Fic: Do Not Speak As Loud As My Heart
Title: Do Not Speak As Loud As My Heart
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Charles/Erik, with brief appearances by everyone else you might expect.
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for the entire movie; warning for discussion/instances of paralysis.
Summary: He wakes from a half-doze when someone shakes him by the shoulder, hard, and he tries frantically to wrench himself out of his dreams (Charles falling to the ground, his face twisted up with pain; surgeons' tools dripping with blood; a voice in his head, a voice he trusts, whispering blame into every corner and crevice). An Ending!AU where Erik doesn't leave, written for a prompt at 1stclass_kink.
Disclaimer: X-Men: First Class (and, for that matter, the entire X-Men canon) is absolutely not mine, nor is anything you recognize from it. The title is from The Scientist, by Coldplay. I cannot decide if I am ashamed of this or not.
Notes: More re-post from the kink meme!
i.
Erik has seen people die before.
It's the first thing he thinks when he thuds dully to the ground, feeling sand beneath his hands as he moves to lift Charles into his arms.
I've seen people die before, he thinks, staring down at eyes that seem almost too blue. You won't be the first.
He's suddenly, viscerally glad he's wearing the helmet.
"You did this," stutters out of him, coming from the burning at the back of his throat. He reaches out a hand and pulls Moira's dog tags taut around her neck, but Charles is already shaking his head and Erik knows, anyway.
"She didn't do this," Charles breathes out. Erik's pride drags words from the tip of his tongue, pleas, really, Don't say that, don't say that, don't, don't, but Charles has never really seen fit to do what Erik asks and anyway, he reminds himself, he can't hear.
"You did this," Charles says.
Come with me, Erik thinks, but it dies too, an ache in his teeth, in his head, and he swallows, takes another breath, forms something like, I'm sorry, only-
"We need to get you to a hospital," Hank says, kneeling on the beach, sand catching in his fur.
A hospital, Erik thinks, and presses an instinctive hand to Charles' chest when he struggles to sit up. He sees the urgency in Hank's hands, the explosion of movement as Moira leaps to her feet, and is shocked into something like hope.
ii.
It becomes clear once they make it to a Florida hospital (something that only happens through a combination of Moira's incredibly fast talking and Hank's incredibly willing threats) that no one is quite sure what to do with him. He watches Moira's gaze skitter away from him when she tells an agent that Shaw's friends have already been taken into custody, sees the way Hank, Sean, and Alex all hover uncertainly in the waiting room, not quite willing to take the only chairs available - the ones next to him. It's Raven who shrugs and slides into one of the plastic monstrosities, her blonde hair flowing prettily over her shoulders. She talks to the doctors, doling out hums and nods of agreement whenever it seems necessary. He feels a flicker of guilt at letting her shoulder so much, closes his eyes and hears Charles saying, They're kids, but Raven is nothing like a child and anyway, he doesn't have to be a telepath to know she wants some illusion of control. He wants that for her, can't help but think she deserves it. Erik would welcome an illusion of control, if only he was naive enough to provide himself one.
Raven falls asleep with her head on his shoulder, midway through her stumbling explanation of what the doctors have told her (surgery-spinal injury-risk of paralysis). When Sean trudges back into the room, hands clutched around a cup full of shitty hospital coffee, Erik expects to be glared at, but Sean only huffs out a sigh and sinks into the chair on his other side.
"So, what now?" He asks, his fingers tapping hollowly against the paper cup.
"Now," Erik says, "we wait."
"I hate that," Sean says in a tone which seems to imply he's sharing some sort of confidence. Fair's fair, Erik supposes.
"So do I," he says.
iii.
He wakes from a half-doze when someone shakes him by the shoulder, hard, and he tries frantically to wrench himself out of his dreams (Charles falling to the ground, his face twisted up with pain; surgeons' tools dripping with blood; a voice in his head, a voice he trusts, whispering blame into every corner and crevice) and into something resembling useful.
"Wake up," a voice is hissing, and it's Raven's. Raven, he thinks, pulling himself entirely into consciousness, his pulse still thrumming in his ears. Right. Raven.
"What is it?" He asks, and she jerks a thumb at the corridor where, he now sees, a metal nurse's cart is slowly bowing inward.
"Stop it, now," she whispers, fear lighting her eyes. He tamps down his instinct to tell her he feels no need to hide and does as he's told, instead-maybe here, he does hide. Maybe, among people who hold Charles' life in their hands, maybe here he hides.
"You're going to get us noticed if you're not careful," Raven says, relaxing back into her chair. "And you should really get some sleep. I mean, some actual sleep, not a couple of pathetic naps in that fucking chair."
