Note: Not quite sex, but after almost a year, s'about time they got some action! Thanks, gals and pals, for all your great comments.
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24
Dinner is quiet tonight. If at all there is any talk, it will only be a series of awkward, pregnant pauses that Erik would prefer not to suffer through. He sets his knife down beside his plate, and when Raoul is given a brief glance Erik sees that the young man has hardly touched his food. Raoul is not eating. He is staring hard at Erik, in a manner only a spoiled young Vicomte will when something is not to his satisfaction. Erik's left brow arches, as it always does when regarding his reluctant prisoner, and smiles when he catches the sharp blue fix. It is a glare of the variety he knows too well, and it sparks his amusement.
"You throw fits when I starve you," Erik begins, and a flicker of desperation passes Raoul's expression, as if he is so sure Erik will tune him out again. "You try to fight me, you declare your utter loathing of my very being, and yet when I give you a meal, and allow you to eat like a gentleman you behave like a child." No reply. Raoul does seem, however, very self-conscious of his expression, so he averts his eyes to his plate. Erik exhales, hard, and massages the bridge of his nose. "Why are you not eating, child?"
Raoul's hair is pulled back from his long, sharply-angled face, and it makes him appear lighter. So much lighter, than when it falls around his face in clumps and leaves his eyes to peek from behind the strands like an angry, frightened cat. He is twisting something around his dry hands, nervously, in his lap – probably his lapel. Erik would stop him from wrinkling the new clothing he was given, but the boy seems too unstable to prod. He does not like Erik calling him child, Erik can see as much. "You'll hit me," Raoul says, hotly. "If I tell, you will beat me," Erik snorts, genuinely amused. It only encourages Raoul. "Or starve me. Or put me in the lake and leave me in the dark, or do other horrible things to me, because you won't hear my words."
Erik's face splits into a smile. One side is darkly and dangerously handsome, the other is Grendel, dreaming of devouring his prey. "You starve yourself for me," Erik points out, and Raoul colors slightly. "Go on, Vicomte, I promise no retaliation."
Raoul stares at him, deciding, wondering if this will only earn another addition to his collection of bruises, still around his eye and temple, or if Erik is truly willing to listen. The ill-feeling has been in his pit all morning, sour, and if he does not speak it will eat him as disease from the inside. He braces himself for the inevitable, and swallows hard. His mouth seems dry and sticky, and his throat is aching hollow.
"She is not coming for either of us," he spits out, and Erik's face drops into a closed off, blank stare, and he turns back to his plate. Raoul knows he only has seconds to keep Erik's attention, and desperation stirs with bitterness. "She won't come for you, not even to save me."
"No more," Erik orders, warns, and his composure hangs on the edge of his reason, but it remains. "You have spoken your piece, and I have listened. If you speak again, you will bleed."
He closes back within himself, an iron gate, a foundation of only Erik and his illusions, and there is no room for Raoul's frustration. The young man breathes, hard, to contain himself and not burst out again. He does not want to bleed, he has bled enough down here. Words will not express, words cannot reach or penetrate the wall Erik has built around himself, nothing. Erik cannot be reached. He has no need of a mask, Raoul has come to realize.
He stands, one-shot movement, and his unused utensils clink against his plate. Erik does not care to look at him, and so Raoul reaches up and rips his tie from his neck, shedding it at his shoed feet as he stalks toward the studio. His dress coat is next, tossed to the side with the twisted lapel with disgust. Erik watches with one eye, and notes to force the boy to do a good bout of laundry the next time he decides to leave his clothes scattered about the floor.
It is just as well, only just as well. Raoul does not care, he knows what he wants, once and for all. In a new, red fury, feet shoulders width apart, he stands before Christine's portrait. It seems so tall now, set on the pedestal of Erik's easel, dark eyes staring into nothing. So much of Erik is in this painting, and Raoul knows he is as well. It was Erik's window to her, to hope. Her face was once his hope as well, a hope he is no longer allowed to hold on to. Raoul draws in a slow breath, and with a trembling hand he picks up one of the thicker coal sticks, and holds it hard in his palm. Black rubs against his fingers, until he raises it and brings it down hard on the drying oil- a thick, ash-black streak across her white face. Once, twice, three times.
Such a release is unlike any other. As if the only rope holding him above the water has just severed, so does something deep inside Raoul. He feels a change, from what was to what is, and for the first time in almost a year does not resist. There is no resistance, and he does not listen to anything but the force that drives his knuckles to press his palm harder around the soft coal, collecting it heavy enough on his skin to reach up and smear it mercilessly over her eyes. His chest is tight, and heaving, and with a cry he knocks it hard to the floor. The canvas crashes from the pedestal.
