Archive of Our Own

1.
Three days into their big Cross-Country Mutant-Gathering Adventure, Erik wakes in the middle of the night, floundering up from a dream of blood and screaming and crematorium smoke. Charles, in the hotel room's other bed, bolts upright in the same instant, and fights free of the covers, radiating terror.

"Erik! God, Erik—"

It hurts like fire to think of Charles seeing the kinds of things that visit Erik's dreams. In a sleep-scrambled panic of guilt, he rushes to Charles, who is shaking like a leaf, and puts his arms around him.

"I'm sorry, Charles, I'm so sorry. Shh, it's all right. Next time I'll try to keep my stupid nightmares to myself, it's all right, it's all right…"

Charles returns the embrace, but to his surprise Erik feels a breathless laugh, startled and a little sheepish, against his shoulder. "I appreciate the sentiment, my friend, but I actually came over here to comfort you."

Erik is stunned silent. He supposes that is what friends do, isn't it? Comfort each other? He can't remember it ever happening to him before. When he was a child, surely his parents... but he remembers so little of those days.

This is comforting, very much so, the warm weight of Charles against him, arms around him, his heartbeat echoing against Erik's own. In fact, the sense of safety and relief is overwhelming, and Erik blinks back tears. Charles is still shaking a little, and Erik shifts his grip to stroke his hair, trying to give back what he's getting. It feels awkward at first — and then deeply, alarmingly satisfying.

"Do you think you can sleep again?" Charles murmurs after a long, silent time.

"Yes," Erik says, surprised to find it true.

"We should both get some sleep, then. Come on." He leads Erik back to bed, and follows him under the covers. It's amazingly comforting having Charles beside him.

The rest of the trip, though they continue to request rooms with two beds, somehow they never get around to using more than one. And Erik doesn't have a single nightmare.

2.
Charles has led a soft life and it's easy to think he's a soft man, bookish and cheerful and clueless. It's only gradually that Erik sees the truth, that Charles is soft like water — edgeless and shapeless and defenseless, and capable of wearing gradually through the hardest stone, or crushing a town in an instant. Harmless and deadly as water — and, like water, utterly necessary for life.

3.
Their group training sessions get pretty rough-and-tumble sometimes, a chaotic storm of shouts and blows and explosions. Today Erik casually, instinctively steps in front of Charles, shielding him from a spray of superheated cement chips Alex has blasted their way, and then moves on with the lesson, only distantly aware that he's taken injury.

"It's nothing, Charles, it can wait," he says when he feels the tug at his sleeve. "Shift to the right, Alex! Banshee, you're losing too much altitude!"

"You haven't even looked at it, Erik."

Erik glances down, sees a surprisingly bloody gash across his arm, and just to be good-natured, suffers Charles to roll up his sleeve and start working on it with the little med-kit the overanxious  professor always carries to training. "It's not serious, Charles. I don't even feel it."

"Well, I feel it for both of us," Charles mutters. "Now hold still or I'll make sure you feel it, too."

4.
The very first time Erik kisses Charles, it's almost an accident. Charles, taking it into his head that a home-cooked meal would be good for the kids, had spent the majority of the afternoon in the kitchen, whence issued a varying stream of mutters, swears, yelps, and occasionally the shriek of the smoke alarm.

"This is impossible!" he snarls as Erik strolls in, hands in his pockets. "How does anyone ever do this? How has humanity not already starved itself into extinction? Look at this!"

"Oh, I'm looking," Erik says, valiantly — well, semi-valiantly — suppressing guffaws. The kitchen is a wreck, a flotilla of dirty spoons and bowls and measuring cups, reeking of burned bread, with raw egg slowly spreading across the floor, and a pot beginning — not, from the looks of things, for the first time — to boil over on the stove. With a hysterical squeak that nearly undoes Erik's composure, Charles rushes to turn off the burner.

"Raven!" Charles shouts. "Raven, will you call for a bloody pizza? I don't even know how to bloody do that!" He tears off his apron — specially purchased for the occasion — and throws it down on the floor. Right into the middle of the raw egg.

It's too much, Charles's face when he realizes what he's done is just too much, and Erik is laughing so hard he can barely remain standing. Charles crosses his arms and glares at him. Pouting.

"Oh, you are too adorable, my friend," Erik gasps, and in a sudden swell of affection, throws an arm around Charles's shoulders and kisses him right on the mouth.

There's no time for either of them to react, because Raven and the others come spilling in, laughing and shouting, but Charles gives him these scorching bright-eyed glances for the rest of the evening, while Erik slowly gives up on convincing himself that it wasn't anything just an impulsive - I don't know it wasn't anything, I just did it because— because he wanted to, he wanted to kiss Charles over and over in fact... 

Charles makes the kids help clean up the wreck of the kitchen, and when at last that's done they eagerly escape, and the moment he and Erik are alone Charles hops up to sit on the still-faintly-sticky counter, grabs Erik's shirtfront, and pulls him in for a real kiss, long and slow and amazing.

"Well," Erik says breathlessly when they at last come up for air, "it's a good thing you're pretty, since you can't cook."

