ficlet february 20: "a door key"
This got sort of out of control. Shore verse!
***
Ficlet February 20: "a door key"
"I've left some things for you on the counter!" Charles calls out from the bathroom Friday morning. Erik shoves the last of his eggs and toast into his mouth and makes his way over to the low desk counter in the kitchen. On top is Erik's lunchbox, the book Charles checked out from the university library for him, and a keyring with three keys on it. "I'll see you late tonight--I'll try to make it in before you go to bed, and if not, you can always stop by before after you get back from Magda's tomorrow?"
Frowning at the keys, Erik shoves them in his pocket and then jogs down the hall to lean against the wall next to the bathroom.
"What are the keys for?" he asks.
"Front door, patio door, and the basement," Charles says. "Don't be late!"
"I won't," Erik says. "I'm leaving now. I love you."
It's strange to say it out loud, in a way. He fell for Charles nearly immediately, the nervous butterflies of attraction in his stomach turning into genuine affection within weeks, days. He has no doubt that what he feels for Charles is love, frightening and new and overwhelming if he thinks about it too long. But at the same time, it feels so strange to be saying it to someone who isn't Magda, even years after their divorce. He imagined he'd never say it to anyone else again once they were married, and even though age and distance have added some insight into different kinds of love and different kinds of relationships, it still feels bizarre to make that declaration.
"Love you too," Charles calls back. "You'll still be home before six, right?"
"Yeah," Erik says. He wants to ask more about the keys, but he really will be late if he doesn't leave now. "I'll see you tonight, maybe."
"Hopefully," Charles calls out. He projects something not unlike a kiss. He respects that Charles' morning routine is a little more complicated than most, but part of Erik still wishes he could see him for just a moment before he leaves.
He's lucky Charles loves him back, because he's pretty fucking pathetic.
Erik thinks about the keys some more as he drives into work. The new metal in his pocket is jarring and lingers on the edge of his mind.
He and Charles aren't living together. Not really. Not entirely. Erik still has his own place, and sure, they've been talking a lot about Charles meeting his kids and Magda and Erik is definitely in this for the longterm, but...they're not living together. Erik doesn't need keys to Charles' apartment, even though he spends all his time there. He doesn't need keys at all, for anywhere, actually, but Charles' apartment especially. He has permission from Charles to come in whenever he'd like and he occasionally makes use of it. It's convenient, when Charles asks him over or is running late, for Erik to be able to let himself in. But he doesn't need keys for it. And he doesn't know why Charles is bothering to give them to him.
He's probably thinking about this more than he needs to.
At work, he settles into his desk and opens his email. There's an Outlook alert reminding him of the twins' gymnastics preview tomorrow and another reminding him of the appointment Charles made with the plumber for 6pm tonight. He mutes them both, weeds through his email for anything important, and then picks up his desk phone and dials Magda.
"I have to leave for class in like, five minutes, so make this quick," she says when she picks up.
"I have a question," he says. Not for the first time he wishes he had friends beyond his ex-wife. "Feel free to invoke divorce rule three."
"Divorce rule three?" she says. "I thought you and Charles were pretty exclusive at this point? Did something happen?"
"No, the date one is divorce rule two," Erik says. "Three is talking about relationships."
"Right, right," Magda says. "Rule three."
"Come on, you wrote half of these," Erik says.
"Well, I don't have the numbers memorized," she says. "Anyway, time's wasting. Divorce Rule Three, I can cut you off if I don't want to hear you talking about your new relationship. What's up?"
"I'm not sure," Erik admits. "Charles gave me a set of keys to his place today."
"Really?" Magda asks.
"Yeah," Erik says. "And...we're not moving in together. We haven't talked about that. I don't live there and I can and have used my powers to get in and out as necessary and...what does this mean?"
"Are you sure you're not moving in there?" Magda asks. "You're there an awful lot more than you're at your place, according to my caller ID."
"It's just...nicer," Erik say weakly. "But even if I am, you don't just...ask someone to move in by giving them keys. Do you?"
"You do know that the sum total of my adult relationship knowledge is our failed marriage, right?" Magda asks. Erik winces.
