A/N: We veer into some M-rated territory near the end of the chapter. I'll be changing the rating shortly.

Christine had just enough time to see that the kitchen was clear before Lisa grabbed her.

"There's a car pulling up," Lisa said, her voice increasing in pitch. Her hand trembled against Christine's forearm.

The vehicle was sidling directly into the driveway, next to Lisa's sedan. Its headlights were blinding in the dark, such that Christine couldn't make out the vehicle, but their height from the ground was indicative of an SUV.

"Get inside," she urged quietly, and Lisa obeyed without hesitation. "I'll be there in a minute." Christine shut the door to Lisa's protests. Terrified as she was, she had to know who was in the car.

Her heart raced even faster now as she waited, hand on the doorknob, ready to run. With her other hand, she pulled up Darius' contact page on her phone.

The engine shut off, and then the headlights. Christine blinked away the bright spots in her eyes. The SUV was not black, but a metallic charcoal gray, like liquid mercury. Out of its driver's side stepped Raoul.

"Hey!" he called, raising a hand in greeting. "Fancy meeting you here." He wore a fitted navy jacket that brought out the brilliant blue of his eyes, even in the dim porch lighting, and every ounce of her tension melted away to leave her sagging with relief.

She pushed the door open. "It's okay; it's just Raoul," she murmured to Lisa, who poked her head out to confirm.

Raoul had made his way to the porch by then. "Yes, just me. Sorry to disappoint."

"Wasn't Darius just at your place?" asked Christine.

"Yeah. He left his phone charger behind." He held up the charger so she could see it. "I decided to be chivalrous."

"Wait," said Lisa, "is this your new guy? He lives here?"

"You want to meet him? You guys are welcome to come up and hang out."

Christine looked to Lisa, eyebrows raised in question, silently hoping that she'd decline. She wanted desperately to see Erik, to apprise him of what was happening.

Instead, Lisa flashed her a hopeful glance. "I'd love to meet him."

"Sure," she replied, with forced enthusiasm. "You guys go on up. I'll just change into something more comfortable first."

She watched them disappear into the staircase entrance, and then she bit her lip as she readied herself to find Erik.

The evening had been going well, all things considered.

Erik spent much of it with his composition software, attempting to pin down his inspiration from the night before, when melody had crept up on him and woven, catlike, around his mind. The laptop was no substitute for a keyboard at his fingertips, but he made do. As long as he got the basics down, he could flesh out the music later.

Later. When would that be? He'd had no luck finding a new residence, despite half a day's efforts. It was not the sort of place where a landlord would hand over the keys without question. There were background checks, and red tape, and every sort of documentation he wished to avoid at present. Hidden bunkers were even harder to come by, if one did not know where to look. He knew the city well, but not that well.

Already he felt the confines of this place. It was easily a thousand times better than prison, of course, but still the walls closed in on him, caged him like an anxious rat: a sensation only intensified by the knowledge that he depended on another person for basic provisions.

He longed for the fleeting daylight that the privacy of the carillon had afforded him, for the office to which he could have provisions delivered, for the ability to move among steam tunnels and hallways and classrooms as he pleased.

When he'd finally let himself compose, it had been to keep himself from hurling his laptop at the wall.

His stomach began to rumble at odd intervals. He ignored it until it grew late, at which point he closed the laptop in exasperation and made his way to the kitchen, where Christine had insisted he help himself to the contents of the fridge and pantry. He was taking stock of the fridge when a car door slammed just outside.

He froze. Christine had walked the few blocks to the theater; he knew that much. There was a creak of the front door, and then a knock at the kitchen entrance. "Christine?"

It was the young detective. Erik remained stock-still, every muscle fighting not to reach out and close the fridge door. The detective knocked again. There was a long pause, and then retreating footsteps that traveled up the neighboring stairs and into the apartment overhead.

When he was satisfied that the detective was preoccupied for the time being, Erik set to making himself a sandwich. This living arrangement, he had to admit, was workable for the time being. Annoying, yes, and inconvenient—but workable.

