Fic: Somebody Break My Heart, Somebody Shake My Brains (2/3)

[and_backagain]

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, start about halfway through this post. I'll post to fic comms when I'm finished with Part III.



PART I.

Rehearsal, he reflects as he tunes his guitar the following afternoon, is meant to be a safe place; like the motel room, but with far more music and far less paisley. He remembers introducing Alex to Sean and Raven, remembers the way Sean had said, "Hey look, we've got a band," as if he'd found a dollar bill in his coat pocket. And it was true-Alex, once he realized he didn't have to impress anyone except with a steady bass line, was a backbone they could all arrange themselves around, an unexpected pocket of consistency and determination and sarcasm. So there it was, a not-quite-accidental band, and Charles looked forward to rehearsals more than anything in recent memory. During rehearsals, he didn't have to struggle to fully understand people, didn't have to worry that he was missing a conversational nuance or a crucial bit of context. It was all there, spelled out in the way Raven still arched her fingers like a concert pianist and Sean could milk every bit of joy from "Good Day Sunshine" and Alex planted his feet against the concrete floor of Moira's garage. So maybe Erik is right, and he hasn't been pushing them to their full potential, but he cannot help the flare of anger he feels at the suggestion he hadn't known it was there.

Erik arrives twenty minutes late, flicks a dismissive look in Charles' direction, and starts tapping out a rhythm on his drums.

It's unfair, Charles thinks rather petulantly, that Erik should turn up and disrupt his life like this, tug at the corners and crumple the edges like so much tinfoil, kiss him as if he can't decide whether or not it's goodbye, and then take this away from him, too. This is rehearsal. This is sacred. This is a time for Raven to call him a stick-in-the-mud and wreak merry havoc with his amplifier while Sean grins away at the microphone and Alex pretends he's way too cool to find any of them funny. This is a time when Charles knows precisely where he stands, when he knows he is making people happier than they would be otherwise. This is not a time to be tapping his foot against the stage, just barely out of sync, as he listens to Erik draw a long, rushing clamor out of the cymbals and wonders what he'd see if he turned around (if their eyes would meet, if Erik would look angry or amused or just look at him at all, if he himself would manage to stop thinking like a harlequin romance novel). This is not a time for doubt and uncertainty and his spine stiffening as he neatly catalogs all the ways this could go even more terribly wrong.

"I think that piano part should be in a minor key," Erik says suddenly, and Charles' response is automatic. It's mostly self-preservation, he'll confess. He doesn't want to turn around and have this argument. He doesn't want to turn around at all.

"The song already ask an awful lot of audiences as it is," Charles says, thinking of the eerie wailing Sean's been threading through the air lately on the chorus and the uneven bass line Alex has been plucking out, never quite where it ought to be. "Best to leave them something to hold on to, don't you think?"

"Whatever you say," Erik says, sounding disinterested, and oh, Charles thinks, an unpleasant falling sensation in his stomach, he wanted to have the argument after all.

It's too late, he realizes as rehearsal sweeps forward, the piano part falling sweetly through the air in its comforting key. It's a startling, disquieting thought, that the conversation had dropped into silence before it even began, and he sets it aside, piles it on top of long, callused, drummers' fingers; deft, capable, oddly clumsy with silverware; I find that endearing and his hair falls into his eyes after a show; I'd like to push it away; I'm thinking about this because I am absolutely hopeless and also possibly a masochist, for Christ's sake Charles pull yourself together and futilely locks the door.

+ + +

It isn't that they don't talk.

They exchange good mornings over eggs and muddy coffee in countless motel dining rooms, they say please and thank you as if they've just learnt which pleasantries constitute good manners-they go so far as to trade inanities about the weather. It's enough to make Charles want to grab Erik by the shoulders and shake until an avalanche of sarcastic barbs and brilliant, prickly observations fall loose, injecting an energy into the band that he knows has somehow drained away.

"What's wrong with you?" Moira demands one evening. Charles is glaring down at his plate of waffles (Sean had insisted on breakfast for dinner for the entire table, for reasons Charles does not entirely understand), his hand warm where it had brushed against Erik's as he passed the jam.

"Nothing," Charles insists, feeling his cheeks heat as he remembers how he'd startled and then flinched away from Erik's perfectly composed gaze, feeling like some sort of infatuated child. He's added his poker face to the list of many, many things about Erik which are entirely unfair. The list also includes his musical talent, his jawline, and his ability to project apathy in waves when Charles is sure (was sure, thought he was sure) Erik is the most passionate person he's ever met.

"Oh come on," Moira says exasperatedly, pouring syrup over her pancakes. "You ought to know by now I'm not an idiot. What is it, did he forget an anniversary? You know what, no, never mind, you wouldn't mind that, I've got a better one: he doesn't like Simon & Garfunkel. I keep telling you, if you make that a deal breaker-"

"Shut up," Charles mutters urgently, but Erik's sitting across the table and paying him absolutely no attention. Moira arches an eyebrow, bemused, and Charles says, "We're not," and then has no idea where to go from there, really, because they did, but now they aren't, and also no one is pushing him until he gives in and lets Erik doing something strange to the sound system so that the microphones fuzz and screech their way into something loud and raucous and absolutely phenomenal so, really, what is there to say?

"Are you telling me you aren't having sex with that man?" Moira says, looking genuinely affronted. "Charles, he's pining. It's driving me insane. He has puppy eyes, for Christ's sake."

"I'm not-he's the one who-you're insane," Charles says. "Absolutely insane. Certifiable. I don't know why I've kept you around so long."

"Why I've kept you around so long, you mean," Moira says with a twinkle in her eye, and Charles sighs and relents.

"Alright, yes," he says, taking a gloomy bite of his waffles. "You're indispensable, completely and absolutely, we'd be lost without you, never leave us, fill in your own pathetic begging here."

"Awww," Moira says, grinning, and throws her arms around his shoulders for a hug that is at least two parts mocking. It's fond mocking, Charles knows, so he doesn't really have much to complain about.

+ + +

"Rise and shine," Moira trills from outside his motel room at seven o'clock the next morning. "Come and stuff some breakfast into your face or we'll be late for the interview."

"What interview?" Charles demands groggily as he half-heartedly kicks the door open, leaning heavily on the frame.

"The one I scheduled last night, the one with the Providence Journal. They don't really care about the band, but they do have space to fill and a desperate need to seem young and hip, so apparently we'll do."

"Encouraging," Charles says, but he pinches the inside of his elbow, hard, in an effort to wake himself up. An interview is an interview, and it's always wise to present the best of yourself to someone who is about to write whatever the fuck they like.

