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Unlike other nights, there are faint cries from the other bed in the room that Charles shares. He has heard voices before - knows that other sick children share his room - but this voice is so broken that it makes Charles want to talk.
It makes Charles want to get out of bed - a very foolish idea - and comfort the other child in his room.
Instead, Charles waits and listens. The cries only grow louder - more pained and more haunted - and so Charles decides that he can brave the pain of getting out of bed for this other child.
When he finally manages to draw back the curtain that separates his bed from that of the other patient, Charles sees a boy - just a few years older, he thinks - sobbing into a tattered teddy bear.
“Can I help you?” Charles asks.
The other boy just sniffles and sobs. Broken and hoarse.
Charles goes back to his bed and hopes he can help the other boy later.
Tonight he has to be strong for them both.
*
The doctors are quick to tell Charles that he shouldn’t have left his bed last night, but Charles takes the not-quite-scolding in stride, as best as he can. His back is still not strong enough for that, but he wants to help the other boy more in this moment than he wants to heal.
He’s never felt like that before.
In the course of the doctors’ examination, Charles asks about the boy in the bed next to his.
The doctors exchange glances and tell him nothing.
A few hours later, he lucks out when he asks one of his nurses the same question. She says that the boy’s name is Erik and that he’s lost his parents in a car crash.
That explains the sobs, then.
Charles thinks that he'll find another way to talk to Erik tonight. He can't afford to waste all the effort that the surgeons have put into him after his fall from a tree a few years before. They have saved him from a life in a wheelchair, so long as he can rest and recuperate after this latest surgery.
*
Thoughts are by far the easiest for Charles to send out, but he knows that many people in the hospital aren’t comfortable with mutants. He hopes that Erik won’t mind, especially since no one has come to visit him.
Erik. I heard you crying last night. I’d like to help, he sends, quietly. Just a whisper of the thought.
For an answer, Charles hears and feels the metal in the room vibrate.
You’re a mutant too! I’m sorry about your parents. The nurses told me that. I don’t normally read people.
Charles stops himself before he says anything else more annoying to Erik. He waits, and waits, and waits, as the night grows darker and the room remains as quiet as before.
Just as Charles is about to force himself into a nap, he hears a few rustles and soon, Erik’s body is next to his on the bed.
Erik says nothing, merely curls around Charles’ body and begins to cry.
Charles wishes he had the ability to soothe away Erik’s pain with his mutation, but knows that Erik’s coming to him is overture enough.
*
In the morning, Erik's no longer tangled around Charles, and Charles finds himself missing him.
Did that help? he asks carefully before the morning routine starts in earnest.
Erik makes no reply, and Charles sighs. He settles his features into a neutral face that the doctors have come to expect from him and tries to make it through the day without reaching out to Erik’s mind again.
*
He's not expecting Erik to climb into his bed again, but that's exactly what happens that night, and this time, Charles tries to simply radiate calm and peace and welcome.
Erik’s breathing evens out soon enough, and Charles leans into him and falls headlong into sleep.
*
Charles’ dreams are not his own, he thinks the next morning. He dreamt of a car set alight and so much pain.
Erik, just as before, is back in his own bed, and he still says nothing to the nurses all day long.
*
Charles says nothing the night before he knows he’ll be discharged. He wants to keep Erik as safe as he can, and the little he knows of Erik tells him that Erik’s nightly visits are aberrations rather than the norm.
Still, on that last night Charles rubs warm circles into the worn fabric of Erik's pajamas, and he wishes that he could take Erik home with him.
*
As Charles is wheeled out of the hospital the next morning, he hears a few nurses saying that CPS has found a man who wants to adopt Erik. His name is Sebastian Shaw and he’s wealthy and respected.
Charles hopes that Erik will be happy with him.
-
The man - his new father - has cold eyes.
Erik misses his parents' warm glances as he has never done so before.
He misses Charles' eyes, too.
But with none of them here with him, all Erik can do is focus on the calm that Charles brought him, as he listens to the people from CPS talking about Sebastian, talking about how soon Erik can be released.
Erik has nearly forgotten about his broken arm and abrasions because of Charles.
-
Charles sleeps alone for the first time in weeks.
He misses the heat that Erik radiated each night and the complicated mind of his friend.
Charles muses if that’s what Erik is: a friend. They never discussed it.
It’s too late now.
Charles hopes Erik’s fine.
Sebastian Shaw was not present for Charles to read, but no one bad would want to take Erik.
Charles thinks he's almost sure of that.
-
“I’ll count to three and then you’ll move the coin or there will be no dinner for you.”
