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2006 — New York City
363 days (and counting) since The Divorce
For all of the shit he’s been through this past year, Erik is in a surprisingly good mood tonight.
This coming weekend, it will officially be one year since he and Charles separated. To celebrate, Erik’s good friends—more like his only friends, at this junction—invited him for a night in the city. It feels more like a distraction than anything, but nobody’s willing to say that part aloud: that they’re doing this so that he won’t kill himself the minute he leaves the kids alone with the babysitter.
(That’s hyperbole. Erik would never kill himself, logistically speaking—he has too many responsibilities, and it would leave a humongous mess of paperwork for the mother of his surviving children. In his relationship with Charles, he was not the one with the penchant for brushing off domestic priorities.)
Tonight’s plans were all Emma’s idea. She finds Erik’s twice-divorced life incredibly depressing. Apparently, she thinks it’s even more depressing that he hasn’t made any effort to ‘get back out there’ since the papers were filed.
“You don’t need to date anymore. You just need to fuck someone,” Emma says scornfully. She’s been nice enough to host at her penthouse in the city tonight, a rare instance of generosity that denotes exactly how bad she’s been feeling for Erik lately. “Your serial monogamy ends tonight. I’ve had it. You cannot continue being ‘the guy who likes getting divorced.’”
“I don’t like getting divorced. It just happens,” Erik protests, laughing with a bit of tired humor he hasn’t felt in a long while. It feels delightfully juvenile, to be leaning on Emma’s kitchen island, a shot glass in his hand, like a frat boy at a party instead of the middle-aged man he’s becoming. Free alcohol is always nice. He throws the liquor back as soon as Emma fills his glass. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to get married again anytime soon,” he adds playfully.
“Or hopefully ever again,” Emma replies.
“Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?” Magda interrupts.
Magda, his beautiful ex-wife who never quite stopped looking beautiful, has been apprehensive about the group plans from the start. She hasn’t said it, but she’s been deathly worried about Erik ever since he moved to Boston. She still sounds nervous, and she hasn’t yet touched a drop of alchool.
“Yes, you are the only one,” Emma says at once, filling Erik’s shotglass with a second helping that he throws back just quickly. “I know pre-gaming with Everclear like a bunch of kids isn’t ideal, but trust me, you’ll want to be drunk before we hit the bar. Shots are stupid overpriced these days.”
“No, that’s not what I meant by—”
Erik elbows his ex-wife in the stomach before she can finish. “Live a little, Mags,” he says lightly. “You’re always working your ass off. You deserve this.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Magda retorts, begrudgingly accepting her assigned glass while Emma moves on to making cocktails. “I just—I don’t know. You really think you’re ready to move on from Charles?”
“Already done,” he tells her smugly. “I haven’t even thought about Charles in the past twenty-four hours.”
And it’s sort of true—with the ‘divorce anniversary’ approaching, Erik is strangely ambivalent to the fact that his ex-husband of nine years is no longer in the picture. He doesn’t think he could be upset about it anymore, even if he tried. Maybe it’s pure exhaustion, but since moving to Boston, Erik can no longer find it in himself to work up the anger about the situation. He feels numb whenever he thinks of Charles. It’s kind of frightening, but convenient at the same time—he can’t have an identity crisis about ‘who he is without Charles’ when he can't even remember who he was with Charles. The persistent numbness keeps him safe from the more dangerous emotions circling like hungry vultures beneath the surface.
Besides, now that he’s with his friends, he’s feeling unusually cheerful, eager to spend time with the few people he likes. He’s not going to let anyone ruin the good mood he’s been riding this evening.
“It took you a month to get over the fact that Charles forgot to pick the kids up from school,” Magda says. “You won’t be ‘over this’ marriage for the next ten years. When you’re going through something this big, you start acting like…”
She stops. Everyone stares.
“Please, enlighten me,” Erik teases. “I start acting like…?”
“I don’t know how to say it,” Magda backtracks. “There’s not really a word for it.”
“She thinks you’re manic,” Emma chimes in, smirking from over the cocktail that she is now suddenly dual-fisting alongside the Everclear shots. “That’s what she’s thinking. I can hear it.”
Erik rolls his eyes with amusement. They’re lucky he’s already feeling tipsy, that the buzz has put him in an affectionate mood. “I don’t get manic, Mags,” he laughs. “That’s such a strong word.”
“Call it whatever you like, but you haven’t been yourself since Charles left,” she says. “I mean, it’s fair—anyone would be upset in your place—but I know how you act when these things happen, Erik. This isn’t your first divorce.”
“With any luck, it won’t be my last,” Erik says spiritedly, allowing Emma to pour him another shot. Emma giggles, and Erik smiles wider, pleased to have beat everyone to the insult. Divorce jokes are low-hanging fruit these days.
Magda is beginning to resemble a furious child who isn’t being taken seriously—the spitting image of pre-teen Wanda, who just turned twelve and now thinks she’s the most responsible person in the household because of it. “I mean it,” she exclaims. “When we separated, you were so impulsive. You’d ‘act fine’ for a while, then you’d do stupid shit as soon as we looked away. Remember when Emma had to fly all the way to Miami to stop you from breaking into Sebastian Shaw’s yacht and destroying it from the inside-out?”
Erik scoffs dismissively at the old memory. “Shaw deserved to have his ridiculous, multi-million yacht blown up.”
“So you just suddenly decided to take a revenge trip to Florida on a Tuesday night? You drove the entire twenty hours in one sitting, fueled by nothing but Red Bull. And that makes you well-adjusted?”
“I don’t even know why you’re bringing this up.”
“Because you worry me. Charles would’ve agreed with me if he was—”
“Magda, Magda, Magda,” Emma chides, slipping her arms around them both. “Why are we talking about Charles? Or Shaw, for that matter? Erik’s survived just about the worst year of his life since Lorna’s mom bought the farm, and you’re going to make him feel bad for for enjoying a night out? Personally, I was worried we’d be spending our Saturday evening at home while Erik bawled over his old British boy toy.”
“Hey,” Erik protests.
“Usually Erik’s the one with the stick up his ass when it comes to going out,” Emma concludes. “So stop fussing. The whole point of tonight is getting one step further from Xavier.”
“Yes, but I also told you that one-night-stands aren’t Erik’s usual style,” Magda argues. “I’m not saying we cancel, or anything, but maybe we should take it easy.”
Emma snorts into her drink. Magda pleadingly looks one last time to her, as if begging someone to notice that Erik’s elevated mood is just the the calm before the storm. But Erik knows he’s safe from further scrutiny here. It doesn't really matter that Emma is a telepath. She doesn’t give a fuck about his ‘mental health’, or whatever.
