Fic: Somebody Break My Heart, Somebody Shake My Brains (1/3)
Title: Somebody Break My Heart, Somebody Shake My Brains
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Charles/Erik, background Sean/Alex, and Raven and Moira being their awesome selves.
Spoilers/Warnings: No real spoilers (it does follow the plot of the movie in vague terms, but it's still a Band!AU, not an X-Men movie). WARNING: This is a WIP, ladies & gents. Parts I and II are up; Part III is in progress.
Summary: Written for the 1stclass_kink prompt, "The band is about to go on tour, but when their drummer quits, their plans are shot to hell. Charles knows of one truly brilliant drummer who can fill the spot -- Erik Lensherr. Problem is, the guy is an unpredictable, bitter troublemaker." Band!AU.
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 I Wanna Be Where The Bands Are, by Bruce Springsteen, which is another thing I don't own.
Notes: Again: WIP! If you've been reading this fic at the kink meme, and want to pick up where that left off, go to Part II and start about halfway down the page. I'll post to fic comms when I'm finished with Part III.
"Hmm," Moira says.
"I realize he has something of a reputation," Charles says. Moira raises an incredulous eyebrow at him, and Alex says, "Yeah, okay, so I'm guessing 'something of a reputation' is being used here to mean, like, 'the world's shittiest reputation?'"
"Dude," Sean says. Coming from Sean, 'dude' can mean anything from "please pass the ketchup," to "get fucked," but the way he bobs his head up and down as he says it means this time it's agreement.
Charles sighs.
"I don't see another way to proceed," he says. "We all know Angel's accepted what she believes to be a better offer-"
"Ugh," Raven says. "I'm sorry, we do not talk about the Hellfire Club right now. What kind of a name is that, anyway?"
"Kind of a badass one," Sean points out, and Alex kicks him in the ankle.
"Dude!" Sean says.
Moira steadfastly ignores them all in favor of leveling her gaze at Charles.
"It's your choice," she says quietly as the other three squabble amicably in the background. "If you decide he's worth the risk, they'll go along with it. And God knows, I'm a manager in name only. When was the last time I managed anything around here?"
"Erm," Charles says. "You told us not to play that gig in Toronto and we didn't?"
"That was because I was smart enough to get you all drunk before I made the phone call," Moira points out and yeah, okay, that's true.
"Apparently he's staying in those apartments behind the old theater on 5th Avenue," Charles says. "I'm going to go and talk to him tomorrow, see if he's interested."
Moira leans back in her chair and stares straight up at the ceiling as, to her left, Sean trips over the couch for no apparent reason whatsoever and Alex points and laughs in what he will later assert was the spirit of solidarity.
"I should quit," she mutters, but it doesn't sound convincing even to her own ears.
+ + +
'Those apartments behind the old theater on 5th Avenue' are, of course, a total dump. Charles had forgotten just exactly how much they looked like a light breeze would topple them in on each other in the time since he'd last known anyone who was staying there (Raven, when they'd first met). Still, he thinks, a band can't carry on without a drummer, and so he raps his knuckles against the door to apartment 407.
"What?" A gruff voice demands, and Charles hesitates, weighing his options.
"Come on, I don't have all day," the voice says, getting exponentially louder in the middle of the sentence as the door is flung wide open.
Behind it is a man, tall, with dirty blonde hair and impatient eyes. Who is, Charles tells himself firmly, not at all astoundingly attractive.
"My name is Charles Xavier," he says. "I hear you're a decent drummer."
"You hear I'm decent?" Erik-because this is definitely Erik Lensherr, definitely-demands, looking grimly amused. "Christ, I haven't gotten into a bar fight in far too long, it seems."
"Right," Charles says. "Well, if you could manage to avoid brawling for just a bit longer, I have a proposition."
"Do you?" Erik says, leaning against the door frame, and Charles is not going to blush.
"Yes," he says. "I do. Are you going to let me in?"
+ + +
The inside of Erik's apartment is neat, but that's largely because there's hardly anything in it. It's a one room, studio affair, and furniture seems to be permitted through the door on an as-needed basis-that is to say, there's a bed, a couch, and a fridge. Except there, in the corner-
"If you're thinking something about how I don't seem to have settled into the place, keep it to yourself," Erik says and then, so incongruously that Charles is caught almost entirely off-guard, "Tea?"
"Tea would be lovely, thank you," Charles says. "And I wasn't thinking about how you don't seem to have settled in. I think you've settled in about as much as you ever do. I was thinking that you must love music."
"Were you?" Erik asks, fishing a kettle from the depths of a cupboard and filling it with water.
"Yes," Charles says. "I was. That record player's the only superfluous thing in this room, not counting whatever secret cooking implements you're still hiding."
Erik glances at him out of the corner of his eye, and Charles sees something like a smile tug at one side of his mouth.
"Go on, you're dying to," he says. "Poke around, see what I listen to. I won't throw anything at you, I promise."
It's an encouragingly eclectic collection, a decent amount of hoarse-voiced American rock-and-roll mixed with jazz and blues and Beethoven's 5th, and a few Beatles' records, plus Miles Davis whom Charles quietly sets in a category all his own.
"Tea," Erik declares from just behind Charles' shoulder, and Charles has to exercise every bit of his not inconsiderable self-control not to startle.
"Are you always this nerve-wracking, or are you putting on a special performance for my benefit?" Charles asks, sipping at his (excellent) tea.
"I'm usually at least this nerve-wracking," Erik says, sounding thoroughly unapologetic. "But sometimes in different ways. At the moment, I'm doing 'quietly nerve-wracking.' I've been known to throw some impressive temper tantrums, though, and I do take special pride in my ability to start bar fights. As we've already discussed."
I, Charles thinks to himself, am about to make an incredibly bad decision.
"I'd like you to join my band," he says.
+ + +
Erik finishes his tea in silence while Charles reminds himself every two seconds not to fidget, not to stare at his feet, not to bite his fingernails. He has not just invited a cheerleader to senior prom; he has invited a disgruntled drummer to join his band.
Oh God, he thinks, that's worse.
"I want to meet them," Erik declares, standing up, and Charles seizes the opportunity to lead him out his own front door.
Introducing Erik to the band goes something like this:
"Holy shit," Raven says to Moira, "I am totally reevaluating my stance on mental instability right now. Insanity just got attractive."
"Hey man," Alex says, "I hear you once beat a guy over the head with his own guitar 'cause he spilled beer on your drum kit. So, my question comes to you in two parts. One, is that true? And two, what the fuck?"
"Dude, that's awesome," Sean says, his eyes wide. Alex shrugs.
"I mean, there's a fine tradition of crazy people in the music industry," he says. "As long as you can play, I don't care."
"I can play," Erik says. It's the first thing he's said since they walked in the door. Charles gnaws worriedly at his lower lip. He knows the band, when presented all at once, can be a bit, well. Overwhelming.
Thankfully, this is when Moira sees fit to play her part.
"Hello," she says. "My name's Moira McTaggert. You should ignore everyone in this room except me for the next five minutes, okay?"
"Sure," Erik says with an air of amused tolerance, and Charles steps into the hallway for a smoke and a break.
Smoking is his guilty pleasure, mostly because his mother would never approve of the cheap cigarettes he himself only buys because he knows she hasn't heard of the brand. Now he takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment, his eyes closed, as he tries not to worry about what's going to happen when Raven inevitably decides it's best to sit on Erik's lap on the tour bus. God, Moira'll pitch a fit, he thinks, and deliberately doesn't wonder what he himself will do. The obvious answer is nothing. Nothing, because although he thinks of Raven as a little sister she's turning twenty-five next month, and it's really none of his business who she…well. Who she fancies. And it isn't as if he has some claim to Erik, for God's sake. He's barely known the man for an hour. It's ridiculous to be wondering how wide those blue eyes would go if he'd just been kissed, or exactly how his hands (callused hands, Charles reasons, from drumming) would feel on bare skin. Ridiculous.
He takes another drag from his cigarette and despairs. Just slightly.
"Well," Erik says into the stillness of the hallway and Charles does startle this time. "I've just had the spiel from your manager-and an excellent spiel it was, I might add, she is clearly a very talented woman. Now. Why should I join your band?"
Usually, after Moira's had her shot at them, people don't need more convincing. Moira talks very quickly, and has a grin a little like a shark's when she wants to, and knows a hell of a lot of legalese. Charles blinks and then,
"Because we're good," he says automatically, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray. "Because I'm good. Because you're tired of sitting around in an empty apartment drinking tea and listening to records without any music to play. Because you want to know what I'd write for you."
The last bit slips in unbidden, but he doesn't take it back.
"I pawned my drum kit," Erik says after a minute. "You get it back for me, and I'll join your band. For a probationary period. How long's this tour supposed to be, three months?"
"Three months," Charles confirms. "Fair enough. A mutually beneficial arrangement."
"A mutually beneficial arrangement," Erik parrots with a crooked grin on his face. He turns to go back inside and Charles, seeing a flickering after image of that grin as he blinks, decides another cigarette can't hurt.
"You're right, by the way," Erik adds, thumb tapping out a rhythm against the doorknob. "I do want to know what you'd write for me. You should maybe get to work on that."
"Jesus Christ," Charles says into the suddenly stifling quiet of the hallway, and yanks another cigarette out of the pack.
+ + +
"So," Raven says when Erik has left the address of a local pawn shop scribbled on a scrap of paper he'd pressed, warm and heavy, into Charles' hand, "he's a bit of a dreamboat."
"Oh excellent," Charles says in a tone he hopes conveys that he wants nothing more than to swear celibacy and move into a monastery as soon as possible.
"Oh my God, you're so into him," Raven says.
"Well, this has gone well," Charles says.
They're splayed across Charles' couch, the rest of the band (and Moira) long gone. It's six o'clock and Charles feels entirely exhausted. Maybe not a monk. Maybe somebody's grandfather.
"Erik Lensherr," Raven says, contemplative. "So what is it, why are you dying to have loads of steamy, sacrilegious sex with him? Is he a secret genius? Does he solve complex equations in his spare time? Is he wooing you with carefully labeled photos of human DNA? Has he been quoting Shakespeare at you? Because actually, we've talked about that last one. That guy was an asshole."
"Raven," Charles says wearily, and she sighs.
"Alright, alright, I'm dropping it."
Temporarily, Charles amends, and out loud says, "Raven. Can I at least ask that this doesn't become the latest hot gossip amongst Alex and Sean as well? That's the last thing we need if we're hoping Erik will stay."
"Which some of us definitely a-are," Raven sing-songs. Charles flails blindly with his foot for a minute until he finds her calf and digs his heel in.
"Ow. I'm not going to bring it up with them," she says. "But if you're going to keep staring at him like he personally created the earth and stars they might notice. And I should stress the 'might,' here, they're pretty oblivious."
"They're twenty-something young men," Charles points out, and Raven giggles.
"So were you, like, three years ago," she points out, and he shrugs.
"Beside the point," he declares imperially.
+ + +
"You do realize," Moira says just before the start of rehearsal two days later, "that you invited this man to join the band, and he agreed, and neither of you had ever heard the other play?"
On an intellectual level Charles supposed he'd realized that, yes. Still, it gives him a jolt.
"I know he's good," he says. "I trust the people who've told me so."
"Mmhmm," Moira says knowingly, and Charles adds her to the 'Lost Cause' list directly after Raven.
Erik's drum kit, successfully recovered from Ace's Pawn Shop downtown, is sitting in the back of Moira's garage and Erik is, of course, who they're all waiting for.
Children of the Atom (speaking scientifically, Charles had said, that is an absolutely ridiculous name, but Raven had cut him off because she was already drawing their logo and it was going to be so, so cool) had started out rehearsing in Moira's garage and even now that they've had a bit of exposure, released their first album, done an East Coast tour, they still come back between gigs to brush up. Sean says it's because they're totally in touch with their roots. Alex says it's because they're stingy as fuck. Raven says it's because Moira's neighbors have already been conditioned to resist calling in noise complaints. Charles is realistic enough to allow that it's a potent mixture of all three.
Erik turns up ten minutes early (something Charles is soon going to learn to appreciate) and stares, transfixed, at his drums. He honest-to-god slinks up to them, as if he's afraid they'll run away or, Charles' mind points out rather treacherously, as if he's trying to seduce the bloody things. The way he runs a finger around the edge of the high hat and knocks his ankle familiarly against the kick drum doesn't help.
"Right," Erik says cheerfully. "So, do you no-talent hacks play music?"
Alex, apparently recognizing a kindred spirit in someone who communicates primarily via insults, says, "Fuck it, come on guys let's scare some neighborhood pets."
Which is clearly a good enough reason for Sean to step up to the microphone and then there it is, they're a band.