"You really aren't sleeping with him," Moira marvels, sticking her head into the room, and Charles unceremoniously shoulders her back into the hall and shuts the door.

"Are you blind or just stupid?" Moira calls, her heels muffled against the carpeted floor as she moves down the hallway, and Charles sighs and begins to rummage through his suitcase, searching for something the Providence Journal might deem young and hip.

+ + +

"A sweater vest," Moira says, but she doesn't sound so much annoyed as resigned. "Of course. Well, are you coming?"

"Do hurry up," Erik says. "I understand we have places to go and people to see."

Moira is grinning at him, a sly, smug, look-at-me-go twist of her mouth, but instead of calling her an insufferably nosy matchmaker-which will only lead to a potent combination of public humiliation and swift vengeance-Charles says, "Good morning, Erik," and buckles his seat belt. The interview has been arranged for a coffee shop, Moira tells them (thank God, Erik says fervently, and Charles chuckles before he can remember not to) not too far from Brown's campus, and it's a short drive spent in silence.

When they arrive there's a young woman already waiting in a corner booth whom Moira introduces as Marian. She has sleek, red, pin straight hair, and her manicured fingers are resting on a tape recorder. Charles is correct when he suspects she is amused by his sweater vest. She also turns out to know her stuff, opening with a question about their first record that actually makes Charles sit up and pay attention. Moira drops casually into a seat at the next table, smiling winningly at the interviewer even as she projects what Charles reads as an unmistakable demand that he keep his answers brief, charming, and entirely devoid of stories about the time last week that Alex, Sean, and Raven may or may not have drawn an impromptu mural charting the history of the English Civil War (why, Moira had demanded, did they even know enough about the English Civil War to take up that much wall?) in the bathroom of a Boston diner at one o'clock in the morning.

"When contrasted with your first album and tour, your sound this time around has really gotten edgier," Marian says. "I think a lot of people are noticing and responding to that-how did you decide to move in that direction, and have you liked the results?"

Charles takes a long sip of his coffee, silently pleased at the chance to hear Erik talk about this-if they can't have these conversations anymore, at least Charles can eavesdrop now.

"That's really a question for Charles," Erik says, and Charles yanks his mug down to stare, knowing it's obvious and not particularly caring. Erik looks perfectly calm, unless you're someone who's spent an inordinate amount of time staring at him, which is precisely who Charles is. Erik's jaw is tight, and he is tapping his fingers restlessly against his thigh, but he's smiling at the reporter, the reporter who has now turned expectantly to Charles.

"Er, well," Charles says, and fumbles something about exploring new interests and challenging themselves musically, which is clearly bullshit, or at least it is without a mention of the impetus for that exploration, and he knows it's going to read like a pre-written soundbite, not to mention that it isn't at all what Charles means to say, but, he realizes as he glances at Erik, it's exactly what the other man expected to hear.

"-will want to know if he's seeing anyone," Marian is saying, and Charles takes a deep breath in through his nose.

"I'm so sorry, could you repeat that?" He asks.

"I said, as your popularity grows a large majority of your audiences seem extremely enamored of Sean Cassidy, your lead singer. There are a lot of folks out there who are going to be curious to know if he's seeing anyone. Any hope to offer his fans?"

"It's really none of my business, I'm afraid," Charles says, softening what he knows is a defensive answer with a smile. "I certainly think Sean deserves as much adoration as people are willing to dish out, I'll say that much. He's tremendously talented."

"A cagey answer if I ever heard one," she scolds, but she's smiling back, so that's a bullet dodged.

"And what about the two of you?" She asks, and Charles is suddenly aware that he may have dodged a bullet, but in doing so he's plummeted into a pit full of extremely sharp spikes, quicksand, and lasers.

"The two of us?" He asks in a voice which is aiming for innocent and comes out a tad closer to strangled than is ideal.

"Seeing anyone?" She prompts. Charles absolutely does not look at Erik as he does his best to mumble his way to an answer, something about being a homebody, really, and not at all rock-and-roll, and thankfully Moira takes pity on them and stands up, signaling for her check.

"I'm so sorry. This morning's something of a mad dash, I'm running the boys into the ground. Thank you so much for your time," she says, and then she's sweeping them out of the restaurant, somehow managing to pay both bills, grab the VW's keys from her purse, and hold the door open at the same time.

"You are a goddess," Charles says, slumping into his seat.

"I know," Moira says airily, and drives them back toward the motel for a morning full of absolutely no mad dashes whatsoever.

+ + +

"Moira's a goddess?" Erik asks later that day as they load their instruments into the VW, sounding tolerantly amused, the sort of voice he uses to draw Charles deliberately into an argument, the sort of voice Charles hasn't heard in what feels like far too long. Charles' breath catches, which is a ridiculously overdramatic reaction to someone's tone, for Christ's sake.

"It was a very nice save," he says after a moment. "Lord knows I don't want to be talking about my love life to someone with a tape recorder."

"No?" Erik asks, boarding the minibus, and Charles can actually hear him smirking. "And Moira doesn't want that either, does she?"

"Well, no," Charles says and then, "Oh, no. She and I, we're not-I mean, not to suggest that you'd care if we were, but we never, never have. Or, well, we went to dinner once and I think we both thought it might have been a date, but then halfway through we started talking about negotiating a deal with the recording studio and then she had to leave early to help her mother deal with a flat tire, and we both realized we didn't really mind, so it definitely wasn't a date of any description. Not that you needed to know, well. Any of this, really. So."

There is a lingering silence in which Charles carefully examines a lose thread at the cuff of his sleeve and turns what he knows is probably fire engine red.

"You both thought it might have been a date," Erik repeats, amusement bleeding through to the surface, and Charles almost thinks this storm of abject humiliation might be worth it to hear that, but then, of course, it never rains but it pours.

"Are we talking about Charles and Moira?" Raven says, appearing at Charles' elbow. "Ooh, fun."

Charles groans and drops his face into his hands and Raven giggles.

"Honestly, it's just the biggest train wreck that never was," Raven says to Erik. Charles determinedly contemplates the insides of his eyelids. "Can you imagine those two together? Completely unworkable. Total disaster."

"Oh?" Erik asks.

"Well yeah," Raven says in a tone that implies 'well, duh,' more than anything else. "She's much too patient with him, for one thing. And she lays things out so simply, which is brilliant, but nothing like good for Charles. Besides, he'd bore her to tears."