"I know but...you have friends," he says. "They have relationships. You see things. I have you, two toddlers, and the boyfriend who left me keys this morning."
"He just left them?" Magda asks. He can hear something dragging across the kitchen floor--probably a chair. He closes his eyes for a moment and can see it all perfectly, Magda in her kitchen on the wall phone, deciding this conversation was worth sitting down for after all. He understands how Magda's mind works. Maybe one day he'll be at that point with Charles, but he only began to understand Magda after twenty-odd years of being around her constantly. Twenty years with Charles would be...a very long time. He's not ruling it out, necessarily, not at all, but they've only been dating a few months.
"There was a pile of things on the counter in the kitchen that he left there while I was in the shower," Erik says. "He packed my lunch for me and he took a book out of the library for me. It was the lunchbox, the book, and the keys."
"He packs your lunch?"
"I cook most nights, so he packs leftovers for our lunches most mornings," Erik says.
"That is incredibly nerdy and incredibly cute," Magda says, but he can tell she's not entirely comfortable with the swerve into his domestic life with someone else, even if she was the one who brought it up. He refocuses.
"He just left them there, and I took them, and when I said, 'What are the keys for?' he told me the front door, the patio, and the basement. Which is, I assume, accurate, but I meant why did he give them to me, not what did they open. And then I had to leave and we didn't really get a chance to talk and--am I just supposed to know?"
Magda hums on the other end of the phone line.
"Well, lots of people give keys to their boyfriends even when they're not living together. Kind of a 'make yourself at home whenever you feel like it' thing," she says. "He's probably just...making sure you know you're welcome."
"But I don't need keys," Erik says.
"It's a symbolic thing," Magda says. "It's his way of saying 'I know you COULD get in at any time but I also know your moral code keeps you from just bursting in places so this is me officially saying that you are welcome to come in whenever you want.'"
"Really?" Erik asks.
"Oh, for god's sake Erik, I have no idea," Magda says. "I've never met him. I'm guessing, here. You would know better than I would."
Erik sighs and rubs his face.
"You're right," he says. "Of course you're right. I have no fucking idea what I'm doing."
"Then talk to him about it, not me," Magda says. "Now I'm officially invoking rule three because I'm going to be late to class if I don't leave now."
"Yeah, okay, I'll see you tomorrow," Erik says.
"Bye!"
Erik hangs the phone up and pulls the keys out of his pocket, staring down at them again. Looking more closely, he can see that they're labeled--F, P, B. Was Charles trying to send some kind of message? Maybe it's actually the opposite of Magda's guess--maybe Charles is annoyed at how frequently Erik just lets him in and the keys are some kind of gentle reminder that he hasn't had permission. Except...giving the keys would mean giving permission, right?
Fuck, Charles is usually better at saying what he means than this. Erik is the one who occasionally finds himself fumbling to express himself and what he needs. It was so easy with Magda--she knew him so well that he didn't have to actually ask most of the time. She could figure out what he wanted and do it or say it or get it. And, okay, sometimes that backfired into weird passive-aggressive arguments and there were definitely times where he skimped on talking about things they really should have talked about because he didn't want to and it was easier to pretend nothing was wrong. Still. This is terrible.
Not much later, some actual work rolls his way. He puts the keys back into his pocket and forgets about them. He composes a million emails to Charles in his head and is very close to reaching out to poke him telepathically. He imagines a dozen different conversations that they might have once Charles gets home tonight, if he even manages to get home before Erik goes to bed.
It's not his most productive day at work.
He gives up at quarter to five and slips out fifteen minutes early. Of course, getting away from his desk doesn't help matters much. Charles is hosting a lecture tonight and won't be home until late. He could always go by the university but...that seems creepy. Whatever this means, whatever the keys signify, it can wait. Can't it?
He picks up take-out on the way to Charles' apartment and installs himself in front of the television with his Chinese food. He can barely concentrate, so he turns it off and makes himself stop freaking out and analyze why he's upset. This therapist used to love this method of reasoning and it drove Erik crazy as a teenager, but he's willing to give anything a shot.