"I'm not going anywhere," he says, his jaw tensing. He doesn't want to hurt Raven. He doesn't even particularly want to yell at her. But he'll do both, he thinks, do either, if she forces his hand.
"Of course not," she says, rolling her eyes in a pale imitation of the girl she was a week ago. "Whatever. You're going for a walk, at least."
He opens his mouth to protest, but she's already talking again.
"We don't need anyone else getting hurt today, do we?"
It's a low blow, but she's not wrong, and he levers himself out of his chair feeling ten years older than he had when he sank into it. It's been five hours. Surgery may take up to thirteen, he's been told. A walk. Fine, yes. He'll go for a walk.
It's dusk outside, and he casts about for a destination, feeling more aimless than he has since before his mother died. In the end he walks along next to the train tracks, following them north as the light fades. The calm of the scenery is doing nothing to slow his thoughts, and he reaches into his pocket for something to do with his hands only to be brought up short by the sharp realization that it's gone, the coin is gone, Shaw is dead.
He doesn't fight the tingling rush of triumph that thought brings, doesn't even feel particularly guilty about it. He wouldn't change that, not for anything. He suspects Charles knew that, though of course Charles is also an expert at preserving a fiction and he will have wanted very much to think otherwise.
And now of course he's thinking of Charles, of Charles laughing and exhausted after a day of racing Hank through the grounds, high on the adrenaline of putting his genius to such use, grinning at Erik as if they could rule the world, the edge of his mind warm and glowing and so, so proud where it brushes inadvertently against Erik's, and you're an idiot, Erik tells him through gritted teeth, a wonderful, blind fool, and you've no idea what's coming, but god, that smile, you stupid fucking dreamer-
It's the ear-splitting screech that yanks him out of his own head and he stares resignedly at the train tracks that are now hovering in midair, twisted into a sort of broken double helix. He snorts out a bitter laugh at his own expense and wonders whether he was closer, then, to rage or to serenity.
It's tempting, oh-so-tempting, to leave the damn things as they are, but he takes a deep breath, pushes it out through his nose, and sets to work smoothing them back into place, slow and steady, with a patience he doesn't have.
iv.
People flit at the edges of Erik's attention for the next nine hours, coming and going with their heads bowed and their faces worn ragged from worry. Sleep snatches at his focus when it can, but he sits ramrod straight for the bulk of his wait, feeling as though someone has scrubbed out the inside of his head with sandpaper. Raven, who caught his gaze when he returned from his walk, does not suggest another. Instead she keeps him supplied with a steady stream of coffee, and uses him as a pillow whenever she feels like it.
Moira turns up halfway through the night, her eyes red, and he has a brief surge of fury at the sight; she has no right to this grief, this fear. This is his to keep bundled up just behind his heart, burning and terrible and an awful, comforting penance. But he thinks of Sean's fingers tapping against the paper cup, feels the weight of Raven's head on his shoulder, and reluctantly allows that Charles meant something-means something, will mean something yet-to many people.
Too many people, he thinks, but he keeps it to himself. He is not starting any blood feuds, not tonight.
"How is he?" Moira asks, which he allows, but when her fingers brush hesitantly against his wrist in a parody of comfort he jerks his hand away.
"No news," Erik says. "I'm informed no news is good news, of course."
"Oh," she says on a shuddering breath out and then visibly gathers herself. He feels a grudging admiration. He understands it, the whirring of gears that kick start a person into motion in the face of disaster. Only something inside him has broken, just at the moment, and he cannot match her resolve.
"I'm headed back to the office," she says. "There's a lot to clear up, I'm sure you can imagine."
"I can," he agrees, and she turns to go. She's left him another cup of coffee, he realizes, and he remembers too late that he should've apologized for strangling her. He isn't sure he could've dredged up the spare emotion to mean it, but it was the right sort of gesture. Charles would've appreciated it.
It's just past one o'clock in the morning when a doctor emerges into the waiting room and says, looking right at Erik, "He's out of surgery and resting comfortably. He's asleep, and it's best not to wake him, but he's going to live, certainly."
It honestly takes Erik a minute to realize who the man is speaking to.
v.
Raven bullies her way past doctors and nurses and visiting regulations long enough to see Charles' chest rise and fall one, two, three times. Then she rushes off to make phone calls, itching to give her friends the good news.
Erik's limbs feel suddenly strange and loose, and he does not so much sit down as collapse into the chair at Charles' bedside, thinking briefly and scornfully that he must look like a tearful widow of some description.
