Erik was not at all enjoying himself. Not only was he bared from the room, but Christine was allowed into the room and he was left with Raoul as they drank away at his liquor storage. They were at the manor for a few reasons. One, Erik did not want the baby to be born in the catacombs. Two, he was remiss to let anyone down there besides who already did know how, and Raoul of course, so a doctor was out of the question. And three, the support system there was like no others. He was comforted by Raoul and Philippe, who were both glad to accompany him during this process. Philippe said he'd gone through this many times with his father worrying over his siblings through the years. He didn't mention Raoul's birth where they'd lost their mother.

"You needn't pace a hole into my floors. They're older than the opera," Philippe said. He was grinning like a bobcat.

"Are they?" Raoul seemed intrigued, as if family history wasn't one his lessons as a child.

"Mhm, yes, but I suspect the intended recipient of the information does not care." Philippe snapped at Erik.

"Sorry," he muttered, the apology insincere.

"What is happening upstairs is beyond your control. There is a doctor, a midwife, and Christine all surrounding Arielette. She is a strong woman... and lucky she gained all that weight, really-"

"I haven't heard the end of it!" Erik moaned, finally taking a seat with the other men. "She is completely self conscience, and I never realized how much of a treasure she was without her fear... axing the whole seven-year-split fiasco."

The men hummed in agreement.

"Have you discussed names?" Raoul asked, then he perked up a bit. "Christine and I have done so despite not being engaged quite yet. I plan on asking her soon actually."

"Wow," Erik was actually responsive now, "You mean that?

Philippe scoffed. "He could have done it months ago. Heaven knows I won't need mother's ring."

"I, too, would have liked to see it happen earlier, but I understand the wait. As long as you're not pining after my wife, I have no problem with you at all." Erik smirked.

Raoul snarled at him, then returned back to his more happy conversation. "She wants to name a boy Gustave, after her father. He meant a lot to us both, so I thought it a fitting title for a young Vicomte."

"The moment you have that child, he will be a Comte, mind you. I will give the title the moment you have an heir," Philippe said.

"Lovely." The younger brother did not mean his words. "Would you stop shaking?"

"Like you shall be any better when your day comes?" Erik growled, hopping back up to appease the men around him. Though, whether they preferred him shaking or pacing, they would never know.

Christine had come down the stairs in a flurry of skirts, her smile broad and one of the most relieving sights Erik had ever thought he'd seen.

"Is everything okay?" He asked first and foremost.

"Just fine. You have a very handsome little boy."

Erik wasn't entirely convinced yet, so he swallowed his pride and motioned it his mask. "Is he..."

"No!" Christine giggled, "Of course not! He is strapping, I mean truly, for a baby."

Bursting past her, he ran up to the room he knew his wife to be in, no longer able to hold back.

"Like you would know what a baby looks like, my love," Raoul said with a laugh, though it did not last long when he saw the look on his partner's face.

"I'm hoping to find out."

And she turned on her heel and left the brothers, jaws slacked in a similar fashion, though Philippe was far more entertained by the encounter than Raoul was.

"And to think you thought she was a poor match for you."

He did not dignify his brother with a response, merely returning to the reading in his hands.

Erik tentatively entered the room where the doctor and midwife were chatting with his wife, all looking very tired.

"Erik!" Arielette was thrilled and she looked down at their hand-made creature... well, more than hands were involved, but if there was this much stress involved with one of these things, he did not want to partake in anymore actions that could cause a little one again.

He came over, unable to resist her call, and peered into the bundle, fingers threaded behind his back.

"He's perfect." It was all he could say. The boy was, and his eyes were still shut, which was expected. They would be blue until another color filled in, and he hoped beyond hope it was not his own yellow. It wouldn't do to mark the boy after thinking him perfect already.

"He is... and he needs a name."

"What about your father?" Erik offered. "A nice strong name."

Arielette bobbed her head side to side as she thought, then suddenly got excited. "Why don't you hold him? See if you come up with anything?"

Unsure of what to make of his wife's hand-out, Erik stepped back. She was going to let him hold the child? Years of being respected had not rutted out every crevice of doubt that had come from being in a Gypsy camp. He'd been allowed nowhere near the children. And while he did very much like them... he was terrified of hurting his own.

What if the child didn't like him or was scared of his visage? Then what?

"Just take him," Arielette ordered, and there was no more loitering.

Erik brought out his arms and listened dutifully to the instructions she gave about supporting the boy's head and not pressing down at all on the top, then he was suddenly holding the little thing in his arms.

He was... extremely light, and while the swaddle of a blanket was keeping him all tucked in there was still the identifiable feeling of limbs somewhere beneath it. Limbs that could break or get injured, Erik's mind was reeling with an immense amount of possibilities.

Christine walked over and gave off a small coo as she came around to look at the boy in Erik's arms.

