Disclaimer: I don't own PotO. But Leah is MIIIINNE! MOO HA HA.
Warnings: Arrr, me hearties', there be 'action' ahead.
A/N: Please review all. I like reviews, reviews are good!
(Random Music In The Background: American woman, I said get away. American woman, listen when I say… :D)
Chapter 11
Erik returned to the Lair the next morning, still with the same self-satisfied grin on his face from the day before.
Leah looked up from more of the Architectural Logs she was reading on the swan bed as he plopped a large ring of keys on a small mahogany desk by his piano.
"Good haul?" She smirked.
"You people of the Modern World do talk very strangely, Leah," He said without looking up at her, as he began to unpack the brown paper bag he had carried in with his keys.
"Dude, you'd busta vein if ya heard what mah homie-mofo playa's were spinnin' back in the 'hood," She giggled quietly, getting off the bed and stretching her long legs.
Erik sighed and gave a small smile, sorting through the assortment of parchment and envelopes he had bought from an inconspicuous street-corner dealer, who did not ask when he ordered two bottles of only red ink. She was strange yet wonderful.
"So what did you buy?" Leah asked, standing on tip-toe, trying to peer over Erik's impossibly high shoulder at his newly-acquired goods.
"Arsenic and Torture Machines," Erik said simply, looking at Leah out of the corner of his eye with a completely straight face.
He laughed long and loud when he saw the inquisitive smile drop almost instantaneously from Leah's lips. She believed him wholly and truly, with no doubt in her open features.
As he laughed though, Leah could not help revel in the sonorous tone of his rich voice, and she sighed in relief as she realised his joke.
"Pleasing to know you believe me unquestioningly Leah, but what you think I am capable of is more than a little worrying," He chuckled.
She flicked a hand at his arm playfully, and stole one of the long quills from his desk, wandering among Erik's collection of things from around the world.
Stroking the soft plumage of the feather absently, gazing in wonder at the assortment of nick-knacks on the shelves and low tables, she voiced her wonderings.
"What will we do next? With the haunting, I mean."
"Oh, we have done enough for a time, I think," Erik said happily as he slumped into a soft armchair. He tossed her a newspaper, and Leah caught it deftly.
She unfolded that day's copy of the Epoque, and looked at the headline, 'El Fantasma de L'Opera Retour!'.
"Apparently I have returned!" Erik said with his nose resting on his church-steepled fingers, with the air of delight unsuccessfully veiled in his voice.
Leah smiled too, running her eyes through the article, although her French was terrible. She managed to pick out what seemed to be the recount by two workers of a 'Female Ghost'. There was a black and white picture of the Opera House as it was before the fire, and another smaller picture of the ruins.
"Wonderful!" She cried, doing a small twirl with the paper in her hands. "So now we just… Wait?" She asked.
"We will keep up appearances, and I must be sighted eventually, or my public will begin to miss me!" He said, bowing again to his imaginary audience. "And of course, letters must go to anyone who visits the Phantom's home regarding redevelopment."
"Of course!" Leah echoed with a giggle.
She sighed, smiling, still hardly able to comprehend the fact she was with the Phantom, in his Lair.
Suddenly a wave of homesickness hit her, not so much homesickness as schoolsickness.
She missed her few friends, and especially Mrs. Hensby and Mr. Russel, her History and English teachers, respectively.
Her friends had always teased her about having a 'thing' for Mr. Russel, their middle-aged English teacher, and sometimes Leah wondered if it was a 'thing', or just their mutual love for almost all the same things.
Mr. Russel was a die-hard Phantom fan also, and he lived for books. His favourite were the soaring Gothic romances like Phantom, but he also liked the darkness and intensity of such stories.
Some of his students called him 'gay' for his choices in reading material (a sad truth in most all-girl colleges, Leah found).
Leah smiled reminiscently, thinking of all the times she had stayed long after class chatting to Mr. Russel about her most recently obtained book, or about the finer things in 'Phantom'. The chats which her friends twisted only half-jokingly into secret meetings, suspicious rendezvous.
"Leah? You look to be dwelling on a lost lifestyle. Talk to Erik," The masked man in the chair said, all the time studying her closely.
Leah's head snapped up, and her far-away eyes came back to the Lair, marvelling at Erik's uncanny ability to either sense her feelings or read her mind. "No, I am alright, just remembering good old friends," Leah sighed. "What I really need is a sho-"
Erik raised his finger in an 'Ah ha!' sort of way, cutting her off, "A shower, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes, they're sort of a way-" Leah began to explain, but again Erik cut her off.