Erik stares at the old German coin on the table and focuses.
He does not move it, and for his disobedience he also has three fresh scars across his back.
-
Back in the hospital for one last surgery, Charles finds himself remembering Erik with a need that is almost as crushing as his own original injury.
It's not new - he thinks of Erik almost all the time - but the memories always seem so much stronger when he's in these familiar corridors that smell of antiseptic.
For his last surgery, Charles remembers. He’ll be able to walk without braces, or so the doctors say.
He wishes Erik were here with him before everything changes.
He has always wished for many things.
-
“You were able to lift that car yesterday. Why can’t you today?”
There’s always a growl and an impatience to Sebastian’s words. His training, too.
Erik knows that Sebastian is not a kind man, and is not interested in helping Erik develop into anything but a highly skilled and highly trained weapon.
“You’ll be my greatest gift, Erik.”
Erik just wants to be done with today’s exercises.
He wants so much that he can’t have.
-
Charles’ time in and out of hospitals is one of the myriad reasons why he wants to be a doctor, though he knows it’s selfish to say so. Self-serving.
Instead, he says that he has a desire to help those who cannot help themselves, forgetting that he was helped by people that are his exemplars now. Myriad people saved his life, and he can think of nothing better than to be like them.
-
Erik knows that he is not a weapon, but it is a hard lesson to forget.
His daughter - his perfect Anya - is sick. Her pediatrician only has to say one word to leave him and Magda scared speechless: leukemia.
Treatable, but still.
He did something wrong. He gave this to her.
He has hurt another person he loves so deeply.
-
As a pediatric oncologist, Charles feels far different from the doctors who helped him. He is less likely to be in surgery than he remembers sensing from his doctors. He’s found a way to help the children before and after surgery, leaving the messy details to his colleagues.
Perhaps it is his mutation that allows him to serve the hospital better, but he never asks.
Instead, he focuses on the scores of children in his charge.
-
Eventually, Magda goes away: she leaves him, leaves Anya, and though Magda is still alive Erik feels like she's gone the way of his parents.
It kills him that he knows exactly what that look in Magda's eyes means every time she visits Anya in the hospital.
Magda leaves everything behind, all of the pieces of the life she'd shared with Erik and with Anya.
Erik would cry about it, if he thought that it would actually help him.
-
When Charles sees the newest patient’s name, he nearly falls over.
Anya Lehnsherr
He promises himself that he will not ask her if her father's name is Erik, when he talks to her for the first time.
Instead, he tries to see if any of the nurses know anything about the girl’s parents.
There are vague stories of a man with a constant scowl on his face and an affinity with metal or magnets.
Charles hopes that he will see Erik soon enough.
Just after he sees that Erik’s daughter is going to be well in the end.
-
Erik hates hospitals. He's felt that way ever since leaving a place that was a lot like this one, twenty-five-something years ago.
Charles, he thinks as he walks into the hospital again. Anya’s had her latest round of treatments and can see him again.
He walks with purpose into the pediatric oncology unit and nearly runs down a short doctor whose wavy brown hair flops around his face.
“Pardon,” the doctor says before Erik steps back and stares into eyes that he hasn’t forgetten in twenty-five years.
Before he can think better of it, he asks, with a strange shiver he's never heard in his own voice, "Charles?"
“Yes?” the man says before Erik steps back again and starts to float loose change from his pockets.
There's a loud "Oh", then, when the thunderclap of recognition hits - and then Erik follows, blind and willing, when Charles grabs his wrist in a punishing grip and practically runs them both out of the room.
-
Charles’ heart beats double-time and his mind races before he latches on to the mind of the man he’s dragging away.
No, he's not just with any other man.
This is Erik.
After so long he is face to face with the boy who cried until he slept and who had no one else to tell him he was special.
“I’m sorry for that,” Charles says when they’re in an unused room partway down the corridor. “I didn't want to bother the children, and I especially didn't want the nurses to notice.”
“The nurses won’t talk about the man you dragged out of the room?”
“Fuck!”
“Not very well said for a children’s doctor, Charles,” Erik says as a smirk settles on his face.
“Well, are they around? No, my friend, they are not.”
Charles sees Erik flinch at the term. “Is that what we are?” Erik asks.
“We are - were - so many years ago,” Charles replies just before he feels his throat catch.
“But so much has changed.”
“None of it matters,” Charles said through his own croak. “We are here now, and we’ll be here for a while still. Anya has months in this cycle of treatment.”