Rough around the edges, true, and they have to start with covers because of course Erik doesn't know any of their stuff. But the thing is, he's incredible. Charles finds he has to force his attention to his guitar more than once and Jesus that never happens. But Erik- Erik runs off on riffs in the middle of the sweet, harmonious stuff from Motown that they try first, and he yanks at the tempo of every early Beatles song they try, turning syrupy ballads into frantic declarations and raucous dance hall numbers into something painfully aching. And the way he holds himself-yes, fine, Charles is looking, it isn't as if he doesn't know the chords-is. Well. It's intriguing, is what it is, because his posture is almost bizarrely impeccable except that there's something about the way his shoulders, elbows, wrists move that speaks of a buzzing energy, barely contained. And when he glances up and meets Charles' eyes, just for a second, he's projecting such pure intensity Charles nearly takes a step backwards.
Pay attention, he scolds himself, glancing determinedly around the room. Raven's throwing herself at the keyboard like she always does, fluid and perfectly at home, pulling every note out of the air like she's only just discovered it, and Alex is grinning fiercely at the entire garage, holding everything together with his bass. As for Sean he's clearly having the time of his life, taking his cues from Erik's tempo and letting himself be far more raw than he ever allows in real performances, his voice screaming out of him like something primeval. It's fantastic, Charles allows. It's absolutely fantastic.
Which, of course, is the precursor to monumental disaster.
+ + +
Naturally, it doesn't happen right away. Monumental disaster is rarely so conveniently straightforward. What happens right away is that Raven decides they all need to go for a drink.
"It's totally a team bonding thing," she declares as she tugs a reluctant Erik away from the drums. "Charles, I bet you can even write it off in your taxes or something. Come on guys, we were so awesome today, we deserve shots."
Three drinks in (on Charles' part) the night has acquired a warm sort of glow. Alex and Sean, who both inadvisedly spent the first half hour trying to match Raven drink for drink, have somehow managed to take up residence behind the bar. Alex is declaring himself an expert mixologist.
"The last time he did that," Moira points out from her languid sprawl against the booth, "it led to explosions."
Charles makes a sort of humming noise of agreement and takes another sip.
"Sean called them delicious explosions, as I recall," he says. "So that should be alright."
To his right, Erik huffs a laugh out through his nose, his fingers curled around the neck of his beer bottle.
"That is not workable logic," Moira says, "but I do not care."
Time drifts for a while, pleasant and unhurried, the night moving sideways around them as Charles absentmindedly catalogs Erik, his gestures and his verbal tics and the way he manages to slide into someone's space without actually leaning forward at all. The way he'd played today-it'd been sensational. He's going to be around for as long as Charles can manage, and Charles wants to learn him, every bit of him, down to his fingertips.
Bits of conversation filter into his consciousness, and when he hears Erik saying something about finding people who are as driven by the music as he is, he opens his mouth before he's really considered context.
"Here's what I believe," he says. "Right? I believe there's music in all of us."
"Oh no you don't," Raven says immediately. "No, no, no. Do not break out the spectacularly awkward drunken pickup lines right now, Charles. I am only trying to save you from the vicious regret they will cause you somewhere down the line. Come on, Moira, let's get another round."
"It's not spectacularly awkward," Charles mutters sullenly to himself as the girls set out for the bar.
"But it is a pickup line," Erik interjects, taking a pull of his beer. Charles blinks.
Erik grins in a way Charles might, if drunk (shit, he thinks, I am drunk, when did I get drunk?) describe as predatory.
"How's the next part of it go, then?" Erik asks.
"The next part of what?" Charles replies.
"Your spectacularly awkward pickup line," Erik says.
"Oh, you know, some very earnest stuff about how music lifts us out of our everyday lives, gives us power. Makes us extraordinary," he says. "What Raven has neglected to mention in her quest to humiliate me on as many levels as possible is that it works."
"If it does work," Erik says, pointing the beer bottle at Charles in some sort of emphatic gesture, "it's because you believe it. I've known you for twenty-four hours and I can tell you believe it."
"I do, I do believe it," Charles admits, startled. "You should see yourself when you play, you know, it's like-like nothing else in the world matters, it's insane."
He sees Erik's shoulders stiffen and then he's standing.
"I'm going to go see what the hell Alex thinks he's doing over there," he says, and Charles shuffles, baffled, out of his way.
Moira returns to the table with another tray of drinks and glances at Erik's retreating form.
"Okay," she says, "as your band manager, you are strictly forbidden from hooking up with him. Strictly. Forbidden. This is the guy who's broken hearts in more zip codes than, you know. Someone who's broken lots of hearts in lots of zip codes. Okay? We need you guys to work so that this band works, and this band needs to work so that I get paid."
She pauses, and Charles' blush settles in for a long stay.
"As your friend," she says, "you are strictly forbidden from hooking up with him. But, if you do, you have to tell me everything."
"You're drunk," Charles tells her with a sigh.
"Very drunk," she says cheerfully, and empties her glass.
+ + +
Charles rather blearily answers his doorbell at eleven o'clock the next morning and finds himself face to face with Erik, who takes the open door as an invitation to stride into Charles' apartment as if he lives there.
"I bought your record," Erik declares, leaning against the back of Charles' couch in a way that somehow manages to be both casual and looming. Charles, who has never taken kindly to intimidation, takes a few steps closer to Erik than he strictly ought to, in retaliation.
"What did you think?" He asks. There are butterflies in his stomach. Butterflies. Raven is going to know about this somehow, instantly, the next time he sees her, and it is going to be incredibly humiliating.
Erik spreads his palms in a, "where to begin?" gesture, except clearly the question is immaterial because he doesn't hesitate at all before he says, "After that rehearsal you've got to understand, this was one hell of a come down. It's a decent record, okay, but there's better than decent kicking around in that fucking garage. You've reined them all in far too much, that's clear immediately. Sean's voice doesn't need to be toned down into some sunshine and daisies thing, he may look like a twelve-year-old but that's not who this music's for, is it? And you've given Raven one too many traditional melodies, to play and to sing, I understand where you're coming from blending that stuff with something a little edgier, but that shouldn't be her job all the time and anyway, your edge isn't edgy enough. And your guitar stuff is killing me. Do you understand how good you could be? You don't even sound like you're enjoying yourself. You're not a professor of music, you're meant to be playing it. But your writing is fucking brilliant. Jesus wept, I think I've had some kind of revelatory experience."
Charles doesn't know if he should start by complaining about the innumerable digs at the band (at him, more like), defending his guitar technique, or waving away the compliments. In the end he does none of those things because, well. There wasn't a single compliment there he'd want to wave away.
"Thank you?" He says, and Erik catches his gaze and holds it, his eyes as dark and focused as they had been during that first rehearsal.
"The rest of it has to get better," he says, and Charles is torn between wounded pride and a thrill of adrenaline at the idea of reshaping the band together, the two of them at the helm of something raw and new and exciting.
"It's a good record," Charles says because he believes that, he really does.
"Not good enough," Erik says.
"One man's opinion," Charles says.
Erik shrugs.
"True," he says, and something in his eyes goes closed off. Charles finds himself scrambling frantically to bring back the fire from moments before.
"That's not to say we can't make some changes," he says, doing his best imitation of casual. "There's always room for improvement. I'm only saying, a complete, overnight overhaul isn't the best idea. There are people who listened to that record and liked it quite a lot, you know. There's a reason we managed to throw a tour together."
Erik is frowning at him, but it's not anger Charles feels directed his way. It's evaluation. It would almost be worse, if it didn't make his skin feel so deliciously tight.
"Better to do it quickly," he says. "Like ripping off a bandaid."
But he's putting up a token argument, and Charles is glad he can already tell the difference. Their interaction has shifted from field of battle to conversation. Not that, in their brief acquaintance, there's always been much difference.
"We start our tour in a week and a half," he says. "It's going to be difficult enough for you to learn all of our material, let alone start making changes."
Erik waves a dismissive hand.
"I can learn the songs," he says. "You let me worry about that. If you're constitutionally capable of letting someone else worry about anything, that is."
"You've known me for two days," Charles says, wry.
"Think how well I'll have you figured out by the time we're done touring," Erik says, grinning. It sounds worryingly like a promise.
"We've gotten sidetracked," Charles says determinedly, yanking the conversation back onto his own terms. "My point was this: if you want to make changes, you'll have to prioritize them. We can't just rewrite all our musical arrangements in the next ten days."
"Sean, then," Erik says. "His voice. Let's see what we can do with that."
+ + +
"Listen, dude, the rehearsal stuff-that was just me screwing around," Sean says that afternoon. "I do that in concert and it's gonna, like, scare people away."
"Like an air raid siren," Alex offers.
"Oh my God, shut up," Raven hisses at him.
"I think there might be a happy medium," Charles offers.
"What, like, controlled screeching?" Sean asks, frowning.
"If you want to put it that way, yes. Although your voice is extraordinary, Sean, I'm not sure I'd call it screeching."
"I would," Erik says, "but I'd mean it as a compliment."
"Okay, but dude, no offense? You're the guy who threw one of his sticks so hard it broke a window. You can be a little intense."
"No one's disputing Erik's intensity, but that particular incident never actually took place," Charles says. Erik starts, throws him a sharp glance, and Charles feels a jolt of victory. It'd been a lucky guess. He's heard the story, same as everyone else, but as legend has it Erik went into a rage after being rejected by a pretty young thing at the bar, and Charles is starting to think that would be thoroughly out of character.
"Your voice," Erik tells Sean, "is perfect for throwing yourself at something. You know that feeling when you're throwing yourself at a wall, over and over, and you can't fucking break through? You've got that in your voice. There's a reason so many good songs are about anger."
"Not just anger," Charles interrupts. "Pain, sorrow-joy can be raw. Here, actually, I'd like to try something."
He leans over to whisper to Raven and she nods, slides onto the piano bench in the corner. It's Moira's piano, a dusty old relic from the days when she thought she'd keep up with piano lessons once her mother wasn't breathing down her neck, but Raven puts fingers to keys and it's practically as good as new. She plays the opening notes of, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," the tempo slowed as she leans hard toward a minor key. Sean steps up to the mic, looking uncertain, and Erik isn't saying anything, so Charles says, "You know this song. Just sing it."
The first few notes are hesitant, and sound like nothing so much as a man who knows everyone's listening to him. Charles clears his throat and picks up his guitar, and Alex takes the hint, starts picking out the bass line. Erik only takes a few steps back to lean against the wall and listen, his head tilted to the side and his arms crossed, but apparently it's enough because by the time Sean's dragged his way down the first high notes of the chorus his voice is achingly imperfect, full of grief and longing and more than a little anger.
"You," Charles says to Erik after the last, thready echoes of, I wanna hold your hand, have spent themselves in the corners of the garage, "are a genius."
"It wasn't my idea," Erik says. He's staring at Charles, and even though he's still leaning against the wall alert-tensed-poised is scrawled into every line of his body. Poised for what, Charles isn't entirely sure he knows.
"It was," Charles counters, "and it was brilliant."
"It wasn't," Erik says. "I would never have chosen-that song, that's what was brilliant."
"Don't get me wrong," Raven says, "I am totally on board for some mutual admiration society stuff, but right now we should probably practice some of the songs we actually plan on playing in concert."
"That one, for a start," Charles says, tearing his focus away from Erik. "You were fantastic, Sean."
"Thanks," Sean says, unusually quiet. "But, dude, I don't know if a concert audience is gonna go for that. It's kind of outside the norm for us, you know?"
"It's way outside the fucking norm," Alex says suddenly, "that's why it's so fucking good."
Sean blinks, and then grins.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," Alex says in a tone which is probably aiming for dismissive. "Now, what else is on the set list?"
+ + +
For the next ten days Erik arrives to each rehearsal first and leaves last; in fact, it becomes something of a trial to evict him from Moira's garage as the sun dips toward the horizon.
"Okay, let me introduce you to the concept of the noise complaint," Moira says at eight o'clock one evening. "It's when you're making a shit ton of noise, and people complain."
"I'm familiar," Erik says.
"Do not think that just because you're six feet tall, I won't throw you out of here on your ass," Moira says. Raven is reluctantly tucking her sheet music back into her bag; Alex is carefully settling his bass into its case, and Sean is collapsing the microphone stand.
"I'm going to get this hook, just give me another five minutes," Erik says, and Moira throws her hands up in the air.
"Deal with this, he's yours," she tells Charles. He determinedly ignores Raven's snickering.
"You've got the hook," he says instead, leaning against the side of Erik's kit. "It's brilliant, it sounded fantastic on that last run."
"It did," Erik agrees. "And it'll sound better five minutes from now."
"When Moira says go, we go," Charles says; he feels suddenly like a teacher scolding That Kid everyone knows will never give a shit, and it's making him irrationally angry. "It's her garage."
"Come on, we can grab a late dinner or something," Raven says.
"I could murder a grilled cheese right now," Sean declares suddenly.
"This is going to make us better," Erik says, as if he finds them all unspeakably dense.