"Follow me, please."
He got up from his chair, and for only the second time in under a week, led her into the dark corridor behind the smashed mirror.
Again they passed the various rooms, and stopped at what Leah had guessed at to be a bathroom.
It turned out she was right, and Erik held the door open for her to see inside.
The bathroom was tiled all in white, and this made it look impeccably clean. There was a relatively modern toilet, a white porcelain basin, and in a corner of the room, set in a small area of floor a little lower than the rest… A shower.
In truth, it was a pipe coming from the ceiling of the room with no shower-head, but Leah could have squealed for joy.
"Does it… Is there hot water?" Leah asked wondrously, still staring at the shower.
Erik walked into the bathroom and flicked on a gas fire under a large tub of water. "Sadly, no, but this should be enough warm water. You should find everything you need there," Erik motioned towards a counter with a mirror above it with an elegant hand.
He smiled and nodded to her, backing out of the room and closing the door.
The water began to steam, and Leah went to remove her dirty blue dress, and for a moment faltered at the thought of Erik and his secret chambers and hidden vantage points. She shrugged, remembering his removal of her dress in her fever and continued to undo the strings on the back of the dress.
She turned on the water, and picked out various soaps and what appeared to be shampoos from the counter, struggling a little with the French on the bottles.
Slowly she eased her way under the fast stream of water, finding it not as cold as she thought it might be.
She breathed deep under the water, feeling the dirt and grime of the last few days run in rivulets from her, revealing the olive skin beneath.
Leah was clean! And warm, and clean, and she smelt relatively normal. Given, she smelt a little fruitier than normal, but that was to be expected with the exotic assortment of soaps and gels that Erik had given her.
She had found a fluffy towel, blood red and huge, more of a sheet that a towel. She dried her hair and sat near the water-heater for a little, waiting for her thick tresses to dry.
Finding a light white blouse and flowing white skirt hanging on a rail, she donned these and cleaned up the room a little. She had been told she was terrible for messing up bathrooms.
She wiped the mirror and threw the towel and her dress into the linen wash basket, leaving the door open to let the steam escape, she re-entered the Lair.
Erik looked up from her forgotten Architectural books, and his face lit up in a smile.
It took Leah a moment to locate her formally-clad (as always) host in amongst all his antique possessions, he blended so well.
Leah then understood Erik's plight. There was no way he would fit in with her changing world; changes that were beginning now in this turn-of-the-century France.
Even his world was different and shifting, and he was not one to fade into the background, disappear from the limelight, as others had done when their era passed.
He was almost a relic of the past living as he did now, hidden and presumed dead; a memory of earlier opulence and glory.
He had waited, knowing this himself, for the time to make his return; Leah's arrival had been just the thing he had needed to spur him into action.
Erik rose and glided towards her with the elegance he had retained all these years, and held her close to him, burying his masked face in her hair.
"You smell wonderful," He said, his voice a little muffled.
He stopped for a second, as if thinking, and gave a chuckle. "You have used the rose body-scrub as shampoo, Angel."
Here he stepped back and took her hand, bringing this to his nose to smell, "And you have used the lavender shampoo as body-scrub."
"I'll say it again; My French is sh…ocking." She giggled, finding herself caught up again in his blazing eyes.
She felt her cheeks flush slowly, as Erik's arms snaked around her back, his un-gloved hands cold against her warmed skin. Leah murmured something incoherent as her vision swam a little, and she felt her feet moving of their own accord.
They were close together, kneeling on the swan bed, Leah could feel and hear Erik's ragged and laboured breathing. Suddenly and without warning he claimed her lips.
She was his; in body and in soul. Not a thought crossed her mind except returning the fiery kiss with all her heart. She grasped his white shirt as his kisses traced a line down her neck, and pulled him closer still, her chest heaving with rapid breath.
He pulled away, his kisses and body gone, and Leah moaned in response, bereft of the only thing she wanted at that moment, him…
Then his hands were back, raising her arms and removing the clean white blouse, lifting it over her head, and she shivered in the sudden cold.
Their hips melded, and Leah could feel him grow hard against her thigh, his warmth and readiness making her tremble all the more.
Before she knew it, the insides of her thighs were damp with her excitement, and she flushed, pressing against him.
She felt an ache deep inside that she had never felt before; she ached for him and what he could bring. This her body said, knowing exactly what to do, yet she found her brain didn't know the first thing.
