fic: the center of gravity of our little sphere (4 & 5 of 7)
Chapter four! And five!
Title: The Center Of Gravity Of Our Little Sphere (4 & 5 of 7) (chapter 3 here) (chapter 2 here) (chapter 1 here)
Rating: R overall, and also for this chapter, for a bit of sex and Erik panicking
Warnings: slight D/s dynamics in later chapters, eventual minor (villain) character death
Word Count: 29,950 (total); 6,573 for chapters four and five
Disclaimers: boys’re not mine, only doing this for fun. Title and epigraph courtesy of H.G. Wells.
Notes/Summary: for telperion_15's prompt of Erik is employed as a not-so-jolly department store Santa, and Charles is one of his elves. Except somehow it turned into an enormous low-powered Victorian AU, full of hurt/comfort and love and plot and some, er, slight D/s dynamics, and also, um, Shaw-the-villain. Yep, that’s right. Also, some historical liberties for mutants existing and gay marriage reform in progress.
In these chapters: lazy mornings, and someone making Charles an offer, to which Erik objects; Erik talking to saucepans and being protective, Charles being brave,and Shaw being vile.
December 18, 1897
“Erik,” Charles says.
Erik doesn’t even open an eye, only wraps one long arm more snugly around his waist. Charles sighs, and tips his head back, and kisses the first spot he can reach, which happens to be the soft skin just under Erik’s sharply-defined jawline, warm and tasting like heat and slightly prickly from morning stubble. “I really do need to get up.”
“No, you don’t. You need to stay here. With me.”
“Well, yes. I need that as well. But I have to go in to the office-” He realizes the poor choice of words even as he’s talking, as that arm tenses fractionally around his body.
Of course his office is a sore spot. A raw place, scraped sensitive and not yet healed over, between them. It will heal, he believes, given time. But not now. Not yet.
“I mean on campus. The university. My university office. I-”
“The university’s on holiday, Charles.” But Erik rolls over and puts the other arm around him, too: an apology of his own, a wordless promise.
“Yes, I know.” He settles down atop Erik’s chest. It’s warm there.
And then he gets a briefly amused mental flicker of response-Charles-as-kitten, curled up and fluffy and craving heat-and then attempts to thump Erik’s closest shoulder with his fist. “I am not.”
“Yes, you are. I like it. Why do you need to go to your university, then?”
“Oh…they sent a message over yesterday…are you petting my hair? All right, then…delivery problems, in the laboratory. Unlabeled specimens. Unsorted slides, for the microscopes…that’s very distracting.” I like your hand right there.
I know you do. “Why do you have to go? I thought you had graduate students.”
“Well, yes, but it’s their holiday, too.” It shouldn’t take very long. I’ll come back and meet you for dinner, after.
“I could come with you.” This time Erik’s thinking that Charles is far too nice a person, and the thought’s tinged with bafflement and pity and protectiveness and awe.
“I thought you had work to do. You were even dreaming about it. That new skyscraper, downtown…”
“You heard that? It’s not a confirmed project. Or not yet. If I did get to design it, though…” The thoughts spiral away into steel and iron, girders and support, mathemathics like a composer’s symphony, playing out on metal strands. Charles listens, quietly, and doesn’t try to hide the upswell of affection, pure and true; Erik’s so breathtaking, like this, in his element, pun intended and turning into metaphor, Erik and the elements at play.
Oh, really… Powerful fingers trace their way up Charles’s back. Over old scars, and newly-mapped constellations of sunburst freckles, and sleep-warmed skin. “Suspension bridges, I think.”
“…what?”
“You.” Erik touches his face, this time, fingers brushing the delicate skin over a cheekbone, below one eye. “If I were designing you. Something elegant, and flexible, but strong…”
“Flexible?”
“Not like that…or, yes, like that, all right…no, I mean it. Graceful, but supporting all the weight anyone can throw at it…with curves, I think…Charles, do we have any…”
And Charles laughs, and gets up to find paper and a pen, and lets Erik sketch new creations into existence over his back, as he lies there decadently naked in the shimmering morning air. Erik’s pen occasionally wanders past the boundaries of the paper, brushing ink onto pale skin with his absorption; he apologizes the first time, and then the second, and then finally hears what Charles is very loudly thinking, and smiles with all those teeth and signs his name, not at the bottom of the sketch, but over a curving span of freckles, a hipbone, ticklish places.
Charles yelps in an undignified fashion and Erik smiles again, so Charles has to kiss him, and neither of them ends up leaving the bed at that moment, in the end.
After, exhausted, languorous, replete, he finds Erik’s paper again, on the floor. “Are those chess pieces? On this bit?”
“Hmm?...Oh. Yes. They don’t actually serve any purpose. Only decorative. I thought you’d like them.” There’s ink on Erik’s thumb, and, rather improbably, on his nose. He looks somewhat less than frightening, right now; the Erik that Charles wants to see, always, thoroughly pleasured and happy and blushing a little, caught between embarrassment and pride in his designs.
“I do like them. They’re smiling at me. Can I keep this?”
“If you want it…”
“I do.” Erik does need the affirmation, sometimes, he’s realizing. Earlier he’d’ve found that strange, from someone so fiercely independent and driven. He likes to believe that he knows Erik a bit better than that, now. “I do still need to go to campus…will you be here when I get back?”
“Of course.” Erik sits up to watch, as Charles pulls on clothing. “I can make food for us. If you want to eat here. It might rain.”
Charles, half-dressed, walks back over to the bed, puts both hands on Erik’s face, draws him closer, and kisses him, for that. Yes.
He finds his own greatcoat, for once-probably because Erik’s started pointedly hanging it by the door-and heads out the door, with a fair amount of reluctance in every step. Almost turns around, when Erik starts idly projecting thoughts about his own continuing nakedness, but he’s already dressed and he’s committed now, so he sends back some unbelievably filthy images of his own, plans for later and himself on his knees and wet lips and ideas about just what Erik might be able to do with the chain off his pocket watch, and then says, cheerfully, later! and listens to Erik’s mental splutter.
He privately vows that this is going to be the fastest laboratory organization ever attempted. And walks a bit more rapidly through the gleaming winterscape day.
The campus is mostly deserted, for the holidays. It’s peaceful, a kind of anticipatory peace: the students will be coming back, soon enough. The buildings wait, content.
Charles lets himself into the laboratory-a brand-new building, absolutely lovely, and he takes a moment to appreciate it, just looking around-and then spots the waiting boxes, unlabeled and towering ominously at him, and sighs, and settles down.
After a while he gives up and sits on the floor. The surrounding space is necessary.
He doesn’t actually mind the work. Labeling specimens is rather mindless, granted, but he likes knowing all the little details of his lab, and this way he’ll have everything organized and tagged the way he wants it to be. Easy, for later. Like setting up a home.
His hands get into a rhythm, while his thoughts wander off on their own. Home. Here, at Columbia. Of course he’s here temporarily, a visiting professorship, he’s been planning to use this year to rid himself of the company and the inheritance and run back to Oxford and his familiar pub and his colleagues and the gently winding medieval streets.
Erik’s here. Erik, and lit-up modern skyscrapers, possibilities and excitement and something that feels a lot like love. Erik, and Charles’s new graduate students, the ones who’ve become friends already, who he’d love to work alongside. This laboratory. Erik’s rooms and the bed they wake up in, shared, together.
Charles has never been the strongest supporter of Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement-he appreciates the wit, but not the cynicism-but they’ve been instrumental in the marriage reform movement, gathering support for passage of those bills first in England, and, slowly and begrudgingly, in the States as well. It’s still only barely legal for two men to form a union, and they’ll be looked at askance, with some suspicion.
But it’s not unheard of. It’s not unaccepted. And the suspicion will ease, with time.
He wonders whether Erik’s ever contemplated being married. He wonders whether Erik would ever contemplate being married to him.
He imagines being married to Erik. It’s surprisingly easy to picture.
And then he laughs at himself, and thinks about castles and air and building on clouds, and goes back to sorting slides, one by one.
A while later, out of nowhere, a voice says, in his head, Not castles, Charles, suspension bridges!! and the voice sounds a lot like Erik’s, and he finds himself helplessly smiling at a set of single-celled organisms.
Later, he’s nearly done, packing away the last of the slides, now neatly labeled in his most legible handwriting, and thinking about Erik’s cooking. Erik has culinary skills, honed by years of poverty and, later, travel, that leave Charles, who burns water on a regular basis, in awe. Erik always blushes, when complimented, and tries to brush the day’s deliciousness off as nothing special; Charles thinks about Erik preparing dinner for them, those long-fingered hands adding ingredients, as the rooms fill up with warm spices and coziness, the occasional spoon stirring by itself while kaleidoscopic eyes pause to look something up, and the thought feels like where he always wants to be.