"Would he?" Erik asks, and Charles could swear he sounds almost taken aback, but before he can glance over to check Moira herself steps onboard, followed by Sean and Alex, who are arguing about the various merits of mini-golf and ping pong.

"I'm just saying, I'd school you on any mini-golf course in the country, bar none. Bring it on," Alex says, and Sean shrugs as he flops into his seat.

"Challenge accepted, it's a date," he says easily, and it's possible he misses the way Alex turns pink and bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning, but Sean has a tendency to be paying attention when you least expect it, so Charles is guessing he noticed. He makes a mental note to warn Sean that the Providence Journal is curious about his love life. It suddenly seems rather more important.

"You both thought it was a date," Erik says from next to Charles, and Charles realizes with a start that they are sharing a bench seat.

"I'm woefully incompetent romantically, what can I say," Charles says, in a flailing stab at oblique apology. He isn't sure if he hits his mark, and he's even less sure that's all he has to apologize for, but Erik makes a sound that is half-laugh, half-scoff, and gives the Business section of the New York Times he's unfolding to Charles. They don't talk for the rest of the trip to New York, and Charles knows he shivers rather obviously when the minibus hits a pothole and their knees brush, but at least he can file the silence under might-be-companionable. It's far too big a relief.

+ + +

There are two shows scheduled for New York and Moira is talking about a third the minute they're done on the first night, waving them on toward the bar without her as she grins down the phone line and talks about tremendous success, youth appeal, reworked material, and a ten percent increase in their fee. This is why Moira can never leave, Charles thinks as he allows Raven to tug him, laughing, in the general direction of alcohol: when she says tremendous success, youth appeal, reworked material, ten percent increase, she means, I love this music, and so should you.

He tells Erik this, once he's drunk enough to think conversation is a good idea. It probably doesn't come across quite as eloquently as he means it to.

"You know what's wrong with you?" Charles asks, peering at Erik from across the table as Raven drags Alex onto the dance floor despite the Alex equivalent of kicking and screaming (grumbled complaints and emphatic eye rolling).

"Enlighten me," Erik says dryly, tapping his fingers against the side of his glass.

"Besides the fact that you don't properly appreciate Moira," Charles says, waving his hand through the air dismissively.

"I properly appreciate Moira," Erik protests, frowning just slightly, and Charles frowns right back at him, ignoring the enthusiastically drunk voice in the back of his head which is noting the lines Erik gets on his forehead when he frowns and very much wanting to smooth them out with his thumb. Or possibly lick them. Or both!

You're drunk, Charles tells the little voice, and forges onward.

"You do not," he says, "you keep making glare-y faces at her and you always say good morning to her last, and. You do not."

"Glare-y faces?" Erik asks, which was so not the point, but oh wait, it was the point. Yes. Good. The point.

"The point," Charles says, "is what's wrong with you."

Erik is not actually looking at him right now, which is very strange. Or, it isn't strange for lately, but. It's still strange. It leaves Charles feeling off-kilter, like their entire conversation's fuzzy at the edges, and he's sure that isn't entirely because of the shots Alex procured in celebration of what he'd eloquently called their "total awesomeness."

Eloquence. Yes. That's what's wrong.

"I'm very good with words," Charles announces, "except not at you. With you. Whatever. If I could just explain it, it would be alright. Or, I think it would."

Erik is looking at him now, Charles notes with a surge of honest triumph that tells him he really is drunk. Not falling down drunk, and certainly not oh-God-who-fed-me-roadkill-last-night-someone-turn-off-the-fucking-lights-help-help-help drunk, or even stupid drunk. Willfully ignorant drunk, he thinks, that's what I am.

"Explain what?" Erik asks, and Charles would fucking swear right now to the fact that his eyes have powers, because they're very blue and very sharp and he can't move.

"Everything," he says, and there's a shake in his voice that he didn't put there.

"You're drunk," Erik tells him, sounding contemplative and derisive and maybe a little disappointed.

"Not too much," Charles says, "but yes. I am. I wish you would just understand. Or I would. It'd be easier that way, don't you think?"

"Yes, actually," Erik says, and then he's standing up from the table.

"Alex," he says, "you'll make sure he gets back to the motel alright?"

"Yeah sure," Alex says, sliding into the booth, a fresh beer in his hand. "You heading out?"

"Tired," Erik says, and he does look tired just then, as he gives Alex a weary smile. Those lines again, Charles thinks, and nearly reaches out this time.

Except then Erik's gone and Alex is looking at him with a shrewd expression that, at the moment, is making Charles decidedly uncomfortable. No one is allowed to be shrewd while he is still drunk.

"You know, the two of you should probably work your shit out," Alex says.

"Duly noted," Charles says with a sigh, and decides he's had enough drinking for the night.

+ + +

He's greeted with a faint, cottony sort of headache the next morning and a brief but vicious run-in with his own lack of depth perception, but on the sliding hangover scale of one to fuck everything, it's probably only a two or so. Which is good, Charles thinks as he starts the shower, because they have a show tonight. In New York. Their second show in New York. Their second show of three in New York.

He laughs at himself, and at the occasionally wonderful world which has seen this come to pass, and promptly gets shampoo in his mouth.

"Charles," Raven shouts fifteen minutes later, banging on his door like she's never touched alcohol in her life, even though Charles knows she drank at least twice as much as him last night. Raven is frustratingly impervious to hangovers. "Charles, come on, there's not going to be any pancakes left if you don't hurry your lazy ass up! And we have rehearsal."

Rehearsal sounds like something of an afterthought to pancakes, Charles thinks, amused.

"Give me ten minutes!" He calls back and makes it in five, just in time to snatch the last pancake away from Sean's questing fingers.

"Dude," Sean says, sounding honest-to-god scandalized. Charles shrugs, unrepentant, and takes a huge bite of syrupy goodness.

"Not cool," Sean declares, pouting, and steals half a waffle from Moira's plate.

"If this band breaks up over breakfast foods it will be the single most frustrating waste of talent I have ever seen," Erik deadpans, and Sean shrugs.

"You're just upset 'cause you didn't get here in time for crepes," he says.

"There were crepes?" Raven demands, at the same time Moira says, "Exactly how many breakfasts have you had, Sean?"

Sean grins around a forkful of stolen waffle and says, "You can never have enough breakfast, I don't see how this is even a topic of discussion. Anyway, being a beloved lead singer is hard work, okay."

Alex rolls his eyes and elbows Sean sharply in the ribs in defense of his own plate.

"Being universally adored really burns calories, huh?" Raven asks.

"Duh," Sean says.

