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One.
The boat is noisy and full of running people and blazing lights and sirens and Erik can’t stand the proximity of so many normal people; he’s shivering and his hair is dripping down the back of his neck and despite the wetsuit he’s cold. His teeth chatter and he accepts the wool blanket from the CIA woman – what the grand bloody hell are the CIA doing running after Shaw? He is mine. The answer to my question.
There are knots of rope and chains and bits and pieces of random things all over the deck. For a professional ship, it’s quite disorganized. As he walks behind the man that’s pulled him out of the water (from death, maybe; that’s still a thought that’s bouncing around his mind and he’s not sure he’s happy about it or not) he catches snatches of conversation and realizes why this ‘mission’ is so cluttered and haphazard.
Mutants.
Not everyone knows, but they all know something’s not totally right. He hears not sure what’s going on; who are those people, and mostly why was that man in the water and where did the anchor come from.
He clenches his hands, the iron railing they’re walking next to flexing with a slight groan. He whips his head around at the sound of laughter, grating in his ears, the lights on the ship too bright and popping in his eyes, stars forming as he blinks.
He trips, suddenly – gangly, all long legs and arms, his body that’s weak and exhausted and anger barely finding the strength to try and right itself, and a hand grasps his, steadying him, pulling him up, leading him around the pile of plastic sheeting he’s fumbled over.
Charles Xavier looks at him, only having to crane his neck slightly, and smiles lightly, a dancing thing that has Erik calming as he meets the other man’s gaze, solidly, surely. He feels the squeeze Charles gives his cold fingers, and reluctantly (odd) lets go, his hand drifting to hold the blanket around his shoulders, the thing trailing to the ground like a torn cape.
“Thank you.”
Xavier’s mouth curls briefly and he touches Erik’s shoulder, a gentle, tiny touch, heat radiating from his fingers as they graze Erik’s arm, burning a line that he follows with his eyes.
Two.
“Charles is fine with the CIA’s decision. Isn’t that right?”
A pause; Erik wonders, but only briefly –
“No. I’m sorry, but I’m with Erik. We’ll find them alone.”
“What if I say no?” The man in the black suit is confounded; Erik’s small smile quirks a bit higher.
“Then good luck using your installation without me.”
He rises and exits with Erik, the two of them walking easily next to each other. It’s terrifying to Erik he’s found that so easily; comfort not in his regular vocabulary. And yet, this man; infuriating.
“Did you just defy someone in charge?”
Charles cocks an impressively groomed eyebrow, his hands gesticulating, flying through the air as they exit the main building, the sun shining and birds twittering and the air crisp and clean. Erik takes a deep lungful - ashes and smoke and dirty, black rain. He crosses his arms over his leather coat and stops at the edge of the walkway he’d almost left down the previous night, waiting for Charles to pause. The other man does after a moment, still talking, halting in midsentence when he realizes Erik’s not next to him.
“You acted so surprised that I stayed. And yet you told me – just last night, I believe – you know ‘everything’ about me.” Erik’s arms are casual, but his stance is rigid and fierce and unrelenting; he steps up to where Charles is balanced mid step, the concrete wall behind him. To his credit he does not flinch or move when Erik almost steps on his toes. “Why?”
“I’m not going to read you without you asking, Erik,” Charles states plainly, the openness of his face nearly painful in the full, cheery sunlight. “I want you to trust me. I need you to trust me.” He smiles, and it’s real and Erik shakes his head and sighs. “Why?” he asks again; this time, his voice is soft and pitched so low Charles can barely hear him.
Why?
“We are the same,” Charles shrugs lightly, his slender frame nonchalant and loose, but Erik senses a tension in him that wasn’t there before. “You are – I’ve never felt anything like you before.”
He puts out his hand, waiting.
he’s lying to me, even if he doesn’t know it
Despite knowing this, Erik takes Charles’ hand, and their grasp is strong and tight and warm and Erik stays next to Charles’ shoe clad toes, the sun on their heads and clean air in their lungs. He knows, knows from so many years of being the lab rat he was that the other man isn’t telling the truth - I’m not going to read you without you asking a bold faced lie. But whatever Charles gets mentally out of trying to make Erik trust him, Erik actually gets a bit more out of trusting him.
And that is nonsensically petrifying.
Three.
The room Charles has turned into a target range for Alex is empty; the smell of scorched brick makes Erik twitch and his stomach churn and one by one he throws knives into the wall at the end of the room, his left hand curling slightly with the effort. His forehead is beaded in sweat and the thin tshirt and sweatpants he wears are too hot and he throws and throws and throws with his mind – ashes, dirt, soot, burned things and always wet heat pound through his skull.
You are the rage. Use it!
He allows it to build to overwhelming proportions, taking deep, painful breaths of the ambient smell of the room, seeing the smears of dark smoke on the brick, feeling the pieces of metal that make up the supports of the walls.
zingpop shriek
One of the bands that surrounds the arch nearest Erik wrenches free – he flings it with the knives toward the wall, imagining Shaw’s face, any face that hurt him, the doctors, the ‘scientists,’ the people that have conspired to be a part of the war against him and –
Charles’ face, innocent and trusting and he’s lying to me, sneaking around in my head
You can trust me, Erik.