He wonders whether he ought to tell Erik that. He thinks that maybe Erik should know.
He thinks that maybe, just maybe, today, this afternoon, he could walk through the door and put his arms around that slim waist and say the words “I love you” out loud.
Erik’s not said them yet. But his thoughts swirl with the emotion, sweeping and sparkling and overwhelmed with joy, stronger each time Charles touches him or kisses him or takes his hand, small gestures of affection that earn wordless surges of yes and please and forever.
Erik’s not said them yet, but that doesn’t mean the words aren’t true. It only means that Erik’s hesitating, perhaps hoping that Charles will say them first, will be the one to take that step.
It might mean something else. It might mean that Erik’s choosing not to say them. That Charles can’t be enough for Erik to love.
No, Charles thinks. No. I’d know if that were true. And Erik’s making dinner. For us both.
Lost in thought, stomach rumbling, he doesn’t hear the first knock at the door. When it comes a second time, it sounds a bit more irritated; and Charles, feeling guilty, shouts, “Yes, Henry, please come in!” without checking, because who else would be here at this hour on holiday?
He doesn’t bother getting up off the floor for the same reason, and so when a very correctly-dressed young woman opens the door and steps inside and says, “Oh…excuse me, we were looking for Professor Xavier, can you tell us where…” he then has to fling himself to his feet, apologizing profusely.
“I’m so sorry, can I help you, I thought you were one of my graduate students, I’m always having to send him home, honestly, he’s brilliant but a bit inclined to live in the lab, not that that’s a bad thing, oh I’m sorry again, what did you need?”
“Ah,” the woman says, and her colleague looks rather impressively disapproving, “are you a student of his?”
Charles flushes all over despite trying not to, all at once acutely aware of his own appearance: shoved-up sleeves, discarded waistcoat, recalcitrant hair, and what he suspects is packing dust from the boxes on his nose. And then he resolutely forgets about it all, and puts on his best lecturing-to-undergraduates expression, though he suspects it’s too late to do any good. “Er, no. I’m the person you’re looking for, I’m afraid. What can I do for you?”
“You are…Professor Charles Xavier?” Seriously? says her tone, and her thoughts, though beneath that there’s a flicker of adorable/ no/ too soon/ too young anyway/ kind of like an eager kitten.
Charles almost asks why is it always kittens? aloud, but manages to turn the question into, “Yes?” just in time.
“All right, then.” She looks him up and down. The expression gives nothing away; she’s likely quite good at what she does. She’s never been faced with a telepath before, though.
“You needn’t be nervous,” Charles says, a statement which, he realizes the instant the words come out of his mouth, produces the opposite effect. Damn.
“I’m sorry. Again. Look, you truly don’t need to be nervous, I’m not reading your mind, and that’s a bit difficult in any case, focusing on one particular mind among all the rest, especially when I don’t know you-” This is slightly exaggerated, he has enough control to discover her secrets if he really concentrates, but there’s no need; she’s already thinking about telling him why they’ve come. Easier just to let her speak. “-and that’d be terribly rude of me, besides. We’ve not even met. Or had coffee. Or anything at all.”
“Flirting with me will get you nowhere, Professor. We have some questions for you, and a request.”
“I wasn’t-” Charles tries, futilely, then gives up. He’d only meant to make her smile. “What’s this about? And, sorry, who are you again?”
Her thoughts say as if you don’t know, but, to her credit, she holds out a hand. “Moira MacTaggart. And this is my colleague, Agent Platt-” Platt only grunts. Well, Charles can’t exactly fault the man for being unimpressed.
“-we work for the United States government, and we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Er…am I being deported? Because I’m actually an American citizen, you know, even if I don’t sound like-”
“No-”
“Then is it about the research? Because I’ve not even started teaching yet, but I suppose I can see how someone might object to principles of Darwinism being-”
“No! Professor, you know a man named Sebastian Shaw, correct?”
“Oh,” Charles says, and thinks, Erik, and then remembers to be polite. “Would you…like to sit down? And, no, I think know is rather a strong term, in this instance. But we have, ah, become recently acquainted, yes.”
The agents glance at each other; Charles says, “My office, perhaps? Upstairs?” and leads the way.
The room is chilly, despite the book-lined walls and expansive desk. No heat being wasted here. Outside, the rain begins to fall, soft and silvery, whispering over tired stone.
Miss MacTaggart does most of the talking. She asks him how much he knows about the man who’s offered to buy his father’s lucrative company. She nods when Charles admits to disliking Shaw on sight, and Agent Platt grunts again. This seems to be his complete range of communication; Charles wonders briefly whether it’s an innate or learned behavior, and how advantageous that could conceivably be for a government operative, then yanks his mind back to the discussion at hand.
“Sebastian Shaw,” Miss MacTaggart says, “is a criminal, Professor. He’s involved in weapons manufacturing. Arms dealing. Selling guns to international crime syndicates. And worse.”
“Sorry, there’s worse?”
Agent Platt speaks up enough to say, “Show him the files,” and Charles nearly says oh you can talk how delightful but judges that now is not the time for humor, and puts on an appropriately interested expression, instead.
He’s handed papers. Documentation. Photographic evidence. The conditions in Shaw’s factories. The fatality counts, workers’ bodies like voiceless accusations. The children, many of them missing fingers or toes, sacrifices to Shaw’s pursuit of wealth and power.
He puts a hand over his mouth, involuntarily. His fingers shake, when he hands back the file. “So you’re, what…tracking his associates? And you’ve come to me?”
“There’s not a law on the books for this.” Miss MacTaggart sounds as angry, as disgusted, as Charles feels. “The official governmental position is that what Shaw does overseas-what he does to his workers, most of whom are uneducated, lower-class, and desperate-is no business of ours. But he’s here, now. In our country. And there are other things we can prosecute him for. Fair trade violations. Criminal conspiracy. If we can catch him in the act, on American soil.”
“Oh,” Charles says again, realizing. “You want me to be a spy for you.” In the pause, the rain gets louder, thundering down.
“We wouldn’t put it so blatantly, but yes. Entertain his offer. See if you can get him to admit to anything illegal, on any front, here in the States.”
“I’ve already told him no, what makes you think-”
“He wants your company for a reason; the Xavier name is well-established, and respected, over here. It gives him legitimacy. And you…well…” For the first time, Miss MacTaggart actually blushes; she’s obviously not quite sure how to introduce this particular topic delicately.
Charles says it for her. “I appeal to his personal tastes. I know.”
“Well…yes. I’d do it myself, if I were in possession of the appropriate qualifications.” She’s still embarrassed, but honest, as well: she would do this, in the service of her country, if she believed it would work. Charles has no doubt that she’d succeed.
She gazes at him earnestly. Overhead, the rain patters meaningfully away. “You would be doing a great service for your country. For the people in those files. You-”
“I need to-” He looks out the window. The world is very cool and grey. The raindrops twinkle and splash, through the mist. They’d turn into bitter flecks of ice, if the air were just a few degrees colder. Erik, he thinks again.
“I would like to say yes. I think I will. But…not yet. There’s someone I need to discuss this with. I can give you an answer tomorrow. Not here.” He doesn’t want them, this, Shaw, anywhere near his life, his real life, the life he’s chosen, if he can help it.
The agents exchange glances and nod. Miss MacTaggart says, quietly, “That someone…that would be your…partner, correct? Erik Lehnsherr?” And the way she asks the question tells him first that she’s not one of those who distrusts same-sex partnerships-unlike her more skeptical partner-and second that she knows precisely who Erik is, and from where he comes.
And Charles nods, as well, and though he doesn’t say so out loud the motion feels like agreement to it all.
Charles is late. Erik worries, and tries not to.
He’s found roasted chicken for them, bread and cheese, not complicated, one of the simplest midday meals really, but Charles appreciates his ability with food in any case. Those blue eyes always light up when Erik cooks for him, as if the preparation of dinner or supper or breakfast is a heretofore unknown skill in the history of mankind.
Charles, of course, has never had to cook; he’d admitted that, the first morning Erik’d fed him breakfast in bed and felt the need to apologize that it was only eggs and toast. Charles’d looked at him, wide-eyed, and devoured every bite.