"We're done for the night," Charles says, and really it isn't that important, Moira (probably) wouldn't call out a hit on them if they overstayed their welcome this once, but Erik's making Charles' teeth grind together just now, and yes, alright, it's possible some of this is for his own personal satisfaction.
"Get fucked," Erik says, but he does get up and walk out of the garage, at least.
"So…dinner?" Raven says brightly into the sudden silence and then under her breath, as she slips her arm through Charles', "He's just trying to get this one right. I think it's-actually I think it's sort of great, to be honest."
+ + +
It's such a small thing, really, a petty argument that took up two minutes of Charles' time and has now somehow consumed all of his attention. He realizes it may have something to do with the fact that Erik chose that particular song to make his stand.
It isn't as if it's a song that shows off the drums (he's not sure he's ever written anything that really shows off the drums, actually; he wonders rather guiltily if that's why Angel left) or showcases Erik's exceptional talent (he hasn't gotten around to that yet, can't ignore the crunching nerves in his stomach whenever he tries). It's slow and plaintive, largely acoustic, and Charles has a sharp, technicolor memory of writing the lyrics, cobbling together the music from Raven's input and his own suddenly urgent need to get this one right. He'd been worried that it was all a tad melodramatic, and God only knows he's never wanted to be one of those people who yanks all the angry, sad, desperate corners of himself into the limelight, but the first time he'd shown Raven the lyrics, tried out a few chords for her on the guitar, she'd cried. As a general rule he's ready to drop every pacifist ideal he's ever professed at the sight of Raven crying, but in this particular instance it'd felt like she'd given him some kind of prize.
He's aware that probably makes him a terrible person.
+ + +
The thing about "Bring You Peace" is that it's the only love song Charles has ever written, and it's to his band.
(The second thing about "Bring You Peace" is that for one horrifyingly stilted week, Moira had thought it was to her; when she'd realized it wasn't relief and had lit her up like a beacon and her eyes had gone overwhelmingly fond, and rather ironically Charles is now fairly certain that if he was ever going to fall in love with her, it would have been then.)
Children Of The Atom will be the first to acknowledge that they're a collection of misfits (Alex says they're the beginning of a joke: a Juilliard dropout and a juvenile delinquent and a former McDonald's cashier walk into a bar, he says, but he can't figure out the punchline yet), and in her angrier moments Raven accuses him of being a collector.
"Charles Xavier, rich ex-socialite, genius, and expert guitar player. Hobbies: insanely expensive food and collecting aimless twenty-somethings for his pet band," she'd said the last time, after he'd accidentally reacted to a bad review by telling her that her piano playing was "very pretty." He'd flinched, barely, and she'd sighed, and an hour later they'd apologized. He still wonders, sometimes, if she understands that none of them are display pieces, pretty little rehabilitation projects for the rich kid to tackle. They're a band; they're his band, but they're Raven's band too, and Alex's, and Sean's, and Moira's, and, well. Erik's now, he supposes.
"Bring You Peace," is Charles' hope for their future, written in a key which makes it clear he wishes it were a promise. It's a rebuke of the world, and occasionally of himself, and if he had any distance from it whatsoever he would probably understand it to be very, very good.
+ + +
When Erik turns up to rehearsal the next day he starts in on "Bring You Peace" before anyone has a chance to say a word, and he plays it so perfectly that Charles feels as if someone is shining a light on his dusty words, picking them up and shaking them off to the beat of a pulsing bass drum. When Sean's voice-still wavering between his usual slightly raspy tenor and the swooping, raw, compelling thing he's been churning out at Erik's insistence-has left the last note behind, Charles feels it's probably safe to risk a glance at Erik. Except that Erik is staring straight at him, his entire body leaning forward in his chair almost like it might be unconscious, his eyes wide and dark and almost hopeful, so no, not safe, not safe at all.
That's the first time it's explicit, this feeling Charles has of falling so hard and so fast he can hear the wind whistling in his ears. That's the first time, and it's a moment Charles will pinpoint later as the moment monumental disaster became not just likely, but inescapable.
"So, first date of the tour tomorrow," Alex says to Sean two hours later as rehearsal breaks up. "You gonna sing like that for the gig?"
"Of course he is," Erik says, raising an eyebrow. "It's the best damn thing he's ever done."
Sean laughs, apparently unfazed by Erik's total dismissal of any and all previous accomplishments.
"I dunno, dude," he says to Alex. "I still don't know if people will go for it, you know?"
"If they don't it's their goddamn loss," Erik says and then adds suddenly, clearly inspired, "If you don't, I won't play."
Alex huffs out an incredulous laugh, looking seriously unimpressed, but Erik doesn't back off in the slightest.
"I'm not joking," he says easily, as if he's discussing the weather or his neighbor's azaleas. "If you don't sound like that tomorrow, Sean, you don't have a drummer tomorrow."
"Dude," Sean says, and Charles honestly isn't sure what he means.
+ + +
The gig is at an old theater, the kind of place that's been halfway remodeled every twenty years or so, with all the incredible clashes of interior design that implies (electric blue carpeting wars with art nouveau panels just inside the doorway; the chandeliers above the stage are so gothic they're practically writing their own novels). They arrive what seems like eons before they're needed, and then hours blur into a five minute window of last-second soundcheck and Erik's shockingly nervous eyes.
Charles resists the urge to ask if he's ready for this, desperate not to offend him at this rather crucial juncture, and is rewarded by a flat smile just before they go out on stage that seems to imply both that Erik is feeling ill and that anyone who dares ask him about it will be beheaded by a cymbal.
The first few songs are standbys, which Charles finds unaccountably thrilling-they have standbys, Jesus they're a real band-and Sean clearly registers that the crowd is enjoying the toned down version of his voice because although he steps onto stage looking conflicted by the time they've finished "It's Atomic" he's just grinning, reaching up a hand to push his mop of red hair away from his forehead and throwing a cheerful salute toward the man in the audience who is shouting something about how brilliant they all are.
"Bring You Peace" is third on the set list, and Charles shivers in anticipation, remembering how it had sounded in rehearsal yesterday, his words come to life as if they'd never been otherwise. Raven plays the opening chord on the piano and Erik answers her, a slow, steady beat on the drums that ties the whole thing together (not showy, Charles thinks defiantly toward every bit of gossip he's ever heard about the man, not showy or egotistical or demanding; perfect) even as Charles presses fingers to strings, his heart kicking against his chest at the thrill of playing this song, this way.
Which is when Erik makes good on his threat and freezes as if suspended mid-motion, his arms still held tense and ready in the air. Raven glances over at Charles, and then back at Erik, her face doing something complicated, and then stills her fingers on the keys even as Alex, looking baffled and angry, clearly about to demand an explanation, presses his palm flat to his bass' strings so that they still. The entire theater has gone eerily silent, and Charles' fingers never fumble on his guitar but he's buzzing with fury, he's still and quiet and raging with it. Sean throws him a terrified glance over his shoulder, the look of a man in free fall, before he curls his hand, white-knuckled, around the microphone stand and lets his voice shudder out into the empty air, hoarse and a little frightened and throbbing with a plea that could be Sean acting the hell out of the song or could be Sean desperately missing his musical accompaniment. Erik kicks the drums back in with a low, ponderous thump, a look of fierce triumph in his eyes, and Raven adds a quavering soprano harmony line even as she brings the piano into play once more, making it sound hesitant and small. Charles, still transfixed by the way his song suddenly sounds all around him, doesn't notice right away that Alex is still staring at Sean, his eyes huge and his fingers unmoving, and so it's another fifteen seconds before Charles manages to not-so-surreptitiously ram his shoulder into Alex's and then the song has a bass line again and Erik's eyes are searing chips of ice that Charles can't quite look away from even when the crowd rises to its feet to scream and cheer and probably throw their underwear at Sean, Charles thinks absentmindedly, that's the sort of thing this environment is supposed to engender.
This is a disaster, Charles thinks as Erik finally catches his eye and grins so fiercely it feels like he's laying siege. This is a monumental disaster.
+ + +
The rest of the night is almost a letdown after the ridiculous high of that third song, and then the show's over and Moira's shepherding them toward the exit, thanking the theater's staff and asking security personnel to make sure they don't have any trouble getting to the bus. The first breath of cold night air burns after the close humidity of the theater, and normally it would be a welcome shift but Charles finds he doesn't quite want to leave the insulated world of that stage, a place where risks always pay off and he doesn't have to worry about what to say next because the words have already been written down for him.
"What you did back there," he says to Erik, who is flush with triumph, looking happier than Charles has seen him yet, but Raven jumps in with a huge smile on her face, leaping to walk backwards in front of Erik, grabbing his arm to tow him across the parking lot.
"That was genius," she declares, looking awed. "That was seriously genius, did you hear us? And oh my God, Sean, you are mind-blowing lately, I can't even deal with this you guys, we are awesome."
Sean grins at her, easy and loose the way he always gets after a show (so, the way he is all the time, Charles amends, but turned up to eleven).
"Thanks," he says, his eyes roaming lazily over each of them in turn. "That was pretty good, huh?"
"That was incredible," Erik says level and dead serious, but Charles can't get over how real the smile on his face is-if he had to choose a word, he thinks, it would be unencumbered, which is a strange word for a smile but Jesus, it is, it's weightless.
Alex is walking a little off to the left, his hands crammed in his pockets, his head tilted down and sideways so that he seems to be intently watching nothing so much as Sean's feet. Charles frowns to himself, wondering if this is something he's going to need to worry about, but he's distracted by the fact that Erik has fallen back a step so that they're keeping pace, walking side-by-side.
"That song," Erik says, "that's how it should sound."
Charles swallows because he suspects, he's suspected since that rehearsal if he's being honest, that there was a reason "Bring You Peace" had fallen prey to Erik's focus.
"Maybe," he says carefully, trying not to let the spike of yes and right and yes at the thought of how it had sounded, plaintive and hopeful in that hushed theater, interfere with what he has to say next. "But what you did-you shouldn't have. He could just as easily have panicked, you know."
Up ahead Sean is laughing, shoving an open palm against Alex's shoulder, "Come on dude, lighten up, we're rock stars," his hair falling over his forehead in sweat-soaked tangles. He doesn't look like the kind of person who panics, but Charles knows, because he knows Sean. He knows how bad it could have been.
"A little panic is good for that song," Erik says, and he's already shutting himself away again. Charles feels a burst of frustration so clear and sudden it's difficult to contain.
"You cut every lifeline he had, all at once," Charles says. "It worked out, but it might not have. And it wasn't particularly kind."
"It worked," Erik says, and there's a sharp difference between a level voice and a dulled one, a closed one, Charles thinks, feeling as if someone has punched him in the stomach.
It's stupid, an overreaction, post-concert adrenaline and the heady start of a new tour combining to make him just a little bit insane. Or at least, that's what he determinedly reminds himself of every five minutes for the three-hour bus ride, Raven asleep on his shoulder and Erik near-motionless in the seat in front of him, his own shoulders so stiff he might be carved from marble.
+ + +
When they all stumble off the bus and Moira hands them their room keys for the night they're in Vermont, and Charles tries to blink his headache away, tries to shake the surreal feeling he always gets when he crosses state lines in his sleep.
It doesn't really work.
He's just sunk gratefully onto his motel bed, trying desperately to believe he's going to get any sleep at all with Erik's flattened voice ringing over and over again in his head, somehow accusatory while also being entirely devoid of emotion, when there's a knock on the door. He struggles upright and peers through the peephole and it's Erik, of course it is. Suddenly everything in the room is sharp-edged, crystal clear, almost too real. He shakes his head and opens the door, planning to say something about the time of night and just what exactly Erik wants people to think, but what comes out is, "Of course it made the song better. You made the song better. I mean-Sean was incredible, but .You. And that song is-you chose it on purpose."
Erik crowds into the room, closing the door behind him, and says, "Of course I did."
"You can't just do that," Charles says, and a weak chuckle escapes him. "You can't just turn up to a few rehearsals and decide everything's going to change. That isn't how this works."
"How does it work, then?" Erik asks. It's not sarcasm, Charles realizes with a start, it's genuine curiosity.
"I don't know," he says. "I think I know how it ought to work. But you really fuck things up."
"Heard that before," Erik says with a mirthless smile, and Charles knows yet again that he's said the wrong thing. This time, though, he thinks he might be able to fix it.
"I've never wanted to work with anyone more than I want to work with you," he says, and the shocked, slow-blooming wonder in Erik's eyes is perfectly on target. "You're probably insane, but you're some kind of genius, and you're not afraid of any of the things you should be, which is exactly what I need. You've got to stay."
He realizes afterwards that he probably sounded a little desperate, and a lot needy, and also like he might've been talking about something besides playing music. At the time, all he realizes is that Erik is closing the space between them until they're practically toe-to-toe, that Erik's breath is warm against his ear when he says, "I have never seen someone do such a simultaneously excellent and terrible job of acting uninterested, and I'm tired of it."