The nurse says something about how terrible it is, an accident like this for such a nice-looking young man, and Erik wonders suddenly what in God's name Moira has told these people actually happened. Whatever the story it's gained Charles a measure of sympathy and Erik too, by proxy. The woman clicks her tongue and calls him a wonderful friend, and backs out the door promising them a bit of privacy although, she says sternly, if he wakes up he mustn't try and move, not until the doctor's had a look.
Erik's feeling such a constant swell of relief at the continued beeping of the heart monitor, the quiet rushes of breath, the continued sounds of Charles' existence, that he's almost affronted when the peace is broken by a sudden gasp. And then Charles, the stubborn idiot, is struggling against his sheets as if they're some sort of honest-to-god restraints, as if they ought to be enough to hold him-
"Don't!" Erik hisses, harsh and breathless, and it's probably panic that makes him twist his mind around the metal railings on the hospital bed and push.
For a moment they only stare at each other, Charles' eyes blown wide by panic and what Erik (rightly) guesses is a vicious burst of memory. Erik readies himself to be evicted, by force if necessary-or, oh hell, to suddenly decide he wants to leave-but Charles only gives him a strange, dull half-smile and says from beneath the railings, "Was there no kinder way to do that?"
They don't talk, not really, not while the doctor makes his appearance and says his lines (this time it's about getting some rest before they discuss options, but Erik sees Charles reach out and peer into his mind, just before his face goes almost entirely blank), not while the nurse offers Erik a bed for the night in the visitors' wing (no), not while Charles rolls over onto his side and falls back to sleep, his breathing slow and rhythmic. But the next time he wakes up and goes wide-eyed with shock, his arms levering hopelessly against the mattress, Erik puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes, leaves the bed railings alone.
vi.
The third time Charles wakes he's measurably calmer, takes in his surroundings with a level gaze. His eyes catch for a moment, though, when they reach Erik, and it sets something scratching against Erik's chest, frightened and hopeful.
"I'm sorry," he says, utterly without finesse.
"For what?" Charles asks, shrugging one shoulder. "Unless you're going to tell me you knew where that bullet was going…?"
It should be a joke, one of his loftily sarcastic asides Erik enjoys more than he's ever really admitted, but it doesn't quite get there.
"It was an accident," Erik says, feeling desperation scrabble at the edges of his voice, and Charles believes him, Erik can see it in the relief that washes over his face, smoothing out a few of the less stubborn lines.
It cannot possibly be this easy.
"They don't think you'll walk again," he blurts out, because no one's told him so but the look on Charles' face after he'd read the doctor's mind had told him everything he needed to know.
He sees the shutters slam closed but it doesn't seem to be anger, exactly, so much as-what? Fear? Frustration? Grief? Whatever it is, Erik knows he's the one who invited it into the room, let it interrupt their fragile sanctuary, and he curses himself.
"But they don't know who we are," he finds himself saying. "Or what we can do. And if we can't fix them ourselves we'll find someone who can."
He doesn't actually say it, but he knows they both hear the ring of an oath in those words. Charles smiles up at him, a genuine smile, and says, "Let's try a few more conventional methods first, my friend."
My friend, Erik thinks, and suddenly the familiar words are a stumbling block he cannot quite surmount. Could he possibly forgive Charles so quickly, so easily, if he was the one lying in a hospital bed? Surely not, surely he would find it impossible (although, a hesitant voice says in the back of his mind, you would try much harder, for him, than you would for anyone else).
Charles is angry, Erik knows he must be, and it can't be left to fester. Erik closes his eyes for a moment against the thought of being at Charles' side for weeks, months, maybe years, allowing himself to sink into that measure of peace, only to be untethered when Charles cannot stand his company any longer. There must be anger there, but Erik understands anger, can push at it and whisper to it and wrap it around himself like a comfort, can make it a known quantity if only Charles will let him.
"What did it feel like?" He asks.
"What did what feel like?" Charles says, bemused.
"You know a little about me, I think," Erik says with a sarcastic slant to his mouth, and Charles snorts out a laugh. "Enough to know I've never been shot in the back. What was it like?"
"No," Charles says sharply, all traces of amusement vanishing. "I won't have you carrying that along with everything else."
"We can agree, perhaps," Erik says, "that I do not deserve many of my burdens. I deserve this one."
Charles is shaking his head, and he truly believes Erik deserves no such thing, it's easy to read it on his face and even if it wasn't, well, Erik knows him.
