Erik / Christine. Picks up from that moment in Kay when Erik (infamously) pops Christine in a wedding dress to sing Aida and then has a crisis of lust.

Disclaimer: The wedding scene belongs to Susan Kay from the epic novel Phantom, which was not a) written in second person POV or b) quite this dirty. Although considering stylistically this is about as far as Ms Kay's work one could get; it's nice to indulge my deep and abiding love for second person perspective. Title from RENT.

there's only us, there's only this

"I'm beginning to realise just how much of a child she really is, how terrifyingly immature and vulnerable... even unstable. There's a fatal flaw running through her, like a hairline crack in a Ming Dynasty vase, but that very imperfection makes me love her with even greater tenderness. Whoever marries Christine is going to have to be prepared to play the father as well as the lover..."

Erik, Susan Kay's Phantom

He shouts. And for the first time you shout back.

"I am not a child!" you roar back at him, the sheer volume of your voice shocking even you. Erik is wrapped around himself as though shielding from a blow, and he curls even tighter when you scream. But you cannot stop. You have been silent around Erik for too long, silenced by his power and his anger and his mystery, but you have found your voice again (for the first time?) and you will not let it go. "If you're sick then you should let me help you - I'm not just a child you can order around and you will tell me what is the matter!" You pause for breath. Half of you is cheering yourself on and the other half is gasping in horror. Erik merely sits at the piano bench, arms locked around his torso, without response. "If this is about Raoul - " And that snaps him out of it sure enough, his masked head twisting to stare at you with those luminous eyes, mocking and cruelly amused.

"Raoul!" he says, with an indelicate noise than in a lesser man might be a snort. "De Chagny! No, my dear, it is not! And yet, perhaps it is..."

He makes so little sense sometimes. Up til now it bemused you, frightened you, fascinated you. But now it infuriates you too.

"There is nothing between Raoul and I," you stress. "Nothing, do you hear me? And even if there was, there certainly wouldn't be after that shocking display by his companions! Soliciting ... those kind of women out where anyone can see..." The audacity of them! That ring would be going back to Raoul the moment you return to the world above the Opera, and you would certainly be taking it off your precious crucifix as soon as possible. "Erik, what about your illness?" you ask, hoping to distract him, but he waves you off with the flick of one elegant hand.

"I'm not sick, my dear," he murmurs, in a voice so reduced you hardly believe it is his. "It has passed." It is as though all the fight has worn out of him, been leeched out of him to return him to your gentle tutor once more. Or perhaps not. Perhaps that mad, reckless fury has merely been caged instead, and might reappear at any time. Your own anger has tired you out; is it so surprising his would do the same to him?

"I intend to retire now, Erik," you say to him. "Goodnight," and you turn on your heel. You don't need his permission to leave and you don't intend to ask for it.

"Goodnight, Christine."

Back in your room, you pace like a possessed woman, the wedding dress swishing vigorously in your wake. You want to tear it off but something stops you; the way he'd looked at you, in the dress, as though you were every fantasy and every nightmare made real all in one. No one else has ever looked at you like that before, as if you were their only reason for existence. Erik's love for you pervades every inch of the house here under the lake like a miasma of gentle fog, creeping into every shadow and every nook and cranny and even into you, changing you. And yes, he had shouted, but oh, the look in his eyes when you had shouted back? As though a knife had twisted in his chest. He has given you so much, and look what you have done to him.

You screamed at him that you are not a child, but you have been content to play that role because it is simple. because the way Erik makes you feel is not safe and not normal, not easy and not sweet, but it knocks you over breathless and you think it may be the most you've ever felt. Yes, even eclipsing your father's death, even greater than that. For you are a woman now.