Charles grew up with servants. And, later, the university dinners at Oxford, or cheap take-away stuff wrapped in newsprint, or late-night pub food if he was feeling tipsily adventurous. Charles has, contrary to Erik’s previous expectations, actually set foot in a kitchen, mostly as a small boy seeking comfort; but he’d been fed by the cook and the maids, who felt sorry for the boy and his bruises. Erik can’t blame them-he’s entirely sure that, if he ever meets any member of Charles’s family, someone will end up maimed or worse, and it won’t be him-but this fact does mean that Charles has never learned what to do with food other than eat it.
Erik’s always been able to cook for himself. He’d designed his apartment with kitchen space-the height of eccentricity, these days, but he’d wanted to, so he had. He likes being self-sufficient. Independent. And he can cook, for himself, and for Charles; his mother always had, and he’d enjoyed watching, following her hands as she explained, the culinary transformations, the mystical creation of one dish out of disparate ingredients.
His mother’d cooked because she’d had to; his family had never been wealthy. Later, when she grew ill, the preparation of dinner had become Erik’s job. He hadn’t minded, except for the reason behind the change.
He’d forgotten, at some point, in the intervening years of bitterness and anger, how much he likes being in the kitchen. Had told himself it was just another task to perform: he has to eat, after all, and if he has the skill, it’s only practical.
Charles gazes at him with unalloyed delight, every time Erik produces biscuits or jam or his mother’s matzo ball soup. And Erik ends up smiling.
Right now, Charles is even more late. And the world is raining, long streamers of water lashing against the windowpane. From this height, in this building, he can see the city, holiday lights battling valiantly against the storm. The lights are losing.
Charles, he asks the wind and the rain, not expecting an answer, please come home.
Charles doesn’t miraculously turn up on the spot. Of course not. What was he hoping for?
What was he hoping for?
Erik stops, halfway back into the kitchen to check on the warm milk that’s going to be cocoa very shortly now. After a second, lowers his foot to the floor, still thinking.
Hope is such a complex word. He’d come here to America hoping for a new start, for enough money, for enough freedom, to carry out his self-appointed mission. To find Klaus Schmidt, and to find some sort of vengeance. For his parents. For his mother, who had taught him how to love the homey glow of an oven, an indoor stove.
He hopes, right now, that Charles will walk in the door, shaking water from damp waves of hair, and smile at him, and kiss him again.
He thinks about the future, where he used to see only one goal, one endpoint, no after because he couldn’t afford to lose focus or become distracted. The world is different now. He woke up this morning with Charles in his bed, and sketched new designs into life over trustingly naked skin, and he’s just thought the word home, and he hopes that maybe Charles thinks that word as well, about this space they share together in the world.
“I think,” he says, to the saucepan and the stove and the cheerful golden lamps, “I might be in love. With him. With Charles. I’m in love with Charles.”
And then he has to dive for said saucepan, to keep the milk from boiling over in happy agreement. He scalds a fingertip in the process. Barely notices.
Is he in love? He’s never been in love before. And it’s only been a few short weeks. How is a person supposed to know for sure?
He knows how he feels, when he looks at those jewel-colored eyes. How amazed and thrilled and excited he is, every morning he wakes up with playful dark hair tickling his face. How badly he wants to keep Charles safe, to touch all the scars and promise that no one will ever cause any again, not while Erik’s there to throw himself between Charles and the pain. He knows that Charles has told him stories that no one else has ever heard, about those scars and blood and old wounds, but also about brightness and the pure joy of research and the freedom of discovery, euphoric intellectual flight.
He wants to know more. He wants to know everything. And he wants to give Charles everything, in return. He’s told Charles about his past, about Schmidt-Shaw-already. Charles hasn’t run away. And Erik loves him for that courage, too. If that’s what this is. If that’s the word for all these wild emotions.
It must be. What other word is there?
Is Charles in love with him?
He pauses to rephrase that question. Can Charles love him? Knowing everything about him? When Erik’s already seen pain in those extraordinary eyes, caused that pain, once before?
Charles is happy, with him. He does believe that. He’s felt it, in the drowsy contentment of shared thoughts, afterglow, sweetness, hands touching in the park. Charles wants him. Trusts him. Enjoys his company. But Charles has never said anything about love. Charles, he thinks, might not even believe in love, given the way he was treated, by the people who should have cherished him.
Erik’s heart does a painful little twist, in his chest, at that realization. It hurts.
“If this is what love means,” he tells the milk, “it is very confusing.” It bubbles at him in liquid concurrence.
And then the key rattles in the lock, and the door opens, and Erik forgets about the milk and the confusing epiphanies, and runs over to grab a drenched greatcoat and throw both arms around the shivering shoulders underneath. “You didn’t take an umbrella?”
“I did, I just forgot it in the laboratory-”
“Charles, you-” He’s busy trying to rub some heat back into pale skin, whiter than usual, and make the shivering go away, so that he can breathe again. “Your fingers feel like ice. Come here. Sit down. Drink this. Next time hail a cab.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s barely a mile-”
“Don’t make me walk you to campus and back, Charles. I will.”
“Oh, Erik…” Charles shuts his eyes, for a minute. Curls his hands around the mug of cocoa; Erik closes his own hands over them, sealing in the heat. Sits down beside him. Charles leans against him, tension evident in every muscle, every line of expressive eyebrows. That can’t only be from the walk; Charles is cold, yes, but he’s not that frail.
Erik wants to ask. Is all at once afraid.
“I didn’t take a cab because I wanted to think.” Charles admits this to Erik’s collarbone, head comfortably settled onto Erik’s shoulder. All the hair is still wet, dripping onto Erik’s shirt; the shirt doesn’t mind, and neither does he. Charles matters more.
“You…wanted to think. About what?” About us? It’s not quite a directed thought, but Charles picks it up anyway.
“Not…well, I suppose it is, actually. But not in the way you’re thinking. I had some intriguing visitors, today…” I’m not going anywhere. Not as long as you continue feeding me delicious cocoa. You know that.
I know. He believes it’s true. “Visitors?”
“From the United States government, in fact. Official badges and everything.” They wanted to ask me about-I haven’t said yes, not yet, so please try to keep that in mind-
“They’re not somehow sending you back to England, are they?” They’ll have to go through him, first.
Charles gives a slightly waterlogged laugh. “No…nothing like that. They want my assistance, in fact.”
“With what?” Charles, please just tell me.
All right. “Sebastian Shaw.”
“…what?”
“They want to arrest him.” Charles looks up. Meets Erik’s eyes. “They think I can help. Since he’s not technically done anything illegal on American soil, yet. Nothing they can convict him for.”
Erik sits there trying to process. Charles sits beside him, pressed against him, and tries to explain. The words tumble over him in a wash. Sebastian Shaw. At last.
The government won’t want the man dead, of course, but that’s a technicality. Between himself and Charles, he’s fairly certain they can make it look like an accident.
Charles. Charles is saying something else, now. About his own involvement. About how they’d like to provoke Shaw into a confession. About himself being-
“No,” Erik says, flatly.
“What?” Interrupted mid-sentence, the eyebrows lift in his direction, curious. “Are you seriously objecting? I thought you’d be in favor of this. I mean-I know what you-”
“He’s not worth it.” Is that his own mouth, saying those words? Doesn’t feel like it. Someone else, making that choice, no hesitation at all. “He’s not-there is no universe in which I am going to let you be used as bait, Charles!”
“I’m certainly planning on being very active bait. I have thought about this, Erik.”
“You’re going to say yes to them? To this-insanity? Charles-”
Lightning cracks, outside, too close. They both flinch. But Charles meets his gaze again, after, hair falling into those eyes, not calm but unafraid.
“You told me once that you were hoping to expose him. To find-justice. If you had the money, the influence, the opportunity…”
“I will.”
“Erik,” Charles says, “I have all those things.”
Erik can’t speak, for a moment. Charles is offering him everything. And then he says, “No.”
“…what? Why not?”
“Why not-you honestly believe I’d let you put yourself in-you can’t want to go anywhere near him, after what he was thinking about you-”
“Erik.” The blue eyes gaze at him, serious and straightforward. They’re brighter than the lightning, when it streaks frantically across the darkened sky. “I’m not asking you to let me do anything. Not outside of the bedroom, anyway-”
“No jokes, Charles. Not right now.”
“…no. All right. No, I don’t want to go anywhere near him, but I think that what I want is less important than what we need to do. And I’m not doing this for you, or not only for you, because I am, of course. But he needs to be put away somewhere. Where he can’t do anyone any more harm. And I can help with that. Understand?”
“Maybe.” You mean that.
Yes. “Thank you.”
Idealist. “I’ll be there with you. Right outside.”
