Amersham - Anna (pineconepickers) - X-Men: First Class (2011) (2024)

Chapter 1: One

Chapter Text

One

The first leaves of autumn started falling on Abercorn Place on the day that Warren and Charles moved in together. Their flat on the first floor of the Victorian townhouse came with a spacious, street-facing living room with the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom at the back where the windows overlooked the communal garden. The various rooms had steadily filled up with boxes as the day progressed and many were now full of Charles’s books, which he promised would go into his office once the university handed him the keys.

Charles yelled out orders of what box should go into which room to their well-intentioned friends whose assistance had been secured with a bribe of beer and pizza. But even in the midst of the barely organised chaos, his thoughts strayed back to the cottage on the outskirts of Oxford that he had left that morning. He had lived there for over three years and it had been home: a cosy, two-hundred-year old nook that had been falling apart, of course, but the branches of the willow had had such a pleasant way of rattling the windows on a windy day, almost like a caress. Charles had refused to sell it now, having told Warren that they would keep it as a weekend getaway. Warren had asked Charles when exactly he expected them to have such time, which was probably true. But Charles was not parting with that cottage for anything, not even for their brightly lit St John’s Wood flat in the heart of London.

Charles looked forward to unpacking and bringing some organisation back into what was now a mess. He wanted to figure out where his stuff went, where Warren’s stuff went – to begin their new chapter in life. They only had the weekend to make these explorations, however, as Warren would leave for the airport early Monday morning. Thankfully that seemed like a long way away as at the end of the day they slumped onto the two couches in the living room, pizza boxes and beer bottles at their feet.

Scott was stretching on the couch opposite them. “You ever heard of a Kindle, Charles? Because that’s what I’m getting you for Christmas,” he said with a pointed look at the book boxes while next to him Jean was busy with the pizza.

“Well I promise you won’t have to help me move again,” he said in turn, and Warren chuckled next to him, arm over his shoulders. Warren’s best friend Bobby was downing his third beer by the doorway, and Charles’s sister Raven sat on the edge of the coffee table, picking jalapenos out of her slice.

Charles was trying to take in this rearrangement of his life: Jean and Scott would drive back to Oxford that night, and Charles would get used to not seeing them every week. Instead he would now see more of Raven, who lived next to Camden Market and had already vowed up and down that Charles would love living in London and that she couldn’t wait to show it off to him. Charles had always liked Bobby too, although Bobby was a bit too boisterous for his taste – still, Bobby was Warren’s best friend and as another expatriate living in London had promised to take Charles out drinking. “To ease the pain while Warren’s away,” as Bobby had said.

Charles had been offered the London job six weeks ago and Warren, who left everything until the last minute, had suggested buying their own place only when Charles had already found a decent place for himself. They had found their first real home in a hurry, but Charles was rather impressed by how efficient they’d been: they’d signed the paperwork, secured the mortgage and been handed the keys.

Bobby was chatting to Scott and Jean as they didn’t know each other all that well, and Jean was telling the story of how she and Scott had gotten together. Raven, who had recently split up with a flavour-of-the-month boyfriend, was listening eagerly. Once Jean finished the story, which to be fair was quite dull (they had met through Charles, who was a mutual friend, and Scott had asked Jean out for dinner – the end), Raven turned to Charles and said, “Oh tell me the story of you two! I love hearing it!”

Next to him, Warren laughed warmly. Charles smiled despite himself, anticipating the walk down memory lane. Warren said, “Well, a few years ago I went to visit my parents in New York, and they dragged me to the annual charity ball. There was an open bar and I got quite drunk –”

“Very,” Charles corrected.

Warren rolled his eyes. “Very drunk. And I saw this gorgeous guy across the room. Had to make a move, of course. So I made this horrible pass at Charles, and it was just embarrassing. I remember calling Bobby as I wallowed in self-pity and vodka.” Bobby nodded from the door, confirming this. “Anyway, once I sobered up the next day I asked around, trying to find out more about this gorgeous guy I’d seen. It was pretty funny because as it turned out our families knew each other as it was, we’d just never met. After that it was pretty easy to get Charles’s number and I called him and somehow managed to convince him to have dinner with me.”

“I was taking quite a bit of pity on you at that stage,” Charles said.

Warren laughed indignantly. “Oh, it was pity, was it, you coming home with me by the end of the night?”

“You’re tall, blond and blue-eyed. We all have weaknesses, Warren.”

They had told this story many a time, so even their disagreements were rehearsed and gained appreciative laughter from their audience.

“Anyway,” Warren continued, “we went out a few more times and as I discovered, Charles in fact lived in Oxford, which of course was a lot closer to Geneva than New York, so I thought great, this might actually go somewhere. Charles, however, kind of brushed me off and told me to call if I ever found myself in Oxford. You know, very nonchalant, very casual and cruel and breaking my heart,” Warren said, and Charles grinned. “So we parted ways. But I was completely smitten at this point, thinking that I’d just met the man I was supposed to be with and after a week of quite obsessive overthinking –”

Bobby piped in with, “So obsessive. So very obsessive. God, I suffered.”

Raven giggled happily. Warren went on with, “I flew to London, got on a train to Oxford. Found that little cottage Charles had gone on about. I showed up with a bottle of wine, and when Charles opened the door I said, ‘I’m sorry to show up unannounced but I think I’ve fallen in love with you.’”

There was an appreciative pause from the room. Charles shrugged. “Well, you know. I let him in, of course. Pity, you see.”

Warren huffed as their friends laughed, and Raven said, “I think that’s the most romantic thing that I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever done,” Warren admitted.

The others looked at Charles expectantly, so he said, “And it was the most romantic moment of my life, too.”

All in all, it was a perfect way of moving into their first home together.

After their friends had gone, Charles made them cups of tea while Warren took a shower. He looked at their mugs side by side on the counter, steam rising as he poured the perfect amount of milk for them both, Warren’s milkier than his own.

He hoped that this flat would soon feel like home to them. Warren, of course, spent most of his life at CERN outside Geneva and just minutes from the French border, and as such he would only come to London for the weekends – realistically every other weekend. But they were used to Skyping and texting and distance as it was, having been in a long-distance relationship since the start. Now they had bought their own place and were building something together as a couple. It was a step in the right direction, the logical and inevitable progression of nearly three years together. The two of them had only just begun.

Warren sauntered into the kitchen, a towel tied around his waist, skin gloriously shower fresh. “Thanks, babe,” he said, picking up his tea as he pecked Charles’s cheek.

“You’re welcome,” Charles said, quite distracted by tugging at Warren’s towel until it pooled at his boyfriend’s feet.

Warren quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, it’s like that, is it Dr. Xavier?”

“I’m afraid so, Dr. Worthington.”

They didn’t drink their teas.

As Charles lay in the dark of their bedroom with Warren asleep beside him – their first night in their new home – it felt like everything had come together at last. It had been touch and go for a while in his twenties whether he’d end up spending the rest of his life alone, but now he was twenty-nine, had a full-time position at an excellent university, a mortgage and a partner. His fears of failure had been unfounded.

Yet he couldn’t sleep.

A small tinge of guilt kept him awake: he felt bad for having lied earlier. Warren showing up in Oxford had not been the most romantic moment of his life. It was, truthfully, the second most romantic.

The moment that ranked at number one Charles had never shared with any of his friends, mostly because it was embarrassing, but also because hardly anyone knew the story of Charles’s first love. It had been like out of some cheesy John Hughes film, except set in Australia and not an American high school.

The most romantic moment of Charles’s life had been at the end of a night he’d spent with the most gorgeous man he had ever laid his eyes on. They had sat all night on a white sand beach facing the Coral Sea, wrapped up in blankets as the campfire flickered next to them. He had been nineteen at the time.

At first there had been a beach party until the others had left to walk the mile back to the hostel, but the two of them had stayed. They had talked, truly talked. Not about superficial things but about what was close to the core: their families, their childhoods, their values, what they thought of love, what they hoped to do with their lives, what their biggest fears were, how they hoped to die one day, what for them constituted happiness. Every word had been like a new confession, a new intimacy until Charles had never felt that exposed or connected to another human being.

They had known each other for a few days at that point, circling one another until they had been sure that they both felt the undeniable chemistry between them. And when they kissed at sunrise, it felt like they had crossed that line hours ago as it was, and nothing could have felt more natural than making love then and there in the privacy of a sleeping bag. Charles had never felt that lost in another person, had never felt that found either.

Afterwards they had lain in each other’s arms, studying each other with small, knowing smiles at the light of dawn. Erik had taken a deep breath and said, “I know we’ve only known each other for two days and that this is going to sound crazy.”

“What is?”

Erik had hesitated and then said, “Marry me.”

“What?”

“Marry me,” Erik repeated, grey eyes burning bright and in earnest. “Now, tomorrow, in ten years. Whenever’s good for you.”

Charles could tell that Erik was deadly serious. To this day Charles was surprised that he had remembered how to even speak. “Okay,” he had said and then laughed in a sudden onslaught of dizzying happiness. “Yes, yeah – Okay.”

Erik had laughed in relief. “Yeah? God. Okay. Okay then.” Their noses had brushed together. “So how about now?” Erik had raised a challenging, playful eyebrow.

Charles had grinned. “I can do now. Definitely.” And, in a quiet whisper, “I take thee, Erik Lehnsherr, to be my lawfully wedded husband – sort of lawful. Law of nature.”

Erik had smiled. “And I take you to be my lawfully wedded husband, Charles Xavier, now Charles Lehnsherr.”

“I think you’ll find you’re taking my surname.”

“Ooh, our first fight as husband and husband? Exciting,” Erik had beamed, kissing him again.

And that had been the most romantic moment of Charles’s life.

He had told Jean of the gorgeous German who had swept him off his feet during his Australian excursion when he was nineteen – just nineteen, what did a nineteen-year-old know? More to the point, it had ended almost as soon as it had started. In turn Jean had told a story of her high school sweetheart Jackson, and they both had laughed it off in an Oxford pub on a bleak January evening.

Nearly ten years had passed since Charles’s night on the beach, making it nothing more than a memory. Charles was now in bed with Warren in their new home, on the threshold of a new era. He would pick a ring and propose before the year was done, he had decided.

Assuming, of course, that he could discount getting married to a holiday fling on an Australian beach years and years ago. This thought amused him as he pressed a quick kiss into Warren’s bare shoulder, although deep down he felt a sharp sense of sadness. He had learned to associate that sensation with the distant, warm memory of a man who had had the widest of smiles, the greyest of eyes and the softest of touches.

He pushed this all out of his mind and relaxed against Warren’s sleeping form.

The past did not matter anymore: he’d found his way home.

Erik had not wanted to take on the role of project co-manager but the estates division had left him little choice. Ted’s health had severely declined and an early retirement had seemed like the best option, and so someone had needed to take over the project and fast. A week later Erik had been promoted.

Normally Erik would have jumped at the opportunity of getting involved with the construction of a brand new university building in central London, but when he had had his annual progress meeting with the boss earlier in the summer, they had both agreed to reduce Erik’s working hours. This meant less work being assigned to him, simple as that, but co-managing a massive enterprise like the new science building was not going to make that a reality. Erik cursed the estates department as he marched to a meeting in the September rain.

This meeting would drag on – he felt it in his bones as he treaded through the flooded pavement. He pulled out his phone and selected a number from his most recent calls list. “Hi, it’s Erik Lehnsherr – I’m well, thank you. I might be a bit late today. No later than six thirty, no, no, I’ll definitely – Yes. Okay. Thank you as usual. Yes, thank you.”

He hung up, feeling guilty. Reduced working hours his ass.

He hopped up the stairs to the old science building that was currently home to Physics, Neuroscience, Chemistry and other such things. The new building was going to be bigger and better, more modern with better facilities, two floors of underground laboratories and five floors of aboveground offices, meeting rooms and lecture theatres. Needless to say the university had a few pharmaceutical companies sponsoring the enterprise, and Erik did not question the morality behind it. He didn’t have time for such things.

In the lobby of the old building, small and cramped with 1970s written all over it, Emma Frost was already waiting for him with the lead architects and the head of the school. They all shook hands, Erik clutching onto his dripping umbrella with his free one. They were led up to the fourth floor to a large conference room full of nerdy looking scientist types, and introductions rang in the air while Erik busied himself in setting up the PowerPoint.

He did not see much point in meetings like these: gathering all the different estates reps, who knew nothing about architecture or engineering, for an update on the building plans so that they could then report back to their schools. Construction was due to begin in a few weeks’ time and, god willing, the building would be ready the following summer.

Emma led the meeting, flicking from one slide to the next. “And, as you can see, we have addressed the lack of staff kitchen space with –”

That was what it all came down to, Erik thought: break rooms. These scientists were after nice, relaxing staff rooms with tables and chairs for a bit of office gossip.

Emma was immaculately dressed all in white as usual, her tone just a tad bored but strictly professional and reassuring. Erik never felt quite at ease with her – he had worked with Emma for four years now and still wasn’t sure if Emma really even liked him. Still, Emma was admirably efficient and as such co-managing the project with her was the best situation Erik could be in.

Despite Emma’s presentation skills, his thoughts wandered to all the laundry waiting for him at home, and he had to remember to order groceries from Sainsbury’s tonight if he wanted a Saturday morning delivery slot. He could take some of the paperwork for this project home with him and try to catch up over the weekend. That sounded like a plan, he figured, as his eyes washed over the faces of the bored staff in the meeting room.

One of the scientists was staring at him.

Erik paused, and the man instantly turned his eyes away, nailing them to the handout they had distributed at the start. The man at the far end of the table was wearing a grey blue suit jacket with a white shirt, the lower half of his face covered in brown stubble, and with tangled, shoulder-length hair that looked like it could do with making friends with a brush. The man was now scrutinising the handout like it might catch fire, but his eyes were not moving.

Scientist weirdos, Erik thought to himself and turned to look at Emma again. She flicked to a new slide that showed the timescale of the construction.

Something clicked in the back of Erik’s head, then.

His head positively snapped back to the direction of the man who was again staring at him, and this time he caught the blue eyes before, again, the man perused the handout like he was possessed.

Erik’s mind brought forth a picture of a young, gorgeous American with an inexplicable English accent who back then had been clean-shaven and had had floppy Hugh Grant style hair that Erik had adored.

It couldn’t be. There was no way in the world – This wasn’t the right place, the right university – No. It wasn’t possible. After all these years. It could not be –

The man dared a look at him, and this time it was Erik who looked away.

It was him. His mind reeled. God, it was really him.

“Erik?” Emma prompted. “Have you got anything to add?”

“No, uh. You’ve covered it quite well. Yes. Very thorough.” He nodded vigorously, nervously rubbing his hands to his knees. The collar of his shirt was too tight. His heart was beating wildly in the confines of his chest. A thousand vivid memories had burst to life inside him, each more intimate than the next.

The meeting ended in a flash, somehow, whilst also going agonisingly slowly. Then people were standing and getting ready to go. One of the reps approached him and started bombarding him with follow up questions that she had written down during the presentation. The man with the messy, brown hair was stuffing papers into a weatherworn, black briefcase, and Erik said, “Email me with your questions. I’m sorry, I must dash.” He haphazardly handed her his business card.

He was trying to think of what to say, because there had to be that one thing that was the right opening line and all others were wrong, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of the one he was looking for. He went with, “Uhm. Hello.” The blue eyes he still remembered distinctively from years before lifted up to meet his. Erik knew he wasn’t wrong, but he had to confirm it anyway, like it couldn’t be real until he heard the name aloud: “Charles.”

God, he hadn’t said the name in years. Thought it, yes. Often. Too many times to count.

“Ah, yes. Hi.” Charles smiled searchingly. “Erik.”

“Yeah. Yes.” He let out a breath, feeling annoyingly nervous. He stared. “Um, wow.” Charles laughed at his confusion, and Erik joined in. “God, this is –”

“Bizarre?”

“That, yes. Unexpected,” he said, and Charles made an agreeing sound. Encouraged, he said, “Christ, it must have been, um. Ten years now?”

“Thereabouts,” Charles agreed, and they shuffled to the side to let people pass. Charles’s smile looked like it didn’t know what to do, whether to beam or be forced, with a frown flickering on his face, and Erik was at a loss for words.

“Uncanny, really,” he then continued, memories flashing through his mind. He quickly ignored them as they seemed to hit too close to home. He focused on the present. “Do you work here?” he asked and then realised what a stupid question it was.

“I do indeed,” Charles said pleasantly and checked his wristwatch. “For a whole week and… eight hours, now.”

“God, what are the chances?” he said because even that meant nothing: the university had thousands of staff. Erik only worked with a fraction of that figure. “I only took this project over from Ted a few weeks back, you know the guy who’s usually here?”

“No,” Charles said, smiling lopsidedly. “Like I said, one week, eight hours. So.” He tapped at the clock face.

“Right. Of course.” He felt stupid, but his eyes had caught the clock face – he was running late. “Listen. Um. This is so random. God, how – How unexpected.” He rubbed at his temple briefly, trying to digest this. “Okay, hey, I’d love to… catch up. Is that weird? Is that..?”

“No, I mean –”

“Look, I really gotta run, I’m really sorry. But we need to catch up, or something.” He placed a hand on Charles’s arm, squeezing it. Charles had definitely beefed up since their last encounter. “Great seeing you, Charles.”

“You too.” Pause. “Erik.”

Erik flashed a quick smile and hurried off.

He emerged from the Archway tube station fifteen minutes past six and made it to the Gifted Youngsters Nursery by twenty-five past – a good five minutes before closing time, so it hardly even counted as cutting it close. He had to call the nursery at least once a week and tell them he’d be there by six forty the latest, and he hardly dared to think what they thought of him there. The only thing he had going for him was that there was always one person who was thrilled at the sight of him.

Upon entering the brightly painted reception area he hardly managed to greet Moira, the manager of the centre sitting behind the main desk, when he already heard a hurried pat of feet racing in his direction with a happy squeal of “Papi!” He scooped up his daughter, propping her up against his hip and kissing her cheek, and she laughed brightly, brown hair sticking out everywhere.

“Und wer haben wir hier?” he questioned fondly as she wrapped her arms around his neck in a hug. She did not understand concepts like personal space and as far as she was concerned Erik was only an extension of her own physicality.

Moira smiled at them kindly, rounding the desk. “She had a bit of a tantrum around naptime, but other than that we had a great day,” she said with her infinite patience that Erik certainly lacked himself. “Didn’t we have a nice day, Shani?”

The three-year-old nodded, busying herself with pulling on Erik’s tie. Erik said, “That’s great, thank you. You had a nice day, did you? Come on, time to get going, Herchzen.” He then turned to Moira. “Oh, and just to remind you, Shani’s mother will be picking her up this Friday, but in case she doesn’t show, you know, if that were to happen, or if she’s late, then –”

“We’ll call you if she’s even five minutes late,” Moira supplied with a smile that said he was worried about nothing. “We know the drill by now, Mr. Lehnsherr.”

Erik was sure that they did, but he liked double-checking when he knew Ororo’s weekend was coming up. Moira did a good job at keeping her face professionally blank, but Erik could sense an air of pity nonetheless.

“Call me Erik, I insist.”

Moira smiled. “Whatever you say, Mr. Lehnsherr.”

He rolled his eyes at Moira, who laughed, before he turned to Shani. “Wo ist deine Jacke, Fräulein?”

“Ich weiß nich’,” she said indifferently yet happily. Moira was on it, holding out Shani’s ladybug print jacket. Erik took it, mouthing ‘thank you’ as he lowered Shani to the floor to put it on her.

A minute later they were walking up the street, Shani holding onto Erik’s much larger and rougher hand. She kept babbling about her day, and he kept making appreciative noises to indicate that he was listening. He was amazed by how quickly Shani was picking stuff up – six months ago she had hardly talked. Now she quite simply wouldn’t shut the hell up, not that he minded.

With every day Shani also looked more like her mother – it was in the mouth and the nose and even the chin. Shani’s complexion was a few shades lighter than her mother’s soft brown, and Erik supposed that was his contribution, that and Shani’s eyes, which were bluish grey. When Ororo had been pregnant they had kept joking that at least their child would be blond, thanks to Erik’s German genes and the fact that the women in Ororo’s family tended to have snow white hair, some kind of a genetic pigment error, but Shani had been born with a mob of brown hair firmly on her head. Ororo laughed that Darwinism had won at last and killed off her family’s hair gene.

Still, Shani was the spitting image of her mother with a dash of Erik, if he was being generous. It helped on the days he missed Ororo – he could still see her smile on their daughter’s face.

They stopped at a corner shop to get milk, and by the park Shani got completely distracted by a dog that she kept pointing at in utter delight, and then Erik was finally opening the front door of their red brick terraced house, pressing in the burglar alarm code as Shani ran inside.

The time was now seven, and Erik heated up some spaghetti hoops and was thankful that Ororo wasn’t there to judge him – besides, Shani loved spaghetti hoops so he wouldn’t have to fight with her about dinner. After Shani had been fed, Erik allowed her twenty minutes TV time, during which she was perched on the floor, blue eyes wide and mouth hanging open with Bubby the Teddy in her arms, watching Bob the Builder. She kept calling out things for Erik to make note of like the tractor. She really loved the tractor. Erik used these twenty minutes to mostly ignore her as he sat on the couch behind her, going on the Sainsbury’s website and clicking on groceries so that he could feed his daughter something a tad more nutritious than canned pasta.

Then there was the brushing of teeth and brushing of hair and getting Shani into pyjamas, and then finally she was under the covers, yawning, and Erik read her a bedtime story until she fell asleep. Erik tiptoed out of Shani’s bedroom just quarter to nine. He should have had her in bed by eight – he was behind schedule yet again.

Finally alone, he changed his clothes to home-wear, padding around in loose pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt that he was pretty sure was kind of clean. He finished the spaghetti hoops can himself, spooning cold tomato sauce into his mouth as he finalised the Sainsbury’s order and got a delivery slot for Saturday. He then cancelled one of his direct debits, bought spare screws for his broken IKEA bookcase on Amazon, watched the news on the BBC website, and lastly he checked the weather forecast to try and decide what Shani should wear the next day.

Having accomplished all of this, he leaned into the couch, exhaling. He was exhausted. His ears were constantly tuned to the sound of Shani waking up upstairs, but she was a good sleeper. Erik appreciated that about his daughter.

He moved the laptop to the kitchen where he set it on the table. He left the kettle to boil as he went upstairs to the small study where he found his external hard drive. It had once been a study, at least – it was now a room full of Shani’s leftover toys. Downstairs he plugged the hard drive in as he made himself a cup of de-caf tea, and then he sat down and started clicking through folders until he found it: Australia 2005. His forefinger hovered over the touchpad.

Nope. He needed a beer for this.

Armed with a bottle of London Pride instead, he clicked the folder open: a mere two thousand pictures awaited him.

Two thousand was reasonable, in his opinion, considering he had been in Australia for a whole year. At the age of twenty-three, it had been the best year of his life – he had gone Down Under with two of his best friends, Kurt and Telford, to hit the beaches and travel around and go surfing and work in bars for cash. He could have started flicking through chronologically to see their arrival in Perth, their West Coast adventure, then flying east – they had hit Sydney hard. But he scrolled past all of this, past their month in Tasmania, their Adeleine road trip. He scrolled until nine months had flown past him and – there.

The word ‘selfie’ hadn’t existed back in 2005, but now he clicked open a picture that would have qualified. He was holding the camera at arm’s length, his youthful face shining with a wide grin, his arm around the shoulders of a man few years his junior, who was also smiling but whose face was mostly hidden by sunglasses. Behind them was a random stretch of Australian beach – they had met there and realised that the man was a guest at the hostel where the three Germans were currently working.

Erik started clicking on the pictures that followed: Charles in red swimming trunks wading knee-deep in turquoise water; Charles sitting on the sand as he talked with his hands; Charles walking down the street with a towel over his shoulder, smiling at the camera; Charles holding up a beer bottle with a drunken smirk in what had been the hostel kitchen; Charles doing a stupid arm muscle-bulge pose with Kurt and Telford; Charles giving Kurt a piggyback ride; a shot of half of Charles’s feet (Erik must have been quite drunk at this stage); and then there was a picture of a passed out Telford with Erik drawing a penis on his forehead with a Sharpie.

From the next day they only had a few shots of the gang in wetsuits on a boat, Charles amongst them. Snorkelling wasn’t exactly camera friendly. There were some scenery shots, and one of him and Charles sitting at the back of the boat, both tanned as hell, with wetsuits pulled down to their waists, beaming at either Kurt or Telford who had taken the shot.

More pictures of drunken foolishness – a few of Erik with a joint in his hands. Jesus, he really needed to censor this sh*t before Shani reached teenagehood.

And then there were pictures of the big party on the beach that the hostel had put together. Erik only had a few pictures of the party because his interest had been elsewhere. He didn’t need pictures to remember that night, anyway, or that morning. He remembered all of it quite clearly, and the youthful hope that had spread in his chest whenever he looked at Charles.

The next pictures showed a road trip, but now Kurt and Telford were absent as they had stayed working at the hostel. They’d agreed to meet in Sydney when they could. And so Charles was standing next to their navy Toyota, a map spread on the car’s bonnet, followed by a shot taken in a bar with Charles pulling a face at the camera as he held a ridiculous looking co*cktail with three umbrellas sticking out of it, then one of Erik in turn sipping on a similar looking drink. Then more selfies of him and Charles from various days, covering a handful of weeks: them grinning at the camera in their rental car, them laying on beaches, them in bars with drinks in hand, them in museums and pointing at statues, them on streets and grinning under street signs, them in a zoo at the cat house, pictures of them kissing, of them with their arms around each other, one of Erik giving Charles’s cheek a sloppy kiss as Charles held the camera with his mouth dropped open in faux shock, and even one of Charles fast asleep on a hotel bed, spread out on his back with nothing but a white sheet covering his modesty, followed by a blurry shot of them sharing a pillow and staring up at the camera with blissful grins, another shot of them kissing in bed, clearly very naked, with lots of tongue, either pre- or post-sex or, god forbid, probably during.

Erik kept clicking until he came to a shot taken at an airport, of Charles looking annoyed with an arm reached out to stop Erik from taking the shot. Erik had only tried to make the waiting more bearable, before Charles had gone through security. He remembered their desperate embrace as they had said what they thought would be temporary goodbyes.

They had not met again until today, almost ten years later.

He took a long f*cking sip from his beer before he rubbed his forehead. Jesus Christ, he had forgotten. Jesus.

He clicked back to the shot of him and Charles kissing in bed.

God, to be young and in love…

And he had been. It had been a brief affair, he acknowledged this: a month travelling around Australia together. He knew that, truthfully, for most people it would just have been a gap year fling, but not for him. He had been absolutely maddeningly in love. The pictures were proof of how smitten and besotted he had been, how he had been all over Charles, stumbling on his feet.

“Jesus,” he breathed in mild awe.

His mind sprung back to the conference room, back to Charles. Erik could not believe that Charles, who had just disappeared into the world, had now resurfaced. That was not to say that along the years he had googled ‘Charles Xavier’ once or twice, having found him at a genetics lab in New York, and later Oxford – but this latter discovery had been sponsored by drinking when he and Ororo had been in the midst of getting divorced, and the realisation of Charles being so close had left him numb and cold and sad. After that, he had been too busy with his failures to contemplate the man he had once loved.

And now this. What were the chances? It had been purely accidental that Erik had ended up in London – he and Ororo had both thought it to be a decent compromise geographically when they had needed to find a place to start a family. And now Charles had started working for the same university and ended up in that meeting with him, having appeared into his life from the academic shroud of Oxford where Erik thought Charles would remain as an unattainable memory?

Erik stared at the screen that showed a happier version of him than he could even recall.

He rubbed at his mouth, taking one more look at the screen before disconnecting the hard drive. His chest felt oddly constricted.

He had never forgotten Charles – no, that was a ridiculous notion. You couldn’t forget a love like that. Whenever he was single or in a relationship that had turned sour or even when he was in a relationship that was going well, Charles had been that 2:35 in the morning thought: if only. God, if only… And in the immediate years after Charles, Erik recalled himself coming to sudden halts on streets when someone who vaguely looked like Charles came into view, his heart suddenly in his throat.

But he had been unable to stop time from passing. He had been unable to retain that feeling of love and longing, and when he had realised that, he had felt like he’d betrayed what they had had. It had been stronger than time, they had both thought, erroneously. And he had moved on, slowly, gradually, but he had, and so Charles became a story of something that had happened to someone else once, something fantastical and exciting and happy, back when he had been ready to believe in things like a soulmate or love at first sight.

He wasn’t the man in the pictures, and neither was Charles. They were entirely different people now, and Erik felt a keen curiosity to find out who Charles had turned out to be. In all likelihood they might not even find anything to talk about now, surely.

Still, Erik thought as he finished his beer, it was too crazy of a coincidence not to follow up.

Charles shared the south-east corner of the third floor with Dr McCoy, a post-doc researcher who had been at the university for a year. Unlike some of the faculty who had been in the same office for twenty years and were hopelessly set in their ways, Charles was pleased to have someone who also considered themselves to be new – and was even a fellow American. They had already formed a habit of shared coffee breaks in either Charles’s office or in Hank’s opposite his.

Charles had carried a box of books into the office every morning for the past few weeks, which had made his morning commute hell whilst enabling him to gain the severe dislike of many a Londoner on the packed rush hour tube rides. Now the right-hand wall was filled with loaded book cases, and he had moved the large desk to the window so that one end pressed against the windowsill, enabling him to gaze out while he worked. Two chairs stood in the middle of the room like little forgotten islands, already home to stacks of papers and, once term started, the occasional student in need of advice or lab report feedback.

It would take a while longer for the already cluttered office to feel like home, but as he placed a picture frame containing him and Warren next to his monitor – them in Barcelona – he felt like he was claiming the space for himself.

His window looked down to a monotonous London street that was a slithering line of black taxis and red busses. His Oxford office had faced one of the many greeneries of the town, elms and beeches on the college meadow.

Well, life went on, he told himself as he waited for Warren to get on Skype. They often lunched together with the help of technology, on top of the evening skyping and their constant calls and texts and emails to one another. Charles had popped out to a noodle place two blocks down to get a bento box and was back for noon GMT and one o’clock Warren’s time. After over two and a half years of long-distance, they had the daily running of their relationship worked out rather smoothly. Intimacy had been replaced with frequency. Warren was usually a few minutes late, however, so Charles checked his emails as he waited. He smiled at the sight of an email from Jean, clicking it open:

How’s London – or rather London must be well nice, innit? Six months until the wedding, innit? Settled on my dress last weekend, Bob’s your uncle, bubble and squeak, god save the queen!

- Jean

Charles snorted and replied with:

Dear Jean,

Cease these vulgarities at once! One must be loquacious with Queen’s English or not at all.

Sincerely,
Dr Charles Xavier

p.s. Okay, okay, what’s the dress like then. White? Frilly? I’m not very good at women’s fashion, I’m afraid. Bulbous?

Jean and Scott were some of Charles’s favourite people in the world. He had met Jean in New York when they were both working towards their doctorates and, luckily for Charles, Jean had moved to Oxford a year before he himself followed. An academic environment like Oxford was a cultural melting pot, so Charles had not been surprised to find an American named Scott living next door to him when he started his post-doc. He hadn’t bought his cottage yet but was renting a small flat in Jericho, and Scott had helped him carry his stuff in on that first day. After that Scott started coming around for beers a few times a week. He worked at the Eye Hospital a short bike ride away from their street and had been in England for two years. When Charles had a housewarming party after he moved to his cottage, both Scott and Jean attended – the rest, as the cliché said, was history.

They had been his closest friends in Oxford, and Charles missed their company now. London felt infinite and overrun with people, and as such was all the gloomier for a newcomer: Charles did not know where to start. He was rather good at meeting people and making friends, but as a lecturer/researcher, he hardly had the time. So far he had lived a life of home-office-home, and without Warren to come home to, it had been rather bleak, even if the job was exciting.

Warren finally called and his handsome face appeared, grinning at the web camera in his CERN office. They started catching up with Charles doing most of the talking because he had more news to share, so he talked about how he planned on taking up squash at the sports centre near their house, and he talked about Hank, who had invited him to join the interdepartmental chess club that met once a month. Charles simply had to make more of an effort to meet people. Warren was a scientist through and through, but his favourite pastime consisted of really bad Hollywood blockbusters, and, as if on cue, he said, “Chess club? That has to be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Says the nuclear scientist,” Charles retorted, and Warren chuckled. “I’ll go check it out. Oh, and Bobby keeps inviting me out for drinks, to get ‘absolutely wrecked’ as he puts it.”

Warren made a face although Charles knew Warren loved his best friend like a brother. “Drinking with Bobby is a whole ritual, man. I’ve told you some of the stories.”

Warren had, and Charles had seen the aftermath of many: Warren groaning in bed that he was going to hurl or die, perhaps both, as Charles petted his hair with faux sympathy and kept his eyes on the book.

“I think I just gotta man up and get sloshed with him,” he said, “although throwing up in some fancy London club is not my idea of a good time. Besides –”

His inbox chimed the arrival of a new email, and he clicked the window open. Sender: Erik Lehnsherr.

Charles completely forgot himself. “I mean, uh. Bobby’s great, but I worry for myself.”

Warren replied something in a jocular tone that Charles didn’t really catch as he clicked the message open.

Dear Charles,

Lovely bumping into you the other week. I’m sorry I had to make such a quick exit as we hardly got to say hello. I know this is rather last minute, but my Friday night’s opened up. Would you perhaps like to go for a drink? There are quite a few nice pubs in the area.

Warm regards,
Erik

His mind reeled. Was he busy the following night? He wished he could have said he was doing something worthwhile, like giving a poetry reading in an independent book shop or going on a canal boat cruise through London. Raven certainly would be attending some artsy party somewhere in Camden, and Charles knew he would be invited if he wanted to go. Or Bobby might take him out for a drink or, to be perfectly frank, Charles’s plan had been to do some fixing around the house as he downed a de-stress Friday beer or two. He could of course just ignore the email. Erik had said he would be in touch, but that had been well over a week ago and Charles had assumed it to have been an empty pleasantry.

“Earth to Charles?” Warren was saying in the minimised video screen. Charles clicked it bigger again.

“Sorry, I was just checking my email. Apparently the lab staff are going for some drinks tomorrow.”

The lie was out of his mouth before he had, one, intended to say it, two, even decided that he would go for this drink Erik had offered.

“Oh, you definitely need to go – make some friends, right?” Warren said.

Warren would be staying in Geneva for the weekend and Charles would be visiting him the weekend after. So far their St John’s Wood flat felt more like Charles’s place – apart from a collection of bad movies, some toiletries and one half of a wardrobe of clothes that were Warren’s, everything there belonged to Charles. They needed to buy a lot of things for the house, and they had planned to go shopping together once Warren got to London, but currently he was tied up in Switzerland and Charles still did not have an abundance of friends in London, so, in a word, Charles had no plans for Friday night.

“We need to finalise Thanksgivings plans soon too,” Charles said, and Warren started talking about his parents’ visit to London in a few months’ time.

After they had finished their lunches, Charles signed off Skype with a wave and a kiss at the screen. He then clicked ‘Reply’, fingers poised in the air above the keys. He held his breath. Nothing.

He leaned back in the chair and sighed. The empty ‘reply’ box mocked him on the screen. What tone was appropriate? What should he say?

“For god’s sake,” he swore and typed out a reply.

Dear Erik,

A drink sounds good. When and where?

All best,
Charles

He pressed send. Short and to the point, polite, professional even.

He tried to get on with his work, but a voice in his head was already telling him that he’d made a mistake.

To him, Erik had been like an apparition. Charles had noticed him the second Erik had walked into the conference room with the other project manager – Ms. Frost, if he remembered correctly. He had not, of course, believed that it was the same person until Emma had introduced Erik Lehnsherr to the room while Erik had been getting the computer going. Being an estates rep for the genetics institute was one of those nominal, sh*tty roles no one really wanted. Charles had taken it on as the newbie who wanted to show that he was willing to take one for the team.

So far he had been a useless rep. He did not recall anything from the meeting because he had spent all of it staring at Erik in disbelief: the tanned German from the beach who was on a gap year, the man who had proposed to him, the man to whom he’d said yes, and the man who had completely broken his heart. And then Erik had noticed him, looking gobsmacked, and it was just as awkward as accidentally running into one’s ex could be.

Ex. He huffed. A month – did Erik even count?

Another bing to notify an email. Erik had sent him the time and place and said, I look forward to it.

Charles’s stomach dropped ever so slightly. Okay, yes, Erik counted. Charles had been distraught when their romance had come to an end that had been as abrupt as its start. In fact, Charles would be in his right to resent Erik, who had stomped all over his youthful heart.

It was ten years ago, he told himself. He couldn’t be mad about something Erik had done ten years ago… could he? He had moved on and was blissfully happy now, so if anything he should be happy that Erik had dumped him. Or perhaps Charles had dumped Erik – it had been a very confusing breakup done via telephone, with yelling and crying from both ends.

“I just wanna see how he is,” he said, keenly aware that he was talking to himself. “Catch up. Innocent. Perfectly innocent. Nothing weird about it.”

But he kept thinking that it was not a good idea.

He pushed the matter out of his mind successfully until the following day, when he left work and kept his phone out, following its directions to the pub. As it was a Friday night, the City was overflowing with well-dressed business men and women who crowded the streets outside various drinking establishments. Charles passed one after the other, not cherishing the thought of having to go into one of them, waiting ten minutes to be served and then standing squished in a corner somewhere whilst yelling over the noise.

The directions, however, took him away from the busy spots until he turned into a quiet alleyway at the end of which a few old-looking men were standing around smoking. As he approached them, he realised they were outside a plain looking pub that advertised itself in no way whatsoever. He walked into the soft chatter of regulars sitting on well-worn wooden chairs in a dimly lit room big enough for perhaps thirty odd, and he was instantly reminded of the many excellent pubs he had frequented in Oxford. He felt right at home and was surprised to find such comfort in London.

A quick scan of the room – no sign of Erik.

Charles felt nervous, which only irritated him.

With renewed vigour he walked up to the bar and got himself a pint of stout from a local microbrewery that he would have to google later because it tasted sublime. He was taking a long sip when a hand landed on his shoulder, and he managed to force down a choke.

“Beat me to it,” Erik said, smiling easily as Charles turned to him. He felt a brief wave of resentment that Erik looked so at ease. Was this easy, them meeting like this after years and years? Erik leaned in and pecked his cheek casually, and Charles caught the scent of Erik’s cologne: a mix of spices and a hint of orange. Charles patted Erik’s arm as some kind of a greeting that he hoped came across as somewhat natural. The familiarity of Erik’s greeting had taken him off guard, but he was used to the more European way of greeting friends – Warren’s male colleagues were kissing his cheek whenever he went to Geneva. “You found the place okay?” Erik asked.

“It was easy to find,” he assured, trying not to stare – he still couldn’t believe this was his Erik.

Erik was in a grey coat over a dark navy suit with a leather satchel hanging off one shoulder. He would have blended in with the business men of the other pubs or a glossy fashion magazine montage easily enough. Charles was torn between fierce jealousy that Erik looked so f*cking stunning without even trying and a feeling of pride that f*ck me, I’ve hit that. Of course back in the day Erik’s wardrobe had consisted mostly of loose shorts and tank tops, not to forget the flip flops, and Charles struggled to adjust to the transformation from a beach bum to a sharp, well-dressed professional.

It occurred to him that he had missed out on a whole transformation.

“What are you drinking?” Charles asked, quickly getting Erik a pint.

They found seats towards the back of the pub at a small round table. Erik put his satchel down and folded his coat over the back of the chair. Charles placed his old briefcase by his feet – he’d found it in a charity shop in Oxford back in the day and was very fond of it. He was still dressing in the whimsical style of an Oxford researcher, which was fine and doted upon in Oxford. London was a very different climate: competition stank in the air. Charles made a mental note of updating his wardrobe, some new sharp suits and shirts, and definitely buying a new briefcase ASAP.

“This is a great pub,” he said once they’d settled.

“I’m glad you like it.” Erik flashed a smile at him, one of Erik’s ridiculous, full-of-teeth smiles that Charles still remembered quite clearly. Erik stared at him for a second, then laughed – and such a good laugh, bright and warm and inviting – and shook his head. “I still can’t believe it’s you. I can’t believe that here I am, sitting down with Charles Xavier. Hey, you look great. Your hair’s grown some.”

“I suppose,” he said, automatically touching the side of his head. Raven said he looked like a 70s p*rn star without the ‘tache.

Erik grinned. “And the beard’s nice.”

Charles now touched his chin. “Thanks.” His next line was ‘my boyfriend likes it.’ Warren did. He didn’t say it. He had never been good with complements. “You too,” he then said. “Look great.” Erik did. God, Erik was stunning – how the hell had Charles forgotten how sharp the line of Erik’s jaw was, how lean his frame and broad his shoulders? “You look older.” But even the lines at the corners of Erik’s eyes looked good.

“Older?” Erik repeated with a grin that was highly contagious, and Charles couldn’t help but grin back. He tried to hold onto the slight anger and resentment – because Erik had f*cked him over, so f*ck him – but somehow it was hard to remember why he’d ever been mad. It felt like they were two old friends catching up. “I mean, after ten years I’m sure that’s true, but you could phrase it differently. More mature, maybe?”

“You look more mature, Erik.”

“Thank you.”

Charles was grinning now and leaned in. “But what is going on with your accent? I remember it being German with an Australian twang, but now it’s – vaguely American? The Germanness is there, but –”

“I lived in Canada for a few years,” Erik said, taking a sip of his pint. “And I lived around the US for a while too.”

This, Charles realised, was what he wanted to know: what had Erik done in the past nine years and how had he ended up in London? But Erik now beat him to it, asking Charles how he’d spent the past decade. Charles began to recap: after Australia he had gone back to Oxford to finish his BSc, as Erik well knew – they had made plans to see each other, for Erik to visit Oxford after he came back from Australia. Erik, of course, never had. After his BSc, he had attended Columbia in New York where he had done his post-graduate studies. After several years he returned to Oxford for a post-doc position and had stayed there until three weeks ago when he had moved to London after they had offered him a better position and a pay rise.

It was a relatively straightforward academic career. Charles wished he had gone hitch-hiking to Tierra del Fuego at some point just to add flavour.

“I lived in New York for a few months, too,” Erik confided. “Back in… 2009, I think it was.”

“Really? I was living there back then.”

“You were? Huh. Maybe we passed each other on the street.”

“We might have,” he acknowledged, now going through memories to see if he’d ever thought he’d seen Erik on the street. He had sometimes, in New York, in Oxford, at airports. He’d always had brief moments where he’d thought… And it didn’t matter how many years it had been. But no man had ever actually been Erik, and he couldn’t think of a New York encounter that would have matched. “I was staying at Upper East Side.”

“Ah,” Erik laughed. “We were in Queens, so probably not. Then it was, uh. Argentina for four months, then we went to Cuba. They have some nice beaches in Cuba.”

We, Charles thought. “Sounds like you’ve travelled all over.”

“It was mainly because of my wife,” Erik said, and bells started ringing in Charles’s head. He had noted that Erik wasn’t wearing a ring, of course, but that meant nothing this day and age. Erik then grimaced slightly. “Ex-wife, I mean. Sorry. We finalised the papers some good ten months ago and I still slip.” Erik looked embarrassed.

This was the obvious place to discuss their relationship before they had gone off to form two separate narratives, so Charles said, trying to keep his tone neutral, “Oh. So. You and, uh. Magda got married then?”

The name of Erik’s girlfriend still tasted bitter on Charles’s tongue.

“No, we never married. I mean, we talked about it, sure. It seemed like the right thing to do, but she didn’t want to marry me.” Erik shrugged. “We tried being together after I was… you know, after I came back from Australia, but it was a doomed attempt.”

And? Charles’s mind screamed.

Perhaps their beach engagement stuck out in his mind, but it was nearly matched by the memory of the day Erik had called him in England and said that he was back in Germany already and that he had some news: his girlfriend was pregnant.

Charles had not understood any of the words coming out of Erik’s mouth. (Girlfriend? Pregnant? Was this even English?) Erik had never said he had a girlfriend back home or that she was having Erik’s child (although Erik had sworn that at the time he had not known). None of that changed the fact that Erik had been cheating on Magda with Charles. Charles had been busy planning the most ridiculous things like moving to Germany after his final exams, finding a job there, he and Erik could find a nice little place in Dusseldorf, and now Erik’s voice was on the line, saying, “I’m sorry. God, I don’t – I don’t even know for sure if it’s mine but she says it is, and I – I have to do the right thing. Charles? Charles, just say something.” So he had. He had yelled his anger and betrayal down the phone, calling Erik god-knows-what. And they had cried and shouted, and Charles had pleaded Erik to just come to England in the same breath he told Erik he never wanted to see him again. “We can’t be over, this can’t be happening,” he had said in utter defeat, and Erik had just kept saying that he was sorry and Charles had called him a liar.

Just thinking about that day felt emotionally draining.

Had the child been Erik’s? After nine years, it might be nice to know.

Thankfully he didn’t have to ask. Erik was no longer smiling. “Pietro is eight now,” he said matter-of-factly. “He lives in Wiesbaden with his mother. She married a marketing consultant when Pietro was three, and they’ve had kids of their own, and they’re raising Pietro together. I send Christmas presents and birthday cards.” Erik was looking at his pint with an empty expression and then shrugged nonchalantly.

f*ck, Charles was an asshole. This was none of his business. He was not entitled to know this, and Erik was indulging him. Here Charles had been thinking of his own petty desire to know what had happened, if the heartbreak had been justified, and all the time Erik had been going through something a hell of a lot heavier.

“I’m really sorry,” Charles said. Erik had managed to fit a child out of wedlock and an ex-wife into nine years.

Erik waved him off. “It is what it is. It’s life. It doesn’t turn out how you want it, and I know Magda is a great mother and that Hans loves my son like he was his own. I just. You know. Hope that when Pietro gets older, he’ll become more interested in his old man. And that he won’t, ah. That he won’t hate me.” Erik leaned back in the chair and exhaled. “I’ve gotten used to it, saying I have a kid I never see. I look back to those days and I realise that it was a really messed up time. I’m really sorry you were dragged into it.”

“Oh, don’t be,” Charles said lithely. “I survived. It was a holiday romance, for Christ’s sakes.”

He had bought a German phrasebook to help him once he moved countries for Erik.

“Anyway,” Erik then said, “I found home quite oppressive after Pietro’s birth. Magda didn’t want me around, we were just fighting, and it wasn’t good for the baby. Then before Pietro could even walk properly I got funding to go on a Masters course in Vancouver, and halfway around the world seemed like a good place to be, so I went.”

Charles made an agreeing noise to show he was listening, but something inside him sank. He wanted to ask when exactly that had been because it didn’t sound like it was very long after their break up – within a few years of it, anyway. He’d always convinced himself that Erik was happy with a wife and child somewhere in Germany, and that Charles had been completely forgotten. The first part of this no longer rang true, but clearly he’d been right about the oblivion into which their relationship had disappeared into. Erik may not have been thinking about him anymore at that point, but Charles only felt angered that he couldn’t say the same for himself.

“After I finished with my course I found work downtown, and then I met Ororo – that’s my ex-wife. She studies weather phenomena, and that kept us on the road until we moved to London some four years ago. I suppose it was time to settle down,” Erik said with a philosophical frown of self-reflection, but Charles wasn’t particularly listening.

He had always been one of those gay guys who thought that bisexuality was a bit bullsh*t. Okay, okay, he knew that it was not politically correct to think so, but he had known too many people who had done the ‘bi now, gay later’ thing, and he had assumed Erik to be one of these men too. Partially that was why Magda’s appearance had gotten him so riled up: she was a woman, and Erik was clearly a gay man, and Charles hated the level of self-deception involved. But Erik had gone on to marry another woman, and Charles wondered if he now counted as some kind of sexual experimentation in Erik’s past.

Erik was saying, “And Shani loves the park near our house, so it makes sense to stay.”

Charles tried to catch the thread of conversation. “Ah, nice. How old is she?”

“Three now.”

Charles wasn’t much of a dog person, so he just nodded.

Erik shrugged. “So in conclusion, here I am: another foreign Londoner. It’s a great city.” Erik took a long sip of beer and said, “God, it’s weird just summarising your life like that, it sounds like it happened to someone else. I wish it sounded a bit nicer. One thing I’ve noticed the past year is that it’s horrible having to say you’re divorced. People just look me up and down and wonder how I f*cked it up.”

Charles was relatively sure people only looked at Erik the Divorcee with lust-filled eyes that wondered how badly Erik wanted rebound and where they should queue up.

Erik smiled at him warmly. “What about you? How many divorces have you managed by now?”

“Ah, I’m just about finalising my seventh, of course.”

“Of course.”

They grinned at each other. For some god-awful reason Charles almost said I’m not seeing anyone just now before he uttered, “There’s someone, actually. He works abroad so it’s not ideal, but you know. Nothing’s perfect.”

Charles was private by nature, taking his time before sharing details of his life with strangers. Erik was a stranger, he reminded himself – they had not spoken in nine years. But it was difficult to treat Erik like an outsider, and a part of him wanted to tell Erik all about Warren. He held back.

“Seeing someone is good,” Erik said, smiling. “And a lot better than being a divorcee, let me tell you.”

They had finished their pints. Charles fell into silence – were they going for another round? Should he suggest it – should Erik? He had come to find out what Erik had done with his life, and now he knew. They would still see each other at the estate meetings, of course, so it wasn’t like they would dissolve into faceless masses of people a second time.

Erik stood up, grabbing his empty glass. “The same?” he asked easily, clearly assuming there was going to be a second round, and Charles’s line probably was actually, I need to get going, but instead he said, “Please, thank you.”

As Erik headed to the bar, Charles was reminded of what about Erik had swept him off his feet to begin with: it was the easy, unassuming confidence with which Erik conducted himself and navigated the world.

That had impressed Charles at the age of nineteen, when even going to Australia by himself had been a rebellious act that he had barely managed to do. He had gone to Australia on a summer internship programme: two months washing test tubes and sterilising petri dishes, having a single room at the university halls. He’d made some friends but not anyone to go travelling with at the end of the internship, and so he’d proceeded to go backpacking on his own. Four hostels in, he’d met three German men. A few days later, he’d thought he’d marry one of them. A month after that, he was back in England, pining and lonely, but still in love and excited about life, and a month after that he was getting f*cked by a stranger at an Oxford house party, and he felt numb, numb, numb, like he wasn’t there at all, and the man’s touch left him cold on the inside.

For a long time it had felt like he had imagined their entire relationship, so it was reassuring to have Erik here now, ordering drinks at the bar, proving that Charles hadn’t made him up.

There were extremely few people who knew about them. He had never told Raven, for instance – she had been only sixteen when Charles had gone to Australia, stuck in a posh private school on the East Coast, and though they were close, Charles had been nineteen and convinced that a child like Raven could never grasp the kind of mature, passionate relationship that he had found himself in. By the time he saw Raven at Christmas, it had been over for months. They all said he’d changed, and not for the better.

Erik came back with two more pints and a bag of crisps that he tore open and left on the table for them to share.

Charles wanted to ask if Erik remembered how they had childishly called their road trip up the East Coast their honeymoon after their faux-marriage on the beach, but he stopped himself. God, they had been so young.

“So do you know a lot of people in London?” Erik asked, and Charles talked about Raven (“Who?” “My sister. It’s her artist name. We’ve all been indoctrinated to calling her that now.”) and about his old undergraduate pals that he was now back in touch with. He realised that the list wasn’t particularly long, so he added a few lab people to it and also Bobby, who was strictly speaking his boyfriend’s friend but he omitted this fact. He talked about his new home and how it needed some renovation, which was going to be a nightmare when the place was already full of stuff.

“Well, I work in estates, and I know guys who’ll give you fair rates. Just let me know,” Erik said amiably. Erik still had that seductive air of a well-travelled man with natural confidence: in Australia Charles had worried about poisonous spiders when they camped out, or about which car they should rent for their honeymoon, and should they go for the higher insurance cover just in case.

And Erik had just breezed through it all: it’s a car, it has four tyres and a wheel, we can boost up the coverage if you like, it’s just twelve dollars more and look, paid already, now let me kiss you. Erik had had this magical quality of getting Charles more relaxed because Erik had seemed like he had everything in perfect control. And even now with a son in Germany and a recent divorce looming over him, even with all this proof that Erik wasn’t simply waltzing through life, Charles felt the pull of Erik’s casual confidence.

Erik asked, “Where in London do you stay?”

“St. John’s Wood area.”

“That’s a really nice neighbourhood,” Erik said with a tone of surprise, which really meant ‘how can you afford it?’ A researcher’s salary wasn’t enough to cover the costs, but Charles’s family had money and Warren likewise came from money. Charles hated the phrase – come from money – but he knew it was true for them both. Charles had never hidden the fact that his family was wealthy, he had talked of charity trustee positions, and their Westchester estate and private schools, but he was relatively sure Erik had never grasped just how wealthy they were. Erik said, “I go running in Regent’s Park with a few friends most weeks, not too far from you – you can join us sometime if you like.”

Charles laughed into his already half-finished pint. “Running? Not my game.”

“Why not?” Erik said like running was as simple as putting one foot in front of the other at a fast pace – which, okay. It was. That was pretty much the definition of running. Drinking on an empty stomach, Charles was getting buzzed and stupid. “We go every Wednesday, meet at the zoo at six. If you ever fancy it.”

“I’m more of a squash kind of guy,” he said, “although Regent’s Park has a certain appeal.”

This introduced the topic of their favourite places in London, to which they both compared their favourite places in New York. Soon enough their second drinks were done, and Charles knew that drinking more on an empty stomach would be highly ill advised. He wondered if he should suggest dinner or perhaps invite Erik back to the house and cook them something because he was enjoying the conversation and didn’t want it to stop. Erik, however, said that he should get going, and Charles felt a tinge of disappointment.

As they headed outside Erik buttoned his expensive looking coat, and Charles wondered if the collar of it smelled like a mix of Erik’s skin and cologne. Erik had always smelt like the ocean back in the day, fresh and salty, and more often than not like sex and sweat and come and Charles. It had been pleasing, he now recalled, pressing his face against Erik’s shoulder blade at night, inhaling him and being greeted with a mix of their scents. Pulling Erik even further into his arms: the man he’d held had been his, completely.

Now Erik distinctly wasn’t.

They came to the end of the alleyway the pub was on, and Erik began to lead them past packed pubs. “What’s the best way to go?” Charles asked honestly. He still had to check the tube map if he varied from the St John’s Wood to Liverpool Street Station routine.

“I’m heading to Old Street. I think you’re best off at Moorgate. Do you want me to take you?” Erik would be heading up the main street and Charles, if Erik’s pointing was anything to go by, ought to head the other way. Erik said, “I really don’t mind, I can get on the Northern line there too.”

The street lights were orange above them, their breaths rising in the air. The light gave Erik a halo around his head, his expression soft and familiar, even now. Charles suddenly had a wild vision of them heading to the tube station, two silhouettes in the September night, and then saying goodbye on the platform, entwined in a passionate embrace like the ones they had once shared, and in that moment he remembered the press of Erik’s body against his, hot and obliging. He recalled Erik saying his name in a choked half-whisper as he came.

Almost shocked by such a vision, he recoiled and forced his alcohol-soaked brain to focus. “No, that’s okay. I know where I am now.” He wondered if he had been flirting without realising it – he wasn’t aware of any flirting on his part, or Erik’s for that matter, but it may have been subconscious. “Nice catching up, Erik. All the best. See you around.”

Erik frowned as Charles made to leave, but Erik quickly said, “Hang on. Here, have my card. It’s got my number on it.” Erik shrugged. “Call me sometime.”

Charles peered at the card with the university logo on it, Erik’s office details and mobile number:

“Thanks,” he said, pocketing the card. “Have a good night.”

No this was nice, which it had been, or we must do this again, because Charles wasn’t sure what it would mean if they did. He smiled in way of goodbye and soon was trudging down the street with his hands in his pockets, his tattered suitcase hanging off a white-knuckled grip.

As he stood on the platform, waiting for the next Metropolitan train, his thumb kept tracing the edge of the business card in his pocket.

It was sad, what became of life. He didn’t mean that in a patronising way, because Erik had done remarkably well for himself, looked nothing short of Adonis, was successful and funny and warm and intelligent and all around charming.

What he meant was that life was sad when looked at from the past. When he had met Erik, Erik had wanted to be a professional surfer, and of course it was a naïve pipe dream, but Erik had talked about it with a passion. During their month together they had talked about travelling the world together, buying a house on Bora Bora, spending their days on the beach, making co*cktails, making love, and reading great literature.

Charles felt sad that Erik had a son he never saw, and although he wasn’t sad that Erik was divorced – he considered divorce to be the outcome of an unhappy relationship, thus divorce was good – he was sad that Erik considered divorce to signify failure. Their younger versions had not been prepared for all the ways in which their lives would fall short of their dreams.

Well, Charles supposed, youthful fantasies had no place in the real world, which they all ultimately had to occupy. All things considered, they both had done well for themselves in different ways.

But perhaps it wasn’t wise for them to see each other again. Seeing Erik made him strangely melancholy and he wasn’t quite able to figure out why.

Chapter 2: Two

Chapter Text

Two

Once out of Geneva Airport, Charles habitually got into a taxi that sped him to the maze of the southern Swiss city. He knew Geneva well enough to suggest a better route to the driver, getting them to Warren’s place on Rue Plantamour faster.

Charles had his own drawer and pile of books at Warren’s flat, which was on the fourth floor of an early nineteenth century townhouse. The flat had high white ceilings and hard wooden floors, with white double-doors leading from one room to the next. They were only a street away from the lake, and the large bedroom and living room were let down by a sad, little kitchen that hardly fit two people and a bathroom the size of a cupboard with a temperamental shower. Warren had lived there for nearly two years now, and the place felt like it couldn’t decide whether it was the soulless weekday home of a bland commuter or the barren brainchild of an ascetic who was in fact quite settled. The large rooms were mostly bare, apart from a large number of books and DVDs in the living room’s sole bookcase and the clothes thrown around the bedroom. There never was any fresh milk in the fridge. Charles was the homemaker, Warren said to him with a confident smile – that was why it was ideal that Charles was the primary occupant of their real home in London.

After the two of them had dinner at the apartment, they headed to one of Warren’s favourite bars on the lakefront for drinks with Warren’s friends. Charles knew many of Warren’s Swiss friends (well, he said Swiss – in fact Warren’s friends consisted of a Chinese nuclear physicist, a German theorist, a Canadian electrical technician, a Spanish experimental physicist, and so forth) and was happy to catch up with them.

Charles began to feel increasingly at home as the alcohol flowed. The conversation was lively, the music was great (it was jazz night), and Warren’s hand on his knee felt reassuring.

They returned to the flat around two in the morning and f*cked in the dark – it was a little drunken yet passionate, and the bed that Warren had chosen for its antique value at an auction once squeaked to mimic their movements. Afterwards they lay next to each other, tipsy and sated, catching their breaths. Warren lit a cigarette that he habitually offered, and Charles took it, inhaling from it deeply. He didn’t smoke as such, but he never counted a post-sex cigarette with Warren.

He kept trying to think of how to word the lingering shadow at the edge of his mind, the one that had made smiling and chatting to Warren’s friends feel somehow artificial. Once Warren was done talking about his parents’ new boat there was a natural pause in the conversation, and Charles said, “So the most random thing happened last week.”

“Oh yeah?”

Charles sucked in nicotine and ash, passing the cigarette back. He blew into the air and said, “Yeah.” He paused. “I’ve told you about that internship I had in Sydney, right, back when I was doing my BSc?”

“You have,” Warren confirmed, voice soft and void of any kind of suspicion or, really, even interest.

“Yeah so, after that I did a bit of backpacking that summer, like I’ve told you. And there were these German guys that I travelled with for a while. And it turns out that one of them works at the university in London these days. And, I don’t know, I thought it bizarre because… when I knew him, he was like this – this wannabe surfer in his twenties, travelling in Australia, and now he’s a divorced engineer in London.”

Warren snubbed the cigarette into the ashtray that they’d placed on Warren’s bare stomach. “Life happens to us all,” he said. He had a point – an obvious point – but a point nonetheless.

“But it’s a bit sad, isn’t it?”

Warren made a disagreeing sound. “I don’t think so. I mean, did he seem sad?”

Truthfully… no. Erik hadn’t seemed sad as such – regretful, maybe. So why was he sad for Erik?

In any case, Charles felt better as he and Warren settled to sleep, with Warren’s familiar skin pressed to his.

Yet he wondered what Erik was doing right then, in the middle of the night. He wondered if Erik had thought of him in the course of the evening, too, between taking a sip and putting the wine glass down again, surrounded by people who, great as they were, somehow just seemed to fall short.

Erik was a fan of Wednesday evenings, which sounded harsh: it was his one daughterless evening a week. Instead of him rushing to the Gifted Youngsters Nursery after work, Marie, who spoke with a strong southern drawl and whose oil tycoon father had relocated to London some years prior, picked Shani up. Marie was studying toxicology at ICL and had babysat Shani on a weekly basis ever since Erik and Ororo had separated.

When he and Ororo had split up, Erik had done some reading on how divorce affected children, coming across lists on the ways in which children could be emotionally and behaviourally scarred for life. He assumed that the one saving grace of their divorce was that Shani would never remember a time when he and Ororo had been together. He hoped that Shani would never question Ororo’s absence, although one day his daughter would eventually figure out that most families came with two parents living in the same house. He wasn’t sure how he would explain it to Shani on that day and was glad that this was not something he had to deal with yet.

Around the time of the break-up, he had realised that he could not cope without any time for himself. By being selfish every now and then, he was ultimately happier and had more patience for his daughter.

That was where he and Ororo had gone wrong, he figured as he changed into his running gear in the men’s room at work. They hadn’t given themselves any time as individuals, which had resulted in them both being incredibly unhappy. They had been on the road to resenting one another when they had had enough sense to call it quits.

When Ororo moved out Erik was in shambles trying to figure out how to take care of his child when Ororo only made cameos in their life. A year and a half later his system wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough. And part of the system was that Wednesday evenings were his own, and come rain or shine he went running, unless it happened to be chess club day. His phone played his running playlist as he navigated the streets – Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire – having to stop at lights and snake between commuters in the rush hour. The start was never pleasant because of the busy streets, but once he got onto the Regent’s Canal Path he got a decent pace going – if one miscounted the dodge-the-cyclists game.

After three miles of passing narrow boats floating on the canal, the path began to curve around the north end of Regent’s Park. This marked the completion of the first half of his workout.

He ran off the path and onto a road, crossing a pedestrian bridge that took him over the canal and into the park. There two men were waiting for him at one of the gates, having likewise run there from work, and Erik was annoyed that he was the last one yet again.

“Hey guys,” he said breathlessly, and Logan and Azazel grinned at the sight of him already winded. They patted each other’s sweaty backs as Erik wheezed. He checked his time from his wrist pedometer: a minute more than last week. “I keep getting slower,” he complained.

Logan scoffed. “You will at this rate. You need to hit the gym with us.”

“Maybe next time,” he granted, and they ran into the park.

Erik had known Logan since his Vancouver years, and they had gotten back in touch once Erik relocated to London where Logan now lived, too. Logan was in the pulp and paper industry, working for a Canadian firm’s London office. When Logan wasn’t at work, he was invariably at the gym and frequently with Azazel, where they had met. To say that Logan could have spray-tanned himself, pulled on a thong, and gotten on stage to flex his muscles with a group of body builders would have been fair. Azazel was less obsessed with the gym and mainly focused on running – he said that running with Logan and Erik once a week felt like a rest as they slowed him down. Erik had never quite figured out where Azazel was from and after three years of friendship it was awkward to ask – Slavic, he ventured, with very religious parents to name their son after a biblical figure. Azazel had pitch-black hair and a black goatee and managed a security company that provided well-known names with bodyguards. Azazel often hinted at their clients but never disclosed anything.

Erik nonetheless liked the fact that Logan and Azazel were so fit: it meant that Erik always had catching up to do, which meant that he managed to stay in decent shape. He did fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups every morning before waking up Shani, but this was hardly enough to keep up with his two best friends.

Once they had done a near full circle of the park, they slowed down to an area where the good city of London had placed public workout equipment, metal bars for pull-ups and the like. As usual, Logan went first while Erik heaved and tried to force his breathing to even. Logan and Azazel had done their share of catching up as they ran, Logan talking about work and his new exercise routine, Azazel hinting that they had a new client from the royalty and then talking about his wife’s brother who was staying with them temporarily and who was doing Azazel’s head in. Azazel now turned the conversation to Erik whilst watching Logan doing a one-armed pull up. “How’s Shani?”

“Ah, she’s great. Taking up all my time as usual – Ororo was supposed to have her this weekend, but she’s staying with me instead. Ororo has some conference in Brussels.”

Logan dropped onto the ground with a thud. “Ororo is changing plans on you all the time. You better make sure she doesn’t take advantage of your patience.” Logan motioned for Erik to have a go, so Erik moved under the bar, jumped to grab a hold of it and started doing chin-ups.

“It’s not that she – that she wants to be, uh, unreliable,” he said or rather grunted, counting the chin-ups in his head. “It’s her – Christ – her job. When she – ah, when she has to hit the road, she, nngh, has to hit the road.” He dropped down after fifteen and Azazel moved to have a go.

Logan said, “Well there are plenty of times when you’d like to be spontaneous and dump the kid on her with no warning, but do you ever do that?” Erik didn’t mind that Logan phrased the care of his daughter as crudely as ‘dump the kid’ – Logan had always been very direct. Besides, Erik knew that quite secretly Logan was rather fond of his daughter.

Azazel did twenty chin-ups in quick succession after which Erik proceeded to do ten more. As he pulled himself up for the tenth time, Logan slammed his tensed abdomen with the back of his palm. “Hold it, Lehnsherr!”

Erik did, gritting his teeth and holding himself up until he had to let go. Logan took over with one-armed pull-ups as he and Azazel watched. “If you have Shani this weekend,” Azazel said, “guess you have to cancel the beers on Saturday night, huh?”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said and Azazel looked unimpressed.

“Christ, man. When was the last time you had a drink? And not in your house, but in a social setting,” Azazel pressed, and Erik didn’t appreciate the hint that he never left his home – he did. Very rarely.

“Only recently as a matter of fact. Took a researcher from the university out for some drinks,” he said defensively.

“Took out as in out out?” Logan managed to wheeze out as he hung from the bar with one hand.

“No, I don’t think so. He said he’s seeing someone,” he explained before adding, “Although he is an ex-boyfriend.” He tried to say this casually, but it sounded anything but.

Logan started laughing and had to let go of the bar. “I’ll never get gay etiquette, I swear.” Logan wiped his brow and the three of them started walking towards the main path. Logan was one of the few people in London who had known Erik before Ororo, and as such knew that Erik was bi. Erik’s ex before Ororo had been John, whom he had met through Logan back in Vancouver, so Logan was well aware that Erik had an interest in both sexes. Azazel had only found that out in the wake of Erik’s divorce but, as was typical of him, he had cared little.

“So,” Logan said in amusem*nt, “let me get this straight. You took out your former fling for some drinks and, what, everyone thinks that’s cool? Him, you, this guy’s boyfriend?”

His history with Charles was difficult to explain, but he tried. “Do you remember when you told us about your ex? When you told us about Kayla?”

Even the mention of Kayla had Logan’s brows burrowing broodily, and Azazel made a face like he wished Erik hadn’t mentioned The Ex. Erik still remembered the night when they all got really drunk and Logan had kept slurring, “She was the one. She should have been the one. God, guys, she was the one.”

Now Logan only said, “Yeah.” He looked gloomy, and Erik swiftly moved on.

“Well, this guy – back then, you know. I thought he was the one,” he said. That was the best way he could put it. Maybe he could have counted Magda as his first love, but he wasn’t sure if she had been. He had been eighteen when he’d met her, and she’d been willing to have sex with him and then watch movies afterwards, and at that age Erik could not have thought of anything better. But life was too exciting to experience only in the confines of Dusseldorf, and he supposed that was why he had gone to Australia: to explore the great beyond. That meant beyond Magda, too.

It was true that he had never said a word of Magda to Charles during their time together, but that was partially because when he met Charles, Magda quite simply ceased to matter. Magda had come to Australia to see him some months before, and yes, Erik had slept with her then. They still behaved like a couple because they had been together for years and it was the only way in which they knew each other. So Erik had never officially broken it off, and that was when they had conceived Pietro.

Talk about life f*cking you right up when you met your goddamn soulmate, as he had believed at the time.

Logan seemed to understand the gravity of the comparison because he said, “So what next? You still wanna go after this – What’s his name?”

“Charles.”

Azazel snorted. “He sounds old.”

“He’s hardly thirty, jackass.”

“Touchy,” Azazel said with a grin.

Logan ignored them and went on with, “Right, this Charles. You’re going after him?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. He had asked himself the same question, but hadn’t quite dared to answer it. “I mean, I haven’t seen him in nearly ten years and now he started working at the university, and I don’t believe in fate or anything like that, but… What are the chances? And I. I was ridiculously in love with him. I mean, I was… god, I was really in love with him. And truthfully I never forgot about us,” he said, and he felt embarrassed and disconnected from his younger self who had been, in a word, whipped. Erik could not quite relate to it anymore, and he couldn’t relate to the heartache he had suffered when he and Charles had split up. It had happened to someone else, not Erik – yet when he looked into Charles’s eyes now he saw something so familiar, the blue of an ocean he wanted to dive back into. Sitting at the pub with Charles a few weeks ago, listening to Charles talking, Erik hadn’t been surprised he’d fallen so madly in love. “I asked him out to catch up, I suppose.”

“You suppose,” Azazel smirked. “Be honest – you were hoping to slip one in there, you dog.”

“Why is everything about sex to you?” Erik sighed.

“Because I’m worried for your f*cking dick!”

Logan hummed in agreement. “Az makes a good point. You’re divorced, not a eunuch.”

“Hey, I’ve dabbled! Since Ororo.”

“I bet you dabble,” Azazel said and looked at Erik’s right hand pointedly. Erik was about to elbow him in the ribs, but that was when Logan started a slow pace of jogging, and he and Azazel followed.

They got onto the main road soon enough and Erik added, “I gave Charles my number but haven’t heard from him. It’s been nearly two weeks.”

He said this casually, but in truth he was disappointed. He hadn’t asked Charles for a drink in an attempt to seduce him or to pick up where they left off or anything like that, but they had shared too much to ignore each other. He associated Charles with fond memories and in a weird way they had had something incredibly intimate that no one else in the world knew about. No one had ever loved like they had – this was, of course, what he’d believed back then.

He was put off by the silence now because when they had been catching up, chatting over a few drinks, their reunion had felt natural. Charles had laughed the same old laugh, his eyes had sparkled when he was amused, and his eyebrows had arched comically when he was surprised by something, and his voice was huskier than before but it sounded f*cking sexy. All of these details kept replaying in his head, and then he was back to reminiscing their affair when that laugh and those eyes and the arch of the eyebrows, when all of those features had been promised for Erik.

“Why did you guys break up?” Logan puffed out, glancing at him as they jogged.

“Because he found out that, technically speaking, I was with Magda who was having my child,” he said, and Azazel said, “Well sh*t.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed regretfully.

Logan made a dismissive noise. “He can’t be that mad about ancient history – he went out with you once already, so ask him out again. Hell, how old were you back then, anyway?”

“Twenty-three.”

“sh*t, I did worse crap than that at twenty-three.”

“Me too,” Azazel voiced.

Erik hesitated. “But –”

Logan said, “Jesus, Erik. Stop moaning about it like a bitch in heat. Ask the dude out, and be remorseful or whatever, and get laid.” They came to a stop at traffic lights. Logan was wheezing. “God, my patience has limits.”

Logan wasn’t very good with love, but he was very good with tough love.

Azazel asked about Erik’s property project, which was hopelessly stuck so he didn’t really want to think about it. His friends assured him that he’d get back on it, and Erik appreciated their faith which he himself lacked.

The run home always took the last out of him, and when he got to his house, he was heaving and sweaty.

The front door opened into the hallway, the stairs ahead of him. Halfway down the hall the living room opened up to the left, and he made for the opening now. Marie waved at him from the couch where she had her course books all around her. She was an energetic woman of twenty-two, outspoken and a tad blunt. Her hair was a deep brown but as long as Erik had known her, she kept two streaks of hair at the front dyed white – it was a fashion statement, she’d explained. He now pointed upstairs, and Marie said, “Asleep like a babe.”

“Great – any trouble?” He balanced himself against the wall as he pulled his shoes off.

“None at all.”

Erik wasn’t surprised: Marie was excellent with Shani, and Erik hoped that she would babysit for them until the end of days.

He headed upstairs where he snuck into his daughter’s room. Shani was asleep in her green – sorry, pistachio, that was what the furniture saleswoman had kept saying: ‘This pistachio coloured bed’ – her pistachio bed that had side panels sticking out to prevent Shani from rolling out, while she could still climb in and out of bed from the bottom end. She was fast asleep with her mouth open as she breathed evenly, and Erik brushed wiry hair out of the way and leaned down to kiss her forehead.

As he pulled back, he watched her crinkling her nose. He smiled fondly, his thumb brushing her cheek. She was so small, he thought – which was ridiculous because when he compared her to the day she was born, it was clear that she had grown like a little monster of some kind. But Shani had now reached an age where she no longer looked like a baby; she was starting to look like a small human being. Somehow that was scarier than anything. She would grow up and, Erik hoped, rule the country one day. Any country. She ought to take her pick. “Gute Nacht, Herzchen,” he whispered.

He grabbed a three-minute shower and, by the time he got downstairs, Marie had put her books away and had made them cups of tea in the kitchen. Erik wasn’t entirely sure when he had stopped simply paying Marie upon his arrival and instead had started spending an hour or so chatting with her before she went. By now it had become a ritual. She talked about her lecturers and lab projects and which one of her friends was fighting with whom – Erik had gone to the painstaking effort of memorising them all in hopes that it would prepare him for Shani’s teenage years. Get insight into young adult drama now, be a kick ass dad later.

“And anyway, now I’m not talking to Gemma because she’s being a total bitch,” Marie confided, “even though Paul slept with Katelyn first.”

“Mmm, of course,” he said knowledgably.

After they had finished their teas, Erik paid Marie for the week, and she was off with a wave of her hand.

Marie was twenty-two, Erik thought as he raided the fridge for something to eat. (Turkey and cheese sandwich, it appeared.) Marie was twenty-two and the relationship drama she related to Erik sounded positively juvenile. Erik once again thought of how young he and Charles had been and how in love he, at least, had been. He wondered if it was ever possible to feel that kind of passion at an older age or if people could fall in love like that only once. And was it bad for him now to be confronted with Charles? Would the illusion of the grandeur of their love fade? It seemed to be so: there was only silence. Charles did not care for the love they had shared.

He shook his head. He was being melodramatic.

Exhausted by yet another long day, he went to bed early, and with no one there to keep him warm, he – well. He dabbled, quick and automatic, as it helped him relax. And he thought of the warmth of a body atop his own, hands on him, a mouth on his neck, maybe one with heavy stubble, messy hair, blue eyes, he thought of getting pinned down and taken, and he thought of the simple act of sex and getting so wound up that he’d come, and – success. He did just that.

As he fell asleep, he thought that love suits the young.

Hank McCoy was young and nerdy looking with large hipster glasses on his nose. He was shy but very enthusiastic about anything science related, and Charles had quickly adopted a big brother role when it came to him. He had already taken the liberty to invite Hank to his and Warren’s Thanksgiving feast, and Hank had unreservedly accepted. This feeling of guiding Hank persisted even when Hank was the one introducing Charles to new things: tonight, chess club.

Charles wasn’t wholly dedicated to the night’s cause because his thoughts kept straying to the weekend and his planned visit home – and by home he meant Oxford. He looked forward to catching up with Jean and Scott, but also he wanted to hide away at his cottage for an evening. Before that, however, Charles had to make friends at the chess club, then he had dinner plans with Raven the following evening and then it’d finally be Friday and by six o’clock he’d be on the train. A part of him wanted to fast-forward to that because he was bored of London, and Warren’s absence didn’t exactly help him feel like London was his home. The chess club, he supposed, would help keep him busy.

He met Hank down at the lobby and together they headed in the direction of Chancery Lane. As they walked, Hank described his personal development as a chess player.

Back in Oxford Charles had played with Scott every now and then, but Scott wasn’t much of a challenge – he was much more likely to challenge Charles in squash, which they had played religiously every Saturday morning. Many a time halfway through a chess game, however, Scott had started swearing and walked away in a huff, which Charles and Jean had always thought hilarious.

“We compete against other London universities every spring,” Hank explained. “We’ve got the current champion – well he’s been champion for the past four years. I’ve never beaten him, and I know I’m pretty good.”

Charles liked the sound of this. “I welcome a challenge,” he said. He hardly ever found anyone to beat him these days.

Funnily enough, it was Erik who had gotten him into chess during their Australian month. One of the hostel common rooms had come with a chess set and they had played into the night, drinking cold beers as Erik had explained all the moves to him. Erik had been an excellent player with years of experience but he had assured Charles that he was a natural. Charles had kept at it after they split up.

He had considered calling Erik many a time the past few weeks. He had considered emailing him too, but then he could never figure out what to say after ‘Hi Erik’. A part of him had hoped that Erik would simply email him again, but Erik hadn’t, and as Charles had no obvious reason to call Erik, he didn’t.

He would have liked to have been able to say that he had forgotten about their reunion entirely already, but he found himself thinking about that night.

Erik had been honest with him in some regards, had even apologised for their breakup ten years prior. And rightly so because Erik definitely owed him an apology – what kind of a man went to Australia and ended up proposing to a co-traveller, only to dump him for his pregnant girlfriend? Erik lacked moral fibre, Charles had thought all these years when hate had seemed to be a better option than wounded love, and he had been lucky to get rid of Erik. Charles did not condone cheating, even less being made an unwitting accomplice.

Erik, therefore, might be a charming man, but he had been deceitful and selfish. People like that didn’t just change. Really, Erik would have been the worst mistake Charles ever could have made at the age of nineteen. Magda being knocked up and breaking them up had been a blessing in disguise.

That is what he had told himself for nine years now.

Erik’s reappearance had put all of that into question. Erik wasn’t walking around with horns on his head, but was funny and witty and eloquent and approachable, and Charles felt his guts tighten when he thought of Erik. Charles didn’t know what it was like getting told you were going to be a dad at the age of twenty-three. Clearly, the whole saga with Magda had taken its toll on Erik, who seemed wiser and more mature for it. Maybe Charles should let the past be past and let them start again, see if they could be friends. Maybe he’d email Erik tomorrow. Maybe he could suggest lunch.

But if he did so, he would have to tell Warren about Erik – the actual truth. This was a task he was reluctant to do: Warren was curious by nature, and the questions would be endless. Charles didn’t feel like he wanted to talk about it much.

He’d see how he felt about it in the morning, he decided, as he followed Hank into a surprisingly trendy looking bar that had a function room upstairs. They were there for the two-for-one happy hour, and Charles loved a good cuba libre. Hank ordered himself a pint, and Charles wondered if he now looked like an alcoholic, holding two drinks as they ascended to the first floor where the meeting was taking place. He paced his drinking these days – he hadn’t always.

The chess club, unsurprisingly, wasn’t massively popular. Six people were in the function room, most of them in their fifties. The room had large, street facing windows, beneath which a long leather bench ran along the wall. Four, square tables had been placed along the bench with chessboards at the ready. Charles put his drinks down on one of the taller bar tables by the door and shook hands as Hank made the introductions. Having gone through everyone – Lizzie from Classics, Craig from Theology, Sandra from Film Studies, Tom from the Business School, etc. – Hank looked around and said, “We’re still missing our star.”

“Well we must crack on without him,” Business Tom, who was the chess club president, insisted. They were an even number and so Charles sat opposite Lizzie and began to play. She was unexpectedly good – Charles had let her cat-fronted jumper fool him.

He and Lizzie were ten minutes in when he heard greetings being called from the direction of the door. He turned to see the star attraction and – It was Erik.

Chess club. Erik. Erik who had taught Charles how to play.

Erik was apologising for being late as he put his satchel away, holding a pint in his free hand. He was dressed in another well-fitted suit, clearly having made his way straight from the office like the rest of them, and Erik had had his hair cut since their drinks together – nothing major, just a trim, but Charles could nevertheless tell, and Erik looked sharp, and it looked distractingly good.

“Who’s without a partner?” Erik asked. Charles was. No, Christ, he wasn’t. Sandra said that they had a new member. Erik looked curious and then their eyes met, and Erik looked taken aback before the expression melted into a welcoming smile. “Charles. What a pleasant surprise.” Erik said this with genuine warmth as he made his way over to their table.

Jesus, Charles was a moron: chess club. Erik.

He really wished he would have called because now it felt like he had brushed Erik off rather rudely.

“You two know each other?” Lizzie asked, and Erik supplied, “Yes, I’m working on the new building for the Genetics Institute.”

Charles realised that this was the version both of them were giving people. Neither of them was saying, “This is my former fake husband.” Charles thought it wise that they were keeping that part of their relationship under wraps.

Erik pulled up a chair to watch them play, asking them if they minded, of course, and Charles could tell this unnerved Lizzie. They nevertheless preceded to play.

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” Charles said after a few minutes, “I’ve just been rather busy.” He felt like a dick.

“Don’t mention it, but you do have to repay me by playing against me.” Erik flashed him a winning grin.

It didn’t take Charles long to win – under Erik’s cool gaze, Lizzie crumpled and played terribly.

They were an odd number for the next round, but Craig from Theology volunteered to observe and get people more drinks. Bless him, Charles thought – Craig looked like he was pushing seventy-five, a tweed-wearing, absentminded scholar type who beamed at everyone because he was just that content with life. He specialised in Gnostic eschatology, and Charles made a point never to accidentally ask.

As Erik had threatened, they paired up to play together. Hank was playing Sandra from Film Studies, who was a junior lecturer in her early thirties, specialising in anime. Hank was staring at her quite adoringly, and Charles suddenly realised why Hank was so keen on the chess club.

Erik saw him looking at Hank and Sandra and said, “Oh that googly eye action has been going on for a year, at least. Ever since Hank joined.” Erik moved a black pawn on the board. “Hank’s a great guy but, to be honest, I don’t think she’s interested.”

This was true: Sandra was paying more attention to the game than to her opponent.

Charles tried to focus on the game, too, and Erik soon granted that he had much improved since last time. Last time had been in Australia, back when they had been an item of whatever kind, but neither of them acknowledged that aloud. Charles distinctively remembered Erik tricking him into strip chess when they had taken the set to their private room, and that had been wholly unfair when he had only been a beginner.

Now he thought that Erik should have been the one stripping – Charles was playing marvellously. Erik had been trying to chat over the game at first, but he soon shut up and began to focus. Theology Craig wound up at their table, observing their game with delight all over his wrinkled face. As the games around them finished, the others joined Craig as an audience and were soon making approving and surprised noises. Erik was a four-time champion and the pride of the club. Charles was going to get him, he was –

“Checkmate in two,” Erik said out of nowhere.

Charles blinked. He scrutinised the board. Then he cursed, and their audience started applauding. Erik offered his hand, and Charles shook it begrudgingly. “I’ll get you next time,” he threatened.

Erik smiled wide. “I’ll be on my guard, next time.”

“My goodness!” Theology Craig enthused. “I do say! Elizabeth dear, did you see that?”

Classics Lizzy patted Craig’s arm. “Yes, love.”

The meetings consisted of two games and a short admin brief, which Tom conducted. After this they moved to the bar downstairs where people got some drinks and started mingling. Charles stood with Lizzy, Hank and Sandra, trying to get to know them. They mostly asked about him because he was new, so he talked about generic things like New York and Oxford and his research. His eyes kept darting to Erik, who was entertaining Tom, Craig, a lady from the School of Modern Languages who looked potentially Greek, and some guy whose name may or may not have been George. Erik was in the middle of a story, making his audience laugh, and Charles realised that the sight of it made him feel distantly proud somehow.

His phone started vibrating in his pocket just then, and he excused himself. He thought it’d be Warren calling to mockingly ask how the chess club was going, but it was Raven. She started with, “Oh please tell me you’re still at work because I am just around the corner.”

It was seven thirty on a Wednesday – Charles felt affronted. “In a bar, actually. Why?”

“A bar? You? Never mind, just tell me that those spare keys that I gave you are still in your suitcase and that you have it on you.”

Charles sighed. “Have you locked yourself out again?”

“…Maybe?”

He gave his sister the address of the bar and she said she was getting into a taxi straightaway, and so she showed up fifteen minutes later, wearing an orange sixties style mini-dress with black boots and a leather jacket. Charles saw a few heads turn at the sight of Raven, who was nothing short of a human disaster. She just hid it with her fashion sense.

“God, do I need a drink!” she declared and took Charles’s fourth cuba libre the second she reached him. The others were taken aback. Raven wasn’t fazed. “Hello! Hi, hello, Charles’s sister, just dropping by,” she said, shaking hands and adding, “You look like a mixed bunch. Is this a cult?”

“This is a chess club,” Charles said impatiently.

Raven seemed delighted. “Is the first rule of chess club that you don’t talk about chess club?”

Lizzie frowned. “I’m not sure I understand. What rules, dear?”

Charles said, “It’s a pop culture reference.”

“Oh I see!” Lizzie smiled, and Charles wondered if she still referred to movies as ‘moving pictures’.

Hank was staring at Raven in awe, and Charles could only think of the many ways in which this would end badly. He dug out Raven’s keys from his new backpack, which he had only recently purchased from a high-end outwear store. The backpack had been made to endure extreme weather conditions while looking sleek as hell, and Charles knew it was wasted as a day-to-day office bag. Still, it was a start in his efforts to match the London ethos – take Erik, for instance. He looked amazing all the time in well-fitting suits, a tie perfectly knotted at his throat.

Charles pressed Raven’s keys into her palm. “There you go.”

But Raven wasn’t listening. Her gaze was fixed in the distance. Hank said, “Do you, uh, would you like a drink?”

“Oh yes please,” she said as Charles followed her gaze to – To Erik. Hank was already rushing to the bar. Raven said, “Who is he?”

Film Studies Sandra decided to be helpful. “That’s Erik. He’s the best player we’ve got. Charles will give him a run for his money, though!”

Raven was already on the move, much like a raven circling an animal it planned on eating once it dropped dead. Charles followed to minimise damage, a surreal feeling looming over him that Raven and Erik were about to meet. He’d wondered sometimes how the two of them would have gotten on, if things had turned out differently. Raven quickly introduced herself to the club members with Erik, who obediently shook her hand. “I must say, you don’t look like a chess kind of guy,” she purred at him. Erik seemed taken aback, but smiled at Raven anyway.

“I didn’t know there was a specific look,” he said.

“Raven,” Charles cut in. “Didn’t you have a thing to go to? That thing?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she said, and Charles realised that she genuinely had a thing she was late for. “Now Erik, are you busy next Friday?”

“Oh, um.” Erik frowned. “I believe so. It’s Halloween, isn’t it?”

“What on earth am I saying?” Raven said with a roll of her eyes and a flash of teeth. “Of course you’re busy on a Friday night. But you must change your plans! Oh you must, you simply must, and then you must come to the opening of my exhibition. I have some flyers, I –” She opened her purse and, after digging around, produced a handful of leaflets. “There you go!”

Charles looked at the flyer Erik was now holding: Blue is the Cruellest Month by Raven Darkhölme. Below was the name and address of a contemporary art gallery around the corner from Sadler’s Wells. “You’re an artist,” Erik said, and Raven beamed.

“How did you guess? Oh, you will love the exhibition. Adore it, even, I promise! There’ll be free wine and canapés, too. Bring a date. Your girlfriend, maybe?”

Charles decided to stare at the wall.

“No girlfriend,” Erik said rather coolly.

“Ooh,” Raven said in realisation. “Gay, aren’t you?”

Erik now let out a short laugh of disbelief. “I, uh. Yes, sure, I play for both teams, but I’m recently divorced.”

Raven gasped a little and took this as an opportunity to place a hand on Erik’s arm. “Oh I’m so sorry! That sucks! But think on the positives, being single again! Everyone must be a little bi these days to get by, do you not think?”

Erik said nothing – Charles wondered if Raven thought Charles should eat a bit of puss* just to get by. Raven could embarrass the hell out of him sometimes.

“Oh, you’re welcome to come along too,” Raven then said, acknowledging the others, and she gave Tom, Maybe-George and Perhaps-Greek-Lady flyers as well. “Well I must dash! Thank you for the keys, darling brother,” she said, smacking a kiss on Charles’s cheek. “Catch you later! And Erik, Erik, you must come to my exhibition!”

“I will certainly try,” Erik said with a cordial smile.

She was out of the bar as Hank walked over to them, holding a drink he’d gotten Raven. His expression fell, and Charles took the drink and downed it. Jesus. Talk about not being able to choose your relatives. “She’s quite something,” Business Tom told Charles confidently and with a rather worried look.

She certainly was.

The others went on with their conversation, but Charles contributed little. Erik had said it just then: he was bi. Charles had wondered about that as Erik seemed to have long-term relationships solely with women: Magda, Ororo… No mention of boyfriends that Charles knew of. Maybe Erik just used men for sex and women for relationships. The thought angered him.

Erik suddenly said, “Christ, is that the time?” It was quarter past eight. “I really have to go, I’m sorry. I don’t want to keep Marie waiting.”

Tom nodded, but Charles only wondered who Marie was: potential wife number two?

“Finish your drink first, mate,” Tom said as Erik was holding a half-full pint. Erik downed it in one go, which reminded Charles of stupid drinking games they had participated in back in the day, drunk and making out on the dance floor of a Sydney gay club. Neon coloured shots, men in nothing but leather underwear, techno beats, glow sticks in their hands – now in a smart London bar, Erik in a suit, nine years older, and Charles with an expensive tie over his Hilfiger dress shirt, paying off a mortgage and in the office by eight thirty.

“Goodnight,” Erik said, giving the members of the group one-armed hugs, pecking the woman who had turned out to be Italian, Federica, on the cheek. He then turned to Charles and said, “I was hoping to have a word?”

“Of course.” He said this neutrally like he’d been expecting it, but in truth something dark stirred in him, a sense of privilege that these other people did not have. He followed Erik to the door, wondering if Erik was going to ask for Raven’s phone number in case she was an easy lay – which she usually was, not that Charles judged. He’d been rather slu*tty himself for most of his twenties.

Erik smiled at him warmly – always warmly – and said, “I wanted to ask – I mean, I suppose I was just wondering… if you’re busy this weekend?”

Oh. Uh. “I’m in Oxford, I’m afraid.”

“Ah.”

“How so?” he said because otherwise he would spend the entire night and rest of the week wondering.

Erik shrugged. “I just happened to have some free time. I enjoyed it, the other week. Spending time together, catching up. Just hanging out.”

That was a good word for it, Charles then decided – they had been hanging out. “Me too,” he said sincerely. “I was gonna call you, really. It’s just with the move and the travelling and – Listen. We’ll go for dinner soon.”

“Yeah?” Erik asked like he didn’t quite believe him, and Charles felt hurt despite himself.

“Yeah. Yes, of course. I insist.”

Erik broke into a smile, and Charles could tell Erik was pleased, and the thought elevated him. “Okay, then, dinner it is,” Erik said. Charles thought of the time they had made pasta in a hostel kitchen, practising the famous scene from The Lady and the Tramp with spaghetti, laughing, kissing, spaghetti dropping onto the floor and their shirts. Someone had complained to management. Jealous souls.

“Great,” Charles said. For a second they both smiled like they had a shared secret.

“See you soon,” Erik said and leaned in, and Charles’s breath caught at his throat. Erik pecked his cheek, and soon was hurrying out of the bar. Charles wished he had stayed longer – Erik always seemed to be in a hurry to get home.

Well, then. He cleared his throat, and turned back to the bar. That had been alright, all things considered. He would have to ask Raven for some restaurant recommendations and make sure she wouldn’t crash the party.

He idly wondered who Marie was.

Charles sat next to Erik at their estate meeting on Monday. Erik was surprised by the ease with which Charles started telling him of his Oxford weekend without Erik having to ask – he liked that. Having to go ‘So… did you get up to much at the weekend?’ marked that person as someone whose life was not connected to yours and to whom you were simply being polite to. Having someone go ‘Let me tell you about my weekend’ meant that they had placed you in the category of people whose job it was to care.

And Erik cared.

As they waited for a few latecomers, Erik listened to Charles’s stories of Oxford. Erik had only been there once himself, and his memories of it were sinister and painful. But Charles spoke of the city with enthusiasm, and Erik felt rather lost as Charles’s blue eyes lit up with excitement, his messy long hair slipping in front of his eyes. Charles brushed it away automatically, which helped keep Erik’s instinct of reaching out at bay. He was probably staring, but Charles was captivating like this: insightful and passionate, speaking assuredly. Emma sat on the other side of the conference table with an icy bitch face – she didn’t like delays.

Charles talked about his friends like Erik knew them all or at least like he and Erik were old friends themselves. They were, if a ten-year gap didn’t count. Two of Charles’s friends were getting married in the New Year and Charles explained how he was co-organising the bachelor party for the groom and how his sister was designing the wedding cake. “Raven, right?” Erik said, recalling the admittedly cute blonde who had been very, ah. Straightforward with her… interest.

“Yeah, that’s her,” Charles said and then, as if suddenly recalling, “Oh, and – You don’t have to come to the show this Friday. She’s a bit insane and worth ignoring.”

“But I’d like to, really. I’m just tied up with Shani this weekend.”

“Oh, right. How old is she again?”

“Three and a half, so she’s quite a lot of work,” he said. His Friday plans consisted of a Halloween themed playdate some parents from the nursery had organised.

Charles said, “So she’s quite young then. She’ll still have a lot of energy to play, I expect.”

“Well, she wears herself out quickly – always in bed before eight. Or at least I try,” he said, and Charles looked confused but smiled, and Erik felt likewise confused but wasn’t sure why.

He and Emma then started the meeting, trying to breeze through it. From their estates perspective, they did not give a flying f*ck how well these non-builders grasped the building works. The entire exercise had HR stink all over it: making different departments come together and work better as teams. Charles looked rather bored during the meeting, and Erik was amused that he didn’t try to hide it. Charles idly rubbed at his jaw, perhaps to appear thoughtful though he clearly wasn’t listening. Erik liked Charles with a beard – he thought it quite sexy if he was honest.

After the meeting was done Erik wanted to ask when Charles was going to take him out for dinner as he had promised, but he didn’t want to overly cheeky. Neither an estates meeting nor the chess club were due any time soon, and he didn’t know when he would see Charles again. He felt unwilling to let Charles go.

As they walked out of the conference room together, he said, “Hey, you know, maybe I’ll swing by the exhibition on Friday, if it’d be okay to bring Shani along?”

Charles frowned and – okay, exhibition openings weren’t exactly toddler friendly. But then Charles said, “Yeah, you know what? It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing in there.”

Erik would not necessarily have classified his daughter as an it or as weird, but he went along with it. They chatted in the corridor a few minutes longer, about what, Erik could not have been able to say afterwards, but it had been pleasant and effortless nonetheless, and they had kept joking and smiling. It was only when Emma ushered him away that they said goodbyes, and Erik was taken aback just a little when Charles gave him a quick, one-armed hug as a goodbye. He briefly thought of all the hours he’d spent in bed, pressed against that very body.

When he and Emma were in the lift down, she said, “Flirting on the job, Erik – hardly professional.”

“Bite me, Frost,” he said, and she cackled – she didn’t laugh, she truly cackled.

She knew nothing, of course, and Erik took comfort in the fact. Being around Charles was bringing back memories that Erik didn’t realise he still had had – most of them were of innocent moments shared, of conversations had. Some of them were filthy beyond belief too, and when those memories emerged Erik almost found it difficult to look Charles in the eye because those eyes reminded Erik of what, perhaps, had been his undoing back in Australia: the way sometimes in the middle of sex Charles got this clouded look of desire in his eyes, a look of being slightly off-kilter, just a bit out of it, the look that signalled Charles was going to come soon: mouth open, letting out f*cking sexy little sounds of pleasure as Charles was f*cked or was f*cking him, looking at Erik as he began to become undone.

Christ, Erik remembered it clearer now than he had in years, and it almost kept him up that night – he forced himself to think of Idris Elba instead, like a normal human being. Thankfully, this method was quite successful.

Shani’s outfit for Halloween arrived the day before – thank god for Amazon Prime – and Erik left the office shortly after two on Friday, taking a half-day that he knew would only make the next week utter hell. Shani had chosen her own costume, and Erik had expected her to choose a princess dress, not because she had been indoctrinated to consider herself as a little princess but because she loved knowing that her grandmother had been an actual, real life tribal princess. But when Erik had asked, “What could you be if you could be anything?”, which was how he had approached the topic because Shani didn’t really get what Halloween was about, she had been determined: a minion.

Erik had watched enough kids’ movies to know exactly what she meant.

And so Shani Ashira Lehnsherr was dressed as a minion for her first proper Halloween: the costume was a simple A-lined dress with a yellow, long-sleeved top and a blue dungareed bottom. It came with a matching yellow hat that had a minion face on it, smiling foolishly with big goggles over the eyes. Erik thought it looked better with Shani’s hair up and under the hat, which resulted in a struggle – Shani ran in circles in the living room, yelling, “Ich will nicht, will nich’!” and a protest of “Nein, nein, nein!” when Erik caught her and carried her under one arm upstairs to finish the job. Shani cried like Erik pulled on her hair on purpose when he combed it, although he was as gentle as he could.

There was a definite downside to a child having only one parent: Erik could not afford being crap at anything. He had to be good at all the daily, mundane things for Shani because there was no one else. Maybe Ororo would have been better at mastering the care of their daughter’s hair that sprung from her head like little rolls of spring wire, but Ororo wasn’t there and Erik’s clumsy hands had to do. Shani stood still, or as still as she could, as Erik sat on the edge of her bed and combed her hair to a nest on the top of her head. He tied the hair at the top and wished that Shani had been born with pigment-flawed white, straight hair like her mother, which Erik might have been better at managing. Shani kept wailing and wincing throughout the exercise, even when Erik was hardly pulling on the comb.

As soon as the ordeal was over and the hat was back on Shani’s head, Shani became a different child – she was practically bouncing off the walls. “Alright then, let’s take a picture for Mommy,” Erik said, and Shani beamed at his phone as he took a shot and sent it to Ororo who was somewhere in Algeria for a sand storm. He didn’t expect a reply, but clearly Ororo was somewhere with reception: she looks adorable!!!

“Mommy says you look adorable,” Erik related, and Shani beamed twice as hard.

Erik had a BMW that he didn’t use much because he always took the tube to work and back, but for getting Shani from A to B a car was invaluable. He also needed it for work to get to building sites that were otherwise hard to reach, but for tonight he needed it to drive them to Sophie’s house. They got there without getting lost because Erik had been there before for Sophie’s second birthday party. Her parents were alright: mum Sharon was an accountant who drank too much and dad Toby was from Edinburgh and ran a catering firm and always wanted to talk to Erik about the latest episode of Top Gear, which Erik had not had time to watch since Shani’s birth.

The playdate was all one could expect from a Halloween themed toddler fest, which was very little. The children, dressed as a Batman, a Bob the Builder, a princess, a dragon, a sunflower, a pirate and a minion, were rolling around playing like they always were, with healthy carrot snacks on offer. Erik busied himself with the sausage rolls for adults and felt an innate Jewish guilt as he enjoyed them.

“Last week’s Top Gear, eh?” Toby asked him conspiratorially, and Erik said, “Yeah, tell me about it.”

He literally meant tell me about it because he had no f*cking clue. Toby only beamed knowingly.

The fathers tended to stick together, which Erik assumed stemmed from their need to re-establish their masculinity when their lives had boiled down to playdates and tantrum control, when only three years back they had been down at the pub ordering rounds with the lads. Erik didn’t really feel that need to re-establish himself – he would have felt equally comfortable with the mothers, who usually worried more about the development of their children than the dads did and were always comparing notes: ‘Well my Hector sleeps nine hours, well my Lucy only eats broccoli’ and so on. Erik as a single dad was the worrier too – there was no one else for the job.

“So how are things with Ororo?” Toby asked sympathetically an hour into the party, and Erik felt a tinge of guilt on top of his pork-eating. Of course Erik wasn’t alone alone – Ororo worried about Shani equally much. In the day to day running of things, however, that meant little.

Being a parent, Erik had started to realise, was 80% about just being there and getting on with it.

“Oh, we’re fine. I mean, I miss Ororo,” he said honestly, “but we’ve figured out this divorcees thing okay. We’ve adjusted, at least.”

“You’d better hurry up,” Toby said and nodded at Shani making roaring sounds at pirate-Sophie, pretending to be a prehistoric monster probably – Shani had been quite into dinosaurs lately.

“Sorry?”

“You know, get back in the game. The wee one needs a mum.”

Toby was hardly a champion for intellect, so Erik let it slide. He didn’t think it was true: Shani already had a mother.

Erik, however, felt that he himself could have done with some extra help.

That was another thing Erik had discovered after becoming a parent and someone’s ex-husband: people were always dishing out advice like they knew so much better what he needed. Bunch of self-centred pricks, he thought.

He was one of the first to leave, and mum Sharon gave them a wrapped up party favour to go. He would have loved to have stayed longer, of course, but he had promised to go to his friend’s gallery opening. It had been lovely, Sophie made a great pirate, why thank you Shani was adorable too, must have dinner together soon.

Shani kept listing her favourite things about the party from her toddler seat at the back as Erik drove in circles around Finsbury, trying to find parking. Normally he never would have dreamt of driving into the city, but then he thought of the last time he had taken the tube with Shani, just two weeks back, when Shani had run off and momentarily disappeared into the crowd – without a doubt the most horrific twenty seconds of Erik’s life.

No, he was keeping a close eye on this one.

It was nearly seven when they got to the gallery, which he could easily see into through the large windows that faced the street. The inside was well lit and packed with people in the most ridiculous costumes. Erik hadn’t dressed up in himself – had he been supposed to?

He expected Shani’s attention span to hold for twenty minutes max. Really the trip was much ado about nothing but – but truthfully, Erik supposed, he had come all that way and paid an extortionate amount for parking to perhaps see Charles.

He didn’t want to acknowledge what it meant as he entered the gallery with minion-Shani in tow.

Warren had dressed in a white suit with angel wings attached to his back. He kept telling everyone to think on their sins or he wouldn’t take them up to see St Paul – Charles was sure that Warren’s theology was a bit dodgy there and wondered what Theology Craig would have said about it.

Charles had likewise given into peer pressure as it was Halloween and he was American, and so although they could have gone for a couple outfit – all Charles needed was to wear a black suit with a red tie, devil horns, and he was done – once he decided he was dressing up, he had dedicated himself to the cause. He had bought brown carton and cut out a crown that had three-inch stag horns sticking out all around. He had pulled on an olive green, long-sleeved shirt and bought a brown women’s poncho that he had cut the frills off and turned it into a vague brown drapey thing over his upper half. Black jeans and a pair of brown boots later, he was transformed into a B-class Renly Baratheon – although this was completely lost on most of the people in the gallery.

Charles still was very pleased with his transformation because, one, Renly had been hot as hell and, two, he had been a gay character and Charles had liked that and, three, the Renly outfit let Charles keep his beard and, four, Renly would have ruled the Seven Kingdoms majestically like the true king that he was. There were several Game of Thrones fans present, but only a handful of people actually recognised him. He blamed it on his long hair that ruined the likeness.

Raven, however, beat everyone out of the water: she had painted herself blue to go with the name of the exhibition: Blue is the Cruellest Month. Charles could see the lines of Raven’s bra and underwear underneath the blue paint and mostly he wanted Raven to cover herself up further because she looked so naked. Still, the gallery was full, the wine was a good vintage, and Warren was in London for the weekend, so Charles thought it was all going quite well.

Raven had always adored Warren and was currently busy rubbing her arm to the tips of Warren’s wings to give them a blue tinge. Warren kept laughing and Bobby, who had come with them, was onto his fifth glass of free wine. Bobby had been lazy with his outfit, having bought harem pants from Camden Market and saying he was Vanilla Ice. Charles was nonetheless amused by the effort, and perhaps he was buzzed himself after a few glasses of wine.

Raven came and went, mingling with her guests and potential buyers and charming people left and right. The exhibition was as promised: blue. It was ‘a study in colour’, Raven said, her abstract paintings hanging from the walls in hues of azure, teal, iris and ultramarine. For the most part Charles liked her work.

