Author's Note: Just finished up a production of Dracula, and I'm attempting to write a play before March 15, the deadline of deadlines. Updates will be slow, but I'll get them out. Thanks for being patient!

28

Erik says nothing, ever, of their deeds done in dark corners, and so Raoul leaves the subject closed. Days have pass and Erik will come and go as he pleases. He always does, and Raoul is left to wait. What is disturbing most to the boy is that he does not mind, anymore. He cannot hope to find solace unless Erik is with him, he is a new addiction of a dangerous nature, and only when Raoul is alone does he find his doubts again.

He waits, and waits. What is the blackest night will pass, and Raoul will still wait. He has never waited so much as he has in these dark days, waiting to be found, waiting to die, waiting for change. Things have not seemed to change so much, and yet will never be the same again. He has let Erik past a barrier, and now there is no stopping. He fears seeing his captor again, fears and longs for the chance.

No thoughts batter away at him as do thoughts of Erik, and he stands before one of the many mirrors, and waits. Erik has bruised him again. Across the cheek, and more recently, along his flanks and the insides of his thighs. Along his side. He can still feel the echoes of that touch, at him, on him, around him. So hard, so ferocious, and gentle, and fascinating. He wonders, miserably, if this is what Christine felt... how, once she was free from such an enslaving force, she would never want to return to such chains. Even to save one she loved. Raoul once believed he could learn to die with that, but now he has learned to live with it.

Where he once moved above the world Erik rules, he has been dragged ever downward, beside him, and where he will not admit he wants to be. Beneath him. Beneath all.