Archive of Our Own

The morning he flipped open the newspaper, several days after the events at the White House, and found the headline and picture dedicated to the peace summit in Paris that was now, finally, going through—and not the mutant terrorist that had tried to kill the president—something cracked in Charles’s chest.

He held the paper in one shaking hand. The other he kept wrapped around his mug of tea. Shaking, because the effects of withdrawal had yet to wear off, yes, but also shaking because somehow it had taken him until now to realise—

He lifted the mug to his mouth, took a careful sip of his tea, and tried to approach the thought with something resembling rationality.

Erik.

Erik was still out there.

Up until a few days ago, Erik’s imprisonment had kept a firm lid on the hole he’d left in Charles’s life. Hard to drop in on someone when they were public enemy number one. But now—Charles had let him go.

The nausea was unexpected. He braced his head on the table, listened to the silverware clink faintly. He’d been in Erik’s head at the White House. He’d had good reasons as to why he’d sworn to never go there again. The ache in his heart now became one of them.

Erik was no longer the top news item. Charles had no doubt that he was good at disappearing. He’d been hunting nazi war criminals across continents for years before he’d met Charles, and no doubt it would be no hardship to him to slip back into this itinerant life.

He didn’t really think that Cerebro would deliver a result. After all, Erik had always been extremely prudent about shutting Charles out. Charles went down there more out of an idle curiosity, because if it wasn’t going to be drugs, he’d have to give in to some other ill-advised impulse. It therefore surprised him to get a clear read on his first try—and on the East Coast, too.

He recoiled almost before processing the details—the smell of bread in the air, the sensation of a warm mug in Erik’s hand, the half-eaten bagel before him.

When he took off the cap, he was breathing hard. It felt impossible to get air into his lungs. His synapses echoed with Erik, Erik, Erik.

Unsurprising, then, that he went back in.

The next time he found Erik, Erik was in a small apartment, still on the East Coast. He was staring at a blank wall, mind empty like he was meditating, or perhaps trying to appear invisible to an ill-advisedly curious telepath. Charles managed to rest in the moment for nearly a minute before pulling out. His shirt, when he came back into his own mind, was sweated through.

He wasn’t exactly mobile by himself. Asking Hank to drive him was out of the question. But Charles did have money and felt like the drug use had worn away enough of his impulse control that he hardly flinched at the price of a cab to Maine.

To assuage the guilty conscience that plagued him nevertheless, he used part of the cab ride to fill out funding applications. He and Hank had agreed on a timeline: they would aim to have the necessary accreditations to reopen the school next year, but Charles had also set himself the private goal of reopening scholarships for the first term. That required money.

Outside, the trees grew thicker. Their leaves were bright red and orange. Fall in New England, come again.

The cab driver deposited his wheelchair on the curb, then helped Charles into it. As he pulled away, Charles caught his last doubtful look. He’d not yet managed to accustom himself to the pity of strangers. He did remember how angry it used to make him, but also that this anger didn’t serve anyone. He squared his shoulders and hoped he looked more confident than he felt.

The town was calm around him. Charles had forgotten what that sort of benign normalcy felt like—when people’s superficial thoughts were shopping lists and what was for dinner, not fear and self-loathing and the worst memories of one’s life always ready to leap to the surface. It was a normalcy that many could not afford.

Why was Erik here? It seemed like the kind of place he would despise on principle.

The sidewalks were hard to navigate with the chair. Charles asked for directions and ascertained the location of a deli that sounded like the place where he’d spotted Erik. A kindly woman in her fifties helped him up the stoop, and then patted his head when he thanked her. Charles felt angry again, not at the woman but at the thoughts she was not the first to think and would not be the last one—what a nice young man, must have served in Vietnam, what a shame, what a wasted life. Even in the depth of addiction, he’d not thought of his life as wasted. A week ago, he might have told her to go fuck herself.

He ordered a bagel and a cup of orange juice, then took a seat by the window. The lamps cast a warm glow on the inside of the place, especially as it started to rain, and the asphalt of the street turned dark and wet as complicated clouds piled high above the houses. He finished his bagel and juice and ordered a coffee. He had a book in his bag, something Hank had recommended. He knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate, but the book gave him something to do with his hands.

It was possible that Erik would not show up today. Perhaps Charles had missed him. He’d not given serious consideration to the thought of what he’d do if evening came and his quest should prove fruitless. He’d built a career on his optimism.

The bell on the door jingled. Charles looked up from the book the same moment that Erik’s gaze fell on him.

Charles raised a hand. Smiled, a little.

Erik scowled and turned towards the counter.

Charles kept his gaze on the book. No word from the page would enter his mind while he could just about hear Erik’s voice over the sound of the coffee machine, giving his order with the same clipped tone he’d always used to point out a flaw in Charles’s reasoning.

