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It's been once a month to the park for chess for the last, oh, forty or more years; there is no reason for Charles to change his routine now. There have been some years where he didn't see his favorite partner, his lifelong partner, but still, in routine there is something like hope.
When the tall, slim-figured man in the grey trilby walks up to Charles's table, Charles leans back in his chair and sighs softly to himself, a smile welling up in his mind if not on his face. "Hello," he says. "Care to join me?"
"I thought we'd go somewhere outside the park today," Erik says. "I don't suppose you have your passport with you?"
Charles blinks up at him. "Normally you don't ask before you whisk me out of the country."
"I'm not planning on whisking you out of the country today. Which is why you'll need your passport."
Charles raises an eyebrow, but he doesn't ask. "I'll need an hour to get back to the house for it."
Erik nods down at the chessboard. "Perhaps we can play while you're doing that, then." He taps his temple gently, and Charles closes his eyes for a moment, forcing himself to go slowly, be gentle about it. He opens their old connection with a feeling much like sinking into a hot bath for the first time in far, far too long, and Erik exhales with the same relief.
«d4,» Charles sends, and Erik takes a seat and obligingly moves the piece on the board.
«d5,» Erik counters, moving his own piece. "I trust you won't cheat and look ahead for what's coming next."
"In the game or otherwise?"
Erik lifts his eyes and smiles at Charles. "Surely once in a great while it's good to be surprised."
"I'm never certain about that when it comes to you," Charles says, but he turns anyway, heads away from Erik and out to his van in the parking lot. Home, then, and he doesn't let himself think about how he's leaving his truest home at the chessboard.
At the mansion, Charles encounters no one. Which is good, as he doesn't have a story planned. My lover has asked me to fetch my passport and go away with him. I don't know where. He says we won't leave the country. Yes, this is the same man who tried to bring down your plane, crumple a building on top of you, unseat the President. I am going with him anyway.
He looks at his desk drawer, the things he's collected over the years that he's always meant for Erik. A book. A small metallic chess set. A photograph. A ring.
Erik might mean it when he says they aren't leaving the country, or he might not. Charles sweeps everything into a leather satchel and hooks the satchel to the back of his chair, and makes the next chess move in his mind as he heads back to the park.
When he returns, the chessboard reflects the last hour's gameplay. Erik sits with his arms crossed on the table, looking down at the pieces.
"Are you ready?" he asks, not looking back at Charles.
"It's your move," Charles points out.
"So it is." Erik stands, and he reaches out a hand to Charles. Charles takes it. "Come with me."
It's the other way around, of course. Charles doesn't ask if Erik has a car rented, and he'd rather be in the driver's seat anyway, not quite trusting Erik not to drive him off to Canada. Erik provides simple directions, this turn and that, with no hint about where their eventual destination might be. His thoughts are mostly about the weather and their chess game.
So it's a bit of a shock when Charles finds himself pulling up to the clerk's office. Charles stares at Erik, waiting to find out if this is some kind of bizarre joke.
"Erik...?"
"You didn't think I'd missed the headline, did you?"
"The-- no--" Charles pats his jacket, feels the outline of his passport. "What kind of game is this?"
"The endgame, I'd hoped." Erik looks at the building, then back at Charles. "I used to think if we could be this to each other, we might stop wasting our time with everything else. In our youth it was a moot point."
"It might still be."
"And yet it's our decision now, yours and mine."
"Yes," Charles says, "ours. I believe a proposal is customary, under the circumstances."
"Ah. Very well. In that case, I think we should exit the vehicle."
Charles glares at him; the mental image comes to him, what it would be like taking the time to get out of the van, looking up at Erik and waiting, and wanting, only to have Erik disappear on him again. "If you think I'm going to allow you to make a fool of me-- you are not as funny as you think you are, old friend."
"I'm quite serious. And you're right, a proposal is very much the custom. Out of the van, Charles. I insist."
It really isn't right that Erik should still be able to talk Charles into such ridiculous, inadvisable things, but Charles lets himself out of the van while Erik waits patiently beside it.
Once he's on the ground and the lift is put away, the van closed up once more, Charles raises an eyebrow at Erik.
And without hesitation, Erik goes down to one knee. Though the motion isn't as fluid as it might have been when Erik was thirty, he's still graceful, still elegant.
Still beautiful. Charles can't look away.
"Charles Francis Xavier," Erik says, "will you--"
"Damn you," Charles breaks in, dragging a hand across his face. "Yes."
