A/N: Written for a prompt off a prompt sheet,"Oh shit. Am I - Am I in love? That's not supposed to be happening. That's not right", as requested by rjdaae.

It is not right. It cannot possibly be right. He is not supposed to feel things. He is not supposed to feel these things, so soft and delicate. How could such…such tender feelings sow themselves in him? If it were the Daroga – if it were literally anybody else – he would have no trouble in believing them capable of harbouring such sentiment. But him? Him?

The Daroga gave him tea, gave him brandy, gave him a fire to sit by and a gentle smile, and in the midst of it all – the brandy, the fire, that smile – it all came tumbling out. The soft twisting in his chest, the longing of his fingers to trace themselves over a smooth cheek (the tingling in his lips every time his eyes fall on that forehead). The way he feels as if his breath has been knocked out of his lungs to see the flick of that hair, hear the lilt of that voice.

(He thought he was dying the first time, the way his heart fluttered. But when he did not actually drop on the spot and was able to draw a full breath again, a rush of unfamiliar warmth in his cheeks, he was forced to conclude that his life was actually not in imminent danger. And then it happened again. And again. And again.)

The whole sorry affair tumbled from his lips, and when the tears burned his eyes as inevitably they did he went to the window and took his mask off, lay his forehead against the cool pane of glass. One hesitating hand patted his shoulder, squeezed it.

You may rest here tonight, the Daroga murmured, voice kind as if he were used to such displays of emotion in his parlour every day, if you wish.

Another time Erik would have refused the offer, and left for home. But that night, that night he had not the energy for it.

If he were another man he might have stayed there, might have escaped from there and run far away to where she might never find him. But the pull in his heart was too much, the aching, the longing, and back he slunk to the Garnier, back to everything that is a reminder of her.

She does not see him, of course, never has. And if he has his way, if he has any sense left to his name at all, she never will.

He nods the resolution, and curls up, and breathes. And somewhere, deep inside, knows being near her will never be enough to sustain him.