To say that Erik's relationship with his own name is complicated would be a pitiful understatement, but words are often a poor substitute, so complicated it is. He's never been fond of the kind of person who uses another's name frequently in conversation as if this ensures some kind of intimacy, as if they're instant friends--
But then he hasn't used his own name in years. Erik Lehnsherr isn't inscribed into any of his handful of passports, or anywhere else that has survived the ravages of time. He supposes somewhere there is a ledger that bears the numbers tattooed on his arm, that theft of culture and history and family, but--with Charles there had been no point in an alias. Charles had known his name before Erik had so much as spoken to him aloud (or shouted at him, as the case had been). Erik's name in his mouth is--different, in a way he can't (or won't) conceptualize. He knows that it aches, like ice breaking up in his chest or the slow return of blood to a dead limb. Of that much he is sure.
And maybe that's how he's become this person who does exactly the same thing he's been so scornful of; he is aware of how often he calls Charles by name; it's always deliberate. It's a touchstone, as intimate and sharp as tapping a person on the inside of the elbow to get his attention. (I need you to listen, because you are all I can see.)
"You ask too much, Charles," he says, jaw tight, eyes striated in their permutations of constantly shifting color. The precipice he's standing on seems to loom in front of him (if he loses this now--he's always known how to be alone, and in his worst moments he's angry at how effortlessly Charles seems to have taken that from him) and he steps back, finally, leans away to cross his arms over his chest. "Don't ask me to do that to you. I won't."
He almost laughs now, helpless with it, arms loosed to gesture like he's trying to hold impossibility between his spread hands. "You really don't understand, do you? You've no idea of your own significance."
To Erik, that much is jaggedly obvious once filtered from the mass of noise in his head. "But then I suppose you have no idea what it's like to want something you can't have."
no subject
But then he hasn't used his own name in years. Erik Lehnsherr isn't inscribed into any of his handful of passports, or anywhere else that has survived the ravages of time. He supposes somewhere there is a ledger that bears the numbers tattooed on his arm, that theft of culture and history and family, but--with Charles there had been no point in an alias. Charles had known his name before Erik had so much as spoken to him aloud (or shouted at him, as the case had been). Erik's name in his mouth is--different, in a way he can't (or won't) conceptualize. He knows that it aches, like ice breaking up in his chest or the slow return of blood to a dead limb. Of that much he is sure.
And maybe that's how he's become this person who does exactly the same thing he's been so scornful of; he is aware of how often he calls Charles by name; it's always deliberate. It's a touchstone, as intimate and sharp as tapping a person on the inside of the elbow to get his attention. (I need you to listen, because you are all I can see.)
"You ask too much, Charles," he says, jaw tight, eyes striated in their permutations of constantly shifting color. The precipice he's standing on seems to loom in front of him (if he loses this now--he's always known how to be alone, and in his worst moments he's angry at how effortlessly Charles seems to have taken that from him) and he steps back, finally, leans away to cross his arms over his chest. "Don't ask me to do that to you. I won't."
He almost laughs now, helpless with it, arms loosed to gesture like he's trying to hold impossibility between his spread hands. "You really don't understand, do you? You've no idea of your own significance."
To Erik, that much is jaggedly obvious once filtered from the mass of noise in his head. "But then I suppose you have no idea what it's like to want something you can't have."