Not as much as you think. “I know you will.”
No. More. “Charles…I…your hands are still cold. Would you like more cocoa? I could…make more for you. If you want more. I will.”
I know you would. If I asked. “Later. You can, however, kiss me now.”
December 22, 1897
Erik’s waiting, outside the office, quivering with all the suppressed emotions, fury and protectiveness and passionate need for action, when Shaw emerges, and walks away.
The man doesn’t even glance in Erik’s direction. Of course not; Charles is carefully keeping Erik’s presence hidden, masked from casual observers.
That unguarded back is so close. So vulnerable, as Shaw strolls down the hallway and towards the elevator. Erik’s fingers twitch. The elevator is slow. That’s not his fault, but it could’ve been.
The coins, in his pocket, shiver and clatter against each other.
In his head, he feels a sudden wave of imbalance, shakiness, nausea. Charles isn’t meaning to project, isn’t meaning to ask for his presence, making no demands.
He stares at Shaw. Feels the incipient headache that isn’t his. The metal cage doors, awaiting the lift’s arrival, twitch once, then calm, abruptly.
The elevator arrives, with a pleasant chirp of fulfillment.
Now, now, and Erik spins around and runs because he has to be in motion, and sprints back to Charles’s office, crashing explosively through the door.
He doesn’t see Charles, not right away.
No. Oh, no, no, please-
Charles tries to say I’m all right and coughs and can’t stand up, from the floor behind his desk.
Erik, later, will have no memory of flinging himself across the room and onto the carpet at his side. What he will remember, always, forever, is the sensation of Charles reaching for him, eyes closed, collapsing into his arms as if that’s the only refuge left in the world.
He tries, as best as he can, to project only calming thoughts. Red-gold firelight. Soothing sheets and fuzzy blankets. The solidity of his own arms.
Charles breathes, coughs again, desperately projects the nausea one more time; Erik yanks the nearest bucket out of the broom closet in the hall, and clutches shaking shoulders, holds hair back, whispers I’m here, you’re all right, please, please be all right, and attempts as hard as he can to make the words true.
I’m…all right, Charles agrees, at last, resting limply in his embrace, not even enough energy to speak. Thank you.
Don’t. Just-just BE all right. He runs a hand through that sweat-damp hair, and struggles to calm his own pounding heart. Please.
I believe I did find what they were hoping I might…can’t convict on my evidence, of course, but if they can get to his private club now, right NOW, there are messages from enough underworld kingpins demanding illegal weaponry to convict him for multiple lifetimes- Charles isn’t breathing well. Too uneven. The headache threatens to split Erik’s skull apart.
I’m telling Moira-Miss MacTaggart, that is-
Don’t hurt yourself!
Oh-well-just one more-
Charles, please!
Silence, enormous and black, inside his head. And then, even as Erik dives desperately into the dark, flickers of light. Still here-sorry-oh god this hurts-
Charles doesn’t move, after Erik sets the bucket aside, this time. Not unconscious, but utterly devoid of energy, limbs falling wherever Erik coaxes them.
“Please,” he whispers, out loud because that might be easier, possibly, someway. “Please tell me what you need.”
Hold me.
Of course.
He was thinking-oh, god, Erik, you can’t imagine-no, if anyone can you possibly could but-about me, too, not only the world and how easily dominated it might be, he likes vulnerability and helplessness and controlling other people’s pain, he enjoys it-The images flash and sear their way across Erik’s brain, glimpses of what Charles must’ve been mentally subjected to, what Shaw would like to do to him, with him, with his body.
His hands don’t clench into fists, because he’s holding Charles, but every other atom of his body tightens up in pure rage. The walls, the floor, creak, with righteous fury.
Erik, Charles murmurs, it’s-
You cannot tell me that this is all right. That you are all right.
No. But I will be. And, Erik, I knew what I was doing. The kind of mind I’d be going inside. I didn’t do this blindly. Though I admit I’d not expected it to be quite this bad…
“Hush,” Erik says, and strokes a hand through his hair, inadequate but somehow earning a ripple of appreciation from Charles anyway. “Don’t think things at me. I can feel your headache. Can I take you home? To bed?”
“To bed, you say…”
“Not for that!” Maybe later.
Charles lets Erik hold him, lets Erik take care of him, and nods.
He’s sitting on the bed, watching Charles sleep-wondering, yet again, if he should say the words, those words, if this is what love means, that he can be so afraid and so excited and so protective and so hopeful all at once-when a knock echoes off the door, disrupting their privacy. Charles doesn’t stir; Erik, annoyed, barefoot, in shirt-sleeves, gets up to make it stop when it comes again, preparing his best scowl.
The woman on the other side of the door has the sense to look, if not intimidated, at least abashed. But she talks regardless. “Mr Lehnsherr? I’m Miss MacTaggart. Is Professor Xavier here with you?”
Ah. Charles hadn’t mentioned that she was pretty. Erik’s not sure whether that means Charles is too preoccupied to care, or simply hasn’t noticed. “He’s asleep.”
“Oh.” She hesitates, brushes hair back from her face. Erik’s not inclined to ask her in, even if not doing so marks him as rude, given the circumstances and the closed blue eyes back in the bedroom. “I wanted to thank him. We found…Shaw wasn’t there, at his club, but with what we collected, we have enough evidence to put him behind bars. And it was Professor Xavier who gave us the location. So…’
“I can tell him you came. When he wakes up.”
“Is he…all right?”
“He says he will be. I think it takes more than a few hours of rest to recover from being violated.” And then, because she’s looking almost as guiltily horrified as he wants her to be, he does concede, “Not physically. Shaw never touched him. Only psychically. But that’s very much an injury. He’s in pain.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Are you?”
“I’m sorry that he’s hurt, yes.” She’s smaller than he is, and slender, but the way Miss MacTaggart meets his eyes, then, reminds Erik that she is a government agent, after all. A woman who fights for, would die for, her country. “I can’t be sorry that we succeeded. Was that what you wanted to know?”
Erik considers this. Nods. She nods back, understanding, in return.
“How did you know we’d be here? Not his rooms at the university?”
“I would have tried there next. But your place is closer. And you would’ve wanted to get him out of there, after.”
They’re in agreement on that, too, it seems. Erik, somewhat to his own surprise, hears himself inquire, “Do you want to come in?”
“No, I have another assignment. But…again, thank you. To him, and to you. Maybe we’ll see each other around.”
Yet again, his mouth decides to offer input without consulting his brain. “If you are not busy, next week…Charles would probably like to see you…if he feels up to it…we’re potentially performing the final Christmas pageant. At the department store.”
“Perhaps I’ll find you there.” She vanishes down the hallway, soundless as only a trained operative can be; Erik appreciates the skill, academically, for a second, then turns around and closes the door and hears his own name very faintly and nearly trips over the sofa while trying to hurl himself in the direction of that drowsy voice.
“Go back to sleep.” Is everything all right? More blankets, or-
I’m fine. Not even much of a headache, now. “Was that Moira? Miss MacTaggart?”
“Yes.” He sits down on the bed. Puts an arm around compact shoulders, making contact. The comment about the headache is half-true; it’s certainly better, but not anywhere close to gone. “She wanted to thank you. For the assistance.”
“I heard. You invited her to the department-store Christmas Eve pageant.” Charles, propped up amid the pile of blankets and sheets, all tangled hair and clear open blue eyes, is the most beautiful sight Erik’s ever encountered; he feels the sudden need to hold on more tightly, to kiss those lips, to never let go.
You can. “It was kind of her to come by. And of you, to invite her. She’s a bit lonely, around the holidays. She misses her husband.”
Erik’s not quite sure how to answer that one. Too many colliding reactions, everything from trust Charles to worry about someone else while barely upright to me? kind?? to husband is an interesting word and what if I, what if we-No. Not now. Charles needs to recover.
He settles for kissing the closest temple, gently, lips over soreness and coconut-scented hair. Does this hurt? “If you aren’t feeling up to the costumes, by then…or if I think you’re not…”
“Oh, you get to decide? And, no, it doesn’t. I like that; do it again.” Erik…are YOU all right? I know-I do know you made a choice, back there. I understand.
Erik rests his cheek atop that head, thinking. Charles does understand. Isn’t judging him for how close it’d been. Is only wordlessly asking about regrets, in the wake of events playing out this way. Wanting to know that Erik is content with the outcome of that choice.
Content is a difficult word. Shaw is still out there. Somewhere. To be found.
Charles doesn’t say anything, out loud, but the impression that floats up through the silence promises that Erik won’t be searching alone.
