Came Home Drunk and Kissed My Phantom | Erik/Fem!Reader
synopsis: In which a night of celebration, too much champagne, and an awkward encounter at the party lead to an unexpected rescue. The Phantom whisks you away from the revelry, only to discover that being your savior comes with its own peril: enduring a hundred tipsy, affectionate kisses he has no idea how to refuse.
notes: Both the title and the latter half of the premise are referencing this particular meme. This fic is super self-indulgent and stems from my feeling of cuteness aggression towards him ❤️
word count: 1.6k words
warnings/tags: fem!reader, opera singer reader, established relationship, fluff, sfw, alcohol consumption, reader is drunk, brief unwanted advance from another character, protective and jealous Erik
The Opera Populaire glittered that night as if Paris itself had bent low to offer up its finest jewels. Crystal chandeliers blazed above the grand foyer, casting rainbows across marble floors already polished to a mirror’s gleam.
Everywhere there was laughter, champagne, and the sound of glasses clinking in triumph. The performance season had ended in resounding success, and tonight was its culmination: a celebration for all who had made it possible.
And at the heart of it all was you.
Your name was on every tongue. Your voice still echoed in the ears of the audience, even though the curtain had long since fallen. Firmin and André hovered like proud uncles, or vultures, at your elbow, alternately praising your talent and congratulating themselves for having “recognized such brilliance from the start.”
“My dear, you must know,” André crowed, his cheeks flushed red from wine, “that Paris has not seen such an ingénue in years! You have given the Opera Populaire new life, new glamour!”
“Indeed, indeed,” Firmin chimed in, bobbing his head as though he himself had been the one giving you midnight vocal lessons, correcting your phrasing, steadying your trembling breath. “A triumph such as this ensures not only your future, my dear, but the future of the Opera itself!”
You smiled, demure yet glowing beneath their words. You accepted their praise graciously, as was expected, but in your heart you knew better. For behind every note you’d sung, behind every daring step onto that stage, there had been a hidden hand. A tutor; a shadow; Erik.
It was his relentless guidance that had carved away your hesitation, his genius that had shaped your voice until it could soar. Every ovation belonged, at least in part, to him. And though you stood now beneath blazing chandeliers, draped in silk and surrounded by admirers, your thoughts strayed to the labyrinth below. To the man who could not stand among them, but without whom you would not be here at all.
But you had no chance to linger on him. The celebration carried you along like a current. Chorus girls swooped in, laughing, tugging you toward the center of the room. The ballet corps, still flushed from their own triumph, pulled you into their circle, pressing a glass of champagne into your hand. Carlotta swept past in an explosion of perfume and satin, her voice dripping condescension even as she muttered a curt “Brava” in acknowledgment.
The orchestra struck up a lively waltz, and soon you were spinning, skirts flaring, the golden light dizzying your eyes. Laughter spilled from your lips more easily than you expected, loosened by the champagne, by the triumph, by the sheer euphoria of survival after so many nights of doubt.
By the time midnight neared, you were flushed and bright, your head swimming with bubbles and music. The chandeliers blurred at the edges, and you leaned against a marble pillar to catch your breath.
That was when he appeared.
“Forgive me,” said a voice at your shoulder. You turned to see a young man, one of the minor tenors, if memory served. His name eluded you; you’d scarcely spoken to him in rehearsals. His smile was too wide, his bow too elaborate. “I realized we have never been properly introduced. Allow me.” He caught your hand, pressing his lips to your knuckles. “An honor, mademoiselle.”
His breath was heavy with wine. His gaze lingered too long. Still, you laughed it off at first. Politeness was second nature. You offered your name, endured his chatter about how dazzling you had been, how envious he was of your success.
But soon his hand brushed yours again. His shoulder leaned too near. His voice dropped lower, coaxing, suggestive.
“You shine brighter than anyone tonight,” he murmured. “Perhaps I could… escort you from all this noise? Find somewhere quieter—”
You swayed, half from the champagne, half from the sudden unease that rippled through you. You stepped back, meaning to excuse yourself, but he followed, still smiling, his hand grazing your arm as though it were all a jest.
When suddenly, the air changed.
A draft swept through the gilded hall, cold as graveyard earth. The laughter around them dimmed as shadows thickened at the edge of the light.
Before you could blink, a figure materialized: a sweep of black cape, the gleam of white mask. Gasps rang out, sharp shattering of glasses on marble, but no one dared interfere.
The Phantom.
His hand shot out, clamping down on the young man’s shoulder with the silent promise of death. The tenor paled, stammering, every trace of arrogance draining away as he felt the iron grip. Erik’s voice, when it came, was a hiss like steel drawn from its sheath.
“You will remove yourself.”
The boy’s protest died in his throat. He wrenched free and fled, tripping over his own feet in his haste. A ripple of terror spread throughout the onlookers, but Erik’s attention had already left them. His gaze was fixed only on you—flushed, unsteady, lips parted in drunken astonishment.
You blinked at him then swayed again, whispering, “Please… don’t hurt anyone. Not for me.”
His rage trembled in every line of him. His gloved hands flexed as though still longing to snap a neck. It would be so easy to let the infamous lasso sing, to silence the insolent man who had dared lay claim to you. But your plea, slurred though it was, stilled him. With a furious sweep of his cape, he wrapped you close, drawing you against him.
Gasps followed as he whisked you from the ballroom, through hidden passages only he knew and could command. By the time the revelers dared to breathe again, both Phantom and ingénue had vanished.
His lair was cool, silent, the faint trickle of the underground lake echoing through the chamber. Erik deposited you onto the vast, curtained bed, his movements sharp with restrained violence. He paced at first, cape flaring, hands clenched behind his back. His anger had no outlet; it seared in the air like lightning, though stormless.
You, however, seemed utterly oblivious. You lay sprawled against the dark covers, laughter bubbling faintly from your lips as though the whole world were a dream.
“There you are,” you murmured, eyes half-lidded, “my shining knight. I was just thinking about you…”
Your hand reached, clumsy but firm, catching at his sleeve. You tugged, and when he resisted, you tugged harder, until he stumbled nearer to the bed.
Erik froze as your fingers brushed his glove. You tugged at it, fumbled, and finally slipped it free. His hand, pale, long-fingered, deadly, lay exposed. Before he could snatch it back, you pressed your lips to it.
One kiss. Then another.
“It’s easy,” you whispered, lips brushing his skin, “to forget how adorable you can be. With your terrible reputation. With the mask you chose.”
Another kiss. “But I know better.”
Erik’s body quaked. This was madness. This was a fever-dream conjured by wine. Yet your lips left proof upon his flesh, impossible and deliberate.
Your lipstick smeared faintly against his skin as you trailed upward, along the back of his hand. Each bony knuckle, one by one, felt the warmth of your kiss. Then his wrist, his forearm. Your breath was warm, your laughter soft. “You’re mine,” you whispered. “No one else. Just mine.”
“St— Stop this—” His voice broke, half plea half command. He stood rigid, every nerve ablaze.
But you did not stop. You pressed your mouth to the fabric of his sleeve, to the line of his shoulder, to the hollow of his throat, climbing up and up, scattering kisses like petals. Smudges bloomed scarlet against black. When you tilted your face toward his mask, your eyes shone with intoxicated devotion.
He trembled. Every instinct screamed to flee, to vanish into shadow. And yet he could not move.
Your hands framed his face, mask and all, and kissed the corner of it, lips leaving stains like proof of possession. “My Erik,” you whispered against him. “My music, my heart…”
He went utterly still. A kiss on what was false, on what hid the horror. And it undid him more than if you had simply stripped the mask away.
He gave a strangled sound, alien, something between a groan and a laugh, and at last his resistance broke. With a shuddering breath, he sank down beside you, allowing himself to be pulled into your warmth.
You nestled against him immediately, as though you had been waiting all night for this surrender, and your lips found him yet again. Pressing adoringly along the sharp line of his jaw, trailing soft, clumsy kisses down the column of his throat, brushing reverent against the seam where mask met skin. Your hands were just as insistent, sliding over his shoulders, tugging lightly at his collar as if even fabric were too much of a barrier between you. He tried to still you, to hold you away, but his trembling fingers betrayed him, clutching at your waist instead.
At last, exhaustion tugged at you. You slumped against his chest with a dreamy sigh, lips curved in a sleepy smile, and your drunken devotion softened into little murmurs against his neck.
Erik sat stiffly for a long while, heart hammering, face burning beneath the mask. His gloves were gone, his clothes smeared with lipstick, his very skin tingling from your reckless affection, the ghost of every kiss seared into him.
Slowly, his body yielded. His arm curled around you almost hesitantly, drawing you closer. He lowered his chin until it rested against your hair, breathing you in, letting the unfamiliar, though not unwelcome comfort seep into him.
When he finally dared to look down, he saw himself marked: smudges of crimson blooming across leather and linen, staining him with proof that he had been touched, claimed. He ought to have scrubbed the stains away…
Instead, with a shudder, he gently pulled the covers over your shoulders and let the marks remain: bright as wounds, holy as relics.
I have some asks- id love if you wrote one of these.
Accidentally flustering him during a lesson and being quite oblivious to why he is being so l.. strange, then it clicks and you start to tease him ever so subtly. nsfw pplease? or def i don’t mind :)
Orrrr, this is cliche, but one bed problem with erik!! he gets so nervous and worried about “improper situations” and maybeee nsfw??
HAVE BOTH.
How about these are with Musical Erik, because I'm seeing the musical soon and I'm DYINGGGGGGG. I split this request into two parts, here be Part 1.
Also, the one bed problem gives me life. never apologize for it
I figured for both of these, we're the "Christine". Christine doesn't exist.
God I love this insane, slutty magic sewer man.
Part 2
You were twelve minutes late, which was, by your own personal standards, practically punctual.
The city had been insufferable since morning — it was the kind of July heat that made the air itself feel solid, that followed you indoors and clung to you and refused to leave — and by the time you'd realized that you had an hour before your evening lesson, you'd actually had twenty minutes, which was enough to pin your hair up off your damp neck and gather your music and make your peace with the scandalous little summer dress you were already wearing.
It was thin, pale and chosen at dawn for the simple reason that everything else in your wardrobe would have been unbearable. The straps were so loose they fell around your arms, leaving your shoulders entirely bare, the neckline — well. Lower than you'd have chosen for an evening lesson alone with your Maestro, if you'd had time to choose. It was the kind of dress that moved when you moved, light and clinging by turns, it framed your cleavage beautifully and you were aware that it completely suited you. The heat had put color in your cheeks and warmth in your skin and you had looked at yourself briefly in the glass before leaving and thought: well. There’s worse ways to arrive somewhere, I suppose.
It was thirty degrees. You had run most of the way. He would simply...have to cope.
You told yourself this on the stairs and believed it. Most of it.
The truth, if you were being fully honest — and you tried to be, in small careful doses, about this particular subject — was that attraction had crept up on you the way your love for music did: gradually, then all at once, until you couldn't remember what life had felt like before you had it.
It had started, you thought, with his mind.
The way he spoke about music was nothing like a teacher speaking from above, dispensing expertise downward. He spoke of it the way a person spoke of something they lived inside. Sometimes, in the middle of instruction, he would pause and say something about a phrase—something so exact, so devastatingly true—that it seemed to reorder your understanding of the world, and then he would go on as if he had not just done it. The depth of it. The completeness of it. It shook you to your core. You had known talented people, and people of great technical accomplishment, but you had never met anyone who simply was music the way he was, as though it were not an art he practiced but a real and living thing made flesh in him.
Then there were his hands. The way they moved when he demonstrated a phrase or conducted you through a passage — precise and expressive all at once, every gesture purposeful, graceful, nothing wasted. More times than you cared to admit, you had caught yourself watching his hands when you ought to have been watching the score.
And his voice, when it came, undid you a little every time. Not the teaching voice — that was controlled, measured, professional. The other voice: the one that emerged when he demonstrated a phrase and, for a few bars, forgot to keep his distance. The voice that seemed to rise from whatever place the music truly lived in him. You had heard it perhaps a dozen times in a year of lessons, and every time it appeared you had to remind yourself to keep breathing.
His intensity. The absolute, focused attention he brought to everything—to the music, to the lesson, to whatever occupied him when he went still and looked down at the score with that peculiar inwardness. When that attention rested on you, it brought with it the persistent and faintly unsettling sense of being genuinely seen—not assessed, not judged, but seen, in the way very few people ever truly saw anyone.
And the mystery of him. How much he withheld. How much remained unknown. The glimpses, when they came—the brief warmth that surfaced now and then when the lesson was going well, or when you said something that surprised him into softness—seemed more precious for how seldom they appeared. More than once, you had found yourself doing things simply to earn one: singing a phrase better than he expected, saying something that made the corner of his mouth shift in that way it sometimes did. You had not looked too closely at that impulse.
These were the things that had drawn you in. Entirely reasonable things, you told yourself. The sort of things anyone might feel in the presence of an extraordinary mind.
Hopefully, perhaps, he felt the same? He gave you glimpses.
It was the little things. The deniable things. The things you had been constructing a careful case against for months.
There was the way he looked at you when you sang well—not only with professional appraisal, not with the swift accounting of what still needed correction, but with something else. Something that came into his expression for a second or two before he put it away. You had seen it perhaps five or six times, and each time you had told yourself you were reading too much into it: the light, the angle, the habitual intensity of a man who looked at everything with that same degree of intense focus.
It was the way he remembered things you said. Offhand remarks, passing observations—a comment you had made three weeks earlier about a particular soprano’s phrasing, a preference you had mentioned only once about the tempo of a certain piece—returning in later lessons, folded in, attended to, as though he had been carrying them somewhere all that time. No one remembered the small things unless the small things mattered to them.
It was the way he sometimes went still when you were near. Not his usual stillness, which belonged to a man in complete command of himself. A different stillness—the kind that came from someone paying very careful attention to what he was trying, with equal care, not to notice at all.
Then, there were the scores that came back to you with your annotations already answered. Twice, you had arrived to find the piece you were working on laid out and waiting, your penciled questions addressed in his hand—questions you had written only in the margins, never thinking to ask them aloud. He had seen them. He had answered them. Without being asked.