There's a twenty-four-hour waiting period on a marriage license issued in New York State. Charles eyes Erik-- the last time they spent twenty-four consecutive hours together was over six years ago-- and presses gently at the registrar's mind, turning the calendar back two days until the license is filled out. Once Charles has it in hand, he and Erik move on to the next stage of the process: visiting the justice of the peace. It's perhaps a bit unfair to jump the queue, but Charles is beginning to feel a little lightheaded; he's not sure he can wait through the line like an ordinary man. If anyone asks, well-- in all likelihood, Erik's presence will keep anyone from challenging anything, and Charles can certainly handle anyone who can stand up to a withering gaze from Erik.
There isn't much of a line, to Charles's relief. There's one other couple, another pair of men waiting to get married. A cheerful young man with blue eyes and floppy hair is practically attached to his fiancé at the hip and shoulder; his fiancé is grinning so broadly Charles can nearly count his teeth. Both are wearing suits, although the floppy-haired young man has his jacket over an arm, his tie off and hanging loose around his neck, and his vest as well as the first two buttons of his shirt undone; the fiancé is neatly buttoned up and color-coordinated.
There are only two chairs outside the wedding chamber; the floppy-haired young man bounces out of his seat and nods to Erik. Erik sits down, and Charles maneuvers himself next to him.
"Congratulations," says the floppy-haired one. He comes around to the other side of his fiancé, who turns slightly, as if settling into his lover's touch is second nature, even in public. The floppy-haired young man drapes both arms around his lover's neck, tucks his chin against his shoulder.
"Thank you," Erik says. "And the same to you."
"We've been together five years. I'm Matt, this is Joshua." Matt nods down at his beaming fiancé. "How about you two?"
Charles looks at Erik; Erik blinks several times in return, and Charles has to take a deep breath at Erik's unexpected swell of regret, sorrow, longing. "I'm Charles, and this is Erik," Charles says, "and it'll be fifty years next April."
"Then it's about fucking-- sorry, about time," Joshua says. "Good for you."
Erik snorts. "The young man has a point," he says.
Charles slips his hand into Erik's; Erik threads their fingers together and squeezes gently. "Yes," Charles admits. "I'm afraid he does."
The door opens, and a bride and groom in their late forties walk out with a few other people.
"Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, you're next."
"That's us," Charles says, and he moves to the door, Erik just behind him. He nods at Matt and Joshua as they go. "Good luck."
"You, too!"
There's no fanfare and no reception; the only witness is a clerk who can't stop smiling at them. She's thinking about her brother, away at war with a boyfriend waiting at home for him; when he comes back, the don't-ask-don't-tell policy may be so much dust, and if it is, she's thinking about the wedding her brother can have, the marriage that will be legal in his home state.
Charles doesn't dig deeper for her thoughts on mutants; better not to spoil things. This is difficult enough as it is; Charles is aching a little too much to smile, and Erik... Erik is shuttered so tightly he might as well be wearing that helmet of his. He doesn't smile, either, not when Charles goes up to the judge and not when they take each other's hands.
"I take you, Erik, to--" is as much as Charles can get out, without taking in a deep breath and rubbing both his palms across his cheeks. "I'm sorry. Sorry. Let me-- I'll just--"
Erik squeezes his hand. It almost breaks Charles into pieces.
"I take you, Erik Lehnsherr, to be my husband. To have," he says, knowing he can't, "and to hold," and not often enough, "in sickness and in health," and what he would give to be there when Erik has a cold, to go to the kitchen for soup. "For better or worse," and that they have certainly had more than their share of, "'til--"
And this is the one part that's been true since the day they met, the one thing Charles has always believed he could count on. "'Til death do us part," he forces out, clutching Erik's fingers tightly.
"I take you, Charles Xavier, to be my husband," Erik says quietly. "To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for better or worse, 'til death do us part."
"Do you have rings?" the clerk asks; Charles nods, ignoring Erik's sudden blare of surprise.
«And here I genuinely believed I'd managed to surprise you.»
«You did. This is something I've had for years, for... ridiculous, unfathomable reasons.» He turns and sorts through the satchel, taking the ring out of its box and holding it in his hand. «It might not fit.»
There's a bit of amusement from Erik. «If it's metal, I assure you, we won't have any difficulty with it.»