He kisses Charles again, answers yes, answers yes to it all.
Title: The Center Of Gravity Of Our Little Sphere (4 & 5 of 7) (chapter 3 here) (chapter 2 here) (chapter 1 here)
Rating: R overall, and also for this chapter, for a bit of sex and Erik panicking
Warnings: slight D/s dynamics in later chapters, eventual minor (villain) character death
Word Count: 29,950 (total); 6,573 for chapters four and five
Disclaimers: boys’re not mine, only doing this for fun. Title and epigraph courtesy of H.G. Wells.
Notes/Summary: for telperion_15's prompt of Erik is employed as a not-so-jolly department store Santa, and Charles is one of his elves. Except somehow it turned into an enormous low-powered Victorian AU, full of hurt/comfort and love and plot and some, er, slight D/s dynamics, and also, um, Shaw-the-villain. Yep, that’s right. Also, some historical liberties for mutants existing and gay marriage reform in progress.
In these chapters: lazy mornings, and someone making Charles an offer, to which Erik objects; Erik talking to saucepans and being protective, Charles being brave,and Shaw being vile.
December 18, 1897
“Erik,” Charles says.
Erik doesn’t even open an eye, only wraps one long arm more snugly around his waist. Charles sighs, and tips his head back, and kisses the first spot he can reach, which happens to be the soft skin just under Erik’s sharply-defined jawline, warm and tasting like heat and slightly prickly from morning stubble. “I really do need to get up.”
“No, you don’t. You need to stay here. With me.”
“Well, yes. I need that as well. But I have to go in to the office-” He realizes the poor choice of words even as he’s talking, as that arm tenses fractionally around his body.
Of course his office is a sore spot. A raw place, scraped sensitive and not yet healed over, between them. It will heal, he believes, given time. But not now. Not yet.
“I mean on campus. The university. My university office. I-”
“The university’s on holiday, Charles.” But Erik rolls over and puts the other arm around him, too: an apology of his own, a wordless promise.
“Yes, I know.” He settles down atop Erik’s chest. It’s warm there.
And then he gets a briefly amused mental flicker of response-Charles-as-kitten, curled up and fluffy and craving heat-and then attempts to thump Erik’s closest shoulder with his fist. “I am not.”
“Yes, you are. I like it. Why do you need to go to your university, then?”
“Oh…they sent a message over yesterday…are you petting my hair? All right, then…delivery problems, in the laboratory. Unlabeled specimens. Unsorted slides, for the microscopes…that’s very distracting.” I like your hand right there.
I know you do. “Why do you have to go? I thought you had graduate students.”
“Well, yes, but it’s their holiday, too.” It shouldn’t take very long. I’ll come back and meet you for dinner, after.
“I could come with you.” This time Erik’s thinking that Charles is far too nice a person, and the thought’s tinged with bafflement and pity and protectiveness and awe.
“I thought you had work to do. You were even dreaming about it. That new skyscraper, downtown…”
“You heard that? It’s not a confirmed project. Or not yet. If I did get to design it, though…” The thoughts spiral away into steel and iron, girders and support, mathemathics like a composer’s symphony, playing out on metal strands. Charles listens, quietly, and doesn’t try to hide the upswell of affection, pure and true; Erik’s so breathtaking, like this, in his element, pun intended and turning into metaphor, Erik and the elements at play.
Oh, really… Powerful fingers trace their way up Charles’s back. Over old scars, and newly-mapped constellations of sunburst freckles, and sleep-warmed skin. “Suspension bridges, I think.”
“…what?”
“You.” Erik touches his face, this time, fingers brushing the delicate skin over a cheekbone, below one eye. “If I were designing you. Something elegant, and flexible, but strong…”
“Flexible?”
“Not like that…or, yes, like that, all right…no, I mean it. Graceful, but supporting all the weight anyone can throw at it…with curves, I think…Charles, do we have any…”
And Charles laughs, and gets up to find paper and a pen, and lets Erik sketch new creations into existence over his back, as he lies there decadently naked in the shimmering morning air. Erik’s pen occasionally wanders past the boundaries of the paper, brushing ink onto pale skin with his absorption; he apologizes the first time, and then the second, and then finally hears what Charles is very loudly thinking, and smiles with all those teeth and signs his name, not at the bottom of the sketch, but over a curving span of freckles, a hipbone, ticklish places.
Charles yelps in an undignified fashion and Erik smiles again, so Charles has to kiss him, and neither of them ends up leaving the bed at that moment, in the end.
After, exhausted, languorous, replete, he finds Erik’s paper again, on the floor. “Are those chess pieces? On this bit?”
“Hmm?...Oh. Yes. They don’t actually serve any purpose. Only decorative. I thought you’d like them.” There’s ink on Erik’s thumb, and, rather improbably, on his nose. He looks somewhat less than frightening, right now; the Erik that Charles wants to see, always, thoroughly pleasured and happy and blushing a little, caught between embarrassment and pride in his designs.
“I do like them. They’re smiling at me. Can I keep this?”
“If you want it…”
“I do.” Erik does need the affirmation, sometimes, he’s realizing. Earlier he’d’ve found that strange, from someone so fiercely independent and driven. He likes to believe that he knows Erik a bit better than that, now. “I do still need to go to campus…will you be here when I get back?”
“Of course.” Erik sits up to watch, as Charles pulls on clothing. “I can make food for us. If you want to eat here. It might rain.”
Charles, half-dressed, walks back over to the bed, puts both hands on Erik’s face, draws him closer, and kisses him, for that. Yes.
He finds his own greatcoat, for once-probably because Erik’s started pointedly hanging it by the door-and heads out the door, with a fair amount of reluctance in every step. Almost turns around, when Erik starts idly projecting thoughts about his own continuing nakedness, but he’s already dressed and he’s committed now, so he sends back some unbelievably filthy images of his own, plans for later and himself on his knees and wet lips and ideas about just what Erik might be able to do with the chain off his pocket watch, and then says, cheerfully, later! and listens to Erik’s mental splutter.
He privately vows that this is going to be the fastest laboratory organization ever attempted. And walks a bit more rapidly through the gleaming winterscape day.
The campus is mostly deserted, for the holidays. It’s peaceful, a kind of anticipatory peace: the students will be coming back, soon enough. The buildings wait, content.
Charles lets himself into the laboratory-a brand-new building, absolutely lovely, and he takes a moment to appreciate it, just looking around-and then spots the waiting boxes, unlabeled and towering ominously at him, and sighs, and settles down.
After a while he gives up and sits on the floor. The surrounding space is necessary.
He doesn’t actually mind the work. Labeling specimens is rather mindless, granted, but he likes knowing all the little details of his lab, and this way he’ll have everything organized and tagged the way he wants it to be. Easy, for later. Like setting up a home.
His hands get into a rhythm, while his thoughts wander off on their own. Home. Here, at Columbia. Of course he’s here temporarily, a visiting professorship, he’s been planning to use this year to rid himself of the company and the inheritance and run back to Oxford and his familiar pub and his colleagues and the gently winding medieval streets.
Erik’s here. Erik, and lit-up modern skyscrapers, possibilities and excitement and something that feels a lot like love. Erik, and Charles’s new graduate students, the ones who’ve become friends already, who he’d love to work alongside. This laboratory. Erik’s rooms and the bed they wake up in, shared, together.
Charles has never been the strongest supporter of Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement-he appreciates the wit, but not the cynicism-but they’ve been instrumental in the marriage reform movement, gathering support for passage of those bills first in England, and, slowly and begrudgingly, in the States as well. It’s still only barely legal for two men to form a union, and they’ll be looked at askance, with some suspicion.
But it’s not unheard of. It’s not unaccepted. And the suspicion will ease, with time.
He wonders whether Erik’s ever contemplated being married. He wonders whether Erik would ever contemplate being married to him.
He imagines being married to Erik. It’s surprisingly easy to picture.
And then he laughs at himself, and thinks about castles and air and building on clouds, and goes back to sorting slides, one by one.
A while later, out of nowhere, a voice says, in his head, Not castles, Charles, suspension bridges!! and the voice sounds a lot like Erik’s, and he finds himself helplessly smiling at a set of single-celled organisms.
Later, he’s nearly done, packing away the last of the slides, now neatly labeled in his most legible handwriting, and thinking about Erik’s cooking. Erik has culinary skills, honed by years of poverty and, later, travel, that leave Charles, who burns water on a regular basis, in awe. Erik always blushes, when complimented, and tries to brush the day’s deliciousness off as nothing special; Charles thinks about Erik preparing dinner for them, those long-fingered hands adding ingredients, as the rooms fill up with warm spices and coziness, the occasional spoon stirring by itself while kaleidoscopic eyes pause to look something up, and the thought feels like where he always wants to be.
