Enjoy the Silence
Daydreamishly
He leaves with the intention of never returning. His resolve wilts not seventy-two hours later.
%
At the mansion, he is not met with welcome.
"Your fault, and if you know what's good for you, you'll get fucking dead, you son of a bitch," Moira MacTaggert sneers.
The students look uneasy, but won't refute her assertion, so he waits until dark and he sneaks into the mansion, the path to the bedroom being traced from memory. He does not meet anyone in the hallways, does not have any trouble adjusting the mechanics in the security with a wave of his hand. The door to Charles's room, distinguished from others in the vicinity only by memory, opens to a room slightly illuminated by moonlight that seeps in from the balcony door, past heavy curtains. He stands in a shadowed corner for two hours, hardly blinking, before relenting to a stiffness in his back and taking to an armchair near the bed. Time slips away. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but when he opens his eyes, Charles is staring at him, unsmiling, but also without condemnation.
Erik, he hears in his mind.
He stands and leaves. He leaves with the intention of never returning.
%
The night following next, he slips into the room, and this time, Charles is still awake, staring at the ceiling; does not look at him, not even a glance.
He takes a seat in the armchair, stares at Charles's stare until the latter closes his eyes and begins to breathe deeply and evenly.
He sleeps for forty-five minutes in the chair, wakes up on his own, and leaves with every intention of washing himself of this place forever.
%
He comes the night after and he can see Charles is asleep again, so he cautiously sits at the very end of the bed; Charles' toes are barely within his reach.
He is too self-conscious and nervous to even notice that Charles breathing speeds up slightly, and by the time he has calmed himself, so has Charles.
He leaves earlier than any time before, intending to never return.
%
A week later, he hears voices behind the door, and leaves without giving any notice of his presence in the first place. He is not needed here. He is not welcome here. He does not intend to return.
In the bedroom, Moira would stop speaking, noticing Charles's face twist into a grim expression with no discernible cue.
"What is it?" Her eyes go to the door, as though sensing Erik there, and starts to get up from the chair she sits in.
Charles quickly assures her it was only a pain in his back. She is not convinced, but does not pursue, and whether that has anything to do with Charles, it never occurs to her to wonder. They continue talking, late into the night. He kisses her the next morning, and she forgets it all.
%
Erik returns later that week, hears the uneven breathing that gives away the pretense of slumber, and sits at the end of the bed regardless.
He thinks about trying to speak, briefly, which had never occurred to him before. And then he understands that there is nothing to say.
Up at the other end of the bed, Charles gives a small sardonic snort that could have easily been either an agreement or dissent.
He stays until nearly sunrise, and then he leaves, questioning for the first time why he came back at all.
%
The next night he eases into the room, Charles watches as he softly closes the door behind him. Maybe the scrutiny makes him feel guilty, so he retreats back to the armchair. Charles is still watching him when he has settled, and their eyes lock for the first time since that first night.
Charles's eyebrows furrow, and he seems to be considering asking something. Erik waits, tensed, prepared to bolt when the hesitant spell of peace, of truce, is shattered.
Charles's expression eventually relaxes, points back towards the sky, and a rush of air recognisable as a sigh is emitted.
Erik sleeps most of that night, wakes to the first pre-dawn birdsong, and leaves, praying that he will find the strength to stay away this time.
%
He doesn't. He is back within five nights, although because he's been isolating himself, supposedly off on some secret project of his own, his concept of time is not particularly distinct.
He must look as haggard in appearance as he feels, because Charles looks concerned.
Leave it, he begs internally, and Charles frowns even more deeply, but keeps his thoughts to himself.
He falls asleep in the armchair almost immediately, and he doesn't dream. Three hours later he wakes apropos of nothing at all, and blinks at Charles, who has been watching him sleep.
He doesn't leave right away as he normally would, doesn't even have to fight an impulse to do so. He stays, sunk deep into the armchair, long legs splayed outwards.
Charles pulls his comforter up to his chin and closes his eyes, trying to sleep, but in the earliest hours of morning he leaves a very awake Charles, and hopes he will never see him again.
%
He reunites with his team, and manages to distract himself for two entire weeks before he is drawn inexorably back.
Charles isn't in his room that night, however. But he suspected that, as no one seemed to be in the mansion at all. Possibly another meeting with the CIA, trying to bargain for peace that should be inherent.
He passes a hand over a pillow, contemplates it, wonders if Charles' scent is on it, ends up in the chair anyway.
He stays there all night.
He doesn't sleep at all.
When he leaves, he isn't thinking about anything other than the hell of a day sleep deprivation is going to ensure him.
%
He comes back two nights later, relieved and regretful all at once when Charles is there, sleeping.
He considers taking up the spot on the bed, but he hasn't slept properly in ages, and if he's going to collapse, better to do it in the chair.
He dreams, but only half of the dreams are his, and a nightmare shocks the two of them awake simultaneously. He loses the dream immediately, but Charles is still gasping on the bed. Torn between the need to keep distance between them and the other to comfort Charles, he hovers on the edge his seat, clutching the arms of the armchair, clenching his jaw until Charles's apparent panic has subsided. He has decided to leave again when Charles sends him a glance so cutting that his knees weaken and he couldn't stand if he wanted to.
Charles continues to look at him intensely, expression unfathomable, before sighing at length and looking away, effectively surrendering to choice of whether to stay or not. Erik gets to his feet, but hesitates. Charles treats him like he is gone already; won't let himself look in his direction.
