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Charles found out through a phone call from the hospital.
Erik had volunteered to retrieve a little mutant girl who had trouble controlling her powers. It was supposed to be a quick, easy feat – her human parents had apparently been pro-mutant rights even before her powers manifested, which always made the job easier. Charles had been swamped in preparation work for the start of a new semester at the school, and Raven was on some diplomatic mission, so Erik had gone alone. Hell, it was supposed to be a day-trip. If only things went according to plan.
Instead of receiving Erik back at the mansion in time for dinner, Charles got a rather urgent phone call from the hospital.
“Hello? Am I speaking to a Mr. Charles Xavier?” the woman on the line had asked, “This is Cedar Hill Medical Center.”
A wave of panic immediately rose up in him, and his grip on the phone tightened involuntarily before managing to choke out something in affirmation. Over the years, he had grown far too used to calls informing him about the demise of yet another person he loved, and if those horrible experiences had taught him anything, it was that phone calls from hospitals were typically the ones he enjoyed the least of them all. Who was it this time? His imagination quickly supplied a number of equally terrifying possibilities. Raven, mortally wounded in some foreign land. Alex, found dead in a hotel room midway through his hard-earned vacation. Maybe even Sean, even though they hadn’t spoken in a while.
“I’m calling about your husband, Mr. Erik Lehnsherr. He sustained an injury, and you’re listed here as his next-of-kin. Do you need the address for our hospital?”
Well, that was new.
As someone who prided himself on being able to remain unflappable in the face of adversity, Charles was ashamed to admit that he was momentarily struck speechless. There were many things to unpack in a sentence that loaded, after all. He latched onto the one that begged the highest priority – Erik was injured. Erik, larger than life and as close as a person could get to being bulletproof, was lying unconscious in a hospital bed somewhere. Charles fought the urge to throw up.
Later, when he recounted the incident to the rest, he conveniently omitted his extremely dignified response, “Um.”
Luckily, Hank chose this moment to poke his head into Charles’ office and ask if he was alright, saying something about how he was projecting distress signals everywhere. Charles was, in fact, not alright. He imagined Erik lying in a bloodied heap alone somewhere before someone found him and felt a wave of regret crash over him; he should never have let him go alone. Hank placed a concerned hand on his shoulder, and Charles relayed to him what the woman on the phone had told him, save some details like how she apparently thought Charles was Erik’s husband.
“Sir, are you still with me?” The operator’s voice brought him back to reality, and Charles tried his utmost to keep a steady tone as they exchanged the necessary information. Surely nothing that bad could have happened, considering they had yet to see it on the news. The sudden demise of the ex-terrorist Magneto at the hands of an eleven-year-old would have definitely made the local eight o'clock. Still, the thought of his friend — oh, wait, husband now — motionless somewhere in a hospital bed left Charles deeply worried; it only took minimal reassurance by some of the older children that everything at the school would remain under control for him to agree to leave for DC with Hank.
Apparently, they had worried for nothing.
"Wait, so, so let's go over this again. You, Magneto, who have massacred entire towns-"
"Hank, I really don't think this part is necessary-"
"-Got ambushed by a nine-year-old girl. You."
"First of all, she's eleven," Erik began, having sat up in the hospital bed with only minor wincing, "And I wasn't ambushed. She was just scared of moving to a new place and leaving her friends behind, so she lashed out and accidentally lost control of her powers. You know, the usual. Happens to the best of us."
"You conveniently left out the part where she managed to throw you halfway across the room into a concrete wall when you can fly, Erik," Hank said. He was eyeing the stained bandages around Erik's chest with something that looked oddly like glee.
"Caught me off-guard, that's all. Charles, you're being suspiciously silent. I'm not about to be homeless, am I?" Erik grinned at Charles, who had begun tapping the steel end of the bed agitatedly during their exchange.
"Did you know we're married," Charles finally managed to say in a conversational tone.
Erik merely responded with a skeptical raise of his eyebrows. "What."
"WHAT?" Hank, on the other hand, looked like he was about to pass out.
"Remember those alien visitors we had back in the sixties? Those that insisted they would only negotiate with 'mated units'?" Charles pressed.
Hank squinted as he looked between Charles and Erik. Where was he when that had gone down?
