April's holiday fic, part two
...and part two! Part one in previous post.
Title: Cold Day In The Sun
Rating: R for some discussion of abuse during Charles’s childhood, some not-very-explicit sex, the possibility (doesn’t actually happen, or only in discussion) of dark!Charles
Word Count: 8,016 total; this part, 4,299 words (part one here)
Disclaimers: characters belong to Marvel, not me; only doing this out of affection; title and opening lines from the Foo Fighters’ “Cold Day In The Sun”
Notes: so technically this is April’s holiday fic. (It’s still April, right?) It’s Father’s Day, this time.
Erik can’t sleep. It’s not just that it’s hot-though that isn’t pleasant-but there’s more to it, a prickly compulsion running through his veins, an itch he can’t scratch inside his skin. Unnerving. Demanding that he get up, walk around, move.
When he thinks about blue eyes and exhaustion and those accidentally-overheard thoughts, Charles not wanting to be alone, the sense of dread intensifies, and he finds himself standing fully dressed in the hallway, before he’s even made the conscious decision to give in to all the hopefully-unjustified worry.
Or maybe it is justified. The tiny feet of anxiety scamper up and down his spine, and suggest that this might be so.
Charles? he asks, and hears a silk-thin whisper of answer, in response: In here.
He follows the spun-gold sensation of Charles’s thoughts down hallways, around corners, up stairs; finds himself standing in front of a nightmarishly warm room, facing the open door and all the unspoken past history that no one here remembers, now. Except Charles himself, of course.
It’s the room he’d been discovering, earlier. With the carpet the color of blood.
“You can come in,” Charles says, out loud. Erik doesn’t know what that means, beyond the obvious. But he steps inside, because Charles has said he can.
It’s very dark, inside.
The windows are open, drapes pulled wide and gaping, the way they’d been that afternoon. They leer at him, as he takes another step. He ignores them. He’s only looking at Charles.
Charles is standing in front of the desk, hands in his pockets, the casual gesture somehow terribly incongruous in this grey-washed moment. He’s gazing, thoughtfully, at the carpet. He’s barefoot, and the edges of the thick weave curl up and splash red around his toes, dulled by the moonlight. He’s very still. Erik has seen this kind of stillness before, in men standing calmly before their doom. It’s peace, of a sort, but not a good sort.
“Charles,” he whispers, out loud, because he doesn’t have any other words, and Charles looks up at him with a half-smile that is not reassuring at all.
“You did find me, then.”
“Of course I did.” He takes another step. The moonlight slides along his arm, Charles’s hair, the arch of a cheekbone. It doesn’t even try to make a sound. Any noise at all, and they all might tumble from the ledge.
“That isn’t an of course,” Charles says, “it’s not a certainty,” and Erik says “Yes it is,” and catches the flash of surprised want in those oceanic eyes, before Charles looks away. “You-”
Charles, Erik murmurs, carefully, not out loud this time because he doesn’t trust his voice, because he doesn’t know what Charles needs, because maybe if he doesn’t have to shape audible words the emotion will spill across anyway, transformed by some mysterious alchemical process into the right collection of sounds. Do you want to tell me?
And perhaps it’s the sincerity of the question, or the phrasing, or the unnamed feelings behind it, but Charles turns around, a deceptively fragile silhouette in the moonlight, facing him now. Puts a hand out, and trails one eloquent finger across the desk, casually disturbing decades of dust.
“My stepfather kept this room as his study deliberately, you know.” Erik doesn’t know, or is only finding out now, but he chooses not to interrupt. He wants to know. “It was my father’s study before that. None of the furnishings are his, naturally. They had very different tastes. Even the carpet was replaced. It had to be, of course.”
Erik is fighting desperately not to ask, not to step into the flow of Charles’s thoughts, but can’t help the why? that drifts across his mind like surfacing debris from a wreck.
“Oh,” Charles says, and draws a second line in the dust, neatly parallel to the first. My father shot himself in this room. In the head, in fact. Right over there.
The moonlight considerately picks out the spot of carpet where Charles is looking, and frames it in silver, just for them. And Erik catches a snapshot of memory, blood and despair and devastating abrupt emptiness, a body but nobody inside, lying carelessly crumpled on the floor. It’s Charles’s memory, he knows.
It snaps back out of his head with disorienting suddenness, like the shattering of a dream. It leaves behind absolute heartbreak, in its wake.
Charles-He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. What words can possibly follow that revelation, drenched in silence and antique starlight.