"You've been slipping lately," Erik interjects, which earns him a remarkably unsubtle glare from Alex and a twitch of a shrug from Sean.

"I beg to differ, dude, I have been awesome," he says.

"We need it all back tonight," Erik says, disregarding Sean entirely, and Charles is so overwhelmingly happy to hear him making just-this-side-of-unreasonable demands again that he barely has it in him to protest. "You've got to be even better than you've been. This is a fucking huge audience all of a sudden. People are paying attention. They know we're doing something different, and you're the cornerstone for that."

"But no pressure," Sean says, throwing a smile over a clanging note of nerves that makes Charles wince.

"Lay off," Alex suggests, and forks his hash browns over to Sean after all.

+ + +

Charles sometimes thinks his favorite five minutes in the world are the five minutes just before curtain, listening to the chatter of the audience. For all they know-for all Charles knows-they might be in for the best show the band has ever played. It could happen because hell, anything could happen.

Moira clicks across the lacquered floor in her heels, peering around the corner to survey the crowd.

"How'd we do for press?" Raven asks, and Moira smiles, sharp and proud.

"It looks like the audience does not lack for members of the fourth estate, let's just put it that way," she says.

"Ooh, someone was paying attention in Gov class," Raven teases. Charles plucks experimentally at his guitar strings, one ear devoted to tuning and the other to the precisely pitched hum of the band around him, that specific blend of nerves and bravado and joyful anticipation that clamored into the air before every show.

Erik (Erik who is part of that now, a voice in the chorus Charles reaches for every night) is adjusting his bass pedal, making tiny changes that Charles is sure must mean something. He's frowning in concentration, pulling his lower lip between his teeth, and Charles is caught between sense memory of those teeth on his lip and his-

"We're going to be good tonight," he hears Sean say, sounding a little more flat than usual, and Charles frowns at the dissonance but before he has time to say anything Moira shepherding them all into their places, muttering about how it's like herding cats, honestly, couldn't they just stand still for two seconds?

"Good show everybody," Raven whispers, fingers poised over her keyboard, and then, in a rush of noise and light, they're on.

+ + +

Charles can tell something's wrong from the minute Sean opens his mouth, but it's not until the second or third song that he pinpoints it, the tentative note in Sean's voice that says he's afraid of hitting the ceiling. He sounds reined in, and without the undercurrent of electricity that's been running through his performances for weeks now, reined in just means, well.

Boring, Erik's voice supplies in his head, and he shies away from the thought of Erik, because Christ he's going to be furious, or maybe something worse, maybe something that banks the fire in his eyes. Charles focuses on Sean instead, brings his profile into focus under the harsh stage lights and sees in the angle of his mouth, the crumpled line of his fingers around the mic stand, that he knows he's falling short. Charles sighs and bends his head over his guitar, trying to make room in his chest for the dull, weighty realization that he is already waiting for tonight to be over.

+ + +

"Look, I'm sorry," Sean says after it's over, after they've left the stage to applause Charles neurotically characterizes as 'polite' and made their way to what's essentially the green room, a bunch of old dressing rooms knocked through and filled with overly-stuffed furniture. "It just wasn't there tonight, what can I say?"

He's curled into one corner of a sofa, his legs tangled up in themselves, somehow, doing a passable imitation of 'relaxed,' and it makes Charles want to pull him aside, tell him to forget it, tonight never happened, erase it entirely, let it go. But Erik, who'd barely made it through the door before he'd drawled out a superior, "Well that went well," it is possible Erik doesn't actually believe in letting things go.

"It wasn't there?" Erik asks, deceptively quiet. Raven is hovering just inside the door, looking faintly nauseous, and Alex is practically spring loaded on the opposite end of the couch from Sean. Moira is leaning against the back of an armchair, cultivating her disinterested, above your childish theatrics aura which Charles so envies.

"It wasn't there," Sean repeats with a meant-to-be-lazy shrug.

"It's always there, it's you," Erik says. "You when you're not being chickenshit, anyway."

He's biting off his words now, shoving them past his teeth with sharp intent, and Charles can feel the ground under his feet give way, just slightly.

"What the fuck," Alex starts, but Sean shoots him a pointed look that's so thoroughly un-Sean that Alex doesn't say another word.

"Dude, just calm down alright? It's one night. One night, I couldn't do it," Sean says, and it sounds like the voice of reason if the voice of reason had been let loose in unfamiliar surroundings, unsure and on its own.

"Yes you could've," Erik says, bitter fury rolling off of him in waves. "You could've, but you ran away from it."

"Charles," Moira says, warning him without moving a muscle, practically strangling Erik with her eyes, and Charles knows she's right, knows he should do something, but if Erik will just stop hearing betrayal and listen for a moment-

"Fuck you," Sean says suddenly, before Alex can open his mouth and say what Charles is fairly certain would've been much the same thing. "Fuck you, dude, you can't just show up and decide how I'm going to sound, what's gonna work for us and what isn't. This isn't your fucking band."

"It's true, I can't decide how you're going to sound," Erik says, disdain and anger and fear all flooding his eyes at once. "If I could, you wouldn't have sounded like shit tonight."

"Erik," Charles says, feeling something at the back of his throat freeze and shatter. "A word, please."

It isn't a request.

Ordinarily, Charles would be surprised that Erik followed him into the empty office across the hall without protest; just now, he only wonders why it didn't happen at a brisker pace.

"That was unacceptable," he says, and doesn't wait to be sneered at before he presses onward, swallowing against the knowledge of everything Erik Lensherr has ever walked away from, the knowledge that he will not be afraid to do it again (that's the best thing about him, Charles thinks, and then again the worst, and oh fuck you're thinking about it, stop stop stop stop). "Sean is brilliantly talented, and very young, and deserves better from the people who are supposed to be his friends."

"Do you realize what he did, tonight?" Erik demands. He isn't sneering, Charles realizes, meeting his eyes for the first time since he closed the door behind them. His face is frighteningly, entirely open. Raw. "If you were really his friend, if you really cared about him, you wouldn't want this. You'd want more for him."

"Don't presume to know how much I care about Sean," Charles says, "or any of them, for that matter. Don't you dare."

"Charles," Erik says, and maybe he's going to apologize or maybe he's going to defend his case or maybe he's going to ask for the time. Charles doesn't know, and he finds at the moment that he doesn't much care.