He looked up when Erik set down his coffee on the table. The scowl had not left his face, but Charles senses a current of curiosity that Erik seemed equally unable to help.

He’d asked himself how wanted mutant terrorist Erik Lehnsherr managed to stay unrecognised in a small town in Maine. Looking at Erik in jeans and flannel, so far afield from his usual coat and fedora, it was suddenly easy to understand. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. His shirt was unironed, but his shoulders filled it well. He looked… normal. Unremarkable.

“What do you want, Charles?”

That was a difficult question. Charles had wrested with it on the way here, over funding applications that did not capture his full attention and that had only made the question more urgent. What did he want? What did he want, now that he had a future and was determined to live it? How did one deal with life—not the life he’d thought he’d have at twenty-nine, when he’d figured he knew how it was going to go, the professorship and lectures, the faculty meetings and monographs—but life, the unpredictable thing that had happened to him instead?

He made himself look at Erik. That had often been too hard and too easy for a number of reasons. There was suspicion on Erik’s face, and his mind radiated it, too—Charles felt it like a crumb lodged in his windpipe, an irritant to their interaction. The sensation was strong enough to make him clear his throat.

“To talk,” he said.

Erik rolled his eyes. There was a wave of annoyance, of I-fucking-knew-it, followed by a bracing of Erik’s attitude to the sermon he expected Charles to deliver.

“Like we used to,” Charles hastened to add. “I want to talk like we used to, Erik.”

Erik crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Like we used to? When?”

Charles clutched his book tighter. Erik’s attitude usually made him angry, but now that anger was laced with the fear that Erik would get up and leave, and Charles would have squandered his chance, perhaps forever.

“Like… before.”

That appeared to amuse Erik, but Charles knew him enough to understand the couldn’t-care-less wave of his hand as an affectation. Something about him, he knew, had always rubbed Erik the wrong way, but Erik was also a man who never chose the easy road if he could help it. When Charles got difficult, that was when Erik was most fascinated by him.

“How have you been?” he asked before Erik could say anything else.

“You mean, besides prison?”

Charles rolled his eyes, and Erik insisted. “You asked. It’s not my fault the question was stupid.”

“I meant… how was the—” Charles waved his hand, stumped, for a moment, by the correct choice of word. How would he describe the vision of Erik’s utopia, that vision for which he’d left Charles, bleeding, on a beach in Cuba? “Commune?”

“It wasn’t a commune,” Erik said. “Don’t call it that.”

“What should I call it?”

“A sanctuary.”

The temptation to rile up Erik was almost too much. But this wasn’t one of their chess conversations. Erik might very well just up and leave, and then Charles would be alone again.

“It’s funny how we both ended up with similar designs despite starting out from such different ideas,” he said instead. “Keep our kind safe from the world. Keep humanity out.”

“Our sanctuary was nothing like that school of yours.” Erik scoffed. “You wouldn’t know what to do in an environment where you don’t get to tell people what to think.”

There was a flash of anger. Charles flinched. He thought of the day the first student told him he would be volunteering. How all his arguments had failed against the unbreakable conviction of youthful patriotism. How angry he’d been that this young man wanted to go to war for a country that had tried to kill his kind. How he’d understood Erik in that moment.

“In the end, I guess we both failed,” Charles said. “So, neither of us has the luxury of calling the other a naïve idealist.”

“The CIA sabotaged our sanctuary,” Erik spat. “You just ran your school into the ground because you got addicted to being normal.”

He seemed to regret it a moment later. Perhaps when he remembered who exactly had put the bullet in Charles’s back.

“The CIA?” Charles said diplomatically.

Erik waved a hand. “They recruited mutants to infiltrate us.”

Charles made a noncommittal noise—it wasn’t unlike the CIA, but frankly it was just as plausible that Erik’s commune had run itself into the ground over ideological differences without any external help. “Where were you again? Colombia? Chile?”

“Chile,” Erik said through gritted teeth.

They both took a sip of their coffee.

“You wanted to talk,” Erik said finally, after enough silence had passed between them for the irritation to subside. “Like before, you said.”

Over chess games and late nights in the library. With the wide-eyed infatuation of a boy meeting a man who took him seriously for the first time. In those days, Charles had sometimes felt like he was inventing some new feeling every time he looked at Erik.

“I miss our conversations, Erik,” he said.

Erik considered that. He considered Charles before him.

“Perhaps it’s best you come to my place,” he said.

They stopped at the bottom of the stairs up to the apartment.

“It’s, ah…” Erik hesitated, and Charles felt the mix of embarrassment and annoyance that he’d gotten to know in so many people since losing the use of his legs. He’d come to resent it far more than the pity.

“I can lift your wheelchair,” offered Erik.

“Can you?” Charles said, dryly.

“Ah,” Erik said after a moment of grasping for the chair with his senses. “What’s it made of? Why?”

