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The study was quiet, cold, empty. There was a stillness to the air; one that allowed dark shadows to crawl across the floors and ceilings, closer and closer until one felt as though they were swimming in a sea of darkness. The lone shining desk lamp made a valiant attempt to ward them off, but there was only so much one small light could do.
It felt an awful lot like Charles Xavier’s mind as of late.
Since Erik had left—eight months, one week, two days, and, Charles checked his watch, six hours ago—nothing had been the same. Every day, it seemed, Charles was less and less present than the last. The students, the teachers, they all needed him, yet he found himself hardly able to focus. Minutes turned into hours turned into days in the blink of an eye. If it wasn’t for the counting, the god-forsaken counting of every moment without Erik, he wouldn’t even know what month it was.
He was sick of it.
He couldn’t stop.
It was late, he should be asleep by now. At 9 A.M. he would have another class to teach. Running a school was still so new for him. Years ago he might have laughed at the prospect of struggling to get out of bed in time to teach a morning biology class to a room full of young mutants. Now, it was a reality, and one he rather liked. After all, it gave him a reason to get out of bed in the first place.
But tonight he couldn’t sleep. Most nights, in fact; this wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence. Most nights he would sit at his desk in his study, busying himself with grading tests, reading research papers, or otherwise trying to fill his mind until he either tired and went to bed, or until he found himself tearfully drinking a bottle of whatever was in his cabinet, reminiscing about the past. He tried to avoid the latter outcome as much as he could, but then he would read something he knew would have interested Erik, or see a doodle on a student’s test that seemed like something Raven would have drawn, and he would be left with no choice.
Determined to not let this be one of those nights, he decided to busy himself with tidying up instead. Stacks of books haphazardly placed on his desk were placed back in their proper shelves and crumpled-up papers he had never bothered to toss in the bin were thrown away. Anything to make his rather disheveled-looking living quarters look even the slightest bit presentable.
He had actually become quite engrossed in the task; more so than he expected. He was, then, understandably startled when a knock sounded at his door. As he wheeled over to answer it, he thought about who it might be. Potentially one of the younger students? So many of them were homesick, and would frequently come to see if he was awake when they had nightmares. It was sweet that in just a few short weeks they had already grown to trust him so much, and he would be lying if he said it wasn’t nice to feel needed.
He unlocked the door, easing it open and peeking behind it as he did so. Instead of being met with the pouting face of a small child, he was met with quite a different view.
“Hank?” Charles lifted his gaze from Hank’s stomach—the supposed height of a small child—to his face. “Is something the matter?”
“I was just coming to ask you the same thing,” Hank informed him.
“Oh, well, I can assure you I’m quite alright,” Charles opened the door further and moved back. “Please, come in.”
Hank passed him, making his way into the study and taking stock of the room before turning back to Charles. “Wow, never thought I’d see it,” he smiled playfully. “You’re cleaning?”
Charles rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help a grin himself. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I may as well be productive.”
At Charles’s admission of sleeplessness, Hank’s face soured a bit. “You’re not…?” He hesitantly glanced around, looking for any signs of Charles being less than sober. It wouldn’t have been the first time Hank had stumbled across him on a bad night.
“No, no,” Charles reassured, cringing a little at the feeling of needing to be monitored. “Tonight’s alright. Really, I’m okay.”
Hank looked unconvinced but didn’t press any further. “Well, if you’d like some company, or maybe just to get out a bit, I have to run some errands. Would you want to come with me?”
“Hank, it’s nearly midnight,” Charles pointed out in disbelief. “What in god’s name are you doing?”
“What can I say? I’m, uh,” Hank rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish laugh. “I’m a busy guy.”
Charles hummed in agreement, deciding to play along. “You certainly must be if this can’t wait until morning.”
With a quick glance back at the door to make sure it was closed, Hank lowered his voice. “Okay, I have a surprise for the students that I’ve been working on. I’m a little excited about it.”
“Are you now?”
“I am. And no looking,” Hank tapped his temple. “I said surprise for a reason.”