Charles gave him keys. Charles seemed utterly blase about having given him keys. Charles did not alter his morning routine in the slightest, despite the addition of keys--he still packed Erik's lunch and made the coffee while Erik was in the shower, then kissed Erik good morning and slipped into the bathroom while Erik got ready for work. He told Erik he loved him before Erik left for work. He encouraged Erik to come over this weekend.
To start with, Charles obviously isn't breaking up with him, which is a relief. You don't give someone keys to your apartment if you're breaking up with them. He knows this, but following it through logically makes him feel much better. That leaves a few options--like Magda said, it could be a symbolic gesture. Charles wants Erik to know he can come and go as he pleases. That...doesn't really change anything. Erik already comes and goes as he pleases. It could be a hint--Charles wants keys to Erik's apartment. Which Erik is happy to give, if that's what Charles wants, but they only very rarely go over there, so it's not like Charles is missing out. Charles' apartment has all of the various things he needs to live his life more effortlessly, and though Erik's been working on making his own place more wheelchair friendly, Charles' apartment is also closer to to their jobs and larger and nicer in general.
None of this hinting seems very much like Charles, though. Charles won't even let them go to bed angry--he hates sleeping alone and makes them talk out any disagreements before bed, at least enough so they can get through the night. Charles talks everything to death, actually. Every feeling, every decision. Erik wonders sometimes if it's not a strange side-effect of the telepathy, or rather, of society's rules for telepathy. He wonders if Charles doesn't talk every feeling to death just to prove that he's not taking any telepathic shortcuts.
Whatever the reason, Charles doesn't make games of things like this. If Charles wanted to say any of those things, he would say them. He wouldn't make Erik play this elaborate guessing game.
Except that still doesn't explain the damn keys.
He's mostly done with his take-out when the doorbell buzzes. It's 6:18, which is later than the plumber was expected, but earlier than Erik assumed he'd actually show up. Erik gets up from the couch to let him in.
"Mr. Xavier?" the plumber asks.
"He's out," Erik says. "But he left me to show you around. You're going to need basement access, right?"
"Yup," the plumber says. "And to get out to the water hook-up outside. Probably on the patio, if the rest of the units are anything to go by."
"Whatever you need," Erik says. He walks the plumber through the apartment and points out the patio door before unlocking and pulling open the door to the basement.
"Great," the plumber says. "Like I told Mr. Xavier on the phone, it's gonna be a two, three day job to get everything fixed and hooked up the way the landlord wants. He said he was gonna leave me a set of keys?"
Erik freezes.
Distantly, vaguely, buried under the weight of sleep and two dozen more important things, Erik unearths a memory of Monday night. They were in bed after sex and Erik was mostly asleep. Charles was checking his email and he asked if Erik would be home on Friday to let the plumber in and Erik said yes, then he started talking about water pressure and toilet use and how long it would take and maybe, possibly, in the middle of all that, he mentioned he was having a set of keys made so the plumber could get in and out.
Maybe. Possibly. Erik's mind was elsewhere.
"He did," Erik croaks. He fishes them out of his pocket and hands them over, hoping that the plumber is paying no heed to the fact that Erik's face is probably as bright red as it feels.
He is an idiot.
"Front, patio, basement," Erik says. "They're, uh, labeled."
"Great," the plumber says. "Thanks. I'll leave you to it."
Erik walks back over to the couch and collapses on top of it, covering his face with his hands.
The first thing he decides is to stop on the hardware store on the way to Magda's tomorrow and get a second set of keys to his apartment. They may go over there rarely, but it's probably the right thing to do anyway. Who knows when Charles is going to need to get inside for some bizarre reason.
The second thing he decides is that Charles can never, ever know about this.
*
ficlet february!
Get some sleep
Five minutes away
Faint recognition
Half an hour before sunrise
Useless, but beautiful
Something’s broken
Surprise celebration
There were signs and signals
Rituals
Write about a postcard
What are you looking for?