Oh, and it was the way he spoke to you about the music—differently from the way he instructed, so differently from the way he corrected. Sometimes, in the hush at the end of a lesson, he spoke of a piece the way one spoke of something intimate with someone trusted, and those conversations felt rare, careful, quietly given. You had treasured every one of them with a fidelity you had not looked at too closely.
None of these things, by themselves, meant anything definite.
Together, they meant something you had spent the better part of three months declining to name.
The recital room door was just ahead.
You knocked, and pushed it open.
He was at the piano.
Of course he was — he was always already there, already in the music, the lesson begun in his mind long before you'd set foot on the stairs. You never saw him come or go, you never ran into him on the stairs or throughout the day as you attended your rehearsals. He just...appeared whenever he decided to. You had accepted this, as you had accepted most things about him, as simply the way things were.
What you had not accepted, recently, was what your heart did the moment you saw him.
That first moment, every time, before he turned — his black hair neat against his collar, his white half-mask catching the candlelight, the precise dark lines of his coat across the particular set of his shoulders. The focused inwardness of a man entirely elsewhere. The lamp light doing him, frankly, no disservice.
He had the kind of presence that rearranged a room. You had noticed this the first time and had continued noticing it with a growing persistence you found more and more inconvenient.
You stood in the doorway a moment longer than necessary.
"Good Evening, Maestro.”
He turned.
"I know. I'm sorry —" you started, already moving into the room, already reaching for the score set out for you. "The heat, I couldn't — the whole city is an absolute oven tonight, I ran most of the way and I still couldn't —"
You were mid-explanation, one hand gesturing vaguely at the general injustice of July, and the words simply — stopped.
He was looking at you.
This time, he wasn't looking at you the way he usually looked at you when you arrived — the swift professional assessment, the inventory of what the lesson would require, the expression of a man already three steps into the work. This was different. This was —
His eyes moved. Not to your face.
They moved, and stayed, for a moment that was long enough to be unmistakable and short enough to be, just barely, deniable — tracking the line of your bare shoulders, the plunging neckline of your dress, your warm, lamp-lit skin above the breezy fabric — and then moved back up.
He said nothing.
The silence lasted perhaps three full seconds. Four. His jaw did something — a tightening, a slight working of the muscle there — and his hand, resting on the piano lid, pressed flat against the wood in a way that suggested it needed somewhere to be.
He swallowed hard. He cleared his throat.
He looked at you again with the focused attention of a man who has decided, with some firmness and considerable effort, to look at your face specifically — and who intends to continue looking at your face specifically for the remainder of the evening...regardless of what the candlelight or the dress was doing.
"You are late." he said.
His voice was even. It had taken him that four seconds to make it even, which you had watched happen in real time, and it was even now, and he was looking at your face, and everything was entirely normal.
Thank God above for this dress.
You couldn't help but smile sweetly at him.
"Three minutes," you said pleasantly. "Given the heat, I'd call that heroic."
"I would not." He drew his pocket watch from his coat with the air of a man presenting evidence — and you noticed, in the half-second it took him to find it, that his hands were not quite as steady as usual. He looked at the face of it with the attention of a man very glad to have somewhere specific now to direct his eyes. "Fifteen minutes, in fact."
"Well." You found your place in the score. "Arguing about the time is only wasting more of it, isn't it?"
You looked up at him and winked.
The pocket watch stayed open in his hand. He was looking at you with the expression of a man who had prepared something — a reprimand, something suitably withering — and arrived at the moment of delivery to find it had been obliterated by your charm. His mouth opened, fractionally. Closed.
Something moved in his throat.
You glanced back down at your score with great serenity.
The silence stretched — full, weighted, belonging entirely to a man putting himself back together one piece at a time. You heard the small decisive click of the watch closing. Heard him draw a breath that was slightly more deliberate than breathing usually required. Heard the watch returned to his pocket with the care of a man performing a simple action very slowly because simple actions were what was available to him right now.
"...Yes," he said, and his voice came out a degree or two rougher than he'd aimed for. He cleared his throat again, turned back to the piano, his shoulders carrying the particular set of a man applying significant resources to appearing unaffected.
"We shall."
He did not mention the fifteen minutes again.
You settled into your position at the music stand with the pleasant expression of someone paying close attention to bar one.
It was, you thought, going to be quite an evening.
Maestro had written the aria himself, and had been using it in your lessons for three weeks.
You felt the accumulated work in it tonight — the muscle memory of the phrases, the breath support that had become instinct rather than effort, the shape of it sitting in your body the way he had taught you it should sit. You sang the first movement cleanly, found the bridge with more ease than last week, and carried the final phrase through to its resolution without the slight pulling-back that had been plaguing you at the top of the register.
When you finished, the room held the silence.
Then, a moment later than it usually came: "The opening phrase. You are still ornamenting the third note."
You turned. He was standing a few feet behind you, his copy of the score held with the deliberate looseness of a man who had very consciously reminded himself not to crush it in his grip. His expression had been arranged into one of focused assessment. His coat lay abandoned on the piano bench nearby, and he stood in his shirtsleeves, still faintly preoccupied with loosening his cravat. The heat, it seemed, was affecting him this evening as well.
"Am I?" You looked from him and back at your own score. "I thought the ornament was marked."
“It is marked. You are doing more than is marked.” He came alongside you to indicate the bar—and in the fraction of a second before his finger reached the notation, his gaze slipped to the bare line of your shoulder in the candlelight, then lower, then sharply back to the score. When he spoke again, his voice had gone noticeably precise, too controlled by half. You caught every bit of it.
"...Here. One turn, not two. The second one muddies the line."
You looked at the bar. He was right — you'd been adding to it, the way you sometimes did when you got carried away.
"I'll watch for it, Maestro." you said warmly.
"See that you do." He stepped back and clasped his hands behind him. A beat of silence — the considering kind — and then he paced, once, the short deliberate movement of a man organizing his thoughts, and turned back.
"Do you understand what our heroine is doing in this opening phrase?"
You glanced at the score. "She's establishing the emotional situation. Preparing the story's climax that comes after."
"She is doing more than that." His eyes stayed on the page, specifically not on you. "She is standing at the edge of something she has finally permitted herself to feel. She has - she has fallen in love. ...She has chosen her lover at long last. But she is —" He stopped. The space where the rest of the sentence should have been sat in the room for a moment.
You looked at the score with new attention. "She's afraid."
"...Profoundly." Still not looking at you. "She wants it more than she fears it, which is the most frightening thing of all — to want something that deeply, and to have decided, at last, to stop pretending otherwise." A brief silence. "That is what the ornament must carry. Not mere decoration. Weight."
You looked back at bar one with the careful attention of someone filing something away where it would not be lost.
The most frightening thing of all, you thought, is to want something that deeply and to have decided to stop pretending otherwise.
The Heroine in Maestro's opera was brave. Braver than you.
The second run-through was better. You felt the difference in the ornament immediately — the single turn sitting cleanly in the phrase, carrying exactly the weight he'd described — and something about understanding the reason for the correction made the whole opening movement settle differently in you. More grounded. Less performed.
You finished the first movement and paused.
For three weeks, something in this aria had hovered at the edge of your attention: a quality you had not been able to name, only feel, something that made it different from the other pieces he had set before you. His work was always remarkable, always precise, always possessed of the particular gravity of someone who wrote music the way other people breathed—because he must, because not doing so would be unthinkable. You knew his compositional voice as you knew any voice you had studied closely: its habits, its favored shapes, its unmistakable movements of thought.
This piece felt different. Closer, somehow. Less architectural and more — you weren't sure. Personal wasn't quite the right word.
Intimate, perhaps.
“Can I ask you something?”
He lifted his eyes from the score. They flicked, just for a moment, to your collarbones before rising back to your face. “…You may.”
"The aria." You chose your words carefully. "When I sing it — there's a quality in it that feels different from your other work. More particular. Like it came from somewhere very specific." You held his gaze. "Was there something that inspired it? Someone particular you had in mind when you wrote it?" A pause. "I'm curious about your creative process."
The quality of his stillness changed.
You watched it happen — the slight shift, the almost imperceptible adjustment, the way a person arranged themselves when a question had landed somewhere they hadn't prepared for.
“There are pieces,” he said, “that one writes from craft alone, from an understanding of what a form requires and what a voice demands.” He paused, and the pause that followed was different in kind—heavier, more deliberate. “And there are pieces one writes because the music already exists. The feeling already exists, complete, somewhere.” The next pause was so slight it was like the slow release of a held note. “One is simply transcribing it.”
He spoke quietly, and you lowered your eyes to the score.
You thought of the aria, and of the woman inside it—of her particular fear, her particular wanting, the singular quality of her longing, which had seemed from the first lesson less imagined than remembered. She had never felt like a character assembled from dramatic necessity, nor like an abstraction waiting to be animated by a soprano’s skill. She felt like someone known from within, someone whose feelings had been lived before they were ever written.
The music knew, with a precision far too exact to be accidental, what it was to want someone whose name you had not yet allowed yourself to say.
You looked at him.
He was watching the first bar with such total, motionless attention that the stillness itself felt deliberate. You saw the line of his jaw above his collar, the slight tension in the hands holding the score, the careful composure of a man waiting to learn what you would do with what he had just, very quietly and with extraordinary care, placed in your keeping.
Because he had told you.
He had set the truth there between you: the feeling already exists, complete, somewhere; one is simply transcribing it. It lay before you now, undeniable, and the only question left was whether you were going to reach for it.
Oh, you thought.
The understanding that followed came warm and whole, rearranging everything it touched.
Oh.
Well. There it is.
You watched him standing in the lamplight, his eyes fixed on bar forty-three, his jaw drawn tight with the careful tension of a man holding something down by force, and for the first time in months you felt entirely certain of where you were, of what was happening, and of what you meant to do next.
You were not going to let this go.
“That’s a remarkable way to experience it,” you said, your voice softer than you had meant it to be. “That sense that it already exists, and you are only finding it.”
He did not answer.
“You’re remarkable, actually.” You looked up at him. “The way you speak about it.”
Not the music. Not the act of composition. Him.
He opened his mouth.
A sentence gathered and failed. You saw the breath taken for it, the minute preparation of speech, and then the words simply did not arrive. He closed his mouth again. Something moved through his face that was not his ordinary composure and not quite its breaking either, but something more exposed than both—something that lingered there, undefended, while he looked at you and found himself without words.
He turned his eyes to the score.
Then to the window.
Then, with an effort so controlled it was painful to watch, he tried once more.
“The—the process of composition is—” He stopped, hearing at once how hopeless the sentence was, how plainly it was leading nowhere. He knew it. You knew it. The silence that followed seemed to know it too.
You watched him with the quiet patience of someone who had no intention of rescuing him from the moment.
“She’s very lucky, you know,” you said softly into the space where his words had failed him.
He went completely still.
“The woman in the aria.” You lowered your gaze to the score in your hands, giving him somewhere to rest his eyes besides your face. “To be known like that. To be understood so completely.” You let the thought rest for a moment before adding, softly, “Most people go their entire lives without anyone ever seeing them that precisely.”
The silence that followed was the fullest one of the evening.
The color that rose in him began low at his throat and traveled upward, slow and undeniable, until it touched the edge of the mask and the tips of his ears. His mouth parted slightly, as though a sentence had been meant to arrive there and had lost its way before reaching him. He closed it. Opened it again. The color deepened.
You waited, warm and patient, and watched him search for language that seemed, for the moment, entirely beyond his reach.
He cleared his throat.
Nothing came.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
You tilted your head, just slightly, with all the appearance of gentle and innocent inquiry, and said nothing at all. You let him stand there in the lamp light with the flush rising at his ears, with abandoned sentences gathering and collapsing somewhere behind his eyes, with the score held in hands that were now starting to tremble.
It was, you thought, the most extraordinary thing you had ever seen: him—your Maestro, the most composed and commanding presence you had ever known—visibly, helplessly, thoroughly undone.
By you.
In a recital room.
On a Thursday evening in July.
Your heart did something stupid in your chest.
Meanwhile, he cleared his throat a third time, straightened, and clasped his hands behind his back with the air of a man assembling himself back into order one careful piece at a time.
“...I think,” he said at last, with the cautious precision of someone testing each word before leaning into it, “that this is perhaps a natural stopping point for this evening.”
“Do you think so?” you said pleasantly.
“The hour is—” He glanced toward the window, where the darkness told him nothing useful. “It has grown late.”
“Has it.” You did not move toward the door.
He looked at you, and at the fact that you were still not moving toward the door.
Then he looked at the piano.
He crossed to it with the swift, composed purpose of a man obeying an instinct before examining it too closely, and began straightening sheets of music that were already perfectly straight. The gesture was transparent, but that hardly mattered. The piano gave him something to do with his hands, and more importantly, it gave him something large and polished and respectable to place between the two of you.
You drifted after him with the same unhurried ease you had carried all evening—not pursuing, not pressing, only remaining present, warm, and entirely at home there—and leaned lightly against the side of the instrument while he attended to pages that required no attention at all.
“It was a wonderful lesson,” you said.
“Yes.” He adjusted another page with needless care. “Your progress on the bridge was significant.”
“I meant the company.”
His hands went still on the score.
For a moment they did not move.
Then, with visible effort, they resumed.
“...The aria will require further work.” he said to the music.
“Mm.” You looked at the candles burning low on the lid, at their soft gold reflected in the black lacquer. “May I ask you something else?”
“...You have asked a considerable number of things of me this evening.”
“One more. Do you always put this much of yourself into the pieces you choose for your students?”
His jaw tightened.
Something shifted in his throat. The color that had only just begun to recede at his collar returned at once and rose again with quiet, merciless determination toward the edge of the mask and the tips of his ears.
He looked at the score.
He looked at the piano lid.
He opened his mouth.
He closed it.
You waited with the serene patience of someone who had nowhere else to be and no wish to hurry him. Your hands remained loosely folded. Your expression was one of nothing but open, innocent curiosity. And you watched the most composed man you had ever known stand in the candlelight and discover, quite helplessly, that he had nowhere left to retreat.
