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Charles senses Erik as soon as he enters Central Park. The students, exuberant to finally have an afternoon away from the school and Westchester, are a giddy presence at the back of his mind. Scott and Alex, brothers reunited at last and slowly relearning how to live together again. Ororo and Jean, holding hands and whispering schoolgirl secrets in each others' ears. Sean smiles at the prettiest girls and nearly loses his footing with awkward, half-grown limbs.
Charles sense no fear or pain and hardly any wariness, for a group who find their disparate origins very far from bright lights and big cities. And though he would never cut them off entirely, even in the safety of the school, he does set them aside for the moment as he wheels down 64th Street, toward the glowing spot in his mind.
Erik's presence intensifies a great deal long before Charles can actually see him, sitting at a stone table with the chess pieces already nearly arrayed in their proper places. Its more than the nominal awareness of an unshielded mind. It's practically deliberate projection bursting forth from Erik. It makes Charles' heart beat faster.
And when Charles does finally see him (in the flesh, for once, not in a dream), Erik looks less a radical mutant separatist than a banker temporarily displaced from a 50th floor office on Wall Street. He's forgone his preferentially ominous tunic and cape, that ought to look ridiculous, but somehow doesn't. And the helmet, obviously, though whether the omission is intentional or born of necessity, Charles can't say. In a black overcoat and very smart hat, Erik is unbearably lovely.
From a distance, Charles watches an elderly man in an old, but quite neat, suit approach and ask for a game. Erik's refusal is obvious and obviously polite from the way the man's shoulders shake in laughter Charles is too far away to hear. Erik is the only person Charles has ever met who justifies human kindness via the possibility that every person he speaks to could be a mutant who knows very few moments of brotherhood and compassion.
The man tips his hat and Erik resumes his wait. Charles considers whether it is hope or presumption that permits him to assume he is what Erik is waiting for.
He pushes his wheelchair forward and sends out a small curl of telepathic power. It's not an intrusion; Charles values both his continued existence and the uneasy truce they have built over the years far too much for a needless betrayal. It is an alert of his presence.
Erik's gaze sharpens then, and he cranes his neck to search through the early afternoon crowd. It's a brisk day, cool enough to carry the hints of autumn, but not yet so cold that parents fear to bring their children outdoors. Charles is, of course, hardly inconspicuous amongst the crowd and wouldn't be even if he and Erik hadn't always been so attuned to each other. He tips his hand in a small wave; Erik stands and inclines his head.
The most obvious question is how he knew to be in the park, but Charles finds the answer largely irrelevant. Despite everything, he's not frightened of Erik. He still believes in the basic goodness of all men.
Charles pushes himself through the crowd, to the table Erik selected. He notes the usual chair has already been removed to give him adequate space. "I must admit," Charles says, as though they are simply old friends. "This isn't the place I would have predicted."
Erik raises an eyebrow. "Would you have preferred a seedy motel, with a squeaking mattress and stains on the carpet?" he asks, heedless of the small children milling around in the sunshine. "I can return the chess set, if that's what you prefer."
Warmth flushes at Charles' collar. He recalls an afternoon spent in hedonistic laziness in his bed, despite the looming threat in Cuba. Erik, lying indolent and naked on his stomach in the tangled sheets. He asked Which do you think is worse to them? To be a mutant or to be queer? And Charles hadn't an answer, except the somewhat tepid recitation of his belief in all people.
"This is fine," Charles says.
For a moment, the physical sensation of Erik's gaze is uncomfortably palpable. Perhaps a touch vindicated, and righteously disappointed. But down that road lies a very old and very raw argument, and a distinction Erik maintains that Charles cannot understand. He straightens, raising his chin. Erik meets his eyes without contrition. Perhaps someday Charles will stop expecting it.
"Shall I begin?" Erik asks.
"As you've taken white, yes."
While Erik considers the board with a level of absorption that Charles does not believe for a moment, Charles searches through the surrounding crowd for any hint of a familiar mind. Angel, perhaps; he doubts he would recognize Erik's other associates as anything other than mutants. Though, if he's honest, it's Raven -- Mystique -- he wants. She's communicated through sporadic postcards and Polaroids that provide frustratingly fragmented evidence of her existence.
"She isn't here," Erik says, moving his knight. He looks up from the board with regret and understanding and Charles swallows down an unexpected burn in the back of his throat. He's a man, for chrissakes. Not a boy with a mother's skirt to weep into.
