Twisted Every Way
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
-William Shakespeare
xxxxx
Christine tried her very best to remain composed. She tried not to dwell on the state of Erik's mood when he left, and how well that would bode for whoever had tripped his alarm. She tried not to dwell on the fact that only a few braces of candles held at bay a darkness so complete that she would never be able to find her way out in the event that some ill wind did away with the candles. She tried not to feel so small and insignificant, trapped in this echoing lair without Erik's presence to fill and animate it. She tried all of these things, but did not succeed.
There were precisely thirty-seven steps between the outcropping of rock where Erik's bedroom was and the scale model of the Populaire's stage on the other side. To calm the frayed edges of her nerves, Christine paced this route back and forth, back and forth as the clock ticked relentlessly.
When an hour passed and Erik had still not returned, Christine wandered around his home, tidying the kitchen and washing the last of the lake water from her clothes in his tub. She poked around his organ, making a show of tidying the piles upon piles of score, while in truth she was snooping for Don Juan Triumphant. How could a score be dangerous? Erik's enigmatic words fired her imagination, whetted her curiosity. She just wanted to look . . . after encountering several locked drawers, Christine abandoned that line of inquiry.
There was no end to the fascinating treasures cluttered with a bachelor's sloppiness in Erik's home. All it needs is a woman's touch, she thought, and in thinking it, blushed furiously. The convoluted tangle of her feelings for Erik she tucked tidily into their own jeweled box within her mind. She spent another agreeable hour picking up objects at random and wondering where he had acquired them and what significance they held. Christine discovered a cozy chaise lounge in the corner near the architect's desk, and judging from the stacks of thick tomes and the braces of candles dripping stalactites of spent wax, this was where Erik did his reading.
She admired the cadre of artist's and architect's tools cluttering his slanted desk, and peered at the drafts and calculations all drawn with geometrical precision. Her eye traveled up from the desk to the designs pinned to his wall. She wondered what made these special enough to merit a place on the wall. They seemed wholly unremarkable to her, but then again, the beauty of a schematic was beyond her. The corner of the one nearest her was fluttering in a faint current of air. Christine grabbed the fluttering end, intending on pinning it down. A yellowish cast caught her attention. Another design? Gently, she peeled back the schematic and gasped.
Her! It was her!
"Me?" she said aloud.
It was unquestionably a likeness of her, sitting with her knees folded up under her chin on the bench near the stained glass window in the chapel. How was it possible for a charcoal drawing to capture vulnerability in the slenderness of the wrist, in the wide, trusting gaze of her ten-year-old self? Christine pushed the schematic farther and saw another drawing and another . . .
To avoid tearing Erik's designs, she pulled out the pins and let them flutter to the floor, exposing a wall carpeted with her, in every attitude, in every medium . . .
Epiphany struck her with all the searing potency of a lightning bolt.
"Oh Erik," she whispered, tears filling her eyes, "you love me. Oh, why didn't you tell me?"
xxx
The hours stretched by unendingly when Christine had only herself for company. Dinner was a simple affair: Erik's supplies and utensils were easy enough to find, though Christine's culinary skills were somewhat lacking. At long last, when the words of the book plucked from one of Erik's teetering stacks blurred before tired eyes, Christine curled up in the cozy warmth of Erik's swan bed and sought sleep.
Her dreams writhed in a senseless tangle. She remembered a terrible darkness, inky and complete that pressed upon her like evil, seeking hands, panting raggedly like an animal in her ear. Then the darkness had laughed: a horrifying laugh, rich with murder and lust and ringing with malice and evil intent. Cold, slippery snakes with jagged-edged obsidian scales wound their muscular bodies around her ankles and held her immobile. She heard a forlorn voice crying out in the darkness, weeping her name with such anguish that her heart simply shattered within her chest, sending shards of pain chasing the droplets of blood through her veins. No light, no hope, no warmth . . . just a yawning abyss and a deadly, raping darkness . . .
Christine woke with a gasp in utter darkness. Her childish fear rose up, augmented by the dregs of the dream and possessed her. She struggled free from the tangled purchase of sweat-dampened sheets and the gossamer cage of silk encircling the bed. Christine glimpsed a golden waver of light beyond Erik's room. Like a moth to a flame, she flew toward it.
XXX
These then, though unbeheld in the deep of night/ shine not in vain, nor think though men were none/that heaven would want spectators . . .
