we're all here because we're not all here, Part 2 | X-Men: First Class | Charles/Erik, Alex/Hank | R
Title: we're all here because we're not all here, Part 2 (chapters six through eight)
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Erik/Charles, Alex/Hank
Prompt: Here at 1stclass_kink.
Rating: R for sex, drugs, dark themes and language. See Warnings.
Word Count: 25,000
Genre: Slash, Gen
Summary: AU, no powers. Charles and the gang are in treatment at the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic for their various problems. Erik is the new patient, convinced he's going to die. Alex is getting a little too intimate with his therapist, and Dr. Hank McCoy remains torn between love and ethics. Romance is completely forbidden between patients, not that that stops our boys. Lines are crossed, tears are cried, hopes are dashed and dreams are reborn. Somewhere in between, people fall in and out of love.
Warnings: Character death, substance abuse, eating disorders, suicide, domestic abuse, rape. Yeah, this fic is definitely not for everyone.
Author’s Notes: This fic could not have been written without a number of things and people: first, I have to acknowledge the documentary Thin and the HBO series In Treatment as well as my own mother for providing me with a semi-thorough background into the world of psychiatry and rehabilitation. If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend both the series and the documentary: very eye opening. I'd also like to thank starshipbadass for reminding me to write the next part/continue with the fic/being there to bounce ideas off of/squeeing over various ideas I had. Truly, without her, the fic would not exist. I'd also like to thank all the people at 1stclass_kink who commented with their kind words of support. Link to Part 3 at the end of Part 2. I hope you all enjoy!
vi. Funeral.
There’s something going on with Erik and Charles. There’s something going on between Erik and Charles, but no one says anything about it. Maybe they fear Erik too much, or maybe they like Charles too much, but there is something going on with Erik and Charles, and no one is saying anything about it.
No one pays much attention to it, anyway. Not today, at least.
“What’s going on,” Charles asks quickly, practically jogging to the crowd of people lined up in the hallway. Alex and Armando are already cursing up a storm, both physically restrained. Erik and Sean stand together, grave expressions on their faces. Charles puts a hand on Erik’s arm. “What’s happened, friend?”
Erik’s jaw clenches. “They’re sending Angel away. Her insurance won’t cover her stay anymore, and her family can’t pay.”
Charles’s eyes flare and he watches as Angel emerges from her room, looking tired and lost. She holds a small box full of her things: Charles can see a tattered blanket, a weathered alarm clock, a like-new copy of the Bible.
“She can’t leave,” Charles murmurs to Erik. “She’s not ready.”
“Who’s to say whether or not any of us will be ready, when it’s our time to go,” Erik postulates, but his eyes remain dark, his expression concerned.
“Come with me,” Charles says, pulling Erik away. “I have an idea.”
They walk, nearly run, to reception.
“I need to use the phone,” Charles says, a little out of breath, to the secretary behind the desk.
“That’s your one phone call for the day, Mr. Xavier,” the secretary reminds, but Charles just nods.
“Yes, yes, that’s fine,” Charles agrees, motioning for the phone. “Quickly, now.” He grabs the phone from the receptionist’s wrinkled hands and dials speedily. He looks at Erik excitedly, fingers drumming against the desk. “Raven,” Charles says at last, breathing a sigh of relief. “Yes, yes I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong. Well, actually there is something wrong, but it’s not about me. There’s this girl who lives here, her name is Angel Salvatore, and she’s run out of insurance money, so she can’t stay at Braddock any longer-”
Charles scowls. “You know exactly what I’m thinking. We have far too much money and I think that we could actually do some good and actually help someone, here.” Erik crosses his arms and begins to pace. “I realize we’re not a charity,” Charles grits out, rage bubbling upward. “This is important to me, Raven. It’s my money too, don’t give me that bullshit-”
“Charles,” Erik says in a low voice. Angel and the rest of the patients have moved from her hallway toward the atrium, just where Charles was having his phone conversation.
“I don’t care if it’s all locked up in trust funds,” Charles spits. “What the point of having all this money if we can’t-fucking-use it?” His voice is ragged and frustration radiates off him. “Well fuck you. Fuck you.” Charles slams the phone on the ringer and looks up, eyes red and cheeks flushed.
Angel puts down her box and walks up to Charles. Wordlessly, she envelops him in a silent hug.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into her hair. “I’m sorry, I can’t-I can’t do anything.”
She responds by hugging him tighter. When she lets him go, she has a calm expression on her face, and it terrifies Charles.
“Thank you for trying,” she says sincerely. She gives him the hint of a smile, as if she knows something everyone else in the room doesn’t.
And then Angel is gone, out the doors of Braddock, and Charles feels oddly bereft. He doesn’t know where to go, what to do with himself, now that he has failed someone so utterly, so completely.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Erik suggests, pressing a hand against the small of Charles’s back. He doesn’t wait for an answer, simply leads Charles away from the emotional debris by the receptionist. Charles enjoys it, for a moment, not having to control his actions, letting Erik take charge of his body, leading him throughout Braddock with purpose. He enjoys feeling kept, and suddenly he is back in group therapy, and Angel is talking about Barnell, and how he kept her, and the misery returns.
They get to Erik’s room and Charles is suddenly furious.
“They should be helping her,” Charles growls, now stomping around the room, running his fingers through his hair in exasperation. “She doesn’t have anybody out there, Erik, you heard her talking about her mother-” Charles is enraged and flushed and all he wants to do is drag Angel back inside because he knows, he knows that this is not a good thing for her, knows that if he could just touch the money his parents had left him, he could save her. He could save her.
“I could save her,” Charles breathes, his voice getting high. He looks at Erik at last, who is leaning his back against the wall. His face is expressionless, but his hands are balled into fists, knuckles white beneath his skin. And then his eyes dart to Charles and he gives him this look, this fucking look, like he feels sorry for Charles, like Charles is the one he should be worried about-
“Don’t look at me like that,” Charles growls.
“Like what,” Erik asks.
“Like you…” Charles pauses. “Like you want to save me. Keep me.”
“I don’t think anyone can, Charles,” Erik says. Charles balks.
“You don’t think I can be saved,” Charles breathes. He feels like the floor has just fallen out beneath him. He sits down on the bed.
“I don’t think anyone can keep you,” Erik clarifies. “You would hate it.”
“I don’t know,” Charles murmurs. “I’ve never been kept before. Maybe I’d like it.”
Erik shakes his head. “You wouldn’t like it. I didn’t.”
Charles wants to ask, wants to know more, but he does not ask. Instead, he leaps up again, anger renewed. He paces a few times, and then throws an ineffective punch into the wall next to the window.
“Charles-” Erik cries out.
“Fuck!” Charles hisses, cradling his hand. Erik is there in an in instant: he brings Charles to the sink, examining the bloodied hand clinically. Erik turns on the water and puts Charles’s hand beneath it. Charles hisses and tries to bring his hand away, but Erik holds it down firmly beneath the faucet until the drain water turns a light pink, then clear again.
“That hurt,” Charles says quietly.
“Sorry,” Erik says, but there is no apology in his voice, just an odd strain and intensity that seems to ripple throughout the room. Erik is suddenly very close to Charles, his body shielding Charles from the rest of the room. Charles feels like he’s been stuck with a needle of adrenaline, and he is very aware of his breath.
“You need a bandage,” Erik rasps.
“Yes, it appears so,” Charles agrees.
Neither of them move.
A shuffle in the corridor, and a security guard rushes into the room. “I heard a noise-is that a hole in the wall-”
“Entirely my fault, I’m afraid,” Charles says, stepping out from behind Erik. He waves his hand around as evidence. The security guard raises and eyebrow and clears his throat.
“Let’s go have the nurses check you out,” the guard suggests, but his tone of voice is less suggestion and more of a command. He gestures toward Charles, who follows the guard out wordlessly.
“Fuck,” Hank groans, pressing his face into the skin between Alex’s shoulder blades. His pants are around his ankles, belt buckle jamming into his bare feet. Hank takes a second to cement the moment in his mind: he opens his mouth and tastes Alex’s skin, which is salty with sweat and soft, so soft beneath his tongue. He sees Alex’s blonde hair against the dark wood of his desk, and how Alex is bent over the front of it so nicely. Hank closes his eyes and feels the heat of Alex surrounding him, and that’s what he finds so remarkable about sex in general: how hot and sweaty it is, how when he comes his hips seem to move without his permission, throwing Alex even further forward, up against the desk. He loves to fuck Alex from behind, but he also loves looking into Alex’s eyes, seeing him hazy and horny and wasted. But now, right now he can’t see Alex’s face: instead, he takes in his broad, muscled back, mostly smooth, with a few scars that Alex will never talk about.
Hank slips out of Alex and reaches for his pants, hiking them up quickly. Alex moans and arches his spine, and Hank is almost hard again, just looking at how Alex moves. Hank reaches for his glasses and puts them on shakily.
“That was,” Alex starts. “Fucking awesome. No pun intended,” he laughs, hiking up his own pants. Hank begins to smile. He wonders how he ever got so lucky, how life had dealt him not what he wanted, but what he absolutely needed. He could get through the hurdles of their relationship; he was determined and prepared for anything that could come their way.
Hank’s phone rings and Alex grabs it immediately, pressing it to his ear with a devilish smile. “Hank McCoy’s office. How can I help you?”