“Holy crap,” Warren said in the middle of Charles and Bobby chatting about the London food scene.

Bobby sneered. “It is holy coming from you.”

But Charles recognised the look of curiosity on Warren’s face, and Warren said, “Raven really should’ve warned us if she was going to invite models.” Warren had rather good taste in men – hello, he was dating Charles – so he looked to where Warren was pointing and… it was Erik. Erik had come.

Erik was talking to some of Raven’s artsy friends, amongst them a young beauty they had briefly met when they’d first come. What had been her name? Angel, right, which was funny because Warren was dressed up as one. Erik was not dressed up in anything ridiculous, but had still abandoned his usual office look: he was wearing dark grey jeans with a black polo neck that he pulled off immaculately and that fit into an art gallery perfectly. The polo shirt was just the right kind of tight across Erik’s chest, showing off his muscular build and incredibly lean form – Charles was jealous, he could admit that. The fabric followed the contours of Erik’s body, narrowing down to his abdomen and waist.

Erik had already been well-built in his youth, but Charles swore Erik had solidified somehow, his body mass having gained an air of strength and hardness that was extremely attractive to look at. No wonder Warren was distracted by the sight – every gay guy in existence wished they had a physique like that.

Charles was pleased that Erik had come as promised. “I know him,” he said. “He’s that guy I knew in Australia.”

“The surfer dude turned engineer?”

“He’s in the chess club too. Raven invited him along tonight.”

Warren frowned. “Wait. He’s the sad divorcee? Jesus. Who would divorce that?”

The two women talking to Erik were probably wondering the same thing. Christ, one of them was even holding up a little kid dressed up in some kind of a blue-yellow outfit – bring your kid with you and then shamelessly flirt with the handsomest single man present. O tempora, o mores, Charles thought with a bitterness that surprised him.

Warren’s question was an interesting one, however, and one that Charles hadn’t yet asked. Why was Erik divorced? Erik had not said much of it apart from the fact that it had happened. Charles now wondered what the story there was.

Bobby went to get himself more to drink and Warren said, “Well, let’s go meet this hunk of man meat, then.”

“Only if you promise not to salivate,” Charles said dryly, and Warren shrugged. Charles fought off a smile as he knew Warren was only trying to make him laugh. Yet he stalled. Erik had re-entered his life and seemed to be occupying a space in it that was inherently separate from the plane Warren occupied. Mixing the two seemed unnatural and, somehow, ill advised. Charles hadn’t even thought that they would both be at the exhibition opening, and now he didn’t want Warren and Erik to meet. What if Erik blurted out that they had once been together? And what if Erik saw Charles with Warren and permanently connected them as one? Charles wanted to stand independently in Erik’s estimation.

But now he had little choice, and they walked over just as the mother put her kid down and the kid pulled her into the crowd, pointing at a blue Raven who had clearly caught the child’s eye.

The woman laughed, “We’ll be right back, I promise!”

Erik smiled after them in amusem*nt. The friend of Raven’s, Angel, who had fairy wings attached to her back, was just about to have Erik all to herself. It was obvious from her flirtatious smile that this pleased her, but that was when Charles said, “Hey, you made it.”

“Charles,” Erik said, and there was something stupid about the way in which Erik said his name that made Charles feel content that it was coming out of Erik’s mouth in a pleased, warm tone. Erik took him in and grinned. “I have no idea who you’re supposed to be, but I like the crown.”

Charles had nearly forgotten he was wearing a costume, and he wished he hadn’t dressed up as the gay prince of a fantasy franchise. (But then a part of him really wished that in some alternative universe somewhere out there he was a gay prince of a fantasy franchise.) “It’s what the night is about, surely,” he said. “And I admit I am slightly addicted to Game of Thrones.”

Erik blinked. “Game of what?”

“What?” Warren now asked. “Do you live under a rock?”

“Apparently I do,” Erik laughed, and Charles politely made the instructions of Warren, this is Erik, Erik, this is Warren. The second the introductions were done and could not be revoked, Charles felt the unease in him spread. Some kind of a line had been crossed now, but he was unsure of what it was. He thought of him and Erik from nine years ago. God, how sad they would have been to know that one day they would stand in a gallery like strangers, with Charles introducing his partner to Erik.

As the sun had come up on the beach after their first night together, they had watched it rise, side by side. Charles had brushed grains of sand off Erik’s cool shoulder.

“Pleasure,” Warren said in his smooth, confident business voice. “So Charles tells me you two met in Australia way back when. What a small world.”

“Yes, it’s quite a coincidence,” Erik agreed, clearly not intending to comment on it further, and Charles relaxed. The last thing he wanted was for Warren to realise that Charles had not enclosed the story of his and Erik’s love affair.

Warren engaged Erik in a conversation about engineering that Angel did not seem to welcome, but she smiled through it anyway. Warren was a physicist but also was infuriatingly knowledgeable about most things on Planet Earth. Warren was also damn good at charming people without even trying.

Whatever collision Charles had feared did not seem to occur. He once again reminded himself that his romance with Erik did not matter anymore, so it was alright that he had not told Warren about it. And he didn’t think of his younger self on that beach either, he didn’t think of how sad that version of him would have been knowing that Erik would become lost to him – become just a vaguely familiar face in the crowd.

Together they talked about Raven’s artwork while the woman with the kid waved at them from across the room, still being pulled around by the child looking at the dressed up people with big, wondering eyes. Erik followed them with his own eyes, surprisingly similar in colour, but Charles didn’t see what was special about the woman: she was probably named Rachel by the look of her, one of those Rachels who bought her skirts in M&S sales and thought that straightening her hair made her a MILF.

Raven came to fetch Warren, then, exclaiming that she needed a bit of heavenly assistance with a potential buyer. “Oh Erik,” she purred at the sight of him, “I am so awfully glad you came!”

“So am I,” Angel now said with a coy smile as she slowly sipped from her wine glass. She was undressing Erik with her eyes, and Charles suddenly felt animosity towards her. She was a dancer, he now recalled, and looked like she was perhaps twenty. Jesus. A twenty-year-old dancer – she could probably bend herself into all sorts of positions that even the Kama Sutra was envious of.

After Warren went with Raven, Erik said, “Warren seems nice.”

Everyone liked Warren – it was one of the things Charles liked most about him. He said, “Yeah, he’s great. Hey, you want a drink?” He only then realised Erik didn’t have one.

“I’m driving, I’m afraid.”

They were in central London – was Erik insane? He let it slide and said, “Orange juice?” Angel asked for another glass of wine. While Charles collected their drinks from the buffet table, he stuffed his carton crown into his pocket and brushed his hair and hoped it looked okay.

When he got back, Angel was standing closer to Erik than before, nodding sympathetically at something Erik was saying. “Relationships are hard work,” she said with the wisdom of a twenty year old as Charles handed them new drinks. Angel was eyeing Erik with the cool, sexual confidence of a young woman who was used to bedding whoever she wanted. Charles disliked the thought of Erik going back to her place, of her going back to Erik’s place.

“What about you, Charles?” Angel then asked. “Are you married?”

Although Angel was a friend of Raven’s, they had never met each other before.

“I’m not, no.”

“Surely you’ve got someone special in your life, a good looking guy like you,” she said but it wasn’t in the same tone she addressed Erik – soft and suave. This tone was just polite.

After a pause which Charles somehow failed to fill, Erik said, “You’re seeing Warren, aren’t you?”

He followed Erik’s gaze to where Warren and Raven were chatting to a middle-aged woman. He was seeing Warren, more than that. But god, he hated the thought of Erik going off with Angel – what made her so special? Her perfect, perky, twenty-year-old breasts that were bursting from the sparkly purple top? Was that all that mattered to Erik now? What about… the meeting of minds, kindred spirits – what about love?

He said, “Well, sure. I mean, I have this- casual arrangement with him, I guess, but he lives abroad.” He shrugged. “We don’t see each other often. It’s very relaxed. Very modern.”

He instantly thought of their shared mortgage and the waffles Warren made him on Sundays and their own made-up word snuddling, which combined snuggling and cuddling and thus was superior, and he wondered why the hell he had just said that it was a casual arrangement when it clearly was not.

“Charles, come here!” Bobby’s voice called out to him as he realised to that he had just claimed his over two-year, monogamous relationship with Warren was a friends-with-benefits arrangement of a casual nature.

He had drunk too much, he realised, and he said a quick goodbye to Angel and Erik. He was being unreasonable.

When he got to Bobby, he let the man finish his wine. He was behaving badly. Christ, he was behaving badly.

He made a conscious effort to stay away, but whenever his eyes darted to Erik – and they frequently did – Erik was still talking to Angel. The kid from earlier was now propped against Erik’s hip, her small arms firmly around Erik’s neck. She seemed comfortable where she was, and Erik seemed content holding her as he carried on with the conversation. Jesus, Erik was even wonderful with children. Charles wondered where the mother had gone while Angel seemed to coo and baby talk at the yawning little girl.

Soon enough Charles saw Angel type what must have been her phone number onto Erik’s phone. She kissed him on the cheek and left with a wink. Charles’s insides felt like black bile, bubbling with a dripping, scorching cold. It was disappointment, somehow, loss and defeat.

Erik now came over to him, still carrying the girl. Charles put on the bravest of casual smiles.

“Must start heading back now, I’m afraid. It’s getting late,” Erik said. It was eight thirty.

“You planning to keep her, then?” he asked and nodded at the girl who was dozing against Erik’s chest.

Erik seemed confused. “Well yes – Oh did you not meet her yet? Shani, Herzchen, say hi to Papa’s friend. Is she awake?” Erik tried to peer down at the girl whose face was buried against Erik’s right collar bone. She was certainly not awake anymore.

Charles blinked. Shani. The playful three-year-old… dog. Not a dog. f*ck. f*ck, this was Erik’s kid.

Erik had a kid.

Suddenly a hell of a lot made all kinds of sense. Charles quickly recontextualised all the little mentions Erik had said of Shani, like how Shani liked parks and how Erik might bring Shani to the gallery and how Shani had to be put to bed at a reasonable hour. Jesus, of course Erik had been talking about a child – how did Charles have a PhD when he could not deduce from context that Erik was not talking about a pet dog?

Erik seemed to be having a similar sort of realisation as he said, “I did tell you about my daughter, right?”

“No, yes, of course, totally. She just – I just didn’t realise,” he blabbed.

Erik had a kid. Okay, Erik had Pietro, Charles knew this, but Erik had an actual living kid, not that Pietro was dead. Rewind, rewind. What Charles meant was that Erik was a dad. Right then. Erik was a very active father who was clearly very responsible for the child asleep in his arms, and something about that was impressive while simultaneously being intimidating and somehow awe inducing, and yet somehow sad because in some way he lost Erik permanently in that one second of realisation. You couldn’t take back a child. You could take back nine years, maybe, but not a child.

“She’s beautiful,” he said gruffly because at least it was a compliment.

“And she also needs to be in bed,” Erik said with a roll of his eyes. Charles felt upset – he had lost. No, Christ, he wasn’t – he wasn’t competing, he wasn’t… “But hey, let’s go for that dinner soon. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you as much as I would have liked tonight.”

“Yeah, I would have liked to have talked to you more too.”

And he meant it in the most innocent of ways: nothing could have pleased him more than to steal Erik away for a few hours of good conversation, especially now when he had so many questions about Shani. He wanted Erik to tell him his life story again, but differently this time. And he wanted to ask if Erik too was sad for them to be meeting like this, as strangers who once had been so much more.

Warren reappeared from the crowd, and Charles was quick to introduce Warren to Erik’s daughter. Warren beamed and said she made an adorable minion, and Charles assumed this was the child’s outfit although he didn’t know whose minion Shani was supposed to be. Warren said that he and Erik must meet again and discuss engineering further, and Erik said it sounded like a plan. Warren gave Erik a one-armed hug because he was a hugger after the fourth drink, and Erik kissed Charles on the cheek as a goodbye, the tips of Erik’s fingers touching the back of his hand as he did so. Charles felt his stomach drop as a heated buzz swelled up inside.

Warren and Bobby kept chatting away happily, and Charles tried to get involved in the conversation, but truthfully he watched Erik walking out with Shani asleep in his arms.

The day after the exhibition Charles and Warren were both hungover, so they stayed under the covers dozing off and snuddling until well past noon. Charles tried to inspire Warren to get up and make them breakfast, especially as Warren’s scrambled eggs were a fantastic hangover cure, but Warren seemed reluctant.

Warren came with enumeration: he was Warren Worthington III, son of Warren Worthington Junior, grandson of Warren Worthington Senior. The lineage was interlaced with American aristocracy, which was often visible in Warren’s demeanour. One of the reasons why they had always gotten along so well was because as male heirs of well-off New York dynasties, they both understood the pressure that the other was under. Sometimes they called themselves a power couple and bumped fists.

The two of them against the world.

Warren may have been a nuclear researcher at the moment, but there was no doubt that he wanted to become one of the most powerful scientists of his generation, giving commencement speeches at Harvard and being nominated as Time Magazine’s person of the year before he turned fifty. And sometime in the 2040s Charles had no doubt that the Director-General of CERN would be Professor Worthington. Warren had ambition and confidence, both of which had drawn Charles to him because he considered himself as having these same driving forces.

Warren was, however, much more than that. He could go from astute and powerful to goofy and soft in a heartbeat. This other half of Warren had sealed the deal: the bad jokes, the Sandra Bullock obsession, the occasional romanticism, and especially the blind faith that Warren had that the two of them were a good team. And Warren was right: they were good for each other. It was hard to grow up in New York elite and not turn out cynical, and both of them generally were just that but not about each other.

Currently, Charles needed Warren to be less cynical about making them breakfast, and eventually Warren grudgingly agreed. Charles had a shower and spent a long time brushing his teeth to get the taste of stale alcohol out of his mouth. He could smell eggs and baked beans from the bedroom as he towelled off and pulled on clothes, somewhat sadly rolling on socks as well. It was November now and the days of sockless existence were gone for the winter.

When he got to the kitchen, Warren was using Charles’s laptop at the small breakfast table by the window. They would eventually have a large dining table in the living room once it arrived – they had chosen one together earlier that week. For now the breakfast table would do as it was big enough for two, and on it Charles had a full plate waiting: two slices of toast, baked beans, fried mushrooms and egg scramble. This was heaven, right here.

“Made coffee,” Warren said, munching on toast, eyes on the screen.

“Mmm, amazing. This is why I love you.”

“You bet it is.”

Charles picked up the coffee pot and walked over to his boyfriend to refill his cup, first placing a kiss on the top of his head. He then stopped abruptly when he saw the screen where there was something rather different than the work emails he’d been expecting. “What are you doing?” he asked, genuinely taken aback.

Warren didn’t even look up. “Stalking Erik Lehnsherr.”

Warren had found out.

Warren was on Erik’s Facebook profile, scrolling through the posts on Erik’s wall. “I friended him last night, and he just friended me back,” Warren said – Warren friended everyone. Networking. He had over one thousand five hundred Facebook friends. Charles had not met that many people in his life, and somehow he doubted Warren had either. Warren stopped scrolling and aww’ed. “Look at how cute his kid is!” On the screen was a picture of Shani, perhaps from a year or so ago when she had been smaller and chubbier. It had been posted by someone from a mutual playdate in a park, and Shani was chewing on the handle of a small, plastic shovel.

Warren hadn’t found out, Charles reflected, he was just being nosy. Warren added, “That kid is going to be gorgeous when she grows up, huh? Well no wonder with a dad that hot.”

“Are you hoping for some poolside pictures?” he asked in disdain, making sure he sounded aloof and annoyed. “Hoping that he’s a speedo fanatic?”

Warren looked up at him with a shocked expression that was utterly fake. “No, of course not! I am only expressing a mild curiosity in your chess club pals. I would not be sleazy about this man just because he’s exceptionally hot, or anything of the sort.”

Charles rolled his eyes, but Warren pushed his chair back and wrapped arms around Charles, pulling until Charles had little choice but to sit in his lap, still holding the coffee pot and all. Warren kissed his shoulder and said, “I love you, Charles Xavier, the man of my dreams, the love of my life. Sure, this guy is pretty f*cking hot, but it’s you I love.”

“And they say romance is dead,” Charles muttered as he kissed Warren anyway. Warren laughed against his mouth, and Charles got out of his lap. “Now put that away so we can have breakfast like a normal couple, alright?”

“Argh! Normal!” Warren groaned dramatically as Charles retrieved some orange juice from the fridge.

He knew Warren’s curious nature – he was always keen to meet every person Charles knew. Erik was not an exception in the acquaintances Charles had that Warren had immediately taken a liking to. This was normal Warren behaviour, and it was not suspicious if Charles didn’t act like it was.

They spent the rest of the day out, buying things for the house, choosing the paint for the box room. Warren settled for a cool yellow that would hopefully brighten up the small space. Once home, Warren made risotto for dinner, but they drank no wine because they still had headaches from the night before. Warren wanted to get on with some work after that, which Charles refused to let him do – Warren was an even worse workaholic than he was. Warren then managed to find Top Gun on TV and forced Charles to watch it, but even the blatant hom*oeroticism couldn’t make Charles truly enjoy it, so he flipped through a science journal before Warren started asking why Charles was allowed to work but he wasn’t. They decided to have sex instead, as a genial compromise.

It was a good Saturday. The entire flat felt homier with Warren there.

Raven dropped by on Sunday morning, now no longer blue. She had sold some art on Friday and was quite pleased. Warren had to leave for the airport around three so she didn’t intrude for too long, but she did manage to stay for a cup of tea during which she said that Angel now had a date with Erik, and Warren moaned the loss of a man who “looked like a Greek marble statue.”

Raven snigg*red. “You do know Greek statues have small dicks, right?”

“Ooh, this is true,” Warren grinned. “I guess nobody’s perfect.”

Erik was actually rather well hung, but Charles didn’t feel like he could share that with the group.

After Raven had left they managed an afternoon quickie or ‘some afternoon delight’ as Warren put it. Charles bemoaned his fate that he had fallen in love with such a dork. All too soon Charles found himself alone in the house again, missing Warren’s company. Warren was good to have around: he helped Charles focus, stopped his mind from wandering. Now Charles was left playing the weekend back in his head, and he thought back to Friday night at the gallery.

He made himself a cup of tea as rain beat against the kitchen window. His laptop was on to the edge of the breakfast table, having gone unused since Saturday morning. He eyed it, hesitating. Then he sat down and pulled it closer.

When the screen flicked back on, it was still there: Erik’s Facebook page. Warren was always rather lazy about logging out of his accounts when using his laptop. Charles sipped on his tea as he started perusing, out of curiosity, from the top down.

Erik wasn’t a massive Facebook user or at least there were hardly any personal updates. Erik’s profile picture was modest: a shot of Erik on a beach with a t-shirt, shorts and sunglasses taken from quite a distance from a holiday somewhere. Charles had to squint to even see Erik properly. In the profile picture folder were only three others, all rather similar faraway shots: Erik at the Grand Canyon, Erik in Glencoe and Erik on a pier somewhere with turquoise water and white sand. Nearly everything on Erik’s wall came from other people, from Erik having been tagged (Logan Howlett had tagged Erik a handful of times, at a bar, at a rugby game and at an Eagles concert, often with some man called Azazel) or there were links someone had shared with Erik, and occasionally Erik himself had shared a Guardian or an Economist article with a comment of “a thought-provoking read.” Usually it was something to do with human rights. Charles scrolled past a plethora of birthday well wishes from earlier in the year.

There were pictures of Shani too – again not by Erik’s own initiative, but from people having tagged Erik in pictures of her. Charles stopped at one such picture, which had been posted by Ororo Munroe some seven months back.

He had already gone this far, he decided, so he clicked onto Ororo’s profile. He could not see much as Facebook told him to send Ororo a friend request if he knew her, but the profile picture and cover photo were visible. Charles was surprised by Ororo’s silver white hair, an odd choice of hair dye, but it looked good on Ororo who was a stunning woman. In her profile picture she was in hiking shorts and a green tank top, standing at the mouth of what looked like a volcano crater with honest to god lava bubbling down in it. Ororo was smiling widely, and that was the kind of person Erik liked, he thought: someone stunning and adventurous and exciting.

Charles reflected on his own life. He had never been up a volcano.

Ororo’s cover photo was a group shot of her with a bunch of safari-styled explorers next to a Jeep in what Charles guessed was either Kenya or Tanzania. Erik was not in the group.

Some people thought that Charles had led an exciting life because he had lived in a few countries, frequenting Geneva, and recently moving from Oxford to London and so forth. Truthfully, however, he had expanded his knowledge of the world a little in his youth, found those limits comfortable, and had stopped pushing. His adventures were academically viable and sound, leading to better and bigger laboratories. He was past the age of wild wandering, of spontaneous decisions like applying for an Australian internship or accepting Erik’s marriage proposal. He was settling down, he thought things through, but Ororo clearly would not have said so of herself.

He went back to Erik’s profile and started skimming through pictures of him, which counted at one hundred and twenty-six pictures. There were pictures of Erik at kids’ birthday parties with Shani, him at someone’s barbeque, a few from the chess club that Sandra Henderson had posted, and then from some three years ago were pictures of a new-born Shani being held by Erik, whose face was one of pure awe and love in a way that only a recent father’s could be. Shani barely stretched the full length of Erik’s forearm, looking miniscule in the protective arms of her stunned father. There were a few pictures of the new-born with Erik and Ororo, their first few family portraits, and they all looked so happy.

Charles should stop. He should really stop.

He kept going.

Erik got progressively younger, more like the man Charles had playfully married on a beach once. The memories of their love affair almost shocked Charles now: to think how adventurous he had been at the age of nineteen, how willing he had been to just change his entire life – move to a foreign country, leave everything behind – all in the name of love. Hell, he might’ve climbed a volcano at that age too, but then he’d grown up. Life wasn’t a movie where you met a handsome stranger who changed your life, and Charles had learned that very quickly.

The oldest pictures of Erik were from a holiday in California from 2009, and Charles was sure that Warren would have been saddened by the lack of speedos in the shots, but the swimming trunks that clung onto Erik’s wet form left rather little to the imagination.

Taken a few years after Charles had met Erik, Erik still looked much the same as Charles’s memories of him: young, tanned, and sea-fresh. Erik’s stomach was taut, water rolling down the lines of the six-pack that had Charles quite transfixed. He remembered the heat of Erik’s skin, the feel of those muscles rigid and hard, and he felt arousal stir in his guts. He finally admitted to himself that had been jealous on Friday. Angel flirting with Erik like that, Erik giving her so much attention… Charles had been jealous.

Worse than that. He’d felt like his jealousy was justified: Erik belonged to him.

Erik’s presence confused him because some part of his brain still associated Erik with someone who was close physically and emotionally. Treating Erik like a stranger felt wrong when memory served that he should have pulled a possessive arm around Erik’s waist, snatching him away where they can be alone, and then tell Erik all of his most intimate thoughts like he once had done, most likely amidst caresses and kissing. He recalled the sense of sadness he associated with the re-appearance of Erik, a sadness that now resurfaced as he clicked through the pictures.

“Did he seem sad?” Warren had asked when Charles told him of a young Erik so full of dreams that had not come true. And no, Erik wasn’t sad – he was not sad in any of the pictures that now flashed on the screen. Erik was happy in all of them. Erik had not had a perfect life or the life he had dreamt of, but he had been happy enough and it had been full of lovers and friends, trust and support, holidays and birthday parties.

And that was when Charles realised why he was sad: because Charles hadn’t been there.

Somewhere deep inside of him Charles still carried the idea of a whole alternative life, one of them together. A life where he had moved to Germany when Magda’s kid hadn’t been Erik’s after all, and they had patched it up and it had been just like before. A life that was brighter, happier than the lives they had actually led, where even the most mundane things felt good because they continued to be as in love with each other as they had been on the day that Erik asked Charles to marry him, whenever it suited Charles best. Charles thought of all the possibilities that had been open to them on that day, all the adventures they might have gone on. He thought of how f*cking much he would have loved Erik in that world.

He sipped on the tea that had gone cold and swallowed hard.

Ten years, and he wasn’t over Erik.

When they went on their honeymoon road trip, Charles took it quite seriously. Upon reaching Townsville on the north-east coast of Australia with Erik asleep on the passenger seat, he drove into the city and cruised around until he saw a hotel that looked posh enough. After he ran inside to check them in, he got back in the car and woke Erik up with kisses, saying, “Hey, Mr. Husband, wake up, wake up.”

Erik smiled into the wake up kisses, stretching on the passenger seat. “Mmm, I’m up.”

Charles pulled back, grinning expectantly. Erik opened his eyes and looked around: they were parked on the driveway of a four-star hotel by the main doors, which clearly took Erik by surprise. “Wha – Where are we?”

Charles dangled the room key in the air. “We’ve got the honeymoon suite. Or, well. They don’t technically have one, but it’s the next best thing.”

Erik laughed, clearly thinking he was kidding. Then Erik realised he wasn’t. “What?”

He grinned mischievously, getting out of the car. Erik followed his lead, stiff from sleep and looking confused as all hell. Charles loved every second of it. One of the bell boys took their battered rucksacks, and a valet took the car. He grabbed Erik’s hand and pulled him inside. They were dressed like they were fit for a one-star road joint in their wrinkled beachwear and flip flops, utterly out of place as they made their way across the lobby and to the lift.

Once heading up, Erik said, “Charles, this is crazy.” They were going to the top floor. “Hey, listen to me,” Erik said, eyeing the bell boy nervously. “This is gonna blow our entire budget.”

“No, it won’t,” Charles said, and when Erik looked confused, Charles showed him the credit card he had in his pocket. “Mother gave it to me in case of an emergency,” he said, breaking into a grin. “And this is an emergency.”

Erik leaned against the lift wall, staring at him, and then burst out laughing. “They’ll kill you.”

“Oh they will.”

“Mein Gott,” Erik laughed and rubbed his face. He turned to the bell boy and said, “I proposed to a madman.”

The bell boy seemed confused by the entire exchange.

Their room was a Superior King Room with Sea View and Hot Tub, and for them it was just as grand as a real honeymoon suite would have been. They ordered pizza and champagne and put it all on Charles’s mother and step-dad. Erik felt horrible about it, but Charles knew he could explain it away once home and, truthfully, his parents were unlikely to miss the money. They only spent one night there – Charles felt daring, not stupid – and they spent most of that night making love on the bed, in the hot tub, on the floor.

The day after they were back in their sh*tty navy Toyota, heading up the coast. Charles read Byron’s poems aloud as Erik drove, and every now and then Erik reached for his hand, bringing it up to his lips, kissing the knuckles.

Chapter 3: Three

Chapter Text

The weekend after Halloween was Bobby Drake’s birthday, which was an entire event. Warren was in London for the celebrations, of course, acting like the boisterous American frat boy that lurked behind his CERN scientist exterior, and Charles embraced the tendency to overindulge that he’d inherited from his mother, lining up tequila shots with the birthday crowd.

Charles usually enjoyed a few pints, some fine wine or Scottish whisky, perhaps some bourbon. He rarely drank to get trashed anymore – tonight was an exception.

Bobby worked as a mixologist at an exclusive London club where he was renowned for his flavoured ice cubes. He had plenty of contacts in the clubbing scene and Charles was therefore not surprised when their group of ten walked past a long queue and straight into a high-class club. Most of the people they were with were Bobby’s friends that he and Warren had met a handful of times in the past. At the club they were joined by Raven and a few of her acquaintances, the two entourages mixing into one. The music was so loud that Charles felt the thud of the bass on his skin while the multi-coloured lights flashed brightly. He inhaled the smell of salty sweat and spilled alcohol, the floor sticky under his feet. He hadn’t been out clubbing in London since he had moved there because between fixing up the flat and keeping the pace going at work, he had little time for much else. Now he had pulled on tight jeans and a black dress shirt that showed off his muscular shoulders and chest, his messy hair even messier in some attempt to look like a rock star, and Warren could hardly keep his hands to himself. Charles felt smug and was ready to get roaring drunk.

After a few drinks Raven pulled him onto the dance floor where she kept laughing and grinning and spinning around jubilantly. She had dragged along a sculptor that she was currently dating, some guy named Oliver, and Charles didn’t like the man much. If history was to repeat itself, Oliver would be gone in a month’s time, anyway.

But a month could matter a hell of a lot, sometimes.

They stayed on the dance floor until Charles realised that he was dancing his alcoholic stupor away, and so they returned to the table where Charles already had a double whisky and co*ke waiting. Warren slung an arm around his shoulders, talking about the upcoming Coen brothers’ film with a friend of Bobby’s. Warren looked stunning, all shining blue eyes and flashes of white teeth, and he was Charles’s.

Raven sat down opposite them, sipping on a vodka orange, and she grabbed Charles’s hand from across the wet surface and yelled, “Hey, guess what?”

“What?” Charles yelled back.

Raven took another sip of her drink and said, “My friend Angel, you know the dancer? Yeah, she went on a date with that Erik guy last night.” She grinned broadly. “Angel reports that he is an excellent kisser!” Raven let go of his hand, beaming at the scandal of it expectantly. Charles stared at her. She grew impatient. “Well?!”

“Yeah, great!” Charles managed to yell back. “Great!”

Bobby brought a tray of tequila shots to the table and everyone cheered. Charles took his shot, not bothering with the salt and lime, grimacing, wiping at his mouth. Warren gave his cheek a sloppy kiss, murmuring in his ear that they’d f*ck good and hard once home. “Mmm,” Charles said in agreement, giving Warren a kiss that came with plenty of tongue. Warren’s offer sounded good, and god, Warren was very, very good in bed. Charles was lucky to have him. He pulled back and said, “I’m gonna go for a smoke.”

When he stood up, he realised vaguely and distantly how drunk he was. The club swayed to the left and the right as he made his way to the side door that led to a barricaded section of an alleyway, full of smoking club-goers. His liquor laced breath rose in the air in a spiral of mist. It was drizzling in the November night, two in the morning, a Sunday now. Charles leaned against the brick wall and sucked in air, the music of the club muffled, but the thud of it seemed to penetrate walls.

When he closed his eyes he saw Erik with a beautiful twenty-year-old dancer, her pinned against the wall, Erik’s hand moving under her skirt.

In what world could Charles even compete with that anymore, in what f*cking world – And did it really not matter in the end, what they’d shared? Did their love truly not matter?

He bummed a smoke off a woman with ginger hair, who lit it for him kindly. He thanked her and smoked anxiously. What a sh*tty night, he thought, what a sh*tty f*cking party. He then sloppily pulled his wallet out, going through its contents until – yes, there. A business card: Erik Lehnsherr (BEng, MSc). He peered at the phone number on it, the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth as he tried to punch the numbers onto his phone. He asked a guy next to him to verify that he had copied the digits correctly, and the guy confirmed that he had but then read the card and laughed. “What the hell do you need an estates co-director for at this time of night?”

“Ah, I dunno,” he laughed, amused by it himself. The man had a kind looking face and appeared a bit too sober for Charles’s liking, but Charles felt like he could confide in him. “Truth? The truth… Truth is that, this uh, this Mr. Director here is – was. Is. He was my first love. And I was his, he loved me before – before others, these other… insignificant… And I think I should tell him. Or just talk, just – just tell him not to bother with the dancers.”

The kind-faced man was joined by a kind-faced woman, and the two started sharing a cigarette. “Who’s your friend?” the woman asked, and the man said, “I’ve met a gentleman here on the quest of calling his ex-boyfriend.”

The woman frowned. “At this time of night, darling?”

“Well no,” Charles said, wanting to justify it. “No, you don’t understand. He’s dating some young thing, and I – Look, I am practically a married man myself. My- My boyfriend is in there.” He motioned back into the club. His words sunk in a little: Warren was right there. His chest tightened painfully. “My boyfriend is in there.” He felt lost and drunk and stupid. “And I just… just wanna talk to Erik.” He looked at the wrinkled business card in his hand. “You know what I mean?” he asked the couple demandingly. They were staring at him. “I wanna talk to him like we used to, back when he was mine and I was his, and – Do you know how good it feels? Knowing you are someone’s and that – that they love you just as much as you love them? That you’re both all in? Like you say hey, hey man, listen, I’m all in. This thing, you and me?” he asked, motioning between himself and the couple. “I’m all in.”

He swayed. “It was the best time of my life, when he was mine.” He looked to the door again. “My boyfriend’s back in there.” He said nothing else.

“Listen, honey,” the woman said, gently taking the business card from him. She pushed it back into his pocket. “How about you call him another time, hmm?”

“Yeah,” the man agreed. “Call him in the morning, if you still feel like it.”

The woman nodded. “Yeah, you call him in the morning. Alright?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he agreed and pushed his phone back into his pocket. Encouraged by the thought of calling Erik once it was morning, he said, “That makes more sense, yeah.”

“Alright, then,” the woman said and relaxed. “Have a good night, love.”

The couple disappeared after that. Charles had dropped his cigarette without noticing, his shirt was wet from the light rain, and he headed back inside. They didn’t stay much longer, but they queued for a taxi for nearly forty minutes. Once he and Warren made it back to the house, they stumbled into the bedroom, undressing each other. “Keep the lights off,” Charles said, “and f*ck me.” Warren groaned in response.

Charles bit into the pillow as Warren took him from behind – he was on all fours, senses lulled by tequila and whisky, and in the dark of the night he closed his eyes. And when he closed his eyes this was what he saw: himself on the bed, being taken, being f*cked – Erik behind him, hands on his waist, Erik’s hips thrusting, thick co*ck in him, Erik mumbling his name barely coherently and whispering how good Charles felt.

Charles moaned as he bit the pillow: the sex was rough and drunken and satisfying, and Charles fisted his swollen co*ck.

“Oh babe, I’m so close,” Warren groaned – Charles was close too.

And he thought of Erik’s jawline, of Erik’s warm eyes, he thought of the shape of Erik’s lips, the stubble of Erik’s cheeks, the skin of Erik’s throat, and he thought that he was all in, oh god Charles was all in –

He came hard and with a cry that was unrestrained, and Warren came after two more thrusts, his familiar moan loud in the room. Warren loomed over his back, kissing the nape of his neck. “Ah Christ,” Warren breathed heavily. “I love you.”

Charles stared into the dark, seeing only the outline of the nightstand and the window. He was horrible. God, he was horrible.

“Love you too,” he said. He meant it. He knew that he meant it.

Warren fell asleep soon after, but Charles couldn’t. He lay in bed, suddenly feeling awfully sober. He felt too guilt-ridden to sleep, his thoughts running in circles and always ending in the same sense of self-loathing.

He wanted to talk to someone, just to clear his head. Who the hell could he talk to? Raven, who had many a time threatened to marry Warren if Charles didn’t? Jean, who had often said how clear it was that they were soulmates? Or perhaps Scott, who said that Warren was the best thing that had ever happened to Charles? Christ. Who else was there? Oh, of course. His parents, who loved Warren. Hell, Warren was the first of his boyfriends that they had approved of – not that Charles had had dozens of boyfriends, but Charles had taken two suitors to meet his parents before Warren, and it had never gone well. Warren was a keeper, they had told him – Jesus Christ, Charles knew Warren was a keeper. He knew that he couldn’t do any better.

It wasn’t about Warren. There was nothing wrong with Warren.

It was all about Charles. He was overworked and sex-deprived, and it was making him act out of character. The changes were to blame, like switching Oxford for London, adjusting to a new university, not knowing that many people in the city, and then Erik had shown up. Erik felt like this old, familiar thing when Warren was away most of the time, and Erik was f*cking gorgeous and god, so bright, and cultured, and…

He was just confused.

Charles took Monday morning off work and spent it in Mayfair, going from one jeweller to the next until after three hours of detailed study and careful consideration he bought Warren a £645 engagement ring.

Shani’s favourite book was Meine kleinen Freunde, which Erik had read out to her until he was so sick of it that he wanted to bury it in the garden and tell Shani that a gnome had nicked it. What he didn’t get sick of, however, was how Shani had memorised the book, how she knew the order in which the pictures came, how she always burst out giggling in the same parts, usually before Erik had even finished the sentence. He had tried suggesting a new book, but Shani was adamant. She was only three and a half, and Erik was already at her beck and call.

They read in the big armchair in Shani’s room where she often fell asleep before the book was done. Sometimes Erik fell asleep right there too, waking up at eleven and then carefully moving Shani to her bed. When that happened, he would be up until two in the morning catching up with the household chores and ironing Shani’s skirt and his shirt for work, then getting some four hours of sleep before getting up at six fifteen for a hundred push-ups.

As Erik now read he could feel tiredness sneaking up on him, and he knew he was in danger of falling asleep. He should move Shani to the bed, but god, it had been hell at work today – the construction of the new science building was a go and everything was chaos, and then Erik had a meeting with the building manager who said they had ordered the wrong kind of concrete, and they could not afford to fall behind schedule already, and Erik really liked the idea of taking a nap with his daughter at the end of it all; his daughter who knew nothing of Erik’s worries and was content with just a simple book.

He was almost asleep when his phone started vibrating in his pocket. He stirred and managed to pull it out without waking Shani. It was Ororo.

“Hey,” he whispered as he answered the call. Shani scrunched up her nose but didn’t wake.

“Hi,” Ororo’s voice came down the line, familiar but with a sense of separation. “Bad time?”

“No, you’re okay.”

“Shani asleep yet?”

Erik checked and said, “Just about.”

There was silence on the line and then, “Can I come over? I need to run something by you.”

Erik had a vague notion of what Ororo wanted. He put Shani into bed, tucking her in, and closed the door gently behind him. He went downstairs and made two cups of tea, one Darjeeling for him, one green tea for her, as he had done for years before the routine had stopped. Ororo had moved to Hammersmith when they separated, where she now had a two bedroom flat in a smart apartment building. Shani had a second bedroom there: more toys, more books, more clothes, a second bed. Erik was not around there much himself – Ororo picked Shani up from the nursery every other Friday, ready with the weekend bag Erik left there, and on Sunday evening Ororo brought Shani back to Crouch End.

At least that was how it was supposed to work in theory. In actuality their system was always all over the place as Ororo often swapped weekends: sometimes she had Shani two weekends in a row, then didn’t see her daughter for three whole weeks. Erik tried not to blame Ororo for it – it was her job and Erik knew that, but it was hard not to feel a bit bitter sometimes. It would have been nice to be able to make plans, but Erik always had to be aware that Ororo might cancel on him last minute.

Ororo’s green tea had nearly gone cold by the time she got in. She still had her own set of keys – Erik had never changed the locks. It hadn’t been that kind of a divorce.

“Hey,” she said, smiling at him cautiously when she got to the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. Erik put down the iPad that he had been using to browse BBC News. Ororo’s white hair was in a pixie cut, and she was in black boots and black jeans, with a black leather jacket zipped up to her throat. She looked good for a winter evening. “Mind if I go say hi?” She pointed upstairs, and Erik said, “Go ahead.”

Ororo flashed a smile at him, and Erik made her a new cup of tea as he waited. Erik knew Ororo wouldn’t wake Shani up – they both knew better than that.

Erik had learned to dread late night conversations with Ororo, especially these kinds: the two of them sat at the kitchen table in quiet conversation lest they wake Shani up. Them talking about their future, their marriage, its end. Them talking about being happy and if that was what they were, and if they weren’t, was it worth it to try to be or should they just stop? Erik still remembered those conversations, so many of them when they hesitated, tried to figure out what was the right thing to do.

There was no right, Erik now knew. You just had to do something.

When Ororo came back down, they sat at the table and exchanged some news of their lives over the past month or so, like friends might do. Erik asked how her closest friend Hisako was doing, and Ororo asked after his mother, who was fine. Erik waited for Ororo to get around to the real matter at hand, however, which she eventually did. “So listen,” she said, hesitating. “I’ve been offered a place in a research team studying polar vortexes. It’s a great opportunity, it’d be such interesting work, I – I’ve been wanting to move into that field more, and this would give me the practical experience –”

“How long?” Erik asked simply.

Ororo worried on her bottom lip. “Three months. We leave in March.”

Erik sighed and closed his eyes. Christ. “I don’t understand why you do this to yourself,” he said honestly and rather coldly. Ororo was about to object, but he cut her off: “I’ll be fine. I’ll manage. And you know what? Shani will probably manage. But do you know who won’t? You. You’ll be calling me up in the middle of the night, crying that you feel like a terrible mother –”

“Now listen –”

“No, you listen. That’s what’s gonna happen because you do that every single time,” he said through gritted teeth. “And you’ll come back after three months and there’ll be more stuff you missed with Shani, and you’ll hate yourself for it. And you know what, it’s not my job to pick up those pieces, not anymore.” Ororo said nothing, and Erik felt guilty for having been so blunt, but at least it was honest. “I can’t stop her from growing up. Give it a year and you’ll probably resent me for that, too.”

Ororo stared at her cup of tea, no trace of a smile on her face. “It hurts me that you think I’m bitter.”

“You’re not bitter,” he said. “Not yet.”

This was definitely another one of their late night conversations. Erik really didn’t feel like he had the energy for it.

Ororo pursed her lips together. “I’m a good mother.” She repeated it like a mantra she told herself on a daily basis, every single day that she did not see Shani: I’m a good mother, I’m a good mother, I’m a good mother –

She was a good mother, she just wasn’t there very much. They had never planned on having Shani, of course. A child had not fit their lifestyle, and Shani still did not fit Ororo’s. Erik had been the one who had changed his life to accommodate Shani, but he had been willing to make that sacrifice. He would be damned if he didn’t do right by her.

“You’re a wonderful mother,” Erik said eventually. He was trying to think what would be best for Shani. Not seeing her mother for three months wasn’t best for her. Erik dreaded the question of why Mommy wasn’t taking Shani for sleepovers – that was what they called it: a sleepover with Mommy tonight! Erik sighed. “Just think about it, okay? And –”

They both stopped and looked at the ceiling. It sounded like Shani might be awake. He hated the thought of Shani’s earliest memories being the hushed, agonised voices of her parents trying to sort their sh*t out in the middle of the night. Thankfully, however, when he went up to check Shani was fast asleep in her bed – he suspected that the sense of guilt that hung over them had made them paranoid.

When he got back into the kitchen, Ororo was still sitting at the table but was now holding his phone. “You got a new message,” she said. “I was curious to see who was texting you at eleven on a Thursday.” She passed the phone back with a perfect poker face, and Erik took it in confusion. “Someone called Angel, apparently.” Oh. Oh crap. “And I quote, ‘When can I see you again, Mr. Sexy? X. X. X.’” Ororo punctuated the X’s, relishing them.

Erik decided to seize the moral high ground while he had it. “That is a gross invasion of my privacy, to which I am entitled to, and –”

“So who’s Angel?” Ororo asked and leaned back in the kitchen chair. Erik let his lower back rest against the counter as he held the phone in his hands, feeling shamed. Ororo sensed it – she was going to win this round, and Erik resented her for it.

He said, “Just someone I had dinner with last week. That’s all.”

“Huh. Alright.” Ororo cleared her throat. “And, uh… how old is Angel? I’m asking for a friend.” She flashed a humourless smile at him.

“Come on.”

“Answer the question.”

“I don’t know. I guess she was twenty-three or something.”

Ororo burst out in disbelieving laughter. “A twenty-three year old?! For crying out loud! I knew that divorce spirals some men into early mid-life crises, but I never picked you as one.”

“If you must know, it was very clear to me that she was twenty-three, alright? She kept talking about reality stars and nail varnish, and I was mostly bored, but you know what? She wanted me, and it was kind of an ego boost. So what?” he said, tone challenging. “Don’t I deserve a break sometimes?”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Sexy,” Ororo retorted. Erik almost wanted to tell her to f*ck off, but bit his tongue. He didn’t like them like this. He didn’t like them nasty. They weren’t bitter, but by god if they weren’t careful they’d get there.

“I think we’re done for the night,” Erik said.

Thankfully Ororo seemed to agree.

Ororo texted him the following day: I’m sorry about last night. Erik sat in his office in the Estates department, staring at his phone. He texted her back with Bygones. He hadn’t texted Angel.

The estates offices were in one of the newer university buildings, and because meetings with outside contractors were frequently held there money had been put into keeping up appearances. With his recent promotion to project co-director, he had been given a bigger office that came with a glass partition wall that faced the open plan office where their administrators and interns worked. Most of the time Erik kept the Venetian blinds shut because he didn’t enjoy the feeling that people were keeping an eye on him. His desk was likewise glass, his swivel chair made of black leather and a metal frame. One side of the office was covered by book cases and filing cabinets, the other was a magnetic board to which he hung up building plans. Behind him were big windows that faced a corporate bank building across the street, a wall of further glass and metal. There was plenty of light, but it mostly felt cold and impersonal. To try and change the coldness of the room, he had put a few of Shani’s drawings on the magnetic board and kept a picture of her from last Hanukkah on his desk.

The CAD was minimised on the computer screen and he hadn’t paid proper attention to it for at least ten minutes. Truthfully he was in a bad mood and it had nothing to do with Ororo, although he suspected that he had been tougher on her than necessary because of it. His bad mood only increased every day, just a little bit, as time ticked by.

He refreshed his inbox in case a new email had arrived, but there was nothing there.

He chewed on the tip of a pen absently, irate. Halloween had been two weeks back, and Charles had said that they should go for dinner. Erik had left it to Charles until he had cracked last Friday, right after getting home from his now notorious date with Angel. Shani had been at her mother’s so Erik had had the house to himself, and he had gotten home around eleven, buzzed from the wine and the co*cktails and the goodnight kiss (kisses, rather), and he had loosened his tie as he made his way upstairs. In the study he had switched on his laptop, just to check the news before bed and to see if sudden inspiration might strike with his building project, but instead he had somehow sent an email to Charles (at eleven thirty-three on a Friday night, which yelled pathetic if nothing else): So how about that dinner?

He’d never heard anything back.

He didn’t intend to push it – he was just confused. Had he imagined it, then? He couldn’t quite say what ‘it’ was, but it had been something in the way Charles had smiled at him, perhaps something in the way his eyes lit up ever so slightly when they talked.

He was a nostalgic fool, was what he was.

He should text Angel back. It was rude not to. Was she Miss Sexy, then, he wondered idly, as he turned back to the CAD and started playing around with one of the lab designs without any enthusiasm. Within five minutes he somehow ended up on Facebook instead. At the top of his newsfeed was Warren Worthington commenting passionately on the most recent New York Yankees game, which had gained fourteen likes since being posted seven minutes ago. Erik felt annoyed at the thought of Warren, who was one of those blue-eyed, blond, wholesome all American boys who played basketball, used the word ‘bro’ bihourly and wore caps non-ironically. He clicked on the dropdown box for the post and clicked ‘Unfollow Warren’. He had no interest to be constantly reminded of what kind of men Charles seemed to have developed a taste for.

For the record, Erik could play basketball if needs be. He did not call anyone ‘bro’, however, and he would rather be shot in the head than wear a cap.

He tried to motivate himself with happy thoughts like his plans of taking Shani to the zoo the following day. Logan would be joining them, although Angel had said several times that she ‘adored Shani’ and would be more than happy to do something fun with them ‘like, whenever’.

But Erik didn’t text her. He’d only asked her out because she was attractive and clearly into him, and he’d felt rather lonely.

Maybe that would have been enough when he was younger. As their date had progressed, however, he had realised he was looking for something much different these days. She’d tried inviting herself back home with him, and he’d cursed himself later for making excuses not to. Didn’t he want to get laid? Apparently not.

His mood did not improve that day or the next. He and Logan got lucky with the weather, a crisp and sunny Saturday. Logan got pushchair duty while he carried Shani on his shoulders as they made their way through the zoo crowds. Logan had not been to a zoo in fifteen years, he maintained, perusing the zoo map in his free hand. “We want to head for the beasts,” Logan said. “Lions, tigers – hey, they have wolverines!”

“Shani likes otters,” Erik said. He had last visited the zoo a few months ago.

“I want to see the otters!” Shani squealed from up in the air in utter delight. As they got nearer to one of the enclosures she began to wriggle, and Erik lifted her up and put her back onto the ground, and she grabbed his hand and started pulling him along. “Affen! Papi, siehst du die Affen?”

“Ja, Herzchen,” he said, eyeing the information plaque on the Angolan monkeys that had Shani so enthralled. He usually loved zoo visits himself – now, he didn’t have much energy for it. Logan talked about his triathlon training while Shani led them around the zoo like an expert.

When they stopped by the kangaroos, Erik thought of Australia again. The most bizarre aspect of his relationship with Charles – the best part, actually – was that after they had made love on the beach, they had never stopped to question what they now meant to each other or where they stood. That had been it: they’d found each other. As far as Erik was concerned, he was done with dating for the rest of his life, and they had planned their future together with the utmost sincerity. Sure, they had talked of silly dreams like moving to Bora Bora, and Charles had said that he’d become a marine biologist, and if Erik remembered correctly he was supposed to become a professional surfer, and they had been half-kidding about that. They hadn’t been kidding about spending their lives together. Erik had known that he was as devoted to Charles as Charles was to him.

He had never had a relationship like that again. Instead it always was ‘are we on the same page? Am I moving too fast? Is this getting too serious? Do we want the same thing? Should I call? Should she/he call? Is this the person I want or can I do better?’ It had been like that with all of the casual relationships Erik had had, and only a few ones had managed to move beyond that stage, like with Magda, and then with John in Vancouver, and Ororo after that. In truth he was a serial monogamist and it was surprisingly hard to find people who wanted the same from the get-go – the rest wanted to play the field before even considering commitment.

With Charles there had been none of that confusion, none of that initial power struggle. They had just… trusted each other. Becoming one being in the blink of an eye.

It had been so simple somehow.

They lunched at the outrageously overpriced zoo café where he got Shani the kids’ lunch pack that came with a tiny colouring book and a few crayons. Shani was kept entertained by the task of making an elephant bright red as they sat in the crowded eatery, munching on cheese and onion sandwiches. Logan eyed Shani before he said, “You, uh – you fight with you-know-who?”

Erik likewise looked at his daughter. He had tied Shani’s hair up to form a sponge-like ball on top of her head, and she was dressed in a purple t-shirt and kids’ jeans, legs swinging over the edge of the chair, blissfully content and unaware. Her small fist was squeezing the red crayon as she made circles on the elephant outline, her brows knitted in concentration as her tongue was sticking out.

“No,” he said when he was sure Shani wasn’t listening.

“You sure you’re okay, though?” Logan asked. “You seem a bit… grumpy.”

Erik hadn’t told Logan about the date with Angel. It seemed self-centred to brag about making out with a dancer ten years younger than him, and he knew that Logan would go on a grand speech of Erik as a eunuch and in need of puss*/co*ck/ass, and those words were certainly not child friendly. Why hadn’t he just slept with her – for fun, if nothing else? That was what people did these days, wasn’t it?

Ah. Refer back to Step 1: serial monogamist.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing, really,” he said, and Logan let it go.

He let Shani sleep in his bed that night, just because he didn’t want to sleep alone. Shani loved staying in the big bed, but Erik was very careful with it because he needed to establish Papa’s room versus Shani’s room boundaries very clearly. If Shani had her way, she would sleep glued to Erik every night, and Erik had managed to cut down Shani’s visits to his room to only a few mornings each month now. Letting Shani spend the night was going against this long struggle that Erik was finally winning, but for one night he didn’t care. He was just tired of sleeping alone.

On Sunday he thought to himself that he could not go on mourning a relationship that he had clearly idealised as time had gone by, and by Monday he was decidedly over it. Either that or he kept waiting for Wednesday and the chess club. He told himself that he wasn’t looking forward to it that much, really, but then Wednesday came, and chess club came, and Charles wasn’t there, and Erik had to admit to himself that he kept putting a lot of hope into something that was clearly not there.

Hank said, “Oh Charles wanted to come, but he had to go home. He said he was expecting a delivery, I think.”

Erik thought: Are we on the same page? Do we want the same thing?

At the age of thirty-two, Erik was too old for this.

He had to let it go.

Erik loved the folk song The John B. Sails, especially the Beach Boys version of it: this is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.

He had been to Oxford once in his life. It was the worst trip he’d ever been on.

He’d got to Heathrow’s Terminal 2 at six that evening, where he had a twelve-hour wait until his connecting flight to Chicago. It was the summer after Australia and he was joining two of his friends for a Route 66 road trip to LA. The sense of a new adventure should have filled him with excitement, but he had never been as unhappy in his life.

So it was over, Magda and him.

She’d said, “You go on that trip, don’t bother coming back!” Pietro had kept crying in his cot, upset by their yelling.

Damn it all to hell. He would go.

And now he was stuck at an airport in a foreign country, waiting. He was restless as all hell, like a caricature of a Kerouac protagonist, dissatisfied and aflame without any idea why.

He watched planes taking off, clutching his book: a travel guide to the big old US of A. He’d never been there before. In his wallet was a picture of a blond toddler, not even six months old. Pietro was laughing in the picture, and Erik saw it whenever he closed his eyes, and he thought: that’s my son.

He hadn’t been ready to be a father. He was only twenty-four.

Was he abandoning his child? Did it count as abandonment when Magda didn’t want him there? And how much would Pietro hate him for this in years to come, that Erik had done nothing more than donated seed and left his son alone in the world? A child wouldn’t understand that it was complicated, that it was difficult – Pietro would only know his absence and would learn to hate him for it.

The terminal was impersonal and busy, everyone waiting to not be there. He had eleven hours to go. It started raining outside.

Truth be told, he was scared. He was going to check out some universities along the road, just to see if he found something suitable for further studies. But he was scared of the change, of completely uprooting himself from the life he had known in Germany. His mother had cried at the airport, and he had reassured her and smiled with all the confidence he could muster. It had been fake confidence for her sake. His father had looked grave.

He was scared that he would get lost in the world, that he would be one of these people who just fell through the cracks of life somehow. He’d seen people like that: people no one missed when they left.

I feel so broke up, he thought, I wanna go home.

Life was simply a web of connections, he reflected. You had to cling onto other people to find a place in the universe and you didn’t necessarily need a lot of people to make a home: even one person would do.

A girl sat opposite him. She was wearing an Oxford University hoodie, reading Marx with a focused expression on her face. Erik stared at her. She noticed and gave him a small smile. He said, “I’m sorry, can I ask you something?”

She hesitated for a second and then said, “Sure.”

“How do I get to Oxford?”

She frowned.

He had to wait half an hour at Heathrow’s coach station for the next Oxford bus, the summer evening warm as the air tasted of pollution. He walked in circles, his hands trembling with a sudden rush of adrenalin. It was so clear now. How had he not seen it before? God, it was so clear.

He and Magda were over.

He was free now.

He tried to think of what to say after a yearlong silence. So much had happened in that time: he had a son now, who looked exactly like his mother except that he was blond like his dad, and Erik had decided to perhaps go through with graduate studies in engineering and he had also gotten into pre-Raphaelite art, which Charles had always raved about. Maybe a simple ‘I’m sorry I’m late’ would suffice.

As the bus sped along the motorway, Erik wondered if he’d planned on pursuing Charles only after he’d booked these flights, or maybe he’d known it already when he was booking them – he couldn’t have told anyone for sure why he had chosen the flights that left him with a twelve-hour London layover. They’d been cheap, of course.

Sure. They’d been cheap.

When he got to Oxford, the sun had long since set. He was tired and hungry and it was still raining, now harder than before, but he felt enlightened like nirvana was attainable and it was Oxford. He asked the people at the station for directions to Worchester College, which was met with confusion until someone realised he was pronouncing it all wrong: not Wor-ches-ter, but something that to Erik sounded like ‘Wooster’. He remembered the name from the address Charles had given him in Australia. He’d never heard it said aloud.

He cursed the idiocy of the English language, which he still was practically fluent in. Thankfully Worchester College was not far away, and he kept up a decent pace as he walked up a street with an old stonewall on his left and grand university buildings on his right. There was an excited spring to his step – it didn’t matter that he was cold, tired and hungry. It was okay that he and Magda had packed it in, that he had ended up being such a massive disappointment to himself. It wasn’t alright that he had failed as a father, of course, but he could fix that later.

Right now he was going to fix the biggest mistake of them all: ever letting Charles go.

When he got to the College, the gates by the entrance were cluttered with bicycles, and Erik ecstatically wondered which one of them belonged to his Charles. He walked towards the impressive looking college building but was stopped by a porter, and he rather nervously explained that he was there for Charles Xavier.

“Charles who?” the porter asked. He was in his fifties and had a large, circular face with a lumped nose in the middle. Erik was soaking wet, his shoulders sore from the heavy backpack he carried, but he only repeated, “Charles Xavier. I’m here for Charles.”

The man invited him into the small porter’s office by the main doors. He made Erik a cup of tea, which Erik forced himself to drink for the sake of being polite (he would be indoctrinated into liking English breakfast tea years later, when he moved to London). He didn’t want to wait – he wanted to rush out into the courtyard and yell Charles’s name until he appeared. This would be followed by a cinematic, in-the-rain kiss. That would suit Erik just fine. He’d move to England, they’d move in together, and god they would be so happy.

Checking files on the computer, the porter said, “Xavier, you said? I think I remember him. Pensive-looking chap with floppy hair, always carries books around?”

Erik broke into a smile. “That’s him. What’s his room number? Can you let him know I’m here?”

“Looks like he graduated last month,” the porter said. “Students have to move out by mid-June.”

It was the twenty-third of August.

Erik said, “He might be here still. He might be doing a Masters.”

“It doesn’t look like he’s enrolled with us anymore. Sorry, pal.”

“Wait, I don’t – I don’t understand.”

“He’s left.” The porter looked at him long and hard. “I really wish I could help you. Chin up, eh? Don’t be so crestfallen.”

Erik quickly wiped his cheek and cleared his throat. “Could you- I don’t. I mean, there has to be… anything. Is there a, maybe a contact number there or anything like that?”

“Even if there was, you know I couldn’t give it to you. Don’t you have friends in common? Someone you could ask?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Charles’s ox.ac.uk email account no longer would work, he realised, and if Charles had left the country, then the UK number Erik had written down somewhere back in Germany was of no use to him. It was 2006 – Facebook hadn’t really hit the big time yet. It was popular in Oxford and Charles had gotten an account a few months prior, not that Erik knew it then. Erik himself wouldn’t get an account for another two years, at which point he naturally would look up Charles Xavier, one night when John was taking a shower, him guiltily glancing at the bathroom door as he sat on their bed in their downtown Vancouver apartment. He would not find Charles then, who in two years had made his privacy policies stricter and made himself unsearchable. Ships in the night, they might have said had they known.

Erik thanked the porter for his time and the tea.

He walked around Oxford aimlessly, hoping that Charles had perhaps moved somewhere else in town, and maybe they’d bump into each other if he walked around long enough. He wondered if Charles had had his hair cut, a thought which amused him; if Charles had a new boyfriend, a thought which hurt him; if Charles was happy, a thought which filled him with unreciprocated love; and if Charles still remembered what they had shared, a thought which made it hard for him to swallow.

And he imagined how they’d bump into each other, then, right there on the street: Charles would be surprised but would take him back to his house, give him something dry to wear. Charles would say, “What are you doing here?”

And Erik would get down on one knee and say: “Now, tomorrow, in ten years. Whenever’s good for you.”

And he would never go to Chicago, never go check out graduate programmes in the US. He’d never go and live that life. Charles was how Erik would stop himself from slipping through the cracks of life, Charles was how Erik could avoid oblivion. Erik would move to wherever Charles wanted as long as Charles took him back.

At the age of twenty-four, it was a sorry realisation that Charles had brought out the best in him, no matter how briefly, and now, without Charles, Erik was permanently not quite as good as he could be.

As he sat at Gate 34 in Terminal 2 the following morning, he began to feel feverish and cold. United Airlines announced that they were boarding. Erik felt dead and rotten inside.

Erik later told his mother that it hadn’t been that bad, sleeping at the airport. He’d managed to kill the time. Only a porter at Worchester College knew that an Erik Lehnsherr had come looking for a Charles Xavier once, back in the day, wanting to ask if perhaps it wasn’t too late for them to spend the rest of their lives together.

Erik handed his boarding pass for inspection at the gate. He looked around, convinced that Charles was going to appear any second then.

And Erik desperately thought: now, tomorrow, in ten years.

Whenever’s good for you.

As Erik checked his emails the following morning, it was finally there. Sender: Charles Xavier.

To his surprise he realised that he didn’t want to click on the email, so he went out to the staff kitchen and made a cup of tea first. He talked to Lynette, one of their senior architects, and only after he had thoroughly learned about her holiday in Croatia did he go back to see what Dr Xavier had to say.

Dear Erik,

Dreadfully sorry I’ve been MIA as of late. I had no idea how crazy the workload would be once term started! My head of department wants me to do a presentation on the new building at our staff meeting on Monday. Of course she only told me of this with two working days to spare, so there goes my weekend! Would it be possible for you to email me the layouts of the genetics labs and offices? I’d be eternally grateful.

Best wishes,
Charles

Erik stared at the screen. Pleasantries aside, it was a work email. Okay. Fine.

He emailed back with:

Charles,

That will not be a problem, but because of university policy I cannot send building plans to non-estate staff as email attachments.

Erik stopped there, considering what to write next. He could UPS whatever Charles needed as he did with others, but it seemed so wholly impersonal. He wrote:

Tell you what, I have a meeting your way tomorrow. How about I come drop off the prints at your office while I’m there. Should be shortly after lunch. Does that work?

Erik

It took a few hours before he received a reply: I would be most grateful for that! In case I am in the lab and not in my office, you can reach me at, and then Charles had put his phone number in. Erik copied it onto his phone and sent a brief reply confirming that he’d drop by the following day.

He, of course, did not have any meeting near the Genetics Institute, but it was true that he was not allowed to send Charles building sketches via email, so going over himself seemed like the sensible thing to do.

Excuses.

He wanted closure, he realised. He needed to go over there and be brushed aside by Charles in person, and then he’d know for sure. He would be able to let it go after that and finally text Angel back and say that – dear lord – Mr. Sexy would very much like a second date.

Tell them all that he wasn’t used to sleeping alone anymore. See who could judge him: no one.

Charles lived on a high for the first few days that followed the purchase of the engagement ring. Technically it was a wedding band as men’s engagement rings weren’t much of a thing yet, and most gay couples that Charles knew did not care for such things. But Charles was old fashioned in this sense, and he couldn’t picture proposing to Warren without a token of some kind. He didn’t want their engagement to be an exchange of words and an agreement that they would wed – he wanted it to be materialised somehow, for it to show. He wanted to give Warren a ring.

The ring had a wide platinum centre that was circled by thin outer bands made of gold. He thought that Warren could wear the engagement ring in his right hand and then the eventual wedding band on his left.

Charles often ended up wandering into the bedroom, taking out a shoebox from the wardrobe, getting out the hidden ring box and holding it on the palm of his hand, and then putting it away again. Eventually he took the ring to work because he didn’t want to risk Warren finding it at the flat prematurely. He wasn’t sure when he would propose, but he now had the tools to do so and he had decided to wait until the moment was right. He was somewhat unsure of how he would know it to be the right moment, but he had faith that he would just sense it in his guts.

Thanksgiving was almost upon him, anyway, and he had little time to be proposing. Warren would be in London for nearly a week, which was going to be great,, but Warren’s parents were also visiting. Charles and Warren would be hosting Thanksgiving to all: the Worthingtons, Jean and Scott, Raven, Bobby, Hank, and they did not yet have a dining table. They had ordered one from an antique shop, but apparently the table and chairs were coming from Poland and, when the delivery was due on Wednesday and Charles left work early to be home for it, he got a call that his antique table and chairs were still somewhere in Germany. He had missed chess club for this, and he yelled angrily down the phone that he needed to be entertaining a party of eight in a week’s time – he needed a goddamn table!

Yelling did not mean that the truck driver could go any faster, and so the delivery was pushed to the following Monday. Charles called Warren to have a rant, and Warren in his forever persistent laidbackness said, “It’ll be there on Monday, babe. Thanksgiving isn’t until Thursday, so it’ll be fine. And if it’s late again, then it’s late.”

“And what, we’ll make your parents sit on the floor?” he questioned disbelievingly.

“No, we’ll just go to a really overpriced restaurant.”

Unfortunately they had loudly promised a homemade Thanksgiving meal.

The day after Professor Hartley dropped by his office and requested a presentation for Monday’s staff meeting. “Time we start divvying up the offices of the new building,” she said, her black hair with hints of grey in a messy bun on the top of her head. “It will get ugly, I can tell you that.”

“Sure – a brief presentation, then?” he asked.

“No, make it thorough. That way we can get it all out of the way nice and early.”

“A thorough presentation it is,” he said and Professor Hartley, whose work in genetics was awe-inducing and whose intellect Charles marvelled at, seemed pleased. God, he thought, he better not f*ck this up.

Sadly he had been a horrible estates rep so far. He had been to two meetings: the first one he had spent staring at Erik, and the second one he had spent in an elevated state of pleasure because he was glad Erik was going to be his friend. Therefore the attention he had given to Ms. Frost’s presentations had been limited at best. He started stressing out and wasted an hour composing Erik an email – he didn’t know what to say.

He had kept his distance out of shame. When he thought of Erik, he now thought of his drunken mind conjuring up images of Erik as Warren took him.

He had been drunk, he told himself. He had been drunk and Erik was hot, but it still wasn’t right thinking about an ex-boyfriend when he was with Warren. Sure, when Charles wanked off he was sometimes in the company of Leonardo di Caprio or when he had been younger it had been Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. And a few times more recently he had been a knight in Westeros where he had been captured by Renly Baratheon, after which he had needed to f*ck his way to freedom by having a threesome with Renly and Loras Tyrell, so point was that sexual fantasies were healthy and good for you and did not mean that you didn’t love your partner. It wasn’t like he didn’t think of Warren sometimes, too.

But there was a difference between wanting celebrities or fictional characters and wanting Erik Lehnsherr, whose business card was still in his wallet and with whom he had once been in love with.

The engagement ring had helped Charles clear his head considerably. It was time for him and Warren to get married – they had been together long enough. He had ignored an email from Erik asking him out for dinner, just to be on the safe side and also because he found Erik easier to deal with in group situations than when they were alone. Still, he didn’t know what to say to Erik now – he had hoped to smooth things over during a friendly game of chess, surrounded by Theology Craig and Business Tom so that they weren’t by themselves, but he had been unable to go because of Tablegate.

The fact that Erik never showed up that Friday to give him the blueprints of the Genetics Institute, however, felt like punishment for Charles having behaved badly as of late. Friday came, lunch time came, and then post-lunch time. Eventually it was five o’clock and he had heard nothing from Erik, and he assumed that maybe it was Erik’s way of snubbing him.

Maybe he’d earned it, he thought. Maybe it was karma.

He had spent far too long getting ready that morning, wondering what to wear. He had wanted to look smart and, as he had tried upgrading his wardrobe to London standards recently, he had new clothes to wear that had earned a few compliments already. He had wanted to look sharp and professional for when Erik came by, busy explaining genomes to someone who was enthralled, and then it’d be “Oh hi there, Erik, how are you?” Smooth and suave.

He took out Warren’s engagement ring from his desk drawer and played around with it for a while, studying it from all angles. He pictured saying ‘I do’ in the Westchester garden in the middle of summer, all of their family and friends there, Warren in a tuxedo, slipping on a wedding ring.

It was time for him to do this: get married and settle down. It was starting to raise eyebrows that after over two and a half years, they still lived in different countries.

Charles had to marry soon.

Monday’s meeting would now be a disaster without the building plans, but Charles would take it in stride. Say he’d been busy planning a proposal.

Charles skyped with Warren when he got home, after which he pulled on sweatpants and an old t-shirt, ready for a lazy Friday night. He made a simple pasta bake, cooking penne, adding sauce from a jar, frying bits of bacon, mixing it all together and throwing cheese on top. He put the bake in the oven and tidied up. He should have used the time to paint the box room, which hopefully would then be ready for the visit of his in-laws-to-be, but instead he sat by the breakfast table and tried to work. It was miserable outside with heavy, cold rain making way for winter. He wondered what kind of a presentation he could put together for Monday. Depressed by the thought, he decided to open a bottle of wine.

He had finished half of his first glass (he knew he’d go for a second one) when his phone started ringing. He didn’t recognise the number on the screen – maybe it was the table delivery. Elevated by the thought, he said, “Charles Xavier speaking.”

“Charles?” a voice came, muffled by the sound of traffic in the background. He knew who it was.

“Erik,” he said, the hairs on his arms pricking up. “Hi.”

“Hey, I just got off the tube – you did say St. John’s Wood, right?”

Charles blinked and stared at the kitchen wall. “…Yes.”

“Good, I thought so. Which way do I go? I’ve got the institute plans for you.”

“Oh, right. Right.”

He told Erik how to get to his house, and Erik said he’d be there shortly and hung up. Charles looked at his phone in surprise. It was eight o’clock. Erik had sounded very business-like on the phone like they had at some point agreed for Erik to drop by his house.

“Christ,” he breathed, getting up and looking around the room. Kitchen – okay, some dishes in the sink. Not bad, that was okay. The hall was a cluttered mess, boxes still there that hadn’t found a home yet. The living room was a bit of a disaster: he had cleared space for a table that had not yet arrived, meaning that the book cases that usually would be against the wall were actually in the middle of the room with all the books on the floor. Charles himself – Christ, not okay, he was in sweatpants for God’s sake, and it was a Friday night, why was he not in a suit like he had an invitation to a VIP club or –

He was in the middle of changing into a nicer t-shirt when the buzzer went off. He combed his hair hastily with his fingers.

He buzzed Erik in and patiently waited for Erik to come up the one flight of stairs. Erik was holding a dripping umbrella in one hand and a long, black tube under the other, his leather satchel slung around him as usual. Charles felt slightly better about himself at the sight of Erik: Erik looked tired and grumpy and definitely not like a fashion magazine cutout – maybe the Argos catalogue, but certainly not Prada.

“Still coming down out there, huh?” Charles said stupidly because, first of all, Erik’s coat was dripping, and secondly Charles could hear the rain beating against the living room windows. He felt a brief sensation of panic that Erik would take one look at him and say: ‘So you think of me during sex, I hear?’ But Erik didn’t, and Charles was okay looking him in the eye. It was childish of him to even dwell on it anymore.

“Yeah, it’s a mess out there,” Erik said as a greeting.

“Come in,” he said, and Erik shook his umbrella before stepping inside.

Erik said, “Still had tourists taking Abbey Road pictures, though – goddamn morons.”

“Oh they’re always there,” Charles said, now studying Erik in the light of the hall. Charles had vague plans of a large coat stand and shoe rack to be put there, but right then the hall was full of unpacked boxes and paint cans. Erik looked surprisingly old in the harsh, yellow light – not physically as such, but somehow a sense of mental fatigue clung to him. Erik was not okay, Charles realised. “What is it?” he asked before he could stop himself. He and Erik weren’t quite on these terms.

“Just been a hellish day,” Erik said tiredly. “I’m really sorry I never showed – Shani started throwing up in the middle of the day so I had to go get her from the nursery. We spent two hours at the GP’s waiting to be seen, absolutely ridiculous, and everything was chaos from there. I had other meetings and deadlines, I didn’t have the time to come see you.”

“That’s fine,” he said, feeling like a dick that he assumed his own priorities should be Erik’s as well. “Is Shani okay?”

“Yeah, probably just a stomach bug,” Erik said absentmindedly, now handing him the tube. “All you need is in there, I think. I’ve got the files on a memory stick as well, I thought you’d want to copy them.”

“That’d be great, yeah,” he said, leading them into the kitchen. Erik pulled a memory stick out of his pocket, and Charles sat down and plugged it into his laptop. “So where’s Shani now?” he asked, and Erik sighed.

“At her mother’s. Ororo couldn’t come get her from the university, so I had to go to Hammersmith to drop her off. Piccadilly line was closed on top of it all.” Erik was looking around the kitchen unseeingly. “I’m really sorry to be ranting, it’s just been an awfully long day.”

Charles looked up from the screen, full of sympathy. Christ, Charles wouldn’t have bothered coming all this way after a day like that. “Do you want a drink?” he said and motioned at his half-empty wine glass.

Erik looked at the glass, then at Charles, perhaps with a hint of surprise. “Sure. Yes. Actually, yes. I’d love a drink.”

Charles got up to pour him a glass, and Erik said, “This is a nice flat. You doing some painting?”

“For the box room,” he said and motioned for Erik to sit, and Erik put his umbrella and satchel down. Charles handed him a wine glass and said, “I should have painted it already but I keep putting it off.”

“You good at the DIY stuff?”

“I’m pretty good, yeah. I renovated my Oxford cottage back in the day.” He copied the files onto his computer, finding this easy as Erik had a folder titled ‘Files for Charles’. He then closed the laptop and pushed it to the side.

“Ororo and I were on a tight schedule when we bought the house,” Erik said. “She was five months pregnant and before the due date we had to get married, fix a nursery and renovate the kitchen. Christ, I don’t recommend it.” Erik was smiling, though, some of the irritation having worn off. Charles took in the new information: a shotgun wedding, then. Not that it mattered why Erik had married Ororo. Erik nevertheless had – he had been someone’s lawfully wedded husband, for better or worse, in the true meaning of the word and not just by the laws of Australian nature. “Is something burning?” Erik then said and nodded at the oven.

“For f*ck’s sake,” Charles cursed as he hurried to get the pasta bake out. The top had gone a very, very, very dark brown – he refused to call it black. Erik came to stand beside him and took a sip of the wine.

“Well, it smells good,” Erik said, his mouth turning up in the corners. “Even though it looks like sh*t.”

“f*ck off,” he said, relaxing as Erik started laughing. Erik could be kind of an ass sometimes – Charles had forgotten about that. “Okay, well. I promised you dinner, didn’t I? Here’s dinner. All you’re gonna get out of me.”

Erik looked at the pasta sceptically and then said, “Alright.” He unbuttoned his coat. “Where do you keep the plates?”

The rain didn’t let up while they had dinner. The food was actually okay once they scraped off some of the top, and Erik assured Charles that with a three-year-old running about he was used to simple, easy dishes. They talked about work, and Charles told Erik about his current research, trying to make it pleb friendly, and Erik was able to grasp the gist of it quickly.

Charles apologised that there was bacon in the dish, and Erik said he hadn’t kept kosher for years – back in Australia he had not eaten pork, but he was mainly a non-practising Jew these days. Erik talked about Shani’s religious upbringing, saying, “You know, all the little Jewish traditions didn’t really mean anything until Shani was born. I mean, Magda is immersing Pietro in Judaism, her family has always been good at observing most things. But Shani doesn’t have that same network. I want her to have memories of Yom Kippur, you know? Of the traditions, the sense of the festival, of fasting to see if you can do it like the adults can. I remember that from when I was a kid – it was a rite of passage in itself, being old enough to fast like the others. And then breaking the fast, and the celebrations, and all the food and the atmosphere – I don’t want Shani to lose out on that. But,” Erik then said, swallowing some pasta, “Jewish holidays are a lot of work. I just don’t have the time. Maybe when she’s older, who knows?”

They finished the bottle of wine as they discussed the loosely defined Catholicism or the lack thereof in Charles’s family. “Does a child need religion to absorb a sense of morality?” Charles asked. “I mean, take Shani for instance.”

Erik grinned. “Well I’d like to think that being told of a bearded man up in the sky isn’t the only thing standing between my daughter and homicide.”

He laughed, “Extremes, Erik! Be serious.”

“I could discuss the moral development of my child, but once you have a kid you meet other people with kids, and you team up in your parenthood solidarity, and these people just talk about their kids all the time and you talk about your own because that’s the only thing you have in common. These funny, interesting people turn into a monotonous mass of mums and dads. We’re not individuals anymore. I adore my daughter and could talk about her endlessly, but I fear I’ll start sounding like a broken record.”

“But I like hearing about Shani,” Charles said and meant it sincerely. After he’d digested the realisation that Erik was raising a child on his own, Charles had become quite fascinated by it. “I mean, when I thought of you, I always assumed you were raising a kid, anyway. I often wondered what you made of it, being a dad.” They had long since finished their food and wine, but Charles hardly noticed.

“A lot of hard work, I can tell you that,” Erik said with a smile. “Did we ever talk about it?”

“What?”

“Us having kids,” Erik said simply, and Charles flinched despite himself. Erik had clearly just blurted the question out without thinking as he now shook his head and said, “I, ah. Never mind.” Erik gave an embarrassed smile.

“No, that’s alright,” he said, clearing his throat. They could have this conversation. “I mean, no. I don’t think we talked about it.”

“Probably the only thing we didn’t talk about,” Erik then granted.

That was most likely true. They’d spent hours and hours and hours talking, as they’d been driving, over lunch, in cafes, after sex in bed, in the middle of the night. They’d loved talking to each other. He settled for, “Yeah, probably.”

Charles wasn’t ready to talk to Erik about their relationship, he then realised. He knew what he was supposed to say: that they had been young and naïve and inexperienced. He didn’t want that to be his line. It wasn’t how he felt about it.

The silence that landed on them was awkward and Charles didn’t know how to break it. Maybe crack a joke of ‘well we never talked about kids but god knows we tried having some’?

“I guess that I personally… I mean that,” Charles said slowly, putting the thoughts together as he spoke. He recalled this from Australia, the way Erik had made him think and challenge his views. “I’ve never thought of kids, I guess. I knew that fatherhood would elude me because of my sexuality. I’ve never questioned that, really. Of course it would be different for a bisexual man.”

He hated the hint of bitterness that oozed into his voice when he said ‘bisexual’, but at that moment he realised that the real problem had never really been Erik’s bisexuality. Charles didn’t know many people who were bi, so Erik was an exception, but at the end of the day it wasn’t Erik’s sexual orientation that got to him: it was the fact that Erik had chosen Magda over him.

But maybe Erik hadn’t chosen Magda per se, he now thought. Erik had chosen being a father over Charles – Charles could not be selfish enough to be bitter about that.

“I think being gay might be simpler,” Erik then said. “This whole dating thing? Everyone I know in London assumes I’m straight because I was married to Ororo when I met them. Now I feel like I’m coming out all over again.” Erik rolled his eyes. “God, the times I’ve been told I need to find Shani a surrogate mother…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head in bemusem*nt.

Charles picked up their empty plates, and Erik offered to dry them with a tea towel as Charles washed them. Charles got the water running, Erik standing next to him. As he passed Erik a plate to dry, he said, “Speaking of dating,” and he did not sound at all as casual as he would have liked. “Raven told me that you’re going out with that dancer now. The one who was dressed as a fairy.” He expected Erik to say something, to confirm or deny. Erik, however, said nothing. Charles could feel Erik’s eyes on him, and Charles focused on scrubbing the plates in the sink. “She seemed nice,” he then continued, voice perfectly blank, and still Erik said nothing. He passed Erik a second plate, and Erik took it. He picked up the last one, the sponge gliding over the polished surface. “Is that going well? Raven’s friends can be a bit eccentric, I guess. But she seemed nice. She definitely seemed nice.”

“She is nice,” Erik conceded at last, and Charles couldn’t even bring himself to fake a smile.

“That’s nice,” he said. He closed the tap. He was done now. Erik needed to go.

Erik was still holding the final plate, drying it slowly. He gently placed it atop the other two on the counter, leaving the tea towel on top. Charles said, “Well, thanks for the prints. It was nice of you to –”

He made to move past Erik, but Erik snatched hold of his wrist. “Charles,” Erik said, staring at him. Somehow, all the blood in his body seemed to rush to his head, heat pulsing from the centre of his stomach to his toes and the tips of his fingers.

Charles did not move. “Yes?” he asked, but it came out falsely innocent.

He’d known it since he saw Erik coming up the steps. He’d known it the entire time they had sat there, talking about his research, about Erik’s kid, about morality and whatever else. He’d known it as they ate and finished the wine. He’d known the entire time that this was where they were heading and he’d relished it.

Erik stepped closer, voice low. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

He swallowed. His eyes were fixated on Erik’s mouth. “I –”

Erik kissed him, the movement sudden and rushed, pressing Charles tight against the counter. Charles could hardly think, responding on instinct and kissing back hungrily. Erik’s hands were in his hair, and Erik’s mouth was on his, wet and rough. Charles pulled air in through his nose, catching the scent of Erik’s skin and cologne, and on his lips he tasted the white wine from Erik’s.

Erik didn’t let go of him, but he broke the kiss, mouth hovering over his. Charles couldn’t even swallow, his breaths coming out in fast puffs of air. The air between them felt electric. “Christ,” Erik almost laughed, sounding relieved. “Christ, the times I’ve thought of this mouth.” Erik’s thumb brushed his lower lip, gaze fixated. “Lately all I can think of is you,” Erik whispered like a small confession, grey eyes flicking up to his, burning bright with unhidden desire.

Charles knew that it wasn’t too late to stop this. It wasn’t too late. He told himself not to be swayed by a pair of pretty eyes and strong shoulders, but to think of the ring, to think of the Westchester wedding, to think of his partner. It wasn’t too late to stop this.

It’d been too late for weeks, probably.

“I keep thinking of you too,” he admitted, and when Erik surged for a second kiss, the kiss immediate and demanding, he responded with matched passion.

His hand moved to the back of Erik’s head – the hair he touched was short yet soft, the scalp warm, and Erik’s lips against his felt familiar and intoxicating. He pulled Erik closer, their mouths parting, and Erik’s tongue pushed against his. A soft groan escaped his throat, his body thrumming in sudden, dizzying heat. First kiss, he thought, since the day they’d said goodbye at Sydney airport. They’d spent the entire night before taking turns between f*cking and sleeping (and fighting and mourning and crying and f*cking), their want for each other had known no bounds, was never satisfied, still wasn’t. In seconds the kiss went from tender to hard, from slow to hurried.

Erik kissed him aggressively and said, “Tell me to stop.”

Erik’s hands moved to his waist, going for the band of his sweatpants. Charles felt intoxicated – the world felt heady as a primitive want reared its head in him. What was real instead was the warmth of Erik, the scent of his aftershave, the solid press of his body against his. “Don’t stop,” he breathed. His mind echoed the command: don’t stop.

Erik pushed his sweatpants down – they were frantic, now. Charles was not wearing underwear, and the sweatpants pooled at his ankles. His stomach dropped, taking a sudden dive downwards. Erik’s hands slid over his hips, apt fingers ghosting over his hipbones.

Erik kissed the side of his neck, hot and wet, and Charles tilted his head for easier access, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth to muffle the noises threatening to slip from his lips. The kitchen ceiling was white, and Charles stared to the heavens, feeling himself give into Erik entirely. “We were so good at this,” he breathed, memories flooding back. Erik’s hands were on his ass now, cupping the flesh, before sliding to the front, fingers dragging across his pubic hair and to his co*ck. Charles leaned into Erik, kissing his ear.

“Yes,” Erik agreed, fingers wrapping around his co*ck that had needed no time in getting rock hard. Erik groaned at the back of his throat, squeezing him. “Christ, I want you.” Erik’s teeth sank into the flesh between his neck and shoulder, and Charles groaned, his mind echoing yes please god yes. He reached for Erik’s belt unseeingly, still breathing in Erik’s hair, trying to tug on the belt and managing to unbuckle it somehow.

Their mouths met as Charles fumbled with Erik’s uncooperative zipper. They breathed into the heated kiss, full of lips and tongue as it deepened, and Erik slowly fisted his co*ck, the administrations making him even harder. Then Erik let go, much to his disappointment, but Erik was forgiven as he moved to help Charles, both of them pushing and tugging to get Erik’s trousers and underwear down to mid-thigh – Erik’s stiffened co*ck sprang free, pressing against stomach. God, he remembered this co*ck, automatically reaching to take hold of it. Still as hard, still as thick…

He let go of Erik’s hardness, their hips pressing together. As they kissed, their co*cks slid over each other’s demandingly, trapped between the hem of Erik’s shirt and Charles’s t-shirt, obscenely contrasted to their still clothed upper halves. The drag of Erik’s hard co*ck against him made him horny beyond belief, and he pushed himself against the friction in a sign that could not be misinterpreted.

Erik broke the kiss, grabbed his chin between two fingers, holding him still. His breathing was ragged, washing over his mouth. Erik stared deep into his eyes. “Turn around.”

“What?” he asked, dumbly. He couldn’t think.

“I know what you want,” Erik said quietly, “so turn around.”

“Yes,” he agreed, and Erik planted a dirty kiss onto his mouth before grabbing onto his hips and pushing him to turn. He obeyed - there was no other thought in him except to do exactly as Erik wanted. Erik pressed to his back, the edge of the kitchen counter now pressing against his abdomen. He placed hands on the countertop to balance himself, winded and breathing fast.

He looked over his shoulder to watch Erik suck on two fingers, eyes boring into his before reaching down to press the digits against his hole. No questions, no hesitation – like he’d done this before to Charles, like he knew – but he had done it. Charles adjusted to stand with his legs further apart, leaning forward, trying to help. Erik’s usual look of steady composure was gone; instead there was resolve to him that neared on something dangerous, a look so intense that Charles automatically let Erik take control of the situation. Erik’s tie was askew and one of his shirt buttons had come undone in the middle of his chest, and Charles was inexplicably turned on by the sight.

He forced down a groan as Erik rubbed spit onto him, getting him wet – so they were going to f*ck then and there. Not surprising, they had always been ready for it, regardless of time or location. He had always been ready, no, eager, he’d always been eager to jerk Erik off, to suck him off, to let Erik go down on him, to f*ck him or be f*cked. In the car, at a wildlife resort that one time, in that one club. Years later, nothing was different: the heat of Erik’s body combined with his burning touch and familiar scent, and Charles needed them to be joined, to be one. Oh Christ, did he…

He leaned over the counter, back dipping, his ribcage expanding with uneven breaths. His head swam as hair fell in front of his eyes.

“In there,” Erik’s voice came. A wallet dropped onto the counter, and Charles flipped it open. It was made of expensive feeling black leather: driver’s license, credit card, debit card, a picture of Shani – in one of the pockets he found the condom that he knew he was looking for. He pressed it into his palm just as Erik pushed two spit-slick fingers in.

“Oh Christ,” he breathed, and Erik made an agreeing noise. The muscles in his thighs clenched from the way Erik was stretching his hole. The warm head of Erik’s co*ck was pressed against the back of his thigh, at the connecting point of upper thigh and ass, while Erik’s free hand smoothed over his back over the t-shirt, from shoulder blade to the base of his spine, a firm, caressing warmth as at the same time two fingers worked in and out of him. Christ, Charles wanted Erik, on him and in him and against him, every inch –

Erik’s mouth was on the back of his neck, biting into his skin. Charles had no patience to be anything other than ready.

“Here,” he said, passing the condom to Erik, pushing the wallet aside. Erik’s two fingers slipped out of him, and Charles let out a short moan as his hole clenched around nothing. He heard foil tearing. Impatiently, he sucked on two fingers, reached behind himself and pushed them in – he wasn’t wet enough, he needed to be wetter… His fingers crooked inside of him, and he groaned at the feel of it, wanting more. He wanted to get himself ready – God, he felt so good right there where Erik had stretched him – He wanted more, he –

Erik made a sound that wasn’t particularly dignified, somewhere between a groan and a whine, and Charles knew that Erik was watching. Erik’s hands grabbed his hips, pulling him closer abruptly, and Charles pulled his hand back to balance himself against the counter. He was filled with restless anticipation, his stomach in knots as he looked at Erik over his shoulder.

Erik’s chest rose and fell heavily, still clothed – Jesus, Erik still had his unbuttoned suit jacket on, the dress shirt now pushed up to his middle and exposing a taut lower stomach. Erik’s hand now moved down between them and out of Charles’s line of vision, but he felt Erik guiding the latex-covered erection between his cheeks. As the co*ckhead pressed against him, his muscles contracted, his hole practically begging. His heart was beating a thousand times per minute, and he couldn’t catch up with himself. Erik pushed in the first inch, the bulbous head slipping past the first ring of muscle – f*ck, Charles couldn’t stop the moan as hot flesh opened him up.

Erik pushed in slowly, working his way in as he groaned at the back of his throat ever so slightly. Charles felt himself open and fill up, and his head lolled towards the counter, his hips jerking as he adjusted. He wanted nothing as badly as this, as Erik in him just like he’d imagined – just like he remembered. Erik pushed in the last inch, and Charles bit his lip but still let out a loud moan. Erik felt too good inside him, pressing against him.

“This still your favourite, huh?” Erik asked between heavy breaths, and Charles’s guts tightened up. Erik remembered how he wanted it, what his favourite position was – he had never been quite as loud as when Erik had f*cked him from behind, just like this… Erik had always teased him about it, how loud he got, getting f*cked in the shower cubicle of the hostel with goddamn paper thin walls.

Charles groaned out, “Yes.” He thought of them in the conference room weeks earlier saying their awkward hellos. Erik standing there, looking at him, and still knowing a long string of intimacies about him that Charles had let spill years earlier. God, if Erik hadn’t been dangerous enough as it was…

Erik now pushed his t-shirt up his back, hand sliding over an expanse of skin. Erik was doing miniscule thrusts into him, as if testing everything out, but then Charles realised it wasn’t for his benefit: Erik was trying to get hold of himself.

“f*ck,” Erik groaned, pulling out slightly and then pushing back in again slowly, hard co*ck sliding deep into him. “Christ, this feels so good,” Erik said, voice just a little wrecked. f*ck all hell if that didn’t undo Charles. Erik brushed against the side of his head, nose against his already tangled hair. “I want you so bad.”

“How bad?” he asked, breathing heavily. Erik groaned in response and began to f*ck him – Charles got a vague notion of how bad exactly.

Erik went fast and hard, and Charles let his head hang between his tensed up arms, his eyes shut tight as he focused on breathing, the pleasure washing over him in sudden flashes that made him moan. His toes crooked, knees weak, as a thick co*ck slammed into him repeatedly. The fill of solid co*ck made Charles lose any sense, and it was Erik, it was somehow so much better that it was Erik, his Erik who had always felt better than others –

Charles had wanted Erik the second he saw him in that conference room. He had wanted Erik to take him there, on the table, in front of everyone, and then just drag him home, take him a second time, keep him in bed – Still his, he thought hastily. God, I’m still his.

Charles stared at the sink in front of him unseeingly, small gasps escaping to the rhythm of Erik’s hard, relentless thrusts: the residue foam in the sink was a light pink from the tomato sauce. He looked at the foam, then bit his lip as Erik hit his prostate, moaning louder than before, and he hissed out, “More, f*ck – Harder, ah f*ck,” and for a second he felt completely surreal: their clothes pushed out of the way, the heat of Erik’s tensed body radiating against him, the desire in his veins, the November rain beating against the window, and the pink foam in the sink.

He looked over his shoulder: Erik seemed absorbed in the act, arms and neck tensed up. Erik’s brows had knit together, mouth dropped open as his hips swerved forward, almost out of their own volition. Charles felt so much closer to coming from the sight alone. They locked eyes, and Erik lost his sense of rhythm.

“Oh, Christ,” Erik breathed, a hand reaching down to the side of his face, brushing against stubble. Erik leaned down to lock their lips, Charles rising to meet him halfway, and the kiss was hard and sloppy but god, Charles didn’t mind. Erik stayed deep inside him, and Charles reached behind them to grab Erik’s ass and keep him there. Erik stepped closer, somehow – pushed in even further. Charles groaned helplessly against Erik’s mouth – he felt so full and so stretched, his muscles squeezing against the hot, hard flesh in him that would soon push him over the edge. Erik’s crotch was pressed tight against his ass as they kissed, the feel of pubic hair against his behind letting him know just how completely he’d been able to take Erik’s co*ck. They couldn’t get much closer to each other than this, Charles thought, they couldn’t get much more exposed.

Erik’s fingers twisted in his hair before he broke the kiss, keeping Charles close. “Jesus, you look out of it,” Erik exhaled shakily, and Charles realised that he probably did, with swollen lips and shoulder-length hair in an utter mess. Erik nipped at his lower lip, pulling it into his mouth before Charles nudged him, and their tongues met as their mouths fused.

“Come on,” he pleaded when the kiss broke, keeping one hand on Erik’s ass, feeling the firm muscles there tense up.

Erik obeyed and began moving again. “You like that?” Erik asked, f*cking him.

“Yeah,” he groaned in response, biting on his bottom lip that Erik had just bitten down on. It throbbed, but the pain aroused him. “sh*t, you feel so good,” he moaned with little thought to politeness. His eyes fluttered shut. “Ah, that’s – God, that’s it. Come on,” he coaxed, his other hand gripping onto the edge of the kitchen counter so hard that his knuckles were white. Erik picked up the pace, going in harder.

Charles slid a hand down to his front, and it was almost too much – Erik’s co*ck taking him from behind, his own hand on his dick, stroking with urgency. He was so f*cking close, so close, with his hand sliding over his co*ckhead where he was wet and leaking. Erik f*cked him hard, harder, stray kisses pressed to the back of his neck, and Charles felt suspended at the breaking point, his body wound up and aching. Erik groaned, slurring, “f*ck, oh f*ck…” and Charles felt the shift that often occurs in f*cking when suddenly they were both only chasing burning release. He no longer spoke, only breathed, his body wound up tight, his ass clenching, his co*ck throbbing, so close, f*ck, he was there, he –

Erik came with a short, muffled cry, the rhythm suddenly breaking. Erik was still buried deep inside him and Charles had to get on his toes to accommodate the forceful thrust of climax, Erik’s body pulsing within his own and slamming him forward. Even with the condom as a barrier, he thought he could feel Erik come – hard and long and with the dirtiest groans – and he pushed his ass down the hard shaft in him, trying to f*ck himself on Erik’s co*ck, and he came in his hand, his hips jerking and pushing back against Erik. His org*sm came from deep, deep within him, his sem*n spilling between his fingers as Erik panted against the nape of his neck. Everything throbbed. Everything ached.

“Ah, f*ck,” Charles exhaled, his muscles convulsing, his body thrumming. Erik was heaving, warm puffs of breath against the shell of his ear. The tension seeped out of them slowly, but the cloudy haze of want remained. Charles felt sweaty and messy, and Erik’s body was an unrelenting radiator against his back, leaving no personal space between them. Erik’s arm slid around his belly, keeping him still as they breathed out their org*sms. Charles swallowed, weakly.

Erik’s other hand moved to where they were joined, and with a quick shimmy of his hips Erik slipped out of him. Charles turned around in the narrow space between them, and he was grateful for the counter behind him to help him stay upright. Erik looked at him with blown pupils, almost with surprise. Charles exhaled unsteadily, then grabbed Erik’s shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. Erik had one hand twisting in the long strands of his hair, the other wrapping around his waist, and Charles melted into the embrace. He pulled the condom off Erik’s slowly softening co*ck, tying it blindly and dropping it in the sink behind them.

Charles let his fingertips brush against the coarse hair at the base of Erik’s co*ck and began to feel the softening length that had been in him moments before – he kept touching Erik there as they kissed. It was comforting, somehow, and familiar, caressing Erik’s sex. It kept Erik dazed, a commanding hand moving down to firmly cup his balls. Charles wanted him, he wanted Erik something f*cking stupid and on his knees –

Erik kissed his jaw, hands now pulling his t-shirt up. Charles began to unbutton Erik’s shirt with his free hand. Why the f*ck were they still wearing these clothes, what the –

Erik spoke, voice raw and low: “Take me to bed?”

“Yes,” he agreed, hand now sliding onto Erik’s warm stomach. “Yes, bed’s a good idea.”

They kissed, undressing each other then and there, their hands everywhere.

They had the second round on the kitchen floor.

For the third round, they managed to get to the bedroom.

Chapter 4: Four

Chapter Text

Charles’s first thought was that rain was battering the bedroom window, but the muted sound was too elaborate to be rain – probably the neighbour’s radio, then. The noise eventually stopped and he pushed it out of his mind, content under the warm covers.

After a while the noise picked up again, however, now decidedly pulling him out of sleep. He made a protesting sound, which did not stop the clamour. As he stirred he realised that a phone was ringing in another room, but it wasn’t a ringtone he recognised. He moved onto his back, and the man next to him groaned sleepily and pressed into him, and Warren didn’t sound or feel or smell like Warren at all.

Charles had a moment of realisation that of course it wasn’t Warren. He’d known it as they slept, aware of it throughout the night as they’d shifted and held each other: it was Erik.

He opened his eyes and saw Erik asleep next to him, lying on his front with a hand resting on Charles’s stomach, head on Warren’s pillow. Over Erik’s shoulder, which bore an obvious bite mark, the clock showed quarter past seven in the morning.

For a brief second a jolt of regret rushed through him. He put a firm lid on it. Not now. Not yet. He focused on what needed to be dealt with first: the noise. “Hey,” he said quietly. “Hey, I think your phone’s ringing.”

Erik stirred out of sleep, eyes opening and blinking in disorientation. He looked around the room before focusing on him. “What?” Erik’s voice was scratchy with sleep.

“Your phone.”

Erik did not appear to have heard as he began to smile, blue eyes coming alight as their gazes met. Charles’s throat felt awfully tight. Erik said, “Hey. Morning. Sorry, what is it?”

The skin around Erik’s mouth was pinker than it should be – Warren got beard burn too sometimes, and Charles recognised it easily enough.

He pointed at the door, and Erik focused. “sh*t, yeah, that’s mine. Sorry.” Erik got out of bed with surprising agility, considering he had just been sleeping. No, not surprising: Erik was always incredibly energetic first thing in the morning. Charles should have remembered that from Australia.

He watched Erik cross the room as naked as the day he was born, steps perhaps a little cautious like various muscles were sore. They probably were. Jesus Christ, he wondered if Erik was aware that his body was still perfect. Charles shamelessly kept his eyes on the pale, toned ass as it vanished from sight.

He lay on his back. The ceiling was beige and blank. It would hit him soon, he reflected, but right then he still felt good. He thought of Erik, and he felt not only good, but excited, as well as the slight ego boost he’d always gotten from getting a particularly hot guy into his bed. The night kept playing itself in his head: hungry, dirty, shameless… He hadn’t had sex like that in a while, and Erik had f*cked and been f*cked like it was his last night on earth. Christ.

Erik came back with an iPhone in hand, still unbothered by his nudity. Erik’s co*ck was half-hard, to which he seemed oblivious – Charles certainly wasn’t. There were a few love bites on Erik: one on his shoulder, another on his collar bone, a third at the centre of his chest. Charles shouldn’t have felt pleased at the sight.

“Ororo’s tried calling me,” Erik said with a frown, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Charles sat up, shifting to lean against the headboard. “At seven on a Saturday morning?” he asked in slight disbelief, but Erik only shrugged and pressed the phone to his ear with an air of concern.

“Sorry about this,” Erik said and, after a few rings, “Hey, what’s up?” Erik’s eyes focused on the floor as he spoke. “I was asleep – what’s going on?”

Charles silently watched Erik talk to his ex-wife and he saw the tension that set in Erik’s shoulders as he spoke to her. He absently reached out to run his fingers down Erik’s back, against those tensing muscles. Erik’s skin was warm.

Erik said, “Well is she hurt? I mean, is she throwing up, or –” Erik listened patiently. “Okay. Okay, I get that but – It’s a tantrum, just let her cry it out – It’s not cruel.” A sigh. “We can’t set a precedent of giving in whenever she cries her lungs out. … I’m not one to preach, sure, but you have to suck it up, and –” Erik rubbed his face tiredly and was quiet for a long time. “For Christ’s sake. Calm down, please, just – Okay, okay. Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell her I’m on my way.” Erik hung up on Ororo and sighed a second time. “Christ.”

“Everything okay?” Charles asked, feeling inadequate as he did so. He hoped he hit the right tone of sympathy and concern without being intrusive.

“Yeah,” Erik said absent-mindedly. “Yeah, but I gotta go. Sorry.” Erik was already looking around for his things, but most of their clothes would be in the kitchen.

Erik was going – okay, that made Charles’s life a lot easier, his rational part knew, but there was a whole other part that only wanted to pull Erik back into bed, tell him to relax, give him a neck rub to get the tension out of his system and then spend an hour or two re-familiarising themselves with each other’s bodies even more. “You want tea or coffee?” he asked as he got out of bed. He went to the dresser and pulled out black boxers.

“No time, but thanks,” Erik said as Charles stepped into his underwear. If Erik had stretched his legs a little clumsily, perhaps having pulled a muscle, Charles felt equally sore upon moving. Christ, he couldn’t remember the last time he was sore like this: too hasty, not enough prep. “I think my clothes are still in there.” Erik motioned towards the kitchen with a sly smile, and Charles motioned for him to go first.

In the kitchen he put the kettle on before helping Erik in picking up the clothes from the floor. Erik was already half-way into his clothes, zipping up his trousers, when he said, “So last night was pretty great. For me.” He looked at Charles and quirked an eyebrow. “Any consensus?”

Charles held the mug he’d taken from the cupboard. It was a simple question, but he wasn’t ready to reflect on the past twelve hours yet. Erik knew – or should know – perfectly well that Charles had had a good time. It wasn’t like either of them could have faked their org*sms or the intensity of them, kissing each other madly in the afterglow. He thought of himself almost collapsing on top of Erik after finishing in him, Erik out of breath, legs spread wide, come on his stomach. He’d murmured how good Erik had felt, pulling Erik into a possessive kiss.

“Yeah, it was great for me too.”

“Good consensus, then?”

“Good all around.”

Erik broke into a grin, like perhaps he was a bit smug about it. “I’m glad,” he said, voice low, and Charles wanted to grab Erik’s hand that was buttoning his shirt, shake his head, pull the shirt off, and drag Erik back to bed. Instead Charles left his tea to brew as he picked up the umbrella and satchel still by the breakfast table. Erik, now fully dressed, pulled his coat back on, and Charles offered him his belongings. “Thanks,” Erik said as he felt through his pockets and pulled out an Oyster card. He seemed content. “I’m really sorry to rush off like this.”

“Don’t apologise. Shani needs you, I get it.”

They headed into the hall, and Erik hung the satchel from one shoulder, clutching the umbrella. It was still raining outside.

“I think Ororo and I are still figuring out how to do this shared parenthood thing, and it’s – it’s more difficult than I’d like.” They stopped at the door with Erik’s hand on the lock. Erik then frowned with a searching expression, his brows knitting together. “Hey, so. So I had a really good time last night. I don’t mean just the sex, I mean – all of it. You know? The conversation and the company, on top of the sex.” Erik seemed embarrassed by his wording and then shook his head a little. “I just had a really great time.”

And Charles, realising the honesty and sincerity of the word as he formed it, said, “Likewise.”

Erik smiled so winningly that Charles had to respond with a smile of his own. Erik said, “Dinner was lovely. Burnt, but lovely.”

“I still got you into bed, didn’t I?”

Erik grinned impossibly wide and leaned in, placing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. The kiss was surprisingly chaste, all things considered. It was almost a question, and Charles felt momentarily suspended, Erik’s mouth so close to his own. He caught Erik’s scent, now one of Erik and him and sex all mixed in one that brought on a dizzying flashback of various Australian beds like they had never left.

Erik pulled back, eyes hopeful. “I’ll see you later?”

Charles leaned against the wall, taking Erik in: fresh out of bed and into rumbled clothes, a knowing glint in his soft eyes, his mouth a little red, and hidden from view were marks of Charles’s hands and mouth like he’d gone on a quest to conquer, to claim, and he realised that he may have been successful. He was f*cked. He was so, so f*cked. “Later it is.”

Erik smiled. “Good.”

And then Erik was gone, and Charles listened to the sound of his steps echoing in the stairwell, going down the stairs and out of the building. A part of him wanted to rush after Erik and tell him not to go, not just yet.

And suddenly he thought: where’s your sense of shame?

And he thought: your tea is getting cold.

He found a used condom in the sink. He disposed of it quickly.

He thought: take the rubbish out before Warren gets home.

As he walked back to the bedroom with his cup of tea, his phone vibrated on the nightstand. He picked it up to find a text from Erik, who still had to be walking to the tube station: And when I say I had a really great time, I mean that I had a really, REALLY great time.

His hands felt sweaty. He typed: Me too.

He waited, staring at the phone. Erik replied with: It certainly sounded like it. Charles looked at the bed, the sheets a mess.

He thought: change the sheets. Wash them.

The room smelled vaguely of come and sweat. He thought of how wantonly they had leaned into their touches, moaning their pleasure into the room, hips thrusting, hands twisting the sheets. His phone buzzed again: When can I see you again?

And Charles thought: erase the messages on your phone before Warren gets home.

Take the rubbish out. Change the sheets. Erase messages.

Find a sense of shame.

Ororo lived ten minutes from Hammersmith Station, in a large run-of-the-mill apartment buildings that you were aware loomed over you as you walked, but you couldn’t have told anyone what exactly it had looked like – perhaps something out of limestone. Erik had been inside a handful of times, but he still had to call Ororo from downstairs because he wasn’t sure which buzzer was hers.

