All the Rules Rearranged, Chapter 6

[igenlode]

'Write about what you know,' they say. Well, I know a lot about unheated rooms... ;-p

The characters are so damaged at this stage that things are never going to be easy.

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Chapter 6: War and Peace

The gas hissed softly behind them and Gustave murmured something in his sleep; the window-frame rattled a little as a heavy wagon passed outside, and somewhere nearby a baby wailed and was hushed back to silence. Raoul looked back at her steadily, his shoulders set in defeat, and the span of their lives together lay trapped between the four walls of this little room, ebbing and ebbing away... Christine bit her lip, eyes filling unaccountably.

“Don’t you understand?” Her grip moved convulsively on his arm. “You don’t have to win to be with me. You never did.”

It wasn’t strength or protection that had mattered up on the Opera House roof. It was the answering joy of that promise given and returned; of his impulsive need to shield her, and not his success.

“Just... stay yourself. That’s all I ever wanted. All I was afraid of losing — all that matters to Gustave, or to me. Fail or succeed or lose your temper, forgive me and let me forgive you, but be Raoul. Be real and flawed and human: you don’t have to be strong all the time, you don’t even have to be right. We’re not those young dreamers on the Opera stage any more, and I’m not made of porcelain; I won’t break. Let me fight for you too. Let me in—”

That’s all I ask of you. She didn’t say it; didn’t think, at that moment, that she could say anything else at all past the ache in her throat that threatened to silence her altogether.

Her fingers were pleating creases in his sleeve. She looked away. Felt Raoul’s hand close over hers and hold it tightly, and clung to his grasp in return with a spasmodic clutching strength that was answered in kind, like two frightened children in the dark.

“I— love you.”

It was jerked out of him bald and unadorned, as if he had not meant to say it; but his grip had tightened until it hurt, and all she could manage was a helpless “I know”. They’d been stripped down together to this halting naked pain, and she did not know how to make things right any more.

An unsteady breath from him that was almost a laugh. “It would be easier to believe, wouldn’t it, if you hadn’t heard it before — if I hadn’t used that plea on you already tonight with a lie riding on its tail and a fortune at stake.”

“I didn’t mean—” She caught in a breath of her own, looking up into his face. “Raoul, I do know. I’ve always known, since you were fourteen — don’t you remember? — and soaked to the skin.”

“Fourteen, yes.” She’d surprised the ghost of a smile into his eyes. “Sticky and salty... and entirely unprepared to be kissed.”

“It was an perfectly harmless kiss.” She could feel the echo of that sudden boyish flush from so long ago creeping into her own cheeks; surely — surely? — she had not imagined the blessed note of teasing in his voice. It had been so long... “It was the same kiss I’d have given your aunt, you know it was. Grateful and proper and absolutely nothing more.”

“Not at fourteen it wasn’t,” Raoul said ruefully. “And if you’d ever been a fourteen-year-old boy, Miss Christine—”

And this time there was no question for either of them about the smile.

He released her hand and drew her nearer, and she nestled into his shoulder with a sigh, afraid to say anything that might break this tentative moment they’d found. As his arms closed round her she thought that he was trembling; but the tremor where she was pressed against him could just as well have been her own.

“And on the roof?” His fingers brushed the curve of her jaw, turning her face up to his and lingering for a second. “I suppose that was innocuous too? Or perhaps in such a proper young lady it was only a momentary lapse?”

But the answer was hovering there on his mouth... if she wanted to take it. The query in his eyes behind the laughter was desperately uncertain.

“You know very well it was nothing of the kind.” The words came out a little breathless where she had meant to speak lightly, and she had to swallow before she could go on. “It was a promise— for both of us—”

She closed her eyes, reaching up for the kiss that was waiting, and felt her husband’s mouth yield against hers. Lips parted and clung between shaky breaths; she broke away briefly to settle more closely against him, and fleeting caresses of mouth on mouth slipped into exploration as her response grew eager under his.

It was not the dream-like rediscovery they’d shared in her dressing-room, with all the hope and tenderness of that false dawn. But rocked in Raoul’s arms, answering his halting, awkward embraces in quest of the reassurance they both sought, Christine felt the hard knot within her heart ease a little further.

She began to kiss him more hungrily; felt him flinch and pull free on an indrawn breath. Left undignified and somewhat bereft, Christine was betrayed into a small sound of protest. Her eyes flew wide, and she found Raoul exploring his split upper lip rather ruefully with the tip of a cautious tongue. The smile of apology he offered her was even more lopsided than before.

“I think we might have to wait a while for this — a few days, anyhow. I’m sorry, Christine.” He caught her sudden stricken gaze, voice roughening into warmth. “Oh darling— darling, don’t look like that...”

But memory showed her again and again, with relentless clarity, the look on her husband’s face when she had hit him. She had done that — and now he was apologising to her for his own pain...

“Forgive me,” she managed, very low, as her cheeks flushed with the inadequacy of it, and saw him shake his head firmly.

“Not for one minute. That’s one scar I’m not ashamed of; it was more than earned, dear heart, and if anyone had the right to it, you did, with that abominable bet... I only wish I could repay the rest of it somehow, with less cost to you.” He felt at his mouth again, dabbing with a pocket-handkerchief, and held out the result on the breath of a grin. “There — blood washes away sin, you see—”

Shocked between tears and laughter at the little blasphemy, as he’d intended, Christine found herself choking back sudden hysterical giggles. The tears slipped free, and Raoul held her close, murmuring against her hair.

“That wasn’t funny — forgive me — not funny at all, no, of course not. Don’t cry, now, don’t cry...” Words and soothing touch lapped her round like the white fur he’d tucked around her in their carriage, that first winter; it had been the softest thing she’d ever felt, and she had scarcely been able to believe it was hers.