I was asleep, at first, but I could hear him-thinking-those thoughts kept turning up in my dreams. I was awake by the time he pulled out the gun and put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I was in his head; I couldn’t help it. Those thoughts were-too loud to hide from. They were everywhere. I felt everything.
Charles, my god-
“No.” You wanted to know, you said.
I do. He means those words more than he’s ever meant anything in his life. He’s never known. Never guessed. Never asked. But he very, very, desperately wants to know. The same way that his body wants oxygen, craves the song of metal, needs the swirling of iron in his veins.
“I told you that my stepfather quite liked this room. He knew I was afraid to go into it. So he redecorated. He chose the carpet himself.” Those words come with crackling images, wildfire that burns through both their thoughts: bruises on pale skin, thin young arms braced against the desk, heavy hands, the dry brittle snap of bone, more blood in a room that swallowed it all unprotestingly. When he died, my stepbrother wanted nothing to do with the estate, and by some miraculous legal technicality I inherited everything anyway, courtesy of my mother. I never thought I’d come back here.
Charles-I’m so sorry-
“Oh, really, Erik, what for? You weren’t there.” If anything I’m sorry I’ve told you. I’ve never told anyone, not even Raven, and she was there. For the last few years of it, at least.
“Charles,” Erik says, out loud, to the dull carpet and the distant stars and the sharp-edged memories, “you can tell me anything.” And you will never need to apologize. And I am-He’s not sure if it’s the right word, in English. But it sounds right, for how he feels. I am grateful that you would share this. With me. When you’ve never-
“You know about darkness,” Charles says, and touches the desk again, and then glances at his fingertip, as if the physical reality of dust has somehow come as a surprise. And you can keep secrets. And I trust you to keep mine.
“You shouldn’t have to-”
“Funny,” Charles murmurs, continuing the thought, “I do trust you. Imagine that.”
Erik flinches even though he shouldn’t: of course he’s not a trustworthy person. He’s a terrible person who’s done terrible things and will in all likelihood do them again, and so there’s no reason that Charles giving voice to that sentiment should flay his heart to ragged chunks.
“Oh…oh, Erik, no.” Charles looks as if he wants to reach out, then. Doesn’t. I’m not astonished because of you, you see.
“Oh,” Erik breathes right back, understanding. He wants to reach out, too, or take a step nearer, over the thick red carpet that spills between them like the flood from an opened artery. He’s not certain whether Charles wants to be touched. Whether the sensation of another body beside his might be asking too much. Charles is still so peculiarly quiet. Contained. Dangerously so.
“I won’t hurt you,” Charles tells him, “probably,” and Erik says, equally honestly, “That’s not what I’m worried about, Charles,” and Charles laughs, humorlessly, and looks away.
It’s not normally this bad. It’s just the night. And the day-I was required to celebrate Father’s Day, you understand, to tell him how thankful I was to be so well taken care of, when I wasn’t even his own flesh and blood, when my own father’d hated living with us enough to-This year I’d almost forgotten-I HAD forgotten, really, and the day surprised me. So it’s only that, I think. Being so…surprised.
And Erik invading this most brutally private of spaces, that afternoon. His intrusion, inadvertently nudging Charles to relive those memories. He doesn’t know how to begin to apologize. He’d not known, but that’s no excuse.
He can’t imagine what Charles had felt, then, in the blackness of that deadly moment, and through all those long intervening years that even at a glimpse sear and sizzle inside his head. Can’t imagine how Charles has stayed sane.
“What makes you think I am?” Charles raises eyebrows at him. The gesture ought to be familiar. It’s not.
Erik wants to say no, wants to protest. Tries. He’s not being heard. And he’s more afraid, standing here in the abandoned room full of moonlight, than he’s ever, ever, been.
Not for himself, though. This fear isn’t on his own behalf.
“If I wanted to,” Charles says, “I could kill everyone in this house. I could tell every single mind to stop functioning, could make you believe that your lungs weren’t holding air, that your veins weren’t pumping blood. Could leave you all less than human. If I wanted to.”
“Yes,” Erik says, because that’s true, and then, “but you won’t,” because that’s true, too. It has to be.
Charles makes a tiny amused sound, and turns his head to look at the mute patch of carpet by the window. The silver light and grey shadows chase each other through his hair, across his face. “You sound so very sure.”
“I am.” I AM.
I’m not.
I know.
But you’re still here.
