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gretavanfleetposts · 3 months ago

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Chapter Two: The Music of the Night

Summary: In 1880’s Paris, you join the company of the Palais Garnier Opera House, newly financed by your childhood friend Daniel with whom you reconnect, and haunted by the man you will soon come to know as your Angel of Music.

Content Warnings: mentions and subtext of stalking, ***this is not a smut chapter but I’m still marking it as dubious consent*** (18+ minors dni)

Word Count: 7.5k

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— 🌹 —

The moment Daniel was gone from the room, the music started, like whispers at first, convincing you you were only hearing things. But it grew more definitive with each passing second until finally you heard it, your name, whispered all around you, spoken in hushed tones beneath the music radiating through the very walls that surrounded you.

You were on your feet before you even heard his voice, that voice which called to you each night now and left you so cold and empty when it went silent.

“He will hear us, master-” you urged quietly, turning back to the door that Daniel had disappeared through only moments ago.

“Do not pay him anymore mind, my dear,” your angel called in thunderous answer.

It was a voice wholly disembodied, unable to be located, try as you did. You’d have been quite the scene to stumble upon, spinning round in circles searching gleefully for your angel whom you believed would soon bare himself to you at long last.

“What is this magic?” you asked to the empty room in breathless wonder. And yet, your angel called back.

“I am all around you. Do you feel it? Do you see it?”

You spun wide once more when your eyes befell the mirror, having caught a glimpse of yourself: an image that was almost entirely you. Almost.

“I feel it, yes,” you attested in a voice that cracked and failed as your eyes fixed to that spot in the mirror that looked ever so slightly un-mirror-like. “But I do not see it.”

How long those many months had been as a pupil of some great invisible teacher who showed you music you never could have fathomed. But his physical form still evaded you. He was the air, the wind, he was the walls, the very fabric of the curtains. He was your angel, no man, no shape, no body. A voice. A tantalizing voice. And a spirit that moved through you precisely the way your father had said the angel he would send to you would when he was gone.

“Must you see me to believe that I am there?” your angel questioned.

“No,” you answered quickly, “no, I just…I would like to meet my angel. Who has been my great tutor these many months?”

“If you wish to meet me, then tell me this: did you sing for that boy tonight?”

You took a step toward the mirror. You were almost certain something was behind the thick glass now. “I sang for you, only for you.”

“He is an ignorant fool.”

“He is nothing, my angel!”

Daniel’s voice rang faintly in the distance, sounding close and yet worlds away. Too far for you to really hear. But not even his very presence could have ceased the steps that carried you closer to that mirror, to the feeling of what might lay beyond it beckoning you closer.

Your angel bellowed from the depths of some place far beyond, “Then you shall know me finally. Come to the mirror. Come to me.”

Like a mirage in the desert, tempting you with some secret that changes entirely when you get to the thing which you thought you saw, the image of your reflection rippled as you stepped closer and closer, until the illusion dropped entirely to reveal a dark, shadowy figure, and then a black gloved hand outstretching from the depths and into the light.

There was a rhythmic thumping beating hard all around you, something much faster than the music that still surrounded and swathed you: the pounding of your heart like a fast-paced drum in your ears. It almost deafened you, almost silenced everything else around you as you eyed the gloved hand carefully. It marched onward in your chest, like it marked the high point of the end of the first act of a performance, begging the question of you alongside the audience, more obvious to you now as you lifted your hand.

And then, against any judgment that might have fought for you to do otherwise, you laid your palm against glove and took the shadow's hand.

The world behind you, the one you had once known and played about in, fell away as you stepped through the hole in the wall that was once partitioned by glassy mirror. And as that world fell away and became secondary, the figure that had stood on the other side which now held your hand firmly in its own took form. It was a man who had led you through the wall, something like a phantom shrouded in deep, rich, black velvet, with only one part standing out from the blackness that he had drawn you into: his face.

It was remarkable, much like a skull held up by shoulders made of nothing more than the black air that surrounded it. It was a ghostly white face, standing bold against its backdrop as he gazed backward at you, bony, hard, and stark, with a brow bone jutting into a permanent, strict scowl.

He led you silently down a long corridor made entirely of stone, slanting and sloping so harshly downward you would have lost your footing for not his hold on you. Even in the dark, you could hear the moisture beneath your feet, dampening each tap of your heels against the stone below. You could feel the moisture in the air, clinging to the walls as deftly as it did your skin. And from the chill in the air that grew none too gradually with each step you took, it was evident that you were retreating from the hearth of the opera house and plunging into the cold depths of the tunnels that laid buried underneath.