It’s when Alex’s smile fades into nothingness that Hank realizes, too late, that something has gone horribly wrong. Alex drops the receiver into Hank’s hand and sinks down, back against the desk, scraping his skin against the knobs and finally, curling up into a ball on the floor, incapacitated.
Hank hurriedly asks, “What, what is it?” and he’s not sure whether he’s talking on the phone or to Alex, but it doesn’t matter, not anymore, not once he hears the words:
“Angel Salvatore is dead. They found her in her mother’s house,” Ginger tells him over the line.
“Cause of death?” Hank asks, but he already knows and is unsurprised when Ginger says, “It was a heroin overdose, Hank.”
Hank hangs up the phone with shaky hands and looks down at Alex on the ground, who is weeping in short, broken breaths. Hank asks himself who this person on the floor is: his lover, or his patient? Can Hank break down in front of Alex, can Hank show him his personal feelings regarding his late patient? Or does Hank have to be strong and show no tears, no emotion, and just make sure Alex is going to cope with this in a way that isn’t self-destructive?
This is why you don’t get involved with your patients, Hank, he chastises himself. There’s a line for a reason, an ethical code.
Hank puts a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Let’s get your clothes on and get you back to your room.”
If Hank lets out a few tears of frustration on his walk back to Alex’s room (a patient’s room), he does not let Alex see them.
There’s something going on between Charles and Erik, but no one says anything about it: maybe, because they’re afraid Charles is going to fly off the edge, and afraid too that Erik will follow.
No one says anything, at least, not today. Because today is the funeral. And today is about loss. They’re not allowed off-campus to the little cemetery where Mrs. Salvatore has Angel interned, but they have a ceremony at Braddock all the same. Armando says the eulogy. The nurses weep.
“If I could have Angel back, I’d ask her what the fuck she was thinking,” Armando says savagely, reading from a crumpled piece of notebook paper. “I’d tell her that I love her. I’d tell her a lot of things, but I can’t, because Angel Salvatore is dead.” Armando looks out at the crowd and catches Alex’s eye, then Charles’s, then Sean’s, and finally, Erik’s. “I don’t want to fucking go through this again. If any of you -” he points at the group- “try this bullshit on me, I will personally hunt your asses down. We don’t lose anyone else. We’re done with that.” Armando nods to himself and clears his throat. “To Angel Salvatore. For cursing like a fucking sailor. For knowing the best way to cook meatloaf. For standing up for me, even when I was wrong. Especially when I was wrong.” Armando puts his paper away and looks out at the crowd. “And for showing me that death isn’t the way. Life is. Thank you.”
vii. Breaking out; also, getting caught.
Getting back to a normal routine is difficult for the residents of the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic. For some, the Salvatore death causes an extreme change in the way they see their treatment: for example, Armando gains five pounds after Angel’s overdose. He takes her death as a reminder of how much he himself does not want to die. Armando has a new lease on life.
Charles does not.
“Mister Xavier,” the nurse calls from his doorway. “It is time for breakfast now.”
Charles does not answer, though he is clearly awake.
“Mister Xavier?” the nurse asks plaintively. “This is the second day you have not had breakfast. Would you like me to call Dr. McCoy?”
Charles shoots her a withering look, but he gets out of bed grudgingly. “I’m sure Dr. McCoy has other things he’d much rather occupy himself with than the likes of me,” Charles spits, and the nurse gives him an odd look that reads, Where’s the Charles Xavier I used to wake up in the morning?
The answer? That man died along with Angel Salvatore. Charles's guilt at not being able to help Angel haunts him during his waking hours: even when he dreams, he sees Angel's calm smile. He can't get away from her, though she's taken herself so far away from them all.
Charles eats with Erik, Sean and Armando. Alex is gone for the day at some sort of retreat in the mountains and Charles is irrationally envious of Alex’s ability to escape Braddock.
“I want to get out of here,” he tells Erik.
“Don’t we all,” Erik smiles, but Charles remains intent on his goal of leaving Braddock.
“Just for a day. I want to get fast food by drive through, see a movie, do something other than mope around here,” Charles says in a low, excited voice. “Let’s go somewhere else, Erik. I can’t stay here, cooped up like this. It feels like I’m walking over her grave all the time, every day. So let’s just fucking go.”
Erik purses his lips and looks at Sean, of all people. Charles crosses his arms angrily, but Sean looks, of all things, amused.
Casually, Sean throws a pair of car keys on the table.
“Tell me I’m awesome,” Sean grins as Charles snatches the keys greedily.
“You’re actually a kleptomaniac,” Armando laughs.
"An awesome kleptomaniac," Sean corrects.
“How?” is all Charles can ask.
Sean, looking pleased with himself, says, “Picked it up off one of the day nurses. Now let’s get the fuck outta here and blow this Popsicle stand. Metaphorically.”
Erik is the first one to leave the cafeteria (they plan their escape in sequential time-slots, in an attempt to attract less attention to their disappearance). Charles sees the slight bulge in his pocket where the keys lie hidden. Erik walks away with extreme confidence, and Charles bizarrely remembers that horrible pick-up line, Boy, I hate to see you go, but I sure do love to watch you walk away. Charles immediately looks away and is certain his face is red. Thankfully, Sean and Armando are too preoccupied with the plan to notice.
Sean is the next to leave, and Charles has to restrain himself from looking out the window to see if Erik’s even found the car in question.
Charles is the next to leave. He nearly runs a nurse over in his haste, but he manages to get off the porch of Braddock hunched over conspicuously. Erik and Sean wave him forward from a dark red sedan on the far end of the parking lot, and Charles speeds up and at last, throws himself into the passenger seat of the car, giddy with adrenaline and exhilaration. It takes Armando fifteen minutes to sneak out, but the second Armando has both feet in the car, Erik has pulled out of the parking spot and started racing toward the exit, a wicked smile on his face, like a cat that’s just swallowed a mouse.
For a while they just drive around merrily, with Erik, steering the wheel with one strong hand on the top of the wheel, and Charles, captivated by how Erik’s hands tighten or loosen around the wheel as he navigates the road. Sean and Armando let down the all the windows and it the wind feels amazing. Braddock itself is a fairly isolated compound, but the highway isn’t very far off the dirt path that leads to the clinic. They pass a few cops on the road, and Charles is curious what would happen if they got pulled over. Erik’s driving is on the edge of reckless, but the cops ignore them for what Charles supposes must be bigger fish in the sea.
“You know what I would kill for,” Charles says at long last. They’ve been driving around for so long that it’s almost lunch. “Some drive through fast food.”
And that’s what sends them on an hour and a half journey to find a McDonalds. Sean is groaning with hunger pains by the time they roll into the drive through, and they order enough food for a small army, filling the car with McFlurries, quarter pounders, a few “Yes, I would like to make that a meal,”'s and bags full to the brim with just French fries. Sean asks the lady behind the speaker if they serve alcohol at McDonalds and Charles’s laugh is loud enough to mask her bewildered response. Erik, blessedly, has a credit card, and, equally blessedly, the meal comes out to less than sixty dollars, which is a miracle in itself.
They find a public park and leave the car at long last. The foursome trek up a hill and eat their feast on the top of a quiet embankment, and their laughter fills the air around them.
For the first time in a long time, Charles’s life feels full.
They drive back, and the barely make it in before the day shift ends. Sean deftly deposits the key at reception and the four patients walk into Braddock together, too full of their achievement to stagger their entrances.
They immediately run into Alex, who stares at the four of them, head cocked to the side, silently asking where the fuck were you guys?, and Charles shakes his head slightly. Alex’s face flushes angrily, but the four of them each run to their respective rooms, leaving the blonde behind in the hallway, alone. Charles closes his bedroom door behind him and exhales shakily.
Charles wants to run around the room and shout from the top of his lungs, “We got away with it! Take that, motherfuckers!” He restrains himself to a small yelp and fist pump. Charles grins to himself and flops backwards onto his bed, exhilarated. He feels the excitement surge throughout his body, and Charles is suddenly aware that he hasn’t felt this good since the last time he got high. It’s when he makes that realization that Charles knows he is in trouble.
"No," Charles says aloud, but the idea has already been planted.
He clenches his hands and presses his arms against his bed, trying to physically restrain himself from getting up: yes, if he doesn’t get up, he can’t break. He can do this. He can stay on the bed.
Charles gets up.
Bedrooms at Braddock don’t have locks, but Charles puts a chair in the crook of the doorknob, and it seems fairly effective in the brief pressure he puts against the knob. Charles looks at the door nervously, wondering if anyone will enter. He waits for a full minute before racing to his closet and pulling out an old, patent leather shoe that hasn’t been worn since the day he arrived at Braddock. Charles shakes the shoe, and out pops a small orange bottle that clatters loudly to the ground. Charles feels his heart start to race again, akin to how he felt when he first entered the room. His hands shake as he pops open the small bottle; he lets two white pills fall into his hand. Before Charles can rethink his actions, he dry swallows both.
Even though Charles knows that the effect can’t have begun yet, he feels this immense sense of relief. There wasn’t ever any chance for Charles at Braddock: he was always going to come to this moment, this fixed point in his timeline… he was always going to reach this precipice, and he was destined to fail.
Charles feels his breathing slow slightly and his skin flush as a wave of heat passes over him: then the first wave of euphoria hits him, and Charles starts laughing and crying, curled up on the floor, unable to stand up his wobbly legs and fragile arms.