"Please?" He says. Perhaps it's his unexpected good manners that do the trick, but after a long silence Charles reaches out and drags a thumb over the pulse in Erik's wrist and says, "Alright," his eyes as dark and uncertain as Erik has seen them. He has a sudden flare of fear, wants to tell Charles it isn't necessary, not if he doesn't want-
The first thing that registers is pain. Of course Erik thinks, struggling to remember that there is no bullet in his back, that it is dingy hospital linoleum beneath his feet, not sand. Of course it would be pain-he's been shot. And this is the pain he is asking for after all, the burden he is asking to bare. So he closes his eyes and lets the beach come rushing in.
It hurts, more than anything he's ever felt before. After all, he's barely ever even gotten into a fistfight, has a grand total of two black eyes to his name over the course of his life. And now he's lying flat on the ground, alone, while the world falls apart around him and those missiles, Jesus Christ, where've they gone?
He fights against the coarse flame that's burning up his spine to raise his head, to see, and then someone's hands are cradling his head, lifting him. Erik.
In the hospital room Erik has a moment of whiplash, sure there is no one who thinks of him quite that way-as a best friend, as a hero in waiting, as an equal, as someone who deserves so, so much more than he's had to fight for thus far-before Charles' memory takes over again and there's the emotion he's been waiting for, like a movie switching from black-and-white to color, only it isn't anger, not exactly or, no, there's anger there but it's secondary, crumbles because it was an accident, because the hands beneath his head are so careful and then it's not anger at all it's shock, hurt, betrayal, how could you?, and the bullet in his back is twisted up with the coin slipping between Shaw's eyes and the missiles speeding away from the beach, and it hurts, all of it hurts, because Charles fell in love with the better man but he fears it's too late to leave that behind, now, no matter the body count, and-
"Sorry," Charles says, short of breath, not quite meeting Erik's eyes. "You might've gotten...more than I meant you to."
Erik rubs a thumb over the skin between his eyes, feeling pulled just slightly too tight, trying to reclaim his thoughts as his own.
"What in the world is it like to live inside your head?" He asks, almost whispers.
Charles frowns at him, looking up from his lap at least, and Erik can feel the tentative smile as it tugs at the corners of his mouth. He can't spare the energy to fight it.
"You're far too generous to me you know. And I enjoy it far too much."
Charles is a smart man and there's something like understanding sparking in his eyes even before Erik leans down, terrified, to brush their lips together.
vii.
Erik isn't sure what he means the kiss to be, but any sense of composure, of intent, fades the instant Charles' mouth opens under his and everything becomes tongues and teeth, frantic and hard and necessary. When he pulls back to breathe he doesn't go far-the pressure of Charles' hand on the back of his neck isn't enough to hold him in place, but it's enough to make him want to stay.
"You're not going anywhere," Charles says, low and a little hoarse, and the last of Erik's fading plans for espionage and revolution drain quietly away.
It won't last, he thinks as he leans back in, it can't, and it seems Charles is paying attention again because his voice leans in at the edge of Erik's mind, exasperated and fond and hopeful.
It might, he says.
viii.
"It's awfully rosy, the picture you have of me," Erik says that evening. The students have paid their visits for the day-Hank had interrogated the doctors until they practically begged for mercy-and the light is dimming in a way Erik is choosing to find comfortable. "I can't live up to it forever, Charles."
"I've been inside your head, remember," Charles says, brushing his fingers along Erik's hairline. "How do you know I'm not right? I've seen your mind."
"And you remember the parts of it you liked best," Erik replies, leaning into the touch.
"There were a lot of them," Charles admits, voice low and warm against Erik's ear, and alright, Erik thinks, they'll do this for a while. It might not last, of course it might not last, but there's a chance it will and now, with Charles enthusiastically expounding on his plans to turn the mansion into a school, a real school, a school for people like them, a school built on acceptance and intellectual curiosity and perhaps a few martial arts classes (more than a few, Erik interjects, more than a few, Charles, they've got to know how even if you hope they never need to), it all feels startlingly possible.
"You'll have to teach a few of the literature classes, of course," Charles is saying, "I can't stand the Romantics, and we both know you secretly adore Shelley."
Which Erik finds he has to kiss him for, somehow.
viiii.
"You could say it out loud," Erik says, later still. He says it very quietly indeed, and he's almost hoping Charles has already fallen asleep, but the half-mumbled, willing, "I love you," sinks that hope. It's probably worth it.
"I love you too," he confesses in a rush, and Charles very kindly keeps his eyes closed and his breathing even, but Erik feels a mental glow, warm and touched, a swell of fragile surprise at the notion that Erik would bother to say the words at all.
Maybe I just like surprising you, he thinks.
You'll have to work hard at it, Charles replies, his thoughts tinged with sleep, and Erik waits until his snores have turned genuine before he tells the quiet room, "I don't mind."