But even at such depths of perceived unusedness, it didn't appear to be abandoned, at least not totally. There were torches that lined the walls that ignited as you passed, ridding the place suddenly of its inky black darkness down the entirety of the corridor, guiding you as surely as the hand holding yours. Cobwebs had been cleared and heavy drapery hung at increments between slick mossy patches of stone. The very walls seemed to operate at his own beck and call. Here one moment, blocking your path further into the ground, gone the next, revealing a hidden passage like the fiery gates of hell accepting their master. Your Angel, you presumed, commander of it all, although as you watched him move silently like a shadow in the night, like a part of that architecture itself, he seemed far more like the devil than any angel. How long he must have lived there to convince even the walls to obey his every whim.

The long, sullen path quite maze-like in its construction only earned his glance every so often, when some fixture with a hidden purpose blocked it and required his magical touch to bend to his will or when some small set of cobbled stairs stood ahead to be descended. There wasn't much that seemed potent enough to tear his stoic gaze from you as he led you to some abyss. Perhaps you had even thrust upon him fully your own credulity, having watched him work some magic with that mirror in your dressing room which you had thought much like any ordinary mirror. You longed to know this sorcerer and you bent your will before him just like the very walls themselves which seemed nothing but a farce when he dared want to go through them.

These were depths of the opera house you’d never ventured toward. Never even neared. They were the very bowels of the place, where the furnaces breathed their fiery breath like dragons and obeyed only their riders covered in soot and slaves to the shovel. Even the warmth of those fervid hearts seemed to be dampened by the cold of the earth when one ventured that deep. You could feel the chill in your own bones, not to be confused with the chill of whatever mystery had been so suddenly thrust upon you.

The stone path led you past the four levels you knew to be buried under the Palais Garnier, to the fifth, which you had seldom heard any talk of. Of course, there were rumors of ghosts who inhabited that depth, though Joshua felt assured those ghosts were nothing more than the poor man banished there to catch rats. Perhaps a vagrant or two. But what you found there was a silence unlike anything that inhabited any other inch of the Palais Garnier. Up top, where the daylight deigned to touch, there was music and footsteps and chatter to be found everywhere you went. But down where the blackness surrounded you like a blanket, there was only the sound of your breathing mingled with the click of your heels, for your Angel practically floated and moved so silently he could not be perceived. And you were very much alone.

It was there in that fifth level that stone turned to rocky foundation, where the masons had built upon the natural formations and bothered not to cover it. And where civilized path ended and rocky edge appeared, you heard the sounds of water in the distance, approaching as quickly as your footsteps allowed it. Your Angel turned to face forward, exchanging your hand into his other behind his back to free the one that would perform his next trick, undoubtedly.

Finally the source of the sound came into view: it was a lake (a whole lake!) buried beneath the Palais Garnier Opera House. Perched atop floated a little dinghy with one oar strewn across it and with his free hand, your Angel lifted the heavy anchoring rope from the rocks and helped you step in.

Just as he had guided you down to the deepest part of that place which he ruled, he steered you across the dark, frigid waters, into a cavernous formation that seemed to be the last stop before the very gates of hell greeted you.

He stared at the waters so studiously, keeping his eyes locked upon the horizon. All you could make out in that swartness was long cascading locks of hair flowing over broad shoulders. It wasn’t until you reached that other edge that was to be your destination and lights sprang up from every corner of the natural earth hollowed out before you that your angel materialized fully before you.

He stepped out of the boat and pulled it more securely to that little shore that sat at the threshold of what appeared to be something of a dwelling, filled with little magical things and instruments beyond number, some of which puzzled you as to the sound they might make, others which puzzled you as to how one would even go about producing any sound from them. But it wasn’t this dwelling which stunned you, turned your gaze to stone, unbreakable and unwavering where it sat resting upon its newest fixation. It was your very angel himself.

In the clarity of light, you saw him better. He was no ghost, no apparition, no heavenly body in form itself, but rather a living, breathing thing. A man, you should think, for not the extraordinary feats he had performed before your very eyes. And in that light, a new discovery: that which you had mistaken to be a skull was in fact nothing so morbid. It was a mask, made of something rigid and crisp white, and covering only half of his face like bones protruding from his skin. It cut along the top of his forehead on the right side of his face, following the edge where skin met hairline until it met his jaw where it curved upward so as to leave his lips unimpeded. And then the matter of his lips, soft, plush, and pink on his face and held barely floating apart from one another, as his breath almost heaved with the way he watched you watch him in turn. They looked soft. That was what you noted.