He'd just put away the last of the sandwich ingredients when another pair of headlights shone through the kitchen curtain. A guest going upstairs, he told himself, but he remained rooted to the spot, waiting. The subsequent chime of his phone—an incoming message—only increased the dread building coldly into his chest.

Grab your things and hide in my room, the message read. Now.

Cursing under his breath, Erik snatched the finished sandwich from its plate and ran.

He cut through the guest room like a cyclone. He arrived at Christine's room with his overnight bag over one shoulder, his laptop bag over the other, and his arms laden with whatever else had been sitting out, the sandwich balancing precariously on top of it all. He set everything on the scalloped teal rug at the center of the room, and he was just closing the bedroom door when he heard the click of the doorknob at the front entrance. He pressed his ear to the wood and waited.

The front door shut abruptly. There was half a minute of unsettling silence, then murmured voices: Christine's, he thought, and another woman's, and then decidedly a man's.

He assumed Christine was doing what she could to keep others out of the room, but he was still a sitting duck should someone happen to wander in. He quietly pulled apart the pair of bifold doors to her closet and, deeming it spacious enough, wedged himself into a small space on the floor, beneath the hanging clothes. He slid long fingers under the doors to pull them shut, and then he finally let himself tuck into the sandwich.

His grateful stomach quieted as he chewed. Some of his irritation subsided, though not all: what had she gotten them into?

He checked his phone for additional messages, but there were none. And then, in the blue light of the tiny screen, something caught his eye: a violin case.

Erik polished off the rest of the sandwich, brushing the crumbs from his palms before he reached for the case. Even in low lighting, it was clear that it had seen better days. He set his phone on the floor with its flashlight on, and he lay the case on its side to unlatch it.

The violin lay nestled in a bed of wine-colored velvet. He ran a finger along its wooden edge before he lifted it, gingerly, to set it on his knee. It was older than his; he could tell that much. But it had been well loved, and well cared for, and it had character.

The bedroom door creaked open, and he was quick to turn off his phone. Several moments of silence followed.

"Erik?"

Christine's voice was barely above a whisper. Before he could respond, the bifold doors opened to her round face. Her eyes widened at the sight of him. "My father's violin," she remarked.

"I was terribly curious; I apologize." He placed the instrument back in its case.

"No, no, I'm glad it's getting some attention. I was just surprised, is all." She sat cross-legged on the floor across from him. "It's still playable?"

"Of course. It would likely benefit from a restringing, which I am happy to do." Erik set the case aside and inched out from beneath the clothes, uncrossing his legs to sit with knees pointed up, his back against the wall. He draped his arms over the front of his legs. "So. To what do we owe this clandestine pleasure?"

Her gaze had drifted to his forearms, and he realized with a small lurch of panic that his gloves were still off, and his sleeves still rolled, from when he had made the sandwich. Even in the dim light of the room, the leathery skin of his right arm rose in ridges pink and angry. It was with a forced calm that he began to unroll the shirtsleeves.

"Please don't be mad," Christine said, "but I told Lisa she could stay the night in the guest room."

"What?" The word came out as a hiss. Sleeves now in place, he lurched to his feet. "Is she in there now?"

She scrambled to stand as well. "No, she's upstairs with Raoul and Darius for the time being." Quickly, she recounted the events of their evening, ending with her capitulation in the driveway.

"There are a hundred excuses you could have given," Erik snapped.

"I'm sorry! I panicked! But how could I turn her away, really?"

"I have been here one day, and I am already at risk of being discovered by a random nobody! What happens when Detective Glasses starts sniffing around?"

"Darius," she said through gritted teeth. "But what if the roles had been reversed, Erik? What if I'd been the one being followed, terrified out of my wits, and Lisa had turned me away at the door?"

"Difficult to say. Am I hiding in her closet in this scenario?"