That made Charles smile. “I would never dream of it.” Hank pursed his lips. ”Okay, I would dream of it, I’m very interested now. But I won’t, I promise.”
“Good,” Hank smiled warmly. “So what do you say?”
Charles thought about it for a moment. There was one place he had been thinking about more often recently, and while it would most likely be on Hank’s way, and would certainly be open…
“Do you think you could drop me off somewhere and pick me up when you’re finished?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, of course,” Hank clearly hadn’t expected such a request but seemed happy to oblige. “Where?”
Charles began to make his way to the door again. “Just a coffee shop.”
It was Hank’s turn to be skeptical. “A coffee shop at midnight?”
“You’re going to a hardware store at this hour, you’re hardly in a position to judge.”
“I’m not judging,” Hank clarified as he followed Charles out of the study. “I just know that my place is open. Are there really any coffee shops open right now?”
Charles hesitated. He wasn’t even sure why he had tried to lie to Hank; he would have to give him the address after all. “It’s… It's not a coffee shop,” he fessed up, feeling rather embarrassed about the whole thing. “Do you remember that bar-”
“The one you and Erik used to go to.” Hank finished, stopping to face Charles.
Charles tried not to flinch at the disappointment in his words. “Yes. That’s the one.”
“Are you really sure about this, Charles?” It was clear Hank wasn’t thrilled at the prospect. Just as Charles had feared; Hank was worried for him. Or perhaps, he thought, Hank was worried for Charles’ students. “I thought you said tonight wasn’t a bad night.”
“I know what I said,” Charles sighed. “Just one drink, alright? I have to come home with you after all, don’t I?”
Being reminded of the control he had over the situation seemed to ease Hank’s mind slightly. “Fine. But I’m not taking my time for you.”
“Alright, that’s fair.”
With that, the pair continued down the hall and out of the school. They made their way to the garage out back, finding Hank’s car easily among the handful of other teacher’s vehicles. As Hank opened the passenger door, Charles noticed the slight grimace on his face.
He chose to ignore it.
“So, this project,” Charles started the moment Hank got in the car himself, not allowing him a chance to question Charles again. “You can’t tell me anything about it? Nothing at all?”
Hank laughed a bit and shook his head. “You’ll have to wait like everyone else.”
“Are you sure? I won’t tattle, I promise,” Charles teased as the car pulled out of the garage.
“You’re even worse than the students. You’ve probably already looked by now anyway.”
Charles gasped in mock offense. “You really think so little of me,” he tutted. “Shame on you.”
With the sound of their shared giggles in his ears, Charles almost felt normal again. Almost. There was still something so off about it all, like returning to a place from your childhood as an adult. Even if everything was the same, which it most certainly wasn’t, you had changed, and that was enough. You would never recapture those memories because you would never again be the same person you were when you made them.
It was clear to anyone who knew Charles that he wasn’t the same person anymore. Not since his whole world had walked away; something he could no longer do himself.
Hank turned on the radio, the soft crackle of some song Charles didn’t know the name of filling the silence. He slumped against the car door, eyes flicking over the scenery outside, watching as trees became houses became proper buildings. It was always easy being with Hank. The need to fill every silence with pleasantries melted away, and Charles felt as though he could truly relax. He was grateful for Hank in a way he thought his friend might never understand. Hank was the last constant left in his life.
They pulled up to the bar and Hank parked the car on the street out in front. He made no move to get out of the car at first, forcing Charles to turn toward him. “No, you won’t change my mind.” Hank opened his mouth to speak, but Charles cut him off. “And no, I didn’t just read yours.”
Hank nodded without a word and slipped out of the car to grab Charles’s wheelchair. He opened the passenger door and waited for Charles to get settled. “Just take care of yourself in there, okay?” Hank asked.
Charles nodded solemnly and reached out to pat him on the arm. “I will, I promise.”