The mask drew a straight line up over his nose, a tiny hole allowing him free breath where it otherwise mimicked perfectly the other half of his nose, almost like the face itself had been dipped in stone. It cut his face in equal parts, up through his strong brow bone, which was mimicked perfectly on the other side in that white case, and back up to the height of his forehead. The only other hole cut into the thing was for his right eye and as you took him in more wholly, you noticed the pair, warm brown albeit rimmed with a purplish hue that seemed to suggest your angel hardly slept despite a need for it.

Yes, a man indeed. One with brawny hips and deft hands, burly legs and a rugged tawniness to the unruly hair and eyebrows that suited this dark figure. The sneak of skin on his face and the repute with which he held himself begged you yearn for any more glimpse at him. But his body was hidden away. Even so much as a sliver of skin any lower than his neck was impossible thanks to the staunch white collar high upon his neck and the thick black vest with matching jacket, worn in some spots, weathered by age and habitation. Even his hands, covered by black leather gloves, were hidden from you.

But what he did not show of himself, he let you hear. What he did not let you see, he let you feel, for all around you, just as suddenly as those candles had been conjured up, so had that sweet music which had surrounded you back in your dressing room. It was there, his very work, swirling around you as easily as the wind might have despite the fact that he still stood there before you, unwavering in stance and gaze. Watching. Eyeing. Closely, closely.

You eyed him back with a curiosity you could not contain, your own lips parted as if standing at the ready should you see fit to gasp. Although, you were much more breathless than all that. You would have even felt that you were gawking up at him, should you not have been the only two souls for some stretch. And to be certain, you were gawking, but you were powerless to stop yourself.

Finally he opened his mouth further to speak and your body, void of any inclination of the mind, leaned forward so as not to miss a word.

“May I?” he asked, outstretching his hand to you once more.

Admittedly, you had no idea for what he was asking permission but it was permission you granted him regardless. And when you took his hand yet again, he lifted you from the boat and onto solid ground.

You spared a moment then to glance around, letting your eyes travel the scenery laid before you, scenery just as tantalizing as the angel himself. It was a home, somehow, built into the foundation of the opera house, deep beneath the earth. Not hindered by the natural rock formations there but rather built in harmony with them by some seemingly mad genius.

The only source of light were the candles burning devotedly for their master but there were plenty of them to cast a beautiful haze-like glow about the entirety of the place. In that light, you could make out little inlets sectioned off by thick red velvet drapery, partitioning quiet little corners with their heft. The focal point of the whole place seemed to be his organ, the pipes weaving in and out of rock, decorated by even more candles in dangerous proximity to the sheer amount of parchment littered all over the place. And tables upon tables upon tables, writing desks and other flat surfaces to hold even more paper, and tiny little trinkets that you couldn’t quite decipher from where you stood.

It was all so very bewildering. There was a whole life being lived here, beneath the foundation of the Palais Garnier.

Your eyes trailed back to him in the wake of your wonderment.

“Are you my angel? The voice that has been teaching me?” you asked breathlessly, so much so that for a moment, you questioned whether or not he heard you. But he turned to you more fully and let his forefinger, one singular digit, rise to the underside of your chin at the very peak.

“I can assure you, I am much more than a voice.”

He walked backward a few steps with your hand still in his to gently pull a rope near the wall and at his signal, the idle music shifted into something more melodic, more haunting.

“You have no idea how many nights I have pictured this moment, you standing here with me,” he whispered as he pulled you in a few steps closer to him. “You have no idea the things I wish to do to you. The music I wish to make with you.”

Your body went willingly. Your fingers itched to have him within their reach. His eyes alone could have haunted you for the rest of your days. He was stunning, his body, his voice, his music.

He guided you toward the more central part of the dwelling but your eyes hardly took their leave from him. The need to see him bared to you fully seemed innate within you now. Your chest burned with your desire to touch him and to know all that there was to know of him.

You raised your hand to the skin on the side of his face that was bared to you and a surprising warmth seeped into your fingers expelling the cold at once. But even given your cold touch, he leaned into it. He seemed to savor it so fully that you couldn't help but wonder when it was that he had last felt someone's touch. You could hardly even fathom a man so hauntingly beautiful going without such a thing.

If beauty and warmth and touch had evaded him so thoroughly as it seemed, you would be his provider, you resolved. You would uncover the side of his face that he kept hidden and bring him back into the light. So you lifted your hand from its gentle resting place and moved it to the side with the mask. But as your fingers began to curl around the hard edge just along the bridge of his nose, his hand snapped to your wrist with a bruising force that squeezed an exhale from you just the same, like a deep gasp of fear and morbid fascination. His eyes, however, fluttered open so slowly it was as if he were waking from a dream. Once set on you though, whatever softness they had contained was gone and in place of that softness was something that terrified you. A heated anger boiled behind liquid hot brown, melting and oozing and so clumsily contained that if your hand had been at your side, it would have shook in fear. Your angel had at once turned into a devil.