“The—” he began.
Stopped.
“Each piece is selected according to the—”
He stopped again.
He had heard it as soon as he said it. The sentence was only scaffolding: structure without substance, words assembled for the sole purpose of keeping other words at bay.
At last he set the score down on the piano lid.
“No,” he said.
He said it quietly, simply, with nothing around it to soften it or disguise it.
No.
“You should—” He broke off, cleared his throat, and tried again. “...It is late.” Another pause. His voice was carefully controlled now, but only because control was costing him everything he had left. “You should go.”
“You keep saying that,” you observed.
His eyes held yours.
“And yet,” he said.
You felt the meaning of it at once: and yet you remain; and yet you stand there looking at me like that; and yet I cannot recover myself while you do.
“And yet,” you agreed warmly.
You straightened from the piano and gathered your things from the lid—your score, your pencil—in the small, unhurried ritual of leaving. At the other end of the instrument, your Maestro stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the color still vibrant at his collar, his eyes fixed anywhere but on you, with the fierce and concentrated discipline of a man who had decided that looking at you directly again tonight was more than he could safely allow himself.
You slipped the score into its usual folder and turned toward the door.
“Good night, Maestro,” you said.
You heard him move.
Toward you.
With the same purposeful certainty he brought to any decision once it had been made.
You turned, and he was already there, closer than you had expected. His expression had settled into something you had not yet seen on him. It was the look of a man who had wrestled with himself, reached an answer, and meant to act on it before he could be prevented.
He reached for your hand.
His fingers closed around yours—warm, careful, certain—and turned it gently in his own. Then, with a deliberateness that made your breath catch, he lifted your hand and brought it to his mouth.
He pressed his lips to the back of it and held them there.
He held your hand to his mouth for one long, unmistakable moment—long enough for you to feel the warmth of his lips and his breath through to your bones, long enough to understand that this was not impulse alone, but intention. That he knew exactly what he was saying, and had chosen, at last, to say it.
Then he lifted his head.
And looked at you.
His eyes through the mask were dark and steady and utterly certain. There was nothing managed in them now, nothing of the careful evasions of the evening, none of the averted glances or the recovered silences or the attempts to retreat behind music and manners. There was only him, looking directly at you, with everything he had been holding behind his composure now visible in his face and no real effort made to hide it.
He let your hand go slowly. His fingers lingered against yours for the smallest moment as they slipped away, and that reluctance was the best thing that had happened all evening.
“Good night,” he whispered.
You looked at him for a moment several beats longer than any farewell required.
The corridor outside the recital room was cooler than the room itself—immediately, startlingly cooler, like stepping into water after standing too long in heat. You made it three steps before you had to stop.
You stood in the dim corridor with your music clutched against your chest and your free hand pressed flat to your sternum, where your heart was behaving in a way that made the precaution seem entirely reasonable. You could still feel it: the precise warmth of his mouth against the back of your hand, the exact place where it had rested, the deliberate, lingering pressure of it. It seemed entirely possible that you would go on feeling it for hours. Perhaps for days.
Your palm pressed more firmly against your chest.
He had been undone.
Not merely flustered, not merely shaken, but thoroughly, visibly, helplessly undone. By you. By your voice, your questions, your summer dress, your refusal to leave when he needed you gone if he was to have any hope of composing himself again. By the slow, unbearable accumulation of a year of Thursdays finally growing too heavy to carry in silence.
A smile rose before you could stop it—wide and private and helplessly pleased. You had to remind yourself to breathe.
Your Maestro was in love with you.
Hopelessly, desperately, unmistakably in love with you.
You could still see him as clearly as if he were standing before you: the color at his throat, the failed sentences, the careful stillness breaking apart under your gaze, the look in his eyes when he finally gave up pretending.
You began to walk again, though it felt less like walking than floating, your whole body warm with the effort of containing your happiness. The cool dark of the opera house opened around you, but it did nothing to quiet the rush inside you.
Behind you, the recital room had gone silent.
But his eyes—dark, steady, certain—still seemed to rest on you.
hello! I was wondering if you’d be willing to write a Phantom of the Opera request centering around reader’s appreciation for Erik’s hands. I mean… he is a musician and can play pretty much any instrument. Not to mention, he can be so delicate in the way he touches reader while also having strangled men (which reader isnt crazy about but… one step at a time…)
How would he react to them showing him such appreciation? And would it lead to anything more…? if you do decide to do nsfw… how would he feel about reader asking him to (lightly) choke them?
feel free to make this sfw or nsfw as you're comfortable with!
Where Trust Lies
i didnt make it nsfw but it is still suggestive!!
erik destler x gn reader
warnings/ tags- light choking, not nswf, gn reader, i demand requests!!!
word count- 1649 words
Erik’s hands were the first part of him you truly knew.
The gentle curve of his long fingers on the keys of his organ, the quiet strength they showed as he adjusted his scores, the rhythmic flex of his knuckles when frustration gnawed at him—all of it fascinated you. His hands were, in many ways, the truest representation of him: deft, expressive, and disciplined, yet trembling with the undercurrent of a deeper, more turbulent self.
You often found yourself watching them from across the dim room as Erik lost himself in music. Tonight, however, was different. Tonight, you let your admiration slip through the walls you carefully built to keep your thoughts concealed from his sharp, all-seeing eyes.
The candlelight barely reached where you sat on the edge of the divan, but it illuminated Erik clearly at his organ. His hands, ever graceful, moved like water over the keys, coaxing out a melody that was equal parts melancholy and tender. You didn’t know the piece, but you felt it—the notes wrapped around you, luring you into his world.
Your gaze lingered on the pale stretch of his fingers. They danced with precision, pressing and lifting as though the keys were extensions of himself. You’d often admired his hands in silence, but tonight, the sight pulled at something deeper within you. Those hands had given life to the beauty in the room: the music, the carefully inked compositions scattered on his desk, the delicate carvings on the furniture he’d restored.
They were hands of creation. Hands that bore the evidence of their toil, calloused but precise, and you couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to feel them against your own skin.
You barely realized you were staring until Erik stilled. The final chord hung in the air before vanishing into the heavy quiet of the underground lair. Slowly, he turned toward you, his movements deliberate, and you realized with a flash of embarrassment that he’d caught you watching.
His dark eyes narrowed, suspicion clouding them. “What is it?” he asked, his voice low and clipped. “Are you displeased with the music?”
You shook your head quickly. “No. The music is beautiful, Erik.”
He tilted his head, his disfigured lips pressing into a thin line. “Then why do you look at me as though you pity me?”
Your breath caught. “I don’t pity you,” you said softly, leaning forward. “I was admiring your hands.”
For a moment, Erik froze. His eyes flicked to his own hands as though seeing them for the first time. He flexed his fingers once, and a soft scoff escaped his throat. “My hands,” he repeated, almost mockingly. “They are as grotesque as the rest of me. What is there to admire?”
You moved before you could think better of it, slipping off the divan to kneel before him. His sharp intake of breath made you pause, but you pressed forward, gently lifting one of his hands between yours. “They’re not grotesque,” you murmured, running your fingertips over the calloused pads of his fingers. “They’re beautiful.”
Erik’s breath hitched, and you glanced up to see him staring at you, his face unreadable. You pressed on, letting your thumb brush over his knuckles. “Your hands create so much, Erik. Music that moves people, pieces that live beyond this place. Even this lair—it’s you. Everything you’ve built is because of these hands.”
His fingers twitched under your touch, and for a moment, you thought he might pull away. But he didn’t. Instead, he watched you, something like vulnerability flickering in his gaze.
“You… you think so highly of them?” he whispered, as though the words were foreign to him.
“I do,” you said, your voice steady. “I’ve always thought so. I’ve just never told you.”
He swallowed hard, his free hand gripping the edge of the organ bench. His breathing grew uneven, and you realized how much weight your words carried. Erik, who was so accustomed to rejection and fear, was staring at you as though you’d spoken something sacred.
Carefully, you placed his hand against your cheek, closing your eyes for a moment. His touch was hesitant, but warm, his thumb brushing your skin in the lightest of caresses.
“Why?” he rasped, his voice breaking. “Why would you say this?”
You opened your eyes, meeting his. “Because it’s true. And because I want you to know how much I see in you.”
Something inside him seemed to shatter at that. His hand cupped your cheek more firmly, and before you knew it, he was pulling you closer, his other hand lifting to cradle the back of your neck.
“Do you know what you do to me?” he murmured, his voice trembling. “To speak of beauty in something I’ve always loathed… You undo me.”
You barely managed to reply before he leaned in, his forehead resting against yours. His breath ghosted over your lips, his hands anchoring you to him as though you might vanish.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik’s forehead rested against yours, his breath shallow and uneven. His hands trembled slightly where they held you, one against your cheek and the other cradling the nape of your neck. His eyes searched yours, filled with an unspoken question, as if he were waiting for you to push him away.
But you didn’t. Instead, you reached up to trace the back of his hand, marveling at the strength beneath his pale skin. “Erik,” you whispered, your voice barely audible in the stillness.
“Yes?” His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard, his thumb brushing your jaw in an almost reverent motion.
“I want you to choke me.”
The words hung between you, heavy and electric. Erik froze, his breath catching as if you had struck him. His hand stilled against your neck, the tension in his fingers palpable.
“What… did you say?” His voice was low, laced with disbelief and something darker—a flicker of curiosity.
You shifted closer, your hands resting lightly on his chest, feeling the erratic beat of his heart beneath your palms. “I want you to choke me,” you repeated, softer but no less certain. “I trust you, Erik. Completely. I want to feel your strength—your control. I’m not afraid of you.”
Erik’s expression twisted, his lips parting as though to protest, but no words came. Instead, he stared at you, his brows furrowed, his hands twitching as though he were waging a silent war with himself.
“You… you don’t understand what you’re asking,” he finally said, his voice strained. “I could hurt you. I’ve spent my life as a monster, wielding my hands for harm, not… not this.”
“You’re not a monster,” you said firmly, your fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. “And I trust you not to hurt me. I’m asking because I want this—not because I see you as dangerous, but because I see you as powerful.”
His breathing grew heavier, and he closed his eyes, his grip on your neck tightening just enough for you to feel the weight of his hand. When he opened his eyes again, they were filled with something raw and unguarded. “If I do this,” he said slowly, his voice shaking, “you must promise to tell me if it’s too much. I cannot bear to harm you.”
“I promise,” you said, your voice steady.
Erik let out a shuddering breath, and his fingers flexed against your skin. Slowly, he brought his other hand up to join the first, his long fingers curling gently around your throat. The pressure was light at first, almost hesitant, as though he feared breaking you.
“Like this?” he murmured, his eyes locked on yours.
You nodded, your breath hitching at the sensation. “A little more,” you whispered.
His fingers tightened incrementally, and you felt the strength in his hands, the undeniable control he held over you. The sensation was intoxicating, not because it left you breathless but because it was Erik—vulnerable, conflicted, and utterly present with you in this moment.
“You’re trembling,” you said softly, your hands moving to rest over his.
“I—” He cut himself off, his voice breaking. “I’m terrified. I don’t understand how you could want this from me.”
“Because I trust you,” you said again, your voice steady despite the weight of his hands. “Because I want you to see that you don’t have to hold yourself back with me.”
Something inside him snapped then, a low growl escaping his lips as his grip tightened just enough to make your pulse quicken. He leaned closer, his face mere inches from yours, his breath hot against your cheek.
“You undo me,” he whispered, his voice raw with emotion. “Do you know what you’re doing to me?”
Before you could answer, his lips were on yours—fierce, desperate, and unyielding. His hands remained steady on your throat, a perfect balance of control and care, grounding you in his presence. The kiss deepened, his body pressing against yours as though he couldn’t bear to leave any space between you.
When he finally pulled back, his chest heaved, his hands slipping from your throat to cradle your face. His eyes were wild, dark with desire and something deeper—a fragile kind of devotion.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
You shook your head, your lips curling into a soft smile. “No, Erik. You were perfect.”
He let out a shaky breath, his forehead falling against yours once more. “You are either the most reckless creature I’ve ever met,” he murmured, “or the only one who’s ever truly understood me.”
“Maybe I’m both,” you said, your voice light but full of affection.
Erik let out a soft, breathless laugh—rare and beautiful, like the man himself. And as his hands slid back to rest lightly on your shoulders, you knew that this moment, fragile and fierce, was just the beginning of something neither of you could put into words.
In this Choose-Your-Own-Adventure you're a young ballet dancer who becomes the obsession of a mysterious musical genius living beneath the Paris Opera House.
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🎮 interactive fanfic "Masquerade" by ArtistT22
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Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
cw: dead reader (you are a literal ghost), dark themes, period typical social attitudes (France in the 19th century was not kind), yandere, obsession, stalking, dark romance, morally questionable love interest
Part one of a mini series based off of this post. A lot of the warnings are not that present in this chapter (apart from reader being dead), however will be relevant in the upcoming chapters when it starts to follow the plot of POTO more closely. Also, like with my Frankenstein writings, dialogue will diverge depending on the reader's gender identity in future chapters so that it is inclusive to everyone to the best of my ablility. Happy readings!
Disclaimer: the following is based off of a translated version of Gaston Leroux's Phantom Of The Opera, the book, and not its adaptations.
The Palais Garnier, home to Paris’ most talented opera stars and ballet prodigies. With rows and rows of polished seats, fancy chandeliers setting the mood, and the most exquisite performances available for the sophisticated audience, you would think that such a place would be far above being haunted by supernatural hosts; surely ghosts would prefer the company of an obscure graveyard rather than the dazzling scenery of the opera house.
And yet, here you were. A ghost, haunting the Palais Garnier for well over a decade now. In fact, you had been an unperceived residence ever since the Garnier held its first performance all those years ago. You see, it was your dream in life to become a famous opera singer, a dream that you shared with a dear friend who would sing with you on moonlit nights, away from the judgemental eyes of those pouring shame on two misbegotten children for the mere crime of existence. As such, after your untimely passing, done at the hands of a drunkard who pushed you into the street when some impatient noble’s carriage was speeding past crowds of bewildered onlookers, you began gravitating towards various different theaters, especially those of the musical kind, until your undead sights eventually set on the freshly opened Palais Garnier.
