fic: the hazards of love (charles/erik, pg-13, 6500 words)
fill for a prompt on 1stclass_kink: "Charles and Erik are attendings, Hank is the chief resident, and the rest of the kids are residents/interns/medical students just trying to save lives." Hospital/Scrubs!AU. I lost the link though so I don’t even know at this point.A huge thank you to james-norrington for the beta. ♥ Slightly cracky. EDIT: 06/22/11 - ok uh, I found that james-norrington hasn't completely combed out for typos, so. feel free to point them out.
summary: Charles was, to him, like a lake. A glacial lake so deep that when you swam it and surfaced you ended up in Darfur or someplace, disoriented and hypothermic..
There were rumours going around of a new attending transplanted from England.
Last Erik heard, the attending had telepathic abilities and could bend spoons with his mind, but the nurses on the third floor were unreliable, especially when it came to performing a lavage, so he took what they said with a grain of salt.
He didn’t usually entertain gossip, but would overhear certain things from time to time: Do you think he’s single? or I heard he was filthy rich. Once, he’d caught a glassy-eyed intern muttering to herself, his hair smells like lilacs.
Admittedly, Erik was intrigued, but not enough that he would go out of his way to press for real information. The rumours would die down eventually, that much he knew from experience.
Two and a half years ago, when he’d started working at the hospital as a resident, someone started a rumour that he’d killed a man in a dark alley and then ate his internal organs. He had his suspicions - Shaw, probably, the Chief of Medicine, who wolf-whistled and waggled his eyebrows, whenever the head nurse, Emma, walked by - but he didn’t want to point fingers.
Shaw hated him too, for reporting him on improper conduct, and there was MacTaggert whose loyalties Erik often questioned.
But time passed, and people forgot about it eventually, although every now and then, Erik heard whispering interns refer to him as Lehnsherr Lecter. The same fate would befall this new rumour, because people at the hospital - the nurses, for the most part - were quick to find something new to harp on, whether it was a high profile patient or a rare medical anomaly.
Whoever the new attending was was going to fade into periphery. Erik largely doubted the sudden interest in him would hold, especially when the words “telepathic” and “guru” were often attributed to him in passing.
He’d give it another week, maybe two, because he was feeling generous, but after that, interest would peter out. He heard McCone was relocating to Canada in a month, after his new position as chief medical surgeon put a strain on his marriage, so that was an issue the nurses might decide to speculate on in the future.
“...I wouldn’t mind if he gave me a pap smear, if you know what I mean,” someone said.
Yes.
Any day now.
Any day.
=
Erik took a perfunctory sip of his coffee.
He’d bought it from the deli across the street and it was weaker than he would’ve preferred, coagulating with milk on the surface. He missed what Emma said to him at nurse’s station, staring down into his Styrofoam cup and rolling the sediments around until they melted and sank at the bottom. He nodded in response, vaguely, in what he hoped was Emma’s direction, then headed briskly to the doctor’s lounge before she could accost him.
Erik dropped his keys on the coffee table and lowered himself onto the plush sofa.
The cholecystectomy he had to perform wasn’t scheduled until after breakfast. If it weren’t for the coffee and his twenty minute hunt for parking space in the back lot, the morning would’ve been near perfect. He began leafing through The Daily Globe, basking, at least, in the peace and quiet.
“Ah, there’s my favourite doctor.”
Shaw. Of course, Erik’s life had to be exceedingly difficult. His jaw flexed. He perused the obituaries. No one he knew had died today, which he considered good news. “I thought you were on vacation in Cuba?”
“That isn’t until next week,” Shaw said, smiling serenely as he bit into a bagel. “And it’s a conference, not a vacation. The hospital is subsidizing my trip.” He picked up a magazine, a dog-eared backdated issue of Good Housekeeping and sat across from Erik.
He complained about the consistency of his bagel, clicking his tongue. “Too gummy. Perhaps too much starch,” he said.
