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Emptiness	By : Josephine1881 Category: M through R > The Phantom of the Opera > Slash Views: 8257 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Author’s note: Happy Valentine’s Day to my readers! With all the talking of love, this chapter is rather fitting for the occasion. And even though the end might sound so, I can assure you it’s not the last chapter. There’s still a lot more to come.

Chapter Seventeen

As I watched the expression on Erik’s face anxiously, checking for signs of outrage, it occurred to me that maybe I had put my declaration of love too bluntly. But then, I didn’t have a lot of experience in that area. The only person I had ever told that I loved her had been Christine. With her, it had just come out naturally, and I hadn’t thought about it much, neither before nor afterwards. There had been no doubt that I loved her, so saying it hadn’t been a problem. It also hadn’t been a problem for her to say the same.

Now it was different. As I looked at the man lying next to me, I felt with every fibre of my being that I wanted him to repeat those words to me. Suddenly I was desperate to hear them. But at the same time fear was creeping up my spine like an ugly spider. What if he wouldn’t say it? What if he had never planned to say it? What if he had planned to say it, but thought it too soon? What… what if he simply didn’t love me?

“Say something…” I urged him. “Please…” Unable to gaze at his face any longer while waiting for his reaction, I looked down, noticing in surprise that my fingers were shaking. Even my breath had become slightly faster. My whole existence seemed to revolve about his reply. Yet unexplicably, he took his time. I could hear him clear his throat.

“You… love me?” he finally asked slowly, as if checking what the words felt like in his mouth before uttering them.

I nodded, still looking at his chest rather than his face. It was broad and muscular, and I saw that some of the little hairs on it were already grey. Thinking about Erik’s chest was much easier than thinking about what might happen. In fact, I thought about it so hard that his next question completely took me by surprise.

“How do you define love?”

Now I did look up at him.

“Pardon?” I muttered.

“How do you define love?” he repeated in a matter-of-fact voice that was strangely out of place in this situation. “I cannot comment on your statement unless you tell me what exactly you mean.” He gave me a stern glance which horribly reminded me of my old teacher. He had looked at me in the same way when I had failed to answer a question sufficiently for his taste.

I didn’t know why Erik asked me such things. The only explanation I could find was that he wanted to gain more time by talking about my feelings rather than his. Yet whatever was the reason, I realised that I wanted to answer. Maybe it would help me prove my sincerity, even if he hadn’t believed me so far for some reason. And maybe he’d even confess that his own feelings were similar to mine.

“Well…” I started uncertainly. “Love is feeling that comes from here.” I put a hand on my chest, in the region of my heart. “But it doesn’t stay there. It spreads through my whole body. I can feel it in my fingers and toes, in my head and in my…” I used my free hand to gesture at my lower belly, feeling slightly embarrassed.

“That’s not love,” Erik argued. “It’s lust.”

“But love is the origin of lust,” I gave back. “Well, maybe not always, but in my case it’s true. We’d have never done what we did if there weren’t strong feelings between us.”

He nodded in acknowledgment.

“I think about you all the time,” I admitted. “Yes, I know we’ve only met again a few days ago, but since that day you’re always on my mind. And when I see you, my heart starts beating more quickly, my hands grow sweaty, and I don’t know what to say, because all I want is kiss you. But there’s more,” I added hastily, before he could make another remark about lust. “I also feel this strong urge to protect you. When you told me about your childhood, I wanted to cradle you in my arms and hold you tight forever. I want to make up for all the rejection and unkindness, even if it’ll take me all my life… which is the amount of time I’d like to spend with you.”

“And why do you feel all this?” Erik asked.

I stared at him in disbelief. I had just poured out the contents of my heart for him, and he asked me for the reasons? Morever, he was still using that flat voice which didn’t give away what he was thinking. It was slightly unnerving.

“I cannot explain it!” I blurted out. “People cannot explain why they feel what they feel – they simply do it. I have no idea why I have all those feelings when I look at you. If I told anyone else about it, they’d probably think me insane, but – “

“Exactly!” he exclaimed triumphantly, as if this was the moment he had been waiting for. “Now you’ve said it yourself – insane!”

I frowned, wondering what on earth he was trying to tell me. Yet I knew better than to interrupt him and ask. He’d go on and explain it much faster if I left him in peace. And that was what he did, just a moment later.

“All those feelings you’re describing are nothing but an outburst of insanity,” he started, as if that were the obvious conclusion. “It is simply impossible that you really feel the way you do, and when you think about it, you’ll realise I’m right and you’re wrong.”

There were many things I didn’t like, and being talked to like a three-year-old boy was one of them. I had had more than my share of such conversations with my brother.

