Archive of Our Own ^beta

For the record, Erik told the absolute truth in that set that got him accidentally famous. Internet famous, at least.

Erik really did meet Charles a week before he did his gig at the Comedy Store.

He’d heard of Xavier’s name long before that. Back when Forgiveness came out and suddenly everybody gave a shit about underappreciated British actors. It was only that he saw the fucker’s name every day that Erik even knew Charles Xavier was another force in the universe, like Paris Hilton, throw pillows, or oysters. Just one of those things that existed even if you couldn’t divine they purpose for it. Erik was touring hard at the time, so even if Charles Xavier was an object of constant speculation in tabloids, a prominent mutant figure in pop culture, and someone even Magda had mentioned as a little dreamy, Erik couldn’t be fucked.

Erik didn’t bother with people who didn’t work. Erik forged his life from listless audiences, twelve-hour car drives, and gigs that paid in beer tickets. Stand-up was Erik’s life. Perfecting his routine and his writing—what it was really like to be a mutant in America, to make comedy out of indignation and strife—was Erik’s life.

So, similarly like Paris Hilton, throw pillows, and oysters, as soon Charles Xavier’s existence was known it was cursorily assessed and dismissed as ephemera.

This would turn out to be the first of many, many mistakes.

~*~

Erik decided at some point to blame the whole thing on fucking Los Angeles.

He’d relocated to L.A. after riding a two-year high of exposure. He’d been touring with some bigger names, getting guest spots on national television, and eventually writing for The Daily Show. And he knew there was a more logical line of progression that included doing a fuckton of sets, going to a fuckton of meetings and interviews, and drinking a fuckton of drinks, but it seemed a lot more sudden. Like one day he was doing gigs at places that had dysentery growing in the bathrooms and the next he was warming up for Lewis Black.

Suddenly he was a name people knew and he was getting job offers. Offers of jobs. Being offered money in exchange for work, rather than begging for work and hoping for decent recompense was a fairly new development.

He wound up taking one of those writing jobs in Hollywood for a trying-to-be-cerebral comedy on HBO about mutants called The Chromosome Closet.

Erik wound up mostly hating Hollywood. He liked the job and got to do gigs enough, but every fucking thing was industry related. There were endless awards ceremonies and pseudo formal parties he was paid to do half a set at. It was at one of those pointless awards ceremonies he finally saw Charles Xavier.

He was backstage, muttering through his tailored routine, when he heard a warm, startling laugh. He followed the sound a really good-looking guy. It was pretty obvious he was an actor. He had the expensive casual clothes that didn’t look like it cost a few hundred for jeans but did, the glowing, well-treated skin and hair. He was Hollywood short, but would be considered average height in the real world. He was talking to a woman, but smiled after her when she walked away.

A shudder ran through Erik’s spine.

There was something so bright and genuine about his smile it made Erik’s body ache. It couldn’t have been fake because the guy was smiling at the girl’s back. Not checking her out, just genuinely being overcome by fondness.

Erik couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen that sort of look on someone.

Everything sort of slid past him while looking at this guy, cataloging his features. His typical pre-show anxiety, no matter how short the set, his typical low-level annoyance in these surroundings. It was all gone for a moment. All he could see was the slight pink blush bringing out the guy’s freckles, the glossy shine of his hair as he didn’t quite manage to push it behind his ear, the slim roundness of his limbs.

Erik must have been looking for a long time because the guy noticed and caught his gaze. And Erik did feel caught because a) holy blue and b) he was. But instead of giving Erik the universal signal for back off now creeper, the man smiled again. This time it was a slightly cheeky smirk.

“Hello,” he said, sort of leaning forward even though there was a distance between them.

Erik panicked and took a step back. He waved awkwardly, already feeling his face heat up. “Um, hey.”

“I loved your routine on the Registration Act.”

And his voice was way, way too pleasant and smooth and British to just say things like that.

“I—thanks.” Erik scrubbed a hand through his hair and his scruff.

He was searching, chest filling with tension, for something to say to this pretty, nice, genuine man who Erik didn’t know from Adam, when, thankfully, an intern rushed in and tentatively hovered a hand near the man’s elbow.

“You’re up in two, Mr. Xavier.”

He smiled. Again. Looked at Erik and said, “Nice meeting you,” and walked toward the stage.

Erik confirmed later what he already suspected. That had been Charles Xavier he looked like an idiot in front of. He didn’t know what bothered him more: that he finally got all bashful in front of a celebrity he didn’t know was a celebrity or that he really cared what an actor he’d never seen again thought of him.

He tried to shake it off during the week, but couldn’t for some reason. He kept thinking about this guy. He found himself reading articles about him on the internet or watching one of his movies on Netflix without even making a conscious decision about it. He read up on his bio.

He had performed as a staple of low budget dramatic independents that people talked about getting awards at Cannes but never actually saw and starchy British period pieces that people talked about getting BAFTAs but never actually saw.

He was a mutant with an invisible mutation. He started acting at sixteen. Well, technically he started acting at twelve in a school play, but got his first televised gig at sixteen. While he was in school, Oxford no less, he still acted, but sporadically. He got a degree in Biology and was reportedly quite intelligent, which earned him the nicknames of Professor X and Professor Sex among his growing fanbase. For the next ten years, Xavier played those indie, period roles that got a little acclaim, less money, but wetted the metaphorical and physical panties of a certain subset of discerning American women and queers who only watched movies they could cynically compare to the book.

Then at twenty-seven, Charles Xavier stared as a romantic lead in a largely British production about the First World War called Forgiveness that was financed by an American studio with a much more famous female counterpart. After that he was fucking everywhere.

So a week later, when he did his gig at the Comedy Store, instead of doing his traditional closer about his mutant supervillain alter ego Magneto, he took the opportunity to vent.

That was it. What he did was instinctive, and he thought at the time not even that funny. It was a spur of the moment decision that never should have amounted to anything.

Erik never thought it was a big deal.

~*~

That might’ve been an understatement.

This is probably the time to mention that up until that moment with Charles freaking Xavier, Erik had never been attracted to a man before. He’d certainly always been able to identify attractive men without difficulty. But he’d never felt lust for another guy before.

He was strictly into women.

And married.

He’d never been confused about that before. Not that he was confused after he saw Charles Xavier.

He was sure it was perfectly common to wonder what it might be like to fuck a guy’s face while he might put his fingers up your ass and moan around your cock when you’re eating lasagna with your wife.

Yeah.

~*~

Erik got along with the other writers reasonably well, but he’d never arrived to work to a round of applause before.

So that was weird.

He looked at the faces brimming with glee around him and felt dread.

“What’s going on?”

“Congrats on going viral, man!” Sean said, throwing a fist in the air.

Angel smirked with more deviousness than she typically exuded, slowly and obviously checking out Erik. “Very revealing. I didn’t think you had the balls.”

The other assembled around the table more or less nod in agreement.

“Um, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Your set, Friday night” Sean yelled, still excited.

“That was a pretty inspired piece, man,” Armando said with a validating head nod, even though I wasn’t sure what to feel validated about.

“I didn’t think any of you came to my show.”

But that didn’t sound right. He was starting to feel a heavy weight hanging over him.

Angel raised an eyebrow. “You’re kidding right. You are all over the internet right now.”

“What?”

Sean had is iPad out and was loading the youtube video before anyone could even ask.

Armando started explaining, “You were on what? TMZ, HuffPo, E!Online, The Gossip, Buzz. I think even my sister emailed me a link.”

On Sean’s iPad was a paused image of Erik on stage at the Comedy Store with a mic in one hand. Of course. Erik had always felt a little from a lost era. He constantly forgot that every single cell phone had a camera now. Up until he moved to Hollywood he was still using the first Nokia he’d bought in 2003. Likewise, he consistently forgot he was kind of famous now.

Then his eye caught the hit count in the corner of the screen.

Seven million hits.

Seven million hits over the weekend. Erik could feel his heart in his neck. That was insane. That was the most insane thing to ever happen, without any hyperbole.

“Oh shit.”

Seven million hits over the weekend was the kind of attention normally reserved for drunk children and kittens falling off things. Seven million hits is fucking insane because he knew for a fact there no number of people that ended in million who even knew who he was.

“Oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh no.”

Then Sean pressed play.

Erik didn’t like to watch his own act, even when people gave him copies. He didn’t like the disconnect of seeing his own facial tics and hearing his own voice. Though he knew that sometimes it was inevitable, which is part of the reason he worked out a fairly monotonous patter and pretty reliable poker face when he was on stage.

But suddenly everyone was crowding around Sean’s iPad and quieting down to listen to the tiny Erik on the screen.

“I’m sorry if I’ve been kind of distracted tonight, I feel pretty distracted, but I had a gay crisis this week.”

Erik cringed and avoided the looks directed his way. He’d forgotten that was his opener to this impromptu segment.

“Yeah, hilarious. You laugh, but I wasn’t fucking laughing.”

The thing was you could see the cringing doubt on tiny youtube Erik’s face, even through the laughter.

“So you all know who Charles Xavier is? Yeah, yeah. What? One woman over there just shouted ‘fuckable.’ Lady, you don’t—you have no idea.”

Tiny youtube Erik shook his head woefully and looked down at the stage, while the audience laughed and whooped, seeing the where he was going.

“I met him. I saw him in person at this industry gig last week. We were both presenting awards for—I don’t know—the tenth best way over indulged studio execs can praise themselves for getting underpaid actresses to show their tits on camera. The eighth best way is blowjobs, obviously. But I met him backstage and… Jesus fucking Christ. He is fuckin’ beautiful… Gorgeous.

“I have, no lie, been yankin’ it all fucking week because of that guy. Maybe I wouldn’t mind if he didn’t come at me like the ninja of homosexual wet dreams… I’m so fucking angry about it… I think it was Wednesday. One of his movies was on Netflix, and I’ve never actually seen one of his movies. I know. I just knew who he was. But I finally was watching one. It was good. He’s good in it. I’m watching the movie wondering how they’re going to convince the duke to let the kids out of the mill for lunch or whatever the fuck, when suddenly I look down and I’m jacking it. Fully erect. One hand around the shaft, one cupping my balls, and I’m the most confused asshole on planet Earth. All I could do was stare at my dick with horror and begrudging amazement. I think I yelled at the screen something like ‘you magic motherfucker, how are you doing this to me?’”