“Charles,” calls a voice from outside his door, or at least, Charles thinks it’s outside the door, it could very well be the ceiling for all he knew. “Charles, the door is stuck.” Charles recognizes the voice, and it sends a thrill through him: Erik, Erik is outside the door. Sheer terror runs through him momentarily, then high anticipation.
“There’s a chair,” Charles murmurs into the floor as Erik tries to jiggle the door open. At last, the chair clatters away and Erik steps through the doorway. He seems to take one look at Charles and know exactly what’s going on.
Quietly, deliberately, Erik replaces the chair against the door. In that moment, Erik becomes complicit in Charles's drug abuse, and Charles breaths out a long breath and murmurs, "Thank you thank you thank you, Erik." Charles beckons with a limp arm, but he is simultaneously thrilled at the idea of Erik Lehnsherr in his room, where they are so very alone.
“I got back to my room,” Erik beings, “and I wanted-I needed that rush again, what I felt when we were breaking out of here-and I knew that I couldn’t be the only one who felt it, who felt… I got away from the stupid locket, that asshole Shaw's locket, and I thought you'd be...”
Erik falls to his knees in front of Charles. Charles, with great difficulty, manages to sit up.
“Give me,” Charles says raggedly, “your palm.” Erik is hesitant at first, but then he holds out his hand, eyes bright and curious and perhaps something else entirely. Charles presses a kiss into the center of Erik’s upturned hand, and then lets two pills fall from the bottle into Erik’s hand. Charles curls Erik’s fingers up to grasp the oxycodone.
“Come with me,” Charles asks, nearly begs.
“I am with you,” Erik says. Charles laughs giddily and falls into a gelatinous mush on the floor.
“Not yet you aren’t,” Charles giggles. He looks up at Erik seriously. “You should probably get us on the bed before you take those. My legs have turned into mashed potatoes.”
Erik smiles briefly and scoops Charles up in his arms easily. Charles revels in the arms of his companion, pressing his nose into Erik’s chest, inhaling deeply. Erik drops Charles down on the bed with a thunk, and then pops the pills into his mouth like he’s done it a thousand times. He probably has. Charles’s legs are piled on top of each other, and he slowly legs his left leg splay out so that he is spread eagle on the bed. Erik has his eyes closed, and he rests a hand against the wall behind him to steady himself. Charles reaches a hand out and is for a time mesmerized by the wrinkles of his own palm and how thin his fingers are. Then he remembers what he wants.
“I’m h-high,” Charles says, pressing his hands against his eyes. “For the first-the first time in months.” He reaches out for Erik. “I-I blamed Raven. I blamed everyone except myself, because it couldn’t have been me. It couldn’t have. But it was,” Charles breathes. “Wasn’t it?” Erik’s eyes flash open.
“It was me,” Charles says, astonished and shocked and saddened. Charles hates his weakness and wants to forget it. “Erik. Erik. I ne-I need, just-”
Charles cannot finish his sentence, because Erik has thrown himself on top of Charles, pushing Charles further up the bed, threading one hand under Charles’s back and one hand beneath the curve of Charles’s neck. Charles moans happily into the embrace. Charles thinks he hears Erik let out a purr against the skin under Charles’s ear, which makes Charles laugh raucously. Charles imagines a world where Erik is a cat and continues to giggle.
“You are seducing me,” Charles says, incredulous at the fact, “by pretending to be a cat.”
“Okay,” Erik says.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Charles tells him.
“Okay,” Erik says, but this time his voice is low and shaky. Charles grins and brings Erik’s lips to his own: the kiss itself is fairly messy and Charles is only slightly concerned that Erik might be drooling on his chin, and above him Erik feels like more teeth than mouth, and Charles can taste the French fries on Erik’s breath from hours earlier. Erik’s hands run through Charles’s hair, and his torso aligns haphazardly with Charles’s waist. Charles starts laughing and in the process, Erik’s teeth graze Charles’s lip roughly.
“Gently,” Charles murmurs into Erik’s mouth. Erik’s laugh is a low grumble now, and the sound reminds Charles of the hum of a plane, and he nips Charles’s lip again. Charles snickers gleefully.
It is a pretty perfect kiss.
It takes longer for them to get their clothes off, but eventually they manage at least the semblance of disrobement: Charles’s pants are hung around Erik’s bare shoulders like a spoil of war, and Erik’s jeans are hanging off his left foot precariously. Charles still has his shirt on, but only because Erik refuses to rise up off his chest. Erik’s arms run beneath Charles’s tee shirt, though, crisscrossing on his back, hugging him close. Charles has his hands down Erik’s underwear, and every so often when he rubs or pulls or squeezes in a certain way, Erik will groan and force his knee even more intensely between Charles’s legs, which Charles ruts against in abandon. Charles has had sex with men and women: in fact, he’s had a lot of sex in his life. In this moment, though Charles recognizes the sexual nature of the embrace, Charles feels like this is something more: a rare moment of pure elation in the monotony of life in rehab, of his life in general. Charles has a second of revelation, there in Erik’s arms, and he knows that he can become something more than what he was before.
Erik’s hips thrust forward sporadically as he comes. Charles rolls out from underneath Erik, and Erik buries his face in Charles’s stomach.
“I want this day to last forever,” Charles tells the ceiling as Erik strips him of his underwear and begins giving him a rough hand job. “Especially-God, especially when you do that, there. Hnnngh.” Charles doesn’t take long in the silence that follows, simply whimpering and moaning into the space between them.
Eventually, Charles groans in climax, jutting his hips and feeling the blanket dampen around his waist. Erik pulls Charles’s comforter over the two of them, spooning Charles’s body in the crook of his own.
“Yes, that’s good,” Charles murmurs into the pillow, pulling Erik’s arm over his body and lacing their fingers together in untempered, brutally poignant relief. Sleep takes them both quickly.
They don’t wake up until the nurse practically breaks the door in the next morning for the morning wake-up call. Charles scrambles to sit up, cursing blindly, and Erik lays down on the bed, hands over his face. The nurse picks up the orange bottle on the floor and looks at the two men sadly.
“I’ll,” the nurse says, “I’ll come back in five minutes.” She closes the door behind her with a small click.
“Shit,” Charles says. “Shit.”
viii. Consequences.
The two of them are in Hank’s office for what Charles knows is an emergency session.
“There are clear rules here, Charles,” Hank says. “Patient fraternization is absolutely prohibited-”
“Patient fraternization, is that what they’re really calling it now,” Charles says. “Just call it sex, Hank. That’s what it was, after all.”
“You had sex with Erik Lehnsherr. I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation, Charles: you’re under review by the Braddock board of directors. They’re thinking of kicking you both out of here. And I know that’s the last thing in the world you need right now, especially after the relapse.”
“The relapse has nothing to do with the way Erik and I feel about each other,” Charles growls. “It was just really, really unfortunate timing, and, might I add, completely my fault.”
“Charles, it has to stop. Whatever it is, make it stop,” Hank begs.
Charles looks at him derisively. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Hank.”
For a long moment, Hank looks at Charles, attempts to evaluate the exact meaning behind the words just said. Then the doctor sinks into his chair and puts his head in his hands.
“Who else knows,” he asks in a deadly quiet voice.
“Just me,” Charles says. “And just for your information, Alex didn’t tell me shit. I am, after all, extraordinarily perceptive.”
Hank groans. “No one else can know. I could lose my license-”
“As well you should,” Charles bites back, with all the rage and confusion of a wounded animal. Then he calms himself down, attempting to breath in a regular rhythm. “I won’t tell anyone, Hank. But there’s no way that you can continue to be Alex’s therapist. Something has to change.”
“I know,” Hank says miserably. “I know.” Hank runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. “My own… situation aside, Charles: you must understand that you’re in a serious amount of trouble here.”
Charles nods. “I think I am beginning to realize exactly what can of worms we opened up.”
“Good. Because this is just the beginning, and I am the least of your problems,” Hank says.
Dr. Moira MacTaggert pulls up to the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic in a black station wagon that gleams in the early morning sun. She steps out of the car in a dark skirt with a light blue shirt tucked in, a bag slung across her shoulder, and a briefcase in her hand.
She slams the door shut behind her and locks the door, dropping the keys in her purse. She runs a few fingers through her shoulder length brown hair and lets out a breath full of nervous energy. Moira takes a moment to view Braddock from the outside, as she supposes this would be the last time that she could evaluate the place as a stranger: the moment she walked in through those double doors, she would become an employee. The building itself is a ranch style establishment, running out broadly against the landscape. It is painted a light yellow that has weathered a bit from the sun and the other elements. Beyond the building itself is a beautiful campus, reaching out into the wooded area beyond. She sees a hammock and some picnic tables, empty and new-looking, as if unused. She tilts her head to the side in slight confusion and treads on.
Moira walks through the front doors and is immediately greeted by a gangly redhead with a smattering of freckles around his face.
“Hello,” he says, a little too close to Moira for comfort. She smoothly raises a hand to him to shake, and the redhead takes it a little uncertainly.
“Hello,” she says kindly.
“I’m Sean,” he introduces.
“Hello Sean,” Moira says, “I’m looking for reception. Or Hank McCoy. Whichever is closest.”
Sean points in two different directions. “That way,” he says, gesturing with his right hand, “is reception. And that guy there,” he says, nodding toward his left hand, “is Dr. McCoy. Are you Dr. McCoy’s girlfriend?” Moira looks left and sees a man in a light blue oxford shirt and brown hair that is a little unruly on the top of his head. He wears glasses and is currently occupied by what appears to be a nurse’s mix up in medication.