MacTaggert bustled into the room five seconds late - impeccable timing, Erik thought - throwing herself down on the sofa next to him and flopping her arms in exaggerated gestures. There was something about her that Erik didn’t like, something that didn’t sit right with him, maybe her name - which, like her surname, began with an M -, or her grating cheeriness, which seemed, at times, almost fake and cartoonish, but she was, at least compared to Shaw, partially tolerable.
“I’ve been here all night,” she said, sighing and rolling back her shoulders. “I smell like urine and intestinal juices.” She laughed softly, loosening her pony tail.
“Always a very attractive combination,” Shaw agreed, raising his bagel. “Would you like a bite, Moira?”
She declined politely, casting him a nervous glance.
Deciding he was going to look for peace and quiet elsewhere, Erik folded his newspaper in two, tucked it under one arm, and left. He remembered not to bring the coffee.
=
Erik saw the attending standing in front of the vending machine on his way down the hall.
He seemed to be staring in contemplation at a chocolate bar through the glass, a lone Kit Kat tangled in one of the metal rings, suspended before a fall. Erik wasn’t sure if he’d seen him before, although that could be because he rarely fraternized with the rest of the staff even during company outings. He eyed him briefly, raising an eyebrow at his neatly combed hair, before deciding to put him out of his misery by thumping the front of his shoe against the side of the machine.
The Kit Kat slipped from the ring, finally free, and the attending bent down to retrieve it, grinning as he unwrapped the treat and stuffed it inside his mouth.
He had a pleasant, regal face. His cheeks were round and clean, indicative of a recent shave. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have thought of doing that,” he said, laughing.
Erik made a polite noise and then went on his way to avoid further interaction. He had twenty minutes to finish reading the morning paper before his scheduled surgery, twenty minutes to look for an intern gullible enough to buy him coffee that didn’t taste like it had been watered down.
“Doctor Lehnsherr,” someone called behind him. “Doctor Lehnsherr I have a question for you! Please wait!”
Ah, McCoy, earnest, eager-to-please, fidgety McCoy. Just the person Erik was looking for.
Erik turned around and smiled. “Hank,” he said, remembering McCoy’s name for the first time in months. “There’s something I’d like you to do for me...”
=
Erik saw the same attending later that afternoon, Kit Kat guy, chatting up one of the nurses Erik recognized as Frost’s understudy, a Hispanic doe-eyed girl fresh from nursing school who looked like she had no business in a hospital. Then later again in the parking lot on his way home as he rifled through his bag for his car keys, Erik saw him, leaning against the side of his car, a modest Toyota Corolla in gleaming dark blue, talking on the phone.
The attending, who caught him looking in his direction before Erik could avert his gaze, lifted his head and waved at him.
Erik, slightly baffled by this strange behaviour, waved back uncertainly, hand poised mid-air, fingers twitching.
=
They bumped into each other again in the lift a few days later. Nine PM, nearly the end of his twelve-hour shift, and the man was humming under his breath, one hand pocketed in his white coat as he chewed thoughtfully on the end of a liquorice stick. He looked up as Erik ambled inside the lift, too lazy to use the stairs even though he’d have welcomed the exercise any other day.
“You,” the attending said, grinning, a twinkle of recognition in his eye. “I know you! You helped me out the other day! Thank you.”
He thrust out a hand.
Erik took it and pulled away first. “Charles Xavier.”
“Erik Lehnsherr.”
“Lehnsherr. Lehnsherr.” Charles made a thoughtful face; it looked comical almost and Erik wasn’t sure whether to laugh. “Now, where have I heard that name before? Ah, you’re not the LehnsherrLecter, I suppose?”
He leaned forward and tapped his chin.
Erik shrugged. “You kill a man once and people never let you forget.”
“Ah, yes, they hold it against you forever.” Charles smiled. The doors of the lift chose that moment to open.
Shaw was standing in the hall penning the morning crossword. “Good morning gentlemen,” he said as he slipped inside. Charles said good morning too as Shaw stood between them, scrunching his nose as he asked, “What’s a twelve letter French word for a sudden flash of lightning?”
Shut up, Erik thought exasperatedly.
“Anyone?” Shaw pressed.
Charles snuck a glance at Erik, and as if hearing his thoughts, suppressed a smile.