"Listen to me," he says. He doesn't say this is something you need to understand, but he distantly feels himself telegraphing it, nails cutting into his palms and jaw tight. "Sean is twenty-five, and it is only for the last two and a half years of his life that anyone has bothered to tell him this is something he's good at. He's very good at rolling with the punches, but that doesn't mean the punches don't hurt. Besides which, he's tired. He's singing every night in a way he's never thought of as worthwhile, and just now he did in front of a theater full of reporters who are going to write him up as a lightweight flash-in-the-pan. That's not who he is, and he's going to prove it, tomorrow, but you have to give him a chance. You're going to give him a chance."

His chest feels clawed at when he finally stops, sucks a quick breath in, and Erik's eyes have gone wide.

"You want me to stay," he says, not a question, and Charles actually laughs, he can't help it.

"Of course I do," he says, and feeling light-headed all of a sudden, hysterically certain that one person can't feel this much relief, that at least half of it must be Erik's, somehow. "I want you to cultivate a bit of patience, and apologize to Sean, and yes I want you stay. For as long as you're willing. Please."

Erik settles his weight back onto his heels, eyes rushing across Charles' face as if the answers are written there, somewhere, as if something in the angle of an eyebrow will break the code.

"I mean it," Charles says.

"I'll stay," Erik says, and of course he doesn't mean forever but Charles lets himself hear it anyway.

+ + +

When they slip back through the door, Charles reflexively glancing at Erik every few seconds in search of living proof he hasn't stormed off to make artistically pure music in the Andes (it would be a nomadic, musically devout existence, Charles thinks, and would probably feature a six types of harp, a didgeridoo, and a brief guest appearance by a jug band, just because-or perhaps he's getting slightly hysterical, now), it's to find the room empty save for Moira, who is sitting in the exact spot she was when they left, scanning the fine print on their contract with the theater.

Charles knows she doesn't need to look it over, not now-she will have already, probably weeks in advance when she first got it signed, and it will be ironclad in all the ways that matter, whatever those are.

"A bit of light reading?" He inquires innocently, and her head snaps up instantly.

"You're still here," she tells Erik matter-of-factly. He nods, the movement a little stiff, and she smiles at him in a way that manages to convey both genuine happiness and dire, dire warnings.

"Well excellent," she says, "now tell me how you're going to fix this."

"I-" Erik says, looking trapped and just a bit lost.

"We aren't going to change anything," Charles says quickly (it's worth it for the look on Erik's face alone, like he's found a foothold in sheer rock, and that's not even considering that fact that it's exactly what needs to be done for the band, Christ but that's lucky) and then amends, when Moira's features set themselves in stone, "well. One of us will talk to Sean-"

"One of us?" Erik asks, blanching, and Charles raises an amused eyebrow.

"Yes," he says, "or possibly both of us. Yes, in fact, I think it might be best with both of us. We'll talk to Sean, Moira, but you and I both know he's been better for the last month then he's ever been. And better off, as well. He's just…stumbled."

"Off of a cliff, maybe," Moira says, glaring, and Charles knows it's largely worry for Sean that has her so determined, but he also knows he's got it right this time.

"I'm sorry," he says, "but we aren't going to change anything."

She shrugs, waving one hand wearily through the air like the proverbial white flag.

"I know that," she says and then, grudgingly, "you'd have to an idiot to change anything. And whatever else you are, Charles, you aren't an idiot."

"Glowing praise," he says, and she grins at him.

"Idiot," she says, and strides out of the room to start in on damage control, shoving the contract back into her purse without so much as a second glance.

Charles is at something of a loss for what to do next until he spots the note stuck to the inside of the door in Raven's handwriting, which reads simply, gone out to get absolutely hammered, don't come along unless you are going to BEHAVE. Erik reads it over his shoulder and goes through a series of facial expressions which, when following on each others' heels, serve to make him look slightly ill. Still, he ends up somewhere in the neighborhood of stubbornly contrite, which Charles decides is good enough provided he's not allowed anywhere without supervision.

"Alright," he declares, "we are going to fix this."

+ + +

The second bar they try has a flock of plastic flamingos on the roof which, Charles thinks as he spots Raven, Alex, and Sean perched on stools, is probably why it was chosen. Tacky decor is part of Raven's Ideal Bar Trifecta (the other two factors being proximity to performance venue and inventiveness of drink names).

He's going to turn to Erik and suggest that maybe it would be best to ease into things, perhaps hang back while Charles tries to assess the situation, but before he can actually manage to say a word Erik is striding forward, looking determined. Charles winces, but resists the urge to walk back out the door and get himself a decent night's sleep, and instead follows.

"I'm not sorry for most of it," Erik is saying when he arrives. Sean has swiveled on his stool, elbow propped against the bar, listening with what is either genuine interest or a superb mockery of it. Alex is running one nail gouging at the soft wood of the bar with his thumbnail, somehow managing to be impressively menacing without actually looking up or saying a word, and Raven is frowning, worrying at her bottom lip. Charles nudges his shoulder against hers, and she sighs, rolling her eyes, but gives him a quick, tight smile. He's forgiven, then, for his part in this mess-he smiles presses a quick kiss to her temple, relieved, and tunes back in to the might-not-actually-be-an-apology unfolding before them.

"I'm not sorry for most of it," Erik says again, and it occurs to Charles that Erik may not know what comes next. He swallows down the urge to speak.

"That does imply you're sorry for something," Sean points out, not unpleasantly, and waits.

"I won't apologize for recognizing what you can do, and I won't stop pointing it out, but what I said to you earlier tonight-that was shitty," Erik says.

"It was," Sean agrees, but the set of his shoulders has slipped into real ease, now. "But for better or for worse-and probably for better, dude, I'm not gonna pretend this hasn't been awesome, mostly-you give a shit."

Erik huffs out a short, startled laugh.

"You're an asshole," Alex says suddenly, looking up from his intent contemplation of his own fingers. "Maybe what happened earlier was none of my business, but I just wanted to let you know that you're a total asshole. But you make good music, and it seems like you want to do it with us. So."

"He's not an asshole," Sean says, whacking the toe of his sneaker against Alex's bar stool. "He just exhibits occasional, asshole-ish behavior."

"Thank you?" Erik says, sounding as if he's not sure it's yet safe to be amused.

"You're welcome," Sean says, and kicks Alex's stool again.

"Apologize, dude."

"What, after that shit he said? I don't need to apologize. We're good, whatever," Alex says, but Sean is shaking his head, unexpectedly serious.

"We're not gonna have this hanging over us for the rest of the tour, no way," he says. "I wasn't as good as I'm supposed to be tonight, fine. You're not gonna argue with that, right?"

Alex frowns, looking like he wouldn't particularly mind arguing with that, actually, but he doesn't say anything.

