Come Home (Cherik fanfiction)

Chapter Nineteen

Erik

It was supposed to go like this: Erik breaks out of Shaw's lab, trains and heals himself, and hunts Shaw down for killing his mother. Not like this: Erik nearly dies, gets saved by a blue eyed angel, and almost kills literally anyone but Shaw.

It was supposed to go like this: Erik trains with the Telepath and his friends, gets the information he needs, and leaves to finish his mission. Not like this: Erik falls in love with the Telepath named Charles, gets wrapped up in this little fantasy, and almost forgets about Shaw.

It was supposed to go like this: Erik goes to Cuba, kills Shaw, and continues on with Charles (despite his being an idealistic ninny). Not like this: Erik almost kills Charles and leaves him on the beach.

It was supposed to go like this: Erik gets Charles back, allowing himself one good thing out of his bleak and miserable life. Erik gets Charles back and protects him until the end of time. Erik gets Charles back and loves and cherishes him and hopes that Charles will-- is able to love him back.

That was not how it happened, and Erik should have known better.

It goes like this:

Charles is somewhere in the house, Erik knows that for sure. He'd use the chain to look, but (1) he doesn't want to make a fool of himself, (2) he's not wearing the helmet so, (3) if Charles catches him snooping, that'll mean more time where Charles isn't Charles and, instead, is closed up in this little shell of himself. And Erik doesn't need that right now, so he does nothing, and instead, lays flat on the floor of his office with the door locked, and reinforced (the lock is braiding into the door-frame).

Erik breathes deeply, but it doesn't stop the molecules of his muscles form twitching.

He and Charles are playing a game.

Charles has been avoided him all day, and he knows it (he can feel it in the goddamn wheels of the chair). And every time Charles rolls past his door, Erik wants to reach out-- does reach out, a little, as if to pull him back. He doesn't. Instead, he finds something else to distract himself with. So far, he's used trading objects, renovations, and relocation as hefty distractions, but nothing works for long, because it somehow ends up going back to Charles.

Charles skirts around the borders of Erik, seemingly unnerved, and Erik is trying not to make the house look as futuristic as the last. It seems, that the only thing worse as having Charles continents away, is having him just out of arms reach, and that is something Erik had never expected. He should have, but he didn't.

He thinks of Shaw, unfortunately, somewhere in the afternoon. He can't remember why, but he thinks of Shaw's old 'games' he used to play with Erik. There was one experiment that involved him starving Erik for weeks. It was a test to see if Erik could support his own body weight with a magnetic force: a coin and an array of food was set in the room. Each day, Shaw would somehow, make the food levitate, getting higher and higher until it touched the ceiling. Erik ate well until he could only stand on his tip-toes and hope, but when it got out of arm's reach, he simply went hungry. (And that's not even as to say he didn't try, but Erik was fourteen and skinny and too overwhelmed to learn to fly with a quarter.)

It infuriates him, even hours later, from just thinking about it. Not because it was Shaw; not because Shaw was a bastard; not even because it was himself who was being starved. Erik often thinks of the kid he was before the camps: respectful, quiet, kind, gentle, never let his Mama lift a finger when he could do it himself. He used to be so . . . good, he thinks, as many children are before war or hurt or a certain type of hunger can reach them. But, he also knows that every child must grow. He thinks-- He likes to think that if Shaw and the camps would not have happened to him, he might have been good . . . good for Charles. He's damaged goods now, but he does like to think of how they would have met: