Work Text:
Erik’s empty stomach grumbles in protest. The digital clock on his monitor displays it’s 2:30 pm, but he hasn’t had a bite to eat since that morning. An ache has been steadily building in his head that throbs with every pump of blood through his jugular. A litre of coffee somehow hasn't tamed it. He needs something stronger. Something like nicotine.
He’s mulling over how he wants to torture Sean for screwing up the third blueprint in a row when his phone begins to ring. Though he’s set the ringing volume to the minimum, it draws the attention of his interns. Angel gets up from her seat with an excuse of locating a fallen pen while Sean leans back in his chair pretending to stretch his legs. Even though Alex’s eyes are on the monitor, Erik knows that his ears are pointed in his direction.
Utter bastards.
At least Darwin is the only one in their lot who has the decency to pretend that he’s minding his own business. Pretend, being the key here.
Erik glares at all of them until they pretend to shrink back to work before picking up the call.
‘Hello, Aunt Ruth.’ He tries to keep his voice to a whisper, but it comes out as a growl. ‘No, aunty, I’m not angry with you for calling. That’s absurd — No, aunty, I’m just at work. Yes, yes… yes, aunty. You know I will. Of course, I will. Yes, I’m eating. He knows it too. What? This Saturday? Alright, I’ll ask him if he’s free. Yes, I’ll bring him if he’s free. Of course, I will.’
On the other end, Aunt Ruth goes on berating Erik’s unhealthy eating habits without giving him a breathing pause while Erik nods and acquiesces to whatever she says. He’s just about to reassure her the third time that he’s been eating his meals on time when Azazel bursts into life in front of him with a hiss of air which overlaps with whatever Aunt Ruth says next.
Tapping on his watch, Azazel mouths the words: ‘Let’s go.’
‘Alright, Aunt Ruth, I have to go now,’ Erik says, half getting up from his desk. ‘Yes, yes. I’ll check with him and text you. Love you, too… Bye.’
Pocketing his phone, he turns to glare at his sad excuse of his team members. Like a flock of birds dispersing at a pelted stone, they lunge back into staring at the screen and tapping idle keys.
Azazel chuckles beside him as they head out into the roaring Genoshan sun.
The chicken roll they both take from the street vendor manages to vaguely quieten Erik’s stomach. He lights a cigarette after walking a short distance to the smoking zone in front of their office building. Floating the lighter to Az, Erik sends out a text to Charles.
You : Hey, Aunt Ruth’s invited us to dinner on Saturday. You free?
The reply comes immediately, which means that Charles is on his free hour.
Charles : When am I not free for her cooking? Count me in! :)
While Erik sends Aunt Ruth a text to confirm that both he and Charles will be coming for dinner, a second text comes from Charles.
Charles : Speaking of dinners, how does pasta sound for today?
Smirking, Erik takes another puff of his cigarette.
You : Are you cooking? Really?
Charles : Hey, my cooking isn’t all that bad. I’m decent. Well… mostly.
They both know that Charles’s cooking doesn’t come anywhere near decent territory, so Erik doesn’t comment on the decency of Charles’s cooking or bring up the fact that he almost burnt the kitchen on three different occasions. Instead, Erik sends out: In that case, A okay for pasta.
Stomaching substandard pasta is a small price to pay for being Charles’s roommate.
Charles : I assure you, my friend. You won’t be disappointed, comes Charles’s text followed by a grinning emoji.
The devil that he is, Az peeks into his phone and smirks. ‘Talking to your boyfriend, huh?’
Erik rolls his eyes. ‘Charles is not my boyfriend, Az. He’s my friend, just like you are.’
Az shudders and blows out a cloud of smoke through his nose, the image rendering him as the incarnation of Satan himself. ‘Please, don’t compare me with him.’
Erik supposes Az is right. It’d be grossly unfair to compare someone like Az with someone like Charles.
