Erik laughs like sandpaper, a rough, bloody bark indicative of the kind of frustration that blots out real words. At this distance he could count Charles' eyelashes if he wanted, could mark each single gray hair in the strand at his part (it had taken Erik until the morning after he'd decided to stay with the CIA to notice, and he'd thought then how old Charles must sometimes feel; strangely, he thought that made him like him just a little bit better), and this is dangerous: to be this close is to be known, to be unzipped at the ribs and let Charles get his hands into the barbed wire mess that is Erik's heart. He should pull away, and doesn't; it's too important to have an answer to this.

"If not you, then who else?" His gaze is fixed, something roiling in the gore-streaked waves that are the surface of his mind, shadows threatening to break the surface. "I'm no martyr, no sheep to be led peacefully to slaughter."

Erik smiles, and on someone else it would look sad; set over the long elegant curve of his mouth it breathes like mourning bells instead, a longing for something so lost it's unrecognizable. "You'd bleed for anyone, you wear the world on your shoulders and you pretend it weighs nothing, but I--there is no one else I would offer this to, Charles."

The question this begs, of course, is why.