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"I love your mind," Charles blurts out one day.
They're lying in bed. It's a warm morning—the sort that promises a day that will grow hotter still. The ceiling fan is on, whirring uselessly above them, doing nothing but stir the hot, soupy air.
He could blame his slip on the heat, maybe. But it was more likely the way that Erik had been looking at him as he traced a hand over Charles' shoulder, eyes running sleepily over the freckles there. Erik’s mind had been quiet, organized—steady as warm summer earth. As always, it had drawn Charles in. The words had just fallen out.
Erik's hand pauses on his shoulder. Then it slips away; he tucks his hand under his cheek as he looks up at Charles, curious. "What do you mean by that?"
"It's..."
He feels his cheeks flush. Thirty-one years old, and he's blushing in bed.
This line of questioning feels more intimate than sex, though. Telepathy is like that—beyond everything.
Charles rolls over so he's lying on his back. The tip of his bare shoulder wedges into Erik's ribs. Erik reaches out with his hand again and covers the ball of his shoulder with his palm. Rubs lightly. Erik has calluses that drag over his skin. Charles resists the urge to shiver.
"Sometimes minds are exhausting," he says at first. An understatement.
"...The ones that are calm are rare. You're quiet," he tells Erik, turning his cheek into the pillow so that they can look eye to eye. "But I always know you're there. It's rather nice."
Amused, Erik says, "So you’re saying I have a boring mind."
Charles only scoffs.
A mourning dove is calling outside their window. Charles listens to it. He watches the sun slide in slow golden shafts through the curtains and creep over their blankets. On the sidewalk outside, the mailman is thinking about his pregnant wife; the woman next door has just woken up; a dog slinks down the street, scenting the air.
"What's it like?" To hear things, goes unsaid. But Charles is a telepath, after all.
"I'd suppose it's a bit like how you sense metal," Charles muses. He closes his eyes briefly; the woman next door has stubbed her toe, and her flare of shock sends a little ricochet through his brain. "It never goes away. When I was a child, I used to think I was insane."
Erik is used to difficult childhoods. His mind doesn't even twitch. "And now?"
"Now I'm better at tuning it all out." He lets go of the mailman, the dog, the woman next door, the people rising from their beds all along the block. Erik is beside him. That's the only thing that matters.
Erik hums lightly in acknowledgment. Then he says, voice low, "Do you know what your mind feels like?"
Charles raises an eyebrow. He's a bit startled. No one's asked him that before. Then again, up until recently, the only person who's known about his telepathy at all is Raven, and he'd kept out of her mind as best he could.
There's a small, lovely thing blooming inside of him. It coils upward even as he shakes his head. "No. But not like too much of an intrusion, I'd hope."
“It doesn’t.” Erik is looking at him in that sharp, intense way he has—like Charles is the only thing in his field of vision. A sly look crosses his face. “Do you want to know?”
Charles nods.
"It feels like this," Erik says, and then he raises himself on one elbow, presses Charles into the sheets, and kisses him, soft and sure and gentle.
The blooming thing in his chest grows and grows. Charles smiles into Erik's mouth; he can't help it. "Oh, like this, hmm? Really."
"What—need a longer demonstration?" Erik's mind is bright with a strange, tender emotion that Charles is too afraid to name.
Tentatively, he sends, Perhaps I might.
A moment passes.
Then Erik smiles, leans down, and kisses him again.
Their morning passes sweet and slow.