Charles moves a pawn forward at random. The truth is, they both enjoy chess but neither of them is particularly skilled at it. They play while they talk to have something to do with their hands that isn't touching each other. He resists the urge to ask after her, his little blood sister treated rather badly.
Erik mirrors Charles' pawn, despite Charles having strayed from the traditional middle pawn at his opening move. There is, perhaps, something a touch poetic in that. Or perhaps it’s simply that it is easier for Erik to follow Charles in the meaningless moments.
There are bruises on Erik’s knuckles mottled a light green and brown. If only because it has been a very long time since they last saw each other and because Erik makes Charles restless and reckless, he reaches across the board and picks up Erik's hand to examine the injury. It's old, nearly healed, and yet. "What happened?"
"A small disagreement with a hard surface." Erik lies with a thin smile. Teasingly, he dangles the truth in images at the edge of Charles' awareness. Something about a prison, a dark prison with water dripping from the ceiling and the sudden bright spray of blood against dirty walls. Charles shuts them down. Perhaps someday Erik will stop expecting Charles to find a vengeful satisfaction in his abilities. "May I ask what on Earth happened to your hair?" Erik asks.
With his unoccupied hand, Charles reaches up and smooths his palm almost over the newly naked skin of his scalp. The shave is so fresh there isn't even the harsh roughness of new growth yet. Truthfully, Charles keeps forgetting he's done it. Hank found that increasing contact with the Cerebro helmet decreased the pain interface caused.
"I've begun to go bald," Charles lies, moving his castle. "I decided to not prolong the agony of the process."
Erik nods in acknowledgement, both of the answer and the way things stand between them. They play several random, silly moves beneath the horrified gaze of masterful old men who despair to see their favorite past time treated so cavalierly and to the delight of small children at the inexplicable journeys of kings and queens, knights and castles, across the board.
Charles pays less attention to the game than Erik. It's the smallest things; the crook of his fingers as he picks up a piece, the slip of wrist revealed beneath the cuff of his coat and jacket and shirt, the way his skin tints gold in the sun. Charles wishes, fiercely, that they were alone so he could chase his observations with touch.
Erik is so many contradictions Charles cannot seem to easily reconcile. And yet he still evokes a constant reaction from Charles.
After Charles sends his remaining knight careening recklessly into the breach after Erik's king, Erik looks at the board and laughs. "Oh, I think you've won."
"Have I?" Charles peers at the few remaining pieces. "Oh, indeed. Checkmate, then."
With a low chuckle, Erik topples his king. The piece clatters faintly on the weathered stone and tolls toward him. "Game to you, my friend." He pauses and looks at Charles with an expression that Charles can't interpret. "Now, do you have to scurry home right away or might I beg another game?”
The sun is high and warm in the sky and the students are still an awed presence tucked safely in a hidden corner of his mind, amazed at the city and each other. And, really, Charles is not a wise man, but a man who wants. "I have time," he says and Erik nods and begins replacing his pieces on their proper squares.
Charles sweeps his black pieces toward him and begins the same task. King and queen standing in the middle, flanked by knights on either side, then the castles and the rooks. Pawns lined neatly in front, though this set has some decorative carving giving them a proper forward face. Charles thinks of the board in his study, perpetually caught in the suspended time of a game begun that will likely never finish. It is, after all, Erik's turn.
At the table next to them, a young girl drags the discarded chair Erik moved to make way for Charles into place. She clambers up opposite an elderly man Charles presumes to be her grandfather with her dark braids swinging halfway down her back. She peers intently at the board with her chin balanced on her fists.
Erik glances at her with his fingertips resting lightly on a pawn; his gaze slides to Charles' wheelchair for a moment, but flicks quickly back to the board without a word. Charles has always wondered whether Erik takes responsibility for the bullet or whether he simply blames himself for not stopping it. They've spent more time together in the interim than anyone would believe. Oddly, it is easier to lie in bed together in the dark than to move together. He has reconciled himself to the probability that he will ever receive an apology.
“Your move,” Charles says, tipping his fingers toward the white pieces arrayed across from him.
“Yes, thank you,” Erik murmurs, picking up a pawn and moving it forward two bold squares. “And yours.”
It is a different kind of game they play the second time around, with a greater precision and thought than before. Passing couples hold hands and peer with distant interest at the games and families wander past with children in tow and young nannies push prams with babies nestled safely inside.