You heard someone in the Opera discuss the moment they grew up once, a split second of time where they ceased to be a child and learned to live in the adult world. well, it has taken you longer than most people, but now you have you will make up for lost time. propriety be damned, this is Erik. Erik has killed people, Erik has abducted you, Erik has extorted the managers and terrorised the ballet rats and tormented La Carlotta, but oh, this is Erik. and Erik loves you. And this night, the waking up of this anger and this passion inside of you - this is you, growing up. Erik has called you a child because you have acted one, but not anymore. You are not a child and you do not need to be sheltered behind Raoul's forgiving arms anymore. You can stand on your own two feet, you can be the creator of your own destiny. You will not be a child anymore.

But perhaps for all his airs and age, Erik is like a child, a lost little boy in the body of a man, with the desires and needs of a man. He longs for all the things a man longs for with the single-minded focus of a child denied too long of what they want, and more than anything you find you want to give it to him. For you are a woman, and you do care for him, certainly more than anyone else out there in the world. Who else will take care of him, caress and tend to him, unless it is you?

He may be a murderer, a madman and a genius, but he is still Erik; raw, human Erik, underneath all the masks and the disguises and those high, high walls of pride he has built for himself. You will tear them down. You may not love him yet, but you like him, and you feel sorry for him, and his voice stirs up feelings inside of you that you never could have dreamed of. And that is enough.

The sickness he spoke of - it was not his heart, not the physical one, at least. It was something else. And you think you know, think that the living man beneath the mask is just as mortal as you, just as susceptible to the flesh and all its pleasures and pains. Erik wanted you. Wanted you as a man wants a woman, and certainly not as a man wants a child. For all his words, you are not a child to him. You will never let yourself be a child for anyone again.

He will not touch you without your consent. He will not do that.

So you must do it for him.

How long you pace in the Louis Philippe room you do not know, until finally you find yourself standing in the middle of the carpet with what is no doubt a stupefyingly dull expression on your face. You remove your crucifix and take Raoul's ring from the chain, looking at it only a moment before tucking it away inside your dresser. And your mind is made up.

Erik looks up at you in surprise as your bedroom door clicks open and just like that, the earlier tension returns. The moment he looks at you again, you lose your breath and your head spins but you are resolute.

"Christine." His voice resonates in the cool darkness. "Were you not planning to retire?"

"I was," you reply, stepping closer to him, into the sphere of light surrounding him and the piano. "But I found myself unable to sleep and realised there was still more I needed to say to you."

He turns away, retreating back into himself. You won't let him. "I think my dear, you'll find you've said quite enough. You've made your point, I shouldn't treat you as a child. Now, I ask of you, go to bed."

Such contradiction in him. He may have listened to you but he didn't hear, and it is not enough for you. So you step forward. "No," you say into the tension-laden air. His masked face snaps to yours. "I will not. I want you to take off your mask."

And you do, oh, how you do. You want to see him, you want to know if you can bear it. If you can tolerate that ugliness inches from your face, trailing kisses over your skin... if you can enjoy it. There is only one way to find out, but Erik is incensed by your request even as he complies. You reflect that he must be quite angry to take off his mask so easily and so rapidly, and then you are not thinking of his anger at all, because you are staring at him, directly into his ruined face, and you are not afraid. You don't really feel anything for it other than the knowledge that underneath it is the mind you have come to know so well, the man who loves you with every fibre of his bruised and battered heart. And your direct, unflinching gaze infuriates him more than you could have ever guessed before.

"Well, then, Christine?" he bellows. You do not shrink away from his wrath. "Is this what you wanted, you foolish, teasing, maddening girl? Am I quite as arresting now as when you first saw me? Do be honest, my dear girl, you needn't try and spare my feelings. Do you find me handsome, Christine?" he roars, his face an inch from your own. "Do you find me charming, pleasant to look upon? TELL ME!"

You hold his gaze. "No," you reply candidly. "I find you very ugly. But I believe, Erik, underneath your skin and bones you look as any other man would look." He deflates. Erik's moods are as fickle as the weather, rain and storm replaced by tired grey clouds replaced by sun replaced by snow. Round and round, always the same, and yet always changing. Keeping up with him is both exhausting and exhilarating.