“No,” Moira says. “Thank you for your help, Sean.”
Moira walks over to Hank, heels clacking against the floor in a deliberate fashion: she had no desire to sneak up on him. Hank turns toward her almost immediately, and Moira sees a mix of emotions on his face: relief, sadness, and a subtle layer of guilt.
“Hello, Hank,” Moira says, a smile blossoming on her face. “It’s been too long.”
“Oh, sorry,” Alex says after cracking the door open. “I thought I was supposed to meet someone else here-”
“You’re in the right place, Alex,” Moira says, looking up at him from her chair. “Please sit.”
Alex steps through the door uncertainly. “Where’s Hank?”
“Hank has asked me to take over his sessions for the time being,” Moira says casually. “Please sit down, Alex.”
Alex closes the door and sits down. “Charles saw Hank this morning,” Alex says.
“I cannot discuss other patients here at Braddock,” Moira says delicately. “What I would like to discuss is you, Alex.”
“Why would I talk to you,” Alex asks her incredulously. “I don’t even know you.”
Moira crosses her legs and leans forward. “So then tell me about yourself.”
“Fuck you,” Alex says.
“That’s an original one,” Moira laughs.
“Where is Hank,” Alex asks again.
“I don’t know,” Moira says truthfully. “It’s none of my business.”
“You think it should be none of my business, too,” Alex tests.
“Why are you so concerned with Dr. McCoy?” Moira asks.
“Well, don’t you think it’s shitty of him to just pawn me off?” Alex asks.
Moira raises an eyebrow. “Do you think that’s shitty?”
“I do!” Alex says, voice almost at a yell. “Where the fuck is Hank?”
Moira breathes through her nose to stop herself from yelling right back at the blonde boy. Throughout her life, she has always had a fairly short fuse, but this boy was just not giving her an inch. Moira clears her throat.
“Let me introduce myself, then,” Moira suggests. “My name is Moira, and I am your new therapist.”
“I don’t need a new therapist,” Alex mimics nastily. “Hank wouldn’t leave me like this. Something’s happened to him.”
“Nothing’s happened to him,” Moira reassures him.
“So you do know where Hank is,” Alex pounces. Moira purses her lips.
“Was Hank a good therapist for you, Alex?” Moira asks. “He must have helped you through a lot.”
“Why do you think that?” Alex asks.
“Well, your reaction to his not being here is certainly… intense,” Moira says. “He must have helped you a great deal.”
Alex looks uncomfortable. “Hank was… we, uh, didn’t talk a lot.”
“But you met with him twice a week, Alex,” Moira says. “You must have talked a little.”
The blonde boy blushes, and Moira masks her confusion with a smile.
“Hank was a good… therapist,” Alex says, but it’s clear that he isn’t quite sure what the word means, and how Hank relates to it.
“As a person,” Moira asks, “do you like Dr. McCoy? Hank?”
Again, the blush. “Yeah. Definitely.”
There is quiet for a moment. “More than like, I guess.”
“He seems very important to you,” Moira says kindly. Alex nods savagely.
“He is.”
Hank is outside on the picnic bench when Moira finds him at last.
“They don’t let the patients out here unless they’ve earned the proper amount of ‘points,’” Hank says as Moira sits down next to him. “An idiotic system, if you ask me. But no one does. Ask, that is.”
“Hank,” Moira says softly. He turns to her with a sad expression on his face. “When you first asked me to join you here at Braddock, I didn’t really understand why. Now though…” Moira sighs.
“I take it your session with Alex was… informative,” Hank says.
“I believe your diagnosis of erotic transference is on the nose,” Moira says sagely. “That boy is so in love with you he couldn’t tell me what day of the week it is.”
Hank coughs for a moment, and Moira looks out over the serene scenery of Braddock. She considers the irony that the patients here would rarely, if ever, see this view.
“There’s no way you can continue functioning, effectively, as his therapist,” Moira says. “It was good that you brought me in here.”
Hank nods, but he does not look at her.
“It’s been a long time since medical school,” Moira says. “A lot of things have changed. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Circumstances… have changed.”
“Yes,” Hank says, slightly distracted. “A lot has changed.”
Moira hears a tone in his voice that is extraordinarily sad. She decides not to tell him about the divorce and simply sits there.
“You need to tell Alex you cannot see him professionally anymore,” Moira tells Hank. “Soon.”
Alex corners him on the way to reception. Hank barely knows what’s happening as he’s pulled into Alex’s room, the door shut behind him.
“How could you?” Alex asks. His eyes are red and his face is flushed.
“How couldn’t I?” Hank bites back, anger flaring. “How could I have waited this long? That’s the real question, Alex.”
“You’re breaking up with me,” Alex says miserably.
“We would both be fools to continue on in this way,” Hank says in a low voice. “And it’s all the more telling that you consider this a break up, Alex. What am I to you, exactly?”
Alex looks at Hank, unnerved. When he doesn’t respond, Hank continues, emotional and unhinged. “Am I your therapist? Really, Alex? I don’t think I’ve been that for a long time. Your friend?” Hank presses Alex up against the door. “How can we ever be friends.”
“You’re trying to push me away,” Alex grits out defiantly. “You’re trying to scare me. It won’t work. I will never be afraid of you.”
“Well you should be!” Hank cries out, and then he clamps his hand down over his mouth. “I have taken advantage of you in ways that I may never be able to reconcile.”
“So I let you fuck me?” Alex asks. “So. What. I wanted you to do it. I wanted it.”
Footsteps pass outside the door and Hank blanches.
“I am your doctor for Chrissakes, Alex!” Hank whispers viciously.
“I still need you,” Alex says. “You can’t just give up on me now.”
“I love you,” Hank says.
A quiet moment passes between the two of them: Hank’s eyes are wild and intense; he grows horrified as Alex remains silent.
“And that’s why I can’t be your therapist anymore,” Hank says bitterly. “I’m sorry I let it continue for this long. It was... wrong of me.”
Alex lets Hank leave him behind in the room. He takes a few unsteady paces around the room, then nearly races to the door and throws it open. Hank is nowhere in sight.
Charles opens the door to Erik’s room later that evening to find a suitcase splayed open on the bed, filled to the brim with neatly folded clothes and a row of shoes tucked in nicely. Erik is in the closet, pulling a box down from the top shelf, and as Erik turns around to see Charles in the doorway, Charles knows what’s happening.
“No,” Charles says. “Absolutely not.”
“I spoke to the board this morning,” Erik says as he packs away yet another belonging. “And you’ll be lucky if they don’t kick you out as well.”
“I should be the one leaving,” Charles says. “I was the one with the pills.”
Erik looks at Charles warily. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. According to what I told the board, I was the one who initiated. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t deny my affidavit.”
“You’re kidding me,” Charles says in disbelief. “How can you expect me to just stand here and watch you fall on your sword? Stop buying into your own idiotic façade of nobility and just consider the options-”
“You think it’s a façade?” Erik laughs. Charles is not amused. Erik lets his smile fade into a serious expression.
“There’s only thing I want more than to stay here with you,” Erik says. “And that’s for you to get better. Being here will help you do that, Charles, in ways that it could never help me.”
“What about you?” Charles asks, voice ragged. “Aren’t you here for a reason, too?”
Erik is quiet for a moment. “I tried to kill myself the night I was brought here to Braddock,” he begins. “I was in this dark place, full of guilt and despair, and I thought there was no alternative, no way out of the depths where I had fallen. For a long time, I thought I had been pushed into that chasm. But now I know that I fell of my own accord. I came here to Braddock by force, and I came here wanting to die.”
Erik takes Charles’s hand. “I no longer yearn for death, Charles. And you know why.”
Erik flashes his teeth at Charles briefly, but there are tears in his eyes as well. Charles feels like he cannot breath, because he does know why: he knows that Erik loves him, knows it without saying the words or a final kiss goodbye.
“I’ll survive,” Erik says. “Because I’ll know that you’re here, getting better, really, truly working on getting better. And I know someday, we’ll both be clean. I’ll be waiting for that moment: every second of every hour, I’ll be waiting… until it comes, Charles, and it will come, and I will find you.”
“Don’t go,” Charles weeps desperately. “You shouldn’t have to go.”
“Promise me,” Erik says, “promise me that you won’t give up. No more relapses or shenanigans or whatnot.”
Charles looks away from Erik and wonders exactly what he did to piss off God or the gods or karma in general to deserve this absolute bullshit. He puts his hand over his face and tries to hide his tears, and finally, Charles nods shakily and Erik smiles.
“There. That wasn’t so bad,” Erik says, but the look Charles gives him says differently.
Erik zips up his suitcase and lets it fall to the ground with a thunk.
“Walk me out, will you?” he asks. Charles nods. Erik holds out his hand, and Charles ignores it, pulling the taller man into a tight embrace.
“I’m sorry,” Charles murmurs into the base of Erik’s throat. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Erik says, clutching at Charles. “It’s okay.”
Charles’s nose is clogged and his eyes are red as he walks Erik to the front door of Braddock. A yellow taxi waits outside for him, and Charles decides that he hates this place.
“See you on the other side,” Erik murmurs, finally letting go of Charles’s hand.
Erik waves at him from the window and disappears into the car. The car drives away slowly, and Charles feels like his heart is being dragged along behind it, attached by the thinnest of strings.