“I'm freshening up one last time, then I’ll be ready to head out,” Emma announces. “Don’t have too much fun while I’m gone, lovebirds.”
Erik just nods and leans against the counter, feeling downright pleasant now that the alcohol is setting in. Honestly, he’s excited for the evening. He’s sort of hoping he can make it to the end without remembering a single thing. He owes it to himself to have that kind of fun after escaping the marital cycle of crocodile tears and empty promises. And like everyone so astutely points out, he never really did sleep around his twenties.
Magda politely waits for Emma to leave before she takes him by the arm. He looks down at the point of contact, unimpressed.
“Please listen to me, Erik,” she pleads. “Now that Charles is gone, there’s no one to look after you when you get these little…outbursts. If something happens to you, what will I tell the kids?”
“They’re hardly kids anymore,” Erik shrugs coolly, reaching for a canned seltzer on the counter. Wanda and Pietro are twelve; Lorna is about to turn fifteen. Jean would be turning fourteen, but that doesn’t matter, now that she’s living with—
“Nothing is going to happen to me, Magda,” he promises. “I’m not going to spontaneously combust the minute we go out. I am not going to bolt into oncoming traffic. I am not going to kill myself, especially over Charles Xavier. Do you want it in writing?”
She gives him a look. He refuses to back down. She’s being stupid and he needs her to know it.
“Look, I promise I won’t do anything reckless like the yacht thing again,” he grumbles, sipping his drink and shrugging out of her touch. “Way back then, I just got a little out of control, because things had been shitty for a bit, and I was young, and—”
“—and you were manic?” she finishes.
“Don’t call me that,” he snaps. “You’re armchair diagnosing me with some shit you don’t even understand.”
“Charles has historically used the same word,” she challenges.
“Well, it’s a good thing I divorced you both, then, isn’t it?”
***
Here’s the plan: get drunk, get laid, get home. Simple.
The more Emma talks about it, the more confident Erik feels that this will be good for him. No more sulking. No more moping. He is a conventionally handsome man who is extraordinarily athletic and fit for his age. And he is going to feel good tonight if it kills him.
Magda’s right about one thing, and it’s that he’s never craved casual sex before. Being single typically diminishes his libido to practically nothing; sex just doesn’t interest him when he isn’t in love. It’s partially why he never bothered exploring his sexuality during his college and football years. He’s always been tied to someone, typically a woman.
But, when he is in love, he’s head-over-heels in love. It makes him constantly horny, filling him with a desire to jump his lover’s bones and ravish them inside-out at every possible turn—that’s when he understands sex. That’s when he gets a glimpse of what everyone else his age has been raving about since their teen years.
Even now, half-drunk in this knock-off taxi, he wouldn’t consider himself horny. He knows what horny feels like—
Charles on top of him
still fully-clothed
straddling Erik’s thighs between his legs
—and this is not the same.
It’s not like he’s got a picture in his head of what he wants tonight. It’s not like he has a type, even; it’s not like he agreed to these plans with the explicit purpose of being dicked down.
He just wants to feel something. Anything. And everyone says casual sex is supposed to feel good. So you could say he’s horny for that.
Whatever that is.
Emma is careful not to bring them to any of the bars Erik used to frequent with Charles. She doesn’t ask, but knows by ways of her telepathy.
On most occasions, Erik tires of the bar crawl routine very quickly. All the clubs look the same to him, and he’s not one for night life in the first place. But he’s feeling weirdly energetic, perhaps just happy to be around someone besides his kids—he misses his friends in New York more than he’ll ever admit—and he’s reached a sustained level of drunkness by the time they reach the “good” gay club that Emma’s been talking about. Emma pays for their cover charges and they head straight for the bar.
The people themselves are rather lackluster. There are a couple of pretty men here and there, maybe a woman that catches his eye once in a while, but Erik feels bored when he tries to imagine sleeping with them. He just needs to keep looking. There aren’t that many attractive people his age in Boston, not that he’s searched very hard, so tonight is his best chance.
Erik leans on the bar counter, studying people as they come and go, noting which ones are too young or too old, dismissing the women who look too much like Magda or the men who aren’t as small as Charles. He’s ordering the next round of drinks for the group when he takes notice of a handful of men across the bar.
They’re on the young side, perhaps college-aged or older, saying inaudible things to one another in between not-so-subtle glances his way. They’re looking at Magda and Emma like they’re just another hot piece of ass and tits. Erik narrows his eyes and shifts his body to block their view.
“Keep an eye on those guys,” he tells Magda and Emma. “They’re staring at you.”
“I can take care of myself, thank you very much,” Emma replies sourly.
Even Magda swats his protectiveness away. “They’re staring at you, Erik. You can have them.”
“What makes you think I want them?”
“Aw, she knows your type, sugar,” Emma says gleefully. “Don’t you think that guy in the blue shirt is cute? He looks exactly like the kind of man you’d be all over.”
“Actually,” Magda says, “that guy sort of looks like—”
“Don’t say it,” Emma snaps.
Erik’s starting to get a little bit annoyed with his friends, until he gives the group of men a closer appraisal and realizes that his ex-wife’s unspoken observation is, in fact, correct: three out of the four men are unremarkable in Erik’s eyes, but the man standing in the middle, with wavy dark hair and a slightly shorter stature than the others, for a split second, looks almost exactly like a younger version of Charles.
Erik tries to laugh off the comment before Emma can get too hard-pressed about it. “That guy looks nothing like Charles,” he says loftily. “Besides, he’s way too young for my taste. I’m not looking to fuck someone with daddy issues.”
“That ship sailed the minute you put your dick inside Xavier,” Emma mumbles.
Magda bursts out laughing. Emma grins. Erik tolerates the laughter for a few seconds, but they keep laughing, and it finally gets on his last nerve. With a surge of spite, Erik straightens up.
Tonight, he’s not a disheveled soccer dad with three terrible mutant kids. He’s dressed up. He’s in a tie and a blazer; he’s wearing slacks that make him look smart; he even used gel in his hair. He’s a new man without Charles.
“Woah, Erik,” Magda says suddenly. “Erik, where are you going?”
“To fuck somebody with daddy issues,” he spits. “I’ll be right back.”
Erik doesn’t even bother asking for a name.
He casually slides up to the bar beside the man of interest, whom he’s mentally dubbed Fake Charles for the time being, and asks if he can buy him a drink. Fake Charles’ friends take the hint immediately and rush off to occupy themselves elsewhere, giving their friend a knowing look before departing. Fake Charles grins like an idiot as Erik slides the bartender his card for the drinks.