In the lift up he had to fight off a smile. Even in the tube over he had been smiling, breaking London etiquette by observing his fellow passengers. In the same train had been at least two other people in the same situation, heading home after a night spent in someone else’s bed. There had been a young Indian woman with a secretive smile, still clad in a short, sparkly club dress. She’d sported impressive sex hair and was wearing a man’s flip flops that were at least four sizes too big for her as she clutched high heels in her hands. There had also been a Scottish man of around twenty-five years of age, rubbing his face with a horrified expression, a massive hickey on his neck, mumbling “Oh Christ” and “Ah cannae believe it” in what was not a happy tone. He was in a world of his own, but momentarily Erik locked eyes with the woman, and both of them recognised that smug, pleased look about themselves and grinned at each other before quickly looking away.

Erik now had to focus: he had to enter Dad Mode and Ex-Husband Mode. Erik was different things to different people, and in the lift he felt a rush from the thought of having been in Lover Mode for the majority of the previous night. And it wasn’t just that he’d gotten laid of course, although by god he’d missed sex.

No, it was Charles. They still had that connection: emotional, physical, sexual. Last night had been years overdue, but he could have sworn that when they kissed it felt like hardly a week had passed. The night had been a flurry of sparks, of yearning, of Erik’s heart skipping beats when Charles pulled him in for a heated kiss.

He was pretty sure he’d performed well, although he was out of practice. God, he really hoped he hadn’t come too fast that first time, in the kitchen. Charles had definitely f*cked him for longer than that in the bedroom, but that was probably okay because they’d taken the edge off. Charles hadn’t said anything of him coming too soon, anyway, but he decided to try and perform better next time.

He snapped out of his daze as he got to the fourth floor. Ororo was already waiting for him at the door of her apartment, looking distraught, and this helped Erik focus considerably. He could hear Shani as soon as he stepped out of the lift, her yells full of the indignant fury that only a three-year-old could muster, and the sound of it had an immediate heart-wrenching effect on him as all of his impulses urged him to tend to his young. Ororo looked like she had been crying herself.

Enter Dad Mode. Enter Ex-Husband Mode.

Erik braced himself and, upon reaching Ororo, placed a comforting hand on her arm. “It’ll be okay, alright?”

Ororo nodded but looked defeated. “She wanted you,” she said in a teary voice. “I couldn’t get her to settle down. She keeps pushing me off.” She swallowed. “I’m not good enough.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“It is right now,” she said morosely and motioned him to come inside.

Ororo’s flat was open plan with the kitchen and living room in one shared space, large windows facing the street below, while Ororo and Shani’s bedrooms were past the kitchen at the other end. He now walked into the living room that was full of sleek and modern furniture – very adult-like, not at all child-friendly – where he was nearly winded by a small girl rushing into him, arms outstretched, tears and snot all over her face as she wailed like no one in the world could understand the injustice she’d suffered. She cried “Paaaaapiiiiiiii!” in all of her misery.

Erik picked her up and began to sooth her, and she clung onto him fiercely. She had a mild fever, he thought, which certainly would contribute to her antics and make her feel sad and rotten, and she sobbed into the crook of his neck, burrowing in. He rocked her back and forth, walking over to the couch where they sat down.

Ororo watched them from a distance, her arms crossed. When Shani was scared, she wanted the most familiar thing to her – that wasn’t Ororo anymore.

Erik whispered endearments into Shani’s ear, petting her hair. Right then he felt like he was the most important person in the world, at least to one little girl. Shani mumbled something about a nightmare and that everything hurt and that Bubby, her favourite teddy, hadn’t been there, and then she cried into his chest dramatically but already with an air of contentment that she was receiving the consolation she had longed for.

He kept calming her down, feeling infinitely better knowing that she was alright. There was nothing seriously wrong: Shani was ill and had missed her dad. Ingredients of a meltdown right there.

Once Shani had calmed down, she was tired from having worked herself up and having spent all of her energy on crying. Erik managed to put her back to bed once he promised her a million times that he’d still be there when she awoke.

He and Ororo watched their sleeping daughter from the doorway of Shani’s second bedroom – it was far less cluttered than Shani’s bedroom at home because Shani was there only every other weekend to make a mess. Erik felt guilty that his daughter had two bedrooms, but he and Ororo were trying their best – that was all they could do.

“You okay?” Erik asked Ororo quietly, and Ororo’s jaw clenched and then she only shook her head. Erik sighed and pressed a kiss to her temple without a second thought. She pulled away from his embrace, and Erik would have been lying if he’d said it didn’t hurt.

In the kitchen Erik sat at the bar counter and had a cup of coffee while Ororo, now no longer teary-eyed but more distant than ever, fried them some eggs. Erik was starving, he realised, as the smell of the food reached him. As Ororo pushed a plate towards him, she said, “Weren’t you wearing that suit yesterday?”

Erik looked down at his clothes. “Was I?”

“You were. And you don’t wear office wear on Saturdays either.” Ororo sat down on the other side of the counter, forking a piece of fried egg from her plate. “Looks to me, really, like you never went home last night.”

“I really don’t know what –”

“And your mouth is red.”

Erik quickly rubbed at his mouth, which felt sore and irritated. Thankfully he and Ororo had never gotten to the point where they’d cheated on each other – clearly Erik would have never been able to get away with it.

“Miss Twenty-Three Year Old?” Ororo asked with an arched eyebrow. Ororo had briefly had a boyfriend around the time they had finalised their divorce, so Erik had gotten used to the thought of dealing with her with the knowledge that she was now seeing other men. He’d, however, been busy reorganising his entire life around being a single father so dating had been the last thing on his mind for the majority of the past few years. This was new territory for them, Erik seeing people, and he wasn’t sure how Ororo would react.

“Not the twenty-three year old,” he said. “Just… someone else.”

“A he?”

Erik shrugged, which they both knew was a yes. Ororo didn’t seem impressed. “Well I hope you’re using protection.”

Erik choked on the food. “Jesus, Or, I didn’t pick him up at a random club. Christ.” He took another mouthful of fried egg and defensively added, “I was brought up in the nineties, I didn’t miss the memo on gay men and safe sex.”

“It’s just been a while since you were in that scene,” she argued back.

Unlike Magda, who had struggled to accept Erik’s bisexuality, Ororo hadn’t had a problem with it. She’d worried that maybe she couldn’t give Erik all he wanted in bed, but Erik had always been devoted to her while their relationship had lasted. Besides, Ororo had been okay with them doing things that had, well. Mimicked what Erik had sometimes had an urge for – strap-ons and such. It had been sexy and fun for both, and now Ororo was someone Erik could not even picture naked without a sense of wrongness. He had seen her too broken perhaps, and now she had rebuilt herself in ways that kept Erik at arm’s length.

“So is this someone you’re dating?” Ororo asked, and Erik gave her a warning look. “I don’t mean to pry, but why does it have to be some kind of a secret? I mean, can’t we just say it straight up?” She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. She said, “I’m not seeing anyone. Are you seeing someone?”

For all her casualness, there was a hint of aggression to her words.

“It’s nothing yet.”

“Ah,” she smiled blankly. “Yet. The magic word.” Erik tried to keep his expression neutral so as to not give anything away. It worked because his ex-wife sighed. “It’d be nice if we could talk about these things.”

“I don’t think we’re there yet,” he said honestly.

Ororo hummed in agreement. “The magic word.”

They finished breakfast in silence and then watched morning TV together, commenting on world affairs and the orange blazer of the presenter until, after giving Shani another hour of sleep, they woke her up together. She was like a different child, beaming and giggling and pulling at Erik’s hand to show him a new toy Ororo had got her.

And Erik thought that even if ultimately he and Ororo had not been great together, they still had created someone pretty remarkable together.

The following morning Erik drove up to Amersham. He hadn’t been up that way for a handful of months now because he had simply run out of motivation. His abandonment of the project had left him feeling guilty and had made the project feel like a moment of folly, but as he drove up that morning he felt pretty good about it for a change.

Ororo had thought that going out with Angel was a sign of Erik’s post-divorce crisis. It hadn’t been. His crisis had taken on a very different shape: a plot of land outside a quaint village an hour’s drive from his London home. There he had purchased half an acre of woodland after having driven past a ‘Land for Sale’ sign the previous Christmas. He had attended Azazel’s wedding that had taken place in a country mansion, and though most of the guests were spending the night at nearby hotels Erik had had no interest in that. His divorce had come through a week earlier – he had taken his ring off, and watching Azazel and his wife exchange their rings had made him want to get out of there as soon as was socially acceptable. It was the first wedding he had attended alone in nearly five years, and he had come to one conclusion: being dateless at a wedding was a one-way ticket to feeling like sh*t about yourself.

He had gotten lost on the way back to the motorway, but he had been in no hurry back to Crouch End. Ororo had Shani for Christmas and at that very moment they were on a plane to Florida for the holiday season with Ororo’s new boyfriend Anthony. Erik had no one waiting for him at his pretence of a home: no wife, no daughter.

He missed Shani. It had been a day and he missed her, and now he had to wait until New Year’s Eve to see her.

Advice for the youth of the world: don’t marry. Don’t divorce.

That was what he had wanted to tell Azazel: just don’t do it.

It was in this swirl of anger, self-pity and loss that he saw the ‘Land for Sale’ sign on the side of the road, just as he was consumed by hatred for his empty house in Crouch End that screamed the absence of his daughter and also his wife with whom he had been for years. And on a whim he slowed down to check out what exactly was on offer because just about anything had to be better than the life he had right then.

Nearly a year later the drive there was familiar to him. He hummed along to Boy George on the radio (did Erik really want to hurt him? Did Erik really want to make him cry?), navigating the M1 traffic with ease. He stopped at a Roadchef on the way to get his breakfast to go, and soon after he entered the village of Amersham. He drove up a half mile past the city centre before slowing down and taking a left into an uneven road into the woods. As he did so, he entered a piece of land that was his.

For Erik there was something pure about owning his own plot. Most people moved into pre-made houses in pre-built cities where the only thing they had to put together was an IKEA storage unit. Erik didn’t want that: he wanted to build something of his own.

He followed the remnants of the road to the middle of the woodland where he parked the car at a clearing. He got out, a coffee in hand, and leaned against the bonnet and breathed in the crisp air of an early winter morning. The sun was out and the birds were singing in the old, tall beeches around him. Erik surveyed his very own tabula rasa, taking sips slowly.

This is where he would build his home. He would plan it himself and build it himself as much as he could – he would be the building manager, in any case. He had all the right connections, knew all the right people, and yes he’d end up with a hefty mortgage, but he would build His Own House. The building permit had come through from the town council in March, and he had spent most of his free weekends designing the house that spring until he had inexplicably lost interest in the summer. He had even started considering selling the property onto someone who would actually do something with it, but now his enthusiasm had returned. He got out his notebook and floor plans from the back of the car, feeling rejuvenated.

He walked slowly around the clearing, mentally tracing it: now he was standing in the kitchen, now he was in the study. Above was Shani’s bedroom, and the master bedroom would be south-facing, catching all the sunlight – he’d build a balcony for his bedroom, two chairs and a small round table out on it for Sunday mornings. He’d use stone and wood for the house, make it organic but still modern, two floors, four bedrooms, three bathrooms. Get Shani out of the labyrinth of London, move out here, put her in the local school which had ranked well in the past few years, and he would quit at the university and start his own consultancy firm.

Needless to say that Ororo didn’t know Erik had splurged a hundred grand on an acre of land in Buckinghamshire, but in Erik’s view it wasn’t that much more work to get Shani to Hammersmith from there every fortnight than it was from Crouch End. He mused all this for the umpteenth time as he took pictures for reference and checked his measurements. He would run his engineering consultant business from home and, once he retired, he could focus on gardening or even fishing on the River Chess a short walk away through the woods, and Shani would come home for Hanukkah with her own family and maybe Pietro could come sometimes too if he wanted to, and then Erik and Charles would have their hands full with their grandchildren running havoc.

Erik was happy with this vision and he checked two more measurements before it even occurred to him that he had inserted Charles into his vision and not even realised it. He felt momentarily flushed and returned to the car to finish eating the Cornish pasty that had gone cold.

As he sat in the driver’s seat, he kept looking at the clearing and visualising the house: maybe put a pond there to the right of the door, have some fish in it. Let Shani plant a tree that was as tall as she was, and then when she was an adult she could look at how tall the tree had gotten. Maybe they could get a dog, a Newfoundlander or a Belgian shepherd – Erik’s family had had a dog when he was young. Pets were good for children: offered unlimited love and attention, taught kids about responsibility. He remembered that Charles liked dogs, too.

As he pictured Charles putting food out to their dog in the kitchen of a house that Erik had not yet built for a family that he did not even have, he realised that he needed to take it down a notch. He was old enough to know when he was getting carried away. He swallowed the last of his pasty and got his phone out, hesitating only briefly before calling Charles, who picked up on the fifth ring: “Erik, hey.”

“Hi,” he said, feeling a smile spread on his face at the sound of Charles’s voice. Erik was pretty sure that if someone had seen him then they would have described him as having ‘a sh*t-eating grin’ on his face. He leaned back in the car seat. “What you up to?”

Really he should be commended for not having called already. It’d been a day, and he wanted to see Charles again.

“Ah, nothing much, really,” Charles said. “Painting the box room, but I’m just trying to put off finishing the staff presentation for tomorrow.”

Erik had forgotten all about it. “Oh yeah, how’s that going?”

“It’ll be passable, I think. What about you?”

“Just having a quiet Sunday morning,” he said, not adding ‘fantasising about us living together in Buckinghamshire’. “Am out in the country for a bit, you know.”

“You are? How English of you,” Charles said in a teasing tone, and Erik was reminded of what a flirt Charles Xavier could be. “So was Shani okay yesterday?”

“She was fine, yeah, just needed a bit of TLC. She’s a tough cookie,” he said and couldn’t help the pride from slipping into his voice. “But I’m sorry to have rushed off like that. I think staying longer would have been… nice.”

Nice. He rolled his eyes at himself. What a king of words he was…

“Yeah, uh… About the, uh… the other night,” Charles said and there was a brief pause on the line. “I’m glad you called. I wanted to talk to you.”

Charles sounded far more serious now, and Erik sat up straighter, bracing himself. “Okay.”

They probably had to have The Talk now, the ‘we are two adults who had sex, we should talk about this sensibly’ talk. It would be the first time he’d ever had that conversation with Charles, and a part of him – the majority, truthfully – saw little need to go over what had happened on Friday night and well into the early hours of Saturday. Yet there was the question of Warren the Hot Scientist, whom Erik had not forgotten.

“I –” Charles began but then stopped himself. “I guess that. I mean that I… I want to see you again.”

Erik grinned. This wasn’t The Talk, and he was glad for that. “That’s good to know because I called to ask when you’re next free,” he said, mind full of Charles’s smile and taste and scent – god, all of it, leaving him hungry and excited and longing. “Wednesday, maybe? There’s this tiny Burmese place near Sloane Square that I think you’d like.” He pictured them there in the candlelight, chatting over dinner, smiling secret smiles at each other, legs brushing as foreplay…

“I can’t this week, sorry.”

“What – not all week?” he asked, disappointment settling in as the restaurant scene evaporated.

Charles sounded apologetic. “Yeah, afraid so. I’ve got family in town for Thanksgiving, is the thing, and they’ll be dragging me to Buckingham Palace and the Tower and some such places, I expect.” He could hear the roll of eyes in Charles’s voice.

“Ah.” Erik tried to hide his disappointment. From what he recalled, Charles wasn’t very close to his family, Raven excluded, and she already lived in London. What family was this? “So how long are they in town for?”

“All week. I’m free by Sunday, though.”

“I have Shani next weekend.”

“Oh, right. Of course.”

Erik felt his mood dampen – he could try and swap weekends with Ororo, naturally, but he disliked the thought. He wanted Shani to have a sense of regularity in her life instead of being passed around like a ball. Shani came first in everything, this included.

He pulled out his pocket diary where he marked his appointments, meetings, and all of Shani’s movements too. “I’m free this Friday evening?” he offered because Ororo was taking Shani to a friend’s kid’s birthday party. He kept the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he scrutinised the week ahead.

“My family is still here then.”

“Well I’ll come for dinner,” he said jokingly, but he almost meant it. He could, couldn’t he? “I’m house-trained, I speak French, and I know how to use a napkin.”

“All important qualities, my friend, but I wouldn’t impose these people on you – their brutish American ways would leave you scarred.”

Erik laughed. “Right, okay. Um, Christ.” He flipped onto the next page that showed the following week. “Wednesday after, then?” A whole week and a half away – that felt far too long not to see Charles. Erik couldn’t stop thinking about him, about the sound of his voice or the blue of his eyes, and how everything with Charles felt just as good as it had a decade ago. They’d never spent any time apart then.

There was a pause as Charles seemed to check his own diary. “Don’t we have an estates meeting that Monday?”

Erik looked at his appointments. “Oh, we do. I’ll have to leave straight after the meeting to get Shani, though.”

“Okay, so we’ll make it the Wednesday then,” Charles said. “I’ve written it in, so it’s officially a date.”

A date.

Erik said, “Yeah, you should know I never have sex on the first date.”

“The third date kind of guy, huh?”

“Sadly.”

“Sadly? Au contraire, mon ami – our pub drinks was a first date, Friday night was our second, so if I can do any calculations at all, this will be our third date.”

“Don’t tell me my virtue is threatened,” he said, and Charles laughed at the other end. Erik wanted to drive straight to Charles’s house and have sex with him for hours. He wondered if he could.

“Okay, well I need to finish painting so that I can move onto the presentation, but uh… I look forward to it.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said. “Speak to you soon.”

“Bye,” Charles said with a voice that was full of promise, and Erik echoed the word back in a blissful daze.

Once more he looked through the windshield at the imaginary house. Something about the phone call left him feeling uneasy, even with a date set up. Finding a time they were both free didn’t fit with his memories of them – after their first night together, they hadn’t spent a single night apart. Parting ways just hadn’t occurred to them.

But it was going to be different this time around, of course: Erik had Shani, who took up most of his free time, and Charles had his own career and family, and of course there was that Warren guy who was, from what Erik could gather, some kind of a very good-looking friends-with-benefits f*ck buddy. Well, be that as it may be, Erik was back in the picture now.

He exhaled. Take it a day at a time. Best option for now.

The pond would go to the right, he decided, and Shani’s tree to the far right, and maybe their Newfoundlander could have a dog house by the tree.

And when the time came, he’d let Charles decide what colour that dog house should be.

It was over.

The thought made a paralysing fear rear its head inside Charles, followed by the conviction that he could not let that happen. He didn’t know what he’d do without Warren – what did his future look like? What would he do without his boyfriend?

It didn’t bear thinking about, and so only a few days after he had slept with Erik he got on the tube at Green Park for the long ride to Terminal 1. He had a book with him, something he’d randomly picked from the Buy one, get one half price! section at W.H. Smith the day before. The book was more for show, really, because it made him blend with the many commuters on the train. He got a seat after a group of tourists disembarked at South Kensington, and he opened the book but his eyes were only fixed on the page, not moving.

He didn’t usually get Warren from the airport as it seemed redundant after their near three years together, although at the start of the relationship he had been waiting at arrivals without fail. That initial enthusiasm waned over time, they had grown into each other, and going to Heathrow gave them perhaps three extra hours together, which ultimately didn’t count for much. But in the past few days he had suddenly been able to recall so many self-righteous conversations he’d had with friends over the years, conversations titled ‘Why I Would Never Cheat on Anyone’ by Charles Francis Xavier. Every time he had had that discussion, he had meant it: he would never do that to someone. He would never, ever cheat. Sure, he’d slept around plenty, but casual sex was harmless fun. Had some of the men he’d been with been taken? Not to the best of his knowledge. He, however, if in a relationship with someone, would never cheat. He was a man of honour.

He was a hypocrite and a fool.

Warren was going to take one look at him and know.

Charles replayed the flat in his head. The dining table and chairs had arrived on Monday as promised, and now they were in the living room and looked as great as they’d hoped: 1920s art nouveau style, dark mahogany, hardly any significant wear, costing them a pretty penny. He had finished painting the box room on Sunday and had fit the skirting boards in, moving all of the unpacked boxes there so that at least the flat looked neater overall. Their bed had fresh sheets, smelling of lavender or roses or some such flower, while the old ones had been washed and folded away, pushed to the back of the linen closet in some paranoid fear that perhaps they will learn to talk, and he had taken the rubbish out on Sunday and replenished the condom stash in the bedroom so that there were as many left as had been on Warren’s last visit.

He assured himself that he hadn’t missed anything: he couldn’t get caught. How likely was it, realistically, that Warren would notice the condoms’ expiry date and realise it was a different month than the one the old ones had had?

Yet a friend of his in New York had had a seven-year relationship end when his girlfriend found a single strand of long, red hair in their bed sheets.

Warren was light blond, Erik’s hair was darker, but he doubted that Warren could tell the difference, should he be paying attention to such things. He would be fine. People cheated all the goddamn time, people far less intelligent than him, and if they could get away with it, then so could he.

Warren would take one look at him and know.

They reached Barons Court.

Charles had an excuse, he was sure he had one, but he just couldn’t think what it was. The distance, perhaps? Being lonely in London, maybe? Or simply that he was a man, a horny one at that, and it had been an animalistic impulse? Hey, boys would be boys… What could you expect, being in another country… He had urges, he was only human…

Yeah, what a piece of sh*t of a human.

In the moments when he realised that Warren would leave him the second he found out, he felt beyond desperate.

Charles had an engagement ring ready. They had a house together. They would get married at his parents’ estate in Westchester. Scott and Bobby would be their best men, Raven would give some kind of an embarrassing speech during dinner and then drunkenly spend the evening on the dance floor, and he and Warren would have their first dance as husband and husband to Enrique Inglesias’s Hero because, although the song was cheesy as all hell, it had been playing on the radio on the morning Charles told Warren that he loved him, too. (Warren had said it first, and it had taken Charles a bit longer to catch up.) Charles could see it all clearly: it would be a big New York wedding, some three hundred guests, the talk of the town, the Xaviers and Worthingtons merging. And he knew that he and Warren were rather alternative with their academic careers and abandonment of the US, but their wedding would follow the kind of grandeur that their circle expected. Charles had expected it of himself, too, since he was a child.

Everyone was expecting that wedding. He was expecting that wedding. Warren was expecting that wedding.

They were supposed to grow old together. Christ, they couldn’t throw all that away because of one mistake, could they? No, of course not.

South Ealing.

How would he explain this to everyone? If this was the end of their love, of their life together, what would happen when word got out that Warren had left him for sleeping with a divorced, single dad whom he’d once boned in his youth? Or would it be dressed up differently: that Charles Xavier started banging an engineer at his work – oh yes, they probably f*cked in the office on a regular basis while poor Warren had no idea. Gay guys – they just can’t commit, can they?

Even with an ocean between Charles and New York, he had the makings of a well-reported scandal in his hands. God, Charles could not let that happen – it was the two of them against those snobby, spoiled sycophants of New York, winning one day at a time because they were happy and successful and going places without their help.

Charles had just f*cked up a little. He had slipped momentarily, very briefly. And in a week’s time he planned on f*cking up again: what the hell was wrong with him?

The train was above ground this far out of the city and so he had reception, and Charles felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He took it out and found a message from a number that had been saved as ‘Trevor’: How did your meeting go yesterday?

Trevor was the new post-doc in their lab. Trevor was from Manchester, had ginger hair and was freckled. Trevor’s mother worked for the Royal Mail, Trevor’s newlywed wife was called Alice. Charles repeated these details in his head. Trevor was real. Trevor existed. He willed Trevor into existence, conjuring up the image of this man until he felt convinced himself.

Charles calmed down, although his palms felt sweaty. He looked at his phone and read it again: How did your meeting go yesterday?

Charles took this in and rehearsed it in his mind. First he pictured Warren, holding the phone: Babe, who’s Trevor? He’s asking about a meeting. And then his own voice, composed and indifferent: that’s Trevor: ginger, freckled, post-doc, married to Alice.

Easy. Fool-proof.

The text was not in any way suspicious or suggestive, but Charles saw himself pressing against Erik, his mouth on Erik’s neck, him pulling Erik’s clothes off, fingertips brushing over a hardening co*ck. He pictured pushing Erik down onto his bed and climbing on top – again, but this time with his own thighs bracketing Erik, guiding Erik’s hardness into him…

He replied with: Never seen that many disgruntled scientists in my life – everyone thinks they deserve more desk space than the next. I survived, though! He pressed send.

Hounslow East.

He couldn’t wait to see Erik again. God, he couldn’t wait. He wanted them to f*ck each other senseless, and he wanted the heavy thrill of pleasure in his guts when Erik touched him, and he wanted the warmth in his chest when Erik smiled at him, and he wanted the pillow talk afterwards, them telling more stories about their lives spent apart, he wanted to inspect Erik’s body for new scars, blemishes, marks. He’d hardly thought of much else since their night together, and when he thought of Erik he felt a rush of euphoria – he often found himself smiling for no reason, and suddenly he felt like he was nineteen and just recently back from Australia, where he’d met the love of his life, and being with Erik made him feel good, and goddammit he deserved that.

And then he thought of Warren and their families and all of their friends, and that high evaporated.

He hadn’t allowed himself the luxury to think of what this meant about Erik. Warren took priority right now.

Hatton Cross.

Erik replied: How about you divide the offices survival of the fittest style? Throw them into an arena. I think your stamina would help you pull through…

He quickly looked away from the screen. The ellipsis made his stomach burn with want, like every one of the three dots was a wet kiss Erik placed on his stomach, heading south…

He deleted the conversation quickly. He wasn’t sure how to explain Trevor’s insinuating tone to Warren.

It’d be fine, he told himself as the train pulled up at Heathrow. He just had to keep his phone on him at all times. That was, after all, what people like him did.

As he made his way to Terminal 1 Arrivals, his palms began to sweat again. He felt otherworldly like he just wasn’t quite as solid or real as the people near him. He had to act natural. Smile a normal smile. Normal. Christ, what did a normal smile look like?

The information screen said that Warren had landed twenty minutes ago. He had timed his journey well, and he joined the other people loitering around the arrivals hall, waiting for their loved ones to walk through from baggage reclaim. He thought of the opening scene from Love Actually, Hugh Grant’s patronising voice preaching about how true love was embodied by Heathrow’s arrivals halls. Bullsh*t.

Look over there, for instance, at that middle aged man with the flowers and the shifty eyes, or look at that young red-haired woman twisting her hands. Were they embodiments of love? No, not love. Guilt.

Charles looked at them and thought: are you cheaters, too? Is that why you have those flowers? Is that why you’re twisting your hands? Have we gathered here today based on our mutually shared guilt?

Warren would know immediately – or… no, of course he wouldn’t, that was ridiculous, how could he possibly…

Warren would know because Charles would tell him. He had to. He couldn’t lie like this, he couldn’t deceive Warren like this. They were grown men, and this entire thing was petty and beneath them. Warren deserved the truth, even if it hurt him. After all that they had been through since Warren showed up at his cottage and told Charles that he was in love with him, Warren deserved more than this. Charles thought of that first night of heated passion, of them eating crumpets in the small kitchen the morning after, of Warren’s blue eyes that had made his stomach flip. He recalled his own thoughts: this could be the love that he’d been missing.

Fast-forward two years and eight months that had been witness to so many things, good and bad: Warren’s grandmother dying of cancer, Warren fighting with his dad over his career, Charles calling Warren whenever he worried that Raven was partying too hard, Warren surprising Charles on their first anniversary with a trip to Barcelona, all the times one of them had shown up in Oxford or Geneva unannounced and taken the other by surprise, their troubles at work, their shared hopes, their shared fears, birthday dinners, holidays with the Xaviers or Worthingtons, and more crumpets in the mornings, kisses, amazing sex, future plans, Sunday brunches and even their fights like that time Charles had been so stressed at work that he’d just yelled at Warren to f*ck off and leave him be because he had so much to do, and Warren had stood there and simply said, “I’m not going. I love you.” That was when Charles had realised that they had something to last for the rest of their lives.

And so he was going to tell Warren that he had slept with someone else. Yes, he’d damaged them and ridiculed the intimacy that they shared, but it had been a mistake, Charles knew that, and Warren would have to forgive him. They could survive this. They had to. Charles would never do it again, ever. He’d confess, be contrite, beg, take the punishment and anger, but Warren was a man of sense as much as sentiment, and Warren would realise that one night was not worth giving up a lifetime for.

So all he had to do was to confess.

Warren appeared into arrivals, suitcase in tow, and he looked happy and handsome, wearing that smart casual Calvin Klein jacket he’d bought in Paris that one time, and he looked like the man Charles wanted to spend his life with. Warren hadn’t shaved, light brown stubble covering his chin and cheeks, and he had his phone out, texting with one hand, and he was Charles’s, all his, devoted to him, and Charles quickly reached for his own phone. Warren stopped, smiled at the screen that had lit up with an incoming call, picked up and said, “Hey babe, I was just texting you.”

“Look to your right,” he said, and Warren frowned and did.

Warren broke into a smile at the sight of him, and Charles felt like he had broken through an invisible barrier: this was the moment he’d dreaded, when it all came crashing around him. This was the moment he had to decide what kind of a man he was: was he good? Or was he a coward?

As he pulled Warren into a warm embrace, Charles knew that he had to protect Warren from anything that might cause him pain. He wanted to keep Warren safe, make him happy, protect him from anything that might upset him. Now the person that might hurt him was Charles – he had to save Warren from himself.

He ran his hands through Warren’s short hair and kissed him on the mouth. “Hey, gorgeous. Welcome home.”

Warren smiled at him, blue eyes alight. “Missed me, huh?”

“More than you know.”

Warren smiled wider and leaned in for another kiss. Charles knew two things.

One: Warren suspected nothing.

Two: Charles would never tell him.

Erik asked Marie to baby-sit Shani longer in the week coming up, and she retorted, “Well if you’ve got a hot date, you better buy some prophylactics.” She was trying to be funny, of course, but Erik choked on his cup of tea as the two of them sat in the kitchen together. Marie looked scandalised. “You do have a hot date!” she exclaimed.

“No, god it’s – I have a date, yes.”

“If you weren’t so cold-blooded, I would say you’re blushing,” Marie said smugly, but Erik definitely wasn’t blushing. If there was any colour on his skin, it was only because of his weekly workout with Logan and Azazel from earlier that evening. He did not blush at the thought of Charles Xavier, the man who had had Erik on the brink of org*sm in two minutes flat (it had taken Erik so much effort not to embarrass himself thoroughly). “Tell me about your date then!” Marie enthused loudly, and Erik worried that Shani would wake upstairs, although he had checked on her and she had been sound asleep.

“There’s not much to tell,” he said vaguely, which only increased Marie’s intrigue.

So far no one knew about Charles. Ororo of course had realised that Erik had spent the night somewhere but she didn’t know who with. Marie was not the confidante Erik would have expected to have, but somehow she seemed like the only person for the job.

Erik had never told Ororo of his affair with Charles in Australia. When he got together with John in Vancouver, he had told him of Charles when John asked if Erik had had any boyfriends in the past. (Gay guys always seemed to want to know if a guy who said he was bi had actually ever done more than just f*cked a man.) So he had said yes, he had fallen in love with a guy he’d met in Australia, and that had pacified John.

Then some six months into their relationship, which had been happy and fulfilling and full of drinking in clubs and f*cking in the toilets because John got off on that, John had asked more about this Australian guy. (Erik had not corrected John about the nationality.) Why did you guys split up? John had asked. So Erik told John about Magda and Pietro, which of course was a familiar story to John, but John didn’t know that they were the reason Erik had left Charles. And maybe it was something in his voice, some hint of regret or longing when he said that he had been really in love with the guy, but in hindsight Erik thought that that was when John had stopped trusting him. When Erik was late, John started suspecting him of cheating, and Erik could never really understand why.

To this day he didn’t know what had gone wrong exactly, but losing John had eventually led the way to Ororo, and then to Shani, so Erik couldn’t really make himself regret any of it. He had learned a lesson from John, however: no one wanted to live in the shadow of a former lover. And so, to be on the safe side, he had never breathed a word of Charles to Ororo, which meant that Erik could not talk to her about Charles now without admitting to omissions in his own romantic past.

He could have told Logan and Azazel, of course, but Erik hadn’t wanted to tell them anything before it was more certain. Those two assholes would probably only make fun of him if he’d told them that he’d spent a night with Charles and that he’d felt the same magic he had ten years ago. Yeah, they definitely would have laughed.

And so Erik found himself confiding in his twenty-two year old babysitter, because saying that he had little to tell was in fact a lie. As Marie stared at him expectantly, he said, “Okay, so. My date is… an ex-boyfriend.” And he told her how they had met again through work, how they had caught up over drinks, and then how he thought that over Halloween Charles had kept looking at him with this look and how, “well, last week I went to his place to drop off some paperwork and we, uh. We ended up. You know.”

You know. He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘we ended up having sex’ in front of Marie, though Marie didn’t shy away from such language when she told him of her own life.

“Ya’ll did the horizontal tango,” she supplied.

“Okay, that.”

“You are such a ho,” Marie said with a big grin, and Erik felt insulted although it sounded like Marie was trying to pay him a compliment. “What’s he look like then? Show me a picture!”

“I don’t have one,” he said and Marie looked confused. She was of the generation that sent selfies every two minutes. “He’s very handsome?” he ventured and she looked unimpressed by his description. “Blue eyes, longish brown hair. He’s got a beard.”

“I feel like I’ve known him all my life,” she said sarcastically, and Erik rolled his eyes at her. He didn’t know where to even start describing Charles: the strong arms, the muscular legs, the amazing ass, the toned chest, the thick co*ck, the solid shape of his hips that made Erik desperately hard? Charles’s body was less soft than before, harder, with more body hair trailing his thighs and stomach, and Erik had wanted to nuzzle against him because nothing had ever been sexier or turned him on more.

No, these were not details he could tell Marie. Yet she was well in tune with the way love worked in the modern world whereas Erik felt out of his depth. He felt perpetually stupid because his first instinct was to just call Charles and invite him over and then, well, spend the rest of their lives together, and at the same time he kept thinking that he had to take things slow because he had Shani to consider, after which he only felt like he had a headache brewing.

“So yeah, we have a date for next week but… it’s kind of complicated,” he continued. “I wanted to meet up this week but he said he’s got family over for Thanksgiving. A part of me wonders if that’s the real reason.”

“Jeez, he’s allowed to have a life,” Marie said like he was being too intense. He probably was.

“Of course he’s allowed,” he said defensively. Charles had only sounded a bit vague on the phone, and Erik kept wondering if he’d imagined it or not. “I guess the problem is that I don’t know how to play it cool,” he said in frustration. “The thing is that he’s got some kind of a boyfriend, or a casual fling with this Hugo Boss model looking guy.”

“Oh,” Marie said with renewed curiosity.

Yeah, oh – Charles had not mentioned Warren once, but Erik had certainly not forgotten the man’s existence.

“I know it’s modern, dating multiple people at once, but I’m a bit too old fashioned for that.” He sighed and finished the last of his tea. “And he and I, you know, we were always – well, ‘all in’, is how he put it. We were all in from the get go. And I want that now too, I want him and me to go for this properly, but I don’t want to scare him off by saying that too soon, in case he… thinks it’s too much.”

“Nuh uh. Don’t be too keen.”

“Right. But I want to let him know I’m interested and that my interest in him is serious.”

“Of course, be keen. I mean, good lord, you don’t want to seem unkeen.”

“So you’re telling me not to be keen and also to be keen?” he asked, feeling utterly perplexed.

“Exactly!” she smiled, and Erik groaned. “Lord almighty, you are hopeless.” She glanced at the ceiling and said, “If Shani’s got a hope in hell of getting a second daddy, you’re gonna need help. Give me your phone. Ah, hush now! No questions, just gimme.”

Erik slowly gave Marie his phone as she made grabby hands for it. She snatched it and said, “Code?” and he gave it to her: it was Shani’s birthday, predictably. “Your gentleman caller’s name?” He gave Marie that too.

She started typing, and Erik asked, “What are you doing?”

“It’s called playing the field,” she said confidently and read, “Did I just see you at – Where does he live?”

“Near Abbey Road.”

“Hmm, okay. Let’s make it: did I just see you at Baker Street? A shame you couldn’t do dinner tonight, I doubt my date will compare…”

Erik looked at Marie in disbelief, but she only beamed. “And sent!” He kept staring. She said, “What?”

“That was a complete lie. All of that.”

“Welcome to the world of dating,” she said with a shrug and then got up and grabbed her bag from the floor. “Now he knows he’s got competition. And before you text him anything else, check with me first. God knows you need the help.”

After Marie left, Erik lay in bed for a long time. She was right, of course: Erik needed extra help. Casual dating was perhaps okay for a little while, but Erik couldn’t keep it casual forever. It needed to get serious at some point, and Erik had already reached that point. He wanted Charles, his smiles and jokes and the way he made Erik feel: alive, just like it had been back in Australia. Unlike last time, however, he doubted that Charles had likewise reached this decision that what they had was It.

So perhaps Marie was right and some luring was due: Charles needed a gentle nudge to wind up in Erik’s awaiting arms.

In the morning, however, he’d received no reply.

Having the future in-laws over for Thanksgiving was a stressful ordeal that required flawless teamwork. All of their guests – Warren’s parents, Jean, Scott, Hank and Raven – were in the living room, sipping on champagne and Tennessee bourbon while the table was set to perfection with silver napkin rings to boot, and the turkey they’d bought from the butcher’s at the High Street looked the most delicious golden brown in the oven. Warren was mixing the mashed potatoes, saying, “Babe, can you pass me the salt?” and Charles did, kissing Warren’s neck and murmuring, “You domestic goddess, you.” Warren snorted and rolled his eyes.

The Worthingtons were a regal couple – even Charles thought so, and his own mother was pretty regal herself. When Scott had once asked what Warren’s parents were like, Charles had said, “Well they’re the kind of people who name their children after themselves.” They were building a dynasty.

Warren Jr. was the head of the Worthington Group, just like his father before him. The fact that Warren was a nuclear scientist at CERN, the place where the goddamn internet was invented, meant very little to Warren Jr. who had long struggled with his son over Warren’s career choices. “One day the business will be yours,” Junior maintained, and Warren said, “No thank you.” Junior was okay enough with Warren being gay – it was the choice of a different career, even if a very promising one, that irked him.

Mother Kathryn had spent the past thirty years as a Long Island socialite, but by no means was she uninteresting, tedious or even spoiled. She was an astute woman of piercing wit, remarkably independent, headstrong and probably the only person whose opinion Junior respected. It was lucky, therefore, that Kathryn wholly approved of Charles, because it meant that Junior had also esteemed Charles as worthy of their son. The name of Xavier carried a certain amount of weight in the upper classes of New York, and Junior had jokingly said that if Warren refused the CEO post, maybe Charles could take it on, “but you will have to change your name to Worthington.” Most of the conflict between Warren and Junior had taken place in Warren’s early twenties, and as the years had worn on the two men had begun to accept what they could not change about each other.

Charles nonetheless knew exactly how much they had running on their Thanksgiving dinner. Warren of course pretended that there were no stakes and that they had nothing to prove, but the evening was testimony to Warren’s life choices (CERN, London, Charles). Charles needed everything to go perfectly, for Warren’s sake.

Junior had already called their choice of home ‘hopelessly small’, but seeing as Junior had a penthouse in the Upper East Side for business and a mansion in Long Island for leisure, Charles could let that slide. Their place was small by American standards, but by London standards their flat was spacious. Junior could not appreciate that, of course.

But the Worthingtons had settled in, and now there were only two things that could spoil their evening: the first was Raven. Kathryn and Junior were crazy about Charles, perhaps, but they considered Raven to be a strange sort of indulgent delicacy at best. Now she had shown up late, holding a bottle of wine that she’d started drinking in the taxi. Her first words had been, “Don’t ask.” Charles didn’t need to.

The second thing was Charles himself. He focused on helping Warren get everything ready, concentrating on how much he loved him, and showing this by pecking him, hugging him – Warren had pushed him off more than once with a laugh of him hovering. After that Charles would back off, and whenever he did his thoughts strayed to Erik and the gloom he felt whenever he recalled Trevor’s text from the night before. No promises had been made between them: Erik had wanted to go out with him that week, Charles had been busy, Erik had gone with someone else. That was perfectly reasonable – it was good, even. Really. Neither of them had any unrealistic expectations of what was going on.

He was convinced that Erik’s date had been the gorgeous dancer again, but presently he did not have time to dwell on it much and he didn’t dare ask Raven. Yet he hadn’t replied to Erik because he couldn’t think of anything that didn’t make him sound petty, and he wasn’t ready to reflect on what that meant either.

Dinner was served on their newly purchased dining table that received many compliments, as did the food. It was all thanks to Warren, who had slaved in the kitchen all day while Charles did his best to help. Charles smiled at Warren and squeezed his hand under the table.

Of course it’d been the dancer.

Before starting with the food they all said what they were thankful for. Junior disliked this tradition as “foolish sentimentality” but explained which business deals in particular he was very thankful for that year. Kathryn said she was thankful that she had at last found a decent gardener for their house while Scott and Jean were very thankful for each other and their friends. Hank was thankful for having been invited as otherwise he would not have had a Thanksgiving meal that year, and Charles was thankful for all of their good health and for them all coming to their new home, and Warren was thankful for much the same, “but perhaps most of all I am thankful for Charles.”

At moments like that the guilt got to Charles. As their guests smiled at them brightly, touched by the sentiment as Warren looked at him with unhidden affection, Charles wanted to get up and say: “This is wrong. This is all wrong.” But he also cursed himself for not having said it himself, and he now wondered if Warren thought it suspicious that he hadn’t.

Raven, who had not yet had her turn, now stood up as she held her wine glass tightly. “I suppose that means it’s my turn!” she declared and held a dramatic pause as she took in her audience. Junior cast Kathryn a long look, and Warren tensed up. Hank was busy looking captivated. “Love,” Raven said, “is a sham.”

Jean and Charles exchanged worried glances. Christ, here we go…

“Love is a sham!” Raven repeated. “That is what I tell myself when it turns out I’m dating another self-centred A-hole like Oliver Milford, who dumped me this morning. And I was gonna break up with him, I’ll have you know! But no, no, now he gets to be the dumper and I’m the dumpee. No siree, no happy Thanksgiving for me!” She caught her breath and her expression softened. “Love is a sham. But in the moments that I think this, I… I think of my brother Charles, who has invited us all to his new home today. I think of Charles and his partner Warren, and I think of how distance has made their love stronger, I think of how they persevere in the face of difficult times, and I think of their devotion to one another and how they always support each other. I think of the wonderful life they have ahead of themselves.” Raven looked at them with a fond if not a little saddened smile. “You two remind me that love is not a sham and that it’s worth fighting for. And for that I am thankful.”

“Well said!” Scott hurried to intervene in a concluding tone and picked up his wine glass. “I could not have said it better myself, really. To Warren and Charles!”

The others had a moment of confusion before they rushed to pick up their own glasses. Charles’s friends and Warren’s parents echoed the toast to them, and Warren and Charles kissed. Warren smiled at him. “Love you, babe.”

Charles was happy. “Love you too.”

They kept holding hands.

Kathryn Worthington was a fan of grand social occasions, under which fell weddings. She had thirty years of party organisation experience, and so she dominated much of the following conversation by making helpful suggestions for Jean and Scott’s upcoming nuptials. They were getting married in a small Oxford church, followed by a reception at a former abbey that had been converted into a hotel. Kathryn said, “Oh no, no seafood for your starters – the oysters might never be as fresh as you think they are, and the last thing you want is to give your guests food poisoning.”

Warren grinned as he went for more stuffing. “Like Paige Charleston’s wedding?”

“Exactly like Paige Charleston’s wedding! Fresh oysters, they said. I should think not,” Kathryn said dramatically, and Hank laughed. “She’s so sweet, that girl. I saw her a few weeks ago, you know, on Madison Avenue. Asked me if you two were married yet – well, no, I said. Who knows what they’re waiting for, I told her.” Kathryn quirked an inquisitive eyebrow.

Warren grinned at Charles and said, “I’ll keep you posted, Mom.” Charles thought of the ring hiding in his office, and he pictured their Westchester wedding, and he felt like he was with his family and that this was exactly where he belonged.

Then he thought of how not only a week before he had been on the kitchen floor, hovering over another man, jerking him off as they had kissed wildly.

And yet no one there suspected Charles of anything, no one thought that he was behaving in a peculiar manner. Paige Charleston wouldn’t have dreamed of Charles Xavier being unfaithful to Warren Worthington, and neither would anyone else. Kathryn and Junior would go back to NY and tell their friends of their London visit, of Charles and Warren’s lives there, and these news would undoubtedly spread quickly. If this dinner was anything to go by, the reports would say that their lives were idyllic, their careers successful, and that their relationship seemed solid.

It couldn’t be, he thought. Was cheating really this easy?

Raven was busy telling Hank all about her breakup recovery methods. “It’ll be fine, I have my single girls – we’ll drink some bottles of wine and hit the clubs. One of my friends is a dancer, she always gets us into the best clubs, you know.”

Hank nervously pushed his glasses up his nose, blushing. “That sounds, um, enticing.”

“Angel’s not a single girl anymore, though, is she?” Charles now said pointedly. He couldn’t quite stop himself.

“Oh yeah,” Warren said, laughing. “I thought she was dating that German hunk from the chess club?”

“Who are these people?” Kathryn asked politely yet impatiently. She hated gossip she could not place.

“Angel’s not seeing him,” Raven said. “He never called, apparently. Probably got a better deal, although I can’t think of a better lay than Angel.”

Warren Junior looked scandalised by the language, but Raven only seemed scandalised that Erik had refused what Angel had offered. Warren cleared his throat and tried to explain in vague terms who they were speaking of, but Charles only felt a new kind of confusion. If Erik hadn’t taken Angel out, who on earth was Erik seeing?

Between their mains and desserts, Charles snuck to the bathroom and locked the door behind him. He got out his phone and texted Trevor, whose message about his date not comparing had of course been swiftly deleted. He typed in: Wasn’t me at Baker Street last night, and then he stopped. He didn’t want to sound like he was upset that Erik had gone on a date with someone else. He wasn’t upset, was he? For crying out loud, Erik was just some guy Charles had briefly known ten years ago – Charles didn’t care. He shouldn’t have cared. Was he insane being jealous that the man he had cheated on Warren with was seeing other people? This whole thing was absurd.

When Jean knocked on the door and asked if he was going to spend the rest of the evening in there, Charles decided that maybe a flirtatious tone was the least problematic. Erik was recently divorced and Charles was probably just one lay in a string of many.

God, he hated the thought of that.

He ended up sending: Wasn’t me at Baker Street last night. Don’t be too worn out for our date next week…

There. He didn’t sound jealous – just horny. That was a good tone, he decided, although a part of him wanted to call Erik and say that it was all very well for Erik to go out with dancers ten years younger than them, but by god Charles didn’t want Erik to tell him about it. He wanted to pretend that their night together had meant more than that, and that Erik, too, had felt the maddening rush and heat when they’d kissed.

They were halfway through dessert when Charles’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled his phone out enough to quickly read Erik’s reply: I want you.

Charles nearly choked on the pumpkin pie, but managed to play it off with a bit of coughing, which thankfully explained why he suddenly had gone a little red as Jean worriedly noted. He assured everyone, including his concerned boyfriend, that he was fine.

As he fetched more bourbon from the kitchen, he texted Erik back: Soon.

Conversation deleted.

There were several times that week when he forgot to feel guilty. His thoughts often strayed to Erik in a dreamlike fashion, and these visions took over most unexpectedly like in the middle of their visit to Kensington Palace, Junior commenting that he had finally found a decent sized house in England, and Charles thought of buildings and construction and therefore Erik. Charles did not experience the shocked realisation he would have expected: he felt like he had wronged Warren, and for that he felt bad. But he did not feel bad about Erik. His brain had placed the two men in such different categories that he couldn’t even compare them.

And so, as his fear of being discovered dissipated, he stopped panicking that Warren was going to find out. Life would go on: there would be more Thanksgivings with the Worthingtons, more references to their expected nuptials, more news about Paige Charleston and their other acquaintances, more Warren singing in the shower, and Raven would still be hopeless with relationships. That was Charles’s life as he saw it – it wasn’t dissolving just because he was sleeping with someone else on the side.

As he and Warren showed Junior and Kathryn around London that weekend, Charles often wondered what Erik was doing at that moment. Warren said “Earth to Charles” more than once, and Charles apologised and said that he was making plans for the house. Charles thought he saw Erik a few times too – men of the same height and build, men who were not Erik but whose brief appearance left Charles feeling hungry both sexually and emotionally.

As they hit the tourist attractions of London they passed many souvenir shops and Charles learned how to navigate the predicament that he now found himself in – the message was everywhere, on posters, t-shirts and mugs.

Keep calm and carry on.

It was sound advice.

Erik took over the estates meeting on Monday as Emma had a nasty throat infection. She had been told by her doctor to speak as little as possible, and so she glared at Erik for most of the meeting, looking like she would have done a far better job than him.

The schedule for the new building had been revised as they were a week behind, which was already ruffling some feathers. The Primate Man, as Erik called him in his head, was busy complaining, but Erik listened to him only with half an ear: Charles had not taken eyes off him since they had started, and Erik was finding it incredibly distracting.

Erik said, “The primate lab will be ready on time, so it will still be possible for the animals to be moved when we originally planned. There will simply still be some construction going on –”

“How do you expect my animals to react to the sounds of banging and drilling, Mr. Lehnsherr? Entire studies may be ruined because of heightened levels of stress.”

“The drilling would be taking place four floors above your lab, I should not think –”

But The Primate Man only threw his hands up and looked annoyed while Emma seemed oddly satisfied that Erik was the one getting yelled at. Erik somehow managed to recall the man’s name and said, “Professor Gillett, here’s what we’re going to do.” He proceeded to lay down the law from an estates perspective so thoroughly that the man seemed unable to conjure up a counter-argument. Erik then offered to reschedule so that the primate scientists moved in earlier and would put up with the drilling, meaning that the actual monkeys would move in only upon the completion of the building. “Someone has to put up with some drilling – now, will it be you or the monkeys?”

Someone in the room chuckled. Gillett pursed his lips. “In the name of science, it must be my colleagues and myself.”

“Okay, good. As long as we all know the hierarchy there.” He smiled at Gillett, who did not seem amused.

The rest of the meeting was spent in solving similar issues, but a part of Erik’s imagination was engaged in another matter. Charles had already been seated when he and Emma had arrived, and apart from a silent greeting as their eyes met, they had not been able to say hello. Charles did not seem to need the use of words, however – Erik felt a heightened awareness of Charles’s eyes on him, quite blatantly staring at Erik. It was a relief after a week of not seeing each other and Erik having worried that Marie’s attempts at mind games had messed up whatever he had with Charles.

Marie may have even been right: lying ever so slightly might have made Charles want him more.

Good.

Of course Erik was not sure that they had the same vision in their heads, but in Erik’s version Charles stood up and walked to the top of the room, grabbed his tie and pulled him into a mind-blowing kiss after which Charles bent him over the table and f*cked his brains out. The other people in the room miraculously disappeared at that point, and Charles would tell him how hot he looked taking his co*ck in the middle of the conference room.

As Erik’s mind played out this scenario, his mouth was busy ensuring the estate reps that the project would not fall further behind schedule. He ended the meeting quarter past five on the dot because he did not want to be late to the nursery already on a Monday.

He made a show of slowly packing away his belongings as the reps poured out of the room. Erik told Emma not to wait for him as he wasn’t heading back to the office and so she took off without him. Primate Man didn’t want Erik to go without further discussion, and so Gillett, Charles and Erik were soon the only ones left, Charles trying to do his best to discreetly linger in a casual manner.

“My monkey Gregory gets very nervous, you see,” Primate Man Gillett explained. Gillett glanced at Charles, who was clearly waiting for his turn, but Gillett seemed to decide that his issues took precedence.

“I understand,” Erik assured him, eyes darting to Charles. “We all have to make some adjustments to make the move go smoothly.” Gillett still wasn’t going anywhere. Erik started to feel annoyed. “I do appreciate that with the monkeys the move will be quite difficult. Just email me with any further questions, alright? Okay,” he said before Gillett could say anything more. “Dr Xavier, did you have questions?”

Gillett looked annoyed but picked up his satchel. As he walked out of the door, Charles said, “Yes, I was rather worried about my experiments, see I have gorillas and a giraffe and several blow up dolls, I can hardly have them be exposed to drilling.”

“Naturally,” Erik said, grinning openly now that they were alone.

Charles glanced towards the open door cautiously, clearly aware that anyone might walk in at any given moment. When he looked back to Erik, his blue eyes had that same intensity they had had during the meeting. “I think you should always lead the meetings, actually,” he said quietly. “You have a way of making monkeys sexy.”

“Well there’s a compliment,” he said and barely resisted the urge to kiss Charles. He appreciated discretion at work – he had no desire for Emma or Gillett or anyone else to know about his private life or the fact that he had finally broken a ten month celibacy streak. He said, “I’ve thought about you a lot the past week.”

Charles hummed quietly. “Me too.” Charles then glanced downwards in a gesture that Erik would have thought shy if it wasn’t for the upward turn of Charles’s lips, and Erik no longer cared. He stepped closer, one arm curling around Charles’s middle and the other tilting his chin up, and before Charles could react he had pressed his mouth against his. Charles recovered quickly, a hand coming to rest against the back of his head in what Erik liked to think was a possessive gesture. Erik’s heart seemed to grow in size as their lips moved over each other’s, thrilled that he once again had someone to kiss.

When their lips parted, he whispered, “Is it bad that I want to take you right here?”

Charles’s fingers pressed into his scalp. He quietly said, “Inconvenient, I think. But not bad.”

They seemed to go for the second kiss at the same time.

The number of times Erik had thought of kissing Charles since they last saw each other was rather ridiculous, but as their mouths pressed together and almost immediately opened up for a hot kiss in which their tongues met, Erik didn’t blame himself for having fantasised about this: Charles had the softest lips he’d ever kissed, and Charles instinctively applied the right amount of pressure, the perfect amount of tongue, leaving Erik’s head swimming. His co*ck responded with an awakening stiffness, their bodies pressing together –

Someone passed the conference room, talking on their phone, and Charles pulled back swiftly. Charles wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, looking a little taken aback – Erik had had plenty of kisses in his lifetime, but a kiss like that…

He stared, a buzz of desire burning in him. He wanted Charles – he’d told Charles as much over Thanksgiving. Marie would have disapproved, he was sure, but the text had gone over as dirty talk easily enough. Erik wanted Charles in bed, of course, but his text had meant more than that: he wanted Charles rather completely, and sometimes that terrified him. Right then it didn’t. He said, “I gotta go, but I really don’t want to.”

“Wednesday’s not far,” Charles said lithely like he had patience, straightening Erik’s tie and smoothing over it in a small motion that had Erik questioning his current action plan of keen/not-too-keen. Maybe he’d been more spot on in Australia when he’d proposed after a single night together.

He brushed the pad of his thumb against the bristle of Charles’s beard. “I look forward to our date.”

Charles smiled. “Yeah? Did your date last week go that horribly?”

Erik nearly asked what date Charles was talking about before he realised that he supposedly had time as a single parent to continuously find new people to date – yeah right. “It went atrociously,” he lied, and Charles said, “Too bad.” Charles sounded pleased, and Erik almost wanted to fess up that he’d never been on any date at all. “Who did you go with, then?”

Er…

“Emma,” he blurted out as she was the first person to come to his mind, but god no, he wasn’t dating Emma even in his imagination. “Had a friend. A friend of Emma’s. Not much to write home about.”

“I’m not particularly distraught,” Charles said with a flirtatious smile, and Erik wanted to kiss him all over again, but held back. He should play this cool, just play it cool…

Outside in the corridor a woman was waiting at the lifts, glancing at them as they arrived side by side, smiling at each other. Charles cleared his throat and said in a professional voice, “I expect to see those schedule amendments in my inbox nine o’clock sharp.”

Erik wondered what scenario this was, where Charles was the boss of him, but he very much liked the idea of Charles bossing him around and getting him on his knees. “I will try my best.”

“Don’t try,” Charles said, walking backwards to where Erik by now knew Charles’s office must have been. “Do.”

Erik raised an eyebrow at him, but Charles only smirked before turning back around. It was a very good view, watching Charles Xavier walk away.

In the lift the woman said, “What a slave driver, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Erik agreed. “He’s the worst.”

He got to the nursery earlier than he had expected, and Shani appeared to be in a good mood – she was sleepy and docile, so Erik was in for an easy night. The manager Moira told him what they had done that day, adding, “And Shani did a lovely bumblebee with the finger paints too.”

Moira handed him Shani’s artwork that would now go on the fridge door next to all the other drawings and scribbles Shani had done in recent months. The paper had a yellow-black smudge in the middle of it. Erik supposed this was the bumblebee. “That’s great work!” he enthused and looked down at Shani at his feet, where she was clinging to his trouser leg. “Papa thinks this is great.” Shani beamed up at him in delight, and Erik grinned back at her.

Moira was fighting off a smile as Erik put the artwork in his satchel. She said, “It’s nice to see you smile, Mr. Lehnsherr.”

“Erik,” he said as he always did, and it was only after this automated response that he wondered why Moira didn’t think he usually smiled. Surely he did – right?

As he and Shani walked home, he hauled her onto his shoulder as she giggled gleefully and kicked her legs, and passers-by smiled at them in amusem*nt. Erik kept saying, “You have to say the magic word for me to put you down!” and Shani squealed and laughed. Erik thought that Moira was probably right: when he was picking Shani up from the nursery, it was usually at the end of a long, taxing day and thus he invariably looked stressed out, rushed or tired. He felt like he had a lot of energy that evening, however, and once they got home he put the bumblebee drawing on the fridge door before he heated up dinner from the night before. After a quick dinner Shani got a book from the living room and came running to him with it. “Bitte,” she said, and Erik was okay with them going for a book instead of Shani’s twenty-minutes of TV time.

They settled on the living room couch, and Shani sat in his lap as he read aloud to her. He paused to point out colours and to ask if she could see the purple flower or the green car. Shani loved this game and smiled winningly whenever she was doing particularly well, her eyes darting to him frequently to check if she had correctly identified the object. Moira might have been right that Erik was often grumpy when he got to the nursery, but this – spending time with his kid – was Erik’s favourite part of each day.

Erik was pleased that he had Shani in bed for eight o’clock – bang on time for once. She yawned and stretched under the covers as he lifted her skinny legs to fold the bottom end of the duvet under her feet like he knew she preferred. “Gute nacht, Herzchen,” he said and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Papi liebt dich.”

“Ich lieb’ dich auch,” she echoed and, although Erik wasn’t entirely sure that she grasped what the words meant, he loved her for saying them back to him anyway. But instead of leaving the room he crouched down beside her, his hand idly brushing her hair.

“Shani?” he said slowly, trying to formulate the words in a way that would make sense to a child. She stared at him with pale, curious eyes. “You know how… some girls like boys and some boys like girls. But girls can like girls too and boys can like boys or you can like both. Right?” He had even confused himself at this point, but Shani only nodded like this was the simplest thing for her to grasp. “And although Mommy and Papa were married for a while, girls can also marry girls and boys can marry boys. So you can like whoever you like, Shani, okay? Like take Papi. Papi likes girls, but Papi also likes boys.”

“Alfie is married to Spiderman,” Shani said like this was scandalous news, which seemed to be her only comment on her father having come out to her when she was aged three and a half. Erik knew that Alfie was the freckled brown-haired boy at the nursery.

“And that’s okay, Alfie and Spiderman can be married,” he said, and Shani nodded in agreement. “Although Papi might want to marry Spiderman too.”

Shani giggled, seemingly delighted by the thought. “You can’t!”

“I can’t?”

“Alfie would be sad,” Shani reasoned, and Erik made a show of looking pensive.

“Okay, okay. Papi will marry Postman Pat instead. Is that okay?”

“Okay,” she smiled, and Erik kissed her again and felt awfully grateful that he had a kid who was as bright as she was. If only coming out as bi to his parents would have been as easy back in 2001 – not that Shani would even remember half of this conversation the next day, but she rarely forgot an idea or a concept and she seemed to in no way struggle with the idea of various sexualities.

Erik did not intend for Shani to meet Charles any time soon, but he wanted to lay the groundwork there so that Shani had time to get used to the thought of Erik with adults that were not Ororo, Logan, Azazel or Marie. In order for this thing with Charles to go anywhere, it was vital that Shani reacted positively to it.

As he headed back downstairs to catch up on work, he mused that no one was born hom*ophobic, just like no one was born sexist. He had never thought of equality much before having a daughter, but by god having one had turned him into a feminist overnight, and he could only shame himself for it having taken so long. Shani would grow up to be a woman, and Erik was well aware of the disadvantage Shani was already facing based on her sex alone, and on top of that was of course the question of race, which meant that Shani’s position in society only became harder, all of which angered Erik greatly. He only hoped that the future generations – Shani’s generation – would be better than his own: more tolerant and open-minded. He hoped that Shani would get paid the same amount as a man for the same job, or the same as a white woman for that matter.

Well, he could hope. In the meantime he would fight every battle for Shani and make sure that no one ever made her feel like she was less than. (And god help those who ever made Shani feel bad – he would go after them with a vengeance.) Throw a bisexual dad into the mix of a society that was inherently a little sexist, a little racist and a little hom*ophobic, and Shani was bound for some confrontations down the line.

To him it was funny how his sexuality was never an issue when he was dating someone of the opposite sex: a woman and a man together – great, keep at it! He had not been in a relationship with a man since before Ororo, now over five years ago. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to have his sexuality questioned by random strangers, what it felt like to not be automatically accepted. He remembered the looks he and John sometimes got when they walked hand in hand in Vancouver, which was a very liberal city but even there Erik sometimes felt judged. He and Charles had got a few comments too back in the day, but quite frankly Erik had been too in love to care – and that one time they got cat-called was because they had started frenching in the middle of Brisbane and the guys laughing at them had done so in a teasing manner. Erik recalled Charles shouting “Can you blame me? Christ, look at him!” after them.

Charles was such a mix of old and new to Erik: both familiar and yet so unexplored, and Erik could feel that same rush he had felt nearly ten years ago. Charles wasn’t the daring youth Erik had met in Australia; it seemed that Charles had matured and was more serious-minded now. Erik liked that – he had settled down himself. And he was trying to be better this time, trying to keep his head on and not, god forbid, propose to Charles randomly out of nowhere. But when he thought of Charles, he felt warm and bright in a way he had not felt in a long while.

As he went to bed that night, he thought that they should go slow this time: not rush into anything but see where this thing with them could go.

Don’t fall in love too fast, Erik reminded himself. He couldn’t take those kinds of risks as freely anymore.

Erik did not follow his own advice at all.

“You did not!” he laughed, shoving Charles’s knee with his foot, causing Charles to laugh into a bowl of chow mein. “That is a made up story, Xavier – I call bullsh*t.”

Charles was sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed with sheets wrapped around his waist, eating the Chinese takeaway they’d ordered. Erik leaned against the headboard of Charles’s bed, having gotten Szechuan chicken for himself. He, too, was naked under the sheets, feeling more relaxed than he had in months and quite unable to stop grinning at Charles.

“Google it, I dare you: chin chin is penis in Japanese,” Charles repeated and went on with his story. “And so there I was with Kaito’s family, trying to say cheers when in fact I was yelling penis at his ninety-three year-old grandmother. We broke up a few weeks later.”

“And when you say we, you mean Kaito dumped you.”

“Yes, thank you for reminding me,” Charles said and glared at him playfully.

As far as dates went, this was definitely in the top five: deciding not to go to the restaurant where they had a reservation but instead telling the driver to head to Abercorn Place, where they had stumbled through the door kissing and undressing. One round of mutual org*sms later Charles had gotten out takeaway menus, and they had managed a second round as they waited for the food. Erik wanted every night to be like this – this good.

“Kaito’s still in New York, I think. Married another Japanese guy. Probably safer that way.”

“I should think so,” he grinned, and Charles flipped him off before going back to the food.

Charles spoke with food in his mouth: “What about you? What’s the worst date you’ve ever been on?”

“Easy,” he said. The first date after Charles had been the worst – the first proper one after the failed Oxford trip, anyway, when Erik realised that Charles was lost to him forever. Erik had slept around every now and then after he and Magda split, but none of those encounters constituted a date. Once he got to Vancouver he met Mabel, who had been one of the two girls on their civic engineering course and who had been beautiful as well as smart. Erik had felt a spark of interest beyond the physical in a long, long time. And so they had gone to dinner and a movie and they had gone back to her place and had great sex. That date had been the worst: Erik had realised that he would get over Charles. Give it time, and he’d be over it. The world had other amazing people in it, and eventually Erik would fall in love with someone else, maybe someone like Mabel.

He never called Mabel afterwards and a week later Mabel heard that Erik was sleeping with the one gay guy on their course. Erik didn’t feel bad about hurting Mabel like he had – he was too busy feeling sorry for himself: he’d get over Charles.

And that had been the worst date of his life.

Looking at Charles now, messy sex hair down to his jawline, sitting cross-legged on the bed, Erik realised he couldn’t tell Charles this. Erik had not thought of these things in years now, and Charles was reminding him of bad memories that Erik had suppressed a long time ago. He said, “This one date I went on had the girl’s ex-boyfriend show up halfway through to demand that they get back together.”

Charles laughed. “And did they?”

“Yup. She left then and there. I had to pay for her food, too.”

“Shameless,” Charles grinned, but something flickered in his eyes, and Erik stared at him expectantly, a silent ‘what?’ in the air. Charles said, somewhat reluctantly, “You never talk about men, really.”

“There have been men,” he said, feeling just a little bit annoyed. By now he was used to having to justify his bisexuality, but he didn’t like it coming from Charles. Neither did he see what the problem was, considering how within the past two hours they had already had sex twice.

“Did you miss being with guys when you were married?” Charles now asked, but his tone wasn’t one of speculation, thankfully. It was only curious.

“Well… yes and no, I suppose. No because that’s monogamy – you choose one person and all that comes with it. But I mean, sometimes I might be in the mood for something I couldn’t get. Like sometimes I missed sucking co*ck.”

“Huh. Well you know, I have a co*ck.”

Erik raised an eyebrow. “You do? Really?”

“I do. A pretty good one, actually.”

“You should’ve said something.”

“Ah, I’m modest, me.” They grinned at each other. Charles added, “I could offer it for your future co*ck-sucking urges.”

“How kind of you,” he said, and Charles grinned boyishly. Erik put his nearly empty bowl on the nightstand and said, “Let’s see this offering, then.” Charles quirked an eyebrow, but Erik met the gaze evenly: it was a dare. He patted his thigh in a ‘come here’ motion, and Charles put his bowl on the floor before moving up the bed, letting the sheets fall down from his waist. Charles was gorgeous naked: his thighs were strong and donned with a dust of light brown hair, and his pubic hair was darker, decorating the base of his generous co*ck. Erik swore he could have spent hours exploring every inch of him and still been able to find new things that turned him on.

Charles now straddled his thighs, the weight of him pressing Erik’s legs into the mattress, buttocks resting on his knees. (And god, Erik didn’t even know where to begin when it came to Charles’s perfectly shaped behind…) Charles stayed still, waiting, and Erik cleared his throat in a professional manner. He took a firm hold of Charles’s co*ck, bending it left, right, up and down in faux examination. “Huh,” he said, giving it a few experimental tugs as Charles began to harden under his touch. He shrugged. “Meh.”

“Meh?” Charles repeated indignantly.

“I mean, it’s not the best dick I’ve ever seen. I’d like some foreskin,” he said, letting his thumb slowly circle the co*ckhead.

“Says the Jewish boy,” Charles noted dryly.

“The Jewish boy who was repeatedly taunted for his lack of foreskin in the showers after PE. When I was thirteen, all I wanted was foreskin. I’m pretty sure I even prayed.”

“Little Erik Lehnsherr praying for foreskin,” Charles grinned before leaning down, mouth hovering over his. “I think you’re fine without.”

“You Americans with your irrational hatred of foreskin,” he whispered, relishing the fact that Charles was now nearly fully erect in his hand. Charles tried to go for a kiss, but Erik averted his mouth, smiling. “You were the first foreskin-less man I’d been with, you know. I wasn’t converted.”

“Aw, f*ck off,” Charles laughed, and they pressed their smiles together as he began to stroke Charles. Charles made an appreciative noise at the back of his throat, hips shifting restlessly. Christ, Erik felt intoxicated by the simple act of sex – how could he have forgotten how great this was?

“Still,” he said, lips brushing against Charles’s, “it’s a f*cking gorgeous co*ck.”

“Oh I know,” Charles said before deepening the kiss, and Erik felt hot fire boiling up in him – again.

The next steps were almost automatic now: Charles grabbed a condom from the opened pack on the nightstand (ribbed for enhanced pleasure), and they shifted on the bed, getting the sheets out of the way as they kissed hungrily, Erik spread beneath Charles. Once the condom was on, Charles settled between his spread legs, hands on the backs of his thighs. He gazed up at Charles, by now hard himself. He grabbed the lube and poured some onto his palm, spreading the substance onto Charles’s erection and rubbing the rest onto himself where he was already wet and open from round one. When Charles had f*cked him the first night, Erik hadn’t bottomed in years, and frankly he’d forgotten how good it could be. Now he was nothing if not willing to make up for lost time.

Charles pushed into him slowly, and Erik bit on his bottom lip to stifle a groan. This evening’s proceedings had been easier than the first’s, when the stretch had burned more sharply – Erik had welcomed it, however: sucking co*ck wasn’t the only thing he’d sometimes missed. And Charles did have a great co*ck, thick and long, and Charles had a fat co*ckhead that made the first push feel challenging, but god Charles filled him up perfectly. Charles steadily slid in deeper, and Erik relished the sensation of Charles entering him.

Charles stopped when he was buried to the hilt. “Christ, you’re so tight,” he said, voice low. Erik ran a hand on Charles’s chest and stomach, the skin warm, muscles underneath tensed. As Charles began to move, Erik arched his back, taking the waves of pleasure the best he could.

Charles leaned over him, and his legs moved to brace Charles’s sides. Their mouths met in an open, wet kiss, and Charles’s hand moved over his throat as he kept f*cking him with deep, steady thrusts. Erik groaned, hands on Charles’s back as Charles’s mouth moved to his jawline, teeth scraping the skin. Charles’s hand on his throat had a primitive effect on him, one of surrender – Erik felt trapped and unable to move against the pressure, and somehow that turned him on even more.

“That good?” Charles asked, lips pressed to the shell of his ear.

“So good,” he breathed as Charles went harder. He moaned, teeth gritting together. The hand Charles had on his throat slid to the back of his head, and as Charles used his other hand to prop himself up, they stared at each other as they f*cked. Charles’s blue eyes were alight with want, pupils just a little dilated. Charles’s mouth was open, mouth red from all the kissing they had done, and Erik could not recall anything as sexy as this visual of Charles taking him.

Every time he saw Charles, he wanted to rip his clothes off and f*ck. That might prove inconvenient as far as work was concerned.

Charles grabbed his right leg, hand sliding up the back to his knee. “Lift,” Charles ordered, leaning back up. Charles grabbed his ankle as Erik moved his right leg over to rest against his left, his lower body twisting to the side. Charles stayed deep in him and moved back over him as he picked up the rhythm more ruthlessly than before. Erik grabbed the back of Charles’s head and pulled Charles closer, his tongue swiping at the seam of Charles’s lips before Charles kissed him back.

Right then Erik could forget all the reasonable, rational things he’d told himself regarding Charles: that this wasn’t like ten years ago, that they should take it slow, that he had to think of his responsibilities as a father first of all… All of that was nonsense to him now. The easy, organic nature of their relationship from ten years ago was still there – finding himself in Charles’s bed made more sense to him than anything, and Erik didn’t want to take this slow at all: he wanted Charles. He wanted to stay, spend the night, wake up next to Charles and do this all over again. Hell, did Charles want to rush to the airport, get on the first plane out of London, and elope? (Okay, stop on the way to pick up Shani, of course.) Because that sounded good to Erik.

They were still kissing when Erik felt the climax building up, and he reached down to work on his swollen co*ck. “I’m gonna come,” he grasped against Charles’s mouth, palming his erection hastily, and Charles groaned, “Oh yeah? You gonna come for me?”

“Yeah,” Erik replied breathlessly – f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, Charles should not be allowed to say sh*t like that. Charles’s lips grazed his, hips slamming fast and hard against Erik, hot co*ck pushing Erik open with each thrust. Erik was sensitive as it was, and everything felt all the more intense because of it.

Erik pushed his ass out the little he could, offering himself even more, and Charles’s co*ck hit his prostate spot on. He swore heavily, giving the game away because Charles said, “You want it there, huh?” and all he could say in response was, “Yes, yes –” and Charles f*cked him hard, hard, so hard. His eyes slipped shut as his org*sm built up, and Charles’s mouth hovered over his cheek, hot, erratic breaths washing over his skin. His muscles suddenly squeezed around Charles’s length, his body tensing up, the hand on his co*ck working fervently as strips of come erupted, his entire groin pulsating with pleasure. There wasn’t much come – he’d gotten off twice already that day. But his body still shivered in pleasure, his balls drawn up tight as his co*ck pulsed in his hand. Charles caught his lips hungrily, and Erik breathed into his mouth – oh Christ, he didn’t want to take this slow.

Charles came after a few more thrusts, biting on Erik’s bottom lip as Erik rubbed the back of his neck. Charles shivered above him, groaning, voice low and rough. “You feel so good,” Charles breathed, their foreheads pressed together. He thrust in a few more times in the aftershocks, and Erik loved the thought of Charles coming deep in him – even with the latex in between there was an intimacy to the act.

Charles pulled out slowly and collapsed beside him, his uneven breaths sounding loud in the room. Erik shifted and stretched his legs out on the bed once more, feeling empty and sore – his hole felt wet with lube, a sensation that he’d almost forgotten about. He’d feel this tomorrow, perhaps the day after too, and he couldn’t wait to be reminded of this moment on the days he didn’t see Charles.

Charles disposed of the used condom and then reached down to rub his softening erection. “Aw Christ. My dick is actually sore right now.”

“It is?” Erik laughed, and Charles hummed, adding, “You’re too tight.”

“Are you complaining?” he asked disbelievingly, pulling on Charles’s arm and Charles followed the tug willingly.

They kissed slowly with Charles hovering above him before Charles was on the move, leaving kisses on his chin, his throat, his chest. Charles kissed away the drops of come on his stomach, tongue sliding across his navel, gathering up the drops of white substance as he looked up at Erik. “That should not be allowed,” Erik said, and Charles grinned against his stomach before taking his softening co*ck into his mouth. Erik jerked in surprise, and Charles sucked on him a few times, tongue licking away the sem*n at the crown. Charles then pulled back with a wet pop, and Erik asked, “Satisfied?”

“Never,” Charles said and kissed him – Erik tasted himself on Charles’s tongue. God, he had to be careful with a man like Charles…

They settled on the bed once more, kissing lazily in the afterglow as they faced one another. Erik ran his fingers along Charles’s cheek, enjoying the post-org*sm buzz.

“I think we should be pretty proud,” Charles then said. Their legs had entwined, and Charles was lazily stroking the small of his back. “We still f*ck like we did ten years ago, but I’m pretty sure we’re past our sexual peaks now.”

“I really hope you’re not expecting me to keep this up,” Erik deadpanned. “I’ll have to resort to Viagra if you expect me to be hard for you all the time.”

“Ah, but you are,” Charles said smugly, hand reaching down to cup his co*ck. Sure enough his spent dick suddenly showed a sign of interest that had Erik jerking because he felt too sensitive to be touched. Charles grinned victoriously and let go of him before reaching for the nightstand. “You want a cigarette?”

“You smoke?” he asked, nuzzling Charles’s shoulder blade.

“What, and you don’t?” Charles returned, having produced a cigarette from the top drawer. He lit it with a plastic lighter and lay back down. Erik propped himself up on an elbow and stared down at Charles sucking on the cigarette, naked and warm and post-coital.

He brushed stray hairs just at the hairline of Charles’s forehead. “I have a three-year-old. I don’t smoke.”

“You used to.”

“Weed maybe, not cigarettes. Can’t afford to gamble with my health in any case,” he said but still took the cigarette when Charles offered it. Just this once…

“I don’t smoke, not really. Warren got me back into it,” Charles said, and Erik breathed in the nicotine and thought, well, the cat’s out of the bag: Charles had said it.

But Charles didn’t seem aware of what he’d said, and Erik didn’t manage to make himself ask. He didn’t want it to be the wrong answer.

After they’d finished smoking, Erik realised that he was running late. “I don’t want to keep Marie waiting,” he said as he kissed Charles and got out of bed. He started getting dressed as Charles lit a second smoke.

“Who’s Marie?” Charles said after a short pause.

Erik zipped himself up. “Shani’s babysitter. She’s a gift.”

“Marie. Marie. An old lady sounding name, isn’t it? So this Marie is, what? Sixty odd?”

“She’s twenty-two,” he said with a quirked eyebrow at Charles, who flicked the cigarette over the mug on the nightstand that was serving as an ashtray.

“A cute twenty-two?”

“Charles?”

“Yes?”

“Are you asking me if I’m f*cking my babysitter?”

“I never said that,” Charles said with a scientific air that amused Erik. “I only wondered if she was the pretty sort. Maybe you looked up her skirt every now and then like the dirty old man you are.”

This, Erik thought, was rather interesting. He finished buttoning his shirt and said, “You have a sick imagination.” He went to Charles’s side of the bed and sat down. He began to pull his socks on.

Charles dropped the cigarette in the mug although he wasn’t done with it. He said, “Okay. I just wondered.”

And now was Erik’s moment to ask. He looked at Charles sitting there with mussed sex hair and swollen lips, and god he wanted to be the only one. He wasn’t good at sharing. He didn’t want there to be others. “What about Warren?”

Charles’s expression didn’t change. “What about him?”

“Well, I mean. I thought he was your boyfriend, but ah. I guess not.” At least he hoped not, considering what they’d spent the past few weeks doing: first the sex, then all the flirtatious texting, now a second date that had turned into another f*ck fest… “I mean… you said it was an arrangement?” he said, and Charles nodded. “Right. Is it a serious arrangement?”

Charles reached over to brush his lower lip with the pad of his thumb, eyes focused on his mouth. Erik waited. Charles said, “No.”

A sense of relief and joy washed over him – a victory won. “Good,” he said casually, but with a grin he couldn’t hold back. Charles was studying him, and as Erik didn’t want to dwell on Others now that he knew there were none, he added, “I think that I could make a habit of this.”

Charles’s smile flickered before he sighed, briefly rubbing at his nose. “It’d be a good habit. Huh. Well if you insist on going, let me show you to the door.”

The kiss they shared in the hall lingered – Erik was back in his work suit and Charles was completely naked, and his skin was warm, and he smelled so good, and Erik could feel Charles still in him, and Erik was a goner.

Never mind slow. Never mind caution.

Erik said bye at least three times, kissing Charles repeatedly before finally tearing himself away. Charles grinned against his mouth and almost pushed him out of the door in the end, and Erik stumbled into the stairwell, a winning grin on his lips. “Bye,” he said with a foolish smile on his lips – four goodbyes.

“Go home, you co*ck slu*t,” Charles deadpanned and slammed the door shut. Erik stared in surprise and then burst out laughing.

Outside the world was cold and dark, and for once no one was taking pictures outside Abbey Road Studios when he passed it. He was almost at St John’s Wood station when his phone buzzed in his pocket: Eating cold Chinese food by myself. I think I liked it better when you stayed.

Erik smiled at the screen and typed in: Next time.

Because there would be a next time. And a time after that and a time after that…

Unsurprisingly he was in a fantastic mood when he got home a bit after eleven. He opened and closed the front door quietly and then made his way to the kitchen, finding Marie typing away on her laptop by the table. She had notes and books all around her and a big mug of coffee steaming, but she looked up at him with a smile when he entered. “Here I was thinking you’d never –” she started, stalled, and then looked scandalised. “You ho.”

“Excuse me?” he asked disbelievingly.

“Oh please, I can recognise an org*sm glow a mile away, and you’re as bright as a Christmas tree. I thought you were going out for dinner.”

“Well, we uh – we skipped that,” he admitted, and Marie looked him up and down with a raised eyebrow. Ah, nothing like getting judged by someone ten yours younger than him… He cleared his throat and said, “I’ll go check on Shani.”

Marie was packing up by the time he got back downstairs – it was too late for her to stay. He called a taxi for her because he didn’t want her wandering the streets of London alone, even if she assured him that she’d be perfectly alright.

As they sat in the living room waiting for the taxi to arrive, Marie asked, “So will there be a lot of these late night babysitting requests in the future?”

“I hope not,” he said, thinking of the guilt he felt for abusing her kindness, but then he realised that that wasn’t what Marie had meant. “Oh you mean Charles? Um, yes. I’ll be seeing more of him.” He would definitely see more of him. “But I can try to fix it for when Ororo has Shani.”

“It’s a f*ck buddy arrangement, is it?”

“What? No,” he objected, feeling rather insulted.

“Katelyn had this exact problem,” Marie mused. “She was seeing this one guy all the time, always went to his place to get her taco stuffed, and she thought that the guy was her boyfriend, but I said: ‘Katelyn, if you only ever see the inside of his bedroom, he ain’t nothing but a walking penis.’ And sure enough, when she pressed him to actually take her out, he started mumbling that he wasn’t ready to commit.” Marie scoffed. “Walking penis.”

Erik said, “What an insightful tale.”

Marie shrugged. “If you don’t leave the bedroom, that’s what he is.”

“I’m keeping Charles separate from the rest of my life for now,” he said. “The bedroom suits me just fine.” Marie scoffed, and he added, “Look, I’m not gonna bring Shani into it before it’s progressed to a more serious level.”

But he knew that Shani was an excuse, however. Erik felt hungry for Charles, jealous of the nine years that they had missed. He wanted to hear Charles’s stories and adventures, he wanted secrets and confessions, he wanted kisses and laughs and f*cks and cuddles and snogs and org*sms, he wanted more of Charles exclusively all to himself. Once he’d been satisfied, maybe he’d share.

“Shani’s got to meet him at some point, though, doesn’t she? And I mean, this Charles likes kids, right?”

“Of course,” Erik said just as they saw the taxi pull up outside. It was only after the front door closed behind Marie that Erik realised that he had no idea what he was basing this assumption on. Although Charles had expressed an interest in Shani’s general well-being, this did not mean that Charles was in any way willing to start seriously dating someone with so much baggage.

Shani wasn’t baggage. Erik refused to let anyone ever make him feel like that.

But Erik wasn’t very datable. He didn’t have half of the freedoms that people without children still dating at the age of thirty-two had. And Erik had to be pickier because he had more deal breakers – his daughter was one of them.

What he and Charles had right now was great, but it wasn’t sustainable. He needed someone who was willing to join his family, someone who wanted to bring Shani up with him. Sex and takeaways had to give way to tantrums and stomach flus, but maybe that didn’t have to be so bad. Along those things would come the intimacy he now craved for, and better things like sharing his bed with Charles, running a joint life together, knowing each other inside and out, and there could still be sex and takeaways too – and hopefully often.

Erik felt somewhat resentful as the realisation dawned on him that Top Gear obsessed Toby had been right when he’d persistently told Erik to find Shani a surrogate mother. Some twelve months after his divorce, Erik wasn’t simply courting Charles: he was shopping for a husband.

Chapter 5: Five

Chapter Text

Five

Charles wrote labels for the next batch of two hundred samples on a lab afternoon during which he announced his plans to propose to Warren. Hank had been stuck with a tedious task of copying data from one programme to the next, flicking between two screens on his MacBook. As they were occupied with Hank’s copying and pasting and Charles’s sticker-labelling, they talked about their weekend plans. Hank was flying to Brussels where a friend of his was getting married. “Apparently her engagement ring cost over two big ones.”

“Christ,” Charles said, “I spent six hundred on Warren’s and I thought that was plenty.”

And then he had said it and could not take it back. Hank’s entire face lit up as he congratulated Charles on the impending engagement, and then all the questions came. Charles told Hank of proposal plans: on New Year’s Eve, maybe, which they would spend in Aspen for Scott’s bachelor party, or perhaps on their third anniversary, which was close to Valentine’s Day anyway, or perhaps on Warren’s thirtieth birthday. He wanted it to be meaningful, whatever he went for.

Hank asked, “Are you nervous of what he’ll say?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. He was rather confident that Warren would say yes, but the act of asking was still nerve-wrecking. He briefly thought of Erik’s courage in proposing to him back in Australia. It took a lot of guts to admit that you had put all of your hopes and dreams in this one person, and he realised that the prospect of proposing to Warren excited him. He was relieved because lately he had started to question even that.

After the second time Erik had visited St. John’s Wood and Charles had… digressed, Charles had received a call from Warren within thirty minutes of Erik departing. Charles hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet: he had lain there on the come-stained sheets, naked and sated in the post-sex buzz, and as he lied that he’d spent his evening watching history documentaries he had wondered if he could actually love Warren given the scenario he found himself in. He of course knew that he loved Warren more than anyone, so how could he justify the cheating?

And so he had panicked that perhaps he did not love Warren, that he had somehow been tricking himself for several years, but as he and Hank now talked, Charles knew that he continued to be in love with his boyfriend who was also, hopefully, his husband-to-be. Charles’s infidelity could not be reconciled with these feelings – his actions with Erik did not follow any rational pattern that he could discern. Maybe Erik was his big freak out before making a life-long commitment to Warren; maybe Erik was the mistake he needed to make (and then cover up) before marriage, maybe Erik was just great sex – whatever the reason was, Charles had gone too far with Erik to justify it as a one-off lapse in judgement. It was an affair now, not a hook up. Charles was aware of this. Mostly he tried not to think about it.

“You two seem meant for each other,” Hank said kindly, and Charles said that they were.

After work he met Raven, who was coming to see a French film with him. Before the screening they headed for some Indian food near the cinema, and as they waited for their pakoras Raven asked what the movie was about. Charles told her that it narrated the struggles of a 1930s French farmer who was facing a bad harvest.

Raven groaned dramatically. “That sounds awful! I am not happy about being your Warren replacement.”

“He’d hate this movie just as much as you’re about to,” Charles assured her with a grin. “He says hi, by the way.”

Raven waved at Charles. “Hi Warren.” Charles smirked. Raven said, “Hey, which one of my paintings should I give him for Christmas? Can you help me choose? I’m stuck between two.”

Charles knew that he would go with whichever painting he would rather have in their living room in the long run. When Raven excused herself to the ladies’ room between their starter and main, he texted Warren: Spoiler alert: Raven is giving you a painting for Christmas – again. Start practising your surprised face. x

His phone buzzed almost instantly, and Charles grinned in expectation, but it wasn’t Warren. Instead Trevor had texted him: Free tomorrow afternoon? Charles glanced up: Raven was nowhere to be seen. His pulse had picked up, which was ridiculous – three words and his entire body seemed to react.

Was he free? He had intended to head to the sports centre for some squash as it was a Saturday, but now that seemed like a terribly dull idea. He could still lie about going, though. Yeah, that’d be easy. He replied with: What did you have in mind?

The waiter came with their food, and Charles hastily directed the sag paneer onto Raven’s side of the table. Another beep: Meet me at the entrance of Highgate tube station, 1pm, and find out.

Another nervous glance, he was still safe – I’ll see you there.

Raven returned after another minute. “Oh my goodness, this smells delicious! Yours looks pretty yum – What are you smiling about?” She eyed him suspiciously.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said with a frown and a chuckle that sounded too forced. His phone on the table buzzed. Raven’s eyes read the upside down name of the sender: it was Warren.

“Argh, you two are disgusting,” she bemoaned. “If I find out you’re sexting, I will throw up.”

“We are not sexting,” he objected, now reading the message: Another painting? Well maybe it’ll be worth some Monet someday. ;) Charles snorted at the screen, and Raven groaned, the indication clear that his inside jokes with Warren were not appreciated. “I just miss him, is all,” he said defensively and meant it as well. Warren always knew how to make him laugh, and at that second he wanted to go home and find Warren there waiting for him, then snuggle on the couch and watch TV, go to bed early, follow it up with morning sex, and wonder silently how he had ever let someone else into their bed. Then all of this would seem like a dream, all of this guilt and second-guessing gone, and only the perfect clarity of knowing who Charles wanted to be with would be left.

No such luck, however.

“Oh, and I thought our love gave you hope?” he then noted.

“Pfft, I was drunk. Now I’m sober and find your love irritating and obnoxious.” He stared Raven down and she gave in. “Okay, we both know I adore him, really.” She picked up the cup of rice and began spooning some onto her plate. “Thank goodness he came along, too – you were rather the slu*t before, man-hopping from one looker to the next. God knows you’d still be single if it weren’t for him.”

“Such high praise,” he said dryly.

Raven asked Charles to come by the following afternoon to help her choose a painting, but Charles said he would be busy checking out the sports centre nearby. She called him a bore and a loser as Charles thought to himself that he ought to buy some more condoms before seeing Erik again.

Erik was waiting for him by the entrance of the tube station on Archway Road. The early December day was cold and gloomy, Charles’s breath rising in the air, but he felt neither gloomy nor cold as he came up the stairs to street level. Erik had his grey double-breasted coat on, the collar turned up against the wind. His leather satchel was missing, but he wore black gloves, a smart burgundy scarf, and looked stunning. Charles’s stomach flipped at the sight of him.

They greeted one another with a kiss on the cheek that was relatively fleeting and not necessarily overtly sexual or intimate, but the way Erik looked at him, however, was: a victorious and knowing smile on his lips that somehow felt like it was only for him. God, those kinds of smiles were dangerous.

“You look great,” Charles said, and Erik said, “Hardly.”

Charles wondered which direction Erik’s place was in. He hoped it wasn’t too far so that they could get to bed faster, especially since he had promised Warren to be on Skype in a few hours’ time.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Erik then said without innuendo, which somewhat confused Charles. Erik motioned him to follow, and together they crossed the street.

A few minutes from the station was a quaint looking café that was packed on a Saturday afternoon, but they managed to get a table at the back. “You’re gonna love this place – best brunch in London,” Erik said as they settled down, and Charles adjusted to this development: brunch, then sex. Well, why not.

Erik went for the French toast and Charles for Eggs Florentine. The roast coffee was dark and rich, and Charles relaxed as they began to talk. If Erik was going to be The Big Mistake that he would inevitably have to break off (he was very much aware that every affair had a certain lifespan), Charles might as well enjoy Erik’s company while it lasted.

And so, before he knew how it had come up, he was telling Erik the story of the time when, at the age of fifteen, he had gotten drunk on eggnog before the big Christmas dinner – quite accidentally, of course. He had thrown up before dessert, right there in the dining room in front of his mother, stepdad and stepbrother, after which he had said, “That’s all folks!” Erik was busy laughing, and Charles was able to laugh too as the incident had stopped being mortifying thanks to the passage of time. In turn Erik ended up telling the story behind the small anchor tattoo on his left ankle, which Charles had noted already on their first night together. Long story short: Erik had been drunk in Cuba. An anchor was alright, though; he could have just as easily picked a penis tattoo in that state.

Their food arrived, smelling divine, and the Eggs Florentine were superb – some of the best he’d ever had, even. He really ought to bring Warren to the café sometime as it was just his kind of place with an authentic continental twist. Erik talked about work and gave some gossip on the icy Ms Frost whom Charles had already started to fear just a little bit, and Charles briefly thought how lucky he was that out of all the people in the café he was the one sitting with Erik.

Once they were done Erik insisted on paying, and when he objected, Erik said, “You’ll get it next time.” Charles grudgingly agreed.

The winter day felt significantly less cold when they re-emerged onto the street, now warmed up by coffee and food. Erik said, “Right, I need to go to a shop this way – maybe ten minutes’ walk, I reckon. That alright?”

“Okay, sure. What we shopping for?”

“Hanukkah presents,” Erik said with an apologetic smile. “That time of the year again.”

Charles was well aware of this: it felt like the holiday season had felt very nauseous and thrown up all over London with glitter and lights and reindeer ornaments. Christmas trees had appeared in shopping centres and ice skating rinks had landed in parks overnight.

As they walked Charles wondered if someone he knew would see them together. He couldn’t think of anyone he knew in this neighbourhood, however, and London was a city of millions. As a scientist, he could figure out the non-existent odds. He decided to stop worrying – it was a nice day, he had excellent company, and even if someone saw them together then, well, as chess club members why couldn’t they brunch? It was fine.

Charles would have missed the shop entirely if Erik hadn’t directed them to the door. The window said that they specialised in antiques, and Erik appeared to have spoken to the owner beforehand because the old man set out to get merchandise ready when they entered. They were the only customers in the small, dusty shop that smelled of old wood.

The elderly, vest-wearing owner placed two trays on the counter that were full of emerald jewellery. “My best ones,” he assured them in a strong, Germanic accent. “Die absolut beste.”

“Danke,” Erik said as he began to scrutinise the jewellery. To Charles he added, “Emerald is Mother’s birthstone. I think it’s all nonsense, of course, but she’s very fond of the idea.”

Charles was somewhat struck that he was accompanying Erik for the purchase of his mother’s Hanukkah present, and as the owner mentioned prices in German, Charles realised that these pieces were not exactly cheap either. They weren’t Warren’s-engagement-ring kind of prices, of course, but definitely more than Charles would invest in his own mother.

He felt like he had little right to be there, apart from the fact that Erik had invited him along. But when Erik said, “What do you think?”, torn between a necklace and a pair of pendant earrings, Charles began to go through the pieces himself. He knew a little about gemstones because as a child, whenever his mother was going to Tiffany’s, he had begged to go along. He had loved seeing his mother choose her new diamonds and had always paid attention when the Tiffany experts had explained about the carats in the gold or the cuts of the gems. He now studied the items on offer and eventually picked out an emerald locket.

“I rather like this one,” he said, and the jeweller commended him on his taste.

“They all look the same to me,” Erik said with a hint of being overwhelmed by the choice, but took the pendant from Charles and studied it as the owner talked them through it and showed the maker’s mark on the back of the piece. Erik bought it five minutes later and Charles definitely thought he had made the right choice.

They walked back to Erik’s house from there, taking the long way through Queen’s Wood. London neighbourhoods were full of parks when it came down to it, some huge and some miniscule – this one was somewhere on the bigger side. Charles rather liked that the Wood was mainly a preserved woodland with paths zig-zagging through clusters of trees. They passed underneath tall, bare oaks as they followed the tarmac-covered path, while on the ground fallen leaves rustled in various shades of gold, brown and yellow. Charles talked about how Raven was a nightmare to buy presents for – it was impossible to guess what she was into at any given time.

“You could buy her some jewellery, maybe,” Erik said, nodding back to the way they’d come. “He’s got nice pieces in there – gives you a fair deal, too. That’s where we got Ororo’s engagement ring back in the day.”

“You did, huh?” he asked, trying to convey neutral interest. He looked down at their feet, walking in tandem. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his coat. “So why did you get divorced, then?”

It was an incredibly personal question, but one which he’d been pondering for weeks and especially recently.

“Many reasons,” Erik said lithely. Their pace was leisurely, perhaps even slow.

“Like?” he pressed on, and Erik glanced at him.

“You really wanna hear this?”

Did he?

“I do,” he said, and so Erik told him, and Charles didn’t like all that he heard.

Ororo had been dating some other guy when Erik met her, but it didn’t take him very long to snag her away. Erik had forgotten the man’s name – it had been something weird, Arkon maybe. Erik and Ororo had both been strangers in Vancouver as he was from Germany and she was from New York City. Neither of them had family anywhere near them, so maybe that was why they had moved in together after two months of dating. For his part, Erik had been in love. Both had wanted to leave Vancouver for new adventures, and when Ororo got funding to do research in Argentina, Erik had managed to find an engineering internship in Buenos Aires. “Ororo was always wanting to go to the next place, you know? Great, we’ve seen Vancouver, let’s go to South America. After a while she’d go, great, now we’ve seen Argentina. Where next? And I loved that – I was hungry to see more of the world, too.”

As they passed through the park Erik talked about their half-year in Argentina, followed by their time in New York, which had only lasted a few months. Ororo started feeling claustrophobic after that, and it was Erik who had decided on Cuba. “Cuba was always going to be a short-term solution, really. We only went there to decide where we really wanted to live.” They had called it their Cuban Spring, which sounded rather romantic to Charles. Both had agreed that southern climates suited them well, and they had some friends who had moved out to Los Angeles so they went westwards to join them. They might have settled down in LA for good – they were talking of buying a place, and Ororo had her foot in the door with one of the universities there whereas Erik had gotten a job with an electronics company that paid rather well. “And a few weeks into the job I came home and Ororo was waiting for me. Said we were having a baby. LA was over after that.”

“Why?” Charles asked. A few joggers ran past them while an old English sheepdog barked at them in delight, butt wiggling like it wanted to make friends. The dog’s owner yelled at his pet until the dog did a lazy turn and went back uphill.

“Well, like I said – we had no family out there, we only had each other,” Erik continued. “I wanted to be close to my parents, but Ororo doesn’t speak any German. The UK was a good compromise for us both. So we moved here, got new jobs, bought a house, got married – all in the space of seven months. Had our second anniversary somewhere in the midst of it all. Maybe our relationship stopped being good somewhere there, I really don’t know. I think we were still quite happy. Ororo was worried about having a child, she said it seemed like such a grown up thing to do. Well, any moron past puberty can breed – and if prehistoric cavemen could raise kids, so could we, I told her. And so we settled in a country that was new for us both. Shani’s got three nationalities, you know: American, German and Kenyan.”

“Kenyan?”

“Ororo’s half-Kenyan. Born in New York, mind you, but she went through this connect-with-your-roots phase in her teens. It was a lot of extra paperwork when Shani was born, but Ororo was adamant that Shani should be legally Kenyan too. The funny thing is that Shani’s only ever lived in Britain, but she’s not legally British, being the odd bird she is.” Erik grinned with fatherly pride. “Oh, and she’s half-Jewish to boot.”

They came to the end of the woodlands and emerged at the bottom of a street that had bungalows on both sides. They started walking up as Erik finally turned to the end of the relationship. “It was never the same after Shani was born. Ororo felt trapped – she said it herself, once. I couldn’t take much paternity leave, so she was alone in the house with Shani all day long, and she had nothing to do and she knew no one. She was depressed, I think, and I didn’t really pick up on that. I was so happy to be a dad again, I couldn’t wait to get back home, you know? And as I was busy being a dad, I was in turn a terrible husband. I didn’t pick up on anything until one day I came home to find Shani crying upstairs and Ororo crying downstairs. She didn’t want to be a mom. I felt like I’d forced her into it.”

Erik looked gloomy and closed off. “Don’t get me wrong, Ororo adores Shani. Ororo loves her more than anything, but it just – you know, what Ororo wants in life is not compatible with having a child. We tried being happier, we tried being a family. But at the end of the day she was just going through the motions, and well – all the usual stuff follows, really. We stop having sex, we stop being affectionate. We start bickering, we start fighting, we stop being friends. I end up sleeping in the study for weeks on end, and I think to myself that this is just a rough patch. It’ll get good again, we’ll get good again. I think of Argentina and Cuba and LA, I think of how much we used to make each other laugh. I think of all of that, playing it in a loop in my head when I try to fall asleep. Pretty sure no one ever told me marriage would be lonely. Pretty sure it shouldn’t be. Left here,” Erik said, guiding them. Erik was quiet for a while before going on – Charles realised this wasn’t something Erik had told very many people.

“When Shani started going to the nursery, Ororo was able to get on with her research, and things got better after that. I saw light at the end of the tunnel – do it for your daughter, you think. You don’t want your kid to have a broken home – Christ, she’s a year old. She doesn’t understand adult stuff, she’s innocent. What’s she done wrong?

So we keep trying. We have good times, we have bad times. Sometimes we feel like a real family, sometimes we feel happy – you know, for a day or an hour. Never for very long. And even though the worst is behind us, and we both know that, I think, we have irrevocably lost the people we fell in love with. I’m not in love with her anymore. She’s not in love with me. But we have this baby, this wonderful baby girl, so we hang on. It felt like playing house, you know like when you did when you were a kid? That’s what it felt like. And we’d exchanged vows to keep going when things were bad. Being married meant that we had to fight – those vows, though, they never mention how long we have to struggle for before it’s okay to give up.

And then a few weeks after our fourth anniversary – from when we got together, I mean – Ororo moved out. Shani was, god – a year and a half? Something like that. We both knew it was over, and I even helped her pack. It was a horrible day. We’d been up all night talking it over, arguing, Ororo had kept crying. I’d admitted that I didn’t love her like a husband should, and when she said that she wasn’t in love with me either – well, god, of course it hurt. That morning, as we packed some of her things, Shani kept looking at us worriedly. I swear she knew.

Thankfully we never had to fight over Shani. We both knew she’d stay with me.” Erik shrugged as they now headed downhill through the neighbourhood. “So why did we divorce? Many reasons. I guess the main reason is that we tried too hard to be people we weren’t. I definitely wasn’t a very good husband.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Charles said but it sounded rather bleak even as he said it. How the hell did he know? Oh, but he did, actually. “You were rather a good husband to me, at least.”

“Oh yeah,” Erik now said, expression brightening. “I suppose that’s true. Decent husband for one month. Up until, of course, I dumped you for my pregnant ex.”

“I think I did the dumping,” he said, and Erik scrunched up his nose and shook his head with a playful smirk. Charles scoffed. “Oh trust me, I definitely dumped you.”

“We can argue about that till the cows come home,” Erik said, and Charles rolled his eyes. “We’re here,” Erik then announced. They were nearly at the end of another street aligned with a row of redbrick houses on each side. A large tree at the edge of the pavement had branches hanging over the small front garden of the house that they now stood in front of, with a small white gate marking the start of a path to the door. The front was trimmed by hedges of perhaps four feet in height – tall enough to give the illusion of privacy. It was a cosy looking London house with two-floors and far nicer than Charles had imagined. Erik said, “A cup of tea to warm up?”

“Please,” he said and followed Erik in.

They entered a hallway where Erik punched a code into a break-in alarm. Halfway down the hall a living room opened to the left where Charles found a decorative early 20th century fireplace next to a large flat screen TV. Two couches faced the TV, and a bookcase and a chest of drawers aligned the wall shared with the hallway. The back of the living room opened straight into the kitchen, the two halves of the ground floor space separated by an L-shaped counter, which Erik now passed as he headed for the kettle. Charles followed, taking everything in: the kitchen had large windows and a door to an elongated back garden where Charles could see a swing set and a pink kid’s bike. Both the living room and kitchen had been decorated with cosy furniture that showed signs of wear, some items looking like nothing that Erik might buy – these, Charles figured, were things Ororo had bought. Erik took his coat off as he said, “Yeah, another thing – Ororo’s pretty well off. Her parents died in a plane crash when she was a kid, so she inherited a small fortune young. We never did a prenup.”

“No prenup?” he asked, and Erik shook his head.

“I wouldn’t have minded, but she didn’t want one. I think she was trying to prove something. So now I live in this house that is mine, sure, but I’ve paid little for it. Hardly feel like I’ve got the right to it either – my folks had simple jobs, we never had much money. It’s nice to be financially secure,” Erik mused as he put the kettle on, “especially with the childcare costs and the babysitting and all of it – I don’t have to count pennies. But do I feel guilty spending someone else’s money? Is this what they sold the tribal lands for?”

“You’ve lost me,” Charles said. As his initial taking in of the house faded, he noticed an overwhelming element: the presence of a child. In his head Erik had lived in some kind of a bachelor pad, sleek and modern, but this was far from it. Shani appeared to have taken over the place quite completely: the DVDs by the TV were Disney movies, by the front window was a child-sized plastic castle for a child to crawl into, the bunny rabbit and the dragon soft toys on the living room floor were likewise hers, accompanied by countless other toys that encircled the castle. The fridge door was covered in drawings and scribbles and splotches of colour on paper, as well as little fake awards from the nursery: ‘This award is for Shani for knowing ten different colours!’ By the sink were children’s plastic cutlery, a polka-dot food bowl and a purple tumbler. Yellow kid’s wellies had haphazardly been thrown close the garden door.

“How do you take your tea?” Erik asked as he poured the hot water into mugs.

“A splash of milk,” he said, not even paying attention much. He felt completely overwhelmed by the degree to which this house was a child’s house. Of course Erik was a dad, and Charles had seen Shani at the gallery briefly, but somehow the exact degree to which Erik’s entire life was taken over by his parenthood had escaped Charles. It now occurred to him that the times when he saw Erik were most likely the only times outside work that Erik wasn’t with his daughter. This was a rather alarming thought.

