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The first time he ever used Cerebro, Charles Xavier almost died.
Not that Charles himself would ever admit it, of course. But Erik knew better.
He’d tried to talk Charles out of the attempt—I know what it’s like to be a lab rat, Charles—without much success. This was Charles’s project, and Hank’s, and the two of them were convinced that Cerebro was going to change the world, was going to help bring together mutants from around the world in happy harmony. Never mind that no one actually knew what would happen, when they hooked Charles up to the machine and fed wires into his astonishing brain.
Erik had come up with every logical argument he could think of against the attempt, and somehow, in the face of Charles’s boundless enthusiasm for possibilities, he just couldn’t voice them. It would've been like kicking a puppy. Not that Erik had ever had a puppy, but he’d seen pictures.
He thought Charles might be a cocker spaniel. It was the floppy ears, mostly, and the expression.
As he watched Charles hop up onto the platform with rolled-up sleeves and a look-at-me! grin, he started to wonder whether perhaps he should have objected harder, after all.
“Right,” Charles said, “okay,” and Hank, looking nervous, lowered the helmet onto his head. “Is that all right, Professor?”
“Yes, Hank, it’s fantastic. I feel like a villain out of a science-fiction serial.” Charles lifted his hands and wiggled his fingers at Erik in what was presumably supposed to be some evil magical gesture. “See?”
“No.”
“Quit spoiling my fun, Erik.”
You could be about to turn your brain into oatmeal, you idiot! “It’s not supposed to be fun, Charles.”
“Oh, surely just a little fun wouldn’t hurt…Hank? Ready when you are.” Charles put both hands on the railing in front of him, and appeared to be bracing himself. Erik felt himself tense all over, in preparation, in sympathy.
“Okay,” Hank said, “here we go,” and started flipping switches.
Charles gasped, and his entire body went rigid, but for a minute nothing else happened. Erik leaned over to Hank, and whispered, “Is it working?”
“Oh, yes.” Hank looked awestruck. “See the readouts? He can sort through minds at an incredible rate…oh, look, there’s someone in San Francisco…and in…is that Africa? Charles, if you can hear me, can you be more precise about that last one? And slow down…”
Erik looked away from the readouts, back at Charles, and—“Hank? Stop it. Now.”
“What? But we’re learning so much—”
“He’s bleeding!” He was. A trickle of a nosebleed, not too bad yet but noticeable now, dripping out from under the helmet. Charles’s face, what Erik could see of it, looked very pale.
He edged closer. “Charles? Can you hear me? We’re going to stop now.”
No answer; but Charles swayed a little on his feet, as if exhausted, and Erik no longer gave a damn about Hank’s data or what they might be learning.
“Shut it off!” Little pops of stressed metal punctuated the order.
Hank, looking shocked, hit dials and disconnected wires and tugged the helmet off. Erik, despite being just on the other side of the railing, was barely in time to catch Charles as he slid bonelessly towards the floor.
“Charles! Wake up!”
There was a surprising amount of blood now. It painted Charles’s unmoving face in terrifying brightness. Erik yanked a strip of cloth off of his own sleeve and used it as a temporary measure. Was that a pulse? Surely it was.
“Charles?”
Nothing.
“Get someone! Get help!” he snapped at Hank.
“There is no help for this!” Hank sounded petrified. “No one’s ever done anything like this before!”
“Then make something up!” The metal walls creaked ominously. Hank’s eyes widened.
The tap of fingers against his hand snapped Erik’s attention away from Hank. He looked back down; Charles was looking up at him, eyes shockingly blue against white skin and—finally!—drying red blood. For a second Erik forgot how to breathe, out of sheer relief.
“Erik…” His voice was slightly muffled beneath cloth; Erik moved his hand, and determinedly kept it from shaking on the way. “…Erik, are you shouting at people on my behalf?”
“Yes!”
“Ah. Well, I appreciate the sentiment.” Charles sat up, wincing in pain; Erik kept an arm around his shoulders, in case he fell over or started spouting blood again. Charles leaned against him, seeming perfectly happy to accept the support.