This is the easy part. He won a Charles over once before. He has no doubt that he can do it again.
He peers across the bar and sees his friends staring with varied levels of concern in their eyes. Erik quickly returns his attention to the man in front of him. He’s droning on about something boring. He doesn’t really hold Erik’s attention the way Charles used to.
He wonders if the man knows he’s looking to bottom tonight. Erik’s aware he doesn’t physically fit the bill for a submissive bottom, but he doesn’t have interest in topping a stranger. Plus, he’s never bottomed for anyone besides Charles in his life, and it only feels fitting to lose that sort of ‘virginity’ to someone else. He hates thinking about how Charles is the only one who’s ever fucked him in the ass.
Anyways, he deserves the pleasure. He’s been so good. Keeping up appearances for the kids, holding his family together despite the various hardships this divorce has caused—can Charles do that? Is he doing all that for Jean, right now? No. The man’s probably joined Sharon Xavier at the bottom of the bottle right now. Erik feels like a fucking god every time he compares himself to the dad Charles tried to be.
Fake Charles asks Erik if he’d like to dance, which Erik absolutely does not want to do, even in his liquor-soaked daze, so instead he asks if they’d like to get out of here together. The man readily agrees.
Yes, this is what he wants.
“Where’s Frost?” Erik shouts, unable to hear himself over the music.
“I don’t know. She found someone.” Magda sips indifferently from a cup of water. “I haven’t seen her in ages, so I’m going to assume she left.”
“I’m going home with someone too,” Erik bursts out, completely missing the fact that she is sitting alone at a high-stool with her chin in her hand. “Don’t wait up on me. I’m gonna take a cab.”
Magda perks up slightly, trying to look happy for Erik even in her own misery. “You’re not still drunk, are you?”
“I’m starting to sober up.”
Magda gives him a knowing eyebrow. “Sure. You know, you don’t have to do this. Emma means well, but she—”
“Emma and you are the ones who keep harassing me to move on in the first place,” Erik says crossly. “We’ve established this.”
“I know, but—”
“You’re not my mother. I can make big boy decisions for myself.”
“Yes, I know you can.” She says this patiently, like she is his mother, and that only pisses him off more. He doesn’t even know why; anger is usually an emotion he reserves for fighting with Charles, not Magda, whom he seldom loses his temper with.
“Well, just text when you get safely back to the hotel, then,” she concludes. “Don’t forget you ended up booking the Best Western. Not the Holiday Inn. Do you have the address in your phone?”
“You’re being a mom again.”
“Alright, fine. Get out of here, Erik.”
Having done his due diligence in sharing his whereabouts for the evening, Erik turns away. But something stops him. Perhaps it’s what little goodness lives in him still, even when he is drunk off his ass. He turns back to Magda.
“Hm? Need something?” she asks.
“No,” Erik says. “Do you?”
“I’m fine. I’m probably going to go home soon, actually.”
Jealousy flares in Erik’s heart before he can place it. “With somebody?”
“No, Erik,” she says acidly. “I’m going home alone. Thank you for asking.”
“Oh. Okay.” Erik pauses. “I…you…I mean, you’re gorgeous, though. You could go home with someone if you wanted.”
He’s trying to be encouraging, but the way Magda’s face pinches tells him he’s said the wrong thing.
“Because one-night-stands are solving everybody’s problems tonight, right?” she sneers.
He stares, bewildered at her unusual hostility, and at that, her guardedness. They’re supposed to be best friends. They’ve always talked to each other about everything—arguably, they became even more open with one another after they settled into their newly divorced lives, free to be honest with one another now that marital expectations weren’t holding them back. It’s what supposedly makes her different than Charles.
She can’t possibly still be mad about their earlier discussion, could she? That was hours ago.
“I’m serious. If you and Emma are forcing me to have a good time, so should you,” he replies. “Don’t sit around looking like an Eeyore when you could have anyone you want at this bar. Man or woman.”
Magda rolls her eyes. “I mean, I can’t have you, can I?”
Erik lapses into shocked silence. Her face is inscrutable, one of tired resignation, like she’s been thinking of saying this for so long that it no longer carries any weight in her own mind. The bumping music in the background suddenly sounds ten times louder.
“Well…yeah, no,” Erik says awkwardly. “But…you divorced me.”
“I know. And I don’t regret it,” she counters. “I don’t want to fuck you.”
“What the fuck? Then why point it out?”
“Honestly? I’m just upset at you, I think. It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” Magda waits for Erik’s reaction, then shrugs when there isn’t one. “Charles was supposed to be different. And then he wasn’t. And now you’re alone again. You jump from relationship to relationship, and I was just one of the stepping stones in your fucked up little journey. You know?”
Erik laughs hysterically. “Yes, I do know, Magda. If you’re upset, how do you think I feel when I think about it?”
“Well, you’re pretending to be completely unbothered,” she retorts. “And you won’t admit it! You’re going to go completely insane about Charles when this one-night-stand doesn’t work out. You—”
“You’re acting like this is your divorce. I’m doing exactly what Emma told me to do.”
“Because Emma is the guru of relationship advice.”
“Do you want me to sit around crying about my ex-husband instead?”
“I’d feel better if you did! Instead of…whatever this is. This fake confidence, these manic moods you get—”
“I can act like Charles, if you prefer,” he snaps. “I can lie around all day at home, crying, feeling sorry for myself, rolled up in my bed, drinking myself to death, ignoring the child we agreed to raise together! How about that? Would that make you feel better? Hm?”
“Oh, fuck off, you big baby.” Magda groans in disgust and turns away from him. “Sometimes I swear that you haven’t changed a bit since we were married.”
Erik clacks his mouth shut. Magda sighs. She peers over her shoulder at him.
“This isn’t something we should’ve talked about drunk,” she apologizes somberly. “Go get laid. Okay? Enjoy. Seriously. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that. She sounds sincere, but that’s even more confusing than the fact that he and Magda simply never argue. That was the whole point of their divorce. They were the kind of couple who never fought about anything, and it fell apart because nobody cared enough to fight.
He turns on his heel, too drunk to figure it out. Not that he’s ever been any good at reading people sober.
***
He and Fake Charles catch a cab together to his studio apartment downtown—a shitty hole in the wall with secondhand furniture, moldy walls, and a musty smell. It’s appalling, even compared to the ugly cesspit Erik once lived in as a widowed twenty-one-year-old. He feels icky sitting on any of the furniture. The bed is covered in dirty laundry, and the couch has visible stains that make him paranoid about bedbugs and fleas.