“I’m going to go throw up,” Charles says to no one in particular.
PART THREE
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Erik/Charles, Alex/Hank
Prompt: Here at 1stclass_kink.
Rating: R for sex, drugs, dark themes and language. See Warnings.
Word Count: 25,000
Genre: Slash, Gen
Summary: AU, no powers. Charles and the gang are in treatment at the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic for their various problems. Erik is the new patient, convinced he's going to die. Alex is getting a little too intimate with his therapist, and Dr. Hank McCoy remains torn between love and ethics. Romance is completely forbidden between patients, not that that stops our boys. Lines are crossed, tears are cried, hopes are dashed and dreams are reborn. Somewhere in between, people fall in and out of love.
Warnings: Character death, substance abuse, eating disorders, suicide, domestic abuse, rape. Yeah, this fic is definitely not for everyone.
Author’s Notes: This fic could not have been written without a number of things and people: first, I have to acknowledge the documentary Thin and the HBO series In Treatment as well as my own mother for providing me with a semi-thorough background into the world of psychiatry and rehabilitation. If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend both the series and the documentary: very eye opening. I'd also like to thank starshipbadass for reminding me to write the next part/continue with the fic/being there to bounce ideas off of/squeeing over various ideas I had. Truly, without her, the fic would not exist. I'd also like to thank all the people at 1stclass_kink who commented with their kind words of support. Link to Part 3 at the end of Part 2. I hope you all enjoy!
vi. Funeral.
There’s something going on with Erik and Charles. There’s something going on between Erik and Charles, but no one says anything about it. Maybe they fear Erik too much, or maybe they like Charles too much, but there is something going on with Erik and Charles, and no one is saying anything about it.
No one pays much attention to it, anyway. Not today, at least.
“What’s going on,” Charles asks quickly, practically jogging to the crowd of people lined up in the hallway. Alex and Armando are already cursing up a storm, both physically restrained. Erik and Sean stand together, grave expressions on their faces. Charles puts a hand on Erik’s arm. “What’s happened, friend?”
Erik’s jaw clenches. “They’re sending Angel away. Her insurance won’t cover her stay anymore, and her family can’t pay.”
Charles’s eyes flare and he watches as Angel emerges from her room, looking tired and lost. She holds a small box full of her things: Charles can see a tattered blanket, a weathered alarm clock, a like-new copy of the Bible.
“She can’t leave,” Charles murmurs to Erik. “She’s not ready.”
“Who’s to say whether or not any of us will be ready, when it’s our time to go,” Erik postulates, but his eyes remain dark, his expression concerned.
“Come with me,” Charles says, pulling Erik away. “I have an idea.”
They walk, nearly run, to reception.
“I need to use the phone,” Charles says, a little out of breath, to the secretary behind the desk.
“That’s your one phone call for the day, Mr. Xavier,” the secretary reminds, but Charles just nods.
“Yes, yes, that’s fine,” Charles agrees, motioning for the phone. “Quickly, now.” He grabs the phone from the receptionist’s wrinkled hands and dials speedily. He looks at Erik excitedly, fingers drumming against the desk. “Raven,” Charles says at last, breathing a sigh of relief. “Yes, yes I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong. Well, actually there is something wrong, but it’s not about me. There’s this girl who lives here, her name is Angel Salvatore, and she’s run out of insurance money, so she can’t stay at Braddock any longer-”
Charles scowls. “You know exactly what I’m thinking. We have far too much money and I think that we could actually do some good and actually help someone, here.” Erik crosses his arms and begins to pace. “I realize we’re not a charity,” Charles grits out, rage bubbling upward. “This is important to me, Raven. It’s my money too, don’t give me that bullshit-”
“Charles,” Erik says in a low voice. Angel and the rest of the patients have moved from her hallway toward the atrium, just where Charles was having his phone conversation.
“I don’t care if it’s all locked up in trust funds,” Charles spits. “What the point of having all this money if we can’t-fucking-use it?” His voice is ragged and frustration radiates off him. “Well fuck you. Fuck you.” Charles slams the phone on the ringer and looks up, eyes red and cheeks flushed.
Angel puts down her box and walks up to Charles. Wordlessly, she envelops him in a silent hug.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into her hair. “I’m sorry, I can’t-I can’t do anything.”
She responds by hugging him tighter. When she lets him go, she has a calm expression on her face, and it terrifies Charles.
“Thank you for trying,” she says sincerely. She gives him the hint of a smile, as if she knows something everyone else in the room doesn’t.
And then Angel is gone, out the doors of Braddock, and Charles feels oddly bereft. He doesn’t know where to go, what to do with himself, now that he has failed someone so utterly, so completely.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Erik suggests, pressing a hand against the small of Charles’s back. He doesn’t wait for an answer, simply leads Charles away from the emotional debris by the receptionist. Charles enjoys it, for a moment, not having to control his actions, letting Erik take charge of his body, leading him throughout Braddock with purpose. He enjoys feeling kept, and suddenly he is back in group therapy, and Angel is talking about Barnell, and how he kept her, and the misery returns.
They get to Erik’s room and Charles is suddenly furious.
“They should be helping her,” Charles growls, now stomping around the room, running his fingers through his hair in exasperation. “She doesn’t have anybody out there, Erik, you heard her talking about her mother-” Charles is enraged and flushed and all he wants to do is drag Angel back inside because he knows, he knows that this is not a good thing for her, knows that if he could just touch the money his parents had left him, he could save her. He could save her.
“I could save her,” Charles breathes, his voice getting high. He looks at Erik at last, who is leaning his back against the wall. His face is expressionless, but his hands are balled into fists, knuckles white beneath his skin. And then his eyes dart to Charles and he gives him this look, this fucking look, like he feels sorry for Charles, like Charles is the one he should be worried about-
“Don’t look at me like that,” Charles growls.
“Like what,” Erik asks.
“Like you…” Charles pauses. “Like you want to save me. Keep me.”
“I don’t think anyone can, Charles,” Erik says. Charles balks.
“You don’t think I can be saved,” Charles breathes. He feels like the floor has just fallen out beneath him. He sits down on the bed.
“I don’t think anyone can keep you,” Erik clarifies. “You would hate it.”
“I don’t know,” Charles murmurs. “I’ve never been kept before. Maybe I’d like it.”
Erik shakes his head. “You wouldn’t like it. I didn’t.”
Charles wants to ask, wants to know more, but he does not ask. Instead, he leaps up again, anger renewed. He paces a few times, and then throws an ineffective punch into the wall next to the window.
“Charles-” Erik cries out.
“Fuck!” Charles hisses, cradling his hand. Erik is there in an in instant: he brings Charles to the sink, examining the bloodied hand clinically. Erik turns on the water and puts Charles’s hand beneath it. Charles hisses and tries to bring his hand away, but Erik holds it down firmly beneath the faucet until the drain water turns a light pink, then clear again.
“That hurt,” Charles says quietly.
“Sorry,” Erik says, but there is no apology in his voice, just an odd strain and intensity that seems to ripple throughout the room. Erik is suddenly very close to Charles, his body shielding Charles from the rest of the room. Charles feels like he’s been stuck with a needle of adrenaline, and he is very aware of his breath.
“You need a bandage,” Erik rasps.
“Yes, it appears so,” Charles agrees.
Neither of them move.
A shuffle in the corridor, and a security guard rushes into the room. “I heard a noise-is that a hole in the wall-”
“Entirely my fault, I’m afraid,” Charles says, stepping out from behind Erik. He waves his hand around as evidence. The security guard raises and eyebrow and clears his throat.
“Let’s go have the nurses check you out,” the guard suggests, but his tone of voice is less suggestion and more of a command. He gestures toward Charles, who follows the guard out wordlessly.
“Fuck,” Hank groans, pressing his face into the skin between Alex’s shoulder blades. His pants are around his ankles, belt buckle jamming into his bare feet. Hank takes a second to cement the moment in his mind: he opens his mouth and tastes Alex’s skin, which is salty with sweat and soft, so soft beneath his tongue. He sees Alex’s blonde hair against the dark wood of his desk, and how Alex is bent over the front of it so nicely. Hank closes his eyes and feels the heat of Alex surrounding him, and that’s what he finds so remarkable about sex in general: how hot and sweaty it is, how when he comes his hips seem to move without his permission, throwing Alex even further forward, up against the desk. He loves to fuck Alex from behind, but he also loves looking into Alex’s eyes, seeing him hazy and horny and wasted. But now, right now he can’t see Alex’s face: instead, he takes in his broad, muscled back, mostly smooth, with a few scars that Alex will never talk about.
Hank slips out of Alex and reaches for his pants, hiking them up quickly. Alex moans and arches his spine, and Hank is almost hard again, just looking at how Alex moves. Hank reaches for his glasses and puts them on shakily.
“That was,” Alex starts. “Fucking awesome. No pun intended,” he laughs, hiking up his own pants. Hank begins to smile. He wonders how he ever got so lucky, how life had dealt him not what he wanted, but what he absolutely needed. He could get through the hurdles of their relationship; he was determined and prepared for anything that could come their way.
Hank’s phone rings and Alex grabs it immediately, pressing it to his ear with a devilish smile. “Hank McCoy’s office. How can I help you?”
It’s when Alex’s smile fades into nothingness that Hank realizes, too late, that something has gone horribly wrong. Alex drops the receiver into Hank’s hand and sinks down, back against the desk, scraping his skin against the knobs and finally, curling up into a ball on the floor, incapacitated.