"There's a time and a place for ambiguity," Charles says faintly even as his hand, of its own volition, slides under the hem of Erik's shirt near his hip, where it's coming untucked.
"This isn't it," Erik practically growls, and then Charles is being spun around and pushed up against his the door of his own hotel room, and that decides things.
The kiss is frantic and about as far from chaste as it is possible to get while still clothed (still clothed, Charles thinks distantly, ought to fix that), and Erik nips at Charles' lower lip as he pulls away, his eyes dark and intense, his hands fisted in Charles' shirt. This, Charles cannot help but think, is one of those things Erik's focus is ideally suited to.
"Bed," he manages to say in between kisses and oh, he thinks to himself rather hysterically, I was right, not much sleep tonight.
+ + +
"I'm a coward," he tells Moira when he joins her at the motel's continental breakfast the next morning.
"Do tell," she says, but she's absorbed with skimming the morning's papers, and anyway he didn't really plan on explaining to her that only a coward sneaks out of his own motel room before the gorgeous man in his bed wakes up.
"How're the reviews?" Alex asks, wandering over to their table looking something like seventeen-point-oh-five percent awake.
"Not too much written, but what's here is incredibly positive. I think we count last night as a win. Actually, I think we would have to count it as a win without any reviews at all because you," she nods at Sean who has just joined them, a pillow crease running down the right side of his face, "were fantastic."
"Thanks," Sean says and then leans over her shoulder, wide-eyed.
"Yes," she says, sounding resigned, I thought you might want to see that."
Alex's eyes skim the paper in Moira's hands and then go suddenly sullen, and Charles leans over, intrigued despite the churning in his stomach that's insistently telling him Erik hasn't come downstairs yet.
It's a photo, taken from the crowd, hundreds of hands thrown up in the air as Sean leans hard into the microphone. The caption is a quote from Anna, 21, who thinks Sean is "super talented and drop dead gorgeous."
"Holy shit, dude," Sean says, elbowing Alex in the ribs, his eyes wide. "I have groupies."
"Yeah, whatever," Alex says.
"Can you seriously not be happy for the sudden advent of my sex life?" Sean demands as he tugs Alex toward the breakfast buffet. "Do you get how rock and roll this is? Wait, scratch that, do you get how this involves sex? On, like, a regular basis?"
"Whatever," Alex repeats, shaking himself free of Sean's hold, nominally so that he can grab a plate.
"Oh God," Moira says, staring after them with wide eyes. "Nothing can ever be simple with you people, can it?"
If only you knew, Charles thinks, and closes his eyes. Honestly, a face plant (followed, obviously, by a nap) right in the middle of his omelette sounds awfully good right now.
"Good morning," Erik says, and Charles' eyes fly open. Erik is sliding into the seat across from Charles and Moira, looking entirely unfazed and holding a blueberry muffin.
"A muffin," Charles mutters to himself, incredulous for no reason whatsoever, and Erik glances at him, one eyebrow raised.
"It's a common breakfast food, often containing fruit of some variety," he drawls. "Would you like one?"
"No," Charles says decisively. "No thank you."
Moira glances between the two of them, her eyebrows raised, and then makes a clear decision to say absolutely nothing.
For a moment there is deafening silence and then Charles rallies.
"We're planning to check out the park after breakfast," he tells Erik determinedly. "Looks like the weather's going to hold, so we'll be outside tonight."
"Acoustics'll probably be shit," Erik says, "but everybody'll be in a good mood. They always are at these outdoor things."
"Mm," Charles hums noncommittally and wrenches himself in the general direction of breakfast. A bowl of cereal, he thinks, or maybe some toast.
Jesus Christ, his life is ridiculous.
+ + +
The park is in the center of town, and Moira leads them straight to a makeshift stage erected at the edge of the lake.
"Oh, this is gorgeous," Raven says, hopping up two of the three steps at once. Alex skips them entirely, vaulting himself straight onto the stage and extending a hand up to Charles and then to Sean; Erik waves him off, makes his way onto the stage, and slides into his seat behind the drum kit that is already set up, along with the rest of the band's equipment (Charles makes a mental note to thank Moira).
"Alright, let's try a few songs," Charles says optimistically.
To be fair, they stick to their set list through a song and a half, before Sean decides to insert a thirty-second stretch of yodeling into the middle of "Normal," for which Raven gleefully supplies vaguely Bavarian piano accompaniment. Alex rolls his eyes, but he moves his bass line down an octave to accommodate the change. Charles grins in spite of himself when Sean finishes the detour with a fervent bit of head banging, and then an Elvis-inspired, "Thank you, thank you very much," which rings across the water along with Raven's full-throated laughter and Alex's, "Guess you missed your calling as a mountaineer."
"Knowing how yodeling sounds in the space is going to be wildly beneficial tonight," Erik says quietly, and Charles risks a nervous glance back at him only to find that he's frowning, tapping his fingers impatiently against the side of his floor tom.
"They're just messing around," he offers quietly, and then winces internally at the connotations.
"Well they ought to be taking this seriously," Erik says, refusing to meet Charles' eyes, and before Charles can decide if that was meant to be quite so weighed down with subtext Raven is cheerfully giving in to Sean's urging that they set "Hey Jude" to a polka tune.
"Christ," Erik says, scornful, and Charles takes a careful step closer.
"They're having fun," he says. "That's permitted even with you here, surely."
He knows it sounded harsh, knows he let protective pride and his ongoing confusion about just what exactly last night was get the better of him, and he spares a second to regret it.
"The amount of wasted potential contained on this stage is stunning," Erik says, cutting without missing a beat. This is not the side of Erik he wants to explore, Charles thinks distantly, even as he says, "Potential I've let go to waste, you're suggesting."
Erik shrugs, an oddly graceful movement, and Charles is struck by the sudden, devastating thought that he has seen bare skin move over those shoulders, the knowledge that if he tugged Erik's collar just a little to the left he would find a mark made by his own mouth.
"Wasted potential," Erik says again, and Charles grits his teeth.
"Music is meant to make people happy," he says. "There's nothing wrong with that."
"Music is meant to do a hell of a lot more than make people happy," Erik says, his eyes more flat by the second.
"Just because it doesn't make you happy," Charles says, thinking about everything he knows (has, maybe, made it his business to know) about Erik Lensherr, near-legend, thinking about bands abandoned because they were deemed lacking in drive, could-have-been boyfriends slighted by just exactly where they fell in Erik's priorities and, once, a star-making record deal turned (decisively) down because the producer had the nerve to ask if he could attend a recording session.
"What exactly would you know about what makes me happy?" Erik demands with a controlled fury Charles recognizes from his drumming, and Charles thinks again about everything he knows about Erik Lensherr, about everything he's heard and everything he's seen, and is forced to an unwelcome conclusion.
"Nothing at all," he says, feeling suddenly very tired indeed.
+ + +
They open that night with "It's Atomic," and it's absolutely fantastic. That's the thing, Charles thinks as Sean belts out the chorus, that's the thing. It's going to be a nasty, splintering moment when Erik leaves. He isn't sure he'll even have a band anymore, after.
"Wonderful," Moira says afterwards, beaming at them with undiluted pride. "I'm taking you out to dinner."
They find a pizza parlor not too far from the freeway and cram themselves into a booth together; Charles isn't paying quite enough attention to seating arrangements (maybe because he's paying a little too much attention to the way Erik's mouth is curved around a smile, a little too much attention to how proud he looks, thinking a little too much about how he wants more chances to put that look there) and through some quick reshuffling he suspects Raven of orchestrating he finds himself sitting next to Erik, their elbows and knees bumping as they scan the menu.
Well of course, Charles thinks, and loses something like a minute and a half contemplating how warm Erik is pressed against his side (as much as he'd known last night that it might be just the once, as much as he hadn't been able to stop the voice in his head from pointing out that Erik never stayed in one place, never, he still hadn't quite managed to memorize the feeling of Erik's bare skin against his; it wasn't for lack of trying).
"This is awesome," Raven declares as the pizza arrives, and presumably she means the last two concerts, Sean's new approach to old material, how Erik is beginning to prod at the edges of their own music just to see what will give, but Sean says, "Dude, yes, this is the best pizza I have ever seen in my life," and from the way Raven is gazing starry-eyed at slice of chicken-and-red-pepper she's dragging onto her plate, his interpretation could well be correct.
"Ew," Alex says, wrinkling his nose up at Moira's vegetarian choice, and Moira reaches across the table to slap him upside the head.
"Hey!" He says, indignant. "Free speech! I'm allowed to protest your pizza if it's disgusting," and Sean chimes in with, "Batman would totally be on Alex's side, that's all I have to say," which doesn't exactly diffuse the age old vegetarian versus meat-lover's pizza debate, but does shove it sideways into the brand new arena of, "Which Kind of Pizza Would Your Favorite Superhero Eat?" In the middle of Raven's treatise on Cat Woman's love for Mediterranean-style, Alex and Sean get into an essentially pointless, to-the-death shoving match over the fourth-to-last slice of pepperoni. Raven solves the problem by grabbing the entire box and offering it to a passerby, who takes it with a bemused thank you while Sean and Alex watch, helpless.
"They have to be like this," Charles finds himself telling Erik, who is watching it all with something not so far from amusement on his face. "Maybe making music isn't all about having fun, or being happy, but it's part of it, it has to be."
"This isn't making music," Erik points out, gesturing around the sauce-splattered table.
"But it is," Charles says, which isn't exactly what he means-he means that this is a part of it, that without this the music wouldn't happen either, that this is important-and Erik glances around the table again.
"Maybe it is for you," he says, and Charles can't tell if it's a concession or a condemnation.
+ + +
They pile onto the tour bus after dinner, luggage in tow. The tour bus isn't so much a bus, of course, as it is a VW Microbus, complete with atrocious green leather interiors. Raven's affectionately nicknamed it "The Monster," and with good reason-the engine occasionally makes noises that seem to indicate it isn't far from growing paws, sprouting fangs, and chowing down on a few innocent bystanders. Still, it gets the job done, and has for nearly a year and a half now, with occasional mechanical encouragement from Alex.
"All aboard," Moira says with a tip of her invisible conductor's cap, and Raven, Sean, and Alex immediately claim one of the bench seats. Erik sprawls onto the one across from them, leaving Charles with the choice of settling back against Erik's arm or looking like an asshole who wants his own damn spot.
He dithers, honest-to-god dithers, which makes him feel a bit like someone's great aunt, but only for maybe ten seconds before he decides it's better to look like an asshole who wants his own damn spot than look like an needy guitarist who's desperate to cuddle with his drummer, even if he is more of the latter and less of the former. He determinedly doesn't make eye contact with anyone as he settles into his seat, but out of the corner of his eye he swears he sees Erik's head half-turn, a quick jerk of movement before he catches himself, looks away again.
Charles sighs, tips his head back and stares at the ceiling for a minute.
It's only a two hour drive to Montreal. Surely he can survive two hours in an enclosed space with an attractive, intelligent, talented man he's just recently had frantic motel room sex with?
Fifteen minutes later, Charles has had more than enough of Erik's fingers tapping out a song he can't quite place on the seat next to him. He wants nothing more than to reach out and still the other man's hand, press it down to the seat. Admittedly, he'd like to follow that up with straddling his waist and kissing him in a manner which could only be described as "incredibly fucking thorough," but first he'd stop the noise. Definitely.
A minute after that the tapping stops, abruptly, and Charles realizes with a start that he's been humming along. It's The Doors, "Touch Me," and Charles would probably take this moment to accuse Erik of being an unconscionable tease but when he glances up Erik looks so startled, his eyes widened by shock and something a little like hope. Charles hastily decides to give him the benefit of the doubt and tugs his attention back to the ceiling.
This is why you don't sleep with the drummer, Charles, a voice in his head informs him. You end up throwing everything out of rhythm. Pun intentional. And excellent, by the way.
The voice in his head sounds exasperated, resigned, tired, but ultimately fond. It sounds like Moira, in other words, and Charles has learned to trust Moira.
Yes, I know, he thinks at it. Although I'm going to have to disagree with you about the pun.
+ + +
He spends the rest of the bus ride staring out the window, watching the landscape dim until it becomes a blur of light and shadow, a scene that yanks at the back of his mind, insists he should be writing. He scrubs a hand over his eyes and gets out his notebook, but he never gets further than two or three lines before the entire exercise spirals into a melodramatic treatise on the fear of being left behind, which makes him angry and sets something gnawing at his stomach lining, so he shelves the entire project and falls into a fitful sleep for the last half hour, his cheek pressed against the cool glass of the window.
It's a relief to shut the door of his motel room and lock it, shut himself into a neat little box for the night. There is a soothing level of predictability about motel rooms-this one looks like someone furnished it in the 1970s and then declared the decor timeless. Charles sinks into the peach-colored, quilted armchair and fumbles for the remote, resigned to the fact that he's not getting much sleep tonight.