Charles had a habit of living like a gross bachelor before they properly moved in together, but this easily takes the cake.
Unbothered, Fake Charles plops down on the bed with another bottle of vodka in hand. Erik reluctantly sits beside him, if only to steal a swig. He’s going to have to be really drunk for this.
You’re already trashed, he can hear his conscience nagging in Magda’s voice. Do you really need more?
He snatches the bottle from the man’s hands and throws back as much as he can bear to chug in one go. He wipes his mouth with a pained groan. Fake Charles is talking about something unimportant, so Erik waves his hand impatiently, his own words falling out as an incomprehensible slur.
“Before we do this, I need to know,” he grunts. “How old are you, really? I’m not tryin’ to—hic—catch a case.”
“I’m twenty-six,” Fake Charles replies at once, a little too quickly for Erik’s taste, but he figures if the kid was lying he would have shot for a much lower number. “You can see my fucking ID if you care that much.”
“No, is fine.”
“How about you, old man?”
“Don’t try me. You’re the one fucking this old man.” Erik grimaces before deciding he has nothing to lose by being honest. “I’m thirty-eight.”
“Oh! You’re not even that old!” The man laughs—actually laughs, and not in a nice way that Erik would associate with playful banter. “Hard thirty-eight. Does your family go gray early, or something?”
“I’m just a mutant.”
“And your power is what? Aging twice as fast? Having weird hair?”
“Why are we still playing twenty questions?”
“Hey, I don’t need your whole life story. I’m just trying to get to know you before we fuck, and you’re playing hardball,” Fake Charles shrugs. “It’s common decency.”
“I didn’t fuckin’ ask for—hic—common decency.” Erik burps a bit of vodka up and wipes his mouth clean of the acid reflux. “Let’s get to it. Unless you have a problem with fucking someone twelve years older than you, of course.”
“I’ve slept with men much older than you,” Fake Charles says snidely, turning to straddle Erik, who immediatly freezes in stupor as the smaller man settles into his lap. He presses a taunting kiss into Erik’s jaw, and for a heart-stopping moment Erik feels like this man really could be Charles—the younger version of Charles, the one that he met in Washington D.C., in 1996, both of them naive and blushing at every little exchange of words—
“Alright,” Fake Charles purrs, leaning in until their noses are an inch apart. “If you’re not interested in all the small talk and foreplay, we can get right to it. I’ll get myself prepped.”
Erik shakes his head. His eyes flit nervously to the growing erection in the other man’s pants, wondering how big he is and if he can take it himself. Fake Charles pauses, then laughs incredulously.
“You want to bottom?”
Erik scowls. “Do you have a problem with it?”
“No. I guess it’s the tough-looking guys who want to be tossed around a bit.” Fake Charles takes another swig from the bottle of vodka and smiles. “Sure, I can top.”
“And be rough,” Erik adds.
“How rough?”
“I don’t know. However you want. I’m not made of fucking glass.”
“Sure. What’s your safe word?”
“My what?”
“For like, if you need a time-out.”
Erik waves his hand agitatedly. “It’s not a game of soccer.”
“We should still probably—”
In a burst of recklessness, Erik leans in to seal his mouth over the other man’s: a sloppy, harsh kiss, closing the gap between them in his desperation to get started. Kissing has always been the easiest way to shut Charles up. Charles loves being kissed mid-sentence. He loves feeling Erik nip at his swollen, red lips, chasing after those tiny moans that happen when their teeth clack together just right—
Fake Charles falls blessedly silent, kissing back with the taste of liquor on both their tongues. The kiss is deep and dirty, and while it’s very different than the sort of kiss he’s used to, Erik’s blood sings. His head spins. He’s being kissed. He’s making out with a sexy, younger man, and he’s lovable again.
As soon as they pull away for air, Erik pushes Fake Charles off of his lap. He drops to his knees, using his metallokinesis to unzip the younger man’s trousers, and the man makes a sound of pleasant surprise as Erik tugs both pants and underwear down to his ankles.
Fake Charles smiles dopily, his cock springing free, slapping against his stomach. It’s long enough to reach his belly button. He takes it in hand, slapping it on Erik’s face, his cheeks, his eager and waiting tongue.
It’s been a while since Erik sucked cock.
He groans happily as he mouths for Fake Charles’ hefty length, wrapping his lips around the delicate pink head, moaning and drooling in drunken pleasure as he sinks down to the root in one go. He gags when it hits the back of his throat, but forces himself to stay down, then slowly pulls back up. He had a routine of rehearsed tricks with Real Charles: tonguing at his frenulum, gently suckling the tip, sinking back down slowly, fondling his balls with a free hand. And it all works like a charm on Fake Charles.
He picks up the pace as the man moans and puts his hand in Erik’s hair, gripping tightly. With his mouth full—he must look obscene—Erik looks up through his eyelashes. Down here, it’s easier to pretend that this is Real Charles. It’s a good enough illusion amidst his haze of alcohol and desperation.
Fake Charles twitches his hips, and he’s pushing Erik down harder, though he’s still reserving his strength, Erik can tell. He fumbles for the other man’s hand, guiding it back to his hair, hoping to somehow convey that he just wants someone to fuck the shit out of his throat.
Finally, Fake Charles gets the hint. He groans aloud, pushing his cock deep into Erik, pinning him in place without mercy. Erik chokes and sputters. It’s wet, sloppy, musky—an absolute mess, the way Charles once liked.
And Erik once liked it, too. He liked when Charles forced him to take it all. When it hit the back of his throat. When it made him tear up and he could feel himself struggling for air, black spots beginning to eat away at the corners of his vision, until at just the last second, Charles would pull him up, stars in his half-lidded eyes, running a thumb along the spit drooling from Erik’s chin—
My darling, you make such a beautiful mess for me. What would people say if they could see the defamed Erik Lehnsherr drooling all over my cock?
Erik nearly cums untouched at the memory of Charles talking to him like that. He forgot how much he loved to be humiliated, disrespected, used solely for the pleasure of his perfect husband.
Fake Charles suddenly yanks up Erik by his hair. Erik slips off with a loud pop, dazed, still lost in his head, and flops over uselessly as Fake Charles bends him over the filthy mattress. A whimper squeezes out of Erik as he’s rolled onto his stomach, his clothes unceremoniously pulled down to his ankles and his bare ass exposed.
And then the man spanks him. Erik yelps like a little dog.
“Oh, you like that,” Fake Charles hums. He spanks Erik again, and Erik arches into the sting, deliciously tormented by the pain, fully convinced he deserves every iota of it. Fake Charles laughs at his desperation, rubbing an appreciative thumb over the pink handprint left behind on Erik’s sensitive skin.