He needed something musical, Erik determined firstly. It had to sound nice... maybe a name from an opera... Don Giovanni!

"Giovanni," Erik said proudly, imagining the strong man his son would come to be.

"Giovanni Charles Destler," Arielette said from her place on the bed. She looked as though she might end up dozing off, and Erik didn't mind in the slightest. Holding his son was not such a terrible thing.

"He's beautiful, you two," Christine said, and Erik turned to look at her, "He truly is."

It was obvious that Christine craved her own children, and little did she know that only a few weeks later Raoul would finally muster up the courage to propose to her.

They would elope, which was to no one's surprise, and honeymoon in Sweden for a month under the warm sun of June. Christine would come back, with a suspicion she might be having her own little one some day, to follow and be friends with Giovanni who grew twice his size by the time the couple arrived back to Paris.

"He's become strong!" Raoul cooed over his wife's god-son. Philippe had been named god-father, which he did not begrudge, especially since his brother would not be having any children of his own, unless an illegitimate heir popped up.

The entire family was amused to see Raoul's behavior about the boy.

"He is my son, of course," Erik said, proud as a peacock.

"Well, he's got your eyes, it's only a matter of time that he would be." Arielette knew the color was far more amber than her Erik's were, but they were stunning nonetheless.

"Come to your god-mother, Giovanni!" Christine snatched the boy from Raoul's hold and cradled him with a thrilling excitement. "Oh, I just cannot wait to have one anymore."

"We needn't one too soon," Raoul defended, seeming to like having his wife all to himself. Though, he did not know the secret Christine held.

"But would you be upset if we did?"

"Of course not!"

They all laughed, and it echoed around the house below the opera as though they were stood in the middle of a mountain range.

"Has your fear evened out yet, Arielette?" Christine asked out of the blue, her finger lost to the grip of a small infant.

"Yes, thank heavens! Not being so worried has taken a lot off my shoulders-"

"And put it all upon mine!" Erik finished for her, though he was smiling. It was no imposition for him to take back up the mantle of the worrier. In fact, he liked his wife being the level-headed one of both of them.

They spent the rest of the evening together, laughing, talking, discussing the things that had happened over the missing month where Raoul and Christine had spent time simply loving one-another.

Arielette could not have been more happy that Giovanni went down to bed so easily that night, especially since she'd wanted to talk to her husband alone.

"Can you believe how happy they are?"

"They better be," Erik replied, pulling her closer to him as they laid in their bed together. They had not been intimate in a while, but it wasn't necessary to either of them when their exhaustion and pleasure both came from simply raising their son.

"We did put a lot of work into those two."

"Well, not a lot, but it did take a good amount of planning to discover something that might make Raoul see Christine's worth. I am simply glad he was convinced finally. It is bizarre to me how little the two of you do actually have in common."

"Mhm," Arielette didn't care much else about speaking. His arms around her were wonderfully warm and comfortable.

"Would you have gone for him if I had stayed with Christine?"

Shocked he dare even ask, Arielette retorted with a similar question, "Would you have ever considered staying with her?"

He snorted, and she felt the breath on her head.

"No, not nearly. She was a wonderful woman, but really, she was so young. There was little to our relationship. Had you not come back into my life, I would have... possibly moved with her, grown with her, but I fear we would have become comfortable companions with regrets. What about Raoul? Hm? You cannot evade my horrible sense of self."

Arielette pushed her behind into Erik and felt the hum of his lungs, but she ignored the kiss he placed to her neck.

"I might have. He's very attractive, honestly. I always thought him handsome, but I loved you, always have. You captivated my heart that very evening in the tent where I first saw you preform."

"That was a long time ago..." Erik said nostalgically, though it was a cathartic type. He never talked about his time in the Gypsy camp any longer, hardly even the same man who had left it. There was confidence, a family, seven years of heartbreak, that had changed him... hardened him for real life and the people in it.

"It was," she agreed, turning around to place a hand on his unmasked features. "I remember your hesitance when you saw me, knowing you had to remove your mask in front of me. I probably looked so fragile to you, and yet you pried the damnable thing off anyways."

Arielette kissed him for good measure. It was slow and long, his hands drifting from her face to her chest and sides, anywhere he pleased, really. Yet, he continued their conversation eventually.

"You are right. I was... mortified you might faint. I've had men do it, you can only imagine what I thought I was about to unleash on you."

"And here we are... with me very much aroused by said face."

Erik grinned, she could feel it in their kiss.

"And here we are."

With a happy ending to their rather rocky beginning, the couple sealed the deal with a few more kisses that lingered into something more. The kind of something more that would one day lead into them having their second child in a few years.

The End....

This story will pick up again as Erik and Arielette's second child, Ariel Cressalynne, begins to make her way through adulthood in Flawless, this story's sequel.