Title: Concerning Stolen Gondolas

Author: Kytten

Pairing: Erik/Raoul

Rating: PG

Summary: It's always difficult to ignore a Chagney. Especially this Chagney.

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

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Concerning Stolen Gondolas

Chapter Four

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If he was honest with himself, Erik truly didn't remember what it was that had him upset. He'd taken to ignoring Raoul a week ago though, and damned if he was about to back down now.

Granted, ignoring a Chagney was never the easiest thing to do. They had an odd tendency to be both eccentric and determined. Raoul was no exception. If anything, he was worse.

It'd been all well and good at first, when it'd been only singing.

Well, perhaps well and good wasn't the best of terms for it.

Erik was losing his mind. It wasn't that Raoul couldn't sing. No, that was the problem. The vicomte could sing well for a man without even the least smattering of training. But his voice, that beautiful, promising voice had a tendency to carry.

Actually, Erik suspected that voice had been intended to carry. He wouldn't put it past Raoul to stand around, deliberately singing next to airshafts and the orchestra pit, making sure his voice carried all the way into the fifth cellar of the opera house.

It was driving him mad.

And without fail, whenever he began to play, Raoul would begin to sing. And his song would grate on Erik's notes until without noticing his fingers slipping; he began to play the vicomte's song.

This was not doing anything for his resolve.

Neither was the fact that whenever he heard that voice stumble, whenever it became obvious that it was only promise Raoul had, Erik's fingers itched. He wanted so desperately to correct the man's pitch or wrong note, as if it was a splotch on the score that rested before him.

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And then, in that infuriating way that Chagneys have, Raoul made everything worse.

He got sick.

Very sick.

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At first, Erik didn't hear about it, having holed himself away in his lair. But at long last, when the need for food and the sound of voices other than those in his head drove him above, he found out.

Pissed was an understatement.

Not only had Raoul managed to endanger his life again. He'd won. The bloody fop had won whatever argument it was that had set them at odds. Maybe not at the time, seeing as how Erik always had the last word, but he'd forced Erik out of his sulk.

In the scheme of things, he'd won.

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Raoul woke up to darkness. And strange as it was, he recognized this particular sort of dark. It wasn't the bark-your-shins-on-the-table-on-the-way-to-the-loo sort of dark. It was underground dark. The kind that only comes when you're below at least ten feet of earth and there's no well or window in sight.

He smiled, feeling the heat of the man beside him where their skin touched through the silk of the sheets. Raoul lay there for a long moment, reveling in the sensation before a thought stuck him, and he leaned back to drift a hand over the bedside table.

There.

Cool porcelain caressed the pads of his fingers and Raoul grinned, placing a hand over the expanse of skin it was meant to cover. Erik stirred under his touch, and curled a hand around his wrist, pulling him forward into a lazy kiss.

"Your fever's broken." He murmured against the vicomte's lips, voice still rough with sleep.

Raoul smiled. He heard the words that pride wouldn't let Erik say.

"I'm cold now." Raoul missed his mouth, kissing the tip of his nose instead. "Hold me?"

Smiling in the dark, Erik pressed close. He'd heard Raoul's answer.

"I'm so sorry."

A stolen kiss and the meeting of eyes blinded by night.

"It's alright. I love you."

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Spaced because ff.n's gay today.