There was another moment where tiny youtube Erik had to pause and left the excitement dissipate a little. It was Erik’s crowd for the most part—people who knew who he was and were there to see him. So they knew his routine and while Erik was used to expressing a lot of emotions, most of them weren’t about personal anecdotes. The crowd was aware they were getting something unusual.

“I’ve called buildings beautiful. I’ve called paintings beautiful. Never have I ever called a dude beautiful. But you know what? Fuck it. He’s fucking beautiful. His face… is like a warm spring day. He is the human version of sunshine. And I mean why wouldn’t you want to put your dick in sunshine? That sounds glorious.

“And he’s kind of little and adorable too. You just want to pick him up and pet him and then, you know, fuck the shit out of his mouth. I want to fuck him. I do. I want to suck his dick, which is kind of a profound feeling really because I’ve never said nor thought that ever before in my life. I want him to fuck me. I feel all virginal and daring all at once. I’m having this whole panoramic gay fantasy in the span of thirty seconds. I almost had a heart attack. And blew in my pants. At the same time. Jesus fuck.”

Tiny youtube Erik paused again while scrubbing his hand through his hair. Erik never realized how much he did that. Or how much of a tell it was.

“I saw him backstage. And it was just this little moment of quiet, you know. He was talking to someone else, looking gorgeous. I know how good-looking he is shouldn’t be shocking to me, he’s an actor, but it is. Anyway, he was talking and the girl he was talking with walked away and he still had this gorgeous, beautiful, amazing smile on his face. In Hollywood, everyone is so fake and so on all the time. It gets repulsive; it gets nauseating. And that look on his face stayed with me all week. It haunted me. Because it was this moment of complete honesty. He was so caught up in feeling fond of that woman that it lingered.

“So I thought about that all week. I thought about the work I do and the show I write for. I thought about entertainment. Because I tell you all I’m honest, or I try to present myself as someone who’s honest, who cuts through the bullshit. But I’m not honest. I lie all the time. I hide more often though. And I’m this guy who usually makes fun of people like Charles Xavier. But in that moment he was one hundred percent honest and open. And it was beautiful and touching.

There was kind of tension Erik could feel from the audience, echoed in what he could feel from his co-workers watching the video. The audience was confused and surprised, but the sudden earnestness. Tiny youtube Erik let silence grow, let the audience feel the connection they were making.

“So, you know, an erection might have been an inappropriate reaction to that.”

The video cut out on most of the laughter. Most of the time, Erik was an applause comic. People laughed, sure, but more often than not they clapped, like they were saying he did a good job and deserved recognition, not that he was particularly hilarious. But the laughter after that set had been a relieved mix of laughter and clapping and whooping—like they were proud of him.

Erik really didn’t know what to think about that in light of seeing himself so bare and honest—well as bare and honest as it was possible for him to be in front of people.

The rest of the writers around him giggled or patted him on the back. Erik was bracing for the jokes about coming out or finding his inner softness or whatever, trying to decelerate the patter of his heart.

By the end of the day he’d received a few dozen emails of pictures of gay porn which may or may not have been worse than the few dozen emails asking him to do interviews, a coming out card signed by most of the people in the office, and a life size cardboard cutout of Charles Xavier that appeared next to his office when he went to piss.

“You’d think you people might be busy working,” he said, trying to glower but finding it difficult with Charles Xavier’s bright blue eyes following him around the writers’ room.

Angel snorted. “Like you aren’t checking the hit count on youtube every ten minutes.”

He was not. It was a lot closer to every half hour. Mostly he’d get restless and search for links or articles to the video, read headlines like Comedian Gets Graphic About Gay Crush on ‘Forgiveness’ Star! and then consoled himself by watching videos of trash compactors crushing old cars.

It was comforting.

Later, after he went home and suffered through Magda’s surprising amusement with the viral video, he went to youtube to see the count had crept up past ten million.

He was totally screwed.

~*~

After two weeks, everyone had mostly forgotten about it.

That was the lie Erik was telling himself after two weeks simply because he got to the point where he wasn’t getting a dozen people a day mentioning it in front of him. He had since cut his exposure to the internet in half, but his peers and co-workers were still talking about it. It was more than just teasing. They thought it was brave. They thought it was meta commentary on stand-up in general.

Some douchebag on HuffPo called it challenging.

Erik wanted to die.

Not least of all because his ten-minute rant on Charles Xavier induced orgasms was what he was going to be remembered for when he died, but also because he couldn’t stop masturbating.

Not even Magda knew.

Well, she didn’t until she came home early from work and found Erik jerking it to a nine-year-old BBC movie about the author and spy Aphra Behn, called Obscuring Aphra, that just happened to have a sex scene with a young Charles Xavier in it.

After Erik went to the bathroom to deal with his dick, clean up, and stall for a few minutes so that maybe Magda would go somewhere, he came back out to find her still there. She was sitting on the couch, watching the TV with an angry frown.

Finally she pulled away from the screen when Xavier’s character walked out of frame. She shook her head and leveled Erik with a blank face that somehow foretold a tsunami of wrath.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Erik?”

At the last second he pulled his hand back from scratching through his hair. “I thought you thought it was funny,” he said, feeling the attempt to lighten the mood fall short of even being an attempt.

Magda sighed and crumpled on the couch, letting her face fall into her hands. Her briefcase was still next to her feet. And she hadn’t even taken off her heels yet, which was always the first thing she did when she got home. Something about her dark hair falling past her shoulders made Erik feel guilt like a sunken weight in his gut. It was far, far from the first time he’d gotten off without Magda. She knew about the porn saved to his laptop. He knew about the vibrator at the back of the closet, set apart from the other toys. This felt like a line had been crossed. Erik felt suspiciously like he’d been caught cheating.

“I think that was before I knew it was true,” she muttered. “I thought—that was just supposed to be a bit!”

Erik swallowed hard. “It was. It was an observational bit.”

Magda laughed a little bitterly. “I don’t even know why I’m so… I thought it was just a provocative bit. Everyone’s been giving you a hard time at work. You’ve been running like crazy. You seemed genuinely upset by the video.”

He’d told her he’d switched from running every-other-day to everyday to deal with the stress. That was technically true, but the stress relief was largely due to the masturbating he did in the shower afterward. Then, of course, after he came on the shower walls he remembered that he couldn’t stop jerking it because of some fucking guy, one fucking pretty guy, which basically put in him an endless loop of shame and confusion.

“I was. I am.”

“Not enough to not jack off in the living room to—what even is this? What is that? You can seriously get off to this, this guy dressed in a freaking 18th Century frilly dress and a fright wig?”

The wig was fucking ridiculous, but Erik stopped himself from pointing out that he was actually rocking those buckle-y man-tights. And the sex scene had been nude and thankfully wigless.

He could not, however, stop himself from muttering, “English Restoration. Technically.”

He was very glad looks couldn’t kill.

“Sorry.”

After a long moment of trying to let the tension subside without his help, Magda sighed and relaxed enough to kick her shoes off. When Xavier’s character happened to walk back into frame she looked at the TV like she was challenging it to a fight to the death.

Erik failed to stop himself from running a hand through his hair.

“I am sorry I didn’t tell you, I guess. I mean I don’t really know what to think. It’s just a weird, stupid… crush.”

When she looked at him, her face had transformed into something unreadable. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or concerned.

“Are you gay?”

The question felt a little like a punch. His gut reaction was immediately blurt no but he stopped himself.

He’d never had to really even think about sexuality and his identity before. The pursuit of sex had never been a big deal to him. He and Magda were both busy a lot, so their sex life was sporadic at best. He never would have said anything, but before the Xavier incident if Erik jacked off two or three times a week, he never even felt the need to go to Magda. So he knew he was atypical, but he’d never thought of guys before.

Even as a teenager, he spent little time scouring for porn or beating off. He supposed speaking out as a mutant and outrage had taken a lot of room at that stage in his development. He had been a troubled teen. His ability had saved him from death in a terrible car crash, but it hadn’t been enough to save his parents. After that, he was despondent and put with human foster parents who weren’t at all happy about his nightmares short-circuiting the electricity and pulling out wall fixtures. He got involved with mutant politics and what amounted to a mutant gang to rebel. There was too much time in his adolescence spent running from the police and talking to psychiatrists. Flirting and dating seemed like a luxury he didn’t have the time or energy for.

In general, Erik had a relatively low sex drive, but never considered a problem, medical or otherwise. He thought he’d been pretty fortunate in that regard. And before Magda, if he did want sex, hooking up hadn’t been hard. So the fact he could go this long in his life without thinking too much about sex didn’t seem weird to Erik.

Magda was his first and only long-term relationship. They met in college at a campus M-Now meeting for mutant rights activism. Erik was the Mutant Students Liaison and Magda was older, already graduated and working for M-Now in the New York office. They hit it off right away, as alike as they were. They even sort of looked like they belonged together—both tall and thin and athletic. They were both blunt and honest enough to admit that similar interests and common personalities, but not passion for each other sustained their relationship. Obviously they were compatible and got along well enough, but had never been head-over-heels in love.

But that had never been a disappointment to either of them. Magda was a realist who didn’t want to wait for some fairytale notion of true love when she could be perfectly happy with a companion who fit her requirements. She told him that on their fourth date. Erik, twenty at the time, thought that idea was revolutionary in its simplicity. All he’d ever thought about marriage and family before was that he wanted a mutant wife and, hopefully, mutant children to carry on his parents’ name. So it seemed perfectly sensible to go along with her.

Twelve years later, Erik’s life had been set for so long it was a shock to even think about this. Thirty-two years old was too old, in Erik’s opinion, to be experimenting with sexuality.

