Note: Stockholm syndrome? Shyeah. Second time I've got a comment like that, actually. :)

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19

Over the course of three weeks Raoul has noticed his meals have become increasingly meager. Three days ago Erik gave him dinner, and since then there has been no sign of the other man. Hunger has set deep in his belly, and the neglect of his keeper has left him to idle about the lair with nothing to do. He is alone again, and so hungry. Two more days pass. Before his capture, he had never gone a day in his life without a square meal.

When Erik finally does appear, after a week, Raoul is finishing a bath. He refuses to actually go into the lake, but he still stands beside it and uses the water. In the very back of the lair, where he assumes one of Erik's passages lead out to the world, he hears movement. Seconds later Erik appears from behind the curtains of his bedroom. He has forgotten he is naked, and the expression on Erik's face – brief, brief discomfort - reminds him his clothes are actually six feet away from his lean, bare frame. He awkwardly reaches for his trousers and tries to maintain balance as he steps a damp foot into one of the legs. He almost loses it, and with a tentative hope he manages to pull them on. Erik snorts.

"You cannot even dress yourself," he says, as Raoul brushes still wet hair from his face and slips into his shirt, neglecting the buttons. He watches Erik, unsure whether or not to ask why he has not been fed, or to let the other man do the talking. Raoul just stands, wet hair clinging to his forehead and cheek, lips parted and flushed. Erik only grazes him with a glance as he passes. On the table he lays out the contents of his overcoat: two bottles of unmarked liquor, and what looks like vile of linseed oil. Erik keeps the linseed oil, and makes his way towards his makeshift studio. He has decided to continue Christine's portrait. Raoul shoots a glance, bewildered, from the bottles to Erik. Without turning, the Phantom says, "By all means, Vicomte, have a drink."

"You brought it for me?" Raoul wonders, half in disgust. Erik turns his canvas to face him, and begins uncovering his paints.

"I have no use for it, I never touch it," he replies, disinterested. "It should give you something to do."

"Drunk," Raoul snaps. "You expect me to drink myself into silence, so as not to interrupt you," Erik is ignoring him, so he approaches the studio, timidly, and beings to absently close his shirt. "You won't feed me. I know what you're doing. You are starving me, to keep me weak." A little smile comes to Erik's mouth, mirthless, and he continues to ignore his prisoner. Raoul spins on his heel to the liquor, and picks a bottle up by the neck, looking it over in complete disgust. "You think I'll take this out of desperation," he murmurs, softly. "That I will stay down here, and rot. Waste away, until you can dump my body at her feet." His teeth clench, hard, and he gives a sharp cry, hurling it to the edge of the lake. It crashes, hard on the rocks, and breaks into large shards of thick glass. A few roll over into the water.

"Well I won't," he seethes, having Erik's attention now. The older man only arches a brow, and does not find it necessary to move as Raoul stalks toward him. "I will live through this, I promise you."

Erik sets his brushes down, and wipes his hands off on the towel on the table. "I never said I would let you die," Erik reminds him, and moves toward the other bottle of liquor, completely passing Raoul without so much as a glance. He touches the top, and leaves it there, waiting to be consumed. "Break it if you want. It is all you will be consuming over the next week, boy."

"You can't keep doing this," Raoul says, slowly following Erik's steps. His voice is torn between hoarse, complaining, and demanding. He hates its instability. "These bouts of starvation where you think I'll become too strong – you can't keep doing it!" Raoul shouts, and it earns a flare in Erik's face. His mouth becomes a white line, and something flashes in the narrowed pale eyes. "You can't keep doing this!"

"Can't?" Erik breathes, savagely, coming to stand his full height before Raoul. He has several inches on the boy, and it is enough to make Raoul want to shrink back, anything to avoid the man's wrath. He is hungry, so hungry. It keeps him from cowering, and Raoul lets Erik get as close as he wants, and stays his ground, despite the urge to lower his head and not make contact with the horrible eyes. "I can't? Boy," Erik's fingers stab into the flesh of Raoul's forearm and holds his wrist up, before both their faces. It is little more than a skeleton, stretched over with pale flesh.

Dawning horror catches Raoul, and his mouth hangs slightly, searching for words, but Erik twists him bodily and forces him over the table, still pinning his spindly wrists before his face with his palm. Raoul cries out as his shirt his forced off of his body, ripped at the sleeves, and Erik's hand plunges into his side. His fingers dig into the soft flesh below the rib cage, and wrap up around the hard swell of the bone. Raoul screams, hard, as Erik pulls sharply at it, once.

"I already have," he snarls. "I already have. Look at yourself," Erik scrapes away from the abdomen and goes lower, hooking three fingers into the curve of his hipbone. There is no fat, and hardly any flesh to protect it, and he is able to almost curl his entire hand around the pelvis, crushing. Raoul is still screaming, but they begin to stammer, into sharp cries. "You are skin and bone, only. I have done and will do to you what I please. I have spared your life, but you still serve my purpose, do you understand?" He shakes Raoul, again, and shouts into his ear as he jerks at the jutting bone. "Do you!"

"Yes!" Raoul shouts, hoarse and cracking. Erik immediately releases him, and picks up the second bottle. He sets it on the step, away from the table, and watches Raoul stumble away from it, examining himself for blood or breakage. There is neither. Erik is precise when he wants to be.

"I have done it," Erik continues. "You will eat tomorrow, again, until the time comes again to keep you under control. Take heart, you will become accustomed to it." He ascends the steps, and Raoul settles at the bottom of them, cradling new bruises and picking his ripped sleeves off of his arm. Erik takes a moment to watch, half-lidded and calculating. He is not entirely pleased with himself. The boy still does not understand. He takes one step down. "Raoul," he says, softly, and the boy turns to look up at him, eyes wide with a bizarre excitement at the use of his name, mixed with dying pain. "You are as nothing to me. Do not tell me what I am capable of."

Raoul turns his head, and he absently pushes his damp hair, now damp with sweat, back from his face again. Another day has gone by, another rise of anger from Erik. He is still hungry. The last bottle still rests on the steps. He crawls forward, only a few feet, and reaches for it. A box instead drops beside it, and rolls down the steps and stops at his knee. He picks it up, and opens the thin wooden lid. Slices of bread. Not much, but it is something.

"If you're going to mewl like an animal, you will eat like one," Erik says, brashly. "Be dressed, tomorrow, if you plan to eat at my table."