Erik asks Charles what he knows about him and he thinks that his heart stops for a minute when he says everything because that’s not fair, it’s not fair that without his permission he picked Erik’s brain apart and put it back together again like a jigsaw, learning Erik more thoroughly than anyone else, than he had any right to - and he knows. He has to know.
It’s not that he’s ashamed of it; he’s not, he have no need to be. Hunting down Nazis is a busy life and although he has wanted (their soft curves would be pliable and wondrous beneath his hands, their hard lines smooth and dangerous) he has never caved.
He hesitates for a split second, debating whether or not he should find out exactly what ‘everything’ entails and if it is a good thing or not, before he keep walking and doesn’t look back. He doesn’t think he wants to know.
Teenagers are highly sexual creatures, he realises a week or so later, after interrupting several would-be Moments between Raven and Hank (and really, he couldn’t understand why someone so proud of who she was would be at all interested in someone who was afraid of his own skin, who wanted to be anyone other than who he was). It does nothing to clear his mind of the meeting with Charles, who seems to be the only sensible person in the building.
At least, that’s what he thinks until he catches Charles averting his gaze quickly when Erik leans over and the way a faint blush rises to his friend’s cheeks sometimes when Charles looks at him.
It only gets worse from there.
He must be imagining it. Charles wouldn’t - couldn’t -
Charles was sweet, innocent. He wouldn’t like Erik - hard and ruthless and determined to kill.
For another month he tries to adjust to it; slowly going insane as Charles tries and fails not to be obvious. It wouldn’t be right for him to do anything, Charles probably doesn’t know that he’s doing it, probably hasn’t noticed the effect he’s having on his friend (god, he hates that - ‘my friend’, and he wonders if Charles looks at all of his friends like that, but he shuts down those thoughts quickly).
Then one night they’re drunk in a small town in a small state and Erik knows that this is going to be terrible.
Charles is a handsy drunk, attaching himself to Erik and refusing to let go. They’re in their room at a motel identical to the many others they’ve been in during this trip, except in those rooms there was no drunk Charles trying to put his hand down Erik’s pants.
Erik might be tipsy, but he’s sober enough to be anxious (not that he’d ever admit it, no way) and tries to stop him.
“Charles, we can’t,” he says, as gently as he can as he tries to remove his friend from his body. He shoves him away slightly, but it’s useless.
“Why not?”
Charles pushes him onto a bed and clambers on top of him. Someone groans and he doesn’t know if it is him or Charles, and really at this point he doesn’t really care. He rolls them over and pins the other man down.
“I can’t - “ I haven’t.
Blue eyes - so blue, how can they be so blue? - look up and him. A grin and a murmur in his ear assure him that that really wouldn’t be a problem.