“You want me to fuck you?” he asks. Erik nods frantically, and he smiles. “Doesn’t seem like it. Beg.”
Erik doesn’t say anything until the man spits on his thumb and promptly sticks it inside Erik’s tight, unprepped asshole. He cries out in pain.
“Mm, please, p-please, ah, fuck me,” he babbles. He pushes back, trying to fit all of it inside, chasing after more than one finger despite the dry burn and stretch. He suddenly feels the hot, long length of the other man’s cock, pressed up against his ass from behind. He shivers as he feels firsthand just how large—and unlubricated—it is.
This is going to hurt.
The man pushes in without any warning. Erik screams, tears springing to his eyes as he grips the sheets beneath him. It burns, it stings, it feels like he’s tearing in half, it’s so painfully thick, so much bigger than Charles—
But you know what? Fuck Charles. And fuck his tiny cock. Erik deserved something better from the start.
Fuck Charles. Fuck Charles.
He feels the familiar pressure of balls pressed against his ass, the stillness that follows after bottoming out. Then Fake Charles begins to move. All at once, Erik’s pain melds with disorienting pleasure—the ecstasy of having his prostate pounded, the sensation of something filling him up, dragging slowly out, leaving him raw and aching and pulsing for more.
The pace picks up quickly. It’s so wonderfully filthy, the sound of a stranger’s balls slapping him in the ass. His desperate moans echo off the ceiling in the tiny studio apartment. He sounds like a whore, feels like a whore. Self-loathing isn’t enough to hold him back anymore. The man spanks him every time he moans a bit too loudly, fucking into him even harder, which only makes Erik squeal for more—
He used to love getting fucked like this. Being shoved face-down over the kitchen counter, the moment the kids were out of the house, giving Charles everything he missed while he was gone overseas. He’d squirm and whine, thrusting back on Charles’ short but thick cock, completely insensate with pleasure, drooling on the granite countertop—
Suddenly, Fake Charles grabs Erik by his hips and flips him onto his back. The new position is a bit more missionary than he’d like, but his limbs feel too heavy to protest. Erik forces himself to make eye contact, to take in a proper view of his lover’s face, and that’s where he finds—
—blue eyes, dark with lust. Curved lips, sinfully swollen from being kissed so thoroughly. A little bit of floppy brown hair dangling in his face. A smug smile, a pretty little tooth gap that Erik’s tongue has passed over more times than he can count.
Except…
This is not Charles.
It’s not even Fake Charles. It’s a complete stranger.
Erik feels a wave of nausea coming over him. His vision blurs, his stomach cramps, and his eyes sting. In this brief moment of clarity, reality crashes over him.
Oh, god.
What the hell is he doing?
But there’s no way to get off of this ride now. Erik mumbles in confused pain as the man changes angles, fucks into him with renewed vigor, slamming into him so hard his breath gets knocked out with each thrust. He begins to plant kisses all over Erik’s chest, mouth dangerously close to his nipples now. Erik keens as he feels a probing tongue wrap around the sensitive bud. He instinctively arches his back in desperation to get away.
But he doesn’t push the man away. He doesn’t tell him to stop. He doesn’t fight back, not really.
You asked for this, Lehnsherr.
You are not a fucking quitter. You are NOT a fucking quitter.
Oh, but he is. He quit on both of his marriages. He quit on Magda, he quit on Charles, he even quit on his poor daughter Jean. He tried to be strong—really, he fucking tried, and even then he couldn’t stick it out until the end, ‘til death did them part or whatever the fuck he and Charles promised each other the day they publicly declared their eternal love for one another.
Who’s he going to quit on next? Who’s even left?
Overcome with emotion, the weight on top of him too much, the length inside him too thick and hot and invasive, Erik sobs—and yet, somehow, he knows his body needs more. This is not filling the empty hole in his life that Charles left behind. It’s not Charles, as much as he pretends.
“Yo, man, you want me to stop?”
Erik gasps out. He feels tears running down his face, forced out of him like he’s being squeezed dry.
“N-no,” Erik chokes, struggling to push out this single word between bile-tinged hiccups and sniffles. “Keep—going. Keep going.”
Fake Charles mutters something to himself—“Jesus, not up for this today”—before flipping Erik onto his stomach again, where he can’t see his face, and lines his cock up. He slips a commandeering hand on the small of Erik’s back, keeping him in place as he pushes back inside.
It’s Charles, let it be Charles—
Charles on top of him
Charles’ cock, perfect in every way
Soft, pale thighs, with light swaths of hair over them,
slapping loudly against Erik’s ass with every thrust
He’s wailing by the time Fake Charles finds his true rhythm. He pounds into Erik with such force that his elbows give out and his face smashes into the pillow. It’s a menagerie of pain, pleasure, yearning, dissatisfaction—and all he can do is take it.
Erik cries as his insides are abruptly flooded with hot, dripping cum, his own orgasm wrung out of him by force. It doesn’t feel good; it’s just something that happens to his body, and it doesn’t do anything to sate his heartbreak, either. Fake Charles grips his hips tighter and thrusts inside with a lustful groan, riding his pleasure out without care for Erik’s growing overstimulation. Erik whimpers and shakes. He feels hot cum spurting against his stomach, dribbling between his ass cheeks, leaking out of his battered hole, soaking the sheets beneath his own ruin, until the stranger’s cock finally pulls out of him without care or finesse. He faintly wonders if he’s torn, or bleeding, but Fake Charles doesn’t stop to check, even as Erik’s leaking hole spasms weakly around nothing.
You’ve nobody to blame but yourself, Erik Lehnsherr.
He lies completely still, mired in a contradictory spiral of grief and sorrow, anxious for all the attention to go somewhere else. Marinating in his own fluids isn’t quite the ideal setting for pillow talk—but then again, he’s not really fucking a stranger for the aftercare. He doesn’t move to clean himself.
The stranger gives Erik one last slap on his ass before rolling off and sliding to his side of the bed. When he speaks, Erik hears none of it, but Fake Charles pauses, waiting for an answer.
“Muh,” Erik mumbles. “What’dysay…?”
“I said, are you still down for more?”
This is it. This is his chance to say no, to leave, to clean himself up with at least a single scrap of his dignity intact. And he wouldn’t even need a stupid ‘safe word’ to do it.
But instead, Erik nods, boneless and gutted.
“Fuck yes,” he says.
***
It’s three in the morning by the time he finally sees himself out.
