Chapter Text
Prune dead or damaged branches. Make clean cuts near the base of damaged branches, since jagged spots are entry points for pests and disease.
Charles waits for Erik in the rose garden with his hands resting loosely clasped on his thighs, a blanket laid across his lap to ward off the chill. It’s cold, sat outside before dawn in his pyjamas and slippers, even after the exertion of rolling the chair forward through the gravel to the centre of the rondel, but he’ll admit to a little dramatic license in his choice; he could have waited in the kitchen with a cup of tea. However, if anyone appreciates the value of showmanship, it’s Erik.
And besides - if Erik hadn’t wanted Charles to feel him coming, he would have worn the helmet. Instead Charles had woken with a start, shock like a bucket of cold water waking him up, and stared at the ceiling with numb confusion as he tried to process the presence of that familiar mind, after so much time. Getting out of bed had been more reflexive than considered, heaving himself from his blankets and rolling himself down the quiet corridors to the kitchen door and outside.
If he tells himself his shivers are all to do with the chill, and nothing to do with the tremulous apprehension in his belly, then it is a small enough lie to forgive. Even the birds are only just starting to wake, trilling sleepily at one another in warm-up for the dawn chorus.
It takes Erik a long time to walk in from the edge of the property, following the edge of the lake in great strides before breaking away to cut through the woodland. His mind is a quiet hum of determination - a noise just on the cusp of hearing, muffled. Someone has taught Erik how to shield, at least a little. It wouldn’t hold up against Charles if he were determined, but it’s enough to dim the immediate furore. He tracks Erik’s progress through the trees with as light a touch as possible, and instead of dwelling on the sharp hitch of his own breathing and the uncomfortable pounding of his heart Charles looks around himself at the rose garden, the bushes burdened with heavy, withered blooms, blackened and drooping on their stems, the deep red colour of the summer now dark with sweet-smelling rot. He hasn’t been out here very much of late. Clearly none of the boys thought to deadhead the roses, and he let the groundskeepers go months ago. The house has been difficult enough to maintain as it is, with just the four of them, and Charles… the way he is.
The lawn probably needs attending to, too.
Erik changes course when he gets closer to the house, and Charles straightens his posture, lifts his chin, calms his expression - how like Erik to investigate new metal first, when before he had been circling the mansion, heading for the service door. Charles’ pulse is beating so hard in his throat that he worries he might not be able to speak aloud. His exhale is shaky, but when he hears the crunch of the gravel as Erik climbs the long ramp up from the grounds to the formal gardens he somehow manages to keep his voice perfectly even. “A little early for a visit, Erik.”
The footsteps stop, and Erik’s thoughts simultaneously get much louder and much quieter, glass-like shields thickening but failing entirely to hide Erik’s sudden agitation. There’s a flutter of birdsong before he speaks, the first rough murmur of a lark. “Charles. I thought I would come and find you before the boys woke up.”
“I thought much the same.” In the house behind him Charles touches briefly on the sleeping minds of his remaining students; he tries not to think of it as smoothing their blankets, but all three settle deeper into sleep once he has done it, the subconscious reassurance better than a command. It feels awkward, talking to empty air, and his breath comes out in a puff of silver steam, ghostly in the pale dawn light. “Won’t you come and speak to me face-to-face? It’s hardly dignified, shouting at one another over the wall.”
There is a pause, then a slower tread as Erik climbs the rest of the way. The sun is coming up behind him, and the shadows shift on his face as he turns and looks at Charles for the first time in a year.
“Hello,” Charles says, as neutrally as he can, and Erik stares in horror at the wheelchair, the taut line of that familiar mouth collapsing on an unspoken word, grey-blue eyes wide before they screw shut in an expression of utter self-loathing.
Charles takes his time looking back at Erik, noting all the little differences, all the things that haven’t changed. Erik looks well, still as lean and lanky as ever - hasn’t been starving, at least. No visible injuries or scars, though that means very little when he’s covered from neck to ankles, a high-necked tunic and pants, even his hands hidden in leather gloves which creak with the tight clench of his fists. Charles tries not to note the way the tunic emphasises Erik’s narrow waist, tries not to glance at the strong, handsome line of his jaw and above all those familiar, expressive eyes, the orderly, dynamic shape of Erik’s mind, but it is, of course, futile. Seeing Erik is like being shot all over again, and Charles tells himself it’s only betrayal and nothing more that drops the bottom from his stomach, a wrenching, awful pain and joy as Erik opens his eyes again, stares back at him.
“Mein Gott, Charles - ”
“So to what do I owe the honour?” Charles keeps his own hands relaxed on top of the blanket with an effort of will. “I hope you’ll forgive my state of undress - it’s harder for me to dress quickly for company these days. I trust you’ve kept well.”
“Don’t do that,” Erik snaps, glaring at Charles, only to flinch violently at the sight of the chair. His face is pale. “Don’t do that English thing you do, where you’re polite all over me so I won’t make you talk about whatever it is you don’t want to talk about. I - ”
Charles holds up a hand, and Erik’s mouth snaps shut as neatly as if he’d forced it closed. “It’s been a year, Erik. What do you want?”
There’s a pause, then Erik says bitingly, “For pity’s sake, Charles, I’ve just found out I crippled you,” hands clenched and trembling, and everything around them made of metal starts to rattle, nails in the lattices for the climbing plants and benches and the guttering on the house, a pinging sound as something comes free of its moorings and flies towards him.
It’s a maelstrom of little bits and pieces, flashing metal catching the early light and orbiting Erik in a thickening cloud, even larger pieces starting to rumble worryingly somewhere around them. Charles’ chair starts to shake, and there’s a grind of gravel against the rubber of the wheels as Erik takes a step back, sits heavily on the wall between him and the drop behind and dragging Charles involuntarily closer. His mind is one long, ringing note of self-recrimination, thorny guilt digging in, and Charles opens his mouth to tell him to stop -
- then, before he can, Erik’s shin is struck by Charles’ slippers, summoned to him by the metal in the decorative buttons. They’re too heavy to orbit with the rest, and they bounce off, falling to the ground. It’s enough to startle Erik out of his funk, and the rattling stops, all the little pieces suddenly falling to the earth with a clatter.
Erik looks down at the slippers and looks so dumbfounded that Charles has to laugh despite himself, the tension dropping out of him as he covers his face with his hands and laughs, helplessly. It’s a wretched, dry sound, more choke than chuckle, and his face feels tight and overstrained in the frigid air, as though the force of it has locked the hinge of his jaw, fingernails digging into his skin hard enough to hurt. His lungs heave, drawing in great gusts of cold that don’t yet manage to freeze out the humiliation of the look on Erik’s face when he had seen the chair, as though Charles was something irretrievably broken, not at all the same as before. Somehow he had never quite managed to imagine it anywhere near as clearly as everything else, but this - this is quite sufficient.
A hand settles itself tentatively on his knee, coming slowly into his line of sight. “Charles, are you…?”
It takes Charles a moment to get his breathing under control, but he manages it, somehow, quits shaking and straightens, puts – ha – iron in his spine. “Can I have my slippers back, please?” he asks instead of answering, and when Erik passes them over Charles takes his hands away from his wet face and bends to put them back on, gripping his ankles in turn and lifting with his left hand while he slides the slippers on over his still, bare toes with the right. He keeps his voice calm, though it hitches a little. “I’m going inside. Presumably you’re here because you want something, so feel free to come in and tell me what it is and have done with it.”
“Charles - ” Erik cuts himself off, shuts everything down inside until the murmur of his thoughts is more like the far-off rhubarb rhubarb public radio sound of distant crowds. “I… I’ll come in in a minute.”
Mercifully he does not try to help Charles push himself, even when the wheels refuse to move at first and Charles has to rock himself back and forth to work himself loose from where he’s sunk a little into the gravel. He adjusts his grip on the handrims and grits his teeth as his forearms tense and coil, shoving hard until suddenly he’s rolling, gravel crunching as he makes a quick three-point turn to head for the kitchen door. He catches some straggling roses under his wheels as he turns and they release a thick cloud of that sweet decaying scent into the air, cloying and heavy on his tongue, mingled with the wet earth.
He leaves Erik behind in the rose garden, and does not let himself look back.
There’s a small ramp in the kitchen doorway, barely a foot across, which smoothes the passage over the threshold into the house; Charles goes up and over with the ease of long practice. His face is still out of shape, flushed and sticky with drying tears he hadn’t meant to shed. It happens from time to time even now - he can be doing anything, thinking about anything, and then he just… bursts into tears.
The doctors he’s spoken to have said that it’s normal, and the boys are kind enough to ignore it when they catch him at it, usually withdrawing and coming back in half an hour with an innocuous question - Sean - or a cup of tea - Alex - or a new idea - Hank - to distract him. Charles hates it, nonetheless, the total lack of control of his own body and emotions, like a puppet dancing to someone else’s tune. And how embarrassing, that the first thing he did when Erik finally came back from the wilderness was weep.
He goes to the far counter and fills the kettle at the sink, reaching high for the taps, then takes it over to the hob to heat, cradled in his lap. Erik comes in as the kettle is boiling, and stands uselessly in the doorway, watching in silence. If he had a cap he would be clutching it, no doubt, the very image of Oliver Twist at the workhouse. Or, no - Erik has never been one to beg.
“Tea? Coffee?” Charles asks, and adjusts the flame without looking at Erik, turning the flame up a little higher so it licks the bottom of the kettle. “I’m afraid we don’t have any milk at present. The milkman doesn’t come by until later, as we’re so far out of his way; it’s a miracle he comes at all.”
“Charles,” Erik says, and finally Charles concedes to the necessity of turning.
“Yes?”
“Are you - ” Erik swallows, regains his equilibrium with a visible effort of will, jaw clenching. “Charles, I am so sor - ”
“If you apologise,” Charles says fiercely, and feels the warning prickle of tears again at the corners of his eyes, hands curling hard around the armrests of the blasted chair, “then I will not just throw you out, I will do you a harm you will not quickly recover from, Erik, so help me God.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” Erik’s face crumples with self-loathing, red and wrenching, and he comes forward into the kitchen proper, one, two, three steps before he slams his fist against the tabletop, the old wood creaking in protest. “I can’t just say nothing when I come back here to find you - ”
“Don’t - ”
“ - crippled and hating me,” Erik finishes, and Charles snaps, “Get out of my house, Erik.”
“What - ”
“Get out! Get off my property!” Charles yells, and he feels it when the boys finally startle awake, the ruckus in the kitchen enough to disturb the dead. “You have no right - ”
“I came back for a reason!” Erik’s hands slam back down on the tabletop and he leans over the table, shoulders hunched and face pale and thunderous. They can both hear the rumble of feet on the back stairs as Alex comes down at a pace, stumbling over his own pyjama pants that he’s trying to wrestle on as he goes. Erik doesn’t seem to care. “You did this to me, did you already forget - you have every right to hate me, but I can’t leave, Charles.”
Furious, Charles stares, dumbfounded, for a long moment in which he has to restrain himself from following through on doing Erik an injury, because there is no way – there is no way Erik doesn’t know how Charles – how dare he come back here and abuse the way Charles feels about him. Charles opens his mouth to shout at Erik even as Alex comes into the hall door, freezes stock still and yells for Hank, expression turning from shock to murderous - when Erik says into the space between them, fierce and quiet and determined, “I physically can’t leave, Charles, I have to - you did this to me, you reset the damn thing.”
Charles - stops. “What damn thing?” he asks, bewildered, and Erik says, “The damn homing instinct, what else could I mean? You couldn’t just let me go, you had to put a leading string on me, didn’t you?”
“Erik, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Charles says, and that’s when Hank and Alex and Sean tackle Erik from the side and bear him yelling and fighting to the kitchen tile in a dogpile of flailing limbs.
There’s a loud thump as they hit, and then all three boys are half tossed back off of Erik, who looks murderous; they recover before he manages to win entirely free, and Hank manages to pin Erik’s left hand just long enough to get punched solidly in the eye with the other, but though he yelps he doesn’t let go. Instead Hank snarls like the beast Alex calls him and tightens his grip enough that Erik goes white with pain; Erik kicks fiercely with his one unobstructed leg and catches Sean in the belly, winding him and forcing a hoarse resounding croak out of the boy that shakes plaster dust free of the ceiling, snowing down over them and leaving them all coughing. Alex only manages to get a hold of Erik’s other hand for a moment before Erik twists it free and grabs him by the throat, slamming him sideways so that his head collides forcefully with the kitchen cabinet.
The kettle is screaming. “Stop,” Charles shouts, aghast, “STOP!” He puts a mental imperative into the order that freezes all four of them in place, robbing them of their momentum. “For goodness’ sake,” he says, exasperated, and lets go like opening a fist, glares back when Erik turns to glare at him, outrage buzzing in his mind. “Get off, boys, before Erik gives you worse than you’ve already had.”
Sean starts, “We were just - ” while clambering to his feet and offering Hank a hand up, and Charles raises an eyebrow.
“Erik hasn’t done anything hostile since he arrived, and he’s not wearing that damn helmet. What you three thought you were doing is rather beyond me,” Charles says, rolling to the cooker and turning off the gas to quiet the kettle. He looks up at his three boys, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, still ready to move on Erik if Charles needs them to. It’s easier to be adult, and calm, when it’s not Erik he’s looking at. “I may not be able to walk, Sean, but I can certainly incapacitate one man if need be. I’m far from helpless.”
Sean winces. “That’s not - Professor, you know that’s not what - ”
“No, of course not. That was uncharitable of me.” Charles sighs, mouth stretching tight and unhappy before he pulls it back into the neutral, supportive expression he’s fostered over the last twelve months. “But it really was rather unnecessarily violent for the time of morning.”
“Then maybe he should have come over at lunchtime,” Alex says sourly, arms folded aggressively across his bare chest. His lip and knuckles are both split, and Charles waves him over with a sigh to hand him the handkerchief he keeps in the pocket of his pyjamas before the lad leaves a trail of blood all over the floor. Alex takes it with a roll of his eyes but presses it to his fat lip anyway, the crisp white fabric turning immediately red.
Erik is climbing to his own feet unassisted, tense and forcibly straight-shouldered, bulking himself out against the three boys as though he has any need of re-establishing just who is the big bad wolf in the kitchen.
Alex scowls. “Seriously, Professor, what did he expect after leaving us - you - there for the army to fire on at will? After shooting you in the spine first, let’s not forget that - ”
Hank glances at Erik too, thoughts spiking with concern. “Alex, don’t.”
“We can skirt around it all you guys want but it still won’t change the fact that Erik put Charles in that chair and now has the fucking balls to come here and sit in our kitchen - ”
“He was standing,” Sean says.
“ - stand in our kitchen waiting while the Professor makes him a nice cup of tea like nothing’s happened,” Alex finishes despite the interruption, blue eyes blazing and chest heaving with outrage. “Seriously, am I the only one who can see how fucked up that is?”
