A quick note: There's a nice little handful of swears in this, but if swearing is a deal-breaker, I've got some bad news about some of Erik's other vices.

Chapter 24 — Reste Encor en Mes Bras Enlacés

It was bullshit, in Erik's opinion.

Though he knew enough of female biology to know that, after about a month, nature would take its course and put a temporary end to the game they played, when Giry passed him a thick cream-colored envelope the day after Christine's last visit, Erik still found himself blinking at the words inside, uncomprehending.

"This month was not successful. Christine will be indisposed for about a week. I will contact you when we have need of you again."

A week!

A two day wait between visits was painful enough; a week bordered on cruelty. And, worst of all, it was entirely unnecessary! The state of things beneath Christine's skirts was — woefully, but deservedly — of no concern to him at all, nor had any bearing whatsoever on what was actually taking place during their rendezvous. This break was insult on top of injury, a reminder that it was just a game, and to play by the rules meant he would be without her for an entire week!

It was ridiculous! It was unfair. It was complete and utter bullshit.

But of course he could never say so. Christine, his little actress, had clearly done an impeccable job of convincing her boy that the terms of the arrangement were being fulfilled as they should, and if Erik wanted these visits to continue, he would have to play his part, as well.

Still, he couldn't help but stew in his pain and resentment. There had been so many years without her, and now, so few hours with her left to be had… Of course he would grieve the loss of time they should have had, even if the use of "should" was debatable.

Erik allowed himself one night of deep melancholy with an entire bottle of wine as company; hadn't he earned a bit of wallowing? Being alone was more or less all he knew, yet over the course of less than a month, he'd learned an entirely new meaning of the word. How much more alone alone felt, after all those hours of her, of her voice, of her smile, of being able to pretend for a brief while that he wasn't so miserably…alone.

Swigging directly from the bottle, drunk on his own misery more than the wine, he shambled through the empty rooms of his home, touching the things that her hands had touched, letting the tears run under his mask until he couldn't stand it anymore, then dragged himself to the bedroom, where he flung off the mask and let the tears flow over his cursed face, and then, before they'd even dried, mercifully passed out cold on the bed — alone.

The next morning, waking with the unwelcome recollection of his obligations — and now without an excuse to shirk them any longer — Erik shut up his hidden home and went back to work.

His house in Brussels was the perfect palate cleanser: impossible to wallow in, with massive windows which left every corner unshadowed, a beautifully (and much less funerally) appointed space, which harbored no trace at all of his life before — no art besides architecture, no music, no her.

Unfortunately, the change of surroundings did nothing at all to improve his mood.

When Erik finally showed up at the church very late that afternoon, Nadir, perceptive as always, must have sensed the prickly irritation Erik had come armed with, for he merely raised a hand in greeting as Erik stomped into the garden room and right on past him, fists curled tight, then watched silently as Erik continued stomping through the church until he disappeared into his office, yanking the door shut without looking back.

Then again, perhaps Erik hadn't been too subtle.

In any case, over the next few days, Nadir wisely gave him a wide berth, filled him in on what he'd missed without prying, and did nothing except sigh when Erik snapped at him after asking the same question about tile twice. Best of all, he kept Emile, that idiot intern — who Erik had to admit, now that he thought about it, wasn't entirely dissimilar from the vicomte — by his side and away from Erik at all times.

As a thank you for that kindness, Erik showed up at Nadir's door that third night with a rather excellent bottle of wine, which they shared as they talked their way around the elephant in the room. When the bottle was near its end, and both men's posture had softened from its initial stiff, self-conscious formality into easy familiarity, Erik noticed Nadir eyeing him surreptitiously — though nowhere as surreptitiously as Nadir thought.

"I was thinking, Erik," he said, topping off his glass and then Erik's with a little splash from the bottle, "that it would be nice if you came along with me on Wednesday. I have a meeting with the accountant to go over where we stand on the budget." He took an ostentatiously casual sip.

Shrugging, Erik took his own, even more ostentatiously causal sip. "That hardly sounds like anything I need to be present for. When have I ever concerned myself with the finances?" He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. "Why don't you take your beloved intern if you need the moral support?"

"Maybe I will," Nadir nodded. "But surely I can expect you when the landscapers come to discuss the plans for the new rear courtyard the following Friday, yes?"