There was a little purple sock on the counter next to the kettle. No explanation. It was just there. The kitchen table was covered in bags from Toys R Us and the Disney store, and Charles realised that Erik had been using his child-free weekend to buy Hanukkah presents for Shani.

“Um, tribal lands,” Charles now repeated, trying to focus.

“Mmm,” Erik said, sipping on his tea and offering Charles his. They sat down at the table, and Charles undid his winter coat. A Powerpuff Girl sticker was stuck to the corner of the table. Erik said, “Ororo’s mother was the princess of a Kenyan tribe.”

“Sure, and I’m third in line for the throne.”

“Seriously,” Erik said, and Charles gaped somewhat. “It’s their money that bought this house and pays for Shani. When I think that the money’s for her benefit, though, I don’t feel as bad. She’s the granddaughter of a princess after all.” Erik smiled a bit stupidly at that. “Shani loves being told her grandmother was a princess.” And by the looks of it, Erik loved it too. Erik took a long sip from his tea and then said, “Okay, so that’s me. Warts and all. Now, how do we explain you?”

“Explain me?” he repeated in confusion.

“Yeah – how is it possible that you don’t have a husband by now? You’re intelligent, charming, hot. Don’t pretend you haven’t had suitors, you’ve definitely had them. I mean, I know I set the bar pretty high. Everyone else felt like a disappointment, huh?”

“Well, of course,” he said, matching Erik’s grin with his own, but he felt a strong and sudden aversion not to have this conversation. Before finding Warren, he had been notorious for his short-lived relationships, all of them failing within a matter of months. And when he met Warren his years of messy dating finally made sense because naturally Warren had been the one he’d been looking for. Warren had put his foot down, said ‘Here I am’, and Charles had needed that. He’d needed someone willing to fight for them.

That all had been before he’d started sleeping with Erik, of course. Charles could not glorify his relationship with Warren quite so easily anymore.

He now waved Erik off. “It’s all chance, isn’t it? There’s this one Smashing Pumpkins song I like, the lyrics go… ‘Love is who you know.’ Something like that.”

“Billy Corgan’s great.”

“Yeah, and he had a point, I always thought: the people you love, the person you end up with: it’s just who you happen to know. It’s not magic or destiny. It’s mathematical proximity.”

“Wow, romance really is dead,” Erik deadpanned, and Charles gave his ankle a kick under the table. Erik laughed, and Charles said, “I’m gonna wipe that stupid grin off your face.”

“You are?” Erik said, tone challenging. Charles recognised the suggestion in it.

Erik’s bedroom was the one place in the house that wasn’t covered in a child avalanche. The sheets were dark grey, the curtains a dark red, the carpet was beige. The mattress was firm under him, and Erik’s body was hard and solid atop him. As they kissed Charles moved further to the middle and something underneath made a loud squeaking noise – they both stopped.

“For f*ck’s sake,” Erik said, reaching into the sheets and retrieving a child’s shoe that was decorated with painted ladybugs. Erik threw it over his shoulder, and the shoe squeaked again as it hit the wall.

“The shoe squeaks?” Charles asked.

Erik looked embarrassed. “Yeah, the shoe squeaks. It, uh, encourages jumping and running.” Then Erik kissed him again, and Charles stopped caring that the shoe squeaked and focused on getting Erik naked as fast as possible.

If he’d been able to tell anyone at all about Erik or that afternoon, he would have said it had been draining emotionally and physically. Erik was very, very thorough in bed – “We’re not in a rush,” Erik said and, later, once their bodies were joined, “Slow, let’s go slow…”

It was draining not to let Erik cut in too deep, to get too close.

Charles was positively dazed when he made his way home that evening, on a steady high from the sex and the feel of Erik’s smile pressing against his mouth. He was several hours late, however, and he practised his story of how Trevor, their post-doc with whom he had gone to play squash, had insisted on going for food afterwards so that Charles could meet his wife Alice, and then his phone had died. He picked out the restaurant that they had been to and his food choices so that he could give these details to Warren, and the entire time he could still feel the ghost of Erik’s mouth on his, filling him with a persistent yearning.

If he’d been able to tell anyone at all about Erik, he would have said that Erik was a good man: something that Charles was beginning to realise he himself wasn’t.

They drove so far up the east coast of Australia that they ran out of large towns and began to pass places with populations of less than a thousand people. Erik thought that they were truly out in the wild. “This is the outback,” he said, but Charles only asked where they would spend the night.

They had a tent and sleeping bags, so the lack of a cultivated backpacking culture didn’t slow them down much. They made camp at a beach with swaying palm trees and turquoise water rolling onto white sand. The nearest town was called Wonga where they got a dozen beers from a supermarket and then hurried back to their camp and tried to drink most of them while they were still cold.

Erik noticed that Charles was quiet that day, although the weather was pleasant and the beach they had discovered was absolutely breath-taking. Erik tried to overcompensate with talking about whatever he could – his football team back in Germany, their recent change of coach – but Charles eventually said, “I’m going for a swim.” Erik let him and then watched the dot that was Charles as Charles swam too far out. Erik finished his beer.

He was lying in their tent, watching the shadows of palm leaves dancing on the canvas above, when he heard Charles returning. He wanted Charles to come inside, lie down next to him – just be there with him. Charles remained outside, however, and after a while Erik couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

Charles was sitting on a towel in his swimming trunks, shivering in the sun and having another beer. Erik sat next to him on the sand. Charles looked like the epitome of youthful virility: he looked exactly nineteen years old, with skin that had tanned to a soft brown, making the freckles on his nose, cheeks and shoulders more pronounced. Erik loved kissing them when they made love, although Charles didn’t like his freckles and Erik knew that. It was madness, in his opinion. Charles’s frame was full of quiet strength and tension, and Erik felt heady with desire just from looking at him. Charles wasn’t in the mood, however – he could sense that. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“Please,” he scoffed somewhat angrily.

Charles glared at him, and Erik felt a distance between them that was unfamiliar to him. He wasn’t going to drop this, and eventually Charles sighed. “Well,” Charles then said, “this is it. This is the farthest we’ll go.” He motioned at the beach before them. “We’re turning back after this.” Charles took a long sip of the beer.

“I know,” Erik said. He’d tried to not think about it.

Charles said nothing for a long time, only finished his beer with a distant look in his eyes. The sand was golden in the sunlight and its contrast with the blue of the ocean was dazzling: this paradise was the end of their world. They’d turn back south the next day: Charles needed to catch his flight back to England.

“I’ll be back in Germany soon enough.”

“Yeah? How soon?” Charles asked and finally met his gaze. A few months – they both knew that. Charles then sighed and some of his anger seemed to fade. He looked grave. “I wish you’d just come with me.”

“I can’t bail out on Telford and Kurt. I’ve told you that.” Erik ran a hand through Charles’s wet hair, pushing stray hairs behind his earlobe. “You’re giving the wait too much power,” he said, moving to sit closer to Charles. He pressed a kiss to Charles’s shoulder – he tasted like the sea. “Imagine us fifty years from now. You think two months is that big a deal?”

“You can’t belittle the present with the notion of an unlived future.”

“Try reasoning with an Oxford scholar, Christ.” He was hoping to make Charles smile, and he got half a smirk. Good.

Charles then leaned in, and their foreheads touched. Charles quietly said, “I love you.”

“I love –”

“No, listen. I love you. When I – when I think of how much I love you, I know I can never love another. Okay? I’m ruined from here on out. I’m yours, and when I’m not with you, I’m just half a thing. I’m going to return to England broken. Do you get that?”

Maybe someone else might have been taken aback by Charles’s declaration – someone else might have told Charles that it was far too soon to be saying such things when only yesterday they had officially known each other for three weeks. Erik, however, understood him completely. He pulled back and studied Charles carefully, the blue of Charles’s eyes fierce and bright. He brushed his fingers against the freckles of Charles’s nose, over the bump on the ridge where the nose had broken when Charles was a child. Charles was so beautiful, and Erik felt his chest tighten just looking at him. God, he’d gotten lucky. “I get that.”

He felt the same way.

Charles’s hand came up to the side of his face, caressing. “Okay.” He sighed. “Christ, I’m so in love with you.”

Erik smiled and placed a quick peck on Charles’s nose, but Charles pulled him into a passionate kiss instead.

They were both moody that final week: deliriously happy one moment, broken hearted the next. Two months was not a long time to wait for each other, Erik kept saying, and Charles often agreed: two months was not long.

After all, what could possibly go wrong in such short a time?

The radio in the café was playing The Smiths: I know it’s over, still I cling, I don’t know where else I can go…

To say that Morrissey was a f*cking downer was about right. Charles was pretty sure he and Erik had had that conversation back in Australia too, discussing the emotional landscape of the musician, and it was Erik who had made him realise that the true value of The Smiths was that they gave people with social anxiety a unifying figurehead. Charles had never thought of it like that before.

Erik had always gotten under his skin. Charles had forgotten that since Australia: Erik made him question how well he knew himself. The days after their Highgate date passed in a nagging worry as Erik’s words haunted him: how do we explain you? Charles had meant what he’d said in reply, quoting that Smashing Pumpkins song and all of it. But he hadn’t answered Erik’s question of why he wasn’t married honestly. He wasn’t married, sure, but with a joint mortgage and an engagement ring ready, he might as well be.

Bobby Drake got to the café ten minutes late, waved at him and headed to the counter, and Charles eyed his watch in dismay. Bobby was never very punctual, so Charles really couldn’t be too annoyed. A lunch date was breakfast for someone who worked in clubs until the early hours of the morning. Charles had gotten the soup of the day – spicy lentil – and as he waited for Bobby to grab his own lunch he rehearsed the details in his head to make sure there wasn’t anything there that would seem suspicious. Nothing about this meeting could ever hint that Charles was hiding something; that it wasn’t until yesterday that he had gone to the sports centre in his neighbourhood solely to get details for his stories to Warren that he played squash there on an ad hoc basis.

His concentration was scattered, however, even as he needed to focus: how do we explain you? He’d repeatedly told himself that people around the world were cheating and having affairs all the time. So he was too. Big deal. Yet something Raven had said to him the other week now haunted him: if he hadn’t met Warren, he’d still be alone. Was there any truth in that?

Bobby came over, and Charles rose up to give him a quick hug. Smile that normal smile, just smile it – he’d rehearsed it often by now.

Warren and Bobby had been friends since they were kids, and Warren had often repeated how happy he was that his boyfriend and best friend now both lived in London. The two were practically brothers, and Charles had felt intimated by their long history when he first got together with Warren. Thankfully, Warren’s feelings for him had meant that Bobby had automatically began to consider Charles as part of the gang. But despite the friendship that he and Bobby shared, their lunch date wasn’t just for the sake of catching up. Warren would turn thirty in the spring, and Charles had taken on planning a surprise party. For that he needed Bobby’s help, and they’d already talked about it briefly but Charles had worked on the plans a bit more lately.

This was his current plan: Warren had always wanted to go to Machu Picchu, and Charles had figured that his thirtieth would be the time to go. He’d tell Warren to pack and at the airport he’d reveal their destination: Amsterdam. Warren would be delighted, naturally, because they both rated Amsterdam as one of their favourite cities in Europe. Charles would book them to a nice hotel and then they would go out for dinner and there, at the restaurant by one of the beautiful canals, many of their friends would be waiting: Warren’s closest work friends from CERN, Warren’s closest NY friends, Raven and Bobby, and then during desert Charles would give Warren an envelope with two plane tickets to Lima, due to leave in the following afternoon. Charles would book them onto a hiking trip to Machu Picchu along the Inca Trail, a five day trek up the Andes.

It was excessive and over the top and all that Warren deserved. Charles had worked on this plan considerably since he had started seeing Erik, and he now worried that in its grandeur Bobby would see something suspicious.

After Charles had filled Bobby in, Bobby said, “You are going to hike to Machu Picchu?”

“Of course.”

“I didn’t pick you for a lover of the great outdoors.”

“I’ve done some camping in my day,” he said mildly. He welcomed leaving the city every now and then. For instance, he looked forward to their New Year plans in Aspen, with the buzzling ski resort and the snow and the fresh air, especially when he knew that he had a brandy waiting for him in their chalet fifteen minutes away. He saw little appeal in trekking the Peruvian jungle-mountains for days on end, with no access to running water or electricity, but Warren had always talked about it, and so Charles would go. Hiking up dangerous paths only to see some Inca ruins that one could see on a postcard seemed unnecessary to him. But was he doing this for Warren, he wondered, or for himself?

He thought of Erik and Ororo’s adventures: Vancouver, Buenos Aires, New York, Havana, Los Angeles, London… Going from one place to the next, hungry for the undiscovered. The last time Charles had gone camping had been in Australia with Erik. He’d lost his taste for rudimentary outdoor living after that.

Bobby leaned back in his chair. “It sounds like a great trip,” Bobby admitted somewhat jealously, and Charles grinned. Bobby looked thoughtful. “I know some club owners in Amsterdam, so I can help with that. I was kind of hoping to use Amsterdam for Warren’s bachelor party, though.”

“Warren’s bachelor party?” he repeated in monotone as the hairs at the back of his neck pricked up and his throat tightened until swallowing would have been impossible. Had Warren said something to Bobby? Because if Warren was about to propose, Bobby would be the one person who’d know. f*ck, was it happening, was Warren about to –

“Yeah, for whenever you guys get around to it,” Bobby shrugged, and Charles told himself to calm down. He had the ring ready and waiting; he wanted to be in control of the next big step they would take together.

“Yeah, of course,” he said in agreement, hoping that he appeared calm.

Bobby must have picked up on his nerves because he smirked. “Eventually you’ll need to make him an honest man, Charles. He was a human disaster before you came along – you’ve trained him well.” Bobby winked at him. Charles was supposed to smile at this so he did, but he did not feel like smiling. Charles had trained Warren? It sounded wrong. Was that the goal of relationships, taking the edge off each other? Bobby could perhaps see that Charles was not impressed because he quickly added, “You know what I mean. Warren was restless, he needed – an anchor, someone suitable to tie him down and give him perspective, someone more ordinary. You’re that anchor.”

This was supposed to be another compliment: Charles was suitable, he was ordinary. He knew that this was what Bobby thought of him. Bobby worked in a club, usually went to bed around seven in the morning and woke up in the afternoon. Charles was at the university by eight: teaching, lecturing, researching. He’d be home by six or seven, then dinner, TV and bed because he was usually exhausted by his workload. When he’d joined the chess club, Bobby had laughed for five minutes straight.

Bobby’s antics had been a good fit for Warren, who had dated a thirty-year-old biker to the shock and horror of upper class New York when he’d been only eighteen. Warren had partied a lot in college and developed a taste for bad boys, and Warren’s parents had been extremely worried that he’d never find anyone good for him. Warren had told Charles all of this himself and he always finished these stories with, “And then I met you.” Charles was the solution and the reason why Warren wasn’t out with Bobby until sunrise on his London weekends. Charles didn’t own a motorcycle but an Oxford cottage and had Ivy League doctorate, and the Worthingtons and their peers thought they were a well-balanced union. Warren had said that he’d grown up and wanted someone more like himself.

But he and Warren were not as different as someone like Bobby probably thought. Charles had fallen in love with a German of no distinguished pedigree or social status at the age of nineteen, had intended to marry him, and after their break-up he too had been a bit of a slu*t in college and beyond, as he’d hopped from one fleeting boyfriend to the next. His parents had also worried that he’d never find anyone suitable. He’d waved goodbye to the society he’d been brought up in and escaped to Europe, just like Warren had. Charles was a workaholic, not a thrill seeker, but Warren was likewise married to his work, which was why they were such a good match. But Warren had had a few serious boyfriends before Charles, whereas Charles had never made it that far. Why was that?

Bobby liked Charles, and Charles liked him back. Yet there was always this feeling that Bobby was somehow disappointed in Warren’s choice: the anchor, the career-focused geneticist, another New York rich kid. The safe bet. A surge of anger stirred up in him and he thought that people like Bobby knew f*ck all about him: Charles had a lover across town – how was that for ordinary?

And the second he thought it, he felt guilty again.

“Maybe the birthday plan is a bit excessive, but Warren’s earned it,” he said, and Bobby smiled at him warmly.

They worked on a tentative guest list for Amsterdam, and Charles thought of how happy Warren would be to trek the Inca Trail. Bobby would be in charge of inviting Warren’s New York friends as he knew them better, and they spent the rest of the productive lunch chit-chatting about their mutual NY acquaintances. Even with an ocean between, it was hard to remove them from the inbred, elitist world they’d all come from.

Despite the successful meeting with Bobby, Charles felt uneasy for the rest of the afternoon. The nagging sensation in the back of his brain lingered, and on his way home he called Warren just to hear his voice. Warren must have picked out the tension in his tone because he said he’d be online in half an hour.

Charles had changed into a suit by the time Warren called him. He walked from the bedroom into the living room, doing the tie as he went. He sat at the dining room table and picked up the call – Warren’s face appeared in the bedroom of his Geneva flat. “Hey babe,” Warren said and then broke in a smile. “You look great.”

“Thanks,” he said absently. “I really don’t want to go.” He finished the tie and flattened it against his chest. He’d bought the suit recently and hadn’t worn it yet. “Is this too much blue?” he asked, motioning at the dark blue tie and the light blue dress shirt. In the corner of the screen, he saw himself in the smart suit, his beard a bit bushy and definitely in need of a trim.

Warren grinned. “Not at all. Really brings out your eyes.” Charles should have smiled but he only huffed. Warren frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Just this moronic Christmas party.”

“Come on, it’s me.”

Charles sighed in defeat and looked at Warren’s concerned expression. The moving picture of him looked unhappy and stressed out. “I just – I’ve been thinking. If we hadn’t met, do you think I’d be in a relationship right now?”

“Sorry?” Warren asked.

“Hypothetically. I mean, you know me better than anyone – do you think I’d be with someone, or would I be alone?”

“Okay, uhm… First, I’d hope you’d be alone because then I could meet you now and seduce you with my infinite charm. But second, have you seen how good you look in that suit? I mean, you would not be single.” Warren gave him a flirtatious grin that Charles could not respond to, thinking of Erik’s comment that it was absurd that Charles hadn’t been proposed to by ten different men by now. People seemed to think that he was a catch, but that had never been his own view of himself. “What’s brought this on?”

He shook his head. “Raven just – She said that if I hadn’t met you, I’d still be single. I guess it just made me… think of my exes and how none of those relationships lasted, and maybe… you know, that was not their fault necessarily – that maybe it was all my fault. I mean, it probably was.”

He briefly thought of the toothbrush episode some two months into their relationship: Warren had left his toothbrush at the Oxford cottage, and Charles had called him to say that it was over. Thankfully Warren had told the taxi to turn back around and confronted him. Charles had found it hard to explain – the toothbrush, there, next to his own. It was too much and he wouldn’t stand for it. They were going too fast and Charles wasn’t ready for toothbrushes. After some further questioning, Charles eventually said, “One day, when we’re over, I’ll be back to just one toothbrush. And I look at yours now and I’m just – I’m sad and upset because I look at it and realise how much I’ll miss you when you’re gone. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do this.”

At the start he’d constantly waited for them to break up and had tried to call it quits a few times. Most men would have walked away, as indeed his ex-boyfriends had, and those who hadn’t he’d dumped himself. Warren had persevered.

His longest relationship was three months pre-Warren, and he’d been twenty-five when they met. Those were not good figures, were they?

He drew in a long breath. “I guess I’ve been wondering how… how do I explain myself. I’m not making sense. Sorry.”

“But so what you didn’t have long-term boyfriends before? It doesn’t say anything of you, it just means that we hadn’t met yet.” Warren was trying to help, but Charles could tell that his boyfriend didn’t understand. Raven was right: he’d still be single. And the more he thought about it, the more he began to feel like it was all somehow connected to Erik.

“Do you think I’m ordinary?” he then said, and Warren made an exasperated sound.

“Wha – Charles, what on earth is going on? Of course you’re not.”

“No?”

“No! You’re one of the most interesting people I know.”

“But if no one is ordinary, then no one can be extraordinary,” he said, and Warren rolled his eyes. “Look, what I mean is – you know, is it boring or dull that I prefer a beer on the living room couch to a Friday night rave, or I prefer a city break to… to mountaineering.”

“Baby, listen to me: you are not dull.”

“Would you like me better if I did go raving? Or if I had a motorcycle or jumped out of airplanes for an adrenaline rush?”

“No, I like you, Charles Xavier, dressed in a suit and going to the chess club Christmas dinner. And if you’re back home at eleven, then I like you, and if that theology professor wants to go out raving and you’d somehow end up going, then I’d still like you.”

“So you don’t think I would go raving?” he asked pointedly. “You don’t think I’m adventurous?”

“Do you want to be?” Warren asked, clearly struggling. Charles wanted to show Warren Ororo’s Facebook page, the pictures of her somewhere in Africa or the one of her at the top of a volcano crater, but then realised he couldn’t. Charles had the uncanny feeling that if he’d stayed with Erik, he would have more pictures of himself in unexplored places. And he certainly couldn’t tell Warren that Bobby had called him ordinary: the last thing he needed was to cause drama between his partner and the best friend. “So you’re not an explorer,” Warren shrugged. “I don’t care.”

Charles let out a breath, but he felt disappointed. “Okay,” he said.

“I love you as you are.”

“I love you, too,” he parroted, but felt little comforted.

As Christmas was just around the corner, the chess club members were going out for dinner together; it was tradition, Hank had said. In the tube over, Charles noticed that he caught the eye of a few women as well as at least one man (a relatively sleazy looking gay guy in his sixties, but hey, at least he noticed). He looked good in the suit, he decided, but he didn’t feel particularly elevated. He was a hypocrite, always making note of Raven’s short-term relationships and putting it down to her being a human disaster. He had been exactly like her before Warren had come along and the second he’d found someone good he’d become one of those smug taken people who pitied those who struggled with love.

If he hadn’t met Warren, he would have still had boyfriends: he had never had a problem getting laid. So yes, even now he’d probably have some boyfriend with whom he’d stick it out for a few months before they would inevitably break up. Probably over a toothbrush.

And the only reason why he was with Warren was because Warren had pursued him. They’d met, they’d flirted, they’d slept together a few times, they’d had great chemistry, and Charles hadn’t planned on taking that anywhere. Then Warren had come to Oxford and declared his love in a romantic fashion that had… God, had what?

Had reminded him of a lost romanticism. Had reminded him of being young and just falling in love without thought of precautions – and with Warren he knew hardly any precautions were required, but even so he’d hesitated and stalled and kept Warren at arm’s length for a considerable while. Warren had stuck through it.

He was with Warren because Warren had enabled him to hope again. And if that hadn’t happened, then Raven was right: Charles would be alone.

As the chess club president, Business Tom had booked them a private cabinet in an Italian restaurant near St Paul’s. Charles was late because of his chat with Warren, the last to be directed through the crowded restaurant floor where Christmas songs were playing and a Christmas tree had been set up in one corner. The long table in the private room was crowded, and he made his apologies to everyone while Sandra from Film Studies whistled at him. “You scrub up nicely, Charles!”

He mumbled a thanks as his eyes flew across the attendees until he found Erik’s grey ones staring back at him with a hint of warmth and something definitely hotter than that. Everyone had made an effort, apart from Theology Craig who was wearing a reindeer jumper. Erik was wearing a dark grey suit with a white shirt and a burgundy tie, presumably to fit the theme of the evening, but his tie also perfectly matched the dress of the three-year-old sitting in his lap.

Shani was munching on bread that was on the table, her Afro curls tied up in a bun on the top of her head. The dress she wore was dark red and sparkly, and Federica from Modern Languages, who was sat next to Erik, was busy cooing at Shani who seemed more interested in the food. There was an empty seat opposite Erik between Lizzy from Classics and George from Chemistry, and Charles took his place between them.

“You look great,” Erik told him as he sat down, and Charles said, “Thank you.” The air between them felt thick and electric.

Charles had prepared for this moment, having called Erik the day before to discuss the Christmas party and the two of them in a public setting. He’d blabbed something about keeping private matters private even in quasi-work settings and how he wanted to be cautious as a gay man – bullsh*t, all of it, but Erik had been quick to agree. “It’s between us,” Erik had said, “and Lizzy is a terrible gossip.” So they both had agreed to keep their relationship under wraps (“For a while longer,” Erik had said, and Charles had refused to reflect on that statement). No one could know about him and Erik – Charles looked to Hank at the end of the table, who knew that Charles had an engagement ring ready for Warren.

Erik looking at him warmly, however, made Charles wonder if the others could truly be oblivious. He was glad they had the table between them because Erik looked stunning, and Charles was happy to see him, and Charles was torn to see him.

Charles was taken aback by Shani’s presence, however. She had her own chair next to Erik, where Erik moved her when the starters came. Erik tried to get her to eat but she wasn’t interested. Instead she slid off the chair, grabbing the purple My Little Pony she had with her, and began running around the cabinet whilst making whinnying noises. Erik apologised, caught her and put her back in her chair, but Shani was soon back to running in circles and pretending to be a horse, at which point Lizzy told Erik to just let the child be. Erik seemed reluctant to let his child roam about, but Lizzy was persistent that it was good for the child to express herself. Clearly the adult conversation interested Shani little, but she seemed good at keeping herself entertained. Well, she was an only child, Charles figured – she knew all about playing by herself.

Charles would not have brought a three-year-old along himself, but he knew that Erik didn’t have the luxury to leave his daughter with a second parent. The club members, however, didn’t seem to mind Shani. Even Tom, who was usually a control freak, only smiled at Shani’s antics. They kept chit-chatting as Shani wandered about.

George began to tell Charles about his holiday home in Cornwall and Charles learned that George’s wife had four sisters and that they all spent Christmas together near St Austell. Charles then told George that he would be going to New York for Christmas and for New Year’s he’d be partaking in a bachelor party. Next to them Lizzy scooped Shani up on one of her rounds of the cabinet and placed her in her lap. “You hungry, my dear?” Lizzy asked dotingly to see if Shani would go for some bruschetta. Shani began chewing on the bread, and Charles couldn’t help but be fascinated. The only time he’d ever seen the child so far he hadn’t realised she was Erik’s daughter. Lizzy saw Charles looking and said, “Do you have children, Charles?”

“Me? Oh no.”

“I have five grandchildren but none are as little as this one anymore! Such a lovely age,” she said fondly. “Do you remember last year, Shani? We sang Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer together, do you remember?”

“No,” Shani said.

Lizzy’s smile didn’t falter. “Erik always brings her along for the dinner – I quite insist on it.”

Shani was now reaching for Lizzy’s wine glass, and Charles quickly pushed it away from her – clearly a mistake. Shani stared up at him in anger. “Mine!” she declared demandingly.

“Shani?” Erik said sharply from across the table, and Shani grudgingly looked at her father. “Be a good girl, like Papa said.” Erik stared at her sternly, but a bit of desperate ‘please behave’ slipped into the tone.

“Okay,” Shani mumbled. She gave Charles a Look of Death but nonetheless yielded. Charles gave her his glass of water instead, and she seemed mollified.

Erik then added, now to Lizzy, “I’ll come get her.”

“Oh, don’t be silly!” Lizzy said when Erik moved to get up. “Sit down, we’re fine!”

Erik looked at Charles, then at Shani, then at Lizzy, then at Charles again. Erik looked nervous. Charles said, “It’s fine, really.”

“If she’s too much hassle…” Erik said, but Lizzy told him not to be crazy. Erik went back to his conversation with Federica – in Spanish, Charles noted – but Erik seemed to be looking their way frequently. Shani appeared content with Lizzy and stayed there as the mains arrived. Charles figured Shani’s placated mood made sense because Lizzy oozed a grandmotherly calm even to Charles – she had an overflowing sense of maternity that felt comforting.

Lizzy had gone for ravioli for her main, and although Shani had her own kiddies’ spag bol across the table going cold, Erik let her stay with Lizzy and eat ricotta. Shani seemed to like the ravioli but was clumsy with the fork that she squeezed in a tight fist. At first Charles thought that he could not see much of Erik in Shani, but the longer he studied the child the more obvious it became that she could not be anyone else’s. She had all kinds of mannerisms that mimicked her father perfectly, like that, for instance – they both wrinkled their noses in the exact same way, as Shani now did in dissatisfaction as the slippery pasta escaped her fork. Charles couldn’t help but smile at the sight, and Shani looked up at him – a look of curiosity that could also be found on the face of Erik Lehnsherr at times. It was not the Look of Death, and he felt mildly encouraged.

“Is the food nice?” he asked. Shani nodded vigorously and swallowed. He smiled. “Good.” He was out of topics. “Uh… Do you look forward to the holidays?”

“We’re going to see Oma,” she reported, and Charles realised she was referring to her grandmother.

“You’re going to Germany?”

“No, we’re going to see Oma.” The two things clearly didn’t connect in her head.

Lizzy smiled. “That’s lovely! Have you been a good girl this year?”

At this Shani began to beam. “Yes! Papi said so!” She was clearly proud of this and flashed a white smile at Charles, just to make sure that Charles knew that Papi had said that she had been good.

“And what do you want for Christmas, lovely?” Lizzy prompted.

“She celebrates Hanukkah,” Charles corrected, and Lizzy seemed momentarily confused but said, “For Hanukkah.”

“I want a tearducktol,” Shani said determinedly.

“A what?” Lizzy asked, mystified.

“A tearducktol!”

Charles looked at the child in confusion before realisation dawned on him. “You want… a pterodactyl?” he clarified, and Shani nodded and beamed at him, perhaps recognising him as someone else equally informed. Charles stared at the kid, stunned. “Erik,” he said, interrupting the conversation that Erik was having with Federica, but their exclusive Spanish chatter had lasted long enough in Charles’s opinion. “Did you know that Shani wants a pterodactyl for Hanukkah?”

The others caught this comment and Sandra began to laugh. “You want a dinosaur, Shani?”

“No!” the child protested. “A tearducktol isn’t a dinosore.”

“It’s not?” Sandra asked in surprise while some of the others chuckled.

“No because it can fly.”

“Wow, you learn something new every day,” Chemistry George laughed.

Theology Craig said, “Do you want to be an archaeologist when you grow up, Shani?”

Charles doubted such a long word was in Shani’s vocabulary, but the child just said, “I want to tell people what to do.” The adults were delighted. Shani then wriggled out of Lizzy’s lap and rounded the table to get back to her dad, and Erik was quick in picking her up and placing her back on her chair. Charles couldn’t help but be mildly impressed by her; she had a good scientifically inclined mind. He had certainly never heard a three-year-old refer to a pterodactyl before.

Erik said, “We recently got a book on ancient lizards for bedtime reading. It’s been a big hit.”

Shani stayed by Erik for the rest of the meal. She had been hyper when Charles had arrived but it appeared that she had worn herself out. She made a mess with the ice cream, and Erik struggled to make her use a spoon and not her hands in its consumption. God, Shani needed constant attention – turn your back for a minute and god knows what she would be up to.

Charles wondered how on earth Erik managed to do it all.

Most of the club members had been helping themselves to the wine generously, and when Craig began singing along to Jingle Bells that now played in the speakers, Hank and Sandra immediately joined in. Erik looked at Charles across the table with a ‘and now they’re singing’ expression, and Charles smiled back an amused ‘I know.’ Shani was excited by the sudden outburst of music and swayed to the rhythm, ice cream smeared around her mouth, and Erik pulled her to his lap, grabbed her hands and began to sway her to the beat of it. Shani began to laugh jubilantly, staring at Erik over her shoulder, and Erik began to sing the words at her and she tried to copy him.

Lizzy pressed her hand to her heart as she leaned to Charles. “God, it’s so sweet, isn’t it? It’s wonderful seeing a father so in love with his little girl.” Charles looked at Erik and hardly recognised Erik at all: making silly faces just to get a laugh out of a kid. It was a side of Erik that Charles was completely unfamiliar with, and somehow that was both frightening and captivating. Lizzy, who had had quite a bit of wine too, then added, “It just breaks my heart that her mum isn’t around.”

“Single parents do just fine,” Charles objected. Okay, he had had some wine too, but who was Lizzy to judge? She knew nothing about Erik and Ororo, and she was in no position to judge Shani’s upbringing based on seeing her once a year. Christ, Shani looked absolutely happy getting Jingle Bells being sung at her.

“Oh I know Erik is a wonderful dad,” Lizzy mused, “but a girl needs a mother.”

“Actually,” Charles said, “the sex of the parent has got nothing to do with a child’s emotional well-being. A child brought up by two mothers or two fathers is doing every bit as well as a child with a mother and a father. Shani doesn’t in any obvious way need a mother – you never know, maybe she needs another dad.”

Lizzy looked confused, and Charles was taken aback by his own words. He wasn’t volunteering or anything – he was just making a point and objecting to the relentless heteronormative bullsh*t of society.

Jingle Bells came to an end, and everyone cheered. Dinner was over, and most of the members were carrying on to the pub around the corner. Erik wasn’t going because it was time to take Shani home. They paid for their food and began to get ready, and as the others began to filter out, Charles found himself approached by Erik who was holding hands with a tired looking Shani. “How was dinner?” Erik asked, and Charles suppressed the instinct to step closer. His chest felt tight just being this close to Erik.

“It was good. You?”

“Fine, yeah. I hope this one wasn’t too much trouble,” Erik said, nodding at Shani.

“She was fine, Erik,” Charles said because he could tell that Erik was nervous about this.

At the door, Federica turned to them. “You two coming?”

“Be right there,” Erik said with a friendly smile, and Charles reminded himself that Federica was married. Still, he thought, her gaze lingered on Erik just a bit too long before she left.

Shani kept tugging on Erik’s hand for attention, “Papi. Papi.”

“Just a minute, Shani.”

“Papi!”

“A minute. Adults are talking,” Erik said, and Shani began to pout. Charles grinned as Erik laughed a “Yeah, she can be a bit, ah. Enthusiastic, once she gets going. Can’t you, Herzchen?” he asked, but Shani was busy rubbing the tip of her left shoe against the floor. It wasn’t one of the squeaky ones. Erik said, “I wanted to ask if maybe you’d want to come over tomorrow night? We’re leaving to Dusseldorf on Sunday. It’d be nice to see you before that. Alone.” Erik gave him a small smile that seemed like a suggestion.

He took Erik in, looking smart and incredibly sexy in the suit. “I think I’m free.” God, he had no self-control… Another squash match with Trevor? Would Warren buy it?

Erik smiled. “Good. I, uh, have the little one this weekend. But her bedtime’s at eight – isn’t it, Shani?” he asked, and Shani responded with a dutiful nod.

“Noted,” Charles said. “I’ll come by tomorrow.”

“Great,” Erik said, but he didn’t just say great: he said great in a hot, inviting, knowing tone that had heat trickling up and down Charles’s spine.

There was something magnetic about Erik, something that Charles was completely unable to resist. He remembered it from Australia and he remembered it now. Charles had never felt this pull when it came to others – he’d never even felt it towards Warren. Erik said “great”, and Charles wanted to pull Erik close, bury his nose in the crook of Erik’s neck and breathe him in and then insist that they never part because Erik felt a lot like home to him.

He’d never felt that for anyone else with such immediacy.

The realisation was unsettling.

Erik picked Shani up from her waist and propped her against his hip. “Home time for you, Fräulein. Say goodnight to Charles.”

“Goodnight,” she said, clutching her My Little Pony in one fist. Then she smiled at him and said, “I want a tearducktol.”

“I remember,” Charles assured her. “It’s not a dinosaur because it can fly.”

She beamed at him twice as hard, which in turn made Erik smile, corners of his eyes crinkling, and Charles thought that in some other life this was his partner and their child, and the thought made his heart feel incredibly warm, after which he felt a sudden, panicked realisation that he was taking this too far.

Erik was a package deal that came with Shani. Charles might have drunkenly ranted that two men made perfectly adequate parents, but Charles could not be that second person – he was just f*cking Erik on the side. He had his own husband-to-be and his own family, and he was just having some meaningless sex with an ex-boyfriend because he was a terrible person like that.

So why was he having brunch with Erik and helping him choose jewellery for his mother and why was he now promising to spend Friday night hanging out with Erik and his daughter? Was that still an org*sm-seeking affair or was Charles dangerously close to dating Erik Lehnsherr? And was this how those people ended up in Jerry Springer with two sets of wives and children in two different cities? They just accidentally slipped into these relationships and then one day woke up, about to get married when they already had one wife, and went “Oh sh*t”?

At that moment Hank returned to get the scarf Sandra had forgotten. They all went outside, where Erik hailed a taxi. With others around, Charles only waved a goodbye and then followed the rest for a drink in order to seem polite. Truthfully he didn’t feel like staying longer.

In the pub there was speculation about Erik’s love life. Charles took a long gulp of his beer and said nothing as people wondered how long it would take for Erik to find wife number two. Not long, everyone seemed to think, when Erik was so bright and good-looking and intelligent, and wasn’t Shani a delight and well behaved, and, and…

As Charles got the tube home, he did not get as many glances as he had earlier, and he was not surprised: he probably looked like a sad, broken down f*cker.

He had fallen in love instantaneously only once in his life: with Erik. And when that had turned sour, he had never had the courage to be reckless again. He had fallen in love with Warren slowly, not saying ‘I love you’ back until a whole two months after Warren had said it. No wonder Bobby thought him ordinary – he had stopped being exciting at the age of nineteen when Erik broke his heart. He realised that now: in just one night Erik had turned him into a cold cynic who didn’t believe that love could last. And now that Erik was back, Charles felt utterly helpless. He wanted Erik, and he couldn’t pretend it was just for sex when it wasn’t. But he was spoken for, he had a long-term partner, and Erik was likewise spoken for, having a long-term partner in the form of a child, and all of those puzzle pieces could not fit together in any way.

What should have been a careless string of sexual encounters was now making Charles wonder if he was capable of bringing up Erik’s children. No, this could not be – he had to put an end to it now and go back to his boyfriend. It was over. Had to be.

He got home around ten, even earlier than Warren had predicted.

Theology Craig had not invited him to a rave.

Azazel called Erik around lunch time and asked him over for beers and football viewing. “The wife’s away so we could watch the game and let the kids amuse themselves.” Azazel’s son Nils was a year older than Shani, and in the summers they often had barbeque play dates with cool beverages for the adults and finger paints for the children. Normally Azazel’s invitation would have been welcome, but this time Erik felt quite pleased to turn him down.

“I’d love to, but I’m getting an afterhours visit tonight,” he said, leaning back in the chair in his office with a wide grin on his lips.

“Is that code for sex?” Azazel asked sharply, which was the exact reaction Erik had hoped for.

“I don’t know, is it?”

Azazel seemed to process this before he let out a husky laugh. “When on earth have you had time to find yourself a partner in crime?”

“I’m a busy man, Az.”

“Uh huh, I can tell. Is this that ex that you were wooing?” Azazel clarified, and Erik was more than happy to confirm it. “And for how long has this been happening, exactly?”

“Some weeks now,” he said, and Azazel chastised him for keeping quiet about it. But Erik had wanted to be cautious, especially because of Shani. But she had met Charles now and nothing had gone horribly wrong. Erik had feared a disaster, ice caps melting, polar bears drowning, Shani having a tantrum or taking a strong dislike to Charles from the get-go, or perhaps the other way around, but none of these things had occurred. Erik could slowly proceed from here.

“I’d never date an ex, personally,” Azazel mused. “We broke up for a reason, and I’m sure I’d remember it sooner rather than later.”

“Cheers for the pep talk.”

Azazel laughed, low and dry and maybe a bit mean. “Well, good for you, man. You’ll have to bring him along for drinks or something.”

“Yeah, I will. You’ll like him,” he said – Azazel hardly liked anyone, but he was sure that Charles could charm him somehow. After Azazel hung up, he called Ororo to update her on his and Shani’s finalised travel details and as he did so he tried his best to ignore Ororo’s sad voice. She was upset that she would be spending Christmas alone, but she had had Shani the previous year, and Erik had had a horrible Hanukkah alone with his mother, especially because it was their first one without Erik’s father, and so Erik was determined not to feel bad that he had Shani this year. Every other Christmas, every other New Year. This was what they had agreed.

He thought of how eager his mother was to have him and Shani in Dusseldorf for Hanukkah, and he stopped feeling so bad.

After having spoken to Ororo, he was pleased to realise that he was on schedule. He was only in for a half day because he had a long to do list waiting at home. One good thing that came out of being a single parent was completely bitching organisational skills. It was nearly one aka going home time when he received another phone call, this time from Charles.

“Hey stranger,” he said, smiling into the phone. He felt like he was on a constant high when he thought of Charles. God, Charles had looked so stunning at the Christmas party, so handsome… It had been hard enough not to stare at Charles throughout the chess club dinner: Charles in that dark blue suit that fitted him perfectly, showing off his broad shoulders and chest… Erik didn’t think he pulled suits off nearly as well although he wore them often. He was too large somehow, always feeling like a goon in a B-class movie. But Charles? He looked perfect in a suit, authoritative and sexy. God, Erik was all for separating one’s work life from one’s private life, but Charles made him question that rather easily. Would it be so bad if their chess club peers knew they were dating?

“Erik, hi,” Charles said but he sounded… off somehow.

Erik frowned. “You okay?”

“Mm? Yeah, yes. Yes. I just – Listen, this thing came up – this work thing, a thing at work, and I don’t think I can make it tonight. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” he said, taking this in. “Do you want to postpone until tomorrow?”

“Ah, tomorrow? Tomorrow’s no good either, I’m afraid. Sorry.” Charles sounded distracted and distant. Erik didn’t like it.

“But we leave on Sunday.”

“You do? Oh. Well.” Charles knew when they were leaving and now seemed to pretend this was new information. “I guess we won’t see each other until after the holidays, then, so… have a nice time with your family. I’m – Look, I’m sorry about tonight. I hate to cancel, but – I’ll… call you. Once I’m back from the States.”

Erik was rather stunned. “You mean in January?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll call me sometime in January?”

“Exactly.” Charles sounded relieved.

“Charles, is everything alright?”

“Of course. Look, I must dash, but um. Happy holidays.”

And with that Charles hung up on him.

Erik stared at his phone. He was bewildered. Had he… Had he just been dumped? No. No, of course not – Charles just couldn’t see him before he left the country. Because of… some work thing that sounded entirely made up.

God, Charles was a terrible liar.

Erik called Charles straightaway but got voicemail, which was bullsh*t because Charles had been holding his phone just a minute ago. He let out a frustrated groan before leaving a message: “Hey, it’s me. Um, I don’t know what’s going on but clearly things are not alright. I really want to see you before we go. I don’t – Listen, I don’t know what’s going on, but we can talk about it, whatever it is.” He stopped briefly. “We’ll figure it out together. Okay, Charles? Just… just call me back. Please.”

After he hung up, he worried that he’d said the wrong thing or seemed too clingy. Last night Charles had seemed happy to come over, and Erik couldn’t understand what might have changed since then. When Charles didn’t call him back, however, Erik began to feel nervous as he replayed their conversation in his head. Charles would just call him sometime? What the hell did that even mean?

He left work early as planned and on the way to the nursery bought some flowers for the staff as a thank you for the past year. Moira blushed when he handed her the bouquet of red roses and germini, but Erik felt little enthused himself. Had last night gone wrong after all? Had he scared Charles off by bringing Shani along? Had it been too soon?

Shani was excitable, bordering on irritable; she was old enough now to understand that the holiday season was a special time of the year and that she would be receiving a small mountainful of presents soon. Earlier that week he had put a plastic Christmas tree in the living room between the fireplace and the bay window alcove, and the two of them had decorated it together. Shani, however, had taken up a game of stealing baubles and hiding them around the living room and kitchen, and Erik for one got tired of the game after nearly slipping on one (the bauble in question had been smashed and his foot had hurt like a bitch).

Shani now ran straight for the tree as they got in the house, and Erik called out a stern, “Nein, Shani!” He picked up the mail from the hall floor, separating the bills from what were clearly holiday cards. One had a German stamp on it, and he went for it first. Shani was being suspiciously quiet in the living room. “Shani, lass den Baum sein!” he said warningly as he pulled out a Hanukkah card with a menorah on it. He flipped it open and instantly recognised Magda’s looped handwriting.

Instead of having simply signed it, Magda had scribbled the card nearly full. Erik read the text quickly and felt his heart sink. He then read it again, now slowly. A surge of anger and sadness filled him. Magda had put this in a f*cking Hanukkah card instead of picking up the phone?

Erik walked into the living room. Shani was standing by the tree with her arms full of baubles, giggling to herself. “Was denkst du du tunst?” he questioned angrily, and Shani’s smile faltered. “Put those back right now or you’ll be sorry.” Shani hesitated, and Erik grit his teeth. “Papa’s not kidding. Right now.”

“Aber –”

“Hörst du mich nicht?! Jetzt!” Raising his voice worked as Shani gingerly put the baubles down on the floor, glancing at him with scared eyes. He sank onto the couch, card still in his hand. “Go draw by the kitchen table. Not a peep, you understand?”

Sometimes when Erik raised his voice, Shani rebelled – other times, and thankfully now, Shani realised not to test his patience. She headed to the kitchen, where the chair screeched as she got on it.

Erik leaned back and closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to see Pietro. He and Magda had agreed months ago that he would drive down to Wiesbaden after Hanukkah and pick up his son, then head back to Dusseldorf where Pietro would spend a few days with them. Play with his sister, see his grandmother, see his father. And Magda had the audacity to cancel that in a f*cking holiday card?

He looked at the message again: I’m really sorry, but Pietro doesn’t want to go. He says he wants to stay home with his parents and his siblings. Erik had no idea if that was even true or not. If Magda was lying because she didn’t want Pietro to go, then she was a selfish, manipulative witch. If she was telling the truth, then Erik’s own son did not want to see him. The latter was worse, so Erik hoped to god that Magda was simply being a bitch.

He tried calling Magda, but got voicemail. What was it with people avoiding his calls today? Erik left his second rambling voicemail that day, and he may have yelled into the phone, but he was furious about the way he was being treated, like he didn’t matter. He had a right to see his son, goddammit, and who cared what Pietro thought? He wasn’t even nine yet – a child should not be allowed to make these decisions. He and Magda had agreed on this, and Erik never saw Pietro, never, and now he had asked for two days to take Pietro to his mother’s house and, well, take him to the movies or treat him to a cool pair of trainers, and do normal, boring, amazing father-son things with him, and that had been refused?

Erik’s head hurt, but the most painful stab was inside his chest.

He asked for so little when it came to Pietro. He knew Pietro had a dad, that Hans was all Pietro knew and that Erik was only a distant figure. But Pietro was Erik’s son and Erik would have died for him in a heartbeat. To make him feel like he wasn’t worthy of even that…

He held the phone in his hand and scrolled down to Charles’s number. He wanted to press call. He wanted Charles’s voice, comforting and full of sympathy. He wanted Charles there so that he could crawl into Charles’s lap and wait until the world got better again.

No wonder Charles didn’t want to come by, he now realised, no wonder Charles wasn’t quite as enamoured with him as he’d hoped. Why would Charles be? Even Erik’s own son didn’t want to see him, so why would anyone?

Magda wasn’t calling him back, so he angrily decided to get on with his to do list. Not much else he could do.

He recruited Shani to help him in the garden while the sunlight lasted. Shani mostly kept to her swing, wearing her red winter coat and fox hat while Erik raked the leaves and kept asking if she was perhaps going to help, although he knew there was very little she could realistically do. He tried calling Magda again and left another voicemail, in a thunderous voice announcing that he would come get Pietro from Wiesbaden as agreed and that Pietro would have a great time with his father, goddammit.

Magda called him back a few minutes later. Her voice sounded old, lacking the youthful, clear ring it had had when they were teenagers. They had not spoken on the phone for months as usually emails were enough, Magda giving Erik the occasional update or picture. She was conscientious in this, but mostly the updates felt foreign to Erik: they were pictures of a blond boy who looked older all the time, usually in the company of a younger girl and boy, both dark haired like Hans. Erik replied to the emails with a short note of ‘Wow, he’s growing fast!’ and usually forgot about them just as quickly because dwelling on them did him little good.

Magda had always been fair in the past. Erik knew this but it did little to lessen the injustice he now felt. Magda said, “He’s at a difficult age right now. We had to go get him from a sleepover just last week because he got so homesick! He just doesn’t do well with people he doesn’t know.”

“But I’m not some stranger, I’m his father!”

“Erik, I am not going to put our son in a situation where he will feel lonely or afraid,” she said, and by ‘our son’ she meant hers and Hans’s.

“And why would he feel either of those things with me?”

“He’s just a child, Erik. He doesn’t know you. Of course he has no real reason to be frightened of you, but he’s just frightened of everyone new right now! Listen to me, please. If you want to come to Wiesbaden and see him here, then that’s okay. Bring Shani, bring your mother. Come for dinner. How is your mother, anyway? I always liked her.”

At the end of the call, nothing had changed. Erik hung up on Magda and loudly yelled, “Sheiße!” The neighbours could probably hear him into their back gardens, too. Exasperated, he looked towards the swing, but Shani was no longer there. Instead she was at one of the large leaf piles he had raked, where she was now very busy throwing handfuls of leaves in all directions and undoing all of his work.

Erik snapped. He marched over. “What do you think you’re doing?!” He knelt down and grabbed a hold of her hands. “Hey! Stop that! Hey!” He shook her. “Look at the mess you’re making! Do you see that? Do you?!” She stared at him with startled blue eyes and then tried to wriggle out of his grasp. He gave her left hand a sharp smack. “Don’t do that!”

Shani stilled for a second as she processed everything. Then, like a train gaining speed, she began to wail, which was the last thing Erik needed. “Don’t you dare!” It was too late as she let out a high-pitched cry. “Shani. Shani, stop crying! For god’s sake, you’re a big girl now, so stop crying!”

All of this made Shani wail more loudly. She looked ashamed and confused, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as her small chest rattled with uneven intakes of breath.

Erik picked her up and walked to the end of the garden. “You’re ruining everything, Shani, and Papa’s had enough. You stand here and think about what you’ve done. No speaking, no moving, or I’m sending you up to your room where you’ll be all alone!”

She began to cry twice as hard – she hated nothing as much as being left alone. Snot was running down from her nostrils to her mouth as she wept, but he only put her down, turned her to face the fence, and left her in the corner.

“Christ,” he breathed as he looked at the mess Shani had made. He picked up the rake and put the leaf pile back together, after which he got out bin bags and began stuffing the leaves inside, ignoring the incessant sound of Shani crying to herself at the back of the garden.

When he had one pile left, he went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea. Shani looked over her shoulder towards the house, her frame still shaking, but she stayed where she was. Whenever she seemed close to calming down, she seemed to get worked up again, and Erik ignored her as his thoughts circled Pietro.

After he’d had his tea, he went out to finish the job. As he began to put the last of the leaves in a new bag, he noticed a worm on one of them. He stopped.

Shani loved worms.

He looked to the corner where his child stood still facing the wall, but even so her stance was slumped and small, and she looked – f*ck. She looked lonely and afraid. Magda’s words rang in his head: I am not going to put our son in a situation where he will feel lonely or afraid.

Jesus.

Jesus, Erik was just f*cking everything up today.

He hesitated, looking between the leaf and his daughter. He then picked up the leaf that the worm was on and slowly walked over to Shani. “Herzchen,” he said softly, kneeling down beside her. “Herzchen, look.” Shani dared a look at him and at what he was holding. “Papi found a worm. Do you wanna see?” Shani didn’t move. “It’s okay,” he coaxed, “you don’t have to stay in the corner anymore. Come look.”

Shani still had tears rolling down her cheeks – one of her many talents: once she got started she could go on crying forever. She turned to face him, wiping her cheeks clumsily with her mitten-covered hands. Erik offered her the leaf, and she took it, looking at the worm that was feeling around for the edges blindly. “Nice, huh?” he said, and she nodded but still looked like she wasn’t sure where this was going.

She didn’t trust him.

Erik sat down on the grass, crossing his legs as his behind made contact with the cold ground. He pulled Shani into his lap, wrapping arms around her. “Papi’s sorry,” he said, hugging her to his chest. He kissed her fox hat. “Okay? Papi was mean and Papi is sorry. You haven’t ruined anything, Papi was talking nonsense. You’re a good girl, you’re not naughty, and Papi loves you so, so much. Okay?”

Shani nodded, but mostly just looked at the worm. He wiped her wet cheeks and nose and kept murmuring that he loved her more than anything, which he did. They then examined the worm together for a while, and then he told Shani to go put Herr Wurm somewhere where it wouldn’t get stepped on.

It was getting dark as they went inside. Shani was rather successfully covered in dirt and it took Erik particularly long to get her clean when he gave her a bath. She was rather quiet, and he tried to crack jokes and pull silly faces, which eventually began to work as a tentative smile appeared on her face again. By the time he was drying her with a towel, Shani was listing all the things she was hoping to get for Hanukkah. “I’ll get a book and a troll and a puppy, and I know I’ll get a teddy because I ate all the carrots.” Erik remembered that particular evening, perhaps a week earlier. God, he needed to stop trying to bribe his daughter into obedience, especially now that she could retain his blackmailing efforts…

But she was back to her usual self as kids tended to forget things quite fast, and Erik was glad for that. He, however, still felt guilty.

After Shani was in her pyjamas, Erik pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie, and they watched cartoons in the living room. He kept Shani in his lap, occasionally pressing his nose to her hair and breathing her in. She still distantly smelled like dirt even after the bath, but beyond that she had a clean child scent to her, one that Erik swore he would recognise anywhere. It was one of his favourite smells in the world.

“Papa loves you, you know that?” he asked, perhaps for the fifth time.

“Yes,” she said confidently, and Erik felt better. He didn’t want to be an asshole. He didn’t want Shani to think that he was one and he didn’t want Pietro to think that he was one. He tickled her, and she let out a delighted, high pitched squeal and squirmed out of his lap. He chased her around the living room and kitchen, letting her dodge his snatching efforts for a while before finally picking her up. After carrying her around like she was an airplane, he settled back on the couch with her. She was beaming, her blue eyes alight. “Fist pump,” he requested and offered his fist. She fist pumped him. “Good girl,” he said approvingly, and she giggled.

He ordered them pizza for dinner as it was one of Shani’s favourite foods, and Shani seemed as happy now as she’d been when he got her from the nursery. He tried not to think of Pietro just then but to focus on the one child that he could see as much as he wanted. He tried not to think of Charles either because when he did he felt like something had dislodged itself in his chest: a painful yearning and a growing fear that he had somehow f*cked it up without meaning to. But if it came down to it, there was no competition: Shani came first in everything.

He’d been hoping he would finish off the year in a better place than he had started it: one promotion up, one beautiful daughter in his care and, perhaps, a hot boyfriend to boot.

Well, he thought, two out of three wasn’t bad so he had no reason to feel disappointed.

Sure. He could keep telling himself that.

Charles rang the doorbell, after which he heard a child’s voice on the other side. The curtains of the living room were drawn but lights were flashing through: the TV was on. He felt rather unsure of himself even as he was resolved to pursue this, freezing even in his winter coat on quiet Coleridge Road. A cold front was washing over England, the weather lady had said. “Be mindful,” she had warned the viewers. Charles was trying his best.

The door opened, the space taken up by Erik, standing there in a dark blue hoodie and grey sweatpants. Charles had not seen Erik in such casualwear in ten years, no ties or suits or perfectly fitting turtle necks. This was a different version of Erik, one stripped down and bare. Shani was in yellow pyjamas next to her dad, staring at Charles curiously as she clutched Erik’s trouser leg just above the knee.

“Hello,” Charles said, his breath rising in the air.

Erik seemed surprised. “Charles,” he said calmly, and Charles felt his chest tighten painfully. Erik sounded neutrally taken aback. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, that– That thing at work took less time than I’d thought. Sorry for being late.”

“You’re early,” Erik said, but Charles was pretty sure he wasn’t. When he frowned, Erik said, “It’s hardly past seven.” Charles knew what time it was because Shani’s bedtime was at eight and Erik had made that very clear, and it was only a bit after seven so how could he… Oh. Oh, of course. He was supposed to come once the child was in bed, not before. Jesus.

Charles felt like ten different kinds of fool right then: he’d spent the day worrying what kind of things to discuss with a three-year-old and how to hopefully make Shani like him, all of which had made him anxious because he couldn’t reconcile that with the sex-focused affair he was supposed to be having. Now it turned out that family time was not at all what Erik had even intended.

“Of course,” he now said. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I should go.” He was keenly aware that Shani was observing him with interest. “I have – I got something, I mean, I didn’t know what was good, but they had plenty of this at HMV so I figured it’s popular.” He opened his backpack, rummaging the contents. He handed Erik a DVD: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2: the Revenge of the Leftovers. It sounded bogus and nonsensical enough to appeal to a three-year-old. “I think it’s good. I asked one woman and she said her five-year-old loved it, so I figured that… You should keep it, for Hanukkah.”

Erik looked at him searchingly, clearly trying to figure out what was going on, and Charles just wanted to say he was sorry for having made things awkward. He tried to say it with a smile, and it was a fake smile, and Erik could clearly tell. Truthfully, Charles did not feel much like smiling.

Without breaking eye contact with him, Erik said, “Shani, Charles brought a movie. Do you want to watch it?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, grabbing the DVD from Erik and running back into the house with surprising speed and agility.

“Good choice, clearly,” Erik said and moved aside. When Charles didn’t move, Erik sighed. “Get in, will you?”

As the door closed behind them, Charles said, “I’m sorry about cancelling earlier.”

He’d got the voicemail and had known that Erik was onto his bullsh*t, but in the flesh Erik looked worn out instead of concerned. Erik said, “You wanna tell me why?”

“Work, like I said.”

Erik looked doubtful, but thankfully Shani called out from the living room for them to come watch the movie. Erik looked in the direction of her voice and then back at Charles. Erik wasn’t okay. There was something haunting him, and Charles felt a small punch in the guts that something had upset Erik. “Hey, you alright?” he asked, a hand gently landing on Erik’s shoulder. Erik’s eyes were sad, and Charles wouldn’t stand for it.

“Talk later, maybe?” Erik suggested.

“Sure.” He studied Erik carefully, trying to figure him out. Was this his doing? “Anything you want to tell me now?”

“Later.” Erik then grasped the hand he had on Erik’s shoulder, squeezing it gently. “I’m glad you came, though.” Erik was relieved, he realised. Charles felt rather relieved too.

“Come on!” Shani yelled. Erik rolled his eyes.

They had barely started watching the film when pizza arrived, which was perfect timing because Charles was rather hungry. He had been in the office until late, so technically he hadn’t lied to Erik, but he hadn’t been working – instead he’s been playing with the ring box, flipping it open and shut, staring at Warren’s engagement ring. Then he’d changed his mind about coming.

Erik got plates and napkins from the kitchen, after which they resumed the movie. Shani sat in Erik’s lap, eating a slice and giggling in delight as the movie went on with imaginative food/animal hybrids in bright colours. It was actually a pretty funny movie: the main character was a scientist, and Charles approved of that, but he wasn’t sure about the talking monkey. When the scientist yelled, “There’s a leak on the boat!” and the screen showed an animated leak on the boat, he and Shani laughed in unison, and Erik placed a hand on his knee without looking away from the screen. Charles looked at Erik’s hand there and thought once again, as he had so often that day, that he had to break up with Erik as soon as possible. Instead of doing that, however, he placed a hand atop Erik’s, his heart expanding as he did so.

Shani kept pulling the laces sticking out from Erik’s hood into her mouth, absently chewing on them as she watched the film. Erik kept pulling them away and telling her no – the white tips of lace looked squashed from much previous chewing, showing signs of several father-daughter moments exactly like this one. Once Erik focused on the movie again, Shani pulled the string back into her mouth. Charles kept an eye on this cycle, observing that Shani was very good at figuring out when Erik was distracted, while Erik always told her off half-heartedly when he caught her. Charles looked away to hide his smile. He still wasn’t used to seeing Erik in this parental role, but he wasn’t surprised to find tenderness and warmth there.

When the credits rolled, Shani had her eyes half-open, her head drooping. Erik said, “Bedtime, you little monster. Come on.” He stood up with Shani securely in his arms. “Thank Charles for bringing the movie.”

Shani looked at him tiredly, her face buried in Erik’s chest, and mumbled, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Happy Hanukkah.”

The child looked sleepy and content – Charles had passed. Not that there’d been any test, of course, but he hadn’t ruined Shani’s night at least, so that meant that he’d passed.

Erik said, “I’ll just put her to bed. Five minutes, tops.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Erik disappeared upstairs, and Charles sat up straighter on the couch. The pizza box was empty on the coffee table and he flipped it shut and switched the TV off. He eyed the Christmas tree that for some reason had baubles at the top but not on the lower branches – instead they were on a pile on the floor. Maybe Erik and Shani had been decorating the tree when he got there. A red Christmas stocking with an S hung from the fireplace mantelpiece, atop which a menorah was ready for the year’s festivities. Apart from these additions the living room was in its previous state of random scattering of toys.

Charles could not separate Erik from this world any longer. At the start it had been easier to compartmentalise the affair, compartmentalise Erik – now the lines felt drastically blurred.

And so he had cancelled on Erik for many reasons. The main one, of course, was that he had to put a stop to his affair, but that had been only one of the reasons. He’d also cancelled because he thought that he wasn’t ready for kids’ films and bedtime stories; he wasn’t ready for the kind of life that Erik led but he now realised that Erik had not intended Charles to even join them. If anything, Charles had intruded on them. That aside, he’d also cancelled because he was worried that he couldn’t control their relationship which was crucial as he intended to keep it hidden from all; and he’d cancelled because he thought that time away from Erik would clear his head and would make it easier to break up with him.

But most of all he’d cancelled because he’d realised something horrible about himself, which was funny because that exact realisation had also made him rush to Erik after all.

He checked his phone: he had two missed calls and a text from Warren. You already in bed, sleepy head? :p x

He replied with: Dozed off on the couch! Now going to bed… Wish I was sleeping next to you. Will call in the AM. Love you. xx

None of that was a lie, exactly. Warren, however, thought he was in their home, in their bed, when in reality he was across town in another man’s house. He’d bought their Peru flights earlier that day and he’d gotten it into his head to propose at Machu Picchu. It had also occurred to him that what he had with Warren was completely separate from what he was up to with Erik. The two matters did not concern each other: they were simply too different to occupy the same space.

Erik returned to the living room where the glow of the TV was now gone, leaving the room in the dim shine of the Christmas tree lights and the light that was still on in the kitchen. Erik didn’t join him on the couch but instead sat on the adjacent one, looking questioning like he had done when Charles first arrived. Erik leaned back. “So,” he said.

“That movie was actually decent,” Charles said in his attempt not to have the conversation that they needed to have. Erik said nothing, just studied him quietly. Charles stilled, unsure of what to do with his hands that he wrung together. “I’m sorry I cancelled. There was a last minute thing at work, and I was pretty stressed out when I called.”

“Okay,” Erik said slowly but it sounded like a question. “Is that the truth?”

He frowned. “Of course it is. A new post-doc started, and Patricia dumped the introduction duties on me. Patricia – Professor Hartley – she’s head of the department, so I could hardly say no. I had to show this Trevor around, and he wanted everyone to go for drinks after, and I didn’t see how I could get out of it.” He shrugged. “Nice guy, Trevor. I managed to sneak away after one drink.”

Erik held eye contact with him, and Charles forced himself not to break it. Then Erik’s penetrating stare vanished as he exhaled. “Okay. You could’ve just said that, though.”

“Yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to sound cryptic, I was just distracted when I called.” He cleared his throat. “And, uh… I guess there’s more. I was nervous about tonight, really. I guess the thing is that… that I don’t have much experience with kids, and I didn’t realise I was supposed to come later, so I was nervous about Shani.” This must have made the last bits of doubt evaporate from Erik’s mind as the hint of suspicion in his eyes gave way to trust instead. Charles wasn’t lying, he reminded himself: he had been nervous about Shani.

“God,” Erik sighed in what appeared to be sudden comprehension. “I’m f*cking this up, aren’t I?” He rubbed at his mouth as Charles wondered what that meant. “Christ, everything’s falling apart.”

The self-deprecatory tone was ill-placed in Erik’s mouth. “How is anything falling apart?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Erik leaned forward, elbows coming to rest on his thighs. He looked at his hands as if silently enumerating in his head. “I mean, first off, I made Shani cry today. I lost my temper and had a go at her when she’d done nothing wrong. Then it turns out that my eight-year-old son doesn’t want to see me, which Magda doesn’t seem bothered by, which is – bloody great. Now my ex-wife, on the other hand, is guilt-tripping me because she’s spending Christmas alone, and I’m up to my ears at work and I just don’t know how the hell I can keep it up. What else… Oh, tomorrow I’ll have to call Mother and tell her that Pietro won’t be joining us for the holidays, and I know she’ll cry because she feels so alone ever since Father passed. And I’m pretty sure I found a grey hair on my head last week, and I know which knee will be my bad one when I’m sixty, that is my left, and when you cancelled on me today I went from – from thinking I was some kind of superman who was busy agreeing with everyone that your life really does start in your thirties, I went from all of that to a sweatpant wearing pizza horder with a nasty attitude in approximately five minutes. Christ, I’m a mess.”

Erik sighed, and Charles tried to process everything. He hadn’t known Erik’s father had died, even, and he now wondered why he hadn’t thought of Pietro in connection to Erik going to Germany. Of course Erik would see his son whilst there, or at least try to. This affair with Erik might be what kept Charles up at night, but he was short-sighted if he thought that Erik didn’t have enough on his plate as it was.

“You’re not a mess,” he said sternly.

Erik shrugged in a reticent manner that did not suit him at all. “Thirty-two years old, two children by two different women, and divorced. How does that look on paper if not a mess?”

“Messy, maybe, but not a mess. And if you insist on it being one, well at least it’s a hot mess.”

Erik frowned before he laughed. “Was that a pick up line?”

He smiled softly. “Maybe.”

He stood up and walked over, a hand curling around Erik’s shoulders as he sat down and pulled Erik into his arms. Erik relaxed against him willingly, head resting against his chest as Charles secured his arms around Erik’s strong upper frame. He nosed the top of Erik’s head, breathing him in – he smelled like grass or something else organic, somehow. Even with Erik giving him a breakdown of the things that were wrong in his life, Charles thought he’d much rather try solving Erik’s problems than anyone else’s.

He pulled Erik closer – there was a whole different centre of gravity to Erik that pulled him straight in. “I think you’re wrong,” he said quietly.

“About?”

“About being a mess,” he said, slowly moving his fingers in small circles over Erik’s collarbone. “You’re doing a bloody great job, I’ll have you know.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“Take my word on it,” he said simply, and he felt Erik smile. Erik was an adventure that he couldn’t bring himself to resist. What Erik described as a mess was a tangled web of Erik that Charles was intrigued by and, seeing Erik like this, vulnerable and unsure of himself, only made him realise how badly he wanted to be the person Erik came to for reassurance. No one in their boring estate meetings had any idea of what the co-director in the immaculately fitting suits was actually like – no one but Charles.

“I guess I’ll take your word on it,” Erik said in what was clearly a hopeful tone. Erik sat up straighter, elbow resting on the back of the couch. Erik’s eyes were a stunning, earnest blue, and Charles’s heart missed a beat as their eyes met. Erik’s thumb absentmindedly brushed his chin. “When you cancelled I thought maybe I’d messed this up. Been too keen.”

“Keen, huh?” he teased.

“Yeah, called you too many times without meaning to or something.” Erik looked a little embarrassed, but Charles only felt his insides tighten. Erik gave him an aloof smile. “I think there’s a part of my brain that thinks we’re still married.”

Erik said this casually and clearly without a second thought. Erik was probably trying to be funny. Charles, however, felt a rush of urgency. “Me too.”

Erik’s smile faded slightly, but Charles didn’t let him respond. Instead he kissed Erik, like he had wanted to do since his arrival. Erik returned the kiss, arms wrapping around his waist, pulling him closer. Erik felt good against him and tasted sweet, and suddenly his body and mind radiated with a string of ErikErikErik. If the way Erik kissed back was anything to go by, the rush of desire was mutual. The kiss wasn’t just a kiss – it was dirty and sex-seeking, deepening instantly with their tongues meeting and tasting.

He reluctantly broke the kiss, arousal already pulsing in him, but Erik’s mouth only followed, placing small kisses on his lips. Those were the best kisses, somehow, the lithe but wet presses of Erik’s mouth against his own. Erik kept his arms firmly around his waist, fingers pressing against his lower back possessively, which only weakened Charles’s desire to do anything other than get naked. Charles brushed his nose against Erik’s. “I should go.”

“Huh?” Erik said, sounding dazed, and Charles couldn’t help but feel a little smug.

“I said I should go,” he said, but he sounded reluctant even to his own ears.

Erik shook his head. “No, that’s ludicrous. Stay.” Charles shook his head in turn, and Erik let out a small, frustrated groan. “That whole thing I said, about being a mess and a human disaster – I take that back, temporary insanity.” Charles laughed, and Erik smirked at him, mouth hovering over his. “Come on, spend the night with me.” It sounded a little bit like an order. Charles exhaled unsteadily – how to hell could anyone refuse? There was still the question of… He briefly glanced at the ceiling. Erik caught the look and frowned. “What is it? Shani? She’s asleep, Charles.”

“She’s here,” he corrected.

“She was always gonna be here,” Erik reasoned. Charles raised a sceptical eyebrow at him. “Aw, come on – her bedroom’s not next to mine. The most she’d hear would be the bed creaking. You remember when you were a kid and your parents’ bed creaked and you were in your twenties before you even realised what it had been?”

Charles laughed at that, rather horrified by the thought. “Um, no, I definitely did not hear that when I was a child. My parents’ bedroom was in a different wing.”

“Oh I see.” Erik snorted. “Rich kid problems.”

“f*ck off,” he laughed and pressed their smiles together.

They kissed a few more times, his hands brushing the short strands of Erik’s hair, cradling Erik’s head between his hands – god he loved Erik’s mouth, pliant and talented… Erik broke the kiss, hot breath washing over his lips. “Please stay,” Erik whispered quietly, thumb brushing his earlobe. “Don’t make me go to an empty bed when I had you right here.”

Erik’s voice was low and honeyed, and Charles felt his stomach tighten. He had a pretty damn good idea what they would do in that empty bed. “Okay,” he conceded. They wouldn’t see each other for a few weeks after this. “But only because you begged. Quite literally.”

“I hardly begged.”

“Oh I believe you did,” he said, shoving Erik back playfully, but Erik only grabbed his wrist and pulled him into a tight hug, face buried in his chest. Charles was taken aback, but pressed a lingering kiss to the side of Erik’s head, his arms around Erik’s shoulders. They stayed in their embrace for a long time, the warmth and proximity comforting. Erik held onto him tightly, like perhaps he needed this more than Charles did. He slowly stroked Erik’s back, and Erik pushed into him more, seeking contact. Erik Lehnsherr needed to be loved, he thought vaguely – Erik deserved as much.

He followed Erik upstairs, feeling like a thief as he did so: slipping into the private quarters in the dark of the night. As they got on the landing, however, a child’s voice rang in the air through the closed door next to them: “Papa?”

Erik stopped, and Charles fought off a grin. “Asleep, huh?” he whispered.

“Just give me a minute,” Erik said, motioning for him to keep going. He slipped past as Erik went into his daughter’s room with a, “Was ist loss, Herzchen?”

Erik’s bedroom was above the living room, the street lamp outside shining in through the venetian blinds. Charles closed the door behind himself, taking in the quiet of the room. The bed was unmade while the wardrobe doors were open with a few shirts on the floor like they’d spilled out. It wasn’t a mess like Erik had described his life, it was just a bit unfocused. He sat down on the edge of the bed, turning the nightstand light on. He looked down at his socks – he’d taken his shoes off in the middle of the film. He’d known already then that he’d stay and not go back to his flat.

His flat. He kept making that mistake. Their flat, his and Warren’s.

It was easier to meet at Erik’s house than his own – that way he didn’t have to worry about changing the sheets, about the condom stash, about Erik leaving a sock behind. He’d unpacked more boxes that week, too, finally getting to the one that had their pictures in it, and he’d put three frames of him and Warren on the mantelpiece in the living room: one of them in Barcelona outside Sagrada Família, one of them from last Christmas at Westchester, in the winter sitting room by the tree, and one of them in Geneva by the lake, his arms around Warren. And as he’d placed them on the mantelpiece he’d thought that from here on out he’d always have to remove them before Erik visited.

In terms of cheating on Warren, sleeping with Erik was worse than just having sex with him. Watching movies with Erik was worse, brunching with Erik was worse, spending the night was worse… Sex was just sex, animalistic and primitive. This was something bigger, something worse.

He looked down at one of the pillows, striped grey and white. He picked it up and, with a glance to the door to make sure no one was coming, pressed his nose against the fabric. It smelled of Erik, of his colognes and shampoos and skin, and Charles’s brain immediately felt pleased and content from the scent on it. The drawer of the nightstand was slightly ajar – he pulled it open further: a few pens, bookmarks, receipts, a forgotten library card, a bottle of lube, tissues, and an opened pack of condoms amongst other junk. He tilted the condom pack up towards him – two inside. How many had there been last time?

He glanced at the bed again, and he thought of that dancer, Angel, and he thought of Emma Frost’s friend, whoever she may have been, and he stood up, aflame with a sudden and unexpected jealousy.

He didn’t like waiting. The night brought shadows with it.

On top of the dresser he found floorplans to a house, domestic looking – not a university project. The word ‘Amersham’ was printed on the top right corner of each sheet, and Charles wondered whose house he was looking at. He walked to the wardrobe next, a row of dress shirts and suit jackets. They were arranged from light to dark, starting with beige tones, then grey, then navy, then black. OCD, definitely, but he loved the sight of the clothes, his fingers brushing the fabrics at the shoulders.

Ten years had slipped past them. They couldn’t just skip that and pretend they still knew each other – Charles knew this rationally, but god it didn’t feel like they were strangers. It was natural to pull Erik in for a kiss, it was natural to have Erik in his arms when Erik was upset, it all felt so natural. But all of that felt natural with Warren, too. Erik was a stranger whose house he was in, whose bed he was going to go into. But god, Erik was right in a way: a part of Charles still remembered everything they had once felt for each other, and that part was convinced that Charles had married Erik Lehnsherr nearly a decade ago. How do you shake off something like that, he wondered.

The door opened and Erik walked in, a kind if damaged man that Charles couldn’t stop thinking about. “She’s definitely asleep now.”

“Good,” he said, walking over as Erik quietly shut the door. He brought Erik down for a fierce kiss. Erik let out a surprised yelp that got lost between their mouths, but Charles felt a desperate yearning to be this other person, to be the Charles who’d spent the past ten years with Erik, that other Charles who had been more adventurous and more exciting than he himself was. This was their house, and Erik was his partner, and, f*ck, maybe down the hall was their daughter – whatever the scenario was, Charles felt himself come alive in it.

Erik recovered quickly, hand coming up to the back of his head as they kissed. Erik wasn’t his. Erik wasn’t, and that made the blood in him boil hotter, in anger and hope.

When the kiss broke, Erik smiled crookedly. “Oh we can’t possibly, we don’t have a separate wing and the child will be traumatised…”

“Shut up,” he said, hand on the zipper of Erik’s hoodie. He slid it down slowly – Erik was wearing nothing underneath.

Erik stepped closer to him, gaze dark. “I can shut up – can you?”

Charles began to harden incredibly fast. “Depends – do you have anything big enough to fill my mouth?”

“I can think of something,” Erik said, voice deep, and Charles’s stomach dropped. His fingers traced the contours of Erik’s toned chest, the skin hot to the touch. His thumb brushed a nipple, which hardened from the contact. He slid the hoodie off of Erik, the garment falling onto the floor – Christ, Erik was beautiful. He traced the muscles of Erik’s stomach, his palm flat against the skin. The sweatpants Erik wore were loose, but Erik’s co*ck had begun to press against the fabric noticeably.

Erik brushed their foreheads together. “Well, you talk the talk, but…” he whispered in a teasing tone.

Charles huffed in annoyance – fine, no wasting time, then. He pushed Erik’s sweatpants down, pleased that Erik wore no underwear, just as he’d suspected. Erik’s co*ck sprang free, protruding out and up from his body, and Charles all but licked his lips at the sight. Erik did not move but left him to his explorations, his hand now dragging over Erik’s pubic bone.

“Lie down on the bed,” he ordered, and Erik finally moved. Charles pulled off his jumper and undershirt while Erik settled on his back in the middle of the bed, propping himself up with his elbows. Charles followed, getting on his knees between Erik’s spread legs.

He stroked Erik’s co*ck with one hand, leaning down to place wet kisses on the skin below Erik’s navel. Erik let out a sigh, hips shifting restlessly. Charles ran a hand from Erik’s inner thigh to his pubic hair, applying pressure there to keep Erik’s hips down. “Keep still,” he said against warm skin, and Erik stopped wriggling. He bit into the top of Erik’s thigh just a little too hard, enough for the indents of his teeth to show when he retreated.

Erik didn’t need to be teased or coaxed to full length – he was already hard, dick flushed and swollen. Charles licked a broad stripe from the base to the head, and on the downward slide he took the co*ck into his mouth. Erik let out a stifled groan as Charles let his lips form a tight O around the co*ck that he wanted in his mouth and throat. The taste of Erik on his tongue made him hungry for more – he loved co*ck, he especially loved Erik’s, and he wanted nothing more than to wreck Erik in the process of it.

His tongue pressed against the underside of the erection, moving over taut skin and protruding veins. His hand curled around the base, and with each pop he began to meet the circle of his fist.

“Oh sh*t,” Erik groaned, hands coming down to rest on his shoulders as he set a fast, firm pace. Erik breathed heavily and unevenly, the hitches in breathing matching the pressure Charles applied. The scent of Erik made Charles feel heady, and the salty taste of him only made Charles himself harder.

Erik was soon slick with his spit, drops of it rolling down onto Charles’s fist. Erik couldn’t quite shut up, making small noises of pleasure that were still quiet enough not to carry through walls. Charles pulled back, trying to catch his breath a little. The co*ckhead glistened, redder now than when he had started. He rang the tip of his tongue along the slit, receiving the taste of Erik’s pre-come as he did so. Erik’s hand on his shoulder squeezed in warning, but f*ck, he wanted more of that taste, a mouth full of it.

“You’re really good at that,” Erik said, voice gruff. He sounded a bit helpless.

“Mmm,” he agreed, his tongue tracing along the ridge of the flushed co*ckhead before he sucked it into his mouth. The tip pressed to his cheek. Erik was staring down at him, supporting himself on one elbow now, and with his other hand he now brushed Charles’s hair.

Erik drew in a sharp breath as he suckled on the crown, pulling it deeper into his mouth. “f*ck,” Erik swore, hips jerking.

Charles pulled back slowly until the seal of his lips was placing a kiss against the slit where more pre-come had gathered. He loved milking Erik out slowly, his mouth demanding, Erik’s body conceding.

“How’s that?” he asked. Erik groaned something that wasn’t quite words. “Shall I keep going?” he asked, rubbing his bearded chin against the side of Erik’s wet co*ck, and Erik laughed a bit desperately. “A yes, I take it?”

“You’re an asshole,” Erik said, and Charles grinned to himself. He loved being good at this. With all of his boyfriends, he’d always wanted to figure out what the perfect blowj*b was for them. Was it deep throating, was it gagging, was it letting them f*ck his mouth – because knowing that gave him power, knowing that he could make that person come in two minutes if he ever wanted to, knowing that they were helpless against him once he got down on his knees and got their co*ck out…

His hand now reached for Erik’s that had slipped onto his neck, moving it firmly to the top of his head. Erik’s fingers instinctively twisted in his long hair, and Charles moaned in response, letting his mouth slip over Erik once more.

He knew exactly how to make Warren come, for instance, and he loved that. Back in the day, he suspected, he had known how to make Erik come too (although to be fair, at the age of nineteen his experience in blowj*bs had been a lot more limited – he’d picked up tricks since). But this time he had not figured Erik out yet, had not perfected this yet. And that was what he wanted, to have that victory over Erik: a good blowj*b made a man about as docile as a dog, eager to please in hopes of getting a treat.

Giving a blowj*b was a power trip, therefore, and although Erik was making all the right kinds of sounds that let Charles know he had him right where he wanted him, it somehow wasn’t what turned him on most of all. Right then what was making his own co*ck throb, still in the confines of his slacks and boxers, was Erik’s hand on his head, fingers digging into his scalp – he wanted Erik to press his head down, to roll his hips up, to keep him where he belonged and f*ck his mouth because it was the only thing that made sense to either of them.

In frustration he let go of the base, placing a hand atop Erik’s that was all too politely resting on his head. He pushed down as he let Erik’s co*ck slip deep into his mouth, hitting the back of his throat – the gag reflex was there, but he knew how to fight it back. Erik swore a little but got the hint, fist now twisting more sharply in his hair as Erik began to apply pressure on him, taking control of the pace. Charles relaxed his jaw and took it, the steady slide of spit-slicked co*ck into his mouth turning him on beyond belief.

Erik groaned loudly, the muscles of his stomach tensing when Charles touched him there, trying to steady himself a little. The pace was faster, Erik pushing his head down, hips twisting up, f*cking his mouth – god yes, Charles wanted this, needed this – Erik’s breathing was ragged and fast, but to Charles the wet, slick sounds of his mouth against co*ck were louder, obscene and dirty.

“I’m really close,” Erik warned him, voice husky. Charles glanced up at him to see Erik staring down, mouth dropped open and brows knit together in a concentrated expression. Erik was watching the display, Charles’s lips stretched around the hardened length. The rhythmic pressure Erik had applied wavered, and Charles wrapped his hand around the base once more, now pumping upwards fast and hard as he sucked on the first couple of inches. All of Erik jerked, and Erik hissed. “Oh f*ck, f*ck –”

Erik was not being quiet anymore, he was not keeping his mouth shut. The tip of Erik’s co*ck bumped against the roof of his mouth before sliding to the back again, and Charles closed his lips tightly around the pulsating co*ck. His eyes fluttered shut as his head popped up and down, sucking hard, his lips meeting the fist that twisted at the base.

“Can I – oh f*ck, come in your mouth?” Erik managed, sounding wrecked. “f*ck, I’m gonna come in your mouth.” His hips were desperately trying to buck up to push his co*ck deeper. Erik’s hand brushed hair away from his forehead. “Ch- Charles, f*ck, I’m gon – sh*t, sh*t, sh*t –”

Erik came with a loud groan, hand twisting his hair painfully. Erik jolted, hips jerking, and hot sem*n hit his throat as Erik moaned. Charles quickly pulled back to taste Erik better and was welcomed with a second wave of seed on his tongue. He moaned, swallowing, and Erik whimpered above him. He loved the taste of Erik’s come in his mouth, the streaks of hot sem*n landing on his tongue. He swallowed again, staring straight up at Erik – god, he wanted Erik to see how hot he was for this…

Erik was heaving, chest and throat flushed. He looked a little dazed, watching him as Charles pulled back, co*ck slipping out of his mouth. The crown was shiny with clear spit and white come, a deep crimson colour and beautifully swollen, and Charles felt a new rush of desire. He dragged the flat of his tongue over the slit hungrily. Erik jerked again, groaning, “Oh Christ, don’t –”

Erik sounded too hot, tasted too good – Charles moved up the bed, straddling Erik’s hips. With one hand he grabbed the back of Erik’s head and kissed him, immediately deepening the kiss as Erik’s lips parted. He knew Erik could taste himself on his tongue, that his own mouth was used and raw. Erik moaned into the kiss, and Charles felt strips of rationality leave him. He didn’t care where they were, what time it was – he wanted Erik all over him and then all over again. Christ, no one had ever made him feel crazy like this.

Thankfully Erik seemed to be on it, hands on the top of his slacks, undressing him with a hint of impatience. Erik shoved his trousers and boxers down until his co*ck was free. Erik rubbed his palm against the sensitive co*ckhead, and Charles thrust into it.

“Can you get out of these stupid clothes?” Erik nearly growled, and Charles was on it. He rolled off Erik, pushing his hips up as he got out of his remaining clothes. He’d barely managed to shake his left leg free of the briefs when Erik was on him, mouth bruising over his. Erik bit on his bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth – an evil tactic to keep him still as Erik began to stroke his erection. Charles lay still to give Erik easy access, and Erik grinned against his mouth as his thumb brushed over the wet co*ckhead.

Erik let go of him – both his lip and co*ck. Charles’s lower lip hurt a little. Erik got the lube from the nightstand before lying down on his back again. He patted his thigh in a ‘come here’ gesture, and Charles got the hint and straddled him. Erik moved with intent as he now spread lubricant on him, staring up with a hungry look in his eyes, his skin a pale contrast to the dark sheets underneath.

Charles leaned over Erik, swerving in for a kiss as Erik began to stroke him, the silence now broken by his small gasps and the wet sounds of him getting jerked off. God, Erik’s hand on him felt so good, squeezing him just right…

“f*ck,” he swore in between a kiss, the warmth of Erik radiating against him, and he could still taste Erik on his tongue. “f*ck, you’re so hot.”

Erik grinned against his mouth, perhaps a little smug. Charles could have pretended that going down on Erik hadn’t made him horny beyond all reason, but he was leaking in Erik’s able hands and saw no reason to pretend. Erik’s other hand moved further to cup his balls, gently massaging and pulling – his balls were already drawn tight, anticipating release, and Erik’s hand only pushed him closer. Charles groaned helplessly – he was close, so f*cking close…

Erik’s mouth slid to his jaw and he spoke, voice low, “Getting you off is addictive, you know that?” To punctuate the point, Erik began pumping his co*ck faster. Charles thrust into Erik’s hands, a hot, hard swirl of lust just at the pit of his stomach steadily building up. Erik’s teeth scraped his earlobe. “I’m at work, at meetings, at a construction site… talking to people, finalising reports, taking phone calls… and the entire time I’m just thinking about us, just like this, getting each other off.”

The speed at which Erik was stroking him increased. Charles had his hands pressed to the mattress on the sides of Erik’s head, eyes slipping shut as he focused on the hands working him towards release. Erik nipped at his chin, hand twisting on the upstroke. Charles groaned, and Erik said, “You think of that too?”

“Yes,” he breathed. “All the time.”

“Yeah?” Erik asked, fist around his co*ck tightening, the hand on his balls tugging a little harder. Charles couldn’t stop his hips from moving, f*cking himself into the tight fist stroking him. So good, so good, f*cking hell –

“Yeah, yeah – Oh f*ck, Erik, please.”

“Come on.” Erik pumped him hard and fast, and Charles was thrusting into it, his arms tensed up, blood rushing to his head. “Come on, I’ve got you… I’ve got you – that’s it, come on –”

That did it, somehow – he came all over Erik’s hand, stomach and chest, thrusting into the circled fist that did not stop working through the waves of his org*sm. And he wasn’t quiet, not at all, but Erik muffled his cries with his mouth. Only when he’d stopped did Erik let go of his co*ck, arms slipping around his waist and pulling him down. He practically crashed on Erik, his body trapping Erik beneath him, but Erik seemed comfortable and so was he. Erik kissed him – Charles was still trying to catch his breath, but responded fiercely. For years his memories of them had included that Erik had been some of the best sex of his life – his memories weren’t wrong.

Erik kept kissing him in the afterglow, more coherent than he was. Soothing fingers ran along his spine, from the start of his tail bone to his shoulder blades, and Charles eventually broke the kiss, breathing against Erik’s cheek as he came down.

He slid off of Erik and onto the bed. Erik rolled onto his side, their legs tangling as Erik pushed against him with the clear purpose of cuddling – Erik was a post-sex cuddler. Charles loved that.

Charles lifted a hand to Erik’s head where the hair was wet at the roots. Erik pushed against him, resting his head on Charles’s shoulder as an arm looped around his waist. Charles pressed a kiss to the top of Erik’s head, his chest swelling up as Erik nosed at his collarbone. Voice hoarse from the blowj*b, he said, “That wasn’t quiet.”

“No,” Erik agreed absently, placing a lazy kiss on his chest. “But note how we’ve been perfectly undisturbed.”

“Maybe she’s deaf,” he offered, and Erik laughed a little.

“Or maybe you should listen to me when I know better.”

Charles scoffed, curling an arm around Erik’s shoulders, his body still coming down from the high. Erik almost seemed to be burrowing into him like Erik wanted to make sure he wouldn’t move. Charles had no intention to. A comfortable silence filled the room, and as the org*sm haze faded, a steady drowsiness filled him instead.

“Thanks for coming tonight,” Erik said, breaking the warm silence.

Charles kept massaging Erik’s scalp thoughtlessly. “Thanks for having me.”

“Charles?” He hummed in response. Erik hesitated briefly. “If I’m going too fast or if – if I’m pushing you. Just tell me and I’ll back off.”

He frowned. “Why would I want you to back off?”

Erik smiled against his skin, and Charles could not think of a single reason why the two of them shouldn’t just throw caution to the wind – and then he thought of Warren. He never thought of Warren during, only after as a fresh wave of guilt. Warren Worthington, his partner.

“sh*t, I almost forgot,” Erik then said, and Charles wanted to say ‘Me too’.

Erik rose and left their embrace, which upset Charles more than he would have been willing to admit. Erik got out of bed with the same agility he always had first thing in the morning, and Charles rose to his elbows. Erik went to the chest of drawers, wiping his stomach as he did so – Charles’s nearly adulterous seed. Erik got out a plastic bag with the Waterstones logo on it, saying, “It’s not wrapped or anything.” Erik sat on the bed and Charles followed suit, crossing his legs. Erik handed him the bag with a smile. “Merry Christmas slash Hanukkah slash holidays.”

Charles took the bag, hesitating. “I didn’t get you anything.” He’d bought Warren plenty of presents, but as he hated Christmas shopping in the full shops with the incessant Christmas jingles he always got it out of the way early, having purchased most of Warren’s gifts in the autumn months. “You really didn’t have to,” he said, now getting a book out. He stared at it: Japanese for Dummies.

“To stop you swearing at innocent elderly people,” Erik supplied.

“Oh, you f*cking dick,” he said, and Erik started laughing, giving him one of those wide smiles that was full of teeth, the corners of Erik’s eyes crinkling. Charles punched him in the shoulder – quite hard but Erik deserved it – which Erik interpreted as an invitation to a naked wrestle for dominance, which only ended with them making out on the bed.

It was only the following morning, on the tube back to his house, that Charles opened the book. Erik hadn’t wrapped it, but he’d written a note on the first page:

To Charles,
For smoother adventures.

Love, Erik

Charles covered his mouth with his hand, staring at the text, and suddenly felt the loss of a life unlived, of nine years that a part of him wished he could have spent with Erik, alongside a sharp devastation as to what kind of a person he had become. He shook this off as well as he could.

Erik seemed to think Charles still had a few adventures left in him; Erik just didn’t realise he was one of them.

Chapter 6: Six

Chapter Text

Six

Three figures in the park were working on a snowman a slight distance away from Erik, who was listening to the sound of the dial tone with no one picking up. One of the builders was a boy of eight, pushing a football sized snowball atop a larger bottom section. The boy had fair hair, blond tips sticking from underneath a blue hat that his mother had knit for him. The boy was working alongside a younger girl, who was doing her best in picking up snow and patting it onto the snow figure. They were being helped by a red-haired woman who had her back to Erik.

The call kicked into voicemail, and Erik hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket. He fought back the slight sense of disappointment: he had every reason to be happy today.

He approached the group and asked the children, “Hat der Schneemann einen Namen?”

Pietro looked up at him, looking thoughtful. He eyed the half-made snowman. “Herman.”

“Herman der Schneemann?”

Shani patted on more snow and beamed. “Herman der Schneemann!” she repeated in delight, and Pietro looked pleased by the positive reception.

Magda smiled widely. “That’s a great name,” she said encouragingly, and the kids continued their labours. The sight of them playing side by side made Erik glad that he had managed to swallow his pride and come to Wiesbaden to see his son, even though he was upset Pietro hadn’t come to Dusseldorf with them. Magda now glanced at Erik. “No luck with the call?”

“Afraid not,” he said. “A work thing, never mind.”

He and Shani had been in Wiesbaden for two days now, their visit full of the kinds of things Erik had hoped Pietro would like: the science centre, the cinema, the park… Last night they had dined at Magda and Hans’s house, and it had all been very civilised although chaotic with Pietro, Shani, Magda and Hans’s two other children, and he and Hans were stiff around one another, as indeed they always had been. Shani had taken no time in falling in love with her brother whom she didn’t really remember from before, yet she now seemed to follow him around loyally, which Pietro appeared to find both bewildering and thrilling. Erik could tell that Pietro enjoyed the attention that came with the big brother role to a second sister. Pietro now said, “No Shani, do it like this,” and began to demonstrate the best way of moulding a snowball. Shani stared at him intently and did her best to mimic.

Magda smiled. “Pietro’s had a great time, you know,” she said confidentially, the children lost in their imaginations.

“So have I,” he replied. He and Pietro never quite knew how to react to each other, it seemed – the awkwardness was an ironic trace of father-son similarity. But he’d seen the boy smile more and more as time had passed, Pietro building up his confidence around his father and half-sister. Magda hadn’t lied about Pietro when she’d first cancelled: Pietro was at a difficult age, Erik could tell, and social interaction with people Pietro didn’t know that well was a struggle. The boy could be as quiet as a mouse, moving silently, being on Erik’s left side one second and then appearing from the right instead. Slowly, however, Pietro had stopped sneaking around and had started asking Erik to play with him. If only he could stay longer, he thought wistfully.

“When are you flying back to London?” Magda asked, as good as ever with pleasant chit-chat as they waited for the children to be done. Erik told Magda of the holiday arrangements with Ororo, who would have Shani for New Year’s. “And how is Ororo?” Magda enquired. The two women had met a handful of times in the past.

“Fine, I suppose,” he said with a shrug, and Magda hummed in a tone that Erik recalled from a decade earlier – it was one of Magda’s ‘oh I see’ hums. “What?” he asked, taking her in: her auburn hair was as red as ever but lines had now appeared in the corners of her eyes. They were both getting older, Erik thought, as they stood in the white park with Erik’s children at play.

“Nothing, I guess,” Magda said dismissively, but cracked easily when Erik scrutinised her. “I guess I always thought that – well, I thought that maybe you and Ororo would eventually get back together.”

Erik was stumped. “Magda, we’re divorced.”

“So are a lot of people,” she argued, and Erik let out a disbelieving laugh. “Fine, never mind. I just thought – You have this look about you.”

His mother had said the same thing, the perceptive witch of a woman that she was, eyeing him suspiciously and knowingly, asking questions full of insinuation: who are you texting, Erik? Why do you keep looking at your phone, Erik? Are there any news, Erik? His mother, at least, knew enough to realise that Erik was not pining for Ororo, nor was she under any false pretences that they would ever get back together. Yet he hadn’t told his mother because he worried that she would say it was too soon after the divorce for Erik to be seeing someone – and not just someone, of course, but a man he’d once been in love with. Erik didn’t want any nay-saying when it was going so well between them. He’d only consented that he had been on a few dates with someone, after relentless badgering.

But god, it was difficult not to tell the entire world. Give it a few more months, he figured. Once he and Charles felt more comfortable telling people, his mother would be the first to know.

Magda crossed her arms, her gaze on the children. “If my memory serves me right, you were never alone for too long.” Erik said nothing. He’d gone through a string of men and women right in the aftermath of their break up, which had hurt Magda a great deal. He wasn’t proud of who he had been back then; he could only hope that he was an improved version of a man. But even as he’d been sleeping around, he’d been searching for someone, a replacement, a connection – something that could even resemble a shadow of what he and Charles had had. He’d been trying to forget, he supposed.

“I’m not alone,” he corrected and nodded at Shani, who marvelled at Herman as Pietro put a third ball on top, giving Herman a head.

“That’s hardly what I meant,” Magda said sternly. Erik huffed. He’d moved across the world when Pietro had still been too young to talk, walking away from his son and starting over elsewhere. His abandonment of Pietro was connected to the downfall of him and Magda with all its grand disasters, and one topic in particular cast a nasty shadow on it all. There was a name that had never been mentioned between them after their break up, not even when Erik was packing up and going: the name had hung over them unvocalised but not unacknowledged.

“Charles,” Erik now said, after an eight year intermission. “I’m seeing Charles. Actually.” He’d held out for respectably long, surely.

Magda frowned. “What do you mean?”

He let out a deep breath. A short version seemed advisable. “Charles started working for the university in September, and I bumped into him shortly after. I had no idea that he lived in London, I hadn’t… seen or spoken to him since, you know. Since back then. But there he was, believe it or not.”

“You’re not trying to be funny?” Magda asked in disbelief. Her eyes had gone wide in surprise.

“No.”

“And?” she pressed on, and he shrugged. “For goodness sake, Erik.”

Last time he had f*cked everything up by not telling Charles about Magda and by not telling Magda about Charles. He didn’t want to repeat history: fess up early this time. “And now we’re seeing each other.”

Magda looked too surprised to speak, but then managed to say, “Well… That must be fate.”

Unlike Ororo, Magda knew about Charles. Of course she’d known. After Erik had resigned to the fact that he had to take responsibility and help Magda raise their child, he had broken up with Charles who was expecting them to reunite. Instead he had moved in with Magda. He had been devastated and Magda had known how to get the truth out of him: Erik had fallen in love with a man he’d met in Australia, and Erik had intended to leave her for him. Oh, the accusations: how can you cheat on me, who the hell is he, how can I raise this child alone if you go? No, no, he wasn’t going. He’d stay. He’d stay and do the right thing. Magda cried herself to sleep for weeks.

Erik never mentioned Charles after those few first fights that they had, and Magda had tactfully suppressed Charles’s name likewise, until now.

“Charles Xavier,” she said solemnly, and Erik was only mildly surprised that she’d memorised the name. “What are the odds?” She shook her head as she folded her arms, suddenly looking her age and then some. She looked at their son at play. “You know, the worst thing about expecting Pietro was knowing that you were mourning the loss of that man the entire time. I knew you were in love with him still.”

“I never blamed –”

“Yes,” she said, “you did. But it was a long time ago now.” She muttered to herself in Yiddish, shaking her head in disbelief. “Fate, it must be. My goodness.” She composed herself. “Well. Is it going alright?”

Erik hesitated. It was going great, but he didn’t want to rub that in. Magda always said it was ‘fate’ when she saw divine power at work. “The crazy thing is,” he said slowly, “that sometimes I feel like we never spent a day apart.” Magda smiled at this, and it was a genuine smile. He relaxed: this wasn’t them years and years ago, when they had both been angry and bitter. She wished him well now. She hadn’t always, and neither had he. “Anyway,” he then said, “I’m taking it slow. I’ve got Shani to think about.” This was a lie: he’d dumped slow somewhere between their first reunited night together and their now daily phone calls, with him in Germany and Charles in New York. Every day they caught up with each other. Every day Erik said that he couldn’t wait to see Charles again.

Slow was not for them.

“It can be difficult, integrating romance with being a parent,” Magda said sympathetically. “Shani’s a good child, though, not much trouble at all. She absolutely adores you. You’re so good with her.”

“I try my best,” he said fondly.

When Pietro was done with Herman, Erik and Magda inspected the final product, and Erik was aware that it was the first time in years that Pietro saw his biological parents together without Hans present: there he was, Pietro Maximoff, a mixture of Magda and him. Erik wanted Pietro to retain this memory, of them all in the park together. The snowman was a little wonky and lumpy, especially where Shani had slapped extra snow on, but Erik thought it was the best snowman he had ever seen: it was the snowman his children had made together.

He and Shani listened to a Disney’s compilation album on their way to Dusseldorf, and he smiled to himself after the successful venture to Wiesbaden. Usually his time with Pietro left him feeling bad, but this time it didn’t: he felt like he was doing okay as a father for once.

He checked the time and did the maths: it was the middle of the night in New York now, so it would be of no use to call. He wanted to tell Charles how everything had gone with Pietro, because Charles had asked to keep him informed. Yet he’d figured by now that it was easier to wait for Charles to call him than the other way around because usually he always got voicemail or Charles saying that he was in a bad spot and would call back later. Erik had found it easier to keep his cool back home, but the longer he didn’t see Charles, the harder it was to deny that in a very short time Charles had reclaimed a sizable chunk of his heart. Erik was enamoured to distraction – no wonder his mother and Magda both were picking up on it.

As Erik drove along the motorway, he hummed along to Unter dem Meer, keeping his eyes on the mirrors and every now and then checking on Shani’s sleeping reflection.

This time everything would go smoothly and he would correct his past mistakes. He could become the man whom he had longed to be at the age of twenty-three when he had failed Pietro, Magda, and most of all Charles.

The snow covering the grounds of the mansion looked like sprinkled icing sugar – or perhaps that was too kind. Maybe dandruff was more apt. Charles observed the whitened view from the bedroom window and wondered to whom the Westchester estate would one day belong to: neither he nor Raven wanted it. And no one needed that much space, let alone a gay man who couldn’t fill it with children.

He had spent a long time away from Westchester, having been sent to a boarding school at the age of eleven, but the house was still as familiar to him as anything. He recognised the creaks of the floorboards and the distinctive smell of the old books in the library. Something in him reverted to a child in that house, every corner reminding him of a long lost moment, and although at first he was taken aback by the grandeur of the many drawing rooms, the genuine Renaissance paintings and the full wine cellar, after a few days back he felt like he had hardly ever left.

This was his real life: this mansion and these people. At that moment it was so clear to him, all the Christmases he would spend there, his mother’s birthday galas every July, and his own wedding on a fine summer day sometime soon. London was a bizarre dream of red buses, busy streets, stuffy university lecture theatres and guilty getaways, from the moment he had walked into an estates meetings in September to the moment he’d snuck out of a Crouch End house over a week ago, six in the morning, snogging a half-dressed Erik in the doorway as the taxi had waited. All of that had happened to someone else; he knew that already. Truthfully, he could hardly remember what his place in St John’s Wood even looked like.

When he was in England, he could pretend that the limits of his life ended with the shores of the island. In that sense he and Raven were similar. She bummed it out in a dingy Camden Town flat that only had one redeeming feature: large windows, letting in natural light for her to paint in. Raven had been able to dedicate herself to art because she knew she couldn’t starve, but only a few of her English friends actually knew that she came from a house that could have easily been found on fantastical West Egg.

Maybe that was what England was for both of them: escapism. And once Charles left that bubble, it all seemed unthinkable to him.

Down by the main doors of the mansion was a limo waiting next to a parked sports car that belonged to Kurt Marko, his stepfather. The yellow Ferrari looking like a splash of urine on the white canvas. This was Kurt’s house these days – not Charles’s, not by a long shot.

Warm arms wrapped around Charles’s middle, a toned frame pressing against him from behind. Charles flinched and heard a chuckle in his ear. “Did I startle you?” Warren asked, and Charles hummed distractedly. Warren pressed a kiss on his ear. “Watcha thinking, all quiet and pensive?”

“That I can’t wait to leave,” he said honestly. They were heading to Aspen soon, where Scott’s bachelor party was due to take place. Charles welcomed excessive drinking and low level vandalism at this stage.

“It hasn’t been that bad, surely,” Warren said. He was right, really: Christmas had gone without any incidents, everyone had been civil, everyone had been polite, and Warren had been courteous throughout. Charles had even had a semi-pleasant conversation with Kurt as they had sipped scotch in the drawing room late on Christmas Eve. Raven was in a good mood, having a new boyfriend from whom she just couldn’t stand to be parted, and so she was constantly calling and texting this Christian Wagner who was back in London. It was rather obnoxious to observe, but on the plus side Raven was amiable to all. Christmas therefore had been good, or better than expected. Still he was restless.

“Hey,” Warren then said, turning him around. Warren was frowning, observant eyes full of concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Warren was wearing a tux, just like he was, every crease ironed out, cufflinks polished. They would wear tuxedos on their wedding day too, he thought vaguely. Warren added, “I thought I was the absentminded professor out of us two.”

Charles tried to focus. “I’m just looking forward to getting out of here. This place isn’t who I am.”

“It’s not that bad,” Warren said, thumb brushing his jawline. “We’ll endure it for a few more days, won’t we?”

“Well, we must,” he sighed.

Warren took a hold of his hand, nudging. “Come on, champ.”