Whether it was your ghostly instincts being attached to places that reminded you of your dream or your human appreciation of the arts that led you to the opera house, you did not know. What you did know was that you had found yourself a home amongst the busy dancers and pampered singers here, for this place and all its intricacies had a way of drawing you in like a moth to a flame (you supposed that’s why so many opera hopefuls wished to be a part of the company here - if you were still alive, you would have probably joined them).
However, not all was well in the Palais Garnier, for you quickly discovered the presence of another ‘ghost’ living in the house’s walls. This other ‘ghost’, well, he wasn’t a ghost at all. Rather, he was your childhood friend, the one who would sing with you under the moonlight, who had grown into a bitter and resentful shell of a man driven by fear. Erik was what he called himself, and you had first met him when you were both children trying to survive; your mother had sold you to the traveling circus when she and your father could no longer afford to feed all of your siblings, and he was one of the freak show attractions put on display. Like any other children of your age would have been, you were deathly afraid of the boy with the death’s head, for what little child would not be haunted by the visage of the grim reaper? Yet the more you saw him, the more you observed from the distance when you ran errands for the various performers of the circus, the more you began to see him as less of a threat and more of a kindred soul: a lonely, misguided child scorned and abandoned by the ones who should have taught him love. And so, you decided to make a friend.
Erik was an eccentric friend. Ecstatic at your presence and awed at the fact that you had offered him friendship on your own accord, he would go through great lengths to impress you with his many, many talents, almost as if silently begging you not to leave him since he could do all these amazing things for you. You had thought that his hypervigilance towards your opinion would fade as you both matured into adulthood, but no; if anything, his obsession and dependence towards you would only grow stronger as the years went by, with Erik’s feelings slowly morphing into that of deep love rather than innocent friendship. As adulthood hardened your minds about the harsh reality that none would accept a heavily deformed man and a poor orphan with no connections in society, Erik became convinced that the only ones who could truly understand and accept the two of you were each other, thus began to see you as a soulmate who would heal his wounds with your presence.
It would have been incredibly awkward, his unyielding devotion towards your very being, had you not reciprocated his feelings. For just as Erik had grown to love you and care for you as the only person to offer him genuine love, you too had grown to love and appreciate his romantic gestures and declarations of love. How could you not, when he was the only person to treat you like you were a precious angel and not some disposable urchin that would not be missed nor mourned should you turn up dead the next day. Society had dealt its cruel hand towards you as well, for you may not have had an obvious deformity, but you were still considered a second class citizen due to your background of poverty and the fact that your own family had sold you to the highest bidder; you still remember the day the ringleader of the circus you and Erik had long since left behind ridiculed you about how you were basically his slave since he owned you the moment your mother had her share of coins. All your life you were treated as something disposable. To your mother and father, you were a sacrifice. Their eldest child to pawn off so that their young ones may survive. To the circus, you were a tool. An extra hand to help with whatever grievings the cast suffered from. To society, you were nothing. An adult with no connections, no money to your name, and no solid career meant that you had failed as a person, and so you were nothing. To Erik, you were beloved. And so you loved him.
There were plans, back in the days when you traveled with your beloved, plans to make you an opera singer and settle down together in a nice house, take walks in the park on the weekends and build yourselves a garden of roses. But those plans were shattered the day that a drunkard decided you looked at him wrong and a pompous noble decided your life was not worth the few minutes of delay it would give to stop their carriage. As you lay on the cold, unforgiving ground bleeding to your death, your only solace was that you were loved, and that your love would not have to see you die. Imagine your surprise when you found yourself a ghost, a pale reflection of what you once were, and you were helpless to watch your beloved one as he spiralled in his grief.
That should have been the last that you saw of him; your own heartache at having to witness his pain drove you to distract yourself by seeking comfort in your all-time obsession, musical theatre and the opera. And yet, here he was, at the Palais Garnier, wearing a black mask to hide his face from the world, playing the part of a phantom tormenting the residents of the Paris opera house. You watched as he whispered lies into the ears of Madam Giry to earn her trust and cooperation, threatened the managers to leave his special box open and forfeit 20000 francs to use as his own, and developed an unhealthy obsession over the soprano Christine Daae, masquerading as her ‘angel of music’, violating her memory with her dearly departed father by deceiving her using his dying words against her.
You tried to stop him, truely, you did. But there was only so much your incorporeal form could do. You were not completely helpless, your new form of undeath granting you a reserve of supernatural energy that allowed you to create poltergeists or even make your presence be known to those around you, though the latter was incredibly tiring on your part and would leave you incapacitated in the aftermath should you maintain your solid form for too long. Using the latter of your powers, you appeared to Erik and attempted to turn him back towards the light, yet he had screamed at you, wailed obscenities about how you were an apparition of his own twisted mind that had come to torment him, and would not listen to anything you had to say. After a week of trying and getting the exact same results, you decided to approach the problem at hand from a different angel; the more you visited, the more agitated and aggressive Erik became, and you really did not want to deal any more damage to his clearly shattered mental state, both for his sake and for the sake of the people of the Garnier who would be caught up in the aftermath.
Your next course of action was to help the people Erik ‘haunted’ by offering aid to those who were affected by Erik’s whims: you moved Erik’s ‘allowance’ back into the managers’ pockets via poltergeist, offered comfort to young ballerinas spooked by “the opera ghost” by manifesting and pretending to be one of the chorus singers, and spoke to Christine masquerading as a second angel of music, warning her about a ‘false angel’. Yet whenever you managed to undo some of Erik’s tyranny, he would always hit back twice as hard, threatening the lives of the residents for daring to disobey him; you figured experimenting with the heights of your power was not worth causing distress for so many others, and eventually decided that it was best to let him have his way most of the time and only intervene when it was absolutely necessary.
Like yesterday night, when the poor stagehand Joseph Buquet almost ended his own life after enduring torture in Eriks chamber of mirrors. Unfortunately, your death-parted beloved had become quite the torture expert since your time apart and had constructed ingenious torture chambers designed for the sole purpose of keeping people out of his abode. One of these chambers featured a room full of mirrors, and it was here that the poor Buquet had landed himself in after venturing too far into Erik’s home for his own sake. Had you not been accustomed to making ‘tours’ of the Phantom’s torture rooms ever night, Joseph Buquet would have hung himself by the noose, readily positioned on a tree of silver to entice the tortured to end their own life. Instead, you summoned all your powers to shatter one of the mirrors, revealing a path behind it for the unlucky stagehand to follow to his freedom; to ensure that he did not inquire Erik’s ire, you even took the effort to manifest yourself, playing the role of a vengeful phantom, warning Buquet to never return to the opera house, for he would not be granted mercy the next time round.
That worked wonderfully, and news of Buquet’s sudden disappearance and a haunting ghost spread amongst the curious ballerinas like wildfire. The opera house was buzzing with gossip about the stagehand and the vindictive opera ghost, adding fuel to the fire that was the dread of the presence haunting the Palais Garnier; although he had been robbed of a kill, Erik was nevertheless satisfied at the turn of events leading to him gaining more infamy and thus more security in his position as the mysterious overseer of the opera house, and so you did not have to worry about him lashing out at some poor worker for his supposed failure. He did, however, reinforce the mirrors of his torture chamber, and you lamented that it would take an even greater effort to rescue people now. You just hoped that things would go far more smoothly from now on, with no one else’s life on the line.
Little did you know that you were about to enter a dangerous game of intrigue and deception, with the childhood friend of Christine Daae coming to visit his beloved soprano becoming a catalyst for a whirlwind of events you would be thrown into the middle of.
Pairing - Erik (1990! Charles Dance) x (Female) Reader
Summary - the last hurdle in your relationship had finally been crossed and erik no longer felt the need to hide such a pivotal aspect of himself away from you anymore. but now all the barriers had fallen and the mask was removed, there was one last thing you craved. and erik, for some reason, was very against participating.
Warnings - erik having major moodswings, apologies and forgiveness, poor self esteem, possessiveness, accidental mask slip, erik panicking, sexual and innocent teasing, teeth rotting fluff, victorian purity culture and potentially misinformed discussions of christianity (oops), y/n knows what she wants and she wants it now, reader isn’t particularly chubby or skinny just average size, virginity loss, breast play, hand jobs (m receiving), unintentional edging, continuous position changing, penetrative sex, unprotected sex because the victorians did not vibe with condoms
Word Count - 9,668
Notes - this is the final part of this little 'twoshot.' i think this is a nice place to wrap it up and end it and move on to make even more erik content because god knows we are all starved. god bless.
feedback is appreciated :) good or bad
01 / 02 (you're here!)
You were not exaggerating when you mentioned that the statues required cleaning. Specks of dust covered every surface of the different fabrics and metals of the stolen display pieces. You couldn't remember the last time you saw Erik dusting them.
You spent a good two hours meticulously cleaning those statues, keeping yourself occupied. A wave of guilt settled deep within your chest as you reminisced about the events that had transpired before your hasty departure. It had been overwhelming for you - the emotional outpouring and the astonishment of finally seeing Erik's face had struck you hard. Not to mention when you recklessly flung yourself onto him, as if devoid of any semblance of control over your own limbs. You were overcome by a sense of foolishness. In that moment, you believed it was the only choice available to you: to fabricate an excuse and flee from his presence.
Your heart constricted as if it were tightly bound by an unforgiving rope, mercilessly pulling and yanking as you sat consumed by your ruminations. The weight of guilt intensified as you contemplated the depth of Erik's sentiments, the vulnerability he had bared before you. Desperately, you tried your best to suppress these thoughts, reminding yourself that you needed time for introspection, or you’d risk an emotional outburst. Yet deep within, you recognized that you ought to have known better, should have conducted yourself with greater propriety. If only you had summoned the courage to articulate your overwhelming emotions and request a moment of solitude, all of this could have been averted. Regret washed over you as you comprehended that you had needlessly transformed a simple circumstance into a tangled web of emotions and uncertainty.
It was quick approaching five o'clock, the time Erik would usually call out to you and say that he was off to gather things for your afternoon meal as you didn't have anywhere to hygienically store food in the little lagoon. You'd not seen him since the time you'd spent in your bedroom, so you mustered all your hope and prayed that he'd show himself to you so that you could vehemently apologise and beg for his forgiveness.
It took a little while longer than five o'clock, but your lover finally emerged from hiding. Your ears perked up, and your hair stood on end as the sound of footsteps approached from behind. They came to a halt not far from where you crouched, and you held your breath, your hands trembling as you continued to wipe down the statue. You found yourself fixated on a minuscule crevice in the metal, desperately endeavouring not to startle him away. The apprehension within you grew stronger with each passing second.
"It seems you're more infatuated with the statues than you are with me," Erik finally said from behind you.
You huffed in amusement, a smile finally reappearing on your lips. You compelled yourself to stand upright and forsake the act of tidying for the present moment, instead pivoting to confront the man standing in your wake. He stood towering and seemingly unfazed, a faint smile playing upon his lips akin to your own.
"You have my whole heart, don't play dumb," you laughed, dropping the duster to the floor.
Erik approached you, gradually closing the distance between you until his presence was palpable against your cold skin. His hands delicately clasped yours, his thumbs tenderly caressing you. You raised your gaze to meet his intense stare, entranced in the depths of his eyes.
"You have mine too," he said, "Which is why I'll forgive you for that little disappearing act. I wanted to give you some space, but as you know the evening is approaching and we need nourishment, so I'll be-"
"I'm sorry. I didn't consider your feelings before I left, and that was cruel of me. You'd bared yourself to me and I walked away because of my own feelings, and that was selfish," you whispered, your eyes slowly trailing down in shame as your head dropped.
Erik shook his head, a hand leaving yours to cup your chin and lift you back up to his eye level. "You can walk away from me a thousand times over, and as long as you return, I'll never bat an eye."
"Erik, that's not right," you replied, removing his hand from your chin to hold it instead, "You aren't expendable, you don't deserve to be left and returned to as it suits somebody else. If I hurt you, please say so."
"Relax, we were both tense and overwhelmed. It's alri-"
"I'm not just talking about that! How dare you say it's okay for me to leave you and waltz back as I please! You matter more than-"
Unlike before, this time it was Erik who sent his lips crashing down on yours. The intensity and urgency in his actions conveyed his feelings and spoke volumes without a single word being spoke. His lips pressed against yours with such intensity and fervour that you couldn't help but gasp. His hands wandered from yours, up the contours of your arms until they were tightly holding your face in his fiery grip. Your nerves set ablaze and your eyes watered as you quickly flung your hands up to entangle your fingers in his blonde hair, unaware that you were interfering with the knot keeping his mask attached to his head.
Erik was completely captivated, his senses consumed by the intensity of the moment. Unbeknownst to him, the ties securing his mask slowly slipped, gradually unravelling until they hung precariously. The only thing preventing the inevitable was the proximity of your faces, maintaining the fragile balance. Just as you pulled back slightly to catch your breath before resuming the kiss, the mask finally succumbed to gravity and fell, shattering the veil.
It happened in an instant. His cry of horror echoed through the room as he violently tore himself away from you, his hands that were once ardently wrapped around you now shielding himself once more. Panic surged through your veins as the realization of what had just occurred hit you like a dagger to the heart, shattering your world into a million jagged pieces. Without a second thought, you instinctively reached down to retrieve his fallen mask, your trembling fingers fumbling to grasp it as he seemed lost in a whirlwind of confusion and despair, unable to distinguish up from down.
You felt awful.
"Erik, it's okay. I didn't see anything, I have your mask. Take it," you instructed, holding it out while also trying to maintain some distance, trying to avoid frightening him further.
He struggled to regain his composure, his hands trembling uncontrollably and his body wracked with violent shudders. His mind raced, desperately trying to make sense of the unfolding situation. It was an absolute nightmare. Twice in a single day, he had been exposed, his mask stripped away and his face studied by a piercing gaze that seemed to penetrate his very soul. There was no hint of malice, no trace of fear in those eyes, and that's what terrified him the most. It was an unfathomable sensation, one that sent waves of sheer terror crashing through his being.