You remind me of someone
A meeting, a beginning
Lasting impression
Long drive
Behind closed doors
Ask questions later
Six impossible things
Day off
Lost in a city
A door key
A late night phone call
Someone else’s mortification
Something from music
Something from a picture
***
Ficlet February 20: "a door key"
"I've left some things for you on the counter!" Charles calls out from the bathroom Friday morning. Erik shoves the last of his eggs and toast into his mouth and makes his way over to the low desk counter in the kitchen. On top is Erik's lunchbox, the book Charles checked out from the university library for him, and a keyring with three keys on it. "I'll see you late tonight--I'll try to make it in before you go to bed, and if not, you can always stop by before after you get back from Magda's tomorrow?"
Frowning at the keys, Erik shoves them in his pocket and then jogs down the hall to lean against the wall next to the bathroom.
"What are the keys for?" he asks.
"Front door, patio door, and the basement," Charles says. "Don't be late!"
"I won't," Erik says. "I'm leaving now. I love you."
It's strange to say it out loud, in a way. He fell for Charles nearly immediately, the nervous butterflies of attraction in his stomach turning into genuine affection within weeks, days. He has no doubt that what he feels for Charles is love, frightening and new and overwhelming if he thinks about it too long. But at the same time, it feels so strange to be saying it to someone who isn't Magda, even years after their divorce. He imagined he'd never say it to anyone else again once they were married, and even though age and distance have added some insight into different kinds of love and different kinds of relationships, it still feels bizarre to make that declaration.
"Love you too," Charles calls back. "You'll still be home before six, right?"
"Yeah," Erik says. He wants to ask more about the keys, but he really will be late if he doesn't leave now. "I'll see you tonight, maybe."
"Hopefully," Charles calls out. He projects something not unlike a kiss. He respects that Charles' morning routine is a little more complicated than most, but part of Erik still wishes he could see him for just a moment before he leaves.
He's lucky Charles loves him back, because he's pretty fucking pathetic.
Erik thinks about the keys some more as he drives into work. The new metal in his pocket is jarring and lingers on the edge of his mind.
He and Charles aren't living together. Not really. Not entirely. Erik still has his own place, and sure, they've been talking a lot about Charles meeting his kids and Magda and Erik is definitely in this for the longterm, but...they're not living together. Erik doesn't need keys to Charles' apartment, even though he spends all his time there. He doesn't need keys at all, for anywhere, actually, but Charles' apartment especially. He has permission from Charles to come in whenever he'd like and he occasionally makes use of it. It's convenient, when Charles asks him over or is running late, for Erik to be able to let himself in. But he doesn't need keys for it. And he doesn't know why Charles is bothering to give them to him.
He's probably thinking about this more than he needs to.
At work, he settles into his desk and opens his email. There's an Outlook alert reminding him of the twins' gymnastics preview tomorrow and another reminding him of the appointment Charles made with the plumber for 6pm tonight. He mutes them both, weeds through his email for anything important, and then picks up his desk phone and dials Magda.
"I have to leave for class in like, five minutes, so make this quick," she says when she picks up.
"I have a question," he says. Not for the first time he wishes he had friends beyond his ex-wife. "Feel free to invoke divorce rule three."
"Divorce rule three?" she says. "I thought you and Charles were pretty exclusive at this point? Did something happen?"
"No, the date one is divorce rule two," Erik says. "Three is talking about relationships."
"Right, right," Magda says. "Rule three."
"Come on, you wrote half of these," Erik says.
"Well, I don't have the numbers memorized," she says. "Anyway, time's wasting. Divorce Rule Three, I can cut you off if I don't want to hear you talking about your new relationship. What's up?"
"I'm not sure," Erik admits. "Charles gave me a set of keys to his place today."
"Really?" Magda asks.
"Yeah," Erik says. "And...we're not moving in together. We haven't talked about that. I don't live there and I can and have used my powers to get in and out as necessary and...what does this mean?"
"Are you sure you're not moving in there?" Magda asks. "You're there an awful lot more than you're at your place, according to my caller ID."
"It's just...nicer," Erik say weakly. "But even if I am, you don't just...ask someone to move in by giving them keys. Do you?"
"You do know that the sum total of my adult relationship knowledge is our failed marriage, right?" Magda asks. Erik winces.