He wonders whether he ought to tell Erik that. He thinks that maybe Erik should know.
He thinks that maybe, just maybe, today, this afternoon, he could walk through the door and put his arms around that slim waist and say the words “I love you” out loud.
Erik’s not said them yet. But his thoughts swirl with the emotion, sweeping and sparkling and overwhelmed with joy, stronger each time Charles touches him or kisses him or takes his hand, small gestures of affection that earn wordless surges of yes and please and forever.
Erik’s not said them yet, but that doesn’t mean the words aren’t true. It only means that Erik’s hesitating, perhaps hoping that Charles will say them first, will be the one to take that step.
It might mean something else. It might mean that Erik’s choosing not to say them. That Charles can’t be enough for Erik to love.
No, Charles thinks. No. I’d know if that were true. And Erik’s making dinner. For us both.
Lost in thought, stomach rumbling, he doesn’t hear the first knock at the door. When it comes a second time, it sounds a bit more irritated; and Charles, feeling guilty, shouts, “Yes, Henry, please come in!” without checking, because who else would be here at this hour on holiday?
He doesn’t bother getting up off the floor for the same reason, and so when a very correctly-dressed young woman opens the door and steps inside and says, “Oh…excuse me, we were looking for Professor Xavier, can you tell us where…” he then has to fling himself to his feet, apologizing profusely.
“I’m so sorry, can I help you, I thought you were one of my graduate students, I’m always having to send him home, honestly, he’s brilliant but a bit inclined to live in the lab, not that that’s a bad thing, oh I’m sorry again, what did you need?”
“Ah,” the woman says, and her colleague looks rather impressively disapproving, “are you a student of his?”
Charles flushes all over despite trying not to, all at once acutely aware of his own appearance: shoved-up sleeves, discarded waistcoat, recalcitrant hair, and what he suspects is packing dust from the boxes on his nose. And then he resolutely forgets about it all, and puts on his best lecturing-to-undergraduates expression, though he suspects it’s too late to do any good. “Er, no. I’m the person you’re looking for, I’m afraid. What can I do for you?”
“You are…Professor Charles Xavier?” Seriously? says her tone, and her thoughts, though beneath that there’s a flicker of adorable/ no/ too soon/ too young anyway/ kind of like an eager kitten.
Charles almost asks why is it always kittens? aloud, but manages to turn the question into, “Yes?” just in time.
“All right, then.” She looks him up and down. The expression gives nothing away; she’s likely quite good at what she does. She’s never been faced with a telepath before, though.
“You needn’t be nervous,” Charles says, a statement which, he realizes the instant the words come out of his mouth, produces the opposite effect. Damn.
“I’m sorry. Again. Look, you truly don’t need to be nervous, I’m not reading your mind, and that’s a bit difficult in any case, focusing on one particular mind among all the rest, especially when I don’t know you-” This is slightly exaggerated, he has enough control to discover her secrets if he really concentrates, but there’s no need; she’s already thinking about telling him why they’ve come. Easier just to let her speak. “-and that’d be terribly rude of me, besides. We’ve not even met. Or had coffee. Or anything at all.”
“Flirting with me will get you nowhere, Professor. We have some questions for you, and a request.”
“I wasn’t-” Charles tries, futilely, then gives up. He’d only meant to make her smile. “What’s this about? And, sorry, who are you again?”
Her thoughts say as if you don’t know, but, to her credit, she holds out a hand. “Moira MacTaggart. And this is my colleague, Agent Platt-” Platt only grunts. Well, Charles can’t exactly fault the man for being unimpressed.
“-we work for the United States government, and we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Er…am I being deported? Because I’m actually an American citizen, you know, even if I don’t sound like-”
“No-”
“Then is it about the research? Because I’ve not even started teaching yet, but I suppose I can see how someone might object to principles of Darwinism being-”
“No! Professor, you know a man named Sebastian Shaw, correct?”
“Oh,” Charles says, and thinks, Erik, and then remembers to be polite. “Would you…like to sit down? And, no, I think know is rather a strong term, in this instance. But we have, ah, become recently acquainted, yes.”
The agents glance at each other; Charles says, “My office, perhaps? Upstairs?” and leads the way.
The room is chilly, despite the book-lined walls and expansive desk. No heat being wasted here. Outside, the rain begins to fall, soft and silvery, whispering over tired stone.
Miss MacTaggart does most of the talking. She asks him how much he knows about the man who’s offered to buy his father’s lucrative company. She nods when Charles admits to disliking Shaw on sight, and Agent Platt grunts again. This seems to be his complete range of communication; Charles wonders briefly whether it’s an innate or learned behavior, and how advantageous that could conceivably be for a government operative, then yanks his mind back to the discussion at hand.
“Sebastian Shaw,” Miss MacTaggart says, “is a criminal, Professor. He’s involved in weapons manufacturing. Arms dealing. Selling guns to international crime syndicates. And worse.”
“Sorry, there’s worse?”
Agent Platt speaks up enough to say, “Show him the files,” and Charles nearly says oh you can talk how delightful but judges that now is not the time for humor, and puts on an appropriately interested expression, instead.
He’s handed papers. Documentation. Photographic evidence. The conditions in Shaw’s factories. The fatality counts, workers’ bodies like voiceless accusations. The children, many of them missing fingers or toes, sacrifices to Shaw’s pursuit of wealth and power.
He puts a hand over his mouth, involuntarily. His fingers shake, when he hands back the file. “So you’re, what…tracking his associates? And you’ve come to me?”
“There’s not a law on the books for this.” Miss MacTaggart sounds as angry, as disgusted, as Charles feels. “The official governmental position is that what Shaw does overseas-what he does to his workers, most of whom are uneducated, lower-class, and desperate-is no business of ours. But he’s here, now. In our country. And there are other things we can prosecute him for. Fair trade violations. Criminal conspiracy. If we can catch him in the act, on American soil.”
“Oh,” Charles says again, realizing. “You want me to be a spy for you.” In the pause, the rain gets louder, thundering down.
“We wouldn’t put it so blatantly, but yes. Entertain his offer. See if you can get him to admit to anything illegal, on any front, here in the States.”
“I’ve already told him no, what makes you think-”
“He wants your company for a reason; the Xavier name is well-established, and respected, over here. It gives him legitimacy. And you…well…” For the first time, Miss MacTaggart actually blushes; she’s obviously not quite sure how to introduce this particular topic delicately.
Charles says it for her. “I appeal to his personal tastes. I know.”
“Well…yes. I’d do it myself, if I were in possession of the appropriate qualifications.” She’s still embarrassed, but honest, as well: she would do this, in the service of her country, if she believed it would work. Charles has no doubt that she’d succeed.
She gazes at him earnestly. Overhead, the rain patters meaningfully away. “You would be doing a great service for your country. For the people in those files. You-”
“I need to-” He looks out the window. The world is very cool and grey. The raindrops twinkle and splash, through the mist. They’d turn into bitter flecks of ice, if the air were just a few degrees colder. Erik, he thinks again.
“I would like to say yes. I think I will. But…not yet. There’s someone I need to discuss this with. I can give you an answer tomorrow. Not here.” He doesn’t want them, this, Shaw, anywhere near his life, his real life, the life he’s chosen, if he can help it.
The agents exchange glances and nod. Miss MacTaggart says, quietly, “That someone…that would be your…partner, correct? Erik Lehnsherr?” And the way she asks the question tells him first that she’s not one of those who distrusts same-sex partnerships-unlike her more skeptical partner-and second that she knows precisely who Erik is, and from where he comes.
And Charles nods, as well, and though he doesn’t say so out loud the motion feels like agreement to it all.
Charles is late. Erik worries, and tries not to.
He’s found roasted chicken for them, bread and cheese, not complicated, one of the simplest midday meals really, but Charles appreciates his ability with food in any case. Those blue eyes always light up when Erik cooks for him, as if the preparation of dinner or supper or breakfast is a heretofore unknown skill in the history of mankind.
Charles, of course, has never had to cook; he’d admitted that, the first morning Erik’d fed him breakfast in bed and felt the need to apologize that it was only eggs and toast. Charles’d looked at him, wide-eyed, and devoured every bite.