=
Erik’s mother phoned him that Friday night. She only ever called because of two things. Either she forgot her social security number again or the cat was missing. She was a retired English professor and until five years ago taught at the local liberal arts college.
“Mother,” Erik said. “How nice of you to call.” He was making dinner, beef stew, in the kitchen, cradling the phone between his neck and shoulder. The stew smelled bad which meant he did something wrong. The TV was on in the living room, playing a golf match.
“How is the hospital?” his mother asked. “Did you contract gonorrhea yet?”
“Well, no,” Erik said, embarrassed. She always had a way of making him feel like a child, though he supposed most people felt the same around their mothers.
“A bei gesunt, but I suppose that’s the problem. You need to be more sexually active!”
Erik put more salt into the stew. “Have you met anyone yet? I sat shiva the other week, your estranged uncle Gideon died. Anya and I started talking about you and what she said made me worry.”
“What did she say?”
“That you will die ahead of me, alone and childless. Possibly naked with a prostitute, mid-coitus.”
Erik’s jaw tightened. “It’s hard to meet someone outside of work,” he explained, finally. “It’s the hours, mother. And there isn’t anybody of interest at the hospital, either.”
He thought of Charles, suddenly, and furrowed his eyebrows, wondering why he, of all people, came to mind.
“Your grandfather had to raise nine children, Erik. He worked three jobs, and he still found time to conduct an extramarital affair.” She sighed loudly, clicking her tongue, and Erik imagined her shaking her head at him as she stood by the bookshelf, smoking a black cigarette, flicking ash all over the china. She paused for a long moment, and then said, as an afterthought, “I need you to help me find the cat.”
=
It was time for free medical check-ups the next day and Shaw put Erik in charge of rounding up all the interns.
Erik paged McCoy to do it for him and fifteen minutes later, he, Summers, Cassidy - the one with the blindingly bright red hair - plus a few other twitchy interns stood outside the lounge in a flock, awaiting orders.
“Out the hall,” Erik instructed, with a jerk of his finger. “Out.” He didn’t get to finish his coffee that morning because the queue outside the clinic was long and the only other attending working that day was MacTaggert whose check-ups took longer than necessary as she often attempted to make small talk with her patients.
Erik found a brief window of time to grab a bite to eat in between check-ups, leaving McCoy in charge of his post. He took an apple from the mess hall and a bottle of fruit juice, and it was when he was heading back to the clinic that he saw Charles again, cradling a little girl in his arms in the hallway, tapping her on the nose. She looked like a patient from the ICU. Half of her face was scarred and Erik estimated her to be about four to six years old.
Charles called out to him and walked over. “Erik!” he said, stopping half a foot away. “Jean, this is my friend Erik. Say hello.”
“Hello, Mr. Erik.” She shied away when Erik bent to her eye-level and held out a hand. “How do you do today, Jean?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Shake Mr. Erik’s hand, Jean, he doesn’t bite.” She looked at Charles wide-eyed and doubtful but grabbed three of Erik’s fingers anyway, shaking them quickly. She tucked her face into Charles’ neck and Charles laughed, patting her fondly on the head. Erik wondered if Charles liked children or if he were simply nice to everyone else.
“She’s darling, isn’t she?” he whispered, squeezing her to his chest.
She looks wretched, Erik wanted to say. Charles held her, as if she were his own, his happy face beaming down at her, his eyes smiling, cool and steady.
Erik watched him, transfixed, and then jerked in surprise when his pager went off in his pocket. McCoy again. “I have to go,” he told Charles, patting Jean halfheartedly on the head a few times.
Charles waved him off and bid him good luck.
Jean, when Erik turned, was waving too.
=
Erik didn’t live with an awful anxiety to get ahead, unlike his father, who died of cancer shortly after Erik graduated from medical school. He was raised in a middle-class household and lived, now, in a minimalist low-maintenance apartment forty five minutes from the hospital.
