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Pietro eats a lot. Erik couldn't help but notice since his first night at the apartment. It must be a side effect of his speed. He can hardly imagine moving at such speeds on an average diet.
So his stubborness to divide food equally is nonsensical. Erik is an old man, Pietro is a mutant. On top of that, their survival depends on Pietro.
So he adds more food on Pietro's plate. "Eat." He insists.
Pietro frowns at that. "I've had my portion." It's always the same with the boy. Well, a man, but he still seems so young. It's easy to forget he's past sixty.
Sixty and just as stubborn as he was the last thirty years. Erik briefly wonders if Charles saw the same quality in him as he did in Pietro.
He frowns at Pietro strictly. "Yes. And now you're having a second one. I can see that you didn't have enough. So eat and stop complaining."
Pietro keeps glaring at him. "That's not how portions work." He argues.
Erik sighs and slaps the back of his head, much kinder than Pietro used to do to him when he refused to eat in the past months. Pietro doesn't dodge, despite having more than enough time to. "Shut up and eat." He reflects Peter's own words on him.
Pietro huffs but with no real bite behind it as he reluctantly takes the plate. He must be more hungry than Erik expected then, if he's not putting up a fight.
Pietro eats it, accompanied by some quiet curses under his breath, muttered too quickly for Erik to decipher. He's eating slowly however. Erik wonders if it's a habit his son developed because he's trying to keep up with him or if it's a habit from living with the X-Men.
Charles always did enjoy the dinners. When they trained his - their - first students before Cuba, they'd share meals the whole time. Something Erik then later implemented into his Brotherhood as well. It invited comradery and strengthened ties among the team.
Pietro puts the plate away. The noise of it rips Erik out of his thoughts of things long gone.
"You're doing it again." Pietro notes when he zaps to move the dishes. "Staring into nothing."
Erik isn't sure if that's concern in his voice or if he's trying to pick a fight. The evening seemed to have gone by smoothly, Pietro had seemingly no reason to get upset. Maybe it had been the hit?
"I was thinking." He answers eventually. An answer neutral enough.
Pietro nods briefly. "About?"
"Charles." The name slips from his lips almost unwillingly. He can see the tension rise in Pietro. He doesn't know what bad blood there is between them, but he can assume.
"What was between you and him anyway?" Pietro's voice is casual but calculated. "He talked about you a lot." He puts the dishes away.
There is no fitting word to describe what him and Charles had "We're....old friends." Lovers, adversaries, soulmates, foes, mirrors to one another and counterweights. It was too big to be put into words.
Pietro chuckles dryly. "Old friends." He repeats. "When were you ever friends?"
It's a jest, but it brings Erik to a different time. Before they were divided, Brotherhood and X-Men, when he had just discovered he wasn't alone in the world. "A long time ago." He says eventually.
"Cryptic." Pietro pouts. "He said the same thing."
So Charles spoke about him. It isn't surprising. He always shared a lot. Especially with him.
Pietro looks up when there's no answer. "Thinking again?" This time the annoyance with a bite behind it. He doesn't like it when Erik isn't paying attention.
"No." He answers softly.
"Xavier said that you built Cerebro." Another jab. He had, an then he used that knowledge to use his friend as a weapon against the humans. How monstrous his power made him. How cruel.
"It was Charles, Hank and me who built it." He can see Pietro tense up at the mention of Hank's name. He's expecting the familiar flash of anger but there's nothing but curiosity.
"Why?" He sits down on the table, fiddling with his shoelaces.
"To find and recruit mutants for a fight." They were all so young back then. Mystique, Havok, Banshee. Two dead and one missing now.
"What fight?" Pietro tilts his head. He stopped fidgeting - paying attention now.
Erik touches his marked forearm. "I was going after the Nazi who murdered my mother." He decides to keep it short.
Pietro is of course smarter than that. "And holier-than-thou Xavier went along with you to kill him." He sneers. "You're leaving out a lot."
He is. Erik still feels shame and sorrow for his actions on Cuba, on the day he took Charles' legs and his sister and left him behind - with nothing. "It is...." Painful? An old tale? Nothing that concerns Pietro?
Pietro gets up from the table and jumps off. "It's late." He doesn't push this time. "Wash. I'll get the bed ready."
He hesitates to tell Pietro when they're both sitting in their beds. He doesn't know how to find the words.
Pietro unpacks, checks and repacks the bag again. He's ignoring him again. Maybe it's for the better.
Even without the helmet, he can't feel Charles in his mind. He'd welcome it now, the familiar pressure of devotion and care. It would be a welcome change from Pietro's distance.
He feels as he did in the Pentagon, calling for Charles in his head who can't or doesn't want to listen.
He watched him die, after all. Worse than that, he goaded Jean into action. What Erik didn't expect was for her to kill him.
But now Charles lived once again and once again he ignored his calling.
Perhaps it was their fate, to stand on opposing sides, equal but so wildly divided by ideologies. Fated to give each other blows that cut so deep and yet be each others only cure.