While the themes of noble sacrifice and redemption seemed farfetched to Erik's jaded appraisal, he could not fault Milton for mastery of blank verse or the air of tragic dignity that permeated the work he had written while blind. The pleasure of reading a familiar volume would hopefully coax Erik into sleep and distract him from the beautiful woman in his bed . . .
A sob caught his attention and he looked up in time to see Christine flying toward him. He had time to close the book and set it aside before she fell into his lap. Even startled, his brain dissected the delicious feeling of having her in his arms, of having her breath against his skin and hands fisted in his shirt.
"Christine! Child, what wrong?" he asked, both hands stroking her back in an awkward effort to still the heaving sobs wracking her.
"A n—nightmare. I had a nightmare," she breathed against his throat.
Erik cupped her head in an attempt to peel her back far enough to look in her eyes, but she refused to move, clinging blindly. He gave up, stroking her mane of brown curls, relishing the warmth and softness. He made a wordless sound of empathy and a wry voice wondered at the mighty Phantom of the Opera, humming comfort to a frightened child.
"What happened in the dream? Tell me," he crooned.
"I don't remember," she replied swiftly—too swiftly. So she didn't wish to tell him. Was the prospect of reliving the dream too terrible or . . . had he featured in her nightmares? It would be no great surprise; he had no doubt lived in terror of those who saw the Devil's Child. The Gypsies had threatened errant children with a visit from him. The thought of Christine fearing him would be too much for him to bear. She gulped down breaths as if still locked in mortal struggle, hands white knuckled with handfuls of his shirt.
"Sssshhhh, hush, my dear," he whispered, "you're safe. It was just a dream. I won't let anything ever hurt you."
The words seemed to calm her: her breathing evened, the humming tension ringing from her body relaxed by inches. He waited for the moment where she would realize where she was and pull away in shy, polite mortification.
It never came.
Minutes ticked by in silent contentment, measured only by the warm thud of her heart against his, the soft rise and fall of their breathing.
Erik began to hum softly, weaving a lullaby of a simple collection of notes. A wordless crooning, like the touch of a mother's hand, imbued with love. She made a soft sound of contentment, nuzzling his neck. His throat closed with a painful rush of tenderness.
"Let's get you to bed," he murmured, arranging her limp limbs in a manner where he could carry her. He frowned as he did so. She was much too light, like thistle down in his arms. He bit his tongue to stifle any fretting words. Wrapped in the cocoon of warmth within his room, he laid her in his bed and draped the sheets and coverlet over her.
"Goodnight Christine," he whispered. Her hand shot out and seized his. Her eyes were dark holes, ones he could fall into and lose himself.
"Stay." A single word, voiced in a childlike treble, with all the trust in the world shining in her upturned face had the power to destroy him.
"Christine . . ." Torturous hours rose in his mind's eye, of he lying inches from the woman he loved beyond all reason and being unable to touch her. A virgin offering that he dared not sully.
"Erik, please."
That erased any further protest. He exhaled heavily.
"Very well."
XXX
Relief coursed through her. She felt safe in Erik's embrace, hearing the music of his heartbeat and enshrouded in his warmth and protection. She released his arm as a measure of good faith. Erik disappeared beyond the gossamer black curtain and she peered through the barrier that undulated idly in currents of warm air at the pale square of Erik's shirt. He returned a few moments later and she saw that he had changed masks, trading the austere familiarity of the white half-mask for a bandit's mask, covering his face from forehead to upper lip in a seamless barrier of soft black silk.
Christine scooted back to make room for him. The downy soft bed, so massive before, now seemed scarcely big enough with Erik's tall frame curled up in it. An air of constrained shyness filled the awkward moments where they settled next to each other. Christine settled into her favorite sleeping pose, on her side with her hands tucked beneath her chin. Erik filled her vision, draped across the bed with all the negligent ease of an indolent sultan. A smile quirked his lips, lessening the air of stern remoteness.
"Madame Giry will have my head for this."
"Why is that?" she asked. The mask concealed any evidence of expression and without the dip and arch of his brows, she was unsure if the downward turn of his mouth meant irritation or regret.
"I am instructed to treat you with the utmost respect and courtesy."
"You always do," Christine said softly. Erik's smile was tight, pained.
"I am honored by your high opinion of my morals, my dear, but sharing a bed with you is highly improper." A delicate savagery underscored his words and sent a delicious shiver down her spine.
He did want her.