The limo outside was for them, and they left without bumping into anyone apart from one of the servants. Warren’s parents were having the annual Worthington Group Charity Ball in the Upper East Side. It was a pretentious sort of gathering that Kathryn organised for the benefit of a different charity each year, and three years ago it had been for the Brighter Futures charity, helping underprivileged children to get college scholarships. Charles’s mother was a trustee of the chosen charity but had been unable to attend, and so Charles had been sent instead to represent the Xaviers. That was when he’d met Warren, and the rest, as they said, was history.

They didn’t count that gala as their anniversary, however, where Warren had made a pass at Charles that had failed. As far as they were concerned they had only properly become an item much later when Warren had come to Oxford. Still, the event marked the day of when they had first officially met, and Charles couldn’t help but feel that it was a special night for them.

They helped themselves to champagne during the one hour drive to the city. They both found the event equally repugnant, which was another reason why they didn’t like to consider it as important to them as a couple. Charles tried calling Raven to see if she would be there, but he received no response. Warren told him to check on Facebook as she was a habitual Facebook check-iner, and as his feed updated itself, sure enough, Raven had checked herself in at a SoHo sushi place twenty minutes prior with three New York friends of hers. She clearly wasn’t coming.

Below this post was another which Charles didn’t get the chance to read – he only caught the name of the person who’d posted it, after which he quickly pocketed his phone, his heart beating faster than a second ago. Warren was busy drinking champagne and asked, “Do you think Portia Dyer will try to dance with me again this year?”

“Of course,” Charles said. “She continues to live in the hope that you’ll stop being gay.”

“If she grows a dick, then maybe on a bad day,” Warren said dryly, and Charles smirked. Warren grinned at him. “And you – will you dance with me?”

“I’ll sweep you off your feet,” he promised and kissed his boyfriend. He felt the press of his phone in his pocket as he did so.

He and Warren were hardly ever in New York anymore, despite both being native sons. The one annual appearance they were both known to make these days, however, was this one, and Charles already knew that he would spend his evening telling their acquaintances about their London life and his new university job and their new home. The fact that Charles had done some of the DIY on their flat himself would undoubtedly confuse most of his interlocutors who hired Mexican or Puerto Rican workforce for such things and, of course, there was one question in particular that he and Warren would get asked, especially now when they had been together for nearly three years.

When they arrived to the five-star hotel by Central Park, it took thirteen minutes by Charles’s reckoning before the question first popped up. Paige Charleston, whose infamous wedding had given food poisoning to many of her guests the year before, found them quickly after they had entered the crowded ballroom and came up to them with a cry of “My beauties!”

Charles was taken aback by how very pregnant she was – about to pop by the look of her. Pecks on the cheeks and some polite questions later, she said, “And when exactly are you two getting married? I mean, they must have gay marriage in England by now!”

“They do, yes,” Charles confirmed with a cordial smile.

“I love a good gay wedding,” Paige mused. “The gays know how to party!”

Positive discrimination was alive and well, Charles thought. Paige didn’t push them further, however, and Charles thought of the ring that was back in his office at the Genetics Institute. He’d at one point toyed with the idea of proposing to Warren over Christmas or New Year, but when he flew out he left the ring behind. He asked her about the baby instead, which was due in a month’s time. It was her first and she was incredibly excited, her hand on the bump as she talked about the nursery and how she was already checking out the best day care centres in the Upper East Side. “I can’t wait to be a mommy,” she beamed before she saw a friend of hers arriving and dashed off to speak to them instead.

Kathryn and Junior Worthington were there, of course, as the hosts, and they went to say hello. Kathryn was beaming as everything had so far gone splendidly, and Junior made grunting noises of agreement. A few minutes in Warren was approached by a long-lost friend from a summer camp they had attended as teenagers, and Kathryn took this opportunity to grab Charles by the arm and lead him over to her sister June, all the way from Oklahoma. “She’s heard so much about Warren’s partner over the years but I know you’ve never met!”

June was full of stories of Warren as a child, which Charles listened to with interest. And even as he laughed about the time Warren had nailed his shirt sleeve to the birdhouse at the age of eight, Charles felt detached. “That sounds like Warren,” he told June with a bright smile. He just didn’t feel bright on the inside. He thought of Warren as a child, being as disastrous as he was now, and the thought filled him with affection that was somehow a little sad. June said, “You are going to get married soon, now aren’t you?”

“Naturally,” he said.

“And will you adopt or use one of those surrogates?” June enquired. Charles was taken aback – not by her directness or lack of discretion because he was used to that with Kathryn, but because it was a conversation that he and Warren had never had.

After June was hurried off to meet a senator, Charles headed for the champagne, hoping to find a corner where he could get out his phone for a few minutes without being rude, but Warren intercepted him and pulled him to a small circle of people. “This is my partner, Charles Xavier,” Warren said. “He’s a researcher at the best genetics institute in London and likes to sing Beyoncé songs in the shower.”

Charles smiled as the others laughed. “Sing is exaggerating – humming, perhaps,” he said good-humouredly. He shook hands and joined the conversation. Warren placed an arm around his waist – not too tightly because that would be considered as unwelcomed PDA, but with a casual, affectionate confidence that felt familiar and comforting. Warren smiled at him brightly – Warren felt bright on the inside.

What kind of parents would they be? Which one of them would be the good cop, which one the bad cop? (Okay, it was fairly obvious that Warren would be the good cop and Charles the bad cop.)

When the dancing began, as predicted, Portia Dyer made a beeline for Warren. Warren looked at Charles in slight panic, and Charles said, “You know she always donates generously. Off you go, darling.”

“You’re prostituting me for charity,” Warren exclaimed in mock horror.

“That is exactly right.”

“Backstabber,” Warren whispered before he turned to his suitor. “Portia! Care to dance?”

Portia grinned, eyeing Warren up and down like he was a piece of meat.

Charles watched them dancing amidst the other couples in the large ballroom. He got himself another drink and was talking to one of that year’s charity’s staff when his phone began to buzz in his pocket. He nearly choked on champagne, coughing and excusing himself, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed when it was Raven. He headed outside to take the call.

The ball was organised in the same hotel each year, and last year he and Warren had discovered a men’s room at the end of the long corridor where they had spent a joyous ten minutes f*cking (in protest of elitism, as Warren had said). The memory almost felt startling and like the ghost of them from a better time, not that now was bad… They just weren’t quite as happy, comparatively. They were okay, though. They were fine.

He headed into the lobby now instead, away from the noise as he talked to his sister. He tried to persuade her to come – la crème de la crème of New York was there, including people Raven knew. “If not for me, come for Warren,” he said, and this nearly got Raven to change her mind but in the end she declined.

“I live in London for a reason: to get away from all those people,” she said. “They’re all up their own asses, you know.”

He grinned, watching the crowds in the lobby: the women in expensive evening dresses, the men in tuxedos, including himself. “Well, you’re not wrong.” The carpet was a luxurious deep red, soft and springy under his black, polished shoes.

Raven sighed. “I know you and Warren need to stay in that world, but I don’t see why I have to.” Charles hummed in agreement and only after the call wondered why, indeed, he and Warren had to. With his parents making sure that no one forgot about the Marko-Xavier family in New York, did Charles really need to be there? But unlike him, Warren was an only child. Warren would always have to make an appearance at his mother’s charity ball and many others, until the end of time. The kind of escapism that Charles longed for wasn’t in their future.

He clicked Facebook open and scrolled down to the post he’d seen in the car, and once he reached it he felt rather stupid: Erik Lehnsherr has shared a link. It was to an article in German that had something to do with Menschenrechte. He had only caught Erik’s name and hoped for some kind of an update from the other side of the world, and this was hardly an insight. He and Erik had never made any kind of formal agreement to keep in touch, but they’d talked to each other every day so far. Charles wasn’t even sure who’d rung the other first – if it had been Erik, then Charles had clearly been expecting the call. Charles therefore knew how Hanukkah had gone, that Erik’s mother had loved the locket she’d gotten from Erik, and that Erik’s Wiesbaden trip had started well. In fact, Erik should have returned to Dusseldorf by now. He was eager to know how the rest of the visit had gone.

Of course Warren would think nothing of Erik appearing on Charles’s newsfeed as such. Erik had friended him a little after their first night together (their second first night together?), and Charles in his paranoid nervousness had accepted as it would seem weird not to, and then he had quickly added every member of the chess club lest Warren find Erik friending him suspicious. Turned out that even Theology Craig had a Facebook profile and Charles felt assured that to Warren it had only looked like a mass friending of the chess club gang. Charles then had put Erik and the others on a strict limited profile so that Erik could not see any of his pictures or updates, which suited him well, while he was able to see what Erik was up to whenever he chose to.

It had been surprisingly easy to get privacy each day for a phone call, for instance when Warren went for a shower or a run or Charles disappeared into the library to make a work phone call. Warren didn’t question him.

Charles now tried to figure out the time difference. It would be early morning in Germany, perhaps too early for Erik to be up. He typed in: Stuck in a boring charity ball. How’s life over there?

By the doors of the hotel a woman was helping a small boy barely out of babyhood into a winter coat, the dad waiting and holding a slightly older child propped to his hip. The dad pecked the daughter’s cheek fondly while the mother was cooing at their younger child, coaxing him to put the coat on. When she succeeded, she picked up him up, and the dad said, “Henry, you look great!” Henry didn’t hear, just looked at the chandelier and then gurgled, kicked his legs and waved his fists. The parents both instinctively smiled, and so did Charles.

Adoption or surrogate, Charles wondered, as he headed back to the ball where Warren had managed to escape Portia, and as Charles had promised to dance, they took to the floor for a waltz. Warren said, “So I have a surprise for you.”

“Oh you do?” Charles asked as they moved in the midst of other pairs, and Warren grinned.

“Well a little birdie told me that you dislike Westchester –”

“Uh huh, that was me.”

Warren rolled his eyes. “Point being that I got us a room at the hotel for the night.” Charles almost stopped dancing. Warren smiled at him. “Good surprise?”

“Yes,” he managed. He didn’t want to go back to the mansion. Warren knew him well. He squeezed Warren tight against him. “Thank you.”

They still had a few hours of mingling to get through, but Charles felt better about it now.

After midnight they headed for the lift hand in hand. Warren had gotten them a double room on the seventh floor that faced Central Park. They quickly got out of their tuxedos and under the crisp hotel sheets, Warren moving close to him with intent – his body was warm and familiar, the invitation clear in the way he pressed closer.

Charles exposed his neck to Warren’s wandering mouth, the press of lips sending a jolt of arousal through him. “Honey?” he asked, and Warren hummed, kissing his throat. “What do you think about kids?”

Warren lifted his head. “Kids?” he repeated. “As in, what? In general?”

His arm looped around Warren’s bare shoulders. “No, I mean, do you think we’d make good parents?”

“We’d make excellent parents,” Warren grinned and now resumed the kissing, this time on his collarbone. “NPH and Burthka have competition.”

“Be serious,” he said, and Warren only hummed against his skin. He carded Warren’s short hair absently. “Have you thought about it? I mean, are we – are we adopting or using a surrogate, or…?”

Warren shrugged. “Whichever.”

“Kids aren’t whichever,” he said. If they ever intended to have a family, they would have to work a lot harder than straight couples. It couldn’t be left to chance: they had to plan it and make it happen.

Warren pulled back from the foreplay once more with an air of exasperation. “Babe, we live in different countries right now. There’s all kinds of stuff we need to figure out before we’re anywhere near baby territory, right?” Warren looked searching, a frown on his face. “It’s not baby season yet, not for us anyway. And they’re – they’re so demanding and messy and, Christ, how could we have the time even, with the hours we put in? And you’ve never seemed… that bothered?”

“I suppose I haven’t been,” he admitted. “And I’m still not in some ways – you know, babies. They’re kind of overrated, they just cry and poop and sleep, but once they’re a bit older, a few years in. Seeing them grow and watching them learn and, you know, being a father to this evolving human being. I mean, you see parents interact with their kids and you see how much they love them, even from a science perspective it’s fascinating in terms of social bonding and –”

“Oh. Oh Charles,” Warren said with a wide grin. “Have you got baby fever?”

“Go to hell,” he said, but Warren was now grinning and then placed kisses on his chest.

“You’ve got baby fever,” Warren persisted, and when Charles insisted that he did not, he simply found children fascinating in the name of science, Warren said, “Okay, toddler fever. In any case it’s precious.” Warren brushed his cheek gently and then peered at him thoughtfully. “You know, sometimes I think I’ve got you figured out, but then you completely surprise me out of nowhere.”

Charles pulled Warren down for a kiss before Warren started asking him about what had brought on such a change. He could blame it on Warren’s aunt June, perhaps, or on Paige Charleston’s baby bump, or little Henry gurgling at chandeliers, but it had nothing to do with any of these people exactly. Instead two very clear images haunted him: the first one was of Erik Lehnsherr at the Christmas dinner, singing Jingle Bells to one Shani Lehnsherr who had been utterly enchanted by her father’s singing, and the second memory was also of Erik and Shani Lehnsherr, this time of Shani absently chewing on the strings of Erik’s hoodie as Erik equally absently kept pulling the strings out her mouth, both creatures in sync, Erik being protective and caring in an instinctive, paternal way that Charles had been captivated by. He recalled the thought that had cautiously flickered in his mind then: they could be mine.

And as these two images circulated in his mind, he still felt a wave of fondness and something that felt like longing. What could be better on a Friday night than watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 with your child and partner, as a small family unit, cuddled up on the couch, as your own self-contained microcosm?

Even if Warren was right about Charles’s baby fever – which he definitely wasn’t – said fever soon evaporated as Warren put his mouth to good use.

A little further into the night’s proceedings, Charles’s phone began to vibrate on the bedside table, the light cutting through the dark of the hotel room. They both stopped, Warren now between his spread legs and deep in him, heavy and hot. “You wanna get that?” Warren asked, out of breath above him. Charles was a little dazed and only groaned. Warren reached over and grabbed the phone. “Trevor. Isn’t it that guy from your lab?”

There was a brief sensation of being suspended in air, a moment in which Charles’s insides dropped, his chest constricted and his head rushed with worry. “Yeah,” he confirmed, placing a hand at the back of Warren’s head. “Yeah, just leave it.”

“Why’s he calling you when you’re both on holiday?” Warren asked, and Charles canted his hips, taking Warren in just a little bit further. Warren groaned.

“Who cares?” he breathed out. “I’m kinda busy.”

Warren grinned and put the phone away, leaning down to kiss him and picking up the rhythm again. Charles closed his eyes, the phone still buzzing, his erratic breaths mixing with Warren’s, Warren f*cking him good and thorough – but he couldn’t concentrate until the phone stopped and the light of the screen went back to black. With it went Erik, slipping back into a void and a silence that made Charles’s insides ache. In the dark he stared to where his phone was, Warren’s mouth on his neck.

And there, in the shadows of the hotel room, he swore he could see a silhouette of a man that he couldn’t get out of his head, no matter how hard he tried.

Thirty-two minutes into the New Year, Charles stumbled out of the chalet and sat down on the snow-covered steps that looked onto the grounds. The bachelor party was in full swing inside, music blaring and the talking and yelling of eleven men filling the air. The windows behind his back cast him in light, silhouetting him on the white, trampled snow ahead of him. David Bowie was singing indoors that they could all be heroes, just for one day, and someone – perhaps Bishop – was singing along loudly. Most of the guys were still playing poker, Scott and Warren amongst them, although a few had opted just to drink. Charles had been the first to fold in the game, and he’d wrapped a scarf around his neck, thrown a skiing jacket on, and then slipped out of the party to break his New Year’s resolution to quit smoking.

Now the cigarette emitted smoke into the cold of the first January night, the bite of the air numbing his fingers but he’d had enough to drink to not care. He pushed his hair out of his eyes, the blur of alcohol making his movements messy. Every now and then a firework lit up somewhere, flying over the hotels and shops of the skiing centre further down in the valley. They’d spent the past two days hitting the slopes and drinking heavily, Scott’s little brothers Alex and Gabriel having located a stripper in town who had visited them earlier that evening.

When they’d all still been in the living room, they had made their resolutions. Scott’s resolution had been to become the kind of husband Jean deserved, which had earned some clapping and drunken mockery. Scott had nodded in his intoxicated state and gone on a slight monologue of how much he loved his wife-to-be, until Alex had told him to shut the f*ck up already. Alex was rather crass and pugnacious, a bit on the wild side – thankfully these qualities had made a good bachelor getaway. As for him, Charles had said that in the New Year he would tackle War and Peace and quit smoking, and Warren had said that he would in turn quit at CERN and move to London.

Warren would finally come home.

They both loved their jobs too much, was the problem. Charles had been an Oxonian through and through, blindly devoted to his alma mater and unwilling to consider other options until the London job came up. Warren had a dream job and excellent career prospects at CERN, on the other hand, and it would be difficult for him to find something he’d enjoy better. Although with Charles’s move to London Warren had promised to spend more weekends ‘home’, Warren’s autumn had proved to be full of lab deadlines, conference organisation meetings and article editing late into the night, and so Charles had been left to his own devices to a degree neither one of them had expected. But it was time now, Warren had said, for him to join Charles in their home. Charles had been completely surprised by such a move, a bit too drunk to process it.

Somewhere amidst it turning to midnight and everyone cheering and hugging, Warren had kissed him, and Charles had thought of the engagement ring back in a drawer in a London office. He now pictured proposing to Warren on the day that he moved to England: it was exactly the kind of romantic occasion he had been waiting for.

Thirty-seven minutes into the New Year, and Charles was living the dream that he had pictured for so long in his head.

He should have been elevated.

His cigarette was nearly done when he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He was too drunk to figure out the time difference, but he thought he’d try. After a sixth ring he was greeted by a gruff “Hey” that spoke of both sleep and alcohol.

“Hey,” he said, relieved and happy. “Hi. Hey, gorgeous. Happy New Year.” He received a grunt in response, and he laughed. “Did I wake you?”

“Maybe,” Erik said drowsily but he didn’t sound like he minded. Charles knew Erik had been out drinking with Logan the night before as it was New Year’s Eve and Shani was with Ororo. “Christ,” Erik groaned, “my ears are ringing. Have clubs always been that loud?”

Charles smiled in the darkness. “A good night, was it?”

“Mmm,” Erik said, “tequila infused, for better or worse. But hey, how are you? What time is it over there?”

“Coming up to one now.”

“Happy New Year, then,” Erik said, sounding more awake. Charles pictured him in the wide bed, warm from sleep, hungover and dazed. He wanted to be in that bed with him, just talking, napping, taking their time doing nothing at all. “How’s the bachelor party going?”

“The party’s fine. A lot of gambling and drinking, you know,” he said. “At one point Scott got thrown out into the snow without any clothes on.” Alex’s brainchild, of course – Scott had needed to redeem his way back to one item of clothing at a time by answering a Jean related question. Charles had gotten the Jean Q&A questions, but had been unaware that Scott would be in his birth suit, ankle deep in snow, when answering them. The rest of them had howled in laughter as Scott has screamed, “Red! Green! Who gives a f*ck what her favourite colour is, my dick is freezing!” Scott had eventually been allowed back inside, wearing boxers, winter boots, and a tie.

“Mmm, stag dos can get a bit wild,” Erik mumbled. “I need to tell you ‘bout mine sometime. Everything alright?” Erik now repeated. Even with an ocean between them, Charles was somehow completely unable to pull one over Erik. Charles thought again of Warren moving to London, cementing their life for good. No more late nights in Crouch End, no more movie nights with Erik and Shani or flirtatious phone calls or disappearances that he didn’t have to account for: their affair was over. He knew that. Erik didn’t.

He felt a sharp pain in his chest that was reminiscent of a much older pain that he had carried around for some nine years now. He recalled a younger version of himself on the phone with Erik, who was telling him that they were done. He now hung his head and thought back to that other phone call and the utter disbelief of Erik having turned out to be someone he didn’t know.

Back in the chalet, a rowdy group of men were gathered to drink in honour of their peer, who was going to become a Man by settling down and marrying a woman he loved. It was nice, knowing who you wanted to be with. It must have been nice. “I’m fine,” he said feebly, “it’s just… Ah. Matrimonial sentiments, here I mean, got me thinking of Australia and all of that,” he said. “And I guess that… Well, I mean. What occurred to me was that back then I… you know, I really thought we were going to spend our lives together. As funny as that is. Right?”

“No. How’s that funny?” Erik said instantly and almost indignantly.

“It was silly.”

“I don’t see how.”

Charles closed his eyes and caught a glimpse of gold, of sunshine on Erik’s skin, of sand in his hair, somewhere far away across yet another ocean where they had once been young and in love. The golden light was only a firework in the sky above Aspen.

He swallowed hard, rubbing his face.

“Charles…” Erik sounded hesitant, apologetic.

Charles didn’t want apologies. “Where do you think we’d be now?” he asked, knowing that only champagne and whisky had loosened his tongue like this. “If things had worked out.”

A pause, then: “Right here, of course.”

Charles’s stomach sank. “Celebrating the new year in different countries?” Of course Erik was most likely right and they would have split up sooner rather than later.

“No, with you drunk-dialling me because you miss the sound of my voice.”

“You wish,” he said, intending to object to – to what? He was drunk. He missed Erik’s voice. “That’s stupid,” he said instead, and Erik laughed. He tried to focus. “So we never broke up.”

“Of course not.”

He smiled widely. He was on a bachelor party trip, and Erik, for some reason, hadn’t been able to come with them, but in a few days Charles would fly back home to him. “I think we’d be living in Germany,” he said. “Maybe Berlin. We’d have an apartment downtown somewhere, on the top floor of some old building. And ah… you’d have started your own business, yeah, you’d um. You’d run a travel adventure company specialising in surfing holidays.”

Erik snorted. “A travel adventure company?” Sheets rustled, Erik shifting to a better position.

“Yeah, it’s a big hit!” he insisted, pleased with his drunken imagination. “And I’d be a… a pharmacist. Or a therapist.”

“Couples counsellor.”

“Perfect, yeah. Okay, I’ll take that.”

“Okay,” Erik laughed. “What about kids? We’ve got to have kids.”

The steady warmth in him began to burn stronger. “We’ve adopted three.”

“Three. Quite a hoard.” Erik sounded pleased, however.

“I’m the fun dad and you’re the strict one.”

“I highly doubt that,” Erik said, and Charles laughed. He imagined them in Germany, their loft full of kids’ toys and him waking up to Erik reading their kids a book in the living room, the light shining through the tall windows, making Erik’s light hair look that much lighter, matching the blond tones of their children, one in his lap, two on the floor: a life as idyllic and happy as anything.

“That would’ve been nice,” he said at length, quietly.

“It would have been.” Erik sounded lost in his thoughts. Charles wanted everything he had said: he wanted to be in Erik’s bed, he wanted Erik to be his partner, he wanted Erik to start a family with him, he wanted a ring on his finger, and most of all he wanted nine years with Erik. He wanted it back. God, he wanted to take it all back. He tried to pay attention when Erik asked, “When are you back in London?”

He quickly wiped his cheeks and exhaled, putting on a co*cky voice. “Miss me, huh?”

“I do,” Erik said, and Charles’s stomach sank. Erik chuckled. “And I’m not gonna lie, I could do with a snog.”

“Modest,” he granted. “You can get more out of me than a snog, you know.” He wiped his eyes again, and thought that he was being stupid, what kind of a grown man tears up like this? At least Erik couldn’t see him but appeared lost in the flirting.

“Hmm, interesting. And could you, you know, clarify: what’s more, precisely?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We could f*ck each other’s brains out.”

“Oh yeah?” Erik asked, voice a little husky. Jesus. He pictured Erik naked in bed, drowsy and warm, a morning hard-on pressing against the sheets. God, he wanted to be there.

“Charles?” A voice came from behind him. He startled and looked over his shoulder to where the chalet front door was now open. Alex Summers stood in the light, David Bowie no longer playing in the background. They must have finished poker. “Who you speaking to?” Alex asked curiously, trying to light a joint that was hanging from his lips, just as Erik asked, “Who’s that?”

“Scott’s brother,” he said in reply to Erik, then lowered the phone and covered the microphone with his hand. “It’s my sister, just ah – I’ll be right in.”

“Go ahead,” Alex said, shrugging. “I’m in no rush.” Alex had been drinking all day but at that moment seemed devastatingly sober. He kept his eyes on Charles, a knowing grin on his lips.

Through the door he heard Warren and Scott laughing, their drunken voices audible. Into the phone, Charles said a rushed, “Listen, I gotta go.”

“You got my hopes up for transatlantic phone sex, I’ll have you know.”

“I’ll make up for it,” he said, no longer able to concentrate. “I’ll call you later.”

“Charles,” Erik said, “you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, just – just drunk and. Never mind.” He said goodbye and hung up. The sky was clear, stars twinkling above, the moon making the snow sparkle like millions of tiny diamonds. Alex was still on the porch, and Charles put his phone away as he asked, “Hey, uh, who won the poker?”

“Your boy, Warren,” Alex said, walking over and sitting next to him. He offered the joint, but Charles shook his head. Alex shrugged and said, “I had heard incest is making a comeback, you know.”

Charles frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Your sister, yeah?” Alex said and nodded at his pocket where his phone now was. “Whose… what was it? Brains you want to f*ck out.” Alex gave him a wolfish grin.

Charles suddenly felt the cold more acutely, air escaping his lungs. “You’re not supposed to eavesdrop on other people’s –”

Alex waved him off. “Relax. sh*t, what do I care? You think I didn’t hear my dad talking to one of his women plenty a time when I was a kid?” Alex blew out smoke, the bittersweet smell of weed in the air. “Always when Mom went to her sister’s for the weekend, Dad would start making phone calls. We knew it was coming, like clockwork. Mom would get back, Dad would wink at us and say that we spent the entire weekend watching football, when truthfully we’d hardly seen him. He made us accomplices, so we had to keep our mouths shut. Scott ever told you about that?”

“No,” he said, throat tight.

Alex shrugged. “Get it where you can, am I right?” He nudged Charles with his elbow. Charles did not feel jovial at all. Alex studied him, a lopsided smirk on his face. “Yeah, you know, you do a good job. You’re very convincing out there – with Warren, super in love, that’s how you seem. I wouldn’t worry; he doesn’t have a clue.”

“Listen, Alex –”

“Chill out, I’m trained at this,” Alex said, but Charles didn’t feel very safe. Alex gestured at the chalet. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s nice what Scott is doing – marrying Jean, settling down. It’s a nice idea. But it’s just that: an idea. After that it’s all a farce, even the loving couples are lying and pretending. I read this book recently, one of those classics people always tell you to read, where the guy thought everyone else was a phony. I see his point: people are phony. f*ck, I don’t judge. I’m phony, too.”

Charles felt worried and insulted at the same time. Alex stood up, and Charles turned after him and said, “Look, it’s not phony. It’s just complicated, and it’s – Sometimes. You can love more than one person, or it can – it can feel right with more than one person. But you don’t want to hurt anyone, and that’s when you… make concessions. And you’ll get that when you’re older.” The ‘you’ll get it when you’re older’ argument. Charles felt a deep sense of shame for the first time in a while. Alex stood still, listening. Charles said, “I’m gonna marry Warren. Okay? Soon. We’re gonna get married soon. So he can’t know… Whatever you heard, just understand that it’s a complicated situation. Relationships are really complicated.”

Alex’s smile faded, and for the first time he seemed upset. “Sure they are. It’s always complicated. Just like my old man, you gotta get it where you can.”

Alex walked back indoors, and Charles stared after him. He couldn’t swallow down the lump in his throat. He knew the kind of men Alex was talking about – the adulterous married men, coveting their neighbour’s wives. Men who thought that virility gave them privileges… Charles wasn’t one of those men, was he?

He swallowed. Someone knew his secret, a young man so indifferent that Charles was lucky it was he who had overheard. He hurried back inside regardless, in fear of finding Alex speaking to Warren, whispering in his ear. But Alex was now sharing his joint with Bishop and Gabriel in the kitchen, whereas Warren was in the living room with the rest. Warren beamed at him and motioned him to come over, yelling, “Babe, I won two hundred bucks in the poker! Come kiss your man!”

Scott and James began to complain that Warren had only won because they’d been busy with shots, and Charles joined Warren on the couch, self-consciously wrapping an arm around Warren’s shoulders as Warren argued with the others.

Across the room, his eyes briefly met Alex’s. Alex looked at him, on the couch playing the boyfriend, and then looked away.

He knew what book Alex had been on about, the one about phonies. He didn’t want to be one of them.

In hindsight, when all was said and done with, Charles thought that everything began to fall apart on his return to England.

He had left England bare, but now it was covered in a thin layer of white. The taxi driver in Oxford told him about slippery roads and how just the other day she’d helped someone whose car had slipped into a ditch. She asked him if he’d been travelling, what with the big suitcase and all, so he told her of skiing in Aspen over the New Year. “That sounds like a treat,” she mused, and he said that it had been life as expected: skiing, mulled wine, cosying up by the fireplace in the chalet. He left out the hard liquor and gambling and the stripper.

Charles checked his watch: Warren’s connecting flight to Geneva would be mid-air right then. He was glad to put an ocean between the two of them and a truth that a troublesome young man now knew, somewhere thankfully far away from them.

His cottage was as he had left it on his last visit in November. When he’d moved to London, he’d told himself he’d come back frequently – that had been folly. He was so swamped with his work, often writing reports late into the night, that escaping to Oxford at the weekends was usually impossible.

Now his cottage had a dust of white on its roof, situated at the end of a country lane just outside Oxford. A broad field separated the back of the cottage from the A34 and a golf course with sporadic trees around the perimeter offering some privacy. The only disturbance Charles ever really got was dog walkers parking on the lane and then taking their pets onto the fields, from where barking sometimes woke him up on a Sunday. Warren kept saying that he should rent the place out for holiday goers or visiting scholars and Charles knew he was right: it just stood empty for weeks on end as it was. But he just didn’t have the heart as he pulled his large suitcase through the gate and onto the gravel, leaving imprints in the snow. The cottage was his and strangers had no place in it.

The stale air inside smelled of wood, and Charles got a fire going in the fireplace. He hauled his suitcase upstairs to the bedroom, smoothing over the sheets of the bed to make sure they weren’t dust covered. Their flight from Denver had left at six that morning, so they had gotten up awfully early to catch it – and as he had gotten off the plane, it had been evening. He’d fast-forwarded, losing the day. Warren should be landing soon, he estimated.

He headed for a quick shower. It took a minute before the old pipes began to heat up the water, after which he stepped under the spray. Standing there he thought of New Year’s Day, waking up hungover in the chalet, making love to Warren. He thought of feeling all edge all day, Alex glancing at him with a knowing grin every now and then. He thought of New Year’s Eve – he hoped he hadn’t made a fool of himself on the phone to Erik. He couldn’t quite remember everything he’d said, but he had felt rather confessional.

Now he and Warren were separated once more, a limb torn from the rest of the body, and as the water disappeared into the drain Warren disappeared off his skin. Alex Summers was now an ocean away, too, and he had never mentioned Charles’s deception to him, and Charles could only hope he wouldn’t tell it to anyone else either.

The cottage hadn’t quite warmed up yet, so after the shower he poured himself a whisky as he settled by the living room fireplace, sitting in the old armchair that he and Warren had bought at an antique market in Chipping Norton. A large clock hung above the mantelpiece, ticking the time away with Roman numerals, and he eyed it, his stomach in knots. The whisky helped some.

He dialled Warren’s number, knowing he had landed by now, and his boyfriend picked up almost straightaway. Warren sounded tired, speaking from the back of a taxi as he detailed the mundane events of his connecting flight. Warren was going straight back into work as one of the organisers of an international conference that had been in the works for a year and a half now, and throughout Christmas Warren had been taking phone calls and dealing with last minute emergencies and amendments, and he sounded both excited and stressed out now that the conference was only two days away. “How’s the old lady?” Warren asked him, and Charles said that the cottage was as homey as ever. He eyed the low ceiling with the wooden beams as he said this.

“When I’m living in London, we’ll go there more often, even if we’re busy,” Warren now assured him, and Charles wondered how he could have forgotten that for even a minute: Warren was looking at jobs in London. Warren said, “Skype in twenty?”

“Ah, the internet’s not working. I forgot to pay the bill, I think.”

“Charles, that’s unlike you,” Warren said teasingly. “Look at how your life is falling apart hours after we part: you need me quite desperately.”

“Out of you and me, you’re the human disaster,” he said, but then felt too tired to keep up the façade. “I forget to pay bills sometimes. It happens.” He hadn’t forgotten. It was all direct debit, vanishing off his account automatically. They agreed to speak in the morning. “I’ll order some Chinese and go to bed,” Charles said, whisky in hand, wearing pyjama bottoms and an old t-shirt, and Warren warned him not to party too hard. Charles told Warren that he loved him. He did. He really, really did.

He poured himself a second whisky and wished that he had cigarettes. So much for that New Year’s resolution. His skin crawled but not for a want of nicotine; only in anticipation.

And then, quarter past eight: the sound of a car driving up the lane and stopping outside the cottage. A car door opening, then closing, a momentary silence, the gate opening, the gravel rumbling. Silence and then a knock on the door.

He finished his drink.

The following minutes were blurred, and all he could distinctively remember afterwards was the sharp pull in his guts, angry and aggressive and taking more. The rest of it was a haze: Erik standing there in the dark January evening, flakes of snow on his coat, pale eyes meeting his, and then he had already pulled Erik indoors, and they were kissing fiercely, undressing almost violently, Erik bumping his head against one of the beams at the low point (you learned to duck), and he had Erik naked in one minute flat, and Erik’s mouth on his neck felt like salvation – They stumbled upstairs, Charles leading the way.

And as they got on the bed, their kisses hard and needy, Charles didn’t feel ordinary, he didn’t feel like anyone’s safe bet. He felt found and like he belonged, he felt wanted and needed. He groaned, back arching as he made contact with the body above his, and Erik breathed, “Crazy about you.” Erik’s mouth found his, Erik’s hand forcing his legs apart. “I’m crazy about you.”

Charles didn’t know if he said anything in response.

In the morning they talked of lunch plans and perhaps going for a walk, but in the afternoon they were still in bed. Charles was like a human radiator, emitting heat and keen to cuddle, and Erik couldn’t think of anything better to do on a cold January day.

Truthfully he was taken aback by how much he had missed Charles: the scent of his hair, the bristle of his stubble, the sound of his laugh, the flash of his white teeth. After his divorce he had drilled it into himself that he could not afford the luxury to need anyone: it was a one-man show now. That independence was something he valued, and yet he’d be lying if he didn’t say that the world felt brighter and his heart and mind lighter now that they’d been reunited.

He told Charles how Pietro might come to London for a few days in the summer, face hidden in the nook of Charles’s neck as Charles lay on his back, an arm around Erik’s shoulders. “That’s great,” Charles said.

“Yeah, I’m pretty excited about it. Hey, we could take him to the science museum,” he suggested. He should draft a few potential itineraries for Pietro – London was full of things for a child of nine to do.

“I bet he’d like that,” Charles agreed, after a pause.

Erik lift his head: Charles’s hair was a mess, the stubble that had gone unchecked was close to becoming a beard, Charles’s lips were a flushed red, and Erik thought of their noon f*ck an hour earlier, agonisingly slow and so incredibly good. He had never seen anything as gorgeous as Charles, but now Charles looked closed off, the brightness of his eyes dimmer than before. He brushed a thumb over Charles’s lower lip in wonder. “What is it?”

Charles shook his head and gave him a sheepish smile. “Nothing.” Charles’s hand moved to the back of his head, caressing.

“No, it’s something,” he said stubbornly. He propped himself on one elbow, hand sliding onto Charles’s stomach. “Is it Pietro?” He did his best to sound casual: the name brought with it all of his past mistakes.

“No,” Charles said and then seemed to reconsider this. “Well, I mean. Not really.”

Erik hated the fact that dark memories shadowed them: they had never talked about their break-up at length, about how Erik had f*cked it up, how he had lied, how he had broken hearts, including his own. The few times he’d mentioned the mess of it, Charles had changed the topic. Erik had stopped feeling bad as years had passed, but now history had caught up with him. Over New Year’s, Charles had sounded upset over the phone. Erik still had amends to make, he realised. When Charles didn’t go on, he said, “I did some digging around at Mother’s house, in my old room.”

“She’s kept it?”

“Please,” he said, “it’s an Erik Museum.” Charles laughed at that, and Erik felt a stupid rush of affection rush through him. His fingers gently brushed Charles’s chest. “Anyway, I found a box full of junk – Okay, I say found. I knew it was there, I just hadn’t – looked in there. For years. But now I felt like…” He started again. “I went through this box and found pictures of us, the few we got developed in Sydney, and I found that poem you wrote for me, and your old Che Guevara t-shirt.”

“Christ, you kept all that?” Charles asked, and he shrugged. Of course he had kept all of it. Charles shook his head. “I was a moron at nineteen, that’s for sure. Viva la revolución, man.” Charles lift his fist at the ceiling sardonically.

“I thought it was endearing.” Charles huffed without any bite. Erik hesitated before adding, “I also found that god-awful bead bracelet we bought at one of the Whitsunday Islands, remember the ones I mean?”

Charles, who had been smiling, now hummed. “Of course. Wedding rings, right?”

“Right.”

He’d bought them from an old hippie who had also sold him some top quality weed, and then he’d rushed back to Charles reading on the beach and presented him with their wedding bracelets. He wondered if Charles had kept his or thrown it away the second he found out Erik was getting back together with his pregnant girlfriend. Christ, Charles would have had every right.

Erik said, “At New Year’s, when you talked of… us living in Germany and me running a travel company…”

“I was drunk,” Charles said dismissively, but Erik shook his head.

“Not that drunk.” He paused to choose his words. “Lately I’ve been thinking what would have happened if I. Well, if I hadn’t royally f*cked it all up between us. And I think if we’d stayed together, your life still would have panned out the same. Oxford, then Columbia and New York, then back to England. The only real difference is that I would’ve followed you to all of those places.”

Charles looked questioning. “You would have?”

“Yes.” God, he would have followed Charles anywhere. “And maybe at some point I slept with Ororo and we had Shani, but you’ve forgiven me for that, so we’re all good.” He looked at Charles sheepishly, who did not look convinced. “Okay, Shani was… an immaculate conception and somehow we adopted her. A crane brought her to the door.”

“Mm, go on.”

He brushed hairs behind Charles’s ear. “So life as you know it… would still have happened. The things you’ve seen and done, all there. Just with some extra Erik stuff on top.”

Charles hummed. “That’s sweet of you, but no. I mean, maybe, fine, maybe my career would have been the same, but if I’d stayed with you and we’d adopted those three kids, come on. I would be a different person.”

“Not that different,” he argued back.

“Maybe.” Charles stared at him, expression unreadable. “So in this version… did I marry you?”

He swallowed. “Of course you did. Years ago. Christ, that’s the first thing we did when I got back from Australia.”

“That’s fast.”

“Not for us it wasn’t,” he said quietly. Their conversation had stopped being playful and Erik wasn’t even sure at which point that had occurred. He thought of how wistful Charles had sounded on the phone at New Year’s; he didn’t want to hear Charles sad like that. “Just because we didn’t get to live that life, though, doesn’t mean that the life we have now is bad. I, at least, think right now is pretty great.”

“Now is good,” Charles agreed quietly. Erik brushed their foreheads together. He didn’t want them to be nostalgic for lost time – they had all the years from here on out to make up for the past decade. Just because something had been lost didn’t mean they couldn’t find it now, and that felt like a sentiment that a younger Charles would have agreed with. This Charles seemed more cynical.

“So, in your version,” Charles said slowly, “that is the same yet different, where we’re married and have kids, how come we’re in this cottage by ourselves?”

“Ah. Well.” He raked his brain. “The kids are at their grandmother’s, and I… snatched you away, for an X-rated adults only weekend.”

Charles gave him a sly grin. “X-rated, you say?”

“Oh, utterly. p*rnographic, even.”

Charles arched a challenging eyebrow, and Erik grinned. His hand slid down Charles’s side, over his hip bone and around to his ass. He gave Charles a gentle yet firm slap on his behind, and Charles instantly winced. Erik grinned, hand now soothing over where the bruise was – Charles had fallen on his ass in the slopes, he’d said. It was quite the shiner.

“I will say, though,” Erik teased, “that if you’d stayed with me I would’ve taught you to ski properly.”

“Aw, but that’s why I have you now: to kiss it better,” Charles noted, and Erik grinned.

“Are you saying you want me to eat you out?” he clarified, and Charles seemed to become more alert. Erik let his fingers move in circles over the bruise.

“I’m pretty sure my default mode is yes, I want you to eat me out.”

“Alright then,” he shrugged, and Charles broke into a grin. He easily moved Charles onto his stomach, pushing the covers out of the way. “And on your knees,” he said, and Charles obeyed instantly, elbows on the mattress as his ass lift up. Erik moved behind him, his own co*ck hardening already. His dick had a mind of its own most of the time now – just the smell of Charles’s skin could get him hard within seconds. Talk about Pavlov’s bells…

The bruise on Charles’s right cheek was a nasty purple, and Erik mostly wished it’d been left by him from rough sex. He kissed it gently, other hand cupping Charles’s balls and massaging them. Charles had positioned himself perfectly, ass offered to him, and Erik kissed a line to the base of his spine. He licked there, slowly going downwards, his tongue moving between Charles’s cheeks with each stroke. Charles let out a guttural moan as Erik got closer, and he paused for a second before decisively moving down a further inch and placing a kiss on the hole. Charles’s reaction was immediate, back arching as he groaned into the sheets. Perfect, Charles was so f*cking perfect…

He placed his hands on the cheeks, spreading them, and he dipped his head down and began to eat Charles out, as requested. There was a slight chemical taste of lube from earlier there, but beneath that Charles tasted good. He pushed the tip of his tongue past the rim of muscle, licking, and Charles shivered, his hole clenching. “Oh Christ,” Charles groaned, clearly enjoying the attention. Erik loved knowing just how wild his mouth alone could make Charles, on all fours on the bed, trembling…

He took a hold of Charles’s co*ck, hard between his legs, and bent it backwards towards him. With some effort he bent down to lick over the head, tasting Charles’s come there, and then with the flat of his tongue he traced a line from the back of the co*ckhead and the underside of the length up to the balls, then over the perineum and back to the hole where he pushed his tongue in. Charles’s co*ck throbbed in his hand as Charles swore heavily. Erik did it again, fresh pre-come leaking out, the taste still on his tongue when he pushed back into Charles’s wet hole. His entire mouth and jaw were wet from the exercise, and he pulled back briefly to catch his breath and wipe at his mouth.

Charles entire body was wired up, his hole a healthy red. Erik’s own co*ck was curved ahead of him, fully hard yet again. Charles breathed, “Don’t stop. f*ck, don’t…”

Erik ran his fingers between Charles’s cheeks and pressed his thumb in. “You feel good, do you?”

“Yes,” Charles breathed, voice uneven. Erik had him exactly where he wanted him.

He removed his hand and got back to the task, taking his time eating Charles out. The noises Charles made got a little more desperate the wetter he got, and Erik was so content where he was, his mouth making Charles kneed, that he barely registered Charles’s moaned words. “What?” he asked distractedly, licking over the pink hole.

“I said f*ck me,” Charles repeated breathlessly. He gulped in a breath and added, “Hard.”

“How hard?” he asked merely out of spite even as he repositioned himself, now pushing his co*ckhead between Charles’s cheeks. He dragged the swollen tip over the wet hole, mesmerised by the sight. God, he’d wank off to this memory later, that was for certain. He pushed in an inch, making Charles gasp. He pulled out. “How hard?” he asked again.

“Oh Jesus,” Charles groaned, which was answer enough. Charles haphazardly reached for the condoms on the bedside table, passing one to Erik. Erik tore the wrapper and rolled the latex onto himself.

“Up,” he said, hand on Charles’s shoulder. Charles followed the guidance, moving up the bed and taking hold of the headboard. He kept his knees wide apart, and Erik’s hands on his hips positioned him until Erik had the hole right where he wanted it.

Erik pressed a kiss to Charles’s shoulder and, without any warning, pushed in all the way to the hilt. Charles swore, hips retreating but Erik grabbed them in a tight grip and wouldn’t let him pull away. “Shh,” he said, kissing Charles’s ear, and Charles let out a slurred plea of “Slower, more, Erik.” His co*ck was suddenly engulfed by a tight heat that flexed around him, adjusting. He’d gone in too fast and too hard. Charles had asked for hard.

Charles relaxed after a few moments and brushed his head against Erik’s. “Can we…” Charles said breathlessly, swallowing around the words. “Can we… pretend… What we talked about. Weekend away.”

Erik stopped at this. Charles wanted to pretend that they were… married and had three kids back home? Erik was relatively sure that was the opposite of most people’s sexual fantasies, but Erik was a serial monogamist. Even when he’d gone through his slu*tty phases, with every random hook up he’d wondered if their brief sexual encounter was how they’d start their ‘how we met’ story at their wedding, ending with them dying together in their sleep at the age of eighty-five, perhaps holding hands in Nicholas Sparks fashion.

He ran a hand from Charles’s stomach to his chest, thumb brushing over a nipple. His hips were restless, needing to thrust into Charles. “We can,” he said. If that was what Charles wanted. He tried to focus, think of the scenario: a weekend getaway, married for eight years, so busy with the daily running of the family that most of the time they fell asleep the second they got to bed, so this was special, them getting to pleasure each other like this. God, how he’d missed this, how he’d needed this… How good they had become at f*cking over the years. “When we f*ck at home we have to keep it down, but not now… You’ve been waiting for this, for me to…” He felt breathless. Be brave, he thought. “For your… your husband to f*ck you until the bed’s slamming against the wall…”

“Yes,” Charles agreed, sounding more turned on than before.

Erik bit Charles’s neck, then nuzzled the spot. “Have you missed me f*cking you?”

“God yes,” Charles said, voice strained.

“That’s my darling,” he said, and Charles groaned. He dragged his co*ck out and slowly pushed back in. Charles’s body tensed, hips shifting and accommodating him. He loved the way Charles took him, loved the way he could tell Charles loved having him inside. He added, “You’ve deserved a good, long f*ck, being so good for me…”

Charles groaned as he began a rhythm, hips flushing against Charles’s behind. “I bet,” Charles said, “all the other couples we know are jealous of us.”

“God, are they,” Erik said, biting onto Charles’s shoulder again. He started to go in harder and harder, the tight heat engulfing his co*ck felt too good not to f*ck into.

Charles turned to look at him, eyes dark. Erik pushed closer, their lips almost touching. Charles whispered, “No one else.”

Erik groaned at the back of his throat. “No one.”

“Your mouth’s mine,” Charles said, and Erik kissed him wildly, grapping his hips. The bed began to move with his thrusts, squeaking as his knees dug into the mattress. “f*ck me,” Charles breathed, and Erik did. His laboured breaths brushed the hairs at the back of Charles’s head as he drove his co*ck in hard, at a fast, impatient pace. Charles was so tight and hot, and god so responsive… The squeaks of the bed were now accompanied by the rhythmic slaps of their bodies coming together, and the skin of his balls was drawn up tight. His org*sm was pushing upwards from the place between his co*ck and balls, a hot burn growing stronger.

Erik was too far gone to speak any more, all thoughts if he had any focused on f*cking Charles hard, getting more of those pleasured sounds, watching Charles’s body tense up, their wet-slick bodies joined, and the world was so perfect when they were like this, each other’s, taking each other. Charles, however, still had control of his tongue. “So good when you f*ck me like this,” Charles groaned, and Erik felt heady with pride and desire. Charles had reached down to fist himself. “No one gets me off like you, no one – Ah, no one. Oh f*ck…”

Who else would there be, he thought, now or in this marriage scenario?

“More,” Charles demanded, and Erik went even harder at a pace that was impossible to keep up very long, the smacks of their bodies meeting loud in the room. He slowed down when he needed to catch his breath, sweat rolling down his hairline. He fisted Charles’s messed up hair and tugged his head back, placing a messy kiss over his ear. Charles’s ass clenched around his co*ck, and Erik cursed, thrusting. Charles groaned, “Say I’m yours.”

Christ. His eyes closed, one hand on Charles’s hip, the other in his hair. He breathed Charles in, his nose buried in the damp strands of Charles’s temple. “I’m yours,” he said, obeying like a dog, his hips continuously moving. His sole purpose right then was to pleasure Charles, to keep him full and on the edge of an org*sm, a willing slave – god, he was Charles’s.

“No,” Charles breathed. “The other way.”

He f*cked into Charles, the muscles of his thighs cramping, his co*ck strained and on the brink of release. He didn’t understand what – “You’re mine,” he said, and Charles groaned in appreciation. Oh. Good. Yes. “You’re mine,” he repeated – Charles was his, f*ck, and a dark possessive satisfaction filled up his stomach. He slammed into Charles almost brutally, sucking on his earlobe.

“Again,” Charles said, breaths quick and uneven. He was about to come.

“Mine,” he repeated, desire swirling in him. “Always have been, always will be. Your ass, your co*ck, your mouth – you’re mine, all –”

Charles came, and Erik let out a whine at the back of his throat as Charles’s ass clenched and quivered around him. He was relieved to come, then, to let go as Charles did. Charles shivered in the aftershocks, and Erik breathed into his hair. His hips slowed down to miniscule thrusts, arrhythmically pushing into Charles as the last of his come filled the condom. His lower lip dragged across to Charles’s earlobe, his nose squashed against the side of Charles’s head. Charles was panting, and Erik closed his eyes and breathed. All he could smell was Charles’s skin and come.

“C’mere,” Charles said gruffly, turning his head and aligning their mouths. Charles’s hand came to rest on the back of his head, and the kiss was sloppy but oh so good. They kept kissing as their breaths slowly evened out, his hands caressing Charles’s sweat-slicked stomach and back. His, mine, each other’s – the words floated in him, and yes, that was what he wanted.

“Did I pass?” he asked once his brain was working a little, wrapping arms around Charles’s middle. Charles hummed in question, and he said, “Do you think I’m husband material?”

Charles grinned against his mouth. “Ah, maybe. I mean, your co*ck is. I’ll need to take your ass for a test drive later.”

“Marriage isn’t an institution for personal sex slaves, you know.”

“Let’s see if you still think that when I’m in you balls deep,” Charles retorted, and Erik had to admit that he had a point.

They lay back down, flushed and sweaty but sated. He got rid of the condom, after which he pushed straight into Charles’s arms. The back of Charles’s neck was wet with sweat and overly warm when Erik laid his hand there, massaging gently. His stomach then grumbled, and not quietly. Charles placed a hand on his abdomen, moving in circles. Charles was grinning smugly. “Need replenishment, do we?”

“Well you don’t feed your guests very well.”

“Ah, but didn’t I just offer you my ass..?” Charles said wonderingly, and he punched Charles’s shoulder – not too hard, and Charles called him pathetic. He then punched Charles a little harder, just to shut him up. Charles punched him right back, which hurt, and Erik began to murmur that they should make love and not war.

After they had proceeded to do this with a bit of content making out, Charles offered to order pizza while Erik grabbed a shower. “There’s a good pizza place that delivers. I’ve got their number saved on my phone…” Charles’s phone was nowhere to be seen, however, and as Charles searched through the sheets Erik grabbed his trousers from the floor and got his own phone out. He lay back down and dialled Charles, after which they both quieted to listen. A phone started buzzing somewhere in the room.

“Under the bed,” he said, and they both reached for their respective sides. A black iPhone was vibrating on the floor on his side. “Got it!” He grabbed the device and then frowned at the screen as Charles reached to take it. “That’s weird,” he said. He showed the phone to Charles. The screen read Trevor.

“Huh,” Charles said and took the phone from him, quickly pressing the red button to hang up. “That’s bizarre.” Charles frowned. “It’s been doing that lately, names and – and numbers, mixing them all up. It’s been doing that.” Charles looked at him. “Trevor’s a post-doc in the lab. He’s from Manchester, this ginger guy. Really nice. His wife’s Alice.”

“Yeah, he’s that guy that started before Christmas,” he said, smiling. “I know – I listen to you, you know.”

“Right,” Charles said, smiling sheepishly. Charles looked at the phone again and shrugged. “God, that’s weird, though. You know, I have to take this to the shop, I think.”

“The shop should fix it,” he agreed and kissed Charles long and hard, going for a good, full-tongued French snog before getting out of bed.

The bathroom was small and the ceiling slanted to one side. The shower was as rubbish as one could expect from an old house like this, but the lukewarm water did the job. He could hear Charles’s voice through the cascading water, a distant, undistinguishable murmur, and he wondered who Charles was talking to because a pizza order definitely didn’t take that long.

Charles wasn’t in the bedroom when he came out with a towel secured around his waist, but the evidence of their night there was abundant: the sheets were a wrinkled ball at the end of the bed, a lube bottle by one of the pillows and an opened condom pack on the nightstand. He felt proud of himself right then: Erik Lehnsherr, Sex God. Spending ninety percent of his time with a three-year-old meant that this part of himself had been dormant for far too long.

Charles was in the kitchen downstairs, now wearing grey boxer-briefs, seemingly deep in thought and staring out of the window with his back to Erik. Erik walked over and slid arms around Charles’s middle, pulling him into his arms. “Hi,” he said with a kiss to Charles’s temple. He hooked his chin over Charles’s shoulder, the embrace tightening, and Charles relaxed against it.

“I found oatcakes in the cupboard,” Charles offered, and Erik looked at the packet on the counter. He’d rather wait for the pizza and said so. The radio was on, giving them news that Erik could not have cared less about.

Charles smelled like him a little, and Erik thought of Charles climaxing as Erik murmured that Charles was his. This kind of possessiveness in Charles was new to him – nothing from before rang a bell. They hadn’t needed to prove that they were each other’s, not when it had been so instinctive. Outside of that moment of sex-driven lust, Erik felt that he couldn’t talk about Charles’s fantasy, although something about it nagged at Erik. He couldn’t quite place what that slight unease was. “I like your cottage,” he said instead.

“You don’t think it’s a waste keeping it empty?”

“No. It feels like home.”

Charles pushed his head against his. Erik pressed his nose into Charles’s messy hair and breathed him in. It was a bright day outside, the view white from the cottage window as snow had covered the overlooking field, and he wanted to stay in this bubble: the two of them without a care in the world, all lazy kisses, silly jokes and friendly teasing.

Erik was happy right then. Happiness wasn’t a sustained state like so many people thought: when someone said they were happy, they meant that they were pretty okay. No, that wasn’t happiness. Happiness was a spark that lifted you above the mundane, a brief state of blissful elevation. It never lasted long because it was only a moment, but those moments were what most people lived for. And right then he was happy in the post-coital glow with the first man he’d ever fallen in love with.

It was naïve to think that you fell in love with only one person in your lifetime, but at the age of twenty-three, when he had met Charles, he had believed it with unwavering conviction. Who else could either of them have possibly needed after that? He could therefore see the appeal in the fantasy that Charles had wanted to act out because the thought of a decade long intimacy was enticing.

On the radio a male voice was now singing hauntingly, telling them that he was alive and that they were all beautiful like diamonds in the sky. Erik was happy.

Charles had also found instant coffee, which Erik accepted. The floor of the kitchen was cold as he stood there barefoot in the towel, sipping on the coffee that Charles had made him. He asked about the house, its age, its materials, of which Charles knew everything as the place had needed a lot of fixing here and there. Charles explained that he had been in charge of the restoration of the roof, which had needed fixing first thing, and Charles had found the perfect tiles from a workshop in the Lake District. “Then some of the beams needed replacing, just over here.” Charles led Erik to the living room and showed which beams were new, pushing an armchair out of the corner to reach up and show where two beams joined together. “This was the tricky part,” Charles explained, and Erik loved seeing Charles be that enthusiastic about something. “I’ve got before and after pictures somewhere…”

Charles found a folder amongst a paper pile in the bookcase, and he emptied pictures onto the coffee table. Erik sat on the loveseat by the fireplace and Charles sat on an armchair as he sorted through them all. “Here’s one,” Charles said, passing him pictures of when the cottage was first bought. “And this one shows you the water damage.” Charles sipped on his coffee as Erik shifted through the pictures on the table. “Another cup?”

“Bitte.”

Charles kept talking about the restoration as he went to the kitchen, and Erik was listening but then his hand froze atop one of the pictures on the table. He glanced towards the kitchen where Charles was occupied with the kettle. He picked up the photo: Charles and Warren were in what looked like a pub, pints on the table and their arms cosily slung around each other. Charles was clean shaven in the picture, looking slightly younger without the beard that marked the Charles Erik had made love to only half an hour before, and Erik wondered when the picture had been taken. Warren was very handsome in it, as he always was: all sharp jawline and piercing blue eyes. Warren might be posing for Vogue rather than whoever had taken the picture. The two of them looked good together, very couple-like. Erik bet that Warren was a f*cking great shag, and he suddenly felt a little bit less like the sex god he’d been upstairs.

Well, so what? He’d had some great sex himself both before and after Charles. And that was what Charles had said, after all, that it had been a sex arrangement. Erik was nonetheless surprised that Charles was one of those men who pursued a benefits-only relationship instead of something more, but Erik was old-fashioned, he knew.

He considered asking if this Warren chap had had a nine inch co*ck or some other bodily grace that had enticed Charles, but then he only flipped the picture upside down and pushed it amongst the others. Charles returned, two cups with him, laughing at how the chimneysweep had discovered a dead bird halfway up. Erik had never been a jealous kind of guy and wasn’t going to start now: everyone had history, and Charles had imprints of his hands on his hips. Jealousy would have been childish.

The pizzas arrived soon after, and once the delivery man had gone, Charles looked at the pizza boxes he was holding, then to the kitchen, and then at Erik again.

“Hmm,” Charles said. “Pizza in bed?”

“Tables are for the weak,” Erik deadpanned, pulled his towel off, and marched upstairs.

Behind him Charles asked, “Could you lie still like one of those sushi girls while I eat Chicken Feast off you?”

Charles had intended to work from Oxford for most of the week, but instead he found himself packing up to go. Erik was driving to London, so he might as well get a lift, he reasoned. Erik seemed to hesitate because of some construction site detour he had to make, but Charles wasn’t in any rush.

Somehow the thought of staying in the cottage after their two nights there seemed unwise to him. He associated the cottage with Warren, the bed with Warren, the couch with Warren, and once Erik left, there would be too many conflicting memories there.

No, he’d rather ride out the wave than face reality. He snuck in another call to Warren while Erik showered, and when Erik queried the voices, he said it’d been Raven. Erik didn’t seem suspicious.

When Erik turned the car engine on, the CD player began to blast out Bear Necessities. Erik flared a little red as he tuned onto Radio 4 and assured Charles that he hadn’t been listening to Disney songs on his way up and that the CD was for Shani. Charles had his doubts.

Unlike the previous day it was now cloudy, the sky looking pregnant with imminent snow. Charles listened to the hum of the engine, his eyes drooping: his body had no idea what time it was, when to sleep, when to stay awake (and he and Erik had established a very irregular sleeping pattern in the past two nights). He fell into a state of dream-like awareness where an alternative life had taken hold of his imagination in the most vivid ways, all thanks to Erik’s stories of weekends away and the two of them as a family. Charles enjoyed imagining this scenario, and he rolled back to 2005, to the day of the last time they spoke to each other on the phone and Erik left him. He imagined Erik choosing differently: saying that he didn’t care whose child it was, he needed to be with Charles more than anything. He loved Charles, and maybe he was a f*ck up who had royally screwed up, but he would beg and lie and steal and do anything to be with Charles again. Well, Charles could hardly refuse after such a monologue (which Erik had never said. Erik had chosen Magda firmly and clearly, even if regretfully and with tears and stuttered declarations of love).

Charles wondered what kind of a couple they would have made. He was quite sure they had been fun and loving and kind to each other. They would have been the kind of couple people wanted to be friends with – dinner parties at their apartment, weekend city breaks with friends, the two of them holding hands in the streets of Rome. Most people would have found their marriage at such a young age surprising, but they were one of those cool married couples that made it seem sexy and fun. And he saw Erik, young, blue-eyed and soft-skinned, aged twenty-five, crawling into their bed on a mundane Wednesday evening after the ten o’clock news, wearing white socks and a dress shirt, picking up Charles’s book and dropping it onto the floor, grinning mouth hovering over his… And that night it rained, heavy water lashing against the mid-European windows, and Charles held Erik close to his chest, knowing no one knew him as well, no one loved him as much. They were irrevocably each other’s and had never belonged to anyone else.

The car jolted, and he blinked awake.

His last sighting was of the M40 heading towards London but now the car was on a country road with a field on one side and woodlands on the other. He stirred out of sleep, rubbing at his eyes as he yawned. His limbs were stiff and exhausted from lack of sleep and excessive sex – just how they’d spent their time in Australia, running on little sleep, constant travel, and overflowing desire. “We nearly there?” he asked, and Erik hummed beside him. He felt a brief moment of déjà vu, waking up on the passenger seat with Erik driving, a cloudy morning in Western Australia, a long stretch of road ahead of them, and all the possibilities had been theirs.

Charles blinked again: this Erik was older, rougher, still loving and kind, but not the apparition of youth that had promised to be the love of his life nor the man from his daydreams who had always stood by his side. He felt momentarily disorientation.

Erik flicked the indicator, and they turned to an uneven road that led into the woods. He expected a big construction site to be around the corner, yet when Erik came to a stop at the edge of a clearing, he admitted he definitely had no idea as to where they were. He had expected piles of gravel and tractors and cranes looming over each other. This was a quiet woodland. “This looks small for university standards,” he commented. Erik seemed nervous next to him, which only baffled him further. “What are you building here?”

“A house.”

“Residential?” he clarified, and Erik nodded, unbuckling his seatbelt. Charles hadn’t realised Erik worked on private construction too. “Who are you building it for?”

Erik stared at the woods through the windshield. “For me and Shani. Actually.”

Charles looked at the clearing again. “Oh,” he said. He felt winded. “That’s nice.” He frowned. “Sorry. Where are we, exactly?”

“Amersham. An hour’s drive from Crouch End, traffic depending.” Charles suddenly recalled the blueprints he had seen in Erik’s bedroom: Amersham. “Bought this place a year or so ago, got the building permit last spring.”

He tried to catch up but his mind kept running into a wall at the same realisation: “You’re leaving London.”

Erik made a disagreeing noise. “Maybe eventually we’ll leave London altogether, but I’ll commute to start with. The tube comes all the way out here, just a ten minute ride to catch it. Not exactly imminent – haven’t built the house yet, have I?” Erik was trying to downplay this, but Charles was little fooled. Erik shrugged. “I need to finish that science building for the university first, anyway, maybe get a leave of absence for next winter to start construction here. And the house will go there.” Erik motioned to the middle of the woods.

“You never said,” Charles managed and followed Erik’s lead to get out of the car. Erik retrieved a sports bag from the boot and slung it on his shoulder, walking onto the clearing and getting a spray can out. Erik shook it, the pea inside making a rattling sound. He walked over to one of the trees and marked a clear X on it in bright red. Charles’s steps made a crunching noise on the frost covered grass. Erik caught his questioning gaze and said, “I’m getting trees cut on Thursday to make this area bigger.” Erik wiped at his nose and looked around at the tall trees. “A shame, but. A big project, building a house. I need space for materials and machinery. Need space for the garage, too.” He then motioned at a row of trees circling the clearing. “All of these need to go, so I’m marking them for the arborists.”

“You need a hand?” he offered. There was more paint in the sports bag, and Erik told him which trees to mark for cutting down. Some of them were tall and majestic. Charles marked them with the brutal X. “It’s a shame,” he said after a while, trying to rub some red paint off his fingers and onto bark. “Some of these trees look old.”

Erik made an agreeing noise and patted one of the trees. “I’ll keep the wood. My mate Logan’s in the wood industry, he knows some people. These babies will be turned into planks. I’ll use them for the house or. Well, something smaller. A shed.” Erik was talking to himself at this point.

“Maybe a dog house,” he suggested as he marked another X. Erik looked over at him curiously like he’d said something weird. Charles tried to shrug it off – it was Erik’s house, why was he trying to butt in? “Well, it’s a perfect place for a dog, isn’t it?” he said vaguely. “A big, shaggy dog. Something to keep you warm in bed out here in the country.”

“Big, shaggy, and in my bed. That’s you, isn’t it?” Erik said teasingly, and Charles thought that was rich – he might be the one with the beard and long hair, but neither of these was shaggy (reminder to self: trim beard, trim hair), and Erik was clearly the big oaf out of the two of them. “A dog house. Well. I’ll keep it in mind,” Erik said. “Might be something to keep me and Shani company…”

Charles averted his gaze. He was squeezing the spray can too hard. He cleared his throat and handed the can back to Erik. Erik marked the last of the trees, then got a camera from the bag and took pictures of the ones they’d done.

As Charles waited by the car, leaning against the hood, he listened to the birds singing somewhere out of sight. He checked his phone and found that he had a text from Warren, informing him what Warren was having for lunch, followed by a question of how Charles was getting on in the Oxford lab. Charles’s thumb hovered over the screen, before the thought of yet another lie seemed too exhausting. He put his phone away and was thankful that neither of them had any real connection to Alex Summers.

The ground was white, now marked by their two sets of footprints. Throw imprints of paws on top, throw Shani’s squeaky shoes on top… The place had a tranquillity to it and he could just hear the sound of running water in the distance. The place was perfect for a family. Privacy, safety, close to nature, homey… What kind of a house would it be? Old fashioned or modern? Glass or stone? He now wished he would have looked at the papers in Erik’s bedroom more carefully.

“It’s beautiful here,” he said as Erik came back to the car, job accomplished.

Erik started to say something but then seemed to swallow it down. Erik glanced at the grassy land where the house would be. He threw the sports bag in the car and then walked back to him, hands now in his pockets. “I wanna tell you something,” Erik said, and Charles nodded to indicate he was listening. “I told Magda about us.”

Charles blinked. “Come again?”

“When I was in Wiesbaden,” Erik said. “I know we both agreed to keep quiet for now, but I’d like to – I’d like to think we can learn from history. That I can. And back in Australia I f*cked it up, not telling you about her, not telling her about you… So I told her.”

Charles stood up straighter. “You told her… what exactly?”

“That we’ve met again,” Erik said, and clearly the rest was insinuated.

Charles looked down at his feet. He cared about this. God, why the f*ck did he care about this? Australia was ancient history, he was over it, he didn’t care what had happened back then, it had ceased to matter, what Erik had done to him didn’t hurt anymore and he was over this. He was, truly. Who cared what Erik had said and how Magda had responded, even if Charles had played dozens of alternative history scenarios in his head over the years, like Erik breaking up with Magda after their first night together on the beach, by nine a.m. on the phone saying that he’d met someone else. Charles didn’t f*cking care about this. He asked, “What did she say?”

“Was amazed by the chances of us meeting, mostly. In some weird way, even though she was… surprised… it was almost like she wasn’t. Like a part of her had been expecting me to – to find you or something like that.” Charles glanced up, and Erik was looking at him gently. Charles felt a brief surge of anger – why hadn’t Erik come back for him then? He had by now realised that it hadn’t even been a year after Australia that Magda and Erik had broken up. Charles had still been in love with Erik. Erik could have called him, could have – god, come get him. Charles had still been game.

Charles thought back to their breakup and how the thought of this woman had caused him such grief: Magda who was funnier than he was, smarter than he was, better looking than he was – infinitely better, practically divine, and pregnant with Erik’s child. Charles had not been able to compete in any way, and he’d drunk himself to a stupor a few days after their breakup and thrown up on the front steps of the Radcliffe Camera on his way home, wallowing in misery and heartbreak. The pregnancy in particular had felt like a twist of the knife, like this Magda he had never met was flaunting the fact that she could give Erik something Charles or any other man never could: Magda and her greedy, self-righteous womb.

Charles swallowed down the lump in his throat. It was time now: Warren intended to move to London, and Charles’s little episode with Erik would soon be over. It was time.

“I gotta tell you something, too,” he said. Maybe Erik wouldn’t mind, maybe he’d think that an affair was sexy. Maybe Erik wouldn’t get in the car, drive off, and Charles would never see him again.

“Tell me what?” Erik asked. Erik was studying him just a little too closely, and Charles didn’t know how to say it. What if he never saw Erik again?

He opened his mouth, the words there on his tongue: I have a boyfriend. Erik looked curious, and Charles wanted this: them, here. He wanted them, probably always had done so. But now it needed to come to an end, and was that even his fault, really? Wasn’t it Erik who had f*cked them over, all those years ago?

Instead of him admitting that he had a partner, he found himself asking, “Why didn’t you get in touch?” This seemed more urgent right then than a confession regarding Warren. “Back then, I mean, when you and Magda split up. Why didn’t you call me or – or something.” Anything.

Erik blinked at him, seemingly surprised. “You’d told me never to call you again.” Erik was right: he had said that.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s true,” he admitted joylessly. It was a stupid topic to have brought up.

“I didn’t listen, of course,” Erik then added, and Charles looked at him, newly alert. “I went to Oxford. I tried to find you.”

Something in his guts tightened, but he only chuckled. “Sure you did.”

“Of course I did,” Erik said, affronted. Erik was staring at him, expression pained. “The following summer, after Magda and I broke up. I went to Worchester College, to… grovel, I suppose. I don’t know, I had no real plan, I just… I thought maybe you’d take me back.”

All of a sudden, the world spun on its axis just a little – but enough to rattle Charles to the core. “Is that true?” he asked, and Erik only nodded. He suddenly saw Worchester College, its grey walls and long corridors and rickety doors, and his old room with its narrow single bed, and his final year living there, when he’d thought drinking in his room would make him stop pining after Erik. It hadn’t. The thought of Erik having come there seemed surreal because he’d wished for it so many times, perhaps too many. “When did you go there?”

“The year after. Summer of 2006,” Erik said. “Too late, I know. You’d already left the country.”

“I was in Oxford,” he corrected slowly, and it was Erik’s turn to be in a loss for words. “I was doing an internship with one of my professors that summer. I moved to a flatshare near Christchurch, I wasn’t… at the college anymore.”

Erik’s voice was paper thin: “In August? Were you there?”

“Yes.”

Erik breathed out an astonished, “You were there.” Erik’s hands had curled into fists. “All these years I – but you were there.”

“Erik –”

“I was only there for one evening,” Erik explained with a desperate laugh. “I went to the college, and they told me you’d left. And after that I walked around a while, then went back to the airport. I kept thinking that if I just… walked around long enough, you’d appear. I might have – f*ck, I might have passed by your house, I might have – I just thought I’d stay with you and we’d take it from there. That we’d get back together and all the rest would sort itself out. It had to because I… I still.” Erik swallowed.

Charles was shocked to find out how close they had been to a different ending to their story. Erik had been to Oxford, and if Charles had known, then… god, he would have taken Erik back instantly, he knew that. Spend a week in bed. Fall back in love. Get married.

And instead they were here – together, yes. But Charles felt utterly damaged and broken, and knowing that Erik had come for him just made it worse. Erik was staring at him intensely, and Charles feared the words that would be spoken next. He yearned to hear them said, again and again, if the words he was thinking of were the ones on Erik’s tongue. But saying it would make this too hard. Charles couldn’t accept those words. “Do you relate to your younger self?” he asked quickly, breaking the thick air between them. “Because me back then, I think of him, and I cannot relate to my younger version in any way: he’s just someone I’ve never met.”

“I suppose,” Erik said, but still with the air of bare intimacy that had Charles’s heart rate picking up. “But when I look at you, I feel like I’m twenty-three again.”

“Christ, I’m glad I’m not nineteen anymore,” he said, and Erik grinned mischievously.

“I liked you at nineteen.”

“I bet you did,” he snorted, and Erik’s eyes glinted. The moment had passed, even if a sadness lingered between them. Charles pushed the knowledge of Erik’s coming to Oxford somewhere deep inside of him, alongside all the other fragments of their past that he could not let himself think about.

“You were very sophisticated for a teenager. A bit of Al Green, you know.”

Charles grimaced, thankful that Erik had let him change the subject. “Oh god, don’t –” But it was too late. Erik imitated a few blasts of the saxophone and in a husky voice breathed, “Yeah, let’s stay together,” and Charles exclaimed, “I was nineteen! Nineteen!”

“And you wrote me poetry and wore that Che Guevara t-shirt and you chose Al Green to be ‘our song’,” Erik grinned, making a big show of the quotation marks.

“And you f*cking loved me for it,” he retaliated.

“Maybe,” Erik laughed and tried to pull him in for a kiss, but he pushed Erik back. Too dangerous, he thought – too dangerous to talk to Erik like this. Erik continued grinning as they got back in the car.

It was hardly Charles’s fault that the first song on the radio when they had started the road trip had been an Al Green song. It’d been romantic with a first line of ‘I’m so in love with you.’ They had been. As Charles now buckled back in, he said, “I take none of it back either.” In reality he wanted to justify what a cheese ball he’d been. “Also, you listen to Disney songs.”

“But Disney songs are great,” Erik said, doing his seatbelt and leaning over to kiss his cheek. Charles stared ahead indifferently, and Erik’s nose brushed his cheek bone. “Aw, Schatz… sei nicht böse…”

Erik murmuring German in his ear should not have affected his resolve, except for how his resolve packed up its bags and got the first plane out of there. He looked at Erik sternly. “Just so you know, Al Green’s a great f*cking artist.”

“Of course he is, Schätzhen,” Erik said, which was the right answer. Charles kissed him, and if it was a desperate kiss, Erik didn’t seem to notice.

Erik had come back for him.

Warren said, “So I think Jim Parsons was giving me the Oscar for the best gay role, essentially.”

“That should be a category,” he agreed, stretching out under the covers. Sometimes they had weekend lie-ins together, with tablets propped on pillows, one of them in London, the other in Geneva. Warren had a bad case of bed hair, and Charles wished that he could’ve run his fingers through the short strands.

Warren kept detailing his dream. “I think he was actually my ex, like we’d been in love, and he wanted to win me over by giving me the Oscar. It was strange, but it made a lot of sense in the dream.”

“Sure it did,” he said, and Warren laughed. Charles smiled at the screen and shifted his head on the pillow to a comfier position. “So who would you say was your first love, then?”

“Apart from Jim Parsons?” Warren asked with a laugh, and Charles granted that they could discount him. “Ah, Duke for sure. I mean, his real name wasn’t Duke, of course, it was his ‘biker name’.” Warren rolled his eyes as he made the air-quote marks. “His real name was Peter – got that off his driver’s license when he was sleeping.” Charles knew this story: the biker over ten years senior when Warren had been finishing high school, picking Warren up after school with his Harley-Davidson to the shock and horror of his family and peers, while Warren had loved the rebellious drama.

“What was he like?” he now asked, curiously.

“Kinda sleazy, now that I think about it,” Warren said with a bright laugh that made it feel like he wasn’t in a different country but right there with him. “He had this long black hair and he was growing out a beard, and I was all over him. I thought he was, like, so hot. And whenever we’d go back to his place he’d f*ck me senseless, or sometimes he’d watch p*rn while I blew him. I know, I know, not Prince Charming for sure. But I’d never met anyone like him before: he just didn’t give a sh*t. Don’t laugh! No, I mean it, it was great. He didn’t care who I was, he didn’t care for the scandal, he just lived day to day. Sometimes he’d smuggle me into bars with him, but if a bouncer didn’t let me in, then he’d just shrug and leave me. And I’d wait. Like, I swear to god, I’d wait outside some Manhattan sleaze joint until two in the morning so that he’d take me back to his place, and then I’d have to get up at six thirty to go to school, and he wouldn’t even stir as I scrambled out of bed. I hated the thought of him taking someone else home – I was so jealous of him. God… He was never in love with me, I don’t think, but I was really in love with him. I thought we’d elope one day on his motorcycle, drive to Vegas and get civil partnershipped.”

“Classy,” Charles granted good-humouredly. “So who left who in the end?”

Warren wiped at his mouth, looking thoughtful. “He left me, I guess? I don’t think we were ever together, really. As far as he was concerned, I was just this young kid who liked riding his dick. I dunno, one day he told me he was going to ride across the States with his buddies, be gone for months, and I kicked up a fuss. He told me to calm down or go home, so I went home. Went back two days later and he’d gone. Had sublet his place to this Canadian chick who was looking after his cat – oh yeah, he was a massive cat lady, Duke was. The cat’s name was Maiden, after Iron Maiden. Anyway, I kept going back there for weeks, to see if he was back but he never was. I kept crying myself to sleep and sniffing Duke’s shirt that I’d stolen once. Mom wanted to put me in therapy, Dad was – probably not aware, really. Christ, I had never understood how f*cking heartbroken you could be before that.

Eventually Georgie, the Canadian girl, told me that she’d extended her sublet by six months. Apparently Duke had called that he’d stay out west a while, had scored a job near San Diego or something. Duke had called her, you know? Didn’t call me. I’d left him so many messages, voicemails… He never picked up when I tried him, but he’d called Georgie. I’ve never been so f*cking mad, don’t think. So I went home, took that shirt of his, and stabbed the sh*t out of it with a kitchen knife.”

Charles had to interject: “You stabbed his shirt?”

“Goddamn right I did!” Warren grinned. “Therapeutic as f*ck!” Charles burst into laughter just imagining the scene. Warren shook his head. “I got it after that: Duke was an asshole. Kinda helped me in getting over him. But Jesus, I was so devoted to him. My family thought it was a big f*ck you their way, and okay, yeah, it started like that. But then I fell in love with him and it was like – like he was the only thing that mattered. Seeing him again, kissing him again… I didn’t care for anything else.”

Charles smiled. “Sounds intense.”

“Oh it was,” Warren agreed. “Jim Parsons would’ve been a step up, though.” Warren shrugged. “I got over it, eventually. A year later I was dating Matt.” This, Charles knew, had been Warren’s first long-term relationship, lasting a few years. He didn’t understand how Warren could have gone from worshipping Duke to worshipping Matt instead in such a short time, although most people he knew did such things all the time. He noted this to Warren, who shrugged. “Well if at first you don’t succeed… What I mean is that just because it didn’t work out with Duke didn’t mean I wouldn’t have better luck next time.”

“You know what?” he said slowly. “I think I was the complete opposite. After I got my heart broken, I decided never to bother with love again.”

“I know,” Warren said in a kind tone. “I’m glad I was able to convince you otherwise.” Charles hummed, knowing that he had been a f*ck up when Warren had met him. He still was one, too. “You know, I don’t think you’ve ever told me the story of your first love. Properly, anyway.”

“It’s pretty boring. Another time,” he said, brushing it off. Warren shrugged. Charles changed the topic to their renovation schemes instead, and after another twenty minutes they both said they really should get out of bed.

In the shower Charles ran his hand over a bite mark he had next to his belly button, Erik having sunk his teeth in at some point.

Would Warren wait outside a club for him until two in the morning if Charles decided to brush him off? Would Warren circle his abandoned apartment, waiting for his return? Would Charles renounce even the basic idea of a relationship if he and Warren ever split up, as he had done at nineteen when he couldn’t have Erik? And would Warren try to find him, a year later?

Raven always said that her relationships ran out of fuse, out of passion. She wanted them to either burn each other up or be stabbing at a forgotten shirt – there was no in between.

Such love was silly, immature, impractical and unsustainable. Such love was all devouring.

Once Charles was dressed, he checked his phone. He had a missed call from Erik. It was ten in the morning. They were going to the movies, the three of them, to watch some kids’ film about penguins, and then Erik had promised to make salmon for dinner, and Charles had bought Shani a colouring in book that he wanted to help her with. Warren thought he was catching up with work at the university and then going to Hank’s for dinner.

He could keep this up a while longer: his lies had become better polished, his manner in lying more confident and smoother.

He and Erik had been cheated out of each other once by cruel twists of fate. And since Charles would have to cut Erik out of his life when Warren found a London job, he was going to store up as much of Erik’s touch and voice and smiles into his memories as he could, and live the life that could have been his as much as he could, to retain for the rest of his years.

If it was selfish, he didn’t care.

He called Erik back, said, “Hey you.” Erik sounded happy and excited to hear his voice, and Charles felt a rush of joy and pleasure.

He wondered when adults began laughing at their first loves, at their Dukes, instead of aspiring to once more be that madly in love.

Chapter 7: Seven

Chapter Text

Seven

As Erik gradually awoke, he found the house quiet and his bed warm. Instinctively, he turned to look at the man lying next to him, a smile forming on his lips as he did so. Charles was a heavy sleeper, his breaths even as he sprawled on his front, head turned towards the wall. Erik pressed closer, hand sliding under the covers onto the small of Charles’s back

He loved this lull between sleep and the start of the day, the gap that was full of potential for the things that might, and by god, there was so much of that potential now that he and Charles were back together. Freckles marked Charles’s strong shoulders, and he admired the patterns they made, estimating the distances between. He could get used to this – he was already used to it, truthfully: Charles asleep next to him, steady breaths sounding musical and familiar.

Erik had forgotten how having someone in his life could alter his entire world view: bad coffee suddenly tasted good, dull meetings were easy to bear, Shani’s tantrums seemed milder, and he was being so nice to Ororo that she was suspicious, and all the time a steady thrum of excited joy pumped through him. When Emma had asked him why he was so goddamn smiley all the time, he said that he’d met someone. Emma huffed. “Well isn’t that sweet.” He kept smiling at her. She barked, “Get a grip, Lehnsherr.”

“And a nice day to you too!” he had called out as she left his office.

Charles had begun to spend nights at Crouch End now, a few times coming straight from work and picking up Shani with him, making dinner, watching TV, the lot of it. More often Charles was too busy for that and instead showed up sometime before ten, a change of clothes ready in a bag for the following morning. Erik saw an entire future when Charles helped serve Shani breakfast, Charles putting the dishes in the washer while Erik hunted down a missing purple sock. Moira had looked at Charles long and hard the few times they had dropped off or picked up Shani together, the curiosity clear on her face. Erik wasn’t fazed by this – he was rather proud to show Charles off, even if it was to someone he barely knew.

January had therefore started in this blissful air of them figuring out a new life together, making the practicalities fit. There was an unpredictability to Charles and his comings and goings, but he knew that they were still working to get a balance. He was just being greedy, wanting as much of Charles as he could.

Even more exciting than this was that all the puzzle pieces that Erik had worried would not lock into place had. Charles had purchased Shani a pterodactyl soft toy when they came back from Oxford, and the night before Shani had been playing with it, after which Barbie had become the Lizard Queen, sat on the back of the pterodactyl as Shani swished them around the living room. Charles had clearly been amused by all of this despite the fact that he’d been trying to work, so much so that Charles had given up on the lab stats to join Shani. Erik himself had been distracted by the Frankfurt vs Freiburg match on TV, and although there had been numerous pauses taken to aid Charles and Shani and the Lizard Queen to rescue Pippa the Pig from the library (Erik was still unsure why Pippa had been locked up in there), Charles had said that he’d still felt like it had been a productive night.

He now carefully pressed a kiss to Charles’s shoulder, willing himself to get up any second: he didn’t want to risk staying so long that Shani would be up before them and burst into the bedroom as she had done the weekend before. The memory of it now made Erik smile, although both he and Charles had had a moment of uncertainty when Shani had found them asleep in the same bed. Erik wasn’t sure how she would feel about finding Charles asleep there, especially when she was used to sneaking into bed with him every now and then. Would she be upset that her spot had been taken? Would she be confused that they were both men?

Shani, however, had seemed to make nothing of it as she had ogled at Erik with arms outstretched, waiting to be picked up and cuddled. Later, over breakfast, Erik had mumbled something about adult sleepovers, and Shani had asked if they could watch Spongebob now. Since then, however, he and Charles had made a point to pull underwear back on after sex – just in case Shani decided to come in before they’d gotten dressed in the morning. (Erik had made a point to Charles, however, that he wanted Shani to know that nudity was perfectly natural. He didn’t want her to grow up like these repressed English people who had never seen their mother or father naked and had no concept of normalised nudity – often Shani bathed while Erik grabbed a shower, and her father’s nudity was as normal to her as was his clothed version. Charles had said that he was being far too German about it for his liking. Poor, repressed Americans, too.)

It felt as if Charles had always been a part of their household, just like in Australia when after two days Erik felt like Charles had always been a part of his life. It was so difficult to remember The Before – had there been such a time, Erik wondered as Charles’s breathing changed, coming to an abrupt stop. Charles jerked and groaned tiredly, rolling onto his back. Charles lifted a hand to his face, rubbing at his left eye as he slowly opened the other. “Hey,” he said, voice heavy with sleep.

Erik grinned and brushed his jawline gently. “Hey. You don’t have to get up yet.”

Charles groaned at the back of his throat. “Good.” He slumped back against the mattress, eyes closing, and Erik chuckled. Charles’s mouth crept into a smile.

“I’ll go make breakfast then, shall I?”

“Mmm,” Charles hummed. “There’s a good boy.”

“Oi,” he said, and Charles grinned widely even as he turned away from him. Erik carefully slid out of bed.

There had been times since Christmas when he’d thought Charles had seemed… distracted, even distant at times. And then there were the sudden cancelling of plans, of Charles disappearing halfway through an evening together… But mornings like this made Erik realise that the trauma of his divorce had cut into his skin: was Ororo acting strange, was she unhappy, was she still in love with him, had she met somebody else, what was she not telling him? Erik needed to shake off those fears: no baggage welcome in this relationship. Charles was incredibly busy at the university, and it wasn’t easy to accommodate Erik and Shani to that. Yet, Charles was trying.

After he and Shani had washed up and brushed their teeth, he got Shani dressed but put her in nothing too nice as she was going to make a mess of herself: they needed to bake for the nursery’s bake sale for the following day. Becky, Alfie’s mother, had asked Erik if she’d like him to bake for them, seeing as Shani had no mother around to contribute to the sale. She’d meant well, Erik knew, but he had been pissed off nonetheless. Erik could produce baked goods, goddammit, and Shani was not some kind of a handicapped child just because her mother happened to be a highly successful and busy scientist who lived on the other side of the city.

Erik set everything up while Shani had her cereal, clumsily yet determinedly holding her big, plastic spoon. Once he’d got the ingredients, mixing bowls and cupcake cases out, he informed Shani that now they were going to play master bakers. Shani was up for it, predictably, chatting away at Erik, who suggested that she should make a cupcake just for Charles. “I bet Charles would like that,” he said, encouragingly. And, because he couldn’t resist, “Do you like Charles, Shani?”

“Yes,” she said, “he tells nice stories. And he screeches!” She giggled in delight – Pippa’s rescue had been accompanied by a noisy pterodactyl.

“He does, doesn’t he?” he asked, and Shani beamed at him. “He likes you, too. He said you’re his favourite girl in all of London.” Shani needed a bit of encouragement with people sometimes. As predicted, Shani seemed doubly pleased to know she was liked in turn, smiling widely in pleasure.

They had the dough mostly done by the time Charles appeared downstairs in a loose t-shirt, wrinkled boxers and with a bad case of bed/sex hair. Charles stopped at the sight of them, frowned, and said, “What are you doing?”

Erik turned to Shani. “Hertzchen, was tun wir?” he said pedantically.

Shani looked up at Charles, smiling widely. “Backen!”

“Ah,” Charles said, nodding. “Und warum… er… backen Sie?”

Erik grinned. “Warum nicht?”

Charles made an ‘err’ sound and then seemed to give up on the German. Charles made his way to the table to inspect the operation, a hand coming to rest on the small of Erik’s back. The memory of Charles’s body against his felt like an imprint on his skin – personal space no longer existed as they touched and caressed and sought contact throughout even a regular day, and here Charles was again, a gentle press of fingertips through his t-shirt that had a grounding effect on Erik.

“Can you bake?” Shani inquired Charles, not taking her eyes off her mixing bowl. She then stopped abruptly. “You need to dress!” She climbed off her chair and ran out of the kitchen as Charles looked after her, taken aback. Erik grinned at his boyfriend’s confusion.

“What are these for?” Charles asked, motioning at the cake cases, so Erik told him, mentioning Alfie’s mother’s good intentions, too. Charles said, “Well we need to show her, obviously.”

“Obviously,” he agreed. Charles was about to dip his finger in the dough, but he swapped his hand away.

“Oh come on,” Charles protested, smiling wide as he wrapped arms around Erik’s waist, their bodies pressing together rather invitingly.

“Don’t mess with the cupcakes,” he said quietly. He felt the by now familiar rush of intoxicated happiness pumping through him as Charles teasingly pushed closer, nose bumping against his jawline. He pressed into the tangled nest of Charles’s hair and inhaled. “Christ, you smell so good in the mornings.”

“I do, huh?” Charles questioned as Erik let out an agreeing sound, and he thought briefly that at that moment the two of them were perfectly synched, identical imprints of thoughts and feelings.

“You’re all warm,” he added rather dreamily. Christ, it was awful how attracted he was to Charles at all times. How was it possible to want someone so much? Charles aligned their mouths and kissed him, and it was foolish how the sunshine seemed to shine a little brighter when he kissed Charles back with an air of hungry familiarity. This was what his twenty-three-year-old self had been completely smitten by – who could blame him?

They broke apart when a giggle interrupted them. Shani had returned, clutching a frilly pink apron, and Erik pulled back in surprise. She’d caught them asleep in Erik’s bed, sure, or cuddling on the couch as they watched TV, but she hadn’t caught them snogging until now. She looked at them inquisitively like she was processing this new discovery that Charles who got a lot of hugs and cuddles also got kisses.

Erik cleared his throat. “Right, Fräulain, back to work.”

Shani kicked back into motion, giving Charles the apron that could in no way fit him. She then went straight back to mixing the dough, the snog maybe already forgotten – Shani was carefree in a way only a small child could be and she was excited to be baking. Erik relaxed and rubbed the top of her head affectionately as he peered over to see what she was doing.

“Why am I the only one with an apron?” Charles asked even as he put the pink apron on. Charles couldn’t tie it at the back because the strings didn’t stretch to his girth, so it simply hung from his neck awkwardly.

“Ah, well I’m a master baker, so I don’t need one,” Erik explained.

“Okay… Shani, why aren’t you wearing an apron?”

“I don’t want to,” Shani said. Charles sighed and accepted his fate, and once the dough had been spooned in the cupcake cases, Erik let Charles and Shani scrape the bowl for the leftover mixture.

They watched half of Pocahontas as the cupcakes baked and cooled down before they moved onto piping and decorating. This required some finesse which a nearly four-year-old lacked, and so he assigned his daughter as colour coordinator and Charles as the colour coordinator’s assistant. Charles let Shani mix the frosting, five bowls on the table, each with a different colouring. The piping was Erik’s task, so Charles occupied Shani with deciding on the best frosting/sprinkle combinations, sitting together side by side.

Shani had been shy at first, but Charles’s frequent presence in the house, plus the toys that Charles had bought her, had helped her warm up to Charles considerably. (Erik had told Charles to stop buying Shani things quite sternly, but Charles said that he enjoyed showing up with something for her. Her eyes lit up to the brightest of blues when she was presented with a new toy, and Erik could hardly blame Charles for wanting to delight her. Still, Erik knew a sucker when he saw one, precisely because he was a sucker himself, and no more toy purchases were allowed.) Now Shani was eager to play with Charles whenever he was around and she seemed happy when Charles gave her attention. Erik observed the two of them between cupcakes, trying not to smile too much. Charles had good paternal instincts, he noted, and Erik liked the look of them together: Shani’s big blue eyes almost matching Charles’s, the child’s attention on Charles, her smiles and giggles for Charles, and Charles talking to her confidently and kindly and with great affection.

Charles would make a great dad for Shani.

Charles now said, “Let’s not put the yellow sprinkles on the yellow frosting – you can’t see the sprinkles otherwise.”

“Sun cakes are yellow!”

“Okay, yes, but you want the yellow to pop out, don’t you? We could put these red sprinkles on the sun cakes, that’ll look nice too.”

Shani scrunched up her nose and shook her head. Erik grinned at them. Charles noticed his gaze and looked up. “Erik, what do you think?” he said, perhaps hoping for support. Shani looked at him, too.

Erik always sided with his daughter, of course, but this time he said, “Charles is right, you have to mix the colours.”

“Papa!” Shani exclaimed in horror, and Erik laughed as he went over to the sink to rinse the piping bag: pink done, blue up next. As he got back to the table, Charles glanced up at him and began to grin mischievously. Erik paused. “What?”

Charles stood up. “You’ve got frosting on you.”

“What? Where?” he asked, blindly wiping at his face. Charles wiped his cheek softly, and Erik took the opportunity to catch Charles’s wrist and pull him in a kiss.

Charles laughed against his mouth, murmuring, “You’re a mess, Lehnsherr.”

“I believe you once said I was a hot mess,” he argued, their lips brushing. Shani was making sprinkle sounds (“swoosh swoosh swoosh!”), so when Charles’s hand came to press against the back of his head, Erik pulled Charles closer and parted his mouth, their tongues meeting in a lazy, content kiss.

“Oh,” someone said. Not Shani, not him, not Charles, but another voice that Erik knew equally well, a voice out of place and unexpected. Shani’s shrill yell of “Mommy!” suddenly pierced through the air.

Erik pulled back abruptly. Ororo was standing by the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, with a surprised, affronted look about her. Erik felt his stomach plummet, his arms releasing Charles as he instinctively stepped back, his eyes not leaving Ororo’s. In the first second of confusion he felt the weight of the lifelong relationship he’d once thought he’d have with Ororo, an idea that had not lasted even five years, and no amount of optimistic idealism had been able to change that. Now she stood there as his ex-wife, and here Erik was in the kitchen with Charles, who was in boxers and a t-shirt and a pink apron, and Erik finally felt happy again, and now Ororo stood there, expression turning icy.

“Ororo.” He cleared his throat. “What –”

“Bubby!” Shani now exclaimed, having made her way over, hands reaching up to her mother who automatically picked her up and propped her against her hip. Shani pulled the teddy from under Ororo’s arm into hers lovingly. Shani had left it at her mother’s a week prior, and a whole drama had ensued due to Bubby’s absence.

Ororo’s eyes quickly went from Erik to Charles to Shani. “Hey, cutie pie,” Ororo then cooed, but was distracted and kept glancing at them – or at Charles, to be precise. “How you doing, huh?”

“Baking!” Shani said.

“Yes, I see that.”

Ororo had no idea who Charles was, of course – Erik hadn’t told her. It’d been too awkward a topic to bring up. Hi Ororo, I’ve met someone. Hi Ororo, you know how you’re single? Well I have a boyfriend now. Hi Ororo, f*cking hell our breakup was terrible, but I’m over it now.

There hadn’t been a right way of doing it. Now he regretted that decision.

“You should’ve called,” he said. She didn’t usually show up unannounced. She still had the keys – why shouldn’t she? Well this was why.

Ororo’s fake smile did not falter. “I texted you yesterday that I’d come by.”

He suddenly recalled a text he’d received halfway through the Bundesliga match – a text he’d read and forgotten about just as instantly, because Shani needed help with saving Pippa the Pig, and then his team had scored, and Charles had moved to his couch, hand on his knee, the other around his shoulders, and Erik had finished watching the game snuggling with Charles. “Right. Right, you did text me. I forgot, I ah. Right.” f*ck.

Ororo turned to Shani. “Mommy needed to bring Bubby back, didn’t she? Did you miss it, baby?” Shani nodded to confirm this, hugging the toy and cuddling into her mother.

Charles said, “Charles Xavier. Pleased to meet you.”

Erik only then realised that introductions were the obvious place to start and rushed to say, “Yes, of course, this – this is Charles. From work.”

From work. Charles looked confused, but Erik was only trying to give some context to them baking and kissing in the kitchen. Maybe ‘from work’ didn’t cut it. Whatever Ororo thought it looked like was exactly what it was.

Ororo gave Charles the onceover. “Ororo Munroe.” Ororo’s eyes were piercingly blue the way they only were when she was angry, leaving Erik dumbstruck and like Ororo had surprised him spending a leisurely Saturday morning with the person Erik was cheating on her with. They weren’t together anymore, they were divorced – so why the hell did he feel like he’d been caught red-handed?

Shani was blissfully unaware, asking if Mom would help with the cupcakes too. Mom’s response was, “In a minute, Mommy just needs to have a word with Papa first.”

A threat more than anything.

As Ororo walked into the kitchen, Charles and Erik took a further step away from one another. Erik felt the spell break, the warmth of Charles’s embrace suddenly feeling like a distant memory. A blank look had taken over the features of Charles’s face that had been playful just moments before. Charles directed Shani back to the kitchen table as he and Ororo stepped outside into the garden. Erik glanced at Charles before closing the door, but Charles wasn’t looking their way.

Outside, Ororo crossed her arms as they moved away from the garden door. Next house over, Kyle Caldwell raised his hand over the fence, gardening sheers in the other. “Morning!” he said, full of benign, middle-aged English enthusiasm. Erik raised a hand in hello, and Ororo pursed her lips. Kyle’s head disappeared behind the fence, the earphone cables trailing his neck as usual. He listened to astronomy podcasts when he did his gardening.

Ororo seemed to grit her teeth, her eyes fixed on an invisible point on Erik’s shoulder. “What do you expect me to do with that?” she asked at length. Erik said nothing. “Christ, I walk into some kind of clichéd domestic scene in our house –”

“My house, actually,” he retorted. “I got the house when we divorced, remember?”

“Oh don’t patronise me,” she snapped angrily, doing away with the best argument he could muster: ‘we’re divorced’. This meant that Erik could do what he wanted and owed Ororo no explanations. She had exposed that to be the lie he’d always known it to be: he still owed her, just like he felt that she owed him too, at times. “A nice way to make me feel like a goddamn fool, Erik,” she said bitterly. She motioned at the house. “So who is that, if I may ask? Mr. Beard Burn or a more recent conquest?”

He glared at her. “A more recent conquest – Christ, do you hear yourself?” His voice was rising already. He glanced back to the house. The windows reflected the garden outside – he could not see Charles. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, it’s the same man. We’ve been seeing each other for a while now.”

“And when, exactly, were you intending to tell me?”

“Like I said: it’s not your business.”

“But it is my business,” she hissed angrily and then made a ‘tut’ with her tongue. “Charles from work. Christ. If he’s spending the night and serving my kid breakfast, I’m entitled to know who –”

“Right, because you introduced me to Tony before you took Shani to Florida with him?”

“That was different!” she said, and before he could ask how, she added, “What I do is different from what you do because Shani lives here. I don’t need you telling me that I’m no saint, but do you know how I manage to sleep at night, not seeing her? Do you? I manage to sleep because she’s with you, and I know you and I know the kind of life you’re giving her: a damn good one. But… Christ, if she doesn’t have consistency here, then what kind of a mess are we..?” She trailed off and then shook her head. “This isn’t the same as me and Tony, and you can’t pretend that it is. This is a whole other level. Shani’s daily life needs to be normal, and then suddenly there’s Charles from work and there you are kissing him when she’s right there –”

“Are you saying this isn’t normal because Charles is a man?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth! Dick or puss*, it doesn’t matter!” she said crassly, fighting to keep her voice down. Erik hoped that Kyle Caldwell had his volume turned up. “What matters is that Shani doesn’t know him. And, I mean, does she understand what’s happening?”

“Of course. You think I haven’t talked to her about this?” he retaliated, although he hadn’t actually talked about Charles per se – he had talked about his bisexuality.

“And does she understand?” Ororo countered. Erik said nothing because he wasn’t sure if Shani did. Ororo let out an exasperated sigh and looked pleading. She pressed her hands together, fingertips brushing the tip of her nose. After a beat she said, in what she probably thought was an appeasing tone, “All I mean is, Erik, that this seems to be happening pretty fast. Please think of our daughter. She’s going to be confused when people just appear and disappear –”

“Mmm, like Tony.”

Who said Charles was going to disappear?

“Yeah, exactly like Tony!” she snapped. “I know what I’m talking about. You don’t. You’ve only been seeing him for a while. Is it wise to let Shani get used to him? You should be more careful than –”

“But I have Shani all the time!” he barked. “You’re right, it’s different with me, this is different than you and Tony. I can’t date and see where it goes because I spend my evenings right here, with our daughter, who I am raising with little to no assistance from you. I don’t get breaks and I don’t get date time, and if I want to see Charles, then this is where he will have to be.”

“I help,” she snarled.

“Do you?” he snapped back. “You know nothing about me and Charles, so don’t even start.”

She gaped at him before realisation seemed to dawn on her. “Are you in love with him?”

He scoffed. “For Christ’s –”

“You are,” she said, but it was an accusation that choked him up. Maybe, or – he hadn’t – They hadn’t. They hadn’t said it, or Erik hadn’t said it, but he felt the warmth of it inside himself, constantly, stronger every day, but that was theirs, his and Charles’s, and not anything to do with Ororo, who looked utterly disappointed in him somehow.

Ororo could perhaps anticipate the imminent anger that Erik now felt boiling up in him because she said, “Yeah, yeah, I’m the bad guy. I’m always the bad guy! But that’s why it’s so goddamn important that you’re the good one!” She sighed, her arms dropping to her sides. She looked sorry. “I don’t want to fight. Christ, I’m not trying to pick a fight. I’m just… asking you to be careful. For Shani’s sake.”

“That’s f*cking bullsh*t and you know it,” he said, ignoring her attempts at mollifying him. He wanted to fight, and he remembered once more why they had divorced. “Where do you get off –”

“Okay, okay!” she cut in, holding her hands up. They glared at each other. She glanced at the house. “I’ve said my piece.”

“No one asked you to.”

“Yes, I –”

“I’m happy. And Shani likes Charles, and he likes Shani, and I want to make that work, and I’m sorry if that’s tough for you, but you don’t get to make me feel like sh*t about something that’s the best thing that’s probably ever happened to me.”

Her lips pursed together. At length she said, “Right. I think you’ve said enough.”

Sure, she had the right to play the martyr.

Erik followed her back in, and both Charles and Shani looked up as they returned. Ororo said, with false chirpiness, “Well, I must be off. Only came to drop off the much missed teddy.” Every word utterly fake and full of forced politeness, like she and Erik had not just had a go at each other outside, questioning each other’s life choices and moral characters.

“I need help, Mommy,” Shani protested, lower lip in a pout.

“She has to get going, Shani,” Erik said coldly. Charles tried to catch his gaze but Erik focused on his kid instead.

“We’ll bake when you next come over, okay?” Ororo said, bending down to kiss the top of Shani’s head. “Now be a good girl.” She stood up straight, hand protectively resting on Shani’s shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Charles.”

Liar.

Charles nodded. “Yeah. You too.”

Shani pushed the closest cupcake away. “I don’t wanna bake.”

Erik sighed. Ororo patiently reminded Shani that they would have a sleepover soon, and Shani said she wanted her to stay. Erik didn’t want to feel guilty about this yet again, on top of everything else. There was no appeasing Shani, who was now heading for a full tantrum, and thankfully this meant a quick exit from Ororo because past experience had taught them both that Ororo leaving was easier as a blaster pulled off swiftly. Shani nevertheless began to bawl and wouldn’t let Erik pick her up. Erik felt like a fool, but wasn’t sure why. He didn’t want Charles to see them like this. “Hey, come on,” he said, trying to cheer Shani up. “Let’s finish the cupcakes, huh?”

Shani shook her head angrily, and Charles asked, “Everything okay with…?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He smiled – unconvincingly, he was sure. Charles averted his gaze. It was difficult to talk over Shani’s yelling, anyway. They’d talk about it later, once Shani wasn’t within earshot.

But when Charles said that he better get going soon, Erik felt relieved. They kissed a hasty goodbye at the door, and Erik knew there was still something he needed to say, something weighing heavy on his tongue, but he looked at Charles’s evading eyes, and he just couldn’t get it out.

Charles tried to get a head start with his teaching duties for the spring semester, spending the morning tweaking PowerPoints for his molecular microbiology lectures. The task was mundane and easy to get lost in, and as he pored over his work, he did not have to think of life outside lecture halls and lab tutorials.

He kept checking his phone, hoping for a missed call or text, although he knew that Erik was busy with meetings all day. He wondered if their offices, which were four blocks apart, were both occupied by workers who were having a hard time concentrating. He could just call himself – but then he thought back to Erik’s tight-lipped moodiness that had followed him meeting Ororo who, goddammit, was even more stunning in real life than on Facebook. It had seemed to him that Erik needed a bit of time just then, so he hadn’t pushed. He didn’t want to be the reason Erik was fighting with Ororo, in any case – they should all think about Shani and make sure she wasn’t upset by adult problems.

Still, it was difficult not to call Erik and invite himself over again. Charles could bring a bottle of wine, and Erik could pour his heart out. It was unusual, truthfully, for Erik not to have contacted him for an entire two days. Were they not okay?

At twelve o’clock a knock sounded on his door, bringing an interruption to the labour-intensive work. Scott was in London for the day and they’d managed to squeeze in lunch together. Scott hadn’t visited him at the new university before, so Charles gave him the grand tour first. After lukewarm coffee from the staff room, they went down to the lab, where Hank was busy at work. Scott had met Hank at Thanksgiving, of course, and Hank warmly greeted Scott who enquired about the experiments taking place. After Hank had enthused about chiasmas, he said, “So what brings you to London?”