“Special polymer. Hank designed it.” He sought Erik’s gaze, wanting the next words to land even though the Charles who had insisted on a metal-free design had been a much bitterer man than him. “You have your helmet. It seemed only fair.”

Erik didn’t flinch. Charles wasn’t sure if he was glad or disappointed.

“I have a couch,” Erik said. “I could carry you up, then the chair.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Charles said.

He had been carried by other people before, mostly Hank, but still he had not reckoned with how it would feel to put an arm around Erik’s neck and have Erik scoop him up. It was unsettlingly gentle, and he was still half mad at some version of Erik, but in this moment, it was impossible to recall any of their differences. He tried not to breathe too deeply as Erik pushed himself up the stairs, struggling with the weight of a fully grown man in his arms despite his fitness. He did not want to find out how Erik smelled, not now, not ten years too late and while he was pressed firmly against the man’s chest.

At the top of the stairs, the lock of the door clicked without the help of a key. Erik kicked the door open with one foot, then deposited Charles carefully on the couch. Charles focussed on breathing while Erik went back downstairs to haul up the chair.

“It folds up,” Charles called belatedly, when Erik was already halfway up the stairs. He emerged at the top, panting only slightly. “It was fine.”

He closed the door behind himself. When he sat down next to Charles, Charles felt the precarity of the situation with full force. Christ, what was he doing here? He should have left well enough; he should have left the memory of Erik alone.

“How have you been, Charles?”

Erik’s voice was quieter now, and Charles could feel he meant the question. That was too much to contemplate.

“You mean besides the paralysis?”

It had felt more satisfying in his mind. He avoided Erik’s gaze, looked instead around the living room, which was undecorated, and furnished sparsely. The only furniture besides the couch was a little side table, upon which stood a Bakelite radio. Their placement indicated Erik’s preferred spot on the couch. Erik had set Charles down right next to them. He could have read into that, had he wanted to.

Next to him, Erik sighed.

“I let you in, Charles. Does that not suffice as a gesture of good faith?”

Charles closed his eyes. He tried to focus on the presence of Erik—not the room around them, not the history between them, just the feeling that they were alone together for the first time in years, and tried to remember that this was precious.

“They stopped writing about you.”

That stunned Erik into uncomprehending silence. “Who did?”

Charles turned to him, smiling bleakly. Jesus but would this man ever stop being both the thorn and the wound in his side. Erik, guilelessly, gazed back at him with an expression of vague hurt. Perhaps he had missed Charles, too.

“The papers,” Charles said. “You were on the front page for a couple of days and I knew that if they did catch you, I would hear about it. But then they moved on, started writing about other things, and I thought that if the CIA managed to catch up with you now, take you out, I would never even hear about it.”

Erik blinked at him twice. Charles felt a helpless fondness for himself twitch in Erik’s gut, though the man fought to keep it from the corners of his mouth. “Really,” he said, voice suffused by sarcasm. “Charles, I’m touched.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

Everything was a joke to him, Charles remembered. Erik was incapable of taking things seriously, unless they were the things he cared about, and then he took them too seriously. And he’d always found Charles worth mocking.

He would have gotten up, but he’d let Erik take him inside, and his chair was all the way across the room. He couldn’t leave—but at the same time, Erik hadn’t put the helmet on. He couldn’t keep Charles out.

A gesture of good faith, Erik had called it.

“I don’t want to fight,” he told Erik. “Please, just once. Do you think we can manage that?”

“You said you wanted to talk,” Erik said. Ah, there was the wariness again. “Do you want me to just sit here and nod so that you can pretend I agree with everything you say?”

“This isn’t going to work,” Charles said. “If you’d just—”

“I’m sorry,” Erik said. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry.”

His embarrassment was strong enough to almost make Charles blush in its aftermath. Charles left him some of his dignity by not looking over at him.

“Do you want to know the truth?” Charles asked, after a moment, when he felt that Erik had composed himself enough. “Why I came here?”

“Please,” Erik said, and though it easily could have sounded sarcastic, it did not. It must have taken a lot for Erik to let himself feel the raw nerve that Charles touched in his life.

“It’s hard. To go on.” Even the thought of giving voice to these thoughts was embarrassing. Charles only forged on because there was no possible way that Erik could think less of him. “We save the world from plunging itself into war, and they want to annihilate us as thanks. They build robots designed to eradicate us, and when some of us won’t stand by and let it happen, they call those people terrorists. I would say we have to be twice as good, but saving the world from nuclear war isn’t really twice as good, it’s on a whole other level, and still, it counts for nothing.”

“If it’s any concern,” Erik said. “People hating you has very little to do with what you do. It’s about who you are.”

“That’s what frustrates me!”

Charles caught enough of Erik’s surface thoughts to know that he thought him hopelessly naïve—but at least he didn’t voice them. Charles supposed that had to count for something.