Erik put down his glass with a harsh sigh. "If you're trying to work out if I'm leaving again and when, Daroga, you could just ask," he said and Nadir grimaced; if nothing else, at least the man had the decency not to protest. "Yes, I am leaving again, within the week."

"For three weeks again?"

"For three weeks again." Erik folded his arms across his chest. "What, aren't you going to take out your little notebook and add that to your list of clues?"

"I have a right to know, Erik!" Nadir's face was ruddy with drink and indignation. "Why won't you tell me what you're doing?"

Erik drained the last of his wine in a large swallow. "We are business partners, Daroga, not a married couple. Leave me be." He stood to leave. "Anything you need me for can be accomplished within this week. And I'll be back again next month for another week, I daresay, once I've finished with my obligations."

"'Obligations'…" Still in his seat, Nadir craned around to observe as Erik began gathering his things, his eyes narrowed behind his gold-rimmed glasses. "Erik, please, please be honest with me. Are you…" His fingers dug into the padded leather armrests. "Are you doing as the Vicomte de Chagny asked you?"

"No," Erik replied coolly, slipping his arms into his jacket and giving the sleeves a crisp tug. "As a matter of fact, I am not."

Nadir sunk back into his chair. "I suppose that must be the truth," he muttered. "If you were, I'd expect you to be in a far better mood."

Against a rising tide of acid words and curses, Erik clamped his jaw shut, tightly enough that it began to hurt. He spoke through clenched teeth. "You once again seem to have forgotten that this topic is to remain off limits. Just as you — the one with an unflaggingly good mood — seem to have forgotten to consider whether perhaps that statement reveals more about you than it does me," he added with an unkind arch of his brow.

The bait was waved away, to no surprise — Nadir had always deftly evaded any talk of his rather suspiciously active social life outside of their friendship. "I only worry for you, Erik."

"Oh, the things you've stuck your unwelcome nose into under the guise of 'worrying'," Erik snapped. He snatched up his empty glass and bottle and strode off down the short hall to the kitchen, as Nadir launched to his feet and trotted after him; for a man who technically should not drink at all, he held his liquor remarkably well.

"You'd think you'd have learned by now," Erik continued, tossing the bottle into a bin, "but it seems you won't be happy until you've stuck it into a place where it truly does not belong and you lose it altogether. So let me warn you again, Daroga…" His grip on the stem of the wineglass tightened, a surrogate for the neck he felt a desperate desire to wring. "It does not belong in anything to do with Miss Daaé."

"Aha! So this is to do with her! Erik, what have you gotten yourself into?" He ran his fingers through his hair, muttering to himself in Persian — it was complete nonsense, Erik didn't even have a sister — and then leveled a look so reproachful that a dull buzzing filled Erik's burning ears. "What are you thinking? You can't be sleeping with another man's wife!"

"I told you, I am not," Erik ground out — and the sanctimonious little prude had the nerve to respond with a doubting, judgmental frown! Heat simmered around Erik's thumping heart. "But"—he slitted his eyes—"if I were to fuck the wife of each and every man in Paris, it would still not be any of your business." He smiled, nastily, gratified by Nadir's wincing reaction. "Do not be mistaken. You are no longer the police. You have never been my father. You"—he raised the empty glass, his fingers clamped upon the stem in an inexorably constricting grip—"are my business partner." The glass groaned, ready to snap.

And he could do it — he could snap the thing as easily as a twig, while never breaking eye contact, smiling his clenched-teeth smile, sending an unmistakable message to the man who never could seem to take a fucking hint—

"And your friend, Erik," Nadir said quietly. "I am also your friend. Though times like this, I truly wonder why." With a frown that seemed more tired than sad, he turned and began to walk away, shoulders sagging.

The heat which had been bubbling up inside Erik's chest, closer and closer to the surface, now moved into his face, which burned feverishly; he pivoted so that only the masked side was visible. Swallowing thickly, he relaxed his grip on the glass. "Oh, if it matters so much, why don't you reschedule the gardener for this week, when I'm here. Two days from now?"

Pausing to look over his shoulder, Nadir nodded curtly and then disappeared down the hall.