PART II.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Charles/Erik, background Sean/Alex, and Raven and Moira being their awesome selves.
Spoilers/Warnings: No real spoilers (it does follow the plot of the movie in vague terms, but it's still a Band!AU, not an X-Men movie). WARNING: This is a WIP, ladies & gents. Parts I and II are up; Part III is in progress.
Summary: Written for the 1stclass_kink prompt, "The band is about to go on tour, but when their drummer quits, their plans are shot to hell. Charles knows of one truly brilliant drummer who can fill the spot -- Erik Lensherr. Problem is, the guy is an unpredictable, bitter troublemaker." Band!AU.
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 I Wanna Be Where The Bands Are, by Bruce Springsteen, which is another thing I don't own.
Notes: Again: WIP! If you've been reading this fic at the kink meme, and want to pick up where that left off, go to Part II and start about halfway down the page. I'll post to fic comms when I'm finished with Part III.
"Hmm," Moira says.
"I realize he has something of a reputation," Charles says. Moira raises an incredulous eyebrow at him, and Alex says, "Yeah, okay, so I'm guessing 'something of a reputation' is being used here to mean, like, 'the world's shittiest reputation?'"
"Dude," Sean says. Coming from Sean, 'dude' can mean anything from "please pass the ketchup," to "get fucked," but the way he bobs his head up and down as he says it means this time it's agreement.
Charles sighs.
"I don't see another way to proceed," he says. "We all know Angel's accepted what she believes to be a better offer-"
"Ugh," Raven says. "I'm sorry, we do not talk about the Hellfire Club right now. What kind of a name is that, anyway?"
"Kind of a badass one," Sean points out, and Alex kicks him in the ankle.
"Dude!" Sean says.
Moira steadfastly ignores them all in favor of leveling her gaze at Charles.
"It's your choice," she says quietly as the other three squabble amicably in the background. "If you decide he's worth the risk, they'll go along with it. And God knows, I'm a manager in name only. When was the last time I managed anything around here?"
"Erm," Charles says. "You told us not to play that gig in Toronto and we didn't?"
"That was because I was smart enough to get you all drunk before I made the phone call," Moira points out and yeah, okay, that's true.
"Apparently he's staying in those apartments behind the old theater on 5th Avenue," Charles says. "I'm going to go and talk to him tomorrow, see if he's interested."
Moira leans back in her chair and stares straight up at the ceiling as, to her left, Sean trips over the couch for no apparent reason whatsoever and Alex points and laughs in what he will later assert was the spirit of solidarity.
"I should quit," she mutters, but it doesn't sound convincing even to her own ears.
+ + +
'Those apartments behind the old theater on 5th Avenue' are, of course, a total dump. Charles had forgotten just exactly how much they looked like a light breeze would topple them in on each other in the time since he'd last known anyone who was staying there (Raven, when they'd first met). Still, he thinks, a band can't carry on without a drummer, and so he raps his knuckles against the door to apartment 407.
"What?" A gruff voice demands, and Charles hesitates, weighing his options.
"Come on, I don't have all day," the voice says, getting exponentially louder in the middle of the sentence as the door is flung wide open.
Behind it is a man, tall, with dirty blonde hair and impatient eyes. Who is, Charles tells himself firmly, not at all astoundingly attractive.
"My name is Charles Xavier," he says. "I hear you're a decent drummer."
"You hear I'm decent?" Erik-because this is definitely Erik Lensherr, definitely-demands, looking grimly amused. "Christ, I haven't gotten into a bar fight in far too long, it seems."
"Right," Charles says. "Well, if you could manage to avoid brawling for just a bit longer, I have a proposition."
"Do you?" Erik says, leaning against the door frame, and Charles is not going to blush.
"Yes," he says. "I do. Are you going to let me in?"
+ + +
The inside of Erik's apartment is neat, but that's largely because there's hardly anything in it. It's a one room, studio affair, and furniture seems to be permitted through the door on an as-needed basis-that is to say, there's a bed, a couch, and a fridge. Except there, in the corner-
"If you're thinking something about how I don't seem to have settled into the place, keep it to yourself," Erik says and then, so incongruously that Charles is caught almost entirely off-guard, "Tea?"
"Tea would be lovely, thank you," Charles says. "And I wasn't thinking about how you don't seem to have settled in. I think you've settled in about as much as you ever do. I was thinking that you must love music."
"Were you?" Erik asks, fishing a kettle from the depths of a cupboard and filling it with water.
"Yes," Charles says. "I was. That record player's the only superfluous thing in this room, not counting whatever secret cooking implements you're still hiding."
Erik glances at him out of the corner of his eye, and Charles sees something like a smile tug at one side of his mouth.
"Go on, you're dying to," he says. "Poke around, see what I listen to. I won't throw anything at you, I promise."
It's an encouragingly eclectic collection, a decent amount of hoarse-voiced American rock-and-roll mixed with jazz and blues and Beethoven's 5th, and a few Beatles' records, plus Miles Davis whom Charles quietly sets in a category all his own.
"Tea," Erik declares from just behind Charles' shoulder, and Charles has to exercise every bit of his not inconsiderable self-control not to startle.
"Are you always this nerve-wracking, or are you putting on a special performance for my benefit?" Charles asks, sipping at his (excellent) tea.
"I'm usually at least this nerve-wracking," Erik says, sounding thoroughly unapologetic. "But sometimes in different ways. At the moment, I'm doing 'quietly nerve-wracking.' I've been known to throw some impressive temper tantrums, though, and I do take special pride in my ability to start bar fights. As we've already discussed."
I, Charles thinks to himself, am about to make an incredibly bad decision.
"I'd like you to join my band," he says.
+ + +
Erik finishes his tea in silence while Charles reminds himself every two seconds not to fidget, not to stare at his feet, not to bite his fingernails. He has not just invited a cheerleader to senior prom; he has invited a disgruntled drummer to join his band.
Oh God, he thinks, that's worse.
"I want to meet them," Erik declares, standing up, and Charles seizes the opportunity to lead him out his own front door.
Introducing Erik to the band goes something like this:
"Holy shit," Raven says to Moira, "I am totally reevaluating my stance on mental instability right now. Insanity just got attractive."
"Hey man," Alex says, "I hear you once beat a guy over the head with his own guitar 'cause he spilled beer on your drum kit. So, my question comes to you in two parts. One, is that true? And two, what the fuck?"
"Dude, that's awesome," Sean says, his eyes wide. Alex shrugs.
"I mean, there's a fine tradition of crazy people in the music industry," he says. "As long as you can play, I don't care."
"I can play," Erik says. It's the first thing he's said since they walked in the door. Charles gnaws worriedly at his lower lip. He knows the band, when presented all at once, can be a bit, well. Overwhelming.
Thankfully, this is when Moira sees fit to play her part.
"Hello," she says. "My name's Moira McTaggert. You should ignore everyone in this room except me for the next five minutes, okay?"
"Sure," Erik says with an air of amused tolerance, and Charles steps into the hallway for a smoke and a break.
Smoking is his guilty pleasure, mostly because his mother would never approve of the cheap cigarettes he himself only buys because he knows she hasn't heard of the brand. Now he takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment, his eyes closed, as he tries not to worry about what's going to happen when Raven inevitably decides it's best to sit on Erik's lap on the tour bus. God, Moira'll pitch a fit, he thinks, and deliberately doesn't wonder what he himself will do. The obvious answer is nothing. Nothing, because although he thinks of Raven as a little sister she's turning twenty-five next month, and it's really none of his business who she…well. Who she fancies. And it isn't as if he has some claim to Erik, for God's sake. He's barely known the man for an hour. It's ridiculous to be wondering how wide those blue eyes would go if he'd just been kissed, or exactly how his hands (callused hands, Charles reasons, from drumming) would feel on bare skin. Ridiculous.
He takes another drag from his cigarette and despairs. Just slightly.
"Well," Erik says into the stillness of the hallway and Charles does startle this time. "I've just had the spiel from your manager-and an excellent spiel it was, I might add, she is clearly a very talented woman. Now. Why should I join your band?"
Usually, after Moira's had her shot at them, people don't need more convincing. Moira talks very quickly, and has a grin a little like a shark's when she wants to, and knows a hell of a lot of legalese. Charles blinks and then,
"Because we're good," he says automatically, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray. "Because I'm good. Because you're tired of sitting around in an empty apartment drinking tea and listening to records without any music to play. Because you want to know what I'd write for you."
The last bit slips in unbidden, but he doesn't take it back.
"I pawned my drum kit," Erik says after a minute. "You get it back for me, and I'll join your band. For a probationary period. How long's this tour supposed to be, three months?"
"Three months," Charles confirms. "Fair enough. A mutually beneficial arrangement."
"A mutually beneficial arrangement," Erik parrots with a crooked grin on his face. He turns to go back inside and Charles, seeing a flickering after image of that grin as he blinks, decides another cigarette can't hurt.
"You're right, by the way," Erik adds, thumb tapping out a rhythm against the doorknob. "I do want to know what you'd write for me. You should maybe get to work on that."
"Jesus Christ," Charles says into the suddenly stifling quiet of the hallway, and yanks another cigarette out of the pack.
+ + +
"So," Raven says when Erik has left the address of a local pawn shop scribbled on a scrap of paper he'd pressed, warm and heavy, into Charles' hand, "he's a bit of a dreamboat."
"Oh excellent," Charles says in a tone he hopes conveys that he wants nothing more than to swear celibacy and move into a monastery as soon as possible.
"Oh my God, you're so into him," Raven says.
"Well, this has gone well," Charles says.
They're splayed across Charles' couch, the rest of the band (and Moira) long gone. It's six o'clock and Charles feels entirely exhausted. Maybe not a monk. Maybe somebody's grandfather.
"Erik Lensherr," Raven says, contemplative. "So what is it, why are you dying to have loads of steamy, sacrilegious sex with him? Is he a secret genius? Does he solve complex equations in his spare time? Is he wooing you with carefully labeled photos of human DNA? Has he been quoting Shakespeare at you? Because actually, we've talked about that last one. That guy was an asshole."
"Raven," Charles says wearily, and she sighs.
"Alright, alright, I'm dropping it."
Temporarily, Charles amends, and out loud says, "Raven. Can I at least ask that this doesn't become the latest hot gossip amongst Alex and Sean as well? That's the last thing we need if we're hoping Erik will stay."
"Which some of us definitely a-are," Raven sing-songs. Charles flails blindly with his foot for a minute until he finds her calf and digs his heel in.
"Ow. I'm not going to bring it up with them," she says. "But if you're going to keep staring at him like he personally created the earth and stars they might notice. And I should stress the 'might,' here, they're pretty oblivious."
"They're twenty-something young men," Charles points out, and Raven giggles.
"So were you, like, three years ago," she points out, and he shrugs.
"Beside the point," he declares imperially.
+ + +
"You do realize," Moira says just before the start of rehearsal two days later, "that you invited this man to join the band, and he agreed, and neither of you had ever heard the other play?"
On an intellectual level Charles supposed he'd realized that, yes. Still, it gives him a jolt.
"I know he's good," he says. "I trust the people who've told me so."
"Mmhmm," Moira says knowingly, and Charles adds her to the 'Lost Cause' list directly after Raven.
Erik's drum kit, successfully recovered from Ace's Pawn Shop downtown, is sitting in the back of Moira's garage and Erik is, of course, who they're all waiting for.
Children of the Atom (speaking scientifically, Charles had said, that is an absolutely ridiculous name, but Raven had cut him off because she was already drawing their logo and it was going to be so, so cool) had started out rehearsing in Moira's garage and even now that they've had a bit of exposure, released their first album, done an East Coast tour, they still come back between gigs to brush up. Sean says it's because they're totally in touch with their roots. Alex says it's because they're stingy as fuck. Raven says it's because Moira's neighbors have already been conditioned to resist calling in noise complaints. Charles is realistic enough to allow that it's a potent mixture of all three.
Erik turns up ten minutes early (something Charles is soon going to learn to appreciate) and stares, transfixed, at his drums. He honest-to-god slinks up to them, as if he's afraid they'll run away or, Charles' mind points out rather treacherously, as if he's trying to seduce the bloody things. The way he runs a finger around the edge of the high hat and knocks his ankle familiarly against the kick drum doesn't help.
"Right," Erik says cheerfully. "So, do you no-talent hacks play music?"
Alex, apparently recognizing a kindred spirit in someone who communicates primarily via insults, says, "Fuck it, come on guys let's scare some neighborhood pets."
Which is clearly a good enough reason for Sean to step up to the microphone and then there it is, they're a band.