Hank hurriedly asks, “What, what is it?” and he’s not sure whether he’s talking on the phone or to Alex, but it doesn’t matter, not anymore, not once he hears the words:
“Angel Salvatore is dead. They found her in her mother’s house,” Ginger tells him over the line.
“Cause of death?” Hank asks, but he already knows and is unsurprised when Ginger says, “It was a heroin overdose, Hank.”
Hank hangs up the phone with shaky hands and looks down at Alex on the ground, who is weeping in short, broken breaths. Hank asks himself who this person on the floor is: his lover, or his patient? Can Hank break down in front of Alex, can Hank show him his personal feelings regarding his late patient? Or does Hank have to be strong and show no tears, no emotion, and just make sure Alex is going to cope with this in a way that isn’t self-destructive?
This is why you don’t get involved with your patients, Hank, he chastises himself. There’s a line for a reason, an ethical code.
Hank puts a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Let’s get your clothes on and get you back to your room.”
If Hank lets out a few tears of frustration on his walk back to Alex’s room (a patient’s room), he does not let Alex see them.
There’s something going on between Charles and Erik, but no one says anything about it: maybe, because they’re afraid Charles is going to fly off the edge, and afraid too that Erik will follow.
No one says anything, at least, not today. Because today is the funeral. And today is about loss. They’re not allowed off-campus to the little cemetery where Mrs. Salvatore has Angel interned, but they have a ceremony at Braddock all the same. Armando says the eulogy. The nurses weep.
“If I could have Angel back, I’d ask her what the fuck she was thinking,” Armando says savagely, reading from a crumpled piece of notebook paper. “I’d tell her that I love her. I’d tell her a lot of things, but I can’t, because Angel Salvatore is dead.” Armando looks out at the crowd and catches Alex’s eye, then Charles’s, then Sean’s, and finally, Erik’s. “I don’t want to fucking go through this again. If any of you -” he points at the group- “try this bullshit on me, I will personally hunt your asses down. We don’t lose anyone else. We’re done with that.” Armando nods to himself and clears his throat. “To Angel Salvatore. For cursing like a fucking sailor. For knowing the best way to cook meatloaf. For standing up for me, even when I was wrong. Especially when I was wrong.” Armando puts his paper away and looks out at the crowd. “And for showing me that death isn’t the way. Life is. Thank you.”
vii. Breaking out; also, getting caught.
Getting back to a normal routine is difficult for the residents of the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic. For some, the Salvatore death causes an extreme change in the way they see their treatment: for example, Armando gains five pounds after Angel’s overdose. He takes her death as a reminder of how much he himself does not want to die. Armando has a new lease on life.
Charles does not.
“Mister Xavier,” the nurse calls from his doorway. “It is time for breakfast now.”
Charles does not answer, though he is clearly awake.
“Mister Xavier?” the nurse asks plaintively. “This is the second day you have not had breakfast. Would you like me to call Dr. McCoy?”
Charles shoots her a withering look, but he gets out of bed grudgingly. “I’m sure Dr. McCoy has other things he’d much rather occupy himself with than the likes of me,” Charles spits, and the nurse gives him an odd look that reads, Where’s the Charles Xavier I used to wake up in the morning?
The answer? That man died along with Angel Salvatore. Charles's guilt at not being able to help Angel haunts him during his waking hours: even when he dreams, he sees Angel's calm smile. He can't get away from her, though she's taken herself so far away from them all.
Charles eats with Erik, Sean and Armando. Alex is gone for the day at some sort of retreat in the mountains and Charles is irrationally envious of Alex’s ability to escape Braddock.
“I want to get out of here,” he tells Erik.
“Don’t we all,” Erik smiles, but Charles remains intent on his goal of leaving Braddock.
“Just for a day. I want to get fast food by drive through, see a movie, do something other than mope around here,” Charles says in a low, excited voice. “Let’s go somewhere else, Erik. I can’t stay here, cooped up like this. It feels like I’m walking over her grave all the time, every day. So let’s just fucking go.”
Erik purses his lips and looks at Sean, of all people. Charles crosses his arms angrily, but Sean looks, of all things, amused.
Casually, Sean throws a pair of car keys on the table.
“Tell me I’m awesome,” Sean grins as Charles snatches the keys greedily.
“You’re actually a kleptomaniac,” Armando laughs.
"An awesome kleptomaniac," Sean corrects.
“How?” is all Charles can ask.
Sean, looking pleased with himself, says, “Picked it up off one of the day nurses. Now let’s get the fuck outta here and blow this Popsicle stand. Metaphorically.”
Erik is the first one to leave the cafeteria (they plan their escape in sequential time-slots, in an attempt to attract less attention to their disappearance). Charles sees the slight bulge in his pocket where the keys lie hidden. Erik walks away with extreme confidence, and Charles bizarrely remembers that horrible pick-up line, Boy, I hate to see you go, but I sure do love to watch you walk away. Charles immediately looks away and is certain his face is red. Thankfully, Sean and Armando are too preoccupied with the plan to notice.
Sean is the next to leave, and Charles has to restrain himself from looking out the window to see if Erik’s even found the car in question.
Charles is the next to leave. He nearly runs a nurse over in his haste, but he manages to get off the porch of Braddock hunched over conspicuously. Erik and Sean wave him forward from a dark red sedan on the far end of the parking lot, and Charles speeds up and at last, throws himself into the passenger seat of the car, giddy with adrenaline and exhilaration. It takes Armando fifteen minutes to sneak out, but the second Armando has both feet in the car, Erik has pulled out of the parking spot and started racing toward the exit, a wicked smile on his face, like a cat that’s just swallowed a mouse.
For a while they just drive around merrily, with Erik, steering the wheel with one strong hand on the top of the wheel, and Charles, captivated by how Erik’s hands tighten or loosen around the wheel as he navigates the road. Sean and Armando let down the all the windows and it the wind feels amazing. Braddock itself is a fairly isolated compound, but the highway isn’t very far off the dirt path that leads to the clinic. They pass a few cops on the road, and Charles is curious what would happen if they got pulled over. Erik’s driving is on the edge of reckless, but the cops ignore them for what Charles supposes must be bigger fish in the sea.
“You know what I would kill for,” Charles says at long last. They’ve been driving around for so long that it’s almost lunch. “Some drive through fast food.”
And that’s what sends them on an hour and a half journey to find a McDonalds. Sean is groaning with hunger pains by the time they roll into the drive through, and they order enough food for a small army, filling the car with McFlurries, quarter pounders, a few “Yes, I would like to make that a meal,”'s and bags full to the brim with just French fries. Sean asks the lady behind the speaker if they serve alcohol at McDonalds and Charles’s laugh is loud enough to mask her bewildered response. Erik, blessedly, has a credit card, and, equally blessedly, the meal comes out to less than sixty dollars, which is a miracle in itself.
They find a public park and leave the car at long last. The foursome trek up a hill and eat their feast on the top of a quiet embankment, and their laughter fills the air around them.
For the first time in a long time, Charles’s life feels full.
They drive back, and the barely make it in before the day shift ends. Sean deftly deposits the key at reception and the four patients walk into Braddock together, too full of their achievement to stagger their entrances.
They immediately run into Alex, who stares at the four of them, head cocked to the side, silently asking where the fuck were you guys?, and Charles shakes his head slightly. Alex’s face flushes angrily, but the four of them each run to their respective rooms, leaving the blonde behind in the hallway, alone. Charles closes his bedroom door behind him and exhales shakily.
Charles wants to run around the room and shout from the top of his lungs, “We got away with it! Take that, motherfuckers!” He restrains himself to a small yelp and fist pump. Charles grins to himself and flops backwards onto his bed, exhilarated. He feels the excitement surge throughout his body, and Charles is suddenly aware that he hasn’t felt this good since the last time he got high. It’s when he makes that realization that Charles knows he is in trouble.
"No," Charles says aloud, but the idea has already been planted.
He clenches his hands and presses his arms against his bed, trying to physically restrain himself from getting up: yes, if he doesn’t get up, he can’t break. He can do this. He can stay on the bed.
Charles gets up.
Bedrooms at Braddock don’t have locks, but Charles puts a chair in the crook of the doorknob, and it seems fairly effective in the brief pressure he puts against the knob. Charles looks at the door nervously, wondering if anyone will enter. He waits for a full minute before racing to his closet and pulling out an old, patent leather shoe that hasn’t been worn since the day he arrived at Braddock. Charles shakes the shoe, and out pops a small orange bottle that clatters loudly to the ground. Charles feels his heart start to race again, akin to how he felt when he first entered the room. His hands shake as he pops open the small bottle; he lets two white pills fall into his hand. Before Charles can rethink his actions, he dry swallows both.
Even though Charles knows that the effect can’t have begun yet, he feels this immense sense of relief. There wasn’t ever any chance for Charles at Braddock: he was always going to come to this moment, this fixed point in his timeline… he was always going to reach this precipice, and he was destined to fail.
Charles feels his breathing slow slightly and his skin flush as a wave of heat passes over him: then the first wave of euphoria hits him, and Charles starts laughing and crying, curled up on the floor, unable to stand up his wobbly legs and fragile arms.
“Charles,” calls a voice from outside his door, or at least, Charles thinks it’s outside the door, it could very well be the ceiling for all he knew. “Charles, the door is stuck.” Charles recognizes the voice, and it sends a thrill through him: Erik, Erik is outside the door. Sheer terror runs through him momentarily, then high anticipation.
