i.
long ago, before his father had died, before he felt the tug of minds in his head, before kurt, before his life changed, charles' nightmares were the same:
the endless black of water below him, bunching his hands into fists and taking the plunge. as he rises from the water, his swimsuit appears to be missing. nobody is around but the fish and the moon, but they all know his secret now.
ah, such youth.
ii.
his father's lifeless corpse stares up at him from the casket, roses and expensive finery against his chest, arms crossed underneath. the smell of mildewed dirt makes charles' nose curl, and the funeral organ from the wake sounds mashed up and hellish in his ears.
the ground is slippery, and charles slips into the casket with him, just before it shuts. no matter how hard he calls, nobody can hear him over the packed dirt slowly compacting his precious oxygen. he clutches his father's smart suit the way he used to in church and breathes in the antiseptic smell of him. a worm works its way out of his father's nostril.
charles wakes under his heavy blankets, nightgown sticking to his back as he pulls them away and gasps for air. the chill of the room makes his wet skin prickle, so he tugs his blankets closer.
iii.
occasionally he finds himself in a wide room, darkness all around him as his bare feet slap against the hard ground. he can hear his own ragged breathing, but over that, the clunk of heavy riding boots. a hand extends from the darkness and fists itself in his too-long hair.
he hears laughter reverberate off the walls and it mingles with his sniffling. a voice, rough and raspy and deep, tells him to stop crying. he does not stop crying, instead curling into a ball on the cold ground, skirt of his nightgown tangled around his legs as he wraps his arms around them. the hands punch, and the feet kick, and punch, and kick, and punch and kick and punch and kick and punch and kick and punch and kick and punch and...
iv.
he dozes off in the taxi cab, fingertips splayed on the piles of his belongings that lie spread across the seat beside him.
in his dream, he is alone. solitary. the woods around him creak and groan and pull at the walls of his cottage. the fire in the fireplace keeps dying, and despite the piles and piles of firewood he shovels into it, despite the fanning of the flames around them, despite his best efforts with shaking hands, the darkness keeps closing in around him.
the cabbie gently shakes him awake and charles blinks and stretches until his back cracks. he unloads his belongings and tips the cabbie, who gives him a kind smile and a 'thank you, miss'. he returns the smile, but it is tight.
he watches the yellow car disappear down the wrong side of the street and then turns to face the massive expanse of oxford university.
v.
he's in his catholic school bathroom, running his hands under cool sink water before splashing it softly against his face, taking deep breaths. he keeps hearing voices. his hands are shaking as he looks at himself in the mirror.
his eyes glance to the side as the door clicks open, and charles scurries into one of the stalls, face still dripping until he wipes it on his cardigan.
a pair of girls enter the bathroom giggling, oxford shoes clacking against the tiled floor as they gossip over the sinks. he looks down at his own polished oxford as one girl enters another stall.
francis ran out of class looking so frightened. one says, but the sound doesn't reverberate.
what's with that freak? the other says.
then, suddenly, he can hear the chatter of a thousand students and teachers, all the thoughts zipping through his head. i can't believe she said that that's the second time this week what is gotten into him i'll have to ask mummy for a new pair of slacks ouch hot water what the heck was the answer to number two what do we need to pray to god for anyway i'm so sleepy--
charles wakes in his small flat, raven gently placing her fingertips against his forehead. she looks concerned, robe wrapped carelessly around herself, as though he's been projecting himself at her.
he probably has been.
"i'm sorry," charles says, and raven says nothing. she simply tucks herself into bed beside him as he buries his nose in her soft red hair.
vi.
his mother and kurt do not frequent his dreams, and when they do, it's confusing. his mother is a slumped knitted sweater, loosely stitched and fuzzy and stained. kurt is a taxidermy bear with the mouth wide open.
he hears the car crash but when he looks up, only scorching metal and twirling pieces of fabric in the air mark that there was ever a car. he clears the air by waving his hand and examines the damage, and what he finds is puzzling.
the dead bear that was one his stepfather is burnt, ripped to shreds and impaled by a piece of metal. the stuffing and hair is scattered around, the bear's long arms clutching at the opened stitching.
the knitted sweater is unravelled, white wine glass broken beside it, contents of the glass soaking into one of the sleeves still intact. the sweater sways in the breeze and the soot from the fires around him settle against it.
he watches the loose yarn and stuffing mingle in the wreckage and bites his cheek.
vii.
