A/N: Written for ArtistForever and likelightinglass, who both sent me this word as a prompt. Plus I'm re-uploading it, because I'm such an eejit Ii marked it as Erik/Carlotta the first time when it is very definitely Erik/Christine.

He has seen her in light, so many times, and while he admires the aesthetic beauty of her, the softness, the delicacy, those feelings do not stir inside of him. The swell of her breasts, the curve of her hip, the architecture of her slim legs – he can gaze on her nakedness all day long, and never want to do a thing more than hold her close, and protect her.

He has mapped her, sketched her, traced her, learned her, has spent days, weeks! contemplating her nude form, and never considered himself more than an artist at his work, never craved to know in that intimate way of husbands and wives.

But when the lights go down. Oh, when the lights go down.

He studies her in the full light, and sees a work of art. He studies her in the half-light of the fire's glow, and nuzzles into her throat and is content. He studies her in the softness of the fading candle, and flicks her nipple with his tongue, the sensation of it humming through him, plucking the first chord in the melody, its note thrilling beneath his navel, warning him.

He studies her in full darkness, and burns to make love to her, to feel her little hands on him, palms soft against his back, fingernails scrabbling. He kisses her nipples, sucks them, breathes in the space between her breasts, lives there a moment eternity, and moves inside of her, her body hot and wet around him and he cannot tell where he ends and she begins, cannot tell if they are two or one or perfectly harmonised, his whimpers and her moans, the stuttering gasps from parted lips owned by both. Falling together, falling apart, her blue eyes shining in the darkness all that he can see—

She rocks through her ecstasy, his own a moment behind hers and his back arches, contorts almost painfully, her fingers brittle between his own, the violins reaching their crescendo, climbing higher and higher and higher all that he can hear, her heaving gasps all that he can feel, that wonderful freedom in his chest when his heart stalls and his vision dims and the violins soar—

And he collapses on top of her, next to her, in and out of himself at once, and he cannot see her in the darkness, can only feel her, her kiss-swollen lips soft against his cheek, promising, whispering, "My poor, Erik, my lovely, sweet, Erik," each word punctuated with his own gasps, "I love you I love you I love you."

He cannot answer her back, cannot speak, can only tilt his head and kiss her, again, once more in the darkness, the music wrapping them in its embrace, each breath a prayer, a promise, a vow that he would never recant, only whisper endlessly as long they both shall live. And as his eyes slip closed, his heart settles, he knows that he will never leave her arms again.