“Charles,” Erik says, “where else would I possibly go?” and knows beyond doubt that Charles hears the words the way he means them, as a rhetorical question, an utter impossibility: there’s nowhere Erik wants to be, other than here. And I know you’re not sure. But I am. So I can be sure for both of us. If you want that.
I… Charles hesitates. Looks up at him. And little flickers of light swim through the depths of those drowned-sapphire eyes. I might want that, yes. If you mean it.
“You can have anything you want from me,” Erik says, and means it, with all that he is. Anything I can give you. Take what you need.
And Charles smiles, thin and precarious as dry tinder under desert sun. But it’s a smile, and it’s real. Thank you.
They aren’t just words. They twine themselves into Erik’s thoughts, seeking support, wrapping slender arms around what he hopes are pillars of strength, deep-set and built of his own unshakeable conviction: Charles is a good person. Charles will never be anything less than a good person. Not perfect-neither of them is-but the darknesses only throw the light into clearer relief.
Thank you again.
No need. Not ever.
I can’t say it, if I feel it? Aloud, Charles observes, “That’s only polite, isn’t it?” and Erik finds himself wanting to smile too, which isn’t exactly appropriate as a reaction, but those words, that tone. Charles is amused. Teasing him. The affection’s audible in that elegant voice.
“Politeness is overrated.” He takes a small step forward, easing closer to Charles under the pale bone-colored light. “I prefer blunt honesty.”
“Of course you do,” Charles says, still amused, “but mine was honest, as well. I appreciate you offering-I appreciate you.” Very much so.
Erik doesn’t say I love you, though the thought rattles so loudly inside his head that he’s certain Charles must’ve picked it up. He’s not said those words for years. Decades. Hadn’t believed he could ever mean them again.
Except he does love Charles. He knows that with inarguable clarity, cutting cleanly through all the dreamlike haze of the night.
He loves blue eyes, and unreasoning adoration of all things pineapple; loves implausible enthusiasm and optimism and the jubilation in that voice when someone mentions Charles Darwin. Loves the hints of danger, the power, the intensity that no one else sees because Charles chooses deliberately to be, mostly, harmless. Loves the complexities, layered like the complicatedly beautiful atoms of steel and iron and nickel, smooth and polished exteriors that only give away their intricacies to a chosen few.
Charles watches him, calmly, across the twilight spaces between them. Doesn’t back away, when Erik takes another small step and ends up in front of the desk.
Doesn’t say anything, either. Which is not helpful; Erik may have just had his entire world flipped end over end with a single revelation, but that doesn’t mean he instantly knows how to express the emotion, or whether Charles could potentially feel the same.
He glances out the window, and feels the ever-present purr of paperclips in his pocket, the ones he’s taken sneakily from Charles’s desk over the weeks and months, encouraging him; and what he comes up with is, “It is after midnight, now.”
Charles blinks. Twice. “Yes?”
“So…you said the day was bad. This day. Father’s Day. But it is over.” And he hopes, desperately, that it is.
“Oh. Yes, I suppose it does mean that…and yes. Possibly it is.” And the impression Erik gets, then, is one of startlement: Charles has turned away from that spot, on the carpet, and has been studying Erik, and hasn’t thought about his father, his stepfather, in several moments. Has been thinking about Erik, instead.
Good.
Hmm.
You have-you’ve been thinking about them for so long, Charles. If you want to-if you want to think about something else, today, tonight-
-I should think about you? Blue eyes meet his, across the moon-shaded space; after a heartbeat, Charles takes the few steps back over the noiseless carpet, to Erik’s side. He doesn’t look at the desk, at the lines in the dust. Only at Erik, standing there beside him.
“Charles,” Erik breathes, and doesn’t look away, gazing down into those blue-black eyes, stormy seas at midnight, electricity over the ocean. He’s never minded turbulent waters. And Charles has already saved him, once, from violent waves. This time Erik can pull him, or both of them, back up together.
On one level, he’s amazed at the strength of his own desire to get Charles to dry land. On another, deeper, truer level, he’s not surprised at all.
“Erik,” Charles murmurs in return, an answer because Erik’s just said his name, and those thundercloud eyes are right there and Erik will never know who asks Can I kiss you? because they think it together, simultaneously, like the echo of the heartbeat of the world.
Charles tastes like oceans in summer, Erik decides. Like blue waves and wetness under golden and brilliant sunshine. Like saltwater and seaspray. The sweet welcome shock of cool eddies beneath sun-warmed surface-depth tides.
That’s beautiful, Erik, Charles murmurs. I love you, too.