Erik sighed. “You can’t let it get to you, Charles.”

“You let it get to you!” That sounded like an accusation. Charles realised, belatedly, that he had not meant it that way. He realised that he was jealous of Erik’s ability to treat every injustice he encountered as a new and specific wrong that he would make his cause to right.

It did make Erik laugh. “Yes,” he said. “But I’m me. And you’re you.”

Charles felt vaguely desperate. “How do you do it? How do you get up in the morning?” His hands were shaking again, he realised. What would he do if Erik didn’t have an answer? “I can hardly make myself. It’s just going to be the same old story, over and over again. We can’t change it.”

Erik sobered suddenly. “We don’t have that luxury, Charles.” His gaze was intent. Charles knew that attitude, knew it was Erik on a crusade, and God but he had missed the force of that conviction. The anger at things that were wrong, when he himself had to muster understanding and compassion. “The world needs you,” he said. “You don’t get to lose hope.”

Charles laughed in disbelief. “Since when do you think that?”

A stab of hurt from Erik, so strong and unexpected that Charles flinched. Erik did not break eye contact. “I have never thought otherwise.”

Those eyes, Charles thought. Brown. Not warm, at least not often—often hard and calculating, but sometimes it looked like everything about Erik melted, and then those eyes were very, very warm. Like now.

“We’re reopening the school,” he said, mouth dry. He wished Erik had offered him a glass of water. He wished Erik was a little more like a normal person, who wasn’t on the run in an unfurnished Maine apartment and who didn’t know to offer his guests refreshments, but then he wouldn’t be Erik. “And I’m applying for government funding, and I somehow have to believe that it matters. That there will be a future where we won’t have to hide behind a façade.”

Erik kept looking at him intently. “Would you rather run away to Chile with me?”

He wasn’t serious, Charles reminded himself. Erik had asked him once to run away with him, and, knowing Erik, he would not ask again. Not while he meant it. He made himself laugh, but it sounded weak even to his ears.

“I want a reason to get up in the morning. I want a reason to go on.”

“How about this,” Erik said. “If you don’t, then that means all we have left are my methods. Of which you thoroughly disapprove.”

“Sometimes I would like to burn it all down.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Erik said. “Believe me, you’d know it if you did.”

He was right. Charles hated it, but he was right. The resignation that Erik carried with him, the absolute certainty of the conviction that people would always come for those who fell outside the narrow scope of normalcy, was so much more comprehensive that the weariness that Charles felt. It wasn’t even anger anymore—anger was the emotion of someone who expected something and found themselves let down. Erik had stopped hoping for better from humanity a long time ago, and Charles couldn’t even blame him today. Optimism was burdensome. It felt nice to pretend that he was ready to give up.

“I hate it when you’re right.”

Erik looked at him with a brittle expression. Concern, Charles realised. Had he given Erik a fright?

“I’m sorry, Erik.” The embarrassment, after having arrived at the lowest his mood would allow him to go, was acute. “I’m sorry for—for bothering you. I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.”

If only he could get up and go himself. “Would you help me back into my chair? I think it’s best I go now.”

“Of course.” Erik stood immediately. Then he fixed Charles with a look that was hard to bear—a sudden flash of despair. “Please don’t go, Charles. Not yet anyway.”

It stunned Charles by virtue of being exactly what he’d wanted to hear. “Alright,” he said. And then: “I would still prefer to sit in my chair.”

“Do you need help?”

Charles shook his head. “Just bring it over here, thank you.”

Back in his chair, he felt a bit more like himself. He could put some distance between himself and Erik, should he want to. Having the option was what mattered, in the end.

Erik seemed to have decided that Charles was not about to run off, if the mellowing of his mood was anything to go by. He now mustered Charles with an amused expression that was more akin to his usual irreverent attitude.

“So even Charles Xavier sometimes suffers a crisis of faith. Who would have thought?”

Charles huffed. At this stage, Erik’s teasing did not truly have the power to upset him. On the contrary, it felt good—too many people, Hank included, or perhaps especially Hank, tended to tread on eggshells around him. Erik had never bothered with anyone’s feelings, especially not Charles’s.

The thought made Charles laugh.

“What?” Erik said. Clearly, he’d not been expecting Charles to laugh.

“Nothing,” Charles said, and only half meant it. He knew that a part of him wanted Erik to ask—had always wanted Erik to ask.

“You know, it’s not fair that you could read my thoughts and yet you keep yours to yourself. How does the saying go? Do I have to offer you a penny before you’ll share them with me?”

Charles grinned and shook his head. “Seriously, Erik.”