Charles watches Erik nod, before he does the most unprofessional thing he knows in the moment, and grabs Erik’s hand.
“Stay and chat,” he says, one finger tracing across Erik’s wrist.
-
Erik stays at Charles’ side whenever he can. Now Anya can smile when she has to be in the hospital, and he's pretty sure Charles's telepathy has something to do with that.
Erik still wants to rage against the hospital for what it took away from him years ago, but Charles’ smile every time Erik walks into the room chases away some of that anger.
*
Erik finds himself in Charles’ office even when Anya has no scheduled treatments.
He knows he’s drawn to Charles - more and more each day.
Questions as to why bubble up in his mind, but he pushes them away and simply relishes in the feel of Charles’ mind in their quiet moments.
*
Anya’s long since gone into remission - her leukemia’s chance of returning near zero - but Erik still calls and talks to Charles.
The calls are so much different than their first conversations, but Erik feels the same satisfaction and calm after each of them.
Today, he has told himself, he’s going to ask Charles to dinner.
He’s going to be a friend that does more than interrupt Charles’ work.
There’s so much he knows he has to tell Charles.
*
Dinner is at Erik’s favorite restaurant, and one far nicer than should be shared by two friends.
Erik can’t bother to care, however, because for the first time in nearly two years, he is free to talk about anything.
It’s liberating in a way that Charles’ presence has always been.
That’s one point for their conversation today, Erik knows.
*
Dinner is a regular event now, and Erik relishes in their shared stories of pain and survival.
Only a small part of him wishes for something else. But he knows that Magda’s departure might still be too soon past to do anything else.
He almost wishes that he could be as forceful as Charles had been on that first day; he almost wishes he had the strength to pull Charles close and kiss him. But as soon as he lets himself think about it he can feel the waves of guilt lapping at his heart.
It’s still too soon after Magda’s departure and Anya’s recovery for him to try and introduce anything new into his life, he knows. Though as he realizes that, he also realizes that Charles has been a presence in his life since Magda left and since Anya’s recovery.
Anya may not be old enough to understand Erik’s sexuality, but she is old enough to hear more about how he and Dr. Xavier met years ago.
*
For all of his nerves, Anya giggles at his story - partly because it's a little strange for her to think that her father had once been someone who held on to a teddy bear, had once crawled into bed with a total stranger. And partly because she's already heard the story.
“Dr. Xavier told me after the first day you met, Daddy,” she says with that wide grin of hers.
“He did?”
“Yes, he did. He wanted us to be friends just as he was a friend to you then.”
Erik knows the question on his lips might ruin everything, but he presses on. “What if Dr. Xavier and I were still friends?”
“You are, silly.” She laughs again.
“I meant in another way, darling.” If she balks at this idea, he's going to regret having the entire conversation in the first place.
“What way is that?” she asks.
“Would you mind if he came to dinner here next week?”
She nods enthusiastically and before Erik knows any better, he’s letting out a long slow breath.
*
“Will it be all right with you if dinner this week took place at my apartment? Anya wants to join us,” he says over the phone to Charles, though he’s grateful that he only had to call to set up this dinner and not say it face to face.
“I’d be delighted,” is Charles’ reply.
*
His nerves are still threatening to overtake his own mind, even as Anya laughed and giggled through dinner. Charles is just as engaging as he was in the hospital with her, a thought that makes Erik a little giddy.
“It’s bedtime for all little girls,” he says just as he watches her head start to loll to the side.
“Not sleepy,” she tries, but as she finishes the statement, she yawns.
“I’ll tuck you in, Anya. How does that sound?” Charles says, walking towards her and leaving the table.
Erik tries not to think about what Charles might say, but the time apart gives him a few minutes to collect himself and school himself away from his thoughts of being pressed close to Charles.
He’s never asked Charles the exact nature of his telepathy since they were children and he’d rather not think that Charles overhears everything he’s thinking.
Busying himself with the dishes, Erik almost misses Charles’ return to the kitchen.
“She’s out like a light. I think the excitement must have worn her out, though it's just me.”
Erik can only nod in reply. He can't trust himself to speak. Running through his mind is the need to kiss Charles, so urgent and white-hot that it hurts.
Before he can say or do anything about that thought, though, Charles takes his wrist and makes him turn around, and kisses him. Soft and chaste, a brief press of mouth on mouth that is a promise for so, so much more.
We have all the time, my friend, is all Erik hears in his mind - lost, suddenly, when he surges forward and kisses Charles with everything he still has in him. Passion, fervor, and an unspoken thanks, for the memory of something good then and the promise of something good now.