Erik wants to shrug away the compliment, directed as it is toward himself, but Charles means it wholeheartedly, offering the adjective as if it’s not a weakness or a source of shame. And maybe it isn’t.
In any case, Erik’s meant every word of his own thought. They both know that’s true.
You’re beautiful. And you-you mean that, too. When you say-
That I love you? I do. Charles hasn’t stopped kissing him; the conversation’s entirely in their heads. Erik is completely, brilliantly, in agreement with this turn of events.
Charles loves him. He would be shaking his head in disbelief, except there’s no room left for disbelief, and anyway his lips are gleefully occupied.
Charles laughs, warm against Erik’s mouth. You can believe it. It’s true. But…Erik, you know I’m not-what you said, I’m not, you’ve seen those memories-
Charles, Erik says, you make me happy, and he knows that Charles hears all the emotion under and around that simple phrase, the astonishment, the reclamation of the word, the clamour of joy. And I have seen those memories, yes. And you are going to stop arguing and let me call you beautiful. Clear?
Charles gasps, into the kiss, at the force of that thought; Erik whispers Sorry, but takes advantage of the parted lips regardless, because they’re open for the claiming. Charles moans. Doesn’t protest the advances of Erik’s tongue, lips, teeth, the last of which earns another little gasp, so Erik nips harder at pink skin the next time.
Charles shivers, in his arms. Erik can feel all the pleasure, palpably swirling between them. Physically. Mentally. Heat that has nothing at all to do with the weather.
Clear, Charles breathes, at last, quiet acquiescence that comes with a sensation akin to wonder. Erik, you-can I ask you for something? For your help with something?
Of course. What do you need me to do?
Well…I was thinking…this house could use a bit of renovation…redecoration…
Some new carpeting? Different furniture, perhaps?
Exactly.
Charles, we can go look at carpet samples all day tomorrow if you’d like. And I’m rather good at dismembering furniture.
“Erik, that’s a wooden desk.” Also…thank you.
“I am aware. You don’t imagine you’re familiar with all my hidden talents, do you? Because I’m extremely good with my hands.” I told you not to say that. I-Charles, you know I’m honored that you’d ask. He is.
And Charles kisses him again. And the horrible carpet and the glowering desk aren’t unimportant, now, not quite. But they are already dwindling away.
“I love you,” Charles says, out loud, and then Erik demonstrates how extremely good he can be with his hands, and Charles actually loses his balance and has to cling to Erik for support. Neither of them minds, given the cause.
You definitely have hidden talents, Charles agrees. Fortunately, so do I.
This time Erik’s the one who gasps. Inadvertently. Because Charles is very talented indeed. Erik might have to consider this a challenge. An extremely enjoyable one.
I love you, he says again, very firmly, because Charles seems to like him being firm. The wordless response confirms that idea very satisfactorily. So…bedroom? Where I can offer you other things to think about?
Now I’m very much not arguing. Suggesting, though…
Oh, we’re definitely doing that. We’re doing that FIRST. And then THIS. My room, you said? He’d caught that one, in Charles’s thoughts. His room is further away from their current location. He knows the reasons why Charles is contemplating that option, despite all the mutual anticipatory impatience.
Yes.
Yes, Erik says, and, several eventful minutes later, YES again, when Charles says it too, and comes apart whispering his name, sight and sound and touch and taste all exploding together, turning the universe inside-out and incandescent with joy.
They fall asleep naked together. Erik puts one arm around Charles, cautiously, and then the other, and Charles leaves his head trustingly on Erik’s chest and the thoughts fade into a contented worn-out hum of satiated pleasure and then into sleep. Erik means to stay awake, because he’s still marveling at how right the position feels, but Charles’s tiredness is seeping into his mind and body and he’s too relaxed to fight it for long.
He can’t even reach his pillow-they’ve knocked all the pillows onto the floor, along with most of the sheets-but he’s comfortable anyway. And they don’t need the sheets. It’s a hot night; the bedding can just lie there and be jealous, on the floor. Because he, Erik, will keep Charles safe in the circle of his arms.
He wakes up first, but Charles follows suit almost instantly, as if they’re attuned.
They look at each other, for a minute. Charles smiles first. It’s clear and weightless as sunbeams, a little frayed around the edges, tremulous but real.
Erik smiles back. So do his paperclips, even though no one can see them, in the pocket of his abandoned pants on the floor. None of them minds where they’ve ended up. Not in the least. “Good morning.” How are you?