“Work, but also best man duties.” Scott nodded at Charles.

Hank’s eyes went impossibly wide as he began to grin. He beamed at Charles and said, “Have you finally popped the question?”

“Wait, what now?” Scott said sharply with a look full of inquisitiveness, and Charles clarified, with a hint of rushing too much, “For Scott’s wedding – me, as Scott’s best man.”

Hank laughed embarrassedly. “Oh, right. Right, of course. I thought maybe you’d finally done the deed. Sorry.”

Scott was now grinning openly. “Well, well. Cat’s out of the bag, Charlie.”

“Oh shut up,” he said, pushing Scott along. Hank mouthed ‘sorry’ after him, but was also smiling. Neither of them was sorry.

He foolishly hoped that Scott would let it go as they talked of the imminent wedding. They ate at the near-by sushi place that Charles had settled on because Erik disliked how much sushi one had to eat in order to be full, and therefore he knew Erik would not be having his lunch there. They sat side by side at the bar that circled the sushi kitchen, a conveyer belt rolling different dishes past their noses. Scott’s nuptials were only around the corner, and all that any of them still had to do was show up. Charles assured his friend that the wedding would be great, and Scott said, “And speaking of weddings… you’re popping the question, then?” Scott was grinning ear to ear.

Charles shrugged, eyes averting as he took a bite of his California roll. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

Scott went on a long ramble about when he’d proposed to Jean and how he’d planned it for months and how exciting it had been, and how their engagement had thus far been the happiest time in their lives. “You’re gonna love being engaged,” Scott said with a smile. “Being married can only be even better! Imagine us as married couples, man. Me and Jean, you and Warren. And when we have kids, you guys can be Uncle Charles and Uncle Warren.” Scott seemed to love the idea of this. He reached for a maki with his chopsticks. “Hey, you guys gonna have kids, you think?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s Warren’s cup of tea.” He’d been realising that more and more recently. How had it never come up before?

“Not for everyone, I guess,” Scott said.

“I’d love to have kids,” he said, quite unprompted, and wondered when exactly he’d come to this conclusion. He’d lived for himself for nearly thirty years now – the thought of living for another creature instead, for a child, seemed reinvigorating. And Shani adored Erik, her world revolving around her dad, and Charles thought that it must be nice to have such meaning to your life. Why did he go to work in the morning? For a bigger house, bigger car, better career? All of the above, probably. But wouldn’t it be good to have a family in that house, in that car, supporting that career, and wouldn’t it be nice to buy tickets for Disney on Ice shows because your child’s smile meant more than having the most prestigious awards at work?

Scott hummed thoughtfully. “You’d make a good dad.”

“You think so?” he asked, earnestly. He’d passed a children’s clothing store on St John’s Wood High Street the other day that he’d somehow never noticed before. This time he spotted a yellow polka dot dress in the window, and the only thing that had stopped him from buying it had been his inability to explain a purchase from Little Darlings should Warren take a look at his recent transactions.

“Yeah,” Scott said. “All you need is baby changing facilities in the lab and you’ll be good to go.” He winked, and Charles rolled his eyes. He worked too much, he knew this. That didn’t mean he couldn’t change. Scott said, “You won’t mind my telling Jean about all this, do you?”

“I’d rather –”

“Oh come on, you know I’m a terrible liar. And Jean will be relieved to know.”

Charles frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Mmm,” Scott said, biting half of a tamago maki into his mouth. “She said it’s strange you hardly ever go to Geneva anymore, but who could with your workload? Besides, I told her that it’s supposed to work the other way around now, with Warren coming here. I mean, she knows Warren is looking for jobs in London, so I don’t know why she thinks you guys are in trouble. She said you don’t mentioned Warren as much as you used to, or something like that.” Scott rolled his eyes.

Charles had lost his appetite. “That’s insane,” he said indignantly.

“Aw, don’t be mad at her. I think she was expecting you to, uh, to be in Oxford longer after Christmas, hang out with us, you know? She was a bit upset when you just took off. Proposal jitters, is what it’s been – your mysteriousness of late. Hey, I sympathise. It’s a nerve-wrecking experience.” Scott then glanced at him. “So when you gonna ask him?”

But Charles could hardy concentrate. “Christ, she’s not said anything to Warren, has she? I can’t bare Warren thinking that I don’t want him here, or –”

“No, no, of course not. Hey, I know you guys are good,” Scott said reassuringly.

“Good. That’s good.” Charles paused and felt ill at ease. “You talked to Alex recently?”

“My brother Alex? No.”

“Jean talk to him?”

“They’re not very close,” Scott mused. “I mean, neither are we. You’ve met Alex, you know how he is. So pugnacious, and I just don’t know why… Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Or I mean – yeah, he did seem a little… off.”

Scott sighed. “Yeah, he is. Always in trouble, Alex. I worry about him sometimes… At the wedding, can you make sure he doesn’t drink too much? He’ll listen to you.”

Charles nearly scoffed. “I doubt that.”

“Oh, he will. He liked you, you and Warren both. He said so.”

He tried to contain himself. “He did?”

“Yeah, after you guys left Aspen. Said you were a ‘swell couple’,” Scott laughed, but Charles knew Alex had been sarcastic – swell did not seem like a word from Alex’s usual vocabulary.

Just then Charles heard his name be called out, and he looked around to see Federica from chess club approaching them. She was one of those tall, slender-framed Mediterranean women who always had their black hair beautifully curled, a gold bracelet on her wrist, and a smart, well-fitting dress on her. Charles had tried to like her, but he knew that she had a soft spot for Erik, despite being a married woman. Well, was he one to preach?

She kissed him on both cheeks. “How was Christmas? Did you enjoy America?” She elongated the e: Ameehrica. He said that he had and introduced her to Scott.

Scott said, “Oh yeah, the chess club! I’m not much of a chess player myself – my talents lie elsewhere, I’d like to think.” Scott was being flirtatious with her, and she took it in her stride and flashed a smile at him.

“I used to think I was good,” she said, “but this man make me question!” She placed a hand on Charles’s arm. “I cannot win against him! I try, but no. I think: Federica, use your – oh what you call it. Poker face! Use my poker face, but no. He can read minds, always knows my next move. Only Erik can beat you, yes?”

“That’s our current champion,” Charles supplied as smoothly as he could.

“Erik is a chess genius,” Federica said appraisingly, and Charles wished to argue the point: he’d beaten Erik a few times. Instead he just nodded, and she said, “But he finally has a worthy opponent in you, eh? You seen him? Erik?”

“Me? No. Why would I have seen him?” he asked with a small chuckle of confusion, and Federica said, “Ah, but you’re friends, no?” Charles made a non-committal sound that to his ears ringed slightly pathetic. She waved her hand. “I’ll call him, is okay. I must go get my sushi, have a staff meeting soon. Always the same yada yada, who has time? British bureaucracy.” She rolled her eyes.

She kissed him again – both cheeks – and waved them goodbye. Scott watched her go to the counter, clearly enjoying the view, and said to Charles, “Now, if you weren’t gay, I’d be telling Warren to keep an eye on that one.”

“Funny,” he said, and Scott grinned.

Charles cut their lunch date short, saying that he had suddenly recalled an email or two that had to be sent ASAP. Scott showed no hint of suspicion as they hugged goodbye – he only grinned and said he expected the engagement to be announced soon. “I’ll keep you posted,” he said with a smirk that hopefully showed the confidence that he did not feel.

After he waved Scott off, he stood in the busy street, in the way of Londoners.

So it was: Jean, who knew him so well, had grown suspicious of his actions. Alex was keeping his mouth shut – but only barely. Warren was as before but increasingly complaining that Charles was hard to reach and missing agreed Skype dates, but Charles blamed it on work and forgetting to charge his phone and on squash with Trevor and simple absent-mindedness. Raven had been complaining about his MIA habits of late, too. And Erik was… rather wonderful, and Charles missed him. It was bad that he missed Erik. No good could come of that.

He checked his phone and had a message waiting. Not from Erik, like he’d initially hoped, but from Warren: I’m taking you out for dinner tomorrow.

He frowned and called his partner. “What do you mean dinner?”

Warren was clearly smiling. “Well, turns out I have a… oh, a meeting, let’s call it, in London tomorrow.”

A job interview.

Charles took a deep breath: another chess piece moved. Soon he’d be cornered.

Warren had chosen a high-end gourmet restaurant near the Saatchi Gallery, where Charles was seated at a table covered with a white linen cloth and a candle alight in the middle. The lights were down-low, and classical music softly echoed from the speakers that had discreetly been hidden somewhere in the busy restaurant. Charles felt underdressed as he had not anticipated that the restaurant was so nice, having come straight from work after a prolonged meeting. Warren had been annoyingly mysterious about ‘the meeting’, which had not put Charles at ease in any way. All he knew was that Warren had landed at Heathrow around noon, when Charles had not been expecting him in the country until Scott and Jean’s wedding. All he knew was that he had imprints of Erik’s teeth on his shoulder, still there from a sharp bite in the midst of org*sm the previous weekend.

He didn’t like Warren’s surprises, he didn’t like having to wonder why Erik had still not called him, and he doubted he liked himself much anymore, either.

He wanted Warren to show up and explain himself. Warren’s reluctance to tell him more about the job – Warren always told him everything – was disconcerting.

He stopped the waiter and asked for a second gin and tonic. He was halfway through it when Warren arrived, hair wet with rain. “Hey,” Warren said with a large grin on his face, dressed in one of his best suits that he often used for conferences. Charles got up to hug him, but the embrace was not as passionate as it should have been after three weeks apart. Charles was irritated and tired, but most of all worried. Warren, on the other hand, seemed over the moon.

Warren sat down, ordering himself a drink, the menus being given to them immediately with smooth professionalism. Warren flipped his open casually, and Charles said, “Is that it?” Warren glanced up. Charles grit his teeth. “You come to London with no warning, ask me to meet you here, and you’re not going to explain yourself?”

“Let’s order first,” Warren said, evasively. He was never evasive.

Charles closed his menu. Warren’s smile faded slightly. Charles said, “You had a job interview this afternoon. How’d it go?”

“It went well,” Warren said, and now he was fighting off a grin. “I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. Promise.”

Charles was about to protest, but the waiter came for their order. Warren asked for the tasting menu times two, and Charles finished his drink. When Warren realised that Charles wasn’t being pushy because of excitement but annoyance, he finally began to talk. The meeting had been with London’s Particle Physics Research Centre, who were setting up a new research group which they wanted Warren to lead. He’d have a team of eleven working for him on a project that expanded on what Warren had started in CERN, and he would supervise one of the biggest particle physics experiments in Europe as a Senior Physicist. “You won’t believe how much money they are willing to give me to run this project,” Warren beamed, now digging into the first dish with gusto. Charles had always thought no one could give Warren a better deal than the one he had at CERN. Looked like London’s PPRC were willing to change that.

“Darling, that’s amazing,” he said, because as one scientist to another, the brilliance of such a job was obvious to him and he couldn’t help but be thrilled for Warren. But something still bothered him. Such massive projects were advertised for, the best of the world were coaxed to come… “This is… very sudden.” He glanced across the table at Warren, who looked stunning in his suit and in the soft candle light. Warren smiled sheepishly, and it clicked. “This isn’t sudden, is it?” he asked.

“Well,” Warren said, “I was pretty sure the job was mine, we just needed to finalise the details. I didn’t want to speak too soon and jinx it, did I?”

Charles lost interest in the Orkney scallops. “I see. So this has been unofficially in the works for a while?”

“A while, yes.”

“So when at New Year’s you made a resolution to move to London to be with me… you had this job lined up.”

Warren waved his hand. “I had it lined up earlier than that. In November, it looked pretty sure, but I PPRC first contacted me last summer. It was all hush hush, but still one of the reasons I wanted us to buy our flat – made sense, if the deal worked out. And now it has.” Charles stared at the scallops. That was months and months of Warren knowing about a potential job in London and not saying a word about it! Warren reached over the table and grabbed his hand. “Babe, this is it. We can finally live together.”

“Yes, that’s a happy coincidence, isn’t it?” he asked, pulling his hand back. Warren stopped chewing his food and looked confused. Charles glared at him. “If this job was in bloody Beijing, Warren, then you’d be moving there instead.”

“Babe –”

“You’d move across the world without a second thought.”

“Well, I mean – I mean, no, it’s. Wait, what?”

“Don’t pretend this has got anything to do with me, when it doesn’t.”

Warren was taken aback. “But you – surely you realise how much keener I was for the job, knowing it was in London.”

“But if it hadn’t been –”

“But it was. Is. Charles, why are you upset?”

“Because you haven’t chosen us!” he barked, louder than intended. A couple at the next table looked over. Warren glanced around them, uncomfortable. Charles leaned back in his chair, realising he had been set up: the Michelin starred restaurant, Warren trying to pass it off as a romantic surprise… But what did any of that matter, a part of him thought: Warren was moving to London. Surely that was what counted. Warren clearly thought so. Charles tried to keep his volume down as he said, “You’ve chosen a job, and I’m a coincidental, happy benefit. It’s hardly the same as taking any job in London just to be with me.”

Warren frowned. “So, what? You wanted me to quit physics and wait tables in London?”

“Would I not be worth it?”

Warren began to seem irritated. “Charles, I didn’t slave away for a PhD to do something else instead. I’ve landed my dream job today, and I get to move to London to our home. And you’re… angry?”

Charles realised that he was being childish. “No, I’m… God, I just. I don’t know. I thought when you said you’d move to London, that it’d be… different. That’s all.” He exhaled and reached over to hold Warren’s hand. “Darling, of course this is great news. The best news. I’m sorry.”

Warren still looked unsettled. The waiter came over. “How were your starters, gentlemen?” he asked as he picked up the scallop plates. Warren blinked and instantly smiled widely, like a different person entirely. “Some of the best I’ve had.”

Although they tried, the conversation didn’t take from there. Charles tried his best to ask questions about the job and when Warren would be moving to London, and Warren answered all queries, but the atmosphere remained jilted. The food was superb, and critiquing it filled silences. In the taxi home, the rain beating the windows, Charles said, “I’m sorry I ruined the evening.”

“No, don’t be,” Warren said, clutching his hand. “I should’ve told you. I’m sorry.” Warren lifted his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles.

They were lousy fighters, the two of them.

Warren had dropped off his suitcase at the apartment before his interview, and as it had been a hectic day for him, he went to bed. Charles said he would be there in a bit. He settled on the living room couch with a BBC Antarctica documentary and a beer. He was disappointed. He tried not to be, but he couldn’t help the feeling seeping through him. Warren planned to finish at CERN in June, not that he had handed in his notice yet, but once he did so there were a lot of experiments to finish and pass over to new people before he could leave. Charles had until June, he figured. He had until June to spend time with Erik. And then, without any proper explanation, he would have to break it off.

In the bedroom Warren was asleep, breathing steadily. Charles moved quietly as he stripped off his clothes, but when he slid under the covers, Warren stirred. Charles said, “Just go back to sleep.”

Warren hummed in response, and Charles found himself staring at the ceiling in the dark. After three weeks, it was highly unusual that they weren’t having sex right then.

After a silence that stretched so long that he thought Warren had drifted off, Warren said, “Did you want me to choose?”

Charles considered this, thankful for the darkness that engulfed them. The truthful answer was ‘yes’. Was it foolish that even at the ripe age of twenty-eight he wanted someone to make him feel like he was the most important person in the world? He said, “No. You’re moving to London. We can be together. The how of it doesn’t matter.”

Warren reached out to brush his hair. Charles felt too tired to react. “If this… if this isn’t about the new job… if this is about something else. You’d tell me. Right?”

Charles closed his eyes. “Right.” He swallowed. “It’s not about anything else.”

He’d been out of sorts for days now – ever since that trip to Erik’s future house, ever since Erik had said he’d tried to find Charles again. He could hardly think of Erik without feeling like something deep inside him had shifted and was slowly reshaping itself. He felt changed, and he felt estranged from Warren.

Warren had a six o’clock flight to Geneva and would have to get up in only a matter of hours. Charles pulled him closer.

Azazel called to ask if they really had to go running in Regent’s Park when it was so windy and wet, but Erik insisted. A bit of rain didn’t bother him, and the whole “winter storm” reportage was grossly exaggerated in his opinion. He changed into his running clothes after work and ran along the canal as he did most weeks. He made excellent time, all of his efforts pinpointed to moving fast and hard. Logan and Azazel met him at the park, both looking a bit angry like it was Erik’s fault that they were drenched. “Come rain or shine,” he reminded his friends, who grunted. In the past, if the weather was as bad as it was that day, they had opted for a cheeky pint instead.

Erik felt detached from his friends and from the bad weather, and somehow that translated to energised running in what could only be described as a mild January storm. For once Logan and Azazel were struggling to keep up with him. When they paused to catch their breaths, Logan asked, “Is the devil on your heels?”

“Yeah, you trying to outdo us or what?” Azazel asked, holding his side with a wince on his face.

Erik was in a bad mood, and his frustration made his steps that little bit faster. “Well we’re here to run, aren’t we?” he questioned.

Azazel stared at him, eyes beady. “Come on, spit it out, then. You fight with Ororo?”

“No,” he barked. “I mean. Yes. Technically. But it doesn’t matter.” He wasn’t angry with her as such: he was angry with himself. He was, truthfully, rather furious with himself. Charles had not called him since leaving that day. Erik had been an idiot, just letting Charles leave like that. He’d choked up, just like he had ten goddamn years ago. Here he was, thinking that he wasn’t repeating history because he had told Magda about them over the holidays, when in fact he hadn’t told Ororo or his mother or even the majority of his friends. They’d been going out for two months now, and Erik had been so greedy with Charles that Charles undoubtedly felt like a dirty secret that Erik did not tell people about. Charles hadn’t called him for a full three days now, which was Erik’s fault. He continued to be inadequate – Charles deserved much better, and Charles had started to realise that.

“You got issues – trust me, I know looking at you,” Logan said, still clearly pissed off that they were out in the miserable rain when they could be having a pint somewhere. “But don’t take it out on us.”

“I’m not. Just forget about.” His friends said nothing. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”

And then he was talking about it, seconds after he said he wouldn’t. And so he told his friends how Ororo had caught them in the kitchen, enjoying a carefree Saturday morning, and how Ororo had had a go at him for being naïve and thoughtless to bring Charles into Shani’s life. That pissed Erik off to no end. But worst of all was that Charles had left and had not called back since, and they spoke to each other every f*cking day, and now it was radio silence. “I was stuck in this bubble of just the two of us, you know? Christ, even you guys haven’t met him yet, and that’s insane. I’ve been so selfish with him, and now he must think that I’m putting him second, just like I did the first time around. I’m an asshole, standing there like a fool while he has to introduce himself to Ororo.”

They had given up running, walking towards the mosque at the Western end of the park. The pace was idle – defeated, even – and it wasn’t as if they could get more drenched even if they’d tried. Erik had handled the situation badly because he’d felt embarrassed and caught, and instead of telling Charles how he f*cking felt, he’d just… shrunk. This was their second chance to be together, and Erik had been so thrilled by it – so excited and distracted – that he hadn’t treated Charles fairly at all.

He stalled, looking at the road that led past the mosque. He was nearly at St John’s Wood. He came to a complete stop.

Azazel said, hesitantly, “It’s been kind of intense with you two. Maybe getting some space might be a good idea.”

“No,” Erik said. It was always intense with them: that was the only setting on which they operated: all or nothing. And Erik was all in. He felt a sudden rush of energy – Charles’s house was barely a ten minute run away. “I need to go,” he said in realisation, making a hasty exit from his two confused friends. Azazel called something after him, followed by Logan’s “Let him sort his own sh*t out.”

The rain picked up as he made his way up Grove End Road, the wet getting through his running gear and onto his skin. His breath was rising up in the air as he turned to Abercorn Place, soon hurrying up the steps of Charles’s building. He pressed the buzzer, impatient. Nothing. He pressed it again. Nothing, again.

His hand dropped, and he clutched his side, trying to catch his breath. Charles wasn’t in. What had he been expecting? Or maybe Charles was, but suspected it was Erik, and was deciding not to speak to him. God, Erik had been an utterly rubbish boyfriend so far. He hadn’t properly met Raven or Charles’s other friends – he had made no effort to make himself a part of Charles’s life, seeing it as a one-sided exchange where Charles needed to adjust to him, all because he had a kid to consider. It’d been short-sighted and foolish, and now Charles wasn’t speaking to him.

Humiliated and defeated, he took the few steps down to street level and gazed up at the building to see if the light was on in the living room. It wasn’t.

“Erik?”

He turned around and was face to face with Charles, stood on the pavement, his work backpack on him, the winter coat buttoned up. Charles had no umbrella and his long hair looked wet and matted, hands in his pockets. Charles recovered from his surprise and asked, “What are you doing here?”

It looked odd, Erik realised, him in the rain in his running gear standing outside Charles’s house, but he felt such relief seeing Charles again that he hardly cared. “I came to see if you were in. I was out for a run, in the park.” He motioned vaguely southwards. Erik had missed him. God, how he’d missed him.

Charles did not invite him in or say that they must get out of the rain. Charles just said, “I see.”

He pulled himself together. “I owe you an apology.”

Charles blinked. “An apo – What for?”

“The other day, but – also no. For ever since we met again,” he said, instinctively stepping closer to Charles.

Charles shook his head. “You don’t owe me –”

“I do,” Erik said, and Charles looked confused. “I didn’t mean to… to act like I did when Ororo came to the house. I didn’t mean to brush you off.” Charles was about to say something, so he hurried on with, “After you both left, I felt guilty and I couldn’t figure out why. But now I – I felt… bad because she saw me… in the house where she once lived, being happier than I’d ever been with her. And I felt guilty about it, and embarrassed, because this… this side of me that… that I share with you. I don’t share it with many. Or maybe any, now that I – think about it. Maybe I only ever shared it with you.” Erik dropped his gaze. “I didn’t do right by not telling Ororo about you, and I don’t want you thinking that it’s like it was before, when we first met. I’ve been selfish, but I want to change that and try…. try harder, if you’ll let me. And I would. Will. Because this, us… is the best thing that’s happened to me in years.”

Something in Charles’s posture seemed to crack, a ghost of a smile lingering on his face – but then Charles only looked sad. “It’s the best thing that’s happened to me, too.”

“Good,” he said, relieved. He paused, suspended in air as he waited for Charles to say something else. When Charles didn’t, he added, “I want you to know how important you are to me.”

Charles didn’t quite look at him as he quietly asked, “Am I?”

The question seemed genuine, and Erik was unsettled by the uncertainty in Charles’s tone. Didn’t he know? “God, of course you are. I can hardly work or eat or sleep without thinking about you. I can barely even –”

Charles kissed him: the kiss was clammy and hard and wet. It was perfect.

Out of the cold and up the stairs into the flat where they hastily peeled each other’s clothes off on their way to the bed. Had Erik paid attention, he would have given more thought to the little things that caught his attention just at the edges of his mind: the two suits hanging in the bedroom, ready for the wedding Charles had coming up, and the scent of a new cologne in the sheets, one that he didn’t recognise as belonging to Charles. If he had paid attention, he would have queried these, and perhaps taken note of the shoes in the hallway that were too small to be in Charles’s size, or the second toothbrush that his eyes caught when he used the bathroom before leaving – any of these things should have bothered him more than they did.

But he only let them wash over his senses, blinded as he was in the onslaught of emotion, making love to Charles, both of their skins cold and clammy at first, and soon flushed and sweat-slick. And, because he could not contain the feeling inside him anymore, because it had grown so strong that all that it could do was spill out of him, he confessed, raggedly, “I’m in love with you.”

The reaction he received caught him by surprise: beneath him Charles exhaled shakily, fingers digging into the muscles of his back. Erik swallowed, heart hammering in his chest as he held the eye contact. He instinctively moved closer, the need for Charles burning him up from the inside even when their bodies were joined like this. Did Charles feel the same, did Charles –

Charles’s blue eyes were alight. Quietly, he whispered, “Say it again.” Charles’s hips thrust up, inviting him to keep going. Erik picked up the deep, needy thrusts, leaning closer.

His mouth hovered over Charles’s. “I’m in love with you.”

Charles’s hands cradled his head, pulling him in closer. A groan escaped Charles as Erik pushed in deeper. “Say it again,” Charles said, legs moving wider apart, asking him to push in even deeper.

And he did, just before their lips touched: “I’m in love with you.”

Charles maintained that Erik did not need to come to the wedding, but Erik disagreed. From here on out he would be that guy who went to weddings as Charles’s plus one. He wanted to meet Charles’s friends, he wanted Charles to meet his; he wanted legitimacy and mutual recognition. They had not been together for very long, this was true, but a few months to them was years in normal people terms.

Charles, however, said, “They’ve budgeted the wedding for a set number, it’d be more hassle than it’s worth to have extra people show up.” Erik could understand that, of course, but he had been to weddings by himself and knew how sh*tty that could make you feel. However, it was his turn to have Shani for the weekend, and he’d already promised to take her to the swimming pool. Charles assured him that he wasn’t upset that Erik wasn’t going to Oxford with him. It was better this way, for everyone – Erik shouldn’t worry about it, and so he yielded.

Charles had coffee with him the day before the wedding in one of the university canteens. Charles was finalising his best man speech, and Erik read it over and gave him feedback. As he did so, their legs brushed against each other’s, and he brushed away some of Charles’s messy hair while Charles scribbled down amendments. He curled hairs behind Charles’s ear, and Charles flinched, shaking him off. “Stop that – it tickles.”

“Then get a haircut,” he said, “I can’t be grooming you all the time.” He was just teasing – he didn’t want Charles to cut his hair at all.

“I think you’ll find the time,” Charles said in turn, smirking at the piece of paper he was fixing. Erik grinned to himself. God, how exhilarating it was to be in love! And not with just anyone, but with Charles. This time they’d be better at it, this time they wouldn’t let each other go. Erik was all in – Charles had him, for better or worse, and he couldn’t have been happier.

He was touched by how beautifully Charles had been able to talk about love and life-long commitment in the speech, although this fact he kept to himself. Charles told him to stop staring, and Erik smiled to himself, squeezing Charles’s knee under the table. Charles called him insatiable. “Is that an invite?” he asked, and Charles said, “You couldn’t handle me, Lehnsherr. I’d wreck you in two hours flat.” Charles smirked when he scoffed – knowing that, truth be told, Charles was probably right.

He wistfully imagined them at the wedding, on the dance floor, then at Charles’s cottage afterwards, making love in the hazy atmosphere of too much champagne and excessive romance, and Erik would say it yet again: he was in love, in love, in love…

He wanted to be in Charles’s audience during the speech, and he wanted to look Charles straight in the eye when Charles talked about soulmates. He said once more that he could still come, maybe bring Shani along too. He had a dress for her that was fancy enough, but Charles told him he truly didn’t mind going by himself. “I’ll be back on Sunday,” Charles said in a tone that suggested Erik was, perhaps, being a bit pushy. It wasn’t as if Erik had ever even met the husband and wife to be.

But the following day, Erik thought that it would be very romantic if he went to the wedding regardless. He knew where it was being held and, if Erik acted on this now, he would be in time for the reception at least. It was getting close to late afternoon, and he’d kept his promise of taking Shani to the swimming pool, where she had run around in the kiddies pool, water splashing, and Erik had frankly lost count of how many times she had gone down the slide. She was now exhausted yet happy, and Erik had kept his promise to her, so he called Ororo, no longer fazed by what she thought of him and Charles. “I know this is last minute, but could you look after Shani tonight? Charles’s best friend is getting married today, and it’d mean a lot to him if I could go. We’d come pick her up tomorrow.”

Ororo, whose arctic expedition party was due to leave Britain in only a little over a month, unsurprisingly didn’t turn down the chance of looking after her daughter. Erik would probably miss the dinner and Charles’s speech, but he could join the wedding party amidst the drinking and chatting and dancing, which was always the best part of a wedding, anyway. He could show up and be at Charles’s side, maybe get introduced to some friends and, most importantly, show Charles that this time Erik would be a better boyfriend, partner, or whatever label they were using.

He found the suit he’d worn to Azazel’s wedding, ironed the shirt, packed Shani’s overnight bag, grabbed his toothbrush and a change of clothes, dressed in the suit, dealt with a mild tantrum when they couldn’t find Pete the Pterodactyl, and spent ten minutes fixing his hair (as if that made any difference). He then got all of this in the car and drove to Hammersmith. “You look sharp,” Ororo said, Shani hoisted to her hip, as Erik handed the overnight bag over outside Ororo’s building. Erik said thank you – ten minutes on hair not wasted. Ororo asked, “Whose wedding is it, again?”

“Jean and Scott, they’re Charles’s friends from Oxford. Charles used to live there, and he still has his old place up there, too, so we’re spending the night.” He relished every bit of information that he gave. Ororo only nodded, keeping her opinions to herself, perhaps, but still looking slightly miffed. Erik kissed Shani goodbye, and Shani looked both thrilled to be with her mother and sad that Papa was going. Erik promised to return soon, giving her an extra long cuddle first.

As he drove to Oxford, he considered calling Charles, but then he wanted to see the look on Charles’s face when he was suddenly there, smirking and asking if he could buy Charles a drink and, indeed, had Charles said something about wrecking him if given the chance? He knew that they had made up, and that his past mistakes, which still continued to haunt Erik, were not hindering the promise of a very bright future. Nevertheless, a romantic gesture could not hurt.

He was better now. He was ready.

His phone found the location of the hotel easily enough, but also the heart-shaped road signs with “S+J” helped him get there. The hotel was an old country mansion with three floors and Erik recalled Charles saying that it had been a bishop’s residence, or something of the sort, before becoming a popular wedding venue. The evening had darkened around him as he parked the car in the rather full guest car park on the side of the building. He straightened his tie, checked himself in the rear-view mirror, and got out of the car.

The wedding was easy to find. Three men wearing suits were smoking outside by the steps, talking and laughing loudly, and in the hotel foyer Erik heard loud music coming down a wide staircase. Ascending, he passed people in tuxedos and dresses, the wedding party clearly well on its way. Erik had thought, naively, that it was probably a small wedding – two Americans getting hitched in Oxford, probably not many could afford transatlantic travel. He was wrong: he stepped into a large ballroom that in the back had crowded round tables covered in white linen and purple flower arrangements, with people chatting and drinking and taking selfies, while the other half of the room was a dance floor, and the DJ was playing Don’t Stop Believin’ to a crowd of enthusiastic dancers. Erik felt like a wedding crasher, briefly, before reminding himself that his boyfriend was there.

He circled by the tables, first left and then right, but saw no sign of Charles. The best man should not be very difficult to find, he thought. He caught the bride and groom, though, on the dance floor – Jean and Scott, as he knew their names were. Jean had long, red hair beautifully curled down her back, her white dress hugging her form rather flatteringly. Scott, newly married and in a smart tuxedo, looked over the moon when he danced with her. They looked like a nice couple, Erik decided. He wasn’t surprised to find that Charles had made friends with good people. He moved closer to the edge of the dance floor, recalling that Charles had said he’d probably be dancing the night away after enough champagne. Erik had said fine, but Charles was only allowed to dance with the elderly female relatives, otherwise he might get jealous. Charles had snorted and said, “You wish you could tell me who to dance with.” He looked over the dancers cheering as Journey faded out.

He saw them first.

Or him, rather. He saw Warren first. He frowned. Why was Warren Worthington there? Was he a friend of Scott’s, or Jean’s…? He didn’t think so. How did Charles know Warren again? Charles hadn’t said anything of Warren being there. The man lived in Switzerland, yet someone had invited him because there he was, in a black suit with a cream tie, in the middle of the dance floor.

The DJ said, “Alright, here’s a classic that, I believe, is a little bit special to the newlyweds…”

Rod Stewart’s raspy voice began to sing The Way You Look Tonight, and as people shifted to adjust themselves to the love ballad, couples pressing together, some people leaving the dance floor, Erik saw Charles, too, on the dance floor. Charles looked stunning in a dark grey suit with a purple tie that matched the flowers and napkins and Scott’s boutonniere. Charles was with Warren, now flashing a large smile at the blond man and slipping an arm around his waist, pulling Warren closer for the dance. Warren laughed, placing arms on Charles’s shoulders, and Charles was speaking to him, smiling, eyes twinkling knowingly. They began to move to Rod Stewart’s crooning.

Erik came to a standstill.

He wasn’t a jealous man normally, he wasn’t, but Charles should not be dancing like that with a… a man he’d used to sleep with. Erik’s confidence in himself couldn’t quite swallow such an act. Charles shouldn’t be dancing with Warren with such – such intimacy, such familiarity, to such a goddamn romantic song. Fear and jealousy reared their ugly heads inside his chest, and both of them snarled: Charles had some explaining to do, dancing with Warren like that.

Warren pecked Charles on the cheek and appeared to whisper in Charles’s ear. Erik almost growled. That was it.

Just as he was about to force his way through the crowd to tactlessly ask Charles what the hell he thought he was doing, he realised something. The suit Warren was wearing had been hanging in Charles’s bedroom only a handful of nights before.

This realisation stopped him in his tracks: Charles had known Warren would be there. Charles had had Warren’s suit waiting.

His thoughts raced from the innocent to the vile: the two were still friends, and Charles had promised Warren to take him to the wedding before Erik and he had started dating, so Charles was just sticking to his word and, yes, of course, it explained why Charles had insisted that Erik should not come along, and so Charles hadn’t told Erik, didn’t want to upset him when it was nothing really. Even so, this intimate dancing and whispering seemed a bit over the top, and those smiles that they gave each other, loving and kind, made Erik’s heart sick: the two were not friends. They were very clearly something other than friends.

The dreadful song hadn’t even kicked into the second chorus yet, and Erik felt a deep-rooted, ominous fear settle in his guts. His hands were in fists, his teeth gritting together. Next to him, someone said, “Between you and me, bro, I wouldn’t make too much of it.”

Momentarily, the only people in the ballroom had been Warren and Charles. Now the full room, with all of the other people in it, somehow reappeared. Erik blinked and looked at the young man standing next to him. He was blond and stocky, had a pleased smirk on his lips, and his eyes were bright with alcohol. Erik said, “Excuse me?”

“Those two,” the man said. He nodded towards the dance floor. Charles and Warren were still amidst the other couples, oblivious of the outside world. “I saw you looking, tha’s all. I know them, or – well, my brother knows them. You wanna hear? Ah, see, him – the bearded one. See, he’s a… watcha call it, a scientist hot shot, and the Ken doll he’s with is his husband to be. Look like a dream couple? sh*t, they think they are.” The man grinned almost cruelly. “But, beard man over there is f*cking around. Poor bastard, his fiancé. Has no f*cking idea of what goes on behind his back. And we’re not supposed to say anything, so.” The man tapped his nose and winked at Erik.

“What?” he asked. It was the only thing to ask. He didn’t understand: what he was looking at, what was this kid telling him? That Charles and Warren – that they were…

When he looked back to the dance floor, he was startled to find that Charles had stopped dancing. Charles was looking their way, having paled, his gorgeous blue eyes alert and suddenly aware. In the second of eye contact that they shared, Erik realised that this was some Charles Xavier that he had never even met. Charles’s face, petrified, did nothing but confirm the worst, worst thoughts and fears swirling inside him right then.

“Excuse me,” he said to the man, who only nodded and took another sip of his drink.

Erik hurried out of the ballroom, forcing his way through people, trying to erase the last image he had of Charles, of Charles staring at him, with Warren frowning at Charles but not having figured out what Charles was looking at. He rushed down the stairs, past the smokers, back to the car park.

As his car turned to the driveway in front of the house, a male figure rushed down the front steps, onto the square of light the open doors lay on the gravel. The car engine screeched as he switched gears, but he could still hear the muffled “Erik!” that Charles yelled after him.

The car jerked and rushed into the night.

Charles stood outside the hotel for quite some time, staring into the darkness where Erik’s taillights had disappeared. A loop of no, no, no no no circled in his head, trashing around erratically. He called Erik: the first call went unanswered and the second attempt went straight to voicemail. He didn’t know what to say when the voice told him to leave a message, so he hung up.

What were the words on his tongue, in his mind, other than ‘oh f*ck, oh f*cking f*ck’ and ‘I’m so sorry’? Goddamn Erik, why the hell had he come?! Damn it all to hell!

“f*ck!” he yelled out in frustration. f*ck, f*ck, f*ck!

His mind raced. He paced.

Erik knew. There was no point in pretending that Erik didn’t, after what Erik must have seen. But you could lie your way out of it, he thought wildly. Say that Alex Summers was a pathological liar – whatever that goddamn f*cker had said to Erik, he’d deny. And then he’d get it all back: nights in Crouch End, playing with Shani, cooking dinner together, getting Erik to iron his shirt in the morning because he hated ironing himself, spending half an hour choosing which Indian to order takeaway from, and he’d get back Erik and his kisses and the way he said “I’m in love with you.” He’d get it back. Goddammit, he had to get it back!

But Erik had switched off his phone, and he had a wedding reception and a night in Oxford ahead of him. Warren would be wondering where he’d disappeared to. You’re a smart man, you’re a f*cking genius, he told himself angrily. Dig yourself out of this hole!

“f*ck!” he yelled out to no one in particular a second time. He inhaled deeply and forced himself to stop shaking.

He returned to the wedding reception, perhaps just with the primitive help of a survival instinct. Alex Summers was there, now sat at one of the tables near the doors, smirking at him, and he couldn’t even grab the front of his shirt and get him to spit out what the hell he’d just said to Erik. Roughing Alex up would have been futile, however. He knew what Alex had said: enough. Alex had said enough.

Alex eyed him with the blurred interest of someone heavily drunk, but Charles wouldn’t meet his gaze. He somehow managed to push the chaotic emotions deep, deep inside of him, maintaining a calm exterior. He was a Xavier, after all – what was he born to do if not to keep up appearances?

But the look on Erik’s face, though… God, the look on his face: jaw set tight, lips pursed, eyes full of confusion, fear and anger… The image of Erik stood on the side of the dance floor in a perfectly fitted suit, and, for a second, he had taken Charles’s breath away before he’d realised that Erik should not have been there.

And what Erik had thought looking at them, what had Erik –

Warren was at the bar, elbows resting on the counter and a twenty pound note ready between two fingers. “Hey, babe, you want a drink?” Warren asked, and without waiting for an answer, to the barmaid, “Make that two vodka tonics, thanks!” Charles inhaled deeply, trying to steady himself. Warren eyed him up. “Where’d you disappear to, hmm? You okay?”

It was over, done for. The secret life he’d been leading for a few months now was disappearing right before him, and all he could do was stand there. No, no, no –

He’d sobered up the second he saw Erik there, staring at him and Warren with – with a cruel, cold fury over his features. Not the soft, charming, warm man that Charles knew, no, far from it. He was sorry. sh*t, he was so f*cking sorry.

He looked at Warren’s frown. “I’m fine, darling.” He smiled. How he managed to smile, he had no idea. He just knew that he had to go on a little longer, have another drink, flash another smile, dance another dance. If Erik was gone, then it was easy from here on out: Charles’s life was the same as before. Now was not the time for Warren to notice that anything was off; him rushing out of the room had been suspicious as it was.

He hoped that Erik wouldn’t turn the car around, come back and cause a scene. He needed Erik Lehnsherr to stay far away from them now. To stay away from him.

God, that was the opposite of what he wanted.

Warren thankfully remained intoxicated. The haze of alcohol was the only thin veil between Warren and the truth, he realised. Warren mocked him for being moody on such a special night and, when Warren realised that Charles was not livening up, called him a killjoy. They nevertheless stayed well after midnight.

After the taxi dropped them off at the cottage, Charles helped Warren to bed and a slight snore arose from Warren’s sleeping form within seconds. Charles showered mechanically and went downstairs, opening a bottle of Scotch. It all felt so surreal: the last time he’d spent a night in the cottage had been with Erik. God, how they’d been unable to keep their hands off each other, how they’d wasted hours talking in bed, caressing, smiling, sharing stories.

He poured himself a drink and sipped it slowly, staring out of the window in the kitchen.

He left Erik a voicemail at two in the morning, smoking Warren’s cigarettes in the living room, the bottle of Scotch on the coffee table. It was his third attempt at leaving a message: “Hey, darling…” A deep sigh: helplessness. “Look, I… Christ, can you… can you please just turn your phone back on? Please. We need to talk.” Unsurprisingly, this did not make Erik’s phone switch back on.

He went to bed around four, only to be woken up by Warren’s alarm at seven. They were both hungover and exhausted, and while Warren showered, Charles helped by making coffee. The wedding seemed distant, the raucous laughter during his best man’s speech echoing dimly from another life.

Warren sauntered into the kitchen, shower fresh and dressed. “You alright?” he asked. Charles said that he was, of course – a bit tired, maybe. They had a rushed breakfast in town before Warren had to leave for the airport, his visit to England short and purely for the occasion of the wedding. They hugged long and hard as the taxi waited and Warren said that he’d rather stay. And then a new magic word: soon. Soon Warren would stay all the time.

Charles waved the taxi goodbye and, for the first time since Erik had seen them the night before, he felt like he could breathe.

He passed Worcester College on his way to the train station, and he examined the main entrance. Erik had been there, once. Almost ten years ago. From there on out, until the end of his days, whenever he happened to walk this way, he would think of Erik Lehnsherr, who had come for him, once. Regardless of what happened next: Erik had come for him. Erik had loved him.

The thought was too sad to stand.

He boarded the train to Paddington, and he sat in the quiet first class carriage staring out of the window at the blur of fields, his phone firmly in his grip. Since Warren’s news about his job, Charles had begun to feel anxious about how to resolve Erik and Warren living in the same city. Something had to break, he’d known that. Something had to break, to give… Well – it had broken.

He hung his head. He was not relieved.

He tried calling again, and this time the phone rang. His heart jumped to his throat, and he visualised Erik in the bedroom at Crouch End, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his phone. Pick up, pick up, pick up – but Erik did not pick up. He sent a desperate text: I’m coming to your house if you don’t answer. He stared at the screen and tried to figure out if he was bluffing or not.

After a few minutes the screen lit up, the phone vibrating against his palm: Erik was calling. He swallowed audibly and pressed the phone to his ear: “Hey.” Erik said nothing, but Charles could hear him breathing. A life line, a thread of communication, of contact. He considered a wild ‘I don’t know what Alex told you, but…’, but then he only hung his head. He realised at that second that there was nothing he could say – nothing justifiable, nothing fair. Quietly, he said, “So you know.”

“Yes.” Erik’s voice was cold and sharp, like a snip of scissors. Another silence that neither of them filled. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go this far – which phrase to use, how to explain it? But then Erik asked, “How long?” Erik sounded utterly distant, a million miles away. “How long have you been together?”

Without thinking, he automatically said, “Three years next month.” How easy it was to say the truth, he marvelled. Erik let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. It sounded bad, it sounded f*cking bad: three years. He squeezed the phone in his hand. “Erik, darling, I – Look, I never said… I never said I wasn’t with him.”

“What?”

“I never said I was single,” he clarified.

“You never..?” Erik repeated before barking, “I asked you! I asked if you were with him, and –”

“You asked if it was serious.” Clutching at straws.

“And three years isn’t serious? Marrying him isn’t serious?! Because it seems pretty f*cking serious to me!” Erik shouted, and Charles stared at his knees. “Who gives a f*ck what I asked, huh? Because however I put it, I still asked. And do you know what you said?” Erik questioned with anger in his tone. Charles knew what he’d said. “You said no. Three f*cking years, and you say no? And then you don’t tell me for months, you – you’re seeing him, and you’re seeing me, and you never tell me that you have a boyfriend!” Erik was yelling at this point. The woman across the aisle from him had stopped reading her book, and instead was staring at the page, eavesdropping politely. Erik’s voice probably carried. Charles slumped in his seat: he deserved this. Let Erik yell, he thought, but no more yelling followed. He heard Erik breathing unevenly.

“It’s not true,” he then said feebly.

“What isn’t?”

“That I’m marrying him. We’re not engaged.”

Erik laughed at the other end, but it was laughter without any warmth. “How does that make it any better?”

“Well, it –”

“No, Charles. It doesn’t.” Another pause in the conversation, and Charles could not think of anything smart to say. He waited for Erik to say something else because he couldn’t, for the sake of his MSc and PhD and whatever other title he had, he just couldn’t think of anything to say. “Who the hell even are you?” Erik then asked. “Was this some kind of a cruel joke, take your old fling for a ride?”

“Please, you know that’s not true. Please, Erik, I – I messed up, I – You reappeared, and you were still… you were still you, and still so wonderful, and – It’s been hard, for me. This has been utterly out of character –”

“Hard? For you? Can you hear the bullsh*t that you’re spewing?”

Charles clicked his mouth shut – in some way it was so good to have the truth out that he wanted to tell Erik everything, all of it from the very moment that Erik walked into the meeting room in September. Now, however, it was too late. Erik said, “I don’t know you. I thought we were still… still us, but we’re not. You’re not the man I knew, because he was – he was good. And he was kind, and he was honest. You’re a shadow of that man, you’re –”

“Erik –”

“Don’t call me again.” The line went dead.

The woman across the aisle lost interest and flipped to a new page. Charles lowered the phone and clutched it in his fist. How common of him, washing dirty laundry in public like this. Not what a Xavier would do, his mother would have told him had she known. Had any of them known.

He closed his eyes. Erik.

Another half an hour to London. The train hummed around him.

Erik didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to say.

Every word that the man at the wedding had said to him was somehow tattooed into his memory: fiancé. Dream couple. Husband to be. And now Charles’s selfish, arrogant ‘I never said I was single.’ How dared he, how – ‘It’s been hard for me.’ Who was this person? Who was this deceitful, self-centred prick?

Please, he thought. Please, don’t let this be real.

When he’d gotten back from the wedding, he had armed himself with a bottle of the nice whiskey Logan had given him for Christmas. He’d thrown the glass across the kitchen at some point – the memories got hazy fast, and he had gingerly picked up glass shards in the morning, groggy and hungover. He worried of Shani hurting herself.

After the phone call with Charles, however, he found the bottle that he hadn’t finished yet and decided to start drinking again.

What was true? What was real? He hadn’t slept all night, and now everything blurred together into the same nightmare.

He took the bottle with him upstairs, finding his laptop in his bed. He scoured Facebook – f*cking Facebook – to find out that Warren Worthington had been making posts from New York over Christmas, where Charles also had been, and from Aspen over New Year’s, where Charles had also been. Warren wasn’t detailing his private affairs for all of the world to see, but Warren had been to every single f*cking place Charles had gone this winter. From Aspen, Warren had been tagged in a group shot of over ten men – the bachelor party crew – and sure enough, there was Charles too, right next to Warren, and at the far left Erik recognised the young drunk man from the wedding. There was the statement of ‘in a relationship’ on Warren’s page, nothing more, but Erik found more pictures of Charles and Warren when he scrolled down far enough.

If Charles had been trying to conduct an affair, then he’d been f*cking awful at hiding: the evidence had been sitting under Erik’s nose the entire time! One goddamn click away!

And yet he’d been utterly blind to it.

Just then another puzzle piece locked into place: Trevor. Trevor. When Erik had called Charles’s phone that time at the cottage, and it’d been under the bed, his number had come up as ‘Trevor.’ Charles had kept him under a false name.

Erik almost choked on his breath. He was the most gullible, blue-eyed, naïve, stupid mother f*cker that had ever existed. Husband to be. Dream couple. Warren and Charles.

And here he’d been thinking that they were soulmates, that they were meant to be together, because of a single, stupid f*cking month when he’d been twenty-three! How pathetic was that? How naïve was that?!

He drank. It seemed like the only thing to do: to dull out his senses, his brain, his chest. And how he’d believed it – Charles’s words, Charles’s… unexplained disappearances and unpredictable arrivals, and why were they always at Erik’s place? Apart from the first few times at Charles’s house, they had opted for Crouch End. Why? Well because of Shani, of course – it was easier for Charles to come to him than vice versa. Bullsh*t. Charles did not want Erik to see what went on in his house: to see the evidence of Warren’s presence. And Charles had never let Erik meet anyone in his life, none of his friends, or that crazy sister, and not even their chess club friends were allowed to know, and now it made sense. It wasn’t ‘let’s take this slow’, it was ‘no one can find out’, clandestine, dirty. And Erik hadn’t even realised it.

Who was Charles? Who the hell even was Charles Xavier, to whom he had given his heart for no good reason?

“And what for?” he asked aloud, slamming his laptop shut and pushing it away. What the hell was it for? And no, this couldn’t – they’d just been reunited, he couldn’t bear the thought of going on without Charles. He refused – he would not. There was no Charles. No, for him, there was no –

He tore off a bin bag from the roll in the kitchen and headed for the upstairs bathroom. Charles had a toothbrush there, and he chucked it in. In the bedroom, Charles had a few shirts, some socks, some underwear – gone, gone, gone. What else? Charles had bought that bottle of lube – gone. And the sheets, the bed sheets, better just get rid of the lot. He pulled them off of the bedding, knocking over the bedside lamp. He stuffed the sheets in the bin bag – what good did washing do to get Charles out of the sheets? Get rid of it, rid of him. Ah, toys! He rushed to Shani’s bedroom. Goodbye, colouring book, and that hair bonnet, and he mustn’t forget the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 DVD downstairs, and where was the f*cking pterodactyl? Shani would be so upset to find it missing, but no, it would –

Years, Charles had been with Warren for years. Erik was a side fling, a clueless mistress, and Charles had made a mockery of him. He’d been so willing, so stupid! Charles must have laughed himself to death at how eager Erik had been! A sad, desperate divorcee, a love-deprived single dad, blushing over a brief fling that was nearly ten years in the past, oh how Charles had laughed!

The pterodactyl had to be here somewhere, goddammit! He threw stuffed animals onto the floor as he searched Shani’s room frantically. He was a fool, a f*cking fool, saying that he was in love, and Charles’s treachery, all of those nights they’d spent together – pretence and deceit, nothing but a joke –

He crashed down to sit on the edge of Shani’s small bed, bin bag in one hand, whisky bottle in the other. He let go of both and pressed his face in his hands. He was drunk. He was in love. He was a joke.

He would not cry. He was thirty-two years old, he was not about to cry. He curled his hand into a fist and punched the mattress, the bed frame shaking.

The worst part of it was that he’d already let himself picture a future with Charles. As he sat there, slowly realising the devastating extent of his broken heart, the worst part was the destruction of that future that he’d started to cherish, to plan, to live for.

It’d all been in his head. Oh, their grand love, as old as time, unchanging through the years…

All of it, only in his head.

Chapter 8: Eight

Chapter Text

Eight

Back in the day Charles had said “Don’t call me again”, the same words that Erik had echoed back at Charles when they spoke on the phone. But now that tables were reversed, Erik couldn’t help but note that Charles fell short of a gentleman. Erik found himself sat in his office, staring at the phone buzzing on his desk – again. He ignored the fact that he hadn’t followed Charles’s wishes either, strictly speaking: he had tried to find Charles back then. He never picked up and he deleted the voicemails without listening to them.

This was the second time Charles was calling him that day, and, as always, briefly Erik’s hand hovered. Then he pulled it back.

When his phone intoned a new message shortly after, Erik was surprised to find himself pleased that it was his ex-wife asking if Erik had bought a present for Shani’s friend whose birthday party was later that week. He hadn’t and told her so. She texted back to say that she’d sort it out and drop a present off at Kathy’s on Shani’s behalf, and Erik felt a wave of gratitude that he had not felt for Ororo in a while. They had been so at odds recently that he’d forgotten how much pleasanter life was when they weren’t being horrible to each other. Ororo had promised to come around to the house at some point, too, and cook that beef stew recipe that they had picked up in Cuba. Ororo had always made it much better than him.

That was how pathetic he’d seemed, he gathered, when he had picked up Shani without Charles, exhausted and hungover, unwashed and broken, on the day after the wedding. It would have been easy for Ororo to say ‘I told you so’ and give a smug grin when she found out that Erik’s love affair had ended abruptly. But she hadn’t: she’d said she was sorry and thankfully hadn’t asked for details beyond his “Charles and I broke up last night.”

Everyone was sorry. Ororo was sorry, Logan and Azazel were sorry, Marie was sorry. Erik was humiliated: he couldn’t even bring himself to tell these people that the entire time Charles had had a boyfriend. No, he didn’t want people to know what an absolute fool he’d been.

When he awoke the next day, he found that at 2:34 a.m. Charles had texted I get that you don’t want to speak to me, but we have to talk. Please give me a chance. Erik didn’t want to give him a chance.

He tried to return to The Before, but it was damned hard remembering what it had been like. The Before probably didn’t exist anymore, where he woke up without immediately thinking of Charles or reaching out to the other side of the bed, reaching for the ghost of warmth that he’d gotten used to far too quickly. When he awoke that Sunday, he once more found himself devastated by the state of affairs.

Charles had stayed with them on a handful of Sundays. Those had been Erik’s favourites: the simple domesticity of poached eggs and coffee, cereal for Shani.

He didn’t get up. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. A week had passed. There was so much he needed to do: he hadn’t cleaned or done any washing or shopping all week, and Shani certainly wasn’t old enough to clean after herself, and so the house had fallen into a state of neglect. Last night he’d noted mould growing on dirty plates in the sink and done nothing about it. The takeaway boxes and cartons were piling up. He went to work, carried out his duties professionally but without any enthusiasm or joy, then picked Shani up from the nursery, and then most evenings he had watched TV like a zombie while Shani entertained herself. A few times she’d tried to coax him into playing with her or asked him to read her a book, but he had no energy. He’d put her to bed, and then lie for hours in his own bed, unable to sleep. He hadn’t bothered shaving all week, and thick stubble now grazed his cheeks. He didn’t want to get up. There was nothing out there, nothing worth getting up for.

He tried not to think of the flat in St. John’s Wood, although it had started to occupy his mind at all times. If Charles wasn’t with him, with them, then it meant that Charles was over there, with him. Charles wasn’t in his bed because he was in Warren’s, even at that very second. What could Erik do with the bitter jealousy and the waves of rejection? God, if someone, anyone – if anyone could just come and take this away from him, this f*cking heartache. He didn’t want it.

How desperate had he been, he wondered, to think that he and Charles still had shared that special connection from ten years ago. But for him it’d been real: both back then and now. For him it’d been so…

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been laying there, eyes fixed on the ceiling, when the door creaked. Shani walked into the bedroom, clutching Pete the Pterodactyl who had pushed poor, old Bubby out of its place. Erik had tried to convince her to get rid of it, but she’d started crying so loudly that he’d given in. She stared at him uncertainly now, her night dress hanging just below her knees. It was getting too short for her; he’d have to buy a new one. He didn’t move, however – she was going to need something from him: breakfast, getting dressed, attention, doing her hair, brushing her teeth, a new nightgown. All of the tasks seemed exhausting to him.

Shani crossed the room and sneaked under the covers with him without an invitation. She nuzzled in close, the top of her head settling under his chin. Her weight was light and warm. “Morgen, Papi,” she said. Erik didn’t say anything: he was too tired to entertain her. He exhaled, trying to fight off a headache.

Shani was a ball of energy in the mornings, and it was unusual for her to be this still. She said, “I want to see the big slide.”

The park.

He shook his head. “Not today.”

“But I want to!”

“We’re not going anywhere today.”

“Why not?”

“Because Papa’s tired.”

“But you just woke up.”

“Yes, but Papa’s tired even so.”

“I’m not tired.”

“We’re not going to the park, Shani.” He expected her to kick off, but instead she stayed still.

She sounded puzzled when she asked, “Are you sad?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Sometimes Papi gets sad.”

“Oh.” She sounded surprised. “Do you want Pete?” She pushed the stuffed pterodactyl up his chest. “Pete has magic. Magic powers. He makes sad things sunny.”

“Thank you,” he said and, because he had grilled basic politeness into her, she said, “You’re welcome.” After a pause, she said, “Can we go to the slide now?”

He sighed. “People don’t use slides when they’re sad. People stay home. Okay, Herzchen?”

She muttered a reluctant, “Okay.” She settled in after that, as if not knowing what else to do. Erik listened to her childlike, light breaths, and wished that he didn’t feel alone. But he did. And at some point, he knew, he’d have to explain to Shani what had happened to Charles.

But maybe she’d just forget about him. Maybe they could both just forget about the way that the house had felt happier and homier with Charles there, how to Erik it had felt like Charles was the one thing they’d been missing, the two of them.

Maybe he could forget about that. That sense of home.

“It’s you and me against the world, okay?” he whispered, slowly petting Shani’s hair. “We don’t need anyone else, do we? No, we don’t.”

He’d forgotten about her somewhere in the midst of sneaking to Oxford, in the midst of nights of passion and Charles’s taste. He’d pictured the three of them together as a family, that was true, but he’d forgotten that she was the reason he kept going with the day to day bullsh*t, the mundane mud that he was knee deep in. It wasn’t Charles or the ghost of their juvenile romance, or its pathetic revival: she was it, his reason for existing. He was all she had.

“We’ll be okay,” he promised Shani, pressing a kiss to her hair. “We’ll be good.” Was he praying? “We’ll be good.”

Erik had been resident in the United Kingdom for two months and four days when the day of his marriage arrived. The sun was not celebrating with him when he awoke in their house on Coleridge Road, which was full of unopened suitcases, recently delivered furniture still wrapped up in bubble wrap, and boxes sent from Germany with belongings that Erik had left at his parents’ house years ago. For the sake of tradition, Ororo had gone to spend the night at a hotel – they were to meet at the registrar’s in… Erik checked the time. In an hour now. It was a small civil ceremony, but they wanted it to feel at least a little bit more special than them leaving the house to run errands and return married. He’d failed to have breakfast and he seemed unable to stay still, his stomach in nervous knots.

The day was cloudy and windy, the tree on the edge of the pavement outside shedding its leaves. Erik anxiously waited for his taxi to arrive, although it was not due for another fifteen minutes. Would the traffic be good? Would he be at the registrar’s on time? His parents would meet them there, having flown from Germany for the ceremony. Logan was a last minute best man because Erik didn’t really know anyone else in London, and one of Ororo’s friends hand flown in from New York to be her bridesmaid. A party of six people – what kind of a wedding was that?

A rushed wedding, was the answer. Ororo was six months pregnant – rushed definitely seemed to describe it. A shotgun wedding, those who’d see them would probably say, but it wasn’t like that. They would have gotten married eventually, he knew: the baby had just speeded things up.

Eleven thirty was too early for a scotch, but Erik poured one anyway. He was in a tuxedo, regulating his breaths. Today was the day: he woke up a bachelor and would go to bed as Ororo’s husband.

And then: a few more months, and he’d be a dad. The prospect felt new and exciting, although it was neither. He already had a son, but he wasn’t a father in any real sense of the word. He hadn’t seen Pietro in… Well, it’d been a year and a half now. The pang of guilt he felt was immediate, and he took a sip of his drink. Sometimes when he looked at Ororo, stomach swollen with their child, he felt such unprecedented joy that his heart was just about to burst. The nursery was the only room in the house that was ready – Ororo was complaining that he should show such attention to rooms that they needed now.

In the excitement of their move, new house and baby plans, their marriage had almost been forgotten. Erik had known it was coming, of course, but he was surprised to find himself in a tuxedo, waiting for a taxi, about to get married.

He was nervous and jittery. He was restless.

He was sad.

He blinked and sat down on the living room couch that they’d only recently gotten. Sad? No, certainly not. He was just anxious about the wedding. He wanted to marry Ororo, he wanted their family… It was about time he married, now that he was close to twenty-nine. As a child, he’d always assumed that he would be somebody’s husband by this age. He vaguely wished that his dad would have been there, waiting with him. He wanted words of advice. God, he thought, do I need advice?

He leaned back and exhaled. The tie around his neck felt too tight, and he couldn’t get it to loosen with one hand. He put down the scotch on one of the boxes from Germany, but in doing so he knocked the glass over, the light brown of the cardboard box turning dark. He swore and picked up the glass that now was empty. He got paper towels and pressed them against the soggy box cover, making little difference. One drink was definitely enough – just a bit of encouragement, that was all.

The box sat on the floor with a splashed top. He opened it, sitting back into the couch. At the top was a framed picture of his football team when he’d been a kid. He was in the front row, his growth spurt yet to come: a boy of thirteen or so, with a too wide mouth, and a skinny, narrow frame. He picked up the picture, letting out a small chuckle. His younger self was squinting at the light, grinning proudly on the football field.

He started going through the box, curiously now. He found a photo album full of movie and concert tickets instead of pictures, and under that some cassette tapes of Guns ‘n Roses – why on earth had he not thrown this stuff away years ago? He picked up a pile of photographs that were in no order whatsoever, from his cousin’s bar mitzvah to his own eighteenth birthday, and then –

He stopped as he looked at the picture of the two men. A younger version of him was at the front and behind him was a young, freckled man whose strong arms were securely around him, crossing Erik’s chest, chin hooked over Erik’s shoulder. Erik had a hand on the man’s arm that held onto him tightly, and he was smiling widely at the camera. In relief, almost, Erik let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. The background was a white wall – Erik could not say where it had been taken, what town, what hostel. Both of the men in the picture wore cheesy bead bracelets, prominently displayed on the wrists resting against Erik’s front: those had been their wedding rings.

How silly, he thought belittlingly.

And then he looked at the brown haired youth in the picture and thought: I was supposed to marry you.

He let out a surprised laugh. Oh. He swallowed hard, looked at the blue-eyed man in the picture, and the feeling lingered: I was supposed to marry you.

Oh. So that was why he was sad on his wedding day.

He shook his head to clear his vision and told himself to get a grip. He hadn’t seen Charles Francis Xavier since his time in Australia, and who knew what had become of him? Ah, but Charles was in New York, his brain reminded him helpfully. You googled him only a few months ago, remember? After that fight with Ororo? You know where he is.

Yes, Erik knew. Charles had come up on Columbia’s list of TAs for a microbiology course, so Charles was doing something academic and scientific by the looks of it. Charles had returned to New York, it appeared, and was probably having the time of his life back there.

His finger traced the edge of the photograph, something deep within him yearning when he stared into the blue eyes of the first and, indeed, only man he’d ever truly loved. You loved John, didn’t you? his brain asked. Yes, of course. But not like this, he concluded, staring at the picture.

Did Charles think of him, ever? Probably not. Charles had probably forgotten his name by now… It’d been so brief, their love affair. And yet Erik had pined for so long…

Well. Today Erik would marry the mother of his child, a woman whom he loved deeply. And Charles Xavier had to go. No more of this – this… guilty stalking via the internet once a year, no more of this sadness. For all he knew, Charles was married to someone else, and Erik was going to marry someone else, too. Christ, what would have Charles thought, knowing that after all these years, here Erik was, on his wedding day, wistfully staring at a picture of them!

In the picture, though, they were married to each other. In the picture…

A taxi honked outside. He got to his feet, rushed out of the house. In the taxi he realised he was still holding the picture. He swore and dropped it onto the cab floor, nervously arranging his hair and tie, and that was where it remained when he stepped out outside the registry office.

It’d been the only picture of the two of them that he’d developed. And he didn’t look Charles up again, not for a whole two years.

A personal record.

Erik emailed Tom, the president of the chess club, to give his apologies for missing the evening’s meeting. With usual business efficiency, Tom emailed back promptly, saying that he hoped it was a one off because Erik was needed to challenge the rest. I suppose Charles can step in for you tonight!, Tom wrote.

It made sense now that Charles hadn’t wanted to tell their chess club friends that they were seeing each other: it was because they hadn’t been. Erik had thought that it was fun, almost, keeping their relationship secret, but now it only made him feel like a colossal fool: he should have realised what was up.

The flowers came the next day, a gleeful Emma knocking on the door with a bouquet of red roses. “These came for you,” she chirped teasingly, and Erik blinked at her in confusion. “Shall I put them in water? Which vase of yours should I use?” She gazed around in faux inspection.

He took the roses from her, ushering her out of his office. There was a small envelope delicately balanced amongst the rose buds with Erik written on it, and he fished it out. The text inside the card had presumably been written by the florist, as per instructions of the person who’d ordered the delivery. A cursive, effeminate had hand written You keep the club.

He stalled. You keep the club? His fist tightened around the rose stems, making the cellophane crinkle. You keep the club!

He marched out into the open plan office, over to the desk of the intern whose birthday it was, according to the cake in the staff kitchen that morning. He handed the flowers to the brunette, to whom he’d hardly ever spoken to before. The intern flushed a little red. “They’re from everyone at the office,” he added, lest there be any confusion in the gesture.

“I, ah – Thank you, Mr. Lehnsherr,” she said awkwardly.

“Yes. Well. Keep up the good work,” he muttered and returned to his room, closing the door behind him a little too loudly. He glanced at the note still in his hand – You keep the club – before throwing it in the bin. He was furious by the patronising, apologetic gesture, like this was a divorce where they were splitting who got what. The last thing he wanted was Charles’s pity, Charles’s altruistic handouts. He keep the club? He didn’t need Charles’s goddamn blessing!

It was, therefore, a bad time for Charles to drop in unannounced, as indeed he did an hour later. A knock sounded on the door of his office, and he called out an irritated “Come on in!”, trying to locate his construction site safety vest in the midst of folders piled on his desk. He looked up from his rummaging, and he suddenly forgot all about the vest, his throat closing up. Charles Xavier now stood in his office with a grave yet apologetic look on his face.

“Bad timing?” Charles asked, and only then did Erik fully believe that Charles was real and not simply a product of his forlorn imagination. Hate and anger had been so easy to maintain when Charles had stayed away – now Charles stood there, flesh and blood, and Erik forgot why they had been fighting in the first place: only the yearning remained. God, he had missed Charles’s voice, his face, his scent, his touch. Charles must have been working in the labs today, if the slacks and jumper combo were anything to go by. Charles wore suits for lecturing, but smart casual for lab work – Erik knew these details, having started picking up on the small routines that had made Charles so… precious to him, somehow. And it had been precious, learning those little things.

But Charles’s beard and hair were slightly unkempt, and dark circles had formed under his eyes. Erik dropped his gaze, seeing the hi-vis vest sticking out of the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled it out and said, “Yes.” Charles said nothing, and it occurred to Erik that Charles had never been to his office before. He’d imagined showing Charles around, once. But this? It hadn’t been like this. His heart was beating wildly inside his chest, blood soaring hotly. On the outside, he showed nothing of it. “Can I help you?” he asked, now doing the buttons of his winter coat, leaving Charles with no doubt that Erik was about to head off. “Well?”

“Don’t be like that,” Charles sighed, somehow having the indignity to sound angry. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for weeks, it feels like. I’ve left- god, so many messages, and I’ve emailed, and I –”

“Don’t forget the flowers.”

Charles stalled. “Oh, they came. Good.” Charles’s eyes zoomed around the room, clearly noting the lack of said flowers. “They weren’t to your taste, then?”

Erik blinked. Was Charles trying to be funny? He really hoped Charles wasn’t trying to be funny.

Kick him out! an angry spark commanded in his guts. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to do this pretence of hatred: it was exhausting.

He stared at Charles long and hard, and he pushed down the longing that was filling him up. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“We need to talk,” Charles said, shoulders slumping. Charles appeared defeated and strangely small in a way that was utterly uncharacteristic for a man of Charles’s charisma, looks and intellect. Erik was angry, he told himself – remember, you’re f*cking furious with him. But it was hard to hold onto that anger. “Erik, please.” But he said nothing, and Charles fidgeted slightly. Good. “Maybe the flowers were – a bit much. They seemed like a good idea last night. Truthfully, I had been drinking when. Uhm.”

A sharp knock sounded on the door and, without an invite, Emma popped her head in. “Hey, I’m ready to – Oh. Dr Xavier.” Emma pushed the door open further, scrutinising the two of them. “Genetics Institute. What brings you here?” She looked between them, her observant eyes noting every little thing, it felt like.

“I’m here for Erik,” Charles said, simply, but Erik cut in and vaguely spoke of some final details Charles had wanted to discuss. Charles muttered, “Right. Yes, of course.” Charles looked at Erik picking up his satchel and vest, morose. “I see.”

Emma wanted to know what details these had been, but Erik said a curt, “It’s all sorted, Emma. Thank you.” He moved to usher everyone out of his office. Emma looked far too curious for her own good, but retreated, high heels clicking. Charles let himself be escorted out, and Erik closed the door behind them.

One of the administrators had spotted Emma and was now speaking to her. Charles stepped closer to Erik and, in a low voice so that the words remained between them, said, “I know you’re angry, and I said some – some stupid sh*t over the phone. But you need to let me explain myself properly, otherwise I’ll show up every day, Erik, and I’ll –”

It sounded like a desperate and empty threat, but Erik had no energy left to fight it. “Right, fine, okay. Okay.” Charles’s blue eyes immediately got some life back into them, and Erik wanted so badly to just reach out and touch him.

He asked Charles to meet him in the pub where they had first gone for a drink all those months ago. It’d be private enough. “I’ll be there,” Charles said earnestly, with a sudden sliver of hope in his voice, and Erik said, “I’ll listen to what you have to say. And then we’re done.”

He walked to Emma without looking back.

The meeting with the building manager went well, the university’s new science building now having all of its seven floors under construction. They visited the fifth floor, the two above still nothing more than concrete pillars and a metal frame around which the building would form. Erik shook hands, went over several blueprints, was shown around different sections, and he took a lot of measurements and pictures and did extensive cross referencing with his own notes. He kept himself busy, so much so that even Emma stopped after an initial jibe of, “Strange, having that Xavier coming to see you. What did he want, exactly?” She’d said it knowingly and smugly, but it appeared that she forgot about it quickly when actual work called.

That made one of them. Erik pushed himself to forget about it, but as they moved in the skeleton of the building that was to be, he wondered if where he then stood would be Charles’s office, or would it be this spot, or this spot… The inspection took all afternoon, the sun setting and the unnaturally bright site lights illuminating their way until they were done. Once back on the street and out of their hi-vis vests, he told Emma he was going back to the office, but instead he hailed a taxi at the next block and gave the address of the pub.

As usual, the pub had a fire roaring, and a handful of old men were sitting down or standing at the bar. A handful of City business men were there, too, a sure sign that the pub would not stay a hidden gem much longer. Charles would have settled in rather well, Erik thought upon entering, hadn’t Charles seemed so jittery, eyes darting to the door the second he walked in. The pint glass in Charles’s grip looked like it belonged there.

He stalled, briefly. Charles’s back had straightened when he walked in, eyes boring into him. Erik couldn’t back out.

The legs of the chair screeched slightly when he sat down opposite Charles. “Hey,” Charles said, softly. Erik was running late, and he was pleased that Charles had had to wait for him. He put his satchel on the floor before he undid his coat, but he kept himself sat straight and rigid. Charles was staring at him intently in the dim light. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I’m not staying,” he said. He had twenty minutes, max, before he had to dash to Gifted Youngsters to get Shani. Charles’s face fell. “The problem with you,” Ororo had said once, during one of their fights, “is that when you’re angry, you turn into this cruel, vindictive asshole who’s got tunnel vision – your way or the goddamn highway!” This had been proceeded by Ororo slamming a door violently shut behind her. She was right, he vaguely knew, and she would have been utterly pleased to see him right then, carrying out her condemnations of him. A part of him felt victorious and good to be here to tell Charles to f*ck off. “So,” he said, “here I am.”

Charles chuckled sadly, nodding. “Yes. Here we are.” Charles said nothing more, but held eye contact with him. Erik was in no rush to even blink. After a few beats Charles lost the battle and shook his head. “Oh Erik, what’s the point? You don’t want to hear what I have to say, I can see that.”

“No, I’m all ears. Please. Do explain yourself. That’s what we’re here for, right?” he asked, and he could tell that each word was getting under Charles’s skin.

“Have you… have you listened to my voicemails, at least?”

“No. I’ve no interest to.” Good. This felt good.

“You haven’t…? You know that’s hardly fair,” Charles said with a faintly pedantic ring.

“You’re gonna talk to me about fair?” he asked disbelievingly.

Charles backtracked. “I get that you’re angry. I get that you’re…”

“I don’t think you do.”

Charles dropped his gaze guiltily and stared at his pint glass. “Right.” Charles hesitated. “I guess I. I mean… Look, I have to ask. Are you… gonna tell him?”

Ah. Of course that would be what Charles really wanted to know. Of course! They weren’t there for Erik, or for Charles, or for them. “No,” he said. How easy it would have been to let Warren Worthington know. He’d felt obliged to at times: they were both victims here, and it was only just… And he’d be lying if he’d said he almost hadn’t. He’d found himself up at three in the morning just a few nights ago, staring at Warren’s profile page, thinking: just one message, no more than three lines, perhaps, and a final note of “I thought you should know.” A click. How marvellous that would feel, for those first few seconds.

But he hadn’t sent the message. He’d unfriended Warren instead – a slip into oblivion, the both of them. He was too old to start a fight. He was too tired. Too hurt.

“I shouldn’t have to tell him,” he then said, pointedly. “Unless you two have an open relationship, I mean, maybe you do. What the hell do I know? Maybe he doesn’t care what you do at your end.”

Charles appeared angered and, under his breath, said, “I’ve never cheated on him before. I’ve never cheated on anyone before.”

Erik laughed low in his throat. “Yeah? You want a gold medal for that?” This had the desired effect of getting Charles to pull back, the brief flicker of indignation vanishing until only the desperation was left. “Look at you,” he whispered. “You look scared, Charles. I’ll tell you one thing: he deserves better than you.”

“I am aware,” Charles said and finished the rest of his drink in one go. Erik couldn’t believe how different this man was from the Charles he’d been kissing only a few weeks earlier. This man was bitter and cold, self-loathing. His Charles had been… full of warmth and kindness. Charles studied him carefully from across the table, the tension between them thick and angry. So this was how it ended, he thought. This was all that was left of them.

He found it hard to meet Charles’s gaze after a while. “You don’t hate me,” Charles then said, surprising him. “Not really.”

He thought back to his cold bed and how he thought of Charles all the time, how he missed his laugh and his jokes and his taste and his smile, god, how he missed Charles all the goddamn time. He missed Charles’s embraces. Didn’t he hate Charles? Didn’t he?

“Maybe I don’t,” he conceded. He’d been murmuring it desperately only days before their fall out: he was in love. He had found himself quite desperately in love. Falling in love was easy, but falling out was like digging himself out of a deep hole with nothing but a broken twig to help him. “I don’t hate you,” he admitted, swallowing audibly. “And that’s why I need you gone.”

For the first time it felt like they weren’t just sitting there in hurt and anger, trying to outdo each other. Charles reached out for his hand with a sigh of, “Darling, I –”

“Don’t,” he said. He pulled his hands back and placed them into his lap. ‘Darling, I’ what? Darling, I’m sorry. And then the hug, and the feel of Charles, and he’d come undone, he’d cling onto Charles so desperately, because he frankly couldn’t see how to be happy without him. And they’d go pick up Shani together, and Shani would be so happy, and –

That would never be them. Not ever.

Charles’s mouth was twisted downwards at the corners. “This isn’t all me, you know. This was a two man job.”

“Meaning?” he asked.

“Meaning that you were just as reckless as I was. You wanted to pretend that ten years hadn’t gone by, just like I did, and if you think this has only messed up your life, you’re wrong. It’s made a mess of everything I’ve known too,” Charles said quietly. “I finally had my life figured out, before all this. I was happy with Warren. It hadn’t been easy, but we were… getting there. He and I, we’d finally established ourselves. And then you. God, you show up after ten years and… and we both pretend like what happened between us was some cute and romantic venture that we’re both over by now, and you say you’re sorry for Magda, and that you’ve had this great life without me, and you suck me back in with your smiles and bedroom eyes, and then you come to my house, pretending to be bringing over work papers, soaked from the rain. For goodness sake, Erik!” Charles snapped.

There was no point in pretending he hadn’t been interested in Charles from the get go, from the day he’d asked Charles to meet him in the pub they were in right then. He recalled sitting there, telling Charles of his life, getting Charles to tell him about his. Ah, the butterflies that had been there, the spark of interest and warmth in his guts and chest. Was this still his Charles? Was this still the man he’d fallen for? It had been, in so many ways. And yet…

“I thought you were single,” he said curtly.

“See, I don’t think you did,” Charles said angrily. “You met Warren, I’d introduced you two. And you didn’t ask about him until after we’d started sleeping together.”

“Yes, and you told me –”

“I told you what you wanted to hear. What we both needed to… to believe. You didn’t want to know the truth,” Charles argued, and Erik felt a voice of protest die in his throat. “You didn’t want to… acknowledge that there was someone else. You can at least own up to that.” Charles leaned over, trying to keep his voice level. “You were as blind about this as I was.”

Erik pursed his lips, not enjoying this attack at all. Yes, he’d known about Warren when he’d first slept with Charles, but he had had every reason to believe…

Charles said, “Wasn’t Ororo seeing someone when you first met her?”

“Yes, but – God, that’s got nothing to do with this.”

“No? I’ve never tried stealing someone else’s –”

“I didn’t steal you,” he snapped. “Don’t be childish. Steal you? Are you without will?”

“It appears so, when it comes to you.”

Erik did not want to consider that as the romantic confession it sounded like. “No, you misled me. And you led me to believe that you had stopped seeing Warren after we…” But had he ever double checked? God, why should he have had to? “Don’t you dare argue that you didn’t lead me on,” he snapped, but Charles didn’t seem angry anymore.

“Darling, we led each other on,” Charles sighed. Erik needed Charles to stop calling him endearments, because every time he did so Erik’s heart yearned to be closer to Charles. “Frankly, the past led us on,” Charles then said, eyes fixed on some indeterminate point over Erik’s shoulder. “What happened with us back then wasn’t… cute, it wasn’t romantic. It was real. And I loved you like I never needed to love again. And you grow up, and you think, hell, you were only a kid, it was a juvenile, one-month fling, and you tell yourself that you’re not allowed to be a mess over it anymore, years down the line. But I have been. Because it was real, you and I. It was real love.”

“I know it was,” he said defiantly, and Charles looked at him then, blue eyes utterly lost. Erik’s insides clenched painfully: he knew it had been. He knew, he knew, and in that moment he knew it more than ever.

Charles said, “Warren is the first man I’ve ever been able to see a future with, after you. I was… unable to have that connection with anyone after I lost you. And then you come back? You dare come back and – and tell me that you left Magda anyway, and that you came back for me, and that. That I could have had you. I could’ve had you back all this time.” Charles’s voice wavered. “Maybe I didn’t make the best f*cking decision here, but what the hell can I do with that?”

“So it was revenge,” he said, realisation dawning on him. “This was revenge from ten years ago.”

“I don’t know,” Charles said, “I didn’t intend it to be.”

Even if he could go back in time, right then, he’d do what he did the first time. There was no scenario in which trying to be with Magda and Pietro was not the right thing to do. Even if it had cost him Charles, even if it had cost them both real love. He would not change what he did then, and he would not apologise for that – he’d sacrificed Charles for it, but he would not say sorry.

Charles rubbed at his mouth, looking vaguely nauseous. “I now know I’ve spent… years. Years trying to forget about what we had. I’ve spent years trying to find something that could compare. Warren was my first real chance of that, and now I’ve f*cked it up.”

He thought of a beach years and years ago, staring into the blue eyes of a young man to whom he had spent the entire night spilling his soul out, feeling understood, feeling found, feeling… utterly amazed that someone like Charles could exist. Thinking, “I have to be with him. I have to.” Asking Charles to marry him then and there.

He looked at Charles now, much older, a hell of a lot more cynical. Still beautiful. Less perfect, perhaps, but somehow more clearly defined. When he was with Charles, he still felt found. He still felt privileged and proud to be at Charles’s side. The immediacy of his affection, perhaps, was more rational: I want to be with him.

He wanted to be with Charles, still, and looking at Charles now, tired and broken, made him think that that was okay. That they could fix this.

Charles was lost in his thoughts. “I know Warren deserves better than me – he always has. After you, everyone deserved better than me.”

He wanted to take a hold of Charles’s hand and say, “Schatz, we’ll fix it.” But this Charles – and this was the catch – this Charles wasn’t his Charles. This Charles was a stranger who had lied to him for months, who’d let Erik fall in love again, who’d been sleeping with another man the entire time, and who had made Erik think that it was okay to need Charles, it was okay to lean on him, when it hadn’t been. Charles had made a joke of him.

Erik forced himself to shut down the need to make Charles smile, whatever the cost. Some things were beyond fixing – it only took one divorce to learn that. “I’m not standing in your way,” he said. Somehow, he had shown up as the wounded victor with the upper hand, and yet Charles had made himself look like the victim. Was it true? Were they both to blame? “I need to get going.”

He began to button his coat. Charles mimicked him in standing up, and Erik picked up his belongings. Charles looked alarmed. “Erik, I – I’m sorry. I wanted to explain, but I don’t think I’ve done that at all. I didn’t know what to do, and the lies just – they piled up, and I didn’t know how to make it right, and –”

“You didn’t know?” he spat. “You tell me the f*cking truth. That’s how you make it right.”

Charles stared at him, blue eyes desperate. “I’m sorry.”

Erik slung his bag over his shoulder. “It’s too late for that.”

Charles shook his head. “No, it can’t be. This can’t be the last time we speak to each other, not now, not like this.”

“Maybe that’s the real tragedy here,” he said, “that it is.”

He walked out of the pub, and Charles didn’t try to stop him.

The phone calls stopped after that. So did the voicemails, emails and text messages.

So did the flowers.

Raven and Christian held hands at the dinner table. Christian had developed a habit of brushing Raven’s hair behind her ear, and Raven caressed Christian’s chin as she spoke of their movie marathon a few nights earlier. They were like cats in heat pushing against each other at every opportunity, any moment of separation too long for them. Charles sat through dinner, short of patience and haunted by a nagging anger.

“The cinnamon crème brulees are my uncle’s recipe,” Christian said, standing up and collecting their dirty dinner plates. “Just give me a minute to do my magic with the torch and they’ll be good to go!”

Christian disappeared into the kitchen of Raven’s Camden studio that had easels with half-finished paintings in three different corners of the living room. Christian had joined Raven’s disarray: underwear (dirty or clean, Charles wondered) now came in thongs and boxer briefs, piled up onto an arm chair in consideration for the evening’s guest, and Raven’s biographies of Dali and Henri Edmond Cross had been joined by Christian’s enthusiasm for the Napoleonic Wars, adorned with titles like Blood and Glory, The March to Waterloo and The True Emperor of France. Like Raven’s books, these too were unfinished, with receipts or postcards sticking out to mark the place where Christian had been distracted by something else.

Christian very well may have been a male version of Raven. God forbid…

While Christian was in the small kitchen prepping the dessert, Raven turned her doting eyes to Charles, smiling brightly. “Well?” she asked as she lifted the wine glass to her lips. “Isn’t he just to die for?”

“He’s very nice, Raven,” he said stoically, sounding like a hard to impress big brother.

“He’s wonderful!” she exclaimed, clutching a fist to her chest. “Oh, he’s just so – so on the same wavelength with me, you know? Just the other day Angel said that we already finish each other’s sentences! And she’s right: we really do!” She snuck a look over her shoulder to make sure Christian was still in the kitchen. She leaned over the table, lowered her voice, and said, “I’m gonna ask him to move in with me.” She smiled ecstatically over the thought, although from what Charles could tell, Christian was, for all intents and purposes, already living with her. He hummed in response, and for the first time that evening Raven looked faintly something other than love-struck. “You could try and be happy for me!”

Charles stirred then, becoming aware that this was his official introduction to Christian and, what was more, Raven needed Charles to like him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “of course I’m happy for you.”

Raven considered him for a moment before she said, “Thank you.” She pursed her lips. “You’ve been moody all evening. Everything okay?”

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked with a light-hearted chuckle, and something seemed to get stuck in his throat. He squeezed the napkin in his fist. “Work has been absolutely hectic lately. The stress is getting to me, I fear.”

“I can tell,” Raven said, taking a quick sip of her wine. “And how’s Warren?”

Charles almost flinched at the name, but suppressed the instinct. He smiled. “Busy trying to find us a neighbourhood tennis club that meets his standards.”

Raven laughed and said that they were obnoxiously aristocratic. She intoned that after Warren moved to London that spring, or early summer as it was starting to look realistically, they could go on double dates to art galleries and Ethiopian street food joints, the four of them. “Maybe I can pick up tennis, too. What the hell, we could play doubles!”

“Ah, well. Let’s take it a step at a time, shall we?” he asked, just as Christian called out that the crème brulees were done.

They ate dessert as Christian made pleasant chitchat, and Charles tried to accept that this was his life once more, and in a handful of months there would be four of them there, eating dessert, planning an afternoon for testing out their tennis skills. Nothing was the matter with Charles right then and nothing would be the matter with him in this future scenario either: the short of it was – truthfully – that Charles had had an affair. It had started, blossomed, and ended, and now life went on while those around him had no idea that he was mourning. At times they noticed that he was out of sorts, perhaps, but they had no idea of the sense of loss and longing that he now carried inside of him. He couldn’t tell them either.

Such stories must have flooded the streets of London: hushed confessions forever lost as lovers returned to their wives and husbands, who had started to wonder why the other seemed so aloof and distant… These lovers returned like soldiers from war, damaged and bruised, and none of the civilians around them could even begin to comprehend what they had been through, and so the lovers fell into silence. Great love stories weren’t ones people could tell anyone about. Great love stories remained untold, caged inside their carriers, burning embers inside one’s chest.

Charles more than knew that it was foolish to be moping around and arousing suspicion now. He’d had his fling, he’d had his mistake, and he even had Erik’s silence. It was, as if, it had never happened at all. Warren was moving to London. They needed to buy curtains for the living room.

“How long have you been with your partner?” Christian asked after Raven said how much Christian would love Charles’s boyfriend.

Raven cut in with, “Oh tell him the story of how you two met! It’s the most romantic story, you’ll love it!”

Charles resisted, but Raven wouldn’t relent. He sighed, trying to scrape the threads of the story together. “Well, I was at a fundraiser in New York a few winters ago. Uh, and Warren was there, you know, and saw me, and tried to hit on me. But I wasn’t really interested. But anyway, he found out who I was and called me a few days later and, you know, he was fit, and I had nothing going, relationship-wise, so we started sleeping together. Anyway, I came back to Oxford because I was working there at the time – Raven might’ve mentioned it? And I didn’t think much of it, but Warren, he, uh, he decided to follow me. So he shows up in Oxford and tells me he’s fallen in love. And I – I guess I… Truthfully, I thought it’d be nice, being in love. I hadn’t loved anyone in so long, and on page, Warren seemed like a good match, so I decided what the hell, let’s go for it.” He was frowning at his own memories of the events. “I was tired of never loving anyone, I think.”

Raven glared at him. “What kind of a version is that?”

He shrugged. “It’s just what it was. Why embellish it?”

Christian was looking thoughtful as he said, “No, no, hear him out, Raven. I think Charles is making a good point here. People have such great capacities for love, but when you have no one to give any of it to, it makes a person cold. It’s very lonely not to love anyone.”

“Yes,” he agreed, suddenly feeling like for the first time he had a glimpse of why he had spent months cheating on his boyfriend. He’d known it was terrible, he’d known it was selfish and deceitful. He wasn’t that kind of a person, and he’d tried to prove it to Erik, who hadn’t listened to his excuses. But had Charles simply been lonely for so long that he hadn’t cared what was right anymore? He hadn’t been without love, this he knew, but he’d been without Erik. Was there a difference? “Along those lines,” he conceded.

Raven eyed the two of them and then huffed. “I think you’re both full of sh*t. I’ll ask Warren to tell the story. He tells it much better.”

Christian, forever polite, said, “I can’t wait to meet him.”

Charles texted Raven from the taxi home to say that he liked Christian and thought they seemed like a good match. He then began to text Warren, who’d wanted to know the gossip on Christian: Christian gets official approval: very smart and observant. Raven is crazy about him. But were he and Warren crazy about each other? Did they need to be?

He needed to be practical. Passionate love and trustworthy companionship were quite different things – the other flared in brief bursts, the other endured and strengthened.

I can’t see you soon enough, he concluded and pressed send.

Back at home, there was no one to greet him. Charles got himself a beer, toed off his shoes, and sat down on the living room couch, sighing. He looked around, as if hoping for someone else to walk into the room.

Christian had been right: it was goddamn lonely not to love anyone.

The fog kept Charles’s plane grounded at Heathrow for an hour and a half, and it was after midnight when he finally landed in Geneva. The airport was abandoned and drowsy, people talking in murmurs and whispers of the night hours. Charles pulled his carry-on suitcase to the taxi ranks outside. He had his own keys to Warren’s flat, and he let himself in shortly after one in the morning, too tired to be artfully quiet. The front door creaked as he entered, and he left his suitcase and coat in the living room, pushing his shoes off of his feet.

At the open double doors of the bedroom he paused, finding it difficult to make out shapes in the dark. “Hey, babe,” Warren croaked sleepily from the direction of the bed, the sheets rustling. He aimed towards the sounds. “How was the flight?”

“Alright.” He stripped down to his boxer briefs and slid under the covers. The sheets were warm and carried the scent of Warren’s aftershave. “Sorry I woke you.”

Warren shuffled closer and burrowed into his chest, arms wrapping around his waist. “That’s alright.”

He kissed the top of Warren’s head. “Happy anniversary.”

Warren smiled into his chest. “Tha’s tomorrow.”

“After midnight now.”

“Doesn’t count,” Warren argued, although he sounded much more awake now. Warren’s hand had moved down to cup his ass, and sometimes these days Charles felt like he was filling up with water, like he was drowning on the inside, and the water level kept getting higher and higher. Warren was real and alive and there, and Charles moved on top of him, pinning Warren down against the bed.

“Hey,” he said, trying his best to make out Warren’s face in the dark – one of pleased surprise. He kissed Warren deep and hard, and he didn’t waste time in getting rid of their underwear, of getting a condom and lube from the nightstand, of doing a very hasty job of prepping. Warren tensed up when he pushed inside, but was smiling wickedly, eyes nearly twinkling mischievously.

“Thought we were going for a record there,” Warren said, pulling him down for a kiss. A record of not f*cking: not in actuality, not wanking off together on Skype, not even having breathy phone sex. They hadn’t even f*cked on the night of Scott and Jean’s wedding, and although Warren had not complained or even mentioned it, he’d clearly noticed.

He f*cked Warren hard, driven by fear that he’d never get to do this again. He bit onto Warren’s neck, leaving a mark. Warren was nothing if not delighted that he was getting manhandled and f*cked into the mattress.

Their anniversary started by the book, at least.

In the morning, Warren went down on him and then popped to the bakery in the next block for fresh croissants. They stayed in bed and watched Netflix, and when Charles clicked into his account, Warren laughed when under ‘Continue Watching’ came Mulan. “Why have you been watching Disney movies?”

“I haven’t,” he lied. Funny. It was over now, and he was still having to lie. He thought of the evening when Shani had kept fussing in the kitchen, and he’d given her his phone, with Mulan running, to keep her out of the way while he and Erik cooked dinner. Erik had told him it was bad parenting to give Shani some gadget to ogle at, whispering the words to his ear, hugging him from behind. It had been such a dangerous time: Erik’s touch had stirred a burst of warmth in his chest. “That’s bad parenting,” Erik had whispered, and Charles’s hindbrain had flickered with you. Just the one word: you. You, you, you. When Charles had made his final appeal that it couldn’t end like this, that evening in the pub, that this could not possibly be the last time they spoke to each other, Erik had lifelessly said, “Maybe that’s the real tragedy here: that it is.” And at that moment inside of Charles had flared up another, stubborn but it’s you.

Warren scrolled along the Netflix options for something for them to watch. “Now this is an excellent Sandra Bullock movie.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Heretic!” Warren complained. Warren was in a superb mood.

Charles tried to tap into that contentment and happiness for the rest of the day. It was their third anniversary, which was a landmark Charles had never shared with anyone. He was back home and back on track. It would have been naïve, of course, to claim that Warren had no idea that something had been amiss. Warren had some idea that something had been off – Charles had been off, for some reason. But now Charles had returned back to them, and although Warren didn’t know that, it was clear that Warren considered their tiff about jobs and careers, whatever it had been about, to be ancient history.

They went for a walk along the waterfront and stopped for some champagne in one of the bars to celebrate. Warren talked of the new London job, about the team he hoped to recruit, explaining his plans for the project. Charles talked about his upcoming article, his lab work, a very promising student he had, and a new café he’d discovered near their flat. None of these topics interested him the way he had expected they would. If anything, he just didn’t want there to be silence between them. And so they talked of Warren moving in properly, and of having Raven and Christian over for dinner, and they got a little buzzed on the champagne as they discussed what to get Charles’s stepfather for a retirement present – a brand new golf set, maybe?

Warren had booked them to a nice restaurant for the evening, and they returned home to get ready. They debated between formal and smart casual, as it was a Michelin restaurant on Quai de Mont Blanc, but then formal won the day. If not for their anniversary, what would they dress up for?

And so, like clockwork, life went on. “What colour tie should I put on?” Warren called out from the bedroom. Charles was sat in the living room, ready in his black suit. Christ, life would just go on, just like this, wouldn’t it? “Babe, what colour is yours?”

He glanced down. “Maroon.” Appropriate, he thought: he felt marooned.

“Okay, I’ll be done in a minute!”

Charles noticed that his hands were trembling and his pulse had picked up. His body was anticipating something: an impact. Oh god, he thought: this was it.

When Warren came out from the bedroom, he was fixing his cufflinks. His tie was blue. “How about we –” Warren started, but then came to a halt. “Babe, you okay?” he asked, and Charles looked up, as if startled. Warren looked stunning. “What is it?”

Charles’s mouth felt dry, his tongue thick and clumsy. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Just go for dinner, he told himself. Just go. And keep going for the next fifty years.

“Charles?”

It took every ounce of strength in him to say what he then said: “We need to talk.” The words floated into the living room and stayed suspended in air.

Warren hesitated. “Okay.” Warren took a step closer, and then stopped. “Hey, what… What’s going on?” He swallowed and looked away. Oh god, what was he doing? “For f*ck’s sake, Charles,” Warren said impatiently. Charles wrung his hands together, feeling sick to his stomach. He was making a mistake, he was making the biggest mistake of his –

“There’s something you need to know.” He was very aware that he was talking to the wall that faced the world outside. Pathetically, the focal point helped him. “I know I’ve been acting out, and I know I can’t make it okay, I –” He stopped himself, swallowing. “What I’m trying to say is that… there’s been someone else.”

“What?” In his peripheral vision, Warren moved – a step backwards. He looked at his boyfriend, and Warren was staring at him, confusion on his face. “What does – What does that mean?”

“There’s been someone –”

“I heard you!” Warren shouted, and Charles shut the f*ck up. Warren seemed to be struggling for words. “What are you – What are you telling me?” Whatever the words conveyed, Charles hoped. He didn’t want to go into detail, he didn’t want to talk it through. He’d confessed: couldn’t they leave it at that? And the less Warren knew the better: the less he knew, the less it’d hurt. f*ck, maybe he even wanted Warren to comfort him, to put an arm around him and say ‘There, there’ and ‘What rotten luck’ and ‘Oh babe, you must have been going through such a hard time.’ Warren said none of these things. “Charles,” Warren said with a hint of desperation. “What do you mean? That you’ve slept with someone else, or you’ve – What does it mean when you say there’s been someone else?!”

“I’ve been,” he started, struggling, “I’ve been seeing someone else, back in London. I’ve been dating him, or I mean. He and I, it just happened, and –”

Warren shook his head, murmuring, “No, no, please no, don’t do this –”

Charles stood up, but didn’t dare approach. The words seemed to have hit home, and Warren yelled, “Who? For f*ck’s sake, who?!”

“Erik.”

“Erik who?!”

For a brief moment, they both were equally surprised. The question seemed so absurd that Charles was almost confused. His Erik, of course – who else? His Erik, who had become so omnipresent, so overwhelmingly… But victory was his: Warren hadn’t had the slightest idea. He almost wanted to laugh. Charles had conducted his affair with artistry and poise.

“Lehnsherr,” he said. “Erik Lehnsherr.”

It appeared that for a second Warren still had no idea who that was. Then it clicked, and Warren looked physically ill. “Him?! From the – the f*cking chess club?!” Charles nodded. He could at least f*cking nod. “Are you kidding me right now?” Warren demanded furiously. “You’re kidding me, right? Please tell me you’re –”

“There’s more,” he said, having found his voice again. Speak now or forever hold your peace – so he spoke. “He’s not from the chess club, or I mean – Yes, he is. I guess. But when we first met in Australia, when I was nineteen. Remember when I told you that that’s when I’d first met him? Well back then, he and I were together. Not for very long, or anything, but we were in love. But it ended, like those things do. And I don’t know, we met again after all this time, he was in London, working for the university, and we still had this spark, and it… it just went from there.” The truth. At long last, the truth. “I just – I couldn’t help myself.”

“You couldn’t help yourself?!” Warren barked in utter disbelief. This had turned into a shouting match now, a nice domestic for the neighbours to eavesdrop over.

“I’m sorry, I really f*cked up. You’ve never… never been nothing but good to me, and –”

“No. No! Three years!” Warren yelled at him. “Three years! You have just wasted three years of my life!” Warren covered up his mouth, running the other hand through his hair, grabbing onto the short strands. He looked out of the window, chest heaving with uneven breaths. Something was cascading down around them right then, something more hurtful than anything they’d ever said or done to each other. Charles didn’t know where to stand to avoid being crushed by three years of intimacy that was fast collapsing onto the living room floor. More quietly, as if to himself, Warren asked, “When’d it start? Was it – when I met him, were you already..?”

“No,” he said, recalling the only time Warren had ever met Erik, at Raven’s gallery opening on Halloween. “Not then.”

“Then when?”

“Warren, it doesn’t –”

“I asked a f*cking question!”

“Before Thanksgiving. He came over, we had dinner. And then…” Warren looked at him in disgust, and indignantly he said, “What do you want me to say? We spent the entire night f*cking, and I met you at Heathrow a few days later.”

“Jesus Christ, Charles!”

“Well isn’t this what you want to hear?!” he barked in frustration. “The seedy details?!”

Warren blinked at him. “You’re angry with me?”

The notion was so absurd, considering the situation, that Charles retreated as quickly as he’d dared to raise his voice. “sh*t. sh*t, no, of course not. I’m such a mess. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t recognise myself.”

Warren regarded him, still heaving, still furious. “What am I supposed to say here? Huh? What the hell am I supposed to say? Good on you, maybe? f*ck, good on you, then! Good on you, Charles Xavier! Look at how I didn’t even know!” Warren’s voice broke, and Charles had to look away. “I can’t believe you’ve done this to us, to me, I can’t – Look at me when I’m talking to you!” Warren shouted, and Charles forced himself to look back at his boyfriend. “What the hell were you thinking, sleeping with him? What were –”

“I wasn’t thinking – clearly, I’d –”

“With Erik Lehnsherr, that goddamn ten out of ten with that kid in tow! The f*cking divorcee, as you dressed him! How could you not tell me you used to date him? And that –”

“I didn’t know what to do! I couldn’t – I couldn’t tell anyone, and – Look, it’s over, okay? The whole thing’s over.”

“It’s over?” Warren asked disbelievingly, as if dazed.

“I’m not seeing him anymore,” he said. “He broke it off.” He regretted this confession just as instantly.

Warren’s features regained a new, sharp focus. “Why?”

Why had Erik left him? “He didn’t know about you and me, not really,” he confessed. “He thought that he and I were together, and then he found out about us, and it just. He wanted… something more. Something I couldn’t give.”

“And is that what? Is that loyalty?” Warren asked, the first of many hate-seared questions that marked the hours that followed.

They went around in circles, varying from angered accusations and bitter declamations to bursts of despair. Warren demanded to know everything, where they met, how often, who had made the first move, and Charles conceded details but tried to cover up as much as he could. He couldn’t remember, he claimed, how often they had met, he denied them ever spending the night together, and he emphasised that they had always met at Erik’s house rather than Charles’s. “Our bed is ours,” he said, although he had taken Erik in it more than once. Warren called him pathetic, just another man running after his prick. “How could you do this to me?!” was asked more than once, to which Charles replied, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” They paced from the living room to the bedroom, from the bedroom to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the bedroom again, shouting, arguing, Warren slamming the few doors available.

In the exhausting, remorseful end, Warren sat on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, and Charles remained by the doors, too afraid to approach him. He couldn’t count how many times he’d apologised, how many times he’d said it was over, and how he’d even said that it hadn’t mean anything, not a thing. Warren had asked why Charles would have done something so hurtful and petty if it truly was for nothing – Charles hadn’t claimed it to be meaningless a second time.

Now Warren let out a choked, teary laugh and wiped his cheeks. “f*ck,” Warren breathed, the word rough from a torn, worn out throat. “This is not how I thought we’d spend our anniversary.” Warren wiped his cheeks again and looked at him, the blue of his eyes rimmed with red.

“I’m sorry.” Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. “I didn’t want to lie anymore.” Warren seemed tired out, and Charles didn’t know what to say anymore. He whispered, “You’re my best friend, you know that. I hate myself for having done this to you. I feel like sh*t, all the time.”

“Good – you should,” Warren said, and Charles felt a new sadness, that they had reached the point where they wished each other ill. He deserved it, all of it.

“I love you,” he said.

Warren stared at him in surprise. “Oh f*ck you!” he snapped, unexpectedly, springing up to his feet and marching out. Charles followed him out to the hall, where Warren was throwing on his coat.

“Where are you going?” he asked in alarm, unsure where he’d gone wrong. “Warren.” The man in question was opening the flat door. “Warren!”

“Don’t you f*cking dare follow me,” Warren snarled with a murderous look before the door slammed shut behind him.

Charles did not dare.

The rooms felt empty after all their unorchestrated shouting. Charles walked back to the bedroom, limbs numb. The worst thing imaginable had happened: Warren knew. How he’d feared it the past few months, how desperately he’d tried to cover it up: making up Trevor from work and lying about late minute meetings, telling tales of imaginary trips to the sports centre for squash. Warren had been close to the truth so many times, but somehow Charles had always dodged last minute, terrified but relieved. And now he’d given all of that work up, when he’d gotten away with it. He wasn’t even sure why, but recalled Erik’s icy stare when he’d said that it wasn’t Erik’s job to tell Warren the truth. Damn Erik’s justice, damn his righteousness.

But he knew he hadn’t confessed for Erik’s sake.

There was only one picture frame in the entire flat, the one on the bedside table, of him and Warren in their early days. Charles looked at it as he sat down on the sheets, pure white giving way under his weight. He breathed and kept breathing.

But Charles, to his discredit, must have fallen asleep, because when he came to it was pitch black outside, and Warren had turned on the ceiling light that awoke him. Warren, for his part, was not asleep: he was wide awake, permeating a smell of whiskey into the room, and still pacing as he had earlier that evening. Charles wiped at his mouth and eyes: this was not a nightmare. It had happened. It was happening.

He sat up straight on the bed, blinking himself awake. Warren kept pacing, a finger raised his way, signalling Charles to keep his mouth shut. Charles said, “War –”

“Quiet,” Warren commanded, brows knit together, before he came to a stop. “Okay, here’s the thing.” Charles looked at the clock on the bedside table: it was two forty in the morning. “Here’s the thing, alright? We all have exes we never get over. Okay? You’re not some special specimen, you or – or Erik. Alright?! We all have people with who we still have that bit of a spark, but you know what? We don’t f*cking f*ck them!” Warren said, shouting out the last sentence, and Charles wanted to hang his head but instead forced himself to maintain eye contact. Warren was furious. “Because we commit. Okay? You make a commitment to someone, that’s what a relationship is. And I made a commitment to you, and I have been loyal and faithful and I have loved you, even if I still have chemistry with other people! And I do, just so you know. I still do!”

Charles felt a blind, purposeless jealousy stir up in him – who was Warren talking about? Which ex? Who?

Warren stopped and with admirable clarity asked, “Why the hell did you f*ck him? Fine, he’s good looking, but we both know that’s not it. Goddammit, we were happy, Charles! We were happy, you and I! So you tell me, because this is driving me insane. This is killing me, so please, just tell me. Why’d you do it?”

“We’ve been over this,” he pleaded. They’d been fighting for hours now, and he was exhausted and needed rest. Was he whining? He deserved this, these endless hours of inconclusive fights. He needed to endure this.

“You haven’t really told me why,” Warren said, and maybe that was true. Warren had returned from his outing – to a bar, clearly – with a sense of purpose, a prepared solicitor instead of a raving witness taken by surprise. Charles, sat on the bed, was testifying. Warren swallowed audibly, hands in fists. “Was it a sex thing?” he asked, faintly. “Because he was there and I’m away all the time?”