"Do not be so sure of that, my dear," he replies, his anger replaced by quiet weariness. "I am an aberration of nature, one of God's own little experiments with his powers of creation. Perhaps under this semblance of a face there is an even greater horror." He looks to be about to launch into one of his fits of black whimsy, muttering about anything and everything to come into his head, playing great and terrible music one moment and then light-hearted parlour melodies the next. You have to stop him before he slips into that odd, mad mood; distract him, one way or another.

"If I had been ugly," you say before you can think about it and stop yourself, "would you have loved me?"

He turns so fast you fear he might do himself an injury. "Christine - " he begins, but you interrupt. Rudeness be damned, he will hear this, and you will have his answer. Now you are curious.

"Or if I walked out in front of a carriage tomorrow and was covered in scars from head to toe, would you turn from me?"

He answers as though the words are dragged from him, costing him something he did not know how to give. "No. Of course not."

"Then why should I turn from you? Why should it be different between us?"

"That - it's different." You get the distinct impression you have flustered him.

"How so?"

His throat works and his lips move, but no sound comes out. You feel a flicker of pride. You, the little chorus girl, have managed to bemuse the Phantom of the Opera enough to render him speechless. And he turns away, lifting the damned mask to tie it back to his face.

"Don't."

He whips around to face you. "Why not, Christine?" he asks, lovely voice raw. "Haven't you humiliated me enough?" The sadness in his eyes is enough to make you blurt it out.

"How can I kiss you through your mask?"

"Kiss - kiss me?" he stammers out. Your dear Erik, stammering because of you. If you were not already set upon this path, you certainly are now. "You mock me."

"I do not. Oh, Erik, I couldn't mock you, not with this. Please," and you draw closer, ever still, until you are so close to him you can feel his heart racing in his chest. You look up into his face, knot your fingers into the lapels of his coat. Oh, he's so close, and you don't flinch, not now. What is there to be afraid of anymore now, when you know Erik himself is far more in fear of the power you hold over him than you have ever been of his face.

And you kiss him.

He is cold, oh, so very cold. His lips move against yours clumsily as though he has never kissed anyone before - of course not. At first he is tentative, iron-rigid, as though he believes this to be merely a cruel jest or a trick of the senses and in a moment he will return to his old reality, cold and alone. Well, you can't have that, can you? And you set his hands on your waist and that appears to be the push he needs because he pulls you flush against him and - oh. Well. That's interesting.

However much you have grown up this night, however many fears you have suppressed or done away with altogether, there is one inviolable truth you cannot deny. Confidence aside, you are still a virgin, and all you know of men and women together comes from La Sorelli's tales of the comte and the other men she's had over the years. Your planned seduction may be over before it has ever started.

No. You are the master of your own destiny. You will not fear this. How hard could it be?

Figuratively, of course.

He draws away from you with a sigh, resting his thin lips against your forehead, a kiss and a benediction and a... farewell? No. Surely not. "Oh, my dear," he sighs. "You are such a good girl. I am so very indescribably grateful to you for what you have done. I will take you home tomorrow."

You're confused, until you realise he thinks you only did it because you pity him. Well, you do pity him, but maybe you love him too, and you owe it to you both to investigate this strange connection between the two of you. "I don't want to go," you enunciate clearly. "I don't want to leave you tomorrow morning. I want to stay. I want to stay with you." You hope the repetition will help it sink in and he will get the message. You don't want to be sent home, not until you have managed to figure out the puzzle that is Erik. And that, you think a little ironically, may take a lifetime, though whether his or yours you don't know. He is so much older than you, after all.

Erik is standing watching you, his head cocked to one side, as though analysing you with that marvellous mind and not comprehending what comes up as the results. "Do you know, I could almost believe you mean it," he muses lightly, but his eyes are focussed on you with that familiar intensity. "The way you look at me - you are a wonderful actress, Christine, but surely no one can be so good - ?" The way it's phrased, almost a question, breaks your heart. Poor, poor Erik.