“Fine, keep your secrets.” Erik crossed his arms. Charles could tell his annoyance was mostly faked—but only mostly. The topic of Charles’s ability was a sore one. Erik had never felt entirely comfortable with the idea of what Charles could do. Well, everyone deserved their own bit of hypocrisy. Erik’s was his absolute acceptance of all mutations expect Charles’s.

Still, he was here without a helmet. And Charles had wanted him to ask for over ten years at this point, and he did not like the thought of Erik upset at him.

A gesture of goodwill, then. If he didn’t call it that, he would have to call it a monumentally stupid idea.

“I was thinking about how you never bothered to spare my feelings.”

“Why is that so funny?”

Charles waved a hand, affected nonchalance although his heart was beating painfully, a reminder that this was stupid, careless—but how far could he still ruin things with Erik, after everything?

“Because I was a little bit in love with you back then.”

Not quite the truth—the past tense was its own mechanism of self-protection, as was the descriptor of ‘little.’ Charles smiled, and Erik frowned.

“You mean—?”

“Surely you’ve guessed.” Charles had wondered sometimes, if he had. For all his flaws, subtlety was not one of them, or so he’d thought. But the power of the heterosexual was blindness towards anything bent out of shape, anything they did not want to see—

“That you’re—” Erik began again. He did not finish. Charles supposed he should be grateful there was no disgust in him—but he knew Erik, and he knew that wasn’t the kind of person Erik was. Still, one never knew.

“A homosexual.”

Erik frowned.

“The reason why I followed you around like a lost puppy, why I looked at you like you hung the moon. I was gay. Am gay.”

“I thought it was because you liked my politics,” Erik said. Charles almost laughed when he realised Erik meant it—he was truly upset to find out Charles’s devotion had been to a part of him other than his conviction.

“I hated your politics,” Charles said.

“I thought you were coming around to them.”

Now Erik was mustering him like what Charles had told him was finally sinking in. At least there wasn’t a friendship left to ruin, Charles thought, and then he thought, oh but there is. There was that last bit of connection between them that had kept Erik from exiting the diner upon seeing him. That had made Erik invite him home.

Did he want to sever ties with Erik? Perhaps this impulse to confess had been part of an elaborate attempt of his subconscious to sabotage him.

“Charles,” Erik said and oh, that was worse, that wasn’t disgust, it was remorse, and sure it was tinged with a bit of incomprehension but it was Erik, and Charles would forgive him a thousand ignorant questions. “Charles, I don’t—”

“I know,” Charles said quickly. Unfortunately, Erik was set on continuing.

“You realise I don’t—”

“I do,” Charles said. “I do. I didn’t mean—”

Didn’t mean what? Didn’t mean thing that was no doubt plain to Erik, that Charles denied in front of the mirror every morning and in front of Hank on occasion, that ten years had not cooled all his feelings for Erik, that he still fell asleep sometimes imagining that one day, Erik would stand on his doorstep and apologise and they would be together again? Had he not meant precisely that?

Who was he kidding?

He had loved Erik for a long time. Erik had seldom loved him back.

That was a thought he could rally around—gather up his courage and his stupid desperate heart and walk out of here with his dignity intact. He smiled. Looked at Erik, who looked a little more haggard now than he had in sixty-two. Who was a little more careless with his stubble, and who still scowled when he thought himself unobserved.

“I think it’s time I go home,” Charles said. “Thank you for having me, Erik.”

This time, Erik didn’t protest. He even offered to walk down the street to call a cab for him. (His hideout had no landline.) It stung a little that Erik didn’t argue, but not enough to make Charles ask him if he could stay after all. He was glad for his chance at an honest escape.

Getting down the stairs was torturous—Erik’s arms too much like a place where, Charles thought, he might feel safe. Charles tried his best not to think about feeling Erik’s muscles under the soft fabric of his shirt, nor the soft sound of exertion Erik made when he lifted Charles up.

Erik helped him into his chair. The air outside still smelled clean, like the rain that had come down earlier. Sunset must have been some twenty minutes past—the sky was not quite dark but had taken on that transient colour of the early evening. Charles watched as Erik trudged down to the next corner telephone booth. The look on his face as he spoke into the receiver. Sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up despite the evening chill. In another week, Charles knew, he’d be elsewhere, rebuilding his mutant utopia from the ashes of his latest defeat, and people would flock to him once more—for the strength of his conviction, for the tools he put into their hands to finally feel like something other than a victim. Charles remembered what that felt like.

But for a moment, as the streetlights came on and the evening grew darker, as night gathered and Erik strolled back towards him, Charles let himself imagine a world that was not that. Instead, a world where they had only this—the porch of the walk-up of a multi-unit home in a small town in America, the sunset, and the smell of trees after rain on the air.

Erik coming back to him with a smile.

“He’s on his way,” Erik said. He sat down next to Charles.

“What are you doing?” Charles asked.