Rough around the edges, true, and they have to start with covers because of course Erik doesn't know any of their stuff. But the thing is, he's incredible. Charles finds he has to force his attention to his guitar more than once and Jesus that never happens. But Erik- Erik runs off on riffs in the middle of the sweet, harmonious stuff from Motown that they try first, and he yanks at the tempo of every early Beatles song they try, turning syrupy ballads into frantic declarations and raucous dance hall numbers into something painfully aching. And the way he holds himself-yes, fine, Charles is looking, it isn't as if he doesn't know the chords-is. Well. It's intriguing, is what it is, because his posture is almost bizarrely impeccable except that there's something about the way his shoulders, elbows, wrists move that speaks of a buzzing energy, barely contained. And when he glances up and meets Charles' eyes, just for a second, he's projecting such pure intensity Charles nearly takes a step backwards.
Pay attention, he scolds himself, glancing determinedly around the room. Raven's throwing herself at the keyboard like she always does, fluid and perfectly at home, pulling every note out of the air like she's only just discovered it, and Alex is grinning fiercely at the entire garage, holding everything together with his bass. As for Sean he's clearly having the time of his life, taking his cues from Erik's tempo and letting himself be far more raw than he ever allows in real performances, his voice screaming out of him like something primeval. It's fantastic, Charles allows. It's absolutely fantastic.
Which, of course, is the precursor to monumental disaster.
+ + +
Naturally, it doesn't happen right away. Monumental disaster is rarely so conveniently straightforward. What happens right away is that Raven decides they all need to go for a drink.
"It's totally a team bonding thing," she declares as she tugs a reluctant Erik away from the drums. "Charles, I bet you can even write it off in your taxes or something. Come on guys, we were so awesome today, we deserve shots."
Three drinks in (on Charles' part) the night has acquired a warm sort of glow. Alex and Sean, who both inadvisedly spent the first half hour trying to match Raven drink for drink, have somehow managed to take up residence behind the bar. Alex is declaring himself an expert mixologist.
"The last time he did that," Moira points out from her languid sprawl against the booth, "it led to explosions."
Charles makes a sort of humming noise of agreement and takes another sip.
"Sean called them delicious explosions, as I recall," he says. "So that should be alright."
To his right, Erik huffs a laugh out through his nose, his fingers curled around the neck of his beer bottle.
"That is not workable logic," Moira says, "but I do not care."
Time drifts for a while, pleasant and unhurried, the night moving sideways around them as Charles absentmindedly catalogs Erik, his gestures and his verbal tics and the way he manages to slide into someone's space without actually leaning forward at all. The way he'd played today-it'd been sensational. He's going to be around for as long as Charles can manage, and Charles wants to learn him, every bit of him, down to his fingertips.
Bits of conversation filter into his consciousness, and when he hears Erik saying something about finding people who are as driven by the music as he is, he opens his mouth before he's really considered context.
"Here's what I believe," he says. "Right? I believe there's music in all of us."
"Oh no you don't," Raven says immediately. "No, no, no. Do not break out the spectacularly awkward drunken pickup lines right now, Charles. I am only trying to save you from the vicious regret they will cause you somewhere down the line. Come on, Moira, let's get another round."
"It's not spectacularly awkward," Charles mutters sullenly to himself as the girls set out for the bar.
"But it is a pickup line," Erik interjects, taking a pull of his beer. Charles blinks.
Erik grins in a way Charles might, if drunk (shit, he thinks, I am drunk, when did I get drunk?) describe as predatory.
"How's the next part of it go, then?" Erik asks.
"The next part of what?" Charles replies.
"Your spectacularly awkward pickup line," Erik says.
"Oh, you know, some very earnest stuff about how music lifts us out of our everyday lives, gives us power. Makes us extraordinary," he says. "What Raven has neglected to mention in her quest to humiliate me on as many levels as possible is that it works."
"If it does work," Erik says, pointing the beer bottle at Charles in some sort of emphatic gesture, "it's because you believe it. I've known you for twenty-four hours and I can tell you believe it."
"I do, I do believe it," Charles admits, startled. "You should see yourself when you play, you know, it's like-like nothing else in the world matters, it's insane."
He sees Erik's shoulders stiffen and then he's standing.
"I'm going to go see what the hell Alex thinks he's doing over there," he says, and Charles shuffles, baffled, out of his way.
Moira returns to the table with another tray of drinks and glances at Erik's retreating form.
"Okay," she says, "as your band manager, you are strictly forbidden from hooking up with him. Strictly. Forbidden. This is the guy who's broken hearts in more zip codes than, you know. Someone who's broken lots of hearts in lots of zip codes. Okay? We need you guys to work so that this band works, and this band needs to work so that I get paid."
She pauses, and Charles' blush settles in for a long stay.
"As your friend," she says, "you are strictly forbidden from hooking up with him. But, if you do, you have to tell me everything."
"You're drunk," Charles tells her with a sigh.
"Very drunk," she says cheerfully, and empties her glass.
+ + +
Charles rather blearily answers his doorbell at eleven o'clock the next morning and finds himself face to face with Erik, who takes the open door as an invitation to stride into Charles' apartment as if he lives there.
"I bought your record," Erik declares, leaning against the back of Charles' couch in a way that somehow manages to be both casual and looming. Charles, who has never taken kindly to intimidation, takes a few steps closer to Erik than he strictly ought to, in retaliation.
"What did you think?" He asks. There are butterflies in his stomach. Butterflies. Raven is going to know about this somehow, instantly, the next time he sees her, and it is going to be incredibly humiliating.
Erik spreads his palms in a, "where to begin?" gesture, except clearly the question is immaterial because he doesn't hesitate at all before he says, "After that rehearsal you've got to understand, this was one hell of a come down. It's a decent record, okay, but there's better than decent kicking around in that fucking garage. You've reined them all in far too much, that's clear immediately. Sean's voice doesn't need to be toned down into some sunshine and daisies thing, he may look like a twelve-year-old but that's not who this music's for, is it? And you've given Raven one too many traditional melodies, to play and to sing, I understand where you're coming from blending that stuff with something a little edgier, but that shouldn't be her job all the time and anyway, your edge isn't edgy enough. And your guitar stuff is killing me. Do you understand how good you could be? You don't even sound like you're enjoying yourself. You're not a professor of music, you're meant to be playing it. But your writing is fucking brilliant. Jesus wept, I think I've had some kind of revelatory experience."
Charles doesn't know if he should start by complaining about the innumerable digs at the band (at him, more like), defending his guitar technique, or waving away the compliments. In the end he does none of those things because, well. There wasn't a single compliment there he'd want to wave away.
"Thank you?" He says, and Erik catches his gaze and holds it, his eyes as dark and focused as they had been during that first rehearsal.
"The rest of it has to get better," he says, and Charles is torn between wounded pride and a thrill of adrenaline at the idea of reshaping the band together, the two of them at the helm of something raw and new and exciting.
"It's a good record," Charles says because he believes that, he really does.
"Not good enough," Erik says.
"One man's opinion," Charles says.
Erik shrugs.
"True," he says, and something in his eyes goes closed off. Charles finds himself scrambling frantically to bring back the fire from moments before.
"That's not to say we can't make some changes," he says, doing his best imitation of casual. "There's always room for improvement. I'm only saying, a complete, overnight overhaul isn't the best idea. There are people who listened to that record and liked it quite a lot, you know. There's a reason we managed to throw a tour together."
Erik is frowning at him, but it's not anger Charles feels directed his way. It's evaluation. It would almost be worse, if it didn't make his skin feel so deliciously tight.
"Better to do it quickly," he says. "Like ripping off a bandaid."
But he's putting up a token argument, and Charles is glad he can already tell the difference. Their interaction has shifted from field of battle to conversation. Not that, in their brief acquaintance, there's always been much difference.
"We start our tour in a week and a half," he says. "It's going to be difficult enough for you to learn all of our material, let alone start making changes."
Erik waves a dismissive hand.
"I can learn the songs," he says. "You let me worry about that. If you're constitutionally capable of letting someone else worry about anything, that is."
"You've known me for two days," Charles says, wry.
"Think how well I'll have you figured out by the time we're done touring," Erik says, grinning. It sounds worryingly like a promise.
"We've gotten sidetracked," Charles says determinedly, yanking the conversation back onto his own terms. "My point was this: if you want to make changes, you'll have to prioritize them. We can't just rewrite all our musical arrangements in the next ten days."
"Sean, then," Erik says. "His voice. Let's see what we can do with that."
+ + +
"Listen, dude, the rehearsal stuff-that was just me screwing around," Sean says that afternoon. "I do that in concert and it's gonna, like, scare people away."
"Like an air raid siren," Alex offers.
"Oh my God, shut up," Raven hisses at him.
"I think there might be a happy medium," Charles offers.
"What, like, controlled screeching?" Sean asks, frowning.
"If you want to put it that way, yes. Although your voice is extraordinary, Sean, I'm not sure I'd call it screeching."
"I would," Erik says, "but I'd mean it as a compliment."
"Okay, but dude, no offense? You're the guy who threw one of his sticks so hard it broke a window. You can be a little intense."
"No one's disputing Erik's intensity, but that particular incident never actually took place," Charles says. Erik starts, throws him a sharp glance, and Charles feels a jolt of victory. It'd been a lucky guess. He's heard the story, same as everyone else, but as legend has it Erik went into a rage after being rejected by a pretty young thing at the bar, and Charles is starting to think that would be thoroughly out of character.
"Your voice," Erik tells Sean, "is perfect for throwing yourself at something. You know that feeling when you're throwing yourself at a wall, over and over, and you can't fucking break through? You've got that in your voice. There's a reason so many good songs are about anger."
"Not just anger," Charles interrupts. "Pain, sorrow-joy can be raw. Here, actually, I'd like to try something."
He leans over to whisper to Raven and she nods, slides onto the piano bench in the corner. It's Moira's piano, a dusty old relic from the days when she thought she'd keep up with piano lessons once her mother wasn't breathing down her neck, but Raven puts fingers to keys and it's practically as good as new. She plays the opening notes of, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," the tempo slowed as she leans hard toward a minor key. Sean steps up to the mic, looking uncertain, and Erik isn't saying anything, so Charles says, "You know this song. Just sing it."
The first few notes are hesitant, and sound like nothing so much as a man who knows everyone's listening to him. Charles clears his throat and picks up his guitar, and Alex takes the hint, starts picking out the bass line. Erik only takes a few steps back to lean against the wall and listen, his head tilted to the side and his arms crossed, but apparently it's enough because by the time Sean's dragged his way down the first high notes of the chorus his voice is achingly imperfect, full of grief and longing and more than a little anger.
"You," Charles says to Erik after the last, thready echoes of, I wanna hold your hand, have spent themselves in the corners of the garage, "are a genius."
"It wasn't my idea," Erik says. He's staring at Charles, and even though he's still leaning against the wall alert-tensed-poised is scrawled into every line of his body. Poised for what, Charles isn't entirely sure he knows.
"It was," Charles counters, "and it was brilliant."
"It wasn't," Erik says. "I would never have chosen-that song, that's what was brilliant."
"Don't get me wrong," Raven says, "I am totally on board for some mutual admiration society stuff, but right now we should probably practice some of the songs we actually plan on playing in concert."
"That one, for a start," Charles says, tearing his focus away from Erik. "You were fantastic, Sean."
"Thanks," Sean says, unusually quiet. "But, dude, I don't know if a concert audience is gonna go for that. It's kind of outside the norm for us, you know?"
"It's way outside the fucking norm," Alex says suddenly, "that's why it's so fucking good."
Sean blinks, and then grins.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," Alex says in a tone which is probably aiming for dismissive. "Now, what else is on the set list?"
+ + +
For the next ten days Erik arrives to each rehearsal first and leaves last; in fact, it becomes something of a trial to evict him from Moira's garage as the sun dips toward the horizon.
"Okay, let me introduce you to the concept of the noise complaint," Moira says at eight o'clock one evening. "It's when you're making a shit ton of noise, and people complain."
"I'm familiar," Erik says.
"Do not think that just because you're six feet tall, I won't throw you out of here on your ass," Moira says. Raven is reluctantly tucking her sheet music back into her bag; Alex is carefully settling his bass into its case, and Sean is collapsing the microphone stand.
"I'm going to get this hook, just give me another five minutes," Erik says, and Moira throws her hands up in the air.
"Deal with this, he's yours," she tells Charles. He determinedly ignores Raven's snickering.
"You've got the hook," he says instead, leaning against the side of Erik's kit. "It's brilliant, it sounded fantastic on that last run."
"It did," Erik agrees. "And it'll sound better five minutes from now."
"When Moira says go, we go," Charles says; he feels suddenly like a teacher scolding That Kid everyone knows will never give a shit, and it's making him irrationally angry. "It's her garage."
"Come on, we can grab a late dinner or something," Raven says.
"I could murder a grilled cheese right now," Sean declares suddenly.
"This is going to make us better," Erik says, as if he finds them all unspeakably dense.