“Partly,” he said honestly. He’d always had a high sex drive, and bedding Erik had been better than Skype sex or phone sex with Warren. You couldn’t beat the real thing, and he’d been thrilled having a sexual outlet as utterly satisfying and exciting as Erik Lehnsherr. So partly, yes: it had been about the sex.

“And what are the other parts?” Warren asked, hands coming to wrap around his middle protectively. Warren looked small, like a teenage boy, and Charles wanted to wrap him up in his arms and kiss it better. Oh god, he’d never wanted this, and he didn’t want to answer the question. Warren quietly asked, “Were you in love with him?”

He said nothing, even if the words echoed in him with a metallic ring. “What does that matter?” he asked. “He left me.”

“What does it matter?” Warren repeated, anger resurfacing. “I will not be anyone’s consolation price!” But am I not yours, Charles wanted to retaliate, but it was too petty. Warren loved him, and he was an asshole if he tried to convince himself otherwise. Warren’s arms tightened their hold around his middle. “Are you in love with me, at least?”

Charles blinked. “Yes. Yes, of course I am.”

“Are you?” Warren shook his head. “You don’t do this to someone you love.”

“That’s not true,” he said. He’d seen enough of the world to know that you could love someone more than anything, and still betray them in the most awful of ways. “It’d be easier, maybe, if I didn’t love you. Or if you didn’t love me. But we do,” he said. “I still love you.”

Warren inhaled deeply. There was an odd serenity in the room now, the calm after the storm. They were too tired to yell. Oh, how much worse that was. “What the hell do you want me to do with this?” Warren asked, a hand quickly brushing off a tear from his cheek. “You cheat on me for months, and turns out I had no f*cking clue. How the hell am I supposed to be with you after this?”

Charles hadn’t thought that far. “Mercy?” he ventured.

Warren smiled a sad, little smile that Charles had never seen before. It looked grotesque and frightening. “I have none,” Warren said, shaking his head. He wiped his cheeks again. “Get out. Get the hell out, Charles.”

Moving on automatic, Charles patted the pockets to make sure the essentials were still there. Warren was standing his ground in the bedroom, arms still crossed, staring at the wall, shaking like a leaf. Charles left his open suitcase there, full of clothes, but threw on his coat that had been on the living room couch.

He stopped, for a moment. He tried to think of something to say – there had to be something, the right words, the right apology, a way to take it all back. Warren was falling apart right before his eyes. This couldn’t be real, this couldn’t be happening, this…

But he had nothing he could say.

The stairwell echoed with his footsteps. He felt faint, dizzy, his head pounding, his insides rotting. Did he have his passport? Yes, good, he did, yes.

Three o’clock in the morning, he stumbled onto the deserted Rue Plantamour. He looked around as if he had never seen the street before. A car passed somewhere in the distance. He wiped his teary eyes and headed that way. He knew where the taxi rank was.

A little after three thirty he got to the airport. He stared at the departures list: London City at 5:45. Good, marvellous. The airline ticket desk was opening just as he walked up to it. “Morning. I wonder if I could change my flight.” He was their first customer.

After passing through security, he sat in a quiet, sleepy departure lounge, waiting for his gate to be announced. His reflection looked back at him from the glass front of a tax free shop that had not yet opened, and he recoiled in surprise. He blinked at the red-eyed, pale, sad looking man, and then he laughed: the man was still in his black suit, ready for an anniversary that they had never reached after all.

Talk about being overdressed, he thought. Talk about being out of place.

He was sorry. Good god, he was so f*cking sorry.

It turned out that that mattered little at four-o-seven in the morning, at Geneva Airport.

From the weeks that followed, a few details stuck in his mind.

The first of these was Raven’s tomato plant that had four withering leaves, forgotten behind cans of paint and bottles of turpentine in the corner of the studio living room. The plant was directly in his line of vision when he sat on the second hand couch, a lumpy, orange remnant of the sixties, while Raven yelled at him. Her words went over him like waves crashing onto a hardened rock boulder, leaving no mark on him. Her views did not hurt after what Warren had said: he was immune.

“Are you insane?!” her voice demanded of him. “What were you thinking?!”

The only reason why he knew it was a tomato plant was because the label on the pot said so. It had no tomatoes to speak of, its stem looking pale and unattended to, the four leaves still hanging on for dear life. Every now and then he’d reply with something like “I don’t know” and “It just happened” and “I f*cked up.”

Raven was distraught. She’d call Warren, she said, she’d sort it out. And she did, saying, “Oh, won’t you just talk to him? Please! He knows he’s made a mistake. He’s a mess, he’s contrite – you have to give him a chance! Please just talk to him!” But Warren wouldn’t, like Charles knew he would not.

He’d told Raven he’d cheated on Warren with a guy from work. Leave it at that, he figured. Warren had been obsessed with details, wanting to know all about Erik. Raven was the opposite: she wanted no details about Charles’s sex life – no thank you – and she insisted that the details did not matter. The guy was meaningless, as had been the entire affair, and it did no good to dwell on it. All that mattered was how they convinced Warren to take Charles back.

That was the problem, though: Erik hadn’t been meaningless, and he and Warren both knew it.

He wondered about their home. He and Warren owned the place together – should he call Warren and offer to buy Warren out? Could he afford it? (Probably. He thought of the Xavier millions, not technically his, but he had a savings account in the US with a seven digit number on the balance statement.) Was it time to start putting away Warren’s things, ship it all back to Geneva for him? He couldn’t bare it, and he couldn’t bare Raven and her judgement either.

When Raven hung up, she was on the verge of tears. Charles said, “Shouldn’t that be in a greenhouse, that tomato plant?”

“Who cares about the goddamn tomato plant?!” she yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

He felt sorry, thinking about the neglected plant, when he went to work the following day.

The second memory imprinted into his brain with utter clarity was the dried skin between the knuckles of Bobby Drake’s fist, which he just managed to see before Bobby punched him. He and Hank had finished a day in the lab, with Charles dragging it out because he didn’t want to go home, then asking Hank out for a drink because he disliked being alone these days, and as they walked out of their building, into the darkened February night, someone called out, “Hey Charles!”

He turned, instinctively, wholly unprepared for the fist coming at him. Does he have eczema, he wondered at the sight of the flaked skin, and then it hit his face. The impact knocked him off his feet, and he found himself sprawled on the hard pavement with blinding pain radiating from not only his face, but his elbows and ass that had taken the hit with solid ground. Charles looked up from blood-covered fingers he’d pressed to his nose to see Bobby looming over him.

Hank – somewhere, behind a veil, it seemed – stepped between him and Bobby, hands raised in a calming gesture, while Bobby yelled, “That’s what you get for cheating on my best friend!”, loud enough for the entire street to hear. Some people had slowed down their steps to observe the display while most Londoners were walking even faster and pretending not to see. Beyond Hank and Bobby was a familiar looking woman in her late fifties – was that Professor Hartley, Head of Genetics? Sure looked like it. Charles wiped his fingers to his lapel, and when he looked up Professor Hartley had vanished.

“Calm down!” Hank beckoned. Charles was struggling to get back up, his nose still oozing hot, sticky blood. He managed to dig out a Kleenex from his pocket and press it to his nose, pinching the bridge. Oh f*ck him, was his nose broken? Jesus!

“You don’t know what you messed up, Charles!” Bobby said, yelling over Hank, who was trying to keep Bobby at arm’s length. “He’s better off without a f*ck up like you!” Then, unceremoniously, Bobby spat on the street. Charles was preoccupied with pressing the tissue to his nose, but his eyes met Bobby’s before they both looked away, like in that moment they were both embarrassed of themselves.

“You done?” Hank asked, and Bobby grunted, stuffing both hands into his pockets before departing. Returning to Charles, Hank asked, “Christ, you okay?” Hank put a hand on his shoulder, steading him. “What the hell was that about?”

On the plus side, Hank paid for drinks that night, and it made a refreshing change not to be told that he was an asshole. Charles explained that an ex-boyfriend of his lived in London and that he had started seeing him behind Warren’s back. He could have said it was Erik, but he didn’t want to make anything awkward between Hank and Erik, who were friendly. The less people in the know, he reflected mournfully, the happier Erik probably was.

“Should we call the police?” Hank asked, eyeing his face.

Charles touched his nose – sore as anything, but not broken. The bleeding had stopped. “No, we’re fine. I had that coming.” It felt better, having been punched. It helped with the guilt.

“I really don’t know what’s worse,” he said after a few drinks, “having my ex a twenty minute ride away, not wanting to see me, or having Warren in Geneva, not wanting to see me. Both distances seem as daunting and as insurmountable.” Hank was a good shoulder to lean on: he nodded with sympathy and listened, instead of trying to feed him bullsh*t advice. “I had two great men. Now? None. You done with your drink? Another? sh*t, let’s make it a whisky.”

After a few whiskies, Hank asked, “So what you gonna do now?”

Charles scratched at his beard, then winced when he tried to scrunch up his nose. “There’s not much I really can do. Warren and I have the house together, there are… things we need to talk about. Maybe he’ll just send a lawyer.”

“So you don’t think he’ll take you back?”

“No,” he laughed, and then flinched in pain again.

“After the swelling goes down,” Hank said, “I don’t think it’ll look that bad.”

Charles shrugged. He preferred the real, physical pain of getting punched, to the immaterial, all-consuming pain that had eaten up his mind and heart. Bobby punched him, and he slept better than he had in two weeks.

But really, Bobby ought to get someone to look at that hand of his. It might be a skin condition.

The third memory that stood out for him, apart from the tomato plant and the flaky skin, was the missing button on Shani’s ladybug coat. It was downright moronic, he thought, to be standing on the other side of the street from Gifted Youngsters Nursery at five thirty on a Friday, with his unkempt hair and bruised nose, smoking a cigarette by the bus stop. He just thought that if he could see them, that was all, if he could just see them, and then the words would come to him, then he could become someone much better.

Or maybe he just wanted to know that they were okay.

He just wanted to make sure they were doing okay, that was all.

Parents kept dropping in, reappearing with their smiling children. Charles kept an eye out on the road that led towards the tube station, hoping to see Erik’s figure coming back from work. Charles was ready to step behind the bus shelter to stay out of sight the moment he would. But Erik never showed, and instead Shani appeared from the nursery hand in hand with Ororo Munroe, who Charles had completely disregarded as another shape distinctively not-Erik when she had first approached the building. Shani had on her fox hat, black wiry curls sticking out from under it, she was wearing teal-coloured wellies on her small feet, and her ladybug coat was missing a button right in the middle.

Charles had seen Erik sewing before – he himself lacked the dexterity for it, but Erik had simply called him lazy. Erik had made it look so easy, sewing a button back onto the dress shirt Charles had contemplated throwing away. There was nothing to it, Erik had maintained, the button fixed in five minutes. Erik had an especially good eye for getting Shani ready for the world, her clothes always clean and ironed, everything matching and well thought out.

But now that button was missing, and Charles felt anguished. It was unlike Erik to not sew the button back on, wholly unlike Erik to not fix it for Shani.

Ororo led Shani towards the tube station, a large tote bag slung over her shoulder. Charles recognised the overnight bag easily enough. He wanted to rush after them, to say hello, to give Shani a hug. To ask if she still remembered him, if she still liked him. He still liked her. He liked her an awful lot.

What a great kid, he thought. He’d wanted to start teaching her about planets soon. He’d wanted to take her to the observatory in Greenwich. She would have loved it, she would’ve –

“Scuse me,” a young woman said to him, “has 41 gone past?”

“Oh, sorry. Afraid I don’t know.”

Shani and Ororo had disappeared. He retreated.

He walked towards Highgate and hailed himself a taxi. It was funny, really, how he’d never noticed people with prams and pushchairs before, parents with toddlers and kids and teenagers, but as he looked out of the taxi, it seemed that people with their children were everywhere.

Someone needed to fix that button on Shani’s coat, he thought. Someone needed to make sure that she stayed warm.

Not him, though, and the two words seemed like the cruellest thought he’d ever had.

Not him.

Erik picked up Shani early from the nursery, and so he was there at the same time as Sam’s mother, whom he’d never met before. She turned out to be a rather shrewd Jewish woman of forty or so, clearly surprised to discover that Shani’s father was white and a fellow Jew to boot. They got to talking as they left, and after comparing notes Erik asked for the number of a Shabbat afternoon club he had been unaware existed for the neighbourhood’s Jewish child population.

Sam’s mum Naomi read the rabbi’s number out to him, and he saved it on his phone. “They’re reform,” she said, articulating ‘reform’ like it was foreign to her mouth – a slight swearword that she was conceding to utter, exceptionally, for the greater good. “But I’ve heard good things about the club.”

Erik, who clearly was not orthodox with his lack of payot and kippah, was excited over the thought. “Did you hear that, Shani?” he asked as they walked home, hand in hand. “Papa’s gonna find out if you can start going to the synagogue’s play group. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“No,” Shani said.

He gave them a call straightaway, and something in the rabbi’s peaceful and inviting tone had Erik sat in her office the following evening, with Shani in his lap. Rabbi Levy was in her forties and explained that she wasn’t the principal rabbi, but rather stepped in as required. Her main duties involved running the community projects that the shul had, which were many indeed. She had a kind, open face, and asked Erik about his religious habits.

Within minutes Erik was spilling his heart out, all the way from his childhood memories of growing up in Germany to Jewish parents of a mixed Polish-German decent, and how there had always been a slight strain on being Jewish in Germany because of the guilt and shame that so few people wanted to talk about but everyone nevertheless felt. His family had been quite religious, although he had lost interest as a teenager. And then he told Rabbi Levy about his divorce, to which she said, “That must have been very hard for you, when Shani was still so young.” And yes, thank you, it had been hard! It had been! And he’d started to worry more and more about Shani losing touch with her Jewishness, because he was so rubbish at it himself.

“She’s starting to get old enough now to understand these things,” he said. “She’s nearly four, and I want to expose her to our faith and culture more.”

Rabbi Levy was more than welcoming of the idea, and they got Shani signed up to the group while Shani was given crayons and some paper to doodle on. She sat at the little kiddies’ table in the office corner while Erik signed her up for a weekly Friday afternoon group. Erik was pleased and made to leave. “But, Erik, can I ask what we can do for you? Be that spiritually or in any way you might need,” Rabbi Levy said, and Erik sat back down, taken aback.

“Oh I’m fine,” he said. “I know I’m not very good at practising my faith, but I’ve always been proud to be Jewish.” Rabbi Levy nodded and smiled at him kindly. “And maybe, erm, Shani and I will try to come to shul more often. To this one, I mean, the one closer to us isn’t really my ideal kind of, uhm. And it’d be good for her, it’d be – And for me, of course!” He laughed, perhaps nervously. Rabbi Levy didn’t even blink, just smiled at him utterly benevolently and calmly. Erik fidgeted. “Although my Hebrew’s awfully rusty, truthfully, but – You’ll have classes, I’ve no doubt. No, really, it’s Shani I’m here for. I don’t need fixing. Oh I mean – that makes it sound like I’m broken. That’s not what I meant, I’m fine. I’ve been better, I guess everyone’s always been better at some point than they currently are. What I mean is that I guess it’s been tough. The past few months. I’ve had personal… issues. Went through a break up. Recently. Ah, what’s your stance on gay people, now that I think of it?”

“Our community is open to all, Erik.”

“Ah, good. I never thought to check, but good. But yes, I broke up with a man I’d been seeing. It’s been hard to keep going after that. You know, it’s not been easy. I have to go to work and keep at it, I have to be a good dad for Shani, and all the time I miss him. I was ready for him to live with us, for him to raise Shani with me… You know, I pictured us married with kids, and us having a house, and.” He sighed and eyed Shani drawing in the corner. “I’ve told Shani that Charles is too busy with work to come see us, but she keeps drawing him pictures. And I feel – I feel embarrassed that I got so carried away, that I was so in love with him after so little. I feel like such a fool. I really do.” He looked at his hands that he’d wrung together. “We met and talked about it, and he said I’d been naïve about the two of us. He had a partner, you see, the entire time he was with me. And he said that deep down I’d known it, but that I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I think he was right. I so desperately wanted him and me to work, you know? It was a wakeup call for sure.”

Rabbi Levy, miraculously, was still listening. “A wakeup call to what?”

“To how pathetic I am.”

Rabbi Levy frowned, clasping her hands together on her large mahogany desk. “Erik, it’s never pathetic to believe in love, and it certainly doesn’t make a person pathetic to seek it. That doesn’t sound like the kind of lesson you should take away from that at all.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “To me it sounds like the lesson is to make sure you’re not sleeping with taken men.”

“Huh. Yeah, I guess that’s… one take on it.”

“Most people find break ups and divorces very traumatic experiences, you know. I’ve seen people to completely shut in on themselves, but it’s so important that you don’t do that, Erik. People need people – we quite simply can’t survive on our own. No man is an island, and all that, and that is how God designed us.” Her utter sincerity was almost unsettling, but Erik was hanging on to every word. Rabbi Levy looked upon him kindly. “Now, forgive yourself for having had an imperfect experience. Trust me, if I showed you pictures of some of my boyfriends from when I was younger, you’d see how much forgiving I’ve had to do myself.” She smiled, and Erik laughed. “Forgive yourself. Grow from it, and then keep looking. Okay?”

He felt comforted for the first time since he’d seen Charles and Warren dancing at the wedding, weeks and weeks ago. “Thank you, Rabbi Levy.”

“You’re welcome. And come to shul.”

Shani fell asleep in the backseat on the drive home. Erik felt energised for the first time in weeks – sympathy drinks with Azazel and Logan hadn’t helped him any, he very much did not want his ex-wife’s pity, and Shani’s questions about where Charles had disappeared to had filled him with guilt. But Rabbi Levy had said there was nothing pathetic about him, and she probably had seen all kinds of relationship tangles during her career. She, if anyone, would know.

He carried a sleeping Shani up to the house, where he put her to bed. He carefully pulled off her shoes and slid her out of her clothes, before he got her in her pyjamas. She was half-asleep, half-awake, and settled down when she got Pete the Pterodactyl under her arm. He tucked her in, and then stayed kneeling by the bed, studying her.

Forgive yourself – easier said than done. Grow from it – he was trying. Keep looking?

Christ, where to look? He’d realised recently that he had been in love with Charles Xavier for as long as he could remember. Even with John, even with Ororo, a part of him had never quite let go. And now he was full of fresh memories, fresh kisses, fresh laughter – how could you lose something like that and then go and find something else? All the while knowing that a car ride away, Charles and Warren were happy in their bubble, and Erik was the fool.

Forgive yourself. Grow. Keep looking.

Mistakes were a part of that process, it seemed. As he lay in bed, he idly scrolled down numbers on his phone, trying to recall the days when he’d had lots of cute girls and boys listed on there. Long before Shani, long before Ororo.

He wondered what kind of eHarmony website he had to go on to gain some of his confidence back. He scrolled back up the phone book and then stopped. Oh. He’d forgotten about that one.

He stared at the ceiling and said, “Is this part of the divine plan, then?”

God said nothing. Erik pressed call.

Warren got in touch on a Thursday morning, stating that he was in London on business and intended to come to the flat for six o’clock that evening. Charles could not have said the yes yes yeses out fast enough, his hands suddenly sweating, his tie too tight around his throat. He attempted a few “Warren, I –” and “Darling, I’ve been –”, but Warren cut him off promptly with a business edge to his voice that made Charles think, not for the last time that day, that Warren would have fared relatively well at the business world of the Worthington Group, had he chosen to do so.

His thoughts remained shattered like they were china dropped from considerable height. He left the labs early to tidy up because their home was a mess of unwashed dishes and clothes, of takeaway boxes that were making due as impromptu ashtrays to his re-emerged smoking habit, and of beer and whisky bottles. He took out three full bin bags before Warren appeared early, five to six, to be precise. Charles, shower fresh, flinched as the key turned in the lock, but remained seated in the living room that smelled distinctly of the air freshener he had generously sprayed everywhere: fresh, cool cotton with a hint of lavender.

It’d been a month since their failed anniversary. A whole month of silence and waiting. Warren hadn’t been in any contact with him since – Charles had returned to London, to Raven’s accusations, to Bobby’s fist, to a permanent sense of loss and confusion. He’d left Warren a few messages, but knew that he’d needed space. The axe would fall sooner rather than later.

He’d wondered how Warren was handling it on his side: for Charles, it had been excessive work with seventy hour weeks, it had been drinking every night, it had been smoking again, it had been lying in bed at night and not knowing whether to call Erik or Warren to beg for forgiveness. Both men hated him equally, he figured.

Now Warren was back, walking into the living room where Charles sat waiting. The flat was still full of Warren’s things – Charles hadn’t removed anything. It was funny how he’d always complained that it didn’t feel like Warren lived there enough, but in the past month he’d noticed all of Warren’s things in their house, from fridge magnets to socks to books to deodorant. Warren was everywhere, and he hadn’t dared to move a thing. He still hoped that maybe…

“Hey,” Warren said. He looked good – gorgeous, even. The ocean blue eyes, the short blonde hair, the strong chin and broad shoulders… Warren made the simple jeans and dress shirt combination look devastatingly good. To think that only a month ago Charles could have made him his husband. Now such an offer would be rejected, he knew.

“Hi,” he returned, not getting up from the couch, although his instinct was to try and hug Warren, to pull him close. It was torturous not to touch him.

Warren didn’t smile when he said, “You look like sh*t.”

Charles’s face still bore the faded marks of Bobby’s fist. “I had a run in with a drake.”

“I guess I’m sorry about that,” Warren said. “Nothing I put him up to. I hope you know that.”

Charles knew as much. Warren detested violence – Bobby was boisterous to say the least.

Warren pulled back one of the dining room chairs and turned it to face Charles before sitting down on it. Neither of them seemed to know what to say. Warren’s hands were nervously rubbing against his knees. “I’m in town for PPRC’s final negotiations,” Warren then explained. “I’m staying in the Hilton at Paddington, which seems – seems surreal, when I have a house a ten minute ride away.” Finally, Warren seemed sad. It was sad – why was he in a hotel when he could’ve been there, with Charles, in their home? Warren asked, “How’ve you been?”

“Strangely productive and mildly imitating an onset of alcoholism,” he said, and when Warren looked surprised, he said, “That’s the truth. From here on out, I’ll only give you the truth.”

“Okay,” Warren said, leaning backwards in the chair. He eyed Charles carefully. “You still f*cking him?”

“No. I haven’t seen him even once.” He’d tried to, that day he’d gone to the nursery. He’d tried, but it wasn’t a lie to omit it. That had been a bad day, a particular low point. “Is sex that important?” he then questioned.

“Right now it is,” Warren said pointedly. Charles hadn’t even jerked off for two weeks – was that a sign of depression? He was pretty sure it was. Warren sounded less aggressive when he asked, “Do you miss me?”

Charles’s throat seemed to close up, but he forced the word out: “Constantly.” As big a truth as anything.

Warren nodded like that was the answer he’d expected. “Look, I’m here because there are… decisions that we need to make.” Warren looked around the living room, avoiding, and then his eyes settled on Charles. Charles braced himself: here it came, the axe. It’d been a limbo, this silence between them – Warren licking his wounds in Geneva, Charles struggling on in London. “We need to take stock. We’re both adults, we’re not – naïve, idealistic youths, you and I,” Warren said, and Charles nodded unsurely. Where was this going? “Yes, monogamy is nice to aspire to, and if we’ve agreed on that, like I thought we had, and we had established trust around that, then shattering it is… it is conclusive. It is irrevocable.” Warren seemed restless. “But, you know, being with someone for a lifetime is hard. It’s supposed to be hard, otherwise it… Can I ask you something?” Charles nodded – anything. Warren said, “Were you planning to propose?”

“I bought you a ring last autumn.”

Warren smiled for the first time since he’d walked in. “Yeah, I’d thought so. I can read you pretty well, you know, even if this… escaped me.” Warren seemed pleased, and then sad again. “You’re not that good a liar, you know. I knew something was wrong.”

“I know that,” he admitted. The late nights, his phone always supposedly being low on battery life, the excuses – Warren was far too smart to believe that for very long.

“See, here’s the thing I don’t understand,” Warren then said. “How do you go from asking me to marry you to f*cking your ex? I mean. Did I do something wrong? I keep thinking I must have done something wrong.”

“No, it’s not you,” and he wanted to give a litany of how Warren was perfect and they had been perfect, and how Charles was a f*ck up and maybe co*ck hungry or panicking about commitment. But he’d promised the truth. The truth. “It was all me, being unable to… move on from the feelings that I had for Erik. I never got over him, not really. You were just fine.”

“I was fine?” Warren repeated indignantly and then huffed. “Christ! Is that we aspire to, now? Being fine?” Warren seemed to think about this and then said, “Well, yes. I suppose that is enough, most of the time. But you know I have this… this resentment inside of me, and I look at you and feel so goddamn… cheated. I feel angry and cheated and hurt, I – No, let me finish. Please. Please. Look, I’m not fine. I am not just fine. A part of me really… really hates you for what you’ve done to me and to us. I think it’s the biggest goddamn mistake you’ve ever made, because we’re worth more than this. We’re worth so much more than you going to bed with an ex. We’re above that,” Warren said, and Charles, who had been sworn to silence now, only stared in surprise.

“Three years, Charles. God, are we gonna throw that away? We have this apartment, we have mutual friends, I have the PPRC job lined up – hell, even our parents get on, and we’re good together, you and I. The only way to salvage all of that is for me to… to let it go.” Warren breathed in deep, his voice rational and sure. He’d thought this through – practised it, even. “There’s too much good here to give up on it. I’m man enough to accept that relationships are hard, and that people who love each other f*ck up and lie and cheat. That’s honest. That’s real. And maybe we’ve been too idealistic about this all along. f*ck, maybe a part of me is relieved that you’re not perfect!” Warren said. “Because even when we got together, and you’d tell me that you can’t commit, and you’d tell me that you’d just break my heart – See, that was a challenge. A tactic. I didn’t believe you, I thought it was a ploy. Well f*ck, maybe I believe you now.”

Warren paused and seemed to collect his thoughts. “What I’m saying is that we’re gonna have to change a lot of things about this relationship, and we might not pull through, but we owe it to ourselves to try.”

Charles could no longer help himself. He asked a disbelieving, “What?”

Warren stared deep into his eyes. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said with a hint of desperation. “Let’s not let this be that thing, the thing we break up over.”

“You’d take me back?” he clarified, utterly unbelieving.

A pause. Then: “Yes.”

He let out a short laugh of pure shock and relief. Whatever he’d expected, it had never been this. It had never been – And it had never occurred to him what life might be like with Warren after this. There had only been withouts: without Erik, without Warren. The rest of his life laid out before him, empty once more. But Warren would take him back.

“Like I said, it won’t be easy. It’ll be hard, and I’ll probably be not so nice to you for a while, but it takes time, these things,” Warren reasoned, and yes, Charles agreed with all of it. He’d have so much to make up for, and so much to prove, and so much to apologise for. Warren would take him back. “You’ll have to change, and I’ll have to forgive you, somehow. Maybe therapy or something, we can look into it. We’ll keep it on the down low. No one has to know, you know.” Warren was busy thinking it through, and Charles paused. He felt relief – but where was joy?

“Why?” he asked slowly. “Why do you want me back?”

Warren frowned. “I said I’ll take you back, not – Look, I said it already: we’ve got a good life here. We’ve built so much together.”

“So you want to stay together because we’re out of time to build new lives?” he asked, and even as he said it he felt the fear in him that they indeed were. He would by thirty in a year and a half. Tic toc, tic toc… But that didn’t seem like a good enough reason.

“Why are we with each other – because it’s convenient?” he now asked. “Because our mothers can have dinner dates, or because in the pool of privileged New York families there are only so many gay sons to spare?” Warren looked offended by his wording, but Charles needed Warren to give him something more than convenience and hushed up couples therapy. What about love, or was it too late for that? “You say we’re good together, and you’re right. Darling, we’re fantastic together, in a lot of ways. We really are. But… but in other ways… I wonder if we’re compatible at all. I fly home from Geneva, like I’ve done for three years, and I’m alone and without you, and I want to get married and I want to have kids, and I want a husband, and you want – you want the job at PPRC. And I used to be like that too, heading for a professorship by thirty-five, I always dreamed. But I don’t. I don’t know if that’s me anymore. I don’t…”

“You can have all those things,” Warren said, and Charles smiled sadly, saying, “You said ‘you’ can. Not we.”

He leaned back into the couch and studied Warren. Whatever distance he felt between them right then wasn’t about Erik anymore – it wasn’t about sex, or cheating, or trust. It was about something else that had been lurking in the back of his mind for… for far longer than he cared to admit. For well over a year, or two. Maybe even three. Now it was just him and Warren, and what they had, and what they’d built. Warren was right: there was a hell of a lot of good there.

“I love you,” Charles said. “I do, and I don’t want to lose you either. But do you ever think there is more to love than what we have?”

“Are you talking about soulmates?” Warren asked disdainfully. “We’re men of science, Charles.”

“Not soulmates, no,” he said. “There’s no such thing as the one right person, I know that. Ultimately, most relationships are… relationships of convenience, of habit, of… fondness.” They had all of those three. “But is it idealistic, do you think, to hope for a lifelong relationship that doesn’t question itself? Maybe that’s what I mean… Just the sense that all the mundane day to day is worth it, when you see the man you love smile. You see them, and you know. You know. Maybe that feeling is what I’m talking about. That’s all.”

A car started honking on the street outside. Someone’s footsteps sounded in the stairwell of the building.

Back in the living room, they looked at each other sadly.

“But we have that,” Warren said quietly, sounding a little lost.

Charles asked, “Do we?” and the two words hung in the air between them, like they were reaching out to something.

Chapter 9: Nine

Chapter Text

Nine

The alarm woke them up. They’d set one just in case, both convinced that they’d be up long before it. Charles, however, hadn’t accounted for how difficult it would be to fall asleep in the first place: he’d tossed and turned as the night stretched, and the shadows of the bedroom had become unrecognisable in the morning hours. Warren, beside him, had bad dreams and was restless, and a few times they were both awake at the same time, but they didn’t speak, nor did they touch.

Upon waking Charles saw that they’d tangled together in their sleep after all. Warren was pressed to his back with an arm snugly around his waist, and Charles’s own arm rested over Warren’s. They’d awoken like this hundreds of times, but this morning was unfamiliar.

Warren pulled back from him, almost in haste. Charles swallowed and reached out to mute the alarm.

When he turned to face Warren, the other was lying back on the bed, naked under the covers, with no trace of a smile or warmth on his face. It was like waking up to go to a wake, to become aware of a new day only to be reminded that someone had died. Something had died. Only the burial was left.

A stale taste of alcohol lingered in his mouth, but beneath that he tasted Warren: saliva, sweat and come. They hadn’t had sex like that before. It’d felt as if they were forcing org*sms out of each other, avoiding eye contact and grabbing each other’s hips to get it over and done with. It’d been self-conscious, angry and sad. Maybe it’d been a keepsake, Charles now thought, but it wasn’t a memory he wanted to keep. No, he wanted a happier memory, one less laden with guilt and sorrow. Anything but this moment.

When Warren looked at him, eyes distant and sad, Charles didn’t know what to say. Everything was inadequate. Charles was inadequate. Warren, voice rough from sleep, said, “I’ll grab a shower,” and Charles said, “Sure.”

Warren got out of bed. Charles didn’t watch him go.

Once he heard the water running, he got out of bed with stiff limbs, pulling on boxers and a t-shirt. The morning was cold, and he wrapped himself up in his bath robe. Warren often hummed in the shower, but no humming could be heard.

Charles observed the start of a new day from the living room window, wrapped up in his robe. It looked like it would be a sunny, early spring Saturday. Two women were jogging down the street, while cars went up and down it. A man was pushing a buggy along, and a child of two or so was beaming, hands outstretched from the buggy, enjoying the rare English sunshine.

Nothing new under the sun, he first thought, but then realised his mistake: the ‘For Sale’ sign outside the building was new. Two days, it’d been there now. Two days. The sign had the agency’s logo and phone number on it for those looking for a flat to buy. He stared at it numbly. How had they gotten here?

“Hey,” Warren said, and Charles realised that he had been staring outside, immobile, for far longer than he’d realised. Warren was in the living room doorway, not just dressed, but wearing shoes. Oh.

Oh.

Making eye contact seemed like a chore.

Warren had his shoes on.

Maybe the quiet acceptance that the two of them shared was the worst part; he wasn’t sure. All this hassle, he thought, when it could be so easily fixed: all they needed was for one of them to drop down on one knee, right then, right there, and produce a litany of promises. That was all they needed, and maybe one of them would reconsider.

“Should I call you a taxi?” he asked and wanted to laugh. Was he enabling this?

Warren shook his head. “I’ll walk to the station.”

“Walk?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Right.”

Warren only had that small carry-on suitcase now. All the rest of Warren’s belongings had been FedExed to Geneva the day before, after which they’d opened that bottle of wine they’d been saving for a special occasion. A special occasion! Well, it certainly had been: the two of them in the living room, talking about the good times and the bad times, and every now and then Warren had said something hurtful and mean that Charles knew he’d deserved. The conversation had been filled with long pauses and awkward silences, anger and resentment and so much sorrow spilling into their words. But there’d been laughter, too, and many “remember when?”s. Warren had kissed him after the second bottle was done – Charles never would have dared to try anything, but he was grateful when Warren did.

Warren now looked like he was ashamed that he’d slept with Charles one final time. None of that usual glow was there: the smug smirk, the knowing glint, the confident grin – all gone. They stood there in their living room, and Charles knew that Warren would lie to his friends about how he’d spent his last night in London. Charles was beneath him, now.

Everyone knew: their friends, their families, their outraged and bereaved mothers. Everyone thought they were crazy. Everyone thought they were making a huge mistake.

Warren looked blank and hollow. Charles still carried the scent of him. Warren was showered and clean.

“Well,” he said, the word sour and thick in his mouth. He followed Warren out into the hall, where Warren put on his coat. Warren zipped up. Charles felt short of breath. He was penitent, he truly was. “Well,” he said, a second time.

“Yeah,” Warren agreed. They both knew what they meant.

And, giving into weakness, he burst out, “Christ, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”

Warren regarded him, not angrily but almost with a detached blankness that was worse. They were toughening themselves up, he realised, growing thicker skin, until they could put enough distance between themselves and become strangers once more. “You should be sorry,” Warren replied.

When Warren moved, with his carry-on suitcase in one hand, Charles automatically slipped out of the way. The door opened. Warren halted. They were just going to let it die, and that was the most absurd part of it. They both were going to step back, idly, and let their relationship die. Absurd! A mistake! They still loved each other, in a lot of ways. There was still a lot of good there.

But it wasn’t enough. God, how he wished it could have been enough.

“Have a nice flight.”

“Thanks. Let’s hope it’s on time.”

“Usually are, the morning flights.”

Warren hummed, made to leave, but then turned back and said, “You know you should be sorry. You really should.” In the one icy glance that he gave Charles was more resigned disappointment than Charles wanted to face.

Warren closed the door behind himself, with some force. Charles’s breath escaped his lungs, and then he wiped his cheeks, letting his shoulders slump. Three years, gone. Three years, wasted. Three entire years had just walked out of the door.

f*ck, why did everyone think that being content was enough? That being okay should suffice?

He inhaled, exhaled. He closed his eyes.

He should probably wash up those wine glasses they’d used the night before.

Yes, he probably should.

Ororo skyped them on a Saturday evening. She was in Kangaamiut, which she said was a small cluster of houses that belonged to the local fishermen, and not much else. It was beautiful out there, though, and Ororo wished that Shani could have seen it. Shani blinked at the screen, and Erik held her gently in his lap as they sat by the kitchen table and smiled at the laptop screen together. Ororo’s voice kept breaking off and her picture was grainy, and Shani looked doubtful. “Mommy, are you far?” she enquired.

“Yes, baby, Mommy’s pretty far.”

“Mommy’s in Greenland, Herzchen,” Erik said.

Shani shifted in his lap and then said, “When will you come play with me?”

Ororo kept on smiling, though it wasn’t a real smile. “Soon, I promise. Mommy will be back real soon.”

‘Soon’ was months away, but Erik didn’t tell this to Shani. Instead, after the call, he made her retrieve her children’s atlas, and they sat in the living room together to see where Greenland was. Shani had recently moved from her dinosaur obsession to maps instead and could point out Germany on a map of Europe (pointing at the middle of the continent was close enough, Erik thought). They practised memorising which animals lived in Africa and which animals lived in Europe, and they were still absorbed in the task when Marie got to their house.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Erik said because he had only called her up the day before.

“Yeah, well, as it turns out I had no weekend plans,” Marie said, and then broke into a grin when Shani came running towards her. “Look at you, my little monster!” Marie exclaimed and picked her up. Shani was beaming and already babbling at Marie excitedly.

Erik left them in the living room and went to get ready for his… whatever. He wasn’t entirely sure how to dress for ‘hanging out’, which was what Angel had invited him to. This would be their second date after Erik had taken her out for a meal the week prior. He thought he’d blown it, because she hadn’t been as into him as she had been back in November when he’d gotten pretty good snogs out of her. Not returning her calls had put her off him, it turned out. He had apologised, of course, and explained that he had been so busy with the new science building that dating had had to wait. He hadn’t said a word about Charles. Why hadn’t he blown the whistle on Charles, he wondered as he stood in front of the bedroom mirror post-shower, scrutinising himself: tie, or no tie? Why had he let Charles get away with it?

He thought of Charles back home with Warren, having a cosy evening for two: a simple meal, some red wine, some telly on the couch, snuggling against each other. Charles telling Warren about his day, Charles’s deep, melodic laugh in the air, and his wise, blue eyes alight, and –

He was squeezing the tie in his hands so hard that his knuckles were white. Embarrassed, he loosened his hold.

Not again. Christ, not again. He needed to stop.

When he’d called Angel up, she’d easily agreed to a dinner with him. She was every bit as stunning as he remembered. He knew that to be vain, but other men had been eyeing her up when they’d been out together, and he’d been pleased that he was her date. Her conversation seemed to have improved from what he’d remembered, to the extent that he wondered how much he’d actually asked about her back in the day. They had talked about parenting, mainly, as it turned out that Angel had babysat her younger siblings and cousins regularly when she was a teenager. She was from Wyoming and her family owned a farm out there – she showed him some pictures on her phone. After that, Erik talked about Shani, as he often did. He’d said that Ororo had now gone away as a part of a polar vortex study, and Angel had made the right kinds of sympathetic noises, but no smooching had followed outside the restaurant. They’d hugged and she’d said that she had had a nice time.

But as no immediate calls or texts had followed their dinner date, Erik had assumed he’d blown it. He hadn’t been sure how upset he was over that – a little upset, because if Charles was marrying that chisel-chinned American frat boy scientist, then Erik could at least date a gorgeous dancer – but when Angel had texted to ask him to come hang out, he’d jumped at the opportunity. Back in the game after all! Anything seemed better, frankly, than spending the evenings alone, catching up with work once Shani was in bed.

He now decided that no tie was the right call for this situation: keep the top two buttons of his light blue shirt undone and choose one of his nicer belts that went well with his black trousers. He hadn’t shaved recently, and his stubble was getting long. It was too late to shave, and he brushed his chin, considering if he liked the development or not – and would Angel?

When he got downstairs, Shani was repeating their earlier lessons to Marie, who was sat on the couch with her. The atlas lay open in Marie’s lap, and Shani was listing animals in Africa: “Lions! And monkeys! And elephants! And giraffes! But no penguins.”

“How do you know all that?” Marie questioned, gaping. “My good gracious me, you’re just the smartest little girl I know!”

Shani smiled winningly. “Papa says I know lots!”

“You sure do, sweetie pie.” Marie then looked up, her smile fading. “And you’re looking like the prize bull at the fair.” Erik had his shoes in hand, and he sat down on the adjacent couch to put them on. He decided that being a prize bull was a compliment. Marie studied him and then said, “So what time will you be back?”

“Midnight the latest,” he said, doing his shoe laces.

“Hmm,” Marie said.

“Wohin gehs’ du, Papi?” Shani asked and, since explaining a date to Shani seemed too complicated, he said that he was going to meet a friend.

“And how old is she again?” Marie asked. Angel was a year older than Marie, having freshly turned twenty-four. Marie’s tone was one of disapproval, but Erik saw no reason why he shouldn’t be going out with a woman that much younger than him. They were all adults, so what did years matter? He needed to get out there, not stay at home and mope. He had rabbinical permission, even!

“Angel is very mature for her age,” he told Marie, and Marie said, “Sure, sure.”

He grabbed a taxi to a Jamaican bar at Notting Hill that had people standing on the pavement outside with drinks, loud live music thumping from indoors. Angel was inside in a short black dress that had an open back, her black hair in a shiny, sleek ponytail. She smiled at the sight of him, and he pecked her on the cheek. “They’re doing two for one co*cktails!” she informed him over the reggae band’s music, a widely smiling Jamaican woman singing and swaying on the stage, hitting all the notes. “Come on, what you having?”

They exchanged some pleasantries and updates, but conversation wasn’t much on the menu as Angel soon led him to dance. Thankfully, reggae had been very popular in Cuba: he was more than fine on the dance floor with the reggae music playing. Angel, as a dancer, needed little guidance and outshone him by a mile, but he wasn’t completely ridiculous dancing with her, so he counted it as a win. His moves seemed to make her warm up to him a little, too.

The party seemed to get going around them, the band turning to a faster tempo, a scent of rum and lime in the air. Angel placed her wrists on his shoulders and shimmied up to him quite seductively.

Well, here he was: in a trendy bar on a Saturday night, getting buzzed on rum while reggae music played in the background. He had a beautiful date, and he wasn’t looking too shabby himself. Life wasn’t over, not by a long shot. He was intact and he had something to give to the world. The band kicked into a new song, a cover of a Hotel California that somehow lent itself very smoothly to a Caribbean beat.

Angel’s hand now squeezed his shoulder. “Some of my friends are here! Let’s go say hi!” She grabbed his hand and tugged him along, and Erik realised how nice it was to hold someone’s hand, and have his own held. It was such a small gesture taken for granted every day, but really, the Beatles had been onto something when they’d recognised it for having the great romantic power that it did.

Angel took them to a couple who were ordering drinks at the bar. The couple – Liam and Daisy, maybe? Or Rose? She’d definitely been a flower of some kind – said it was nice to meet him. Daisy-Rose was in Angel’s dance company, and Liam was a street dancing teacher in an arts college, Angel explained. Angel was being quite handsy with him, so he figured Angel wanted to show him off. He didn’t mind – Charles had never showed him off at all or introduced him to any of his friends. It had taken him far too long to realise why.

Liam and – Poppy! That was it, Poppy. Liam and Poppy would be leaving soon to attend someone’s gin party in Soho. Angel asked if he’d like to go too, but he said that he needed to be home by midnight – only an hour and a half to go now. Angel burst out laughing. “Like Cinderella, huh?”

He grinned at her. “Yeah, I guess: like Cinderella.”

Angel was tipsy on the co*cktails and pulled him right up to her. “Well, Cinderella, I guess we should be time efficient, shouldn’t we?”

She kissed him, and. Well. She led him to the back of the bar, where they entered the women’s toilets. “Excuse us, ladies!” she said to the women at the sinks, who laughed and gasped as they entered one of the cubicles. Erik was as surprised as they were, staring at Angel in disbelief as she locked them inside.

“The, uh,” he tried, his throat suddenly dry. It wasn’t as if he was new to sex in semi-public places (Charles at nineteen, back in Australia, hadn’t cared where they f*cked, and Erik had obliged very happily – in their rental car, in a shared hostel bunk room while others were out, in an art gallery men’s room, even), but such situations didn’t usually just spring up on him like this. Also, it had been years since he’d done anything like this. “Don’t you, maybe, want to go back to your place?”

Angel didn’t live far away – they could manage a trip there. But Angel just shook her head, grinning. “Why bother? Isn’t this fun?” She pressed him against the cubicle wall. She smirked and said, “You’ll owe me for this one.”

She proceeded to get down on her knees and blow him. She was, in all honesty, rather very, very good at it, and Erik could appreciate a good blowj*b when he received one. “The, uhm,” he managed, trying to decide where to put his hands: her head, her shoulders? “Oh,” he managed as she sucked hard on his length. Right: this was happening. And they might get caught, which was a definite turn-on, and she was a lot filthier than he’d thought, which was welcomed, and it was really nice, after all, to have a mouth on one’s dick.

For f*ck’s sake, he barked at himself: stop thinking and enjoy it! Who knows when you’ll next get head? Exactly!

He bit on his bottom lip, kept one hand politely on her head, and closed his eyes, while her mouth moved up and down his length. It wasn’t hard to make him come. She asked him to give her a warning, and as he did, she pulled back, and he came over her palm that was covering the head of his co*ck. He exhaled shakily, the back of his head resting against the cubicle wall.

Angel stood up, flushed and out of breath. Erik zipped himself up, unsure if he ought to say thank you, while Angel cleaned her hands on toilet paper. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her lips puffy, and then dusted off her dress. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he kissed her instead, and she tasted like him, and f*ck if that wasn’t a turn on. He loved kissing someone when they tasted like his co*ck, like his come – there was a possessive quality to it that drove him insane. He could spend ages kissing Charles after a blowj*b.

“Swapsies next time?” Angel said with a laugh as they snuck out of the toilets.

“Yes, absolutely,” he said, liking the thought of her whimpering as he went down on her. Hell, maybe in another public spot – he felt reckless and brave. Who had known on Monday of that week, when he was prowling around the new science building that now had all floors, walls and even a ceiling, that come Saturday he’d be getting frisky in a club and getting head from a gorgeous American dancer? He definitely hadn’t thought this when he and Shani had enjoyed spaghetti hoops for dinner earlier that evening – enjoyed was a tad too strong, of course. And he definitely had not foreseen himself being so bold as to actually follow through with anything so naughty, but it helped him forget that just the other night he’d jerked awake when he hadn’t felt a figure next to him in bed, and in his sleep this had set off alarms.

Angel came outside to see him off. She was going to the gin party with Liam and Poppy and said it was a shame Erik wasn’t joining her. Erik asked if she wanted to join him in the cab if she was going to Soho, but she shook her head. “I’ll drop by my flat first.”

Erik stalled and looked down the street for a taxi. She lived close by, he knew this. If she was going by her flat anyway, why the ladies’ room blowj*b? Was she a thrill seeker, or hadn’t she wanted to take him to…? “Look, uh.” He cleared his throat. “You don’t have a… a boyfriend or anything like that back at your flat, do you?”

Angel looked at him in surprise. “What? Of course not.”

“No?”

She laughed like she was unsure whether to be amused or annoyed. “No. But I do have a cat that needs feeding.”

“Oh. Right.” He felt like an idiot.

Angel looked mildly shocked as she processed his question. “Did you think I did? After we just –” She motioned back at the bar.

“Well, no! No, of course not. I didn’t mean to, er, insinuate –” He sighed and gave up. “I’m sorry if that seemed rude. I only asked because… Recently, I was seeing someone, and he said he was single when he wasn’t.”

“A he?” she clarified, and he said, “Yeah, a he.” Angel looked even more surprised, but then just nodded. “Okay, then,” she said. “Right.”

“I just thought…” He motioned in the direction where he imagined her flat was. “It was stupid, I know. I’m sorry I said anything.”

“No, that’s okay,” Angel said. She was clearly working through this – the accusation or Erik not having mentioned he was bisexual, he wasn’t sure. “That really sucks. I’m sorry someone did that to you.”

“Don’t be, it’s fine,” he said, rushing it out. He didn’t want the blowj*b to turn into a pity job retrospectively. Together, they looked down the street, Erik wishing for a taxi to appear more ardently than before.

Angel sounded hesitating when she said, “You know, uh, I’m not looking for anything super serious right now. Not from the get go, anyway, you know?”

“That’s fine. I mean, totally fine. Good. That’s good.” He was nodding too much. “Yeah. Slow is, or would be, ah. Good for me.”

“Okay. Good,” she said, and they looked at each other and laughed. ‘Slow’ probably wasn’t practising oral sex in a bar toilet, but they seemed to get each other. If Erik had learned one thing, it was not to be planning a forever after without anything to go on.

They hugged, quite chastely, before Erik got in his taxi. Angel waved him off before heading down the street, and Erik gave his address to the driver, straightening his shirt and checking, discreetly, his crotch for any spillage. Thankfully he didn’t see any.

He looked out the window at the lively streets of people out on the town, smiling to himself for the first time that week, he reckoned. Maybe there were still people out there he would be able to connect with. Just maybe. And he didn’t even need people; just the one would do.

They slowed down at traffic lights. He saw Charles on the other side of the street. He jerked upright, his stomach plummeting, but after a double decker passed, Erik realised how little the man looked like Charles at all: mere similar height, same long-ish brown hair and a beard, and that was where the similarities ended. Yet his heart was racing like mad.

He’d felt relieved in that one second where he’d thought it was Charles: finally, after all these weeks! It was goddamn torture to work a few blocks away from Charles, and every commute, every lunch break, he was expecting to see Charles, to bump into him, and he wasn’t sure if he dreaded it or longed for it. And in the one second he thought he’d seen Charles, he’d felt like he could stop the taxi, stumble out onto the street, and go pull Charles into a fierce kiss filled with weeks of longing. He could stop this, all of this, and he meant the drinks and the bar and the toilet encounter and him taking a taxi home in rumbled clothes, where Marie would look at him judgingly, eyebrow raised, and he was angry and upset that the man who he’d thought was Charles wasn’t Charles at all.

He leaned against the backseat and closed his eyes. The lights changed; they kept moving. The sense of exhilarated joy was gone, and he fought against the feeling that he’d just cheated on someone. Of course he hadn’t – not even in the slightest. Christ, he definitely had absolutely no one to even cheat on.

He was doing fine.

Really – he clenched his fists, palms sweaty, heart still racing – he was fine.

London became distorted in the weeks that followed Warren’s departure, like someone had painted over the city with a wide brush that made familiar sights unrecognisable. This included their home: the estate agent prepped their flat for a viewing, bringing in a vase of flowers and fresh oranges for the kitchen. These details, the man maintained, made all the difference in selling the place!

He and Warren had agreed, firmly, on a price they were both happy with. That had been the pillow talk of their final night together: what price were they giving their dreams?

He waited out the weekend viewings at Raven and Christian’s flat – the latter had officially moved in now. The estate agent called him and Warren separately to say that no one had matched their asking price, but he was sure a few couples were intending to sleep on it. Charles then hoped for Warren to call him, so that the two of them could assess if they should lower the asking price. But Warren didn’t call.

Charles was both happy and unhappy about the flat not selling: with Warren gone, he didn’t feel comfortable there. They still owned the place together, and he felt like he was taking advantage of that fact. At the same time, the thought of having to move, which he eventually would have to, seemed like unnecessary stress that he wanted to put off for as long as possible.

He went to the university every weekday and worked long hours, from eight to eight, after which he still had to go home. During these evenings of tired idleness and restlessness he paced the bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, and he would have called Jean and Scott hadn’t the two been away on their honeymoon in Laos. Some people could make relationships work, he thought, not everyone was a f*ck up.

The estate agent had left the flowers. They were dying, now.

The flat felt hostile and strange. Charles had packed away the pictures of him and Warren that he had not managed to put out for ages, partly in fear that Erik would show up unannounced. And, indeed, Erik had just shown up that first night, with the paperwork, when they’d wrecked the kitchen. And Erik had shown up uninvited later, too, that day when he’d dropped by during his run in Regent’s Park, flushed and sweaty from the workout, to say that Charles was important to him, that Charles mattered, and Erik was sorry he hadn’t told Ororo of them, and Charles had all but dragged Erik upstairs to the bedroom where they’d made love, and Erik had said that he was in love with him.

Yes, well. He had put the pictures of him and Warren away. Never knew when the flat might sell, he reasoned: better start packing.

But the flat wasn’t entirely free of Warren. One thing remained. Charles was keenly aware of this, but it took him a few weeks before he rolled out of bed on a Saturday, got dressed, and grabbed a taxi to Mayfair like he had intended to do so all along.

When he entered the jewellery shop, he was thankful for the professionalism of the sales assistant. After the initial flinch when he placed the ring box on the counter and mumbled that he was returning it, the woman’s mouth parted in a pleasant, kind smile, her eyes attentive and betraying thankfully little sympathy. She’d clearly seen this before: oh no, she was thinking, he got rejected! But Charles had never even asked. He’d got caught in his lies long before that.

Would he like to look at other rings instead? No, he did not need a ring. This ring or any ring. Was he sure? Yes. He just would like to return this one, please. Of course, sir.

On the other side of the sales room, a young man and woman were choosing their wedding rings, chattering and chittering in happiness. Charles fidgeted, finding it hard to swallow. The woman serving him examined the ring to make sure it was in perfect condition – and it was. Charles had looked at it often, but he’d never even taken it out of the box.

After the deed was done, he walked out to the streets of Mayfair, rid of the box that he had carried around with him like a nervous secret, a sensitive bomb that he’d pushed into shoeboxes, to the back of drawers. Why had he hidden it for so long? Why had it been so hard to just ask Warren if he wanted to get married?

And the right moment! For months he’d kept telling himself that he was merely waiting for ‘the right moment’, but now, with their flat for sale, he recognised that for the lie that it had been.

f*ck, he thought, and came to a stop in the middle of the street. Had he ever really been sure he wanted to spend his life with Warren? Had he ever been sure he wanted to propose?

The unsettling realisation had him looking for refuge in a pub just off Baker Street. He sat by one of the windows, watching people pass by. Someone had left a copy of the day’s Guardian, and he read the news and drank his whisky and tried not to feel like a man who had just returned an engagement ring. He could tell you what it felt like: sh*tty, that was all.

He checked his phone, but had no missed calls or texts, which added to his misery. Warren was a man of his word: Warren had said that they were done, and they were. Not once had Warren broken his silence since leaving the flat. Charles, well, Charles wanted to talk to him still, all the time. But he didn’t get to cheat on Warren and say that their love wasn’t enough for him, and then call him up to say that he missed him. He knew that, but to him it made sense to miss Warren at the same time as knowing that their relationship hadn’t been right for him in the end.

But this silence? It was unnatural! Three years… Three years! And they were selling their flat, and Charles had just returned Warren’s engagement ring. His instinct was going to Warren with his woes, but he needed to relearn that, too.

He had a new email, though, and he checked the inbox. An email was telling him that there was a flight to Lima, Peru that would be departing in seventy-two hours from Amsterdam Schiphol, and that Drs Xavier and Worthington should now choose their seats.

“Oh Christ,” he breathed in realisation, shocked that he’d somehow managed to forget all about it. He’d never cancelled Warren’s thirtieth birthday present! He’d returned the ring but forgotten about Peru! How could he forget about Peru?

He looked around the drowsy pub, but no one there looked like they could potentially help him figure out how the f*ck his life had turned into such a mess. He swore under his breath and then decided to just suck it up and do something. The day was a day for decisive action, after all, and so he called Warren. The second he pressed ‘dial’, he felt a rush of blood to the head, a wave of nervous nausea and longing, but he persevered. And Warren thankfully answered, tone neutral in the simple “Hey”, like Warren had been expecting the call all along. And Charles, for his part, was drinking whisky at one in the afternoon, by himself, having returned the ring.

It seemed surreal that Warren had been a short dial away the entire time. In almost bewilderment, he said, “Hey. How are you?”

“Yeah, well, same old I guess,” Warren said. Charles pictured Warren back in the Geneva flat on a Saturday afternoon, probably getting on with some work. It was funny, almost, that Charles now finally knew how much Warren had cared for him: so much that he’d turned down the London job. Warren had used the leverage to renegotiate his position at CERN instead, walking away from the opportunity PPRC had offered him. Apparently a city of eight million people was too small for the two of them, after what Charles had done. “What’s up?” Warren then prompted, a little restlessly. Charles could no longer call without any reason.

And so he explained about Peru, about the five-day trek to Machu Picchu he had booked them on, for Warren’s thirtieth birthday. He explained how he had forgotten all about it, and that Warren should still go. Charles had booked for two – Warren should go with Bobby, maybe, if Bobby could get time off work at such short notice. “There will be an admin fee to change the name of the passenger, but I’ll cover that,” he said, finally.

Warren didn’t say anything at first. What a way to turn thirty: newly single and having walked away from a dream project after getting cheated on by your partner.

Warren exhaled on the other end of the line, and Charles stared at the Guardian article on a recent MP scandal, eyes unseeing. He knew he’d overdone it even when he’d booked the surprise: the trip screamed his adulterous guilt. At that moment they both knew it. Warren said, “Never mind it.”

A punch would have served the same effect. Charles sat up straighter, indignant. “No, you should take it. It’s all paid for – the hotels in Lima and Cusco, all sorted. I paid for the hike to Machu Picchu and all of it, I just – It slipped my mind. Please, Warren, you should go.”

“You keep it,” Warren said, but what he really meant was that he didn’t want anything from Charles.

“But –”

“Charles, I’ll go to Peru on my own sometime.”

“Right. I see,” he said, hanging his head. “Okay.” He was once again a man who had just returned an engagement ring. He slumped his shoulders, sighing. “You always really wanted to go, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Warren said. “Thanks,” Warren then added, uncertainly.

Charles realised that they were out of places to see together. Peru was only the first of all the little scenarios that they had both imagined that would never come true. When a relationship ended, so much more died than the day to day companionship: plans died, dreams died, entire futures died. Charles felt yet another vision die, right then.

“You should go,” Warren then said. “Maybe it’d do you some good.”

“Good?” he repeated. “How so?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Raven might go with you,” Warren said, paused, then added, “Or ask one of your ex-boyfriends, since you’re so friendly with them.”

There it was! “That’s completely uncalled for,” he said.

“Yeah? Feels fair to me.” Warren’s tone was challenging, wanting to pick a fight.

“I don’t know how many times I can apologise, or –”

“I’m sick of your apologies: they mean sh*t. If you really f*cking cared, you wouldn’t have f*cked that guy in the first place!” Warren snapped back, and the anger in his tone surprised Charles. He thought they’d moved past this, but then he realised that there was no scenario in which he and Warren would ever be over Charles’s cheating. It would always stay between them, angry and painful.

Charles squeezed the phone in his hand. “If that’s all you have to say, then I guess we’re done.”

“You don’t get to say when we’re f*cking done – I do,” Warren said, and hung up on him. Warren had never hung up on him before, not ever.

Charles placed his phone onto the table, as if it were contagious. He’d missed his companion, and what he got in turn was anger. They had been amicable, hadn’t they? Warren had wanted to bed him one final time – they had held each other, they had kissed, they had had sex. Amicable, surely. They’d waved each other off with more sadness than anger.

And now they were swearing at each other over the phone.

He finished his drink. He had overdue sabbatical to take.

He could do whatever the hell he wanted, these days.

Raven said that he was insane and that he should just stay put. But it was the Easter holidays, Charles had booked the time off months earlier, and he’d paid for the flights already. Raven shook her head at him. “What are you going to do in Peru? I’ve been to South America. Trust me, it’s not your scene.”

“Why wouldn’t I enjoy it?” he asked.

“Trekking? In the mountains? The most outdoorsy you get is your Oxford cottage, outside one of the poshest towns in the country! That’s your idea of the great outdoors – having the A40 half a mile away!”

But he would not be persuaded, and so he flew to Amsterdam, where he went to the Van Gogh Museum, had dinner in a nice restaurant by one of the canals, and the following morning got on a plane to Lima. Just as his plane took off, he felt a sense of utter disbelief, but he would see this through. It wasn’t as if he’d never gone to a strange country by himself before: he’d been to conferences from Johannesburg to Oslo, from Seattle to Moscow. He was a well-seasoned traveller – in cities, he admitted, and he could navigate most university campuses with relative ease.

The last time he’d gone to explore like this had been in Australia. He’d had the inflated confidence of a nineteen-year-old and the naïve belief that life would work out how he wanted it. And of course it had, for a while: he’d met Erik.

He would be twenty-nine that summer. Maybe it was time for another adventure. He’d become too academic, too boring, too goody-two-shoes – one affair aside. He’d go to Peru and, goddammit, maybe he’d misbehave and do whatever the hell he wanted. No one cared, after all – Warren certainly didn’t care.

As he sat on the plane, he felt his self-confidence inflate once more. Maybe it was in defiance, however.

He quickly decided that he liked Lima and was impressed to discover that it had a population the size of London. The streets were packed and noisy, and the coastal line that the city shared with the Pacific offered both beaches and dramatic cliff drops. The city stretched to all directions in never ending neighbourhoods and blocks. The centre was modern, though he knew that many of the vast suburbs were poor and shabby. Downtown, though, the city followed a strict grid pattern of wide, endless streets that reminded him of numerous American cities. The buildings, though modern, were not as tall, and the facades were more colourful in hues of red and yellow and blue.

His first night there was spent drinking champagne on the hotel balcony. The room was a well-sized double room: the one he’d booked for Warren and himself. He’d forgotten that he’d requested champagne waiting for them, as another romantic gesture that he’d thought might prompt him to propose at last, and so he had a hundred dollar bottle to remind him of his failure.

On his second day there, a little less jet-lagged, he took a taxi to one of the beaches, but he didn’t go swimming because he didn’t want to leave his belongings unattended. He could have asked someone on the beach, but his Spanish was rusty and he was hungover from finishing a bottle of champagne by himself. He got to ‘Perdon, pueden mirar…’ in his head, and then stopped, unsure if he’d used the right verbs, or if he was mixing French with his Spanish. It occurred to him that Erik wouldn’t have struggled, being fluent in both.

It was only April, anyway – it wasn’t that hot. He didn’t need to swim.

He kept thinking of Australia, somewhere far away on the other side of the ocean he faced. That had been ten years ago – ten years! He should feel older and more confident, he reflected, but he felt as young as ever as he sat on the beach in Lima. He certainly felt as clueless about his future as he’d felt at nineteen. Various beach vendors kept trying to sell him sunglasses, although he was already wearing some. The city was lovely, though, he decided. He might have been lost, but what a place to be lost in!

It was too goddamn sad, however, to be drinking by himself in a hotel room, so on the second night after his beach day he went to a club called Lolita that the internet told him was of a ‘mixed and friendly’ clientele. The techno music echoed into the street, and a slightly older gay man stuck in the 80s in a full leather get-up called him ‘lindo’ as he passed. He stalled, worried that Lolita was actually a leather den – he wasn’t that kind of a gay man. The other people in the queue looked younger and trendy enough, however, so he joined them. Back in Australia, he’d gone to a gay club on his first night in the country – he was already a day behind schedule!

The club was busy on a Friday, the smell of weed everywhere, and the average age of everyone seemed to be twenty-five. He was single, he reminded himself once more, and he was on holiday. He should have some harmless fun.

Men were grinding against each other on the dance floor, while a few middle-aged suits at the upper floor bar were getting young twinks drinks as the younger men batted eye lashes at them and twirled in their too-tight jeans invitingly, and on the stairs a group of American college girls were loving the Peruvian gay club scene with their hands in the air and hair everywhere. Charles got himself a cerveza and did a second loop of the lower floor, cruising: seeing who noticed him, and to see who was worth noticing.

Peruvians, Charles had already observed at the airport, were not the tallest nation in the world, and so it was quite easy for him to spot the tall and blond man at the bar, who stood out as distinctively not local. Muscular and lean, the man had sand blond hair tied back on a man bun. He had a strong chin and was by himself – around his own age, he ventured.

Charles stalled. Christ, he hadn’t done this in so long. Three years of Warren, and Charles didn’t know how to pick up men in a gay club anymore. He’d never had to try before – the men usually just appeared offering themselves, especially when he had been younger. Forget romance, forget courting – it was co*cks first and questions later. He was single again – wasn’t this what he’d wanted? And he was horny beyond belief, the weeks of his own hand making him miss the smell and touch of another man, of someone else’s hot skin.

He approached and, over the music, yelled, “Hey, you want a drink?”

The blond man turned to look at him – he had beautiful blue eyes. The man took him in, assessing perhaps if Charles was the best he could do that night. Then the man smiled. “I reckon I do,” he said, and Charles was hit with a strong Australian accent, followed by a wide Australian smile.

Davey was a surfer from Sydney, and he’d been in Peru for four months. Davey wasn’t sure what his plans were, except that he wanted to have a good time while his visa lasted. Davey had the body of a surfer, too – Charles could tell that under the jeans and white shirt was a toned, muscular body.

The excitement of a new sexual conquest swirled in Charles’s stomach, but seemed to stay there instead of spreading anywhere else. Davey asked, three minutes into the conversation, if Charles had condoms on him as he’d run out. Charles figured from this that Davey was a pretty safe bet, even as he assured Davey that yes, of course he did. He’d packed some with him, almost in defiance of Warren’s casual attitude to Charles going by himself. It’d be good for Charles to go? Well fine, he would go, he’d thought, throwing a pack of Durex into the suitcase!

He and Davey, both content that they would be getting each other off before the night was done, started drinking. Davey had grass on him, and at first Charles said no – he was too old for drugs now, and he simply didn’t see the appeal of getting high anymore. Davey said, “You sure? It’s good sh*t.” Davey gave him a lop-sided, sweet smile.

Charles laughed – here he was, in a gay club in Lima, having already picked up a random guy, he was a bit drunk and, f*ck it, why the hell not, what did he owe to anyone, wasn’t he young only just once, and they smoked at the bar because everyone else did, too. Once they were high, they danced, and it was dirty: the club was hot as hell, everyone perspiring. Davey grabbed his hips and grinded against him, eyes sparkling. f*ck it all, Charles thought, and kissed Davey on the dance floor, the techno beat thumping loudly.

Davey’s place was close by. They walked down the avenue in the humid night, smoking cigarettes while Davey talked about what kind of waves were the best to ride. Erik had talked of being a surfer once, Charles remembered, and smiled. Erik might have ended up like Davey – thirty years old, skin prematurely aged from excessive sun and salt water, with a man bun, bumming it out in Lima. Charles was happy that Erik had become a civic engineer instead and had a house in London, a very promising career, and an intelligent and kind daughter. Something respectable, something proper: something secure and worth attaining.

Davey’s place was above a small café bar that was still open at two in the morning. On the other side of the street was a petrol station, with people hanging out under its bright, flickering lights, chatting. The apartment was small, and Davey’s bed might have been the squeakiest bed Charles had ever f*cked on. Or maybe not, he thought as he pounded into Davey from behind, the surfer on his hands and knees. Maybe that hostel in Sidney, as it happened, where he and Erik had stayed almost ten years earlier, topped the squeaky bed competition. Every thrust and roll of their hips, and the bed had screeched. Every time they’d gotten a rhythm going, it felt like they were announcing their copulation to the entire building, perhaps beyond. Erik had demanded that Charles stop f*cking him so that they could pull the mattress onto the floor. They’d done that, and then Charles had slipped back between Erik’s parted thighs, and the floor hadn’t squeaked, thank god, but Erik had kept moaning in German, and Charles had placed a hand over his mouth when he’d made Erik come, and he himself, he still remembered, had groaned confessions of love as he’d climaxed: “I love you so f*cking - nnngghhh.”

Davey was likewise loud, full of appreciate “oh mate”s. There was no love there, however.

When Davey came, he groaned about Charles’s fat, thick co*ck, and Charles finished soon after. Charles lay in the loud, suffering bed next to Davey, catching his breath. Davey drew in air shakily and said, “Let’s have a kip, and I’ll do you if you like?” That sounded good to him, and they dozed off for a while. It was getting light outside when he re-awoke, straddled Davey who awoke to this, and he rode Davey until they both finished a second time. The bed’s squeaking must have woken up the neighbours, but Peruvians appeared sympathetic to the necessities of f*cking.

He got dressed quietly, some hours later. Davey was snoring on the bed, stretched out like a star fish, his fair pubic hair cushioning the now flaccid but well-sized co*ck. Davey was nice and very goddamn attractive. A Warren type, Charles acknowledged, and wondered what some of his friends would have said about that. Charles would pass through Lima after Machu Picchu, so they could meet up a second time, couldn’t they? Charles paused, half into his clothes. Davey mumbled something in his sleep. All Charles had to do was leave Davey a note, maybe, to say what his hotel was, and they could meet again.

Charles stumbled out onto the quiet Sunday street without having written a note. He did the walk of shame, not having the slightest idea where he was. He stopped a taxi to take him back to his hotel, where he showered and then packed.

He already regretted all of it: the excessive drinking, the weed, the gritty dancing, the casual sex. He didn’t want the life most of those people at the club were after. He’d already done it, and he was bored of it – the only thing you got out of it was a hangover. No, he wanted something more, but it seemed this lesser life was all he was worth.

He caught a flight to Cusco that afternoon. He was not taking Peru by storm like he’d thought.

Shani’s fourth birthday was intended to be a mass celebration with happy memories for all to cherish for years to come. The day started off promisingly enough, and Erik felt better than he had in weeks. He should have known, however, that it wouldn’t last.

From the moment she’d woken up that morning, Shani had run around the house, yelling, “I’m four, I’m four!” She had been thrilled that she was finally a big girl, and Erik had struggled to sit her down long enough for him to prepare the house for the party. He put up bunting and hung up balloons, he put away anything that might kill one of the seven children coming – he had a trained eye for spotting a choking hazard if there was one.

All the while Shani fussed and bounced around. “Who’s coming?” she asked, perhaps for the millionth time. He said, “Everyone,” and Shani pressed the issue: “Jeder?”

“Ja, jeder, jeder!” Everyone!

“Mommy kommt auch?”

“Oh, not Mommy. Mommy is far away, remember? But everyone else, I promise. Absolutely everyone.”

Shani buzzed with excitement while he got the carrot and celery sticks ready for the kids, the low-sugar sweets and popcorn ready in bowls. He linked up the Bluetooth on his phone to the stereo and made sure he could play the children’s songs playlist from Spotify. He had just enough time to get Shani into her new, butterfly-printed party dress, before the first guests arrived.

The party proceeded as expected: everyone had come, including the new friends Shani had made at the Shabbat club. Alfie with his parents came, Sophie with her dad, Marie by herself, Azazel with his son Nils, the twins Leo and Becky with their mum, and Logan showed up with a huge teddy bear under his arm that was twice the size of Shani. When Erik opened the door to Logan, he stared at the teddy and, annoyed, said, “Where the hell do you expect me to put that?”

Logan eyed the teddy and then shrugged. “Her room, I’d imagine?”

Shani was excited to see Logan, too, who picked her up easily and flew her through the air like an airplane.

As Erik offered drinks and provided the children with entertainment, he was pretty proud of himself. A month ago, if you’d asked him, he would not have been at all sure he could find the energy to celebrate his daughter’s birthday. He’d been too upset about Charles, too heartbroken and devastated, to even think of putting together any kind of a celebration.

But he’d been better, recently: he’d forced himself to get back out there and move on. He wasn’t sure he’d forgiven himself about the Charles affair, precisely: it bothered him still, when he let himself think about it – so he didn’t. Planning a party had been welcomed distraction from it.

The living room was crowded with people, the children playing and bouncing on furniture. The stereos belted out that it was a small world, after all, and the grownups were chatting, most of them drinking juice, but a few had opted for the beers. Sophie chased Nils around the living room, both of them squealing and laughing. The kids screamed and giggled, fought over toys, stuffed their faces with popcorn, and someone hurt their finger and required a plaster while parents tried to have adult conversations. This was not easy to do when Leo ran up to Erik and Azazel and yelled, “I’m gonna let out a fart!” Leo then laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and Leo’s dad seemed embarrassed with a “Leo, we talked about this!”

Nevertheless, Erik would have been pleased with the day’s proceedings, really, if Shani had enjoyed herself. But when all was said and done, and he brought out the cake, he realised that the day wasn’t what his daughter had wanted after all. The cake was shaped like a green stegosaurus, with red plates sticking from its back, and on each plate was a candle alight. In the middle of the dinosaur was ‘Happy 4th Birthday, Shani!’ in writing, and the adults hummed and awed approvingly as he set the cake on the coffee table for all to see. The kids gathered around the cake religiously, eyes alight with excitement.

“You get to make a wish now,” he informed Shani. The kids kept ogling at the cake – one was even drooling, quite literally. Shani looked at the cake and the candles, and then at the party guests. She appeared to be hesitating. “Go on!” he encouraged her, and someone echoed him: “Go on!”

“Aber…” Shani began, uncertainly. Erik frowned. She beckoned at Erik nervously, and Erik knelt down next to her, placing a soothing hand on her back. The attention was making her shy!

“You just blow the candles out,” he said to her calmly.

“But not everyone is here,” Shani said, looking torn between cake and her wanting to wait.

Erik looked around at the adults smiling at them. “Everyone is here, Shani.” But Shani shook her head. “Everyone came – we all want to wish you a happy birthday.” This, somehow, made Shani’s mouth twist downwards. He squeezed her skinny little shoulder, worried. “What is it? Tell Papa.”

Shani’s eyes were swelling up with tears and she sniffled, looking around. “Churls isn’t here,” she whispered miserably, and Erik was taken aback. But he had spent most of that week telling Shani how everyone was coming to her party, he realised, and it hadn’t even occurred to him that Shani would connect that with Charles, who had disappeared from their lives quite abruptly.

“Who?” Sophie’s mum echoed in concern, but Erik really did not want to explain in front of his acquaintances.

“Oh, but I forgot to tell you!” he said, thinking on his feet. Shani blinked at him uncertainly. “He really wanted to come, but something came up, okay? But he called and said happy birthday and that he wanted you to have lots of cake. Okay? And he wanted you to blow out all the candles in one go. Do you think you can do that for him?”

One of the kids, Leo the Farter, said, “I want cake! NOW!”

“Leo!” his dad said, but Leo was chanting, “Cake, cake, cake!”

“Do you want to blow the candles together?” Erik asked. “We can tell him later how you did.” Shani nodded timidly. She looked around a second time, as if to confirm what she’d feared: Charles had not come.

By five o’clock, the living room and kitchen were like battlefields, full of rubbish and half-eaten carrot sticks. The guests had departed, and thankfully only Marie, Logan and Azazel had even known who this Charles was that Shani had asked after. All three had had the decency not to bring it up with him afterwards either – Erik did not wish to talk about it.

And as he was tidying up, Shani sat quietly on the living room couch. He thought she must have fallen asleep, but then he realised she was brooding. She was clutching the Barbie she had gotten as a present, her frilly dress pillowing around her. One of her socks had rolled down her ankle, and she had dried cake on her cheek. She did not look happy, her mouth a thin line, her brows knitting together.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked, picking up plastic cups and throwing them in the bin liner he was carrying. The coffee table was covered in cake crumbs – he kneeled down and tried sweeping them into the bag, but only smeared them against the top.

“No,” Shani said, tone one of challenge.

“No?” he asked, and Shani shook her head. “You didn’t have fun?”

“No,” Shani then said, more firmly.

“Why not?” he asked and, after hesitating, he said, “Is it because Charles didn’t come?”

Shani shrugged first, but then nodded her head. At the mention of Charles, her angry front seemed to melt away, and her mouth twisted dramatically downwards. She looked close to tearing up again, and he quickly sat next to her and placed her in his lap. He brushed her hair out of the way and kissed her forehead – god, he didn’t know what to do with the guilt he felt. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he held her. He didn’t want to think about how greatly Shani had taken to Charles in such a short time – how good a match the two of them had been. “Charles really, really wanted to come, Shani. He really did, and he thought it was pants that he couldn’t make it. He told me so.” He rubbed Shani’s back soothingly.

“But you said everyone was coming,” Shani mumbled in a teary voice.

“I know I did, I know. Charles just couldn’t make it after all.” And now – for the real dick move. “And Charles told me to tell you that he likes you a lot – he thinks you’re the best little girl in the world. But he can’t come see us anymore, and he told me to say he was sorry.” He swallowed. “Charles isn’t going to come see us anymore. I’m sorry.”

Shani pulled free of him – no longer sad, but angry. She stomped her feet across the living room floor. “I hate today, I hate today!” she yelled angrily.

“Shani!” he almost gasped. He had put days and days of effort into organising the party!

It was a nightmare putting her to bed. She didn’t want to get into her pyjamas, she didn’t want a bedtime story, she didn’t want to be tucked in. Erik had hoped that her birthday would be one of happy memories, which they both sorely needed – it appeared to be the opposite, and he nearly lost his patience with her. Eventually she tired herself out being angry and moody, and she fell asleep with Pete the Pterodactyl, uncharacteristically, rejected on the other side of the bedroom.

Erik knew there was no such thing as angry sleeping, but goddamn, Shani somehow managed to look angry in her sleep too.

f*ck. So here was to yet another failure.

He finished cleaning downstairs, unsure what to even feel about it. It was his fault: he’d let Shani get attached to Charles far too soon, only to snatch him away again. With Ororo coming and going as she pleased, Erik should have known better than to make Shani get used to another adult that couldn’t be trusted. He was doing a sh*tty job of fatherhood once more. God, he’d been so swept away by Charles that he hadn’t properly thought of how their relationship might hurt Shani.

Never again, he thought, never again would he make the same mistake.

He loaded up the dishwasher, turned it on, and exhaled. He thought of Rabbi Levi’s advice: forgive yourself. But it seemed hard with Shani upset now that Erik had finally admitted that Charles wasn’t coming back.

Charles wasn’t coming back. If Shani hadn’t been so young, maybe he could have told her that he was angry about it, too. He was heartbroken, too. If this was hard for her, then by god it was nothing compared to what it was like for him.

But she was too young to think beyond her own feelings. He’d failed them both. And he was failing himself, even letting himself think about Charles now.

When the soft knock sounded from the door around ten o’clock, he was in a sour mood. Angel had been to their house a few times now, for, uh. Well, for sex. Erik didn’t get any weekends off with Ororo away, but thankfully Angel didn’t want dining and entertainment – they had transitioned, quite smoothly, from a bar toilet cubicle to Erik’s bed instead. It had been just as casual as they’d both said it would be: Angel got out of bed after a bit of cuddling, leaving to go back to her place even if it was the middle of the night.

Charles had usually come by after work, helping him with dinner, playing with Shani, watching TV with them before bed. He and Angel skipped all of that.

Angel now pecked him on the mouth and asked if she could use their shower first. “Boiler’s broke at my flat – no hot water,” she complained. He told her where to get a towel and finished cleaning up in the meanwhile.

He was already in bed, with his laptop on his lap, by the time she got to the bedroom. Her hair was wrapped up in a towel, and she was wearing a simple, oversized grey hoodie with a university logo on it, some black knickers, and by the looks of it nothing else.

“It’s a shame my practice clashed with the party,” Angel said, and Erik made an agreeing noise as he peered at the blueprints on the laptop screen. He only mildly felt like an asshole as he avoided the topic of the party. Angel had assumed she was invited, but her dancing practice had gotten in the way. This had saved Erik from the embarrassing task of uninviting her, because he hadn’t intended to ask her. Sure, he could have shown her off to his friends, to Logan, to Marie, the lot of them. With no make-up or pretty clothes, Angel remained a natural beauty. Definitely someone he could quite proudly show off!

He, however, had no intention to mix their casual arrangement with his family and friends. He’d learned to compartmentalise: keep your mouth shut unless there’s something to write home about.

And this was good, him and Angel. It was working as it was: they had already moved past the awkwardness of not really knowing each other, feeling more at ease each time they hooked up. It was good. It was enough. Hell, maybe this was it from now on: he’d remain single, focus on raising Shani alone, and have a casual arrangement on the side. Who said you needed romantic love to be happy, anyway?

“I hope the party was more fun than my day,” Angel said, going to the mirror as she towelled her hair.

“Oh yeah?” he prompted because he didn’t want to talk about how Shani hadn’t had a very good time at all.

“Yeah – you know how you sometimes want to kill your friends?” Angel asked and started detailing her day, from the day’s full dancing practice to the drinks afterwards. “I mean, I was already annoyed at Katie when Raven got there for the co*cktail hour. She’s usually the one you can count on for a good time, you know? But no, she’s changed. All she did was talk about herself!” She huffed. “Whatever. Raven’s just so in love.”

“Yes, she and Christian seem to be quite into each other,” he said in agreement, to show he was listening.

“Are they! Like he’s made of gold, the way she goes on about him! And if not him, then it was about her brother who’s in Bolivia or some place and – Hey. How’d you know about Christian?”

As she turned to him in surprise, Erik already felt like his world had come to a sudden end. Erik knew about Christian because Charles had told him about Raven’s new boyfriend that she was very excited about and, Erik had realised recently, he seemed to have retained every little thing Charles had ever told him, and he failed to see how that mattered, at that moment, because he was stuck on Bolivia.

“You must have told me about them the other day,” he said, surprising even himself with the calm tone he managed to maintain. “Where’s Charles?” he then couldn’t help but ask. Charles was just a twenty-minute car ride away, wasn’t he? Not that it mattered, but Charles was there, in the city – maybe with Warren, but still there. The thought of Charles having disappeared halfway across the world, without Erik knowing at all, made him feel ill.

“I don’t know, I think it was Bolivia?”

“Right. And did Raven say when he’s coming back?” he asked, stupefied and, he realised, suddenly afraid.

“Oh yeah – I forgot you do that chess club thing together.” Angel was now back to examining her face in the mirror, rubbing some kind of lotion on it. She had her rucksack at her feet – Erik could only assume she didn’t suspect Erik had been sleeping with Raven’s brother rather recently.

“Yeah, we’ve got our annual chess championship coming up,” he said, sounding sad even to himself. He wondered once more why he was keeping Charles’s lies for him. He could tell Angel – she was alright. She’d shrug it off.

“Oh there are championships? Cool. Yeah, Charles has gone on holiday – Raven seemed to be angsting about it. Hey, do they strike you as being too close? And why does he sound British when she sounds American, anyway?” she asked, and he just shrugged and said he didn’t know them that well. Another lie.

Charles had left London. Erik couldn’t even f*cking fall asleep without thinking of Charles, and Charles had gone on holiday to Bolivia. And, he knew, if Charles was away on holiday, he was there with Warren. Why did that feel worse than the thought of them back in St. John’s Wood? Because happy couples went on holiday, happy couples took holiday pictures and had slightly more energetic sex than the rest of them. They experienced new, exciting things together. Charles had gone to Bolivia to show how goddamn happy he was with Warren Worthington, like Erik had never happened at all.

And, as far as Charles was concerned, Erik probably had never happened.

At that moment he felt the pain of it all over again – he was at the wedding, standing at the edge of the dance floor, seeing Charles and Warren embrace. Always on the outside, looking in.

That may have been nearly two months ago now, but he was struggling every day, and Charles was somewhere out there, doing just fine. Hadn’t Charles cared? Had that broken down look on Charles’s face, at the pub when Charles had almost begged that the two of them couldn’t end like that, been another lie too? Probably. Most likely.

A liar, a cheat –

Charles and Warren were having such a great time. Oh he was sure they were having such a great time. Christ. Were they engaged yet? God, he’d lose his mind if he heard that they’d gotten engaged. Please, no, Charles couldn’t –

Angel rounded the bed and climbed in. “You know, Raven didn’t even ask me how I was. Not once.”

“No?” Angel shook her head. He shifted restlessly. “You didn’t tell Raven about us, then?”

Angel snorted. “As if I could’ve gotten a word in!” She sighed, taking the pillow and squishing it. She then placed it back down, as if testing it. “I mean, she’s had bad luck with guys. I get if she’s excited that he’s a keeper, but still.”

“Yeah, still,” he said, lifelessly. Maybe it would have trickled down to Charles that way, that Erik was just fantastic too. He already had a hot dancer on his arm and he hadn’t even needed to take her to goddamn f*cking Bolivia to show how okay he was.

Shani missed Charles. He missed Charles. Christ, the Lehnsherrs were a collective mess. Charles had done a number on them, alright.

“What project is this, then?” Angel peered at his laptop screen. He didn’t know why he’d brought up the blueprints to look at, on today of all days. It was on hold again, the whole thing. He should just sell the land. Who was he kidding – he’d never build a house out there, certainly not for his family.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“A house?”

“Nothing, like I said.”

“So is that –” she asked, reaching out to point at the master bedroom, it looked like, when he slapped the lid of the laptop down forcefully. Angel pulled her hand back in surprise.

“Nothing. I just told you.” He placed the laptop on his nightstand.

“…Okay.” She seemed to catch on that he was upset. “Hey, I didn’t even ask – how was the party?”

“Just fine,” he persisted, stubbornly, and sealed her mouth in a kiss. Talking done, sex next, and Angel would be out of the house within the hour. In the morning, it’d just be him and Shani, like it would always be from now on. They couldn’t afford to need anyone else.

He had learned – let no one say that he hadn’t learned.

If at some point Charles had started to feel like a successful, well-endowed single man on the trip of a lifetime, co*cky and drunk on his own conquests, the altitude sickness that bedded him for two days in Cusco snapped him out of this illusion.

The hotel was prepared for weakling westerners like him: they gave him a small portable tank of bottled oxygen, and he kept breathing it in through the rubber mouthpiece that a tube linked to the tank. He wasn’t sure if he could join the hiking team to Machu Picchu now, although he had all of the hiking equipment with him. He’d even trained at Regent’s Park after his decision to go, running around the lake and realising how bad a shape he was in. He hadn’t trained much, he knew, but he’d gone for a run each night for a week. At around six, on Wednesday, he had lingered in the park, stretching by one of the benches near the zoo, hoping for a familiar figure to run past with some friends.

No such luck.

The day before the hike was due to commence, he spoke to the hike leader on the phone, and she had some useful advice on how to battle altitude sickness. She showed up at the hotel and handed him coca leaves. “Just chew them and then store them in your cheek like a guinea pig!” she enthused. “Helps with that headache.” Her name was Julie, she was thirty-five and from Baltimore. “If you keep throwing up, then I wouldn’t come with us. But if you feel better by six o’clock tonight, then come along. If you get sick on the road we can send you back on one of the mules. Happens all the time.”

Charles stayed in bed, taking turns between the oxygen and the coca leaves. He imagined how the trip would be turning out if Warren were there. Warren was impatient and very excitable: the adventures of Cusco would have lured Warren from his bedside, he knew, although Warren would have called every few hours to check up on him. Warren would call him from the museum, from the cathedral, and from a restaurant when he stopped for lunch. Charles would have been clinging onto his oxygen supply, fighting nausea. Warren would have gone out for dinner and for beers that evening – Charles didn’t feel like eating.

And so, Warren or no Warren, his first impression of Cusco would have been the same humble hotel room, empty and quiet, and the nauseating weakness wiping him out.

But Julie the hike leader had been onto something – by that evening, he felt better. He cautiously went for a walk around Cusco, and he bought some Inca Cola from a small mini-market two streets away. He then discovered a French restaurant, realised he was starving, and had one of the best meals of his life. They had a full bodied cabernet sauvignon from near Bordeaux that Charles ordered three glasses of. He might as well have bought the bottle, he thought, when he ordered the third. He was so excited about the wine – being a bit of a wine snob – that he walked back to his hotel quite drunk, but feeling miraculously cured. Who had known to expect a restaurant like that in the heart of Peru?!

He felt less cured when he woke up at four in the morning, hungover, to join his hiking party that was leaving at five thirty. He ate a cautious breakfast, got dressed in his brand new and never used hiking trousers, jacket, boots, and was then ready to hike through the jungle. There was a CCR song that fit the occasion, he thought, although that song was about Vietnam, he was pretty sure, and not the high altitudes of Andean Peru.

They were a group of eight hikers: a Scottish couple on their honeymoon, two French sisters in their forties, a Canadian couple who had been hardcore hikers for twenty years now, a lone German man of fifty, and Charles. Julie was full of energy and advice as their minibus rattled out of town before sunrise. She was robust and practical, her brown hair on a slick ponytail and a khaki cap on her head. “Right,” Julie said, on board the minibus that was taking them to the trek’s starting point. “We’ve got five days of trekking ahead of us. At the end of it, we will be gazing at the most astounding ancient site on planet earth: the city of the Incas, Machu Picchu.”

Hungover and munching on coca leaves, Charles wondered why the f*ck he was bothering. Why not take a goddamn train to Aguas Calientes like normal tourists, and a bus up to the ruins from there? You could do it in a day!

This trek had been Warren’s dream, and that was why he had booked it. Was this a f*ck you to Warren, that he would go tick off something from Warren’s bucket list without him? Was he angry with Warren or was he paying homage? He wasn’t sure. He was sure, however, that five days of trekking with mostly middle-aged strangers sounded like an awful idea. Behind him, the Canadian man snored. The bus kept shaking as it approached their start off point.

Most of their equipment was loaded on mules when they got off the bus. Julie assured that they would have their belongings waiting at ready-made camps by sunset. Charles eyed the sorry looking mule who would carry his bag and a few of the others’: the mule had a sorrowful yet wise face, big eyes emptily taking in yet another group of lazy foreigners on a glorified holiday.

If Warren had been there, he would have liked to have a conversation about Western guilt. The entire economy of the region was based on tourism and tourists like them, however: they had services on offer for those who wanted them. Good old capitalism, Charles thought, but he knew he would tip the mule owners too generously – out of guilt – when the time came.

When they finally started their trek at nine in the morning, he had been up for five hours. Julie was full of energy, somehow, and so were the Scots and Canadians. The French seemed perpetually displeased, and the German man remained blank, offering neither enthusiasm nor a lack of it. Around them mountains rose up and stretched, barren and covered in rocks and green mossy plants. Julie was already ahead to start them on the first day’s trek.

As they took off, warily, Charles had to admit to himself that he still wasn’t an outdoorsy person. Sleeping in tents was something he’d done back in Australia, curling to Erik for shared body heat. He was pretty sure they’d both lost a few virginities in the tent Erik had owned – not that either of them was inexperienced, but Charles had certainly been more adventurous with Erik than his previous partners (three men in total, at the time. Erik said that he’d only slept with two men, back then). There was a lot to discover. Erik, likewise, had often panted, “Well I’ve never done that before,” dazed and sweaty, belly smeared with come. God, they had done obscene things to each other in that tent.

Glancing at his fellow trekkers, Charles knew he would not be f*cking anyone in anyone’s tent. This was real camping and real wilderness. No s’mores, no beach ‘barbies’, no newly acquired German lover who looked at him with shining eyes. Just Charles, two French ladies with bad English, two Scots so in love that they hardly noticed anyone else or the views, two overly chatty Canadians taking pictures of everything, and a taciturn German man plodding along, plus the ever positive Julie. Charles chewed on coca leaves, hiking boots firmly tied to his feet, and cursed his sorry existence. Raven had been right: this was a silly thing to be doing, and he wasn’t proving anything to anyone.

He couldn’t complain about the views, though. He’d been to the Alps and he’d been to the Rockies, for skiing in both instances. But the Andes were something else entirely: the evening saw them in a mountain valley that stretched a mile each way. A stream of icy, clear water ran through it, and all around them mountain peaks reached into the sky; and beyond those peaks, and from between the ends of the valley, in the distance far away, new mountains rose with sharp, snowy tops, majestic and larger than anything Charles had ever seen. He had never been anywhere so remote: at the top of the earth, infinite and astounding. He had not even realised such places could exist.

They camped at 3800 meters above sea level that first night. The mule men had set up red tents in a row, and they ate around a camp fire, emptying dried food from silver bags to a pan full of water. Charles thought he’d never breathed air as clean or thin as this: it was invisible, light water in itself, seeping into his lungs. The Canadians told everyone hiking stories; the Scots listened politely; the French were bored when they couldn’t understand and started speaking to each other instead. The Canadian man looked sorry and, to Julie and Charles, said, “I wish I’d done better with French at school so I could talk to these ladies.” Charles had good French, but not the energy to converse. The women were talking about French theatre, anyway, a subject which he knew little about.

The next day he and the German man, Philipp, mostly walked together, without speaking. It was all up hill on the second day, too – Charles panted and swore. “I need to quit smoking,” he said to Philipp, out of breath. Philipp stared at him. “Ich musse, uhm. Feuer. Nicht machen?”

“Ja,” Philipp agreed. It was the first time he’d spoken all day.

They were heading for the Salkantay Pass, the highest point that they would reach. They arose to the heavens alongside the mountains, the paths they were following getting narrower and rockier. He had never realised anything could be as vast as the landscape he was in. Their voices didn’t echo but got lost in the endless space around them, in the empty valleys, steep hillsides, forgotten plains. They sweated, slowed down, stopped to drink and stretch. “Will you look at that, Claire?” the newlywed Scot enquired of his wife. He was pointing at the view of the mountains around them, grinning.

“A wee bit bigger than Glencoe, alright,” Claire agreed.

“A wee bit? A wee bit?” Malcolm asked, laughing.

Charles didn’t join them for the bonfire that night, but retired early. He was sore everywhere, he felt sick from the thin air again, and he wondered if it was too late to call the whole thing quits. What had he been thinking, anyway? He knew what the hell Machu Picchu looked like, and he didn’t need to go there to believe it was real. He didn’t like any of these people, and he felt f*cking alone, and he had blisters in his feet, and every step hurt. f*cking hell! Why was he torturing himself? At least sleep took him instantly, exhausted as he was from the day’s walk.

He awoke at three in the morning, as his watch told him, with a dire need to piss. The air was icy cold when he got out of his sleeping bag, and he shivered and swore, hating God for having invented the Andes. What a waste of day four, or whenever God had created the Earth! He pulled on his hiking boots and left the tent, feeling cold to his bones.

He hadn’t taken a light with him, and so he stumbled in the moonlight and away from their row of tents. He almost fell over on a rock, cursing into the quiet and cold night. God, this could not be over soon enough! How many more days of this idiocy was left?!

It was only when he was mid-piss, trying to hurry it up to get back in, that he happened to look above.

Skies like that weren’t real, he first thought. There could be no way that that many stars existed, he first reasoned. But while he was a man of large cities and light pollution, he was also a man of science, and as such he knew he was wrong.

The sharp, ominously black ridges of the surrounding mountains reached up into the heavens, and when they stopped the most wondrous display began: the sky wasn’t black or empty, but alive with hundreds, no, thousands of lights, thousands of glimmering, glittering, sparkling and shining stars that twinkled and glowed, that shone and gleamed. The sky shimmered and swirled with hues of purple and blue and the odd touch of gold: he was staring right into the universe, and nothing had ever been as breath-taking as that.

Finished with his business, he stumbled under the starlight, face pointed upwards. The world was cosmic, and as a geneticist he was used to finding worlds and worlds within the smallest things, but he did not often look for worlds beyond, worlds bigger than any human being could truly understand.

He sat down on the cold, rocky earth. He felt thousands of miles away from the nearest soul, although his fellow trekkers were in tents close by. He looked up, breathless, beneath the most astounding display of heavenly beauty: shooting stars, cosmic glow. He briefly felt that he had an awning of the miracles of the universe. Every single step he’d taken so far had been worth it a million times, just to see this.

He didn’t know how long he stayed out there – too long, probably. He was ice cold by the time he finally, and reluctantly, went back to his tent.

He tried to explain this experience – nearly religious – to Julie the following morning. Julie, however, had seen hundreds of such sights, and only agreed that it was beautiful indeed. He shut up after that, and fell in the back of the group with Philipp. It seemed that in the last two days the trekkers had formed groups, and it was too late for Charles, who had been moody and quiet, to try and make friends now.

At least he still had the grumpy company of Philipp. He wondered about this older man, who never spoke, but nevertheless was determined to go on. He was the oldest of them, in mid-fifties, and clearly the trek was taking a toll on him. Charles slowed down to keep pace with him, and Philipp seemed resigned to the fact, not resenting it and not being appreciative of it either. The only real emotion that Charles could sense from him was obstreperous German single-mindedness. Philipp would make it over the next hill and the next rise, the next cliff and the next ascend.

But they were done ascending, having reached their highest point. The next two days saw them going downhill, away from the barren and rocky mountain plains into humid and hot rainforests. The change seemed sudden: they awoke in the rocky, sky-brimmed scenery, and went to bed under lush and vibrant trees. Charles was finally in the swing of the whole trekking business, and he even enjoyed the exertion.

On the fourth night, they camped near Aguas Calientes, the tourist town full of the travellers who had simply taken the train. To preserve the nomadic experience, they stayed away from the town’s restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops, and set camp a mile outside it. “We’re getting up at four in the morning,” Julie told them, “and before it’s time for your second coffee, you will be in Machu Picchu.”

She was right. In the morning they passed Aguas Calientes and came to the bottom of the steep mountain that housed Machu Picchu at its top, some four hundred meters above them, Julie said. This final ascend took the form of endless stone steps pushed into the steep hillside, underneath heavy, bright green vegetation. They panted and gasped for breath, sweating, but they had been toughened up by the four days it had taken them to get there. They were so close now, and they spoke little, full of anticipation and excitement. Charles, however, still was unsure if the experience was that much different than that of those who simply used vehicles to get there.

And, finally, they emerged next to a car park where the shuttle buses left people off. The first of the busses for that day hadn’t arrived yet: they and a few other hiking groups were the first ones there, at the gates of the visitor centre. When Charles looked down from the edge of the car park, all he could see were green hillsides steeply disappearing downwards and out of sight.

Julie gave them quick inside information on what she thought the absolute Machu Picchu must sees were before leaving them to it. They were ushered through ticket gates next to the visitor centre’s toilets and cafés were. The sun had only been up for an hour.

They followed a cemented path along the hillside, with a steep drop on their right down to the valley, as Incan houses began to appear in the hillside around them. They were approaching the site not from below, as Charles had thought, but from one of its sides. Finally, he stopped by a reconstructed house, behind which, further down on a lower plain, most of the ruins lay. He did not feel the awe that he had hoped for, although he was very obviously looking at Machu Picchu.

The group dispersed, and Charles decided to hike up for the best vantage point. The landscape was steep, and llamas grazed amongst the ruins, uninterested in the first set of that day’s tourists. Charles climbed up more steps – the never ending goddamn steps – surrounded by what had once been houses, temples… And when he got to the top, where five or so tourists lingered taking selfies, he saw the view, at last, that everyone knew: down on the plain below him was a village that had been built around 1450, at the top of the world. And when it was abandoned, no one had known of its existence for hundreds of years. It had lain there, forgotten but majestic, uncaring of the outside world.

There it was, and it was breath-taking. He was exhausted and tired, his feet were covered in blisters, he’d suffered and endured, and he looked at the view and began to cry. He wasn’t sure why: he was exhausted and relieved, he was proud that he’d done the trek that he’d never really wanted to do in the first place; he was unbelievably happy to be there, and he was utterly aware of his own historical and cosmic insignificance.

A hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing: it was Philipp, the German. His eyes glistened likewise, to Charles’s surprise. Philipp gave him a watery smile. “Ich verstehe,” he said. I understand. And somehow Charles felt like Philipp did.

He laughed, and Philipp smiled at him through his tears. And together they stood there, taking in the view, with tears streaming down their faces.

They sat there, the two of them, for a good half an hour, talking. Philipp showed him a picture taken decades ago, one of him and his wife on that same spot, smiling with Machu Picchu in the background. It had been taken in 1983, Philipp explained. They’d been married for three years at that point. She’d been called Maria. She’d passed away a year ago.

Charles now understood that the trip wasn’t one of leisure or adventure for Philipp: it was pilgrimage, a sombre one, and that was all.

He understood why Philipp cried: because of dead things, because of passage of time.

And he understood why he himself cried: because of dead things, because of passage of time.

Philipp, who it had turned out had perfectly good English, eventually said, “Let’s go take a look at this village, then. For old time’s sake.”

They spent the rest of their time exploring the ruins, Philipp translating from his guidebook interesting facts.

He had come through, he thought. Come through what, he wasn’t entirely sure, but he felt proud of himself for the first time since he’d first started lying to Warren about Erik. He’d been nothing but a nasty human being for so long that it felt good to have accomplished something he could be proud of. He’d stopped liking himself for a while there, but now, well, maybe he’d hang out with himself for a bit.

“Come see this llama!” Philipp called out. “She looks exactly like my sister!”

He and Philipp took a picture of the two of them at Machu Picchu, smiling widely, arms on each other’s shoulders in a brotherly gesture. They had shared something there: an understanding that only two people who carried loss with them could truly appreciate.

In less than twenty-four hours from the moment he and Philipp took their picture together, Charles was on a plane to Europe again, and exhausted though he was, he kept thinking of those dead things that had made him and Philipp cry. Warren had been right in wanting to trek to the old Incan city: Charles was only full of utter gratitude that he had done it. He felt he’d gained something, a precious gem of some kind that he now carried inside himself.

It wasn’t too hard to figure out why he had cried: Warren was a dead thing, now, and the love that the two of them had shared was dead too. It was his fault, and he was sorry for how he’d treated Warren, lying and cheating, but he realised that he was sorry for his methods, not the outcome. The dreams they had had of each other, of them together, were disappearing, and he had wept for them together with Incan gods. He missed Warren, still. He missed the friendship and the companionship, but it was becoming apparent that they couldn’t salvage that from the ruins of their love.

He thought of Davey, who was official rebound, he supposed – another notch on his bedframe. That had been another dead thing.

He slept for a while, woke up, and asked for some wine. They were still over the Atlantic. He thought of the passage of time, next. Returning to London filled him with unease, but it had nothing to do with the flat that they had for sale. The gem he carried inside of him, full of memories of the most startlingly beautiful night sky, of Andean mountain tops and clear water springs, of standing over Machu Picchu with Philipp the widower, who was crying –

He returned to London full of stories to tell, but somehow he felt mute. Those stories were locked inside of him with no way to get out.

He asked for a second glass of wine and tried to relax. As his mind drifted, he reimagined his journey if he hadn’t gone alone. Day one: champagne at the hotel, drinking it on the balcony with Erik, taking in the city. Going to the beach the second day, Erik using his Spanish skills to secure someone’s favour of looking after their clothes so that they could go swimming. Erik and him, ocean fresh, reading books and drying off in the sunshine, talking about potential museums to see. He imagined them going clubbing later, too, heading to the same bar: Lolita. Neither of them would have noticed Davey at the bar, and they would have laughed at how glad they were that they didn’t have to pick up strangers in places like that. They would have gone back to their hotel after drinking and filthy dancing, and found a way to make the new, well-oiled hotel bed squeak.

In Cusco, Erik would have stayed in the hotel room, reading aloud to him while he lay immobilised by altitude sickness. They would have Skyped with Shani – who was taking care of her? Ororo, he would have thought. Erik would have gone out to get them food and Erik would have watched Peruvian TV with him, would have patted his head and said that Darwinism seemed to want Charles dead (Erik could be awfully sarcastic at the worst of times every now and again). And Erik would have been his biggest supporter in going on the trek anyway and would have smiled proudly when Charles said, f*ck it, he had to try.

And in the middle of the night, when Charles had discovered the stars on the second night of the trek, he would have fetched Erik from their tent to marvel at the skies with him. He would have held Erik close to him and shown him the universe. He would have taken in the landscape together with Erik, he would have explored the wilderness and conquered the mountains. They would have got lost in the ruins together, Erik with his engineer’s mind measuring stones and estimating the structures of the Incas, deeply impressed, calling out, “Schatz, did you see this yet?” They would have bought one of those colourful llama wool hats for Shani. And they would have taken some pictures of the two of them trekking, climbing mountains, crossing valleys, camping out under the stars. Every now and then, when Charles least expected it, Erik would reach out for his hand and squeeze it firmly: I’ve got you.

And he would squeeze back to say: I’ve got you too.

He blinked, and was alone.

On the plane, over the ocean, he wanted to get to London as soon as possible, so that he could find Erik. He was full of stories, and the only person he wanted to tell them to was him.

That was it. Erik or no one. That was all: it was either Erik, or no one.

For how long, exactly, had he been in love with Erik this time? He wasn’t sure. Falling in love with Erik had happened as naturally as it had the first time, but he’d firmly pretended that that hadn’t been the case, because of Warren. Why pretend anymore? He was more than in love – he was devoted, he was ardent.

He was going back to London, and the only person he really wanted to tell about the things he’d seen was Erik. God, they’d only been getting started when it all had come crashing down! It had just started getting so good, and Erik had said that he was in love with Charles again. God, they’d nearly had each other back!

He should have said it back when Erik said it to him, because he’d felt it too: he was in love. God, even a blind person could have seen it – in hindsight it was that obvious: the way they acted like the world stopped spinning when the other one walked into the room, the lithe kisses, the love-making, the hugs, the laughs, the talks, the silly text messaging from work, the way it had been getting harder and harder to fall asleep without Erik.