“You will never be in any danger with me, my dear, that I can promise you. But only so long as you never touch the mask.” He spoke deliberately, awaiting some answer on your part, some sign of your understanding.

There was no real understanding to be had, of course. The secrets that he kept so boldly would plague you long after you awake from your dream. But even so, that vague feeling of knowing better, like a scolded school child knowing when to quit, gave tilt to your head and you conjured up the smallest movement which could be perceived as a nod, even as your mouth hung ajar to give way to your breath which came faster even though it threatened to fail.

Still, he did not free your wrist. Instead, he turned away from you, pulling his arm behind his back and switching the grass of his hand so it once again took yours in lead and he brought you to a place in the wall where a tall, heavy curtain hung and shook its golden tassels. When you reached it, he turned back to you and gestured to the long pull rope next to it with his eyes, expectancy wading at the surface.

Hesitantly, after your eyes met the rope before traveling to his face and back again, you moved your body in a small motion to face the curtain more earnestly. But there was something of his presence, something about him, that prevented you from ever really looking away for too long. Even as he dropped your hand to let you reach up and pull the rope, your eyes somehow searched for him.

At the tug of your wrist, the curtain breezes by your face to reveal a large statue of a mirror, intricate gold leaf covering the carvings around the thick outside edge that framed you so nicely, like a blanket of white with your shadow behind you. Or perhaps more like a predator stalking its prey; you braced for his touch.

“You may touch me however you like,” he whispered as he stalked close behind you, his chest pressing a ghost-like touch against your back and his words whispering a fan of breath like a mask of their own over your temple, sending chills sprinting down the length of your neck and arms.

His gloved fingers ghosted over your own hand at your side and your eyes, now fixed to his mirror image, couldn't for all their strength find another home. His movements enraptured you, the way he plucked your hand from your side and pulled it up along his neck, where the curve of his jaw met the curiosity of the skin he let you see so much more freely than the other half of his face.

“Any part of me at the will of your fingertips…” he continued as his nose grazed a long, ghost of a line at the edge of your jaw which seemed to draw out the breath from your lungs with the power of its movement. That was the first bit of desire he pushed through you, deep into your bones which might have ached in soreness from lack of whatever touch it was they yearned for from him when you woke.

“...as long as you never touch the mask,” he repeated, stealing you back from your trance-like state.

He turned you sharply in his arms then, so sharply that the breath you inhaled caught in your throat like the pitiful squeak of a mouse when the trap snapped shut, now face to face with its master.

“Tell me you understand,” he demanded. And that fire was back, igniting the seriousness behind his eyes that you had almost forgotten when your bodies had been pressed tightly to one another.

Another small squeak of a sound pushed it's way from your lungs, this time intelligible word, just barely. “I understand.”

His face turned up all at once, another turn of his expression so sharp it could have cut you. This time though, it was a smile that he flashed, wide and miraculous like the heavens had opened up to exalt you for your good deed.

“Then I shall show you more music than you can fathom.”

He pulled you from the mirror with a jaunt in his step, past a large wall of miniatures, the opera house to be precise, in all its likeness, with pulleys and levers and little strings all over hidden corners. Even tiny figurines including Madame Kiszout kneeled at an alter of candles in the little chapel hidden away in a closet of the place, the new manager posed in a hunch over even tinier papers in his office, and yourself, on stage, singing Faust as you had only hours ago. He breezed you past tables of parchment with scribbled sketches and paintings, past little desks with candles tipped, dripping wax mixing with sticky clay, a messy ode to the tiny sculptures being born on those surfaces. But it was the organ that was his destination, a fixture so grand and impressive, it begged all the attention of the room.

He flung himself onto the tufted bench that sat before it and let his fingers dance excitedly over the keys, hammering out something heart wrenchingly beautiful, even in his haste. And loud, so much so that you might have thought the sound would travel upwards and shake the whole of the opera house from those very depths. The stoney walls didn’t dampen the sound as narrowly as the heavy drapery might have if you wrapped yourself in it. They echoed the sound back until you were surrounded by it, engulfed in it. They delivered that poignant sound and laid it at your feet until your head spun. They let it echo and reverberate even after his hands abruptly stopped until it waned to a soft then silent memory after several moments.

When the air cleared, he lifted his eyes back to you, rising slowly, like a mere shadow moving in the night. He hardly walked but rather glided over to you, or maybe stalked given the intensity of his gaze which had once again shifted.

He kept silent as he moved, the only sound being that of your breathing which quickened as he neared and then stilled completely when he raised a single gloved finger to your chin which followed his movements as he took his place behind you.