He wasn’t happy because happy seemed too broad a term to describe the overall temperament of his life. He was doing well financially, debtless and ‘climbing up the food chain’ as Emma liked to say, but he wasn’t happy, not quite. He wasn’t lonely, either, or looking for a relationship, or any sort of complication, so when he found Charles sitting alone in the hospital gym, wearing a grey sweatshirt, his hair matted to his face, his lips slightly parted as he collected his breath, his head leaned back as he tipped his face to the ceiling, Erik didn’t give much thought to the sharp lurch in his stomach.
Charles, as if sensing him there, cracked one eye open. He smiled. He was always smiling, something Erik continued to marvel at because how could any sane person be happy all the time?
“You again,” Erik said, picking up a basketball that had rolled off to the side of the court.
“Mhm,” Charles said agreeably and closed his eyes.
=
Charles made his first appearance at the doctor’s lounge a few days later. He strolled in with MacTaggert who talked about her new shampoo in great detail, chewing on the end of a licorice stick. “Usually after hours, my hair smells like the hospital, but now it’s like, I’m freshly showered all the time.”
Erik pretended not to see them over his newspaper. Charles opted to sit next to him though and it became especially hard to ignore him especially when his shoe brushed the side of Erik’s ankle, making Erik jerk upright in his seat.
Erik lowered the front page and looked up, and there he was, Charles, his legs folded, his hands on top of his knee, his face serene, leaning casually against the cushions. Last night his mother called again to tell him about a nice girl she’d met at the grocery store, a girl Erik would’ve loved although she was a bit on the masculine side, she said, with arms as big as tree trunks, but pretty blue eyes and curvy hips good for child bearing.
Charles’ eyes were blue, Erik thought. His hair was long and flopped to the side when he shoved a hand through it and he didn’t have child bearing hips but he was trim, and shorter than he was, not diminutive, but just the right height, up to his chin, and Erik imagined his body a single perfect curve in bed.
“We meet again,” Charles said.
“It was only a matter of time,” Erik told him.
MacTaggert was flipping through TV channels and Erik heard her settle for a Mexican soap opera, sitting herself down on the sofa across from them, muttering and rooting into a bag of chips. “Oh, that Sergio. He really needs to get those women tested.”
“Do you play chess, Erik?” Charles asked.
Erik put down his newspaper and crossed his arms. “That depends on the stakes,” he said.
=
They didn’t play chess that afternoon though, because Charles was paged to look into a patient’s developing cellulitis. And Erik was swamped with work in the next few days, herding interns during rounds, doing paperwork he’d put off in the last week, and helping his mother move into a new apartment, a modest one that she could afford, with plumbing that wasn’t temperamental. He was on his way to the lounge when Charles called out to him from his office.
“I didn’t know you had an office,” Erik said.
Charles looked embarrassed, toying with the end of his stethoscope. “It’s my father’s, really,” he said, looking down at his hands. He pursed his lips.
Xavier, Erik thought. Xavier, Xavier, Xavier. It made sense now. He hadn’t seen Charles before because he was new here; his father was chief superintendent.
“Chess?” Charles offered, gesturing to the glass set on his table. Erik sat across from him and leaned on one elbow. The last time he played chess was ten years ago when he’d father had still been alive.
Charles tapped his chin. “When I win,” he said.
“Counting chickens before they hatch, are you?”
“When I win,” Charles continued, “I’ll buy you dinner.”
“Dinner,” Erik repeated.
“Dinner,” Charles confirmed.
Erik thought about what that entailed and felt a smirk curl in the corner of his lips. Arrogance on Charles, he thought, fleetingly, was mildly attractive. Erik felt the intensity of Charles’ gaze on him and felt the back of his neck prickle with goosebumps.
He began rearranging the chess pieces. “And if I win, I’ll have you do all my paperwork,” he said. He looked up at Charles. “Understood?”
“Ugh,” Charles moaned. “You’re terrible. I hate paperwork.” He propped his cheek against his palm and smiled. “Joking of course, I don’t mind it, not really.”
=
Erik lost.
=
Charles tore a page off his prescription pad and wrote down his number. His handwriting was smooth and elegant, slanting forwards but short and fat and taking a lot of space. Erik folded the paper into a tiny square before tucking it into his wallet.
“Dinner then,” Charles said, patting the pens in his breastpocket. “I’ll call you. Or you call me in case I forget.”