Christine huffed. "Argue all you want, but I know I did the right thing." She began to collect his belongings from the rug, relocating them as she saw fit. He'd put his dress shirt from the previous night on a hanger, and he was oddly moved to see her add it, with great care, to the closet rack that held her own clothes.

He exhaled in resignation. "You are too soft for your own good, Christine Daaé."

She gave a playful tug of his sleeve, her smile both smug and warm. "It seems to have worked in your favor."

His hands were still uncovered, and in that moment he wanted nothing more than to cup her face, feel the gentle heat of her skin, tangle his bare fingers in those brown locks and kiss her. But no: there were logistics to work out first. "And what is your plan for the rest of her stay?"

"Well, to start, I said I'd join them once I changed clothes." She went back into the closet, this time to extract garments.

"While I stay imprisoned in this room?"

He didn't miss how she flinched at the word "imprisoned." "Only for the night," she insisted. "You can come out while we're upstairs; I don't mind."

He shook his head. "Too risky."

Christine's shoulders sank. "Well, then, you can at least have my bed. I'll sleep on the floor."

He was not about to let that happen, but there had been enough argument for the time being. "You need to join your friends," he said. "They will start to wonder."

She hesitated, but one stern look from him and she started moving. She changed into jeans and a long-sleeved tee in the bathroom, and she returned with an armload of clean linens: sheets and blankets for the both of them, a fresh pillow for him. She lingered after that, her eyes wide with some amalgam of guilt and perhaps cloying pity. He would have none of that. A few sharp commands, and he had her on her way upstairs as he listened for the faint and distant sound of her gait on the staircase.

He'd assumed that the women had gone upstairs in order to relay the night's events to the detective. But minutes passed, and eventually a full hour had gone by. Loud bursts of laughter began to punctuate the murmur of voices overhead.

He took out his building irritation on the linens, shaking the folds loose with more aggression than was necessary. The more things changed, as was said, the more they stayed the same. He would forever be relegated to a life of confinement, while the rest of the world passed him by.

Upstairs, Christine found Darius and Raoul sharing the living-room sofa, while Lisa perched on a neighboring chair, the three of them chatting about grad school. She sat in an armchair opposite Lisa's, still too unnerved by the black SUV to join in. Lisa was making a passable attempt at conversation—perhaps a necessary skill when dating a business mogul—but the hands folded in her lap were fidgety, her smile uneasy.

"Lisa," Christine finally said, "did you know that Darius is a police detective?" When she received only a timid nod in response, she added, "You should tell him." The men's heads lifted in interest.

Lisa glanced down at her hands. "I don't think I want to make a big deal out of it, not after Phil told me I shouldn't."

"I can assure you," said Darius, "that nothing you tell me will be anywhere close to the most unnecessary police calls I've witnessed."

She hesitated, but after an encouraging nod from Christine, she began to chronicle the incidents with the black SUV.

Darius listened intently, his comments soothing, his follow-up questions tactful and patient. Raoul, on the other hand, seemed to grow more uneasy as she spoke, until it was unclear whether he intended to throw up or punch a hole in the wall.

"And my brother told you not to worry about it?" he asked afterward. "Unbelievable! I could strangle him."

"No, don't start anything with him," Lisa pleaded. "He's already so stressed right now."

"He's stressed?"

Darius held up a hand for quiet. "Lisa, can you come down to the station tomorrow and file a report? You can ask for me specifically. Here." He fished a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her. "And if you see the vehicle again, try to get the license plate number, okay? We should be able to check out some security cameras downtown in the meantime."

She nodded and slid the card into her purse, while Raoul grabbed a handful of beers from the kitchen. "We could probably all use a drink," he said, opening and distributing the bottles. Lisa eyed hers suspiciously, only to tilt her head back and swallow whatever protests she might have had along with the brew.

"So this guy," said Darius, jerking his thumb toward Raoul, "has been awfully tight-lipped about his childhood. Surely one of you has something on him?"