"We're done for the night," Charles says, and really it isn't that important, Moira (probably) wouldn't call out a hit on them if they overstayed their welcome this once, but Erik's making Charles' teeth grind together just now, and yes, alright, it's possible some of this is for his own personal satisfaction.
"Get fucked," Erik says, but he does get up and walk out of the garage, at least.
"So…dinner?" Raven says brightly into the sudden silence and then under her breath, as she slips her arm through Charles', "He's just trying to get this one right. I think it's-actually I think it's sort of great, to be honest."
+ + +
It's such a small thing, really, a petty argument that took up two minutes of Charles' time and has now somehow consumed all of his attention. He realizes it may have something to do with the fact that Erik chose that particular song to make his stand.
It isn't as if it's a song that shows off the drums (he's not sure he's ever written anything that really shows off the drums, actually; he wonders rather guiltily if that's why Angel left) or showcases Erik's exceptional talent (he hasn't gotten around to that yet, can't ignore the crunching nerves in his stomach whenever he tries). It's slow and plaintive, largely acoustic, and Charles has a sharp, technicolor memory of writing the lyrics, cobbling together the music from Raven's input and his own suddenly urgent need to get this one right. He'd been worried that it was all a tad melodramatic, and God only knows he's never wanted to be one of those people who yanks all the angry, sad, desperate corners of himself into the limelight, but the first time he'd shown Raven the lyrics, tried out a few chords for her on the guitar, she'd cried. As a general rule he's ready to drop every pacifist ideal he's ever professed at the sight of Raven crying, but in this particular instance it'd felt like she'd given him some kind of prize.
He's aware that probably makes him a terrible person.
+ + +
The thing about "Bring You Peace" is that it's the only love song Charles has ever written, and it's to his band.
(The second thing about "Bring You Peace" is that for one horrifyingly stilted week, Moira had thought it was to her; when she'd realized it wasn't relief and had lit her up like a beacon and her eyes had gone overwhelmingly fond, and rather ironically Charles is now fairly certain that if he was ever going to fall in love with her, it would have been then.)
Children Of The Atom will be the first to acknowledge that they're a collection of misfits (Alex says they're the beginning of a joke: a Juilliard dropout and a juvenile delinquent and a former McDonald's cashier walk into a bar, he says, but he can't figure out the punchline yet), and in her angrier moments Raven accuses him of being a collector.
"Charles Xavier, rich ex-socialite, genius, and expert guitar player. Hobbies: insanely expensive food and collecting aimless twenty-somethings for his pet band," she'd said the last time, after he'd accidentally reacted to a bad review by telling her that her piano playing was "very pretty." He'd flinched, barely, and she'd sighed, and an hour later they'd apologized. He still wonders, sometimes, if she understands that none of them are display pieces, pretty little rehabilitation projects for the rich kid to tackle. They're a band; they're his band, but they're Raven's band too, and Alex's, and Sean's, and Moira's, and, well. Erik's now, he supposes.
"Bring You Peace," is Charles' hope for their future, written in a key which makes it clear he wishes it were a promise. It's a rebuke of the world, and occasionally of himself, and if he had any distance from it whatsoever he would probably understand it to be very, very good.
+ + +
When Erik turns up to rehearsal the next day he starts in on "Bring You Peace" before anyone has a chance to say a word, and he plays it so perfectly that Charles feels as if someone is shining a light on his dusty words, picking them up and shaking them off to the beat of a pulsing bass drum. When Sean's voice-still wavering between his usual slightly raspy tenor and the swooping, raw, compelling thing he's been churning out at Erik's insistence-has left the last note behind, Charles feels it's probably safe to risk a glance at Erik. Except that Erik is staring straight at him, his entire body leaning forward in his chair almost like it might be unconscious, his eyes wide and dark and almost hopeful, so no, not safe, not safe at all.
That's the first time it's explicit, this feeling Charles has of falling so hard and so fast he can hear the wind whistling in his ears. That's the first time, and it's a moment Charles will pinpoint later as the moment monumental disaster became not just likely, but inescapable.
"So, first date of the tour tomorrow," Alex says to Sean two hours later as rehearsal breaks up. "You gonna sing like that for the gig?"
"Of course he is," Erik says, raising an eyebrow. "It's the best damn thing he's ever done."
Sean laughs, apparently unfazed by Erik's total dismissal of any and all previous accomplishments.
"I dunno, dude," he says to Alex. "I still don't know if people will go for it, you know?"
"If they don't it's their goddamn loss," Erik says and then adds suddenly, clearly inspired, "If you don't, I won't play."
Alex huffs out an incredulous laugh, looking seriously unimpressed, but Erik doesn't back off in the slightest.
"I'm not joking," he says easily, as if he's discussing the weather or his neighbor's azaleas. "If you don't sound like that tomorrow, Sean, you don't have a drummer tomorrow."
"Dude," Sean says, and Charles honestly isn't sure what he means.
+ + +
The gig is at an old theater, the kind of place that's been halfway remodeled every twenty years or so, with all the incredible clashes of interior design that implies (electric blue carpeting wars with art nouveau panels just inside the doorway; the chandeliers above the stage are so gothic they're practically writing their own novels). They arrive what seems like eons before they're needed, and then hours blur into a five minute window of last-second soundcheck and Erik's shockingly nervous eyes.
Charles resists the urge to ask if he's ready for this, desperate not to offend him at this rather crucial juncture, and is rewarded by a flat smile just before they go out on stage that seems to imply both that Erik is feeling ill and that anyone who dares ask him about it will be beheaded by a cymbal.
The first few songs are standbys, which Charles finds unaccountably thrilling-they have standbys, Jesus they're a real band-and Sean clearly registers that the crowd is enjoying the toned down version of his voice because although he steps onto stage looking conflicted by the time they've finished "It's Atomic" he's just grinning, reaching up a hand to push his mop of red hair away from his forehead and throwing a cheerful salute toward the man in the audience who is shouting something about how brilliant they all are.
"Bring You Peace" is third on the set list, and Charles shivers in anticipation, remembering how it had sounded in rehearsal yesterday, his words come to life as if they'd never been otherwise. Raven plays the opening chord on the piano and Erik answers her, a slow, steady beat on the drums that ties the whole thing together (not showy, Charles thinks defiantly toward every bit of gossip he's ever heard about the man, not showy or egotistical or demanding; perfect) even as Charles presses fingers to strings, his heart kicking against his chest at the thrill of playing this song, this way.
Which is when Erik makes good on his threat and freezes as if suspended mid-motion, his arms still held tense and ready in the air. Raven glances over at Charles, and then back at Erik, her face doing something complicated, and then stills her fingers on the keys even as Alex, looking baffled and angry, clearly about to demand an explanation, presses his palm flat to his bass' strings so that they still. The entire theater has gone eerily silent, and Charles' fingers never fumble on his guitar but he's buzzing with fury, he's still and quiet and raging with it. Sean throws him a terrified glance over his shoulder, the look of a man in free fall, before he curls his hand, white-knuckled, around the microphone stand and lets his voice shudder out into the empty air, hoarse and a little frightened and throbbing with a plea that could be Sean acting the hell out of the song or could be Sean desperately missing his musical accompaniment. Erik kicks the drums back in with a low, ponderous thump, a look of fierce triumph in his eyes, and Raven adds a quavering soprano harmony line even as she brings the piano into play once more, making it sound hesitant and small. Charles, still transfixed by the way his song suddenly sounds all around him, doesn't notice right away that Alex is still staring at Sean, his eyes huge and his fingers unmoving, and so it's another fifteen seconds before Charles manages to not-so-surreptitiously ram his shoulder into Alex's and then the song has a bass line again and Erik's eyes are searing chips of ice that Charles can't quite look away from even when the crowd rises to its feet to scream and cheer and probably throw their underwear at Sean, Charles thinks absentmindedly, that's the sort of thing this environment is supposed to engender.
This is a disaster, Charles thinks as Erik finally catches his eye and grins so fiercely it feels like he's laying siege. This is a monumental disaster.
+ + +
The rest of the night is almost a letdown after the ridiculous high of that third song, and then the show's over and Moira's shepherding them toward the exit, thanking the theater's staff and asking security personnel to make sure they don't have any trouble getting to the bus. The first breath of cold night air burns after the close humidity of the theater, and normally it would be a welcome shift but Charles finds he doesn't quite want to leave the insulated world of that stage, a place where risks always pay off and he doesn't have to worry about what to say next because the words have already been written down for him.
"What you did back there," he says to Erik, who is flush with triumph, looking happier than Charles has seen him yet, but Raven jumps in with a huge smile on her face, leaping to walk backwards in front of Erik, grabbing his arm to tow him across the parking lot.
"That was genius," she declares, looking awed. "That was seriously genius, did you hear us? And oh my God, Sean, you are mind-blowing lately, I can't even deal with this you guys, we are awesome."
Sean grins at her, easy and loose the way he always gets after a show (so, the way he is all the time, Charles amends, but turned up to eleven).
"Thanks," he says, his eyes roaming lazily over each of them in turn. "That was pretty good, huh?"
"That was incredible," Erik says level and dead serious, but Charles can't get over how real the smile on his face is-if he had to choose a word, he thinks, it would be unencumbered, which is a strange word for a smile but Jesus, it is, it's weightless.
Alex is walking a little off to the left, his hands crammed in his pockets, his head tilted down and sideways so that he seems to be intently watching nothing so much as Sean's feet. Charles frowns to himself, wondering if this is something he's going to need to worry about, but he's distracted by the fact that Erik has fallen back a step so that they're keeping pace, walking side-by-side.
"That song," Erik says, "that's how it should sound."
Charles swallows because he suspects, he's suspected since that rehearsal if he's being honest, that there was a reason "Bring You Peace" had fallen prey to Erik's focus.
"Maybe," he says carefully, trying not to let the spike of yes and right and yes at the thought of how it had sounded, plaintive and hopeful in that hushed theater, interfere with what he has to say next. "But what you did-you shouldn't have. He could just as easily have panicked, you know."
Up ahead Sean is laughing, shoving an open palm against Alex's shoulder, "Come on dude, lighten up, we're rock stars," his hair falling over his forehead in sweat-soaked tangles. He doesn't look like the kind of person who panics, but Charles knows, because he knows Sean. He knows how bad it could have been.
"A little panic is good for that song," Erik says, and he's already shutting himself away again. Charles feels a burst of frustration so clear and sudden it's difficult to contain.
"You cut every lifeline he had, all at once," Charles says. "It worked out, but it might not have. And it wasn't particularly kind."
"It worked," Erik says, and there's a sharp difference between a level voice and a dulled one, a closed one, Charles thinks, feeling as if someone has punched him in the stomach.
It's stupid, an overreaction, post-concert adrenaline and the heady start of a new tour combining to make him just a little bit insane. Or at least, that's what he determinedly reminds himself of every five minutes for the three-hour bus ride, Raven asleep on his shoulder and Erik near-motionless in the seat in front of him, his own shoulders so stiff he might be carved from marble.
+ + +
When they all stumble off the bus and Moira hands them their room keys for the night they're in Vermont, and Charles tries to blink his headache away, tries to shake the surreal feeling he always gets when he crosses state lines in his sleep.
It doesn't really work.
He's just sunk gratefully onto his motel bed, trying desperately to believe he's going to get any sleep at all with Erik's flattened voice ringing over and over again in his head, somehow accusatory while also being entirely devoid of emotion, when there's a knock on the door. He struggles upright and peers through the peephole and it's Erik, of course it is. Suddenly everything in the room is sharp-edged, crystal clear, almost too real. He shakes his head and opens the door, planning to say something about the time of night and just what exactly Erik wants people to think, but what comes out is, "Of course it made the song better. You made the song better. I mean-Sean was incredible, but .You. And that song is-you chose it on purpose."
Erik crowds into the room, closing the door behind him, and says, "Of course I did."
"You can't just do that," Charles says, and a weak chuckle escapes him. "You can't just turn up to a few rehearsals and decide everything's going to change. That isn't how this works."
"How does it work, then?" Erik asks. It's not sarcasm, Charles realizes with a start, it's genuine curiosity.
"I don't know," he says. "I think I know how it ought to work. But you really fuck things up."
"Heard that before," Erik says with a mirthless smile, and Charles knows yet again that he's said the wrong thing. This time, though, he thinks he might be able to fix it.
"I've never wanted to work with anyone more than I want to work with you," he says, and the shocked, slow-blooming wonder in Erik's eyes is perfectly on target. "You're probably insane, but you're some kind of genius, and you're not afraid of any of the things you should be, which is exactly what I need. You've got to stay."
He realizes afterwards that he probably sounded a little desperate, and a lot needy, and also like he might've been talking about something besides playing music. At the time, all he realizes is that Erik is closing the space between them until they're practically toe-to-toe, that Erik's breath is warm against his ear when he says, "I have never seen someone do such a simultaneously excellent and terrible job of acting uninterested, and I'm tired of it."