He smiled and Erik smiled back before lumbering out the door, not quite sure what happened but pleased that it did, anyway.
This was a partial breakthrough, he thought. A welcome development.
=
Erik was on the third hour of his second shift when he ambled over to the on-call room. He was tired and cranky as hell and all he wanted was to go home and collapse on his bed.
The door to the on-call room was closed and a line of light showed underneath. He knocked a few times and was startled when Charles opened it. He looked tried, his dark green scrubs wrinkled, his hair flat where he’d lain down on it. “You shouldn’t be here,” Erik told him. “You have an office.”
“The beds are comfortable.” Charles shrugged. He opened the door to let Erik inside and climbed up the top bunk, lying there with his hands folded across his stomach.
The light was weak. Summers, a friend of McCoy’s, Erik knew, was asleep in one of the beds across the room, his back turned to them. Erik took the bed below Charles and listened to the scratch and rustle of his movement.
Erik kicked at him gently, a thump meant to get his attention, not hurt him. He seemed restless.
“Are you masturbating?” Erik asked.
“Close,” Charles said. Erik heard more shuffling, a yawn, and then, suddenly, nothing. He shut his eyes and waited a beat, then opened them again and saw Charles peering down at him over the bed.
“You have the oddest expression on your face,” he said. “With your eyes closed you look peaceful but also constipated at the same time. I can’t explain it. I might have to take a picture.”
Erik smiled in spite of himself. Charles’ hair hung in front of his face and Erik felt his fingers twitching to push it back. “I’d better stop that right away then,” he said, instead.
“Yes, right away,” Charles said. He snorted, shaking his head before dissolving in a fit of laughter.
=
Erik’s mother rarely visited him at the hospital which was why, when she showed up one day, her neck bundled up in a maroon scarf and wearing dark eyeshadow, he considered it an omen. She hated the hospital and often called it a breeding ground for bacteria. “Quit,” she’d tell him from time to time. “Teach medicine. It’s a noble profession, teaching. Your father did it. I did it. You might even find a nice girl to settle down with, fall in love with one of your students. Make sure she’s of reasonable age though, you don’t want to get into trouble.”
They were at the mess hall at lunch when Charles spotted them from afar. He had terrific eyesight, it seemed, or else was simply nosy.
“Erik,” he said, stopping by their table. He smiled pleasantly at Erik’s mother as introductions were made and hands were shook, then excused himself to buy coffee. “It was nice meeting you,” he told Erik’s mother, squeezing her hand in pulses before leaving, both hands pocketed, a skip in his step. Erik watched him stop to say hello to an intern and then laugh at whatever was said to him.
“Is he, well, you know?” His mother asked as soon as Charles was out of earshot. She made an obscene gesture with two fingers and Erik swatted her hand, shooting a glance over his shoulder, checking for Charles whose back was, thankfully, turned away.
“He’s not a homosexual, mother,” Erik said and then realized he’d never even thought of Charles as sexual before. Friendly, yes, but sexual? Charles was reliable, friendly, the kind of person you’d trust with your housekeys or to help you cash your checks.
She sipped her tea thoughtfully. Erik could see the cogs in her head turning. “Well, at least you’re happy,” she said, finally.
Erik let out a rueful laugh. Happy? “I can never be happy.” This was true. The interns were enough to drive him mad most days. Earlier this afternoon, Cassidy administered the wrong dosage of heparin and almost killed a patient in the process. And there was McCoy who kept hovering over his shoulder, like an expectant dog seeking validation.
His mother rubbed his cheek in sympathy. “Well, it’s hereditary, of course,” she explained to him, sighing. “You got it from your father’s side of the family; they were all broody, problematic men, some driven to suicide. Frankly, I’m quite surprised you’ve lived until thirty four.”
Erik looked at her but thought it best to say nothing.
=
Of course, after she’d met him, Erik’s mother brought Charles up from time to time when she called him every other day.