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Charles/Erik, with brief appearances by everyone else you might expect.
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for the entire movie; warning for discussion/instances of paralysis.
Summary: He wakes from a half-doze when someone shakes him by the shoulder, hard, and he tries frantically to wrench himself out of his dreams (Charles falling to the ground, his face twisted up with pain; surgeons' tools dripping with blood; a voice in his head, a voice he trusts, whispering blame into every corner and crevice). An Ending!AU where Erik doesn't leave, written for a prompt at 1stclass_kink.
Disclaimer: X-Men: First Class (and, for that matter, the entire X-Men canon) is absolutely not mine, nor is anything you recognize from it. The title is from The Scientist, by Coldplay. I cannot decide if I am ashamed of this or not.
Notes: More re-post from the kink meme!
i.
Erik has seen people die before.
It's the first thing he thinks when he thuds dully to the ground, feeling sand beneath his hands as he moves to lift Charles into his arms.
I've seen people die before, he thinks, staring down at eyes that seem almost too blue. You won't be the first.
He's suddenly, viscerally glad he's wearing the helmet.
"You did this," stutters out of him, coming from the burning at the back of his throat. He reaches out a hand and pulls Moira's dog tags taut around her neck, but Charles is already shaking his head and Erik knows, anyway.
"She didn't do this," Charles breathes out. Erik's pride drags words from the tip of his tongue, pleas, really, Don't say that, don't say that, don't, don't, but Charles has never really seen fit to do what Erik asks and anyway, he reminds himself, he can't hear.
"You did this," Charles says.
Come with me, Erik thinks, but it dies too, an ache in his teeth, in his head, and he swallows, takes another breath, forms something like, I'm sorry, only-
"We need to get you to a hospital," Hank says, kneeling on the beach, sand catching in his fur.
A hospital, Erik thinks, and presses an instinctive hand to Charles' chest when he struggles to sit up. He sees the urgency in Hank's hands, the explosion of movement as Moira leaps to her feet, and is shocked into something like hope.
ii.
It becomes clear once they make it to a Florida hospital (something that only happens through a combination of Moira's incredibly fast talking and Hank's incredibly willing threats) that no one is quite sure what to do with him. He watches Moira's gaze skitter away from him when she tells an agent that Shaw's friends have already been taken into custody, sees the way Hank, Sean, and Alex all hover uncertainly in the waiting room, not quite willing to take the only chairs available - the ones next to him. It's Raven who shrugs and slides into one of the plastic monstrosities, her blonde hair flowing prettily over her shoulders. She talks to the doctors, doling out hums and nods of agreement whenever it seems necessary. He feels a flicker of guilt at letting her shoulder so much, closes his eyes and hears Charles saying, They're kids, but Raven is nothing like a child and anyway, he doesn't have to be a telepath to know she wants some illusion of control. He wants that for her, can't help but think she deserves it. Erik would welcome an illusion of control, if only he was naive enough to provide himself one.
Raven falls asleep with her head on his shoulder, midway through her stumbling explanation of what the doctors have told her (surgery-spinal injury-risk of paralysis). When Sean trudges back into the room, hands clutched around a cup full of shitty hospital coffee, Erik expects to be glared at, but Sean only huffs out a sigh and sinks into the chair on his other side.
"So, what now?" He asks, his fingers tapping hollowly against the paper cup.
"Now," Erik says, "we wait."
"I hate that," Sean says in a tone which seems to imply he's sharing some sort of confidence. Fair's fair, Erik supposes.
"So do I," he says.
iii.
He wakes from a half-doze when someone shakes him by the shoulder, hard, and he tries frantically to wrench himself out of his dreams (Charles falling to the ground, his face twisted up with pain; surgeons' tools dripping with blood; a voice in his head, a voice he trusts, whispering blame into every corner and crevice) and into something resembling useful.
"Wake up," a voice is hissing, and it's Raven's. Raven, he thinks, pulling himself entirely into consciousness, his pulse still thrumming in his ears. Right. Raven.
"What is it?" He asks, and she jerks a thumb at the corridor where, he now sees, a metal nurse's cart is slowly bowing inward.
"Stop it, now," she whispers, fear lighting her eyes. He tamps down his instinct to tell her he feels no need to hide and does as he's told, instead-maybe here, he does hide. Maybe, among people who hold Charles' life in their hands, maybe here he hides.
"You're going to get us noticed if you're not careful," Raven says, relaxing back into her chair. "And you should really get some sleep. I mean, some actual sleep, not a couple of pathetic naps in that fucking chair."
