If nothing else, Erik finds Charles' deep and abiding smoothness incredibly entertaining, so there is that. He's not without a sense of humor, he cracks his dark little jokes as a way of spitting in the face of everything that should have stripped out of him the capacity to laugh, but Charles--he still remembers laughing for sheer joy that late autumn afternoon, that feeling like his chest was going to split open and laughing because there was no other way to let out the huge vaulting light inside of him.

Charles can make him smile for reasons other than the fact that he's angry, a sloping open grin without teeth. His face still feels unfamiliar with the expression; it aches, but not terribly. So he's wry rather than brittle when Charles attempts to foist caretaking on him, sits on the edge of the bed in a deceptive parody of obedience, which ...of course turns out to be the precursor to more or less grabbing Charles by the shirt tails and reeling him in until their knees bump. "I'm fine," he--well, he wouldn't call it lying, just a carefully structured and practiced pattern of ignoring his own pains. "As flattered as I am by your desire to play nursemaid."

Charles would be totally adorable in one of those huge flying nun hats, for the record. "It's only a headache, I can assure you I've dealt with worse."