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Eyelids close, his thick eyelashes catching all the sunbeams, Erik puts his hands on the back of his head.
“ Days seem sometimes as if they’ll never end ”, he hears a warm voice, warmer than the sun caressing his skin. Erik opens his eyes, and they meet those he always craved.
“Charles”, he mutters with a smile he tries to eat down.
“They’ll never end, my friend”, he says softly, promises, sitting by Erik’s side. Erik lowers his gaze, letting out a huff.
“You’ve been meddling”.
Charles laughs brightly, as he always does — how does he do it? He could light up an entire forest just with a smirk. Erik is not fooled by it, and tries to tame down the feeling in his chest that arises everytime Charles looks at him that way—as if he could eat the world for him.
“You left it wide open on the kitchen island”, Charles retorts. “Couldn’t help but wonder what you are always working on”.
Erik falls silent for a moment, appreciating the small breeze that comes to take away the tremble he felt on his hands.
“Did you read it all?”.
“No”, he lies. Erik knows he’s lying, because Charles has that slight blush on his cheeks —that one that reaches his ears and chest— that betrays he’s read more than he should.
Erik huffs.
“What did you think about it?”.
Charles waits for the right words. He doesn’t find them, so he lays on the grass by his side, and puts an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer. Erik leans towards him, trying —and failing— to do it slowly enough so that he wouldn’t really notice.
“Do you really think it’ll end someday?”.
Erik thinks before rushing out an answer.
“Everything ends eventually”.
Charles turns to look at him, with a small smirk he seems to have plastered on.
“Always the dramatic one”.
“You chose to read my poetry”.
“You chose to write about me”, Charles chuckles out the answer, and regrets it as soon as the words come out of his lips. Erik turns to him, his cheeks a darker colour than he would’ve liked.
“How do you know it’s about you?”.
Charles tilts his body towards him, now laying on his side. His hand came to rest naturally on Erik’s hip. Still, even when they behave this way with each other —even if they wouldn’t consider this platonic on anyone else —he finds it hard to believe. Hard to believe he has feelings for Charles, and that those feelings are requited.
“Well… is it?”.
The hand on his hip weighs more than usual. Charles has some of his curls in the way of his eyes, and Erik instinctively reaches to brush them away. He has more freckles, now that it’s summer. Now that the sun hits his skin more often, on that beautiful garden.
“How come you didn’t have those little spots on your skin when I met you?”, he asks suddenly. Charles doesn’t ever mind the jump in subjects —Erik’s mind takes turns in every corner, and he likes that more than he’d care to say out loud.
“Oh, the freckles?”, he takes his fingers to his face, as if he could feel them on his skin. “They come up with the sun”.
“You didn’t get sunlight before meeting me?”.
“No”, he smiles knowingly. “Met the sun that night”.
Erik chooses to think he’s not saying what he’s saying —chooses not to think about Charles calling him his sun . Because he’s rather the vanishing moonlight, right? The pitch black of the night, the darkness he’s most nights afraid of.
Except for those when Charles comes knocking on his door and asks to read him something, or a late night chess game, or anything to keep a busy and dangerous mind occupied with happier thoughts, happier times than the ones he tends to remember when sleep doesn’t come.
“Did you like them?”, asks Erik, slightly terrified by the answer.
“The poems?”. Charles turns to the sky once again, a smile etched on his face. “I know them by heart”.
“You read them more than once?”.
“No, just the once”.
“They’re not… they’re just about anything”, he tries to justify himself. But Charles knows he writes them right after his therapy sessions. He knows they talk about the depths of his heart. About him, as well, since he seems to have made himself a nest in that hole.
Charles pulls out from his pocket the small notebook with the poems. Erik’s eyes widen in horror.
“I beg you…”, Erik tries to hide his face in grass leaves.
“Days fade into a watercolor blur / memories swim and haunt you” , he reads with a smooth tone. Not a mocking one, but appreciative. Erik feels like Charles holds his art with both his hands, carefully, as if handling a hatching egg.
“Could you not?”.
“ But look into the lake, shimmering like smoke…”.
“Charles”, he pleades.
“ Rises the moon ”, he finishes, and closes the small notebook, handing it back to its artist. Charles reflects on it again —the uncertainty of the days, Erik’s memories of his past—he sees how it could’ve been things he talked about with his therapist. The lake of the mansion... “Who’s the moon?”, he finally asks, looking straight into his clear eyes. Erik doesn’t feel uncomfortable —perhaps the only person he can make eye contact with.
“Who do you think?”, he mutters.
“I thought you didn’t like the night”.
“The dark of the night”, he corrects him, and suddenly Charles understands.
There is a moment of brief reflection where all that can be heard is the chirp of the birds and the grass of the turf moved by wind. The sun stings in their eyes, midday approaching and yet they're too busy to think about lunchtime — busy with their thoughts.
“Do you really think it'll end?”, he repeats the question. He wants a different answer, a real one, this time. He worries Erik thinks of this whole thing as a temporary stay. He’s seen his credit card hotel expenses —he wonders if he sees Charles as yet another hotel to stay on until Shaw is over with.
“Everything good does”.
Charles shakes his head.
“Well, I'm not all good. At least some of the bad should stay, yes?”, he looks up, and then adds, “would you still want me even if I was all bad?”.
“You're all good, Charles. All of you is good, to me”.
Charles huffs out, as if hiding a knot in his throat.
“With what good conscience can you say something like that to me, and not kiss me?”.
Erik doesn't turn to look at him just yet. He closes his eyes and savours the moment. The words echo in his mind, loud enough for Charles to see how they wrap around his brain like a warm blanket.
“Do you hear yourself sometimes, Charles?”, he smirks softly. If he were to turn around, he'd see Charles' lips parted open in disbelief.
“Heartless. I won't pour my heart out to you again”.
“You know I love you more than anything and anyone”, Erik finally turns to face him, and pulls away a bug from Charles' hair. “I wouldn't write all those poems about you otherwise”.
“I knew they were about me”.
“You always know everything”.
“Who's the moon?”.
“You are the moon”, he smiles on his lips, before kissing them shortly, quickly —just a peck, “but you knew that already”.