“I’ll wait with you,” Erik said, like it was the most self-evident thing in the world. He sat down on the stoop next to Charles’s chair. Charles felt the absurd urge to pet his hair. Erik’s hairline wasn’t receding like his own. The lucky bastard would probably still have a full head into old age. Charles linked his fingers in his lap.

“It was good to see you, Charles,” Erik said. He didn’t look at Charles, but Charles could feel how complicated that sentiment was for Erik, how hard-won. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, wondered if he might glimpse a star or two despite the quick clouds moving through the sky, despite the streetlights.

“It was. It was good to see you.”

Hank didn’t ask him where he had been, the next morning, over breakfast. They took that together again, in the small dining room adjacent to the kitchen, and Hank stayed off the serum most days. Charles knew it was his idea of solidarity; disagreed but didn’t say anything because he also knew that Hank knew no other way to comfort him. Sometimes life was about that, about someone needing to comfort you more than you needed their comfort.

This morning, the morning after his visit to Erik, after he had collapsed into bed long past midnight, the sun fell brightly through the tall windows onto their table. Hank was having scrambled eggs with his toast. Charles felt as fragile as a glass swan. He grazed the bone china of his teacup with his fingers just to feel the heat, over and over. A pain he could bear. Eventually, he would work up to the real thing.

“You know I’m gay, right, Hank?”

Hank, knife in one hand and butter dish in the other, startled.

“I, uh…” He swallowed. Looked at Charles, then looked away. Set down the knife and picked up his coffee. Continued, into the cup: “…assumed.”

“And it’s not an issue for you, right?”

Hank looked like he would take Vietnam over this line of questioning. Charles persisted. “I mean, you’re living with me. You let me run a school. Obviously you don’t think I’m a pervert.”

“Professor…” Hank hesitated. “You would know. If I was…”

“A bigot?” Charles asked brightly. “You can’t always tell, you know. People don’t often put their hatred first in their justifications of their beliefs to themselves. Hate usually enters the equation in the interaction.”

“Oh,” Hank said. “Well, I’m not. I mean I—don’t mind.” He picked up the knife again. Even got halfway to the butter dish before setting it down again. “Why?”

I was wondering how obvious I was, he didn’t say. He also didn’t say: I was in love with Erik for years and I don’t think he ever realised.

“I was just wondering,” he said. “Since people seem to be talking about this sort of thing more now.”

It wasn’t a sound that woke him; more the nudging of a familiar mind at the edges of his consciousness. Nothing to send him into a state of alertness. It just felt like a well-known person slipping into bed next to you.

Not that Charles had ever known that sort of comfort.

He turned, boxed his pillow into shape, and closed his eyes again, reaching for a dream that was already slipping away. The next moment, he sat bolt upright, upper body braced, hands planted firmly on the mattress.

“Erik.”

The shape across the room smiled faintly.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Charles sank back into the pillows. He closed his eyes and passed a hand over them. His heartbeat felt uncomfortably quick.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

Charles couldn’t take that seriously, and yet he wanted to.

Too late at night. His defences were down.

“If you want to see me, come back in the morning,” he said, only half of his annoyance for show. What time was it? There was no light outside his window.

Erik had no response to that. Charles didn’t feel particularly pressed to add anything. He could feel himself slipping back into sleep—and that shouldn’t be so easy, not with Erik close, but Erik had always been his blind spot. Then Erik spoke, dragging Charles once more back to wakefulness.

“Did you really love me? Back then?”

Charles opened his eyes.

Ten years ago, he wanted to say, same as today.

He didn’t.

“Why do you ask?”

Erik was silent for a long time. Charles sat up so he could watch him, barely illuminated by what little light there was in the bedroom. He reached for his bedside lamp, and both of them flinched.

Erik looked a bit less haggard than the last time Charles had seen him. He had shaved, and his shirt didn’t look like he’d worn it for twenty years while doing manual labour. Charles couldn’t help a small smile.

Erik echoed it.

Charles’s heart twisted painfully.

“Selfish reasons,” Erik finally said.

“Selfish,” Charles echoed. He had the sudden and distinct feeling that he needed to tell Erik to stop talking. But he didn’t.

Call it morbid curiosity. Call it his fucking blind spot when it came to Erik Lehnsherr.

Erik stood, abruptly, like he’d made a decision. Charles tilted his head back to follow the movement. What he hated most about being in the chair—what he would always hate most, he was pretty sure—was constantly looking up at people. And Erik had always been tall.

He came to sit on the edge of the bed. Charles shuffled himself backwards, to sit more upright against the headboard.

“How did you even get in here?” Charles said. “We need to up our security measures.”

“Would you really keep out your own kind, Charles?” Erik said, and his tone was light and teasing and asked Charles to pretend that everything was alright between them.

“You’re a terrorist,” Charles said, trying to sound affronted.

“A terrorist in the eyes of an unjust government is no terrorist at all,” Erik countered.