It is metal, of course. It's made of aircraft-grade titanium, sleek and light, and wide enough to be substantial even on Erik's hand. It's a key, a weapon, a plaything, it could be anything Erik needs it to be, but Charles slides it onto Erik's finger, feeling it tighten perfectly into place under Charles's fingertips, hoping it will always be this and only this.
The ring Erik gives Charles is like nothing Charles has ever seen. It's a complicated, beautiful swirl of metal that seems to forever be in motion, and when Erik slips it onto Charles's finger, when it's past the knuckle, it snugs up carefully. It's not coming off without Erik's help-- or without a band saw, but please God it never comes to that.
"With the power vested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you spouses for life," the judge says.
Erik goes to one knee in front of Charles-- this is getting to be a habit-- and looks him deeply in the eye. "I wish we'd done this when we were young men together," he says softly, lacing the fingers of his left hand with the fingers of Charles's right.
"And who says we're not?" Charles asks. Now he smiles; now he can't help it. "You're only as old as--"
"--the man you feel, yes," Erik says, rubbing his thumb over the back of Charles's hand. "Do you think it's ever too late to make up for past mistakes?"
Charles's fingers go tight to the point where his knuckles whiten. "Never," he whispers.
"Then let's start now," Erik says, and he leans in and kisses Charles, kisses him the way he did when they were twenty-eight and nothing could stop them, nothing could part them, nothing could get in their way.
There's a burst of light as someone takes a picture. Charles asks for a copy and provides his email address; he wonders what will be etched on his face in that photograph, if it'll be a memory to keep or another picture to add to his long scrapbook of Erik's feats.
Outside the courthouse, Erik looks up at the sky. Charles looks up at Erik, afraid to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing.
"It isn't about the ceremony or the paper," Erik says. "You know that..."
Then what, Charles wants to ask, but the moment feels strained enough without the question. Erik's thumb grazes his ring, and the metal seems warm and alive on Erik's body, already a part of him.
"I wonder," Erik says quietly, "would I be welcome if you brought me home?"
"I can't say it wouldn't frighten the children," Charles admits, already weary at this conversation-- what was he thinking, what could he possibly have been thinking?
His ring sits heavy on his finger, and he reaches over with his right hand to trace its swells and curves. This is no dream, no fantasy. This is a moment he's been waiting for, waiting these long fifty years now. Fifty years of love, hate, destruction, and rebuilding. Now this, and Charles doesn't know what to make of it.
"I could ask you to come with me," Erik says. He still isn't looking at Charles. "Or to come away with me. Make a fresh start somewhere."
"You know I can't."
"I know you can't."
Charles reaches out for Erik's hand, and Erik squeezes hard. It's a moment Charles wants to linger in, one that ought to be allowed to last forever.
"There's a convention on genetics in Milan next month," Charles offers. "I'll be there. On my own, for once."
"I'm already registered." Erik looks at him and grins, but the grin freezes and sticks, and Charles knows it isn't genuine. "A few stolen days in Europe, the occasional tryst when I'm in New York, a collaboration now and then versus larger dangers than ourselves..."
"It's not enough anymore, is it?"
Erik shakes his head. "It has never been enough."
Charles clutches at Erik's hand. Don't go, don't go, don't leave me, don't go. He's said more pathetic things to Erik, but at least then he had the excuse of being exhausted from the sex and sleep-deprived from the need to take in every possible second of Erik's company. He doesn't say it now.
«I can't do this anymore,» Erik thinks, the pain in his mind so deep it's almost palpable, almost has physical substance. «I want...»
The lump in Charles's throat is hard to swallow past, but he does it anyway. Say it. Say it now, out loud, before the chance is gone forever.
"Please."
Erik stares down at him, and as difficult as it is not to wilt under that nearly-inscrutable gaze, Charles holds his ground.
Finally, Erik closes his eyes. When he opens them again, Charles feels something spark inside him; something very much like the feeling he has every time he goes to the park, every time he and Erik have a chance to speak or touch or kiss.
"Scare the children, you say."
"I did just elope."
Erik laughs, throaty and unexpected and marvelous, and in him Charles can see every year of their fifty-year friendship, the man Charles met in the water that April and the man who's been Charles's lover and best friend and greatest challenge ever since.
"Take me home, Charles. We'll explain it together, hopefully before I'm struck by lightning or battered by lasers."
Charles lifts Erik's hand to his lips and kisses it, and he wishes there were a photographer here, now, because this-- God, he hopes-- is the start of his marriage, too many years late in coming but beautiful and cherished regardless.
"I'll tell them we're on our way."
-end-