They are, to Charles, a piece of the humanity he likes best. Proof of the peace that is a possibility Erik refuses to see in bright blue skies and leaves beginning to turn brilliant colors. Charles watches them from the corner of his eye when it’s Erik's turn, quietly envying their easy normality.
Charles shakes his head and ignores the twist in his lungs. He wants this with Erik. An uncomplicated ease in an afternoon in the park, not hours stolen from beneath the noses of others because before they were enemies, they were friends. And lovers.
"Did your parents bring you here when you were a boy?" Erik asks suddenly, lightly.
"Occasionally." Charles' voice comes out embarrassingly rough and he hides the moment behind a polite cough. "Yes, occasionally. My mother and I would spend weekends in a hotel a few times a year. If there was time, we could come. It was the zoo mostly."
Erik makes a soft sound of acknowledgement. "What was she like?"
Charles opens his mouth to answer, then closes it. He remembers his mother as a distantly benevolent figure, high in her own adult castle in the clouds. After his father died, she retreated away from the rest of the world and went dutifully through the motions. He never dreams of his mother or father; though from time to time the kind, sad face of another mother entirely appears in his dreams. Lighting candles with a man Charles has never met and a child Charles can never decide if he knows or not.
But there's no ease even in those memories that Erik places in his hand.
“She was my mother,” Charles says, capturing a pawn with a reckless move of his knight into the jaws of Erik's queen. “She was neither very good or very bad. I don't think of her much.”
Erik captures the knight. “I know,” he says, with a kindness that renders Charles suddenly struck with an anger that he cannot articulate. It would be so much bloody easier if Erik were simply violent or cruel or cast as the villain in their drama. But no, that would be too convenient for a man of his ideologies.
“Did your father teach you?” Charles asks, which is a barbed question he almost immediately regrets.
Erik's hand curls into sudden white-knuckled fist and Charles wishes he could bite out his own tongue. “No,” Erik says slowly, making no effort to hide the slow grind of words from his throat. “My grandfather taught me. My father and I used to play at night before bed.”
Charles takes Erik's rook with his castle and keeps his eyes trained on the weathered stone of the board. It is an uncomfortable sensation to have memories that are not his float upwards as recollections that don't feel as though they belong to someone else. He can too easily see the scene contained in Erik's bitten off words; the kitchen table of scarred, but deeply polished wood, and the light from the lamps turning the old board a rich brown and yellow. Hand carved pieces splayed in battle across the squares and his father's – Erik's father's – big hands moving pieces with a soft smile.
With each move came sparely spoken words of advice that contained all the secrets of the universe. The quietly spoken German used to only having meaning in their cadences to Charles. They were the words of a man who loved his child dearly. Years later he’s picked up enough German to understand the gist of it, but the impression of pride and deep affection is still the strongest.
It is an image Erik treasures. Charles shakes his head to dislodge the memory and the guilt and is entirely successful with neither.
“Your move,” Charles says. There is no point in asking if Erik misses his family, or what happened to the old pieces. He isn't certain he could explain why he knows what he knows; that in the nights they spent together when there was no distance between their skin or their minds, things bled over that Charles never meant to take and Erik never meant to share.
“Yes,” Erik agrees. He moves his rook. “Penny for your thoughts, old friend?”
The rush of possible answers that flood into Charles mouth startles him and with that comes a low, humorless laugh. He rubs his hand over his eyes and squeezes them shut. Far better to say nothing than to confess things that cannot be taken back once said. His damned traitorous eyes burn again at the corners and he can feel the thickening at his throat.
He will not make a fool of himself in front of Erik, though damned if he could explain to God or man why he still cares so damned much about what Erik thinks of him. Erik who made little enough sense when they first met and has made steadily less as time wears on. The demands he makes are so simple and implicit when they lie together in bed; be a mutant, be a man, be a queer, and be proud of all these things.
There isn’t much that’s secret between them, except the murky years after the war that Erik has pinned down in his mind with such force that even Erik can’t really touch them. It’s the impression of a rage so overwhelming that it eclipsed everything else and honed into a fine focus that turned him into the man he is.
After all, Erik has endured while Charles has the world placed neatly at his feet. And thus he can walk down the street with absolute conviction of his right to live as he is without fear.
And still Charles holds to his anonymity.
Charles can admit that sometimes he is grateful for the memories Erik has spared him. He doesn’t exactly want to know what it took to turn Erik into Erik and that, he can admit to himself, is his own failing. It makes him feel very weak that he cannot even stomach the memories when Erik lived it.