Christine was grateful that the lack of light hid her blush. The boneless relaxation she felt as he sang her the lullaby had vanished, replaced by tingling excitement, an acute awareness of where they were and the secret knowledge of his feelings for her. How did one proceed in a seduction? Christine's fingers crept a few inches forward, approaching his hand with what she hoped was nonchalance. Had she had the brazen wantonness of some of the other ballet rats, she would have rolled on top of him and taken what she wanted. But Christine was out of her depth, paralyzed by the morally reprehensive nature of such conduct and her natural shyness. A creeping hand was all she could manage.
"I won't tell," she tried to purr. The piercing intensity of his eyes blazed in the darkness, enigmatic and all-knowing behind the mask. Her face flamed, but she did not dare blink.
"I dislike deception."
Christine uttered an unladylike sound that could only be classified as a snort.
"You did so easily enough when you pretended to be my Angel." A shiver of tension raced through him, a wary, watchful concentration.
"That was different. I . . . I never meant to hurt you."
It was natural and easy then, to take his hand in hers, weaving their fingers together.
"You didn't. I understand, really I do. But imagine waking up one day and have someone tell you that the sky isn't blue, that the sun didn't rise."
"I didn't realize that I meant that much to you."
She squeezed his captive hand, mesmerized by the warm pulse of his heartbeat against her palm and sensual embrace of their woven fingers and his skin against hers. She craved more. And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss, she thought.
"You are my Angel," she whispered by way of explanation. That cursed mask hid any clue to what he was thinking or feeling, save for the seething coils of emotion in his eyes and what lurked there defied description.
"The hour is late. We should sleep," he said. Christine recognized the note of command in his voice and struggled to obey, snuggling into the pocket of drowsy warmth beneath the coverlet. Sleep coaxed her lower and she struggled to lift her heavy lids. A sudden thought occurred to her.
"Erik?" she whispered.
"Yes, Christine?"
"Who tripped your alarm?" the soothing cadence of his breathing rushed out in an expelled sigh. She mentally prepared herself for a careful shaking loose of his hand. Instead, his thumb stroked the back of hers.
"It was not our dear Vicomte," he said tonelessly. Christine bit back words of protest as she waited for him to elaborate. When she realized no further description would be forthcoming, she prompted, "Who was it then?"
"An old friend of mine from Persia." Again that tantalizing glimpse into his wandering past! The hunger to know more was almost visceral. Any probing questions on the subject would be met with a stony wall of silence, so she swallowed them.
"Was he injured?" Erik uttered a dry snort in reply.
"The Daroga is as tough as boot leather. I'm sure not even my most lethal devices could faze him. But no, he was not hurt. He came to deliver a message. The Vicomte de Chagny has issued a warrant for my arrest." Christine shot up straight in the bed.
"What? Why? On what charges?" Erik was unmoved, a sardonic smirk quirking his mouth.
"If I told you, you would not be so keen on sharing a bed with me." The faint condescension in his tone infuriated her.
"Try me," she snapped.
"Insanity. With the managers corroborating my performance in their office, no doubt. If insanity is a crime, I am guilty of it. I am guilty of a great many things. So, Christine? Do I still make you feel safe? You run into the arms of a madman to comfort you after a nightmare. You must appreciate the irony."
Christine paused, considering the various ways she could reply. Fatigue had robbed her of her wit and the lingering dregs of her nightmare her courage. She sighed.
"If you don't believe me when I say I trust you, I don't know how else to convince you. I'm tired. We should sleep."
Erik made no reply as Christine settled down beside him. But neither did he try to relinquish her grip on his hand. After a moment, his soft whisper caressed her ears.
"Goodnight, Christine."
"Goodnight, Erik."
XXX
As he predicted, the hours that followed were torture. But ah, a sweeter torture he had never known! Silken sleep ensnared him in its web, dragging him down into a pool of warm, comfortable somnolence. He woke to the scent of violets, the tickle of Christine's soft curls and the slender solidity of her. Sometime in the night, Christine had insinuated herself firmly beyond the imaginary line halving the bed. Her slender legs were braided with his, the infernal shift rucked up to mid-thigh, exposing far too much creamy white skin. Her face was nestled comfortably under his chin, the humid warmth of her breath caressing his throat, and her mane of curls tickling his nose. Their hands remained linked, a secret kiss of palm beneath woven fingers. A stray thought pondered on the ancient customs where to sleep in the same room was a mark of trust. There was a strange sort of intimacy to share in that particular vulnerability of sleep, as if the tendrils of their dreams wove them together. By his estimation, it was early morning, on the second day of Christine's week long furlough.