Charles hits him in the chest but Erik just catches his hand and pulls him in for another kiss.

5.
Hank is often the last to bed, puttering around in the lab long into the night. Six days before Christmas, around one in the morning, he finally makes his way across the great, dim house, determined not to sleep in the lab again. He's completely forgotten the sprig of mistletoe Raven and Angel laughingly hung in the kitchen doorway, and he's certainly not expecting to see Charles and Erik there, half-lit by the kitchen nightlight, exchanging light, gentle, floating kisses with their arms around each other's waists. Hank is shocked, no getting around it — nothing in his upbringing has prepared him for a sight like this — but what sticks in his mind, as he slinks silently away, is that they both look so perfectly, beautifully, glowingly happy.

6.
Charles has the sweet tooth of a nine-year-old, inhaling all manner of candy and baked goods at any opportunity, but somehow he has never been introduced to real German chocolate until Erik digs some up for him. He samples this gift with an unrestrained enthusiasm bordering on the embarrassing, and is then determined to show Erik the extent of his gratitude, such that Erik knows he will never be able to taste German chocolate again without feeling like he's kissing Charles.

7.
Charles, collapsed across Erik's bare chest while they both catch their breath, props his chin on one hand and regards him with a dreamy smile. "Truth or dare."

"Truth," Erik says immediately. He's not physically up to any more dares at the moment.

"Who was your first?"

Blindsided, Erik stammers some sort of non-answer, and wonders if he's visibly blushing.

"Come on, Erik, tell me."

"No, I don't — ask me another. Two others, in exchange."

Charles cocks his head, concern flickering in his eyes. "Why don't you want to tell me? Was it traumatic? I can help with that--"

"No. No, not at all. I just…" Now he knows he's blushing. "You'll be awkward about it. Or laugh at me."

Charles presses a kiss to his chest. "I would never laugh at you, my friend."

"You're laughing now."

Eyes sparkling, Charles says, "Well, then you might as well tell me, hadn't you?"

"Fine." Erik sighs, threads his fingers through Charles's hair. "It was you, all right? You were my first."

Charles looks so blankly shocked for a moment that Erik almost laughs. 

"Not that I didn't come close a few times," he continues. "Girls in bars… somehow I never quite went through with it. I just… didn't want to." He angles his head forward to kiss Charles softly. "Saving myself for you, hm?"

"But — why didn't — how did — Erik, why didn't you tell me? I would've — I don't know--"

"You would have gotten self-conscious and ruined something that was already perfect." He kisses him again, more deeply, and pulls away only just far enough to speak. "Your turn. Truth or dare?"

"Dare," Charles says, and off they go again.

8.
It's not that Erik fears the rain. Ninety percent of the time, he doesn't regard it with any more interest than he would sun or snow. Then there's the other ten percent, when some trick of light or sound or atmosphere will plunge him back to 1944 and ankle-deep mud and his parents disappearing into the crowd of fellow doomed and metal gates screaming and twisting under the strength of his need.

He and Charles are running up the long driveway in a sudden afternoon thunderstorm, both soaked already, when one such flashback hits him. He stumbles, puts out an arm to prop himself against a tree, tries to disguise his sudden gasping panic as a mere desire to catch his breath — but, of course, good luck hiding something like that from Charles. And for once Charles's concerned touch on his arm doesn't help at all, because Charles is sodden and ragged and pale in the grey light, and for a moment it's entirely too easy to imagine him with a number inked on his arm. Erik grabs him, crushing him against his chest, and it has to have hurt but Charles doesn't let on, only returns the embrace as well as he can with his arms pinned, and murmurs, "You're safe, Erik, we're safe together, and I swear no one will ever take me away from you."

9.
When the remainder of the group get back from the beach, when Charles gets out of the hospital, the phone calls start. Always in the evening, about the time he would have (should have) been playing chess with Erik. The telephone rings and Charles answers it and there is no sound at all from the other end. A dial-tone, eventually, if Charles doesn't hang up. Every night for a week.

On the eighth night, Charles picks up the phone, listens to the burning twisting silence, and finally says, "Please come home, Erik."

The connection is immediately dropped, and the phone calls stop.

10.
All Hank can think, as he tries again to get the professor to swallow some water, is how unbearably stupid this is. A staph infection. After all the crazy unbelievable things Charles Xavier has survived--plane crashes and gunshot wounds and Cerebro overuse and training Alex Summers--it's a stupid staph infection that's going to kill him.

The fever just keeps climbing, leaving Charles pale and shivering, cheeks flaming unnaturally, eyes glazed, and he never sleeps and never quite wakes up, and on the fifth day he starts crying for Erik and Raven. Not just calling for them--crying, keening, the most desolate sound Hank has ever heard.

Hank finds the phone number Raven left him, the one he hasn't had the stomach to call in the three months since they left, and dials it. For some reason, he's not particularly surprised when it's Erik who answers.

"If you want to say goodbye," Hank says, "you'd better hurry."