Raoul stares at it, tears gathering in his eyes, of release, of anger, of hate, and he feels Erik grab at him from behind before he even remembers who it is, and gives no resistance. He is thrown violently aside, passed over. He picks himself up to sit and watch, as Erik tenderly picks the painting off of the floor, moaning in despair as he inspects the damage, like a parent cradling a lost child. It is a new change that begins snagging teeth on the walls of Raoul's inside. Pity. Guilt, as Erik traces her images, the last gesture, a last goodbye to something that was gone long before he lost it.
Fear pangs within him as Erik suddenly turns on Raoul, teeth bared in a snarl, eyes dark with hatred, and like a demon out of Hell he tears at the younger man. Raoul is still, perfectly still as his shoulders are hooked and forced onto the floor, so hard rocks almost stab through his shirt. He stares up at Erik's pained, drawn face, and expects death. He has taken Christine from Erik, and perhaps realizes it now. His chest seems to cave in guilt, and his breath leaves his body as Erik is now atop him.
He does not hit Raoul yet, but studies his face, incredulous, searching for reasons as to how the boy would act in such defiance, in horror. "Why!" he bellows, sorrowful and echoing about the walls of the lair. He shakes Raoul's shoulders, hard. "What have you done!"
What has he done. More than half a year. Pain, bleeding, loneliness, soulful agony. Penance for sin. Regret. It all rests in the image of Erik's eyes, and crashes on Raoul like a cold, bitter wave of ocean water. It burns, and the sudden tension between them is thick, and hot, and suffocating. Erik's body, hard and lean and so much stronger than his presses down, so close. His nose almost bumps Raoul's, and his breath is hot on the boys cheek. Raoul moves his face away from Erik's wrath, so close to that horrible reminder that makes up the side of Erik's visage. It is hot, burning, on his neck and down his chest, Erik is breathing so hard.
Thin fingers clasp his cheekbones, slide over his ears and below his jaw and forces Raoul to look upon him. Raoul jerks his head away, but cannot escape, and Erik shakes him in bewilderment. "You have destroyed me!" Erik shouts, and Raoul lifts off of the ground, only enough to hold himself up, defiance.
"She is not coming for you!" Raoul shouts back, low and husky, and resists another hard shake from Erik, his teeth rattle in his skull and his voice in his chest. "She has left you, Erik, left you here to die, like she left me – to wither, to always wonder why you were not good enough!" He jerks from Erik's grip. "She left us behind!"
"I will tear your tongue from your throat if you say it again," Erik threatens, hardly a threat, a growl to be pitied, and Raoul is dragged in by the point of a hook. Erik's mouth is, after all, so close to his. It would not take but an inch of movement – Raoul does not think, does not consider the consequences. He ends the distance between them and presses his lips, dry and awkward, testing, to the Phantoms. The kiss is hardly there, so brief, a shadow fleeing before the day. It is like any mouth he has ever kissed, and more. Erik releases the other man's face, his fingers parting rigid, knuckles baring out, and when Raoul pulls back, Erik stares at him, wide, wild with disbelief, ambivalence.
Raoul awaits punishment, but for the first time in a long time Erik does not know what he wants to do, or what he should do. Raoul moves from under him, only slightly, propped on an elbow. Erik's eyes follow his, and they take shallow breaths, quivering and quieting. Erik's lower lip, lower jaw hangs, enough for Raoul to do it again, an open kiss on a mouth that has only just this moment learned to feel. Raoul takes it back, that kissing Erik is not at all like any mouth he has ever kissed. It is rougher, harder, but the taste is warm and reminiscent of the wine he sipped at dinner. Teeth scrape against one another, lips prod, eyes remain open, curious and pursuing, a tongue crushing his. Raoul becomes instantly addicted to Erik's taste, to Erik's bottom lip, and Erik to his. He pulls at it, hard, tingling, sucking.
Thrill, thrill of something so dangerous drives him to keep going, and the lock of their mouths pass the longest seconds the Vicomte has ever experienced. He is suddenly painfully aware of Erik's hips on his own, and he is instantly rigid, pressed against Erik's thigh. It seems to wake the other man from a spell. He rips away, first from Raoul's apparent response to another man's mouth on his, and carelessly backhands Raoul across the cheek. Raggedly, Erik rises from their play, and stumbles away. Raoul feels tears sting from the impact, impact unlike all the other blows dealt by Erik's hands.
"She has left us both!" he yells after Erik's back, but he is gone. The air around him becomes tepid again, and clings to the sweat on his skin. He clutches the new print on his face. Raoul loves the sting on his face, even as the thrill fades. Pain has never been so thrilling, or so sweet.