Perhaps he had been a bit harsh, a bit defensive. But really, Erik reasoned, as he went to the sink and, with shaking hands, gently washed and dried the glass, there was no reason for Nadir to have harassed him like that. It was quite uncalled for. Then, deciding that there was nothing else to say, he placed the glass back in the cabinet and slipped silently out the front door.

Maybe, he thought, walking the half-dozen or so yards to his own front door, maybe tomorrow he would apologize.

…

Whether or not he actually would have made that apology, Erik never found out.

The next day, he received a note, sent by express mail, informing him that they were ready sooner than expected and requesting his presence back in Paris tomorrow evening. Within fifteen minutes, Erik's bag was packed and he was out the door on his way to the train station.

Halfway to Paris, he realized he hadn't so much as left a note for Nadir, and felt a brief pang of guilt before he decided that if the Daroga of Mazandaran couldn't figure out what had happened, that was no fault of Erik's.

Besides, he would remind him — a real friend would understand.

...

They were late.

Well, they weren't technically late, but, usually, they were a few minutes early, and tonight that was not the case, which was more or less the same as being late. Erik executed a sharp turn and continued his march back down the path from which he'd just come, the sound of his heavy footsteps competing with the blood pounding in his ears.

That spoiled, self-important boy was simply too much to bear! Dismissing him like a superfluous servant, and yet expecting him to be at his beck and call? Making him wait in the cold and damp, dangling the promise of his own wife over Erik like a soup bone in front of a starving dog? That puffed up little prick! He knew exactly what he was doing. And now it was exactly nine o' clock, according to the watch Erik had been glaring at since he began his vigil, and now they were technically late!

"When we have need of you…" The absolute gall, to write such an insulting, presumptuous pronouncement with his own hand! As if Erik were some animal expected to be available for stud service at a moment's notice.

Oh, but Christine had need of Erik, alright; she'd told him so herself when she confessed that she could not sing without him. The vicomte, however, seemed to see Erik as barely human, when he really ought to have gotten it through his thick, inordinately handsome skull by now that Erik was a man — something more than a man, actually: a phantom, an angel, an unearthly maestro, capable of reaching into Christine's soul and extracting her deepest longings, which had nothing at all to do with something so common as motherhood.

Erik shoved the watch back into its pocket; there was no need to look at it now, they obviously weren't coming, and it was obviously the boy's fault, and the boy was damned lucky that Erik had given up murder as a solution to his problems, because right now it seemed like the perfect answer. He ground at the gritty stone floor with a brutal twist of his heel. Perhaps it was time to start thinking of spending the 50,000 francs which were still crammed into a dark, unused corner of his desk. Erik smiled grimly to himself as he wondered…would the hospital consider accepting a donation for the Raoul de Chagny Institute for the Study of Compulsive Masturbation?

So lost was he in his daydreams of unrealistic — and, yes, perhaps hypocritical — institutional endowments, Erik didn't notice their arrival until the gate began to creak open. Darting forward to assist, Erik snatched Christine's hand and pulled her down into the darkness, then flung the gate shut behind her, just missing the boy's still-grasping hand.

Erik did not trust himself to look directly at her, not yet, not until he'd had time to slow his racing heart and blink the sudden, surprise welling of tears from his eyes, and so he focused on the bobbing light of the lantern, a will o' the wisp beckoning them toward dark, mist-covered waters which were haunted by nothing but himself.

By the time they were on the boat, gliding across the still water, the pole clutched tight in Erik's hands to stop their shaking, it felt more awkward to stay silent than to talk. And yet he could not think of a single thing he could actually say out loud.

I missed you terribly? I'm so very, very happy you're here again? I did nothing since we were last together but count the moments until you returned to me?

No, not only was that pathetic, but he simply could not let her know how deep his feelings ran; which was ridiculous, considering all that had happened. As if his last words to her before she'd punted off with her boy that cursed night, wearing a wedding dress — a goddamned wedding dress — that he himself had buttoned her into hadn't laid his feelings bare in no uncertain terms! But he needed to keep some shred of dignity, did he not?

Though Christine had been quiet, it wasn't until they were finally face to face as he helped her with her cloak that Erik realized that she might be upset about something: a strange tension hunched her shoulders, and her red-rimmed eyes, which looked as if she had been holding back tears or hadn't slept or both, kept darting around the room as she removed her gloves. In a whisper, she thanked him for taking her cloak. But she did not look at him.