"I'm not going anywhere," he says, his jaw tensing. He doesn't want to hurt Raven. He doesn't even particularly want to yell at her. But he'll do both, he thinks, do either, if she forces his hand.
"Of course not," she says, rolling her eyes in a pale imitation of the girl she was a week ago. "Whatever. You're going for a walk, at least."
He opens his mouth to protest, but she's already talking again.
"We don't need anyone else getting hurt today, do we?"
It's a low blow, but she's not wrong, and he levers himself out of his chair feeling ten years older than he had when he sank into it. It's been five hours. Surgery may take up to thirteen, he's been told. A walk. Fine, yes. He'll go for a walk.
It's dusk outside, and he casts about for a destination, feeling more aimless than he has since before his mother died. In the end he walks along next to the train tracks, following them north as the light fades. The calm of the scenery is doing nothing to slow his thoughts, and he reaches into his pocket for something to do with his hands only to be brought up short by the sharp realization that it's gone, the coin is gone, Shaw is dead.
He doesn't fight the tingling rush of triumph that thought brings, doesn't even feel particularly guilty about it. He wouldn't change that, not for anything. He suspects Charles knew that, though of course Charles is also an expert at preserving a fiction and he will have wanted very much to think otherwise.
And now of course he's thinking of Charles, of Charles laughing and exhausted after a day of racing Hank through the grounds, high on the adrenaline of putting his genius to such use, grinning at Erik as if they could rule the world, the edge of his mind warm and glowing and so, so proud where it brushes inadvertently against Erik's, and you're an idiot, Erik tells him through gritted teeth, a wonderful, blind fool, and you've no idea what's coming, but god, that smile, you stupid fucking dreamer-
It's the ear-splitting screech that yanks him out of his own head and he stares resignedly at the train tracks that are now hovering in midair, twisted into a sort of broken double helix. He snorts out a bitter laugh at his own expense and wonders whether he was closer, then, to rage or to serenity.
It's tempting, oh-so-tempting, to leave the damn things as they are, but he takes a deep breath, pushes it out through his nose, and sets to work smoothing them back into place, slow and steady, with a patience he doesn't have.
iv.
People flit at the edges of Erik's attention for the next nine hours, coming and going with their heads bowed and their faces worn ragged from worry. Sleep snatches at his focus when it can, but he sits ramrod straight for the bulk of his wait, feeling as though someone has scrubbed out the inside of his head with sandpaper. Raven, who caught his gaze when he returned from his walk, does not suggest another. Instead she keeps him supplied with a steady stream of coffee, and uses him as a pillow whenever she feels like it.
Moira turns up halfway through the night, her eyes red, and he has a brief surge of fury at the sight; she has no right to this grief, this fear. This is his to keep bundled up just behind his heart, burning and terrible and an awful, comforting penance. But he thinks of Sean's fingers tapping against the paper cup, feels the weight of Raven's head on his shoulder, and reluctantly allows that Charles meant something-means something, will mean something yet-to many people.
Too many people, he thinks, but he keeps it to himself. He is not starting any blood feuds, not tonight.
"How is he?" Moira asks, which he allows, but when her fingers brush hesitantly against his wrist in a parody of comfort he jerks his hand away.
"No news," Erik says. "I'm informed no news is good news, of course."
"Oh," she says on a shuddering breath out and then visibly gathers herself. He feels a grudging admiration. He understands it, the whirring of gears that kick start a person into motion in the face of disaster. Only something inside him has broken, just at the moment, and he cannot match her resolve.
"I'm headed back to the office," she says. "There's a lot to clear up, I'm sure you can imagine."
"I can," he agrees, and she turns to go. She's left him another cup of coffee, he realizes, and he remembers too late that he should've apologized for strangling her. He isn't sure he could've dredged up the spare emotion to mean it, but it was the right sort of gesture. Charles would've appreciated it.
It's just past one o'clock in the morning when a doctor emerges into the waiting room and says, looking right at Erik, "He's out of surgery and resting comfortably. He's asleep, and it's best not to wake him, but he's going to live, certainly."
It honestly takes Erik a minute to realize who the man is speaking to.
v.
Raven bullies her way past doctors and nurses and visiting regulations long enough to see Charles' chest rise and fall one, two, three times. Then she rushes off to make phone calls, itching to give her friends the good news.
Erik's limbs feel suddenly strange and loose, and he does not so much sit down as collapse into the chair at Charles' bedside, thinking briefly and scornfully that he must look like a tearful widow of some description.