"Erik," you whispered, your voice barely audible. Uncertainty gripped your every word as you grappled with the weight of the situation. A deep sense of guilt washed over you, threatening to consume your thoughts. It was your fault, you knew it. The mask had come loose, revealing a side of Erik that he fiercely guarded. You feared he would believe that you had purposely revealed him, betraying his trust in the most vulnerable of moments. The room fell into a tense silence as you waited, your heart pounding in your chest, unsure of what would happen next.
You observed that he wasn't crying like he was earlier that day, which gave you some relief. However, it was evident that he was visibly distressed. Your heart ached as you observed him and his turmoil. After the intense series of events, you believed that he had experienced enough excitement for one day.
"Erik, I have your mask. Put it back on if you wish and go lay down, I'll deal with dinner arrangements tonight. You've been through so much today."
He frantically shook his head, his face still concealed behind his trembling hands. The urgency in his actions was palpable, as if his very soul depended on it. With bated breath, he inhaled deeply, summoning every ounce of courage within him. Slowly, almost agonizingly, he began to peel back his hands, one finger at a time. Your heart raced as the suspense hung heavy in the air.
As the seconds ticked by, the anticipation grew, enveloping the room like a thick fog. The silence was deafening, broken only by the sound of his quickened breaths. Every nerve in his body seemed to be on edge, as if a single wrong move could shatter his entire world. The tension mounted, building up to a high that seemed almost unbearable. You could practically taste the anticipation in the air, a mix of excitement and nervousness. It was as if time itself had slowed down, stretching out the suspense to its breaking point.
The first glimpse of his face emerged from behind his hands as they subsequently dropped to his sides. Your jaw hung heavy, falling open as you drunk in every little bit of his uncovered self. He stood there, unwavering and self assured, a resolute expression pointed at you. Your ears rang and your palms grew sweaty as you came to the realisation that this was the first time you'd seen his face show any emotion that wasn't gut-wrenchingly disconsolate. You were at a loss for words.
"Erik..."
"I know, a handsome gentleman, aren't I?"
You spluttered in shock, the blood rushing up to your cheeks as you stood there observing him. Simply seconds ago he had been exuberating monumental signs of upset, and now he was... cracking jokes? Not that you weren't attracted to him, but he clearly thought he wasn't handsome. Otherwise you two wouldn't be here right now.
"Well, I'll be taking that off your hands," Erik continued, politely taking his most beloved mask back from you. He quickly resecured it to his head. "I must really go and get food now, otherwise we will go hungry tonight. The kitchen closes around 6 o'clock, as you are aware."
You stood there, utterly astonished, as he placed a quick peck on the back of your hand before walking away. You remained rooted to the spot, completely taken aback by the unexpected turn of events. Oh, how the tables turn.
You remained in this state of stupor for an embarrassing amount of time. You were off in your own world throughout his disappearance- when he returned, once your evening meal had been prepared and consumed, and even now while you were tending to washing your cutlery and plates. Erik did not directly reference the elephant in the room throughout that entire sequence, and you knew you'd have to be the person to bring it up.
Now, you weren't usually the person to address things that required addressing. As you'd demonstrated countless times, you were a run away and ignore your feelings kind of person, not a stay and confront them head on kind of person. Admittedly, though, it was unfair to expect Erik to do the emotional heavy lifting the majority of the time, so you yielded. Just this once.
"Erik," you called out, busying yourself with scrubbing down the little nooks and cranny's of the fork you were holding. His footsteps didn't take long to hear.
"Yes, dear?"
"I'd like to discuss... what happened, with you?"
"Hm? What did happen?"
"Erik," you whined, squeezing the washcloth you were using extra hard as you rung out the dirty water.
"Sorry, I just couldn't believe what I heard. I thought my ears were deceiving me. You want to be the one to discuss things first? The horror."
"Erik, be serious!" you cried out, throwing the washcloth to the hard stone floor with a resounding 'splat!', "I wanted to just make sure you were okay, you switched so fast earlier I thought I'd gone crazy."
"Perhaps you did."
"Erik!"
"I'm just teasing," he smiled, coming to sit next to you. He rubbed your knee soothingly. "I'm perfect. I'm sorry for my little outburst, was just a shock is all. Nothing serious."
"Are you sure?" you asked, holding the hand that was rubbing your knee.
"More than I've ever been in my life."
Erik caught your eye, sustaining relentless eye contact upon saying those words.
"Well, I'll trust you then," you replied.
"How much do you trust me?" Erik asked.
"Way too much,” you giggled. Your smile soon fell upon seeing Erik’s serious expression.
A silence swept over. Your heart was hammering as if it's goal was to send you into a fatal cardiac arrest. Your throat felt as though it was closing up, the incessant twiddling of your fingers your only relief from the heavy air of suspense that wafted over you both like a weighted blanket. You could practically feel your heart in your throat.
"That's all I needed to know."
The hand that was resting on your knee slowly began to crawl up the length of your leg, fingertips lightly grazing your skin as it travelled up and up. You were practically hyperventilating. The sinful intentions behind his touch were palpable, and yet he seemed unashamed, as if he were waiting for you to make the next move.
Soon he reached the curvature of where your thigh met your hips, giving your leg a firm squeeze before continuing even higher up your body. The air was so thick you felt as though you could slice it with a knife and it'd split in two. His hands were so gentle and careful, as if he were afraid one wrong move would make you bolt.
"How about we get some sleep for the night, my dear? I'm quite tired after today, I feel like an early retreat to bed is in order," Erik stated, giving you a coy smile. Your head felt as though it could explode at any second.
"Oh. Alright, then. I bid you goodnight," you quickly mounted your feet, "I hope you sleep well and I shall see you in the-"
Erik quickly scooped you up into his arms, holding you tight and secure as he made his way in the opposite direction of where your bedroom resided. Your eyes widened.
"Erik? Why are we heading to your room? You said it was a bad idea for us to share," you squeaked.
"That was before you'd seen my face. Now we've gotten over that small hurdle, the matter of bedroom sharing is no longer an issue," he replied. "Now, shall we?"
Without saying a word, Erik carried you closer and closer to his resting place. His steps were steady yet quick, and he maintained a firm grip on you. During the journey, you noticed a subtle change in Erik's demeanour. The fire and intensity that once burned in his eyes had started to fade, as if he were changing his mind about something.
As you stepped into his bedroom, your eyes wandered with fascination. It was your first time setting foot inside Erik's chambers, and you were captivated by the opportunity to glimpse into his life as you observed your surroundings. His bed, adorned with little coffins on the posts and covered with neatly arranged black covers, boasted a dark brown wooden frame. It was nestled in the corner of the room, exuding an air of intimacy and comfort. Adjacent to the bed stood a wardrobe, while a meticulously organized desk, adorned with stacked papers and a fountain pen, occupied the space in front. A small bookcase resided beside the desk, completing the ensemble. Though entirely ordinary, the room exuded an atmosphere of tidiness and orderliness, prompting a smile to spread across your lips.
"If you don't have any objections, I'd like for us to share this room together from now on. Your old room can be altered to be a place for your hobbies, interests, whatever you wish it to be. Whatever makes you happy," he said.
"That would be wonderful," you replied. He gently lowered you until your feet could comfortably touch the floor below. However, he made sure to keep an arm firmly sinched around your waist, even as you stood upright.
He nodded, radiating a clear sense of joy and relief. After a final glance around, you turned to face him and met his gaze immediately.
"Forgive me if this comes across as strange, but I've kept some nightclothes for you in here since we started our relationship. Just in case," Erik gently squeezed your waist before stepping away and opening the drawers at the bottom of his wardrobe. Delicate lace and pristine white fabric peeked out from the open drawers as he continued, "Everything will be brought over from your room tomorrow, tonight just wear these."
He reached into the drawers and carefully retrieved the aforementioned night clothes, placing them on the bed beside him. With deliberate movements, he pulled open the doors of the storage unit and extracted a long night shirt. Excusing himself, he quietly stepped away to find a private space to change. As he left, you seized the opportunity that presented itself. Swiftly and silently, you exchanged your blouse and long skirt for the nightgown he had prepared for you.
He returned not long after you'd finished closing your top button, door squeaking as he slowly shut it behind him. He took a deep breath before raising his hands to untie the knot behind his head, allowing the mask to slip off. Seeing you have no reaction, he reached out, waiting for you to place your hand in his before guiding you to the side of the bed. He wrapped you in his arms before lifting you once more, pressing a quick kiss against your forehead before lowering you onto the mattress below. You sunk into the bed as if you were laying on clouds.
He busied himself with removing the blankets from beneath you, bringing them up and over to envelope your frame. He ensured that every inch of your skin was covered and unexposed to the chilly lagoon air. Reaching up, he tucked your hair behind your ear, slowly trailing his fingers down until he stopped at your neck. He gave you another quick kiss before retreating.
He blew out out the candle on his desk before he carefully crawled up onto the bed. He tucked himself away into the corner while you laid on the outside. His arm slithered underneath your neck, pulling you into him with his other. You rested your head on his chest as you turned, nuzzling into him as if he were a giant teddy bear. You thought his heart were about to leap from his chest from the rate you could hear it hammering.
"Goodnight," you said.
"Goodnight."
Many evenings were spent in such a manner. Before long, your former room was emptied and filled with new, exciting things. It had transformed into a new sanctuary, replacing your secluded spot in the verdant woods outside. Now, you possessed a haven to house your cherished items; somewhere to store your books, a cozy nook where you could recline and immerse yourself in literature for hours, and a table for you to engage in the art of crochet, a repository for yarn, and a showcase for your completed projects. It has everything you wanted, precisely as he promised.
Your sentiments for Erik were blossoming with each passing day. His comforting caress, his unwavering commitment to your happiness, his tender manner of adoration - they propelled your emotions beyond what you had deemed imaginable. As a child, you could not have fathomed that dwelling in a modest subterranean abode would be where you dreamed to be in life. Yet, now that you were settled in this lagoon, the thought of never encountering him seemed unfathomable. He personified a sense of belonging, amalgamating all that was exquisite and comforting. He was your haven, the epitome of beauty and security.
But as Erik's love and devotion enshrouded you, there existed an alluring charm concealed beneath the surface. It beckoned you irresistibly, drawing you closer, its presence palpable. You could discern its essence in his tantalizing touch, his possessive grasp, as he ensnared you with an insatiable hunger. It was as if he held you under a bewitching spell, your body a mere marionette swaying to his carnal desires. The longing in his eyes spoke of an urge that transcended innocence, a primal yearning that flouted the conventions of morality. And you, consumed by the same passionate flame, yearned for him with equal fervour, unbound by societal expectations or righteous inhibitions.
So why was he resisting?
He was your everything, your entire world consumed by his presence. You did believe yourself to be the keeper of his heart, and he, in turn, was the keeper of yours. No other soul could ever compare to the ardour you held for him. He was the very essence of your existence, the driving force that propelled you through each passing day. It was not about what he did for you or what he provided; it was simply him—the embodiment of all that you craved. You were willing to endure the depths of hell itself just to remain at his side. There were no limits to what you were willing to bestow upon him, not even your own purity.
It was truly mortifying how excessively you fixated on this minuscule detail. From the moment you had first shared a bed, weeks or even months had elapsed. The atmosphere crackled with an undeniable sexual tension and an insatiable yearning that permeated every interaction, overwhelming you to the point of metaphorical asphyxiation. If only he did not desire it, then you would accept it and never mention the subject again or indulge in surreptitious tantalizing touches. But it was evident that he did indeed want it. His body language screamed what his own lips dared not speak.
So tonight, you had a plan. Either he would relinquish his defences and claim you, as you could discern the fervent desire in his eyes, or he would quash all notions and prospects of intimacy for the indeterminate future. A straightforward affirmation or denial was all you sought, to then bring an end to your torturous overthinking.
To start your plan, you deliberately selected sleepwear that exuded desire, surpassing the usual modesty of your night clothes. It was exquisitely crafted from elegant and feather-light fabric, delicately caressing your skin in a manner that mirrored your desires for your beloved's touch. Its slender straps gracefully extended from the bodice, adorned with sheer breast cups embellished with intricate floral lace. Just below your bosom, a dainty bow served as a liaison between the upper portion of the gown and the gracefully flowing, undecorated skirt. While not lingerie per se, you believed it would at least catch his eye. Hopefully.
As per his usual routine, he entered the room once he had finished dressing for the evening. Lately, he had taken to leaving his mask aside unless he had to venture into the opera house or he was planning to receive a visit from Gerard. Hence, you had the opportunity to behold his expression in its entirety when his gaze fell upon you. His eyes widened, and his mouth fell agape, unabashedly scanning your figure as you discreetly feigned obliviousness to his direct scrutiny. In that moment, you felt acutely aware of your own immodesty, your cheeks aflame with a profound sense of embarrassment.
"I haven't seen that nightdress before," he commented, finally picking up his slack jaw. He moved closer to you, hands coming to rest on your hips as he lips edged near to your ear.
"It was at the back of my closet, I hadn't noticed it until today," you lied, knowing that you'd been very aware of it, and just had no reason to wear it. Until now.
"You look heavenly," he whispered into your ear, sending shivers ricocheting down your spine. His presence was dizzying.
You hadn't thoroughly pondered the plan it seemed. You had hoped that the execution would require minimal effort on your part, yet you had neglected to determine your response for this inevitable situation. Shaking your head, you realized the need to gather your wits. Retreat was not an option now that you had made a commitment.
"Do I?" you asked, hesitantly placing your hands upon his. You needed to act like you knew what you were doing. "You should feel the fabric, it's heavenly to touch as well."
You sensually and enticingly glided both of your hands up your torso, relishing every moment as they caressed the curve of your waist, skilfully manoeuvring them to rest seductively beneath the swell of your bosom. A startled gasp escaped his lips, his breath catching as he realized the audaciousness of your gesture. Your confidence surged with every passing second.