He understands for the first time the full impact of what he was doing by coming here, and knows also that he was powerless to stop.
He also understands what the nightmare must have been about.
He wants to run. He wants to stay. He wants to be so far he can't possibly come back. He wants to crawl so close he slips into Charles's skin. He wishes more than anything he'd been let to drown.
Don't be a fool, comes a sharp voice in his mind, not his own. He tears his eyes from the door, and Charles is looking at him again, angry in a way he's never seen.
But seeing the wheelchair unobtrusively waiting beside the bed, Erik reflects that the warning comes far too late.
%
He stops skipping nights, and though Charles has every reason to turn him away, or raise the alarm, or manipulate his thoughts into who even knows what, he doesn't. In fact, every night he steps through the door, Charles seems to relax his tensed muscles, if not welcome him, and once, a few weeks gone, he even offers a small, ironic smile.
What irony he is invoking, there was never any exact telling.
Sometimes Erik sits at the end of the bed, but usually he just lets the armchair absorb his weight as he drifts off into slumber.
He leaves every night wishing he wasn't coming back.
%
He awakens in the armchair with a startled half-cry, and Charles opens his eyes, pushing himself laboriously into a sitting position, and reaches out his arm.
Erik, he communicates wearily, Come to bed.
He can't. That wasn't what this was, that was what this could never be. He is across the room and out the door in less than three seconds.
%
He listens to the snores of Riptide and and Raven's restless movements from the other cots; their headquarters was hardly as comfortable as the school. He tries to distinguish between all the sets of breathing in the room. He counts dark stains on the ceiling. He recites Spanish poetry. He prays, a little. He does not rest.
Finally, a voice in his head, neither his nor Charles', growls irritably, Go to him. He gives a startled glance at Emma's cot; she is on her side, facing away from him. Go, she insists. I can't sleep with you projecting your emotions like a goddamn siren.
He scowls and quietly leaves the room, wanders the streets for a while, but ultimately returns with dark circles under his eyes.
%
That night, he goes out as everyone else settles down for the evening. No one pays him any mind; he has by now become understood as an insomniac who spends most nights idly roaming the city. Emma Frost knows the truth, of course, but has apparently kept it to herself, more likely more out of disinterest than any respect for personal boundaries.
He tries to conform to the mistaken concept of his whereabouts for about half the night before surrendering himself.
He gives up and goes home.
%
He closes the door behind him, knowing without looking that Charles is awake, looking as exhausted as he.
He doesn't say anything. He tries not to think anything. And mostly, he is too resigned to even care anymore.
He strips from the waist up and takes off his boots and slides into bed beside Charles, pressing against his side, and draping an arm across his torso. Physical touch is not as strange as it should be after all these weeks.
He sleeps until well into morning, waking with Charles's hand threaded limply through his hair, and has to climb down from the balcony to avoid being seen.
%
His dreams the next night, curled tight around Charles Xavier, are vivid, although when they wake up this time, hearts beating heavily, it is not fear in their eyes.
Charles grabs his jaw and drags their faces together, lips crashing, tongues thrusting eagerly, teeth nipping.
He rolls onto Charles without breaking the kiss, pinning his wrists, and knows all the while that this is destined to end soon, awkwardly, and unsatisfactorily.
Because of him, Charles will never have an erection again.
But Charles doesn't seem to care, and lets his button-down pajama shirt be torn open, and moans indecently when a hot, wet tongue comes in contact with his nipple.
Erik, his mind calls out frantically, Erik, Erik, Erik.
He continues to suck hard on his nipple, scratching with his fingernails down Charles's sides, all the while his own erection becoming uncomfortable. He cants his hips unconsciously against Charles, and surveys him with hooded eyes.
Touch yourself, he commands silently. I want to watch you come.
He pauses to give Charles a searching look before rolling off him and kicking off his pants and underwear. His cock is leaking precome, which he uses as lubricant as he begins to jerk himself off. Charles watches with a slack jaw, and begins grunting and groaning in time with his strokes.
Erik can't help but grin to himself. Charles is leeching off his masturbatory pleasure, feeling every touch on his cock like it was his own. He feeds him every sensation instead of making Charles take them from his head; knows it will feel even better that way.
Charles begins pouring obscene thoughts into his head, from encouragements to lewd images, some recalled straight from the dream that had started this.
A picture of Charles shoving his cock hard into Erik's ass.
He comes abruptly, both of them crying out in unison.
He wipes his hand unceremoniously onto the bedspread, and kisses Charles as slowly and communicatively as possible, knowing all the while that this is their last night.
He doesn't let himself fall asleep. He wants to be awake for every last second.
%
Erik Lehnsherr doesn't want to move, but the sun is rising. He stays defiantly flat on his back, Charles Xavier bare-chested and staring at the ceiling again beside him.
What are you thinking? A question rarely asked.
Nothing, comes the reply. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if I've ever thought anything at all.
He gets out of bed, slowly gets redressed, and then pauses, unsure of what to say.
Charles sits, braced against his headboard, and does not offer any solution.
In the end he settles on leaning down and placing a kiss on Charles's forehead.
He leaves, with the intention of never returning.
A/N: Gah. My first X-Men fanfic and my first adult work, all rolled into one. I hope this made sense, and that no grievous continuity errors were made. Please give me your feedback! What worked; what didn't? I love every single review, but anyone who tells me one aspect I could have improved upon in addition to whatever praise you deem necessary will be my hero. Thank you for reading!