He turned toward the bar, hearing Hank’s car door shut behind him, and let himself inside. The bar was just the same as he remembered; a little hole in the wall with a long counter that spanned the length of the room, a handful of tables and chairs, and not much else. It had been almost a year since he had been here; the last time he had come was with Erik. They had sat at the little table in the back—their favorite spot due to its seclusion from the rest of the room—and had spent the night just drinking and talking. He could still see the dim yellow overhead lights twinkling in Erik’s eyes—he stopped the thought before it progressed any further. He had a promise to keep.
The old wooden floorboards creaked as he wheeled across them and up to the counter. He sat straight in his seat, stretching a bit to speak to the bartender. A beer was all he ordered, as while he would have liked to order something stronger, he kept Hank’s worry in the back of his mind.
With his drink settled comfortably in his cup holder, he made his way further into the bar, aiming for his and Erik’s old table. He told himself that the only reason for it was due to the privacy the table offered.
He fervently ignored the part of him that longed to round the corner and be greeted by Erik’s sharp smile and welcoming voice.
When he finally did pass the counter, his spirits fell a little. Someone was already sitting at the table, their head hung low as they fiddled with the glass in their hand. Hearing his approach, they looked up.
It was Erik.
Their eyes locked, and Charles felt as though the world had stopped around him. He had been so lost in his own head and his fantasy of having Erik again that he had somehow missed the sound of his mind not ten feet away.
“Charles?” Erik straightened up after what felt like an eternity of being frozen. He looked tired, a bit disheveled, and just as beautiful as Charles remembered.
It took Charles a moment to catch his breath. His hands hesitated over the hand-rims of his wheelchair; every fiber of his being wanted to go to Erik, to grab him into a hug and scream at him until Charles’s vocal cords gave out. Instead, he stared forward like a deer in headlights.
“What are you doing here?” He managed out weakly, his voice so soft he thought Erik may not have heard him at first.
“What are you doing here?”
“I only live ten minutes away. Erik, you left. On some, some fucking beach in Cuba you left me. ” The softness in Charles’s tone had long since passed as fury rose like bile in his throat. Now he fought to stay quiet and not cause a scene amongst the few other patrons scattered about. He finally pushed forward a few feet, coming to a stop near enough to Erik to be heard even as his words dipped into a low hiss. “You made your choice, and I made mine. So I think it’s fair that I ask you; why are you here?”
I missed you , the thought was so loud that it hit Charles like a ton of bricks. It was a slip though, he knew it was. Before he could even attempt to hear anything else, Erik’s mind re-cemented the walls he had fought so hard to build in the first place. Charles could go digging if he wanted to, Erik wasn’t that strong, but he didn’t. He was furious with Erik, sick to his stomach from how overwhelming the feelings of rage, confusion, abandonment were. He wanted nothing to do with Erik’s mind, not anymore.
It had nothing to do with the fact that he had promised Erik he would never look without permission.
“I’ve had some… setbacks,” was what Erik said aloud. “I just needed somewhere familiar to regroup.”
Charles all but rolled his eyes. “You really expect me to believe that?”
“What, did you think I came here for you?” Erik asked bitterly. “Don’t be so self-centered, Charles. I would have figured you had better things to do on a school night” —he spit the words like venom—”than to be out drinking. Seems I was wrong.”
Charles threw up his hands in exasperation. He should have left right then and there; turned around and gone outside. It would have been simple enough to give the bartender a description of Hank and ask them to tell him that Charles had hailed a taxi to get home.
It was wishful thinking, though. A fantasy to run away from his problems. He knew he was stuck here for at least the next half-hour or so, and he knew that sitting in a room with Erik so close was an even worse option than facing him head-on.
“Well, you got me,” Charles bit back sarcastically. “I have nothing better to be doing than sitting here talking to you.”
Seeing that Charles had no intention of leaving, Erik blinked uncertainly at him. He glanced between Charles and the empty seat across from him. Wordlessly, he got up and pressed past Charles, moving the chair out of the way so that Charles could sit at the table.
“Well?” Erik prompted as Charles settled in and placed his beer atop the small wooden table. “Go ahead, old friend. We both know you’ve got so much you want to say.”