Once he reaches the road, he’s still swaying like a branch in the wind, drunk out of his mind. Even in the open air, he can smell himself. Sweat, liquor, and cum. There’s dried semen caked all over his skin, soaked into the clothes he threw on haphazardly after their last round; it’s even in his hair, he finds as he runs his fingers through his bangs.
Which is his own fault—he didn’t want any more cum inside him, and the next best place for it was simply his face. He didn’t wash up properly before leaving, either, since he didn’t want to linger longer than necessary. Now his walk of shame is about as twice as slimy as it’s supposed to be.
His skin is crawling. But at least he feels alive.
Dazed, he half-heartedly looks both ways before limping into the street. He freezes in the middle of the intersection when he realizes he has no idea where he’s even going. A car honks and swerves around him, but he doesn’t move. Left? Right? Where did he park? It’s cold out. He doesn’t have a jacket. Did he even bring one? Did he leave it in the club? The apartment?
Alcohol makes him stupid, he realizes belatedly. His mutation grants him an impeccable sense of direction, but being intoxicated has deeply muddied his connection to the magnetic fields of the earth—his control over metal is now wobbly and blurry, shattered and disjointed on the surface of his palms. He feels blinded. Like a broken compass, like his balance is ten times worse than the average drunkard. He hasn’t felt this disconnected from his powers since he was a teenager forced into an inhibitor collar for school—and that’s not a pleasant memory to dwell on, either.
Why does anyone ever drink?
He stumbles to the other side of the road, barely catching himself on the adjacent stop sign, pulling himself upright just in time to hurl the contents of his stomach onto the sidewalk. It’s all liquid. Clear and tinged with stomach acid. Maybe he should’ve had dinner before driving to Emma’s. He moans and presses his cheek into the cool, calming metal of the stop sign.
Somehow, he manages to hail a taxi. He doesn’t quite remember when or how. One moment he’s hurling his guts out on the street, the next he’s sitting in a cab with his head stuck out the window like a miserable dog. The driver looks very annoyed at him for the inconvenience.
Erik can’t even remember what address he wound up giving the driver. Did he book the Holiday Inn, or the Best Western? Fuck, he knows Magda told him earlier. His phone has no battery to call or check.
His next instinct is Xavier Manor: 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center. He sure hopes he didn’t ask the driver to take him there. That’s not his home anymore, and it never will be again. But it’s lodged in his memory, his muscle memory, like a kid who’s been drilled on his home address so that he can recite it on the phone for 9-1-1 operators in case of an emergency.
…Is this an emergency? Would Charles even let him stay at his place if it was?
Shut up! You will never see Charles again, Erik scolds himself. Do you really want him to see you like this? You’re done. You can’t call for emergencies you made up yourself.
Oh, but Charles would love to take care of him. He loves when Erik is helpless and pathetic. He’d clean him up and tuck him into bed with a glass of water at his bedside, a trash can nearby, a bottle of Tylenol on the table for the morning hangover. Charles would curl up next to him, tiny and perfect against his chest and beneath his chin, keeping him on his side so that he doesn’t choke on spontaneous vomit in his sleep.
And then Charles would apologize. He’d be sorry that he ever drove Erik to do something like this in the first place. They’d fall asleep in each other’s arms, no hard feelings, end of this horrible, never-ending story.
But then Erik remembers what Charles looked like the last time they saw each other. A depressed, disheveled man with shaggy unwashed hair and a mean mouth.
No, that Charles wouldn’t want to take care of him. In fact, he would blame Erik for getting into this predicament at all.
***
He looks out the window and realizes immediately that he’s definitely given the driver the wrong address. At least it’s not Xavier Manor, though this isn’t much better.
Fuck me, he thinks.
As he starts to get out of his seat, the stabbing ache in his ass reminds him that actually, he’s already been fucked enough for one night.
He fumbles up the driveway, skull pounding, vision swimming. He’s mindlessly scratching at his forearms, leaving red streaks with his fingernails, trying to get the disgusting feeling off of him before he interacts with another human being. He stares abashedly at the doorbell in front of him.
Get it together, Lehnsherr. Keep it cool, and you’ll be lying down on a soft couch in no time.
He knocks tentatively. It sounds pathetic even to his own ears, so he knocks harder, and harder, and harder.
Wait. Why is he knocking like a loser? He has a key. A really old key, on the lanyard stuffed in his back pocket, though he promised Magda never to use it unless it was an emergency. A real emergency. Not a made-up, self-imposed breakdown—
Wait. Why does he need a key? He’s fucking metallokinetic. He could just open the lock himself.
The door opens before he can break his promise.
“Erik?” Magda says, her hair pinned up and her makeup washed off. It’s clear by her fleece pajamas and the aloe cream smeared under her eyes that she’s been rudely awakened from a peaceful end to the evening. “What the fuck are you doing here? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Erik stares at his ex-wife in stunned silence. He didn’t plan this far ahead, didn’t think she’d open the door on her own accord. There’s so much to explain, all too humiliating to put into words. He pictures himself wrapping all of what he’s feeling into the palm of his hand, then placing it into hers.
But Magda isn’t a telepath. That trick only worked with Charles.
“Mags,” he says lamely. “Errrr—I might have, uh, drank too much. Can’t r’member where I put my hotel. Can, can you…?”
“Jesus Christ.” Magda puts an exasperated hand on her forehead as she looks Erik up and down, taking in what a mess he is, although she thankfully cannot see the worst of it in the dim glow of the porch light. “I—okay. Well, you’re here now. Do you want to sleep on the couch?”
Erik nods abashedly. Magda extends a hand, perhaps with the good intentions of guiding him indoors, or examining him closer—but as soon as her fingers touch his, it nearly burns.
Erik leaps back with a cry of alarm. Of course, with his luck, he finds himself pathetically entangled in a set of wind chimes dangling from the porch roof. The twinkling sound of cold metal startles him out of his skin. When did that get there? Metal never sneaks up on him!
“Erik, woah!” Magda shouts. “It’s okay, Erik, it’s okay! Calm down!”
But Erik always destroys everything he touches, and he always does it faster than anyone can stop him. Clumsy with panic, he magnetizes the wind chimes with the palm of his hand, tearing them from the hook and twisting them into such a shape that they’ll never sing again. He flings them haphazardly into the yard, as if fending off a venomous snake rather than a harmless set of patio decorations from Big Lots.
Magda watches the scene with a tired sort of acceptance. She’s never shocked by how difficult her ex-husband can be, even if Drunk Erik isn’t a particularly frequent customer—she’s helped raise three mutant children, and she’s had more than her fair share of property vandalized by rogue powers. She waits patiently as he shakes a few stray pieces of ruined metal from his palms, unable to de-magnetize with his usual precision.
