Chapter 4
ERIK
“Charles I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I cover my face in my hands trying desperately to fight the surge of power churning inside me. “You don’t know what it’s like to have this- this power living inside you, I can’t control it.”
“Oh, I don’t know what it’s like? I have to live with the lives of every human being living in my brain, I just know how to fucking control myself!”
The world is burning around me, fallen buildings and bent-broken bodies litter the ground—my destruction. I hover above the earth, metal creating a cyclone around me, Charles lays huddled at my feet his wheelchair gone making it impossible for him to flee.
I was fine I had everything under control but then I couldn’t stop. The power pours from me like lightening on my skin, I live and breathe it, it intoxicates me. Memories of the man at my feet begin to escape my mind, I’m losing sight of who I am, I can’t remember. All I can see are the humans their guns pointed at the army of mutants behind me, the only thought in my head is how desperately I wish to spill their blood. I raise my hand and send a piece of metal through Charles heart.
I wake up with a start, Charles dead body is burned into my retinas. My heart is beating so hard it feels as if it’s trying to crawl its way out of my chest. I must have sent out a magnetic pulse in my sleep because my face is covered in coins, screws, and other small bits of medal. I look over at Charles and let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding when I see he’s fine. It was just a dream, nothing more than a dream. I get up and make my way to the small bathroom, and splash water on my face. My whole body is drenched in a cold wet sweat that gives me goosebumps and causes my teeth to chatter. Even in my dreams I end up hurting Charles.
When I make my way back to the small bedroom a light is on and Charles sitting up in bed watching me.
CHARLES
“Are you alright?” Erik avoids making eye contact with me as he slides back into the bed.
“Just a nightmare is all. Go back to bed.” Erik’s head tells me the opposite, a storm of turmoil wages in his mind and creates an irritable prickling feeling in my own.
“Erik?” he only grunts in response his back to me. The bed is uncomfortably small his heat washes over me. I desperately want to breech the gap of sheets between us to cradle his mind in my own. My skin itches in a way that it hasn’t since we first met. Despite the afternoon we spent together we still haven’t done much talking, I still don’t know where we stand with each other, what he wants from our relationship, what I want. I know that now is not the time or place to be posing such questions, but I crave him, he’s so close to me yet so far away.
*Erik, you know you can tell me anything.* I push the words into Erik’s conscious without a sound.
*Stay out of my head old man,* Erik presses the words back, “get some sleep we both need it.”
Erik still doesn’t turn to look at me, my only view of him is the curve of his back outlined by the thin sheet. His back is strong and muscular his shoulder blades are angular like wings. I cannot lie, the dream of sharing a bed with Erik has crossed my mind more than once, but I never imagined it would occur in a situation like this. The thought makes me gut twist with guilt. Perhaps it was presumptuous of me to assume that when he offered me a home, he also was offering his love. Turning the light off I try to push any thoughts of Erik out of my mind, after all what right do I have to take up space in the man’s heart. All those I love end up dying and I couldn’t bare Erik ending up the way Raven or Jean did, so instead I try to fight my way back to sleep.
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My sleep comes in spurts, but I can feel Erik’s nightmares, his fear and unease radiate in my teeth making my mouth taste like metal. It becomes too much for me to take. Putting my hand on Erik’s bare shoulder I shake him awake. He jumps with a start as soon as I touch him, he’s so startled he sends my watch flying off the nightstand into the tv.
“You were having another nightmare.” I say reassuringly. Erik’s eyes roam around the room as if he’s trying to remember where he is, when his eyes fall on me recognition lights up in his eyes.
“Were you looking in my head again? Did you see my dream?” Erik asks accusingly.
“I didn’t have to, your whole being is drenched in fear, I could feel the dream.”
“Sorry for waking you.” Erik mutters ashamed.
“It’s fine, do you want to talk about it?”
“No, you don’t need to worry yourself.”
“Really it’s fine, I can help take them away if you’d like.” Erik thinks for a second weighing this option in his mind.
“Ok,” he says doubtfully. “Just promise me you won’t go roaming around in there.”
“I promise.” I place my hand once more on his shoulder and sift through his mind, easing it so he can sleep nightmare free.