“There’s a chair,” Charles murmurs into the floor as Erik tries to jiggle the door open. At last, the chair clatters away and Erik steps through the doorway. He seems to take one look at Charles and know exactly what’s going on.
Quietly, deliberately, Erik replaces the chair against the door. In that moment, Erik becomes complicit in Charles's drug abuse, and Charles breaths out a long breath and murmurs, "Thank you thank you thank you, Erik." Charles beckons with a limp arm, but he is simultaneously thrilled at the idea of Erik Lehnsherr in his room, where they are so very alone.
“I got back to my room,” Erik beings, “and I wanted-I needed that rush again, what I felt when we were breaking out of here-and I knew that I couldn’t be the only one who felt it, who felt… I got away from the stupid locket, that asshole Shaw's locket, and I thought you'd be...”
Erik falls to his knees in front of Charles. Charles, with great difficulty, manages to sit up.
“Give me,” Charles says raggedly, “your palm.” Erik is hesitant at first, but then he holds out his hand, eyes bright and curious and perhaps something else entirely. Charles presses a kiss into the center of Erik’s upturned hand, and then lets two pills fall from the bottle into Erik’s hand. Charles curls Erik’s fingers up to grasp the oxycodone.
“Come with me,” Charles asks, nearly begs.
“I am with you,” Erik says. Charles laughs giddily and falls into a gelatinous mush on the floor.
“Not yet you aren’t,” Charles giggles. He looks up at Erik seriously. “You should probably get us on the bed before you take those. My legs have turned into mashed potatoes.”
Erik smiles briefly and scoops Charles up in his arms easily. Charles revels in the arms of his companion, pressing his nose into Erik’s chest, inhaling deeply. Erik drops Charles down on the bed with a thunk, and then pops the pills into his mouth like he’s done it a thousand times. He probably has. Charles’s legs are piled on top of each other, and he slowly legs his left leg splay out so that he is spread eagle on the bed. Erik has his eyes closed, and he rests a hand against the wall behind him to steady himself. Charles reaches a hand out and is for a time mesmerized by the wrinkles of his own palm and how thin his fingers are. Then he remembers what he wants.
“I’m h-high,” Charles says, pressing his hands against his eyes. “For the first-the first time in months.” He reaches out for Erik. “I-I blamed Raven. I blamed everyone except myself, because it couldn’t have been me. It couldn’t have. But it was,” Charles breathes. “Wasn’t it?” Erik’s eyes flash open.
“It was me,” Charles says, astonished and shocked and saddened. Charles hates his weakness and wants to forget it. “Erik. Erik. I ne-I need, just-”
Charles cannot finish his sentence, because Erik has thrown himself on top of Charles, pushing Charles further up the bed, threading one hand under Charles’s back and one hand beneath the curve of Charles’s neck. Charles moans happily into the embrace. Charles thinks he hears Erik let out a purr against the skin under Charles’s ear, which makes Charles laugh raucously. Charles imagines a world where Erik is a cat and continues to giggle.
“You are seducing me,” Charles says, incredulous at the fact, “by pretending to be a cat.”
“Okay,” Erik says.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Charles tells him.
“Okay,” Erik says, but this time his voice is low and shaky. Charles grins and brings Erik’s lips to his own: the kiss itself is fairly messy and Charles is only slightly concerned that Erik might be drooling on his chin, and above him Erik feels like more teeth than mouth, and Charles can taste the French fries on Erik’s breath from hours earlier. Erik’s hands run through Charles’s hair, and his torso aligns haphazardly with Charles’s waist. Charles starts laughing and in the process, Erik’s teeth graze Charles’s lip roughly.
“Gently,” Charles murmurs into Erik’s mouth. Erik’s laugh is a low grumble now, and the sound reminds Charles of the hum of a plane, and he nips Charles’s lip again. Charles snickers gleefully.
It is a pretty perfect kiss.
It takes longer for them to get their clothes off, but eventually they manage at least the semblance of disrobement: Charles’s pants are hung around Erik’s bare shoulders like a spoil of war, and Erik’s jeans are hanging off his left foot precariously. Charles still has his shirt on, but only because Erik refuses to rise up off his chest. Erik’s arms run beneath Charles’s tee shirt, though, crisscrossing on his back, hugging him close. Charles has his hands down Erik’s underwear, and every so often when he rubs or pulls or squeezes in a certain way, Erik will groan and force his knee even more intensely between Charles’s legs, which Charles ruts against in abandon. Charles has had sex with men and women: in fact, he’s had a lot of sex in his life. In this moment, though Charles recognizes the sexual nature of the embrace, Charles feels like this is something more: a rare moment of pure elation in the monotony of life in rehab, of his life in general. Charles has a second of revelation, there in Erik’s arms, and he knows that he can become something more than what he was before.
Erik’s hips thrust forward sporadically as he comes. Charles rolls out from underneath Erik, and Erik buries his face in Charles’s stomach.
“I want this day to last forever,” Charles tells the ceiling as Erik strips him of his underwear and begins giving him a rough hand job. “Especially-God, especially when you do that, there. Hnnngh.” Charles doesn’t take long in the silence that follows, simply whimpering and moaning into the space between them.
Eventually, Charles groans in climax, jutting his hips and feeling the blanket dampen around his waist. Erik pulls Charles’s comforter over the two of them, spooning Charles’s body in the crook of his own.
“Yes, that’s good,” Charles murmurs into the pillow, pulling Erik’s arm over his body and lacing their fingers together in untempered, brutally poignant relief. Sleep takes them both quickly.
They don’t wake up until the nurse practically breaks the door in the next morning for the morning wake-up call. Charles scrambles to sit up, cursing blindly, and Erik lays down on the bed, hands over his face. The nurse picks up the orange bottle on the floor and looks at the two men sadly.
“I’ll,” the nurse says, “I’ll come back in five minutes.” She closes the door behind her with a small click.
“Shit,” Charles says. “Shit.”
viii. Consequences.
The two of them are in Hank’s office for what Charles knows is an emergency session.
“There are clear rules here, Charles,” Hank says. “Patient fraternization is absolutely prohibited-”
“Patient fraternization, is that what they’re really calling it now,” Charles says. “Just call it sex, Hank. That’s what it was, after all.”
“You had sex with Erik Lehnsherr. I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation, Charles: you’re under review by the Braddock board of directors. They’re thinking of kicking you both out of here. And I know that’s the last thing in the world you need right now, especially after the relapse.”
“The relapse has nothing to do with the way Erik and I feel about each other,” Charles growls. “It was just really, really unfortunate timing, and, might I add, completely my fault.”
“Charles, it has to stop. Whatever it is, make it stop,” Hank begs.
Charles looks at him derisively. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Hank.”
For a long moment, Hank looks at Charles, attempts to evaluate the exact meaning behind the words just said. Then the doctor sinks into his chair and puts his head in his hands.
“Who else knows,” he asks in a deadly quiet voice.
“Just me,” Charles says. “And just for your information, Alex didn’t tell me shit. I am, after all, extraordinarily perceptive.”
Hank groans. “No one else can know. I could lose my license-”
“As well you should,” Charles bites back, with all the rage and confusion of a wounded animal. Then he calms himself down, attempting to breath in a regular rhythm. “I won’t tell anyone, Hank. But there’s no way that you can continue to be Alex’s therapist. Something has to change.”
“I know,” Hank says miserably. “I know.” Hank runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. “My own… situation aside, Charles: you must understand that you’re in a serious amount of trouble here.”
Charles nods. “I think I am beginning to realize exactly what can of worms we opened up.”
“Good. Because this is just the beginning, and I am the least of your problems,” Hank says.
Dr. Moira MacTaggert pulls up to the Elizabeth Braddock Rehabilitation Clinic in a black station wagon that gleams in the early morning sun. She steps out of the car in a dark skirt with a light blue shirt tucked in, a bag slung across her shoulder, and a briefcase in her hand.
She slams the door shut behind her and locks the door, dropping the keys in her purse. She runs a few fingers through her shoulder length brown hair and lets out a breath full of nervous energy. Moira takes a moment to view Braddock from the outside, as she supposes this would be the last time that she could evaluate the place as a stranger: the moment she walked in through those double doors, she would become an employee. The building itself is a ranch style establishment, running out broadly against the landscape. It is painted a light yellow that has weathered a bit from the sun and the other elements. Beyond the building itself is a beautiful campus, reaching out into the wooded area beyond. She sees a hammock and some picnic tables, empty and new-looking, as if unused. She tilts her head to the side in slight confusion and treads on.
Moira walks through the front doors and is immediately greeted by a gangly redhead with a smattering of freckles around his face.
“Hello,” he says, a little too close to Moira for comfort. She smoothly raises a hand to him to shake, and the redhead takes it a little uncertainly.
“Hello,” she says kindly.
“I’m Sean,” he introduces.
“Hello Sean,” Moira says, “I’m looking for reception. Or Hank McCoy. Whichever is closest.”
Sean points in two different directions. “That way,” he says, gesturing with his right hand, “is reception. And that guy there,” he says, nodding toward his left hand, “is Dr. McCoy. Are you Dr. McCoy’s girlfriend?” Moira looks left and sees a man in a light blue oxford shirt and brown hair that is a little unruly on the top of his head. He wears glasses and is currently occupied by what appears to be a nurse’s mix up in medication.
