It never ceased to surprise him, how much he loved having her there in his house - after so long of craving solitude away from others, he found he actually craved having her there with him. He was used to having her there for lessons or the occasional use of his guest room, yes, but there was nothing quite like having her there for no other reason than she had decided to be there.
She still had a busy life up above, but even so she tried to find time at least once a week to visit him. Sometimes she would bring flowers to put in a vase on his mantle place or in the kitchen (although flowers were not high on the list of things he himself would would choose to decorate his house with, he loved them for the distinctly feminine touch they brought, the tangible evidence that made it clear that a woman also inhabited that space). Sometimes she would bring some sort of food for him, usually fresh fruit, which was difficult for him to procure for himself very often. Sometimes she brought nothing but gossip and her own delightful self, and he looked forward even just to that. Each day seemed to have a little more purpose when there was the possibility that she might drop by.
When he came back to his house one afternoon after a stressful day of errands he had to run, he noticed her boat was tied to the dock. A smile formed on his face as he saw it, and the worries that had accumulated during his time out in the sunlight began to fade away.
He opened the door and called out to her.
"Christine, dear, I'm home."
Oh, how his heart fluttered at hearing those words out loud from his own lips, as though he were calling out to his wife just like any other man coming back from a long day.
He found her in the sitting room, curled up on the couch with a book, and she gifted him with a luminous smile when she saw him in the doorway.
"How were your errands, Erik?"
His soul ached at the splendid perfection of it all.
He didn't think he would change a thing about their situation. Perhaps, if he were a bolder man, he would find it in him to hope for even more - but he knew that hoping for things that would never come to be was a dangerous pastime. He had already been blessed with so much, had he not? None of it had been easy, of course - but it had been worth it. Her, there in his house, was seemingly a miracle. He could live like that forever, if only it was possible. Every pain they had endured at the hands of the other, though still regrettable, had all been worth it in the end if this was the final result. Perhaps, he sometimes mused, it was because of those pains and having to work through them that they held so much trust for each other now. Pain was a byproduct of allowing someone into his life, but unlike so many pains he had endured before, this one was soothed by the balm of knowing that she was actively trying to not hurt him, and that she - that they both - would work to make up for any inadvertent pain that was caused.
He knew it couldn't last forever, knew it was only temporary - but the triumph of him opening up his life to someone and the immense amount of trust that she placed in him to keep her safe was surely a thing to celebrate having achieved, regardless of how long it would last. How many people had he ever trusted to know so many of his secrets? Only Christine. How many men did she feel comfortable enough around to stay overnight in their home? Only Erik.
The guest room slowly but surely became Christine's room and her room alone.
He never entered when she was there, but of course he still had to clean it every so often and keep it tidy for her (it would never do to have her suddenly show up and want to use the room only to find it was dusty!) and that was how he noticed the way the room slowly began to collect some of her belongings.
It was a few things here and there, at first - a pair of earrings on the dresser, her slippers by the bed, some hair ribbons by the vanity - but over time it grew to include a number of articles of clothing, almost as though she lived there full time.
He eventually worked up the courage to look in the wardrobe one day (to think that he, a man who spied on others more easily than talk to them, felt shame over looking in his own wardrobe in his own house! And all because of Christine, his seemingly newfound moral compass) and what he found inside confirmed his suspicions - three dresses, a hat, a pair of shoes, and a dressing gown.
She approached him one day about his choice of decor.
"Erik," she asked in that simple way that seemed oh-so-innocent, but Erik had come to realize meant she had already planned the ensuing conversation ten steps ahead. "Would you mind very terribly if the shelf of your mother's things in my room... didn't have your mother's things on it?"
"What do you mean," he stared dumbly at the wall, trying to process her words, but he was particularly stuck on her use of 'my room'.
"I mean, would it bother you if I packed them up and put them away somewhere and I used the shelf instead," she clarified.
He thought on it a few moments.
"Of course you may use the shelf, sweet. I'll find you a box to put her things in."
