→ my my let these songs be an instrument to cut here darling,

[mentis]

Who: Charles Xavier & Erik Lehnsherr. ( C L O S E D )
What: Reunions
When: Day 66
Where: House 8
Warnings: Emoting everywhere; it'll probably be gross. Also now touching is happening. And dirty talk. DON'T JUDGE ME.

It's been barely a few days and he still hates the emptiness of the house, despises the hollow feeling that echos the space in his chest. Being so thoroughly alone is not a new feeling but the potency of it is, the sensation of poison slowly dripping through his veins and making him slow and sluggish pulls at him. He can barely enter the walls of his home before his skin crawls with how quiet it is. Erik and Raven are gone, he cannot do anything to fight against the fact. He's impotent with it and it makes him wish he were more prone to violence than he is - surely he could smash the place up, rage against the cruel nature of the cape and it's shadowed rulers. All he's been able to do is clear out the kitchen of the reminder of his hidden evil, all he could do is spend his nights huddled in the bedroom on the ground floor, imagining the imprint of Erik on the sheets like some ridiculous thing. He's not used to this level of heartbreak, because that's what it is, a heart breaking for absent loves and he feels sick from it too often.

So he sleeps and then he leaves and spends his days in the library because information is a weapon and he can use that if he can't use anything at all. He refuses to be in that position again; used and then left bereft. Those in charge think they can tame the people here but Charles thinks they are wrong. He knows they are. So he's quick when he gets changed, when he lets water ease off the fingerprints of the monster he had been. It would do no good for him to fixate, not when he can get even instead. Not when next time he can protect the rest of them with knowledge. He has to hope he'll find it.

He's dressed and heading for the door when it happens, when, his thoughts go white and fuzzed out at the edges.

Erik slams into his consciousness so hard that Charles' knees buckle with the intensity of it. Erik. He's like a burst of sunlight at the edges of Charles' darkness, a familiarity that blinds him to everything else. He's half leaning, half holding on to the railings of the stairs for dear life, his breath coming in shallow pants as the relief rips through him. It's the same physical shock of cold that he felt the first time, no less magnified by the absence of huge bodies of water to throw himself in. Charles feels the jolt to his core, the sudden yank of belonging that has pulled him off his feet and threatened his balance. His eyes water and he wants to laugh or cry, wants nothing more than to just let it consume him because Erik is here.

But until the man himself is in front of him Charles is taking nothing for granted. Pulling himself on to his knees is easy, pressing shaking fingertips to his temple even more so. He hasn't been using his power but that doesn't matter, not when he feels the tendrils of anger call out to him like a siren call.

'Erik.'

Beyond the single syllable is a plea that Charles can't quite keep contained. Please be real. Please be safe.

Comments

[violenthearted]

Whether Erik is safe in any capacity may always be a point of contention, at least as far as he can tell it: if nothing else he is at least real. Present. Awake. Out of that dreamlike state from whence he can only call the most flickering of memories, as jagged as the wounds left by a serrated knife. (They might be memories. They might be dreams. It's like trying to remember through sluggish liquid--the pressure of straps at his shoulders, does he remember that or had it only been a thin black skein of nightmare? The red gout of blood against the pristine white of a labcoat and whiter tile floor, had he done that or just hoped for it?)

It takes only one fluid movement to pull himself upright, whereupon he discovers he's much the same as when he'd--he'd passed out, he thought, and wondered if he were crumbling into dust, golems not being known for their permanence. But now he is flesh and fragile bone and blood he can feel iron singing in again, and for a second that's all that matters. If he's a mutant, he knows himself, recalls coming here (or being brought, against his will) and all the passing strangeness that had happened since. That time, though, seems as much like a dream as whatever he's just fought his way out of.

(At least that's how he's choosing to look at it, until someone convinces him otherwise. He'd been able to fight back this time, hadn't been a child, hadn't been helpless.)

He knows two things are real. One, that he woke up on the road leading out to the far edge of town where it would wind away to Elsewhere if there was an Elsewhere to go to, and two: that he is angry. The latter barely counts, it's as much as saying he's breathing, but then--then there is a third, the intrusion into his bristling rage that pulls him to the surface, the voice that bursts behind his eyes and deafens him without making a sound. Charles. If Erik is himself, then it stands to reason--he has to be, Erik can hear him, feel him, that knocked back feeling like someone has opened a door in his head and been utterly bowled over by what was behind it.

Running is--surely, it would be beneath his dignity. He makes himself walk, makes himself look at the blooming spring around him, remembers before everyone had changed overnight they'd talked about growing food now, keeping themselves alive independent of their captors--he makes himself remember. And doesn't run until he can see the house, at which point all bets are off; he doesn't so much walk through the door as slash it open by the metal hinges.

It's not like coming home, but it's close enough. He closes the distance to the stairs in two long strides and crouches in front of the other man at once - their knees are bumping, it's awkward and what a stupid thing to feel as relief that is, that Charles is solid and no longer cold - and closes his hands around his upper arms. "You're all right," he says, without so much as preamble or greeting, not sure if it's a question or a statement. If it's the former he can will it into being. And then just: "Charles."