Erik's stomach dropped; he'd been wrong. There was no might be — she definitely was upset about something.

With cold, bloodless fingers, he took the gloves and tucked them into her cloak, and tried not to look when she began wringing her hands as he put the bundle aside. The last time he had seen her, she'd smiled brightly and had nearly run off to the music room before he'd even finished setting down her things. Yes, something had upset her, something that had happened since last time, and whatever it was, it was not good news for Erik.

The two stood awkwardly, expectantly, each waiting for the other to say something, make some move. Finally, Christine opened her mouth as if to speak, only to snap it shut again after a few stomach-clenching seconds, leaving one explanation clear in Erik's spinning head: she was having second thoughts, but did not know how to tell him.

While she chewed at her lip, glancing occasionally down the hall, then back at the music room, then down to her feet, Erik steadied his breathing and tried to stay positive — at least there seemed to be an easy way out of the situation: if she wasn't going to say anything about it, neither would he.

Erik knew he'd promised to talk, even about difficult things, but he wasn't so stupid as to ask what was wrong when the answer would obviously be the last thing he wanted to hear.

So he cleared his throat and gestured to the music room, a tight smile stretched across his face. "Shall we?"

"Actually…I..." Christine said quietly, still not looking at him, and Erik's fake smile evaporated. "I was thinking about…these visits…about what we're doing… And if maybe we should reconsider..." She bit at her lip.

Oh god, it was just as he thought. Nausea roiled his stomach in swelling waves.

"And I thought," she continued, still not meeting his eyes, "well...that this might be a good time to talk. About that. Instead."

Not this, not again. Last time she'd asked to talk, it turned out— well, it turned out pretty well, actually. But this was different. This time she specifically said that she wanted to reconsider these visits, and Erik did not want to reconsider these visits, and so Erik most certainly did not want to talk. Even if he'd promised.

His heart pounded, hammering so hard it seemed impossible that Christine could not see it, hear it, even feel it pulse right through the space between them — and yet, its swift, steady rhythm calmed him, focused him.

And that was the answer, wasn't it? If he could just get her singing…

The false smile reappeared. "Certainly," he said quite smoothly. "But as I recall, you don't want to be forced to choose only one or the other." The smile stretched until it felt about to crack around the edges. "We needn't limit ourselves to just talking, right? Surely we can sing, too?" He clasped his trembling hands behind his back.

Christine glanced down the hallway and frowned, her lip once again pressed between her teeth. "I suppose so…" she said, her pinched brow relaxing just enough that Erik felt justified in slowly releasing the painful breath he'd been holding in.

"Talk and sing it is, then." This time Erik's smile was genuine, though shaky. "Which would you like to do first?"

"Let's…" She twisted at her ring. "Let's sing," she said at last, with a sigh — one which sounded to Erik's ears like relief.

Erik was no fool. He knew that once he enveloped her in music, once she was singing, once her soul was flying free on wings only he could provide, she would remember how much she wanted this, how much she needed this, and she would never again second guess what they were doing. And by all appearances, he'd been right. Once the music began, there was no awkwardness, no doubt; just her and him and the ecstasy of song.

But, just in case that wasn't enough, Erik also knew a thing or two about avoidance.

To that end, he dragged out the lesson so that talk was impossible, keeping Christine distracted by drilling her on trivial details, one right after another, choosing passages to focus on which required intense concentration and physical effort, so that by the lesson's end, she was completely exhausted with perhaps a vague memory that she'd meant to ask him something, but quite unfortunately, could not remember just what.

He had changed, though, he truly had; he had no intention of taking away her choice. So as he helped her back into her cloak and gloves, he asked her, very congenially, if she still wanted to talk. And when she demurred, Erik nodded understandingly, saying "Next time, then," and rowed her back across the lake in satisfied silence, smiling to himself all the while.

He had saved himself. For now. And if she wanted to talk next time, well, that was a problem for then.

…

Strangely, though, the next time, she did not mention talking at all. In fact, she was quite insistent that they get to singing right away. Whatever was troubling her seemed to have passed, and she was ready to sing again with all the passion and hard work she had been putting in the month prior.

Especially the passion.