“You know nothing about it,” Erik snaps, hands in fists shaking at his sides. There is blood trickling down the side of his face from a cut near his hairline, red and thick. “My business with Charles is none of your concern.”
They’re all bristling at each other, like a pack of dogs, and Charles tuts from where he’s sat in the middle, deliberately makes them all look at him again, lifting his chin. “Do you really think that I of all people don’t know how ‘fucked up’ this is, Alex,” he asks pointedly, and watches Alex deflate, the aggressive downturn of his mouth turning deeply unhappy.
From the corner of his eye he sees Erik start at the obscenity, hears his mental flinch. It makes it easier to continue. As much as he might like to pretend he is, Erik is not insensible to the pain he has caused, has not quite excised the part of him that cares about the consequences of his actions. “Now. We are all aware that what happened on the beach was an accident, and that as much as Erik was part of the cause it was unintentional. So if I, as the wronged party, choose to make him a cup of tea in my own damn kitchen, then I expect you to respect my decision even if you don’t agree.”
Alex scowls, but his gaze drops to the floor, unable to look Charles in the eye. “This is bullshit. But, sorry.”
“Be that as it may be, go and get along with whatever you had planned for the day. If Erik decides he’d really rather murder me brutally than discuss whatever he is clearly here to discuss I shall let you know posthaste.”
Suitably chastised, the three of them head for the hallway, glancing significantly at one another where they think Charles won’t notice. “You still treat them like children, I see,” Erik says as they file out, and Sean turns on the threshold to draw a finger across his throat, then point at Erik, before following the other two.
Charles leans back in his chair and tries not to sigh. “And you still expect them to be as you were at their age, trained out of having emotions.”
He’s surprised when Erik laughs, a brief bark of sound before he gets up from the kitchen chair and paces past Charles to the stove, where he picks up the kettle. The back of his head gives nothing away as he opens the cabinet for two mugs, sets them down on the counter and reaches for the loose-leaf tea and strainer as though he’s never been away, familiar and easy. The tone of his thoughts is wry, the movement of his hands sure. “If that were true then I wouldn’t be here.”
“Why are you here, Erik?” Charles settles himself at the table and hides his hands under it, tangles his fingers together and squeezes tightly until his knuckles pop. “I’ve heard a little about what you’ve been up to in the papers of course – there was quite a fuss about some of the labs you’ve broken into. They might not name you, but I recognise your fingerprints. So I can’t imagine you’ve come for a social visit, given the circumstances.”
“Do you really - no, it’s clear you don’t remember.” Erik sighs as though he is deeply aggrieved. The mug placed in front of Charles is exactly to his preferences, thick with milk and sugar. The mug Erik sets down for himself as he takes a seat opposite Charles is black and opaque, and Lord alone knows where he found the tin of Russian blend Charles is smelling, or indeed how he drinks the stuff.
The boys are having a meeting of their own in the front salon, minds sparking off one another as they argue over what to do about Erik. Charles doesn’t listen in, though he could. “I really don’t remember whatever it is,” he says finally when Erik does nothing further to break their little detente, tapping his fingers gently against the warm china cupped in his palms. “You’ll have to remind me. I’ve had other things on my mind this past year than your personal concerns.”
Erik grumbles, but sets his own tea aside to place his hands palm down on the table, leaning forward towards Charles. He pauses, hesitating on the edge of speech, then says in a rush, “Do you remember - I told you once of my marriage.”
Charles does.
Erik had come to him late one night unable to sleep, and it had taken a couple of hours of small talk and chess before Charles had managed to winkle the nightmare out of him. Charles himself has always been a night owl - insomniac, Raven had said with disapproval, and he hadn’t disputed it - and had watched with morbid fascination and pity as Erik had slowly deconstructed himself through alcohol and exhaustion until eventually he had admitted to having dreamt of the fire that killed his wife and daughter. He’d never mentioned them before or since.
Oh, Charles had thought, fingers clenching white-knuckled around his whisky glass, he was married, and at the same time as he had been reaching out to place his hand on Erik’s arm he had felt a sudden sense of loss that he quashed ruthlessly in favour of sympathy.
“Yes, then. I remember that.”
Erik nods, seeing the memory on Charles’ face. “Do you remember that I told you I was drawn back there every Spring? Whatever I was doing, wherever I was, I had to go back there and stand in the ashes of our house on the anniversary of that day and wonder if I was standing in the remains of my family. I had no choice - it was like something was pulling me. And you said, I think I can break that compulsion for you. If you would like. And I took you up on the offer.”
Charles curls his fingers around his mug and hides his mouth behind it, takes another sip of his tea. “I remember.”
“You didn’t remove it at all,” Erik says, his whole body drawing tight and rigid. His eyes are burning, focused laserlike on Charles’ face. “You reset me like a timer, Charles. It wasn’t psychological at all, it was magnetic somehow. And you’ve set me like a lodestone to come right back here in the autumn.”
It’s not even close to anything Charles was expecting to hear, and he gapes stupidly at Erik, mouth falling open and the bottom falling out of his stomach.
“Reset - of course not!” he says indignantly when he manages to get his voice working again. “You’re saying you were - what, drawn here magnetically to insult me? How would that even - as if I would - I just told your subconscious that it wasn’t somewhere you needed to go any more. I wouldn’t have done something like that to you, and if you think I would then clearly you knew me less well than I had supposed.”
He takes a slurp of his tea, loud and obnoxious, and continues, “So you’re saying you’re some kind of - some kind of homing pigeon, on an annual migration? They navigate by some kind of magnetic sense you know, perhaps you could ask them for directions sometime.” He means it to be a joke, if a rather pointed one, but there’s a loud mental burst of frustrated embarrassment like a crash of cymbals from Erik that stops him in his tracks. “Oh, Erik, you can’t really - ”
“Do you really think I would come back here willingly?” Erik says viciously, white-knuckled and pale-faced, and Charles says, in a very different tone, “Oh.”
His indignation withers and fades, even as he tries not to let his face fall.
Erik looks stricken, caught between fury and retraction, but does not take back the words still dying off in slow echoes between them.
Charles pulls his hands back from the table and places them instead on the hand-rims of his chair. “No, of course not. How silly of me to think you might value something as frivolous as friendship.”
“Charles - ”
“And so here you are, asking to sleep indoors instead of haunting the shrubbery,” Charles continues, throat tight. “Is that the extent of it, or are you going to ask me to invade your privacy again to fix your problem for you, then complain when I do? Because I have always found that sort of hypocrisy rather tedious.”
“I’ve never pretended to be a good person,” Erik says, affronted. “I don’t mean to impose on your good nature any more than necessary.”
“It’s - ” Charles shakes his head, sweeps the unfinished sentence aside. “No, let’s return to the why. You’re saying this is mutation-related?”
A grimace, then a reluctant nod. “My first thought was a compulsion, but I’ve - Emma’s had no chance, I don’t trust her enough to give her one, and I was too far from you for anything but a time-bomb.”
“I can’t comment on Emma, but it certainly wasn’t me,” Charles says.
Erik nods again, tight-mouthed. “It felt too much like going back to Germany each year to be a telepathic compulsion, but it was much stronger than it ever used to be. I could feel the magnetic field all around me, like a map, telling me where to go. I had very little choice in the matter - whenever I tried to resist my feet would start moving me in that direction the moment I relaxed my self-control.”
“And here you are,” Charles murmurs to the dregs of his tea. Hurt aside, he can feel that Erik believes what he’s saying, that he is not intentionally lying. It’s worse, almost, to find Erik is not even here for malicious reasons - has simply come to Westchester because he was forced to.
Charles tries to think of it like a scientist instead of emotionally, does not look up as he says, “I may have been joking earlier about you being a homing pigeon, Erik, but it might fit - I read a paper recently which posited that birds read the Earth’s magnetic field to direct them when they migrate, like a sixth sense. If that’s true then it’s easily possible that your powers could be due to that sort of brain structure, and it would explain a migratory instinct, if that is what’s happening - if your brain is birdlike, the two could go hand in hand.”
“No doubt that’s very interesting to you,” Erik says, impatience writ all over his face. “I only want rid of it.”
“It is. And I’m sure you do.” The tealeaves in the bottom of the cup look like nothing in particular, offer no wisdom. “You still haven’t asked me.” Charles looks back up at Erik, and pushes aside the jolt that runs through him at meeting those piercing eyes, the feeling of being seen for who he is, and being found wanting. “But regardless, my answer is no. I won’t go fishing around where I’m so clearly not wanted, and then let you shy away like I’ve wronged you. I’ve had enough of your double standards, Erik. Every mutation is unique and beautiful until it inconveniences you, and that applies to my telepathy and whatever this is too. You can just learn to live with it, the way I have, and be inconvenienced, at least until you get over yourself enough to ask Emma. Your room is still free upstairs, and in much the same state as you left it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and get dressed for the day.”
“Charles, that’s not fair,” Erik says, alarmed and half-rising from his chair, and Charles says, “Mutant and proud, Erik. Feel free to spend some time in the library if you need amusing, or to use the telephone if you need to call anyone to let them know you’re alive. Don’t think I’ve forgotten to ask about Raven - ”
“It’s Mystique.”
“Gesundheit,” Charles says, and wheels himself out into the hall towards his elevator.
~
In the North, bluebirds usually arrive in mid-March, when the ground is still frozen. Thus, if you’d like bluebirds in your garden next Spring, install nesting boxes in November, while the ground is soft enough to dig holes to mount them on.
~
Charles is in his study pretending to do his accounts when Hank comes to find him later. The ledger is old, leather-bound and embossed with his father’s initials, the edges of the pages worn and soft under his fingers. He’s acutely aware of Erik’s presence in the last bedroom on the third floor of the west wing of the house - directly across the corridor from his own. Erik has been pacing for the last hour, back and forth, footsteps describing a perfectly straight line along the carpet as though he is measuring out a grave.
Hank knocks again, once it becomes obvious Charles isn’t going to answer.
“Oh! Sorry, come in,” Charles says belatedly, and adds another number to the ingoing column that he will have to cross out later. When he glances up at Hank he winces, because the boy’s right eye is indigo and swelling, the lid puffing up and slitting his eye closed. Usually Hank is too fast to be struck nowadays, but then he’s more used to sparring with Alex than brawling with someone as vicious and efficient as Erik.
Hank crosses the room near-silently on his bare feet, only the rattle of pencils and small tools in his pockets giving him away. His voice is soft, though he’s lost the lisp since he finally got used to his fangs. “Professor, are you alright?”
“Quite, I assure you.” Another number goes into the ledger before Charles realises he just added that one a moment before, and he crosses it out with a splodge of ink that obliterates the mistake entirely. “What did you three decide to do with Erik?”
A snort. “Sean wanted to lock him in the pantry, but Alex pointed out that there’s really nowhere we can put him he can’t just unlock with his powers without knocking him out cold, and we suspected you wouldn’t like that.”
“Not particularly, no,” Charles says, and finally puts down his pen to look up at Hank properly and give him his full attention. He sighs, leaning back in his chair so he can meet Hank’s eyes. The tall boy used to take a step back whenever he noticed Charles cricking his neck until Charles had told him not to in a fit of pique, and now it’s too late to take it back even though it would in fact be much more comfortable if Hank were to move back just a little. “You might as well know - Erik is going to be staying here for a short while.”
“What?” Hank’s eyebrows fly up, his thoughts like an exclamation mark. “Professor - Charles, you can’t be serious.”
“I’m quite serious. It’s that or put him up in the greenhouse, and we both know it’s in rather a state of disrepair. It would be inhumane.”
“Professor,” Hank says reprovingly, and Charles sighs.
“There’s really very little choice. To cut a long story short, Erik will keep coming back here every time we throw him out for the next - well, I’m not sure how long, but since he’ll just keep coming back until this has run its course we might as well keep him here instead of wasting time and energy on being surprised every time he turns up.”
“That explains precisely nothing.”
There really is no reason not to tell him - the boys deserve to know, and there’s no reason not to think this might not happen again next year, and the year after that, based on Erik’s stubbornness and previous experience. And yet - Charles hesitates, because to explain it would require telling Hank about Magda and Anya, and Erik is so intensely private about himself and his tragedies that it would feel like a violation to share information Charles himself only got through concerted effort and an unintentional drop of Erik’s defences.
“Sometimes there will be things I can’t tell you,” he says instead, slowly, and he can feel Hank’s disappointment palpably between them, along with a sour sense of betrayal that Charles would rather protect Erik’s secrets than explain what seems like an inexplicable decision. “It’s not mine to tell, and the why makes no difference. If it was going to endanger any of us then I wouldn’t have consented.”
“It’s not like we don’t know, you know,” Hank says, and though his hands have clenched into fists he loosens them now, claws retracting. “We - me, Alex, Sean - none of us mind, Professor. We figure there’s enough different in this house without worrying about who you love. But it matters when it’s making you foolish.”
Oh.
Charles flushes hot and red, and coughs to cover the moment where he is speechless and gaping, though his ears feel as though they are burning; he feels irrationally humiliated, and his voice when he speaks sounds strange, forced through a throat clenching down tight to try and keep in the words he doesn’t want out. His heart is pounding. “That’s - that’s not - I, well - well, that’s long since over and done with. One way or another. And it was never - never. Well. I should have.” Hank looks so uncomfortable that Charles forces himself to finish. “Thank you for, for understanding, Hank, but it’s really not - relevant. Any more. If it ever was.”
“Forgive me if I don’t take your word on that,” Hank says, almost gently, though his whole face has darkened under the layer of finer fur that covers it, a deeper purple beneath blue. “Look. It’s your house, but don’t expect us to like Erik being here. And Alex and Sean aren’t going to be happy. Alex is going to blow a gasket.”
Charles takes a deep breath and lets it out, gathering back his composure like armour and layering it on until he can regain some semblance of a controlled expression. It’s difficult - he hadn’t known that the boys knew about his preferences, let alone that... and to think he’d thought himself so subtle. To have it brought up like that with Erik in the house is… jarring. “Alex can blow as many gaskets as he likes,” he says, picking up his pen again and twisting it between his fingers, “so long as he doesn’t destroy any more furniture in the process.”
Hank’s voice is a low rough rumble. “I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”
Charles doesn’t look at the dusty and unfinished game of chess still on the board by the fireplace, does not glance upward at where Erik still paces, alone and frustrated and thinking about coming down to find Charles. “I don’t intend on it. This is a purely practical arrangement.”
“Uh huh.” Hank cocks his head to one side, listening - the other two boys are coming down the hall towards them. “I’ll go fetch them,” Hank says, and he’s already gone to the study door to call for Alex and Sean to come and join them before Charles can ask for a breather.