But basically for the first time in his life, Erik was feeling passion for sex. For the first time he thought lust was an appropriate description of what he felt for another person. He couldn’t count the times in the last three weeks he’d thought of fucking Xavier, or being fucked by him, or just coming with the image of the man’s face in his thoughts. He could count on one hand the times wanting to fuck Magda had driven him to distraction.

“I don’t—“ He faltered. “No. Of course not.”

“Because you’ve never been like most guys. For a long time, I liked that. I liked that our relationship wasn’t based on sex. I liked that we could be independent of each other. But I never thought you might be…”

Erik felt a spark of anger and had to stop himself from yelling. “I’m not gay. It’s just this one… Thinking one actor is hot doesn’t make you gay!”

“Okay, no, but it’s there. It’s there and you’ve been thinking about him and jacking off for weeks now apparently.”

“Yeah, so. Don’t tell me you don’t masturbate.”

“Yes, Erik, I do. I have to. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since we had sex?”

He hadn’t really thought about it, but it had to have been before the Xavier thing. “A few weeks, I guess.”

“Two months,” Magda said flatly. “Over two months now. And to be honest, the sex hasn’t been good for a while. At least since the last year in New York, it was just routine for you. And before that you were on tour all the time. I guess part of it’s my fault because I let it slide. I wanted to try new stuff or therapy or something, but I didn’t say anything because you were finally getting so much work. And honestly, I thought with increased stress and attention, you were just tired all the time.”

She laughed harshly. “I thought you weren’t interested at all, but apparently you just weren’t interested in me.”

Erik opened his mouth, hoping for something rational and comforting to arrive in his brain, but it never came. But Magda was on a roll.

“And do you know the last time we talked about having kids was?” She didn’t let the pause go on very long, because it was clear Erik knew and didn’t want to say. “It’s been years. We used to talk about the strength of the mutant family and raising children in power-positive environment all the time. We were going to start five years ago, then four, but it was always wait til this contract is signed, wait til I get done with this tour.”

“We can still do that. We still have time—“

“I’m thirty-six, Erik! I’m going to be thirty-seven in two months and I don’t want to be pregnant in my forties.”

“Well, we could…” Erik didn’t even want to speak. Apparently there was a hell of a lot more to deal with than his gay crush.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea with the state of our marriage?”

In that moment, Erik was spectacularly fucking angry it took him twelve years to realize his marriage was much more like having a sexually amicable roommate than a spouse.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”

To his surprise, Magda didn’t get angry and storm off, which is probably what he would’ve done. She just looked disappointed, with a touch of now you understand what I’ve been going through, took her briefcase into the bedroom, and shut the door behind her.

Erik silently volunteered to sleep on the couch that night.

~*~

In the morning, after a mostly sleepless night and possibly the most tense bowl of cereal in history, Erik wrote down I love you, so couple’s therapy maybe: y/n? on a note and passed it to Magda. It may have been juvenile, but the idea of speaking into the palpable early morning kitchen tension was unbearable.

But she smiled a little and handed it back with the ‘y’ circled, so it worked. Later that day, she even sent him a text: Put Forgiveness on the queue. We might as well enjoy him together.

Erik and Magda scheduled an appointment with a therapist and had sex. It wasn’t exciting or particularly passionate, but it was pretty romantic, he supposed. They had a nice dinner and there were candles involved. He got to remind himself that he really truly was aroused by breasts and the hot, wet melting feel of Magda’s pussy.

It was nice.

Naturally, the feeling of pride and success he was riding on for a few days had to end.

Charles Xavier had a guest spot on Conan.

Obviously the video was brought up. Erik went into watching the video with the intent to suppress everything that resulted from it. Even the part where Charles’ eyes focused and said “Oh yes, I’m a fan.” But after they showed a clip and was asked how he felt about it, Charles responded by looking into the camera with his red-lipped, cheeky grin. His voice was smug and mellifluous at the same time. His eyes twinkled impishly, but then again they often did.

“I’d like to see him put his money where his mouth is.”

After that, Erik’s brain just kind of shut off as he watched Xavier’s winning smiles and keen eyes, heart pounding as though he was halfway through a run.

Later Sean sent him a picture of Charles Xavier shirtless in one of his movies as a joke. Erik saved it in his this is not pornography folder.

 

~*~

For months, Erik could mostly put the set behind him. Or at least offset the damage.

He and Magda were going to couples’ therapy twice a month to talk through their intimacy problems. If he’d known he was going to spend that much money just to talk and get lame ideas on how to be spontaneous and romantic he would have just done an internet search and set aside some time every week. But Magda seemed pleased with it, so that was all that mattered.

Erik’s fascination, or crush, or spontaneous latent gayness, for Charles Xavier did not end. He still caught up on Xavier’s whole filmography and read articles intimating what movies he might be in next. And he tried not to think about how often he’d search Xavier’s name for new videos of interviews. Now that he was having more sex with Magda, he really couldn’t stop himself from wondering what it might be like to fuck him when he was actually fucking her. He did his best to prevent Magda from knowing he was pondering the mechanics of gay sex, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew.

Which is one of the reasons why when she asked if he’d be interested in her wearing a strap-on he froze up in terror.

After a few weeks of being beaten down by his own curiosity they went to The Pleasure Chest. Magda joked about naming it Charles. Erik laughed and tried to ignore how guilty that made him feel. Because when, eventually, he was on his hands and knees feeling the foreign sensation Magda’s typically blunt nails dig into the front of his hips, and the even more foreign sensation of being breached and filled, it was easy to think of it as one of Charles’ characters sliding in and out of him. He bit his lip so hard trying not to say anything blood seeped in a thin line around his gums.

They’d written off the Charles thing. Magda said he was a fanboy and Erik accepted that because he was obsessed. And there wasn’t anything more to it. After all they’d both had fantasies about other people. Magda genuinely thought the Charles thing was amusing after a while because it made them deal with their boredom and try harder at their marriage.

He felt closer to Magda than he had in years, but strangely like the way one might feel close to a sibling. He loved her. He was irrevocably fond of her. But he always assumed that passionate love, like his parents had, would be this irresistible pull—like the gravitational feeling he felt for metals. When he imagined life apart from Magda, or life after her, he didn’t feel very distressed. The appropriate ardor was just something he couldn’t muster for Magda.

There was nothing wrong with not feeling that way, but he was curious if he was missing out on something.

~*~

One evening Erik and Magda were having one of their Xavier nights—a provision that came into being after the We might as well both enjoy him text. It was some unknown little coming of age style—ugh—romcom—uuggghh—called Reservation for Twelve that was pretty decent, but not spectacular. None of those things had stopped Erik from seeing it three times. So really, thank God for Netflix.

It was at Erik’s favorite part—where Xavier’s character runs into an old friend of his that derails the love story for a bit—when Magda said, “He doesn’t look good in this movie” apropos of nothing.

Erik looked from her to the screen to her to the screen to her again, none of which gave him any explanation for her ludicrous statement.

“He looks fine.”

Part of his brain did think fine as fffaaiiiiine with a z-formation snap, for which he was deeply ashamed and blamed Angel and Sean entirely for ruining him.

“Doesn’t he look a little…?” She scrunched up her face without finishing the sentence.

He couldn’t tell if she was trying to imply something about his slightly rabbity, or maybe some other kind of adorable herbivore, face, or if she just couldn’t think of the right word. It didn’t matter though because he was beautiful.

“He looks demonstrably normal. There’s nothing wrong with his face.”

“I’m just saying he’s not that attractive in this movie. He’s got a big nose.”

Apparently the look he was giving Magda was a little aggressive because she held up her hands in surrender and went back to eating her popcorn.

Erik spent the rest of the movie wondering if maybe Charles Xavier being beautiful wasn’t a universal fact. If it wasn’t, he couldn’t fathom it. Everybody and their dick went crazy for Angelina Jolie, who did nothing for Erik. What if he was just as peculiar and marginal in his regard for Xavier as he was for everything else?

During the scene where Xavier’s character and his old friend wound up wrestling on the kitchen floor in a fit of surprisingly good physical comedy, Erik decided that even if no one else did see he was obviously right about Charles Xavier it didn’t matter.

People were always wrong about everything anyway. They could go fuck themselves.

~*~

The end of the first season of The Chromosome Closet and its renewal for another found Erik at a studio party. Emma Frost’s wrap party wasn’t technically mandatory, but Armando had convinced him it would be a tragic idea to not be seen by studio execs—“And maybe you can even talk to them, you know, make nice” was probably hoping for a bit much.

It took about eleven minutes for Erik to want to throw himself off the roof. There were dozens, but it felt more like millions, of people he didn’t know. If that wasn’t horrifying enough, several of them asked him outright if he was a producer and then wordlessly walked away when he said no. His previous agreement with himself to stay for an hour and pretend he had somewhere else to be quickly winnowed down to forty minutes, and then a half hour. Give or take, and preferably take, five.

Then he saw him.

Of course he did. On some level, Erik wasn’t even surprised.

How many courses had he set to continue his life as normal and stumble over the image of Charles Xavier’s face instead?

It was like he was in a movie, standing on the palatial balconied roof of some too-wealthy Hollywood executive’s second best home. And there, past the lit pool and the palm trees, suspiciously alone, was the object of his obsession. Erik’s stomach clenched in worry, hating himself for even debating to go over there. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew it was something that would only end badly.

He could go over there and what? Either somehow be charming, impress Xavier, and then torture himself by deluding himself into thinking he could be friends with him—or repulse Xavier by being a weird stalker-pervert and know forever Xavier hated him.

Then in mid-suffering, a thought moved through him like a shock to the system.

Maybe the reason he couldn’t “get back to normal” was because this was his normal now. Maybe Erik was destined to live the life of a quasi-famous, semi-queer mutant infatuated with Charles Xavier. And maybe it wasn’t Charles Xavier being thrown in Erik’s path.

Maybe Erik had already left the path to get Xavier’s attention.

Maybe Erik had done that set at the Comedy Store knowing full well people would talk about it, and that his world in some way butted up against Xavier’s. Maybe the moment he’d seen Xavier as a stranger backstage at that awards ceremony he’d wanted to get the man’s attention.

