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From the moment he’s tugged upwards from the sea, it’s already decided, all of it, lines drawn out in the sand, feet kicking out to avoid being saved.
Charles is nothing much after, a small man, barely more than a boy, eyelashes stuck together with salt water and a strange sort of tenderness on his face, a face as open as an outstretched hand.
He will be my undoing, Erik thinks, and the worst part is that in that moment, he almost doesn’t mind.
*
Erik doesn’t know why he says yes, why he agrees to an idea that seems as though it is doomed from the outset, except that isn’t true, that isn’t true at all, Charles’ face unchanged from the night he half wanted to drown, still that open face, that outstretched hand, palm up.
If Charles is an outstretched hand, Erik is a fist. Erik is a disaster.
*
Charles is exhausting, enthusiastic about everything, endlessly optimistic, endlessly excited, gathering children around him and telling them stories, stories of what they are, stories of what they could be, if they’d like to. Stories like fairytales, of endless power, endless opportunity, all stretched out to be plucked and nurtured.
They are not the children of fairytales. They are soldiers, even if Charles doesn’t see it, if he refuses to see where this will lead. Endless power, endless opportunity, and billions who’d flinch if one of them so much as sneezed. Endless power, endless opportunity, and yet Erik had been an experiment, skin splitting under a whip, under knives he hadn’t yet had the power to push away.
Charles is a liar, but Erik supposes it doesn’t count if he cannot see it, if he looks into minds and sees good, only good, blocking out the ugly urges as if they’re insubstantial. He looks into Erik and sees good, and Erik wonders how deep he’d had to dig to find it.
Erik finds only good in him, but that isn’t hard, everything bright and burnished, untested by time, by adversity. Charles glows with a sort of satisfaction. Erik finds him beautiful, and hates him a little for that fact.
*
It’s bound to happen eventually; Erik cannot shield his mind, wouldn’t begin to know how to, and he must light up every time Charles enters a room, must go tight and tense and woefully, inadequately tender. If Erik could love anyone, if he loved anyone, it would have to be this man, and Charles watches him like a puzzle, cheeks stained pink like he can’t get past the shame.
It’s a night like any other, really, comfortably ensconced in Charles’ study, but they’ve been drinking too much, Charles caught up in his theories and Erik caught up in the way Charles gesticulates when he’s tipsy, hands curving into clumsy shapes. One particular movement drives his hand close to smacking Erik in the cheek, and Erik curls his fingers around his wrist, holds more gently than he thought he knew how to.
Charles watches him, licks over dry lips. “Erik,” he says, and the word comes out raw.
“Do you want this?” Erik asks, punctuates with a squeeze to Charles’ wrist, probably too hard—certainly too hard. Charles lashes flutter, and Erik doesn’t know what that means.
“Yes,” Charles says, finally, barely a word, his ears red, like he cannot believe himself, and that’s when Erik pulls him in.
*
They end up rutting against the floor, Erik’s face buried in the long pale line of Charles’ throat, fingers shoving up his shirt to get skin, get any skin he can have. Charles comes with his head tipped back and a gasp caught on his tongue, one Erik swallows when he can.
*
It’s Charles who comes to him the next night, says nothing, but looks at him with the quiet expectation of a man who’s committed wrong, and is prepared to do it again.
“It isn’t a good idea,” Erik says, and he can see the warring impulse, the urge and the shame, the lost little boy still in him, fighting hard.
“Can I not decide that for myself?” Charles asks.
“I’m not a good person,” Erik says. It’s stating the obvious, but it needs to be said.
“I disagree,” Charles says.
Erik sighs, rubs a hand over his face.
“Right,” Charles says. “You’re absolutely right. It isn’t as if I were psychic.”
“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” Erik says, but his mouth tugs up at the corners, entirely against his will.
“You’ll find I’m exactly as funny as I think I am,” Charles says. The backs of his fingers brush against Erik’s cheek. “You’re smiling.”
“Yes,” Erik says.
“It suits you,” Charles says, and Erik’s smile disappears. “Have I done something?”
“No,” Erik says. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Is that the problem?” Charles asks, canny, always too canny, too quick to lay waste to the careful placed walls, the bed of silence. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” Erik says, and turns his face into the curl of Charles’ fingers.
*
That last night, he sleeps beside Charles, finds him in his room after the debacle with Raven, mulling over a bottle of champagne.
“What are we celebrating?” Erik asks, and Charles only shrugs.
They end up splitting it, bubbles sharp on his tongue, opulence and casual, stupid wealth, and it tastes best when licked from the curve of Charles’ mouth, Charles who gets drunk fast, becomes pliant and easy, arching up beneath him, leg twined around his waist.
Charles who burns hot inside, tight around his fingers, then his cock, who can’t help but shove quiet, needful desperation into Erik’s mind until they’re clinging to one another like they need to be saved.
Charles who falls asleep easy, sprawled half over the covers, mouth half-open, a bow, while Erik sits beside him and tries not to think about the push of time.
*
I will not watch you bleed, Erik thinks, but it’s too late for all of that. Charles’ mouth is open in a gasp, his breathing soft and small, and Erik cradles his head, just for that moment, watches him consumed by the pain.
Now you know what it is like, he thinks, but it is a small, mean thought, quick to disappear, replaced only by the clutch of dread in his stomach, the steady pulse of Charles’ blood onto the sand. For a moment, Erik is selfishly glad, so glad, that Charles cannot hear him, cannot duck into the corners of him and find where he is nasty, and raw, the place that can find the smallest grasp of pleasure in watching something beautiful burn.
Charles won’t take his outstretched hand, won’t take his offer, and Erik would beg, would shuck any sense of propriety, of ego, if he knew it would change anything. It won’t, so he leaves him, leaves him bleeding. Tears off the beach in a flash, and it’s only later he lets himself think about it, Charles prone, helpless, choking in the air. Lets himself hope, foolishly, like he hasn’t since he was a child, that Charles will be put back together, return to himself, unmarred and idealistic and untouched by anything.
He will be my undoing, he’d thought. He will be my undoing, at the first glance at Charles’ wide open face, at the first brush of Charles’ mind in him. He realises now he’d gotten it backwards all along.