“No,” Moira says. “Thank you for your help, Sean.”
Moira walks over to Hank, heels clacking against the floor in a deliberate fashion: she had no desire to sneak up on him. Hank turns toward her almost immediately, and Moira sees a mix of emotions on his face: relief, sadness, and a subtle layer of guilt.
“Hello, Hank,” Moira says, a smile blossoming on her face. “It’s been too long.”
“Oh, sorry,” Alex says after cracking the door open. “I thought I was supposed to meet someone else here-”
“You’re in the right place, Alex,” Moira says, looking up at him from her chair. “Please sit.”
Alex steps through the door uncertainly. “Where’s Hank?”
“Hank has asked me to take over his sessions for the time being,” Moira says casually. “Please sit down, Alex.”
Alex closes the door and sits down. “Charles saw Hank this morning,” Alex says.
“I cannot discuss other patients here at Braddock,” Moira says delicately. “What I would like to discuss is you, Alex.”
“Why would I talk to you,” Alex asks her incredulously. “I don’t even know you.”
Moira crosses her legs and leans forward. “So then tell me about yourself.”
“Fuck you,” Alex says.
“That’s an original one,” Moira laughs.
“Where is Hank,” Alex asks again.
“I don’t know,” Moira says truthfully. “It’s none of my business.”
“You think it should be none of my business, too,” Alex tests.
“Why are you so concerned with Dr. McCoy?” Moira asks.
“Well, don’t you think it’s shitty of him to just pawn me off?” Alex asks.
Moira raises an eyebrow. “Do you think that’s shitty?”
“I do!” Alex says, voice almost at a yell. “Where the fuck is Hank?”
Moira breathes through her nose to stop herself from yelling right back at the blonde boy. Throughout her life, she has always had a fairly short fuse, but this boy was just not giving her an inch. Moira clears her throat.
“Let me introduce myself, then,” Moira suggests. “My name is Moira, and I am your new therapist.”
“I don’t need a new therapist,” Alex mimics nastily. “Hank wouldn’t leave me like this. Something’s happened to him.”
“Nothing’s happened to him,” Moira reassures him.
“So you do know where Hank is,” Alex pounces. Moira purses her lips.
“Was Hank a good therapist for you, Alex?” Moira asks. “He must have helped you through a lot.”
“Why do you think that?” Alex asks.
“Well, your reaction to his not being here is certainly… intense,” Moira says. “He must have helped you a great deal.”
Alex looks uncomfortable. “Hank was… we, uh, didn’t talk a lot.”
“But you met with him twice a week, Alex,” Moira says. “You must have talked a little.”
The blonde boy blushes, and Moira masks her confusion with a smile.
“Hank was a good… therapist,” Alex says, but it’s clear that he isn’t quite sure what the word means, and how Hank relates to it.
“As a person,” Moira asks, “do you like Dr. McCoy? Hank?”
Again, the blush. “Yeah. Definitely.”
There is quiet for a moment. “More than like, I guess.”
“He seems very important to you,” Moira says kindly. Alex nods savagely.
“He is.”
Hank is outside on the picnic bench when Moira finds him at last.
“They don’t let the patients out here unless they’ve earned the proper amount of ‘points,’” Hank says as Moira sits down next to him. “An idiotic system, if you ask me. But no one does. Ask, that is.”
“Hank,” Moira says softly. He turns to her with a sad expression on his face. “When you first asked me to join you here at Braddock, I didn’t really understand why. Now though…” Moira sighs.
“I take it your session with Alex was… informative,” Hank says.
“I believe your diagnosis of erotic transference is on the nose,” Moira says sagely. “That boy is so in love with you he couldn’t tell me what day of the week it is.”
Hank coughs for a moment, and Moira looks out over the serene scenery of Braddock. She considers the irony that the patients here would rarely, if ever, see this view.
“There’s no way you can continue functioning, effectively, as his therapist,” Moira says. “It was good that you brought me in here.”
Hank nods, but he does not look at her.
“It’s been a long time since medical school,” Moira says. “A lot of things have changed. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Circumstances… have changed.”
“Yes,” Hank says, slightly distracted. “A lot has changed.”
Moira hears a tone in his voice that is extraordinarily sad. She decides not to tell him about the divorce and simply sits there.
“You need to tell Alex you cannot see him professionally anymore,” Moira tells Hank. “Soon.”
Alex corners him on the way to reception. Hank barely knows what’s happening as he’s pulled into Alex’s room, the door shut behind him.
“How could you?” Alex asks. His eyes are red and his face is flushed.
“How couldn’t I?” Hank bites back, anger flaring. “How could I have waited this long? That’s the real question, Alex.”
“You’re breaking up with me,” Alex says miserably.
“We would both be fools to continue on in this way,” Hank says in a low voice. “And it’s all the more telling that you consider this a break up, Alex. What am I to you, exactly?”
Alex looks at Hank, unnerved. When he doesn’t respond, Hank continues, emotional and unhinged. “Am I your therapist? Really, Alex? I don’t think I’ve been that for a long time. Your friend?” Hank presses Alex up against the door. “How can we ever be friends.”
“You’re trying to push me away,” Alex grits out defiantly. “You’re trying to scare me. It won’t work. I will never be afraid of you.”
“Well you should be!” Hank cries out, and then he clamps his hand down over his mouth. “I have taken advantage of you in ways that I may never be able to reconcile.”
“So I let you fuck me?” Alex asks. “So. What. I wanted you to do it. I wanted it.”
Footsteps pass outside the door and Hank blanches.
“I am your doctor for Chrissakes, Alex!” Hank whispers viciously.
“I still need you,” Alex says. “You can’t just give up on me now.”
“I love you,” Hank says.
A quiet moment passes between the two of them: Hank’s eyes are wild and intense; he grows horrified as Alex remains silent.
“And that’s why I can’t be your therapist anymore,” Hank says bitterly. “I’m sorry I let it continue for this long. It was... wrong of me.”
Alex lets Hank leave him behind in the room. He takes a few unsteady paces around the room, then nearly races to the door and throws it open. Hank is nowhere in sight.
Charles opens the door to Erik’s room later that evening to find a suitcase splayed open on the bed, filled to the brim with neatly folded clothes and a row of shoes tucked in nicely. Erik is in the closet, pulling a box down from the top shelf, and as Erik turns around to see Charles in the doorway, Charles knows what’s happening.
“No,” Charles says. “Absolutely not.”
“I spoke to the board this morning,” Erik says as he packs away yet another belonging. “And you’ll be lucky if they don’t kick you out as well.”
“I should be the one leaving,” Charles says. “I was the one with the pills.”
Erik looks at Charles warily. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. According to what I told the board, I was the one who initiated. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t deny my affidavit.”
“You’re kidding me,” Charles says in disbelief. “How can you expect me to just stand here and watch you fall on your sword? Stop buying into your own idiotic façade of nobility and just consider the options-”
“You think it’s a façade?” Erik laughs. Charles is not amused. Erik lets his smile fade into a serious expression.
“There’s only thing I want more than to stay here with you,” Erik says. “And that’s for you to get better. Being here will help you do that, Charles, in ways that it could never help me.”
“What about you?” Charles asks, voice ragged. “Aren’t you here for a reason, too?”
Erik is quiet for a moment. “I tried to kill myself the night I was brought here to Braddock,” he begins. “I was in this dark place, full of guilt and despair, and I thought there was no alternative, no way out of the depths where I had fallen. For a long time, I thought I had been pushed into that chasm. But now I know that I fell of my own accord. I came here to Braddock by force, and I came here wanting to die.”
Erik takes Charles’s hand. “I no longer yearn for death, Charles. And you know why.”
Erik flashes his teeth at Charles briefly, but there are tears in his eyes as well. Charles feels like he cannot breath, because he does know why: he knows that Erik loves him, knows it without saying the words or a final kiss goodbye.
“I’ll survive,” Erik says. “Because I’ll know that you’re here, getting better, really, truly working on getting better. And I know someday, we’ll both be clean. I’ll be waiting for that moment: every second of every hour, I’ll be waiting… until it comes, Charles, and it will come, and I will find you.”
“Don’t go,” Charles weeps desperately. “You shouldn’t have to go.”
“Promise me,” Erik says, “promise me that you won’t give up. No more relapses or shenanigans or whatnot.”
Charles looks away from Erik and wonders exactly what he did to piss off God or the gods or karma in general to deserve this absolute bullshit. He puts his hand over his face and tries to hide his tears, and finally, Charles nods shakily and Erik smiles.
“There. That wasn’t so bad,” Erik says, but the look Charles gives him says differently.
Erik zips up his suitcase and lets it fall to the ground with a thunk.
“Walk me out, will you?” he asks. Charles nods. Erik holds out his hand, and Charles ignores it, pulling the taller man into a tight embrace.
“I’m sorry,” Charles murmurs into the base of Erik’s throat. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Erik says, clutching at Charles. “It’s okay.”
Charles’s nose is clogged and his eyes are red as he walks Erik to the front door of Braddock. A yellow taxi waits outside for him, and Charles decides that he hates this place.
“See you on the other side,” Erik murmurs, finally letting go of Charles’s hand.
Erik waves at him from the window and disappears into the car. The car drives away slowly, and Charles feels like his heart is being dragged along behind it, attached by the thinnest of strings.
“I’m going to go throw up,” Charles says to no one in particular.
PART THREE