“Good morning. Um…I could probably use some tea.” And…better. You-well, you were incredible, of course, that was stupendous-but I don’t just mean that about the sex. Everything before that-everything you said-it IS better, this morning. I’m better. Thank you.
I’m glad. “I can make you tea, if you want that. You can even stay here. In bed.”
“Not going to turn down such a tantalizing offer, but not yet. I want you to stay here, for a few minutes.” You feel good, holding me. And I think I’m happy. And I love you.
I love you. Quiet, for a few moments, in which clouds gather peacefully outside the windows and the scent of rain arrives, a promise of reprieve in the air.
As the first drops start to patter against the windows, Erik hesitates, then says, over the noise, “You would be a good father,” and Charles sits up, wide-eyed with shock.
“What?”
“Come back here. Please.” His arms miss the solid warmth already. The rain taps wistful fingers over the glass, and the droplets slide down and pool like tears and drip from the eaves into the bushes below.
“I’m sorry, did you just say-why would you say-” You know I-I told you about-those are not precisely good examples to follow! Beneath the shock there’s a curious sense of betrayal, as if Erik hasn’t followed the expected script, hasn’t fallen in line with Charles’s certainty on this point.
But he’s never been good at falling in line with expectations. And Charles is, once more, wrong about himself. And Erik can also never resist telling Charles when he’s wrong.
And telling Charles he’s wrong now might possibly help make something right. Possibly, he thinks again. Mentally crosses his fingers.
Erik, I-
First, I love you. Second, what is it that you think you’re doing now? With Alex, and Sean, and Angel, and the others?
I-you-that’s different, that’s-
Charles, they adore you. And you want them to be all that they’ve ever dreamed they could be. You tell them that they have possibilities. And of course you aren’t perfect-you’re far too kind to them and you like them to think that you know everything, which we both know you don’t-
Thank you for that.
I am making a point, Charles. “And we said you weren’t going to argue with me. About this, anyway. I enjoy you arguing with me about everything else.”
“We did not. You did.” But…I agree with your last two sentences. Go on.
“You aren’t perfect, but you make them want to be better people simply by asking them to be. Because you believe in them.” And you…make me want to be one of your better people, as well. To be what you need.
“Me…as a father. Of children. I’d give them lectures on genetics,” Charles says, slowly, but the rain is dancing outside the windows and the beat of it is beginning to be echoed way back in those tangled sapphire eyes, “and expect them to be chess masters at age six and none of us would ever clean our rooms…” Erik…you ARE what I need.
“Ah. I have seen your room. That might be a problem.” Charles, I-love you. So damned much.
“I know you do.” And I love you. And…about the rooms….I can try to be tidier. If we’re going to share.
You want to-
“Yes?” And this time you’re wrong about something. One thing.
“Yes. I can learn to live with a disastrous bed and clothing on the floor and half-finished cups of tea on your nightstand.” That, or he’ll just start cleaning up after Charles. At least the tea, because that’s distracting-really, why not just finish the beverage, if one’s gone to the trouble?-and results in a shortage of mugs in the house besides.
He pictures himself collecting Charles’s discarded teacups, in the morning. Domesticity. It has an odd but definite appeal.
They can probably reach some sort of compromise about making the bed, however, since they’re going to be using it so very often.
Agreed.
You said I was wrong. About one thing. What am I wrong about, Charles?
“Well, now it might be two things, once you start to regret some of those promises about cleaning our room…” Just one small pronoun. It isn’t what I’M doing, now, with the…children. It’s what WE’RE doing. You, and I.
Erik stares. Speechless. In every way. Charles grins, through the splashing of the rain.
“The same argument applies to you, you know. The way you get them all to listen to you. Even-especially-when I am too nice. The way they respect you. And…what you did for me, last night…” A flash of memory, vivid as lightning: strength, offered and accepted and freely given and shared. Respite. Love. That was-no one’s ever done that for me. Until you. You make me better, as well. Or we make each other better, perhaps.
We. Erik knows he’s smiling. Probably too broadly. Doesn’t care. Charles has said we.
So he answers yes, because that’s one more true word in a world full of truths, now, between them. And then, because it’s raining more heavily and Charles might be cold, “Do you want me to make you tea now?”
And Charles laughs, in time with the rhythm of the storm. Says, “I want you to make me tea later, Erik, at the moment I just want you.” And lets Erik pull him back down into encircling arms, while the rain billows around the aged mansion walls, the thunder laughing too.