Leah opened her eyes, to find Erik staring in wonder at her small black bra (which she had refused to give up for a corset). "The back…" She panted, "The back."
Erik asked no questions, but ran his strong hands over her uncovered back, looking for anything that would remove the thing that kept her from him. He stopped, his hands lingering around her shoulders, feeling ridges and blotches on her skin, and he turned her a little.
He found scars and fading bruises, congealed gashes adorning her tanned skin and he swallowed, "What… Who?" He whispered.
"My father, it does not matter…" She breathed, and pushed harder against him, fiddling with the button on his open shirt, pulling it over his shoulders, but not removing it fully. She ran her own hands down his scared back, taking in every mark, every bump, and every straining muscle under the pale skin.
Now Erik was groaning, the want and passion finally upon him, and as Leah looked into his eyes, only inches from her own, she saw a different man. This time she kissed him, feeling his tongue, tasting her Angel.
He pushed her down gently and began to struggle with his pants, putting a knee between her legs, spreading them slowly, finding no resistance. Never once did he falter from her kiss. He lifted her skirt above her hips, all with the precision and grace of experience, yet she knew him to be chaste. "The mask… Please…" She whispered into his ear, sending a deep sigh through his whole body.
Something in her simple request seemed to bring him back to earth; he groaned in response, and Leah felt a wave of restraint pass through him. He was fighting his urge to take her right there, right then.
Erik pulled away from her kiss and rolled away from her, and lay panting on his back, his fervour fading. "Rape," He gasped, still panting, turning his still-masked face towards her, his eyes pleading, "It would be rape…"
He moved into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, struggling as if it was an effort.
"No!" Leah cried, and crawled on her knees towards him, cupping his face in her hands, "Not rape… I wish it to be so! I want to be yours," Leah said with tears in her eyes.
"If you were to return… Your father… Our age… In your time our coupling would be frowned upon. He could claim… rape."
Then Leah understood that he meant Statutory Rape, and her father was likely to claim this. Even if he could not find the culprit, he would find one.
Mr. Russel… The thought passed through Leah's mind before she could stop it. He would blame Mr. Russel; he already believed their relationship to be something more than teacher-student.
"But I will not go back! I will stay with you always!" Leah cried for what might happen to her and her friend, and the loss of what may have happened between her and Erik. She was torn between the two extremes: dread and desire.
"Please," She whispered, kissing him full on the lips, Erik returning the kiss half-heartedly. He broke from her, and murmured something in quiet French.
Leah didn't catch the words, (she doubted if she would have understood them anyway) but took delight from the way the syllables and vowels rolled from his tongue.
She went to straddle his lap, hoping to rouse the feelings of moments ago, but it was not to be.
Now Erik's fit of passion had passed, and it was once again the handsome musical genius she saw when she looked in his eyes, he moved to sit up, and took her hand.
"You have your life in the Modern World, Leah; I can not make you give that up. You have your entire life ahead of you…"
"That I want to spend with you," Leah said in return. "I will give it up, there is nothing but… abuse for me there now. My father will never forgive me for disappearing for a week, longer maybe. He would kill me, I can't go back."
Erik seemed to understand, but did not approach her again. He handed her the white blouse, and rose, moving to his piano slowly. "I love you Leah, make no mistake, but I cannot take your innocence… Not yet."
He took up one of the hundreds of red roses that littered his Organ-top, and handed it tenderly to Leah.
"Take this," He said, "As my promise. I am yours, and you are mine."
She smelt the rose, and looked up at him, his dark brows creased in sincerity, his lips set in a fine line.
"Even if we are separated by one hundred and seven years?"
"My promise transcends time. It is forever. Even if the unreliable Mistress Time takes you back to your century, I will be waiting."
Leah could have sobbed, but she held back the strangled cry that threatened to escape. Why couldn't her date for the Social have been more like Erik?
She drew her blouse more tightly around her, and looked up at the damp ceiling of the Lair. She had given up all the luxuries of the Modern World for this, a shadowy cave, yet she could not have felt more content. This was not her time, no, but she felt more at home here than she ever had in her age.
As Leah did up the last button on her blouse, Erik's head snapped up, and he looked intently at the roof of the Lair.
"Is there someone up there?" She whispered, slowly becoming accustomed to Erik's sharp and fast movements.
Erik said nothing, but no more than ten seconds later, Leah heard what her perceptive Angel had caught first; the soft crunch of shoes on gravel and rubble.
They looked at each other noiselessly, and broke into smiles simultaneously.