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Erik doesn't often pause to reflect on the idiosyncrasies of his particular mind, because he suspects it would be a rather time consuming and ultimately useless exercise. But it occurs to him now that his attention has an odd tendency to change in radius depending on his mood. When he is feeling small and miserable- yes, it happens, despite the bulletproof facade he likes to present- or even just bored and lonely, he can feel everything, all the metal in the room, the energy pulses in every television, the magnetic pull of the earth itself. But when he's high on the crest of an emotion, at the end of a chase, at the top of the world, he feels himself focus inward, on a gun, on a bullet, on Charles's worried eyes.
“You know I can stop it!” he shouts, laughing. He can feel the exact measure of power it would take, the amount of kinetic energy he'd have to redirect. He can do it, he can stop bullets, he's fucking invincible. He can feel every different component of the gun, every piece of mechanical death. He thinks about the deafening sound of a shot, wonders whether it would be louder when he stopped the bullet frozen in the air. He's dealt with so many of these things over the last seventeen years, flung them out of the way, crumpled them into useless lumps of metal, turned them to point on their owners, but he's never done this, this personal, intimate thing. He's still focused on Charles's eyes. They're very blue. This is an observation he's made before, of course, but it interests him that even when that self-assured smugness is tinged by fear and desperation the pull remains, drawing him like a moth to a candle.
He is aware of everything at once, condensed into a single impression: the the sharp green smell of carefully manicured lawns, the smooth texture of the stones beneath his feet, the gray sweater so like and yet unlike a uniform. The bright sun. The gun and the bullets and the watch on Charles's wrist, the hands ticking, the faraway whisper of the radio dish, the tension in Charles's fingers as they caress the trigger.
Charles stares at him and for a moment Erik is actually discomforted. The world is still bright and sharp but Charles looks at him with such painful indecision and it throws Erik off balance, somehow. Then Charles moves, in one smooth fluid motion, and before Erik can even think, the gun is under Charles's chin.
The spinning world grinds to a halt, the force of it slamming into Erik, making him stumble a bit on the paved ground. He tries to say something but all he can do is stare back, eyes connecting to eyes like bar magnets on a table. I don't understand, his eyes say, and Charles smiles a little. “Go on,” he shouts, his accent as manicured as the lawns. “You said you could stop it, right?”
Now Erik is the one struggling for breath. “Don't be stupid, Charles. I don't want to play games right now.”
“Oh, neither do I, Erik, neither do I,” Charles says calmly through his weak smile, and he shifts his arm a little as if trying to find the perfect aim. “So I'm going to pull the trigger, and you're going to stop the bullet, right? Perfectly safe.”
There's a lump of fear coalescing at the pit of his stomach, and the most terrifying part is he's not really sure what it is he's afraid of. You've been reading my mind again, he wants to say.
“Yes, I have,” Charles says, as though he spoke aloud. “But only because you gave me permission, Erik, you have to believe that.” The gun arm is dropping, and Erik's eyes are following it. “But you can't tell me something you don't tell yourself.” The arm snaps back up, and Erik can't stop staring at the contrast, black metal against pale skin.
The sun is bright and distantly he can hear birds singing and he doesn't know what to do. He hasn't felt this terrifyingly lost since he was eleven years old.
Charles's finger tightens on the trigger- he feels it, he is the metal, he feels the kiss of that touch, gentle and soft and- the gun is in his hand, suddenly, or what's left of it, a crumpled sphere very tightly compressed, and Charles is bleeding, bright red blood dripping over his fingers. Erik drops the gun and takes Charles by the shoulders and pulls them together, tongues on teeth, sweat-drenched jumpsuits and skin and bones. He's pulling too hard, and Charles isn't fighting, and as soon as he realizes this he releases the other man, just stares at him, breathing hard, his limbs feeling weak, like they've been tied up and he's just regaining circulation. There's a blurred quality to his perception and he can somehow see himself, see his own face, and he knows that Charles is thinking that no one has ever looked this terrified before.
“Well,” he says. “That was- not entirely unexpected. I mean-”
“Forget it,” Erik replies, closing his eyes. He's startled to feel a gentle pressure on his own shoulder a moment later. Memories threaten to overwhelm him, casual touches over the past month, reassuring, congratulatory, on his shoulders, his chest, his back, safe, unremarkable touches. He wonders if maybe it was leading up to this all along. Charles is a far better manipulator than Erik ever imagined.
“Erik,” the psychic says. You can't tell me something you don't tell yourself, Erik remembers. “Finding Shaw doesn't have to be an end, my friend. Don't you see what I'm trying to do here, for the children, for all of us? None of this was meant to be an end.”
Erik opens his eyes. He takes the hand from his shoulder. Charles winces. His hand is cut and there's blood all over Erik's sweater. “I'm sorry.”
“It's nothing,” he says. He's still refusing to look away. He can see everything, everything, and still he looks, like Erik's the most interesting thing in the entire universe. How is anyone supposed to deal with that? “My friend,” he says again. “This could be a beginning.”
“You don't know what you're asking for,” Erik replies. He doesn't want to have this conversation, not here, not now. These words are meant to be spoken in the evening, over a chess set, with a certain amount of distance and shadows between them. The light is too bright out here, everything is too close and too immediate and he can't think of what he's saying before it comes out of his mouth, he can't figure out what he's going to think before Charles can see it in his head. This could be the last day before the world goes up in flames. Tomorrow he will find Shaw, and he will end all this. Or it'll be ended for him. He finds the thought strangely comforting, that maybe he won't be able to deflect all the knives and bullets and missiles of the world.
“I want you to try something new,” Charles says. He's wearing a little half smile. The thought wanders into Erik's head, that he'd quite like to stay here in this garden with Charles for a long time. He wouldn't even know where to start in making that happen, so instead he tries to fix the memory in his head, so that when it ends along with everything else, maybe that memory might endure, even when everything else comes crashing down.