The nurse says something about how terrible it is, an accident like this for such a nice-looking young man, and Erik wonders suddenly what in God's name Moira has told these people actually happened. Whatever the story it's gained Charles a measure of sympathy and Erik too, by proxy. The woman clicks her tongue and calls him a wonderful friend, and backs out the door promising them a bit of privacy although, she says sternly, if he wakes up he mustn't try and move, not until the doctor's had a look.
Erik's feeling such a constant swell of relief at the continued beeping of the heart monitor, the quiet rushes of breath, the continued sounds of Charles' existence, that he's almost affronted when the peace is broken by a sudden gasp. And then Charles, the stubborn idiot, is struggling against his sheets as if they're some sort of honest-to-god restraints, as if they ought to be enough to hold him-
"Don't!" Erik hisses, harsh and breathless, and it's probably panic that makes him twist his mind around the metal railings on the hospital bed and push.
For a moment they only stare at each other, Charles' eyes blown wide by panic and what Erik (rightly) guesses is a vicious burst of memory. Erik readies himself to be evicted, by force if necessary-or, oh hell, to suddenly decide he wants to leave-but Charles only gives him a strange, dull half-smile and says from beneath the railings, "Was there no kinder way to do that?"
They don't talk, not really, not while the doctor makes his appearance and says his lines (this time it's about getting some rest before they discuss options, but Erik sees Charles reach out and peer into his mind, just before his face goes almost entirely blank), not while the nurse offers Erik a bed for the night in the visitors' wing (no), not while Charles rolls over onto his side and falls back to sleep, his breathing slow and rhythmic. But the next time he wakes up and goes wide-eyed with shock, his arms levering hopelessly against the mattress, Erik puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes, leaves the bed railings alone.
vi.
The third time Charles wakes he's measurably calmer, takes in his surroundings with a level gaze. His eyes catch for a moment, though, when they reach Erik, and it sets something scratching against Erik's chest, frightened and hopeful.
"I'm sorry," he says, utterly without finesse.
"For what?" Charles asks, shrugging one shoulder. "Unless you're going to tell me you knew where that bullet was going…?"
It should be a joke, one of his loftily sarcastic asides Erik enjoys more than he's ever really admitted, but it doesn't quite get there.
"It was an accident," Erik says, feeling desperation scrabble at the edges of his voice, and Charles believes him, Erik can see it in the relief that washes over his face, smoothing out a few of the less stubborn lines.
It cannot possibly be this easy.
"They don't think you'll walk again," he blurts out, because no one's told him so but the look on Charles' face after he'd read the doctor's mind had told him everything he needed to know.
He sees the shutters slam closed but it doesn't seem to be anger, exactly, so much as-what? Fear? Frustration? Grief? Whatever it is, Erik knows he's the one who invited it into the room, let it interrupt their fragile sanctuary, and he curses himself.
"But they don't know who we are," he finds himself saying. "Or what we can do. And if we can't fix them ourselves we'll find someone who can."
He doesn't actually say it, but he knows they both hear the ring of an oath in those words. Charles smiles up at him, a genuine smile, and says, "Let's try a few more conventional methods first, my friend."
My friend, Erik thinks, and suddenly the familiar words are a stumbling block he cannot quite surmount. Could he possibly forgive Charles so quickly, so easily, if he was the one lying in a hospital bed? Surely not, surely he would find it impossible (although, a hesitant voice says in the back of his mind, you would try much harder, for him, than you would for anyone else).
Charles is angry, Erik knows he must be, and it can't be left to fester. Erik closes his eyes for a moment against the thought of being at Charles' side for weeks, months, maybe years, allowing himself to sink into that measure of peace, only to be untethered when Charles cannot stand his company any longer. There must be anger there, but Erik understands anger, can push at it and whisper to it and wrap it around himself like a comfort, can make it a known quantity if only Charles will let him.
"What did it feel like?" He asks.
"What did what feel like?" Charles says, bemused.
"You know a little about me, I think," Erik says with a sarcastic slant to his mouth, and Charles snorts out a laugh. "Enough to know I've never been shot in the back. What was it like?"
"No," Charles says sharply, all traces of amusement vanishing. "I won't have you carrying that along with everything else."
"We can agree, perhaps," Erik says, "that I do not deserve many of my burdens. I deserve this one."
Charles is shaking his head, and he truly believes Erik deserves no such thing, it's easy to read it on his face and even if it wasn't, well, Erik knows him.