"Y-yes, it's quite nice. I see what you mean," he tried to remove his hands, but you clutched him tighter in response. He clearly didn't really want to remove his hands either, because he didn't put up more resistance than that.
"You touching me is quite nice, too. Although I'd prefer your hands higher."
Each breath that escaped his lips resonated loudly in your ear, his yearning becoming increasingly apparent as it ardently pressed against your backside. Instinctively, you drew your body nearer to his, eliciting a deep groan from behind.
"Or lower. I'm not fussy."
Erik felt as if he were on the verge of bursting. Every ounce of blood in his body was frenziedly surging downward, his throat parched as sweat dripped down his skin. His fingers yearned to comply with your request, but his mind vehemently protested, urging him to resist and refrain from succumbing to such feeble-mindedness. He couldn’t treat you like an object, only something he used to fulfil his devilish wants.
"My dear, I know you may not intend to have this affect on me, but I am a man and... your words stir things in me. Please allow me to remove my hands so we can retire for the night."
"What if that is my intention?" you teased.
Erik hesitated. Did you truly wish for him to treat you in such a manner? Perhaps you did not fully grasp the implications of your actions. For an unwed woman to partake in the act of intimacy was deemed the utmost disgrace, an indelible blemish that would tarnish her reputation indefinitely. Although Erik knew that their secret would remain hidden, he did not wish to lead you astray into the depths of sin. While he may not believe in a higher power, he understood that most individuals clung to faith, and you were no exception.
"I couldn't do that to you," he replied, "You are my lover, not something for me to vent my unholy desires upon. I hold too much respect for you to allow that to happen."
You sighed. "Is that why you kept running away? Because you do not wish me to be a damned woman?"
"Yes. It is already too late for me, I have done too much wrong and I have hurt too many. But you can be saved."
Carefully considering his words, you shrugged, "I can always repent."
Erik gawked at your words, eyebrows furrowing as he processed what you'd uttered. Did you not understand the severity of the situation? Were you not thinking straight at the moment? Why were-
"I may believe in God, but I also believe you aren't going to heaven. So why would I want to go there either?" you explained, tightening your grip on his hands. "If I end up changing my mind, and I regret my decisions, I shall repent and hopefully God will forgive me. But if I marry the man I had premarital sex with, is it really so bad?"
Erik found himself descending into a state of turmoil. He grew exasperated, unable to comprehend why you could not understand that he was doing this for you. He yearned for you to grasp his intentions, to comprehend that his actions were driven by a desire to shield you from sorrow and remorse. Simultaneously, a sense of bewilderment overcame him. As you expanded upon your reasoning, the fortress around his emotions began to crumble, revealing a vulnerability that he had long concealed. With each passing word, he felt his defences wane, his carnal desires surging forth, beckoning him to abandon propriety and surrender to the depths of his impure thoughts. The allure of gratification grew stronger, compelling him to yearn for the freedom to explore the depths of his desires, to caress you with an intensity that bordered on ravishment, and to claim you as his own.
"So, Erik," you spoke, "Will you take me right here and right now, or will we forget this ever happened and go to bed, as if nothing ever happened?"
Erik let out a strained sigh, feeling his composure shatter like delicate porcelain. He offered no words in return, only a meek inclination of his head, which you could discern from the proximity between you. Your heart soared with a mixture of elation and trepidation.
You spun around and launched yourself at him with an enthusiasm you never knew you possessed. Every fantasy, desire, urge, and longing surged to the surface, your lips conveying everything you had kept locked away until this moment. Oxygen ceased to matter, the world dissolving into nothingness as you clung to him with every ounce of desperation. The bed seemed impossibly distant.
With a sense of urgency, you propelled yourself forward, gently but firmly directing Erik until his knees collided with the plush mattress. Wasting no time, you pressed your delicate hands against his chest and gracefully pushed him back, momentarily breaking the connection of your lips as he tumbled onto the bed beneath. He hastily settled into a proper position, while you, with a mix of excitement and apprehension, gracefully climbed on top of him, your legs straddling his form.
Too much time had been squandered to concern yourself with trivial matters like being gentle and slow, you needed him now and you had no intention of lingering. You centre settled upon his pelvis, sensing the warmth of his length beneath his night shirt. Your hips circled around the bulge poking through the fabric, moans and whimpers escaping your lips as you took everything he was willing to give you. He definitely did not object.
Your kisses grew increasingly fervent and frenzied as time wore on, losing yourself in the sensation of his proximity and knowing that by the morning, your connection would have deepened and exceeded all of your expectations. Reflecting upon yourself a month prior, when Erik finally granted you the privilege of seeing him whole- witnessing the profound transformation that had taken place between the two of you since then was nothing short of dizzying.
The straps of your nightgown were slowly beginning to falter off of your shoulders, loosely hanging as if begging him to finish the job and strip you entirely. You’d imagined countless nights of lying beneath him, skin bare and free for him to explore and observe as you basked in the glory of his gaze. So with that thought, you took the hands that were currently clinging onto your hips for dear life and placed them on your shoulders, saying exactly what you wanted without uttering a word.
Erik appeared to understand your desires, for with trembling hands and lips that faltered, he withdrew himself to assess the situation. He gazed up at you, seeking your approval with a nervous and hesitant air, fearful of making a wrong move that would propel you away from him and back to square one. However, your reassuring nod and an intensified grinding of your hips against his spurred him into action more swiftly than a racehorse urged on by the whip. He wasted no time in discarding the delicate straps that confined your form, liberating your body from his prying gaze.
As your nightgown fell to bunch at your legs, Erik felt as though his lungs almost gave out. Your body was unlike anything he’d ever seen in the paintings he collected, every mark and curve of your skin displaying a radiance he didn’t realise was possible. With a thrust of his hips, he gestured for you to move back so he could continue diligently removing the last of your clothing.
The moment your last inch of skin emerged from the confines of the fabric, Erik gently nudged you to recline. You should have felt more shy or apprehensive about being bare and vulnerable beneath him, yet the only sensation that coursed through you was the fire that blazed within your core. You let out a soft whine about no longer being able to remain on top of him, but your grievances were swiftly silenced as his hands swept you up, swiftly manoeuvring you beneath him.
“Wait, can I see you too?” You asked, hurriedly sitting up before he had the chance to properly position himself above you. He seemed taken aback by your eagerness.
“Are you sure? I’m nothing special to look at, don’t feel-“
“Take your shirt off!” You demanded.
Erik seemed even more speechless than you thought possible. His eyes were blown wide in astonishment as if you had begun conversing in a long-forgotten, extinct tongue. While somewhat entertained by his disoriented state, you delicately extended your hand and commenced the task of unfastening the buttons of his nightshirt with the utmost precision and unwavering determination, as if you’d done this many times before. Even if that couldn’t be less inaccurate.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he reminded you, “It’s okay to go slow.”
Slow was a word that had no place in your dictionary at this present moment. However, you eased your grasp and lessened the ferocity of your actions, aiming to appear slightly less forceful in your demeanour.
After the last button popped free, you hurriedly removed the garment from him. Discarding it to the side, you reclined slowly, unable to tear your gaze away. His figure exuberated a powerful presence, every inch meticulously sculpted as if by the hand of a master artisan. Though littered with small scars and scratches, the striking juxtaposition between his celestial physique and his disfigured visage was utterly captivating, leaving you utterly intrigued.
He could feel your eyes penetrating him, and he resisted every urge screaming at him to shrink away. He was done hiding from you, he wanted to feel the warmth of you enveloping him, holding him, loving him until the day it was no longer possible. He wanted to give you all of him and never let go. He was done with thinking he didn’t deserve to be loved wholly, because you were right here offering everything he never believed he could possess. You had defied all of his meagre expectations and made him a new man.
You were so pliant and pure beneath him, the rise and fall of your chest and the slight nibble on your bottom lip betraying the hidden worry within. He wasted no time in leaning forward above you, his lips desperate as they sought to kiss away every fear and trace of hesitation you harboured. He bestowed a trail of delicate kisses down your forehead, across your cheeks, and along the graceful curve of your neck. His fervent kisses then graced your shoulders, tracing a path around your collarbones, each touch so delicate and reverent, until finally reaching the soft expanse of your chest.
His lips hovered, waiting for the right moment to strike and send you into a frenzy of pleasure and bliss. He bestowed tender kisses upon the delicate curvature of your breasts, attending closely to the sounds that escaped your parted lips. He observed the signals your body conveyed, observing the hastened rhythm of your breath and the involuntary movement of your legs, the way you were drawing them closer to create friction where you craved it. His own longing became unmistakable, his cock standing tall and achingly rigid, tantalizingly grazing against your abdomen.
His mouth was progressively nearing your nipples, delicately encircling your areola and occasionally darting out his tongue to deliver a teasing lick. Despite his inexperience, he performed with an air of seasoned confidence, as though he had engaged in such intimate encounters countless times before. He knew exactly where to lick, kiss and touch to elicit the most erotic responses from you. His lips slowly closed around your nipple, testing the waters with light sucking and flicks of his tongue before experimentally grazing it with his teeth, his cock turning red and angry from how much blood was coursing through his veins.
You cried out at the peculiar sensation, quickly calling out for him to not be too rough with his teeth. He nodded against you, his tussled hair tickling your skin as he consumed himself with teasing and playing with your breasts. It felt so scandalous and immoral the way he played with you, the way his hands caressed and pressed against you as he familiarized himself with the curves of your body.
As his fervor increased, your sensitive buds responded with heightened sensitivity. The intense and eager caresses caused your nipples to swell, becoming puffy and tender. The sensation was so overwhelming that tears threatened to well up in your eyes, the stimulation evoking a sharp, piercing ache. Eventually, you found yourself asking him to stop, and he promptly complied upon hearing you.
"Are you alright?" He was panting, saliva coating the surroundings of his mouth.
You nearly laughed, but could only manage a whimsical giggle. The sight of him so concerned yet utterly spent at the same time stirred emotions within you that you dared not confess. Your essence overflowed, moistening your inner thighs as it trickled out like a stream. The influence your lover had on you was profound, surpassing anything you had ever imagined. Even the most daring of literature that you’d read did not evoke such a powerful surge of arousal and longing within you.
"I'm perfect," you smiled, "but my breasts were beginning to hurt, and the feeling was becoming much too overwhelming. Besides, I'd like to return the favour."
You sprung up, lifting your back off the bed before he even had time to brainstorm his response. You jumped at him, twisting both of you until he was back beneath you. You gave him a sloppy kiss before pulling away, venturing down until you reached his shaft. It was longer than you expected. Your old, more outspoken friends who boasted of their premarital escapades always mentioned men's genitalia to be around four or five inches, but Erik's seemed more like six or seven. His girth seemed to align well with their descriptions, so you decided he must just be a bit more gifted in the length department. You gulped.
"What are you doing? Please, just focus on yourself. I need nothing in return."
You shook your head teasingly, rolling your eyes with a small smirk on your face. The vivid images that had danced in your mind about how on earth that was supposed to fit inside you were quickly dismissed. You gathered all the saliva you could muster in your mouth, spitting it onto your hand. You’d read about that in a book once.
Erik looked utterly astounded, captivated by the strings of saliva that cascaded from your lips. He was about to inquire about your intentions and where the destination of that saliva globule was going to be, but his curiosity was quickly satisfied when your delicate fingers enfolded around his manhood and you tentatively began stroking him up and down. Your movements lacked the refined cadence of experienced hands, occasionally faltering in rhythm and fluctuating in pressure. Yet through perseverance, you eventually established a steady and pleasurable pace, accompanied by a grip that elicited delightful sensations and heightened pleasure.
Sighs of ecstasy escaped his lips, his eyes fluttering closed as he became enveloped in the sensation of your caress. He felt a stirring deep within his abdomen, a tension coiling tighter and tighter until it would inevitably release. His skin glowed with perspiration as he tilted his head back, his moans growing louder and louder, harmonizing with the sound of your saliva squelching as your hand traversed his shaft.
He was no stranger to desire and impure thoughts, long before he had met you he still yearned and had fantasies of what it would feel like to touch and be touched by another. However, he refrained from indulging in such pleasures, deeming it a frivolous waste of his time. Little did he know that the allure and intensity of self-pleasure had eluded him. Oh, how he wished he had been more enlightened back then.
Something was building inside him. Unaware, you continued your steady pace, looking into his eyes with a sweet smile. He felt something akin to a rubber band stretching in his abdomen, reaching its snapping point, pulling further apart. Instinctively, his hand reached up to grab your free hand, squeezing with a force that you knew would cause pain the next day.
Your arm was beginning to seize up, your muscles cramping worse than you’d ever experienced before. His hand practically crushing yours didn’t help, and eventually, you had to relent and withdraw. A frustrated grunt escaped his throat, his eyes clenching shut as his hips bucked. The snapping sensation in his abdomen gradually subsided, the build-up disappearing as if it were never there to begin with.
"That was... different," he heaved.
"Good different?" You tentatively asked.
"Good different," he confirmed.
A profound stillness enveloped both of you as Erik struggled to regain his composure, his erection throbbing with a vengeance. He clenched his jaw, the distressing ache seeping into his bones, sending tingles down his limbs and leaving his mind in a dizzying haze. The rush of blood roared in his ears as he lay there, gradually returning to the realm of consciousness.
You were filled with trepidation. Had you committed a grievous error? Why did he seem so discomposed? His eyes were shut, and his chest rose and fell with alarming rapidity. He appeared to be in a state of distress. The books you read had failed to prepare you for such a sight!
"Are you alright, love?" You fussed, cupping his cheeks in your hands in concern, "Do you need anything? Water? To stop?"
"No, no, no," he instantly denied, waving his hand. His arm came to drop over his eyes. "I'm just... a little overwhelmed, I suppose."
Hearing that he wasn't about to enter sudden cardiac arrest, you threw your leg over his stomach. Your warmth pressed deliciously against his well-toned abdominal muscles, sending electrifying sensations up your bones. He appeared more at ease now, his hand that wasn't thrown across his face reaching up to caress the skin of your thigh with his fingertips. Quivers reverberated through your body, as if a gentle breeze had swept through the room, carrying with it a delightful shiver of pleasure.
