Chapter 16 — A Lovely Evening

Raoul was fine.

Everything was fine.

Really, the worst thing about the evening was that it was rather boring to simply sit and wait. Next time he would have to remember to bring a book.

He flagged down a passing waiter and gestured to his cup.

"Another, sir?" the young man asked, an eyebrow raised incredulously.

Raoul looked down at the oil-slicked dregs of coffee swirling in the bottom of the cup. It hadn't been that many, had it?

He tipped back the remainder and nodded his assent. He'd regret this tomorrow, but tomorrow was a long way off, long enough that he needn't worry about it now. There was much more of tonight to get through. He still had another— actually Raoul wasn't exactly sure how much longer he needed to wait. Listening for the chime of the bells marking every quarter hour was all the time-keeping he needed; a pocket watch ticking away on the table next to him was excessive, and much too precise. It was better to keep things a bit vague.

Right away, Raoul had found that watching the inexorable march of the minute hand served no purpose other than to prompt mental calculations which were good for nothing but turning his stomach. There was nothing to be gained by working out when, exactly, it would happen. As everyone knows, the anticipation is the worst part of an unpleasant event. With his pocket watch put away, he could clear his mind and wait for the clock to strike a quarter till ten, signalling that it was time for him to go, and he could be confident the thing had happened, no going back, what was done was done, and at that point, it wouldn't do him any good to be upset about it.

That strategy worked well enough, at first. But as he had begun to light up his third cigarette, the clock had struck half past, and a jolt of blind panic surged through him, causing the flame to shiver and bob as he attempted to set the tip alight. The thick, bitter coffee churned in his stomach, and he had to fight against the urge to retch. And another fifteen minutes had still remained!

No, it wouldn't do at all.

And so Raoul had come up with a solution: for the time being, he would simply pretend that rather than the actual thing, his wife was off doing something quite different in that house by the lake...perhaps having tea and catching up with her former mentor, as any old friends might.

It wasn't denial if it was intentional.

Now, the waiter reappeared and replaced Raoul's cup with a fresh one, steam curling in the bitingly chill night air. Without pause, Raoul swallowed it down, letting it blister a path down his throat that would likely sting for hours.

No, he wasn't in denial — he was denying nothing. He'd made a plan, and a very good one at that. When all was said and done, he'd have his wife, he'd have his heir, everything would be just fine, and he could forget all about what had to happen to achieve all of that. He was simply getting a head start on the forgetting, that was all.

Thanks to the new scenario he'd concocted, Raoul had been able to relax. It was a little boring, yes, but otherwise he was quite enjoying his solo trip to the bistro. From his seat on the patio, he could enjoy one of the last nights of the late fall, before the weather turned too cold to sit outside, and bask in the unrivaled beauty of the City of Lights. The coffee was good, the scenery was splendid, and he sincerely hoped Christine was having a lovely time with her friend.

A sudden sear of pain at his fingertips made Raoul wince. He blinked at the cigarette clutched between his fingers — he'd somehow managed to smoke it down to the very end. Laughing at absentmindedness, he stubbed it out and added it to the pile overflowing from the ashtray, and then withdrew another from the silver case.

He struck a match, cupped it in his hand, brought it carefully to the tip of the cigarette clenched in his teeth — and jumped, hard, at the clang of the big bronze bell.

The match dropped to the table, extinguishing with a hiss. Raoul swallowed. His throat felt as though it had been coated in sand. He glanced at his empty coffee cup, longing for just one more to ease his dry throat, but it was too late. It was time to go.

It took three tries for Raoul to get the cigarette back in the case, his jittery fingers fumbling with the slender cylinder. Maybe it really had been too much coffee.

He stood, smoothing his jacket, and tossed a handful of francs on to the table. He wasn't sure how many, exactly, but far more than enough; it only seemed appropriate as a thank you to the waiter for such a lovely evening.

And now he would collect his darling wife from her visit with her friend and they'd discuss the changing weather on the way home and then retire to bed where they would sleep sweetly snuggled together, as always, and in the morning, there'd be no reason to even remember such an ordinary event as tea with a friend.

Yes, yes — everything would be fine.

...

Raoul's pocket watch was in his hand, the burnished gold now as warm as the sweating palm it was clutched in. He couldn't decide — how long, exactly, should he wait past the appointed time before heading underground to retrieve his wife? Three minutes? Four? Certainly not more than five.

Not that the time had even come yet — actually, several minutes still remained — but it was good to be prepared.

