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The sun was warm against his face. Erik's lap was a steady seat that Charles couldn't move from even if he wanted. He was getting increasingly worried about how he couldn’t feel anything below his waist and he was terrified to think of what that might mean. Instead of focusing on the despair that was none too quietly echoing through the emptiness in his mind, he stared up into a pair of eyes that had only the night before seemed so familiar, and now he barely recognized.
“We want the same things,” Erik said, pleaded, sounding as desperate as Charles felt. There was so much there, so much that echoed between his simple words, that Charles had to close his eyes and take a deep breath else the tears that had been burning his eyes spillover.
“My friend, I'm sorry,” Charles began, heart breaking into a million pieces right inside his chest until he felt hollowed out, “but we do not.”
Silence reigned between them, echoing painfully through the stilted tenseness that was laying over the entire beach. Charles had no idea what else to say and had no idea what Erik was thinking, something that hurt him more than anything else that had happened so far. Erik kept staring at him, eyes sparkling but hidden behind the wretched carving of the metal laid over his head and keeping him from his mind.
“But does that truly matter?” Erik's voice was gutted, broken apart and tearing Charles' chest open. Of course, it mattered. It had always mattered, would always matter, but Charles...well, Charles had been foolish enough to think that what they had mattered more.
“Be careful with what you're asking, Erik,” he warned, not sure if he would even be able to handle what it was that Erik was hinting at. They’d never had this conversation, and maybe they should have, since Charles certainly didn’t want to be having it now.
“I love you,” Erik stated, the words echoing through Charles' ears but still feeling incredibly hollow for the way he only heard them and couldn't feel them through the awareness of his mutation, which was truly making him feel deaf as Erik kept him locked away.
Charles threw his head back and laughed bitterly, unable to keep the noise in at the sheer audacity of Erik's words even as the tears he’d been holding back finally spilled over as he asked, “And who's the one keeping me out, Erik?”
For a single moment that felt like a terrifying stretch of hope-filled eternity, they stared at each other with an entire world stretched between their gazes. Then, before Charles could so much as blink, the helmet was sailing across the sand and then sailing over the water, flying so low that it was throwing off a spray as it zipped over the ocean. Charles gasped, watching with wide eyes and a terrifying sense of hope growing in his chest as the helmet got smaller and smaller in his view until it was completely out of sight. Only then was he able to draw his gaze away, and when he looked up Erik was breathless with sweat beading along his brow.
“Charles, I...” Erik trailed off, hand hovering over Charles' cheek but not yet touching, keeping only millimetres away. Charles pressed up into it, allowing Erik to cup his jaw and gently cradle his face. Now that his mind was back, Charles didn't waste a single second before he was diving in and parsing through the overwhelming fear Erik was feeling and the way it was twisting his thoughts up into something that Charles could hardly recognize.
I'm so sorry, Erik pressed at him, and it was perhaps one of the most genuine things that Charles had ever felt from him.
It's not alright, but I believe it will be, Charles told him, and then, because he wasn't sure what would happen if he didn't get help soon, pressed forward the numbness emitting from his legs and the pain in his lower back. He watched as Erik’s eyes widened and a wave of guilt and grief crashed through Erik's mind and lapped into his, making him gasp even as Erik filed it away to deal with later in the absolutely breathtaking way he was able to compartmentalize his feelings.
Erik snapped for the red-skinned mutant to get them to a hospital, and Charles focused on the endless presence of Erik’s thoughts as it swirled through his mind, doing his very best to believe everything would be alright.