‘Hey,’ Az says, inhaling another puff of smoke into his lungs, ‘a friend of mine is playing at the pub downtown this Saturday. I’m going out with the boys. Wanna join?’
‘No, I’m going to Aunt Ruth’s for dinner. You carry on.’
‘And is Charles going with you?’ Az asks way too innocently for Erik’s liking.
‘Yes.’ Erik agrees begrudgingly.
Az pins him with a look that spells out crystal clearly: see what I mean by boyfriends?
Erik barely restrains the urge to smack Az on the head. ‘He’s a friend and a roommate, Az. Nothing more.’
‘Really?’ Az asks, leaning on a pillar, his movements gracefully feline; almost akin to a bored cat toying with a ball of yarn, aware of the level of destruction it’s capable of. ‘Is that why you refuse to move out, or is it because you prefer to travel twenty-five kilometres to work?’
Okay. Erik will agree that travelling almost an hour to work is a bit of a hindrance. But it wasn’t a hindrance two years ago when Erik was looking for a place near the engineering firm he was interning at the time. He’d seen an ad on a communal mutant app asking for someone to share a two-bedroom flat with. The man who had posted the ad, Charles Francis Xavier, at the time had been a freshly minted postgraduate eyeing the position of a junior lecturer in the Genoshan University, with a lease amount to a nice house too hefty to bear on his own.
The house itself was more agreeable to Erik and — more importantly — to Erik’s meagre stipend.
Charles had declared that he’s gay and a telepath the day they’d met, and that Erik should look elsewhere if he had a problem with either of those. In response, Erik had plucked the pen tucked into Charles’s breast pocket with his powers and had signed his half of the lease agreement.
Erik’s not an easy person to live with — and Az will enthusiastically attest to it. He’s weird and particular and controlling and territorial — and that’s just the first four entries on Az’s list. He doesn’t know what to attribute it to, but living with Charles for a roommate is… easy.
His living arrangement with Charles is comfortable. Charles doesn’t have any irritating habits. He isn’t stingy with money or particular with the groceries. He carries out his fair share of cooking and cleaning around the house. They take their turns doing the laundry and the dishes. What talent Charles lacks in cooking, Charles makes up for in baking — and that’s coming from a man who hates anything with more than two spoons of sugar in it. He isn’t overly dirty or messy. Charles picks up after himself — except when he has finals or is in the middle of research. The house is a dump zone for his tea mugs and their dining table is a disaster zone for papers during such bouts.
More importantly, Charles respects Erik’s boundaries. He doesn’t poke his nose into Erik’s business or needle Erik for anything he isn’t willing to share. It helps that they keep their personal lives separate, too. Whatever flings he has, Charles keeps them outside of their shared home, and Erik returns the favour. The only things they argue over are which show to watch on TV or which place to order from. And all the times they’ve come very close to fighting are nights spent over a chessboard, pitching points to and fro, for or against human-mutant relationships and ideologies. Erik would be lying if he said that he didn’t live for such nights.
In little over two years, Charles has become Erik’s best friend. And apart from Az — who’s, by now, more or less of a brother Erik can’t get rid of no matter how hard he tries — Erik doesn’t have many of them. So he doesn’t see why he should give up all of that for a few hours saved in commute to work.
Voicing any or all of it will only encourage Az to needle him more, so Erik shrugs and squashes his spent cigarette with the heel of his boot. ‘Come on, it’s getting late. I still have two blueprints to review before seven.’
Az groans at the mention of blueprints. ‘I have three to finish. God, Shaw will bite my head off my shoulders if I don’t complete them by today.’
With that, they move into the blessed cool of the air-conditioned building.
Just before Erik turns on his monitor, a text alerts Erik — and by proxy all of his interns he shares his cubicle with. It’s from Charles and says: Got to get to my classes now. See you at home, Erik! :)
See you at home, Erik sends and smiles to himself.
He just hopes Az doesn’t see it.
_