A/N: These are going to be some wordy drabbles. Lol. This is not a shuffle challenge or a songfic, but there will be lyrics at the top of each chapter. The title of this fic means, according to Wikipedia - 'fawningly', in Italian. It's a music term that indicates something is supposed to be played 'expressively and caressingly'. I just like the word!

Warnings: angst, Charles/Erik, slight Charles/Moira, depressed!Charles. Set at the very end of First Class.

Disclaimer: . . . I, flowermasters, do not own X-Men.

In my past, bittersweet

There's no love between the sheets.

Taste the blood, broken dreams

Lonely times indeed,

With eyes cast down, fixed upon the ground

Eyes cast down

'Shake Me Down', Cage the Elephant.

Charles Xavier looks at the chessboard and sits completely still. He stares and he does not move, shift, twitch, or even breathe.

Sitting here will not make him come back, his brain informs him logically.

Erik, moans his heart, broken and thudding in his chest.

Breathe, you bloody idiot, his lungs remind him, and he does, taking in a slow, quiet gulp of air.

He wheels himself closer to the small table where the board rests, and continues to stare. The pieces are all as he recalls leaving them – or at least, they probably are. It turns out Charles cannot remember nearly as much as he thought he could.

His hand jerks out in one smooth motion, upending the board and sending pieces flying everywhere. He just watches as they scatter, and it is with a bitter taste in his mouth that he notices the kings. The white king has landed almost under the nearest bookshelf, and the black king is beside it. They are facing away from each other, like the enemies they truly are.

The black king is abandoning the white, Charles muses. If there is a God, he is laughing.

His heart has taken up its rhythm again. Erik, Erik, Erik –

Behind him, the door swings open, and he turns to look. It is Moira, of course. She takes in the sight of him sitting all alone in the middle of the room surrounded by chess pieces, and pity floods off of her in a massive tidal wave.

"Charles," she says. "Let me clean up for you –,"

"No," he responds. "No, thank you, Moira. I'll get them later. I want to go outside. Will you take a walk with me?" No; you will walk, I will be pushed.

She nods slowly, her eyes damp and her thoughts sad and miserable, flowing from her head and into his like a continuous river of CharlesI'msosorryIloveyouohCharles.

He looks away, and gazes down at the pieces on the floor. "I'll pick them up later," he repeats, mostly for her benefit, but also partially for his.

"Let me," she says.

"Alright," he agrees absently, as she wheels him out of the study. But Moira will never pick up the chess pieces; Moira will be taken home soon, unconscious and unable to remember anything. Charles will pick them up a week later and put them back on the board, and he will place the pieces back into their proper spots, except for the kings. These he will leave in the center of the board, facing each other, almost as though the black king was preparing to embrace the white king. Almost as though they were not enemies, as though they did not each have their own respective side.

It will be a long, long time before he moves the kings apart, and when he does, it will be with the heavy throb of his heartbeat – Erik, Erik, Erik – and the acrid taste of want on his tongue.

A/N: I promise, most of these won't be so angsty. Thanks for reading, please review! :)