The knives pick themselves up off the ground and circle around his head, whirling faster, his hair whipping with the force, his fingers barely moving now, the power raging through him, anything metal within a five yard radius trembling and shivering.
“…stop this, Erik!”
A hand on his shoulder, down his arm, then fingers threading through his. He blinks, and the knives drop around them, one of them piercing the edge of Charles’ sleeve, ripping his cardigan as it falls to the floor. Charles’ fingers are warm, Erik’s ice cold, but he allows Charles to drag him out of the room and out into the night air, where there is no smell of smoke or fire.
His mouth tastes like ash, dead and rotten.
Charles still holds his hand, now between the two of his.
“Stop this.”
Erik meets his eyes, and the blue is shining and blameless and for a moment Erik hates himself for thinking that Charles of all people would lie to him –
How long has Erik known Charles?
“I want to believe in you.” By everything Erik has ever truly considered holy, everything he’s ever wanted – he wants this one simple thing so very badly. He wants someone to trust; is that so much to ask?
“Then do it, Erik.” Charles’ words are bullets in Erik’s brain, inserting themselves where they don’t belong, nestled somewhere in the soft, damaged tissue where they can’t be dug out. He clears his throat and looks down at their joined hands.
“Just trust me.”
I am the rage.
Erik closes his eyes as Charles sighs and squeezes his hands again, gently, tenderly.
Four.
Charles passes the gun to Erik, his fingers trembling as he grasps the hand that Erik takes the thing back with. He holds on to the hand and the gun for a moment – infinite, time stretching away from the both of them, and Erik can see the agitation in him, the hurt, the worry that what if I shot you? What if I shot you and you couldn’t stop it? His mind screams the words to Erik’s.
“I can.”
I’m not going to try. Erik.
His name is whispered in Erik’s brain, painfully, raw, Charles’ inner voice as darkest midnight as his speaking voice is brightest day.
Erik slides the gun from their joined grasp and pockets it.
Five.
The room is dark and still and the moon slips through the open windows, a visitor and the only witness to something Erik never thought he’d find. Something he never thought he’d want, as it is so not what he is nor is it something he feels deserving of. He is vengeance and takes what he wants and does not give, no matter the circumstance –
Charles’ head is thrown back and his neck is dotted with red and his shoulders will be bruised come morning. Erik lifts the other man higher on his lap, their bodies joined, the sheets twisted around them, their clothing in heaps on the floor, his mouth on Charles’ throat again and again as though the flesh there is branded with his name, or more appropriately, his and Charles’ names, together, one piece, whole.
Calm.
That word is an abhorrence, something Erik can’t fathom, but yet just like he wants to trust Charles with everything he has, he wants the calm this man brings to his struggle. He studies Charles' face after he’s kissed him, and the slackness of the expression and the fluttering of the long lashes stirs something in Erik’s belly that he can’t describe – nor does he want to, for that would mean it might have a meaning in the world beyond he and Charles and the world just doesn’t deserve that.
He’s still for so long Charles opens his eyes, the headboard of the bed making a creaking sound as he shifts against it, his thighs pressing a comforting weight against Erik’s large muscles. “You still there?”
His voice is soft and affectionate and Erik’s vision clouds with something he doesn’t understand.
Charles’ hand reaches for his and their fingers wind together like snakes and Erik does not feel shame to realize his face is wet and Charles kisses him and –
One.
Things rush by him in slow and fast motion all at once; the hospital is dark, and no one is around save Charles and Erik wonders how long the other man’s been sleeping. He cocks his head, his clothing nondescript (he’s left the cape and jacket behind, but the helmet stays on), the black blending with the shadows that dance through the rooms and over his body and truth be told, through the place Charles occupied in his heart.
beep
Beep
Beep
the only sound, and Erik stands at the side of Charles’ bed, watching, waiting, his throat dry, his mind empty for once in his very structured and (now most awfully) empty life. He’s always known the thing to say, the thing to do, the ends to a mean for his own desires and he’s lived for so long with this fact that now that things are different, have been nothing but different since Charles pulled him from the water –
Charles turns over and mumbles in his sleep, and Erik thinks surely it can’t hurt and removes the helmet.
He waits.
And things are silent.
He sits on a chair he drags to the bed with a flick of cold fingers, and hesitates and breathes and Charles’ face is toward his on the thin pillow, white skin and dark, dark circles, bruises under his eyes that are purple and stained.
His hand flops limp on the bed, IV marring its perfection, tapered fingers motionless and Erik can see the veins in it.
He gathers the tiny thing – a crushed white blossom, petals dark with mold, decomposing – between his two hands and cradles it like it’s the only thing in the world that has weight or meaning.
His head rests on the bed, and he holds Charles’ hand, and he waits.