“Professor, I’m so sorry—”
“Hank, it’s all right.” Charles rubbed his temple, gingerly. “Though I do feel as if my head might be about to explode.”
Hank went white.
“Oh, no, not literally! My apologies, Hank. I think it was just a problem of intensity, really. Not your fault at all; we couldn’t have known. If you can dial it back a bit, we can try again tomorrow.”
“You will not,” Erik stated, shocked. As if he, Erik, was going to let Charles turn himself into a martyr in pursuit of this…whatever it was. This cause, he supposed, that Charles believed in.
Well, he, Erik, believed in Charles. In the man who had saved his life, in all the ways that mattered. He would protect Charles, even from himself. Certainly someone had to, he thought, and eyed the bloody strip of cloth still clutched in his hand.
Charles looked from Erik to Hank, and back to Erik, and slumped back into Erik’s supporting arm. “The day after tomorrow, perhaps?”
Hank looked somewhat reassured by this enthusiasm. Erik just sighed.
It actually took Hank four days to get the machinery to a point where he felt comfortable with it, double-and triple-checking everything, and then doing it all again, just to be safe. Charles slept most of the first day, and then spent the time writing down and studying his notes on the experience, attempting better preparation. Erik surreptitiously made lists of medical facilities—organized variously by reputation, proximity, and how easily he could intimidate the staff into priority service—and went running frequently, in places where no one would notice tiny holes in the landscape about the size of ball bearings.
The second trial actually went much better, or seemed to. Charles seemed to be taking things more seriously; at least, he refrained from making jokes or supervillain hand gestures this time around.
He did lean over to Erik and murmur, “You know, I’m sure I’ll be fine. There’s really no need for you to stay, if you’d prefer to be somewhere else.”
To which Erik replied, “Really?” and refused to move away from his side. Charles shrugged, smiled, and then, very quietly, Erik heard, Thank you, my friend. He put one hand on the railing, and, after a minute, felt Charles move his own to lie next to it, not holding his hand, just touching, side by side.
After that, nothing, not even an impending apocalypse, could have dragged him away from that spot.
He took that little whisper of relief, the admission that Charles might need him, Erik, and tucked it up inside his heart, where it could keep that cold and lonely organ warm, sometimes, at night. He didn’t try to think about why it mattered so much.
But, despite Hank’s shaking hands and everyone’s fears, the second trial was a success. Three new mutants, precise locations; and, if Charles looked a bit drained afterwards, it was a far cry from seeing him on the floor again, bleeding.
He beamed at Hank, tiredly, after removing the helmet. “Well, that went brilliantly, I thought!”
“Excellent!” Hank looked thrilled, and relieved, in equal measure. “We have so much to go on, from here…new mutants, of course, but also some really fantastic data on your mutation itself, on the brainwaves…”
Erik tapped his fingertips against Charles’s. “Are you all right?”
“Hmm…bit of a headache, I think. Nothing an aspirin won’t cure.” Thank you for staying.
Are you saying you were actually worried?
Well…perhaps just a tiny bit. Charles looked a little rueful. I may have been overzealous the first time.
That’s one word for it. Charles’s headache had started knocking gently at Erik’s skull; he was, abruptly, annoyed that Charles could dismiss his own pain so lightly. “Should we go find you an aspirin?” Hank was ignoring them, engrossed in his data. “Or did you want to stay and discuss the results?”
“Ah…Hank, can that wait for morning? I am a bit tired.”
“What?” Hank looked up, startled, and waved them away.
Erik put a hand on Charles’s shoulder—it wasn’t out of any overwhelming desire to touch, he told himself; it was just that Charles might need the support—and steered them both toward painkillers and food.
And that was the first day.
Several days later, things did not seem to be going as well.
In some sort of misplaced team-building effort, Charles had decided that they should take turns being responsible for dinner. It was Alex’s night to cook, and so, after a failed attempt at spaghetti, take-out pizza had happened. The children welcomed this with enthusiasm. Erik studied the cacophony of mismatched toppings with suspicion, gave a mental shrug, and ate it anyway. He’d had worse.