"No, I'm not acting, Erik. I'm not lying. It's just the truth." He sighs, and it sounds like the wind through trees and a river singing its way over rocks. The way this man has so easily become the centre of your world is a little off-putting, and as thrilling as touching your hand to a flame.

"I don't know how I'll be able to bear it if you're lying to me, Christine." You can't help but move towards him, lay a hand on his arm.

"You don't need to know. I promise I'm not lying." He looks down at the ground, and you're aware he doesn't believe. "Erik, when I sang with you tonight, I was a child. But you have changed me. I'm a woman," you say, almost desperate to have him understand. "I've been content to play the child because it's easy but I don't want my life to just be easy. I want it to be complete." You trail off, frustrated with your own inability to articulate what you want so much to say, but Erik lays one gloved hand over your own on his arm.

"I understand," is all he says, but his eyes are worth a thousand words and you exhale in relief, glancing towards your bedroom. He follows your gaze. "What is it?" he asks, even as you walk towards the Louis Philippe room. He does not follow you, arms folded, eyes wary.

"Are you not coming?" you ask. His eyes spark.

"Coming, Christine?"

"To bed. With me." You walk back to him, take his hand in your own with a sigh, and pull him unresisting into the Louis Philippe room. You close the door, and he is there, so close, taller than tall and overpowering your senses. You breathe a little faster.

"Christine..." It is a warning. "What are you doing?"

"Do I look like I know what I'm doing?" you snap feverishly, and before he can protest you grip his lapels hard in your hands and kiss him again.

It is different this time. Before he had been tentative and shy and so had you, but you know Erik is nothing if not a speedy learner and he quickly takes possession of the kiss, his lips demanding on yours, his tongue moving against your own. Your knees are more than a little weak and you feel hopelessly out of your depth, you and this hideous man, doing things you've been told only married people should do. But he is ugly, so very ugly, and you think that maybe the standards for ordinary people don't apply to Erik. And you are not so very ordinary either, not anymore. So perhaps this is right.

You pull away and breathe, "Come to bed."

He attends to the lights with shaking hands, and in the bathroom you splash water on your face and wish you had listened a little closer to La Sorelli's tales. And when you come out he is standing there looking awkward and oddly, so very young.

Perhaps we should undress," he says, and then looks stricken. "Christine - that is to say, of course - I don't mean to presume - "

"Good idea," you reply briskly, and turning away, you quickly begin at the buttons of the wedding dress. Perhaps he thinks you have turned away because of distaste at seeing him nude, but in truth you are sure your face is flushing a dull brick red with embarrassment and shame. And yet, you are not, not really. This is the indoctrinated response that people all your life have told you that you should feel at the thought of someone seeing you unclothed. And maybe, just maybe, just a little, you're worried about what he might think of you naked, if you'll be enough for him.

When you turn back, bare to your skin, Erik has already slipped under the sheets. He is gazing resolutely at the wall, away from you. Oh, he's such a gentleman. You lie there in silence with him for a while, the two of you side by side staring up at the ceiling, until the absurdity of the situation catches up with you and you have to giggle a little.

"This is ridiculous," you laugh. He arches an eyebrow, rolling onto his side to face you.

"Do tell me what so amuses you," he replies in that familiar dry tone, and you only laugh harder.

"Look at us," you say, when you can breathe again. "The pair of us. We finally manage to get into bed, and neither of us have any idea what to do!"

Erik quirks his lips in a half smile. "I do have some idea, Christine," he admits, and a lead weight settles in your stomach.

"Have you - " Your throat constricts and his eyes widen.