Although, all this planning was really quite unnecessary. Of course she was in no danger of not coming back when she should, Raoul would never do anything that would put Christine at risk. True, there had been the time with that whole Don Juan Triumphant fiasco, but his plan had been solid; he simply could not have foreseen the depths that the other man was willing— Raoul's sharp bark of a laugh echoed down the alley. Ridiculous! What was he doing? What a silly thing to be thinking about, letting himself be drawn into unpleasant memories of a past which had no bearing at all upon the present.

Something cold and sharp-cornered was biting into the flesh of Raoul's other hand; he looked down to see that he was gripping his cigarette case, fingers curved around the edges like claws. He placed it back in his pocket and ran his hand through his hair with a laugh. He couldn't imagine what he'd been thinking, reaching for it like that — he never smoked in front of Christine! Though she now seemed to ignore the smell of smoke on him, were she to catch him with a lit cigarette, he imagined he would never hear the end of it.

Fastening the last buttons at the collar of his coat, Raoul huddled into himself. The temperature was dropping, and hiding in the shadows pressed close to a cold stone building wasn't helping matters. He'd catch a chill if he waited too long. Better make it no more than three minutes past, just in case.

In the end, though, he'd been right: it was unnecessary. Two minutes before ten, the gate creaked open, and Christine appeared in the mouth of the passage, her eyes scanning the street. Catching sight of her waiting husband, she glanced over her shoulder with a quick nod. For a wild, heart-stopping moment, Raoul thought he could see a flash of white and swirl of black retreating into the shadows, before he realized that it was obviously just a trick of the light. His stomach lurched as he darted forward to assist her, the acrid tang of coffee rising up his throat — though what did he expect, sprinting like that with a full carafe's worth of the stuff sitting heavy in his stomach. Then, at last, his wife's hand was back in his, and he pulled her away from the building, closing the gate behind her, his heart lightening with each step, his lips pressed to the back of her hand to stop their joyful trembling.

Surreptitiously, Raoul swept his eyes over Christine, noticing the slight disorder of her skirts, something hardly worth noting at all, given that it was so easily explained by the difficult journey she'd just undertaken. In the thin light of the streetlamps, her face looked even more pale than usual, her lips pressed flat and bloodless, though a spot of deep pink colored each cheek, like cherries in a bowl of cream, the color deepening and spreading as she noticed Raoul's eyes upon her. He tightened his hand reassuringly around hers. But then she turned her face away, and with his pulse thudding hollowly in his head, Raoul noticed, behind her ear, a stray lock of hair, a single curl somehow fallen free from her carefully styled hair, and it was becoming exceedingly difficult to convince himself that what had taken place over the last hour was anything other than what it really had been. But it didn't matter. Just because it happened didn't mean they had to acknowledge that it had, not when he could push the truth down just as he'd pushed down so many uncomfortable, inconvenient things. And so his hands were reaching, pulling that curl back up to the place it belonged and securing it on a pin, nice and tight, so there would be no chance of it coming loose again.

"Well, darling," Raoul said, clearing his throat, "the carriage is waiting. Shall we?" He took her by the elbow and guided her toward the street. "It's getting quite cold, don't you think? Winter's just around the corner. Perhaps you'd better wear an extra layer next time."

…

He didn't want to be the one to suggest it — not only because it would mean having to acknowledge what had happened, but because it seemed an insensitive thing to do, even if it was a reasonable request — so Raoul was quite relieved when Christine announced that she was going to take a bath before coming to bed.

Minutes later, she emerged from her dressing room in her robe, brushing past him with eyes averted. The sound of water banging to life in the pipes prickled Raoul's skin, and he was fine, but all the same he found his feet moving, shuffling about the bedroom, uncertain of where to go and what to do, with only a vague sense that he needed to be doing something. Blinking, he looked up to find himself in Christine's dressing room, standing before the pile of silk and lace draped over the chair. With numb fingers, he gathered up the discarded dress and pressed it to his face, inhaling deeply, breathing in the scent of Christine's perfume, that delicate mist of lavender — but mingled with it was another scent too, the stale smell of damp and dust, that smell which clung to fabric and hair and skin after being swallowed up by the cellars beneath the opera, just as he expected, just as he himself likely smelled. But then he inhaled again and there was something else — a subtle soft, spicy scent, like sandalwood — and with that fetid, fragrant breath still burning in his lungs, all at once the contents of Raoul's stomach were in his throat, in his mouth. He flung the dress away and with just seconds to spare, he managed to find an empty vase, and into it he heaved and heaved and heaved until there was nothing at all left within him.