Christine had little to work with, so she once again recounted the incident when a slightly inebriated Raoul had lunged into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan to rescue her scarf.

"And they say chivalry is dead," Darius teased. His dark eyes regarded Raoul with the same fierce warmth she'd seen in Erik's gaze the night before, when she'd slipped out of her room to brush her teeth, and now her stomach turned somersaults to recall it.

"Everything I know about his childhood is secondhand," said Lisa, "but I was told that little Raoul wanted to be a dog when he grew up."

Among the burst of subsequent laughter, Darius reached out and tousled Raoul's sandy hair. "And he's getting so close."

Lisa took another sip of her beer, her delicate pink fingernails clicking against the glass. Her eyes lit up as she set it back down. "Oh! And he pulled the fire alarm at a fundraiser in the fancy campus ballroom."

Christine gasped in mock horror, while Raoul ducked his head sheepishly and raked a hand through his mussed hair. "Look, I'm not proud of it," he said. "But in my defense, Phil egged me on. Mom and Dad wouldn't stop dragging us to those God-awful events because Dad thought we needed the exposure, and we were just...so done with it."

"Did you get caught?" she asked.

"Close enough. A family friend saw us running from the fire alarm as soon as it went off." He shook his head as though in disbelief. "That was the summer Dad wanted me to start hanging out at the office, to see how things worked, and I wanted to go to camp. I can't believe he still let me go after that stunt."

"It was because Phil told your dad he'd pulled the alarm." All eyes fell on Lisa, who blinked owlishly at the sudden attention.

"What?"

"He knew how badly you wanted to go to camp," she explained. "I thought you knew?"

"No." Raoul's gaze drifted out over the room as he took a slow swig of his beer. "That camp changed everything for me. Made me realize I didn't want to go into the family business." He let out a bitter laugh. "Took a lot longer to admit that to Dad, of course. Among other things."

"You mean...?" Christine gestured vaguely between him and Darius.

"Yeah." Raoul took another drink; Darius put a consoling hand on his knee. "He and mom still don't know about that. At all." He looked up at Lisa and forced a smile. "Phil's had my back there, too, eh? It's almost like I've never grown up and he's still bailing me out of trouble."

Her face was solemn, her eyes kind. "You know he doesn't think that," she said. She sighed and added, more quietly, "I wish he were here, though."

The room went silent, the four of them sipping at their respective drinks, no doubt thinking desperately of ways to rescue the evening.

It was Christine who did it. "Did I tell you guys about how I thought Darius was a policewoman named Daria?" she asked. There was collective peal of delighted laughter, and the night wore on.

There was a noticeable and gradual return of tension to Christine's every muscle as she descended the steps to the first floor. She'd enjoyed herself immensely, and had been grateful for this particular band of friends to come together as they had, but she'd been gone too long. She hadn't shaken the feeling she'd abandoned Erik, not since she'd thrown one last look at his solemnly resigned expression and closed the bedroom door behind her.

She got Lisa settled into the guest room, and she felt herself shrinking somehow as she padded down the hall to her own room.

Only the string lights were on, and Erik had already arranged the extra bedding on the rug. He sat with his back against her bed, rangy legs stretched out in front of him, in a fitted navy pajama set with white trim that only served to elongate his already lean frame. He wore headphones that he removed when she entered, but his stoic expression went unchanged.

"An mp3 player?" she whispered, and she flashed him a teasing smile. "I didn't think anybody used those anymore."

"It was all I could access in prison."

Her stomach sank. "I'm sorry."

He said nothing, but folded in his legs and dropped the device into his overnight bag.

"What were you listening to?" she asked.

"Music."

The longer he went without elaborating, the hotter her face grew. Finally, she grabbed a pair of pajama pants from her dresser and excused herself to go change and brush her teeth.

He was irritated with her; she was certain. Should she press him? They were still in the early stages of...whatever this was...and the last twenty-four hours had been so emotionally intense. Eventually, she might push him too far out of her grasp. She couldn't rely on her mouth to save her every time.