“I will caress you with my music, if you let me.” His hands encircled your neck delicately until they found a home hanging round your neck like a loose necklace where you feared for a moment that they may tighten. But instead, it was his gentleness that made you jump in his hands, as he ever-so-delicately tilted your head back, guiding you to rest against his shoulder. “I will possess you with my music, if you let me,” he hissed in a low, tempting whisper against your temple.

That black leather, so cold to the touch, it glided over your skin so imperiously, giving quicker rise and fall to your chest. But it was gone far quicker than it came, leaving you standing there alone with dizzy head and a craving so fierce your fingers twitched at your sides.

He was such a curious man, moving about so unpredictable, there one moment, praising you, singing to you, touching you, and then gone the next, leaving you cold in his absence. He was far more a ghost than he was a man, now you were certain of it. Only an apparition could evaporate and reappear the way he did.

Where he stood several steps away, his face seemed to be asking you a question that he hadn't yet spoken. And now he was looking after you with an eagerness, perhaps even a nervousness if you were to pay close enough attention to your Angel’s face. His very happiness, maybe even his very life, seemed to depend upon the words which you spoke next. In truth, you had no idea what he hoped you’d say, but there were questions bubbling at your lips, coating your mind in a thick layer of inquiry.

“You live down here?” It was the best you could do. A poor attempt at conveying the wonder clouding your mind and perhaps your judgment as well.

It was a silly question, indeed, the answer written all over the comforts of the place, but even so, you watched him swallow and gleaned more from that action alone than you had anything else.

“Yes,” he said simply, breathless and taken aback by the simplicity of your question, certainly after all he had already said and done. He had bared his soul to you, brought down from the heavens by God himself, and that was your question.

His answer displeased you as much as your question did him. Far too simple, far too easy. None of this was simple and none of it was easy.

“Did you build all of this?” you implored further, braving a single step in his direction toward his mounting confusion.

He blinked back something like startlement and swallowed, answering in an even more hushed affirmation.

You turned back to the grandness of the organ and the papers littering the floor and the music desk, even hindering the keys at the high end of the instrument. Scribblings, music notes and shaky hand-drawn staff lines, sheet music scrawled out in ink and written over again, all dripping a dye as red as blood, as if he has put his own into the work. It all appeared to be the musings one might attribute to a mad man. Or maybe a genius.

You looked up at him again, bewildered.

“Where do you sleep?” you asked, a feeble attempt to ask the real question on your mind, which was much closer to ‘when do you sleep’, or maybe even ‘do you sleep’.

This time you caught the slight smile that touched his lips and you anticipated the outstretching of his hand before it ever greeted you. He led you to a little nook in the stone, a far corner just barely out of sight and shrouded by layers upon layers of thick curtain that he pulled back with one deft sweep of his arm. Like a magician uncovering some great beauty, he revealed to you the little isolated island that he called his bedroom and the large bed that took up most of the space made entirely of bronze, forged and figured into the shape of a swan with its body carved out just at its back so as to hold a rider, a sleeping person, between its wings. Nestled into that divot was a sea of plush red as vivid as it was inviting. It called to you like a gentle reminder to your body of how late the day had grown, though your mind was awake and wide with all of the newfound possibilities of your most recent discovery.

Your fingers nimbly felt their way along the cold copper piece, so much dissonance in its existence alone: a haven of plush comfort built within hard metal walls. It seemed to argue with itself. You wondered if he had built it.

“You can sleep here tonight,” he said, gesturing to the bed with a quick glance and nothing more. “It is quite late.”

Your fingers lost themselves in the overflowing tulle of your skirts, diamond-studded and far too fragile for sleeping. But your body did long for it, a deep sleep, if only it didn’t promise to usher you from your dream. “I have only my gown.”

An armoire stood tall in the corner, dwarfed still by the sizeable comforts of the gilded swan

There stood an armoire in the corner that, large as it was, was no match for the grandeur of the bird-like bed and sat almost hidden off to the side like it dared not draw attention away from the real beauty of the room. He pulled on long bronzed handles emblazoned with tiny feather carvings, swinging the doors wide like wings themselves to reveal fabric pouring out of it’s shelter with the gust of wind he’d given it: a nightgown made of intricate lace and drooping silk and just as white as the gown you already wore.

He stood like some sort of chauffeur, a face like he hoped it was to your liking, but only for a moment before he uttered a quick, “I’ll let you change”, and then evaporated as was his habit of doing.

He was like a part of the whole apparatus under the opera house, as much of his current surroundings as you suspected he was of the angels he met with when you weren’t there. You, on the other hand, felt out of place. You felt you were an intrusion into his little palace, no matter how greatly you longed to belong there.