Erik couldn’t tell anymore.

And he was standing in Charles’ periphery the moment he could admit to himself he didn’t care to resist anymore.

For a second, he just looked at Xavier, wondering why he was so pale until his brain supplied the internet-regurgitated currently on location in Scotland and Erik hated himself a little bit more.

“Um, hi. Sorry to interrupt, but I should probably apologize,” Erik said.

When Charles’ brow wrinkled in confusion, Erik felt a brief flash of panic. Of course he thought about it on a daily basis, but the set and the viral video had been months ago. To Charles it was probably barely registered as ancient history in an immense tapestry of people wanting to bone him.

Charles laughed. “Of course I remember. I’m just confused as to why you think you need to apologize.”

After a pause, something sunk in. “Oh right. You’re a telepath. Of course you are. I mean, I knew that. I just forgot to remember that before I walked over here. Okay, this is already embarrassing. I think I’m going to drown myself in the pool now. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come over here.”

“Erik, wait,” he said, almost tentatively. “Can I call you ‘Erik?’”

He snorted. “Of course you can! I’m the one who came over here when you’re trying to be alone. I just wanted to—I hope I didn’t cause you any trouble with my set. I know I probably should’ve done that a while ago.”

Charles shrugged. “You didn’t. And you were just being honest.”

“How do you know that?” Erik cringed at the sound of his own voice. “I’m sorry. The first thing I do is come up to you like some jackass who thinks he knows you and then I yell at you.”

“I’m a telepath. Remember from about five seconds ago when you’d forgot?”

Erik laughed uneasily. “Oh yeah.”

“And if I’m honest, it was a bit flattering. Graphic, but flattering.”

“Really?” Erik tried to remember how many times he’d reiterated the sentiment I’d like to fuck his face.

“Well, you couldn’t know this, but I’ve been a fan of yours for some time.”

Erik thought for second all the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere.

“Please don’t just tell me that because it’s the Hollywood thing to say.”

“I’m not,” Charles said, honestly looking a touch offended.

Erik was becoming certain that either Xavier was the greatest liar in the world, or he must have felt everything as purely as possible. Because Charles’ face up close was as easy to read as the first time they’d met, and as easy to read as it was in movies.

“I saw you once in New York,” Charles continued. “It wasn’t long after Kelly’s reintroduction of the Registration Act. And everyone was talking about this brilliant young mutant comedian, so a friend and I went to see you at Maxine’s. You were amazing. You were so ferocious and funny. I was quite enamored of you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Charles shook his head, and smiled a close-lipped smile that still managed to shine. “I was a little hurt when I saw you at backstage at that show and you clearly didn’t know who I was.”

Erik was sure his jaw was on the ground.

“Wow… fuck me,” Erik said, finally breathing again.

A devilish smirk slid across Charles’ face. “Don’t tempt me.”

Erik laughed. Because Charles was joking. Surely. Because that’s what those sorts of people did—joke about being in a constant state of sexual availability. He was sure.

For a moment, Erik was going to thank Xavier for his time and the compliment, and leave to savor the moment alone. Or possibly with Magda. But when he thought about taking a step back, he couldn’t. After all, how many opportunities would he get to talk to Xavier. And now, it wasn’t just an attraction. He was a fanboy now, he supposed.

“So can I ask,” he said, moving further into Xavier’s personal space, “is Smut really going to be as raunchy as the book?”

When Charles’ eyes lit up with glee at the question, Erik couldn’t ever imagine wanting to walk away again.

~*~

A few weeks later, when he informed Magda he was going out to lunch with Charles Xavier, Erik walked out of the door pretending he hadn’t seen her deer-in-the-headlights look.

~*~

 

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you!”

“You’re a telepath, for fuck’s sake. How can you not believe me?”

“Well, obviously I believe you. I just don’t believe the reality in this case. You are the curmudgeonliest man I’ve ever met. Whereas I’m an absolute delight.”

Erik scoffed more loudly than was necessary in order to get his point across. “I enter your previous statement into the bank of evidence of reasons why you’re worse than I am.”

“Oh, please.” Charles waved his hand as though he were swatting away a fly. “You know it’s true.”

“You’re insufferable,” Erik said, but totally unable to keep the affection out of his voice and his expression.

Charles grinned, but that was as close as Erik would ever get to having Charles admit that he was indeed insufferable. It didn’t change how right Erik was in the least.

On the other hand, however, Charles was an absolute delight. It had only taken a few hours of knowing Charles to prefer him to all other company.

They’d been hanging out for over three months, not constant as Charles had five weeks of filming in Canada and Erik had a Comedy Central gig in New York. It wasn’t like they could get together every day, or even every week. They were both busy. But the time still flew by. Erik had never hit it off so well with anyone.

Erik had never been able to talk so easily with anyone else.

By the second meeting they had, Erik was already telling Charles things about his parents’ death when he was thirteen, and his subsequent exposure to the more extremist factions of fringe mutant rights’ groups. He told him about never finding another mutant to rely on until Magda. He even admitted to how Sebastian Shaw, an older mutant and figure in the underground separatist group he followed, manipulated him into beating up a human. Shaw had said he knew the human had raped a little mutant girl, but the guy was just a drug dealer under Shaw’s employ who had screwed him out of money. But the guy wound up in the hospital. The only reason Erik got off with a year of community service was because of his parents’ recent death and his young age.

It was stuff Erik never used in his act, or even talked about. Erik had never told anyone outside a court-appointed therapist that.

But Charles took the revelation and the abrupt intimacy in stride.

“You’re not alone in that, my friend. We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all misused our abilities somewhere on the road to learning them. I don’t think those mistakes define us, but rather our attempts to put them to rights.”

“There’s a difference between making a mistake and hurting other people on purpose.”

Charles stopped him with a look. He cut straight to the heart of the reason Erik told the story, without Erik even knowing why. “Don’t doubt that you’re a good man, Erik.”

“You can’t know if I am.”

“I do know it. I know it from the way you speak, from your writing, from your mind. And if you wanted, I could show it to you. Just know that if there weren’t reason to believe in you, I wouldn’t.”

After that, Erik was hooked.

For his part, Erik got to learn that the cheeky smirks and easy pleasant smiles weren’t an act. Charles walked a strange balancing beam as a telepath. He was as open as he could be with his expressions, but only with positive emotions.

“It’s my offering, I guess. A way to counterbalance the telepathy. I don’t want to take their thoughts from them, so I try to give something of myself in return.”

Erik told him that was unnecessary. Telepathy was the gift he was born with. He didn’t hold any contract with the world to negate who he was if the world was offended.

Charles dismissed the notion, because it was like that.

They disagreed mostly about Charles more cavalier approach to his public image as a mutant. He insisted that not everything needed to represent the mutant brotherhood. Erik said that donating money wasn’t the equivalent of being involved in the community.

Charles was simultaneously enchanting and infuriating. He had incredible, insightful things to say about the mutants’ rights movement and how to progress, but never said those ideas publicly. He was erudite, creative, and eager to be helpful. He was also blind to the possibility that he might be wrong about things. He was as stubborn as Erik, if not more so. He was as opinionated as Erik, probably more than Erik was. And he was as assertive as Erik. Though Erik was willing to admit Charles was definitely nicer about it.

But Charles was by far the most understanding person he’d ever met. He dealt with Erik’s moodiness, his relentless pessimism, and his often loud and public disdain for any politician who failed to meet Erik’s standards when it came to mutant issues. That last one was sometimes asking a lot because Erik’s standards were perfection and “any politician” was code for all of them. Charles had even accepted Erik’s obsessive need to drive everywhere himself with aplomb.

Erik had tried to explain himself once, about how it was a need from the accident, about how he couldn’t breathe right every time someone other than him sat behind a wheel. But Charles just gave him a small, warm smile and said, “It’s okay, Erik,” with the confidence and certainty of someone who actually believed it.

They phoned each other nearly every day, which Erik hadn’t even realized until Magda pointed it out. Erik mentioned it by way of apology, attributing it to his lack of experience with close friends.

Charles responded with: “If I’d ever had a friend worth talking to this much before, I’m sure I’d agree. Until such a time as we can’t stand the sight of one another, let’s proceed as usual.”

Their beliefs were quite similar, but not entirely the same. So naturally they argued incessantly. About politics and mutant rights; style and aesthetics. About entertainment and how to enjoy it. About how Charles’ obsession with Teen Wolf was wrong, borderline illegal, and more embarrassing than he thought.

They were currently arguing about who was more argumentative.

Erik had said he’d never argued with anyone more than Charles in his life. Which was, in Erik’s mind, clear evidence that Charles was more combative as the only consistent factor in all those other arguments was Erik. Charles only thought he wasn’t because he wasn’t as blunt as Erik usually was. It was a theme on an argument they’d had twice already—determining who was worse to talk to. It was equals parts putting blame on the other and proudly claiming the title for one’s own.

“Also ‘curmudgeonliest’ isn’t a word.”

“It is so.”

“Oh my god, you can’t be serious. You can’t argue for something that isn’t a word.”

“It is so! ‘Curmudgeonly’ is an adjective; therefore ‘curmudgeonliest.’ Most curmudgeonly.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “You are going down.”

Erik had never been so happy in his life.

~*~

Most evenings, he wound up not telling anyone when he was hanging out with Charles.

There was nothing sordid to it. It was just that people didn’t seem to understand how or why Erik and Charles were friends.

Erik was kind of famous, even more so after the video. Charles, of course, was an international film star. So when people saw them running together or coming out of a bar or at mutant rights event, they did more than notice. Celebrity news joked about their relationship occasionally. But Erik’s friends and co-workers seemed unsettled by it, looking at Erik like he wasn’t quite sane whenever he mentioned Charles. Magda looked just as baffled, but a little offended.

Dealing with all that wasn’t typically a huge problem, but every once in a while Erik could tell when Charles was tired of hearing people think.