Charles ran a hand up the side of his bottle absentmindedly, debating if he even wanted to open it. Suddenly it seemed as though the alcohol wasn’t why he had come here after all. In any case, the thought of drinking it made him feel sick.
“For eight months, I’ve thought about this,” Charles licked his lips unsteadily, refusing to look up from the bottle. “Sometimes I’ve thought that I might scream at you; that you took my legs, that you took my sister, that you took-” The words stuck in his throat. He had never spoken them aloud before. “That you took the man I loved.”
“Other times, I’ve thought I would just leave,” Charles shook his head as tears began to sting his eyes. “I would just leave, and say nothing to you; nothing at all. I would leave you to suffer alone.”
Finally, his eyes met Erik’s, and oh, how he wished they hadn’t. Reflected in Erik’s eyes was everything he felt; shock, sorrow, regret, love. “Clearly, I’ve done neither of those.”
“What will you do then?” Erik’s voice was low, hoarse, welcoming. It was an open invitation; whatever Charles threw at him, he would take.
“Offer you a chance to come home.”
Erik's eyes widened, his lips parting ever so slightly in surprise. “Charles, I”—a tear escaped his eye—”I can’t. You said it yourself, I made my choice.”
Charles wiped back his own tears with a poorly concealed sniffle. “And?”
Erik blinked in confusion. “...And?”
“Did you get what you wanted?”
A pause.
“What difference does it make?”
“I would say it makes quite a difference,” Charles replied grimly, finally opening his beer. “Wouldn’t you?”
Erik glanced toward the bar, down at the table, at the wall; anywhere but Charles. He took a sip from his own drink, his glass hitting the table just a bit too hard as he set it down. “How’s the school?”
It was difficult to swallow the lump in his throat, but Charles managed. If this was how Erik wanted to be—cold, unfamiliar, casual even—Charles could do that. Mind you, he didn’t want to. What he wanted to do was to demand Erik answer his question; to make him admit to Charles’s face that it was worth leaving him, that he didn’t regret it. Who gave a shit about the school when Charles, frustrated, scared, heartbroken Charles, was right there? But as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he wanted to take it all back; anything to stop the way it made his stomach curl in self-loathing. How could he think that way about the students he cared so much for?
“Good, " he replied as calmly as he could, taking a sip of his drink to steel his nerves. “You know, it's nice, really; feeling as though I’m actually helping young mutants. They have somewhere to go, someone to turn to. They’re being given a chance at normal, peaceful lives.” He couldn’t help the thinly veiled dig at Erik.
“Is that what you think you’re doing? Giving them normal lives?”
“It’s more than you’re doing.”
Erik scoffed and shook his head. “You don’t give a shit about what I’m doing, Charles, as long as you can feel good about yourself.” He leaned in close, his piercing eyes finally meeting Charles’s and pinning him down. His voice was a low snarl, and Charles thought that it wasn’t just his smile that was sharp. “You’re teaching them to let the world trample them. Those children will never learn to fight for themselves., and when they get hurt, it will be your fault.”
Not letting Erik think he had the high ground, Charles pressed forward, leaving his and Erik’s faces only a hair’s breadth apart. “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to use them? Turn them into weapons? Is that what you’re looking for?”
A heavy sigh escaped from Erik’s lips, so close that Charles shivered at the breath on his skin. Erik leaned back in his seat and downed the rest of his drink before crossing his arms. “You know that isn’t what I meant,” his tone was gentler now, but it still carried notes of bitter resentment all the same.
“Then what did you mean?”
Erik visibly swallowed, his eyes roaming past Charles again. “Aren’t you scared, Charles?” There was a distant look to him as he said it. It didn’t take telepathy to know that he was picturing horrible fates befalling those children at the hands of humans.
Finally, Charles slid back, settling into his chair. Well, this had certainly solved his sleeplessness dilemma, he noted with grim amusement; he was thoroughly exhausted. “Of course I am, Erik. Every day I fear for the safety of not just my children, but all mutant children. You more than anyone should know that.”