He feels guilty the next moment, because it’s important they know what’s going on, but he could really have done with a moment to stop feeling like his chest had been torn open and his feelings unexpectedly exposed. Though he tries to hide it, it must be showing on his face because Alex’s hackles go up immediately he catches sight of Charles, his step becoming cautious and rising slightly onto the balls of his feet, fight or flight. “What is it?” he asks bluntly, coming to a stop on the very edge of the rug in front of the desk.
“Erik went upstairs earlier,” Sean says, coming to join him and folding his arms across his chest. “So what, is he moving back in or something?”
Charles nods. “For a little while, yes.”
“What?” Sean’s mouth falls open, his hands flying up to grab handfuls of his own hair, leaving it even more bedraggled and wild-looking than usual before he suddenly relaxes, laughing awkwardly. “Oh. Ahahahaha. British humour, right?”
“No,” Alex says, voice ringing and firm. “No, Professor, just, what the fuck. No. Magneto can’t just stroll back in like he was away on a business trip and now Daddy’s come home and we’re supposed to be all happy and waiting for pats on the head.”
“I refuse to be Mommy in this scenario,” Charles says, but the joke falls flat, not even Sean cracking a smile. He sighs. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Hank. Erik will just keep coming back until this has run its course, so there is little point in kicking him out. I don’t expect you to make nice, but he will be here for several days, perhaps as long as a couple of weeks. If everyone just keeps to themselves then it should have very little impact on you. Pretend he’s not here.”
“We don’t even get a say,” Alex says in disgust to the other two, then looks back at Charles, scowling and tight-mouthed with anger. “We don’t want Magneto here. He doesn’t belong here, he made it damn clear he doesn’t want to be here, so I don’t see why he should just get to pick and choose when that applies.”
Charles steeples his fingers across his stomach, raises an eyebrow, waits until he feels Alex’s fury falter before saying, “I intend to make this house a haven for mutants. I don’t see why I should get to pick and choose to whom that applies. If you want me to be the Professor for you, and to be in charge of this house and to be the figure of authority, I can do that. But then you also have to let me take charge when I deem it necessary and make decisions you might not agree with.”
“What if we don’t want that?”
“Alex,” Charles says, with a self-deprecating smile, “considering that all three of you have seen me at my lowest, in my most degraded and debilitated state, that you allow me any authority or indeed dignity at all is miraculous to me.”
“What does he want? Is he on the run?”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s not mine to share.”
Sean opens his mouth to object, but then Hank says, finally speaking up, “It’s up to the Professor who he wants in his house.” The other two turn to look at him and he straightens to his full height, towering over even Sean’s gangly frame. “If the Professor can deal with having Magneto here, then so can we.”
There’s a pause where all three look at one another, and a silent conversation goes on between them in glances and facial expressions, one Charles does his best not to listen to. Then Sean makes a face and blows out a sharp blast of soundless air. “Fine. Yeah.”
Hank waits until Alex, grudgingly, nods, then nods back before turning to Charles. “I’ll do what I can to secure the downstairs lab.”
“Thank you. I suspect there’s not much that will keep Erik out if he’s determined to be nosy, but hopefully the implication that he’s not welcome will be enough,” Charles says, and feels Hank’s wry disbelief when he thinks about Erik’s covert operations, his response silent but no doubt targeted - the man was basically a spy, I don’t think he believes in privacy if he wants to know something.
<<You may be right,>> Charles thinks back, <<though we should at least make a token effort,>> and Hank’s feline nose wrinkles with begrudging acceptance.
Upstairs, Erik has stopped pacing - he moves with sudden swiftness toward his bedroom door and out into the corridor, pauses long enough to get his bearings then makes for the staircase at the front of the house, all determination and gritted teeth. Though he doesn’t look - unlike Erik, Charles does try to have some respect for privacy - Charles suspects he knows what Erik’s intention is, so he gives the boys a smile and says, “Now, I think we should all get back to our plans for the day, don’t you?”
“Are you still going to help me with my hearing?” Sean asks, perking up, and Charles nods, giving him a small smile. “Of course. I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour or so, if that suits you?”
“Aye aye, Professor!” And that seems to be enough for him - Sean heads off to do whatever it is he needs to get done today, and the other two follow more slowly, both of them giving Charles pointed looks. Alex is still frustrated, but Hank is already murmuring to him as they go, stooping a little to get closer to Alex’s ear.
Charles goes back to the accounts, or at least pretends to himself that he’s not waiting to be interrupted. The ink in his pen nib has dried. He raises it to his mouth to give it a quick lick to re-wet it; it tastes bitter black on his tongue, and he licks it again when it still doesn’t write, tests it against the paper. When he looks up Erik is stood in the doorway watching him, eyes dark with some unspoken emotion he keeps tamped down, his fingers clenched tight on the doorhandle.
“The answer is still no,” Charles says, flipping his chequebook back to the register page and squinting at his own cramped handwriting on the narrow little lines until he finds where he last wrote, payment for the electricity company’s last exorbitant bill. “If it’s some instinct sending you hither and yon, turning it off would require some serious tinkering that might disrupt or even cripple the rest of your power. And even if not, I’m disinclined to go doing you any more favours, Erik. You can just learn to love your mutation all over again.”
There’s a long silence, but Erik doesn’t leave, and when Charles looks up again Erik is closer, catlike quiet on the thick carpet as he comes forward to drop into one of the chairs on the far side of Charles’ desk, stretching his legs out in front of him and dropping his face into his hand, staring at Charles with a kind of fascinated frustration.
“What?” Charles asks eventually, and caps his pen, setting it aside. “Is there something on my face?”
“Stubbornness,” Erik says, and his mouth quirks into something Charles can’t read before it’s already gone, the matching shift of his mind quiet, like a far-off whisper, just out of hearing. “Mystique is well. She doesn’t know I’m here, if you were wondering - she didn’t choose not to come with me, I didn’t give her the option. She’s learnt a lot since - in the last year. She’s a lot more confident in herself.”
It’s a weight on Charles’ heart nonetheless. Raven is alive and thriving and far from him, and while she may not have been given the choice to come with Erik she has still chosen not to come of her own accord. “Is she happy?” he asks when he can speak.
“She misses you.”
“That’s nice,” Charles says. It’s clear from Erik’s face that he’s not fooled. “I told her to go, Erik, don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you pity me,” Charles says, then, “I hope you’re looking out for her, Erik. She’s still my little sister, after all. I hope she knows that, too.”
Erik’s voice when he replies is uncharacteristically soft. “Neither of us ever forget it.”
It’s too much. Flustered, pulse racing, Charles wheels himself back away from his desk, coming swiftly around the edge and past Erik, who draws his legs back as though Charles might run over his feet. “I have to go help Sean train now. Help yourself to any books you might want to keep yourself occupied.”
Erik lets out a small sound like a muffled laugh, and when Charles fixes him with a sharp look over his shoulder he says, “You’ve finally learnt to run away from things that hurt you.”
“Whereas you’ve never learnt not to run from things that might make you happy,” Charles says, and Erik pales, red spots appearing high on his cheeks, mouth tightening and dimpling in where he’s bitten the inside of his lip. Charles doesn’t care. “Feel free to call my sister and let her know you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere, won’t you? I’d hate for her to worry. I’ll foot the bill.”
“Still not above fighting dirty, I see,” Erik mutters, and Charles leaves.
He makes it to the corridor before he stops, wondering if he ought to go back and apologise. It’s not Erik’s fault that Raven prefers him, after all; if anything it’s Charles’ fault, and it’s clear that he’s burned that bridge by the way Raven hasn’t even called since she left him last year, not even to find out if he was alright.
He can hear Erik’s voice in the office behind him, a low rumble as he speaks to - whoever it is, it might not be Raven, after all Erik has his own team, now. A team who break into labs and destroy government property, and steal records from the FBI. Charles is tempted to listen in to the conversation - to see what Erik has to say for himself, to see what he’s planning, if he’s planning his next crime, but the thought of hearing Erik telling Raven about Charles’ legs is too painful.
Instead he wheels himself down to the basement bunker to work with Sean, and tries to ignore the creeping realisation that even if Erik is a criminal now, a terrorist, at least, unlike Charles, he is doing something.
Sean, at least, is easy enough to deal with, waiting enthusiastically to start working, and not asking any difficult questions. “I suspect you’ll be able to hear even better than Hank does, with enough practice,” Charles says encouragingly, and Sean positively beams before getting ready to listen to the next pin drop.
~
That night Charles goes to bed and does his customary check of the house and gardens with his mind as he arranges his legs under the blankets, touching gently on each set of thoughts as he does so - Hank is still awake downstairs, working in the lab, but the other two are asleep, Sean drifting and Alex dreaming in twisted shapes and colours that Charles untwists as unobtrusively as possible, sets into warmer patterns. He touches on Erik’s mind before he can stop himself, and catches a flash of frustration - guilt - familiar place before Erik notices and slams a mental door in Charles’ face, shutting him out forcefully.
It takes Erik a long time to fall asleep, listening to the rain falling outside. Charles stays awake, too, keeps silent vigil with him in their separate beds across the hall from one another, stares at the ceiling with unseeing eyes and does not let himself get any closer than the outer edge of Erik’s warmth, like running his hand over the outside of a candle flame.
~
The thing is -
The thing is, Charles has been in love with Erik since day one.
~
Train wayward vines. While some vines stick closely to their trellis or other support, others send their stems far and wide. To redirect a wayward perennial or annual vine, first note whether it naturally grows in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction, then train the stems accordingly.
~
Charles takes his tea out on the terrace the next morning, at the old cast iron table that Sean had unearthed from one of the groundskeeper’s sheds and left out for him on the paving stones, in the far corner where it catches the first of the morning sun. It took Charles a while to work out how best to transfer drinks from one part of the house to another, but now he has different thermos flasks for tea, coffee, and water, and can carry one of these and a cup in his lap while he uses his hands to traverse the corridors or, in this case, the path outside the kitchen that leads through the defunct vegetable garden to the terrace at the side of the house.
In November there is not enough warmth to take the chill out of the iron, but it’s pleasant to sit out in the weak rays of the wintering sun and pour tea from the thermos into a china teacup - from a set Charles is less bothered about breaking, if it slips off his lap - and sip it slowly, steam rising to warm the underside of his chin and nose when he holds the cup in both hands and looks out over the rolling hills of the estate.
In front of the house it’s mostly meadowland, the grass grown long with neglect except for the long burnt patches where Alex has been practising his aim and range. For the first time Charles frowns to himself, tapping his fingers against the porcelain. Something will have to be done about the lawn - it looks very shabby, ragged and uncared for, browning with winter. Perhaps one of the boys can mow it, or perhaps they can hire someone to come up for a day or two and take care of the grass. If they leave it to matt down all winter the soil will smother. Considering the size of the gardens, surely the house must have a ride-on mower somewhere…
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Charles startles violently, and he only avoids getting tea all down his front because his cup is empty. Erik steps up to his side and looks out over the landscape beside him, raising a hand to his face to shield his eyes from the stark whiteness of the clouds. When Charles looks up, Erik is a dark shape against them, a sleek silhouette dressed in one of his old turtlenecks and dark pants; he must have found them in the closet of his room, because he certainly didn’t bring anything with him. “There’s not a lot to look at out here,” Erik continues, before turning to meet Charles’ gaze. His thoughts feel tentative, uncertain of his welcome, though outwardly he seems as calm as ever, pristinely unconcerned and comfortable in his skin.
Charles thinks, so you’ve chosen the softly softly approach.
“I was watching the grass growing,” he says. Erik’s eyes crinkle at the corners, even though his mouth doesn’t smile.
“It could do with a trim,” he replies. “I didn’t take you for much of a gardener, Charles.”
And it’s easy to say, “I thought I might start,” before he’s even registered the notion in his own mind, to express it to Erik, who makes a noise that could be anything, assent or disbelief or amusement, rumbling low in his chest. One of the chairs scrapes out from the table seemingly of its own accord, and Erik steps around Charles to sit, wincing at the cold when it bites through his clothes.
They sit in silence for a while, and Charles pours himself another cup of tea. After a moment Erik takes the lid of the thermos and pours one for himself without asking. He makes a face at the bitter taste from where it’s been stewing a while, but drinks it anyway.
Behind them in the house Charles can feel the boys moving around, their different energies and moods familiar in their patterns as they move in their regular morning orbits. If each mind is a planet, with its own weight and pull, Erik beside him is a neutron star, the centre of gravity, the absent stretch of his long, long legs in front of him drawing Charles’ attention, the roll of his shoulders as he remoulds the back of the chair behind himself to make it more comfortable, the absent curl of his fingers around the thermos lid.
Charles sighs as silently as he can, tries to pay attention to his tea, but it’s hard. It might not matter any more - and surely even less so now, given his paraplegia - but it doesn’t stop him from wanting Erik with a longing that is deep and moves in tides, swaying between them as Charles pulls back on it but is inexorably pulled forward again, like the moon pulling the ocean away from the shore. And with each time he moves in he glances the land and sees -
Under the usual twitches of impatience and need to be in motion, acting and doing and on his way with his problem resolved, there is something deep in Erik that is very - content. Charles tries not to look, but he can’t help it - that part of Erik’s mind is curling the local magnetic fields around his shoulders like an invisible blanket, one Charles is aware of only peripherally. It feels like comfort, and when Charles reaches out very quietly to assess it he finds that it touches his mind back without Erik’s conscious awareness, curls its mental fingers around his and extends the blanket to envelop Charles as well, like it’s nesting. He can’t feel it, lacks the necessary sensitivity, but it’s like it’s tasting its environment, making sure it’s the right one.
Intrigued, Charles stops pulling away and turns a little more of his attention to what has to be Erik’s migratory instinct, tries to peel it back away from their environment and back into Erik, but it clings stubbornly, resisting his interference.
Erik himself doesn’t seem aware of it at all. “I thought you’d have more students by now,” he says, shifting in his chair as his mind’s grasp on his magnetic aura springs back into place. “You were so keen.”
“I’ve been somewhat preoccupied,” Charles says.
Erik’s voice is taut with things unsaid, a remembered tang of sea salt and blood heavy on his tongue. “There’s still room for you at my side,” he says, gravelled and guilty-minded. “I have Emma, but she’s not you. I could use your help, Charles.”
Though his heart gives a pang nonetheless at the thought of going with Erik, regardless of the cost, Charles shakes his head slowly, wordless in his refusal. To be wanted by Erik - no matter that it is not in the same way as he wants Erik - is a sweet and awful pain, but he shakes his head anyway, and lets go of the handhold he still has in Erik’s unconscious mind, withdrawing carefully. The extended magnetic field pulls back away from Charles as soon as he lets go. “You could always stay and help me with those students. I think you’d make a good teacher.”
Erik’s hands tighten around his cup, and he looks at Charles without an ounce of surprise, thinks, more loudly than he’s thought anything, like a shout, of course he said no. “Someone has to make a world for that school to exist in.”
“I intend to.”
“A world for that school to exist in openly and without shame, then,” Erik says. “Try as you might, Charles, you’ll never get humans to accept us by being polite at them.”
