to break your teeth on love

[misheard]

Title: to break your teeth on love
Fandom: Fate/Grand Order
Character(s): Ritsuka, Phantom of the Opera
Pairing(s): Ritsuka/Phantom of the Opera
Genre: Fluff
Word Count: 501
Rating: R
Warnings: None
Summary: There is music in the Phantom’s mouth.

Sometimes literally. Sometimes not.
Notes:

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There is music in the Phantom’s mouth.

Sometimes literally. When Ritsuka cannot sleep for nightmares, for fear of what the next day might bring, when he’s exhausted all other possible cures, he goes to Erik and asks him to sing him to sleep. It’s not fear that makes him reluctant to turn to Erik, nor is it worry that the Phantom minds the duty or thinks less of him for it: he knows that his Servant won’t hurt him, and it’s clear that Erik considers it a great and precious honor. It’s just regular old embarrassment about having to be sung to sleep like a child.

But Erik’s kisses are music too, the way they make Ritsuka’s heart pound in rhythm. Pressed to the corner of Ritsuka’s lips or the inside of Ritsuka’s wrist, they write songs with Ritsuka’s heart serving as the beat, badump, badump.

(He says that Ritsuka’s sighs and moans are music. Ritsuka doubts that, but he thinks the same of the Phantom’s gasps over that pounding rhythm. Maybe they’re both a little biased.)

Erik’s mouth is his greatest tool as a Servant, a weapon to use against their foes. Ritsuka feels taken apart, for certain, even if it’s not in the same way. Erik’s lips on the inside of his thighs dismantle all defenses and chase away all other lingering worries until all Ritsuka can think of is him.

He is a vision on his knees.

(Ritsuka thought to ask to take a picture, once, but he knows how that would be received. The Phantom only sees his own ugliness and assumes others see the same. He doesn’t understand that even his talons are beautiful in Ritsuka’s eyes.)

He is a greedy man - Chaotic Evil, reminds the part of Ritsuka that catalogs his Servants by trait and application - but he is greedy for the sounds Ritsuka makes, and Ritsuka cannot find it in himself to mind. If he had any complaint, it’s that he’d rather listen to Erik’s moans than his own. But even then, there is something to be sad for Erik’s humming around him driving him mad.

Without fail, when Ritsuka comes he tries to excuse himself, claiming he needs no repayment as long as his Christine is pleased. Without fail, Ritsuka tugs him back down to the bed.

His own mouth isn’t nearly so talented (no matter what Erik says), but he has the benefit of hands that don’t slice or scratch tender flesh. At most they draw half-circles on Erik’s back as Ritsuka takes him in, marks that will be healed even before they’re done.

Like this, he feels a part of Erik’s music. He feels a part of Erik, linked by more than mana and contract and circumstance. Like this, he feels complete. If this is what it means to be Christine, then he will gladly take the title.

But sometimes, after the hardest days when all Ritsuka wants is to be Christine instead of himself, the Phantom manages to whisper, “Ritsuka.”