"I do, actually. Didn't we get a fake marriage certificate from one of those Vegas chapels to convince them?" Erik smiled almost-fondly at the memory. A time from before everything went to shit with the Hellfire Club and Cuba. It was long gone now, of course, and they would never be able to go back to how it was.
Hank continued to gape silently as he slowly digested the newly acquired information.
"Well, turns out it wasn't fake. It was an entirely legally binding document," Charles stated matter-of-factly, swiveling around in his chair to face the window instead of looking Erik in the eye.
"Let me get this clear……you two have been married twenty-six years without knowing it?” Having finally recovered from his stupor, Hank was the first one to utter out loud the implications of the recent discovery. Both men in question were blinking rather rapidly.
"How was I supposed to have known? Magda and I never had the chance to get legally married," Erik murmured, to which Hank snorted. Because I was a wanted criminal at the time went obviously unsaid.
Charles was still staring at the window like it held the keys to the universe. "I…There was never anyone then. I just assumed…"
In a second, Erik's steely gaze turned to Charles, having picked up on the most crucial part of the sentence. "Then? So there is someone now?"
Charles met his eyes in an instant, the air immediately becoming charged with the same unspeakable tension that had simmered between them for years, too preoccupied to even notice that Hank had excused himself from the room under the guise of getting snacks. "Why do you care?" he asked softly.
A long time ago, Erik had asked Charles to promise not to read his mind. He'd had less control over his powers then, and Erik's thoughts had been much less guarded and more like a book beckoning to be read. On some days, staying away from his mind felt like a job on its own. Nor did it help that Erik's emotions had always been intense, practically shouting angerfearlove from the rooftops. Charles had wanted so badly to just know.
These days, Erik's grip on even his own feelings was iron; nothing ever slipped out unless he wanted it to. And Charles had gotten so much better at not giving in to the temptation of taking a quick peek just to know what Erik was thinking. Owning a school full of multiple angsty teenagers had certainly helped enforce boundaries, but an underrated aspect was simply that Charles no longer had to rely on peering into Erik's mind to know what he was thinking. Often, he just had to take a look at the latter's face.
Like the way the man was practically radiating nervous energy right now, his back stiffly straight and face a deliberately blank mask.
"Just showing some concern for my dear husband, that's all," Erik said. Charles tried to ignore the sweetly warm feeling the word stirred up in his chest. He had imagined what it would be like to be with Erik, of course he had, but hearing Erik call him his husband so unabashedly still did something fluttery to his gut. Even though they had been husbands, apparently, for the past twenty-six years.
Erik had been his, even when they had been torn up in rage against each other, even when they were fighting to kill, even when he was with someone else. And Erik himself might not have known it, but Charles had always belonged to him anyway.
"There isn't anyone. But there could be, if you wanted," Charles smiled, pushing his chair over to the bedside and placing his hand gently over Erik's palm. For someone who was still bedridden, Erik was extremely quick at turning their hands over and catching Charles' in a tight grip.
"I do. Want, I mean. We've already said actual 'I do's, can't go back on that now, can we?"
The world paused. Charles wasn't sure how long they just sat there staring at each other with their hands intertwined, or really who it was that even moved first. But at some point in that tiny pocket of time, Erik's other hand had migrated from where it lay on the scratchy sheet to cup Charles' cheek. It felt like the most natural thing to lean in and close the gap between them once and for all. Erik's lips were chapped from the cold hospital air, but they were as soft as they were in Charles's imagination every time he had ever thought of this happening. Instead of the fireworks he had envisioned though, it just felt like coming home.
They moved with a sort of ease that seemed almost practiced, as though Charles had fitted his lips against Erik's a thousand times instead of it being the first. Erik seemed to be equally into it, if the hand that had moved from Charles' face to steadily inching up the hem of his shirt was any indicator.
When they finally broke apart, it was to the sound of a throat clearing. Both men turned to see an unimpressed-looking Hank standing at the entrance of the room with a nurse in tow. "As happy as I am that you two have finally figured your shit out, it would be great if you don't…consummate your marriage here." While Charles at least had the decency to blush, Erik just looked wholly proud of himself.
"Don't look so smug, you bastards. You still have to tell Raven."