“It’s alright, Erik,” she says finally. He jerks his head back at her, panting. “Erik, relax. You’re just drunk. Come inside and warm up, okay? Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
Erik wipes the frustrated tears from his eyes and stares at her. He can’t fathom how somebody besides Charles ever got to know him so well. Magda has never been afraid of him. Even when he hurt people. Even when they finally separated.
Maybe that’s why he calms down.
“I don’t feel good,” Erik mumbles childishly, still scratching his arms.
“Yeah, I figured. Let’s drink some water, okay?”
Erik obediently trails after her. He hasn’t been in her house for a while—he doesn’t usually come here, into her space, the space she made her own without him after they separated in the nineties. The kids didn’t grow up here. But she still keeps little photos of them all over the walls. It feels wrong to be looking at them, somehow, while in this debauched state of being.
He follows her down the hallway and to the bathroom. He hobbles to the toilet bowl and groans in pain as he crumples onto the tiled floor. It hurts to squat, or even kneel. He wonders if his ass will ever feel normal again.
He weakly pushes the toilet lid up and waits to vomit.
Magda turns the bathroom light on, crossing her arms at the doorway, cognizant of the pained grimace and what it means. He can feel her looking at him, but he pretends not to notice. In the light, there’s nowhere for him to hide the mess he is any longer. She isn’t stupid. She can see the vomit, the sweat, the leftover semen.
“Erik, you’re limping,” she says accusingly.
“Quiet. I’m trying to concentrate,” he grunts.
He promptly projectile-vomits into the toilet, hurling with such an unfortunate velocity that a bit of toilet water splashes back at him, which only makes him puke more.
Magda sighs. She decidedly kneels down beside him as he’s still heaving, rubbing his back until the last of his stomach contents are emptied.
“Oh, Erik,” she murmurs. “We let you out of our sight for one evening—”
“I’m fine,” he snaps, keeping his head down in the toilet bowl. “I didn’t…I…it’s fine.”
“Do I need to call Emma? Do I need to call the cops?”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
“Maybe we should go to the ER, then. I don’t know what happened, and I won’t ask for details, but…”
He angrily shrugs her hand from his shoulder blades. “I don’t want to go to a fucking hospital,” he snarls, a fierce finality to his tone. “I said I’m fine. Why don’t you ever listen to me?”
“Okay. No hospital,” she concedes at once. “Let’s just…we need to clean you up the best we can. Do you think you can take a shower?”
Erik mumbles under his breath, something half-coherent about how he just wants to go to bed for now and he’s way too exhausted to move from this spot, let alone shower himself. Magda either ignores his request or doesn’t understand him. She reaches behind him to tug the shower curtain open, turning the faucet on and then standing up.
For a frightening second, Erik worries she’ll ask him to undress. In front of her. He doesn’t think he can stand being naked right now. Especially not with Magda watching. He’s dirty, and she’s always been pure; he’s ruined, and she’s perfect; he’s a needy piece of shit, and she’s the angel who takes him in when nobody else will.
“Washcloth is here. Towel is here. I’ll bring you some spare pajamas to change into,” Magda instructs, though he can barely parse the words coming from her mouth. “I’m also bringing you a bag to put your old clothes in as well. Don’t try to wash them by hand. If you do decide to go to a hospital tomorrow morning, they’ll want to keep them as is, for testing purposes.”
“Testing? I don’t need testing—” Erik starts.
“I know, I know. Just in case you change your mind,” she says quickly. She tries and fails to give him a reassuring smile. “Alright. I’ll leave you to it.”
She’s just about to close the door when Erik blindly grabs for her hand, pulling her back a step. She looks down at him with wide eyes.
“Yes?” she asks.
“Where are you going?” he demands.
“To get you a bag and pajamas?”
“No, I…I mean…” He begins his request with little success and swallows back another round of sour stomach acid. “I…don’t…you…”
Don’t leave me alone, is what he wants to say. The thought of Magda abandoning him again—even to leave the room for a brief moment—has sent him into a complete tailspin. He cannot conceptualize separation as a temporary state of being right now. He came here for a reason: even drunk, he knows that Magda is the one person he can trust to keep his company right now.
Erik angrily swipes his eyes. He can’t stop them now, the hot tears running down his cheeks, nor can he stop the water still running in the background, or the way he still smells like shit, or the way the room is still spinning. A mournful sound rises from the back of his raw, sore throat.
Stupefied, Magda lowers herself back down to the floor. She slowly puts her arms around his trembling frame.
“Hey,” she says softly. “It’s okay, Erik. It’s going to be okay.”
“Don’t touch m-me,” he whimpers. “I’m—I’m dirty. Don’t wanna get you—”
“It’s okay, Erik. It’s okay.”
He shakes his head miserably and squeezes close to her, finally returning the hug. He clings with such desperation that he can feel both of their heartbeats in his ears. She tightens her arms around him as he sobs into her shirt, stroking the back of his head like he’s a frightened little boy.
“Mags, I’m—I’m so sorry,” he chokes. “I was terrible. To y-you. To Charles. What kind of husband—what kind of father—oh, fuck. I should be—I should be—”
“Hey, hey, let’s breathe. Everything’s okay.”
“N-no, it’s not! I wish I was dead!” he shouts. “I wish I was fucking dead!”
He bursts into another ugly sob, sounding even more dramatic than Pietro on a bad day. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard himself sound like this.
But Magda has. She makes an oh sound and pulls him closer. She doesn’t even try to argue with him. With Charles, it would’ve been a lengthy, unsolicited philosophical debate: no, Erik, you don’t want to DIE. You just want to LIVE. Blah, blah, blah. It would have made him feel stupid and insignificant for ever bringing it up, even if judgment was never Charles’ intention. He’s grateful that Magda listens without objection or correction.
“I w-want—to go—home,” Erik hiccups, gulping for air as Magda rubs his back in speechless circles. “To Westchester. I want—my old—house. My old—parking spot—in the garage, and my—shitty—old—car. The stupid mom van, it was mine. And I—w-want—Jean—”
“Oh, Erik, honey,” Magda coos, a gentle reproach against what she already knows is to come. “Don’t go down this rabbit hole now. You did the best you could for that little girl.”
“No. I should’ve fought harder. In c-court. To k-keep her. I should’ve—Magda, I should’ve taken her—with me—I should’ve—I should’ve—”
He can’t even finish his own sentence. He sounds, and feels, absolutely insane. He’s grateful Charles can’t see him now, because Charles would leave him all over again if he saw this mess.
