Come Home (Cherik fanfiction)

Chapter Eleven

(AN:) So I went over the previous chapter (which I should also edit) and I think it ended kind of terribly. Sorry guys. :( But there really wasn't much that I could do about that. it's whole purpose was to just serve as an explanation of how Erik was getting from point A to point B so you wouldn't miss anything in between. I hope I kind of made up for it with a little fun chatty time with Emma, Raven, and Charles. This chapter will explain a little bit more though, I hope, about what's going on in the story. And, like most writers, I suck at giving you exposition so I wait give it in disorganized heaps. Love you all! Love hearing some of your responses to the story (keep that up)! Thank you so much for sticking through me throughout my first fanfiction! You're all awesome. Don't forget it.

Charles

He could sense Erik, before he saw him.

In truth, Charles missed Erik's mind. He didn't know what it was about Erik's mind, but Charles missed having it in the back of his. He knew he shouldn't miss it, too, but he just couldn't help it.

Erik's mind was very different, and even though he always went on about how each mind had it's own uniqueness and how each mind was different, but when you wiped away individual thought and moral, each mind worked the same. Each mind was like a starving child when you didn't look at individuality. All it thought about was food, sleep, and surviving. The human mind -- and he was sure animal -- would do anything to stay alive.

If he was honest, Erik's mind was the same. But it was the way he regarded things like food and sleep and survival underneath the angst and the anger that truly made Charles wish he could just carry the man around in his rib cage.

Erik didn't think about food, and when he was hungry, he ate the exact amount it would take to sustain his body until the next couple of hours. Charles swore he could set his watch by the way Erik ate. And Charles understood he had probably had to put himself on a schedule, what with hunting down a raving Nazi scientist for one half of his life and being tortured at the hands of said scientist throughout the other half.

Erik regarded sleep as foolish but necessary. He only slept for the exact amount of time that he had to. Charles knew Erik could be tactile and alert with only two hours of sleep and a pot of coffee (he had learned that when they had been recruiting mutants), but Erik knew that it was better to get at least six, so that's what he got.

Erik had a different view of survival. He knew he had a deep-rooted instinct of self-preservation, both from being a living organism and from Shaw did. However, he was willing to die for all of the ideals he had. He was willing to die trying to prove a point.

And despite to insurmounting anger had during those weeks leading up to Cuba, Erik had a calm mind with heavy undertones of determination and pure drive to reach his goal. This was probably because his mind didn't pay attention to mundane, simple things and instead dissected things than should have been just details.

He noticed the details.

He noticed the details about the details.

He noticed Charles.

And Charles had seen many, many minds, and ones a lot like Erik's, but having a mind like that in the back of his mind for that long had been a gift and Charles only wanted more of it.

And since Charles got to know mental-Erik like that in only the short time that they had lived together, he had also gotten to know physical-Erik. He had gotten to know physical-Erik so well, he knew that if he was living in the same house as Erik, moving shadows were never just a trick of the light.