"So he called me out on it. This is a band. We're supposed to do that. Anyway, I still remember when I couldn't have paid someone to listen to me. People don't really want to be serenaded in the McDonald's drive-thru."

"Their loss," Erik says.

Sean grins, easy and bright.

"See, that's what I'm talking about," he says. "Totally not an asshole."

"I'm still reserving judgment," Alex says, but with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Charles remembers when Alex first joined the band, remembers his propensity for sneering insults and sarcasm. After three days Raven had gleefully declared him to have a gooey, marshmallow center and it hadn't really mattered that Alex had flipped her off and gone back to reading Rolling Stone, she had been right. Alex had still sneered and launched snide asides at the rate most people blinked, or possibly breathed, but it didn't really matter when he also had an inexplicable instinct for mornings when everyone was at their worst and made a coffee run before anyone else woke up (besides which, he remembered that Raven hates flavoring unless it's cinnamon and Charles is a secret whipped cream addict).

Erik slides onto a stool at the end of their little row, next to Raven, and Charles takes the next one over, their elbows knocking companionably together. Charles lets out a long, slow breath and thinks, This is enough. Their band, fracturing, splintered, has glued itself back together relatively unharmed, and it seems greedy to ask for more, doesn't it, even if he can feel Erik's pulse when their forearms brush, beating double-time with what must be relief.

It seems the entire night is beginning a welcome slide into normalcy, but of course that ignores the fact that they've just played a show, and they're in a bar (a bar with a flock of plastic flamingos on the roof, Charles reminds himself), and, well.

"You're that band," someone slurs from behind them, and they all turn to see a tall, solid, thoroughly intoxicated man with scraggly sideburns and a beer in his hand, gesturing toward them accusingly.

"Ye-es," Raven says after a pause. She's flicking her eyes up and down his frame, clearly deciding whether or not she could take him, and although he's at least a third of her size over again Charles is going to have to side with her on this one. Her prospective opponent is falling-down drunk, after all, and Raven has a vicious left hook.

"Well," the guy says, pausing as if searching for the right wording, "well you suck."

"Thanks for the insight, we'll take it under consideration," Raven says dismissively, rolling her eyes and starting to turn back around.

"And you," the guy says, pointing at Sean, "what was that, right? What the fuck was that?"

"Oh my God, just go away," Raven says, and Alex says, "Seriously? Stop talking."

"I wasted my fucking money on you tonight, man, you should fucking pay me back or something," the guy says, lurching menacingly in Sean's direction, waving his beer bottle in a vague arc as if hoping it will connect with someone's face, which is when Erik hits him in the jaw.

+ + +

Charles realizes, in hindsight, that there might have been quite a bit more friction between Erik and everyone else if he hadn't gotten himself thrown in the drunk tank in defense of Sean's honor.

Besides which, spending a night in a grimy holding cell together does wonders for friendships.

If Charles was going to tell the story (which, Moira tells him through gritted teeth the next day, he is only going to do if he can make it the most relentlessly funny and charming story anyone has ever heard, bar none), he would probably tell it like this:

No one but Erik actually hits anyone, because the minute the punch connects with Drunken Asshole's jaw he staggers backwards, reels into a table, knocks over three beers in a flailing attempt to regain his balance, and concludes his masterful demonstration of the perils of alcohol by calling the room at large a load of no-talent hacks and stumbling off into the night without paying his bill.

In theory, this should be the end of it.

However, knocking over three beers is frustrating at best, and at worst, them's fighting words, which is probably how half of the bar ends up half-heartedly shoving the other half out of a sense of drunken duty, while one or two of the patrons who were clearly spoiling for a fight already seize the opportunity to give themselves war stories to tell in the morning.

When the police turn up, someone readily identifies Erik as the man who started it all, which leaves Erik looking startled, amused, and thoroughly handcuffed. Raven immediately declares this to be injustice of the highest order, Sean and Alex back her up fervently (Alex even gestures with his half-full glass, which probably doesn't help their case, in the end), and in a desperate bid for efficiency the weary officer decides the simplest thing to do is book them all for drunk and disorderly. Charles, who is never technically told to come along, slides into the back of the police car beside Erik on autopilot. If his band is going to spend the night locked up, so is he. After all, what else would he be doing?

Four hours later they have played three hands of wildly amateur poker, had a rousing debate about which Beatle was best, and tentatively started the discussion of which songs should go on the next album.

"I'm only saying, I'm still bitter about leaving 'Only Kids' off of the last album," Raven insists, dropping her hand entirely (shit, a full house, Alex mutters, and drops his as well). "And it would work really well somewhere in the middle of this one."

"Okay, but it's a lot more, like, mellow than the rest of the stuff we've been doing lately," Sean says.

"Charles, back me up," Raven orders.

"If I was taking sides in this argument, which I am not doing until after I've slept in a real bed and had at least three cups of coffee," Charles says, "I would say that this album is going to need a few softer interludes. A few tracks that let people stop and breath for a minute, if you will."

"No," Erik says leaning forward and into the conversation, "no, that's completely missing the point. Giving people a break is like-it's like letting them go. People should put this album on thinking they'll listen to the first track, and not be able to stop until the last one's over. Mellow isn't acceptable, here."

"Letting people stop and breath isn't the same thing as letting them go," Charles says. "Letting people absorb the quieter moments isn't tantamount to letting them stop listening."

"'Scuse me," a policeman says, standing just outside the cell door. "You're the band, right?"

"Unless there's another one here," Charles says. Raven groans and elbows him in the ribs, hard.

"That's us," she agrees even as a man in the back corner raises his hand uncertainly and calls out, "I play the trumpet?"

"Your fines've been paid," the officer announces, and then they're all attaining various degrees of mobility, unbending aching limbs and rolling sore shoulders as they follow him down the hall and past the front desk, where Moira is standing, hands on her hips, one eyebrow raised.

"Well," she says, and then turns on her heel and leads them out to the waiting minibus.

+ + +

Moira pulls out of the parking lot without a word and sets them on a course back toward their motel, driving at precisely the speed limit, her hands white-knuckled on the wheel.

"This is not the kind of band you are," she says after five minutes of near-unbearable silence. "Drunken bar fights? I am blaming all of you, in equal measure, but I am not joking when I say: tell me whose fault this is, because we are going to have a conversation."

Her voice is low, and measured, with steel running through its core, and she's glaring at Erik in the rear view mirror as she speaks, Charles notes. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Erik pull his shoulders back and lift his chin.

"This is the kind of band we are when some dumb ass drunk guy decides to talk to Sean like that," Raven blurts out. Sean's frowning a little, worrying absentmindedly at a lose thread on the bench seat.