How tempting that idea was, though. Christine bit at her lower lip to tame the grin that blossomed there.

She brushed her teeth thoroughly, and flossed, and rinsed with mouthwash. Just in case.

She returned wearing blue plaid pajama bottoms in place of her jeans, clutching her discarded clothes to her chest so he wouldn't notice she'd taken off the bra beneath her shirt. He lay under the blankets on the floor with his back to her, and she huffed. "I told you to take the bed." She kept the words hushed so that Lisa wouldn't hear.

"And I respectfully declined," came his curtly whispered reply.

She exhaled her frustration through her nostrils, shut off the string lights, and climbed under the covers.

Several minutes of silence passed, enough that she thought he might be asleep when she whispered, "If you don't tell me what I did wrong, then I can't fix it."

There was a pregnant pause before a muted reply came from the direction of the blankets.

"What was that?" she asked. "I can't hear you."

"I said, it was ultimately nothing you did."

Still, Christine could just barely make out the words. She grabbed her pillow and slid from beneath the covers to lie on the floor beside him. He shifted to face her, his white mask practically glowing in the darkness, and she could sense more than see the tension in his jaw. "It's too hard to hear you," she explained. "What do you mean, it's 'ultimately' nothing I did?"

Erik exhaled slowly. "I mean that I am fated to exist in the dark, alone, and you are not."

"I don't understand."

"Either I hide from my enemies, or I hide on account of my face. That will not change. And the shadow is no place for a creature of light such as yourself."

"That's awfully reductive."

"But accurate."

She hadn't even noticed how cold she was until Erik lifted the edge of the blankets and folded her into them, into his waiting arm. Even as he did so, he cautioned, "I am not a likable man, Christine."

"I like you."

"Mm, a fact that makes me question your presence of mind."

She thought quietly for a moment. "There are spaces that exist between dark and light, you know," she said. "Different gradations. Like twilight."

"Twilight is fleeting."

She found his hand and twined her fingers through his as he sucked in a breath. "But it's the most beautiful of all the skies, isn't it? When day and night come together?" She tilted her head up to him, just slightly, so that their lips were in line.

"Oh, Christine," he breathed: an echo of his words to her in the steam tunnels, but with entirely different meaning now. She could feel his warm exhalations on her skin. The pocket of air between them grew heated.

She was unconscious of either of them moving, but somehow there came a featherlight brush of lip, so slight that she could have convinced herself she'd dreamt it. Their collective breathing grew heavier in her ears. Another soft touch and she was sinking into him, tasting him, releasing his hand to wind her arm around his neck as he kissed her. For some time, the only sound in the house was the soft, wet crackle of lips meeting and parting and meeting again. The edge of his mask chafed the skin above her lip, but it would not deter her. Her tongue darted out, and he caught it with his own.

She had not forgotten where they'd left off on the sofa earlier that day, and neither had he, if the broad hand sliding under her shirt back was any indication. His fingertips resumed their easy exploration, tracing circles, etching notes that made her skin sing and her spine reverberate.

Gradually his hand slid down, down, and over her waistband to cup her backside through the soft flannel of her pajama bottoms. Every nerve ending in her body kicked into gear, and she released a soft whimper into his mouth. He squeezed harder.

She bucked against him now, needing more, needing to touch and grab and knead. Her fingers found the hem of his shirt and slipped beneath it, coming to rest on his hip. The skin there was cool, and the hipbone jutted sharply into her palm.

A thought tugged at the back of her mind as she kissed him more deeply: there was still a conversation to be had before they went too far, to keep things respectful and safe. How much longer could she put it off? His hand slid around her waist and up the front of her shirt and oh, she could hardly remember her name now. Cool fingers kneaded warm flesh and her head tilted back at the feel of it, her mouth breaking contact with his, gasping for air.

Still that persistent thought nagged at her, but her hand moved of its own volition. Her splayed palm skimmed his abdomen where it met his waistband, and then it ventured up toward his chest. It surveyed the lean muscle there before it swept onto skin more rugged and scaly.

