He'd overdone it with the tinsel, he just knew it.
Erik stood back to study his normally tidy, organised living room. How he'd managed to convince Gerard to help lug that miniature fir tree in that corner over there all the way from the market to the fifth cellar, and then across the lake no less, he had no idea. But there it was, standing in a puddle of its own needles, barely visible with the amount of tinsel he'd wrapped around its branches.
Underneath it, the little boxes, which he'd spent that long, terrifying evening wrapping, sat precariously arranged as in the little display he'd oggled in the shop window this very morning.
He checked his pocket watch for the hundredth time that afternoon and tapped his foot - he'd need to change out of his tap shoes, wouldn't he? Put these ones in the conservatory before Christine realised he was still very much attached to the clickety-clacks they made against the stone. He had a proper pair somewhere, didn't he?
"It looks fairly good," Gerard commented from the armchair. Erik glowered at the tree as it began to bend from the weight of his decorations, and dared it to topple at its peril. "If the trunk holds up."
"Do you think it's strong enough?" The baubles alone were quite heavy, and glass at that.
"It certainly felt strong enough when you made me haul it down here at four in the morning, Erik," Gerard said, his voice low in his throat. Erik shot him a look from the corner of his eye. Gerard cleared his throat. "It will hold."
The tree groaned and leaned further to the side. Erik bounded over before it could take him up on his bet and hauled it upright.
"On second thoughts, I hope you didn't put absolutely everything on it, did you?"
"The silver was rather becoming with the gold!" Erik protested, his masked face pressed into the needles and pile of tinsel. He wrapped his arms around the tree further and cradled the top with one hand.
"Take some off."
"Never!"
"Erik, it's going to fall when you let go, and you know that."
A silence.
Erik blinked.
"You must let go at some point. Won't you?"
Erik said nothing. The tree groaned and sagged against him. He nudged a box away and stood upright, bringing the tree with him.
"What will Christine think when she sees you?" Gerard ambled over and lay a hand on Erik's shoulder, as if that could tempt him away from saving his handiwork from a loud and messy demise. "Her respectable, kindly Maestro, in some sort of amorous embrace with a little fir tree!"
"I'll tell her I simply like trees."
"Enough not to let go of one for an entire holiday?"
Erik rolled his eyes. "Of course not!"
It was a silly tradition anyhow. German, he believed, although it seemed to be the British to show him the extravagant ways of dressing a tree. A tree, he'd spluttered last year! How would one go about dressing a tree, hmm? Give it a tailored waistcoat and hat? Perhaps a cane to wave in greeting when it saw other trees? Dressing a tree, indeed!
Yet here he was, with more tinsel and baubles, fitted snugly on the sharp branches, than actual tree, in the corner of his little living room. And for what? His own embarrassment before the lady he'd insisted he didn't need to impress?
Denying he loved her, however he looked at it, was futile by now.
"Erik." Gerard tugged lightly at his shoulder. "I have the tree. Come away and we'll simply take a few things off."
He stayed a few seconds more, debating that point. The tree leaned away from him slightly. Begrudgingly, he unravelled his arms from the branches and stepped gingerly aside.
"Take this off for starters," Gerard said, pulling a length of tinsel-free. Erik grumbled about his wasted afternoon of colour coordination and endless designs but complied and removed a few more, along with some baubles and several tiny nativity scenes, carefully laying them back in their boxes.
He hadn't realised just how much he'd piled onto the tree until it came off. By the time they had a boxful of decorations again, it was starting to resemble something more tree-like.
"Stop!" he ordered, stepping back with hands spread to examine their work. Gerard paced back alongside him. "That's it. I do believe we've made it significantly better!"
The tree groaned and sighed into its pot.
Gerard inhaled sharply.
Erik folded his arms and nodded, once and curt. "It's perfect."
Gerard shuffled back to his armchair and sank into the creaky cushions, rubbing the bridge of his nose - the sort of nose Erik might have inherited, he'd often thought begrudgingly - and pinching the skin there.
"Erik," he said with a sigh, "you're mad."
Erik rolled his eyes. "And a Happy New Year."
"Right this way, my dear," he said, smiling his best as he appeared at her side and took up her hand gently.
To say he felt rude for sweeping her away from the Christmas Eve masked ball upstairs would be a complete inaccuracy. She carried a beautiful mask in her hand, shimmering silver in his dark tunnels, and, if he had been young and naive still, he would have imagined her his mother's ghost, draped in all of heaven's finery. Besides, all there was up there was drunken drivel and that cacophony they called music. He was really doing her a favour.
Christine Daae, radiant in her new gown and recently curled hair, seemed to have grown used to trekking five stories below her usual, Parisian ground.
"I'm only here on the promise of that Christmas turkey," she teased, following him through the tunnels - at least, he hoped she was teasing. Even now, even after forty years of needing to be able to tell exactly what people were thinking and when, he still found himself unsure of Miss Daae's feelings; did she like his little jokes? Did she find him courteous or just downright strange? Was she be disgusted with his reasons for hiding away - he would be, if he were in her shoes.