"Please?" He says. Perhaps it's his unexpected good manners that do the trick, but after a long silence Charles reaches out and drags a thumb over the pulse in Erik's wrist and says, "Alright," his eyes as dark and uncertain as Erik has seen them. He has a sudden flare of fear, wants to tell Charles it isn't necessary, not if he doesn't want-
The first thing that registers is pain. Of course Erik thinks, struggling to remember that there is no bullet in his back, that it is dingy hospital linoleum beneath his feet, not sand. Of course it would be pain-he's been shot. And this is the pain he is asking for after all, the burden he is asking to bare. So he closes his eyes and lets the beach come rushing in.
It hurts, more than anything he's ever felt before. After all, he's barely ever even gotten into a fistfight, has a grand total of two black eyes to his name over the course of his life. And now he's lying flat on the ground, alone, while the world falls apart around him and those missiles, Jesus Christ, where've they gone?
He fights against the coarse flame that's burning up his spine to raise his head, to see, and then someone's hands are cradling his head, lifting him. Erik.
In the hospital room Erik has a moment of whiplash, sure there is no one who thinks of him quite that way-as a best friend, as a hero in waiting, as an equal, as someone who deserves so, so much more than he's had to fight for thus far-before Charles' memory takes over again and there's the emotion he's been waiting for, like a movie switching from black-and-white to color, only it isn't anger, not exactly or, no, there's anger there but it's secondary, crumbles because it was an accident, because the hands beneath his head are so careful and then it's not anger at all it's shock, hurt, betrayal, how could you?, and the bullet in his back is twisted up with the coin slipping between Shaw's eyes and the missiles speeding away from the beach, and it hurts, all of it hurts, because Charles fell in love with the better man but he fears it's too late to leave that behind, now, no matter the body count, and-
"Sorry," Charles says, short of breath, not quite meeting Erik's eyes. "You might've gotten...more than I meant you to."
Erik rubs a thumb over the skin between his eyes, feeling pulled just slightly too tight, trying to reclaim his thoughts as his own.
"What in the world is it like to live inside your head?" He asks, almost whispers.
Charles frowns at him, looking up from his lap at least, and Erik can feel the tentative smile as it tugs at the corners of his mouth. He can't spare the energy to fight it.
"You're far too generous to me you know. And I enjoy it far too much."
Charles is a smart man and there's something like understanding sparking in his eyes even before Erik leans down, terrified, to brush their lips together.
vii.
Erik isn't sure what he means the kiss to be, but any sense of composure, of intent, fades the instant Charles' mouth opens under his and everything becomes tongues and teeth, frantic and hard and necessary. When he pulls back to breathe he doesn't go far-the pressure of Charles' hand on the back of his neck isn't enough to hold him in place, but it's enough to make him want to stay.
"You're not going anywhere," Charles says, low and a little hoarse, and the last of Erik's fading plans for espionage and revolution drain quietly away.
It won't last, he thinks as he leans back in, it can't, and it seems Charles is paying attention again because his voice leans in at the edge of Erik's mind, exasperated and fond and hopeful.
It might, he says.
viii.
"It's awfully rosy, the picture you have of me," Erik says that evening. The students have paid their visits for the day-Hank had interrogated the doctors until they practically begged for mercy-and the light is dimming in a way Erik is choosing to find comfortable. "I can't live up to it forever, Charles."
"I've been inside your head, remember," Charles says, brushing his fingers along Erik's hairline. "How do you know I'm not right? I've seen your mind."
"And you remember the parts of it you liked best," Erik replies, leaning into the touch.
"There were a lot of them," Charles admits, voice low and warm against Erik's ear, and alright, Erik thinks, they'll do this for a while. It might not last, of course it might not last, but there's a chance it will and now, with Charles enthusiastically expounding on his plans to turn the mansion into a school, a real school, a school for people like them, a school built on acceptance and intellectual curiosity and perhaps a few martial arts classes (more than a few, Erik interjects, more than a few, Charles, they've got to know how even if you hope they never need to), it all feels startlingly possible.
"You'll have to teach a few of the literature classes, of course," Charles is saying, "I can't stand the Romantics, and we both know you secretly adore Shelley."
Which Erik finds he has to kiss him for, somehow.
viiii.
"You could say it out loud," Erik says, later still. He says it very quietly indeed, and he's almost hoping Charles has already fallen asleep, but the half-mumbled, willing, "I love you," sinks that hope. It's probably worth it.
"I love you too," he confesses in a rush, and Charles very kindly keeps his eyes closed and his breathing even, but Erik feels a mental glow, warm and touched, a swell of fragile surprise at the notion that Erik would bother to say the words at all.
Maybe I just like surprising you, he thinks.
You'll have to work hard at it, Charles replies, his thoughts tinged with sleep, and Erik waits until his snores have turned genuine before he tells the quiet room, "I don't mind."