One day, after texting with Charles throughout lunch, Erik left work a little early and absconded with Charles to save him from a boring evening of schmoozing at a press event.

“Really, Erik,” Charles said, getting into Erik’s car with a grin and buckling his seatbelt. “It’s like I’m being kidnapped.”

Erik grinned, knowing it was the full-toothed predator grin that unnerved everyone but Charles. “That would probably entail a little more kicking and screaming and a little less strapping yourself into my getaway vehicle.”

Charles reached over the gear stick and touched Erik’s thigh for just a second. “I should’ve known you’d rescue me.”

“Well, your emoticons got out of control there towards the end of lunch. It was depressing.”

Charles laughed. “Where are we going? If we go to a bar my PA is going to kill me.”

“No, I’ve got something better. It’s a surprise.”

“What is it?”

Erik rolled his eyes. “A surprise. Don’t look either.”

Charles whined about it, but as far as Erik could tell remained ignorant of the surprise for the car ride.

Erik had been a little nervous. He was driving about an hour out of the city to a little Podunk town he stumbled on during touring once, which would seem like a lot after they got out of the city. But Charles didn’t mind the drive, and seemed relaxed and talked easily for the whole drive.

When they arrived, Erik couldn’t hide the surprise anymore, because the type of building had an obvious purpose.

“A planetarium?”

He thought he might have to do some convincing, but Charles looked ecstatic. Erik tried not to let the look on Charles’ face warm his insides. After all, Charles got ecstatic about green tea flavored ice cream, children in Halloween costumes, dogs in Halloween costumes, and interesting specials on Nova.

“The Carhardt Planetarium. It’s from the Fifties. They have vintage space race posters and model rockets in the lobby. It’s cool. I stumbled across it when I was on tour a couple years ago. You know, you have to find things that keep you out of the bar sometimes. If it’s stupid, I think there might be a theater. Or we could just drive back.”

“No, this will be wonderful.”

When they were inside, Erik was relieved to see it was the same as it had been. The whole place had probably been refurbished, but it looked like something out of the 50s. Some of the things were originals. Erik could tell from the fixtures. The older nails and pipes were degraded, rusty, but had a higher iron content. He watched Charles look at the vintage posters about the space program and models of rockets from the 50s and 60s with delight.

“It’s marvelous, Erik. Thank you. Did you want to be an astronaut as a child?”

Erik felt for the internal structure of one of the models above their heads and spun it on its strings. He shrugged.

“I wanted to be a blacksmith. And then a vampire hunter. And then a ventriloquist. I only liked rockets as much as I liked anything to do with big metal things. You?”

Charles chuckled and shook his head. “I was eminently sensible as a child. I wanted to go into biomedical research. I was actually planning on being a geneticist until I got my first job acting. But I love space. It’s so immense and alien. It’s the entirety of unknown world, yet it’s so…”

“It’s what we come from,” Erik supplied. “We’re made of the same elements.”

Charles smiled fondly, biting his lower lip a little, before pushing his shoulder into Erik’s playfully. Well, he hit Erik’s chest more accurately as he couldn’t quite reach Erik’s shoulder. Out of instinct Erik threw his arm around Charles shoulders—he fit so neatly under his arm—and walked to the box office for tickets.

The planetarium was small and old. So the show wasn’t exactly cutting edge or incredibly exciting. And the material was standard basics of the star system that most grade school children heard over the years. Charles would lean into Erik’s shoulder occasionally to whisper additional snippets of information. The chairs smelled musty, but there was no one else there due to the early hour.

Afterwards, Erik drove them to a nearly abandoned diner. Halfway through the burger and fries, Charles’ cheer seemed to drain out of him. He was pushing around his knife in a pool of ketchup, rubbing tired circles in his temple with his other hand. Erik didn’t think the sudden drop in attitude was from the food.

“I didn’t even think to ask you if you just wanted to be alone.”

“Huh?”

“Telepathy headache. I took you out the big city, but I’m probably just as annoying.”

Erik rubbed a hand through his hair, darting a look out the diner window. He’d meant it as a joke, but it sounded more desperate to his own ears. It was a fear of his. That Charles would rifle though his frantic insecurities and laugh at how pathetic Erik really was. How much of a liar he was.

Charles smiled, but it was forced. It didn’t sit well with his eyes.

“Not at all. I’m just tired.”

“I can tell. Which is why I should’ve left you alone.”

“I would much rather spend time with you than be alone. It’s only that…”

“What?”

Charles shook his head. “It’s nothing. Your mind is not at all a burden on mine. Certainly not annoying.”

“Okay, but something is still bothering you.”

Charles’ foot pushed reassuringly against Erik’s. “You know me very well.”

“I like to think so. So tell me.”

Charles sighed, looking nervous for the first time off a movie screen. “I suppose I do rather enjoy spending time with you. As though it’s a comfort to be around you.”

Erik felt his chest tighten. “Yeah. I mean, me too. I’ve never had a friend like you.”

“Yes. Friends.” Charles took a long drink from his glass of water. “Erik, do you ever wonder why we’re such good friends? Why we get along so well?”

Like most mutants who went to public schools, he’d once had a mandatory Saturday class on blocking techniques for telepathy. Ever since befriending Charles, Erik had availed himself of the closed-doors-open-doors technique emphatically and frequently. That time it felt like there was a particular door that wanted to open, with a light shining from the inside. But Charles was right there, so Erik was most definitely not going to open it.

Erik cleared his throat, his mouth very dry, and scraped his fingers against his scalp.

“I suppose, we’re just alike. We’re not the same, but we’re similar. Or opposites of the same thing.” Before he could stop himself, he said, “Like bookends,” and immediately regretted it because it was so obviously and tragically gay.

“Like magnets,” Charles suggested quietly.

Erik forced a laugh. “I can’t believe I didn’t say that.”

Charles nodded, but went very quiet. More quiet than he ever was while conscious. Erik could feel the tension as strongly as he could feel every passing car outside the diner. He wanted to break it, but knew what would remain if he did.

When they left, the drive back to L.A. was silent.

~*~

“Tell me what you want,” Magda said, breathily. She was riding Erik’s cock, making the whole bed bounce with her thighs, leaning back from her hips, forcing Erik to look into her eyes. “Tell me what you want.”

She’d asked that in therapy over the months. The shrink had too. Erik, you need to verbalize your needs. He didn’t speak openly enough.

But he couldn’t tell her the truth.

At that moment, with his heart racing and his cock aching, what he wanted was to not see her face. He wanted to close his eyes and see Charles’ face. Or better yet, fuck Magda doggy style. Or even better still, get on his hands and knees and have Magda fuck him with the strap-on and pretend it was Charles.

At least he wanted the fucking mirror gone.

Magda had always had a full-length mirror, but she’d moved it near the bed recently. She’d wanted to watch.

And for the first few times, Erik had liked it. He’d liked seeing his dick slide wetly in and out of her. Or he’d liked seeing their dildo go in and out of him. Seeing her thrust forward and feeling it fill him out at the same time. But like all fucking, it was repetitive and not endlessly fascinating. At least not to him.

He swiftly got over the novelty and grew sick of seeing their bodies together. Without the initial turn on, it was just distracting. All he could do was look at the mirror and every time it became more disgusting. They were both rail thin and bony, with taut, lean muscles. When he saw himself fucking Magda, he could easily see him fucking himself. Or a morbid mockery of sex, slipping further into the mirror and seeing only their bones clawing at each other.

It was all he could do to stay hard inside her.

“Open your eyes. Look at me.”

Erik bit his lip. All he wanted was to close his eyes and see Charles’ face. Just a glimpse to keep him going. Fucking Magda was the only time he could think of fucking Charles. Charles was cautious not to be too invasive in his mind reading, and stayed away from certain areas like sex. So Erik locked it away into something he knew Charles wouldn’t look for.

Erik pulled her tight to him, tucked her right under his chin and started thrusting up into her from there. She grabbed onto the headboard and brought her hips down to meet his pace.

It was pretty easy to switch. They were about the same size. Magda was thinner, less muscular, but Charles was shorter, so if you just moved the mass around slightly they’d be about the same weight. Charles a little heavier, a little fuller. He had a bigger, rounder ass than she did and Erik tried to imagine the slap of his cheeks if he fucked into them. He held her tight, thankful she had small breasts, but squashing them so they were immobile.

Charles would be tighter— smoother inside. He couldn’t bring himself to ask Magda for anal. It would be too transparent. Charles’ shoulder wouldn’t be so bony under Erik’s jaw. His hair shorter and more ticklish to Erik’s nose. Charles would ride his cock while gripping onto Erik with all the strength of his arms, squeezing more tightly than he’d ever felt. Erik would squeeze back, feeling the firm flesh of his back, and hold him just as tightly. Charles wouldn’t try to squirm away because it wouldn’t hurt Charles.

He tried to imagine what it would feel like with Charles’ cock pressing against him, leaking on his stomach.

Without the mirror distracting him, he could almost hear Charles’ voice muttering his name.

After he came, it was clear Magda wasn’t even that close. Not even trying to eke out an orgasm for herself from his fading dick, she pulled off of his lap and fell back onto the bed. He waited for something—her to go to the bathroom, get her vibrator, yell that she knew he was still thinking about Charles—but nothing happened.

He slid an unsure hand up her thigh and delved into the lips of her pussy. He crawled over her so they were missionary, which was no problem now that he’d actually shot his load. She didn’t object or encourage, so he wasn’t sure what to do other than stroke up the wet length of her lips to massage her clit.

“Do you want me to finger fuck you?”

“No.”

She let out a small moan when he pressed harder on the little tag of skin and nerves and stroked it.

“Faster?”

“No.”

“What do you want?”

She stared at Erik silently for a long time, lazily sweeping her fingers through Erik’s hair. Her eyes were dark and unreadable. Part of him wanted to ask her what was wrong, wanted to soothe her, but he knew what was wrong. And he knew if he asked, she’d answer. She stroked a finger over his eyebrow. He tried not to think that she seemed to be memorizing his face, like she wouldn’t see it again.

“I want you to tell me what you really want,” she replied.