"No!" he assures you. "No, I've never, not personally - but, well, there is... literature available on the subject, if one goes looking for it, of course." He holds his eyes with your own, and you're caught by then like a bird staring into the eyes of a snake. "It's only ever been you, Christine," and you release the breath you've been holding. You don't know why it matters so much to you - but if you are going to damn yourself by making love before marriage, it might as be to someone worthy. You think that maybe God won't send you to hell for making love to Erik, anyway. You rather think God owes Erik one by now.

"I'm glad," you murmur, your voice barely there, and his hand cups your cheek tenderly.

"I was waiting for you."

He's waited so much longer than you. It isn't fair to make him wait much longer. And so, abruptly, you roll over to the centre of the bed until you are facing him, so close you can feel his cool breath on your face. He doesn't smell of death. He smells faintly musty like the house itself, like the fine fabrics he favours, like ink and parchment and some kind of aftershave. He smells like a man. He's your man now. You are body to body with him, pressed breast to breast, thigh to thigh. Although he is so much taller than you, you find that somehow the two of you fit together, and you adore the sensation of being wrapped in him, protected. No, you're not a child anymore, but you like feeling safe regardless. It's only human.

He watches you without words, impassive despite the lack of mask on his face. You can feel him hard against your leg. It doesn't frighten you anymore. But perhaps it frightens him, because despite the warm bed and your warmer body next to him, he is shaking like a leaf in a gale.

"Christine," he breathes. The blankets are pulled almost up to his chin; you can only see his maimed face and his collarbones, the tops of his shoulders, and his hands, clutching the quilt with such ferocity his knuckles whiten. Those long, spindly fingers, so elegant on the piano, on teacups, on books - could they work such magic on you, play you like one of his beautiful instruments?

And you get an idea, a wonderful, dreadful, naughty idea. Erik loves your voice, you know, for its sweetness when singing, its flexibility and range and beauty. You wonder what else he might love about it.

"I can't stop looking at them," you murmur. He jerks away from you, but you reach out, place a hand on his hip to keep him with you. He goes still under your fingers, but you can feel the tenseness in his frame, a caged animal beneath your palm.

"Looking at what?" he grits out through his teeth.

"Y-your hands, Erik," you stammer out, but to your surprise the words are easier than you expect. "Even when I was resisting you, I couldn't stop looking at your hands. I was so afraid you'd see and know what I was thinking... that I was imagining you touching me... everywhere..." It's not a trick. You have been fascinated and captivated by him all along, drawn hopelessly into the marvellous contradiction of him; the gentleman with the face of a monster, the genius with the temperament of a madman. You've been looking at him all along.

"Wretched woman," he groans. "You'll be the death of me." Part of you is alarmed, but it vanishes when you see that he is smiling, with that odd nearly lipless mouth of his curled up into a grin. He's happy. And so you take his hand and link it with yours, draw it to your skin.

"Touch me," and he shivers, and complies.

"So soft," he whispers, tracing a finger down your shoulder lightly. You shudder and his eyes darken. "These hands, Christine?" he asks roughly, but his hands are as light as snowflakes and just as cold. They soon warm though. "You imagined these hands - my hands on you?"

You have to bite your lip to restrain a whimper. "God, yes, Erik," you murmur. "Angel, please - "

At the slip he retreats a little, averting his eyes, and when he finally looks back at you they are steely. "I don't want you to look at me," he blurts, and you think he may be - no, you know he is blushing, mortified, even, to confess this to you.

"I don't mind," you hurry to assure him. "How you look, I mean. I don't mind it."

"I know," he says, and it has the air of a confession. "I know that. But I do mind it."

You bite your lip. You want to look at him, to see him in all his strange and wonderful glory. You are not getting into this with any expectations of him being as a 'normal' man is - not that you have anything to compare him to, anyway. And this is about him, hasn't it always been about him? This is about Erik's loneliness and despair and love for you, and his desire to be treated just for one night as a normal man. He thinks if you see him in his entirety you will be horrified and flee, and you understand you cannot fix a lifetime of rejection in one night. And so you acquiesce, but with one demand. "Next time," you reply, and the expression in his eyes at the idea there might be a next time both tears at and warms you. "Next time, you'll let me look."