Charles, he noticed, ate approximately three pieces of pineapple off of the piece Raven put in front of him, and seemed slightly distracted. It might just have been that he objected to pineapple, sausage, black olives, ham, and mushrooms, but somehow Erik didn’t think that was it, or at least not all of it. The Charles he was used to would have been in the middle of all the conversations, laughing and joking and excited about the world; this Charles was silent, and, if he managed to smile when spoken to, it seemed to be an effort. The world felt wrong, somehow. Off-kilter.
He’d ended up sitting two people away from Charles; it would be difficult to ask out loud without the children hearing, but…He made it as focused a thought as he could, and assumed his target could hear it easily from that close a distance. Are you all right?
Charles actually flinched, and dropped his fork. Erik blinked in surprise. He hadn’t been shouting that loudly, had he?
The conversation paused while everyone looked at Charles, who coughed in embarrassment. “I’m, er, fine. Just tired. Long day.”
“I can make tea, Professor,” Alex offered.
“No, you can’t. You set the spaghetti on fire. Who sets spaghetti on fire?”
“That was an accident, Sean!”
“So were last week’s tacos an accident too?”
“Er, no, thank you. I think I’ll just have an early night, actually. Please do carry on.” Charles cast a smile around the room, stood up, and headed out the door as the tidal wave of conversation resumed.
“—if this were the 24th century, we’d have food replicators. Like on Star Trek.”
“Could we sell Alex to a Klingon?”
“What’s a Klingon?”
“They kind of look like Hank.”
“I object to that characterization. The Klingon warriors and I have very different appearances. For instance…”
Erik frowned. Was he the only one who had noticed that Charles’s walk, on his way out, had been just a bit unsteady?
Raven was also eying the door, but when she saw Erik looking too, she shrugged. “He’s always been better at dealing with problems in private. When he comes back out, he’ll be fine. Trust me.”
“Hmm.” Maybe so, and Raven would probably know, being familiar with Charles’s longstanding habits, but…
But. Charles hadn’t eaten anything at dinner. Had he been at lunch? No. He had stopped by, but then headed off to his study, claiming he had work to do. And he’d only had tea at breakfast, but that had been because Alex had broken the back staircase and…Or was that the reason? In fact, Erik realized, he actually hadn’t seen Charles eat anything all week. And Charles hadn’t extended one of his laughing after-dinner invitations to chess, even though they’d left a game in progress several days before.
He’d thought Charles was just tired, or maybe he’d finally gotten sick of Erik’s company and was too tactful to say so outright. Erik wouldn’t have blamed him for that.
But… A little tendril of worry wormed its way up his spine. The fork twitched in his hand, and he set it down hastily.
“I think I will depart as well,” he announced to the table, and got up. Most of them didn’t notice, by now being deep in a discussion of the relative merits of Star Trek versus The Twilight Zone, but Raven glanced up, briefly, as he walked by her on the way out.
Charles’s rooms were easy to find; he’d been there enough in the past few weeks, even if he hadn’t automatically memorized the layout of the mansion and all available escape routes within a day of arrival. The chess pieces sat, frozen mid-game, on the tabletop; it was Charles’s turn, and he clearly hadn’t been feeling up to continuing.
Erik winced at the thought; he should have known Charles would never leave a game unfinished, especially when he was ahead. Normally, they were fairly evenly matched. Charles had a knack for gambits that appeared harmless but weren’t, though Erik was more ruthless and far more willing to sacrifice his own pieces for a winning move. He suspected that Charles felt sorry for the pawns.
“Charles?” The small sitting room was quiet and dark, all the heavy draperies pulled shut, but Erik was good at knowing the difference between quiet and empty. “Charles, where are you?”
There was a pause, and then, “In here.”
Erik frowned. It was Charles’s voice, and it was coming from the bedroom, but…
He ventured over to the bedroom door, feeling absurdly like a trespasser, and stuck his head inside. The first thing he saw was the bed, which loomed out of the darkness like some ancestral pillow-covered monstrosity, utterly alien to Erik’s own experience of beds. Entire families of Xaviers might have slept in it, possibly all at once.