"I know but...you have friends," he says. "They have relationships. You see things. I have you, two toddlers, and the boyfriend who left me keys this morning."
"He just left them?" Magda asks. He can hear something dragging across the kitchen floor--probably a chair. He closes his eyes for a moment and can see it all perfectly, Magda in her kitchen on the wall phone, deciding this conversation was worth sitting down for after all. He understands how Magda's mind works. Maybe one day he'll be at that point with Charles, but he only began to understand Magda after twenty-odd years of being around her constantly. Twenty years with Charles would be...a very long time. He's not ruling it out, necessarily, not at all, but they've only been dating a few months.
"There was a pile of things on the counter in the kitchen that he left there while I was in the shower," Erik says. "He packed my lunch for me and he took a book out of the library for me. It was the lunchbox, the book, and the keys."
"He packs your lunch?"
"I cook most nights, so he packs leftovers for our lunches most mornings," Erik says.
"That is incredibly nerdy and incredibly cute," Magda says, but he can tell she's not entirely comfortable with the swerve into his domestic life with someone else, even if she was the one who brought it up. He refocuses.
"He just left them there, and I took them, and when I said, 'What are the keys for?' he told me the front door, the patio, and the basement. Which is, I assume, accurate, but I meant why did he give them to me, not what did they open. And then I had to leave and we didn't really get a chance to talk and--am I just supposed to know?"
Magda hums on the other end of the phone line.
"Well, lots of people give keys to their boyfriends even when they're not living together. Kind of a 'make yourself at home whenever you feel like it' thing," she says. "He's probably just...making sure you know you're welcome."
"But I don't need keys," Erik says.
"It's a symbolic thing," Magda says. "It's his way of saying 'I know you COULD get in at any time but I also know your moral code keeps you from just bursting in places so this is me officially saying that you are welcome to come in whenever you want.'"
"Really?" Erik asks.
"Oh, for god's sake Erik, I have no idea," Magda says. "I've never met him. I'm guessing, here. You would know better than I would."
Erik sighs and rubs his face.
"You're right," he says. "Of course you're right. I have no fucking idea what I'm doing."
"Then talk to him about it, not me," Magda says. "Now I'm officially invoking rule three because I'm going to be late to class if I don't leave now."
"Yeah, okay, I'll see you tomorrow," Erik says.
"Bye!"
Erik hangs the phone up and pulls the keys out of his pocket, staring down at them again. Looking more closely, he can see that they're labeled--F, P, B. Was Charles trying to send some kind of message? Maybe it's actually the opposite of Magda's guess--maybe Charles is annoyed at how frequently Erik just lets him in and the keys are some kind of gentle reminder that he hasn't had permission. Except...giving the keys would mean giving permission, right?
Fuck, Charles is usually better at saying what he means than this. Erik is the one who occasionally finds himself fumbling to express himself and what he needs. It was so easy with Magda--she knew him so well that he didn't have to actually ask most of the time. She could figure out what he wanted and do it or say it or get it. And, okay, sometimes that backfired into weird passive-aggressive arguments and there were definitely times where he skimped on talking about things they really should have talked about because he didn't want to and it was easier to pretend nothing was wrong. Still. This is terrible.
Not much later, some actual work rolls his way. He puts the keys back into his pocket and forgets about them. He composes a million emails to Charles in his head and is very close to reaching out to poke him telepathically. He imagines a dozen different conversations that they might have once Charles gets home tonight, if he even manages to get home before Erik goes to bed.
It's not his most productive day at work.
He gives up at quarter to five and slips out fifteen minutes early. Of course, getting away from his desk doesn't help matters much. Charles is hosting a lecture tonight and won't be home until late. He could always go by the university but...that seems creepy. Whatever this means, whatever the keys signify, it can wait. Can't it?
He picks up take-out on the way to Charles' apartment and installs himself in front of the television with his Chinese food. He can barely concentrate, so he turns it off and makes himself stop freaking out and analyze why he's upset. This therapist used to love this method of reasoning and it drove Erik crazy as a teenager, but he's willing to give anything a shot.