But Magda simply smooths his hair back, saying nothing about the sweat and toilet water tangled in his bangs. In a silent act of love long past, she presses soft lips into his forehead.
The kiss is more motherly than anything, yet still, Erik freezes up. He’s not worthy of this affection, he thinks. She’s going to get germs all over her mouth now. At the same time, he finds himself automatically pressing closer—he doesn’t want her love to go away. There’s only so much he can handle losing.
“I know it’s not easy, Erik,” Magda murmurs, lips still buried in his hairline. Her breath is hot on his skin, a warmth he didn’t know he’d welcome ever again. “To want what you can’t have. It hurts when all we want is for things to go back to how they were before.”
He sobs wretchedly, clinging.
“But…punishing yourself like this, it won’t bring Charles back to you, honey. He’s not coming to rescue you. I know that’s what you’re trying to do—put yourself in a position where he’ll notice you’re hurting. It’s not going to work.”
Of course, she’s right. She’s always been right. But what if there’s nuance? What if he falls apart so hard that someone calls Charles?
Erik tried to kill himself, Charles. Wake up. Your husband still needs you.
No. That’s not even remotely close to anything that would happen in reality.
The realization wrenches another agonized sound from his chest. It’s a dry sob; he’s all out of tears, and soon, he’ll be too exhausted to continue throwing his tantrum at full magnitude. Magda hugs him back tightly, soothing him through the final hiccups. She reaches for one of the washcloths on the counter and sticks it under the hot water of the bath tub.
“Hold still for me,” she says gently.
She begins to wipe the sweat, semen, vomit, tears, and everything else from his face. The unexpected intimacy stops his heart for a second. He’s been thinking about Charles all night, but sometimes, he misses Magda, too—she’s still so beautiful and radiant, even when his darkness is clouding her light. And she loves him too much. To be doing all this for him, even after their marriage ended so poorly…
He realizes he’s staring.
“S-sorry,” Erik sputters. “I—you—”
“Don’t make this weird,” she chides, almost playfully.
He relaxes. She scrubs gingerly, getting as much as she can, and then she looks wearily down at the rest of him. They both know he has to get clean, that he might even be injured, and that he’s way too drunk to stand on his own.
Don’t make this weird.
With a sigh, Erik closes the toilet lid and shakily rises. He sits down and begins to unbutton his shirt, unbuckle his belt, roll his trousers down to his ankles. He waits until his socks are off before he finally peels the damp, sticky briefs from his body, dumping them shame-facedly atop the pile of dirty laundry.
There. He’s naked. In front of his ex-wife, too, and she’s not even trying to have sex with him.
(For an impulsive second, he wonders if—)
Unaffected by his complete nudity—seeing Erik naked is no longer of any interest to her after so many years—Magda gestures toward the filled bathtub. He’s not sure whether to be hurt or relieved by her dismissiveness. Is it a gift or a curse, to be known by someone so privately?
Once he’s seated in the tub, he can see what a mess he actually is. He’s covered in purple bruises, most of them the size of fingerprints. They’re all over his hips, thighs, and arms. There’s a stickiness between his legs, and when he sticks his fingers there, they come back slimy.
“You wash anything below the waist,” she tells him kindly. “I’ll help wash your hair. And back. It’s gonna be okay.”
Don’t make this weird. Don’t make this weird.
But how can he not? She’s scrubbing him like a stray puppy who’s gotten into the mud, using her cupped hands to rinse the suds and semen out of his hair. He focuses on getting the filmy sensation out from between his thighs. It hurts, but he bites back the urge to wince in front of Magda.
She says nothing.
Dressed in old sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt, Erik limps out to the living room, where Magda is setting the couch for him. She’s spread out a blanket, placed a glass of water on the coffee table, and set a small trash can at his bedside. He stands awkwardly as she goes about her business; he feels useless, and that’s an especially bad way to feel after your ex-wife gives you a pity bath.
She notices him staring and quickly finishes up. She walks up to him with hands folded.
“Need a toothbrush?” she asks conversationally.
He nods. He takes her hands, craving her touch again, and stares plaintively at her, still mystified by her brown eyes even after all these years. Pietro’s eyes, he thinks. A little part of her lives forever in their son.
Then his eyes dart to where their hands connect. He can’t decide how to feel about the fact that they’re holding hands right now. Like everything else this past year, it feels like nothing. Maybe he really is over her.
“I’ll leave you some toothpaste on the sink,” she says quietly. “Do you…want to talk...?”
He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t let go of her, either. He’s scared what’ll happen when he does. Nothing in his life could have prepared him for feeling this flayed out in front of his lovely, way-too-generous ex-wife. No, he doesn’t want to talk about what happened. This is the part where Charles is supposed to read his mind.
“Erik?” she says softly. “Come on. I won’t judge, honey. I know you’re thinking about it.”
He swallows, annoyed at himself for crying again. He’s already made such a scene in the bathroom. But up close, she smells like the honeydew-scented moisturizer that she rubs into her face every night, and now he thinks about how she used to smell a lifetime ago. She always took a shower in the evening and got into bed smelling fresh. He misses having someone in his bed like that.
Maybe that’s why he hasn’t been able to fall asleep in so long—he’s too scared to be alone. Not my-husband-is-traveling-overseas alone, but alone alone.
He presses her hand into his cheek. Now that he’s clean, the touch feels a lot more soothing. He doesn’t have to worry about getting her dirty anymore.
Surprisingly, she doesn’t push him away or pull back—in fact, she just runs a thumb over the tear on his cheek. She’s looking at him the same way she looks at Wanda when she scraped her knee as a child, the same way she looks at Pietro when he’s having a meltdown about something inconsequential.
“I can’t be by myself right now,” Erik finally whispers.
“Okay,” she says at once. “Would you like me to stay with you?”
He nods, embarrassed.
“Alright. Just this once. But, the couch isn’t big enough for two people, and I’m way too old to be sleeping on the floor, so we’d probably be best off sharing the bed. If you’re okay with that.”
He nods again, honored by her trust. It means a lot to him, especially when he doesn’t have many other friends he can rely on to this degree.
After Erik brushes his teeth, he quietly slips into the bed, trying to acclimate to the unfamiliar sheets and new mattress. Beside him, Magda turns the light off, and drapes the blanket over him. She says nothing about how he’s curled up into a ball, shivering despite the heavy linens. She just puts an arm around him.
“It’s okay, Erik,” she mumbles sleepily. “You’re gonna be okay. It’s okay…it’s okay…”
Erik doesn’t protest at the extra doting. He wriggles closer to her where it’s warm. He doesn’t even need to pretend it’s Charles. It’s Magda.
And for once, that’s nice.