“It worked on you,” Charles says, and Erik snorts, takes another mouthful of his tea then tips the rest of it out over the edge of the patio onto the grass. Charles scowls. “Hey! That’s good English tea, you know. I would have drank it if you didn’t want it.”
Erik shrugs. “I can’t just sit around with you all day, Charles. I have things to do.” He gets to his feet, handing Charles the lid he’s been drinking from. “What do you have planned for today?”
“What could you possibly be doing?” Charles asks, rushing to finish his tea and placing the thermos in his lap, shaking the last few lingering drops from his teacup before adding it to the pile. “I’m sure you keep very busy normally, but you might as well have a few days to yourself since you’re stuck here for now.”
It earns him a roll of Erik’s eyes, something Charles used to value - Erik is always so proper, getting him to behave so casually is a victory. “I’m going to go over some planning with Emma. Once this passes, we’ll be ready to go ahead with everything that’s been disrupted by my little - diversion. I can’t just kick back and smell the roses, Charles.”
Like hell. “Not using my telephone, you’re not.” Charles scowls and puts his hands to his wheels so he can head for the kitchen door. “I’m not letting you use the mansion as your terrorist headquarters, Erik, and I refuse to be involved or to fund you killing people.”
“Fund me - I’ll pay you back for the damn phone bill!” Erik keeps pace with him easily, setting his usual long stride to Charles’ speed and folding his arms across his chest, tipping his gaze down to meet Charles’ with a scowl of his own, thick brows beetled and forehead creased. “At least I’m acting, Charles, what about you? For all of your fancy plans for the future, and the big game you talked, you’re still sat here in your little rich boy den, playing at helping mutants. What is it you actually do, to help your people? Still training the same three students? Whatever are you teaching them?”
“You’ll have to come back in January for Parent’s Evening,” Charles says as lightly as he can, though there’s a sick lurch in his belly as they reach the back door, like seasickness as he rolls in over the threshold in an easy up-and-over. “I don’t have their report cards ready.”
Erik follows. “You’re not going to tell me, are you.”
“Given that most of your associates are enemies we fought against the last time I saw you, no, I’m not,” Charles says, and puts the thermos and cup in the sink to be washed up later with a final little clink of china on metal. “If we end up fighting you again then we’ll need every advantage we can get, since there’s more of you than there are of us, even including me.”
The kitchen is silent between them, and he can feel Erik growing upset, the relative smoothness of his thoughts thrown into violence like crashing waves. When Charles turns to look at him Erik’s face is livid to match, and his arms fall away from his chest so that his hands can fist at his sides, knuckles white and straining. By contrast his voice is tightly controlled when he opens his mouth, every ounce of emotion stripped away. “Fighting us - why on Earth would you be fighting us? I’m not – we’re not – your enemies, Charles. We’re all mutants.”
We want the same thing.
Charles doesn’t say, you didn’t say that about Shaw. “Considering the bodies and destruction your new playmates left behind at the CIA facility, forgive me if I don’t relax my vigilance enough to find out different later.”
“Just because I left your team doesn’t mean we’re enemies!”
“When you leave your friends to join the people they have been fighting, who have been trying to kill your friends - and you, I might add - that doesn’t exactly leave a clear-cut friendship situation.”
Erik shoves a hand back through his hair and looks away out the kitchen window, the muscle at the hinge of his jaw tense and squared where his teeth are clenching, cutting each word cleanly, staccato. “You make it sound like I abandoned you.”
“I do wonder what else you think it was,” Charles says quietly, and ignores Erik’s sharply taken breath, waves a hand at the space between them, dismissing it. There’s no use in salting an already open wound, and he has had enough already of fighting with Erik, not their old casual sparring and debate but this bitter, resentful clawing at one another. “Now, whatever you think of me, I do in fact have work to get to today. Do you need something to do, other than world domination?”
“I’ll be in the library, using the telephone. If you object you can send one of your highly-trained warriors to stop me.” Erik swivels on his heel and strides out into the hall, towards the study, vanishing from the doorway without another word. And Charles -
Charles, despite knowing better, doesn’t stop him.
~
Make sure all leaves are off your lawns before heavy snows begin. Matted leaves will smother the lawn and kill it. You can rake them off by hand, or try using a bagging lawn mower. Leaves collected with a lawn mower are chopped up and ready to use for mulch next year - add them to your compost pile, or use them to cover empty beds in the flower and vegetable garden.
~
Charles avoids the library all day, even though he has work to do that requires paperwork he keeps there. It’s not worth being forced to overhear Erik’s conversations, or see his scrawled handwriting all over lists and plans and blueprints, or worse, having Erik turn to look at him expectantly, eyebrows rising first in question then in victory when Charles doesn’t force him to hang up or do anything, just grabs his own things and taking them away with him, ceding the territory and the win to Erik.
Instead he broods in the lab downstairs, futzing about with smaller projects and reading journals he barely takes in, slamming about while he tries to persuade himself that Erik is wrong about him. Charles has got plenty done this year, he’s been busy, had enough to deal with having been shot in the spine, it’s perfectly reasonable for him to be taking his time getting started again, never mind that he’s been taking his time about it -
Hank is in the kitchen preparing dinner when Charles finally snaps, stood at the counter chopping up tomatoes with swift precision, the soft fruit clasped gently between the very tips of his claws. The whole room smells like olive oil and basil, a quiet simmering coming from a covered pot on the hob.
“What progress have you made on Cerebro?” Charles asks without even saying hello first, and Hank jumps, the knife pausing as he twists to look at Charles.
“Oh! Professor! I’m sorry, I was miles away. What?”
Charles rolls into the room and into his open spot at the table, bracing his elbows on the top and leaning forward a little. He feels rushed, impatient even with having to repeat himself. “Cerebro. Where are we with it? I know you’ve been working on it, but how far along are you?”
The knife starts up again, more slowly, but Hank is still watching Charles from the corner of his eye, tense, as though he expects to be shouted at. “Oh. Hmm. Well, uh, it’s a lot easier to rebuild something, of course, than to build it in the first place, and having a qualified telepath to hand during the design process has been useful in terms of making it more suitable for what you actually do, that is it fitting you instead of you fitting it. So, um, we’re still in the design phase? I’ve been trying to work out how to get it sized down for the space available - ”
“Is there anything we can do to get it active more quickly?” Charles asks, interrupting, and he’s aware he’s being rude, but he can’t seem to stop himself. It’s like there’s an Erik-shaped burr caught under his skin, and no matter how he worries at it he can’t get it out, the feeling of inadequacy, of inaction. “Let me know if we’re going to need to make more of a financial outlay,” he says, trying to crush down that hungry feeling. “It’s important we get this up and running, so for all practical purposes your budget is unlimited. Just make sure we can still afford to eat.”
The tomatoes go in the pot, and Hank turns, putting the knife down and crossing his arms across his chest. “That’s good to know, Professor, but… what’s brought this on? You’ve not been too bothered about timeframe before now.”
It’s clear from his expression that Hank knows exactly what’s - who’s - set Charles off, and it’s infuriating, enough that Charles has to cover his face with his hand to try and calm down. “All we’ve done so far is argue,” Charles says, and Hank makes a humming noise, his suspicions confirmed.
“You two always argue.”
“Not like this.” It feels tight in his chest, an elastic cord pulling his heart downward toward his belly, arteries resisting and pulling it all awry. “Oh, never mind. You don’t need to hear my maundering.”
“Hmm,” Hank says, then, “I might need some help with the construction,” instead of pushing further, and Hank glances up at Charles over his glasses, dragging out a chair on the other side of the table and taking a seat. God bless Hank. “Unless we want to take turns digging, we’re going to need a much bigger room to put it in, and it can’t be overground or someone will find it eventually. I can wire it into the satellite dish without much chance of anyone noticing us piggybacking their signal, but a structure this size isn’t going to fit into the mansion aboveground without some serious modifications, and anyone photographing us from the sky would be able to tell the difference.”
Charles doesn’t need to ask who might be watching them. He spent as much effort as he could on blurring their tracks in the minds of the CIA, but without access to Cerebro completely erasing every memory was impossible. The mansion, at least, he is fairly certain he protected well enough - subconscious landmines left behind to discourage curiosity should take care of that - but the CIA isn’t entirely composed of fools.
“Well, provided you can come up with a good reason why we want a room that particular size that sounds frivolous and eccentric, I can make a few phone calls and get somebody in to do the work.” He smiles at Hank’s puzzled expression. “My family has a reputation locally for having rather more money than sense, for reasons including but not limited to the nuclear bunker in the basement. Provided I tell people it’s some sort of New Age wine cellar then they’ll happily take my money and build me whatever it is I ask for regardless of the sensibility of the request.”
Hank’s nose crinkles, amused, his mind already spiralling out to a list of specifications. “We’ll need to put together the main shell ourselves, or else you’ll have to do some creative editing. There’s no way we can pass off lining a giant spherical room in metal panels and putting in a central podium, unless you want to be that eccentric. Though I’m not sure they’d let you have a school permit if you were.”
The irony of it is, and Charles can hear Hank thinking it at the same time Charles does, that if they were to ask Erik, he could do the job in a trice - but they can’t possibly let Erik know they’re rebuilding Cerebro, not with Emma Frost on his team. If it were just Charles… if he were the only one who could use it, then he would ask Erik and have done with it, because there would be no risk. But Emma was willing to help Shaw start a nuclear war and kill millions of people on the off-chance that it would lead to mutant supremacy. Cerebro in her hands would be a weapon of mass destruction.
Quite aside from the fact that it would give Erik far too much satisfaction if he thought Charles was only doing it to prove him wrong.
“We’ll manage,” Charles says, and Hank gets up to check on his soup. If Charles squints he can almost see the thick cloud of mental calculations swarming around Hank like a swarm of insects, clambering over one another under his skin and clothes, clamouring for attention, a thick droning sound like the hum of wings. There is still so much to do, and so few hands to really help, compared to the resources Hank had when he worked for the CIA.
If it weren’t for Charles, Hank could still be enjoying those benefits, and if it weren’t for Raven and her cellular structure, Hank might never have come up with a serum that would have so changed him as to keep him from a society not yet prepared to accept the way he looks now, that would barely have tolerated his feet before his additional… modification.
“You do know you’re not obligated to teach, when I open my school,” Charles says suddenly, and Hank startles, half-turning to look at him in surprise
“Of course,” Hank says, brows rising - more a function of facial muscles than of hair these days. “We discussed this, Charles. We all want to help. It’s not as though we had other plans.”
“It’s just that,” and Charles pauses, uncertain of what he wants to say, before settling on, “my dreams don’t have to be yours, Hank, any of yours. You’re free to pursue whatever it is you would like to do. I’m happy to help you with whatever it is.”
“Well then. I want to stay here and build things without having to try to ignore the people they’ll be used to kill and without having to mothball any projects that don’t materially contribute to our national security.” Hank pushes his glasses up his nose with the back curve of a claw, stirring the soup with a wooden spoon in the other hand. “I believed in what I was doing, but there was a price associated with that. If the price here is helping teach children, then I can live with that.”
Charles finds himself smiling with a kind of bewildered pleasure, curling his mental fingers around the feeling as Hank smiles back at him, awkward and relentlessly good. He’s about to say something no doubt embarrassing to both of them when there’s a clatter of feet on the back staircase and Sean rambles into the kitchen, sniffing loudly and proclaiming that something smells fantastic, and that he demands his food early as a reward for braving the spiders on the third floor this afternoon while cleaning.
Alex comes in shortly after, and he and Sean have a brief squabble over the fresh bread they brought back with them from the grocery store, but their minds are friendly, both of them putting on more bluster than irritation. Hank takes the bread off them to start on toasted cheese, and eventually Charles concedes that he isn’t going back to work, fetching himself a fresh cup of tea while his boys set the kitchen table and elbow each other out of their way.
“Erik eating?” Sean asks when he’s helped himself to a bottle of cola from the pantry, perching beside Charles and out of the way as Hank finishes whatever it is he’s doing to the soup.
“Who cares,” Alex grumbles under his breath.
With Alex having been rude first it’s easier not to do what Charles wants to do, which is avoid the issue. “Alex, we can quite afford to be hospitable enough to feed him,” Charles says, and reaches out to find Erik. He’s still in the library, on the phone to Emma, and when Charles tries to announce his presence Erik’s thoughts immediately turn prickly and snap away from his touch as though Charles is some sort of pickpocket.
<<There’s food if you want any,>> Charles says as brusquely as he can, stung by the instant rejection, a feeling like catching his fingers in a hinge.
Erik debates with himself for a long moment, pride warring with practicality, but then he sends a pulse of acknowledgement and turns back to his phone call, telling Emma he’ll call her back.
Charles lets his focus come back to the kitchen, where Hank is sharing out the soup into bowls. “He’s coming now.”
Sean grins at Alex, mouth already full of cheese and bread. “Think of it this way. He’d be much worse to deal with if he was hungry as well as a psycho.”
Charles frowns. “Whatever else he is, Erik isn’t a psycho.”
“You say tomay-to, I say psycho,” Sean says. “Never mind. He’s not aiming it at us, that’s the most important thing. Pass the pepper?”
Hank hands Charles a bowl and sets the last one in front of an empty chair at the far end of the table, sitting himself down on Charles’ other side so that the only seats left open are the ones furthest away from Charles. Alex shoots him a look that is backed up by thoughts equal parts disgusted at having to sit next to Erik and proud Hank had chosen tactically. Charles allows himself only a brief moment to close his eyes and sigh before starting on his soup.
It’s very good.
Erik comes in while Sean and Alex are arguing over who is the better driver, and the boys determinedly don’t react to his entrance, continuing their bickering while Erik drags out his chair and takes his place as though it is his by right, picking up his spoon without ceremony and tucking in with the efficiency of a man for whom food is less a pleasure than a fuel. His mind is cold and dead, locked up so tight that Charles can only hear the very slightest of distant murmurs from him, like a conversation in a far-off room.
“You two should take your double act on the road,” Erik says when Sean and Alex finally pause for breath. There’s a dry sarcasm there that Charles has always appreciated, though he suspects none of the children ever recognised it for what it was. “I’m sure you could entertain enough yokels to make a few dollars.”
“We’ve been missing our clown,” Alex says, and takes a noisy slurp of his soup that makes the rest of them wince. “Have you seen him? About your height and build, big shiny head? Sometimes tries to hide it with a helmet?”
Erik smiles tightly. “Can’t say I have.”
Charles says, calmly, “Play nice, children,” and takes a sip of his water, looking at each of the boys in turn until they go back to their respective dinners. Erik he looks at last, and Charles finds grey eyes looking solidly back at him, hard and focused. It’s arresting, that gaze catching him like a trapped animal, Erik the hawk considering whether to make a meal of him.
“So how’s life on the run?” Sean asks, and Erik looks away finally, eyes sliding away from Charles and freeing him to look down at his bowl and pretend to be deeply interested in his soup until he remembers how to breathe.