Usually Madame Kiszout was there to untie you or unhook you or unlace you. The act alone required a great stretch of the arms, twisting and feeling blindly for the strings that would make the whole bodice give. You fumbled, hands far shakier than you had realized when they hadn’t a single task, but now they needed a steadiness they didn’t possess. Surely your angel saw everything though, did he not? Was he not always watching over you? It made you wonder if he would come to your rescue but that wonderment was dashed when you heard the familiar pounding on the keys of his organ yet again, although this time the layers of the curtain that separated you from him did a remarkable job of muffling the noise to a mere tranquil melody, aggravated as it sounded.

With him distracted by his music, you felt more assured you could take your time with it and you let your fingers work more calmly. The cold air hit your body hard and the nightgown was a welcome shield from the chill you felt, not just from your surroundings but from your nerves as well.

When you finally pulled back the curtain you were confronted more squarely with his work, deafening and defeated. You craned your neck as you walked to try and steal a glimpse of him even sooner, to see that heavenly host hunched over his instrument as it wailed for him. And when you finally stood a mere few feet away from the beastly organ, tears were beginning to fall from your eyes at the tragedy of his tune.

“My life’s work,” he said without prompting, his fingers finding a stillness that you suspected was rare, “Don Juan Triumphant. I work on it for months at a time then leave it alone for years. You have inspired me once again to finish it this time.”

You sat next to him on that dutiful little bench, feeling emboldened by the first true glimpse of himself that he had given. When he met your face, he seemed taken aback by the tears he saw there, staining your cheeks with a rosy red blotchiness that followed. He stopped one of the culprits in its path with a single finger, that finger which saw fit to taunt you and tease you with his touch.

“It is heartbreaking, my angel,” you offered by way of explanation.

He cleared his throat and dropped his eyes. “You may call me Jacob. Please.”

“So my angel has a name.”

Rather than answering, offering any polite word to soften the astonishment that drew lines on your face and tied your features together, he stood and wandered away, like it was your very gaze that he aimed to evade.

“We shall practice here from now on. Less distractions this way,” he all but mumbled.

You gave him a gentle nod, afraid to say much. You had this strange feeling that he might fly far away, up and out of your grasp, and in truth, it scared you beyond reason. The idea of Jacob not being there with you, leaving you chilled without his presence and his magic and his music; it terrified you.

“You will become the triumph of the Palais Garnier,” he continued, almost matter-of-factly like this was all some transaction he meant to sell you on. “But you will be my greatest triumph.”

Of course, it enticed. How could it not when the Palais Garnier was home to more talent than you'd ever had the privilege of knowing yourself? But far moreso, you fancied yourself his muse. That was the true gift he had chosen to bestow upon you: his very attention.

“Why me?” you suddenly asked, struck by the thought that he could have chosen anyone over you, and perhaps all more fitting of his gifts and his focus.

“I beg your pardon?”

You stood to match his pose, now poised toward you and awaiting expectantly as you straightened and the long silk of the nightgown slunk down around your bare feet and past your wrists to hide your hands from the damp cool that bit through the air. You felt almost like a bride marching up to meet her fate, dragging your veil behind you as your feet brought you to him.

“Why have you chosen to bestow this gift upon me?” you asked, watching him firmly with beseeching eyes.

“Why you?” he repeated. He seemed incredulous at the question but nevertheless met you halfway from the imaginary place in front of him you sought to stand on and traced an invisible line up your neck to your chin, never actually touching your body until he reached his own destination, tugging your head back by a grip around the nape of your neck with a force that threatened to be anything close to forceful. There, he looked at you, really looked at you, his plush lips parted and looking quite like they might mean to do something. But all they did was speak.

“There is no one else on this earth but you.”

Utterly speechless in his hands, unable to move or think, unable to blink or even breathe, he broke the silence you were bound to.

“You need sleep.”

— 🌹 —

When you woke, you woke most certain the night before had been a dream. It wasn't until your eyes, freshly opened, were met with the back of the head of a bronze swan larger than life that a sense of realness pooled in the pit of your stomach.

The feathery down laid smooth and untouched in all the places your body hadn't occupied and if you didn't know any better, you'd say your ghost hadn't slept at all but maybe stood watch over the place like a dog guarding a bone. But you knew he was still there by the way muffled his music trickled through whatever cracks or crevices it could find in the curtains that partitioned you off. Like he sought you out, wherever you might be.

A tray on a little slab of wood teetering on three legs next to the bed was your only indication Jacob had even been past that curtain while you slept. And despite having not seen anything remotely resembling a kitchen in that alcove he called his home, the tray carried a tea kettle that steamed so hot it fogged its own silver and a plate of berries.