"There's a time and a place for ambiguity," Charles says faintly even as his hand, of its own volition, slides under the hem of Erik's shirt near his hip, where it's coming untucked.
"This isn't it," Erik practically growls, and then Charles is being spun around and pushed up against his the door of his own hotel room, and that decides things.
The kiss is frantic and about as far from chaste as it is possible to get while still clothed (still clothed, Charles thinks distantly, ought to fix that), and Erik nips at Charles' lower lip as he pulls away, his eyes dark and intense, his hands fisted in Charles' shirt. This, Charles cannot help but think, is one of those things Erik's focus is ideally suited to.
"Bed," he manages to say in between kisses and oh, he thinks to himself rather hysterically, I was right, not much sleep tonight.
+ + +
"I'm a coward," he tells Moira when he joins her at the motel's continental breakfast the next morning.
"Do tell," she says, but she's absorbed with skimming the morning's papers, and anyway he didn't really plan on explaining to her that only a coward sneaks out of his own motel room before the gorgeous man in his bed wakes up.
"How're the reviews?" Alex asks, wandering over to their table looking something like seventeen-point-oh-five percent awake.
"Not too much written, but what's here is incredibly positive. I think we count last night as a win. Actually, I think we would have to count it as a win without any reviews at all because you," she nods at Sean who has just joined them, a pillow crease running down the right side of his face, "were fantastic."
"Thanks," Sean says and then leans over her shoulder, wide-eyed.
"Yes," she says, sounding resigned, I thought you might want to see that."
Alex's eyes skim the paper in Moira's hands and then go suddenly sullen, and Charles leans over, intrigued despite the churning in his stomach that's insistently telling him Erik hasn't come downstairs yet.
It's a photo, taken from the crowd, hundreds of hands thrown up in the air as Sean leans hard into the microphone. The caption is a quote from Anna, 21, who thinks Sean is "super talented and drop dead gorgeous."
"Holy shit, dude," Sean says, elbowing Alex in the ribs, his eyes wide. "I have groupies."
"Yeah, whatever," Alex says.
"Can you seriously not be happy for the sudden advent of my sex life?" Sean demands as he tugs Alex toward the breakfast buffet. "Do you get how rock and roll this is? Wait, scratch that, do you get how this involves sex? On, like, a regular basis?"
"Whatever," Alex repeats, shaking himself free of Sean's hold, nominally so that he can grab a plate.
"Oh God," Moira says, staring after them with wide eyes. "Nothing can ever be simple with you people, can it?"
If only you knew, Charles thinks, and closes his eyes. Honestly, a face plant (followed, obviously, by a nap) right in the middle of his omelette sounds awfully good right now.
"Good morning," Erik says, and Charles' eyes fly open. Erik is sliding into the seat across from Charles and Moira, looking entirely unfazed and holding a blueberry muffin.
"A muffin," Charles mutters to himself, incredulous for no reason whatsoever, and Erik glances at him, one eyebrow raised.
"It's a common breakfast food, often containing fruit of some variety," he drawls. "Would you like one?"
"No," Charles says decisively. "No thank you."
Moira glances between the two of them, her eyebrows raised, and then makes a clear decision to say absolutely nothing.
For a moment there is deafening silence and then Charles rallies.
"We're planning to check out the park after breakfast," he tells Erik determinedly. "Looks like the weather's going to hold, so we'll be outside tonight."
"Acoustics'll probably be shit," Erik says, "but everybody'll be in a good mood. They always are at these outdoor things."
"Mm," Charles hums noncommittally and wrenches himself in the general direction of breakfast. A bowl of cereal, he thinks, or maybe some toast.
Jesus Christ, his life is ridiculous.
+ + +
The park is in the center of town, and Moira leads them straight to a makeshift stage erected at the edge of the lake.
"Oh, this is gorgeous," Raven says, hopping up two of the three steps at once. Alex skips them entirely, vaulting himself straight onto the stage and extending a hand up to Charles and then to Sean; Erik waves him off, makes his way onto the stage, and slides into his seat behind the drum kit that is already set up, along with the rest of the band's equipment (Charles makes a mental note to thank Moira).
"Alright, let's try a few songs," Charles says optimistically.
To be fair, they stick to their set list through a song and a half, before Sean decides to insert a thirty-second stretch of yodeling into the middle of "Normal," for which Raven gleefully supplies vaguely Bavarian piano accompaniment. Alex rolls his eyes, but he moves his bass line down an octave to accommodate the change. Charles grins in spite of himself when Sean finishes the detour with a fervent bit of head banging, and then an Elvis-inspired, "Thank you, thank you very much," which rings across the water along with Raven's full-throated laughter and Alex's, "Guess you missed your calling as a mountaineer."
"Knowing how yodeling sounds in the space is going to be wildly beneficial tonight," Erik says quietly, and Charles risks a nervous glance back at him only to find that he's frowning, tapping his fingers impatiently against the side of his floor tom.
"They're just messing around," he offers quietly, and then winces internally at the connotations.
"Well they ought to be taking this seriously," Erik says, refusing to meet Charles' eyes, and before Charles can decide if that was meant to be quite so weighed down with subtext Raven is cheerfully giving in to Sean's urging that they set "Hey Jude" to a polka tune.
"Christ," Erik says, scornful, and Charles takes a careful step closer.
"They're having fun," he says. "That's permitted even with you here, surely."
He knows it sounded harsh, knows he let protective pride and his ongoing confusion about just what exactly last night was get the better of him, and he spares a second to regret it.
"The amount of wasted potential contained on this stage is stunning," Erik says, cutting without missing a beat. This is not the side of Erik he wants to explore, Charles thinks distantly, even as he says, "Potential I've let go to waste, you're suggesting."
Erik shrugs, an oddly graceful movement, and Charles is struck by the sudden, devastating thought that he has seen bare skin move over those shoulders, the knowledge that if he tugged Erik's collar just a little to the left he would find a mark made by his own mouth.
"Wasted potential," Erik says again, and Charles grits his teeth.
"Music is meant to make people happy," he says. "There's nothing wrong with that."
"Music is meant to do a hell of a lot more than make people happy," Erik says, his eyes more flat by the second.
"Just because it doesn't make you happy," Charles says, thinking about everything he knows (has, maybe, made it his business to know) about Erik Lensherr, near-legend, thinking about bands abandoned because they were deemed lacking in drive, could-have-been boyfriends slighted by just exactly where they fell in Erik's priorities and, once, a star-making record deal turned (decisively) down because the producer had the nerve to ask if he could attend a recording session.
"What exactly would you know about what makes me happy?" Erik demands with a controlled fury Charles recognizes from his drumming, and Charles thinks again about everything he knows about Erik Lensherr, about everything he's heard and everything he's seen, and is forced to an unwelcome conclusion.
"Nothing at all," he says, feeling suddenly very tired indeed.
+ + +
They open that night with "It's Atomic," and it's absolutely fantastic. That's the thing, Charles thinks as Sean belts out the chorus, that's the thing. It's going to be a nasty, splintering moment when Erik leaves. He isn't sure he'll even have a band anymore, after.
"Wonderful," Moira says afterwards, beaming at them with undiluted pride. "I'm taking you out to dinner."
They find a pizza parlor not too far from the freeway and cram themselves into a booth together; Charles isn't paying quite enough attention to seating arrangements (maybe because he's paying a little too much attention to the way Erik's mouth is curved around a smile, a little too much attention to how proud he looks, thinking a little too much about how he wants more chances to put that look there) and through some quick reshuffling he suspects Raven of orchestrating he finds himself sitting next to Erik, their elbows and knees bumping as they scan the menu.
Well of course, Charles thinks, and loses something like a minute and a half contemplating how warm Erik is pressed against his side (as much as he'd known last night that it might be just the once, as much as he hadn't been able to stop the voice in his head from pointing out that Erik never stayed in one place, never, he still hadn't quite managed to memorize the feeling of Erik's bare skin against his; it wasn't for lack of trying).
"This is awesome," Raven declares as the pizza arrives, and presumably she means the last two concerts, Sean's new approach to old material, how Erik is beginning to prod at the edges of their own music just to see what will give, but Sean says, "Dude, yes, this is the best pizza I have ever seen in my life," and from the way Raven is gazing starry-eyed at slice of chicken-and-red-pepper she's dragging onto her plate, his interpretation could well be correct.
"Ew," Alex says, wrinkling his nose up at Moira's vegetarian choice, and Moira reaches across the table to slap him upside the head.
"Hey!" He says, indignant. "Free speech! I'm allowed to protest your pizza if it's disgusting," and Sean chimes in with, "Batman would totally be on Alex's side, that's all I have to say," which doesn't exactly diffuse the age old vegetarian versus meat-lover's pizza debate, but does shove it sideways into the brand new arena of, "Which Kind of Pizza Would Your Favorite Superhero Eat?" In the middle of Raven's treatise on Cat Woman's love for Mediterranean-style, Alex and Sean get into an essentially pointless, to-the-death shoving match over the fourth-to-last slice of pepperoni. Raven solves the problem by grabbing the entire box and offering it to a passerby, who takes it with a bemused thank you while Sean and Alex watch, helpless.
"They have to be like this," Charles finds himself telling Erik, who is watching it all with something not so far from amusement on his face. "Maybe making music isn't all about having fun, or being happy, but it's part of it, it has to be."
"This isn't making music," Erik points out, gesturing around the sauce-splattered table.
"But it is," Charles says, which isn't exactly what he means-he means that this is a part of it, that without this the music wouldn't happen either, that this is important-and Erik glances around the table again.
"Maybe it is for you," he says, and Charles can't tell if it's a concession or a condemnation.
+ + +
They pile onto the tour bus after dinner, luggage in tow. The tour bus isn't so much a bus, of course, as it is a VW Microbus, complete with atrocious green leather interiors. Raven's affectionately nicknamed it "The Monster," and with good reason-the engine occasionally makes noises that seem to indicate it isn't far from growing paws, sprouting fangs, and chowing down on a few innocent bystanders. Still, it gets the job done, and has for nearly a year and a half now, with occasional mechanical encouragement from Alex.
"All aboard," Moira says with a tip of her invisible conductor's cap, and Raven, Sean, and Alex immediately claim one of the bench seats. Erik sprawls onto the one across from them, leaving Charles with the choice of settling back against Erik's arm or looking like an asshole who wants his own damn spot.
He dithers, honest-to-god dithers, which makes him feel a bit like someone's great aunt, but only for maybe ten seconds before he decides it's better to look like an asshole who wants his own damn spot than look like an needy guitarist who's desperate to cuddle with his drummer, even if he is more of the latter and less of the former. He determinedly doesn't make eye contact with anyone as he settles into his seat, but out of the corner of his eye he swears he sees Erik's head half-turn, a quick jerk of movement before he catches himself, looks away again.
Charles sighs, tips his head back and stares at the ceiling for a minute.
It's only a two hour drive to Montreal. Surely he can survive two hours in an enclosed space with an attractive, intelligent, talented man he's just recently had frantic motel room sex with?
Fifteen minutes later, Charles has had more than enough of Erik's fingers tapping out a song he can't quite place on the seat next to him. He wants nothing more than to reach out and still the other man's hand, press it down to the seat. Admittedly, he'd like to follow that up with straddling his waist and kissing him in a manner which could only be described as "incredibly fucking thorough," but first he'd stop the noise. Definitely.
A minute after that the tapping stops, abruptly, and Charles realizes with a start that he's been humming along. It's The Doors, "Touch Me," and Charles would probably take this moment to accuse Erik of being an unconscionable tease but when he glances up Erik looks so startled, his eyes widened by shock and something a little like hope. Charles hastily decides to give him the benefit of the doubt and tugs his attention back to the ceiling.
This is why you don't sleep with the drummer, Charles, a voice in his head informs him. You end up throwing everything out of rhythm. Pun intentional. And excellent, by the way.
The voice in his head sounds exasperated, resigned, tired, but ultimately fond. It sounds like Moira, in other words, and Charles has learned to trust Moira.
Yes, I know, he thinks at it. Although I'm going to have to disagree with you about the pun.
+ + +
He spends the rest of the bus ride staring out the window, watching the landscape dim until it becomes a blur of light and shadow, a scene that yanks at the back of his mind, insists he should be writing. He scrubs a hand over his eyes and gets out his notebook, but he never gets further than two or three lines before the entire exercise spirals into a melodramatic treatise on the fear of being left behind, which makes him angry and sets something gnawing at his stomach lining, so he shelves the entire project and falls into a fitful sleep for the last half hour, his cheek pressed against the cool glass of the window.
It's a relief to shut the door of his motel room and lock it, shut himself into a neat little box for the night. There is a soothing level of predictability about motel rooms-this one looks like someone furnished it in the 1970s and then declared the decor timeless. Charles sinks into the peach-colored, quilted armchair and fumbles for the remote, resigned to the fact that he's not getting much sleep tonight.
PART II.