No, all he has ever had to do is the rather easy task of accepting Erik for who he says he is. It’s not so very much of a struggle.
“My life was so much simpler before I knew you,” Charles says, using his one remaining knight to take Erik's rook. “Check.”
Erik arches an eyebrow and uses his king to take the knight. “I might say the same.”
“I suppose mine was simpler to begin with,” Charles counters, swallowing with force to little avail. There is sometimes, with Erik, the urge to apologize for his past. As though his ‘sorry’ would have any meaning at all other than as an attempt to excise his own guilt. He inhales a long breath, but the exhales shudders. “But I was content, before I met you.”
“And lying.”
Charles looks up with sharp, hot, heady outrage burning in his veins alongside the utterly irrational tears. Erik meets his gaze with a steady resolve that Charles cannot, cannot understand, because it isn't as easy as Erik likes to pretend. Not if you like large portions of the world in which you live. “I don't lie.”
“You omit.” Erik eases his knight across the board, then plants his elbows on the table. “You like to read the minds of others. You like to run your school. You like nights in bed with me. But you don't want to be a mutant--” Quite accidentally, Charles makes a noise of caution and, with a wry expression, Erik lowers his voice. “You don't want to be a mutant, or a queer. And that, my friend, my lover, is how you lie. Checkmate.”
Charles looks at the board. “Indeed.”
He flicks his king over with his first finger and feels a single shameful tear burn down his cheek, because he is an idiot for having come to sit across from Erik when he ought to know better. He bows his head, blinking hard, forcing steady breaths from lungs that don't wish to cooperate with their owner.
“Oh, Charles,” Erik says quietly. “You great fool.”
“I am indeed,” Charles agrees, gritting his teeth against the ridiculous dampness at his eyes. “I should go.”
“No, wait,” Erik interjects, pushing back from the table. His chair ekes out a rough, vaguely torturous sound that Erik ignores as he skirts around to Charles' side. A young man steps forward and asks if they've finished and Erik nods, offering him use of the pieces of well. “Come,” he says to Charles, and as they've just agreed he isn't a wise man, Charles pushes away from the table.
They find a secluded spot just a bit off the main path and stop. Charles puts the brake on his chair and pushes his knuckles into his eyes. He hasn't cried in a very long time, with the exception of the day on the beach when he was in terrible pain and slowly seeing the house he'd built unravel in the inexplicable choices of others. Perhaps it's a blessing that it isn't the wild wailing of a child, bur rather the tight, unhappy tears he associates with Raven's bad days, when she looked in the mirror and believed no one would ever love her.
Erik kneels in front of him; with two fingers, he forces Charles' chin upward so their eyes meet.
“We are a little hopeless, you and I,” he says with soft certainty.
With his thumb he brushes the tears from Charles' face; his hands drift downward to cup Charles' jaw in his palm. “I've never cried in front of you,” Charles says, rolling his eyes upward and blinking hard. It doesn't help. “At least not like this, for no damn reason.”
The corner of Erik's mouth turns up in a wry smile. “Well, you’ve seen me cry, for many reasons. I suppose we could call it even now.”
Charles manages a low chuckle, shaking his head. He sees the intent in the line of Erik's body and from the look in his eye and it would be a lie if Charles claimed there was no muted flair of panic at the thought. But they are mostly alone and Charles hasn't felt so small in a very long time. So he allows Erik to lean forward and kiss both his cheeks and each of his closed eyes.
“One day we'll stop meeting like this, unnecessary theatrics included.”
Erik shrugs. “Without the theatrics we might not ever manage to meet. I'll take what I can.” He turns his head and looks at the sky, then stretches out his hand and looks at his watch. “But time flies, I suppose, and neither of us are without our responsibilities.”
Charles nods. He wonders if the urge for resolution will ever lessen. It would be lovely if he believed things could reconcile. “We do.”
And then it is back to the business of being nothing more than old friends enjoying an afternoon in the park as Erik stands. Playing the parts of men who do not run schools for the unwanted children of the world and men who do not believe very little of the world is at all worth saving. Side by side, they move back onto the main path, amidst the couples and the families and the laughing children. Erik adjusts his hat to a rakish angle
Silent, they walk back toward 64th Street with the understanding they will go separate ways.
“Erik,” Charles says as they reach the sidewalk.
“Yes?”
“Next time, consider the motel room.” He doesn't look at Erik's face as he wheels away, but he hears the laughter.