For a second, Erik paused. He could see the giant chasm that was positioned behind that door. It was a door he’d spent every moment of the last several months knowing Charles desperately trying not to open. He knew that if he started to answer her, he’d tell her everything that had been creeping in the back of his mind with increasing frequency.

If he answered her, he’d tell her how he thought of Charles virtually every time they fucked. He would confess that the only reason they’d been fucking so much over the past six months was so he could pretend he was fucking Charles. He’d wind up telling her how he wanted every moment with Charles to last longer.

If he answered her, he would say that he did feel passion, that he did desire someone bone-shakingly, mind-bendingly with intensity, and that he did have an irresistible gravitational pull for someone.

It just wasn’t for her.

If he answered her, he would have to admit, out loud, that the last thirteen years of his life were built on a decision to take the path of least resistance. That he still believed in creating strong mutant families, and wanted children.

Just not with her.

He sunk back down to kiss down her chest and belly. As far as distractions went, it wouldn’t work for long, but at least he could avoid it for another night. He started eating out her pussy, really putting his neck into it, despite the sour taste of her wetness and his jizz combined. He slid his fingers inside her hole and sucked her clit until all he could hear was the sound of her squealing, aching orgasm.

He wondered if, in some cultures maybe, good cunnilingus counted as an apology.

~*~

In retrospect, Erik should have known that finding solace in his best friend because of his marriage troubles, which were in large part caused by his unflagging desire to bone his best friend, was not a good idea.

~*~

It was far from the first time they’d gone to a bar together, but it was the first time Charles and Erik had gotten drunk at a bar together.

Over the course of a few hours, Erik’s line in the conversation went from “I’m pissed and I don’t want to talk about it” to “I think my relationship with Magda is over and I don’t know what to do” to “Oh my god, I think I wasted most of my life, Charles—get me another beer if you’re getting up.”

Too many beers in, Erik realized Charles could throw back the scotch a little too well. It hadn’t been long after Charles confessed his fears about becoming like his alcoholic mother, so Erik subtly pulled Charles’ drink closer to him as they talked and drank it for him. Well not so subtle that Charles didn’t give him a lazy, exaggerated eye roll.

“I’m not going to become alcoholic because of a few fingers of scotch. I’m commiserating with you and your pain. Your marriage will be… Well, I’d like my scotch back anyway.”

Erik scowled. “You can’t think my marriage is over. You don’t know anything about my marriage.”

Charles’ eyes went wide in disbelief as he took the glass out of Erik’s hand. He didn’t comment, but in a transparently I’m-not-commenting way.

“What? Okay, shut up, telepath, I know, but what?”

“It’s just that… I think you know what you should do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Erik, tonight was the longest you’ve ever spoken about your marriage. You told me you wished she’d been your sister, rather than your wife. And it seems as though the strongest impulse to keep you from divorce is breaking your routine.”

“No,” Erik scolded. “I don’t want to hurt Magda. I mean it’s more than that. Obviously. But I don’t want to hurt Magda.”

Quietly, but not so quiet Erik couldn’t hear, Charles said, “But you’ve already done that, haven’t you?”

“What the fuck do you know about it?” Erik’s tone was equal parts accusatory and fearful.

Charles sighed, and took his phone out of his pocket, pressed a few buttons, and put it next to Erik’s ear.

“Um, hello, hi. This is… This is Magda Lehnsherr.”

Erik almost wanted to object to the sound of Magda’s voice on his voicemail. Charles made a keep-going gesture.

“I know we’ve never talked, but… this is awkward. But I need to ask you about Erik. I wouldn’t except I just can’t get him to talk to me. He’s been shutting me out more than usual… Are you and Erik having an affair?

The silence on the message that couldn’t have spanned more than a seconds seemed to still them even longer. Charles had obviously already heard the message, but he looked sad. And disappointed. Erik felt like he was drowning in the urge to stop the message and comfort.

But it wasn’t Magda he wanted to pull into his arms and reassure that everything was going to be alright.

“I don’t—I promise you I’m not looking to start some kind of Maury-esque public shitshow. I just want to know. I need to know. I don’t… I’m not sure why I’m calling. Because, I’m pretty sure you are. If not, God, he’s definitely in love with you, so it’s weird if you’re not. He’s never once had that look in his eyes when he’s looking at me… The point is I’m not going to fight you for him or anything stupid. Erik and I were never high school sweethearts or star-crossed lovers. It was practical and we stayed together because it kept being easy and practical. It made sense. But it’s been anything but sensible for a while now. Before you even came on the scene. We’ve been trying to fix our marriage for so long. I finally asked myself why we’re trying to save it and I couldn’t think of a reason.”

Erik felt that statement sink into him. He supposed it could have been a blow, but really it just made sense to him.

“That’s not—Don’t get the wrong impression. I care about Erik deeply. I’m not fucking happy about this. It’s not that I don’t want him to love me, but I’m not going to go Ophelia because he’s in love with someone else. I just want him to—oh God, why am I telling you this?

“Listen, the point is, I just want to know. That’s all. And if it turns out that I’m crazy and you have no idea what I’m talking about, then I think you and Erik need to have a long conversation.”

After a pause long enough he was about to put down the phone, he heard Magda’s voice start up again.

“Uhhm, oh what the hell. It’s not like I’m ever going to get another chance. That movie ‘Fugative’ about the gun magic or whatever. That was awful. You never should’ve done that. Big fan of ‘Vile Bodies’ though.”

Erik sat there for a long time aching to say something. He wasn’t proud of it, but he spent a lot of his silence not pondering the width and breadth of how much he fucked up his marriage, but searching for something funny to say to break the tension.

Though, strangely, Magda had kind of done that for him. He didn’t like it. Nor did he appreciate Charles doing it a moment later either.

“I was going to say it was magnanimous of her to pay me the compliment, but I only had two scenes in Vile—”

Charles shut up when he saw the look on Erik’s face.

“When did she call you?”

“Earlier today. Must have been while you were at work.”

“And you didn’t open with that? You didn’t tell me immediately?”

Charles frowned. “No. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to tell you at all.”

“What? Why would you do that?”

The desire to read Erik’s mind was radiating from Charles. Erik could always tell. He’d have this ravenous curiosity to his eyes. This time it was paired with the abrupt sound of Charles being offended or wounded somehow.

Charles shook his head.

“Because I knew you wouldn’t acknowledge one word she said. Because the first thing you did when you heard that message was close up your mind entirely.”

“You’re not supposed to be looking—“

“And you keep trying to start a fight with me instead of wonder why your wife was so sure we’re having an affair she called me to ask about it!”

Charles leaned back from the table, pushing his hand through his hair with too much oomph. He’d just gotten it cut for a role and must have forgotten. It was a strange thing to notice, especially under the circumstances. He and Magda both felt their marriage was over, but were desperately skirting the issue to each other. His wife just called his best friend to accuse them of having an affair. He should have been thinking of how to apologize to Magda, and what he could do to convince her he was committed. He should have been driving home, or to the closest late night florist, on the phone, desperately trying to bail out the sinking ship that was his marriage.

But he was sitting in a bar, measuring the minute movements of Charles Xavier’s body, and watching the ship go down.

“You can’t honestly tell me you’re surprised,” Charles continued.

“Well, I have to say, yeah. I’m a little surprised considering we’ve never actually slept together.”

Charles laughed, but it was a distinctly unhappy sound. “Not that you’d be able to tell from your wank bank.”

It was a little funny that it was Charles’ face that slowly slipped into a crushed, heartbroken panic when that was how Erik felt.

“Erik, no—“

But Erik was already up and halfway to the door. He didn’t realize until he was outside, half-jogging to get to the parking center to get to his car, with the cold air assaulting him that he was hot. The sweat on his forehead was starting to turn to ice and his hand was wet gripping the cell phone.

He pressed all the digits of Magda’s number before he realized the significance of calling her on Charles’ phone.

“Hello, Char—Mr. Xavier?”

“Oh god. Magda, I—“

“Erik? What are you do—Oh my god.”

“Magda, I’m sorry.”

Then there was just dead air on the phone and blinking flash of Erik’s Wife Ended. If the fact that a four second conversation had probably definitely broke the last straw in ending his marriage wasn’t funny, the fact that Charles had at some point, after being accused of having an affair with Erik, saved Magda’s number was fucking hilarious.

~*~

It turned out Erik was wrong about the phone call being the last straw. He should have known. It could always get worse.

~*~

A few moments later, while Erik was still staring at Charles’ phone, Charles jogged over to Erik.

“Erik, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have said that. It was cruel. I’m sorry.”

Charles’ cheeks were pink from running and he looked far too young in his suit. Unless Charles’ suits were extremely tailored he wound up looking like a little boy. It hadn’t been noticeable before but the running had rumpled him up. Now his sleeves were hanging too far along his wrists and his waistcoat looked too big. Erik almost started laughing. Charles’ damn waistcoat fetish. It had been a nice bar, but not that nice.

He groaned. He very suddenly wanted to be the type of man who wouldn’t have neglected his marriage to this point, but if he had, wouldn’t be more concerned with how unintentionally adorable Charles Xavier was than his wife.

Erik shrugged. “It’s true. Now I just feel like a jackass for trying to pretend you didn’t know.”

“No,” Charles shook his head and closed the distance between them. “It was never like that. I always knew, obviously. But I didn’t—It was never crass to me, Erik. From the first time you saw me backstage I felt your attraction to me. It’s hard to ignore lust. Sometimes it’s repulsive. Sometimes it’s flattering. But in you it was stunning and honest and—“ Charles paused like he didn’t want to admit something, but did anyway. “And stimulating. After all, I was attracted to you long before you knew who I was.”

Erik swallowed hard. “When you saw me do stand up in New York.”

Charles nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We are both on some extremely dubious moral ground right now, do you really want to play the why didn’t you tell me game when you’ve fantasized about me the entire time we’ve known each other?”

Erik scrubbed his hand through his hair and groaned loudly. “What are we going to do?”

