burning glances, turning heads
The lovely @drreallyreallystrange showed me a sketch of her art that sparked this whole thing in my head, and now she’s posted the full, dazzling art here and I’m going to post this as well.
Christine had spent only a few weeks in the mad whirl of Erik’s world, and yet -- it felt like longer. Perhaps it had been, and the six months of lessons had simply been tentative probing of the water, trying to find if it would burn.
It did, but she no longer cared.
Her dress was her own, for once. It had been her own idea - helped along by an old opera she’d found in Erik’s library, detailing the character of L’Aurore - and had blossomed beyond that with the help of the opera’s costume mistress and a local dressmaker. Erik had given her money - insisted she take it, with a smooth comment about how little the opera paid its new prima donna - and yet, it was her dress, her secret.
He’d promised not to peek at it, even when she - daringly - hung it in her dressing room, the closet door half-open, only a probing glance away from discovery. It was her own little test of her teacher; he’d let her return to the surface and loosened the leash, but she needed her space.
He said he understood the desire for secrecy, had agreed to her getting ready with the other opera staff aboveground, but he’d gotten his own back by refusing to tell her what he planned to wear to the masque. Even her half-joking inquiries about the chance of a ghostly apparition at the party were met with nothing more than a quirk of the lips and a polite question about the state of her own dress, and if it was such rough going she was looking to have the party cancelled before it even began.
(She didn’t want it cancelled, at all. The dress was coming along perfectly, thank you.)
Christine felt eyes on her when she entered the ballroom, and dared to hope. She become very adept at sensing her tutor’s eyes on her in the past few months, and living in his home had only confirmed her instincts.
(She hadn’t ever bothered to return to her own flat overnight since her debut, and it was practical. Erik’s home had warm baths, her music lessons, and only a short, brisk walk in good company to rehearsal. The fact she enjoyed his presence outside of lessons had nothing to do with her choice to leave one of her few dresses there, and to return at the end of the day.)
She was almost certain he hadn’t watched her while her former comrades in ballet had helped her into the dress, giggling and teasing that Christine must be hoping for something to happen at this masque, having spent so much time and money on her costume -- but whatever she had or had not planned was thwarted; Erik was not there. Of this she was relatively certain; she knew his build and gait better than her own, now, and couldn’t see it on any of the masqued dancers around her as she made small talk with opera patrons.
The Red Death’s entrance was dazzling, and that proved lucky; no one saw Christine’s wide-eyed shock melt into something else, quickly hidden behind her drink as the grotesque figure outlined his demands to the managers. The opera ghost had come to the party after all, and Christine swallowed down disappointment that it was the ghost and not her tutor attending.
She turned, accepted another glass of champagne from a polite server, and smiled when a chorus girl, not fooled by Christine’s thin filigree mask, struck up a conversation. It was easy to lose herself in the party if she ignored the well of disappointment gathering beneath her ribs. It had no reason to exist when, after all, she and Erik were not like other couples. They weren’t even a couple, of that she could be assured; whatever softer affections her tutor felt for her were nothing like the free hands and laughter of couples around her now.
She wouldn’t want them to be, she told herself. Not even at a masque when normal rules could be suspended.
Eventually, when one guest tried to lay those too-free hands on her, Christine melted into the back corridors of the opera house, idly walking towards the dressing room that she only half thought of as hers. Perhaps she shouldn’t take the stairs down; perhaps she should go home to her little flat and explain to her flatmate why she’d been gone so often. Reality was intruding on the little fantasy she’d constructed for the night.
She made it a hallway before she felt eyes on her and whirled, ready to reprimand whichever guest felt entitled to her time, and found Erik, dressed more simply than she’d ever seen him, a white mask obscuring half his face.
“You,” she breathed, the champagne bubbling up in sparks of emotion. But unless he was the greatest actor in the world - and perhaps her teacher was - his look of appreciation and warmth couldn’t be faked. The dress hadn’t felt any more revealing than her ballet costumes before, but now she was acutely aware of how it left her throat and arms bare, her legs half exposed in the heeled boots.
He held out a hand, and she took a step forward without thinking, her hand sliding into his as naturally as breathing, as naturally as forgiveness. She completed the turn on inertia, hours of dance still guiding her feet as she spun in to rest against his chest, which stilled against her back.
Breathe, Christine. Pretend it was intentional, like she would on stage.
“You didn’t tell me the opera ghost would be at the party,” she said, conversationally, and he breathed again - if only to laugh. Christine suppressed a shiver at how his chuckle felt against her skin.
“I’m afraid he had obligations there,” he offered, his voice a pleasant rumble against her back, and Christine did shiver. He wrapped the edge of his cloak around her, his hand coming to rest just under her collarbone, against bare skin, and Christine relaxed.
“And is the opera ghost at liberty again?”
“Erik is,” he half-confirmed, and she smiled before spinning in his arms to meet his gaze, feeling the champagne sparking up her spine in an entirely different way.
“Good,” she said, before she could lose her nerve, and pressed him back towards the wall, enjoying the mix of smile and shock on his visible face.