You leaned forward, pressing your lips against his with utmost delicacy. His other hand joined in, but instead of gently caressing your thighs, he grasped your flesh firmly, guiding your hips in a swaying motion. Your mind turned to mush, the undulating movement causing your senses to ignite. Sparks flickered between your bodies, every touch sending pleasurable jolts through your form as he manipulated you to his desires.
Every pitiful moan and whimper was swallowed by his intoxicating mouth, every breath shared intermingling into one. He kept you restrained at a steady pace, even as you attempted to push against it and yearned for a more vigorous rhythm. One amused glance sent a rush of crimson to your cheeks, a blush of embarrassment that betrayed you.
"Can I put it in?" You whispered. You wanted to get your upper hand back and fast.
He paused for a moment, his pupils dilating and a gasp escaping his lips as he absorbed your words. His eyes turned upwards towards yours, staring deep into your soul as if attempting to decipher your thoughts. His unyielding gaze was slightly intimidating, and you found yourself questioning if you had spoken inappropriately.
"If you wish," he replied.
Sucking in your lower lip, you cautiously descended. The sensation of his tip brushing against you made you unconsciously bite down, feeling the connection of your most intimate parts. He elevated himself to a seated position, pressing his arousal even closer to your entrance. The wetness that coated his tip, combined with your own slickness, allowed for ample lubrication as it trickled down.
He gave you one final questioning look, to which you responded with a confident nod. He returned the gesture in understanding. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you slowly lowered yourself until the tip naturally found its way to your opening, gently teasing and exploring. You bit down on your lip so hard that you could taste blood, but you pressed on. His hand reached down to assist in guiding himself inside you, and both of you gasped as his bulbous tip slipped past your entrance.
The sensation was indescribable, pleasure and discomfort waging a battle as your body came to a halt. Erik pressed tender kisses along your shoulder, his hand resting on your back to ease your tension. It was unlike anything you had ever experienced, the feeling of your purity being tested by his manhood was intense and sent a fiery heat rushing through your core. Your face twisted as you summoned the strength to sink further, enduring the initial sting as best you could.
"We can stop at any time, just say the word," Erik gently reminded you, nestling his head against you as he patiently waited for you to adjust. He couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt for indulging in such pleasure while you were clearly in pain. He made a concentrated effort to conceal his contorted expressions and stifle his moans and grunts.
Finally, you managed to lower yourself fully into his lap. His cock was nestled deep within your intimate depths. You took deep breaths, determined to overcome the discomfort and replace it with the exhilaration you knew could await. It felt as if you were being impaled, your arms clinging to him with increasing intensity as you willed yourself to relax and surrender to the sensations that enveloped you.
You were practically restraining him, keeping him trapped inside of you to the extent that he felt unable to move even if he desired to. The tightness was approaching discomfort, his soothing and calming touches attempting to coax you into relaxing your muscles and embracing the sensation.
After a few moments of acclimation and striving to ease your muscles, you soon sensed the inferno below gradually transform into a thrilling excitement. A surge of adrenaline coursed through you as you comprehended your current location and the nature of your actions.
Testing out the waters, you gingerly lifted your hips, wincing at the sensation of your walls contracting as you raised yourself further off of him. His swollen tip caught on your entrance, prompting you to cease ascending. Erik released his grip around you, reclining back on his hands to observe the spectacle.
The eye contact was overwhelming. He dared not divert his gaze from you for a single moment, your partially closed eyes battling to remain open as you lowered yourself back down. A strangled cry threatened to escape your lips as the exquisite stretch overwhelmed your senses, your mind empty and your vision wavering. His tip was nearly grazing your cervix. Every fibre of your being was consumed by the sensation, your mind black and vision wavering.
You pushed yourself up and down a few more times, willing yourself to adjust and adapt. Gradually, you found your rhythm, moving with grace as your walls glided along his cock. The sound of your flesh meeting echoed softly in the air as you fervently rode him. He was buried deep within you, overwhelming your senses and leaving you dizzy with desire. Erik wasn’t any better off.
"Oh my god," you whined, fucking yourself on him as if you had never been more desperate for anything in your life. "I've been dreaming of this for so long."
"Me too," Erik grunted.
Your breasts undulated in perfect harmony with your motions, practically demanding Erik to divert his gaze towards them. In any other circumstance, you would have teasingly chastised him for his audacity, yet a deeper blush coloured your cheeks as you beheld him intently studying your form. He reclined further upon the bed, his weight supported by his elbows, his eyes filled with a fervent longing.
Your hands instantly found purchase on his chest, using him as leverage to move faster and rougher on top of him. He was engrossed in the way your body moved and responded to him, his hoarse moans only serving to make you even more hot and bothered. Your faltering stamina almost made you want to burst into tears, because the last thing you wanted to do was stop.
Erik soon caught on to your stuttering motions, noticing the way your hair stuck to your forehead from the copious amount of sweat.
"I love you, I love you so much," you cried, sniffling from the overload of emotions that were bubbling to the surface. The love, the infatuation, the relief, the pleasure, the euphoria- everything was rising inside of you abruptly and without warning.
"I love you too," he moaned, relinquishing his elbows to rest upon the bed. He grabbed your hips, bringing you to a pause. You sobbed. "Are you getting tired?"
"No, I'm perfectly fine," you protested, attempting to resist his hold in order to resume your agitated movements. He would've rolled his eyes at your stubbornness if he wasn't distracted by the feeling of your hole swallowing his cock.
He forcefully pulled you down, pressing your body against his chest as he exerted his dominance. With a swift motion, he flipped you over, positioning himself on top. In the process, he momentarily withdrew from your cunt, but without hesitation, he re-entered your inviting warmth. Your legs instinctively wrapped around his waist, and your arms enveloped him as you surrendered to him, reclining in submission.
Your mouth formed a perfect 'o' as you endured his pounding, setting a fervent and punishing cadence as he plunged inside of you with all the strength he could summon. Your world spun, your lungs yearning for air as you let out moans and cries with every motion he executed.
His whispered curses and sounds of pleasure were hot against your ear, every slide in and out enhanced by how close he was pressed against you. It was intoxicating, his embrace crushing you so tight that you couldn't distinguish where your body met the mattress and where his body met yours. Everything dissolved into one.
"Does this feel good?" Erik questioned, pace merciless as he pulled away to look at you directly.
"Yes! Yes it does!" You wailed.
"Who's making you feel good?" He growled.
"You! You!"
"What's my name?"
"Erik! Oh!"
"That's right," He let out a deep and guttural groan, diverting his gaze from you for a fleeting moment. With a firm grip on your thighs, he effortlessly folded you, positioning your knees so close to your ears that it bordered on the extreme. "Who do you belong to?" he gruffly inquired, his voice laced with a hint of possessiveness.
Ecstasy surged through your being, the sensation of being filled to the brim overwhelmed your senses. Your every nerve tingled and quivered, your body contorting and your eyes fluttering in pure pleasure. Your walls fluttered around him as you uttered his name in breathless gasps, your voice choked with desire. The tightening in your core reached a crescendo before finally giving way to an intense release.
Erik was going crazy. The feeling of you contracting and spasming around him made his body tremor as his desperate pace transitioned into aimless jerking. His resolve came undone as white ribbons shot out of him, painting your walls white. Your cunt was practically milking him.
"My god," Erik sighed, huffing as he recovered from the aftershocks of his climax.
You were in no better a state. Tears streaked down your face, and sweat had practically glued your bodies together. Erik withdrew himself from you, guiding your limp legs back onto the bed. He laid beside you, his form exhausted and his arousal gradually subsiding, as you both took a moment to regain composure.
You swallowed, surprised at how parched your throat was. "Was it good?... Was I good?"
"Better than I ever imagined," he affirmed.
It didn't take long for Erik to rise, hastily donning his nightshirt before exiting the chamber and venturing into the lagoon. In a swift manner, he reappeared, clutching a moist towel in his grasp. With delicate precision, he gently glided it over your sensitive areas, meticulously cleansing the semen that had spilled out of you, ensuring that no traces of your sin were left behind.
A damp patch had formed beneath you, causing the fabric to become stained and the bed linens quite uncomfortable to rest upon. Erik gently lifted you and settled you onto the chair positioned in front of his desk, attending to the task of replacing the soiled bedsheets so that you would not have to sleep upon the concoction of your arousal and his release.
"I'll prepare baths for us tomorrow. For now, I think it's best for you to get some sleep," Erik tapped your cheek, laughing as your droopy eyelids perked up at his touch.
You grumbled at him, your dishevelled hair and pouting lips evoking a sense of charm that made his heart soar. He scooped you up once more, cradling you in his arms with care as he escorted you back to your shared bed. With haste, you scurried beneath the fresh linen, seeking solace and warmth within the confines of the quilt that shielded your immodest frame from the chill that seemed to permeate the air. Erik casually discarded the used towel into a corner alongside the dirtied sheets, joining you on the bed and tucking himself away behind you with his back to the wall.
He drew you closer, his arm slipping beneath your neck as he nestled you against his side. You gazed up at him, a smile gracing your lips, but inside, a vexed frustration swelled as you silently cursed his attire. Why must he remain clothed while you, in this moment, were so undressed?
"If I'm naked, then you're naked," you playfully stated.
"Is that so?"
"Yes, strip right now."
He complied silently with your request, and your internal vexation turned to jubilation as his flesh made contact with yours. You resumed your former position, nestling yourself once again into his embrace as your wearied eyes finally succumbed to the burden of your fatigue.
Then it was ruined.
"Will you marry me?" Erik implored, his voice filled with anticipation and a touch of desperation. As your disapproving gaze met his, he hastily continued, "We've already consummated our love. What's the harm? We agreed on this months ago."
Snickering under your breath, you retorted, "Get me a ring first, then I'll consider."
The comforting hum of Erik's complaints and attempts at convincing you to please please marry him carried you softly and sweetly into a deep sleep.
ERIK | THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (multi interaction)
. 𝄞𝄢 *. ˗ˏˋ ♪ ˎˊ˗ *
❝THE ROLL AND REVOLVE❞ (Erik | The Phantom of the Opera x Fem!Reader)
While attending the masquerade ball the Red Death asks for your hand to dance.
SFW, at most canon typical violence is mentioned, dancing - dancer!reader & african!reader
Reader’s 18+ and one of the older girls in the dance line along with Sorelli. (Pic source: left•Juan Navarro/Saulo Vasconcelos’s Phantom from the POTO Mexican production [1999-2000], middle•Emilie Kouatchou’s run as Christine from the POTO Broadway production, right•John Owen-Jones’s Phantom from the POTO West End production [2011].)
3k+ words
Fluttering from group to group at a masquerade ball was apparently not all everyone cracked it up to be.
You stop, standing off to the side of the entirely too unappealing table of food assortments. Some of the food even appeared to have gone bad to you, speckled in powdered sugar only for show; to mask the rotten truths underneath.
You’ve steered clear of dining at all throughout the night for that very reason. The truths they hid were clearly of the stomach pain and extended time on the loo type, and looks always had the chance of stowing deceit.
The opera house was full tonight, the date a prelude to the new year, with its high ceilings and garnished walls host to all manner of primed woman and man dressed in a bid to garner the most envy in their best furs and feathers, masks and fedoras. The only thing consistent amongst you all being your efforts to hide your identities from one another; crowd after crowd of people decked out in masks of all kinds that hid their faces from the world.
Where you stand a voice rises to greet you, managing to be heard even over the echoing sounds of the opera’s orchestra.
“Y/n, y/n! Did you hear the news?”
The bottom of your crisp white gown, a gift from your mother, kisses the floor as you shift your feet to intercept the few girls from the dance line coming to speak with you. To your surprise Christine is amongst them.
“Clearly not,” you respond to Jammes.
The brunette bounces, near manic smile on her face and Sorelli beside her rolls her eyes.
“It’s not nearly as entertaining as she’s making it.”
“More like terrifying,” Meg pipes up.
Your eyebrows raise, “Was there another death?”
It’s Christine who answers your weary inquiry, bright hair bouncing as she shakes her head.
“It’s not nearly as serious,” she shrugs. “More like a ghost story than anything-”
Jammes cuts her off with an excited squeal.
“The Opera Ghost is rumored to show up tonight!”
Oh.
There was a good second there where your eyes were starting to widen but they drop back to half mast behind the white swan-like pantalone mask you’re wearing, the feathers of which tickle your face as you sigh. You wave the girl's excitement away.
“You’re so overdramatic, Jammes, everyone knows the OG is just a rumor the stagehands made up to scare us.”
“And that the police is sustaining so they can get out of properly catching a murderer,” Sorelli scoffs.
You nod at her and your other friend just pouts.
“You all have such little whimsy.”
From where she’s got her arms wrapped around herself Meg laughs, a nearly startled noise of contempt.
“Maybe we just don’t want to make a myth out of an actual killer,” she says.
Now it’s Jammes’s turn to roll her eyes.
“I say it’s just you guys being boring,” she flips her hair over her shoulder. “But whatever, I've got a violinist to dance with so I’ll see you all later.”
She’s gone just like that. Meg frowns after her and you and Sorelli make kissy noises that cause Jammes to giggle as she walks off.
“Which one of them do you think it is?”
“Come on Sorelli, you know it’s Eugène. She misses all her steps during his solos,” you say.
“Actually I think it’s Ahsan, we are getting more Persians lately. He might like to have a change of pace since no one ever really talks to him.”
Your lips purse. You're pretty sure Jammes hasn’t even noticed the Populaire’s newest members.
“Just because you’re interested in Ahsan doesn’t mean she is, Sorelli. What do you think Christine?”
From where she’s just about completely checked out from the conversation making heart eyes at the Vicomte from across the room, Christine startles. You’d joke but the navel man is staring back at her just as intently. Her eyes flutter up to meet yours eventually though.
“Um- I don’t know? I think maybe you’re right about Eugène, Y/n, but would you all mind if I excused myself?”