God help him.
A dull, pulsing ache made itself known and Erik's jaw clenched.
He, who could master any skill he put his hand to, who sampled all the world's knowledge, was at the mercy of a slip of girl and the throbbing of his virility, so achingly close to the haven of her warmth. His hips arched and pleasure coursed through him at the exquisite friction. A snarl of savage longing rose in his throat.
That shameful farce of finding release within the grasp of his hand repelled him, but in order to maintain any grasp he had on sanity, it was his only alternative. He cursed his fleshly desires for the thousandth time, all the more viciously for the fact that they now robbed him of the singular pleasure of sleeping with his beloved in his arms. Erik disentangled himself from her embrace and limped from the room to seek relief from the burning ache in his loins.
Erik found he could not return to his bed and face perhaps her wounded eyes at finding him absent, or even the sweet vulnerability of her sleeping form. Christine was temptation incarnate to him, a breathtaking Galatea who embodied preferences he hadn't even known he had. The act of relieving his baser needs had not dulled the ache of yearning, but sharpened it, illuminating the crude realities lurking behind the pure protestations of love.
Erik sank onto his organ bench. Music was another of his addictions and Erik sank willingly into her soft arms, borne on the ebb and flow of color and emotion. While the memory of passion still churned in his veins, he clutched at Don Juan with the same desperate feverishness as the fleeting moments of pleasure in the relative privacy of his bathtub. Maybe in her sleep she would hear the yearning he could not voice and respond . . . No!
The graceful splay of his fingers curled into crude fists on the keys, his body doubled over until his forehead touched the lip of the organ. Yesterday's promise held true. He would not twist her fragile innocence with the power of his music. An empty ache yawned in his chest. He needed something to dull this terrible pain! His hand scrabbled for the key, opening the drawer that held his morphine. The vice that would save him from an even greater sin.
He rolled up his sleeve in precise turns, exposing the irregular pattern of purplish punctures from previous doses and the green-hued streaks of collapsed veins. He tightened the tourniquet with a yank of teeth as deft fingers prepared the syringe. He flicked the syringe free from trapped air bubbles and poised the glinting needle over the turgid snakes of his veins, busily pumping blood back to his heart. His thrice cursed heart. A quick, dartlike jab and the needle sank in. With a sob of relief, Erik depressed the plunger, feeling warmth and that elusive euphoria wash over him. Erik staggered to his feet, intent on hiding from Christine in his storeroom. Stars burst before his eyes, multicolored sparks distorting the world. Inarticulate terror rose like a demon. The ground reached up to embrace him.
XXX
Christine shifted and stretched beneath the coverlet, warm and languid with deep, restful sleep. A thought intruded on her blissful waking and soured her mood. Erik was gone. Her hand felt forlorn and lonely without his fingers woven with hers and that heady kiss of palm. Christine sighed and sat up, finger-combing her wild mane. What time was it? In Erik's kingdom, she obeyed the rhythms of her body. When she was hungry, she ate, when she was tired, she slept, wholly unaware of whatever timetable they followed in the world above. Christine rose and contemplated the neatly folded pile of her clothes. A part of her wanted to flaunt her body before him—as much as her timid heart could manage, which was to say, respectably clothed in her shift and stockings—but another part could not stand another scolding word. If he called her a child one more time . . . her fists balled. He would be sorry!
In the end, she chose the green velvet, who had survived its odyssey through the lake mostly unscathed. She spent another few minutes wrestling her hair into a semblance of propriety before she emerged. A quick glance found the lair empty.
"Erik?" With the air of sleepwalker's unreality, she was seven years old again and walking toward the ominous silence in her father's room.
He told me I'd be visited by an Angel. An Angel of Music.
The sight of Erik's long body sprawled on the stone floor would be forever inscribed on her memory, just as her father's wasted body and fever-bright eyes were.
"Erik!" her panicked shriek reverberated in absurd echoes off vaulted walls.
Oh Holy Virgin, oh God, oh sweet Lord Jesus, please don't let him be dead!
Christine knelt beside him, her breaths coming in hitching, sobbing pants, her hands fluttering, unsure of where to land. She grasped one brawny shoulder and heaved with all her strength, hauling his torso across her lap. He uttered a low groan as she did so and tears sprang to her eyes. Alive! Thank God!
"Erik? Love, can you hear me? Wake up," she crooned, caressing the black silk covering his right cheek.