When he was finally finished, he swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, laughing shakily. Well, he supposed he would have to admit it: maybe it was possible that he wasn't quite as fine as he'd thought.

...

Raoul was waiting on the edge of the bed in his nightclothes when Christine returned, skin scrubbed to a glowing pink; he leapt to his feet as she approached. She paused in front of him, arms drawn around her waist, apparently waiting for him to make the first move. The right thing to do, he knew, was to take her into his arms, and that was just what he'd planned to do...but for some reason he had no answer for, at the last second, he instead clasped her on the shoulders, planted a swift kiss on her cheek, and then stood aside and waited for her to climb into bed.

The walk around to his side could have been completed a touch more quickly, but he needed the time to berate himself for what he'd just done. It was wrong, he was handling all of this wrong, and yet, when he took his place beside her, he found himself staring up at the ceiling, the sensation of her eyes on him sending his bare feet squirming beneath the sheets.

"Raoul…"

The way she said his name sounded like a recrimination, and he deserved that, but still, he couldn't look at her. And then it hit him, the words she'd spoken the night he'd presented his plan ringing in his ears as clearly as if she'd just spoken them, his cheeks burning hot from the shameful realization that he was doing precisely what he promised he would not. "You really think you'd be able to look at me the same way after such a thing?" she'd asked, and he'd sworn up and down there would be no reason to doubt him, yet here he was, not looking at her at all.

Guilty tears pricked his eyes as he finally turned to her; he tried to blink them away before she could see.

It was a futile effort. One look at her face, at the deeply etched lines of worry and apology, brought the tears springing right back, mercifully blurring his vision so that he no longer had to wonder how he could possibly stand to see her look at him as if she'd done wrong and needed his forgiveness, when all of this was his doing, when all along he'd been the one pushing her to agree, when she'd done nothing he hadn't insisted upon. No, he was the one who should be seeking forgiveness. He'd behaved like an absolute heel, letting his own feelings of discomfort get in the way of what she needed from him. He'd been making this all about himself, had thought only of himself. He would do better.

Breaching the distance between them with his outstretched hand, he ran the backs of his fingers over her burning cheek. He could feel her soften under his hand, and she smiled back at him, uncertain and waiting.

There were so many questions he wanted to ask her, so much he needed to know, needed to be reassured of. But he couldn't. He wouldn't. The promise he'd made was to her and to himself as much as to Erik — he would not pry.

"Did you feel safe and—" Raoul cleared his throat, "comfortable at all times?"

Christine held his eyes as she answered. "Yes."

"And were you treated with respect?"

"Yes," she replied, her voice unwavering.

Raoul nodded, his lips pressed shut. He'd asked his two questions, and it was best that he not give himself the opportunity to keep speaking; he'd learned well enough that his mouth could sometimes run away from him, spouting things he'd never meant to say, asking questions he didn't want answered.

"Are you alright? Is this going to be alright?" Christine's fingers were twining through his, holding tight, her eyes serious and searching. "You only need to say the word and we can end this right now."

But no words were necessary. Now, he truly was alright. And so, wordlessly, he opened his arms to her and she folded herself into his embrace; he held her there, safe and protected, loved and cherished.

Pressed against the heat and softness of her, he felt his body quickly begin to respond, the intensity of his desire shocking him. The last thing he expected was that he would want to be intimate at this moment, but also, it made perfect sense, didn't it? And so when he kissed her and she responded with exceptional hunger, within moments he was on her and in her, and it felt so right because she was his and he was hers, and it was surprisingly easy to forget everything as she clung to him, their bodies fitting together as perfectly as they always had.

The coupling felt like a relief, like a new beginning, and if he was crying, it was only because he was so happy that everything really was going to be just fine.

Hello hello! I really know how to give the people what they want, no? First, avoid a possible E/C sex scene, and then, after a month-long wait, follow it up with Raoul chain smoking, vomiting, and getting laid. No need to thank me; I live to serve.

Thanks again to Aldebaran for being my first, amazing insightful reader on tbis chapter!

Up next: Erik and Christine hang out, and honestly it's gonna be pretty lowkey, since it's not like they have an awkward pretext for meeting up any complicated history to be addressed or anything.

Thanks as always for all of your thoughtful feedback! I still owe replies to many messages; this last month was really A LOT so I'm behind on everything, but things are settling down now again. I appreciate each and every one of you! You're the best!

xo Flora