“Are you calling me mad?” I asked angrily. Here I was, confessing my deepest emotions to him, and all he did was suggesting that I was insane.

“Only in a way,” he replied in what he probably considered a soothing voice. “And it won’t last very long. In a few weeks’ time you’ll wake up, remember the things you said and laugh about their absurdity.”

It took me a moment to understand what his words implied.

“So you’re sending me away?” I whispered.

He shook his head.

“You can stay here,” he said. “We can still enjoy ourselves. Just forget that stupid talking of love.” He stretched out his hand to brush over my hair, but I pushed it aside before it reached my head. Erik let out a little sigh. “Oh Raoul, don’t be like that,” he muttered. “You’ll soon understand that at the end of the day, I’m only saving you from making a fool of yourself.”

“Never,” I stressed. “First you’re calling me temporarily insane, then you say my feelings are absurd, and now you want to save me? Even without a brilliant mind such as yours I can see that those things don’t fit together.”

“You just don’t understand it now because you’re upset,” he said smoothly. Why did he have to have a reply to anything? And, even more irritatingly, why didn’t I possess the same ability?

“I’ll… I’ll never understand it,” I murmured defiantly, feeling slightly intimidated by his smooth self-confidence, but trying not to show it. That was why my voice grew louder with every word I spoke. “Why can’t you simply accept the fact that I love you? You should be happy. But no! M. Opera Ghost is never happy! Instead, he tries to persuade me that my feelings are wrong. Well, I’ll tell you one thing: I don’t believe you, and you won’t talk me into believing you, even if you try all night. I love you. You can tell me that you don’t return my feelings, but you cannot tell me I’m insane because I love you. So don’t bother.”

I wanted to turn away from him to underline my words, but he wrapped his arms around me and didn’t let me go.

“I do,” he said simply.

“You do what?” I asked blankly. I had no idea which part of my little speech he was referring to.

“I return your feelings,” he replied softly. “I love you, Raoul. And incidentally, I don’t know the reason either.”

I held my breath, feeling my heart swell to unnatural proportions. I didn’t dare believe what I had just heard. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask whether he was joking, when I realised that wouldn’t have made me any better than he was. If I wanted him to believe me, I had to believe him as well.

“You… do…” I whispered. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

He gave me a wry smile.

“Because I was afraid, silly boy,” he answered. “You see, even the mighty Opera Ghost is afraid every now and then. If you hadn’t told me about your feelings first, I might have never told you. And still…” He paused, and I sensed that something was causing him enormous trouble.

“What is it?” I asked gently.

“I know that my feelings for you are sincere, because I can feel it in my heart,” Erik started, but I didn’t allow myself to be cheerful yet, for there was more to come. “And despite the things I said before, I believe you when you say your feelings are sincere as well… now. But I know it won’t stay that way. I know that, sooner rather than later, you’ll meet someone else, a man or a woman, and you’ll be gone. At the moment, I’m filling a gap, because you’re feeling lonely and abandoned and I’m the only one there for you. But once you’ll have recovered… Do you remember what I said before? One day you’ll wake up and laugh about the absurdity of your feelings. And I don’t want to lie next to you when it happens, still loving you and desperately wishing I could turn back time and just be happy with you…”

Wordlessly, I leaned over and kissed his lips softly, trying to put all the love I felt into that kiss. I couldn’t have expressed how much his confession meant to me in any other way. He loved me – that was the most important part of his words for me at the moment. Yet naturally everything else he had said pushed itself into my mind as well. So I merely allowed myself a few moments to rejoice. Then I broke the kiss gently.

“I can’t promise you anything, Erik,” I told him truthfully. “Yes, it is possible that I won’t love you till the end of time. But I love you now. You’ve already trusted me a few times. You’ve shown me your face, you let me touch it…” The memory made him shiver. “…you invited me into your home, you’ve even given me the key to it. So far, you have not regretted any of it, have you?” He shook his head. “Then I ask you to trust me again,” I went on. “This time, I ask you to trust me with your heart, and I’ll do my best not to disappoint you. I’ll try to make you happy… or as happy as you allow me to.” That remark earned me a smile. “Do you allow me to?” I asked. Again, he nodded.

Perhaps our relationship had started sooner, maybe as soon as the moment that I had stood at his door for the first time. But I’d always remember this moment as the beginning, this moment in which I let overwhelming joy spread through my body, erasing every negative thought from my mind. It even made me feel a little giddy.

“In that case… can we start our conversation again, without all the interruption between the important parts?” I asked. Without waiting for his reply, I went on: “I love you, Erik.”.

He threw me a puzzled glance, then he seemed to understand my intention.

“I love you, too, Raoul,” he gave back. He had realised that this was all that mattered.
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Emptiness