Charles grew up with servants. And, later, the university dinners at Oxford, or cheap take-away stuff wrapped in newsprint, or late-night pub food if he was feeling tipsily adventurous. Charles has, contrary to Erik’s previous expectations, actually set foot in a kitchen, mostly as a small boy seeking comfort; but he’d been fed by the cook and the maids, who felt sorry for the boy and his bruises. Erik can’t blame them-he’s entirely sure that, if he ever meets any member of Charles’s family, someone will end up maimed or worse, and it won’t be him-but this fact does mean that Charles has never learned what to do with food other than eat it.
Erik’s always been able to cook for himself. He’d designed his apartment with kitchen space-the height of eccentricity, these days, but he’d wanted to, so he had. He likes being self-sufficient. Independent. And he can cook, for himself, and for Charles; his mother always had, and he’d enjoyed watching, following her hands as she explained, the culinary transformations, the mystical creation of one dish out of disparate ingredients.
His mother’d cooked because she’d had to; his family had never been wealthy. Later, when she grew ill, the preparation of dinner had become Erik’s job. He hadn’t minded, except for the reason behind the change.
He’d forgotten, at some point, in the intervening years of bitterness and anger, how much he likes being in the kitchen. Had told himself it was just another task to perform: he has to eat, after all, and if he has the skill, it’s only practical.
Charles gazes at him with unalloyed delight, every time Erik produces biscuits or jam or his mother’s matzo ball soup. And Erik ends up smiling.
Right now, Charles is even more late. And the world is raining, long streamers of water lashing against the windowpane. From this height, in this building, he can see the city, holiday lights battling valiantly against the storm. The lights are losing.
Charles, he asks the wind and the rain, not expecting an answer, please come home.
Charles doesn’t miraculously turn up on the spot. Of course not. What was he hoping for?
What was he hoping for?
Erik stops, halfway back into the kitchen to check on the warm milk that’s going to be cocoa very shortly now. After a second, lowers his foot to the floor, still thinking.
Hope is such a complex word. He’d come here to America hoping for a new start, for enough money, for enough freedom, to carry out his self-appointed mission. To find Klaus Schmidt, and to find some sort of vengeance. For his parents. For his mother, who had taught him how to love the homey glow of an oven, an indoor stove.
He hopes, right now, that Charles will walk in the door, shaking water from damp waves of hair, and smile at him, and kiss him again.
He thinks about the future, where he used to see only one goal, one endpoint, no after because he couldn’t afford to lose focus or become distracted. The world is different now. He woke up this morning with Charles in his bed, and sketched new designs into life over trustingly naked skin, and he’s just thought the word home, and he hopes that maybe Charles thinks that word as well, about this space they share together in the world.
“I think,” he says, to the saucepan and the stove and the cheerful golden lamps, “I might be in love. With him. With Charles. I’m in love with Charles.”
And then he has to dive for said saucepan, to keep the milk from boiling over in happy agreement. He scalds a fingertip in the process. Barely notices.
Is he in love? He’s never been in love before. And it’s only been a few short weeks. How is a person supposed to know for sure?
He knows how he feels, when he looks at those jewel-colored eyes. How amazed and thrilled and excited he is, every morning he wakes up with playful dark hair tickling his face. How badly he wants to keep Charles safe, to touch all the scars and promise that no one will ever cause any again, not while Erik’s there to throw himself between Charles and the pain. He knows that Charles has told him stories that no one else has ever heard, about those scars and blood and old wounds, but also about brightness and the pure joy of research and the freedom of discovery, euphoric intellectual flight.
He wants to know more. He wants to know everything. And he wants to give Charles everything, in return. He’s told Charles about his past, about Schmidt-Shaw-already. Charles hasn’t run away. And Erik loves him for that courage, too. If that’s what this is. If that’s the word for all these wild emotions.
It must be. What other word is there?
Is Charles in love with him?
He pauses to rephrase that question. Can Charles love him? Knowing everything about him? When Erik’s already seen pain in those extraordinary eyes, caused that pain, once before?
Charles is happy, with him. He does believe that. He’s felt it, in the drowsy contentment of shared thoughts, afterglow, sweetness, hands touching in the park. Charles wants him. Trusts him. Enjoys his company. But Charles has never said anything about love. Charles, he thinks, might not even believe in love, given the way he was treated, by the people who should have cherished him.
Erik’s heart does a painful little twist, in his chest, at that realization. It hurts.
“If this is what love means,” he tells the milk, “it is very confusing.” It bubbles at him in liquid concurrence.
And then the key rattles in the lock, and the door opens, and Erik forgets about the milk and the confusing epiphanies, and runs over to grab a drenched greatcoat and throw both arms around the shivering shoulders underneath. “You didn’t take an umbrella?”
“I did, I just forgot it in the laboratory-”
“Charles, you-” He’s busy trying to rub some heat back into pale skin, whiter than usual, and make the shivering go away, so that he can breathe again. “Your fingers feel like ice. Come here. Sit down. Drink this. Next time hail a cab.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s barely a mile-”
“Don’t make me walk you to campus and back, Charles. I will.”
“Oh, Erik…” Charles shuts his eyes, for a minute. Curls his hands around the mug of cocoa; Erik closes his own hands over them, sealing in the heat. Sits down beside him. Charles leans against him, tension evident in every muscle, every line of expressive eyebrows. That can’t only be from the walk; Charles is cold, yes, but he’s not that frail.
Erik wants to ask. Is all at once afraid.
“I didn’t take a cab because I wanted to think.” Charles admits this to Erik’s collarbone, head comfortably settled onto Erik’s shoulder. All the hair is still wet, dripping onto Erik’s shirt; the shirt doesn’t mind, and neither does he. Charles matters more.
“You…wanted to think. About what?” About us? It’s not quite a directed thought, but Charles picks it up anyway.
“Not…well, I suppose it is, actually. But not in the way you’re thinking. I had some intriguing visitors, today…” I’m not going anywhere. Not as long as you continue feeding me delicious cocoa. You know that.
I know. He believes it’s true. “Visitors?”
“From the United States government, in fact. Official badges and everything.” They wanted to ask me about-I haven’t said yes, not yet, so please try to keep that in mind-
“They’re not somehow sending you back to England, are they?” They’ll have to go through him, first.
Charles gives a slightly waterlogged laugh. “No…nothing like that. They want my assistance, in fact.”
“With what?” Charles, please just tell me.
All right. “Sebastian Shaw.”
“…what?”
“They want to arrest him.” Charles looks up. Meets Erik’s eyes. “They think I can help. Since he’s not technically done anything illegal on American soil, yet. Nothing they can convict him for.”
Erik sits there trying to process. Charles sits beside him, pressed against him, and tries to explain. The words tumble over him in a wash. Sebastian Shaw. At last.
The government won’t want the man dead, of course, but that’s a technicality. Between himself and Charles, he’s fairly certain they can make it look like an accident.
Charles. Charles is saying something else, now. About his own involvement. About how they’d like to provoke Shaw into a confession. About himself being-
“No,” Erik says, flatly.
“What?” Interrupted mid-sentence, the eyebrows lift in his direction, curious. “Are you seriously objecting? I thought you’d be in favor of this. I mean-I know what you-”
“He’s not worth it.” Is that his own mouth, saying those words? Doesn’t feel like it. Someone else, making that choice, no hesitation at all. “He’s not-there is no universe in which I am going to let you be used as bait, Charles!”
“I’m certainly planning on being very active bait. I have thought about this, Erik.”
“You’re going to say yes to them? To this-insanity? Charles-”
Lightning cracks, outside, too close. They both flinch. But Charles meets his gaze again, after, hair falling into those eyes, not calm but unafraid.
“You told me once that you were hoping to expose him. To find-justice. If you had the money, the influence, the opportunity…”
“I will.”
“Erik,” Charles says, “I have all those things.”
Erik can’t speak, for a moment. Charles is offering him everything. And then he says, “No.”
“…what? Why not?”
“Why not-you honestly believe I’d let you put yourself in-you can’t want to go anywhere near him, after what he was thinking about you-”
“Erik.” The blue eyes gaze at him, serious and straightforward. They’re brighter than the lightning, when it streaks frantically across the darkened sky. “I’m not asking you to let me do anything. Not outside of the bedroom, anyway-”
“No jokes, Charles. Not right now.”
“…no. All right. No, I don’t want to go anywhere near him, but I think that what I want is less important than what we need to do. And I’m not doing this for you, or not only for you, because I am, of course. But he needs to be put away somewhere. Where he can’t do anyone any more harm. And I can help with that. Understand?”
“Maybe.” You mean that.
Yes. “Thank you.”
Idealist. “I’ll be there with you. Right outside.”
Not as much as you think. “I know you will.”