Charles gave him keys. Charles seemed utterly blase about having given him keys. Charles did not alter his morning routine in the slightest, despite the addition of keys--he still packed Erik's lunch and made the coffee while Erik was in the shower, then kissed Erik good morning and slipped into the bathroom while Erik got ready for work. He told Erik he loved him before Erik left for work. He encouraged Erik to come over this weekend.
To start with, Charles obviously isn't breaking up with him, which is a relief. You don't give someone keys to your apartment if you're breaking up with them. He knows this, but following it through logically makes him feel much better. That leaves a few options--like Magda said, it could be a symbolic gesture. Charles wants Erik to know he can come and go as he pleases. That...doesn't really change anything. Erik already comes and goes as he pleases. It could be a hint--Charles wants keys to Erik's apartment. Which Erik is happy to give, if that's what Charles wants, but they only very rarely go over there, so it's not like Charles is missing out. Charles' apartment has all of the various things he needs to live his life more effortlessly, and though Erik's been working on making his own place more wheelchair friendly, Charles' apartment is also closer to to their jobs and larger and nicer in general.
None of this hinting seems very much like Charles, though. Charles won't even let them go to bed angry--he hates sleeping alone and makes them talk out any disagreements before bed, at least enough so they can get through the night. Charles talks everything to death, actually. Every feeling, every decision. Erik wonders sometimes if it's not a strange side-effect of the telepathy, or rather, of society's rules for telepathy. He wonders if Charles doesn't talk every feeling to death just to prove that he's not taking any telepathic shortcuts.
Whatever the reason, Charles doesn't make games of things like this. If Charles wanted to say any of those things, he would say them. He wouldn't make Erik play this elaborate guessing game.
Except that still doesn't explain the damn keys.
He's mostly done with his take-out when the doorbell buzzes. It's 6:18, which is later than the plumber was expected, but earlier than Erik assumed he'd actually show up. Erik gets up from the couch to let him in.
"Mr. Xavier?" the plumber asks.
"He's out," Erik says. "But he left me to show you around. You're going to need basement access, right?"
"Yup," the plumber says. "And to get out to the water hook-up outside. Probably on the patio, if the rest of the units are anything to go by."
"Whatever you need," Erik says. He walks the plumber through the apartment and points out the patio door before unlocking and pulling open the door to the basement.
"Great," the plumber says. "Like I told Mr. Xavier on the phone, it's gonna be a two, three day job to get everything fixed and hooked up the way the landlord wants. He said he was gonna leave me a set of keys?"
Erik freezes.
Distantly, vaguely, buried under the weight of sleep and two dozen more important things, Erik unearths a memory of Monday night. They were in bed after sex and Erik was mostly asleep. Charles was checking his email and he asked if Erik would be home on Friday to let the plumber in and Erik said yes, then he started talking about water pressure and toilet use and how long it would take and maybe, possibly, in the middle of all that, he mentioned he was having a set of keys made so the plumber could get in and out.
Maybe. Possibly. Erik's mind was elsewhere.
"He did," Erik croaks. He fishes them out of his pocket and hands them over, hoping that the plumber is paying no heed to the fact that Erik's face is probably as bright red as it feels.
He is an idiot.
"Front, patio, basement," Erik says. "They're, uh, labeled."
"Great," the plumber says. "Thanks. I'll leave you to it."
Erik walks back over to the couch and collapses on top of it, covering his face with his hands.
The first thing he decides is to stop on the hardware store on the way to Magda's tomorrow and get a second set of keys to his apartment. They may go over there rarely, but it's probably the right thing to do anyway. Who knows when Charles is going to need to get inside for some bizarre reason.
The second thing he decides is that Charles can never, ever know about this.
*
ficlet february!
Get some sleep
Five minutes away
Faint recognition
Half an hour before sunrise
Useless, but beautiful
Something’s broken
Surprise celebration
There were signs and signals
Rituals
Write about a postcard
What are you looking for?
You remind me of someone
A meeting, a beginning
Lasting impression
Long drive
Behind closed doors
Ask questions later
Six impossible things
Day off
Lost in a city
A door key
A late night phone call
Someone else’s mortification
Something from music
Something from a picture