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This chapter went a little fluffy on me. If that's what you like, enjoy. If not, wait a minute. Next chapter has a 100% guarantee of 0 fluff.
Music breathed life into the ancient little chapel.
It was a humble pipe organ, and small, but it was reasonably in tune. And with the Phantom's help, it filled the tiny church with a truly joyful noise. The notes that poured out of the tarnished pipes scampered gaily between the stone walls. Christine smiled at the sound. She thought she recognized it – one of Bach's French suites. The hardest bit, she thought, dizzying in its speed and complexity. Still, it tumbled out beneath his fingers as easily as "au clair de la lune." It was an incredible display of his skill. But what Christine liked better was the sound of his heart pouring out through his fingers – happy! So happy.
Christine had asked again for a candle; not in anger this time, but to help her freshen herself up. He had obliged, and even brought her a pail of water from somewhere to drink and wash her face. But when she'd moved to light the candle, he'd excused himself, and went out to play on the organ where she could not see him.
He will have to come around to it, and soon, Christine thought, more determined than ever that his looks would not move her feelings even one small inch. Not ever again.
She looked down at the last remnant of clothing she wore, the thin slip of a petticoat, and sighed. There were, of course, no proper towels, and she balked at using the well worn rags he'd offered her. No petticoat in the world could do anything to help preserve her modesty at that point, anyway. It was no great loss. She took it off and used it to wash her face. Then, with a wince, she very carefully wiped the worst evidence of their nocturnal endeavors from her body.
Holding the ruined petticoat near the candle, she saw the expected smear of blood, starkly red on the white cloth. She stared at it for a long while.
A last twiddle of keys signaled the end of the Bach, and he began something new immediately. It was joyful, and grand, and very different from the Bach. Handel, Christine realized. It was Handel, though she had never heard it played alone on an organ - the arrival of the Queen of Sheba. She smiled at the stained petticoat, folded it neatly, and set it aside.
While she had the light, she indulged herself in a look around their bedroom. He had invaded the Sacristy, where the priests vestments were stored in dusty trunks, and a few odd scraps of furniture, candles, and other goods were stored. Their bed sheet was a spread of rough burlap that seemed to be composed of sacks crudely stitched together. There was a small stash of bread, citrus, and root vegetables that she suspected were her Angel's food stores, and a messy stack of sheet music written in his familiar, clumsy hand. She brushed her fingers over the pages reverently, and denied her impulse to look through them. There would be time, later. And she would pour over it all, drink it in, bring it to life with her voice. She would be there for every new creation. She kissed her fingertips, and pressed them to the stack of sheet music in loving promise.
With a last glance around, she began tidying up the orgy of discarded clothes, pulling each item in to fold it and set it aside. She was efficient with her own garments, but lingered indulgently over his. She ran her fingers over his coat lapels, noting that they had not weathered the change in lifestyle well. She smoothed the silk strip of his bowtie, and laid his shirt out carefully to fold it so it did not crease. There were buttons missing, she noticed, touching the rough threads where they should be, and she wondered if she had done that herself in trying to get his shirt undone. The thought set her neck and cheeks flaming, and she hastily set the shirt aside with the rest of his things. Lacking a comb, she did the best she could with running her fingers through her mussed curls, and then wrapped herself in the Phantom's cloak and laid down again.
A well aimed puff of breath extinguished the candle. In almost the same instant, the organ fell silent.
The Phantom returned to her with all the shuffling eagerness of a school boy, finding where she reclined in the dark and slipping under the cloak with her. She opened her arms in invitation, and he gratefully accepted, rushing into her embrace as though he'd been away from her for weeks instead of minutes.
"You played beautifully," she said, "but you don't need to go next time. You don't need to fear the light, not with me. Not anymore."
"... You forget what the light would show," he said quietly, "and that's just as well. But I cannot. And I will not forget the look on your face when you first unmasked me."
She frowned in the dark, and touched his lips with her fingertips to stop his words.
"I'm sorry... I am. But I wish you would forget. Because it won't be that way again. ...This is flesh..." Her fingertips moved to caress his face, but he caught her wrist to stop her. "... It's only flesh. Flesh is so unimportant, in the end. Your fear, our delight... this warm, delicious feeling, or that horror you saw on my face – they are brief things, my Angel. I am young, but I know that much. Flesh isn't what lasts. It isn't permanent."
This sentiment didn't seem to comfort the Phantom. He released her wrist, but only to clutch her body closer, like someone or something might try to snatch her from his arms.
"Flesh is important enough during our time here on earth," he said. "It's enough to condemn a man, whatever might be underneath it."
Her hand stroked gently over his back, feeling the ridges and whorls of old scars there, silent witnesses to the cruelty of the world.
"And that's wrong. You hate it, because you know it's wrong. You wish that it hadn't been so, and so do I. Don't punish yourself on the same false charge. I promise that I will not."
Christine moved in his arms to loosen his grip, and urged him onto his back. He was stiff, and reluctant, but finally obeyed. Propping herself on her elbow, she leaned over him, her hand threatening another caress over his hated deformity, and his own jerked up without conscious command to ward her off again.
"You already let me touch you once, when we found each other, out in the graveyard."
The Phantom's voice shook when he spoke. "I was sure I could not have you, then. So it didn't mat– ... It mattered less, if I frightened you away."
"And you still think me such a child, after tonight? That I'd run away now?"
"You forget your horror. But I do not."