He glanced around. Perhaps Charles had been eaten by a pillow. “Charles?”
“Over here.”
And then Erik actually saw him, and forgot all about the bed, the pillows, and the entire rest of the world.
He’d been easy to miss, sitting crumpled into the wall next to the door, as if he’d made it inside the room and couldn’t go any further. Erik had seen men look like that before. Most of them had never gotten up again.
He opened his eyes as Erik landed next to him. “Hello, Erik. Did you need something?”
It was such a Charles thing to say that all Erik could do was stare. He sat there on what looked like the brink of death, and still wanted to know what he could do for someone else? Half of Erik wanted to yell, Charles, you idiot! The other half agreed, but wanted to add I think I love you. Either, he decided, would be inappropriate in the circumstances.
“Are you all right?” Stupid. Obviously he wasn’t. “What happened?” Not perfect, but better.
“I, ah. I have a headache?”
Erik glared. His hand, the one that hadn’t automatically gone around Charles’s shoulders, bumped something on the floor. A bottle.
“Charles, how long have you been taking Vicodin?”
“It’s a very bad headache.”
“I can tell.” He wrapped both arms around Charles, as if that might keep him safe. Charles didn’t protest, even though he was now more or less sitting in Erik’s lap. “It’s from using Cerebro, isn’t it? How long has this been going on?”
“What day is it?”
Erik muttered profanities in German under his breath. “It’s Thursday, Charles. You started using Cerebro again on Sunday.”
“Then…Monday or Tuesday.” Little bits of hair tickled Erik’s face as Charles moved, shivered, leaned into Erik’s hold. “Tuesday, maybe. It took a day or two to…get this bad.”
Erik cursed again, quietly. He’d just realized that he couldn’t actually feel Charles in his head—not that Charles generally came in without permission, but he tended to radiate whatever emotions were predominant at the moment, an occupational hazard when associating with a happy telepath. Erik had gotten used to walking into a room after Charles, or just standing next to him, and experiencing a cheerful sense of welcome, and brightness, and optimism. Right now he had Charles in his arms, and there was nothing at all. He disliked that feeling intensely.
“Don’t worry,” Charles murmured. “It’s usually better by the morning.”
“Charles—” Erik hesitated, helplessly. It was all wrong; Charles shouldn’t have to reassure him. He should be the strong one. He knew how to hunt and kill a man, how to torture and stand up to torture, and how to bandage his own wounds when he was bleeding, but he didn’t know what to do here, or how to bandage Charles.
“You take care of everyone. All the children. And me. Who takes care of you?”
Charles actually managed a tiny smile. “I do that, too.”
“Not anymore.” Erik tightened his arms around thin shoulders. Too thin; Charles hadn’t been eating, he recalled with a pang. “Let me take you to bed, at least.”
Charles actually lifted his head to blink confusedly. “Did you just proposition me? Because at any other time I’d be thrilled, but at the moment…”
“Did I what?” Erik mentally reviewed his sentence. Oh. Damn the English and their confusing idiomatic language. “I meant I could put you in your bed. And then I could leave. Or stay. Or bring you food. Or threaten Hank with bodily harm on your behalf.” He was trying very hard not to think about the part when Charles had said he’d be thrilled to be propositioned by him, Erik. It was proving difficult.
“Then yes,” Charles sighed. “By all means…take me to bed. And try not to threaten Hank, Erik. He feels guilty enough as it is.”
No matter how guilty Hank felt, it was not nearly enough, in Erik’s opinion.
“Erik?”
“I promise not to threaten Hank,” Erik said obediently. After all, if he just happened to be standing in Hank’s lab at some point tomorrow, and happened to be staring silently at Hank while he worked, and Hank found this threatening, that was hardly Erik’s fault, was it?
He scooped Charles up—it was painfully easy—and made his way across the bedroom, to the acres of bed and the intimidating pillow mountain. Some of them had tassels. “Just push them onto the floor,” Charles murmured into his shoulder.