“Says who?”

“Me, for starters.”

Erik grinned. Charles loved him. Charles hated that he loved him.

“So,” Erik said. “Did you love me?”

“I already told you.”

Erik was too close, and then he came closer. Charles knew he should say something—something like ‘this is a bad idea, Erik’ or ‘just because I loved you then doesn’t mean I love you now’ or ‘just because I love you doesn’t give you the right to do this’—but the problem was, he didn’t believe any of that. He let Erik press his lips to his own; breathed in sharply at the sensation. Erik’s lips were slightly chapped. Warm. The smell of Erik was too much, this close.

Erik drew back. Charles busied himself with a loose thread on his quilt.

“Can you say something?” Erik asked, finally.

Charles shook his head. He didn’t trust his voice. He wanted very much to cry, but he hadn’t cried in years. Not while sober, anyway.

Erik made a frustrated noise. He had never been a patient man. It might have made Charles laugh, if his heart wasn’t currently being pulled apart in his chest.

“Charles,” Erik said.

Charles kissed him.

It wasn’t remotely how he’d pictured it. In his better fantasies, Erik would confess that he’d secretly harboured feelings for him for years, and then they’d consummate their love with the kind of steamy, passionate sex better reserved for pulpy romance novels. This Erik—the real, actual Erik—was awkward and shy with his kisses. He breathed out sharply when Charles put a hand on the side of his face.

Had Erik shaved because he’d been planning on doing this?

Charles pulled back. He searched Erik’s face for any sign of cruelty but, for once, found none. Erik looked as lost as Charles felt.

“Why?” Charles demanded.

Erik shook his head.

“Why?” Charles asked again. He felt his heart had earned at least that answer.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about—what you said.”

Finally, Erik looked away, down at his hands.

“That I was in love with you,” Charles said tonelessly.

“That you were in love with me.”

He had to ask. He shouldn’t ask, but he was going to. “But you’re still not—”

“No,” Erik said. “I don’t think so.”

“Right,” Charles said, and now he couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“That doesn’t mean—You do mean a lot to me, Charles.”

“There is no need to let me down gently, Erik.”

Why did Erik have to come here, so late at night, looking so lost, to ambush Charles with everything he’d ever dreamed of? Charles hated him. He hated that he loved him.

Erik reached for his hand. Charles met his gaze.

They kissed again. More heated this time.

Charles let himself be pressed against the headboard as Erik climbed into his lap. Then Erik’s hands came up to cradle the sides of his face, and Charles felt it was only fair to grab his hips, maybe a bit of arse, and squeeze. Erik didn’t protest. He had a nice arse. Charles opened his mouth and felt Erik’s tongue. For someone who wasn’t gay, Erik had very little compunctions about sticking his tongue down another man’s throat.

Charles hadn’t had a man in his lap like this in over ten years, when he’d been younger and much less disabled. Still, some things never changed. The weight of Erik’s ass in the palm of his hands was just as nice as it would have been back then. The smell of Erik’s aftershave was just as intoxicating. Charles wasn’t sure where Erik intended to take this, but he would not stop him.

He, too, had his vices.

Erik tugged at his lower lip with his teeth, and Charles groaned. He felt the bite as a phantom echo in his groin, something like arousal but different from how it used to feel. A sting that reverberated throughout his body.

He pulled back with some difficulty. When he did, he was surprised to find he was breathing hard.

“Erik,” he said. “Erik.”

Erik’s eyes locked onto him with that intense focus he wore so well. He always committed himself to a path wholly.

Damn it all, Charles thought. He had enough people in his life who would have told him that Erik was using him. For once, he didn’t care. Whatever Erik got out of this, Charles would be a happy participant for once.

They went back to kissing, Erik’s hand in Charles’s hair. When Erik pulled lightly on the strands, Charles again felt that pleasurable pain in every part of his body. He hummed with urgency. Fumbled for the belt and button of Erik’s jeans. Erik gasped when Charles’s knuckles grazed his erection.

It was not quite easy pulling him out of his boxers. When Charles managed, Erik fell back into his lap, panting, their mouths barely touching. He didn’t say anything. His eyes were closed. Charles watched his face, too close to make out any meaningful expressions. Breathed the same air as Erik. Felt his panting breaths on his lips.

He’d thought it would feel different, to hold Erik’s cock in his hand. Better. More like a victory, less like anticipatory loss. When he tightened his grip, Erik leaned in and kissed him again, fingers tightening in Charles’s hair and Charles wanted to take his hand away from Erik’s cock so that this would never have to end, so that Erik would keep kissing him forever.

“Just like that,” Erik muttered. The obvious pleasure in his voice ruined Charles. “Just like that.”