A coolness fell over her voice. "Sir. You forget my horror on the stage, as you whisked me past the dangling body of poor Piangi. You forget my horror, when you thrust a veil at me, when you–" Her hand dropped to his chest, and curled into a fist there. "...When you held another hostage, and bargained for my love with a life. That, Sir, is true horror. Not the childish flinching of a girl who sees your face for the first time."
He did not reply. Beneath her clenched fist, she felt the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and felt his fear. For just a moment, she held onto it. Then she forced her hand to relax, and open, and smoothed her palm over his breast to sooth the flutter of his heart. Gentleness returned to her voice.
"...I have already pardoned your true crimes," she said. "Let me pardon this false one. We've shed the rest of our armor. Let me take this last piece from you, so you can finally rest, and there will be no other barrier between us."
Slowly, like she was reaching for a wild animal that might bolt at any moment, she moved again to touch his face. His fingers clawed into the rough cloth of their bed, and clutched it tightly to keep himself from flinging his arms up to stop her. She heard his breath quicken, as though he anticipated the touch of a hot brand instead of her gentle fingertips. When she made contact, he flinched. But still she would not relent. Her hand served for her eyes in the dark, and explored his ruination in terrible detail.
The first thing she lingered on was the bloated swell of lips that curled back in an unnatural snarl, leaving teeth and gums exposed at the corner of his mouth. She marveled at how insignificant that awful snarl was when he was singing, and still more at how the sweet adoration of his kiss rendered it completely powerless. She bent low to confirm it, and kissed him full on the twisted side of his mouth, drawing a pitiful moan from him as she did. Upwards her fingertips traveled, showing her the strange twine of flesh from his jaw to his cheek. Her imagination conjured up the gruesome image of flesh flayed away from the muscle, leaving it exposed in its grisly layers. Over and over, her fingers traced it, divining its awful shape and feeling it move as he flexed his jaw. And then she bent to press an accepting kiss to that flaw, too. She began to speak in a low, soothing voice.
"... When my father died... I was empty," she said. "Everything I loved had gone away, and I was left here, on earth, without purpose. There was nothing that gave me joy anymore. Not even music. Father's death took all my music away. I drifted through each day, waiting for the one when death would take me, too. And it would have done. I wanted death then, more than I wanted life. ...Until you came to me."
Onward, the exploration went, over ragged edges of flesh and strange smooth spots that were too stiff to be skin. From the cavernous pit that marred his nose to the sharp ridge of his cheek bone. Over skin that was thin and brittle as old parchment, so delicate that she thought it might tear under her touch. Up, around the sunken dish of his eye socket, and the whorls of flesh that twisted away from it to leave him hardly any eye-lid. Each ghastly landmark was thoroughly mapped by her fingers, and to each she pressed a soft, forgiving kiss.
"You may not have been sent to me by my poor father, as I believed in my naiveté... No, the truth was you stalked me like a mountain cat, and I was nothing but a rabbit. ...But you did give music back to me. You made me want to live. You brought beauty, and color, and feeling back into my world. ...Even as you hunted me, you saved me from emptiness, from death. No one else in the world was there for me then. In my grief, I had made myself into an invisible shadow. No one could see me. No one but you."
His hands uncurled from their death grip on the burlap and rose shakily to enfold her. She followed their pull, and slipped her leg over to lay warmly atop him. She felt tears stream freely over her finger tips, and felt his breath hitch in the start of a sob, so she found his mouth again and kissed it to stop it coming. He held her in his arms, and kissed her back helplessly. Long into the night, she kissed him. Until his shaking stopped, and the desperate clutch of his hands relaxed. Long enough that his body responded once again to the warmth and weight of her against him. Tender though she felt from their previous tumbles, she gave herself to him again. And it was different that time. They made love in the dark, slow, and languid, and so gentle that her tenderness ebbed away in the smooth roll of their bodies together. And though she did not quite make it with him to the brink, she held him close when he gasped, and kissed him sweetly to welcome him back down to earth.
When it was done, Christine eased herself back down to lay comfortably with her head pillowed on his chest. She listened to the steady thrum of his heart, heard the precious words that it said to her over and over and over. She no longer felt any dread for the coming day. She longed for the morning. When the sun rose, she would tell him what her heart own heart was saying. The peace of his arms in the dark was too sacred to break – but in the morning, she would tell him that she did wish to marry. That she wished to marry him. And he would have to tell her his name, then, because she would take it for her own.
Sleep found them both still entwined, body and soul. And so beautiful was the smile on Christine's face that sleep could not bear to smooth it away, and so she smiled still in her dreams.
Stuff that Erik plays on the organ in his post-coital glee (can't post links so please replace the letters DOT with a . ):
the Gigue from Bach's French Suite #5 in G Major (starts at about 8:10 in this recording): youtuDOTbe/770du8P0UW0
(DOT = . )
Any sampling of the happiest, most regal bits in "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" from Solomon, by Handel: youtuDOTbe/ey_8VSD7fgc
(DOT = . )
So, when I saw Love Never Dies, I didn't really buy the idea that Erik would ever willingly leave Christine once he'd gotten her, once she came to him of her own free will. Certainly not just because of his uggy face. Like, didn't we already cover that at the end of POTO? She kissed him in all his uggo glory, and went back in for more. It just didn't sit well with me as his sole motivation in the act of giving up everything he wants most. So I wrote this chapter to put that idea to rest.