“Then you won’t have any floor.” He propped Charles up with one arm, and used the other to decimate the pillows and yank down the sheets. Silk, a tiny part of his brain noted. Charles had blue silk sheets. It was, in one very specific way, a good thing that Charles was unlikely to read his mind at that particular moment.
Charles made a small happy noise as he burrowed into the bed. “I think the Vicodin is working. Lovely stuff. Very useful.”
“How many of those are you taking?”
“Probably too many.”
“Charles.”
“Erik?”
“From now on I am keeping your Vicodin, all right?” Erik sat on the edge of the bed. It felt like clouds. Of course Charles would have a bed made out of clouds. Possibly there was a unicorn somewhere on one of the pillows now littering the floor.
No answer from the bed.
“Charles?”
“I’m here, I’m fine, I just…” Charles wriggled around to look at Erik. “I can still feel them, you know. They burn, in my head. Like thousands of little suns. Beautiful…”
“…and painful.” Like suns. Trust Charles to make pain into poetry.
“Yes. The closer they are, the more intense they feel.”
Erik flinched. Was he hurting Charles, just by being there? If Charles needed to be alone…
“You—do you want me to go? I could leave you alone. If that would help.”
“No.” Charles reached out, curled a hand around Erik’s wrist, loosely. Just barely touching, and Erik wondered if it hurt him to amplify the connection between them, but Charles didn’t seem to mind, or maybe he thought it was worth it. “No, stay. You feel…comforting.”
Of all the words that Erik Lehnsherr had ever heard applied to himself, comforting had never been one of them. Until now. “Then I will stay.” He kicked off his shoes and settled down next to Charles, attempting to relax. It wasn’t easy; in addition to worrying about Charles, he now had the feeling that he was about to be devoured by a feather mattress. “For as long as you find me... comforting.”
He thought he heard Charles say Always, but the word flickered by too quickly to catch, and when he looked, Charles’s eyes were closed.
And then they were open. “Oh, that hurts…”
He was hurting Charles. “I’m sorry—”
“It’s not you.” Charles tightened his fingers around Erik’s wrist. “Raven’s coming up here to check on me, that’s all. I can…feel her thinking about me.”
Erik moved to jump off the bed, already thinking of three ways he might deflect her, but Charles was still holding onto him. “Do you want me to—?”
“No, I can do it.” Charles shut his eyes again, sounding distracted. “She wouldn’t believe you anyway. Stubborn…” He paused, little lines of pain creeping across his face. Erik guessed that he was talking to Raven, and wondered how much it was costing him, just to reassure her. Stubborn, indeed.
He got his answer a second later, when Charles said, “There,” and then turned absolutely white, and his hand around Erik’s arm went limp.
“Charles!” Erik shook him, and then did it again. No. No, no, no.
“I’m awake, Erik, stop that…”
“You looked dead!” Erik switched to German, Polish, and Gaelic for a few sentences, because it was probably better that Charles didn’t understand those, and then back to English. “Are you trying to kill yourself? What would I—we—what would we do without you?”
“I’m guessing those weren’t nice things you were calling me…You would be all right.” Charles paused; words seemed to be tiring for him at the moment. “Sometimes I think… you’re the strongest of us all. Stronger than me, certainly.”
Erik shook his head, but he didn’t think Charles saw. I’m not. “You’re right. They weren’t nice things.”
And Charles laughed, and winced again. Erik, a little hesitantly, put one hand on his back and started rubbing in small circles. It was something he had a vague memory of his mother doing for him, at some hazy point when he’d been very young and in need of comfort. He attempted to emanate soothing emotions through each fingertip, in case it helped.
And it did seem to help, or maybe Charles had just exhausted himself—Erik himself felt somewhat exhausted, after the multiple times Charles had managed to terrify him in one evening—and some of the panic and tension fled the room, leaving behind stillness, and solace, and warmth.
“…Erik?”
“I thought you were asleep. Go back to sleep.”