His eyelids fluttered, lips moving over soundless words. One blue eye rolled into view, its pupil a tiny speck of black. It was then that she saw the cloth tied around his upper arm and the painful red hue of his half curled fingers. She attacked the knot, yanking off the slip of cloth and throwing it aside.
His arm . . . oh God, his arm!
Peppered here and there were pitted purple marks, one weeping a sluggish trickle of blood, strategic over the visible lines of his veins. Horror unfurled in her.
"What did you do to yourself?" she hissed, clutching him to her chest.
In that interminable twilight Christine held a silent vigil over him, stroking the warm black softness of his hair. Christine watched the rise and fall of Erik's chest, sometimes so unbearably slow that she shook and shouted at him to breathe. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks unheeded. A fierce protectiveness rose up in her. Had anyone, in his whole life looked after him, other than Madame Giry? Christine swore she would. She would protect him—even from himself. She took in a deep breath and released that hot emotion. They were bonded in music. She would call him back.
Angel of Music, guide and guardian,
Grant to me your glory
Angel of Music, hide no longer
Come to me, strange Angel
"Come back to me," she whispered.
XXX
It was a bloody miracle he wasn't dead. Like an idiot, in a wild fever of tormented lust, he grabbed the wrong bottle. Instead of the diluted morphine he had weaned himself to, he grabbed the pure bottle. A dose of that amount should have killed him.
The question remained: Why wasn't he dead?
No St. Peter and no hellfire and brimstone.
No, he could feel the cool air moving in and out of his lungs, the cold stone beneath his face, the pain of his arm trapped beneath the weight of his body. He swam in and out of consciousness; the soft clouds of the morphine high had given way to that blank, stuporous state. The tapestry of his mind presented an exquisite vision of Christine calling his name, Christine holding him to her bosom, Christine singing . . .
Ah, perhaps this was Heaven after all!
"Come back to me."
His soul strove to obey its mistress, surging up into consciousness. Her face filled his vision, the face he knew better than his own. No, he would not compare the perfection of his Angel to his own twisted visage! She was art, poetry, music incarnate! Ah, that cascade of brown curls glinting with hints of red, the heartbreaking oval shape of her face with skin like porcelain, adorned with those chocolate brown eyes, the wide full curve of her mouth . . . so beautiful.
The beauty of his voice had deserted him and her name emerged in a garbled rasp. His hand floated up to wipe away the tears staining her cheeks. Regret pierced him. She should have never seen him like this. His slack muscles couldn't manage it, but Christine's cool hand trapped his against her face.
"Oh Erik . . ." her breath was a benediction against the heel of his hand.
Erik commanded his muscles to move, bracing one shaking arm on the ground to sit halfway up from Christine's lap.
This was a mistake.
His body rebelled, nausea washing over him like floodwaters. Muscles seized a paroxysm of agony, his gorge rose. In the most humiliating moment of his thirty-seven years of existence, Erik vomited all over the beautiful green velvet of Christine's skirt.
"Oh dear," she said softly. He groaned, burying his face in her bodice to hide his mortification. His arms of their own will wound around her torso, clinging.
"What can I do for you? Can I help?" the warm, even murmur of her voice reverberated through him. Erik summoned his voice, tasting bile.
"I . . . I didn't want you to see me like . . . like this."
A crude half-apology, but it was all he could manage at the moment. Erik was vaguely surprised that anything articulate emerged from his throat, what with the headache pounding in time with his heartbeat and the world performing cartwheels whenever he opened his eyes. Christine was his ballast, anchoring him to reality. Even in a morphine-induced dream, he would never have imagined a more ignominious outcome. He was most definitely awake.
"What did you do?" she demanded with such a quiet desperation that Erik could not lie. Not when she held him to her heart even as he expelled his breakfast all over her skirt.
"Morphine," he paused for a delicate moment, then forged ahead, "I am an addict." Erik was very glad that he could not see her face. He couldn't bear the look of disgust, betrayal, pity.
"Oh." That small syllable encompassed a gamut of emotion that Erik was too tired to decipher. His cursed stomach was doing flips and twists within him.
"Oh God. Christine, the basin-" he made a weak gesture towards the washstand near the organ bench. She barely fetched it in time. When the retching passed, Erik groaned again.
"Just leave me, Christine. Let me die," he murmured, only half serious. He was absolutely miserable, yes, and mortified beyond belief, but if he was going to die he would have done so already. That damned muscle in his chest was still beating with relentless tenacity, no doubt to please its virgin goddess of a mistress.