"And no one's taking the blame for this, Moira," Charles says. "I'm sure we all would have thrown the first punch, given half a chance."

"We would've," Alex confirms, not even glancing in Erik's direction.

"I'm not asking who would've," Moira says, but she just sounds tired now, not dangerous. "I'm asking who did."

There is silence, and Moira sighs, pulls into their allotted parking space and twists around in her seat.

"Well, don't do it again," she says, gaze leveled directly at Erik, and then, "any of you. I mean it. I don't care who says what about who, I worked hard to grab a few good headlines, and now they're all going to be, 'Mediocre Performance Followed By Bar Brawl,' and that pisses me off. You're all grounded until further notice."

"What?" Raven demands, horrified, but Moira only shakes her head, and somehow manages to follow that with sweeping gracefully down the VW's steps and into the motel lobby. Charles isn't sure he's ever seen someone sweep gracefully out of a Volkswagen minibus in his life, but he supposes there's a first time for everything.

"Oh God," Alex groans, thumping his head against the headrest. "Remember the last time this happened? Fucking curfew."

"It won't be so bad," Charles says in a tone he hopes is bracing. Raven makes a weak noise of what is probably supposed to be agreement, but sounds mostly like despair.

"No post-show drinking, though," she says. "How're we supposed to go drunken mini-golfing?"

Drunken mini-golfing is a favorite past-time of 'Children of the Atom,' and with good reason-some of Charles' best stories, and his most interesting scars, are from time spent absolutely hammered on a miniature golf course.

"Sorry, you're really going to let your manager ground you?" Erik asks, incredulous. "What are you all, twelve?"

"We're not going to let 'our manager' ground us," Sean corrects, "we're going to let Moira ground us. She's omnipotent, dude, she knows all and she sees all and she books all of our gigs. Plus, she's Moira."

"She is that," Erik acknowledges; it should be some sort of sarcastic jab, but it definitely isn't.

"Look, just grit your teeth and behave for a few days," Charles advises. "She'll let us all roam free again once she realizes last night was an aberration. Now! We have a show tonight, and I think it would be best if we all ate something and grabbed a few hours sleep before then."

"Yes mom," Raven grumbles, but she's the first to stand up, and she yanks on Charles' arm until he joins her.

"Come on, we're going to talk," she declares, and leads the way out the door.

"Listen," she says as he joins her on the pavement, "you're in love with him, I get it okay? He's got that whole tortured musician thing going on, you guys are doing some weird, complicated bossa nova around the issue of actually getting it on, fine. All fine. But."

She holds up a hand to forestall any protest Charles might muster against the insinuation that he is either in love with Erik or performing any sort of Latin ballroom dance, and he reluctantly snaps his mouth shut, blushing.

"You do not get to tell him he's good to go without talking to us first," she says. She's got that look on her face now, the one she'd had when he'd tried to tell Alex to relax about getting the bass line down to perfection, that wasn't the point of this one; the one she'd had when he'd ordered a grand piano delivered to her apartment a month after he'd met her. It's a look that says: You've missed something, here, dumbass, but I love you anyway.

"This isn't just your band, Charles," she says. "It's our band. And after how he's been acting lately-I know you went off and had a heart-to-heart with him, and whatever got said, you were happy with it, and I'm not saying I'm unhappy he's sticking around. But you should've asked us first, all of us."

"I should've," he says, wincing a little, because he hates himself just a bit when he does this, pushes the accelerator blindly to the floor as if he's the only one along for the ride. "I'm sorry. I know I'm not the master of all I survey, Raven, I really do."

"I know you do," she says with a smile, slipping her arm through his. "You're just stupid about it sometimes. That's what you've got me for."

"That is one of the many things I desperately need you for, yes," Charles says, deadpan. "And thank you."

"Anytime," she says, and tugs him toward the motel.

+ + +

It's a good show that night, Sean throwing himself at every lyric as if it's life-or-death, pushing and shoving and dragging at the audience until they forget whatever they've heard about the band, good or bad, and just pay attention. And attention is all they really need, that night-they're on their game. And maybe Charles is imagining it, but he thinks Erik gives the bass drum a little more oomph, lets his playing drive forward a little faster than usual. It's like his playing is an allowance for Sean, instead of an argument with him, like the entire night is Erik's concession to the need to have fun once in a while.

"Was I imagining the fact that you enjoyed yourself, just now?" Charles asks, feeling giddy and slightly untethered in the humid New York night.

"Yes," Erik replies, deadpan, and Charles has to be vigilant to note the smirk that twists his lips, just for an instant, but note it he does.

"Ha!" He says and without thinking about it he reaches up and presses a thumb, briefly and triumphantly to the corner of Erik's mouth. "I've caught you out."

"I suppose you have," Erik says, and Charles has already snatched his hand away so quickly he wonders if he's sprained something.

"Well," he says and then, with nothing to follow it up, hurriedly picks up his guitar case and follows the rest of the band out past the small knot of press and fans.

"Oh my God," Raven says from up ahead. She's stopped just inside the theater's back door, where there's a bulletin board with so many layers of paper stapled and pinned up over one another that it probably warrants its own place on the scale of geologic time. "Roller derby. Fuck yes, we are so, so going."

"Dude," Sean says, and Alex grins.

"Roller derby's vicious," he says approvingly. "Count me in."

"Oh God," Moira says, and Charles can't stop himself from saying, "You see? This is what happens when you don't let them drink. They come up with far worse things to do."

"They'll only be spectators," Moira says, trying to sound dismissive.

"Do you really think they won't find a way to be participants by the time the night's over?" Erik asks from just behind them.

"Oh God," Moira says again, but she also shepherds the three of them to the curb and gets them into a taxi with strict instructions not to do anything that won't make for pithy anecdotes, to avoid alcohol as if it were death itself, and to be back by two-thirty unless they wanted to sleep on the bus.

"What about the two of you?" She asks. "Any plans? A gladiatorial arena where I can drop you off, perhaps?"

"I think I'll call it a night," Charles hears himself saying. He can practically see the moment when Erik decides that he is not going to test the limits of Moira's patience tonight.

"Me too," he says.

+ + +

The truth is, half the time when they all go to bars after the show, Charles doesn't drink. It isn't so much the alcohol as it is the decompression-time spent huddled in some slightly grimy corner booth with the people he loves best in the world, all of them trying to come to terms with the fact that they just got paid to play music, of all things. Roller derby, as entertaining-and vicious, apparently-as it sounds, doesn't really sound much like decompression. And so Charles finds himself in his room at eleven o'clock, post-show adrenaline still fizzing through him. He isn't sure it'll ever stop feeling this way; most nights, he doesn't want it to.