Christine wrapped herself in his presence for a long moment. Then she raised her head and took his face between her two hands, enclosing the wounded place with the comfort of her own gentle mouth and exploring each sensation: the first dry prickle of shaven skin, the warm moisture within, the swelling where she had hurt him and the stiffened wound itself, traced lightly — oh, so lightly — with the healing touch of a small, repentant tongue.

It was neither a kiss nor a caress between them, but something both detached and more intimate. Raoul’s hands slid forward across her shoulders, but he made no sound. For a moment they were quiet and still, poised together by the tiny tender movements of her mouth around his.

Then Raoul sighed and ran a light touch down her arms, easing free. He leaned forward to set his cheek against hers briefly.

“We should get your coat, Madame de Chagny — or get you tucked up in bed. It’s getting chilly in here, and you’ll need something round your shoulders if we’re going to sit up much later tonight.”

He stood up, stretching widely with an inadvertent yawn, and reached for the coat that she had laid as an extra layer over Gustave. The movement left her aware for the first time of the creeping chill of the night air without him close by, and she hugged exposed arms tightly. “Leave Gustave the coat, dear. He’ll need it... I’m worn out anyway; I’m going to bed.”

She hesitated. “Could you unlace me?”

It felt an oddly personal request; but her husband’s hands were as quick and steady down her back as those of the dresser who’d helped her in the theatre that afternoon, and she slid between the sheets in her chemise, tugging the covers up over herself with a shiver. Mrs Morrison’s services to her guests clearly did not encompass airing the beds, and the bed-linen at Phantasma had undoubtedly been of a finer quality.

She curled up into a ball, feeling the springs creak as Raoul sat down again, and the small movements of undressing that meant he had decided to turn in for the night himself. Another rising lurch meant piles of neat clothing set down across the room — even drunkenness only led to staggering heaps: the habit had been too well beaten-in during his youth as a cadet — and the light dimmed and went out. Breath hissing with the cold despite long-sleeved underwear, he dived beneath the blankets in some haste and without ceremony, and she felt his weight settle beside her.

It had been a long time since she had shared a room, let alone a bed... But if he felt the same constraint, he said nothing.

Christine lay for what seemed like long minutes watching chinks of streetlight chase across the walls as the shades on the window swayed, and hearing her husband’s breathing gradually grow deeper and more regular. The clammy sheets warmed around her slowly. Small sounds from beyond the foot of the bed were Gustave moving in his sleep; once he cried out and she was on the verge of springing up to him. But the words died away into a long sleepy mumble, and she lay tense, listening for more. So far as she could tell he seemed to be fast asleep again.

She put out a hand in the dark, a little awkwardly; found Raoul’s shoulder.

“I heard.” Raoul rolled over, muffled with sleep. “‘Papa, I want to go home’ — and do you suppose he’ll be the only one tonight to see that pier in his dreams?”

Christine shivered, picturing her own faceless fears, all the worse because she had seen nothing of it, and Raoul sighed and reached out towards her. “Christine, come here.”

She stiffened, abruptly self-conscious as to his intentions. “Gustave...”

“I’m not going to wake Gustave. I’m not even going to keep you awake.” Raoul’s patient voice was cut off by a yawn, and he wrapped an arm round her and drew her closer. “You’re freezing... come over this side, there, where we were sitting. Like this...”

Caught up and tumbled across in the warm depths of his body, Christine managed no more than a brief protesting squeak. The hollow where he had lain was blissfully welcoming... She stretched out cautiously against him; let him drape obliging limbs across her cold toes.

“Better?” It was a murmur in her ear. “Good. Go to sleep. Try not to dream.”

“You too,” Christine whispered softly, settling back into the comfort he offered. But at least tonight if he woke she would be there with reassurance of her own; the nightmares had come back, these last few years, and she knew they had been getting worse. She’d tossed in her room down the hall, listening.

Well, there would be no separate suites for them this night; and not so much as a hot brick to air the bed, either. A tiny chuckle escaped her. “Shared rooms — damp sheets — coats on beds: who’d have thought we’d sink this low?”

“The Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Chagny are above such things... Do you suppose old Ma Morrison would give us breakfast if I used my title on her?”

His breath brushed the back of her neck, and Christine choked back laughter. “Go to sleep, Raoul.”

“I don’t mind this sort of ‘low’ — not like that farce on the docks.” Bitterness stole in. “Not so long as we can call our souls our own...”

But the echoes of those last words trailed off into the silence between them with a meaning he had never intended; and that was the question, Christine thought helplessly, that would always be the question now until they could learn somehow to live with it or to trust...

“Christine.” It was almost a plea. “Christine — it’s over now, isn’t it? You’re free... of him?”

But she couldn’t give him the answer he needed so much to hear. Not when a part of her soul, that part she shared with Gustave, would always belong to the man whose unearthly music had given it form; the Phantom who — whatever else he was to her, whatever else he had done — had shaped its gift and taught it to take flight. Her soul would never be entirely her own while she still lived, and even for Raoul who loved her she could not make it so.

“Raoul...”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. I—” She let out a long breath and turned to lie against him, burrowing close. “Just... Raoul.” The name lay cradled, high in the arch of her mouth; liquid consonants and a sigh.

“I’m here.” Quiet words in the dark. “I’ll be here.”

It was the promise he’d made to her so long ago; the promise she’d begged of him, and returned. Wherever you go, let me go too...

“I’m here,” Raoul said again softly, questioning nothing, demanding nothing, and she put her arms around him.

“So am I.” The choice that mattered; the answering joy. “Oh, don’t you see?— so am I.”