Erik raises an eyebrow. “It’s not as though I’m a fugitive.”
Sean shrugs. “Whatever you want to call yourselves. International men and ladies of mystery. Like, how is that going, small talk, go.”
“Fine. It’s going fine.”
“Man, you suck at small talk.”
“What do you want me to say?” Erik asks, and he sounds openly amused now, putting down his spoon with a soft click of metal on wood. “Am I supposed to tell tales of playing poker with Pussy Galore and Emma Frost in Monte Carlo? It’s not nearly so glamorous, I’m afraid. Mostly intelligence gathering, which means keeping a low profile and traipsing among unpleasant humans in the hopes they know something of use. Nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished by sitting in the laps of luxury eating foie gras and seducing untrustworthy women.”
“Stop trying to recruit my students, you’ll turn their heads if you make it sound too exciting,” Charles says, but he’s thinking of Raven in the kind of grubby bedsits he knows Erik used to frequent, filled with the worst the world had to offer, following people better left alone down dark alleyways in the dead of night. “So you’ve had no trouble with the CIA, then?”
The look he gets from Erik is slow and knowing. “It’s rather strange, actually. Emma went to their headquarters to remove their memories of us and someone had been there before her. Left all very neat, apparently. She only had a few loose ends to tie up.”
Charles doesn’t react outwardly, but his murmur of “How odd,” seems to be enough for Erik, who nods slowly, glancing down before looking up at Charles again, warm approval emanating from him, mind opening just enough to let him share it. If it weren’t for the fact that Charles still feels guilty about being so peremptory and invasive as to go in and wilfully edit the memories of so many people without their knowledge or consent - even for the purposes of self-defence - then he might enjoy it. As it is, it makes him feel a little nauseous.
“That reminds me. Where is Moira?” Erik asks, and Charles feels more nauseous still - Erik knows, he has to know. Unless she was out on assignment when Emma went to do her little clean-up - but no, Erik would never leave that thread unsnipped.
“You know full well that I wiped her memory, let’s not play games,” Charles says, and finishes his soup quietly.
The boys eventually start another conversation to cover up the awkward silence. Erik eats the rest of his like a machine, unruffled and efficient.
“I’ll take care of the dishes,” Charles says after dinner, the way he does every night, but Alex is firm and hustles him away from the sink when he tries to protest, already rolling up his shirt sleeves as he waves Charles away with a gruff, “You can get them next time.”
The fact is, it’s hard for him to reach to do the dishes properly, but it feels wrong to give up without a fight. “You’ve had a long day already.”
“It’s fine,” Alex says, setting the tap running and squirting dish soap into the water. “You can make it up to me - I want to have another go at today’s exercises this evening, in the dark.”
Charles frowns. He can feel Erik hovering in the doorway, eavesdropping shamelessly, but he says anyway, “I don’t want you to overdo it, Alex. Too much is as bad as not enough.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I just feeling like shooting stuff in the face today,” Alex says, and drops the first plate into the water with an almighty splash that spatters his front with water. “Speaking of, Magneto. You’re drying.”
And to Charles’ surprise, Erik doesn’t complain; though he gives Alex a rather sardonic look for the presumption, he still comes forward and takes the towel from its hook, reaching for it barely having to look, still remembering where it’s kept.
Charles leaves them to get on with it. He has nothing to contribute to the washing up, and if Alex still wants to pick fights with Erik, then so long as they don’t seriously hurt one another then Charles - ha - washes his hands of the matter. Instead he goes upstairs to fetch his winter coat from his closet to brave the chill of the night, and comes back down when Alex is done with the cleaning and has put everything away.
They work on Alex’s control for a couple of hours in the sullen moonlight, where Alex has no way to absorb new energy to replace what he’s using - it had taken them a while to understand the solar aspect of his power, that he was drawing his energy from the sun instead of from himself and his subsequent summer vibrancy and winter malaise, until Hank had been able to build a lamp for Alex to use in the darker months to supplement what he wasn’t getting from nature. Charles hates to admit it, because he doesn’t believe in playing favourites, but he’s most proud of what he’s achieved with Alex out of any of them. His control has improved so much in the past year that the vest is on the verge of becoming a crutch rather than a necessity.
The light from the windows of the house behind them is a pale wash so far out on the lawn, barely enough to navigate by, hiding all details in the bluish tinge of night and broken only by the hot flash of Alex’s power. “Once more, then you can go wash up,” he calls when Alex stops his latest battery, the boy bending over to brace his hands on his thighs and panting with honest sweat. “You’re doing very well indeed, but let’s give it one last go and see what we get.”
Alex just nods, too worn out to speak but emanating a pleasant sense of exertion, of good-natured happiness in working hard. He takes the bottle of water Charles hands him with wordless gratitude, knocking half of it back in one toss. “I can do two,” he says once he’s swallowed, handing Charles back the bottle.
Charles smiles. “One will be just fine.”
He feels Erik coming from the direction of the front door just as Alex fires, a short, sharp burst of individual shots, comet-like, like a plasma machine gun rather than one long blast; the bulk of the house is still keeping Erik from seeing what they’re doing, but the sound of it is different when Alex is working on his fine control. There’s a moment where Charles wavers - this is a further step of distrust than he’s taken against Erik before, and it feels awful, but with the memory of Erik’s jab this morning still fresh in his mind he throws out a hand to squeeze Alex’s forearm anyway, ignores the sharp clench of his belly when Alex halts mid-barrage and waits for Erik to come into view.
“Am I interrupting?” Erik calls, boots crunching on the thick gravel, and then on grass as he comes closer, treading easily down the steep slope. In the dark he’s little more than a silhouette, dark turtleneck and trousers against the blackness behind him. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“I’m always up for some moving target practice,” Alex calls back, turning to face Erik full-on and crossing his arms across his chest.
Charles sighs internally as the two of them glare at one another across the long grass, and comes to a decision, turning his chair and heading towards the ramp at the back of the house. The ground here is worn flat by their frequent use, but the grass is slick and slippery from last night’s rain, and the incline makes the muscles in his arms strain and ache.
“Do you want a hand, Professor?” Alex breaks the staring contest to ask, is thinking of how hard Charles finds it sometimes to get back up when it’s muddy, but Charles waves him off and nearly backslides to the bottom of the hill when he takes his hand off the right wheel. With effort he controls it long enough to get his grip back and keep toiling his way up.
“Just bring in the targets when you come in,” he says over his shoulder, and makes it to the top of the slope with his dignity intact, though his triceps are burning.
Erik follows after him, skirting around their practice area - a few words with Alex that Charles doesn’t listen in on - and comes after him nonetheless in rapid strides, taking the hill easily, eating it up on those long shanks of his. He’s wondering if Alex was right and Charles could do with a push.
“I can manage quite alright on my own,” Charles says when Erik draws up behind him, and after a moment’s pause Erik steps up to his side instead, without calling Charles on the intrusion. It feels as though they’ve spent all of the last two days like this, never at ease, side-by-side and separated by a year’s worth of resentment and guilt, moving from place to place and never getting anywhere. “It’s not normally that hard. It’s just wet today,” he adds, though his arms hurt, muscles twitching and cramping from the unusual exertion.
“You’ve never been one to accept unsolicited help from anyone,” Erik says. “It’s something I always liked about you.”
Charles gives him the side-eye, bemused and oddly flattered. “Did you need something?”
“I wanted to ask - ” Erik hesitates mid-sentence, expression shifting as he tries to word what he wants to say. It’s very quiet out there but for the sounds of Alex collecting the targets behind them, the damp susurration of Erik’s shoes on the wet grass, and the rolling of the ball bearings in Charles’ wheels. They could almost be alone in the world, with only the stars above their heads to listen in. “This afternoon I tried to see how far I could go, and I got as far as the road down by the satellite dish before I couldn’t make myself go any further. I felt sick - so sick, I thought I was going to throw up. I might as well be a prisoner again, I have as little choice about where I go and no chance of escape when it’s my own body making me do this.” His voice is shaking a little with the force of his feeling, coiled tension in every line of his body like a caged animal wanting to run, lean and long and ready to flee.
Erik’s eyes when he flicks them down at Charles are half-wild before he looks away again. “Charles, you have to cut the cord.”
Charles stops pushing and momentum keeps him going for another one, two of Erik’s steps before he comes to a halt at the base of the long ramp that leads up to the upper gardens and the house. “We’ve been through this. No. I’m not going to change my mind just because you keep asking.”
“I don’t understand why!” Erik snaps, only realising belatedly that Charles has stopped and spinning on his heel to look back at him, running his fingers back through his hair, an old, frustrated gesture Charles recognises all too well. “You’ve given me some vague sentences about meddling too far and some frankly vindictive rubbish about not going where you’re not wanted when I’m explicitly inviting you in, but no real explanation.” He’s scowling fiercely, and Charles can see the anxious energy in the twitches of his thighs as he stops himself from pacing. “Just tell me why, Charles. Surely you must want rid of me, if only so you can free yourself of the obligation of berating me for my crimes.”
“Do you really want to do this here?”
Erik practically shouts. “Yes!”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake. Fine, then.” Charles lets go of his wheels entirely and tucks his hands together in his lap, letting out a sigh. “My hypothesis is that this is some sort of instinctual response, which is probably related to your brain structure but not necessarily directly a result of your magnetism. If it’s instinctual then it’s hardwired, like breathing or blinking or your intestinal tract’s peristaltic response. Or your heartbeat. I can interfere with those impulses, but it’s crude and it’s really not something telepathy is designed for. I can do much more with the voluntary impulses than the involuntary, but there’s no knowing how you’ve been wired up, and what’s connected to what, and as I’m not entirely certain I wouldn’t kill you by accident if I went fiddling around with whatever this migratory impulse is, I’m afraid I intend to leave it well alone.”
Erik’s mouth tightens into a thin, straight line, but Charles keeps his chin up in the face of the hard stare he’s subjected to, keeps his shoulders square and his own face neutral.
“You meddled with it before,” Erik says eventually, eyes intense in a way that sends a hot shiver down Charles’ spine despite his better judgement. “You told me not to go to Poland and I didn’t, this year, I didn’t feel it at all. Can’t you do the same for here?”
“Quite aside from the question of whether you swapped fixation to the place you were in when I meddled last or if there’s some other reason you’re here and not anywhere else,” Charles says, “even assuming I could do the same and it would stop you coming here, would you really rather take pot luck at where you’ll go next year? Perhaps the CIA compound, you spent some time there. Or - forgive me, but it’s entirely possible you could end up going back to the concentration camp, Erik.”
Erik’s face pales, though his expression barely changes but to get grumpier. “I think you’re making up excuses to keep me here, hoping to win me over to your side.” Wanting me to stay, Charles’ mind fills in, though he can’t hear it from Erik.
“I didn’t remove the impulse, just put a band-aid over something deeper. I’m not the one who tried to recruit you on the beach, Erik,” Charles says, exasperated. It’s really too much to be borne, being cast in the role of Shaw, now that the man himself is no longer able to take it up - it’s as though Erik has to have somebody to fill that space in his world, but Charles is a poorer fit than most. “I let you make up your own mind, and Raven, too. I held Shaw still for you to kill him even though I disagreed with what you were doing. I don’t see what else I can do to convince you I have no interest in superimposing my own wishes on you. You’re the one who came here, and as soon as you’re able you’re more than welcome to leave. I won’t stop you.”
“I’m asking for your help, Charles,” he says eventually, though his voice is tight and strained, as though it’s hard to say.
And Charles - relents, just a little, the way he always does for Erik, can’t stop himself from rolling himself forward and reaching to put his hand on Erik’s tensed forearm, warm and hard-muscled under his palm. “And I will always give it,” he says, looking determinedly up at Erik, who looks back at him with eyes little more than a gleam hidden in shadow, expression unreadable. “I will feed you and give you a roof over your head, and I would hide you from the authorities if you were on the run, without question, and I would fight for you if I had to, but I can’t give you what you want, Erik, not without the very real risk of harming you further, and that I won’t do.”
Erik’s next words are quiet. “Even after what I’ve done to you?”
Charles’ stomach twists, and though he means to say yes he can’t quite manage it, looks away up the ramp and steels himself for an uphill battle. “Come on, I’m getting cold.”
~
Finish putting the garden to bed. Check to be sure you’ve removed all the stakes and other equipment from the garden. If you didn’t turn the soil in October, spread a 3- to 6- inch layer of compost topped by chopped leaves over the garden to add organic matter for next year.
~
Charles wakes before sunrise to the feeling more than the sound of stealth, and lies prone on his side facing away from his bedroom door listening to Erik moving around across the corridor, slipping out of bed and getting dressed in the dark as though the light is what will wake Charles and not the feel of his mind, active and thinking. Once he’s clothed Erik eases his door open and pads away down the hall with a moment’s pause to listen for movement from Charles, who does not so much as breathe more heavily, too tired to bother with preventing Erik from going. It’s plain enough, when he intrudes a little further on Erik’s privacy, that the pull is still there - Erik won’t be going far, no matter what he thinks.
He listens to the hum of Erik moving around downstairs, collecting breakfast for himself before striking out across the grounds towards the road, thinks of Erik striding through the dim and early hour with trouserlegs no doubt damp to the knees with dew, and Charles settles deeper into his own pillow, creased against his cheek. When he rubs his face into it his stubble catches at it with a quiet rasp, and he reaches down to rearrange his legs into a more comfortable position so that he can roll onto his front, one arm curling up and under the pillow the other tugging the blankets up around his shoulders to cover the back of his neck.
Erik gets about half a mile down the road before he stops, hesitating before pushing on ahead again - another hundred metres before he stops again. Unhappiness burns from him like a signal fire on Charles’ mental landscape, and though Charles is sliding back towards sleep, lethargic and slow, he still feels it when Erik tries to force himself further. This time he bends over, retching with helpless nausea, and Charles reaches out as his eyes drift shut, thinks, come back, come home, like a caress, then falls back to sleep before Erik can respond.
~
Charles next wakes up several hours later, much later than he is accustomed to, with the sun creeping around the edges of the curtains and illuminating the room to a soft grey. He stretches, pushing against the mattress so that he can arch his back properly - it feels wonderful, though it tugs at the scar with a whisper of far-off pain that he ignores.
The other minds in the house are all awake and occupied, and there is nobody on this floor at all. Erik is down in the study, and Charles thinks of the strength in his arm when Charles had touched him yesterday - innocently, but the memory lingers, like everything else about Erik, the taut muscles under the skin under the sleeve of Erik’s turtleneck, shifting under Charles’ grip. He thinks of the turn of Erik’s profile yesterday morning, sharp and intelligent, the way he had looked so fierce as they argued, as though nothing was more important than that moment. The lean narrow line of his waist and hips, greyhound-like and neat, the broad span of his shoulders.
