Title: Tracing lights through sleepless nights
Fandom: X-Men First Class
Length: 489
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Erik/Charles
Content notes: no warnings apply
Author note: part of my Patterns of Light noir AU, following on from Showdown; title from the song Close Enough For Love, sung by Shirley Horn; thanks to owl_by_night for cheering me on to post this



“We still need Xavier for the case,” MacTaggert says.

“That’s for Charles to decide,” Erik says. “You have Frost now.”

He takes another bite of the stale Danish. It tastes like cardboard. Everything in this fucking hospital canteen tastes like cardboard. Except the coffee, which tastes like dishwater. He’s drinking it anyway, out of sheer exhaustion. Can’t remember the last time he had a proper night’s sleep.

“God, this stuff is foul.” MacTaggert pushes the half-full mug of brownish liquid away, rests her elbows on the chipped melamine table.

A fly buzzes towards the electric catcher. There’s a quick jolt and a flash of blue. Gone.

They don’t look at each other. He’s thinking about Shaw, the way that death looked. More like the chair than a lethal injection. Erik’s gut churns. It could have been him or Charles instead of Shaw. They’re lucky to be alive, he knows that. But Charles –

“How is he?” MacTaggert says, breaking in on his thoughts again.

Erik rounds on her. “He’s fucking paralyzed, how do you think he is?”

She holds his gaze, unflinching. There’s a long silence.

“What do the doctors say?”

“Nothing,” Erik grits out. “They keep doing these fucking tests, and they won’t tell him anything.”

Her mouth twists. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” he says. His chest hurts.

There’s another long pause, before she says “The Bureau will pick up the tab.”

There’s a lot he could say to that, none of it good. He doesn’t say any of it.

The clock on the wall ticks loud and slow, so slow. Another half-hour before they’ll let him back in the room. It feels like an eternity.

“Look,” he says at last, “I don’t know what he wants to do. About testifying, or whatever else. But whatever he wants, wherever he wants to go, I’m with him.”

He doesn’t say If he wants me to be. The thought that Charles might not want that is one he can’t let himself hold.

She clears her throat, as if what she’s about to say is a struggle. He half expects her to come out with something like You hardly know him; it’s what Theresa said, amongst other things.

“Don’t throw your career away, Lehnsherr,” MacTaggert says instead. “You’ll regret it if you do.”

“Too late for that,” he says. “I crossed a line. We crossed a line.”

There’s no going back from that: the line he crossed, sleeping with Charles when he thought Charles was Shaw’s boy. The line he and MacTaggert crossed, sending Charles to Shaw in spite of his protests. Erik doesn’t know how else he’s going to live with himself, except by offering Charles everything.

He takes the strip of photographs from Rehoboth out of his pocket and looks at the two of them together, happy and carefree and in love. It seems a lifetime ago, but he carries it like a talisman, a promise of some kind of future.