There was a tense feeling of expectation cutting through the silence that forced Erik to look at Charles. He was smacked with a sense of déjà vu. Charles was wearing almost exactly the same expression he was wearing in Forgiveness when his character had to depart from his true love to fight in the First World War. He looked pale with dread and hopeful at the same time.

“Is there even going to be a you and me tomorrow after you’ve talked to your wife?”

Erik couldn’t stop himself from sliding his hand over Charles’ arm, not even realizing they were right in each others’ space, just inches away. “Of course, you’re my—“

Erik had no way to finish that sentence. He had no idea what Charles was. He just knew that whatever it was the word had to be immense and outside his vocabulary.

Before he could fall short of that word or falter in explaining what it meant, Charles kissed him. The pressure, the brush of Charles’ chest against his, his hand pulling down on the nape of Erik’s neck, was there and gone before Erik could even take it in and think about it and compare it to nearly a year of fantasies waiting for that moment.

“I shouldn’t have done that. You’ve got to talk to Magda.”

Erik knew that. Erik agreed. What he should have done was put an end to proceedings, taken Charles to his apartment, and then gone home to talk to Magda about getting a divorce.

But there was a bright, stabbing hunger in his chest. He felt like something was being pulled out of him and the trail led directly to Charles. Some inky curl of paranoia in his mind whispered that if he didn’t do it now Charles would leave and he would never get him back.

Erik leaned down to pull Charles into a second kiss. He kept pulling until the world narrowed in to Charles and the warmth of his lips and where is body met Erik’s. There was a spreading weightlessness to his limbs because he was kissing Charles Xavier. Charles’ face was cupped in his palms. Charles’ hands were pulling at Erik’s shoulder and waist. He wasn’t pretending the press of Charles’ mouth, the almost-there nip of his teeth.

When they broke from the kiss Erik had to rest his forehead against Charles’ for a moment, not moving. His hands had moved to Charles’ sides and he could feel the beating of Charles’ heart under his palm. He could feel Charles’ chest expand and contract as he breathed in and out. Erik never wanted to let go of him.

Erik cleared his throat. “Should we go to your apartment or is there a motel closer?”

~*~

The motel was closer.

~*~

Between the search for a bathroom with a condom dispenser, the memorization of what few sex scenes Charles had done in his career, and the extensive catalog of masturbatory daydreams Erik had engaged in, the first time he had sex with Charles bordered on surreal.

There was a moment when Erik was sitting on the motel bed and Charles was standing knees with Erik’s cock in his mouth, while his fingers, lubed up with free motel room lotion, fucked in and out of Erik’s hole. Erik couldn’t stop the laugh from escaping his throat, even when he gripped hard on the base of his own shaft. Charles looked up questioningly, his red lips still loosely wrapped around Erik’s head, which quickly deflated all humor from the situation and replaced it with a slow leak of semen on Charles’ lips.

“I was going to say something about how this wasn’t the first time you’ve done this to me, but I’d rather not.”

Charles responded by stroking his prostate and sucking the come out of him.

~*~

The second time a few hours later, however, was achingly real.

Erik had Charles on his back, finally feeling Charles’ cock against his stomach as he slowly rocked into him. They were a knot of limbs, with Charles’ legs wrapped around Erik’s waist and their arms locked around each other’s shoulders. They were too close to do anything but kiss and breathe their shared patch of air.

Everything was quiet. There was only the faint sound of bedsprings and the papery sound of skin moving against skin.

Erik could feel with each breath the things they both refrained from saying. There were so many things to say from questioning the intelligence of what they were doing to describing how amazing it felt to finally have his dick inside Charles. Erik wanted to tell Charles how there was no way he could understand how beautiful his eyes were. He wanted to ask if they were making love because he was sure he’d never done that before, but whatever this was it felt like it. He wanted to tell Charles his favorite sound would forever be the gasp Charles made when Erik first licked the underside of Charles’ cock. He wanted to say I love you on an endless loop.

And he could see the same hesitation before those words on Charles’ face, but he heard them.

“I love you,” Charles whispered, barely audible over the sound of their breathing.

Erik kissed him like he might be able to taste the words lingering on his lips.

Afterwards, they stayed silent and close and awake, just touching each other like they’d never felt human skin before, or might never again, for as long as they could.

~*~

It was about the seventh time that he registered the buzzing of cell phones, that Erik decided he might as well embrace consciousness.

It would prove to be a terrible mistake.

After listening to about a dozen messages being reamed out by his agent, and skimming through over a hundred texts, many of which amounted to little more than DUDE, while Charles dealt with similar demands from his phone in the background, Erik noticed there were a significant lack of messages from Magda.

On a whim of self loathing, Erik opened a search bar on his phone and typed in “erik lehnsherr charles xavier.” He managed to refrain from vomiting over the number of hits that search produced, but he wasn’t so sure he’d be able to maintain that strength. Like he suspected, the first dozen images returned were of him and Charles kissing in the parking garage from the night before. He was about to throw his phone just to cope with some of the violence welling up inside his body, but instead he highlighted one of the pictures and looked at it. And then another and another.

Some of them were grainier than others. They were all from the same general angle, but some showed more of Erik’s back, some had more of Charles’ side.

It meant that there hadn’t been one lone scumbag with a telephoto lens, but several. Probably someone from the bar had seen Erik and Charles intimately arguing and called some tabloids. That wasn’t confusing. Something else was.

He waited until Charles hung up for a moment. Immediately the phone rang again, but Charles turned it off, and sat on the bed with a sigh of resignation. When Charles finally looked up, Erik spoke.

“Why didn’t you know there were paparazzi?”

“What?”

“You’re a telepath. Why didn’t feel their skulky minds skulking around the parking garage?”

Charles frowned, his eyes narrowing darkly. “I don’t know. Why couldn’t you feel their cameras?”

“Too much plastic.”

“I was distracted! I was a little more concerned about you than whether there were paparazzi in the constant tide of minds I feel. Are you actually blaming me for this?”

Erik knew he didn’t need to say anything. But he was pissed, and everything that was laid before him would irreparably change his life. If she weren’t right at that moment filing for divorce, Magda soon would be. He was about to get drowned in another round of invasive public embarrassment. And he wouldn’t even be able to apologize to Magda properly and soften the blow of falling in love with someone else by saying that at least he hadn’t technically cheated on her.

Something about that grated in his mind. The night before he hadn’t been able to resist, convinced that if he walked away from Charles he might not get another chance. But it had been at the expense of sparing Magda.

So even though he knew he shouldn’t have said anything when he was angry, of course he did.

“Maybe this is how you wanted it. I don’t know.”

“Excuse me?”

“What do you have to lose? I mean this is just extra publicity for you. And you get me freshly divorced!”

What he expected was something equally cruel shouted back. That was what he wanted. It’s what Magda would have done. It’s what Erik would have done. And Erik could recognize the tense anger in Charles’ face and posture. But he forgot about Charles’ eyes, which spoke a million things, which he’d spent so long memorizing for any and all expressions.

Charles’ eyes were near tears and betrayed.

“That’s what you think of me?”

Confused, he paused. He opened his mouth to speak—

But when he opened his eyes again, he knew something was wrong. He felt like he’d been woken out of a deep sleep. He knew without having to think about it that Charles had blanked out his mind. Charles was gone and the room felt like it was echoing with absence.

Erik ran to the door, but halls were vacant too.

~*~

His house was similarly abandoned.

Magda’s car was gone. Certain things were conspicuously absent from the living room. He didn’t even get to the bedroom closet before he got his definitive answer—which was an actual tabloid print of Erik and Charles’ kiss stapled to the bedroom door with the words Fuck You written above it in permanent marker.

When he opened the door and saw the strap-on dildo they had once called Charles lying on top of the bedspread—he had to admit, that was pretty fucking funny.

~*~

Magda had come back after a few days and several dozen phone calls for more of her things. He hadn’t told her any lies about reconciliation, only that he wanted to apologize for letting everything get out of hand.

“I’m filing for divorce,” had been the first thing out of her mouth.

Erik couldn’t say it was a bad move.

They talked for a while. Erik helped her pack her things and move them into her car. They attempted to pinpoint the exact point where their marriage had fallen beyond repair.

After Magda shut her trunk, she said, “Maybe the reason why we can talk amicably about the downfall of our relationship while you’re helping me leave you is the same reason why our marriage was never going to be one of the whirlwind romances of history.”

Erik tried to shrug it away but it stung. “Who needs romance?”

Magda frowned. “Maybe I don’t, considering how long I was willing to maintain the status quo, but I think you might.”

Erik tried hard not to think about Charles and all the movies they’d gone to, all the times they’d had conversations for hours, and all the ways they’d gone out of their way to avoid saying I love you. At that point it had only been a week since Erik had fought with him for no reason and he was beginning to suspect that fucked up was an understatement for whatever condition Erik had. He checked his phone approximately every half hour minutes to make sure he hadn’t somehow missed a call from Charles. And it was only every ten minutes that he wanted to call Charles to apologize, or hear the sound of his voice.

But he didn’t. Something stopped him every time.

Before she left—for good apparently, as she’d basically immediately called her old office in New York to see if she could get her old job back—Magda leaned against her car and said, “I tried very hard to get you to be in love with me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I guess I don’t think you’re supposed to try. I mean you didn’t try to fall in love with Charles. You just did.”

Erik flinched. He wasn’t about to tell his soon-to-be-ex that he’d already alienated the man he’d cheated on her with, but she could obviously tell something was up.

“I put a lot of effort into trying to salvage our marriage, Erik. And it didn’t work. So for my sake, don’t fuck things up with Charles too.”

He thought a lot about that, the last few years of his marriage, and what he’d said to Charles the morning after they’d been caught. He paced around the house for a good hour, picked up his cell phone, put it down, and opened a word document and titled it This Is Not Comedy, and started typing.

Over the next few weeks all he really worked on was developing that document. It was really nothing more than observations about all things he’d done wrong. A pretty big sub topic of the document was Reasons why I’m a Dick. Some of them were funny, but most of them were just brutal because they were all the reasons he wasn’t happy and they were all his fault.