There is a pang in Charles’ chest that is not entirely love, that is the pure animal want he used to indulge so carelessly, as though it didn’t matter. And it hadn’t, not really - not with any of those many girls or the very few boys he’d met in college in the US or in England, few of them lasting long enough for him to remember their names, now, just flashes of skin, positions, an exceptionally talented mouth or a nice ass. It was never hard for him to find satisfaction, and it seems cruel now that of everybody Charles could have had easily it is Erik who has caught him fast and held Charles’ interest long after he has no remaining hope of reciprocation, and Erik who has then taken away even the small comfort of being close to him, if never close enough.
He’s tried it before, and there’s no reason why it might be different today than any other day, but Charles rolls onto his back anyway with a grunt of effort, the new patch of bed cool under him, and slips his hand under the covers.
The muscle of his stomach jumps under the touch of his palm, but he keeps going, easing his fingers under the elastic waistband of his sleeping pants. His knuckles catch on the fabric, and he thinks guiltily of the night they had first met, when Erik had been mysterious and wet and clad in form-fitting neoprene all over that had left nothing to the imagination, even cold as he must have been from the water of the ocean. In the bright lights of the captain’s office even the lines of his defined muscles had been visible where the material clung to him, thighs and arms and chest, and between his legs -
Charles’ hand curls around his own cock, but he might as well be touching himself through an inch of padding, for all the sensation it elicits. He’s vaguely aware of the warmth, the pressure of his grip, but there’s no connection there, no spark. It’s like touching his hand after sitting on it for half an hour, numb and desensitised to all but the most general contact.
Nonetheless, he adjusts his grip and strokes the soft flesh carefully, dragging his fingers in the way that used to have him stiffening in moments, closing his eyes and letting himself linger on the memory of Erik’s body before he’d been hustled off to change, a thick shock blanket thrown over him, thinks about the times when they’d shared a room during their long roadtrip - Erik asleep in the next bed, the sheet slipping sometimes so that Charles could see the bare muscle of his chest, a thin edge of dark nipple, not an ounce of fat on him, every piece of him perfect, perfect -
His cock remains limp, not even a reflexive response to the contact. Charles thinks about pulling the covers back to get a better look at how he’s holding it - as though somehow he might be doing it wrong!, he thinks back at himself, scornful and self-loathing - but he doesn’t want to see.
He keeps stroking instead, but nothing happens, and, eventually, Charles gives up. He would compare it to flogging a dead horse if the analogy weren’t so depressingly accurate. If he was willing to put the effort in he might be able to work himself up to a strange sort of pseudo-orgasm if he spends enough time on his nipples - his chest is flushed and his breath at least a little faster than normal, a tingling sort of feeling in the rest of him - but the last time left them sore and chafed by the time he finally ‘came’, and it just feels like too much effort for too little reward, today. Perhaps if it were someone else’s hands, someone else’s mouth and skin and desire, it might be easier, better, but today Charles feels small and unattractive and spent.
When he finally gets out of bed it seems to take an age to get into his chair and, subsequently, to the bathroom for his shower, where he only has to transfer again onto the bath chair Hank installed for him, and the hot water, when it comes, feels appropriately like drowning.
~
He should probably just be happy, really, that he’s capable of pissing and shitting by himself without a catheter and an adult diaper. It doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment.
~
Charles doesn’t let himself think about why he avoids Erik for the rest of the day, but he finds things to do wherever Erik isn’t, and when he rolls down into the labs in the late morning Hank is happy enough to cede some space for Charles to tinker about in. He’s in a sour mood anyway, bitter and resentful and guilty, still, for feeling so, his throat closed up and tight, as though he has swallowed a marble, hard and smooth and uncomfortable, like a thumb pressing against the cartilage.
“Professor? Is everything alright?”
Charles starts, shocked out of his brooding, and twists in his chair - he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone, and his heart is pounding from the unexpected voice, his pulse loud in his ears. Hank looks apologetic when Charles turns to meet his gaze, and tries unsuccessfully to hide his thought - Charles has been leaking his bad mood all over the lab, and it’s been making Hank uncomfortable, pressed in by a dark and tumultuous cloud of unhappiness.
“Bugger.” Charles puts his pen down on the countertop and raises his hand to rub at the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb, pinching hard as though it might drive out the slow throb of self-loathing. Clearly he’s not as in control today as he’d like to pretend. “I’m sorry, Hank - I’ll try to keep it to myself. I hadn’t realised I was projecting.”
“It’s alright,” Hank says, though a little stiltedly, and is kind enough to turn back to his own work instead of trying to maintain conversation, curling awkwardly over his own experimental data and withdrawing his focus from Charles as best he can. Hank’s still overly aware of him in the back of his mind - his animal brain is much more dominant than it had been before he’d taken the serum, and right now it is classing Charles as a potential threat, which is embarrassing to both poor Hank and to Charles, listening in to the tensed muscles and fight-or-flight instinct Hank is trying to crush down, everything about him anxious and unsettled.
Charles pretends to be working for a while longer, but it’s impossible to concentrate. He’s just staring blindly at the words as they swim together on the page, and though he tries his hardest not to think of all the things he used to be able to do before Erik was so careless, all the things he can no longer do and misses, no matter how sorry Erik is - and he is, Charles can tell that at least, Erik is at least in part so angry all the time at present because every time he looks at Charles in his wheelchair he feels overwhelming remorse and responsibility and he’s never liked having feelings he can’t control - no matter how sorry he is, it won’t fix what he’s done to Charles, and Charles is the one who has to live with it.
Eventually Charles admits to himself that he is having a bad day, and leaves Hank to get on with his work in a less hostile environment, taking himself off to the bunker to sit and sulk alone where he’s far enough from everyone else that his mood shouldn’t be contagious. Drawing his mind in on itself as tightly as he can feels like tying himself up in a strait-jacket, but at least it means he’s not listening to other people not being miserable.
He stares at the ever-present burn marks all over the aged concrete and wonders how long it will be until Erik leaves again. It’s for the best, really - Erik would only chafe at the bit here, and even if they were together again Charles would still be confined to his wheelchair and no longer able to keep up with Erik’s faster pace, unable to easily take off around the country and stay in dreadful motels and drink terrible roadside coffee, a much less convenient and trouble-free companion than before. The guilt would wear off and resentment would kick in, and Erik would find himself tied to someone who doesn’t share his ideas of what constitutes appropriate action against humanity’s many prejudices, and he would start wondering what it was he ever liked about Charles. Or they could stay here, and Raven would come back, but she would be here for Erik and not for Charles, it would be Erik-and-Raven not Charles-and-Raven, Charles playing gooseberry to two people he had thought would be his forever.
Perhaps Erik has already let Emma Frost fill Charles’ shoes, anyway. She has the appropriate talents in a very attractive package, and of course her secondary mutation is probably also extremely useful, quite aside from how attracted Erik has always been to visible mutations -
Really it’s probably for the best that Erik never had long enough to get tired of Charles the way Raven did. At least this way he maintains some modicum of importance, or relevance.
His breath catches painfully in his chest and Charles chokes, coughing hard and curling forward over his own lap, one hand pressed in tight to the centre of his chest as he tries to rub out the lump in his lungs. He only realises his face is wet when a dark blotch appears on the tawny fabric of his slacks where it’s stretched taut over the bone of his knee, then another two or three in quick succession, tears dripping from the point of his chin and falling to soak into his pants leg. It takes a moment before he can sit up and make himself scrub at his cheeks with his sleeve and the back of his hand, wiping away the rest of them and forcing himself to calm.
“Maundering accomplishes nothing.” Charles’ voice echoes loudly in the vaulted ceiling of the bunker, thick and wet-sounding but resolute. His stomach feels hollow, as though his insides have been scooped out and not replaced. “It’s certainly not going to fix anything, so you might as well be an adult about this and act your age.”
Forcibly pulling himself together, Charles turns to go back upstairs only to find Erik standing in the doorway staring at him, a dark shadow against the bright light of the hall. Erik’s breath hisses in sharply when he catches sight of the tears on Charles’ face, and Charles nearly has a heart attack - between his self-inflicted mental bondage and Erik’s own shields he hadn’t so much as caught a whisper of Erik’s approach, and clearly he hadn’t heard the door opening either. The shock causes him to turn far past where he intended, momentum carrying him through when his hand jerks to his chest, clutching at the hammer under his ribs.
“Jesus Christ, what are you doing?” The blood rushes hotly to his face and probably only highlights the redness around his eyes, his own breath coming out in a wheeze. “Sneaking up on people is usually considered rude, you know!”
“Were you - you were crying again.” Erik says. He folds his arms across his chest, looking deeply uncomfortable. Though he meets Charles’ eyes with his own, his jaw is tense and jumping, like he’s forcing himself to hold contact, refusing to look away.
“I - yes.” It would be pathetic to try and lie about it when the evidence is literally all over his face. Charles forces a smile, though it’s probably as watery as his eyes. “Did you need something?”
Erik ignores him. “Why?”
“Most people would say ‘what’s wrong’. It’s less interrogative.”
“Fine. What’s wrong.”
“It’s too late for that now, you’ve already brought out the thumbscrews,” Charles says, carefully tugging his sleeve straight, the damp cuff brushing against the inside of his wrist. “And it’s really nothing. Certainly not worth worrying about.”
Erik’s mouth pulls tight, and he takes one step, two, further inside the bunker, footsteps echoing like gunshots, until he is only a couple of feet away, still watching Charles with that intense expression, fierce in his determination. “Tell me anyway.”
Charles sighs, then rather ruins the effect by sniffling, his breathing still a little wet. “I’d really rather not.”
Erik’s shields crack a little with the force of his frustration, and it washes out in force, like a dam breaking; Charles feels a little like he’s drowning, and has to press back against it to keep from being overwhelmed. “You’re avoiding me today,” Erik says, hands flinging up to either side of him like he’s parting the Red Sea, tense and handsome even under the terrible, stark fluorescent lights, the harsh illumination only highlighting the strong lines of his face. “You’re avoiding me and crying alone in the basement, Charles. Clearly something is wrong and I’ll be damned if I’m just going to leave it be. You’re the one who always advocates letting your emotions out.”
“Hmm, well, that turned out well for everyone the last time, didn’t it, encouraging you to express yourself,” Charles says, and Erik flinches, but doesn’t withdraw. He’s never been the sort to retreat - Erik Lehnsherr is like a dog with a bone. Once he gets his teeth into something, he never lets go. “Sometimes I cry,” Charles continues, folding his own arms and looking away. “It’s a failing of mine. If I choose to do so in my own basement then it’s my right to do so, it’s my basement. And I am really a very busy man, Erik, so if you’re conceited enough to think that I’m avoiding you simply because I am getting other things done, then that’s your problem.”
Erik doesn’t know what to say to that. His mouth opens as though he’s about to speak, then shuts again; he’s suddenly uncertain, determination wavering in the face of Charles’ rebuff.
“Did you ever consider,” Charles says, before he can think better of it, a burning venom rising in his throat that he has to get out, “that you are the person who took everything from me, and left me with nothing, and that I have no reason to tell you anything about anything? All you do is come here and tell me I’m lazy for not having done more this year, that I should have shrugged off being shot in the spine and been more active in doing things for mutants instead of mourning the loss of my legs.”
And now there is silence between them, broken only by Charles’ ragged breathing and the stricken look on Erik’s face, as though he has been stabbed in the gut, curling around the injury just slightly, posture bending under the weight of Charles’ accusation. The air is crackling between them with the weight of Charles’ anger, sharp and brittle, expanding out of his mind to rage around him loud enough that people without his skills can overhear it.
It burns out as quickly as it started, a phosphorus snap of hopeless fury that leaves afterimages in its wake once it has ignited and been destroyed. Charles feels worse now than he did before he said it, looking at the bloodless pain on Erik’s face as he stares wide-eyed at Charles, as though he’s waiting to be struck.
“I’m sorry.” Charles reaches up to wipe at his own face and finds more wetness there, swipes it away with the brisk edge of his palm. “That was uncalled for.”
Erik’s expression hardens. “Don’t pretend,” he says, and if anything his eyes are fiercer now than before, the shame turning to anger. “Don’t pretend that you didn’t mean that, Charles, don’t you dare. I’d rather you were honest about hating me than that you mouthed pleasantries to my face with a smile.”
And Charles says, “If you think I hate you, you are a very stupid man indeed.”
He has to get out of the basement, out of the house - he feels suddenly trapped, claustrophobic in a way he never has even as a child, too long caught in the same place, sharing too little air in too small a space with Erik. He sets his hands to his wheels and just – goes, and doesn’t stop until he’s outside. The path between basement and garden is a blur, something that barely registers when he tries to remember how he got into the old vegetable garden, can’t remember if Erik tried to stop him, even, but he’s alone now in the cold, underdressed for outside in November.
He doesn’t care all that much.
The vegetable garden is overgrown and ragged, the once-tidy rectangular beds choked with weeds and dead leaves, the soil overspilling onto the pathways between them. Charles can only assume the anonymous, rot-sweet pile in the far corner was once the compost; the rest is almost distinguishable as the place he and Raven used to play inbetween being run off by Cook for falling into her herb patch when chasing one another a little too enthusiastically. Raven had used to delight in stealing sprigs of mint and rosemary, holding them to her nose and inhaling greedily throughout the rest of the day until the wilting leaves lost the best of their scent.
Charles misses her, again, desperately, the forbidden zone of her thoughts - familiarly scented nonetheless, like the mint, something he had not known to miss until it was far too late. They had lived in each others’ pockets for so long that the idea of being apart had seemed impossible, until it had happened.
His chair has come to a rest at the foot of the herb bed, which seems now to be home to a whole tribe of half-dead dandelions, brown-spotted leaves and drooping, naked stems, their seeds long gone. If nothing else, he can improve the state of this one flowerbed, Charles thinks, and bends forward over his own lap to stretch his hand down and grasp the leaves of the nearest offender.
The soil is wet and clings to his skin, but the weed doesn’t budge. Adjusting his grip, Charles tries again, yanking upward with all the strength his wheelchair has built up in his arms. When the damn thing finally yields it’s so sudden that he nearly smacks himself in the eye with his own fist for pulling so hard in that prone position - instead he catches himself in the forehead, and swears, dropping the plant and grimacing, though the pain fades quickly, the heat of his mucky palm soothing on the chilled skin.
“Take that,” Charles mutters, glaring victoriously at the dandelion, which lies limp and defeated on the path at his feet where he dropped it. It’s snapped clean off from its root, leaking milky liquid onto the soil.
It feels pathetically good to have won against something, and so he sets himself to the next one, gripping the woody stem tightly and dragging it away from the dirt. This time he avoids hitting himself when it breaks free. It’s an awkward angle, though, to be pulling upward like that from a seated position, and by the time he gets to the fourth one Charles gives in and carefully sets the brakes first so his chair won’t roll off.