“I am…” Charles leaned against him, into the touch of fingertips and bodies. “Just wanted to say thank you… ’s better with you here.”
“Thank me by being alive in the morning,” Erik muttered, and watched the movement of his own fingertips across Charles’s back, across the ridiculous fuzzy sweater that he hadn’t managed to take off, tracing lines and circles and swirled patterns like arcane symbols of possession, something mystical in the repetitive motion.
He was still sitting on the edge of the bed, and Charles’s bony shoulder was pressed up into his hip, and two of the pillows he hadn’t managed to toss away had wedged themselves behind his shoulder blades. A kind of tired peacefulness had settled into his bones, and he never wanted to move again.
Charles had, mercifully, gone to sleep now, the carvings and furrows of pain that had been etched around his eyes now softened and faded, but not entirely gone. It’s better with you here. Maybe that was still Charles thinking at him, or maybe it was just the memory, but either way, the idea felt unexpectedly warm inside Erik’s chest. He’d helped Charles. And he had done it, not with any of the human or superhuman skills he’d honed to deadly knifepoint over the years, but just by being there. By holding a hand, sitting beside him, touching. Being comforting.
Maybe this was what Charles had always meant, all those times he’d so irritatingly claimed to know that Erik could be a good man. Funny, that. Erik had never really cared what kind of man he was, until Charles dove into his life, pulled him out of the water, and demanded that he care about everything, not just himself but about the children sleeping downstairs in the mansion, about rights and responsibilities, about whether the world might be worth saving.
Charles was worth saving, always. Of this Erik was certain. He felt it in his bones, like the strongest magnetic pull of his life. Charles was his lodestone, his true north, and he didn’t mind it at all.
Charles frowned a little, in his sleep, and whimpered. Erik whispered, “Shh,” and went back to rubbing his back.
Being comforting, he thought, and shook his head. Only Charles would think that about him, Erik Lehnsherr, and mean it.
It took some time, but Charles finally seemed to relax in his sleep, looking more peaceful; it might be safe, Erik decided, for him to do the same. Only for an hour or so, of course. He wouldn’t allow himself any more than that. Charles might need something, or the children might wake up early and come looking for their professor, and it would be easiest for everyone if he managed to be out of Charles’s rooms as efficiently as possible.
But the thought of staying all night, of waking up next to Charles, was an unexpectedly perfect one.
No, he told himself, and almost meant it. One hour. Perhaps two. No more.
Erik carefully eased down into a horizontal position on the bed—Charles made a little protesting sound, but didn’t wake up—and then paused, confronting an unexpected dilemma: he had, in actual fact, never shared a bed with anyone, at least not for sleeping. Other things, certainly. But he had never quite trusted anyone enough to sleep soundly beside them.
What did one do with one’s limbs? Which way should he end up facing? What if they both moved around in their sleep? The bed was laughably enormous, and Charles wasn’t very big, but Erik knew himself to be a restless sleeper. What if he somehow managed to knock Charles off entirely? And what if that hurt Charles even more? What if this was, in fact, a terrible idea?
But at that point Charles made a small huffing sound in his sleep and stuck his foot in between Erik’s ankles, and any thoughts of attempting a panicked flight vanished forever. He’d just have to hold onto Charles all night; that was clearly the only reasonable solution.
He draped one arm over Charles, and one leg, for good measure. It was a surprisingly comfortable position.
Two hours, no more. Perhaps three. Certainly he’d be gone before morning, anyway.
He fell asleep still holding onto Charles, as tightly as he could, just in case.
Erik woke up startled, briefly unsure of his surroundings—when had he ever slept in what felt like marshmallows?—and then opened his eyes to see Charles Xavier looking back at him, and remembered all over again why he was there.
Good morning.
“It’s too early for you to be in my head, Charles.” He meant to sound much more stern, but somehow, faced with the impossibly blue eyes and the distressingly comfortable bed, Erik just couldn’t muster any real outrage over his current situation. He wondered what time it was; the heavy curtains were entirely effective at blocking whatever light might be lurking beyond them, and he suspected he’d slept later than he’d meant to.