With a sharp hiss, he pulled back and dislodged her hand from beneath his shirt.

She lay frozen in place, chilled by the missing weight of his hand at her breast. "I'm sorry," she whispered, not entirely certain what she was apologizing for.

"It's too much," he said. "Too much, too soon. I thought that, perhaps..." He trailed off, his jaw clenched. "Forgive me."

She forced a tiny smile for his benefit. "It's okay," she said, but her voice came out weak and strained. "I'll get back in bed." She rolled over, but a long arm wrapped around her waist, trapping her.

"Stay."

She hesitated. As if to persuade her further, he curled his arm tighter, reeling her in until she lay flush against him. Every muscle in her body constricted at the sudden closeness.

Two thin fingers were slow to sweep the hair from the side of her neck. Then they were gone, and in their place: lips, tender and dry, ghosting along her skin and giving her goosebumps. Her eyes closed of their own volition, and she exhaled deeply.

The hand at her waist began to move in tandem. It found the hem of her shirt and pulled it up. His broad palm touched down on her bare stomach, fingertips toying with the waistband just below her navel, and she let out a small gasp at the contact, at her sudden understanding: he was not ready to be touched so intimately, but that didn't mean he couldn't touch her.

His lips were still working against her neck when his hand slid downward, its pressure warm and firm against her lower abdomen, and stopped just short of where she now burned with need. "Christine," he murmured into her skin.

She writhed at the huskiness of his voice, whose pitch hovered somewhere between hard tenor and soft baritone. "Please," she whispered.

The hand shifted. A single digit emerged to deliver one soft, delicious stroke and she arched into him, gasping. His mouth still moved along the side of her neck as his finger slid down even farther, rubbing back and forth until her jaw hung open in anticipation of that building release.

She was distantly aware of whispered words on her lips—his name? A plea?—as her hips rocked in tandem with his movements. And then she was gone, her vision white and sparking, her thighs clenching around his hand as pleasure zipped and crackled through her every nerve.

He held her as she came down, one hand still between her legs, and he pressed gentle kisses into the shallow dip between her neck and shoulder. She honed in on her breathing, heavy but measured, and willed it to slow. The hand between her thighs slid away.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Erik hummed in acknowledgment and started stroking her hair. Her next breath came out on a heavy sigh.

He had nearly lulled her to sleep when he murmured, "I suppose now is not an appropriate time to inquire as to why there is a mini-fridge in here."

Christine laughed softly, sleepily. "I don't use it much. But it was helpful during a time when—" She hesitated. How should she characterize that time? There was really nothing she could say to make it sound less pathetic. "When it was difficult for me to leave my room."

He stopped touching her hair. "What happened to you, Christine?"

Again she tried to examine that period of her life more objectively. What exactly had happened? It had been more than passing grief; she knew that much.

"Few things in my life have been permanent," she said, slowly, "except for my dad. It was always me and him—and then later, Professor and Mama Valerius, once they took us in. They grounded us." She swallowed. "I don't even think I would've gone to college if it weren't for them."

He curled an arm around her waist once more, as though bracing them both for what was to come.

"Professor Valerius was killed in a car accident seven years ago. And we lost my father, as you know, three years after that."

"And the professor's wife?"

"Two years later. Breast cancer."

His grip on her tightened, but he remained silent.

"With her gone," Christine went on, "there was nothing to hold onto anymore, nothing to anchor me. So I sort of just...drifted away."

"You know what I am going to say." She nodded, tears springing up in her eyes, but he said it anyway. "It's time to swim back."

She sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "I want to," she whispered. "But Erik, I'm so scared."

"Then it will be all the more thrilling when you succeed."

She did not know how to respond, how to express her wonder and gratitude for his enduring faith in her abilities. She placed a hand over the one at her waist, and she absently stroked the rough skin there until she was lulled to sleep.