“And yet you do nothing about it,” Erik returned simply. “What happens if someone comes for them? If someone comes to hurt them?”
Charles thought on it a moment. It was something he never wanted to imagine, yet it haunted his nightmares every night. He thought of the little kids who ran to him in the night for comfort, and some childlike shred of his mind wished that he could do the same.
But then, he thought of his older students, the ones who now truly understood the world’s cruelty. Those who understood, too, their own power to change it. “I pity the fool who tries.”
“You believe in them?” Erik’s voice was sincere, having lost its bite entirely. Somewhere under that raging fire of pain and hatred for the world, there was a deep concern; somewhere in him, there was still love.
“More than I believe in myself, sometimes.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of Erik’s lips, and he nodded solemnly. There was a bittersweet satisfaction to him, one that made Charles’s heart ache. “It was good to see you again, Charles.” The words were hardly more than a whisper.
A tear slipped down Charles’s cheek. He wished that he could say the same. “The offer still stands.” In a perfect world, he would say he was just being polite, that he hadn’t meant it seriously, that he didn’t want Erik to return. But this wasn’t a perfect world. Even though Erik would say no, even though his face would haunt Charles’s dreams now more than ever, the offer was genuine. After everything that had happened, all the pain and suffering he had endured at Erik’s hand, Charles was still in love with him.
If only Erik knew.
Erik reached across the table hesitantly, gauging Charles’s every move for some sort of reaction. Seeing no hostility, he grabbed Charles’s hand in his and squeezed it gently, soothingly. “Thank you.”
Maybe he did.
Without another word, Erik stood from the table and left. Left Charles again, alone and afraid and in pain without so much as a goodbye.
Charles clung to the hope that the lack of goodbye meant it wasn’t truly goodbye. That one day soon Erik would take him up on the offer; Erik would come home to him.
He was foolish to do so.
Now alone, he downed the rest of his drink in record time, hoping it would make him feel anything other than heartbreak. In some twisted way it did; he felt sick.
It was only a few more minutes before Hank arrived. Charles didn’t need to see him, not that he could from where he sat; Hank’s mind was so loud with worry that Charles felt him before he ever walked in the door.
“Hello Hank,” Charles called with a forced cheerfulness as he wheeled over to his friend. “Did you get everything you needed?”
Hank blinked at him a few times. “Yes,” he responded after a moment, clearly a bit caught off guard. “Are you good to go?”
With an affirmative nod from Charles, Hank opened the door and the pair made their way back to the car. For the duration of the time it took to get settled in, Charles never said a word. He didn’t trust himself to.
As Hank pulled down the street and drove back toward the school, a silence hung over them, deeper and far more noticeable this time around. Every time Charles considered saying something, anything to ease Hank’s mind and his own, he felt tears begin to well up in his eyes once more. And so the car stayed quiet, and his mind stayed fixated on broken fragments of Erik; the lights dancing in his eyes, the warmth of his voice, the beauty of his smile, the tear sliding down his face, his enraged snarl, his back as he walked away from Charles a second time.
It was then that Charles realized he wasn’t in love with Erik; he was in love with the ghost of a man who had died on a beach in Cuba in 1962.
“Is everything alright?” Hank finally asked when they were nearly back at the school.
“Hm?” It took Charles a moment to pull himself out of the pit of his own mind and register what he was being asked. “Oh, yes. Everything’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” Hank glanced at him briefly out of the corner of his eye before turning his attention back to the road. “Nothing happened in there?”
Charles rested his head against the window, letting his gaze float out into the night. “I just saw an old friend. Reminded me of the past is all.”
“Anyone I’d know?”
Charles hesitated.
“No,” he responded. “No one you would know.”
While Hank didn’t seem convinced, he didn’t press the matter any further. “As long as you’re alright.”
“Of course I am,” Charles lied through a smile.
Of course he was alright, why wouldn’t he be? Nothing bad had happened, after all; he had only met a stranger in a bar.