It became something of an obsession. To the point that was mostly what he was doing at work. When Armando called him out on it, Erik replied rather petulantly that at least he was coming to work. Angel pointed out that considering he hadn’t shaved in weeks, he seemed to entirely subsist on caffeine and nicotine now, and it was on the day he’d come in wearing sweatpants, it was a pretty low point.

So he added another sub topic called Controlled Sulking.

Every night he looked at his phone for a solid minute before setting it back down without calling Charles.

So he added another reason to Reasons why I’m a Dick: “I’ve spent thirteen consecutive nights listening to Mystique’s best torch songs drinking Charles’ favorite scotch instead of apologizing.”

Erik did his best to avoid all the offers for interviews and opportunities to appear on different talk shows for no reason suddenly. But when he got called to Emma Frost’s office to talk about an hour of televised stand-up, Erik got an idea.

~*~

A month after the tabloid picture, Erik picked up his cell phone, touched Charles’ name, and pressed ‘Send.’

~*~

I didn’t really expect you to answer. Who knows? You might be busy. But if you’re not, I understand. I don’t want to talk to me either. I don’t know why I couldn’t call you until now, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about attacking you the way I did. I’m sorry for making you think I blamed you for my marriage falling apart. I’m sorry for not talking about my… my problems sooner. I’m sorry for saying I wanted to fuck your face in front of a stand up audience. I’m sorry for pretending I wasn’t attracted to you.

I’m sorry for not telling you I love you. I’m sorry for not telling you I loved you every day since I first thought it.

I love you, Charles.

I miss you. I think of you every day.

And I hope you forgive me. I hope you talk to me again. I want to see you again, but if you don’t feel like you can see me in person, please watch me on… January 11th. I just arranged a thing. HBO is filming my act at Madison Square Garden, live, which is… big, to say the least. But it’s new stuff. I’ve been writing it for the past few weeks. It’s… You might want to hear it.

Oh, it’s at 10 Eastern.

And I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

~*~

Erik looked at the giant poster of his face with big blocky letters proclaiming This Is Not Comedy disdainfully.

If the flames were there to indicate how incendiary he was going to be for his big HBO special, people were going to be sorely fucking disappointed. A good portion of his fifty-two minutes was dedicated to how much he loved and/or wanted to apologize to Charles Xavier. And it was entirely devoid of biting satire. Also, eponymously devoid of comedy, so it’s not like they couldn’t say they weren’t warned.

He was pretty sure he was going to die. For sure metaphorically, but possibly literally as well.

To say Erik was nervous was an understatement that made him want to punch through walls. In the lead up to the big show he was fairly certain he’d watched every video of cars being compacted that the internet had to offer. As well as every video of Charles he could find.

Charles had not called him during the two-month lead up to the show. That didn’t entirely surprise Erik. What did surprise him was that he wasn’t angry about it. Charles was proud and stubborn, like Erik. Erik was still confident Charles would talk to him again one day and that was all he needed. He was sure Charles would watch the show tonight.

And he knew Charles was still thinking about him.

On his birthday, when he knew Charles was filming in Canada, he’d received postcard with no inscription but the words I miss you. On the front was a picture of the Carhardt Planetarium under a full moon. Erik had kept it folded in his wallet ever since.

So nothing was going to keep him from doing this show. Not even his burning desire to vomit.

When the five minute call came along, Erik drank some water, smoked another cigarette, and got a text from Magda that said Break so many legs.

Then there was the two-minute call. He didn’t think he’d get an answer, but before he handed his phone over to an intern, he sent a text to Charles that read: This is for you. Except the part where I might throw up. That’s not for you.

Then Erik walked on stage.

For the first minute or so, Erik couldn’t remember anything. The music died off, and the clapping died off, and then there was just him. The stage was insanely hot. Thankfully he couldn’t see thousands of faces staring back at him, but he could feel them.

“So,” he started, pushing away the faces and television cameras, “most of you have probably come here hoping to hear any sordid detail you could scrounge about my incredibly public gay love affair with a famous movie star and the subsequent ruin of my marriage.”

He let the judgment sink in a little and felt it spread through the audience, which was good, because he was definitely judging them a little.

“Well, you’re in luck tonight.”

~*~

Erik collapsed in his dressing room in a daze. He was tired and sweaty. He felt liquid and melted and there was a ringing sound he couldn’t get out of his ears. But mostly he was impressed that his voice hadn’t given out half way through.

His phone was blowing up with people eager to congratulate him on a show they surely hadn’t seen. By the time Emma and various managers and venue people had been in the congratulate him and bullshit pander, he was envious of the days when show runners would tell him he sucked before they kicked him out. All he wanted was a shower and a smoke, and it was sure in what order. He spent the better part of Emma’s talk about ratings fantasizing about smoking and showering at the same time.

They all left when he discreetly implied that he needed to take a post-adrenalin dump, which was his second favorite way to get rid of people after a gig. His first favorite was pretending the nerves from the show made him incapable of reigning in his ability. He’d wiggle peoples’ glasses or beer cans for affect—sometimes shake the light fixtures. Then they’d scamper off in fear.

It was hilarious.

Erik compromised on his amazing hybrid shower/smoke plan by pouring a water bottle over his head and lighting up on the floor under the no smoking sign.

When he heard the knock on the door, he almost ripped out the doorknob, but contented himself to ignore it. He thought it worked until he heard an achingly familiar British lilt say his name.

Erik stood in the doorway for a long time, staring at Charles, afraid that he was hallucinating.

It was probably Erik’s well known, and now preserved for posterity twice, biases, but Charles looked more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen. His hair was a little longer, with just a slight wave to it. He was clean shaven again, his skin looking perfectly soft as usual, but freckled up like he’d recently been in the sun. And he had if Erik’s internet stalking was accurate. He would’ve just gotten back from Africa not too long ago. The backstage spots made his eyes luminous.

“You’re here,” Erik said, too stunned to say anything useful.

Charles nodded. He looked ready to speak, but then bit his lip.

“Did you get my message?”

Charles smiled at that. “Yes. I’m glad you didn’t vom.”

“No, I mean—“

“Yes. I got that one too. I should’ve called.”

“No, no. I get it. You wanna come in?”

For a second, Erik thought he might say no, but thankfully he came in and stood uneasily on his feet. He declined a water. Erik was afraid to stand away from the door in case Charles took that chance to run.

“So, I didn’t think you’d come to the actual show. You didn’t need to. I thought you would just watch on TV. But this is better. Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Did you get my postcard?” Charles said in a way that Erik would’ve said was blurted out if Charles ever blurted anything.

Erik took it out of his wallet to show him.

Charles nodded, then shook his head a little frantically. “Carls Blavier?”

Erik laughed nervously. “The lawyers said I shouldn’t say your name. But it’s not like everyone and their mother didn’t know what happened.” He’d used that once, then switched back to Charles anyway.

“Did you think I’d sue for defamation of character?”

“No. No, I didn’t, I just—“

“Erik, calm down. I want to… I want to thank you. I want to thank you for the show and apologize.”

“You don’t need to apologize.”

“Yes I do. I listened to your message, god, I don’t know how many times. I was really hurt. After the night we’d shared, and then you were so angry. I felt betrayed. Which was confusing because I basically split up your marriage. Then you left me that message and I… I melted. I knew I couldn’t face you because I’d take you back without a second thought. But I was angry, Erik. So I stayed away because…”

“You’re stubborn,” Erik supplied.

“Yes.”

“And proud.”

Charles eyed him suspiciously. “Yes. Erik, what—“

“I know,” Erik said with a grin. “I love that.”

“Why aren’t you angry?”

“I just spent the last hour explaining why I don’t deserve to be angry.”

“That’s not true.”

“Well, maybe in general, but in this case, it is. I understand. I’m not angry.”

“I ruined your marriage.”

“No, I did that. Magda and I probably never should have gotten married.”

“I ignored you for months.”

“I knew you’d come around.”

Charles frowned, but it was all Erik could do to keep from kissing him.

“Charles, I love you. I knew you’d come around. And you did. Earlier than I expected, even. We should celebrate.”

“Erik—“

“Have you forgiven me? For everything?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do you think you could ever love me again?”

“Erik,” Charles said wearily, sliding his hand around Erik’s. “I didn’t ever stop.”

Erik pulled Charles close, leaning down for a kiss but stopped abruptly.

“I love you. I think we should start over.”

Charles gave him an unimpressed look. “Start over how?”

“You know, not scrub our brains clean of memories starting over, but cleaning the slate sort of. Date, like normal people. Be honest.”

“Like in movies? The can-we-just-start-over starting over?”

“Don’t look skeptical. Those are your movies and your movie logic.”

“Not in my movies.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Have you by any chance fallen in love with Hugh Grant while I was away and mistaken him for me?”

“Don’t be gross,” Erik said, hugging Charles’ waist a little more closely. “Start over with me.”

“Well… we never were properly introduced.”

Erik couldn’t help but grin as Charles stepped back, cleared his throat, and held out his hand.

“Hello, I’m sorry if this is a bad time. After this big show and everything, but I just wanted to tell you, I’m a big fan. I saw your set about the Registration Act in 2007. I loved it so much. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. You were so handsome and passionate. Then I got to meet you again and found out how intelligent and bold and dedicated you are. And I fell in love with you. My name is Charles Xavier.”

Erik took his hand.

“Hello, Charles. I’m Erik Lehnsherr. I love your movies. I love your face. I love how warmhearted you are. When I met you I couldn’t believe how genuine you were and you made me feel passion for another person for the first time. I fell in love with you so hard it scared me. But I’d like to try again. You make me want to be a better person.”

“You make me want to be a better mutant. I would definitely like to try again.”

When they fell into each other’s arms again, Erik felt a familiar urge overcome him and tried to remember the phrasing.

“I’m feeling a pretty profound desire to suck your cock.”

Charles smirked and didn’t fail to deliver his part. “I’d like to see you put your money where your mouth is.”

~*~

It was a pretty good start.