“My apologies.” Charles didn’t sound terribly contrite, especially since he was smiling, but that was all right; it was difficult for Erik to be annoyed, after all, because Charles was smiling.
Also, he noted with some satisfaction, his plan of desperately-hold-on-to-Charles-while-sleeping had worked: they were both still on the bed, in one piece, and he even still had an arm resting on Charles’s waist. Excellent.
And if Charles was talking in his head… “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, yes, thank you.” Charles beamed at him, as perfectly cheerful as if they were looking at each other over toast and eggs instead of approximately two inches of pillow space. As if Erik’s hand on his waist didn’t bother him at all. Perhaps it didn’t, which was entirely unfair. “Spending the night with you helped, I think. Perhaps we should try sleeping together more often.”
Erik choked on air. “Charles…do you actually hear the words that come out of your mouth? Ever?”
“What—oh. Oh. Yes, well…” Charles somehow managed to both grin and blush at the same time. Erik watched, fascinated. “We could certainly try that too, if you’d like. In the interests of science. And my health.”
“That is the single worst pick-up line I have ever heard,” Erik informed him, and lunged across the inches between them to capture Charles’s lips with his own.
They tasted like soft skin and early morning and cheerfulness and Charles, like the best thing he’d ever done in his life.
He could hear Charles laughing in his head like sunshine, laughing and kissing him back, open and warm and brilliant, wanting everything Erik had to give him and giving everything he had in return.
If bad pick-up lines are going to work this well, I’m sure I can come up with more.
“I know you can,” Erik retorted, speaking into the curve of Charles’s mouth. “I’ve heard you try to flirt. It’s pathetic.”
Says the person—mmm, there—who was clutching me like an octopus when I awakened!
That was for your safety. Erik’s mouth was occupied in tasting all the delicate stretches of pale skin that he could find. He should have known Charles would be talkative in bed. With anyone else, it might have bothered him, especially if he was expected to respond. With Charles, it was just part of the sheer delight of it all, spilling out in every imaginable way. You might have fallen out of the bed. I had to make sure you were all right.
Oh, I see. Not at all because you wanted to wake up with me in your arms in the morning.
I admit that was an unexpected bonus—“Did you say morning?” Erik bolted upright and blinked at the clock. Definitely morning. Late morning.
Hey!
“You didn’t tell me it was ten in the morning, Charles!”
“Was I supposed to?” Charles looked unfairly adorable when confused, Erik reflected. It was some sort of extra mutant ability; there was no other good explanation for it. “Is there something important about ten in the morning?”
“Well…no, I just…Everyone else will be awake!”
Charles flopped back down on the pillows. “Is that really something you want to spend time being worried about, Erik?"”
Erik paused. Thought it over. No, he supposed not.
“Besides, half of them are convinced we’re sleeping together anyway. Probably most of them, considering that Raven went downstairs and told everyone you were staying up here last night.”
“You knew she would do that, didn’t you?” It was an unfair accusation; Charles probably wasn’t that conniving. Probably.
He heard Charles sigh. “I was in quite a lot of pain, if you recall. I actually wasn’t thinking much beyond getting her to believe that I’d be fine. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have told her you’d already cured me with your exceptional lovemaking prowess.”
Erik froze, horrified. And then Charles, who had no poker face at all, burst out laughing. After a minute Erik reluctantly joined in.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You should have seen your face. The mental image accompanying that comment was so ludicrous that Erik snorted.
I have never looked like that in my life.
Well…but in all seriousness, I am sorry if I made you stay, or…or do anything you didn’t want to. You did want to stay with me, right?
That last line was laced with such surprising wistfulness that Erik leaned over to kiss him again, just to make it go away.
“Of course I wanted to stay with you. I have wanted to stay with you.” He watched Charles’s face light up at that, and felt it, too, warmth running through his veins, under his skin, into his heart. “It was just…” He looked down at Charles’s fingers, long and slim and graceful against Erik’s own large hands, etched with old and faded scars. “I had never spent the night with anyone. Never shared a bed. I had never wanted to…” Until you. And it scared me, how much I wanted to stay here with you.