And yet she took his arm every time and let him wander through the Jardin de Luxembourg with her or take her out in a borrowed carriage through the Bois de Boulogne, each time under the cover of inky darkness, which she'd been wary of at first but soon come to associate with her Maestro's bashful and introverted nature.
He'd learned rather quickly that she was never convinced of his borrowing that carriage, but he couldn't very well tell her that the former manager of the opera house she worked in, his father no less - come now, he wasn't blind. Hideous, maybe, but blind? - wouldn't really mind if they returned the horses and carriage in tiptop condition.
"And a turkey you will have," he promised, unlocking the dining room door, the same door he'd led her through a month ago - only a month? It felt like a lifetime. She grinned, sweet and girlish and like Christine, and he let her in first. "Cloak?"
She undid it and handed it back to him.
For a moment, a moment he barely thought he'd survive, his fingers brushed over hers. Even through his gloves, which he'd spent twenty minutes - each - fiddling with and perfecting over and over again, he felt the warmth of her hand.
It sent a shock through him, enough to snatch the cloak and murmur a shaky 'thank you' as he hung it on a cloak rack. She didn't seem to notice; was she used to this sort of behaviour? He bit his lip. Even after six months, even the slightest contact made him freeze or jolt or turn into jelly. That would need some work, he knew.
He swallowed and adjusted his cravat.
How to be a Man Infront of a Lady: Lesson One began this evening.
He seated her at the table and filled her glass to a polite amount, training his stare on it and not on the honey-sweet smile she'd taken to giving him this month, the one that usually sent him to his bed clutching a pillow and lying there in a fuzzy, dazed panic for an hour after she left. The towel came away from the turkey, leaving it shimmering in the gold aura of the candelabra beside it.
"Miss Daae," he said, seating himself across from her at the little table, smaller now with two people sitting at it; it had only been designed for one diner, but he preferred the cosy setting.
"You cooked all of this?" she asked, marvelling at the dinner he'd convinced Gerard to spend his afternoon cooking.
"Give or take," he chuckled, carving into the turkey. "And for afterwards, I've prepared a pleasant evening and an even nicer collection of Verdi and Mozart."
"And Gounod?" she pressed, forcing a whole potato into her mouth to silence her rumbling stomach.
He smiled. "And Gounod."
He stayed true to his promise and, when they had finished eating and taking turns to sing - and indeed learn, in Erik's case, when Christine sang in Swedish - some carols as they washed the crockery and cutlery, he escorted her to the music room.
She sat like a picture on the love seat, grinning across at him while he played through Silent Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem and Away in a Manger, the simplest little tunes made an angel's hymn when Christine lifted her voice and accompanied his flute.
He could have played for years if only to hear her sing those carols. But, alas, her voice soon displayed its tire after her practise and performance earlier, and Erik was no stranger to the little dips and cracks that signalled the need for rest.
He, however, after asking her to stop, played on.
That must have been how he came to realise half an hour later that Christine Daae had fallen asleep on the love seat plonked herself in.
He put the flute down, hesitating. He should put her in a suitable sleeping place, surely. But to touch her, especially while she was asleep? To lift and carry her to his spare room? Promiscuous! Obscene! Ungentlemanly!
He stared at her for a moment longer, the various combinations to the puzzle ticking through his mind. Each and every one required moving her somehow; she'd form such a crick in her neck, and that wasn't fair of him.
He weighed the cost of being a good friend against the unspoken laws of society, of courtship - but wait, was he even courting her? Didn't that make this evening all the more indecent? Each and every time, he came to the same conclusion.
Surely she wouldn't mind?
In the end, he arose from his seat and pulled off his tailcoat. She was easy to move so she lay across the seat; he folded her hands to make her comfortable, but that looked rather macabre and he didn't wish to alarm her upon waking to find herself stationed like a corpse. But what else could he do without awakening her?
Gently, he set his coat over her, taking care to remove the little dagger he kept in an inner pocket. His fingers twitched to push the few strands of hair away from her nose, but he didn't allow it. He wouldn't touch her any more than he had to to make her comfortable. Then he wouldn't have to overstep any very serious boundaries and also be a good person.
He was a genius.
Christmas, he thought, shutting the door behind him quietly and tiptoeing away to find a proper blanket, had never really been celebrated in his world, especially not down here, not after his poor, beloved mother passed on. Of course, Erik had seen, and indeed, in his younger, more rebellious years, joined - although he was always scolded for it afterwards - the Christmas Bal Masques Gerard had organised, but as far as Christmas went, that was about it.
Even then, it had always been Up There, out of his reach and dangled like a carrot in front of a beach donkey. Over the years, he must have seen the holiday as more of an annoying séance of poorly sung carols and drunkenness, opportunity enough to play silly little tricks - usually with mirrors and lights or whatever his fancy was at the time - and get away with them for the most part.
But this year, he decided as he found his best blanket and hurried back to the music room, was different. Decidedly different.
That was because, when he looked inside, Christine Daae was awake and smiling at him.
Suddenly, those simple Christmas carols, even the beautiful Sweedish ones he often times couldn't wrap his soft-speaking, French tongue around, became the heights of musical perfection, and their writers masters of their craft.