Charles stroked him hard and fast. Erik thrust up into Charles’s fist with impatience. He kept watching Erik’s face throughout. He didn’t know for what. For a sign of Erik falling in love, maybe. A sign that this wasn’t a futile endeavour that would break his heart. Erik’s orgasm, when it came, was quiet and stifled against Charles’s neck. Charles put a hand on his lower back and held him as he shook through it.

Erik pulled back slowly. He looked Charles up and down, as though he was expecting to find him different from before. There was a high colour in his cheeks.

“Can you still—” He nodded sharply, once. Charles followed his gaze down to his crotch.

“Can I still get hard?” he asked. Part of him felt like being cruel. Wanted to ask: What gives you the right to ask me that? “I do. Not as much as I used to. But that may also be life circumstances.”

Meaning: I haven’t been around anyone I’ve wanted to fuck in a while.

“Oh.”

Charles couldn’t interpret that sound. Surprise? Guilt? It was difficult to tell. There was something mellow on Erik’s face. He surprised Charles by placing a gentle hand on his cock.

“Is this alright?”

His voice was low. The look on his face too earnest.

“I’m not made of fucking glass, Erik.”

That prompted a grin from Erik. How could he forget, Erik loved it when he lost his temper. He closed his eyes. Then he opened them again immediately when he felt Erik pull down his pyjama bottoms. When Erik had his cock in his hand, Charles had to look away. He felt too vulnerable.

But he had to look back because sensation was not what it used to be. He was dependent on the image of Erik’s long fingers wrapped around his cock—was forced to watch it like some spectator to his own pleasure, except that he could feel it, just not how it would have been before his injury.

“Can you touch me?” he asked. “Pull my hair again. Anything. Please.”

And Erik indulged him without a word; shifted them so that Charles lay cradled in the crook of his arm and he could stroke his cock with one hand while skimming the other across his chest, his nipples, his neck. Sometimes, the scratch of fingernails drew a sharp gasp from Charles. Erik’s teeth worried the edge of his earlobe.

There was a thrumming in his body now. He could see his own erection in Erik’s hand, and the difference in sensation made it seem like it was happening to someone else, but Erik’s hold on him belied that depersonalisation. It was Erik; it was him.

“I want to do something,” Erik muttered into his ear. Charles could only nod. He let Erik deposit him gently on the pillows then watched, half with dread and half with anticipation, as Erik shuffled down and took his cock in his mouth. Charles made a noise like someone had punched him in the chest.

“Touch me,” he muttered. “Please.”

And Erik’s hand returned to his torso while he bent to his task. Charles could not take his eyes off the sight: his erection disappearing into Erik’s mouth, Erik’s hands on his hips, his stomach, his sides, digging in firmly, leaving white bloodless indents where he’d gripped Charles tightly.

“Erik—”

Something was pulling taught inside of him. Charles felt it ratchet up, an unbearable tightening, and suddenly he was afraid that he would not be able to get there, not anymore, because the sensations were so unlike any way he’d ever come before, but then Erik’s fingers dug into his skin again and something loosened all at once in his entire body. He could feel it thrum through him. He made a stunned noise. A moment later, Erik raised his head. Charles met his gaze, still breathing hard.

This had been a monumentally bad idea, Charles realised as Erik came up and laid down next to him. He hadn’t thought there was a way for Erik to worm himself deeper into his heart. He threw an arm across his face and focussed on catching his breath. Erik made no move to leave.

“You still love me, don’t you?” he asked after a while. His hand tracing idle patterns on Charles’s chest. He might as well have sunk his fingers through the skin and pulled Charles’s heart out.

He knew.

“Yes,” Charles said simply.

“I’m sorry,” Erik said.

He always said he was sorry, and maybe he was sorry for it all—their differences in politics, their interpersonal differences, their differences in who they wanted to fuck. But none of it ever helped Charles, who was left to pick up the broken pieces of all the things Erik destroyed so carelessly in his attempts to build a different world.

“It’s alright,” he heard himself say. “I’ll still love you anyway.”

“Charles—” Erik said, and now he sat up, a sort of alarm on his face. “Don’t say that. Don’t—”

Charles shrugged. “I’m afraid I can’t help it, old friend.”

It was his revenge. Erik could smash his way through the world, thinking one day he might invent a way of breaking things that would fix them. And Charles would always be right here, with a patient heart and a hope for better in Erik. Perhaps the last thing that remained of Erik’s conscience.

“I’m going to go,” Erik said. He swung his legs out of bed. Charles watched him, allowing himself the indulgence.

“Erik,” Charles called when Erik was almost dressed again. Erik turned. “Don’t come by again,” Charles said.

Erik had the good grace to look chastised.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Goodbye,” Charles said.

He watched Erik disappear through the door and quietly pull it closed. He sunk back into the pillows. They still smelled faintly like him. Charles wondered when Erik would break this promise to him. Tried not to look forward to it too much.