No. More. “Charles…I…your hands are still cold. Would you like more cocoa? I could…make more for you. If you want more. I will.”
I know you would. If I asked. “Later. You can, however, kiss me now.”
December 22, 1897
Erik’s waiting, outside the office, quivering with all the suppressed emotions, fury and protectiveness and passionate need for action, when Shaw emerges, and walks away.
The man doesn’t even glance in Erik’s direction. Of course not; Charles is carefully keeping Erik’s presence hidden, masked from casual observers.
That unguarded back is so close. So vulnerable, as Shaw strolls down the hallway and towards the elevator. Erik’s fingers twitch. The elevator is slow. That’s not his fault, but it could’ve been.
The coins, in his pocket, shiver and clatter against each other.
In his head, he feels a sudden wave of imbalance, shakiness, nausea. Charles isn’t meaning to project, isn’t meaning to ask for his presence, making no demands.
He stares at Shaw. Feels the incipient headache that isn’t his. The metal cage doors, awaiting the lift’s arrival, twitch once, then calm, abruptly.
The elevator arrives, with a pleasant chirp of fulfillment.
Now, now, and Erik spins around and runs because he has to be in motion, and sprints back to Charles’s office, crashing explosively through the door.
He doesn’t see Charles, not right away.
No. Oh, no, no, please-
Charles tries to say I’m all right and coughs and can’t stand up, from the floor behind his desk.
Erik, later, will have no memory of flinging himself across the room and onto the carpet at his side. What he will remember, always, forever, is the sensation of Charles reaching for him, eyes closed, collapsing into his arms as if that’s the only refuge left in the world.
He tries, as best as he can, to project only calming thoughts. Red-gold firelight. Soothing sheets and fuzzy blankets. The solidity of his own arms.
Charles breathes, coughs again, desperately projects the nausea one more time; Erik yanks the nearest bucket out of the broom closet in the hall, and clutches shaking shoulders, holds hair back, whispers I’m here, you’re all right, please, please be all right, and attempts as hard as he can to make the words true.
I’m…all right, Charles agrees, at last, resting limply in his embrace, not even enough energy to speak. Thank you.
Don’t. Just-just BE all right. He runs a hand through that sweat-damp hair, and struggles to calm his own pounding heart. Please.
I believe I did find what they were hoping I might…can’t convict on my evidence, of course, but if they can get to his private club now, right NOW, there are messages from enough underworld kingpins demanding illegal weaponry to convict him for multiple lifetimes- Charles isn’t breathing well. Too uneven. The headache threatens to split Erik’s skull apart.
I’m telling Moira-Miss MacTaggart, that is-
Don’t hurt yourself!
Oh-well-just one more-
Charles, please!
Silence, enormous and black, inside his head. And then, even as Erik dives desperately into the dark, flickers of light. Still here-sorry-oh god this hurts-
Charles doesn’t move, after Erik sets the bucket aside, this time. Not unconscious, but utterly devoid of energy, limbs falling wherever Erik coaxes them.
“Please,” he whispers, out loud because that might be easier, possibly, someway. “Please tell me what you need.”
Hold me.
Of course.
He was thinking-oh, god, Erik, you can’t imagine-no, if anyone can you possibly could but-about me, too, not only the world and how easily dominated it might be, he likes vulnerability and helplessness and controlling other people’s pain, he enjoys it-The images flash and sear their way across Erik’s brain, glimpses of what Charles must’ve been mentally subjected to, what Shaw would like to do to him, with him, with his body.
His hands don’t clench into fists, because he’s holding Charles, but every other atom of his body tightens up in pure rage. The walls, the floor, creak, with righteous fury.
Erik, Charles murmurs, it’s-
You cannot tell me that this is all right. That you are all right.
No. But I will be. And, Erik, I knew what I was doing. The kind of mind I’d be going inside. I didn’t do this blindly. Though I admit I’d not expected it to be quite this bad…
“Hush,” Erik says, and strokes a hand through his hair, inadequate but somehow earning a ripple of appreciation from Charles anyway. “Don’t think things at me. I can feel your headache. Can I take you home? To bed?”
“To bed, you say…”
“Not for that!” Maybe later.
Charles lets Erik hold him, lets Erik take care of him, and nods.
He’s sitting on the bed, watching Charles sleep-wondering, yet again, if he should say the words, those words, if this is what love means, that he can be so afraid and so excited and so protective and so hopeful all at once-when a knock echoes off the door, disrupting their privacy. Charles doesn’t stir; Erik, annoyed, barefoot, in shirt-sleeves, gets up to make it stop when it comes again, preparing his best scowl.
The woman on the other side of the door has the sense to look, if not intimidated, at least abashed. But she talks regardless. “Mr Lehnsherr? I’m Miss MacTaggart. Is Professor Xavier here with you?”
Ah. Charles hadn’t mentioned that she was pretty. Erik’s not sure whether that means Charles is too preoccupied to care, or simply hasn’t noticed. “He’s asleep.”
“Oh.” She hesitates, brushes hair back from her face. Erik’s not inclined to ask her in, even if not doing so marks him as rude, given the circumstances and the closed blue eyes back in the bedroom. “I wanted to thank him. We found…Shaw wasn’t there, at his club, but with what we collected, we have enough evidence to put him behind bars. And it was Professor Xavier who gave us the location. So…’
“I can tell him you came. When he wakes up.”
“Is he…all right?”
“He says he will be. I think it takes more than a few hours of rest to recover from being violated.” And then, because she’s looking almost as guiltily horrified as he wants her to be, he does concede, “Not physically. Shaw never touched him. Only psychically. But that’s very much an injury. He’s in pain.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Are you?”
“I’m sorry that he’s hurt, yes.” She’s smaller than he is, and slender, but the way Miss MacTaggart meets his eyes, then, reminds Erik that she is a government agent, after all. A woman who fights for, would die for, her country. “I can’t be sorry that we succeeded. Was that what you wanted to know?”
Erik considers this. Nods. She nods back, understanding, in return.
“How did you know we’d be here? Not his rooms at the university?”
“I would have tried there next. But your place is closer. And you would’ve wanted to get him out of there, after.”
They’re in agreement on that, too, it seems. Erik, somewhat to his own surprise, hears himself inquire, “Do you want to come in?”
“No, I have another assignment. But…again, thank you. To him, and to you. Maybe we’ll see each other around.”
Yet again, his mouth decides to offer input without consulting his brain. “If you are not busy, next week…Charles would probably like to see you…if he feels up to it…we’re potentially performing the final Christmas pageant. At the department store.”
“Perhaps I’ll find you there.” She vanishes down the hallway, soundless as only a trained operative can be; Erik appreciates the skill, academically, for a second, then turns around and closes the door and hears his own name very faintly and nearly trips over the sofa while trying to hurl himself in the direction of that drowsy voice.
“Go back to sleep.” Is everything all right? More blankets, or-
I’m fine. Not even much of a headache, now. “Was that Moira? Miss MacTaggart?”
“Yes.” He sits down on the bed. Puts an arm around compact shoulders, making contact. The comment about the headache is half-true; it’s certainly better, but not anywhere close to gone. “She wanted to thank you. For the assistance.”
“I heard. You invited her to the department-store Christmas Eve pageant.” Charles, propped up amid the pile of blankets and sheets, all tangled hair and clear open blue eyes, is the most beautiful sight Erik’s ever encountered; he feels the sudden need to hold on more tightly, to kiss those lips, to never let go.
You can. “It was kind of her to come by. And of you, to invite her. She’s a bit lonely, around the holidays. She misses her husband.”
Erik’s not quite sure how to answer that one. Too many colliding reactions, everything from trust Charles to worry about someone else while barely upright to me? kind?? to husband is an interesting word and what if I, what if we-No. Not now. Charles needs to recover.
He settles for kissing the closest temple, gently, lips over soreness and coconut-scented hair. Does this hurt? “If you aren’t feeling up to the costumes, by then…or if I think you’re not…”
“Oh, you get to decide? And, no, it doesn’t. I like that; do it again.” Erik…are YOU all right? I know-I do know you made a choice, back there. I understand.
Erik rests his cheek atop that head, thinking. Charles does understand. Isn’t judging him for how close it’d been. Is only wordlessly asking about regrets, in the wake of events playing out this way. Wanting to know that Erik is content with the outcome of that choice.
Content is a difficult word. Shaw is still out there. Somewhere. To be found.
Charles doesn’t say anything, out loud, but the impression that floats up through the silence promises that Erik won’t be searching alone.
He kisses Charles again, answers yes, answers yes to it all.