He brought her the box a little while later, and watched, curious, as she packed away the little treasures with the utmost of care, wrapping them in the tissue paper he had provided.
She felt great satisfaction once they were all in the box, and she smiled triumphantly at Erik as he took the box from her and placed it into his storage closet near the portrait of his mother. In truth, the old mementos had unnerved her to a degree - she didn't want to think about his mother every time she stayed there - it was bad enough that they shared an uncanny resemblance - and she despised them for the mocking reminder of yet another person who had hated the man she held so dear.
Besides that, she really could use the extra space.
The girls up above had taken to playing pranks on each other, most recently by stealing small objects from one another's rooms. She hadn't minded too terribly when Meg took her comb, or when Colette had taken her sewing kit, but she had nearly slapped Francesca when she found that she had taken the little photograph from her dresser. It hadn't mattered that all the items were returned once one realized they were missing, it hadn't mattered even that photograph hadn't been harmed - it was the only photograph she had of her Papa, and it was so very precious to her. Who else would take such careful care of it but her? Francesca could have been careless with it, it might have torn or bent or gotten a stain or any manner of calamity - Christine wanted to scream just thinking about it. It was that incident that made her realize her most precious treasures were perhaps not safe in her dormitory and needed to be somewhere else. She would take no chances with that photograph.
So of course it was the first item she placed on the newly cleared shelf.
Erik examined the objects on her shelf with guilty eyes as he dusted her room the next week. He tried to tell himself it was okay - she was coming for a lesson tomorrow, and she would probably want to stay the night as well. It wasn't as though he were spying, not really, but he couldn't help the guilt that assuaged him - especially since not looking at whatever treasures she had seen fit to store here was not an option (both because he needed to clean around them and also because he wanted to see what they were). He tried to make it better by telling himself that he hadn't been in the room since the last time he had cleaned it, which really was quite a feat considering how he longed to know what, exactly, she had wanted the shelf for.
There was a tiny bottle of perfume, empty, from what he could tell (a gift from Mamma Valerius from so long ago, her first bottle of perfume and her first grown-up lady gift on her thirteenth birthday), a smooth stone from a river (Professor Valerius had died a number of years before Mamma did, but when he had been alive he often made a point of setting time aside in his busy schedule to take young Christine to the lake and skip rocks, a pastime she used to enjoy doing quite often with Papa - so she and the Professor would skip rocks and talk about their memories of Gustave Daaé - one story or memory for each rock they'd skip), a wooden crochet hook (her Papa had carved this for her mother, and her mother had used it to create Christine's first baby blanket - the blanket itself was now sadly lost to time), a finely painted box about the size of his hand (it had held tea leaves at one point, but it currently contained a large number of dried white rose petals - he did not know this, of course, because he dared not look inside, but if he had looked he would have been quite thrown to see what he would rightly assume were the remnants of some of the many, many roses her Angel had given her), a postcard that someone had drawn a less-than-quality landscape scene on (a gift from a younger Meg), a red scarf (this was the only object on the shelf that Erik actually knew the backstory of, of how the boy had run into the sea to fetch it from the waves for her - he eyed the scarf with disdain, jealous of it somehow, but he supposed he couldn't fault her for it, or for how her eyes had sparkled as she told him the story after he had asked what she was doing with a scarf in the middle of summer, for holding it dear to her even after all these years. The boy was quite lucky, holding a place in her heart as he so clearly did, and Erik hoped that he appreciated that - not everyone was so lucky), and a single, unframed photograph.
He delicately picked up the photo, holding it carefully by the edge. It was an image of his dear angel as a little girl, standing next to a man who was holding a violin. They were both grinning, and the resemblance between the two was clear. So this was the man who had promised her the Angel of Music.
He studied the image. He spared only a perfunctory look at the man - he didn't look terribly tall, but his hair was dark and face was charming, especially the way he was smiling. His eyes were a darker color as well, and Erik could only assume that Christine's lighter coloring must favor her mother, though her facial features were not dissimilar from his. Her hair had been shorter then, and although he would still classify Christine as a generally happy person today, this little Christine had clearly not yet tasted the bitterness that life could offer. Erik felt a mix of emotions. He was most certainly not what her father had in mind when he had told his daughter about the Angel, and Erik couldn't help but feel he had disappointed both of the people in that photo, regardless of what Christine might claim. Christine deserved so much more. He placed the photo back on the shelf and finished cleaning her room.