The fagala, she called Charles, which was Yiddish for homosexual. How is the fagala doing? Is he making you happy? Have you slept with him yet? He seems nice, for a fagala, presentable, not ostentatious unlike your uncle in New Jersey. He was a plumber, you know, a gay plumber. Nobody liked him. Not because he was gay, you understand, but because he stopped returning phonecalls after he’d moved to San Francisco with his lover.
Erik wished she’d stop calling him that though, fagala, because it didn’t seem fair, not to Charles, whose sexuality still remained a mystery despite the promise of dinner looming in the corner and plenty of speculation on the nurses’ part.
Erik still hadn’t called. He told himself it was because he’d been busy lately, not because he was delaying the whole process, fearful he may have misconstrued Charles’ invitation to dinner. He had Charles’ number taped to the fridge and he’d stare at the sheaf of paper from time to time while he made dinner or when he was on the phone, sometimes in the morning when he poured himself a glass of orange juice after a run.
=
“When do you go home?” Erik asked, twelve days after they promised to call each other.
It didn’t matter, really, - and Erik wasn’t keeping track of the days - but it was a feeble attempt to make small talk. And if he were honest with himself, he was, in part, curious too.
Charles was, to him, like a lake. A glacial lake so deep that when you swam it and surfaced you ended up in Darfur or someplace, disoriented and hypothermic.
He wanted to know what Charles’ work hours were, and why he appeared without preamble each time Erik least expected him, like when his mother was visiting or Erik went for naps in the on-call room. Once, Charles had walked in on him in the bathroom, walked out, then sauntered back in again precisely after Erik had finished with his business.
Charles clicked his pen and pocketed it. “In two minutes,” he said, unclipping his ID. “I’ll call you as soon as I walk through the door.”
“You don’t have to call me that quickly,” Erik told him, feeling suddenly embarrassed.
“I know I don’t have to,” Charles said. “But I want to.” He clapped Erik on the shoulder and smiled. His hand was warm, his touch light, and Erik thought about the other night, when they lay on bunk beds in the on-call room, listening to Summers having a wet dream, keeping their laughter reined in. His hand, when he’d leapt off the top bunk and patted Erik on the thigh, had been warm too.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Doctor,” Charles said.
“Tomorrow,” Erik echoed.
Charles gave him a jovial little salute at the end of the hall and then turned, out of sight.
=
He called, of course, five minutes later when Erik was in the doctor’s lounge watching MacTaggert’s soap operas. Erik ducked out of the room, pressing two fingers into his ear to drown out the sound.
Charles’ voice was high and breathy and Erik leaned against the wall, slipping a hand inside his pocket.
“I have tomorrow off,” Charles said, apropos of nothing.
So did Erik. They made plans for dinner and Charles had Erik write down his address.
“7PM,” Charles reiterated. “Do not forget.”
Afterwards, the phone clicked off and Erik stood, stunned speechless, unmoving. He stood there for a long time, five minutes, maybe thirty, he wasn’t sure, until he was paged to check up on a septic patient on the fifth floor.
“I think he’s dying,” Cassidy said, standing over the man, clutching a defibrillator.
=
Charles lived in a mansion with towering gothic spires that, like Shaw, seemed threatening at first glance.
Erik didn’t expect suburban squalor, but he didn't expect such opulence, either. Suddenly, matters seemed less certain. He felt overdressed in khakis and a blue blazer and wondered briefly if he’d worn too much perfume.
He rang the doorbell.
A minute later, a maid sprung to the doorway, peering up at him and squinting. “Are you here for Mr. Charles?” she asked, speaking with a clipped accent.
Someone laughed behind her. Charles. He was showered and dressed in beige chinos and tasseled loafers. His grey button-down hugged his lean shoulders.
Erik’s mouth went dry.
Charles strolled towards him, one hand pocketed, standing with his hip cocked to the side.
“Well done, Erik,” he teased, eyeing Erik up and down, gesturing at his brown leather belt - a gift from his father many Christmases ago that he’d only worn tonight. He was surprised it still fit.
“I should say the same for you,” Erik told him. “This is a much slimmer look for you.”
Once ensconced in the privacy of his car, Erik had one of those split-second thought processes that only ever materialized in times of panic, distress and/or mild flirtation.
“We should halve the bill tonight,” he said quickly.