Your eyes skipped past the tray in their search for any other proof that your angel was indeed a real human and not, as you believed, an angel come to you in a more appreciable form when they landed on a small figurine that seemed as bound to time as any tattered toy. The figurine took the shape of a monkey that smiled back at you with a cymbal in each hand sitting on a windup box striped like a circus tent. A curious little piece, and one of few that didn't appear made by the master who worked on the other side of the curtain.

You outstretched a hand, giving it a little wind not even a full revolution of the key before sitting back to watch it work. The monkey’s arms began to move, clapping the cymbals together on a winded rhythm as a twinkling little melody played. So kiddish and quaint but it captivated you, so much so that you didn't notice the playing on the organ had ceased until Jacob was suddenly throwing back the curtain to your hideaway and standing squarely in the entrance with a look of annoyance owning his every feature.

In two strides he was by the figurine clenching the cymbals together to stop the noisemaker in its place and when he turned back to you, he stood rigid and angry like a gargoyle.

“You must return,” he said brusquely. “They've lost their wits looking for you.”

You said nothing in fear of further jostling his anger, though when his eyes moved from your unflinching form and to the tray you had not so much as touched, his annoyance only grew.

“You did not eat,” he sighed, plainly vexed.

You shook your head, a light and hurried motion that startled you in its own uncertainty.

“If you are to be my visage, you'll need your strength.”

“My body and your voice,” you answered hoarsely, your voice having been coaxed from its reluctant hiding place.

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I could conjure up any hunger,” you tried this time, barely meeting his eyes, piercing as they were.

He pulled you roughly to your feet with a hand grasping your bicep, bringing you face to face with his patience, far thinner than it had been the night before. So flimsy, in fact, that when he raised his hand to your throat, you were almost certain there would be a danger there that it had lacked each time he had done it previously. And you braced for it only to be surprised when his fingertips, ever gloved as they were, met your skin with a touch so delicate the air in your lungs expelled itself all at once.

But that was about the only forbearance he offered you, using considerably more strength to turn you sharply by your neck until your back collided with his chest. His hand still adorning your throat like a permanent necklace, he dipped his head to speak against the shell of your ear in a severe whisper.

“You'll do as I say.”

The gasp you sucked in at the rasp of his demand was involuntary, as was the way your body pressed back into him despite how vulnerable you felt in his hands. There was something about his touch that intoxicated you, obscured by the leather of his gloves though that it was.

With his freehand, he plucked a berry up off your breakfast tray, a plump, deep blue sphere of perfection that looked so frail between his black leather fingers. “Must I feed you myself?” he asked, his voice low and deadly.

Without waiting for any answer you might have thought to give, he lifted the berry to your mouth. Your lips parted on their own, expecting the fruit between them, but all he did was run that sweet fruit along your lips, first the top, letting it glide close to your tongue, before teasing it along the pillow softness of your bottom lip. Then finally, when you felt you were pressing back into him with an immeasurable force, he tilted your chin back with his pinky, signaling for you to take the berry into your mouth at long last where it burst with relief.

“Eat. I will not ask again.”

His hands and body disappeared from you, as was their habit of doing, already gone back to his piano.

He didn't eat while he worked. Didn’t seem to drink either. He was enveloped by it. A slave to it and you a slave to him. You could do nothing but listen to him work until he guided you back to your dressing room.

Taglist: @roving-blade @vanfleeter @readyforthegarden @stardustthread @Wrldabomination @josh-iamyour-mama @notsostrangerthing @runwayblues @redundantrachel @i-choose-the-road @Notsostrangerthing @MyLeftSock @sacredjake @Stardustjake @earthlysorrows @kiszkas-canvas @golddustwoman777 @xserenax-13

#ghost of the opera house #gvf

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gretavanfleetposts · 3 months ago

Text

Chapter Two: The Music of the Night

Content Warnings: mentions and subtext of stalking, ***this is not a smut chapter but I’m still marking it as dubious consent*** (18+ minors dni)

Word Count: 7.5k

Masterlist

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— 🌹 —

You were on your feet before you even heard his voice, that voice which called to you each night now and left you so cold and empty when it went silent.

“He will hear us, master-” you urged quietly, turning back to the door that Daniel had disappeared through only moments ago.

“Do not pay him anymore mind, my dear,” your angel called in thunderous answer.

“What is this magic?” you asked to the empty room in breathless wonder. And yet, your angel called back.

“I am all around you. Do you feel it? Do you see it?”

You spun wide once more when your eyes befell the mirror, having caught a glimpse of yourself: an image that was almost entirely you. Almost.

“I feel it, yes,” you attested in a voice that cracked and failed as your eyes fixed to that spot in the mirror that looked ever so slightly un-mirror-like. “But I do not see it.”