He nods. You don't know if it's because he believes you or he wants to believe you or if he's just letting it go, and you don't honestly care. The heat in his eyes makes you want to be touched again, and so you sink back against the pillows and close your eyes as he begins those feather light touches all over your body once again.

And something else, something cold and moist, kissing down your neck with the utmost gentleness as those strong, exquisite hands brush over your breast. He finds the tender places on you and lavishes attention on them, and you have to fight to remain still even as his soft caresses drive you half-mad. You can't stop the moan, though. "Christine?" he asks, his voice sounding worried, and damn the promise you open your eyes and twist, pulling his hard slim body on top of you and kissing him hard.

Erik responds enthusiastically, his hands against your back pressing him against you, moving, roaming up and back around to tease at your nipples and oh God, why hadn't anyone told you it could feel like this? Quite clearly the universe has been holding out on you and should have informed you of this years ago, and you writhe underneath him, subtly begging for more. In a flash he grips both your hands in one of his own and raises them above your head, rendering you helpless. You're shocked at the way your body buzzes with joy at the sensation. In the dim light his eyes are dark, the pupils wide, and his smile is both tender and a little wicked. "Naughty, Christine," he purrs, and you thrill to it. More than you pleasuring him, he's discovered how to pleasure you, and it makes him so very happy. Your eyes tingle with the onset of tears but they're of joy, and you laugh in delight as the puzzle in your head finally clicks into place.

It's Erik. It's always been Erik.

You love him, and he loves you. And it's perfect.

"Amused, love?" he asks, voice deep and almost a growl, and you arch up into him, winding your legs around him.

"Happy, Erik," you reply. "I'm so happy."

"Good," he simply replies, and lowers his head to kiss you again.

It hurts, at first, when he presses inside you. But you were once a ballerina after all and you've done the splits more times than you recall, so it's not exactly the blinding, excruciating pain the ballet rats talk of in their dressing room in excited and scandalised tones. You focus on Erik, his face, his hands gripping your hips, the way his eyes flutter shut and he groans shakily against your throat, as though you're the only thing holding him together. As though the world is a hurricane and you're saving him. You kind of love that.

And then his hand finds that place between your legs that feels like electricity and a flawless aria and Erik's smile and heaven all at once, and suddenly the rhythm goes from slow and sweet to mad, clashing lips and tongues battling and oh dear Lord is that the bed banging against the wall how cliché is that? The things you think of, rocking against him, as he falls apart above you and you think you're probably doing the same below him and its so, so good.

And you can't really think anymore.

He follows you a few moments later, collapsing on top of you, breathless and gasping and his heart a thunderous rhythm against your breast, almost too hard. You stroke his thinning hair, trying to calm him down. It wouldn't do for him to have another attack, not now that you've found yourself in love with him.

And together you catch your breath.

"I wanted to marry you first," he murmurs into your hair. You turn on your side, meeting his eyes with your own. It's not news to you, the wedding dress pretty much gave it away, but he looks a little unhappy and you realise he wanted to do it the right way, the proper way. Well. You've never been particularly good with patience.

"I, Christine Daae, take thee, Erik, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, til death do us part." You're reasonably certain you've missed some of the words and mangled others, but his eyes glow with joy all the same. "Now it's your turn."

He kisses you instead. It's an acceptable trade.

"But would you?" he asks. "Marry me, I mean," he adds when you raise an eyebrow. "The proper way. Before God in a church, with witnesses and rings and - "

You cut him off with a kiss. "Of course," you say, and his smile lights up your world. "Mrs. Erik..."

He smirks. "You could keep your own name, for when you return to the stage," he murmurs, kissing your throat. You feel him stirring against your thigh.

"Again? Already?" you ask, mock-glaring at him. "You'll wear your wife out, sir."

"God, I hope so," he replies with a grin, pulling you under him once more.