Charles slid his seatbelt on and smoothed the front of his shirt. His hair seemed glossy where light from outside hit it. Hairgel? Erik wondered.
Charles said slowly, as if he were speaking to a particularly slow child, “You can pay for dinner next time, if you want.”
Next time? Erik didn’t even think there’d be a next time. He turned on the ignition and drove.
=
The menu contained little English which was always a good sign.
In between bites of smoked oysters, Erik’s pager kept going off, vibrating in his pocket. He clenched his teeth and checked his messages for the fifth time, throwing his table napkin aside. Shaw. Emma? Summers wanting to know if he wanted Mortimer Toynbee on low molecular weight heparin.
“I might be needed back at the hospital,” Erik said, flipping out his cellphone and sending Summers a brief text message. Sometimes it seemed as if he were the only one doing any real work at the hospital. Interns kept coming to him for medical advice. It was the constant disapproval, his mother said when he’d complained to her. People found it fatherly.
Charles looked both amused and exasperated at the same time. He leaned across the table, his voice lowered, as if he were about to share a secret. “Look, this is dinner,” he began. “You’re out on a Saturday night. You’re at a four-star restaurant, eating good food. Oysters. This doesn’t happen very often, not to you. I don’t think I’ve seen you have anything but coffee or donuts.” He thumped his knees with both hands, smiling.
“What I suggest is that you turn your pager off, have more of this lovely Sauvignon, and enjoy the rest of the evening. Que sera, sera, my friend,” he said.
Que sera, sera. Huh. When Charles put it like that, everything sounded simple, easy. Doable. Erik slid his pager across the table against his better judgment and Charles closed a hand over it, avoiding Erik’s fingers deliberately.
“I’m confiscating this,” he said then looked at Erik over the rim of his wine glass, tipping his head to the side, his face completely inscrutable. “More wine?” he asked after a second.
“Please,” Erik said.
=
The wine put Erik in a better mood. The wine also made him drive Charles home at nine o’clock, follow him into his living room where they were served coffee and teacakes by his housemaid, and brush his hand over Charles’ knee.
They played chess again halfheartedly until Raven, Charles’ half-sister sauntered into the room in stiletto boots and a tiny black dress.
“I’m going out now,” she said, looping an earring through her ear. “I have a date.” She gave Erik an unsubtle once-over and kissed Charles on top of the head as she passed him.
“This is Erik,” Charles said, pointing to him. “Erik, my sister Raven.”
Raven smiled politely enough but said nothing.
“Are stiletto heels a good sign?” Charles asked, watching her from the sofa, eyebrows raised.
Erik waited until Raven shut the door. “Only if you’re looking for sex,” he said.
Charles made a thoughtful face. “I guess that answers my question then,” he said. “I hope she’s meeting someone nice, at least. A gentleman. Someone with a sense of humour but who also remembers to turn off the bedside lamp and call the next morning.”
And then he smiled, slow, with a hint of teeth and Erik was hit with a flash of fever as he watched the movement of his lips.
So he leaned forward and kissed Charles long on the mouth.
It felt perverse, almost, to push his tongue between Charles’ lips, slip his hand up his ribs and cup his shoulder. Charles tasted sharp, cool like electricity, and he yanked Erik back when Erik pulled away, arms tight around his neck, like a noose.
“Stay the night,” Charles whispered, eyes lowered to slits.
=
Charles’ breath was noisy and rough against Erik’s cheek and he pushed himself up on his elbows to kiss the stem of Erik’s neck. His eyes were dark. The peaks of his face flushed. Everything about him seemed to deepen.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Charles asked, sliding a tentative hand between them. He sounded concerned. Erik felt Charles’ palm graze his hip and he jerked forward into the touch, his hips stuttering, his eyes clenching shut.
Erik surged forward and kissed him, hard and wet. Charles smiled, bit him gently on the shoulder, the pressure gentle although his teeth left tiny marks.
Later, Erik rolled him over to his back and spread him out on the bed, pressing a hand flat against his stomach.