*

The others all stare in confused, angry shock when Erik and Raven show up on the doorstep, but Hank completely ignores that, showing them to Charles's room without a word. Raven is in tears. Erik... somehow Erik's expression is worse than tears. He stands back, letting Raven speak to Charles first. Charles is so fever-dazed he barely seems to understand what's happening; he's clearly overjoyed to see Raven, but the animation and half-coherent conversation fade quickly into exhaustion.

"Let him rest," Erik says, and they all turn to leave the room--or so Hank thinks, until the door slams between them and Erik, the lock clicking with unnecessary force.

He doesn't let anyone in for three days, only permitting Hank to slide food and medication under the door. He doesn't seem aware of the camera and intercom Hank installed in the bedroom so he could monitor Charles's condition. Hank is the only one who knows how Erik spends those three days--under the covers with Charles, holding him through the tremors, stroking his face with a wet cloth, insisting he eat and drink. All his motions gentle and soft, but not his voice, his voice is a constant angry growling demand that Charles pull himself together, he has responsibilities, and Erik will never forgive him if he dies.

"You give me your word, right now," Erik snarls, "that you will never be so selfish as to let yourself die."

"Never," Charles says with a breathless, painful laugh. "Never, I give you my word."

On the fourth morning, Erik and Raven are gone, the door is unlocked, and Charles is really sleeping at last, the fever broken.

11.
They learn to function without each other, more or less. Erik doesn't sleep. Charles doesn't eat. Neither of them can stop feeling the cold, silent, empty place where the other used to be. Charles makes himself stronger, harder, able to accept the unacceptable and lead his students alone, make impossible decisions with no one to advise him, argue with him, reassure him. Erik, already strong and hard, becomes... brittle. Cold.

They see each other now and then, sometimes openly, sometimes not. Every glance, every touch, every word hurts unbearably, and it's the closest they come to feeling alive at all. 

Hostility between their two groups increases steadily as their philosophies solidify and become actions. Arguments become skirmishes, skirmishes become battles. Erik can feel what's happening to him, is relieved when it still hurts to see Charles because it means he can still feel something besides anger.

Five miserable years pass.

And then a little boy with a gift for fire and explosions loses his temper and burns a school building to the ground. No one is killed, for a miracle, but several children are in the hospital, and the town is in uproar. He and Charles get into town at almost the same time, as they often do when something like this makes the news, competing to be the one to train the child--in fact they share a cab from the airport, because why shouldn't they? But when they arrive, it's to find a mob rioting, dragging the weeping, screaming boy from his house. And three very important things happen in the space of fifteen minutes. 

The first is that when Erik and Charles intervene to stop the riot, they work together in utter seamless trust--and Erik finds himself sparing the lives of the rioters, however little they deserve it, simply to avoid hurting Charles. 

The second is that when a rioter with a gun opens fire on Erik from behind, Charles, trapped yards away in his wheelchair, does the only thing he can to protect Erik--seizes the mind of another rioter, and moves him into the path of the bullets instead.

Though it's a near thing, Erik deflects the bullets — he hardly needs to think about that process by now — and no one is hit by them after all. Charles looks thoroughly sickened with himself — in fact, he gets literally sick as soon as the crisis has passed — and Erik is not cruel enough to let on that to him, this breaking of high principles, this shameful act of moral grayness, is not only a gesture of love that shakes him to the core, but the first sign that any true compromise might be possible between them.

But the third thing is perhaps the most important. When the mob drags the child from the house, waving weapons and howling for blood, there are two women who follow, unarmed, fighting tooth and nail to defend the mutant boy. Both are killed.

One, they learn, was the boy's mother, and as one might expect, this strikes a chord for Erik. But the other woman is, in a way, more of an amazement to him; she was the boy's teacher, sharing no bond of blood and only a few months' acquaintance. Neither of them had any powers whatsoever.

Will you call them homo inferior? Charles asks him silently, and Erik cannot answer.

It's days before they have a chance to speak calmly and at any length with the boy and his father. Charles says "There is a safe place for your son, where he can learn to control his power, where he can meet others like him, like us," and Erik says, "Yes, Professor Xavier and I run a school for children in exactly this situation," which is a risky and rather an arrogant thing to say because what if Charles doesn't want him back?

But Charles only twitches slightly in surprise, carries on the conversation with half his mind, which this being the brilliant Charles Xavier is more than enough, and with the other half presses tentatively into Erik's mind, delving for the truth. Do you mean this Erik don't do this to me Erik

I do mean it, he answers, and it's the first right-feeling thing he's done in five years.

Forty-eight hours later, the four of them — Charles, Erik, the little firestarter, and Raven, who burst into tears of relief when Erik called to tell her what he was doing — arrive at the mansion, and Erik stumbles to a halt at the door. He doesn't know if this can work. He doesn't know whether the X-Men he abandoned can accept him back, or what he's going to do with the rest of his Brotherhood or his own now-confused ideals. He doesn't know.

But Charles turns back at the door to take his hand and whisper, "Welcome home, Erik," and he realizes he knows one thing.

No matter what happens now, the worst five years of his life are over.