They had spent the entire session on "Nuit d'hyménée", to Erik's ever-increasing misery. It really was for the best that he was not allowed to sing Roméo's part, because he doubted he would have managed to choke out the words "O sweet night of love" without weeping wretched tears of frustration. Instead, he closed his eyes and let himself sing wordlessly through the violin, letting it weep with the joy of fleshly delights he would never know.

"One more time, Erik?" came Christine's sweet voice.

He dropped the bow and opened his eyes; Christine was smiling at him apologetically, twisting a ribbon around her finger. "Can you check that I'm holding myself correctly? I'm not sure I have it right."

Again!

Groaning internally, Erik set down the violin and took a deep breath before assuming the now-familiar position behind her, trying to keep his eyes off the exceptionally low neckline of her dress. Between that and these frequent requests for breathing and posture checks, if Erik wasn't so sure that she had no interest whatsoever in the original reason for their reunion, he would almost…possibly…

No, no. She'd told him in no uncertain terms that she'd had not meant to follow through, and that he'd been right to turn her down, had she not? Besides, Erik had almost no experience at all with women exhibiting desire for him — he would be a fool to assume, wouldn't he?

But that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy these moments anyway...

With splayed hands, he checked the leveling of her shoulders, then slid them down her arms to check for signs of tension, his unmasked cheek just barely brushing against her pinned-up hair, and he had to fight the sinful urge to pluck out the pins and drag his fingers through the curls, so he might see them fall loose over her shoulders again.

He let his heavy-lidded gaze drift across her narrow shoulder, followed the sculpted line of her collarbone to— Erik blinked. When had her head fallen so far to one side? Beneath his terrible — and suddenly very dry — lips, a long sweep of ivory neck lay exposed, velvety as a peach and just as tempting, though Erik had never hungered for any fruit as much as he craved a taste of the temptation laid before him. He swallowed hard — Eve had never had it so bad.

Breathless, his hands still skimming her arms, her belly, her ribs, he let his gaze settle beneath her ear, in a little hollow, where her pulse beat with a rhythm far more urgent than Juliette's andante. Erik watched it race with darkening eyes. Could she really be so unaware of the invitation she seemingly offered? She had to be, didn't she?

She had to be…

Gritting his teeth, Erik wrenched his eyes away from that maddening flicker which he would have easily given a year of his life to flick his tongue against, just once. He cleared his throat with a small cough. "Well, here — you need to straighten." And with the tips of two fingers at her jawline, he tilted her head fully upright, though the rest of her seemed to sag, and she sighed, with...surely not with disappointment?

Of course not, that was ridiculous. He must remember, he couldn't trust himself to interpret anything, not when a mind driven near-mad with loneliness and sexual frustration was capable of making much too much out of nothing. Logically, even if Erik could make her feel desire with music — a sensation he was, well, intimately familiar with — he could never think she would desire him physically, not when the man she shared a bed with every night was almost exactly how Erik would have designed his worst nightmare of a rival — though to call him a rival would assume that Erik had ever had a chance.

Christine drew herself back up. "Can I try it from 'Ô charmes tout puissants!'? Without the violin." She looked back at him from over her shoulder, dark eyes steady and serious and…something else. "Just...maybe you can listen and...let me know if it's working for you."

Erik pressed his lips together and nodded. He opened his arms to her, and she settled herself within his careful embrace; he pressed his fingers to her breastbone, guiding her to take a breath.

That was right, Erik didn't have a chance — which was why he'd decided weeks ago that he would take what he could get — which was why he only felt the smallest twinge of guilt as he pulled her in close, nearly flush with his body, and whispered in her ear for her to begin — which was why even that small twinge of guilt vanished as golden notes poured from her throat, as skirts of pleated silk swished in gentle accompaniment to the rhythm, as he felt her flow through his veins, potent as any drug, felt his eyes grow heavy with barely suppressed lust.

This wasn't wrong of him, this is how they'd sung together so many times before, from the very first time he'd revealed himself to her — a transcendent experience then and every time since. She wanted to restore her voice, and if that was best accomplished by enfolding her in his arms and letting music transform into desire and then back again, by letting her play innocent Aminta to his miserably burning Don Juan, then he could do that for her.

For her.

He could make it through this. He could focus on her voice, on her breath, on the pleats and ruffles of her skirt brushing against his thighs delicately, but not so delicately that he didn't have to hold his breath and remain as still as humanly possible so that he didn't—

Ah…but it was too late.