He tries reading, but not even his usual escapist novels (Dickens, Raymond Chandler) serve him well. He finds himself scanning the same lines over and over, words slipping in one ear and jumbling themselves up before they make it out the other. He spends ten minutes uncovering the secrets of the remote, only to decide after another two that there is nothing good on television, nor has there ever been. He's jittery, and bored, and in the end he decides a walk will do him good. He yanks an Oxford sweatshirt on over his show-worn white t-shirt and sets out down the hallway, barefoot and aimless.

The motel is a one of Moira's typically adroit finds, a rambling, one-story place just far enough off the beaten track that their bill won't break the bank. For the most part it's full of businessmen whose companies aren't picking up the check for a week's travel into the city, interspersed with the occasional young couple seeing the Big Apple on a budget. The halls are quiet at this time of night, their stillness disrupted only by the sound of an ice machine clinking somewhere nearby and Charles' own feet shushing quietly against the floor. And-piano, Charles thinks, startled, and pauses mid-step.

It's soft, wandering piano, notes falling delicately over each other in a way that's achingly sad. It speaks of uncertainty, of loss, and Charles is walking toward it even as he strains not to let the sound of his own footsteps drown it out.

He turns a corner and then another, and finds himself staring at a door which reads, Lounge: Paying Guests Only. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob, listens to the last strains of the piano fade, quivering and alive with sorrow. There's nothing like the satisfaction Charles usually feels at the end of a good piece of music; nothing's been resolved, no comfort has been offered. The piece was bleak, yes, but gorgeous, and he determinedly acknowledges and then casts aside the feeling that he is intruding on something private to slip through the door. Whoever's playing this (does he already know who's playing this, really?) he wants to meet them. Really, he feels as if he already has.

"Erik," he says, knowing he sounds stupid and awestruck and utterly infatuated and not much caring. The other man is sitting at a piano bench on the far side of the room, his back to the door, frozen.

"Charles," Erik says, his shoulders stiffening although his voice remains wry, resigned. "What a surprise."

"I'm sorry to interrupt," Charles says carefully, and Erik actually laughs-it's strained, perhaps, but it sounds more genuine than half the little chuckles he dispenses day-to-day.

"No you aren't," he says.

"Alright," Charles says, resisting the brief surge of irrational panic he feels at letting go of the polite niceties that might've let them both weather this conversation unscathed. "I'm not. I heard the music from down the hall and I wanted to know who was playing. Had to know who was playing, if we've decided it's the time of night for brutal honesty."

"That's not particularly brutal," Erik points out. Charles can't read his tone, and it's unsettling; Erik may cultivate distant amusement, but Charles still prides himself on being able to pry up underneath it all, occasionally. Now it's as if there's nothing to discover, two dimensions where there should be three. If only he'd turn around, Charles thinks.

"It might be if you didn't want anyone to hear you," Charles says, still standing just inside the doorway.

"I really don't know whether I did or not," Erik says, "which is unsettling, Charles, and I blame you."

It's as if it's meant to be a joke, and it's bypassed the punchline entirely to land somewhere beneath Charles' ribs and lodge there. Erik sounds as if he's trying to paper over how shaken he is, how uncertain, not unlike the music he'd just been pulling from the piano, and it's heartbreaking. Oh damn, Charles thinks, it is, it's heartbreaking. I'm fucked, I'm royally fucked, maybe we're both royally fucked-

"I'll try to bare it gracefully," Charles says, frantically derailing his own train of thought. He's got to focus.

"Who taught you to play?" He asks, because whatever dangerous, raw territory they've wandered into he can't stop the curiosity that drove him here in the first place; he can still hear the the piano creeping down the hallway, chords reaching for each other and falling just short, overlapping at the edges as they faded.

"My mother," Erik says and, like a dam breaking, he turns around.

It's as if Erik has rushed back into the room, the nuances and depths Charles has been just barely missing in vivid, painful color before his eyes.

"My mother taught me how to play," he says. His voice sounds rusty, as if he isn't quite expecting to hear the words coming out of his own mouth, and Charles feels as if his skin is too tight, pulled at from all directions. He badly wants to ease the long-lived sorrow from Erik's eyes even as he wants to demand an explanation for it, wants the whole story, wants all of Erik's stories, wants to pile them away somewhere for safekeeping, greedy and infinitely careful.

"She must have been a brilliant pianist, then," is what he manages, eventually.

"She was," Erik says and then, his voice strangling itself, "shall I answer the rest of your questions now? It'll save us both the trouble. She was a brilliant pianist, self-taught, and she taught me. It's the first thing I remember, sitting in her lap and watching her fingers move on the keys. I thought it looked impossible. It was one of the few things we had in common while I was growing up. We adored each other but we were very different people, my mother and I. She died when I was twelve-don't say you're sorry, it's been a very long time, Charles."

"She's still your mother," Charles protests weakly. "Christ, Erik, it doesn't matter how long its been. She still matters."

"Of course she matters," Erik says, looking at him with something like gratitude, and then he sighs, slumping forward as if someone's cut his strings. He rubs at the skin between his eyes and Charles recognizes the universal sign of an oncoming headache, winces in sympathy.

"I'm sorry for intruding, I really am," he says, "But thank you, for telling me. And for the playing. It was incredible."

"It was something she was writing, when she died," Erik says. "I've tried to finish it, but it's not-right."

"It was beautiful," Charles says, emphatic, and Erik shakes his head.

"I'm not saying it wasn't, not exactly. But it isn't-I want it to sound like her, and it doesn't. There's too much of me in it, and of everything that happened afterwards in it."

Everything you've done without her, Charles thinks.

"I wish I'd known her," he says instead, because he does. If what Erik played managed to describe her, even only a piece of her, a fraction, he wishes he'd known her. "She must've been an extraordinary person."

"Thank you," Erik says, and Charles wants very much to be touching him just now, anywhere at all-his wrist, his hip, his shoulder. He has no idea how to offer the comfort that's proving so elusive, to fill the gaps that even the piano can't seem to soothe.

"It was a quiet piece," Charles can't resist saying on his way back out the door, "but I couldn't have stopped listening if I'd tried, Erik. There's a case to be made for softer interludes. That is not a song which would let anyone go, not the way you played it."

"Go to bed, Charles," Erik says, but Charles hears the smile in his voice and breathes a small, exhausted sigh of relief.