"No! Don't say that! Don't you ever say that again, Erik!" The hot vehemence in her voice took him aback. He jerked his head in a weak gesture of assent.
"As you wish. Now I must . . ."
Bless her, Christine correctly interpreted his broken command as a desire to die in a more dignified position. She drew his arm across her slender shoulders and Erik paused as he rose. Blood drained from his head and they swayed dangerously, like a mismatched dancing pair. Erik clenched his jaw against another rising wave of nausea.
For the love of God don't let me embarrass myself again! he thought. Christine uttered a soft cry as he slumped against her and Erik mustered his once great strength.
"I apologize for ruining your dress, my dear," he whispered as they lurched across the room and up the slight incline to his room.
"I have others," was her laconic rejoinder, followed by, "How long have you been . . . doing this?"
"Morphine? Off and on for about ten years. Many others before that, in Persia. I feared damaging my voice with the opium pipe and hashish was too . . . intense for my particular need. Morphine seemed the most logical alternative."
It had also loosened his tongue.
"I see." That enigmatic statement drove him insane.
If only he could crawl inside her mind and wander around, absorbing every facet of her thoughts and feelings! This, his private shame, his self-destructive madness, he never intended to show her. Ever. Eventually, through science or will, he would have devised a way to free himself from morphine's seductive clutches. To show it to her now in such a disgusting and embarrassing fashion was . . . unexpected to say the least.
"Do you wish to leave?" he asked as neutrally as he could manage. God, this was a disaster! First the gondola capsizing, then the intruding Daroga and the threat of arrest the moment he set foot above ground, now his own foolish addiction . . . it would be a miracle if she wished to associate with him at all! In response, Christine eased him into a seated position on the edge of the bed.
"I'm not leaving you," she replied, unsmiling. She made a curt gesture with her fingers and Erik's muddled brain could not follow the gist of her command. Heart, mind, body, they were all hers to command. Thankfully his lips chose to keep that secret!
"Here. Let's get that shirt off. You've sweat through it." She plucked the limp linen distastefully. Erik wrung the damp tails of his shirt in his hands, his embarrassment deepening, if that was possible. He chose his words with care.
"I . . . I was not well treated in the past. I am . . . scarred." An incredible softening washed over her face, and tears welled in her eyes. The naked sympathy in her eyes did not affront him. Some desperate starving thing inside him wanted to fling himself into her arms and cling to the comfort she offered.
"The marks on your skin will not repel me." The solemn promise in her words relaxed a hidden knot of tension.
He peeled off the damp shirt. Gooseflesh stippled his skin despite the warmth of the room. Erik snatched the clean shirt from her hands and yanked it over his head before he embarrassed himself any further. Quite by accident, he fell sideways into the soft embrace of his bed. As fragile as a kitten. Christine uttered a soft cry, kneeling beside the bed. Erik twitched a hand in a weak wave. Her cool hand slid into his, with perfect ease, as if they had done so a thousand times. His skin tingled and sang at the soft touch of hers. His heart would continue beating for the hope of that alone!
"I'm all right, my dear. Truly. The worst is over. I'm . . . I'm just very tired."
His eyelids felt as if they were weighted with lead. He shook himself, struggling against the morphine . . . Morpheus's drug of choice no doubt! The weak joke roused a snorting chuckle. Christine's face was a picture of seriousness, her graceful brows furrowed together. God, laughing to himself he must look like a madman! A madman and a morphine addict as well as a ruthless, lying aristocrat in the form of the Vicomte, she truly did attract the worst sort of characters. That almost pushed him off into another bout of absurd giggles. He mastered them and said, "Now, when I've amply recovered from my foolishness, we begin again with Ill Muto. There isn't much to do and a great deal of time to do it." Now he did laugh, the garbled sentence clouding those brilliant brown eyes with confusion.
"The drug makes me stupid and ties my tongue in a knot. I meant: there is much to do and-"
"I understand, Maestro. Now rest," Christine ordered gently, drawing the coverlet up to his chin. Tears stung his eyes. Tucking him into bed? Not a lover crying out his name in the heat of passion, but a sweet little nurse!
Kill me now. On that merry thought, Erik sank into a dreamless slumber.
XXXXX
A/N: Thank you everyone for your reviews! You have my eternal gratitude and here is where I beg for more. They are my bread and butter.
What did you think? Erik nasty little morphine addiction was going to surface eventually. I hope I got it right.