“stay out of my head,” erik says, and the barrier he puts up suddenly around his thoughts sends charles flinching. it actually hurts him.
he is sure there is something more to erik than anger and pain and darkness, but he can’t stand the sharp steel pillars that skewer his telepathic reach. he hastily pulls away and rubs at his temple. erik doesn’t trust him, and that’s okay.
then on their road trip erik’s thoughts scream out to him, weaving their way into his mind like a fine mist. erik’s dreams are sterile, compartmentalised and dark. charles doesn’t know what he’s doing in it, but a man he doesn’t recognize--shaw, no doubt--cuts into an erik he doesn’t recognize with a calm expression, and erik appears to be alive. he is struggling, slightly squirming and shaking as charles’ stomach turns with horror.
he puts a hand to his temple and then shaw is falling asleep, and ever so carefully he reaches out for erik’s face.
“i thought i told you to stay out,” erik says, voice soft and light and so young it hearts his heart. charles lets out a hum of acknowledgement and runs his hand through erik’s hair soothingly. he turns his head in agony and charles aches. his hands are shaking, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but he does anyway, patching up the slices in erik’s small stomach. erik sniffles above him. “you shouldn’t be here.”
he wakes up the next morning in erik’s bed, unsure how he managed to get there in the first place. erik, of course, is missing, the hissing of the shower in the bathroom a good indication. charles yawns, tucks the blanket back around himself, and returns to sleep.
viii.
charles yawns as he comments that erik is like a hound hunting foxes. kurt had never kept hunting dogs, but his father had kept a herd of sleepy droopy bloodhounds that only saw life when they bounded across the fields behind their home, chasing squirrels and other small wildlife.
he finds his dream that night familiar, the cabin in the dark woods, but he chooses this time to open the door. a fox scurries in, little claws scraping along the floor, and charles smiles down at it. he offers his hand to the fox and patches up its wounds carefully, door shut against both the barking of the hellhounds that chase after the fox and the creaking of the woods at his walls.
the fox’s eyes are cold and grey and every time charles runs his hand along its back, it prickles. how like erik to skew his words, he thinks, reading aloud from a novel to the creature as he falls asleep, head on his thigh. he rubs carefully at its head.
he rises once again to erik’s shower, but this time as he just gets his eyes open, the bathroom door opens. with the billowing steam comes erik, fully dressed and wiping at his hair with a towel.
“good morning,” charles says, curling the blankets around himself. “have a good night?”
erik’s eyebrows furrow and he stares at charles for a long, agonizing moment. charles flushes, looks away. brushes his silly hair down and fusses over it. strings of butterflies march across his stomach.
oh.
ix.
charles has never thought of westchester as his home, and especially not since he’d gone to university. after his parents’ passing, his inheritance of the estate was merely a formality; he’d live in it, perhaps, after his schooling, or he’d give it to some charity or turn it into a museum. he never expected to wake up against someone’s chest, morning breath soft against his neck as he dozed. and yet, he does. he wakes up every day in a new bedroom, erik’s hand burrowed in his hair softly.
he’s never felt so at home as he does in erik’s arms.
he’s living something of a dream now, even though the itch at the back of everyone’s mind screams of sebastian shaw and of the potential for death. he wakes to the sound of erik making breakfast and truly rouses to consciousness with his face buried into his freshly-washed back. erik kisses his cheek and stirs his tea along with his own coffee.
he buries his face in erik’s neck in the gardens, he shows the children (their children, by now) his and raven’s old bedrooms, and slowly he finds he begins to think less and less of his two-bedroom flat in england, even if he does miss his books.
i love you, he murmurs into erik’s shoulder as they sit together. i love you, he repeats like a mantra, clutching at the fabric of his trousers. i love you so, my darling, i can’t begin to fathom living without you and i can’t understand how or why. i love you, i do, i do, i do…
charles still has nightmares, but he wakes up to the smell of erik’s shampoo and a kiss to his cheek in the mornings and remembers that he is home, and he is safe.
x.
they say it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, and charles believes that it is true. though he returns from cuba alive, and safe, and with some but not all of their--his--children, it feels dull.
he still has dreams about erik, calling out to him at the bottom of the dark water he once feared as a child. charles tries, he tries every night, but he keeps drowning or coming up for air before he even has a chance to touch erik.
but it is erik, and he will drown a thousand times, even if it is just dreams. in his nightmares, erik watches with a hard expression, and just as charles calls out to him, he turns. but before he does, erik catches and holds his eyes, one long and breathless moment.
erik, i’m sorry. i’m so, so, so terribly sorry.
0.
erik, i’m sorry. i’m so, so, so terribly sorry.
erik wakes in the early hours of the morning, clutching at his sheets and looking around. unless charles is using cerebro to expand his mind, he shouldn’t be able to feel charles’ mind, and if he is using cerebro, he’d have made himself known to either erik or emma.
but erik knows that the tone is charles’, and knows that the voice is the same one on that beach in cuba. charles’ voice trembles.
i forgive you, charles, erik sends feebly. i will always love you, and i forgive you.
(charles feels suddenly at peace, choosing in the moment to pour his cup of brandy down the sink. he doesn’t know why, but he suddenly feels he doesn’t need it.)