“Let me keep trying for awhile,” Erik said and thrust against him, rolling his hips experimentally. He pushed and pushed and pushed and said, “I lost to you on purpose,” and Charles’ mouth went soft as his eyes closed, his entire body sagging under Erik’s weight like a deflating balloon.
His breath was raspy, a passing glance in Erik’s ear. “I know,” he said, completely undone. “I know.”
He hummed against Erik’s throat and pressed his nose to Erik’s ear and Erik felt himself shiver, somewhere deep in the center of his bones.
=
He left without warning the next morning, searching for his shoes and then tiptoeing barefoot out the door so he didn’t wake Charles. Charles slept on his stomach, his mouth half-open, his leg dangling off the edge of the bed as he snored softly.
Erik was already late for work so he didn’t have time for coffee and spent a good fraction of his shift with a headache.
He grew moody as the day progressed. He found McCoy and Summers in the supply closet, hiding from Shaw during rounds, when he went to look for a trach kit. Erik raised an eyebrow but chose not to comment, not because he understood their fear but because he anticipated their shortcomings. “I honestly thought he was gonna stab us with a hypodermic needle,” he heard Summers say just before he shut the door on them.
Cassidy was waiting for him at the end of the hall. He brightened when he saw Erik and ran up to him, eager as a springer spaniel.
“Doctor L! Doctor L!” He swam towards Erik’s elbow. “I was instructed to return this to you.” He produced a white bundle from his back pocket.
“Doctor Xavier said you might want it back,” he said.
Erik peeled back the handkerchief, recognizing the initials stitched in the corner. C. X. It was Erik’s wristwatch. He hadn’t even realized he’d left it until…
He looked up, confused. “What else did he say?”
“That’s it pretty much it, doc.” Cassidy shrugged. “Oh, wait, no, he said, and I quote, ‘have a nice day.’”
“Castor,” Erik said.
“Cassidy,” Cassidy said. Erik slid his watch on and felt the familiar heft of it around his wrist. He lifted the handkerchief to his face, remembered Cassidy was still there, bouncing on his heels, and frowned, making a dismissive gesture.
“Sorry,” Cassidy mumbled and shuffled off.
=
Erik didn’t expect to find Charles in the lounge, but then he was sitting there oh-so-comfortably, watching a news report on the overhead television set. Erik stared at him for a minute before emerging from the shadows, sweeping his white coat aside to pocket his hands.
“There was a landslide in Vietnam,” Charles said, frowning. “Fifty three confirmed dead, ninety eight still missing.” His face changed as soon as Erik hunkered down next to him, sitting close enough so that the sides of their knees touched. Erik wondered what in god’s name he was doing. They’d just slept together, he thought. He’d seen Charles naked and spread out, gloriously unraveled.
“Done for the day?” Charles asked suddenly, startling Erik from his thoughts.
“I have until eight thirty. One more hour,” Erik said. He leaned back against the sofa and wondered if Charles hated him, even just a little, for leaving without explanation. If he did, he didn’t show it. He raised his eyes as if he were waiting for Erik to speak so Erik did.
“You sent Cassidy.”
“Hank and Alex were otherwise engaged when I found them in the on-call room and I couldn’t seem to find Armando anywhere.” He shrugged.
Erik said nothing. Charles was paged over the intercom so he climbed up to his feet quickly. And then as an afterthought, he kissed Erik, on top of the head, and then smiled and looked at his face.
“You’ll age prematurely if you frown too much,” he said and patted the side of Erik’s face. “I’ll see you later, Erik.”
Charles stopped, though, before he reached the door, turning around and walking backwards. “Remember: you owe me dinner. And you still have my handkerchief.”
Erik realized both were true. Charles left, and Erik sat there listening with only vague interest to the mundane noise of hospital life: outside interns were gossiping with the nurses about McCone’s transfer to Canada and a patient on a wheelchair rolled to a stop in the hall.
MacTaggert flopped down on the sofa and pointed the remote at the TV.
“Oh, Sergio,” she said, cooing. “How I have missed you.”
Erik picked up the newspaper from the coffee table, unfurled it and shook his head. He probably looked like a fool, smiling at nothing in particular, but he did it anyway and with relish.