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When he first saw Erik, he thought the man was absolutely beautiful. He helped him out of the dark waters and onto the ship, the visibly shaken expression on the other man's face not making him any less attractive. Charles followed him on the ship, talked to him to keep him calm. He was in the same room with him when he changed into the dry, warm clothes that someone had fetched for him. And as professional he had tried to be, Charles let his eyes linger over the man's form, admiring every inch he saw. He looked like a statue, slender yet still so strong, each muscle like it was carved out of marble. His cheekbones were so incredibly prominent, a feature that had always made Charles feel weak in his knees.
Erik caught his gaze, Charles knew that, but he didn't think too much of that. He was sure that the slightly pained expression on the man’s face was simply for the fact that Shaw had slipped through his fingers, there was no need to get into his mind and check. He had just been admiring him, there was no harm to that.
Had he known what kind of poisonous thoughts his gaze awoke in Erik’s mind, he would have turned away immediately.
~
Taking the young mutants back to his mansion had been a great idea. Here they had all the space they needed for training and they could live at least remotely peacefully. It was a safe environment for them all, for the younger mutants and for him. And for Erik.
“Charles.”
Sometimes he was sure Erik was the one with telepathic powers. How did he always manage to walk up to him right when he was thinking about him? Or was he just thinking about him too much?
“Yes, Erik?”
“Can you promise me you will never read my mind again?”
Charles was a bit taken aback by that, eyebrows furrowing.
“I haven’t read your mind for a long time”, he pointed out, watching his friend intently.
“I know that, but you did do it a few times, in the beginning. And I’d rather you not do it anymore. Under any circumstances.”
“But, Erik, having access to your mind would make it easier for me to help you access all your pow-“
“No. I don’t want that. I want you to promise me to stay out of my head.”
The telepath swallowed, lips left slightly parted. Erik seemed somehow… cold. Even if his usual self wasn’t too warm either.
“Yes, of course. I promise.”
“Good”, Erik said and turned around, disappearing into his room without saying goodnight.
~
Erik could still feel Charles’ gaze on him whenever he was changing. Of course he had noticed the telepath watching him the day they met, he had followed his eyes as he stared.
Taking off his black shirt the mutant walked in front of a full-length mirror, mapping the spots Charles had paid attention to the most.
“Here”, he muttered to himself, his fingers touching his collarbones, then moving to his tight abdomen, gracing over his waist.
“Here, and here too”, he continued as he touched his left hipbone and the beautiful line between it and his abs.
“Because here I am thin”, he told himself, then running a finger down his thigh were a muscle was showing, but not as prominently as his abdominal ones.
He didn’t look here, the man thought and wondered if he had time for a morning jog if he woke up at five.
~
“For a man who can move a fork with his mind, you eat oddly slowly.”
Erik jerked a bit, the fork falling from his hand onto his plate.
“Must you sneak up on me like that, Raven?”
The woman smiled and took a cup of coffee for herself before sitting down in front of Erik, stealing a piece of his omelette.
“I don’t usually catch you so deep in your thoughts that I could do that. So I just had to use my opportunity”, she said with a giggle, stealing another piece of the older mutant’s breakfast.
Erik, seeing an opportunity for him to escape the situation, pushed the plate over to her.
“Just eat the whole thing, I wasn’t really hungry anyway”, the man said and left the room.
“Is it just me or is he acting weird?” Charles asked as he stepped into the kitchen, a cup of tea in his hands and a worried look on his face.
~
Erik couldn’t understand his obsession with his body. He always meant it when he told Raven that she was exquisite and she should be proud of her natural form.
Yet when he looked at the mirror, at his pale skin and thin body, he saw nothing to be proud of. He saw flaws upon flaws upon flaws.
It made him angry. And frustrated, so incredibly frustrated. He tried so hard to change himself, to make himself look better. To be thinner, to be more sculpted, to look more appealing. Yet he was losing weight so slowly. To him, his body looked the exact same ever night; not good enough.
Angry at himself he squeezed his hands into fists, the metal frame of his bed shaking until it broke apart.
~
There was no reason for anyone to be concerned about Erik. Even if he was a bit grumpier than he had been before, he still seemed to be fine. He trained with the other mutants, he was actually making a lot of progress with his powers.
And with his physique, Charles had noted. He ran faster than any of their students, well, except for Hank, but he had an unfair advantage. Charles had noticed Erik outside during mornings, running or jogging. He didn’t think much of that, he was just happy to see Erik determined to get better and so motivated.
Sometimes during their chess games late at night Erik was too tired to focus and would even drift off to sleep. And more often than not, Charles ended up eating all of the sandwiches or biscuits or whatever he had brought for them. But that didn’t mean anything, right? Erik was tired because he woke up early in the morning. And because he was tired, he didn’t have so much appetite that late in the evening.
It was all completely normal.
~
Erik collapsed.
One second he was running back towards the mansion, the next he was on the ground, motionless and unconscious.
He woke up by himself fifteen minutes later, rubbing his head as he sat up. He felt like he had no strength left. Like he had no will to get up from the ground.
But then he remembered the extra serving of mashed potatoes he had eaten yesterday and got up, doing a few jumping jacks before running back to the mansion.
He didn’t tell anyone about what had happened.
~
“Have you talked to Erik recently?” Raven asked as she sat down next to Charles on the stairs leading up to the mansion.
“I talk to him every day”, Charles replied to which the blue mutant rolled her eyes.
“I didn’t mean it like that. Have you talked to him about personal things lately? What I mean is, do you know what’s bothering him?”
Charles turned to look at her, confusion on his face. He then glanced at the man they were talking about, walking around with Hank and talking about something, probably whatever the young genius was currently working on
.
“No, I haven’t. Then again, I didn’t really think there was something bothering him.”