He knew that their situation was highly improper, a fact he chose to ignore most of the time. He knew, also, that buying her gifts most certainly only made the situation worse - what reason could he cobble together to justify buying her presents? They were not courting, it was not a gift-giving holiday, either. But... If a finely wrapped box happened to appear on her bed one day, and if there happened to be a silver picture frame inside (with a sturdy glass to keep even the most fragile and important of photos quite safe), and if he just so happened to notice the next time he was dusting that she had used said silver frame to store the photograph of her and her father, well... Neither one of them made mention of it. They were already so far past any semblance of propriety, were they not? What was a gift here or there?
Although he tried to ignore it as best he could, Erik was aware that she was spending a great deal of time with Raoul as well. He couldn't complain, he supposed - was she not already incredibly generous with how much time she spent in his home? Besides, he couldn't take her places that the boy could - or even if he could, she probably wouldn't want to be seen there with a masked man.
"How was your day yesterday? With the boy?" he just barely managed to get the words out with choking on them.
She looked up from her book, a little surprised that he had remembered a passing comment from a while ago that she was going to spend the previous weekend with Raoul.
"Um," she shifted on the couch in his sitting room. "It was good, mostly."
"Mostly?"
"Well," she looked away, uncertain how to word it. "It was good but a little awkward, I suppose. I think- I think that he perhaps might want to- to court me," she nearly sputtered the word out as though it were preposterous. "And so I had to have a bit of a conversation to prevent that, as it were."
She kept her gaze down and smoothed out her skirt. Perhaps yesterday's slightly awkward conversation could kill two birds with one stone. She glanced up at Erik where he was perched on the piano bench before she quickly looked away.
"I had to tell him that I don't intend to have any serious relationships, not in that way - not for a long while, at least. I just want to sing, you know? I don't want to have to worry about courting or marriage or- well, any of that - while I'm trying to focus on my career. I don't need the worry of someone falling in love with me right now."
Erik's eyes were downcast, staring at a particular spot of nothing on the floor. He was certain she wasn't intending her words for him, but he couldn't help but feel the weight of them, anyway. She didn't need the worry of someone falling in love with her and trying to steal her away from the stage and all her dreams - and she certainly didn't need the worry of having her vocal tutor fall in love with her. As much as it stung, it was also a relief to know that the boy was not in competition with him for her affections.
She dared to look back up at him.
"My first love is music, and it always will be. There's time enough for all the rest of that after my future in singing is secure."
"Hm. A worthy love, indeed," he slid a single gloved finger silently over the keys of his piano before his eyes snapped back up to hers. "But what about the boy? How did he take it?"
"Oh, he took it all right, I suppose. A little disappointed, maybe, but- well, I'm sure he'll live," she arched an eyebrow.
"Hm," he said again. This conversation seemed to have a way of stealing all his words. "He- he treats you with you respect, then? Respects your wishes?"
"Of course!"
"Good, that's good."
He hesitated a long moment before continuing.
"Should the day ever come that he doesn't, just let me know, Christine. You should always be treated with respect."
He had witnessed far too many nobles who thought whatever they wanted was theirs for the taking. The boy might respect her wishes now, but what if he got tired of waiting?
"If he ever oversteps his bounds with you, say the word and he will disappear. I can make it look like an accident - or I can simply make him vanish. They'd never even find the body."
Christine stared blankly at him, eyes wide. Then she burst into laughter.
"Erik, you say the funniest things sometimes!" she shook her head mirthfully.
Erik tried a smile, confused. He had been quite serious on the matter. Why did she think it was funny? It certainly wasn't a joke, not to him. He crossed his arms and decided to go along with her.
"Anything to see you smile, sweet."