You all give some manner of affirmation but Christine is already moving anyway so it wouldn’t have mattered much if you hadn’t.
“I wonder what it’s like to hold a man’s attention like that,” Meg sighs.
You shrug, “Well, it’s not always as nice as it seems.”
Her head bobbles as she nods before she’s curtsying and leaving as well, head bowed. Not long after that Sorelli bids you goodbye and goes in search of someone to dance with in front of Madame Giry. She wants lead in the next production since Christine seems set on being Primadonna. You don’t have the heart to tell her that showboating won’t get her any points with the Madame.
All danced and socialized out, but knowing you can’t leave your appearance obligations for the opera house lacking, you content yourself with staying in your tucked away haven by the most unappealing refreshment table at the party.
Your feet tap and you hum along to the orchestra playing as people pass you by. Young couples rushing to someplace private and friends, old and young alike, moving about as they make gossip. Body swaying in place to the music you bask in the fact that you’ve made it, even partially, and soon enough you’d be dancing front on this opera’s stage and stages even beyond it. You’ve seen plenty of other black artists make it, there’s no reason to think that outside of the Americas you couldn’t fight your way to the top too.
You’ve gotten as far as a dance line already.
A poised shadow appears to your left but you do not bother giving anything short of the person’s silhouette a glance. You were in borrowed time at the Palais Garnier. It was best if you didn’t attract any attention and ruin your chances.
Instinctively your hands clasp in front of your body and you rock back onto your heels, humming and tapping ceasing. Stay unheard and you’ll be fine; your dreams of artistry and fame were yet to be dashed.
“Why so solemn?”
You feel your eyes widen, your attention quickly shifting to the shadow. You glance around, but seeing no one else close enough for him to have been talking to instead your gaze fully settles on more than just the man’s silhouette.
The masked man in front of you is completely shadowed in shades of red and fine jewels. The mask masquerading his face, the grimmest sign of the end: an ivory skull. And atop his head bloomed a crown of feathers on a wide brimmed fedora; all the colors of death and decay.
Your heart quickens at his procured visage.
“Me?”
A deep timbre falls past lips you can’t see when he chuckles.
“Who else, Mademoiselle?”
“There is no shortage of beautiful women on the dance floor.”
“By why would Erik bother with them when the most beautiful is over here? Tucked in darkness’s warm embrace?”
Your head ducks and your face warms.
“You’re too kind.”
The wide shouldered shadow seems to shake his head, hard to tell with such an elaborate headpiece.
“Oh no! I fantom I have failed to be kind enough.” He sweeps forward, a cape previously bathed in his shadows trailing out behind him, everything lined with jewels shimmering like blood in moonlight. You find yourself ensnared as you look into the great eyes of death.
“When one such as yourself makes a swan’s grace look lacking with her prowess she should expect nothing less than to be bathed in gifts.” Death holds out his gloved hand, and still looking into those dark depths, still looking for the sign of the man underneath, you take it. “Precious flowers: lilacs and lilies…”
A mimicry of a kiss is pressed into your knuckles and you shiver. The hardness of something you’re becoming convinced may have once been an alive man’s touching ever so softly to your ebony skin.
“…roses.” he murmurs finally. “Painstakingly, devotedly, clipped of their thorns so as to not tarnish perfection.”
Your breath comes short as you finally find it. Only a flash, blink and you miss it, but you couldn’t blink. Citrine eyes; ill colored. It makes something in you want to flee, cause a scene in an effort to not be dragged out of the light by this man’s wrongness. Then his words finally reach you.
Words said in that burning liqueur tone that carry your mind away with their unique melody. You find yourself smiling, mouth stretching wide, alabaster teeth gleaming against the contrast of your dark skin.
“I’m not perfect,” you find the urge to argue.
If only to hear his praise some more.
“My Dear, you are my everything. How could you not be perfect?”
“I’m only a chorus dancer.”
“Which is a shame,” he admits.
His tone is solemn like he feels your own disappointment at never being given the chances of the other girls despite dancing with twice their merit.
“It is a shame,” you nod, spine straightening as you grip his hand tighter. The man before you seems to gasp at your assured touch. “To whom do I owe my thanks for such lovely compliments?”
The shadow appears to shrink in on himself for a moment before his grip in turn strengthens and guides you closer together. As he comes more into the light his onsemble sparkles mesmerizingly.
“The Red Death,” he bows, “at your service.”
You laugh. “I admire your dedication to the ball’s theme.”
He makes a humored sound of his own at your acknowledgment of his dramatics.
“It’s for the best I assure you, my dear. Now,” he runs the soft fabric over his thumbs along your bare knuckles, “would you do me the honor of a dance?”
You incline your head, smiling in appraisal as you nod.
“It would be my pleasure, Monsieur Death.”
He leads you from your not-so-hidden corner with a swish of his cape.
You seem to nearly teleport down the stairs with the way he whisks you away so soundly to the ballroom floor. Marble meets the bottoms of your heels as he finds you a good starting position towards the center of the room and, as is in your nature by now, you stand tall in a dancer's carry. He does not let the conversation end as you begin moving.
“Do other things outside of dancing capture your attention?”
“Should there be anything else?”
He laughs as he spins you around, “I suppose not. Dancing is your craft after all.”
“Yes,” you settle into his lead. “Yes it is, but um, I don’t just do ballroom and ballet dancing.”
“No?”
“No. I also dance things far older than my knowledge of ballet, from my people.”
“Amazing,” he says. “You’ll have to show me some day.”
“I’d be happy to,” you give him a small smile.
So near to him as you elegantly weave in between other couples on the floor you can see his eyes very clearly. They are sick looking but they do not lack awareness. The man takes in your every move so intently it makes you breathless. You notice though that he does not meet anyone else’s eyes and uses the wide brim of his hat to block others from seeing him. But not you.
“Penny for your thoughts, Mademoiselle L/n?”
You glance away from his eyes, instead looking at the way whatever mechanism he created allows the mouth of the skull to move with his speech. He must be very rich and worldly if he can acquire or make something like it.
You tilt your head in interest.
“How do you know so much about me and yet I can’t recall ever having seen you before?”
“Technically you are not seeing me now,” he responds easily.
A quiet scoff escapes you as you nod.
“Well then how come I’ve never heard you? A voice as poignant as yours I’m sure I’d remember.”
He does not answer your question.
“Is that what I sound like to you?”
And you do not notice.
“Yes,” you look back into his eyes as your right foot steps back, his left pushing forward. “You have a strong tone but behind it you sound…weary.”
His eyes narrow. Then your dress and his cape are flowing to a still as he stops moving. You look down at your hand on his shoulder, swallowing.
“I do not mean to offend you Monsieur, I apologize.”
You step away, hands sliding from him as embarrassment buzzes up your spine. He probably thinks you called him weak or something, men hated-
“No, please!”
He moves faster than you’re expecting, barely making a noise despite his extravagant costume, and grasps your right hand with his left. You gasp as he settles his other hand on your waist and tugs you closer with strength that didn’t fit him.
“Don’t leave,” he whispers. Your left hand he still has in his he shifts to settle back onto his right arm, and you try to relax.
There is no bone in your body fit to argue with him, nor a ligament that desires to do so.
“Alright, I won’t.” A soft smile pulls at your lips. “I enjoy dancing with you.”
“Thank you. Just know you did not upset me.” For the first time during the whole time you’ve danced he looks past you, gaze far away. “No, you could never upset Erik.”
You marvel at his soft tone and the glossy shine to his eyes as he urges you in motion. He begins swaying to the new song playing and you do the same.
“So your name is Erik then? I wasn’t sure before.”
You take on an affable tone when you speak this time around, glancing away for reprieve from the emotion in his eyes. How you’ve had that effect on him with one dance is beyond you, but you’re remiss to say it doesn’t feel kind of…nice.
Erik nods and those deceptive hands hold your waist just a little tighter. He looks at you again.
“May I ask you a question?”
You nod and he pulls you even closer, his swaying finally turning into steps, and you intuitively follow his lead. The song playing is one you’ve never heard before but it’s haunting. Erik takes to it even better than the last piece; the way he leads you feels like you’re dancing on clouds.
“Have you ever felt lost?”
“I imagine not in the ways you might’ve. “
His eyes crinkle briefly at your words.
“You said earlier that I sound weary, and never doubt I have reason to be so, but it has long begun to get tiring—”
Horns blare, cutting him off. A gasp falls past your lips and, as if on instinct, Erik pulls you closer. Heart pounding and near threatening to clog your throat, you don’t think before you’re splaying your hands over his chest either.
The way you both glance around mirrors each other, but his voice grumbles illegibly once the most likely reason for the cacophony captures the entire crowd’s attention.
The boisterous new leaders of the opera house stand tall behind the railing nearest the staircase that curls down to the ballroom floor, their paper masks in their hands and dressed in their finest costumes.
“Oh,” you laugh, “It’s just Monsieur Moncharmin and Monsieur Richard. They can be so dramatic sometimes, no?”
Your dance partner glances at you narrowly, his irritation for the opera’s new owners heavy in his tone, “‘Dramatic’ is certainly one way to summarize Armand and Firmin alike. Personally, I’d say they both more resemble wallowing buffoons with clothes on.”
Silently, you blink up at him, mouth dropping open in surprise.
Very quickly Erik’s tune changes and his strong hold on you loosens.
“I apologize. The Opera’s new owners have become a point of…vexation for me recently. I did not mean to take it out on you.”
“It’s alright,” you say softly, “I can see how I’ve touched a nerve.”
“I must say you are wrong there, my Dear, you have done no such thing, ” he croons, reaching up to hover a gloved hand over the subtle plump of your cheek. “You have managed to truly make my night, do not discount that.”
He keeps his hand near your face, outlines the side of it with hardly a whisper of a touch while his gaze roves over you as if he’s starved for your very image.
Looking him over you feel much the same, the absence of his touch molding to your dark skin hitting like an unfitting taunt.
“Won’t you touch me?” you whisper, watching the way Erik’s eyes drop to your two-toned lips and take on a sheen of agony all their own.
Fingers ghost feather-light over the plush of them, more of that unfitting mockery. It is a pale substitute for a kiss.
“No,” he answers, voice just as unsteady as his gaze would have you assume. “I fear what might happen if I indulge myself anymore of this…illusion.”
“If you are so tortured as you claim, why not allow yourself a seconds reprieve when it is being offered?” you rush out. Your voice is far firmer than it ought to be around anyone above your stature, but no hint of a reminder to not forget yourself leaves Erik’s mouth. Nor any scoff or harsh glance.
You bring your hand up, desperate to urge him into action. Press your fingers lightly into the back of his hand in a barren plea, and wish for his palm cradling your cheek and for his arm around you to tighten once more.
Wish for his skin against yours. This stranger who has been kinder to you than any Frenchmen before him.
Though you do not push, Erik’s hand freezes beneath your touch and a harsh noise climbs up the back of his throat.
“Erik—”
He jerks his hand from you. Knocks yours aside with a low, pained sound.
In quick succession he steps back too, releasing you from his grip near entirely, the hand you kept on his arm dropping to your side. He fumbles to grasp it as you pull away, however, holding scarcely the hand he’d grasped. After a moment’s consideration you make a point to squeeze at his hold before stepping back yourself and finally breaking your contact as a whole, struggling to keep the set of your shoulders high.
Erik startles more surely than a horse and you are not sure you’re equipped to handle it.
“I- I must be leaving now,” he rushes out, his pupils are smaller now. His back straighter in compensation.
“Of course,” you reassure him, no small amount of disappointment lingering in your voice despite your best efforts. “Thank you for such a wonderful dance, Erik.”
He nods his agreement, lowering his head as his hand comes up to tamper to some unseen degree at the jaw of his skull. “And I you, Y/n,” he says softly. Your name curling so delicately on his tongue your mind immediately starts running his delivery on repeat.
“In the meantime you will stay on my mind, my dear, and I hope that you will keep me on yours,” he begins once more, swooping into a bow after swinging his cape behind him.
This time when he raises your hand to press a kiss to your knuckles it’s lips that meet your skin. You shiver, gaze snapping downward. He pulls away and when you glance up he’s just slipping the skull mask back over his mouth. Your wide inquiring eyes only catch the barest glimmer of pale skin with just the hint of gaunt features and thin lips.
“Until we meet again, my dear Y/n. Just know that I will be enjoying your dazzling performances from afar as I lay in wait,” Death says, sickly eyes glowing with satisfaction.
In turn you take the time to send him off with a curtsey; legs crossed, crisp white of your dress bloomed, but when you bow your head you take care not to lose eye contact with him. His swallow after that is audible, and your answering smile might as well be with how clearly it sings of your appraisal. Then there goes your morose Death disappearing into the shadows; a specter bathed in mystique.
He makes a grande spectacle later that night. Reappears in a plume of smoke making an impassioned demand for an opera. His Opera. And you live everyday more convinced than the other that Death personified had truly visited the Populare that night.
Gaunt pale skin and sickly eyes drawn to the murders in your corner of France in a flash of winsome words and red and feathers.
Death had showered you with praise, looked you in the eyes and taken you hand in glorious hand across the ballroom floor, had decried the gall of the upper caste’s frivolous celebrating over the graves of those lost, and Death’s name was Erik.
NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!! I don’t…apologize for the melodrama, but I do understand if it wasn’t for you.
The reader-insert is ambiguously African here since it seemed fitting, but I didn’t want to overemphasize anything and shoot myself in the foot. Just imagine the reader-insert is from one of the countries France still takes exuberant colonial taxes from in order for those countries to stay independent from them.
Now, as far as canon influences go for this story: there’s some og book canon, some ALW musical canon, and a not insignificant amount of MazM canon for good measure. Also, by all means the last name ‘Destler’ is only canon to Poto 1989, but I’m really in love with that specific Erik so I tend to add the last name to my more generalized depictions of The Phantom; at least beside the fic title.
I had a wonderful time writing this and cannot wait for what the new year has to offer for my writing endeavors in the future. Happy New Year (except kind of not really, but we’ll deal)! 🥳🎉
btw: if you’d like to leave a comment I’d very much appreciate it!