“You might be a telepath, Charles, but you suck at reading people sometimes. He looks more tired each day, and I doubt that’s because of nightmares about Shaw or anything like that. Maybe it’s an even more personal issue”, she said as she got up.
“I promised I wouldn’t get into his head.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you do that. Talk to him.”
And Charles tried, but Erik pushed him away. He left in the middle of their chess game just because Charles had asked him if he wanted to go to the kitchen, get some tea and biscuits and just talk about things. He couldn’t understand what he had done wrong.
~
That night, Charles broke a promise. As he lay on his bed in the early hours of the morning, he couldn’t stop thinking about what Raven had said and how Erik had acted. There was something that Erik wasn’t telling them, he could see that now. And he was worried of what might happen if he never told anyone.
And so, he pressed two of his fingers to his temple, searching for Erik’s mind from his room down the hallway.
He reached him and got into his mind, for a brief second seeing the same dream that Erik was seeing. Then, there was a flash of intense pain, frustration and anger. And then, only muffled sounds and unclear images that didn’t make sense. Almost like Erik was consciously keeping his thoughts to himself, forcing Charles out of his mind.
It seemed like the man had decided to lock down completely.
~
The only option was to try to talk to him again. And so Charles did, stopping the man on the hallway the next day.
"Erik, what on earth is bothering you?" The sentence came out blunter and colder than he had mean and judging by the look on Erik’s face, he already made a mistake. The man was already pulling away from him.
"Can't you find out for yourself, Charles?"
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Just slip into my mind and see what I'm thinking about, it shouldn't be too hard."
"I promised you I would never do that again”, Charles tried though he was quite sure he knew how this conversation was going to end.
Erik looked away, lips pressed into a tight line.
"I've felt you try."
He sounded hurt. Charles had no time to even react before the mutant had walked away.
Erik had all the rights to be hurt; he had broken a promise. Charles felt guilt swell up in his chest, a pained expression forming onto his face as he realized that now the other had no reason to trust him with his problems.
Erik was slipping away from him and he couldn’t do anything.
~
From the moment they first met, Charles had always thought of Erik as a calm and collected person. He seemed to have everything under control, even his rage. When they trained together, Erik could access that point between rage and serenity that he needed to reach in order to have full control of his powers. To Charles, watching him do that was beautiful. It amazed him every single time.
That was why it was so heart-breaking to see Erik lose that control.
They were out on the yard, all of them training on controlling their powers. Both Alex and Sean were working on their accuracy, Hank guiding them and patiently bringing out more and more targets for the two to wreck.
Erik and Charles were a bit away from them, Erik focusing on the satellite in the distance, trying to make it move.
“There is so much more to you than you know”, Charles said, “So much more than just pain and anger.”
What a ridiculous lie. Erik knew there was nothing more. Pain and anger were the only things he felt, had ever felt. There was nothing good or beautiful about him, neither outside or inside.
A wave of emotions rushed through him, causing the satellite to move. It shrieked as Erik accidentally bent the metal. But the satellite didn’t turn towards them, no, Erik only pushed it further away.
“I think we are done here”, Erik said, fighting to keep his face emotionless as he turned away and went back into the mansion. But Charles had caught a glimpse of something, a pain different from the loss of his mother and all the things he had been through at the camps. It was an irrational pain, something that seemed to be taking over Erik’s mind. And it broke Charles’ heart.
~
In the darkness of the night the shadows on his body were harsher, showing Erik the cruel reality of what he had become. He looked at himself in the mirror, naked. His muscles were all withering away, bones sticking out everywhere. Like a skeleton coated by a thin layer of paper.
Erik didn’t see himself as overweight, no, he saw himself exactly the way he was. Yet still, there was the desire to keep going, to lose more weight, to be thinner. It disturbed him, really, the erratic thoughts that occupied his mind. The pure need to watch his body waste away. The dark desire to weigh absolutely nothing.
As he pinched his stomach and felt something between his fingers –not fat, just loose skin- he wanted it gone. He wanted it gone so bad he felt like cutting the skin off. It was too much, it was extra weight, it was keeping him from his goal.
Charles! He screamed in his mind, desperate for help he couldn’t ask for.
When the telepath tried to reach for him, he had already locked up his thoughts and hidden the key.
~
Charles felt like he never saw Erik anymore. At first he thought that the man was just ignoring him, but after finding out that Raven and Hank had hardly spoken to him for the past week, he really started to worry. It wasn’t like Erik loved to spend time with them, it really wasn’t uncommon of him to stay in his room alone for long periods of time, but this… This was different. Erik was starting to skip training sessions, he was never there with them when they were eating together. It was like a ghost was living among them.
A ghost that now happened to be asleep on the couch of Charles’ study.
As quietly as he could, Charles moved to sit on the floor next to the couch, the worry inside him burning like a fire as he just looked at the other. Erik’s turtleneck was hanging on his body like it was three sizes too big. His cheekbones were jutting out, cheeks hollow. There was a greyish tint to the man’s skin. Erik was a shell of what he used to be.
Charles couldn’t understand what was going on. Erik was strong. His mind, even if full of pain and rage, was one of steel. One that wasn’t affected by anything this drastically.
But even the strongest fall from time to time.
Gently he reached his hand to touch Erik’s cheek and the man reacted in seconds, eyes slamming open as he scrambled to sit up, a terrified look in his eyes.
Charles’ heart broke all over again.
“Erik, calm down…”, he whispered, and reached his hand to gently put it on Erik’s knee. Erik let him. Slowly, over the course of the next ten minutes, he moved to sit on the couch next to Erik and held him, as tight as he could without breaking him.
Bones pressed against his body, bones that felt sharp as knives even through Erik’s clothes.
“I’m fine”, Erik said. I need help, he thought.
Charles heard both and held him through the night.