“Must you see me to believe that I am there?” your angel questioned.

“No,” you answered quickly, “no, I just…I would like to meet my angel. Who has been my great tutor these many months?”

“If you wish to meet me, then tell me this: did you sing for that boy tonight?”

You took a step toward the mirror. You were almost certain something was behind the thick glass now. “I sang for you, only for you.”

“He is an ignorant fool.”

“He is nothing, my angel!”

Your angel bellowed from the depths of some place far beyond, “Then you shall know me finally. Come to the mirror. Come to me.”

And then, against any judgment that might have fought for you to do otherwise, you laid your palm against glove and took the shadow's hand.

Finally he opened his mouth further to speak and your body, void of any inclination of the mind, leaned forward so as not to miss a word.

“May I?” he asked, outstretching his hand to you once more.

It was all so very bewildering. There was a whole life being lived here, beneath the foundation of the Palais Garnier.

Your eyes trailed back to him in the wake of your wonderment.

“I can assure you, I am much more than a voice.”

He walked backward a few steps with your hand still in his to gently pull a rope near the wall and at his signal, the idle music shifted into something more melodic, more haunting.

Your body went willingly. Your fingers itched to have him within their reach. His eyes alone could have haunted you for the rest of your days. He was stunning, his body, his voice, his music.

“...as long as you never touch the mask,” he repeated, stealing you back from your trance-like state.

He turned you sharply in his arms then, so sharply that the breath you inhaled caught in your throat like the pitiful squeak of a mouse when the trap snapped shut, now face to face with its master.

“Tell me you understand,” he demanded. And that fire was back, igniting the seriousness behind his eyes that you had almost forgotten when your bodies had been pressed tightly to one another.

Another small squeak of a sound pushed it's way from your lungs, this time intelligible word, just barely. “I understand.”

“Then I shall show you more music than you can fathom.”

“You live down here?” It was the best you could do. A poor attempt at conveying the wonder clouding your mind and perhaps your judgment as well.

It was a silly question, indeed, the answer written all over the comforts of the place, but even so, you watched him swallow and gleaned more from that action alone than you had anything else.

His answer displeased you as much as your question did him. Far too simple, far too easy. None of this was simple and none of it was easy.

“Did you build all of this?” you implored further, braving a single step in his direction toward his mounting confusion.

He blinked back something like startlement and swallowed, answering in an even more hushed affirmation.

You looked up at him again, bewildered.

“Where do you sleep?” you asked, a feeble attempt to ask the real question on your mind, which was much closer to ‘when do you sleep’, or maybe even ‘do you sleep’.

“You can sleep here tonight,” he said, gesturing to the bed with a quick glance and nothing more. “It is quite late.”

An armoire stood tall in the corner, dwarfed still by the sizeable comforts of the gilded swan

“It is heartbreaking, my angel,” you offered by way of explanation.

He cleared his throat and dropped his eyes. “You may call me Jacob. Please.”

“So my angel has a name.”

“We shall practice here from now on. Less distractions this way,” he all but mumbled.

“You will become the triumph of the Palais Garnier,” he continued, almost matter-of-factly like this was all some transaction he meant to sell you on. “But you will be my greatest triumph.”

“Why me?” you suddenly asked, struck by the thought that he could have chosen anyone over you, and perhaps all more fitting of his gifts and his focus.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why have you chosen to bestow this gift upon me?” you asked, watching him firmly with beseeching eyes.

“There is no one else on this earth but you.”

Utterly speechless in his hands, unable to move or think, unable to blink or even breathe, he broke the silence you were bound to.

“You need sleep.”

— 🌹 —

In two strides he was by the figurine clenching the cymbals together to stop the noisemaker in its place and when he turned back to you, he stood rigid and angry like a gargoyle.

“You must return,” he said brusquely. “They've lost their wits looking for you.”

You said nothing in fear of further jostling his anger, though when his eyes moved from your unflinching form and to the tray you had not so much as touched, his annoyance only grew.

“You did not eat,” he sighed, plainly vexed.

You shook your head, a light and hurried motion that startled you in its own uncertainty.

“If you are to be my visage, you'll need your strength.”

“My body and your voice,” you answered hoarsely, your voice having been coaxed from its reluctant hiding place.

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I could conjure up any hunger,” you tried this time, barely meeting his eyes, piercing as they were.

“You'll do as I say.”

“Eat. I will not ask again.”

His hands and body disappeared from you, as was their habit of doing, already gone back to his piano.

#ghost of the opera house #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #sam kiszka #danny wagner #greta van fleet #gvf #gvf fic #jake kiszka fic #josh kiszka fic #sam kiszka fic #danny wagner fic #greta van fic

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