely on me, I'm afraid."
She shakes her head.
"It's neither of our faults, then. It's just that seeing your cof- seeing where you sleep reminded me..." she pauses.
Reminded you that I am a monster, his mind supplies. But her next words catch him by surprise.
"It reminded me that I could lose you." her voice is barely audible by the end, as though she fears to even speak the words, fears to make the thought real by giving it form.
She pauses again for a moment before carrying on in a stronger tone.
"And I don't want to think of that. I don't want there to ever be a day that I'm not with you. I love you."
For once Erik does not feel any doubt at her words - the emotion there is too raw, too real to deny. He lets himself fully believe her. He knows that in future moments he will still struggle with believing how or why she cares for him, but in this moment he simply wants to cherish the feeling of receiving her love without the voices in his head telling him otherwise.
"I love you too, Christine."
Any other time he would have inwardly flinched at the waver in his voice, but not tonight.
After a few moments in silence, he begins to read again. He continues to read until he realizes she fallen asleep. He sets the book on the floor and pulls a blanket over them. He doesn't have the heart to wake her, and besides - he is now unwilling to send her back upstairs, not wanting to be alone.
When they awake it's late in the morning she realizes she's late for work, but even in her rush to go upstairs and change she does not neglect to give him a lingering kiss and the promise that she'll be back as soon as work is over.
As soon as she sets foot outside their door, he sets to work of his own.
He's there to meet her when she slips into the secret door after her long shift is done. She holds out her hand to his and he takes it, and they walk home in this fashion, her telling him all about the latest incompetence on the part of the managers and how her day went.
It's when they finally arrive into his foyer that she can see him properly and realizes he's positively thrumming with nerves.
"I have a surprise for you, my dear."
And he leads her to a room that's tucked away on the other side of the kitchen, a room she can't remember what exactly it used to hold, but recalls that it was a sort of storage space for odds and ends he wasn't using at the moment. He motions for her to open the door.
But now - now the room has been utterly transformed, and she gasps.
There's a small bookshelf and a little table, and a chest of drawers and a wardrobe just waiting for her to fill with her clothes. There's a candelabra on the wall, candles lit and casting everything in a warm glow, and a dozen roses resting in a vase on a vanity.
But her favorite part - her very favorite part - is the bed. She's never seen a round mattress before, but here it is in all it's glory, wrapped in red and black silk sheets and piled high with pillows and a billowy blanket.
"Oh, Erik!" she cries.
"Do you like it?" he asks nervously.
She nods enthusiastically, unable to find words.
He gestures to the room with a flourish.
"You deserve a more, ah, conventional sleeping arrangement, so I made certain that you would have only the finest of beds. It is yours, my gift to you."
"My bed?" she breathes.
"Yes."
She turns to him, her face shining with absolute joy - and just a glimmer of wickedness in her eyes.
"Oh Erik -" she's grabbing him by the arms and tugging him with her towards the ever inviting mattress. "I think you mean -our- bed."
And before he realizes it he's falling underneath of her onto the bed and being kissed divinely and throughly divested of his clothing.
He's hit with a wave of shyness as she unbuttons his vest and pushes it off, realizing he's never been so undressed around a woman before. But now there are other, more distracting emotions, and the shyness fades away - mostly.
There are a few awkward moments throughout the night, but Christine remains undaunted and Erik is nothing if not a quick learner, and when all is said and done they'd both agree that the night was an overwhelmingly perfect triumph.
He awakes in the morning slightly disoriented. He feels unusually warm and he's quite sure he's not in his own bedroom - whatever he's laying on is far too soft to be his coffin, for one. He blinks a few times and realizes that the warmth is his wife's body wrapped around his, and suddenly the memories of the previous day - and night - come rushing back.
His head is swimming with the impossibility of it all - of having Christine here with him like this. It's too much, all too much. He closes his eyes once more, almost certain that when he opens them again he will be alone in his coffin, the natural order of the world.
But then Christine shifts and stretches and gives a small noise as she wakes, something between squeak and a moan, and she's really here and this really happened - and he rolls over and buries his face in the crook of her neck as his hand goes goes around her waist-
"Erik loves his Christine." he whispers to her.