Already his heated blood had begun to swell and stiffen that most monstrous part of him, throbbing in that torturous, satisfying way he'd become so familiar with.

How loathsome he was. What an immoral lecher. He cursed himself again and again for his depravity — as he simultaneously praised God for bustles and the buffer they provided — as he committed to memory the rhythm of her swaying hips, noted the breadth of them so he might arrange a couple of pillows just so later that night.

Over her stiff silk bodice the barest tips of his fingers skimmed and slid, gauging her breath control, his own control close to breaking — sweat breaking out in droplets along the back of his neck, sweat slicking his palms as he pictured his hands scrabbling at her skirts until he had them hoisted waist-high — pictured his hands wrapped around her ribs, grasping her — his lips on her neck, tasting her — his hips against hers, burying himself in her — and then burying himself alive in a shallow grave, because that was the very last thing she wanted and she would never forgive him, never come back to him, and there would be nothing left for him when it was done.

But at least there were bustles — yes, thank God for bustles — so that he could press himself against the pleats of silk, feel them rasp deliciously against his tenting trousers like the filthy old man he was — which of course, of course he was, he'd lived a hell of a long time having been this pent up, much too long.

And this wasn't so bad, they'd been doing this little dance for weeks now, and not only did she tolerate it, but sometimes, like now, it almost seemed — though of course she wasn't really — as if she pushed back against him — the pressure increasing until he could almost make himself believe it was deliberate — even if he knew it wasn't — her hips almost grinding into him, her head falling back, back arching, one fluttering hand coming up to cover his, holding it to her heaving belly, that sweet, bustled bottom pressing closer and closer until he could swear he could feel the soft, rounded flesh beneath the small padded bustle, so warm and yielding and— Oh god, she was only wearing a small padded bustle!

He could feel her— her! There was no cage to protect her from him, just that little pad and a few layers of petticoats and that meant she could feel—

His vision went dark, little spots of light popping behind his eyes. He spun away, and, keeping his back to her as much as possible, all but ran to the door. Only when he was suitably shielded did Erik look back, fingers clawed around the door frame, at Christine, who stood open-mouthed, the song cut off cleanly mid-line, blinking, her hand hovering over her belly, over the empty space where his own caressing hand had been but a moment before.

There was no saying which of their faces burned a brighter red.

He couldn't look at her. And she couldn't look at him. And that's how Erik wanted it to stay.

"That's enough for today," he at last managed to croak out. Oh please, god, don't let her look at him. "We— ah..." His throat burned as he swallowed thickly. "We should be going. We need to go. We need to leave. Now. So we won't be late. We can, ah…" Erik drummed his fingers against the door frame. "We can finish up with that one next time, if you like."

Christine at last turned to him with a blank stare, shaking her head slowly, as if coming out of a trance. Then, all at once, her face clouded; her hands fell heavy to her sides. With a harsh sigh, she turned and snatched the music off the stand. "No," she said, "that's alright." She tossed the pages onto the stack of scores piled next to the piano, her mouth set in a grim, yet tremulous line. "I think I might have to give up on this one."

Oh man. Can't believe that's that and they're never gonna do it. I'd like to file a complaint with the author - I want my money back.

Up next: That's that and they're never gonna do it. Unless...?

Thank you all so much for your support! I am trying to get this written a quickly as I can, and I appreciate your patience and kind words, it keeps me going! That and, like, I too would like them to do it eventually, JEEZ.

Thank you to everyone, and a special thank you, (I have had such a hard time with responding privately, so you get a public thanking) to rscoil, MarilynKC, FleshofMidnight (thank you for suffering through the Raoul), sharp52092, His Midnight Music (who I respect for their commitment to their anti R/C ways, and makes me feel honored you're putting up with it here), Mominator124 (yes, green fairy is both!), EmeraldHeather, blubird2021, TMara (you are right about Christine's reasons for being upset - both reasons!), Musicwriter158, and TendernessOfTheHeart (you are also right! it is all of the above.)

Thank you to Aldebaran, who put in so much time talking story with me and helping in countless little ways. And also, thank you to another fandom friend for your advice to not worry about disappointing readers, and instead torture them by cutting it here. She shall remain nameless, unless I get a bunch of complaints, at which point I'm gonna have to name names and let her take the blame. :)