It’s difficult to transfer that far, with nothing higher to brace against, but he moves his feet off the footrest and sets his hands to the armrests, pushing up and out of the seat. He can feel the strain in his arms, but they hold him easily enough as he lowers himself forward, not-quite falling the last little bit to the cold earth, a jolt he feels in his spine but that doesn’t truly hurt, thanks to the paralysis.
No doubt his pants are becoming filthy with mud, but down here he’s much closer to the victims of his frustration and Charles can get a better hold on the weeds as he pulls them up, tossing them all aside, broken and unwanted. His hands start bleeding after a while from the rough leaves cutting at his skin, but there’s such satisfaction in it that he keeps going. No doubt he’ll regret it later when he has to push himself along again; for now though it’s like picking at a scab, bad for him, but impossible to resist.
He feels rather than notices the sun going down, working at this little patch of soil as it gets colder yet outside, the shadows getting longer until the whole vegetable garden suddenly goes dark. The sun has fallen below the top of the hedge, casting everything inside into twilight. Charles looks up with surprise only to find he has a sturdy little pile beside him and his hands are burning with cold, friction burns and broken skin; a good half of the flowerbed is stripped bare of weeds, the edge of the cleared area a semi-circle matching the radius of his easy reach. It’s only then that he realises he is shivering, frozen down to his bones, and he feels foolish even while he feels as though he has achieved something - something tangible, something real.
Erik would probably appreciate this sort of physical result. There are even visible casualties.
Raven would probably tell him that he’s an idiot and fuss over him until he let her treat his hands, then use the iodine just to punish him for being so stupid. It’s a thought that makes his breath catch in his throat, longing for the sudden sting and hiss, the yellow stain on his palms, darker in the creases and against the blue of his sister holding them open until it dries, fond irritation in her pinched mouth. It feels like choking, grief rising so sharply that he’s taken by surprise, pressing his hand to his chest instead, over his heart.
Charles only lets himself feel maudlin for a few minutes before levering himself from the ground. It’s harder than getting down, stiff from the cold and with hands that don’t want to push down against the fabric of the seat, stinging and stabbing with pain, and at an awkward angle so that he has to put his arms into an uncomfortable bend behind him to push.
In the end he half-drags himself back up on his hip, diagonal across the chair so that he can turn himself onto his ass once he’s in the damn thing, all the while knowing that if he reached out and asked any of the boys would come and help him. The edge of the seat scrapes against his lower back, but once he’s in it’s not too hard to twist and readjust himself by main force until he’s sitting upright and dignified, and with none the wiser.
Wheeling himself back inside is somewhat harder, wincing against the pain in his torn-up palms, but he does it anyway, taking himself around along the side of the house and in through the front door, where he can reach his private elevator more easily to go and clean up his hands.
~
Dandelion seeds can blow in from elsewhere and remain viable for years in the soil, waiting for a chance to grow. And because they're perennial weeds, dandelions will keep coming back, larger and stronger each year unless they're removed or killed.
Dandelions are at their weakest right after they bloom and food reserves in their roots are at their lowest. When you have only a small number of dandelions, dig them out after the ground has been softened by rainfall or thorough watering. Try to get 4" to 6" inches of root so the remaining portion doesn't have enough energy to sprout new buds and leaves. If a plant does re-sprout from a bit of the root, dig it out again.
~
Charles does the best job he can, but despite the cream he slathers over them and the bandages he puts over the cuts his hands are swollen and sore from the abuse by the time he comes downstairs again, and there’s no hiding them or pretending it’s just soreness from moving about all day. He’s caught coming out of the elevator as Alex comes out of the living room, and his mind lets out a sharp spike of attention like an exclamation mark as he jabs a finger at Charles, who had been trying not to be too noticeably ginger about wheeling himself out of the small space.
“What’s that?” Alex demands, worry as ever blended with anger in his mind until the emotions are near-inseparable. It’s unfocused, undirected, but Alex is almost always carrying a pilot flame of anger with him, ready to be ignited. “What happened?”
The little corner of hallway where Charles’ elevator has been carved out of the existing house is brightly lit, courtesy of Hank, and gives no shadows to hide Charles’ wince at being caught; Alex immediately scowls, and turns his head over his shoulder back towards the living room. “Sean!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Alex-” Charles starts, but it’s too late now; he hears a clatter from the living room and then Sean is peering over Alex’s shoulder, his gangly height giving him a good view, sharp eyes quickly zeroing in on the bandages and letting out a hiss of sympathy between his teeth that rattles the lightbulbs overhead. “What happened to you? Was it Erik?”
Charles’ laugh when it comes is a little forced, and he can tell immediately that it hasn’t fooled either of them. “Of course not. Don’t fuss. I just did a little gardening.”
Sean’s eyebrows rise comically towards his fringe. “Did you remember to use the sharp end of the shears on the plants?”
“Had I used shears, I can assure you that I am capable of telling the difference between the handles and the blades.”
“Come on, Hank needs to take a look at those,” Alex says, but when Charles sighs long-sufferingly and puts his hands to his wheels Alex steps directly in his path, shaking his head. “Nuh-uh. I’ll push.”
“Like hell you will,” Charles says, and when Alex refuses to budge Charles simply rolls himself backward into the elevator, though not without a wince at the pressure on his palms, which burn and sting more sharply when he curls them to grip his wheel rims. “I’m quite capable of taking myself downstairs, Alex.”
Sean puts a hand on Alex’s upper arm to move him aside, smiling disarmingly at the two of them even as he steps forward and slips himself quite neatly into the narrow space left beside Charles’ chair in the elevator car as though nobody could possibly object. “Well, Alex has to go make dinner anyway, so I’ll come with you in case you forget to remind Hank to come up to dinner.”
“You three are all terrible mother hens,” Charles says, but he lets Sean press the button for the basement anyway, and does not let himself reach out to see if Erik is still down there, stood dumbfounded in the bunker the way Charles had left him, his usual quick retorts frozen by Charles’ vicious loss of self-control.
Hank really is more or less where Charles left him, some complicated piece of unfinished Cerebro on the tabletop in front of him. He takes in Charles’ hands with a frown and immediately puts down his screwdriver, and before Charles can stop him Sean has pushed him over to Hank’s side of the lab, letting go of the wheelchair’s handles and stepping back as soon as they’ve reached their destination. Charles gives him a dirty look, fully intending to tell him off, but then Hank reaches to untie the bandages, tugging them away from the sticky, puffy tissue and picking at the untidy knot with the sharp tips of his claws. It’s distracting enough that Charles shelves the telling off for later, biting at the inside of his lower lip and hoping it doesn’t show.
“They’re pretty torn up,” Hank says once they’ve explained and he’s got the bandages off, frowning at the wounds and glancing up at Charles over the rims of his glasses. “There’s no point in me nagging you about not hurting your hands now, but you probably shouldn’t be pushing yourself with them now that you have. It’ll only make them worse.”
Which would essentially mean he was trapped wherever he could persuade someone to leave him, with the chair only an aid for those trundling him around the house, like an old shopping cart. Charles represses the sudden flash of claustrophobia and shakes his head, tugging his hands back out of Hank’s grip. “Don’t be silly, I’m fine. If you’ll help me wrap these back up then we can get on with dinner.”
All he really wants is for everyone to ignore it and get on with whatever it was they were doing. He could, of course, make everyone forget about it, but he tries not to use his powers for frivolous personal gain these days. At least, not as much as he used to.
“Erik came by earlier,” Hank says, apropos of nothing, save that Charles stiffens like he’s been electrocuted, sudden anxiety thrilling down his spine as Hank goes for his medicine drawers where he keeps the various supplies they’ve sourced through less legitimate channels. “I was working on the plans for Cerebro, but I told him it was for a new jet. Hard to tell if he believed me. He’s not an engineer but he’s not stupid. He seemed kind of distracted.”
“Do you think he knows?” Sean asks, shuffling along the countertop until he’s perched on top of it between them, swinging his feet back against the cupboard doors and making Hank shoot him irritated glances between searching for whatever it is he’s looking for.
Hank shuts the middle drawer with a thump and comes back with a tube of ointment and a cotton swab, settling himself on his stool in front of Charles and squeezing out a nickel-sized dollop in the centre of Charles’ palm. The tip of the swab works carefully, smoothing the ointment out from the middle to cover all of the broken skin in a light film of the stuff. It smells chemical, strong and acerbic. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have come here to see if I was rebuilding it,” Hank says. “Erik’s a strategist, he has to know we’d think about it.”
“That’s not why he’s here,” Charles says distractedly, concentrating on keeping his hand open and not jerking away when Hank touches on a particularly painful cut, and the two of them look up at him like bloodhounds on the scent, like sharks with blood in the water. It’s hard not to feel like a criminal who’s strolled into the wrong bar. “A little further caution wouldn’t go amiss, however,” he finishes lamely, and offers Hank his other hand.
“Hmm.” Sean fixes Charles with that gimlet stare of his - it’s not intimidating, but it is discomforting, unblinking and focused, as though in competition to see who will give in first. “I know you said it’s none of our business, but I really think you ought to tell us, just to set our minds at rest about Erik. It’s responsible parenting or mentoring or something.”
Hank probes another cut with a fresh swab, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth as he dabs, and Charles winces. “It’s still none of my business to tell other people’s secrets, Sean. If I went about telling everyone everything I think they ought to know then I would be a very irresponsible telepath. I’m sure there are things you’d rather I didn’t share, too. What makes Erik’s secrets any different?”
Sean shrugs. “Just nosy, I guess.”
Charles feels his lips quirk into a smile. “So’s everybody, when it’s not their secrets being told.”
“I’m going to put some fresh bandages on now,” Hank says, and Charles holds carefully still while Hank starts winding the white linen around his wrist before making a figure-eight shape around his palm and thumb. “By the way. You probably need to give that flowerbed a good turning over, if it was dandelions you were pulling up. The roots can be up to two feet long, and if you leave even a little bit in the ground they just grow right back.”
Charles feels a sudden puncturing of his pride. “What?”
“Sorry, but that’s why they call them weeds,” Hank says, taping the end of the bandage down firmly. “I can probably make you some herbicides for them, if you’re serious about the gardening.”
“That would be kind, Hank, thank you. Much appreciated.”
Sean makes a face, hopping down off the counter but raising his hands when Charles raises an eyebrow in his direction to warn him off the chair. “What’s with the sudden gardening thing, anyway?”
“It - ow - helps me think,” Charles says, not untruthfully, and they all finally go back upstairs for dinner.
Erik, of course, is not in attendance.
~
Erik is still outside by the time Charles goes upstairs for bed, haunting the grounds like an ill-tempered ghost. It can’t be warm enough, Charles thinks, with the kind of concern for his wellbeing that Erik would disdain; it can’t be comfortable out there, tramping around the lake in the cold November weather as though Erik is walking the perimeter of the property, a hawk waiting to be let off its jesses. He feels Erik’s attachment to the mansion like a taut and fraying string, plucked and quivering, the finest of leashes tying him back to the mansion and Charles. Erik walks the boundaries as though he is guarding them against enemies, his presence simultaneously a burden and desperately welcome. The string that ties him here is bound around Charles’ wrist, and it tugs at him constantly, a reminder and a wound.
Erik will leave soon.
In the elevator car Charles closes his eyes and makes himself press the button for the third floor only, instead of going to the attic in the hopes of seeing Erik coming back that little sooner. The elevator itself is relatively small, to fit within the confines of the existing building - Hank had had to sacrifice part of the downstairs parlour in order to make it fit - but it lets him reach every floor of the house, something he had despaired of when they had first returned after he was released from the hospital. He had never wanted to go to the attic until the staircase became insurmountable; now from time to time he goes to the top of the house just to prove that he still can.
Today he only goes to the third floor and his bedroom, and shuts the door behind himself gratefully once inside, turning the key in the lock and leaving it there - if Erik wants to come in, he will, but there’s little chance of that.
His hands are more painful now even than they were before, and the bandages feel tight, as though they’ve swollen. He really is an idiot, Charles thinks ruefully, when putting his hands to his wheels to push himself towards the bathroom proves to be a near-agonising task. How stupid, to injure his hands, his only method of locomotion, for a childish fit of grief. Pressing down on the rims to grip them squeezes the inflamed tissues against one another, and Charles has to grit his teeth to press forward even while fire races up his arms.
He turns on the wireless on his dresser as he passes, and leaves the door open while he brushes his teeth so he can listen to the late-night news. It crackles a little, but he can hear the newsreader clearly enough talking about the President’s latest initiative for civil rights between the usual hoorah claptrap about his tour of Texas. Charles can’t help but wonder what attitude President Kennedy really took to last year’s events in Cuba - in the media he immediately denounced mutants as a ‘menace’, and promised to address the issue, but then there’s been so little on the news about mutants lately after the initial uproar died down that it’s hard to tell whether he even knows that he had some on his own side, fighting his battles and winning them for him.
Certainly Charles hasn’t been sent a medal for bravery, though his own erasure of the CIA’s collective memory had rather seen to that. It’s perhaps a little unfair to blame the President for not being able to find him when none of them even remember Charles’ name.
Charles looks at himself in the mirror and settles his expression into something he thinks is calm, dignified, worthy of respect. He imagines how it could have been if the humans hadn’t panicked, if Erik hadn’t been forced to take action - Moira, at least, had known them well enough to know that Erik never stops short of making a point, once roused, but clearly that intelligence hadn’t made its way back down the grapevine to the rest of the CIA. Charles might have been standing next to the President with Erik while they were thanked for their service, for saving the day, instead of vilified for orchestrating it. It’s vain, and perhaps silly, but he hadn’t thought it unreasonable to imagine it might happen, before everything had gone to shit.
However - it is what it is, and Charles dashes away the silly daydreams, washes his face - carefully, trying not to wet his bandages - and transfers himself briefly onto the toilet to relieve himself before settling back into his chair and reversing carefully back out into the bedroom to change into his pyjamas. Kennedy seems like the sort willing to listen to reason, and perhaps given enough time for the immediate furore over Cuba he will start to consider mutants as another facet of the civil rights movement, as another group of people entitled to fair treatment, just like the blacks. After all, the President had met with Martin Luther King, publicly, among other civil rights leaders. Even if they’ve not had the beginning Charles had hoped, they might yet reach his end goal, with or without himself in the frame.
Or Erik. He can imagine Erik on television, smart and articulate beside the President, the handsome face of mutant rights. Not that they would let him anywhere near the President now, of course, with the company he keeps.
Charles is used to dressing and undressing himself in his chair, and it’s easy enough to reach out for the others while he strips himself of his trousers and underwear - simultaneously, pulling them down together and off over his limp ankles and feet - and unbuttons his cardigan and shirt, folding each carefully and laying them aside on a chair to put away in the morning.
