you can't break that which isn't yours
Title: Après Moi
Paring: Erik/Charles
Rating: PG13
Summary: Be afraid of the lame, they'll inherit your legs.
Notes: I always considered Regina Spektor's Après Moi to be the perfect song for this pairing, so I stole it for my title and cuts. Someone should just take it and write a fic based on it and make me happy. Or sad. Definitely sad.
Après Moi
It happens in Paris because nothing happened in Paris. Paris holds no memories, no chesspieces, no shrapnel. Paris is clean, so Paris it is.
Charles doesn’t know why he asks and Erik doesn’t know why he agrees. Neither is sure what to expect. Business, Charles informs the limo driver, eyes out the window. Pleasure, Erik tells the bartender, the bite of lime under his tongue.
Neither goes to the meeting point. The little red card reading Reservé is removed by a tired-eyed waiter around midnight. Charles rubs his right knee absently, in front of a large, open window and breathes deep, in and out, like working against a panic attack. Erik wanders the streets aimlessly and crushes his cigarettes on the gates of the prettiest houses. Charles feels stupid and Erik feels furious.
Dusk and neither is asleep, there and waiting for the world to start spinning backwards. Erik’s hands are in his pockets, Charles’ curled over a leather-bound book, and they both feel some sort of little death, when the sun comes up, timeline relentless.
~
They meet in the Louvre, in front of the Sarcophagus of the Spouses. Charles doesn’t feel like laughing at the irony but he still does. He almost prays Erik will choose the coward’s way out and walk away, almost breaks into his mind to make sure he won’t.
“You’ve made quite a contradiction of me, my friend.” And it’s as much of a greeting as they’ll ever spare.
Footsteps on spotless linoleum make a poor job of covering Erik’s silence. Charles wants to leave, suddenly, wants to get up, but Erik’s hand ruined that chance one year ago and Erik’s hand is on the handle of his chair, and Charles wonders how, how for the world and all its tropic beaches he can still trust these five fingers.
They look at the art.
~
A day later, at night, they both feel sore enough to start again. Charles’ fingers shake as he leans over to press a couple of bills in the bellboy’s open hand. “Can barely look at them anymore,” he says, a speck of gold running across the thick red carpet soundlessly, disappearing under the bed, between Erik’s long legs.
Erik snaps his head upwards and just plain snaps- I didn’t do it to you, open hands screaming I would never, the sort of lie he tells himself when the night is dark enough and quiet enough for sentiment and make-believe. Charles laughs, and says my friend, my friend, ice growing over the words, you pushed a coin through my skull as well, I simply wasn’t the one to die.
I did not let him kill you, Charles’ small red mouth curls. I could have.
And Erik, Erik is sick of all the things Charles could have done. All this power he claims to have stored inside his brittle frame for later use, for emergencies, this short-coming of a heart he wears like a medal of honor, like it gleams in the sun and sets him apart so brightly from the rest of la plebe.
Erik has become nocturnal.
You couldn’t have, he says, and it’s the truth for so many reasons and on so many levels that it makes them both dizzy. Charles is in his head again, but he doesn’t mean to be, he just tripped, he just got a little lost, cataloguing their mutual losses and honest mistakes and almost-touches in the library in a frenzy of suppressed grief that Erik rebels against, the past has passed and regrets are empty and a man of metal has a heart of stone.
He shuts the door but doesn’t slam it, though the handle still melts, hot iron dripping to the floor.
~
When Charles is drowning, Erik comes back.
He presses his face against the gasping throat, knees slipping against the sides of the tub, hands tight on prominent ribs, mad with panic and four flights of stairs, after a voiceless FYI that hit him in a yellow cab, just so you know, I wanted you to know, the water’s gone cold now and this feels so familiar.
Charles is laughing with his head tipped back.
Here’s to admitting to no weakness, Charles toasts through a mouthful of tubwater, and here’s to the little tin boy. Here’s hoping we’ll kill each other one day, my friend, with all the effort we put into saving each other.
Erik doesn’t ask why, what in the name this was, just pulls them both out of the lukewarm water, onto the cracked tiles of a tiny bathroom in an expensive hotel room somewhere in Paris, because nothing horrible happened in Paris, this is just life, two men panting against porcelain, shit happens. He breathes against Charles’ red lips like resuscitation and thinks about fixing and mending and melting into one, iron and gold boiling together to form a horrendous, shapeless mass, an atrocity.
He thinks about the way Charles’ pale legs lay crookedly on the floor and doesn’t think about it, the familiar words Charles was screaming with his head underwater.
Erik knows exactly how they got there, but he still wants to ask, how did we get here.
~
Charles tries, but no matter what, Erik’s mouth won’t taste like gunpowder or grains of sand. Erik tastes like brandy and breath and Charles wishes out loud that this war between them were more of a war and less of a chessgame to keep them interested until they’re bent and dated, ready to retire in a one-bedroom cottage somewhere green.
Erik peels off Charles’ wet clothes slowly, opting for clinical and ending up reverent, pressing kisses to both his useless knees. Charles doesn’t say stop it, you know I can’t feel that, the way they both had feared. Charles likes the way Erik’s hair curls against his nape.
“Don’t we both see in shades of gray,” Erik asks, tugging on Charles’ socks, stupid little question to keep his mouth running. He’s thinking about Charles’ pulse and Charles’ lashes, and Charles thinks of how easily he could demolish the man right now, take him apart from the inside out, he thinks of how perfectly Erik exploits the things he would never forgive himself for.
“We should have done this when I would still be able to assist you,” he hums instead while Erik takes off his own shirt, damp hair falling over his seawater eyes.
Erik thinks to him, we’ve both made mistakes.
Charles wants to say I love you, to simplify things, but it tastes like pennies and spinal fluid and rubber gloves.
Yours were slightly graver, my friend, he whispers.
Braver, Erik corrects.