He knew that Charles heard everything, all the words he said and all the words he did not say, and this time it was Charles who sat up and leaned forward and tugged him into a kiss.
Stay as long as you want.
Always.
Then stay always. We can get rid of your bed, and you can sleep in here with me. For my health, of course.
Of course. It was an easy answer, and Erik had always distrusted easy answers with every angry fiber of his being. But this one…
This one might actually be just that simple. Although we’re not sharing a bed with five hundred pillows, you realize. Why do you need so many pillows?
They’re decorative!
Erik planned to answer that nonsensical statement with the derision it deserved, but then his stomach growled, and Charles started laughing into his shoulder. He supposed they had missed breakfast, and he’d only had one piece of the overly decorated pizza the night before.
“Yes, well, don’t tell me you aren’t hungry. When was the last time you ate? Tea,” he added, anticipating the response, “does not count.”
“Ah…”
“I can make you breakfast.” Dear G-d, was this what being in love did to a person? He was becoming domestic. And he didn’t even mind.
“Well…all right. But…”
“Are you going to say you’re not hungry?” Charles, you ARE all right, aren’t you?
I’m fine! I’m…mostly fine.
“Charles…”
“It’s nothing, it’s just…oh, it’s probably easier if I show you.” And abruptly Erik found himself inside Charles’s head, borrowing Charles’s sensations and perspectives. It felt decidedly odd, like having phantom limbs, but not entirely unpleasant.
See? There. And Erik could feel it: not even a real headache, but the ghost of one, like a still-healing but mostly-faded bruise at the back of his brain. It really only hurts if I poke it, like this...
Charles! Stop that.
They surfaced out of Charles’s head in a smooth movement, quick and elegant; Charles clearly had lost none of his control. “See? Mostly fine.”
“Hmm.”
“I believe you were promising me breakfast. And I’ll have you know that I don’t share my bed for anything less than French toast.”
Erik raised an eyebrow at him. “Not what I’ve heard.”
“I’m insulted. Orange juice, at least.” Charles glanced down, fiddled with an unraveling thread on the fuzzy sweater that he was still wearing, because they hadn’t managed to do anything other than fall into bed the night before, and wake up together in the morning. Actually…I never brought anyone home, you see. So I’ve never shared this particular bed with anyone else. Just you.
Erik, who had been attempting to think of some clever remark about breakfast foods, found himself abruptly disarmed by that last sentence, by the simple honesty offered as easily as, well, orange juice. He watched Charles’s bent head as he picked at the fraying sleeve, worrying the thread loose like it was the only important thing in the room, and the only thought he had space for was, simply, I love you.
Charles looked up, and grinned. Oh, good!
Oh, GOOD?! One of the pillows on the floor had metallic embroidery; Erik could feel it…
It hit Charles in the stomach with an entirely satisfying thwap.
“Oof!” Erik! You know what I mean!
“No, I do not!”
Thwap. This time it bounced off of Charles's shoulder.
Ow! Erik, you KNOW I love you, I haven’t exactly been subtle about it, have I? And abruptly he did know: unconditional acceptance, absolute trust, sheer joy, surprising desire, a kaleidoscope of memories of Erik himself, laughing, smiling, wounded, everything they each were and had been and might be, all of that wrapped up in yes yes I love you and flung out in exuberant display for Erik to share.
I did nearly everything except strip naked and hide in your bed, Charles observed, and the image accompanying that was enough to make Erik drop the pillow.
Ha! My turn.
“You really don’t want to do that,” Erik informed him, and used the pillow to anchor Charles’s wrists to the bed, something he had the impression that Charles was totally fine with.
I’d be more fine if you’d kiss me, Charles said hopefully, and then stopped talking, possibly because Erik was doing his best to be distracting. However, one important thing still had to be said.
Charles?
Hmm?
I’ve changed my mind. You can keep some of the pillows.
well I talked about it
put it on
never was it true
but it’s you
I fell into