The buttons give him some trouble, swollen fingers threatening not to grip so that he’s more tugging the fabric around the buttons than handling the buttons themselves, but he manages, mind brushing lightly over Alex still in the living room downstairs, reading a textbook, which he never does when he thinks anyone might catch him; Sean in his bedroom on the second floor, listening to music which has his feet tapping, though Sean doesn’t dare sing along too loudly any more the way he used to, his voice too powerful for the high notes. Hank is in his lab, as ever - Charles nudges him in passing, and Hank sends back a wordless acknowledgement before continuing just as before, not at all thinking about going to bed yet.
Closer than any of them, Erik is coming up the stairs, sock-footed, boots clasped in his hand so he can pad quietly along the carpeted hallways and avoid being overheard. He’s tired, and cold, sluggish, and he feels Charles watching him, head lifting from its slight droop into something stiff and alert - Charles must be sleepier than he thought, for Erik to catch him touching his mind. Instead of slapping him away, though, Erik feels - resigned, almost, to the intrusion.
<<What do you want, Charles?>> he asks, and even his mental voice is tired, worn around the edges.
<<Nothing, Charles lies, and withdraws. He tries not to listen out for Erik’s footsteps in the hallway as he bends to pull on his pyjama pants, dragging them with clumsy haste up his legs and under his ass, up over his hips. Knowing Erik is moving this way is inducement enough to throw the shirt on with haste as well, then, when he can’t get the buttons to cooperate, leaving it to hang open around his chest in favour of getting into bed.
Angling his chair towards it, Charles sets his right hand on the mattress in a fist and the left on the chair - there’s a scuff on the carpet outside, and he rocks himself forward, putting his weight on his hands and pushing up from the chair just as Erik calls out, “Charles, can I come in?”
Startled, putting the weight on his fists feels like driving nails into his palms, and Charles slips.
He lets out a sharp cry as the pain jags up his arms, and everything happens in slow motion - his momentum carries him forward, and he can see the carpet coming up toward his face even as he falls, the chair shoved backward despite the brakes by his unsupported weight and the comforter dragged off the bed along with his body. Charles only just gets his forearms in front of his face before he hits the ground in a heap, all the breath driven out of him along with a loud flash of mental alarm that he can’t suppress. The impact is like a full-body slam, his forehead bounces off the inner bone of his wrist, hard enough to drive another heave of agony out of him, and he only realises Erik has burst into the room when a hand falls on his back, skin-to-skin where the shirt has been flung up and away from him.
“Charles! Are you - ”
“Don’t touch me,” Charles wheezes. The hand is snatched back, the sound Erik makes almost drowned out by the sound of Charles’ lungs trying to remember what they’re for. It’s incredible how much it hurts, bellyflopping onto the floor like a beached whale. Everything above his waist is screaming; below, the limited sensation trails off by the time it reaches mid-thigh, until for all Charles knows his shins could be broken. At least part of him doesn’t hurt, he thinks, pushing down enough with his forearm to turn onto his side, away from Erik. It rolls his back into Erik’s knees, pressing against his spine side by side.
“Charles,” Erik says, then, “Gott, what did you do to your hands?”
There are rather a lot of dust bunnies under his bed. Charles is never usually in a position to notice. He’d really rather he wasn’t now, or at least that he could be alone to wallow in his own humiliation before trying to get back up. “I’m fine.” The fibres of the carpet rub against his exposed flesh, his eyes still watering from the impact until everything is blurred. He lets himself lie limp, limbs heavy. “Whatever it is you need, I’d really rather sleep now, so if it could wait until tomorrow morning, I would be much obliged.”
Erik’s shadow falls across him when he leans over to look at Charles’ face, and Charles can feel Erik’s incredulity vibrating between them, a loud and sudden anger. His voice, when it comes, is rough. “You - no. I’m not going to let you act like that didn’t just happen.”
Feeling crowded, Charles reaches forward to take hold of the fallen bedclothes to help him pull himself up, but the comforter only slips further, puddling on the floor, and his hands burn like they’ve been literally set on fire. Pushing himself into a seated position is difficult when he feels like he’s been beaten with a bat, but he manages anyway, pushing first with his forearm and then, gingerly, hissing, with the heel of his hand on the floor, until his back is to Erik, and Erik’s knees aren’t touching him any more. He braces himself with his arm on top of the mattress, head bowing forward just a little. “I’m fine,” he says again, breath warm and moist against his forearm, and does not let himself reach to tug his unbuttoned shirt back up where it’s slipped down to his elbow, exposing his shoulder and back to Erik’s view. “I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Erik says, and then there are hands on him again - Charles doesn’t have time to swear before Erik has his arm tucked under Charles’ limp knees and one around his back, lifting him awkwardly enough that Charles has to throw an arm around Erik’s shoulders to keep from falling forward out of his grip and back to the floor.
Charles yelps as he’s jostled upwards and feels unsteady, unsafe, pressed against Erik’s chest close enough that he can feel Erik’s warmth through his shirt, the in and out of his breathing, Erik’s callused hand against Charles’ shoulderblade, big and careful. “Put me down!” Charles demands, though his hands are clutching Erik tightly for fear of being dropped. His heart skips a beat, two.
There’s a pause, silence between them, the radio burbling in the background while Charles is cradled in Erik’s arms against his broad, muscled chest, closer than he’s ever been. Erik seems to have stalled, straightened all the way to his feet only to stare at his own arm encircling Charles’ legs, skinnier now than before. The quiet feels loaded, everything coming to a standstill, Charles’ protests and Erik’s stubborn insistence. It feels simultaneously like everything Charles has ever wanted, and the utter opposite.
“Put me down.” Charles hears his own voice come out of him as a tremulous whisper, can’t quite stop himself from staring at Erik’s stubble so close, fine-grained and reddish; at the creases at the corners of his eyes, the flecks of green and blue in the grey of his eyes, the tremor of his eyelashes when Erik blinks. His eyes stay closed a moment longer than normal; then he opens them to look back at Charles, and steps forward to place him carefully on the bed. The mattress gives under his weight, Erik’s arms withdrawing with swift unease.
Erik shifts hastily backward, as though putting space between them erases the look that was on his face when he was holding Charles, the slight parting of his lips, a tight-lidded gaze torn between guilt and tenderness. “There,” he says, awkwardly, then, in a rush, “Don’t bother complaining, there’s no way you could have got yourself back up there with your hands. Now stop avoiding the subject, what happened?”
“I fell.” Charles doesn’t want to fumble the buttons again in front of Erik, so instead he just grasps the edges of his shirt and wraps it across his chest, hiding the spreading flush, stark on his pale skin. Somehow it feels like he’s caught in the moment before something opens, like a flower about to bloom, and Charles swallows, feels all of his physical limitations now laid out in a way the chair hid, somewhat, by leaving him mobile, able to get around by himself. “I just - I fell.”
“Obviously,” Erik says, flicking away the statement with a sharp flap of his fingers. “Your hands, Charles.”
The offenders fall to lay folded in Charles’ lap, one over the other. It’s a toss-up between telling Erik and getting it over with, or telling him to get out - if he said it strongly enough, often enough, Erik would listen, Charles is sure, but he’s not sure it’s worth the effort. The bandages are already a little dirty from his stubborn insistence on self-propulsion, and Charles sighs, lets his head tip back against the headboard behind him, and says, “I was tearing up weeds, Erik. I overdid it a little.”
“Weeds?”
“Dandelions.”
Erik gives him an incredulous look, and then lets out a single, dry chuff of laughter that kills the softness between them. “And to think, you could have a whole army of gardeners - paid or under your control - but you choose to yank up weeds using your bare hands. That’s always been your problem, Charles, you have all these resources and you refuse to use them. You always have to do everything your damn self.”
“As if you’re any better,” Charles retorts, ignoring the way his stomach falls in something like disappointment, filling the space with irritation instead. All the sorrows and upsets of the day burst from him like pus from a blister, popped by the needle of Erik’s self-important ego. “You have an opportunity to make a difference, you have all these resources - you’re a leader, Erik, you have charisma and intelligence and goodness on your side, and instead all you want to do is make people hate mutants more. It’s not the same thing.”
“And all you want to do is pretend to be normal,” Erik snaps, his hands in fists at his sides.
Charles takes a sharp breath - he’s so angry he could spit sparks, and some of that is Erik’s emotion bleeding over, only magnifying his own. He can feel it, foreign, like fuel to the flame, like throwing water on burning oil.
Erik is white with fury, as though his emotions, too, have been held down for so long that once released they can’t be stopped short of burning down the whole forest, like a smouldering in the underbrush that can wait all summer before setting fire to autumn. “So much for fighting for me, Charles - for all your pretty words you’re still telling me to fuck off. So much for forgiveness.”
“I don’t forgive you,” Charles says, and he feels the moment that Erik’s mind just - stops, his mouth falling open but nothing coming out.
The silence is terrible, now that he’s said it, and instead of watching Erik’s face crumble to match his insides Charles leans forward for the rumpled comforter, straining a little to reach it and tugging it back onto the bed with his bandaged hands. Getting it straight again is even harder, without moving from his position right in the middle of the bed, but he manages, lifts and snaps his arms hard so it billows out and lands more-or-less back in place.
His voice, when he speaks, is carefully diffident, trying to divorce the emotion from the words, though he feels as though his heart is trembling in his chest, terrified at finally saying it out loud. “I’ve never forgiven you, Erik. Not for any of it. I might understand the whys and wherefores, but I don’t forgive you and I don’t see why I should.”
“You said - that you don’t hate me.” Erik’s voice, too, is so tightly controlled as to be deadened, his whole mind locked away, too far down for Charles to reach without coaxing. “You were lying, then. Trying to spare my feelings.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Erik. If Hank - Hank! - can tell that I’m in love with you, then certainly you're well aware,” Charles says, and leans forward to pull the comforter over his legs with brisk, sharp tugs. “Don’t let’s try and pretend otherwise.”
Erik doesn’t say anything.
When Charles finally looks back up, Erik is staring at him as though he’s never seen him before, hand halfway to his head as though he was going to run it through his hair and stopped, halfway, caught so by surprise that he’s forgotten even to complete the motion, and Charles feels himself flush a sudden and scorching red all over. “Oh. Really?”
“How long?” Erik - Erik! - has started a slow-burning blush, too, Erik who never blushes, who is never the least self-conscious, who hasn’t stepped back away from Charles where he lays in his bed practically half-dressed. Erik looks as though his joints have locked up too tightly for him to move in either direction, everything about him rigid in his surprise. “You. How long?”
Charles wants to die. His organs are shrivelling up inside of his body, and he considers reaching out to one of the boys and asking them to come and interrupt, but there’s no need to add a peanut gallery to his humiliation - bad enough that Erik is thinking I never knew he was queer and we shared a room in every motel we stayed in and how long?, over and over again, as though it makes any bloody bit of difference now. Charles lifts his chin, and his voice barely wavers when he says, “If you didn’t know then I’m certainly not going to tell you anything else.”
Erik swallows, a swift bob of his Adam’s apple under the skin where he’s gone pale, now, all the blood drained from his face. “You know,” he says distantly, “I was once blindsided into a similar scene with your sister in this house? Her in the bed and me standing over her being propositioned, and not knowing what in hell to say. Gott in Himmel, the two of you!”
“Propositioning - I wasn’t propositioning you!” Charles splutters, then processes the rest of what Erik has said, and feels daggers like ice piercing his vital organs. “What were you doing in my sister’s bedroom in the first place?” He hears the jealousy in his voice and it’s just - if there was anything he didn’t want it was that, was Erik’s whole face closing down, mind closing down again too, even though everything he was thinking was what does he want from me and none of it was reciprocation.
Charles waves a hand before Erik can answer, closing his eyes and leaning back against the headboard so he doesn’t have to look at him standing there finally confirming that he really doesn’t want the same things as Charles. “Never mind. Never mind. I don’t want anything from you, Erik. You and Raven - I hope you’re, ah, happy together.”
A shift of feet on carpet. “We’re not. Together, that is.”
Good, Charles thinks, almost says aloud, chokes on it, his chest seizing on a breath that won’t escape. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he says instead, without looking, the insides of his eyelids lit soft ruddy black by the overhead light.
“Even I know that’s not true,” Erik says, and is quiet when he leaves.
~
Erik goes out for a walk before dawn the following morning and doesn’t come back. Charles follows his mind as far as the property line before Erik takes his helmet back from the old storeshed where he left it and just - disappears, as though he was never there.
It makes everything a lot easier, Charles tells himself as he lies on his side in his bed with his bandaged hands curled up on the pillow by his face, his hair scattered and untidy across his brow, eyes closed. This way they don’t have to face each other across the breakfast table, or out on the patio, or anywhere, really, and perhaps by the next time they meet Erik will be able to pretend that it doesn’t mean anything, too.
Whatever it is, this instinct of Erik’s, the compulsion, Charles has no doubt that Erik will ask Emma to remove it for him. He wonders if she’ll agree, dig it out of him like a canker, an appendix, unwanted and unnecessary to his survival. And if she doesn’t… if she doesn’t, if she leaves it alone, the way Charles has left it alone, too aware of the consequences of excising so vital a chunk of Erik’s system…
He doesn’t let himself think about next year.
When Charles rolls his face into it the pillow smells like himself, comforting and safe, and he lies there for a while thinking about how grateful he should be that things can get back to normal now, until eventually he forces himself to sit up and reach for his chair, dragging it closer to the head of the bed from where it was left and near enough to transfer himself into.
It still hurts, but it’s a manageable pain against the telltale hollow in his chest, and easily hidden beneath shirt and sweater, wrapped away somewhere he can nurse it in private. None of the boys so much as comment on Erik’s absence when Charles rolls into the kitchen, faces tight with things they keep to themselves, before getting along with their chores.
And then it’s just another day, up until lunchtime, when Alex comes to fetch him to the wireless in the parlour, and the President has been assassinated.
~
Charles rolls himself back out to the garden later that afternoon, still staggered by the news - it’s too much to take in all at once, the implications and consequences laying themselves out in his mind one after the other. With Kennedy dead, there’s no knowing what will happen to all of the civil rights movements he had been helping along, quite aside from the uneasy detente with Russia and Cuba, which had not been helped at all by Shaw’s actions last year.
He stares at the half-cleared flowerbed, the limp, already withered-looking pile of dandelions off to the side where he left them the day before. The soil is dark and naked, stubbled where he only broke some of the stems instead of fully uprooting them, the cold already freezing it dry. It doesn’t look like much now, but nobody but Charles is going to make it anything more than it is now.
Relying on the potential good will of the President was never going to make headway for mutants, Charles thinks now as he looks at his vegetable garden, most of which is still choked with weeds. No, if anything is going to change, he’s going to have to do it himself.
~
Study the bare bones of your garden and take notes on potential improvements. One of winter’s blessings is that it provides an opportunity to see your garden in a new light. The win ter garden can be beautiful in its own right, particularly once its basic structure is cleared of snow. This is the best time to plan how to improve your garden’s structure and research plants to grow for next year.