And he’d f*cked it up royally. He’d made a complete mess of it, and he’d hurt Erik, he really had, he knew, he knew…

Maybe he could explain to Erik that he’d needed some time. The break up with Warren had been a mess and he’d needed time to process it all, but he’d managed to bury most of it now, somewhere in Lima, he figured, and somewhere in the wild. And then he had climbed the mountains and found out that he could be someone he liked, as a person. And he hadn’t been sure of that for a while. On top of that, he wanted to be the kind of man who deserved Erik. And somewhere between the shuttle bus car park and the vantage point above the ruins, Charles had believed that he could be that man.

And he may have needed to go to the other side of the world for it, but he finally knew who he wanted to be as a person.

And that person, it happened, wanted Erik Lehnsherr.

By the time he got to St John’s Wood, he’d been travelling for thirty-five hours. There was no sense of homecoming: the agency had done some viewings in his absence, and there were flowers on his and Warren’s antique dining table that he hadn’t picked out. The hall smelled of air freshener – lavender? – and their bed, perfectly made, looked like it had never been slept in.

And neither would he sleep in it now.

He’d had time to think, as he’d waited for his London connection in Amsterdam. He had no time to waste: he had to tell Erik how he felt. They’d wasted ten years already, goddammit – he was done waiting!

It was, however, just about noon on a Tuesday, and Erik would be at the office until five or so, assuming he wasn’t on site somewhere. He’d turned up at Erik’s office before, after he’d sent his apology flowers – that episode had not gone down well at all. No, it was best to give Erik time to go home. Although he was itching to just find Erik, their mutual place of work did not seem like a wise setting. Charles would go to Crouch End and wait for them, Erik and Shani, at the door.

He had a few hours to kill, therefore – good. He went for a shower and trimmed his trekking beard. He wanted to look presentable, if nothing else, when he asked Erik to spend the rest of his life with him. He stopped mid-snip with the scissors and stared at the mirror in utter surprise – he’d propose! That was it! He’d go over and propose to Erik. It was so obvious now, and he couldn’t believe it had taken him this long to realise it! Was that insane? No, it wouldn’t be – Erik needed a grand gesture, Erik needed to know how much Charles meant this!

Finding the right clothes for a proposal was tricky. His phone kept ringing in the kitchen, but he ignored it as he tried to find the iron. You couldn’t propose in a wrinkly shirt, could you now? And he didn’t have a ring – would Erik mind?

He spent twenty minutes trying to find that nice silk tie before he remembered that it had been Warren’s. It clearly had been taken out of the apartment when Warren had moved. He opted for a slightly less nice silk tie instead, and he was scrutinising himself in the mirror – shower fresh, beard neatly trimmed, bags under his eyes from a lack of sleep, in a crisply ironed shirt and trousers – when the buzzer went off. When he picked up the receiver with a hello, Raven’s voice echoed, “Don’t you know how to pick up your f*cking phone?” He buzzed her in and let the door ajar.

He was in the bedroom when Raven got there. “I thought I’d told you to call me when you landed!” she complained. He glanced at her and then went back to finding the right belt. It might make all the difference between a yes and a no – the right belt.

Whereas he felt he was a changed man, Raven looked the same: she was in her usual mini-dress and boots combo, her blonde curls falling over her shoulders. She seemed angry, he realised – she was eyeing the big backpack that he’d dumped onto the bedroom floor when he’d gotten in. “You going somewhere?” she asked. He was pleased, knowing her surprise meant that he looked better than she’d expected.

“In a while,” he admitted, pulling out a belt from a drawer. “Sorry I didn’t call – it was a long trip.”

“Yeah, no sh*t. Was Peru to your liking, then? Was it cathartic?”

“It was, actually.” He didn’t need the sarcasm. “Look, I’ll tell you all about it some other time, but I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.” He walked to the hall and into the kitchen, and Raven followed, looking baffled. He didn’t have time to explain! Why had she come to check up on him, anyway? It was a Tuesday afternoon, surely she had more important things she needed to be doing!

“Charles,” Raven said, crossing her arms in a huff and quite efficiently blocking the kitchen doorway. “What is going on? You’re all – on edge.”

He sighed, irately. “I don’t have time to explain it all to you!”

“Explain what?” she persisted.

“I’m going to ask Erik to take me back.” He couldn’t help but smile widely when he said it, simultaneously nervous all over again. Raven paled, and she was about to say something, but he cut her off. “I know you think that he’s just some guy I met at work, but you’re wrong. There’s a lot you don’t know, alright? There’s a lot more there than you even realise.”

Raven swallowed audibly and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Charles shook his head. “You’re not calling Christian, you’re not calling Mother! Or Warren, or whoever. I know what you’re thinking, okay? I know – to you, this seems reckless. But you don’t know him, and you don’t know us.” He took in a deep breath. “Erik and I’ve got history – ten years of it... This isn’t sudden, not really. I met him in Australia, when I was just a kid, and he was a kid. You don’t know any of this, and I never told you, but just listen.” He certainly had her attention – she appeared to be gaping. “I fell in love with him back then. I was going to drop out of Oxford and move to Germany for him.”

“You – What – When?” Raven stuttered.

“You were still a teenager, I wasn’t about to tell you, was I? Or Mother for that matter. I thought I’d send you all a postcard from Dusseldorf, after Erik and I were married.”

“Married?” Her voice had gone high pitch. “Did they even have gay marriage in Germany back then? Or now, for that matter?”

“That’s not the point!” he argued. “The point is – the point is that it didn’t work out for me and him back then, in spite of what we felt. And I was lost for years afterwards, all those failed relationships and always dating the wrong guys… And you’re thinking that Erik got married and had a kid, sure, but he’s told me he still loves me. There’s so much you don’t know!” he said, because he could see another interruption on Raven’s face. “And you think it’s too soon after Warren, and it is, yes, I know that. I loved Warren, and I know you did too, but when I met Erik again, at the university – it was settled. It just was. When I look at him, I just know.”

Raven looked sorry, for some reason. Quietly, she asked, “Know what?”

“That he’s the one,” he said, simply.

Raven bit on her bottom lip, her eyes a little watery. It wasn’t because she was so touched, he realised. “Oh Charles,” she sighed, “you f*cking fool.” She shoved her phone at him. He took it and looked at the screen, showing him a WhatsApp conversation between Raven and some of her friends.

Abby: who’s the hottie??!!
Maria: OMG! You’ve kept that one quiet!!

“Scroll up,” Raven said.

He did until he was looking at a picture taken in Erik’s bedroom – he recognised the curtains – and at the forefront was Angel, that friend of Raven’s, with Erik right next to her. The caption read ‘Him, probably ;)’, in response to Jasmine’s question: ‘What are you ladies doing tonight?’ Erik had his arm around Angel’s shoulders, she was doing pouty lips at the camera, looking every bit as stunning as Charles remembered her being, and Erik was giving a wide grin at the camera, holding her protectively.

Charles stared. He was going over. He’d figured it out. He would… he would propose or, or explain to Erik what had happened in Peru, how Charles had… He was.

The phone screen went black.

“I came over,” Raven said, “because I thought you should know.”

Charles gave her the phone back. “Okay. Thanks.” He looked around. He’d found the right tie. He’d found the right belt.

“This guy is stringing you along! You know that, don’t you? I mean, okay, I didn’t know that you guys had history, but clearly whatever you think is going on between you two isn’t the same as –”

“Okay, Raven. Okay. Thank you.” He didn’t look at her. “Can you go now – please?” She hesitated, and he said, “I’m not going anywhere. Please.”

To his surprise, Raven left without too much of a fight. She looked awkward, like she didn’t know what to say.

He stayed in the kitchen, hearing the front door close. Funny. It was the same kitchen where he and Erik had… all those months ago. And the rush of it, the feel of Erik, the taste of his mouth and the warmth of his skin…

He sat down at the kitchen table, feeling weak. What a suitor he was! He loosened his tie. What a fool, like Raven had said.

He couldn’t quite remember why he had thought it was a good idea – any of it: going to Crouch End, declaring his love, expecting Erik to be receptive to it. God, how long had it even been? Less than two months since Scott and Jean’s wedding? Well. Erik Lehnsherr had always been fast, hadn’t he? With Magda, with Angel… Didn’t lick those wounds for very long.

Had he been planning to propose? Preposterous! No, he was just… He’d just been.

He’d been awake for thirty-nine hours. Maybe, he thought, just maybe it was time that he sleep.

Chapter 10: Ten

Chapter Text

Ten

They started out early on the Sunday, Scott deciding they would visit the National Trust manor that Jean had wanted to see for well over a year. They were trying to be good friends, the two of them, and keep Charles busy and not talk about What Had Happened, but Chares wasn’t sure why anyone would think that a recently-single person would feel better in the company of newlyweds.

It wasn’t their fault, he reminded himself as he sat at the back of the car with Jean driving and Scott navigating. The couple had returned from their Italian honeymoon more in love than ever, but quite alarmed by Warren and Charles’s break up. Jean had been suspicious of something, but even she hadn’t suspected the extent of what had been going on. The four of them had done many couple dates together, had even done a weekend away once. Now Warren was gone, and Charles must have seemed to Jean and Scott like a half thing of something whole. It was difficult to explain, however, that he felt freed, in a lot of ways, and that although their break up was recent still, their parting of ways had little to do with his moods.

They walked around the grounds of the posh manor estate, and Jean and Scott held hands as they did so. Charles felt like a third wheel and tried to determine whether this outing was still preferable to being in his Oxford cottage by himself. Wasn’t he acutely aware of his singlehood right then, meandering in the woods with no one’s hand to hold.

“Look, all the blue bells are out!” Scott enthused. Spring was giving way to summer, time washing over them. Give it another ten years, and this would all feel distant again. Give it ten years, and Erik would have lived another decade without him.

As the three of them went to the three-storeyed manor house, he realised that Scott and Jean were excited about the future and their next ten years. He, on the other hand, had little to look forward to: in ten years, he’d probably be a professor, like he’d always dreamed. He’d probably had some kind of man or regular gentleman caller arrangement, but he’d live alone in a bachelor pad somewhere. Erik, on the other hand, would probably be married to someone – Angel, maybe – and Shani would be well into her teenage years.

The tour was full of family history, of lords and ladies and positions in the government. The house reminded him of Westchester when he forced himself to focus, but his mind wandered. Inside him was a large, endless pool of dark water, seeping into all parts of his body, creating a persistent sense of joyless gloom.

Scott and Jean read the info plaques on the walls, chatted with the stewards and took pictures. He followed behind, tiredly. He’d thought that a weekend in Oxford, back in his cottage, would set him right. Get up in the morning, go for a run like he’d used to, have breakfast, Skype with W – Oh, never mind. And the last time he’d spent a few days there, Erik had come to stay, and for the first time in ten years they’d spent a day in bed. The thought of it sparked the first sense of warmth inside him all day, but it was gone just as quickly.

One might think that he was sad or depressed, but mostly he was confused. At first he’d thought it was history repeating itself: they break up, Erik ends up in the arms of a woman. But no, this wasn’t it, this wasn’t Magda. This wasn’t Erik swearing again and again that he loved Charles, but that he had to do the right thing. Erik and he were both grown up now: this was something else.

“Did you enjoy that?” Jean asked him, rather worriedly, when they got back to the car.

“Sure.”

Scott smiled a bit nervously. “Well, we ready for lunch? John at work said there’s a pub a few villages away that does the best Sunday roast. A hidden gem!”

“Sure, sounds good.”

John should have been more specific, however, because with Jean driving and Scott navigating, the two were soon fighting as to which way to go and which one of them was right. Charles stared out of the window, at the little villages that they drove through. It was always the wrong one, it was always the wrong time.

God, he felt like he hadn’t slept in weeks. He was behind on work, and usually that snapped him out of a mood like this. He loved his work and not much could affect his morale and enthusiasm for it. Now, though, he couldn’t motivate himself. He wanted to be back in the cottage, reading a book and having a drink, despite the fact that it reminded him of Warren, and that these days it reminded him of Erik. Erik had only been there once! And somehow his presence lingered.

“Oh for god’s sake, Scott!” Jean snapped. “If you don’t know where we’re going, I’ll just choose whatever pub we see next!”

“No, no – John said this pub is the best around here!”

“But you don’t know where we are!”

“I just need signal on my phone!”

“For god’s sake!”

Jean refused to keep looking in vain, and as they drove through a slightly larger town, she spotted a traditional looking pub with a car park, and soon they’d parked the car. The day was cloudy, but the pub had a small beer garden rather full of optimistic locals. “This isn’t the one John recommended,” Scott grumbled as they approached the doors.

Inside, the pub was stuffy and noisy. A few families with children were out for a meal, and a handful of regulars were downing pints at the bar. They found an empty table towards the back and started looking at the menu. “Apple crumble! Looks good!” Jean enthused. “Doesn’t it? Charles?”

“Yeah. Great.” He pretended that he didn’t see the glance Jean shared with Scott.

Jean and Scott went to order, while he kept their table for them. He’d fessed up, now: everyone knew everything. Well, Raven did, and so did Scott and Jean. He hadn’t told his mother, perhaps, the finer details of his and Warren’s break up, or that an ex-boyfriend named Erik was at the heart of it all. All either of their families had needed to know was that they’d called it quits, and Charles’s mother had even called him and said that he was a fool. What a time to suddenly become interested in his life!

But he was done lying – god, it’d been so tiring – and to his close friends he’d admitted fully what had occurred. He’d met his ex-boyfriend. He’d cheated on Warren. Erik had found out about Warren. Erik had ended it. Charles had told Warren about Erik. They hadn’t been able to make it work after that. The story ended with, “Anyway, Erik’s got a girlfriend now, so I guess the joke’s on me.”

He couldn’t quite stomach it. Something bothered him about the whole thing, something else than the frustration that he had been replaced so fast, or by someone younger, handsomer, and what other comparatives one chose for Angel.

He fiddled with his phone, demonstrating the twenty-first century inability to be left at a table by himself. He had a voicemail and a missed call from the real estate agent. Another weekend of viewings. He listened to the voicemail to hear the usual words of some interested people but no offers and that the flat would soon sell, really it would, but he was in for a surprise. The excited voice of their agent told him that a woman had offered their asking price for the flat! Congratulations! The buyer would have a surveyor come by on Monday, and assuming all checked out (as it should!), they could start getting the paperwork sorted – assuming, ha ha, that he and Warren accepted the offer, but why wouldn’t they?

Beep. The voicemail finished.

Charles carefully placed the phone on the table, trying to take this in. The apartment they’d bought with the belief they’d spend a very long chunk of their lives in it was about to be bought by someone else. They’d lasted less than six months.

“f*ck,” he sighed, leaning back in the chair. Was he supposed to be happy about this? He’d be homeless. Was he relieved? f*ck, he wasn’t sure. He needed to move out, he needed to –

A woman came up to him, middle-aged, in a baggy jumper. “A leaflet for the flower show?” she asked, and he took the leaflet she offered with a thanks. She moved to other tables, handing them out. He eyed the leaflet slowly: Annual village flower show – 12th year running! Someone had done a poor job with Photoshop, and grainy pictures of flowers beds were awkwardly plastered over each other. May 21st – 22nd. He took in the location of the show. The leg chairs screeched against the floor when he pulled back, abruptly.

“Excuse me,” he asked the family one table over. “Where am I?”

The mum and dad looked at each other awkwardly. The mum said, “Uh. What do you mean?”

One minute later, he was heading out of the pub. Jean and Scott were following him out, saying that they couldn’t go – they’d just paid for their food! Jean had left her purse at the table, however, and now Charles had the car keys. “Get in or get out!” he told them as the car beeped, the doors unlocking themselves.

“Charles!” Jean said, but Scott rushed to the car, yelling, “You stay here, we’ll be right back!”

Scott barely had time to put on his seatbelt before Charles was back on the road. “Er, out of interest,” Scott said, “where are we going?”

“Not far,” he said, busy trying to look for road signs. It took five minutes, not any more than that, for him to find his way. He used the old village church as a landmark. He had a good sense of direction most of the time, and he remembered these parts quite clearly, although he’d only ever seen them once. “Somewhere here, I think,” he mumbled, more to himself than Scott.

Out of the village, a turn onto a quieter B-road, half a mile up, and –

He slowed down the car at the crossing, hesitating briefly, before following the road into the woods. Another minute later and they were there, where he’d been months earlier on a bitter January morning. He parked the car as Erik had done, at the edge of the little clearing.

It wasn’t so little anymore.

As he got out of the car, he remembered all those trees they had marked for cutting down. This had been done: dozens of logs were piled up high on the edge of a bulldozed square instead, twice the size of a tennis court, the woodlands feeling brutally torn up. The meadow grass was gone, and instead wide tyre marks zig-zagged in upturned soil. Well, it was big enough for a house now – the clearing had doubled in size.

Scott followed him out of the car. “Where the hell are we?”

“Erik’s. He’s building a house here.”

“He is?” Scott asked, sounding intrigued. “sh*t, are we trespassing?”

“We’re in England,” he said irately. “People don’t get shot for trespassing.” That Scott seemed to relax a little, but not much. Their surroundings were hinting the coming of a vibrant summer: all the leafless trees of January were now budding, the air smelled floral and fertile, and the birds were chirping all the louder now that summer was nearly there. “I didn’t realise we were here, but I wanted to – to come see this. He’s building a house here, for him and Shani.”

“Seems nice,” Scott said, a little testily. “Not much of a house here yet, though.”

“Yeah,” he said, finding it hard to swallow. “Well, I – I guess the work hasn’t progressed much, so…” He’d rushed out of the pub like a melodramatic fool to look at nothing at all. He poked at some of the upturned dirt with the tip of his shoe, and sighed. “I got a call while we were in the pub. Someone’s made an offer on our flat.”

“No kidding? That’s great!”

“Is it? I’ll need to move out. Find a new place to live.”

“London’s full of flats,” Scott said, and he almost wanted to scoff, but managed to reply, “Yes, but it’s not full of homes.”

“Well, I… Uhm.” Gingerly, Scott said, “So you came here with Erik, then?” It seemed like a poor attempt to change the subject.

“Yes, once. We’d been, ah – shagging it up in Oxford. We were heading back to London. Yes, I know,” he then added when Scott gave him a look. “I know, it was bad. I know.” But it hadn’t felt bad when he was with Erik, standing in the woods. He’d suggested a dog house, he recalled. Erik had seemed amused.

He’d been drunk on Erik, in the way you could be drunk on another person: their laugh, their stories, their smiles. God, he’d been intoxicated. Erik had been all about pillow talk those few days they’d been in Oxford, and they’d spend so much time just catching up again, after ten years. Erik had talked about Pietro and Magda and Shani and Ororo and Argentina and Vancouver, and Charles had… not said much, because he couldn’t. But he’d loved listening to Erik’s stories, drawing circles on Erik’s back as Erik talked.

“See, that’s what I don’t understand,” he then snapped, eyeing the large, muddy field where Erik’s house would go. “About Erik’s new girlfriend, I mean – it doesn’t add up, after what he and I had, and what we felt – for each other, what we had… I mean, hell, he brought me out here, and I know why: because he was offering me this.” He motioned at the imaginary house. “We were both picturing it, us living out here, as we stood here. And I know I messed up, I know that, but I don’t understand how he can go from bringing me here to moving on like he can replicate our connection with ease. He can’t, he bloody well can’t – it can’t be real with him and Angel! And the fact that he’d even pretend pisses me off! He’s an utter f*cking wanker, and I hate the fact that I’m so – so in love. f*ck!”

He stopped to catch his breath. It’d been stupid of him to think that he could just go to Erik’s house, grovel, and Erik would have him back. That was naïve of him – okay, fine. But what the hell did Erik think he was doing, pretending that he could replace what they shared with someone else just like that? Aloud, he said, “What we have is once in a lifetime, and we both know it. I can’t believe he’d give it up so easily.”

“Charles,” Scott said embarrassedly, “you were with Warren that entire time. You know that, right?”

“I know,” he sighed, exasperated. “I know.” He tried to picture the house in front of him and felt sorry all over again. “He offered this to me, though. I know he did.”

But that had been before the truth came out. The invitation, he figured, must have been revoked. But he was angry because it was a lie – Erik was living a lie. He’d lived one himself for months, so he felt like an authority on the subject: don’t do it.

His phone started ringing, and for a fleeting moment he thought it’d be Warren, calling him to discuss the news.

He was surprised, however, when it was Tom from the chess club. Tom’s first words were: “I need you.”

Charles changed his mind some four to five times the following week, amidst packing up his belongings in St John’s Wood. He was determined to go – that wasn’t what he kept changing his mind about. He just couldn’t quite decide what for he was going, and he still didn’t know this when he got to King’s College for nine o’clock sharp the following Saturday. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting of the chess championship, but he felt like he was going into battle in more ways than one.

The large chamber in the old university building had a view over Thames from its windows, ready to host the London Universities Chess Championships (LUCC, for short). There was no luck in chess, however, the King’s College rep who signed him in chuckled.

“You must be new,” the King’s College chess club president, Dr Elissa Hartington as her name tag read, said with interest. “I was expecting the usual Federica and Erik line-up from your club.” He explained about Federica’s family emergency, and Elissa looked mournful. “Oh how unfortunate! I hope everything’s fine.”

“As do I,” he said, but he could tell Elissa was eyeing him up to determine whether Charles would pose a threat.

Charles went over to get himself a coffee. Federica’s mother was in the hospital, and Tom had all but begged Charles to take her place in the championship. “You play better than her, anyway,” Tom had said on the phone. He couldn’t say much else except accept the offer.

The room was filling up with players and spectators, and at the coffee table he greeted many of his friends. He felt out of form to be playing against King’s College, Imperial, Brunel and the lot. His chess club friends were not putting any pressure on him, they said, and it was very likely that Erik would keep his championship, as it would be his fifth one in a row. Tom, as their president, was very keen for them to hold onto the trophy for the commendable fifth year. Tom had a personal rivalry going with the Brunel’s chess club president, Charles gathered – something about a disagreement on Joy Division’s place in British music seven years earlier.

Charles hadn’t been to the meetings since he’d realised it was too awkward after what had happened with him and Erik. He had quit the chess club – although he’d said to Hank and the others that he was busy with work and taking a break. Tom had been devastated: Charles was their second best player. Tom, therefore, was not too sad that Federica was out if it meant that Charles was in.

But the truth was that he wasn’t there for the chess – hardly. It had been final enough, Erik saying that he didn’t want to see Charles again. Erik had a girlfriend now, and the two of them hadn’t spoken since their visit to the pub where Erik had walked out on him. And yet he was there, like a fool.

The centre of the room was full of square tables with two chairs each and with a chess set and clock on each. Charles found the one he was allocated to, wanting to get used to the space to get into the swing of things. Tom, with a clipboard, came over. “You all set here?” he enquired, giving him a copy of the day’s proceedings. Tom wasn’t concentrating on Charles, however: he was like a meerkat, scanning the room frantically.

Charles’s first opponent sat down: a psychology lecturer from Greenwich. They shook hands politely. The man looked at Tom and asked, “You okay there?”

“Yes, yes. Erik just seems to be running a bit late.”

Most of the other players were already sitting down, too. There were sixteen players to start with, and in the second round eight would remain, followed by a semi-final, until two faced off. It would be a long day, culminating in the afternoon’s final. The strict schedule said that they were due to start in just a few minutes, but Erik Lehnsherr wasn’t there. Had he heard Charles was coming? Had he cancelled this just not to see Charles?

Elissa started reading out the rules. A woman from SOAS was sat by herself, clearly wondering where her opponent was supposed to be.

Erik rushed in as the rules were being read out, cheeks flushed, tie slightly askew, mumbling “Sorry, sorry” to Tom, who was on him instantly. Erik handed his coat to Sandra from Film Studies, Tom quietly whispering to Erik in what appeared to be an urgent manner. Elissa eyed their way, annoyed, but kept going with the welcome speech.

Charles forgot what he was there for, his throat closing up, his heart beating wildly. f*ck, Erik was even more beautiful than he remembered: in black slacks and a neatly ironed white dress shirt with a black tie, and he’d let stubble grow since their last meeting, too. Erik was wearing a black kippah, which he absently took off his head and pushed into his pocket as he spoke to Tom. Erik was coming from a synagogue, Charles realised, wearing his Shabbat best. What synagogue? For how long had Erik been going? He hadn’t a few months ago.

Erik seemed to freeze at something Tom said and then quickly turned to face the room. Their eyes met instantly – Charles was more than staring. His hands felt sweaty, blood soaring in his ears. Erik looked away sharply.

“Ah, he’s tough,” the man sitting opposite Charles whispered over Elissa’s welcome speech, having followed his gaze. “He put me out last year.”

“And now,” Elissa was saying, “if we’re all ready…”

Erik hurriedly went to the empty chair at the back of the room, behind Charles’s back. Erik did not look at their table as he passed, but he mumbled apologies about the traffic.

Charles knew that he couldn’t turn to look, but Erik glossing over him was obvious enough: Erik wasn’t happy to see him.

The game started. He moved a pawn and hit the chess clock. The man wearing the name tag ‘Max Schiffer’ moved a pawn of his own. Charles couldn’t concentrate – he felt like Orpheus, doubting the presence of Eurydice behind his back. The tension was torturous and entirely in his head. Was Erik facing him or not? Was Erik staring at his back at that second? Was Erik really even there?

Max Schiffer smirked as he took one of Charles’s knights. Charles stirred – he was there to fight, he remembered, and he was there to challenge. The sooner he’d win, the sooner he could speak to Erik.

There wasn’t much excitement in observing chess, one had to admit. The room was filled with silence and people ticking the counter back and forth between them. Max Schiffer was easy to beat; he only thought three or four moves ahead. Charles kept ahead of him easily, and so Max was out of the championship when the first round came to an end.

The players headed for the refreshment tables as the break began, their friends from various clubs ready to offer words of support or advice. He immediately tried to locate Erik, but Erik somehow had managed to slip away – Erik was quite a tall man, so he wasn’t sure how he’d done it. He had a quick coffee and barely listened to Tom’s advice of how to beat the person he’d be up against next. He went to the men’s room, but Erik wasn’t there either, nor was he amidst the few men smoking outside.

When he got back to the match room at the end of the break, Erik was sitting at one of the eight tables set out, talking to his opponent. Charles found his spot, this time facing Erik, who looked at him as he sat down.

Charles tried to maintain the eye contact, but then he looked away. Erik’s jaw was clenched, and none of that warmth was there in his eyes. Was that better than indifference or some other sure sign that Erik no longer cared? He had to hope so.

He played badly in the second round, but luckily his opponent was even worse. He wasn’t sure how she’d gotten through the first round, to be fair – he made stupid mistakes, but still beat her. He even finished within the hour, after thirty or so moves. They shook hands whilst others around them still played.

He was ready, this time. When Elissa called the second round finished, he walked right up to Erik, who was still at his table, having stood up. Erik saw him coming, looked away but didn’t make to move, and then evenly met his gaze. “Hi,” he said, and wondered if he should be embarrassed that upon their last encounter he’d all but begged Erik to stay. Something told him this wouldn’t end that much differently.

“Hi,” Erik returned. Charles took in Erik’s face, the start of a ginger beard that he’d never seen on Erik but he much liked the look off, the lines in the corners of Erik’s eyes, the expanse of his throat, and he thought how ridiculous it was that none of these features were his to touch, or to kiss, although they should have been. Erik said, “I didn’t expect to see you here. After you gave me the club, and everything.”

He ignored the sarcasm. “Well, Federica couldn’t make it, and Hank’s away this weekend…” He trailed off because Erik clearly didn’t care as to why, exactly, Charles had shown up at the championships. Erik was looking over his shoulder, he noted, just to avoid eye contact. “Anyway, I’m here.” Erik said nothing. Charles added, “It’s good to see you.” So good – god, so good. He hadn’t properly even realised how much he’d missed Erik. “How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” Erik snapped, and then clearly realised that snapping was a tell-tale sign of the opposite. Erik cleared his throat. “I mean fine. Just fine.” Erik briefly touched his forehead, frowning. “It hadn’t even occurred to me you might be here. I thought you were in Bolivia.”

Bolivia? Charles’s mind reeled. “Peru? I was in Peru.” Erik was clenching his jaw, but at least he was still talking to him. “I’ve been back for a while now. How did you know?” Erik hadn’t tried to get in touch while he’d been gone, had he? And even so –

“Hank must’ve mentioned it,” Erik said, dismissively. His tone signalled that the line of enquire was now closed. Erik shifted restlessly. “Was there something you wanted?”

Yes, of course there was. He wanted so many things: the truth, forgiveness, an explanation, and Erik. Maybe most of all Erik, but he just wasn’t sure if Erik wanted him anymore, after all that had happened. When Scott had reminded him that, despite his heartfelt litanies of what he and Erik had shared, Charles had still been with Warren through all of it. He’d said “I know”, but right then he felt like he didn’t know. God, he must have hurt Erik much more than he’d realised.

“Warren and I broke up,” he said, and Erik all but flinched. “I don’t know if –”

“Well, well, well!” Tom beamed as he reached them, and Charles’s ‘I don’t know if you heard’ got cut off, but by the look of it Erik had not heard. Erik was staring at him with sharp, blue eyes, confusion clear in them. “Both of our players in the semi-finals, eh?” Tom started patting their shoulders, looking smug. “Come on, let’s make it to the final!”

Erik excused himself. Charles watched him go, throat closed up.

Tom wouldn’t let him be over the break either. Charles was facing Erik’s fiercest opponent from Brunel, who had made it to the finals the last two years. As Tom detailed her playing techniques to Charles, Charles tried not to stare at Erik chatting to someone from Greenwich over a cup of coffee.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected: we broke up, and Erik would follow it up with, “Let’s go home, then.”

God. God, that would’ve been nice.

There were only two tables left for the semi-finals, while more chairs were put out for viewers. Theology Craig arrived and was pleased to find Charles in the semi-finals. He said that he would put some money on him to win, even. Erik was facing a morose African studies lecturer from SOAS, who seemed to start strong, from what Charles could observe – he found it hard to concentrate on his own game when over his opponent’s back was Erik’s table. Erik had his back to them, but Charles could see the face of the African studies lecturer, and he looked very pleased with his first few moves.

His own opponent hummed to herself, pleased, when Charles didn’t see her bishop coming for a pawn. Charles tried to concentrate.

The semi-finals lasted longer: Erik beat the SOAS lecturer in an hour and ten minutes – the audience murmured assent. Erik was the current champion, after all. Elissa asked for silence, and Charles stared at his board. The Brunel woman had him in a tight spot, he had to admit, but Erik was in the final, and Charles didn’t feel like letting Erik off that easily.

When Charles secured his own place in the final, beating the woman that the audience were expecting to win, there was much chittering in the room. Tom was loudly shouting “Yes! Home final! Home final!” for all to hear, and a few of the other chess club presidents looked sore about it.

A buffet lunch was waiting for them in the canteen downstairs, and Charles was caught up in being congratulated and chatted to by people who had largely ignored him so far. When he got to the canteen, Erik was sat by a table by himself, texting on his phone. Probably to Angel, he thought, quite bitterly. What did Erik need a mess like him for anymore, anyway? Erik was better off, Shani was better off…

He talked to Elissa in the sandwich queue, and when she saw him looking at Erik, she said, “Ah yes, he never speaks to anyone before the final. Has to get into his mind set. You think you’ll beat him?”

Charles wasn’t sure, and although Erik’s body language signalled a ‘stay away’, not just to him but to everyone, he still walked over with his plate of university catering mini-sandwiches. “So it’s just us left,” he said, as an opening line. Erik looked up from his phone – a text conversation, with whom? Where was Shani, anyway? Ororo should be in Greenland, if Charles wasn’t much mistaken.

Erik put his phone away, but said nothing. “May I?” Charles ventured, and sat down when Erik didn’t make any obvious objection. “I don’t know why I took so much,” he said, motioning at his overflowing plate. “I’m not even that hungry, really.”

He paused, to give Erik a chance to say something, and as the silence stretched on he was sure Erik would say nothing, but Erik then began, evenly, “Not that it matters, but what happened?”

The question wasn’t vague: Charles knew exactly what Erik was getting at. “Everything,” he said, his mind going through the memories of the end: the shouting, the yelling, the slamming of doors, and the endless, endless spirals of disappointment… “You were right, it was a done thing, it was… at its end,” he said. “He deserved to know, like you said, and so I told him.”

“You told him?” Erik asked, clearly surprised, and Charles hurriedly said, “Yes, I did. All of it.”

Erik clearly had not been expecting it, and he added, “Anyway, we’re selling the flat now. They did viewings while I was away.”

“You were in Peru by yourself? As, what? An impromptu getaway?”

“Ah, no. It was supposed to be, uh, Warren’s birthday present this year. I went by myself, in the end. He didn’t want the present, understandably… and I needed to clear my head.” And he had cleared it, he felt like: he’d returned with a definite idea of what and who he wanted. God, even then he wanted to tell Erik everything.

“Well,” Erik said, picking up his emptied paper plate. “I think your head definitely does need some clearing.” Erik stood up. “Good luck in the final.”

Erik walked off, and even Charles knew it would have been too pathetic to follow him after such a rejection.

As the final started, Charles began to feel pissed off. Erik was being rude, and fine, Charles had expected hostility, but Erik also had said nothing of his girlfriend, although Charles knew about him and Angel. And Erik was keeping him not only at arm’s length, but possibly two – Charles was left guessing wildly about what Erik may have been thinking right then.

An Xavier didn’t show his emotions, his mother had often quipped when he was younger. No public scenes, everything kept under wraps. Warren had been of that same breeding – their shouting match in Warren’s flat when Charles told him about Erik was as crass as it’d ever gotten between them. And they’d always used to hold hands just the appropriate amount, not too much, and had only exchanged a few chaste kisses in front of any relative. Always so moderate and polite, the two of them.

And then there was Raven and Christian, who were as bloody inappropriate as they chose. Or him and Erik back when they’d first met – the anonymity of Australia had had Charles snog Erik just as much as he’d liked, wherever they were, and Erik had not once told him to stop.

God, maybe he’d stand up and throw this table over, he thought as he and Erik sat down to compete against each other. Maybe he’d yell that enough was enough, and Erik would talk to him, goddammit!

But the game began, and he did no such thing. An Xavier didn’t show his emotions. An Xavier held himself together.

Erik pressed down the chess clock after having made his third move, and Charles flinched. He’d forgotten about the game. He looked at the black and white chess pieces between them and felt like he knew what Erik was planning. A few dozen people were watching them play. He made the next move, calculatedly. Erik tapped the table with his forefinger – he was annoyed. Charles smirked to himself.

Maybe Erik wasn’t at his best as Charles got the upper hand with relative ease. There was some murmur from the audience when Charles was on the offense and Erik on the defence. When Charles took Erik’s knight, he quietly said, “I don’t really care who wins, you know.”

“I do,” Erik said, eyes not leaving the board. The chess clock between them was set to ninety seconds per move, and Erik didn’t make his until his time was nearly up.

Maybe Charles had disturbed Erik’s attempts of getting into the right mind set, but Erik clearly couldn’t get into the swing of things. Erik fidgeted, played with his cufflinks nervously, pulled on his collar, and tapped the table, all the while refusing to make much eye contact. Charles, knowing that Erik was more ill at ease than he was, decided to win not only the game but the championship. He began to play more aggressively, attempting to capture Erik’s king. Erik had his moments, however – Charles lost his queen when he wasn’t expecting it, but Erik did so fully knowing he’d have to sacrifice his last knight.

“Check mate in three,” he then announced, loudly enough for the room to hear. Erik frowned, surprised, and Elissa rushed over to assess if the situation was really so.

“Goddammit,” Erik cursed when he saw what Charles’s next few moves would be, and that Erik couldn’t defend the king against them.

Elissa declared him the winner, and wild applause erupted from the room. Charles offered his hand across the board, smirking – Erik could be rude to him, could throw him over for a newer fling, but at least Charles had this – and then he stopped smirking. Erik didn’t look annoyed or impressed, but deflated. Erik shook his hand – the first contact they’d had since before Scott and Jean’s wedding, he realised – but it was lifeless and automatic.

Others had rushed over to congratulate him and to give condolences to Erik, who had been the clear favourite beforehand. They stood up, and someone had already fetched the little trophies: one for the champion and one for the runner-up.

Charles wasn’t happy he’d won. He should have let Erik win, of course – now this, too, was another thing he’d taken away from Erik. Fool, fool, fool!

Someone took pictures of Elissa handing Erik the smaller trophy, and of her giving Charles the slightly larger one. Their peers clapped, and Elissa gave a closing address stating that they’d see at Brunel next year.

When people were free to mingle, Theology Craig was quickly upon them. “What darned luck, Erik!” he exclaimed, and Erik said, “Yes, well – can’t win them all.”

As Erik departed, Craig winked at Charles and said, “Well done! You’ve just won me twenty quid. Fancy a sherry? I’ll buy.”

But he refused, and quite rudely walked away from the people wanting to talk to him. Erik had gotten his suit jacket and was slipping it on as he walked out of the room. A sore loser, others would say. Charles knew better.

He didn’t catch up with Erik until in the downstairs lobby, where his sharp “Erik, wait!” made the other man halt and turn around. He descended the rest of the stairs, while Erik stood tall, fists clenched.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, walking up to him.

“About what? Winning?” Erik asked and then pointedly carried on, “Or showing up out of nowhere?” The latter was likelier, they both knew. It had seemed such a convenient way of seeing Erik again that he hadn’t considered whether it would upset Erik. When he didn’t respond, Erik said, “You know I’m glad Warren’s left you. He seemed like a good person.”

“Yes, he was,” he said, somewhat unsteadily. Was hate all that was left? “You’re not doing too badly yourself these days, from what I’ve heard.”

Erik blinked at him once, expression blank, before it cleared up. “Oh that. Yes. Yes, we’re great. Fantastic, even.”

“Really?”

Erik’s jaw set in tight. “Yes, really. Shani absolutely adores her.”

Erik somehow knew exactly which strings to pull to make it hurt. Erik kept calm, cold eyes on him, and Charles despaired. “It can’t be that great.”

Erik frowned. “Excuse me?”

“I said it can’t be that great.” He took one step closer. “It can’t compare to what you and I had.” He paused, swallowing hard. “I get it, okay? I get that you’re still angry, and I know you’re entitled to be, but – Please, Erik, let me back in. Don’t treat me like a stranger, don’t –” His voice wavered. “I know I messed it up, and I know you’re upset – you’ve got a right to be. But I’m all in, if you gave me a chance.” That was what they’d said to each other often during their time together in Australia. They were all in: permanently, for good, for life. “I’m all in, for all of it.”

He expected Erik to regard him indifferently, but instead Erik looked sorry. “That’s nothing to do with me, Charles.”

“It’s got everything to do with you,” he argued.

Erik shook his head. “No.”

And at least then he knew, he supposed. He’d wondered if things would have ended up differently, if he’d been more honest with himself and with Erik about how he felt about them. A desperate last resort, to coax Erik out of this pretence with Angel, this pretence of normality or newly discovered happiness.

“Congratulations on your victory,” Erik said.

Charles hadn’t won anything, he thought, as Erik walked out. He hadn’t won anything at all.

Well, there it was: the Bernard Roth Building, its glass windows glittering in the London afternoon sunlight. Five stories rose up above him, and two floors below ground, too. The building looked spick and span, like a recently polished glass ornament, but Erik knew that behind the scenes were men working even then to finalise the little things: lab equipment was still being delivered and installed, the IT technicians were getting the photocopiers and printers ready, and the moving men were bringing in desks and chairs through the back door. The actual building of it was done, apart from a few doors here and there, and some painting work that was pending.

None of that showed on the side facing Chiswell Street, where the revolving door kept spinning as well dressed men and women entered – there was no exit flow.

Beside him, Angel looked impressed. “It’s huge for sure!” she said. Shani, on the other hand, didn’t seem wowed by the Bernard Roth Building.

“It looks better on the inside,” he said, showing his guests to the door. It was a good excuse to cut a Tuesday short: a four p.m. wine reception to celebrate the opening of the Bernard Roth Building. Guest of honour: Bernard Roth himself – an old man with too much money but a keen interest in sciences. Supporting acts were the Vice Chancellor of the University, and even some minor and distant member of the royal family, if he wasn’t much mistaken.

When they entered the large, glass-fronted reception hall, chatter hit them from all corners. His eyes scanned the crowded room of well-dressed women and men, most holding wine glasses already, but he did not see the face he was looking for.

Frankly, it didn’t make a difference. It didn’t change any of the facts, Charles and Warren having split up. Charles had only done the bare minimum of what was decent in the circ*mstances and faced the consequences, which were hardly a surprise for anyone. Charles had had that break up coming, and it was just as well.

Yet he had thought about it the past week, as he lathered his hair in the shower, and as he tied Shani’s shoe laces, and as they walked to the nursery hand-in-hand, Shani chatting away about the difference between cucumbers and tomatoes (one was green and pointy, the other red and squishy, like an old nose). He thought about it in the crammed tube to work, and he thought about it over a morning coffee in the staff kitchen with a few of his colleagues.

He thought about Charles Xavier, whose offices were two blocks away even at that moment – for now. Soon Dr Xavier and everyone else would have relocated to this new building. Would that make a difference, he wondered, that Charles was further away?

Charles should have just stayed in South America, he thought angrily as he got Angel a glass of wine and some orange juice for Shani. Although he’d been devastated at first over the thoughts of Charles and Warren’s holiday together, happy and romantic, he now knew Charles had gone to Peru with a tail between his legs. He nevertheless wished Charles had stayed away. It was easier.

Angel had immediately said yes when he’d invited her, even after he’d said that he needed someone to mind Shani while he talked to the big guys. She seemed happy to have been included, and she was now making a fuss over Shani, who clearly didn’t really know who this Angel was. Erik had successfully kept their relationship confined to the bedroom, during the hours when Shani was asleep. Angel had dressed smartly, a pencil skirt, blouse and high heels, and she turned some heads in the spacious reception hall of the new science building, which he figured was a nice plus.

Yes, he needed someone to mind Shani, but he’d also found himself boasting about how great his relationship was to a certain Dr Xavier, who’d seemed sceptical. He’d wanted to make sure that Angel attended the opening ceremony with him.

And so days had passed, with Charles’s blue eyes, so goddamn sincere looking staring into him ardently, imprinted on his brain. It was clear enough that Charles had played a losing hand, and now was trying to put together the scraps to make the best of the situation. Erik’s life – the life he and his daughter lived – was not something to be toyed with, however.

In the week leading up to the opening, he’d thought of meeting Charles here, toughening himself up for it. It was nothing to do with him, how Charles felt or what he was going through. He’d not look at Charles, or he would by letting his eyes wash over him fleetingly. He’d talk loudly to someone with his arm around Angel, maybe – because it didn’t make a difference, that Charles Xavier was available, or that he claimed he was all in and ready to be with him now. He was too disappointed in Charles. He was too disappointed.

He, Angel and Shani made rounds in the lobby, Erik introducing Angel as his friend, which he immediately realised didn’t go down well with Angel. She’d said she wasn’t looking for anything serious, but recently she’d been calling him every day, and Erik was starting to feel like they no longer were on the same page, exactly. There were waiters going around with canapés, and one of them brought Shani some breadsticks. The four-year-old was content after that, trailing behind them, munching on the bread.

Hank McCoy came over to them to say hello, announcing himself with a bright “Hi there!” If Hank was there, Charles must be too – Erik knew that all the new staff of the building had been invited, and that the Genetics Institute folk had been assigned to the West half of the fourth floor.

As before, he introduced Angel as his friend (she pursed her lips), while Hank kneeled down to Shani’s level and said that she’d grown loads since the Chess Club Christmas party. In a serious tone Shani said, “Thank you.”

Hank laughed as he straightened up, saying how exciting it was to see the new building at last, after wondering for so long – but at that point Emma Frost came to fetch Erik, as Bernard Roth et al. needed to be given a tour of the floors before the main address. “You okay here for a bit?” he checked with Angel, who was holding Shani’s hand.

“Sure thing,” Angel said, but she sounded annoyed.

Erik excused himself and followed Emma. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but when he walked across the lobby to join the party of VIPs expecting him, he thought he saw Charles Xavier appear through the revolving doors, in a smart dark blue suit.

Lies, lies, he thought as he shook hands with Sir Bernard Roth. It’d been Charles: his heart would not have plummeted in such a fashion if it wasn’t Charles. “Just this way,” he said to their party of ten or so, taking them to the lifts. “Shall we start with the underground laboratories?”

He made sure not to look towards the entrance.

He showed the guests the highlights of the many floors, avoided all the slightly unfinished sections carefully, flashed his white teeth, opened doors, and threw impressive sustainability figures at the guests. By the time they reached the fifth floor and examined the view, his guests were thoroughly impressed with the building. Many shook his hand and offered their thanks as they headed back to the lifts downstairs. They reached the lifts the same time as Emma, who had shown a group of her own around. Their eyes met, and Emma looked smug with a ‘we’ve done it’ expression. It would be as much recognition of his hard work as he’d get from her, he figured.

When they got back downstairs, he almost immediately spotted Hank McCoy. He went over, now equipped with a drink of his own, and said, “Sorry I had to rush off – that lot wasn’t going to wait around for me.”

“Not at all,” Hank smiled and then broke into a grin. “I was told Charles beat you fair and square in the final! You still licking your wounds?”

“I wasn’t at my best,” he said.

“Funny, that’s what Charles said.”

Had it been that obvious? He didn’t know how he’d been expected to concentrate or to perform with Charles Xavier staring at him from across the table. He’d been a mess that entire day – to show up and have Charles there, when he thought he’d never see Charles again. And that entire damn final, his hands hand felt sweaty, his heart hammering wildly. “Speaking of whom, is Charles here?” He marvelled at how casual he sounded.

“He said he’d drop by before his meeting.”

It was already well past four o’clock – a work meeting? Or did Charles have to meet a friend, or did he have a date, or – He had been wearing that smart, dark blue suit, he recalled. “What meeting?”

“Realtor, I think. He’s selling his apartment,” Hank said conversationally as people milled around them, sipping from their wine glasses. Hank’s eyes then widened. “I mean that – He and his partner broke up. I don’t know if you heard –”

“I did hear. Charles told me.”

Hank visibly relaxed. “Ah, you’re in the loop as well?” Hank cast a look around to make sure no one of note was within earshot, and then confidentially added, “God, what a mess, am I right? I never met his boyfriend. Did you?”

Hank seemed intrigued, and Erik averted his gaze. “In passing.”

“What was he like, then?”

“Normal. Fine. Yeah, fine.” And talented and driven and smart and frustratingly good-looking.

“Huh. Did they seem happy?” Hank asked and then shook his head. “Well, can’t have been. Happy couples don’t cheat.”

“They can do,” he corrected.

“I guess, but that must be rare,” Hank argued. “And Charles would have taken Warren back, surely, if they’d been that happy.”

Erik frowned. “It was Charles who did the cheating.”

“Yes, I know. But Warren wanted them to stay together, anyway.” Hank came to a halt, as Erik stared at him in confusion. Warren had wanted to stay together? After what Charles had done? Hank went back to his embarrassment quickly. “Sorry, I assumed you knew as much as I did.”

“No, I – I mean. Why didn’t Charles – I’m just surprised, that’s all.” He’d assumed that Charles had been dumped; he’d certainly dumped Charles the second he’d found out, although it’d not been easy. Had Charles dressed it up nicely? Maybe claimed it’d been a one-night misstep, something Warren might be ready to forgive?

“I think everyone’s been surprised,” Hank said, sighing. “But it doesn’t work anymore, does it, if you’re not in love with partner but want the other guy instead?” Hank shrugged. “Maybe we’re alright, being single.” Hank gave him an awkward smile, then seemed to recall Angel, and added, “Oh I mean. I’m single. Still. Always.” Hank rolled his eyes, but Erik found it utterly impossible to concentrate.

Had Charles said that he wasn’t in love with Warren anymore? And that he…

But he couldn’t ask Hank. “What – ah. What do you make of the building, then?” He found it hard to swallow the lump in his throat. What exactly had Charles meant when he’d said he and Warren had broken up, and now Charles was all in again? Charles had been asking him to take him back because he’d been dumped and was sad and felt sorry for himself… hadn’t he?

Hank praised the building and said he’d even seen his office – a definite improvement on the previous one. Erik listened to politely, distracted and bewildered, and he was thankful when he saw Angel approaching. He frankly felt like leaving.

Angel rushed over to them, her hair in disarray. “Erik, I messed up!”

“What’s –” the matter, he meant to ask, but as his eyes automatically scanned at hip-height and he came blank, he said, “Where’s Shani?”

She’d been missing for at least five minutes, Angel estimated. Angel had turned her back for one minute, and Shani had vanished! Angel had looked everywhere, everywhere! She’d even checked under the refreshments table, and she couldn’t find Shani anywhere!

Erik looked around the lobby, but it was so full of people – it was impossible to see where she might have gone. “Okay, look in the lobby, check with the catering staff. Hank, can you check she’s not gone outside? I’ll check the side rooms – she can’t have reached the lift buttons, she should be on this floor. Go, go!” he barked, and Angel and Hank scattered.

Someone was clinking glass, clearing their throat, to get ready for a speech. Erik didn’t care – he was rushing through people, trying to find his daughter. Goddamn Angel! She’d had one job! But Shani was so goddamn quick on her feet when she wanted to be – he’d lost her at Waitrose just the other day – but she never went too far on her own. She was pushing boundaries, to see what she could get away with. Nightmare of a girl!

God, the sooner she was back in his arms the better!

He checked the offices behind the reception desk, awkwardly lurked into the ladies toilets on the ground floor, earning a sharp “Excuse you!” from one of its visitors, and called Shani’s name in his ‘you better come out here’ tone in the ground floor IT lab. This produced no results, and he was beginning to feel less annoyed and more genuinely worried as the seconds rolled by. What had she been wearing? He’d need the description for the police, he’d – What if she’d been snatched, what – No, no, he could not –

The double doors that swung into the ground floor’s large lecture theatre were too heavy for her, but he went in anyway, just as behind him in the main hall Bernard Roth was giving a speech on how in another life, maybe, he would have become a scientist himself.

He came to a halt. The red seats of the lecture theatre rose in front of him, numerous and bare, but the speaker’s raised stage wasn’t empty. At the podium was Charles with Shani propped to his hip. A crackling noise sounded in the theatre: the microphone was on, transmitting the voices of the two. Charles was saying, “No, say professor, not president.”

“But I want to be the president,” Shani replied, her voice echoing all over. She giggled in delight, head turning this way and that to chase her own voice echoing.

“Well in that case say, ‘Good morning, students, this is your president speaking.’”

“Good morning, students, this is your, uhm. I am the, the president. Morning!” She belted out the last word: moor-NING! Her voice rang in the hall, and she laughed again.

Charles grinned at her widely, pulling her higher up on his hip, arm securely around her. “Well done, lovely. You wanna try the video feature, too? We can get our picture on the big screen behind us.”

“Maybe,” Shani said, indifferently, but was clearly excited.

“Charles,” Erik said, and whatever illusion he had been watching, it shattered then. Charles sharply turned towards him, unaware of his presence. Shani simply kept smiling, looking content in Charles’s arms. Erik approached them carefully, up the small ramp to the stage, and when meeting Charles’s gaze seemed too difficult, he looked at Shani instead. “Why’d you run off, huh? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Oh,” Charles said, immediately putting Shani down on the ground. Shani didn’t run to her papa, however, but clutched onto the leg of Charles’s blue trousers, the way she at times did when she wanted to keep Erik still. “I’m dreadfully sorry,” Charles was rushing out, “I was doing some exploring, and she came up to me. I didn’t think there was any harm – I didn’t realise.”

“Shani,” Erik said, reaching out a hand, but Shani kept still.

“Go on,” Charles coaxed her, and Shani looked up at Charles hesitatingly before releasing his pant leg and walking over to Erik.

He scooped her up, and she wrapped arms around his neck. “We were playing,” she said sheepishly – she knew she shouldn’t have run off, and Erik knew he needed to give her a stern lecture, but somehow he felt powerless. He felt like he knew what had really happened: Angel may have turned her back for a minute, sure, but if he knew his daughter at all, she had spotted Charles and made a beeline for him.

Charles was keeping his frustratingly deep blue eyes on them, and Erik felt at a loss. What had Charles said to Hank, really? And why hadn’t Charles told him about him and Warren, and how it had really ended?

The doors behind them opened a second time, then, this time sounding clearly in the silence of the lecture theatre. “Thank god!” Hank said, exhaling in relief as he came over. “There’s been a search party for you!” he said to Shani, who buried her face in Erik’s neck in response.

“She was with me,” Charles said. “I should’ve asked first, Erik, I truly am –”

“Can you give us a minute, Hank?” Erik asked, handing Shani over. Hank took her but awkwardly, clearly not used to holding children. He certainly didn’t hold her in the utterly natural, paternal way that Charles had. “Don’t let her run off,” Erik said, fearing at that second that he’d never quite forget the spark of hope he’d felt when he’d seen Charles and Shani together.

Hank looked surprised, but said that sure, he’d be just out in the reception. He should go inform Angel they’d found Shani, anyway. “Come on, Shani, they might still have those breadsticks left,” Hank said, but not without a look at Erik and then at Charles. Charles remained still and sorry looking.

When the doors swung closed behind Hank and Shani, Erik swallowed hard.

The lecture theatre felt deafeningly quiet. There still was a smell of fresh paint in the air, and the computers had been installed only two days ago, Erik knew – at least it all worked, he figured, as he tried to think of what to say.

“Of course you’d all be looking for her,” Charles said now. “What a tremendously foolish thing of me. Thoughtless, really – I’m sorry.”

But Erik wasn’t even mad that while they’d been looking for Shani, she’d been with Charles all along. The second he’d walked in on the two of them, he’d relaxed: Shani was fine. Shani was with Charles, and as such she was fine. There weren’t safer hands to look after her.

“Don’t be. She’s missed you a lot,” he admitted. She’d stopped asking after Charles after her birthday, when Erik had broken the news that Charles couldn’t come by anymore. She’d stopped asking, but she certainly hadn’t forgotten.

“I miss her too,” Charles said, quietly.

He regarded Charles, trying to put the puzzle pieces together: Charles had had his hair cut since the chess tournament, as the hair now came off his shoulders slightly. It still had the look of not having been brushed, but Charles had also trimmed his beard, and in the blue suit that had probably been tailored for Charles, he looked nothing short of stunning. In that second he absolutely believed that Warren had been ready to forgive Charles’s infidelity and to give them a second go. It was surprisingly hard, he thought, to remember the reasons why Charles needed to be kept away.

“Did you really tell Warren the truth about us?” he then asked.

Charles blinked in surprise. “Yes. I told you.”

“I know, but – but why, then, if you told him, why did he want to stay together?”

“Oh,” Charles said, and Charles looked away and at the wide podium. The microphone was still on – Charles turned it off, fingers resting on the buttons. Charles didn’t ask him how he knew. He waited, and Charles seemed to hesitate in forming his next words. “I guess he thought… that staying together was easier than breaking up.”

“And you didn’t think so?”

“Oh yes, I thought so too. It would have been much less hassle.” Charles gave a small shrug. “But I knew something Warren didn’t, I suppose. I knew there was a – a scenario, or a situation, in which I was… I was happier, than I could have been with him. But he, I guess – he didn’t have that comparison to make. And then, when he offered to take me back, I just knew it could never happen. For me, it would never be enough. And so we broke up.” Charles frowned to himself, then, and let out a small chuckle. “Such euphemistic… Anyway.” Charles cleared his throat, now looking straight at him. “That’s that.”

“I see.”

“Hmm.” Charles’s fingers traced the edge of the podium. “I was hoping to run into you, really. I’ve been wanting to have a word.”

“Yes?” he said, his stomach dropping.

Charles gave him a sad smile. “Yes: I want to apologise for the chess championships. I was out of line, completely so. It’s not my place to criticise your… relationships, or to – to make a rather pathetic plea for us, after what I did.”

“It’s fi –”

“No, really. I was out of line, and I wanted to apologise.” Charles looked sorry, too. Charles slid his hands into his pockets, and it seemed to Erik that Charles was closing himself off from him – very different from Charles’s plea at the championship of asking to be let back in. “Maybe one day,” Charles then said, as an afterthought, “if you ever – think that you can forgive me, at all. Maybe we can try to be friends, because – because we’re such great friends, underneath it all. I always felt like I could be myself with you, from the second I met you, and that’s rare. The older you get the more you realise how rare that is, really.”

Charles was right, but Erik didn’t know what to say. They were amazing friends underneath it all: god, Charles always seemed to understand the thoughts that didn’t make sense even to him. But the layers above that, the intimacy, the passion and the sex and the love and – it was so much more complicated than just the bond of kindred souls. It was such a mess, and he doubted they could ever salvage the friendship underneath.

Charles added, “I know that’s not something you’d consider now, or tomorrow, but – well.”

“Duly noted.”

“Okay.” But Charles looked disappointed.

“Thanks for looking after Shani,” he said, and Charles smiled at him kindly.

It was hard to walk away from Charles, and somehow this one felt harder than when he’d fled the wedding at Oxford, or when he’d walked out on Charles at the pub. This one felt more final than either of those times.

As he left the theatre, his feet felt clumsy and slow.

He got back into the main hall just as applause began ringing in the air, a speech or another having finished. Hank had stayed close by with Shani, Angel now with them. Angel looked beyond relieved that they’d found his daughter, who was now clutching her hand, but Shani simply lifted her arms up at the sight of him, asking to be picked up.

He did, propping her to his hip. “We’re going now,” he said. He thanked Hank for helping them look, and then trailed out with Angel.

They hailed a taxi outside and he told Angel that he and Shani would get the next one, over Angel’s repeated apologies. But he wasn’t even mad at her, although he probably should have been. Right then he just wanted to get away and rest – he was exhausted, somehow, and he felt old, so old…

“Do you not want me to come over?” Angel asked, but he had work to catch up on. Shani waved at Angel as her taxi took off.

“Papa,” Shani said as a second taxi soon slowed down for them. “Can I have sweeties for dinner?”

“If you like,” he said, opening the taxi door. He buckled Shani and himself in, leaned back against the leather, and closed his eyes, fighting off a headache as they started their way home.

People his age were too old for love, he thought. When you were young, no one forewarned you of what was to come, and no one told you what the hell to do with the baggage and the hurt and the disappointment that would emerge later on in life. You were not expected to use reason or to be sensible when you were young. No, young people were free to love with irrational abandon. No one expected young couples to be forgiving, either.

And then you grew up, and the fallacies of perfect loves crashed around you fast.

What was left after that, he wondered. What did they have left?

Raven’s friend Stefan had gone to India for six months, leaving behind a small flat on Camden Road, above a Caribbean take-out. The flat smelled vaguely of jerk chicken, which Charles found ironic because Stefan appeared to be vegan, if the ‘vegan for life’ fridge magnet was anything to go by.

He now owed Raven one, as she had sorted the place out for him. Stefan only asked for two hundred pounds per week (a real bargain) and that Charles water the plants, for however long Charles intended to stay. Charles carried boxes in gradually over the week, and the living room was soon full of his boxes of books. Scott came down from Oxford to help him on Wednesday, and Hank helped him on Thursday. As Scott had huffed up the stairs with a box of books, he’d said, “This better be the last time I’m carrying these.” But it wouldn’t be: Stefan would be back in a few months, by which time Charles should have found a new place to live. He’d get removal men for the next move, he promised.

As the flat wasn’t his, he could hardly unpack. Stefan also had little trinkets and jade ornaments on all surfaces. Camden Road was always noisy outside, and even the wall of boxes stacked up in the living room couldn’t muffle the sound.

He was living out of the suitcase he’d lain open on the bedroom floor, and when he awoke in the mornings he was always disorientated and unsure of where he as. A smell of incense lingered in the air, and although Charles had put his own sheets on the futon mattress on Stefan’s bedroom floor, even his own sheets now carried the scent of lotus flowers and agarwood.

Charles supposed it was better than living in a hotel, like a man who’d been kicked out. Their Abercorn Place flat was now being renovated to match the vision of the woman who’d bought it: it’d happened in just a few weeks, and Charles was still trying to get his head around it.

It was the kind of living arrangement that certainly made him take stock of his life, and that stock was mostly humiliating – therefore he was thankful that he had rediscovered his desire to work. As there was no work station in Stefan’s small flat, he had to use the kitchenette’s bar counter for the purpose. He made himself a cup of flavoured black tea (mango – Stefan had said to help himself), and spent his weekend morning wrapped up in his bath robe, marking his Masters students’ lab work. He finished in record time, put the marking away, and began writing his paper for a conference in Düsseldorf in three weeks’ time. It was good to be busy, he thought, and it would be nice to visit Germany, and especially Düsseldorf, where Erik was from. He’d once thought he would move there, so it’d be nice to take a look around.

He’d avoided thinking of Erik for a long time, but recently he’d embraced it. His memories were all that he had left, and it seemed too painful to lose them too. He certainly had not come out clean, and he’d spent a lot of time thinking about Erik and Magda, and how upset he had been that Erik had never said he had a girlfriend back home.

Well, how ironic was it that he’d outdone Erik: not only had he omitted Warren from their conversations, he had been sleeping with both men at the same time.

And back in the day he may have been willing to forgive Erik for not mentioning Magda, but it was Erik who had chosen his son instead. He’s spent years being bitter over it, angry and lost, but that too had changed. He had never been around children much, but he had gotten to know Shani and had witnessed the bond between her and Erik. Of course Erik had made the right decision: you had to put our children first – the wondrous, bizarre creatures that they were. You had to try for their sake, and you might fail, but before any such failure you owed it to them to at least try. Erik had done right by his son, and Charles no longer could blame him.

It now seemed that the things he had been heartbroken about for years and years were not as valid as he’d thought. He’d been too hard on Erik, and he’d been taken it too hard himself.

This time everything had been worse. This time he truly had f*cked up the most important, most promising – but never mind, never mind. He was still embarrassed of his confrontation with Erik at the chess championships, to demand an explanation for Angel after he’d been two-timing Erik. But he’d been jealous and upset.

At least he’d apologised. At least he’d been able to do that much. It’d been out of line…

He wrote his paper, typing ‘I’d also like to thank the president of the Biogenetics Institute’, and then recalled Shani’s declaration of wanting to be a president rather than a professor. He chuckled to himself, even as something sharp and painful twisted in his guts. He’d left the theatre in time to see Erik and Shani leave the Bernard Roth Building together with Angel – they’d looked good together, the three of them. Like a family, maybe.

His smile faded. One of the more persistent, darker voices inside his head asked: well it’s just great you’re trying to learn to accept all that, Charles, but what if that’s it? What if you never fall in love again?

Those were the exact same thoughts that had had him bouncing from one boyfriend to the next for years now. No, he had to do better, he had to develop somehow. No random one-night-stands, no meaningless flings. He always panicked he’d wind up alone, then convinced himself that Boy Wonder from the club, or his course, or the university library, or even the chip shop once, was perhaps The One, and after a few months of dating he’d dump them as decidedly Not The One. And then there was Erik, who made him feel like he’d found his place in the world, who had always…

He blinked and found his presentation staring at him. No, he thought as he kept typing, he’d stay single until he figured out how he could be better for others, or for someone special. And if it wasn’t as good as it’d been with Erik, then he’d just have to accept that. He’d still strive and be a better person, and he would seek to commit to someone, even if he knew that the one person he really had wanted to be with had slipped through his grasp. That, after all, was no one’s fault but his own, and he needed to admit it.

In some moments he congratulated himself for being so mature, and the next he was keeping the fear at bay again, that he’d spend the rest of his life alone.

Raven called him around lunch time and asked if he’d want to do brunch the next day. He said he could after a squash date with one of his institute colleagues. He’d actually started playing squash now, after months of using it as a ruse to cover up his infidelity. How funny the world could be..!

They made a date near Camden Market, after which he finished a draft of his presentation and grabbed a shower. He was still towelling off in the bedroom when someone knocked on the door – a neighbour, he guessed, since he hadn’t buzzed anyone in. Would he have heard the buzzer over the shower?

“Just a minute!” he called out, quickly pulling on a t-shirt and grabbing the pyjama pants he’d left on the bed that morning. He’d had two people come by so far looking for Stefan – apparently Stefan liked borrowing people’s things (like the blender) but not returning them so much.

He hurried to the door that creaked ever so slightly as he pulled it inwards. “What can I –” He stood quite still, words forgotten.

Erik stood in the narrow stairwell where the blue paint was peeling and the handrail felt unsteady. Even in the jeans and the grey t-shirt, Erik looked too well put together to be anywhere near Stefan’s flat, especially since Charles’s messy moving in.

Erik inhaled slightly, eyes glued onto him. Charles said, “What are you...?”

“Can I come in?”

“Oh, you want to..? Sure. Sure! Yes, do come in.” He stood aside, and Erik entered. Erik was holding his car keys – he’d probably driven over. Charles hastened to close the door, thoughts running havoc as he tried figure out what was going on.

Erik seemed to be doing an inspection, taking in the couch with purple, pink and neon green cushions, and the huge teal coloured vase in the corner that had a single, dead tree branch sticking out of it. “This…” Erik began, searching, “….is alright?”

“It’s temporary,” he was quick to point out. “I mean, it’s certainly no St John’s Wood, but I can’t complain. Stefan, that’s whose place it is, he’s in India. I haven’t met him. He’s got a nice DVD selection on yoga, not that I’ve tried yet.” He stopped, aware that he was rambling. He decidedly shut up and nervously pushed still wet hair out of his face. Erik, who had patiently waited for him to pipe down, nodded. Charles tried to pull himself together. “How did you know, uh…” He motioned around them.

“Well,” Erik said, eyes lingering on the framed picture of an elaborately jewelled elephant above Stefan’s TV. “I went to your old place first. The woman there gave me this address.”

“Ah. Right.” He’d given Stefan’s address for mail redirection. “What brings you here?”

Erik took in a deep breath. He appeared to be talking to his car keys as he said, “I’ve come to…” The silence lingered, and Erik cleared his throat. “Have you seen Warren lately?”

“No.” The morning Warren left their apartment for good had been it.

“Spoken to him?”

“A few days ago,” he admitted, and Erik looked up at him sharply. He couldn’t read Erik: what was that? Fear? “We’ve – I mean. There’s some paperwork to sort out, now that the flat’s been sold. But apart from that he… Well, he’s not talking to me, really.”

“You can’t blame him,” Erik noted, and Charles dropped his gaze. He’d never live it down – not now, not ever. His brief thought that maybe Erik had come to offer forgiveness evaporated. Erik asked, “Are you seeing anyone?”

This question took him by surprise. “No.”

Erik quirked an eyebrow at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Defensive, but confused. He still didn’t understand why Erik had gone to his old place, or why Erik was in Camden now. Did Erik want to accept his offer of friendship, or to have another go at him, or – But the third option he didn’t dare think about, although the longer Erik stood in Stefan’s living room, the reddish stubble having been trimmed some since the opening of the Bernard Roth Building, the more that final option began pulsing through his veins. Erik’s blue eyes were alert, the creases in the corners of Erik’s eyes signs that they were both getting older, the two of them. Erik looked wise beyond his years just then.

“Did you mean it?” Erik then said with a change of pace, the fiddling with the keys now done. When Charles wasn’t sure what the question meant, Erik added, “That day at King’s College. Did you mean it when you said you’re all in, all of… that.”

His embarrassing speech down at the lobby. He couldn’t lie: “Yes.”

Erik let out a little hum, nodding, as if to take this in. “I’ve thought about that a lot, what you said at the tournament, and at the pub that time after I found out, and I’ve thought of your offer of friendship, too.” Erik frowned. “You seem to want different things each time.”

“It’s been a very rocky few months,” he said, not wanting Erik to think that at any point he’d been whimsical. He’d gone through a break-up – no, two. And at the end of it all, only one thing had remained, but he’d since learned that it was too late.

“I know what it used to mean, us being all in,” Erik said, and Charles knew it too: that they were choosing each other, that they’d follow each other anywhere, that they were willing to get married the next day if the opportunity arose. Utterly irresponsible but so exciting, so all-consuming – and when he looked at Erik, he still felt it, even then.

“It still means the same,” he dared to say. “More, even.”

Because he was more aware – he was sure they both were – of the responsibility that went along with declaring one’s intentions of a life-long relationship.

Erik seemed to weigh his words as he said, “I know that… that when we met again, I was quite lonely. I assumed a lot and I hoped a lot – more than you gave me reason to hope, and that’s not on you. I really did… I really wanted us to be like before. And we were, in a lot of ways, but I ignored the ways in which we weren’t, and that was blind and idealistic. I guess I’d just missed you for so many years that – Well.” Erik paused. “Maybe you were right that some of it was my fault, too. Maybe I wasn’t perfect either. I mean, I certainly didn’t f*ck up to the extent you did, but I get it, the pull of what we had, seducing us both and making us act rashly. I know I acted… very rashly.”

“I see,” he said. It was forgiveness, after all, Erik showing up here. He’d pat Charles on the back, tell him not to feel too bad about it, and he’d go back to his new family.

But there was an urgency to Erik’s voice when he said, “Look, I’m not modern, I don’t believe in… open relationships, and I don’t like dating multiple people at the same time, or any of that. And I don’t want –” Erik’s phone began ringing just then, and Charles didn’t want Erik to answer because he was hanging onto every word, every syllable, every letter, but Erik got his phone out, checking the name before saying, “Sorry, I gotta take this.” Erik had the slightest hint of red to his cheeks now: adrenalin rush or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell.

Erik faced the wall, and only then did Charles realise how nervous Erik seemed: his entire body was full of tension, from his shoulders to his feet. He almost reached out to touch Erik – because something was wrong, clearly, Erik was upset in some way – but then managed to stop himself.

“Stella, hey – all good?” Erik sounded annoyed, but he listened, a woman’s voice muffled, and then said, “No, that’s fine. No, she’s not allergic – no, not to walnuts, or any nuts. … Uh huh. Yes. … Yes, that’s fine. Shani enjoying herself? Good, good.” Erik glanced at him, and then at his watch. “Yeah, that’s when I’ll be there. Okay. Thanks, Stella. Okay, bye.”

Erik hung up, sliding the phone back into his pocket. “Sorry about that, Shani, uh – it’s a new friend, their first play date together. Stella wanted to make sure – Anyway. Where was I?”

“You were saying that you don’t like dating multiple people at once,” he supplied, almost instantly.

“Yes, good. Good. No, I don’t,” Erik then said, like he was agreeing with himself. Erik’s lips pursed when he went on with, “And I don’t want you thinking that I condone cheating either, because I don’t.” Charles was about to say that no, no, absolutely neither did he, but Erik pressed on. “And if you really are all in, then that’s it, that excludes all those things. There’s no negotiation in that, there’s no leeway, and I would never forgive anything like it either, and if that seems unreasonable, then I’m an unreasonable man.” Erik paused and then, softly, said, “If you’re with me, Charles, then you’re not with anyone else. That’s the deal.”

He swore that the blood rushing through his head was deafening. “Are you. Offering?” His command of English was deteriorating shockingly fast. “Because yes, I mean – yes, that’d be fine. With me. And that’s not – maybe for some, maybe, but. I don’t find that unreasonable, I could –” Erik took a step towards him, and Charles felt his heart beginning to race. “Sorry, I have to,” he began, and Erik stilled, both hands clenched into fists. “I mean, you’re a – a taken man yourself, are you not?”

Erik smiled, for the first time since having arrived, and then instantly stopped as if that were inappropriate. “I’m not with anyone.”

“And how’s that, then?” he asked, sincerely but rather desperately wanting to know.

Erik looked slightly guilty. “Do you want me to tell you that you were right? You always seem to be.” Erik’s lips pursed in displeasure. “Angel and I… I think we both knew, deep down, that it wasn’t quite… what either of us wanted. I mean I say ‘we’, but she wasn’t too happy with me, really, when I suggested that maybe we were looking for different things.”

“When did that happen?”

“Last night,” Erik admitted. “She wanted a boyfriend, and I wanted less than that from us. And then I told myself to sleep on it, to think about if rushing over here was such a smart thing to do. So I slept on it. And then I rushed.” A hint of warmth had returned to Erik’s eyes, a tender warmth that he recognised. “I guess I wanted you to know that I’m unattached. Apart from my little girl.”

“Well, she’s got dibs, of course,” he said.

“Of course. And I thought, when I pick her up from the playdate, maybe you’d like to join us for dinner.”

“I’d like that.” He was barely holding himself together. “I’d love that.”

“Yeah?” Erik said with a wide smile, and the small living room somehow felt much smaller, then, and Charles became aware of how close to each other they were: only a few steps apart. He nodded, and Erik exhaled, and in two long strides Erik had engulfed him in his arms. The hug was almost painfully tight, but he clutched Erik to him wildly, heart hammering, trying to believe Erik was real and in his arms.

“Thank you,” he said, words muffled by Erik’s shoulder. “Oh darling, thank you, thank you. You won’t regret it, you –”

“Oh shut up,” Erik said, head bending towards him, and their mouths met halfway. The kiss was every bit as desperate and hungry as Charles could dare to hope – Erik’s hands held his face still, lips bruising against his. The kiss broke, almost gently, Erik’s forehead pressing against his. They were breathing unevenly, Charles trying not to drown in the relief and joy. He was daydreaming – was he daydreaming?

“I’ve missed you terribly,” he confessed, words now spilling out fast, “I’ve been so angry with myself, so angry, I messed it all up for us, and the thought of going on without you –”

“Yes,” Erik agreed and kissed him again. Charles wrapped his arms around Erik’s middle, holding him close. This kiss was deeper, hungrier. He pushed himself against Erik with intent: a request, a suggestion and an invitation all in one.

Erik’s hands moved down to his hips, taking firm hold. “Okay, we need to, ah, think this through,” Erik began, voice washing over his lips. Erik sounded hesitant. “We need to talk things through, properly and sensibly. And you and I mustn’t plunge head first into anything, or – or each other, which is what we… tend to do.” Erik said all of this with a gaze perfectly fixed on Charles’s mouth, which suddenly felt dry.

“You want to talk things over?” he offered, trying to reel his mind into doing that if Erik so wished. His breaths were shallow, his insides twisting together. He could taste Erik on his lips.

“We need to take things slow,” Erik said, and when Erik kissed him, it was just that. Their lips parted, tongues meeting – slow, slow, slow… He was getting hard, an automatic reaction to the press of Erik’s body, his scent and touch and taste. He didn’t want to push Erik – they had time, there was no rush…

Erik pushed closer, and he felt Erik against him, stiffening co*ck underneath the denim of Erik’s jeans. “We can do anything you like,” he said, like he was drunk on Erik, but he was, he was… “Anything you want…”

“Goddammit,” Erik swore, and when Erik kissed him now, he knew they were both goners, and yes, absolutely, they’d talk about everything, they’d talk it all through, finalise the details and the grand schemes – Erik had come back to him, wanted to be with him, even now, still! He’d never been more grateful, never humbler or as ready to go on blind faith as then. They pushed closer to each other, and Charles knew they both needed the physical intimacy as a precursor for all that they needed to talk about – later.

Erik’s hands settled on the small of his back, pulling him close as they kissed, tongues tasting each other. Charles’s hands wound up on Erik’s scalp, pushing over the short strands, and all he could think of was how much he wanted right then. It wouldn’t feel real until they reclaimed each other, nothing would be sated, nothing would be resolved until –

“Come on,” Erik said, hand taking hold of his, palm to palm, and Erik headed to the only open door in the living room that led straight into the bedroom. Erik’s eyes landed on the futon, eyebrow arching like he somehow wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t a proper bed, just a mattress, but then Erik was already pushing Charles down onto it, climbing on top, mouth encasing his in hot kisses. Erik’s mouth on him was hard and commanding, the feel of it flowing straight down to his belly, to his groin.

Oh I’m going to be with this man forever, he thought, and his stomach dropped. They were already pulling on each other’s clothes, and Erik’s hand went to his fly, unzipping his jeans even as he kissed Charles. He was ready, pushing Erik’s jeans out of the way, shimmying his own pyjama pants down. He pulled his t-shirt over his head as Erik got rid his jeans and shoes. Charles grabbed the front of Erik’s t-shirt and pulled him close again, his own bared body stretched beneath Erik’s half-naked form. Their legs entwined, their crotches brushed over each other’s, and he pulled on Erik’s t-shirt, mouth linked with his, demanding more and more.

“Has there been anyone?” he asked, as they pulled Erik’s t-shirt over his head, Erik throwing it to the side. His palms pressed to Erik’s shoulders, slowly running down his chest. “Apart from Angel, has there…?” He was an easily jealous man and wanted to know.

“No,” Erik said, with a shake of his head, and dipped down to kiss him deeply. Their tongues moved together, and the contact had his co*ck aching already. Erik’s mouth trailed over his, wet and soft. “You?”

“Yes – a guy I met at a club, after Warren and I – for a night, that was all,” he said, and Erik nodded, “Okay.” End of conversation. Why would he ever want anyone else, he thought, as his hands moved over Erik’s body, as Erik’s hands now slid down his sides, claiming, Erik’s hands reaching down between his legs.

“Wait, have you got – anything?” he asked, realising he had no idea in what box his condoms were.

Erik blinked above him. “No,” he said. “God, I – No, I didn’t think, I.”

“There’s a shop a few doors down.” He instantly knew neither of them was very willing to get out of bed right then, for anything. It’d be fine, they’d do others things, save that for later. “Or maybe,” he said, and he slid from under Erik, rather impatient. He reached out for Stefan’s nightstand and prayed that Stefan was sexually active enough and practical enough to be of use here. And Stefan was: at the bottom of the drawer were condoms, under receipts and pens. He pulled one out, pleased, but then stopped and had to laugh.

“What?” Erik asked, pressing kisses to his shoulder blade, pressing his teeth in.

“Well uh,” he said, passing the condom onto Erik. He looked over his shoulder at Erik’s reaction, who broke into a grin. Charles laughed. “Let’s stay on top of the covers?”

“Good idea,” Erik said, pressing the glow-in-the-dark condom into his palm.

The lube, at least, was standard, Charles pouring some onto his fingers and reaching down to press two wetted digits to his hole. He spread the lube there, pushing his two fingers in – oh that was good. His sex drive had been low lately, even taking the pleasure of going solo away. Now those dormant desires sprung up to the surface, his guts twisting in anticipation.

Erik had rolled the condom onto himself, co*ck erect and curved upwards on his belly, flushed deep red even through the protective layer of the latex. Erik’s hand moved down between his legs, fingertips prodding, demandingly, until Charles pulled his own hand away. Erik instantly replaced the two digits with his own, going in deeper than he had. He let out a small moan, encouraging. Erik pulled his fingers out, added lube onto them, and then pushed the two back in, this time going deep and crooking the digits right against his prostate. Charles wasn’t expecting it, and his back arched as a wave of pleasure ran up his spine, a rather deep moan escaping his lungs.

Erik grunted, pleased, and leaned over him to meet him in a kiss. Charles’s arms felt heavy and graceless, and he wrapped them around Erik’s wide shoulders, kissing him, breathing into his mouth, while Erik worked two fingers in him. The fingers kept pushing in, opening him up, while Erik’s tongue met his, deep and fiery.

Charles spread his legs wider, Erik’s latex-covered co*ck bumping against his own, hard and throbbing against his belly. “Good,” he breathed, somewhat nonsensically, and kissed Erik. He held a hand on the back of Erik’s neck, to keep him close.

“Can I?” Erik’s fingers slipped out, leaving him feeling wet and open.

He grabbed Erik’s behind, hands full of firm buttocks, and pulled Erik closer and over him. He shifted his hips to align himself with Erik’s co*ck, which slid between his cheeks. Erik didn’t need further instructions, grabbing his co*ck with one hand. Charles held his breath as the head of Erik’s co*ck pushed against his hole, biting on his bottom lip. Oh please, please, please, he thought, fired up.

Erik’s eyes flew from between their bodies back up to his face, restless anticipation and concentration there. Erik held himself up with one hand, the other still between them, and veins were visible under the tensed, flushed skin, Erik’s chest moving with uneven breaths. Then Erik pushed his hips forward, the muscles of his stomach rippling.

“Aw, f*ck,” he swore, seizing up, but Erik kept pushing in until several inches of hard co*ck were deep inside. His toes crooked, his spine curved, and Erik’s hands moved to the insides of his thighs, adjusting him. He was left open and full, body thrumming. It’d only been a few months, and he’d somehow forgotten how full he was when Erik was in him, how completely Erik took him.

Erik’s mouth sought his, wet and light, brushing over. “Okay?” Erik asked, and he could only hum in response. Erik pulled back and pushed in again, letting out a soft ‘Ah’ that sounded far dirtier than Erik probably realised. Erik began to f*ck him slowly, not going too hard or too fast. They couldn’t stop kissing, mouths locked as their bodies joined together, Erik’s hips between his legs claiming him once more. Charles thought that they belonged there, the both of them – lost in each other with the world forgotten.

Erik grabbed the back of his thigh, lifting, and he obligingly braced his legs at Erik’s waist, feet dangling ungracefully in the air behind Erik’s back. Erik lifted up slightly, one hand on the futon for balance, and as Charles’s legs rested at the tops of Erik’s thighs, steady and firm between his own, Erik’s hips began rotating small thrusts into him. He groaned, head pressing hard into the pillow, eyelids drooping. Erik gripped the back of his neck, staring at him as he kept the small, yet forceful thrusts going. Erik then pushed in deep without warning, stealing his breath as he gasped. Erik’s fingers dug deep into his neck. “Missed you,” Erik said, eyes desperate and fiery.

“Me too,” he said – god, they’d been fools, nearly throwing this away. He’d been a fool almost letting this slip through his fingers! He leaned up, and Erik met him in a wet kiss, Charles’s hands settling on Erik’s shoulder blades.

He all but melted into the thrusts. He couldn’t explain why it felt so raw: everything was running in deeper than his skin and bones, radiating at the core of him. Erik’s stubble scratched at his chest, Erik’s lips exploring the skin there, finding a nipple and sucking it into Erik’s mouth. He shivered, hips shifting, giving way to Erik’s thrusts.

Their breaths were uneven, shaky, and Charles felt groans pushing out of his throat, but the sounds mostly got lost between their mouths. Charles’s thighs strained as he kept himself open for Erik, desperate for more. Erik’s hands ran all over him, his chest, his belly, caressing the tops of his parted thighs.

Erik tasted so good, felt so good, better than anyone – god, this felt better than even ten years ago. This time would probably even deadlier, more intense, more all-consuming…

Erik pulled back, then, pulling out of him. Charles was about to protest as Erik rose up, knees digging into the mattress, but Erik grabbed the back of his thigh and pushed it across to the other side. Charles got the hint, shifting to lie on his stomach, first, before lifting his ass up – Erik muttered an impatient curse to himself, sounding somewhat adoring – and then getting on his hands and knees. The futon mattress dipped under him, and Erik leaned over his back, a warm ghost presence, mouthing the nape of his neck. Charles craned his neck, met Erik’s mouth with his, his own co*ck hanging heavy between his legs. Erik’s pushed back inside him without hesitation, and Charles moaned into Erik’s mouth.

Erik’s hands gripped his hips, Erik adjusting his own position behind him. Take me, Charles thought, wildly, but he didn’t have time to make the hungry thought into words before Erik was moving again, f*cking into him from behind. This time the smack of their bodies meeting joined the uneven breaths and groans already filling the room.

Charles’s head dropped between his arms, Erik’s arm wrapping securely around his chest, Erik almost glued to his back as Erik’s hips f*cked into him. “This good?” Erik asked, like he somehow didn’t know. His entire lower body felt like it was burning up, tingling and throbbing, the sensation radiating from where Erik pushed into him, large and stiff.

“Harder,” he asked, and Erik’s breath washed over his shoulder blades, tongue dipping into the curve of his spine, moving downwards to mid-back before vanishing. Erik began a harder rhythm, and Charles bit on his bottom lip, eyes screwing shut. He wanted to feel this afterwards, the ghost of Erik in him, of his Erik in him – Christ, they wouldn’t have to hide, or keep it to themselves, they could finally just be, the two of them, and –

Erik’s teeth sunk into the side of his neck, enough to make him jerk but not enough to hurt, and he grabbed his co*ck, squeezing it into his warm palm. “Yeah, that’s – oh f*ck,” he swore, almost regretting that he’d asked for harder. His free hand twisted in the sheets, maintaining his balance, as with the other he palmed his co*ck, his hips thrusting between his hand and Erik’s co*ck. He almost squirmed, chasing pleasure from both ends. He wasn’t going to last long at all, was he?

Erik was groaning, low and hot into his ear. He felt lost, so f*cking lost, but all of a sudden he found himself smiling, blissed out and content, unbelieving of his luck of Erik Lehnsherr having come and given him a second chance. And here they were: pulling and pushing and grasping and searching…

“Love doing this with you,” Erik groaned, hips stilling and shifting to slow, shallow thrusts just as it began to feel too much. The muscles of his hole clenched, and Erik hissed, the arm around Charles’s chest tightening and keeping him close.

“Love you,” he returned, trying to catch his breath. Erik’s chest expanded against his back with unsteady breaths, Erik’s hips stilling.

“You do?” Erik asked, the words soft in his ear, and it only then occurred to Charles what he’d let slip out in the midst of their love-making.

He moved from under Erik, Erik slipping out of him. He flipped back onto his back on the bed, Erik flushed and sweat-slick above him. Erik’s mouth was swollen and red, a sheen of sweat covering him, his pupils wide and dark.

He took in these details of Erik, bare and intimate, and his legs parted nearly out of their own volition, Erik slipping back between them. His breathing was shallow and broken as he stared up at Erik. “Yes,” he confirmed. Erik leaned down, tongue licking over his parted lips in a broad stroke once, twice, before plunging into his mouth. Charles dug his fingers into Erik’s scalp, the hairs there wet from sweat. Absolutely, yes: he was so in love, had been for months, and it was better and deeper and wiser than the love he’d felt ten years earlier. Maybe as tactless, he thought, his hand guiding Erik’s latex-covered erection back into him where he was lube-slick and open – Erik slid inside, making them both groan – tactless, yes, maybe. But so strong.

Buried in him again, the muscles of Erik’s stomach quivered as his hand ran over them. Erik was hovering above him, body tense, blue eyes alight. Charles wanted to be brave for them, braver than he’d been when he’d heard of Magda, braver than when he’d started their affair behind Warren’s back. He needed to fight for them and fend for them – properly. Protect what they had more fiercely than ever before. “I love you,” he repeated, and Erik’s blue eyes seemed to glaze over.

Erik paused, mouth open – silence, at first. “I love you too,” Erik returned, and then let out a laugh of relief, and as they kissed their mouths turned into smiles, and Erik grinned, and Charles felt his heart expand and radiate. He nudged Erik’s behind with his heel, urging him on even as he tried to fight back a laugh himself. “Needy,” Erik noted, and Charles bit down on Erik’s bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth. This shut Erik up efficiently.

Charles kept a hand on his co*ck as Erik f*cked him. It was too dry, and Erik licked his own palm, reaching down to wet him, and Charles did the same, looking at Erik as his tongue rubbed spit onto the inside of his palm. Erik swore and then greedily watched as Charles began jerking himself off. Erik studied his rhythm and then appeared to try and match it, and Charles stretched out beneath him, feeling like he was being f*cked into bliss or oblivion – perhaps both.

His own skin was overheated and slick, the muscles of his legs aching as Erik lifted and hooked his ankles over his shoulders, slipping in even deeper. Erik leaned down to kiss him deeply, bending him in on himself, f*cking him steadily, and Charles felt the mattress move with them. “Yeah, just like that,” he slurred, tightening his grip of his erection, already leaking onto his stomach.

“Charles,” Erik groaned, mouth seeking his constantly, hungrily. Erik was able to f*ck so deep into him from this angle, and Charles felt himself be pushed open, claimed, taken. “So close,” Erik breathed, and Charles nodded feverishly. Erik grunted, slipped one of Charles’s legs off his shoulder, and Charles pressed it tightly to Erik’s side. Erik worked into him, mouth hanging open, eyes dark, and Charles felt his own org*sm boiling up inside him. “Fu – Schatz.” Erik closed his eyes, thrusting hard. “So – need to,” and Charles said, “Yes, come on,” and Erik came, hard and deep, hips violently pushing flush against his ass. Erik groaned loudly, his chest flushing red, hips mimicking thrusts although he was as deep as he could get.

Charles felt himself follow, seizing up beneath Erik, whose open mouth was washing uneven breaths against his jaw. Charles came on both of their stomachs, white streaks of come even hitting Erik’s chest. He jerked from the spasms, and Erik sealed his mouth with his own, tongue pushing in aggressively. He kissed back, thoughts having disappeared. He milked his co*ck until he was dry, the amount of come on them slightly obscene, hadn’t he reminded himself that he hadn’t had sex in a good while, and even then it hadn’t been like this.

When the tremors ceased, the euphoria still pulsing inside him, the release carrying a sweet droning feeling to his limbs, he relaxed against the mattress, Erik’s solid weight feeling good on him. Erik was catching his breath, nipping at his jaw lazily, and brushing his head against him.

“Christ,” Erik whispered, voice rough. Erik then moved down his chest, kissing his skin, tongue swirling to taste the come there. Charles tried to catch his breath, his legs now back on the mattress, Erik slowly softening inside him. Erik got to his navel, and with come-covered lips moved up to kiss him again, and Charles tasted himself on Erik’s tongue.

He brushed his knuckles gently against Erik’s cheek. Distracted by the exercise, he sighed. “This beard is a… very, very good look for you, by the way.” The stubble bristled against his hand, and Erik grinned. He grinned right back, feeling rather lovestruck.

“You’ve got beard burn,” Erik noted, smugly, but he said, “So do you.”

“Touché,” Erik all but purred, and their mouths met in a kiss that was soft and sated – for now.

Erik pulled out of him gently – such a sweet dragging sensation – and, once tied, Erik threw the condom to the side of the bed. They lay on their sides, facing each other: their legs entwined, their arms holding each other close, fingers slowly caressing.

Charles was still trying to catch up with everything, but felt like he’d need weeks to do so. “How much time we got before the playdate’s done?”

Erik smiled, turning to press a kiss on his knuckles. “We got another hour, maybe.” Erik then checked his wristwatch. “Or forty minutes. Crap.”

Charles laughed, and Erik’s blue eyes positively sparkled. He immediately wanted Erik again, but this time Erik beneath him, whimpering as Charles pushed into him hard… No, they wouldn’t have time – later.

What a sweet word: later. Because they were not in a rush. “I think you’re right,” Charles said in between lazy but hungry kisses. Erik hummed in question, and Charles placed kisses on his chin. “We need to be more sensible… not get carried away…”

“Yes,” Erik agreed, taking his left earlobe between his lips and sucking. God, Charles wanted to familiarise himself with Erik’s once more, until the contours and shapes of Erik’s physique were as familiar to him as his own, until Erik felt completely and utterly like home. To his ear, Erik whispered, “What’s the middle ground between being all in and being sensible?”

Charles arched into Erik, hand slowly moving down Erik’s side. “Let’s find out,” he suggested.

“Let’s,” Erik said, and Charles found Erik’s lips and kissed him deeply. Erik began to smile against his mouth, and Charles wondered how on earth were the two of them expected to behave like normal people, or sensible people, ever again.

Oh no one should ask good behaviour out of lovers, he thought. Maybe he’d keep it to himself a while: that he was all in, for good, rather permanently, quite madly in love, and determined to offer himself as a partner, a companion, and as a father, too, for Erik’s children.

Maybe he’d keep it to himself, for at least a week. Just for the sake of pretending to be normal.

Who knows, he figured – they might even succeed.

Charles did not have to tell Erik he was nervous: Erik could read Charles easily enough, as Charles fiddled with the sleeves of his jumper in the taxi over to Raven’s house. Erik still had moments of disbelief himself, and he knew that tonight’s dinner with Raven and Christian was a big deal to them both.

He tried keeping Charles’s mind off of it, therefore, squeezing Charles’s knee and talking. “If I give you the collection code, Schatz, can you pick up those shoes we bought for Shani?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, that’s fine,” Charles said, gazing out of the window. The autumn night was rainy and had a feel to it that was decidedly different from all the other times they had visited Raven and Christian over the summer.

Erik was himself nervous. Raven hadn’t exactly adored him from the get go, seeing him as the man who had usurped Warren. And then Raven had been angry about the affair, understandably, but she’d been more upset with Charles – Erik hadn’t known about Warren, after all. Charles still felt guilty about lying to all of his loved ones, but in Erik’s eyes Charles had redeemed himself in numerous ways: Charles was everything he’d hoped for in a partner, patient and loving and kind. It’d been some months since he’d met Raven as Charles’s new boyfriend, and he and Raven were definitely friendly at this stage. He just feared that perhaps this was too much, even for Raven.

“I hope Christian’s made that seafood linguine. It was delicious last time,” he said, and Charles, lost in a world of his own, said, “Yes, that’d be lovely, dear.”

They got out of the taxi and walked up to Raven’s building. Erik was about to push the buzzer, but Charles grabbed his arm. “What?” he asked, and Charles gave him a nervous smile.

“Oh nothing,” Charles said, aimlessly. Charles then rolled his eyes and said, “C’mere.” Erik happily met him halfway in a kiss. Charles clutched onto him tightly, but still smiled into it.

They were holding hands as Raven buzzed them in.

Raven and Christian greeted them warmly, Raven’s studio the usual mess it always was. To be fair, Charles wasn’t the neatest person to live with either: Charles always left all the lights on, forgot unfinished cups of tea in the kitchen, the living room and their bedroom, and hardly ever helped him in cleaning after Shani. And every time Erik saw an abandoned cup of tea, hours old and cold, almost untouched, he rolled his eyes and picked it up, and thought of how much he loved Charles’s annoying, irritating habits. Their house in Crouch End felt lived in again.

He’d talked to Ororo earlier that day, and Charles had emailed Warren the day before. Raven, as an opponent, should not be as hard.

“Some bruschettas I made,” Christian said, putting down a platter of them as appetisers as they sat around the studio’s dining table. They had some wine, talked of Raven’s new art, and Shani’s Shabbat school, and about the house they were building in Amersham. Raven had been funny about the house – they’d announced their plans of it after a month of dating. They’d adjusted Erik’s plans quite a lot, as Charles had said that the study absolutely needed more shelf space for books if he was to work in there. Erik had redrafted accordingly, including Charles in the house he’d planned for him and Shani. It was even better, now, with Charles having been included. At this stage Charles was as absorbed in the project as he was, and together they were deciding on door knobs and wallpapers and tiles.

As they ate, Erik updated Raven and Christian on the project. Charles was quiet, so Erik filled in the gaps. Raven probably still thought they were insane, building the house together after such short a time.

But was it short? He’d known Charles since he was twenty-three, young and witless. He was older now, and a father and a man and – All those things he’d dreamed he’d be, and with Charles at his side he felt excited about life again.

Christian had made some absolutely sublime asparagus risotto for their main. Christian talked of his summer in Cortina, where he had picked up the recipe. Raven squeezed Christian’s hand and said, “We’ve been talking about going to Italy for the winter, haven’t we, baby? A friend of ours has an apartment in Milan.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Charles said, folding and refolding the napkin in his lap. Under the table, Erik found Charles’s hand and squeezed it. Charles relaxed some.

When they’d been getting ready for dinner, waiting for Marie to come over for babysitting, Charles had kept asking him, “Over the main course, you think? Or before dessert? Certainly not after dessert. What do you think?”

It was now post-main course, and Charles still had said nothing. Christian had made lemon soufflés and brought them in proudly. Charles poked at his, and Erik waited it out. Charles went awfully quiet, and Christian asked Erik if he thought they could make the skylight of their bedroom bigger, structurally speaking, and Charles said, too loudly, “We have some news.”

Erik lowered his spoon, eyes leaving Christian and Raven on the other side of the table, and looking at Charles next to him. They all waited. Charles cleared his throat. “The news are that – ah. As it happens, then, the other week, Erik and I were talking about the future, too. And, well, as one thing led to another, I asked Erik to marry me. And he said yes.”

Raven dropped the spoon into her soufflé. “He – What – You’re getting married?” she asked, mouth hanging open. Christian also looked surprised.

“Well,” Charles began, hesitatingly.

“Isn’t that a bit soon?” Raven asked disbelievingly. “I mean no offense, Erik,” she then added, and he was quick to say none was taken. It was soon – too soon, far too soon. “I mean, I know you’re very happy together, but – but it’s not been very long, and it’s such a serious commitment, and –”

“We take it very seriously,” Charles cut in, now more certainly. “And it was a lot of paperwork, dealing with our respective embassies, but Erik was marvellously good handling the bureaucratic side of things – you really were, darling.” Charles now placed his hand on top of his on the dining table, squeezing. “And so, on Thursday, Erik, Shani and I went to the registry in Islington and – and now we’re married. Two days and then some.” Charles flashed a grin at his sister. “Soufflé’s great, Christian, how did –”

“Are you f*cking kidding me?!” Raven almost yelled, and Christian said a, “Now, honey, be calm!”

Raven stood up. “You got married without telling me?!” she yelled. “It’s one thing getting married after three months, Charles, and another to have your goddamn wedding behind my back!”

“We wanted a small ceremony, just us –”

“You knew we’d try talking you out of it!”

“Well, yes,” Charles said, eyes on his sister. “But I’d met the man I was intent on marrying, and nothing could have changed that. Be upset if you like, but it was our decision, and one we are extremely happy about.”

And it was what they’d expected, really: Raven was more than willing to remind them that they’d been together for three months, that was it! Three months! A house was one thing, but now marriage? Behind her back?! And even as she had a go at them, Erik couldn’t help but grin, because she was reminding him that Erik had finally, finally married Charles Xavier. After ten years of waiting, after their initial promises and fantasies on a beach somewhere far away, it was finally real.

“Raven,” Charles said calmingly, “I appreciate your concern, but Erik and I have always spectacularly failed at being sensible. Yes, it hasn’t been much time, but we both know that this was the right decision for us.”

“A marriage is for life, Charles!”

“Well I certainly hope so.” And Charles looked at him with a grin, blue eyes alight, freckles over his nose, white teeth flashing between red lips. Charles was clutching his hand more firmly than before. “I think marrying you is the best decision I’ve ever made.”

“I think it’s the best decision you’ve made this week,” he teased.

Raven now looked at Erik, but he stared back calmly. Raven had an air for theatrics, and they’d expected this reaction. He was more than ready to take her on – his sister-in-law, as she now was. She said, “Charles has always had his head in the clouds, but I expected more of you.”

“You expected me not to marry your brother? After he asked me?” He smiled at her, unable to quite hide his happiness. “I don’t think I ever considered that option.”

“No, I can’t – I can’t believe you two!” Raven objected. “Have you even told Mother?”

No, Charles hadn’t. Charles had shown him the email he’d sent Warren, polite and considerate because it was fairer that Charles tell Warren the news himself, rather than the news finding Warren second-hand – Warren had not emailed back as of yet. And Ororo, well, she had mainly been interested in the legalities and custodianship of Shani, saying that Erik marrying Charles had very little to do with her, ultimately, and everything to do with how they would all now care for Shani. Erik couldn’t have agreed more. Maybe they hadn’t gotten Ororo’s blessing, precisely, because she had clearly been unsettled and upset, but she hadn’t called him a colossal fool, at least. “The funny thing is,” she’d said, “that somehow I felt like this was coming.”

Their marriage, thus far, had been rather stressful. This was the downfall of having acted so rashly, having to let everyone know and dealing with people’s reactions, but when they got a moment to themselves, the two of them with their – their – daughter, Erik could hardly believe how lucky he’d gotten. His mother, when he’d called him the day before the wedding to at least give her some prior notice, had started weeping, making him repeat, “Mutti, bitte nicht weinen.” Charles had sat on the other couch of the living room, mouthing ‘What? What?’ But she’d been overcome with emotion: Charles had had her on the palm of his hand within an hour of meeting her that summer, when she and Pietro had come to London for a week to stay with them.

Raven was the final tough opponent – Charles’s mother, perhaps, aside, but as Charles wasn’t close to her, Erik knew that her views wouldn’t matter as much to Charles as his sister’s.

They didn’t stay long after dessert, as Raven needed to digest the news. She and Christian both congratulated them, however, hugging them at the door. Charles asked, “So you’re okay with this?”

“Okay with it?” she repeated, incredulously. “It’s a done deal, isn’t it?”

Back outside, Charles went to hail them a taxi. The sun had just set, the street in the glow of dusk. He said, “Wouldn’t you rather walk?” The evening was warm enough for September. He knew it’d take them at least an hour to get home, but it was early still, and Marie wasn’t expecting them back yet.

Charles dropped his hand, taking him in. “Sure,” his husband then said, with a smile.

He offered his hand, and Charles took it, the two of them falling into step with one another. They weren’t too far from Camden Road, where Charles had lived in that man’s flat for a couple of weeks. After Charles had left with him on the day they got back together, Charles had never officially gone back there, except to pick up clothes, toothbrush, and other essentials. Two weeks later they went with Erik’s car to move Charles out of there and into his and Shani’s house. Charles had spent every night with him, since that first one – apart from a few business trips on both of their parts.

Best three months of his life, he thought. Charles was rolling his shoulders, talking about Raven. “Went as well as one could expect,” Charles mused, but was still tense. They talked about where to go next with Raven. Give her a few days to begin with, and then woo her with reminders that she’d just become Shani’s Aunt Raven. Raven had a soft spot for the girl.

By the time they reached Tufnell Park, they were pondering if they had ticked off all the essential people from face-to-face or phone call announcements now, and if they were safe to announce their marriage on social media without utterly offending someone. “Aw, we should’ve shown Raven that picture of Shani in her flower girl’s dress,” Charles then said. “She couldn’t have been mad after that.”

“She looked wonderful in it,” he agreed with fatherly pride. He’d never forget standing there, in the small ceremony room, holding hands with Charles as they repeated their ‘I take thee’s. He’d never seen anyone more handsome, more dashing, than Charles with his shining blue eyes, saying a firm ‘I do.’ Charles’s hand in his had felt so natural, so good, so reassuring… And Shani, who had a small basket of paper confetti, had emptied it all at their feet in one go, little red and white hearts everywhere. Just the three of them, the registrar, and two witnesses out of the administrative staff. God, he wanted to live that moment all over again: Islington Town Hall, on a rainy Thursday, he looked at Charles with all the love and warmth in him and said it back to him: I do.

And it finally started being real.

They’d been overwhelmed themselves, leaving the town hall, smart in their suits, Shani in her flower girl’s dress. They’d promised Shani ice cream, and half an hour later had sat in an Italian gelato café, ridiculously overdressed and never as happy. He’d had lemon sorbet, and Charles had gone for pistachio, while Shani had wanted chocolate. He and Charles had kept looking at each other across the table – excited and disbelieving.

Nothing in the world could have been better than that – not some big lavish wedding in Westchester, or a humbler one in Oxford, or a traditional Jewish wedding in Germany. No, absolutely nothing would have suited them better. Shani had exclaimed that boyfriends were stupid, no one needed those – husbands were much better, she’d said, because husbands were allowed to drive. He and Charles had laughed and laughed.

“Oh, I meant to ask,” he now said, slowing his steps slightly. “What do you think of ‘Dad’?”

“Whose dad?” Charles asked, and he chuckled.

“No, I mean for you. Shani can hardly call you Charles anymore, can she?”

Charles stopped in the middle of the pavement. “I hadn’t thought of that.” His eyes were wide with wonder. “So I’d be Dad,” Charles said, slowly. “And you’re Papa.”

“Yes,” he said, and when Charles broke into a blinding smile, he wrapped arms around Charles’s waist, pulling him close – f*ck the Londoners and residents of Tufnell Park. “Sound good to you, huh?”

“Oh absolutely,” Charles said, laughing. “A million times yes.” Charles pecked him on the mouth, grabbing his hand tighter and tucking him along. “Dad, huh? Dad. Sounds good. Dad. God, so many things we haven’t even considered yet!”

He was right about that, and so was Raven: they’d plunged head first into this after all, reckless and irresponsible, and they still had so many things that they needed to decide now that they were husband and husband. What thrilling madness, what reckless insanity – and they loved every second of it.

Charles kept testing the word for the rest of the journey, and they tried to think of all the scenarios in which Charles could now use it. ‘Shani, I am your father’, in a raspy voice, was one of their personal favourites.

When they finally crossed Crouch End Hill, Erik said, “You know, it did take us ten years – almost.” Charles raised an eyebrow, and he said, “Back in the day, when I proposed to you, I said I’d marry you –”

“Now, tomorrow, or in ten years – whenever was good for me,” Charles recited, correctly.

“We went for the ten years option, it seems.”

“Yes,” Charles said, as they turned onto Edison Road. “But, just in case it wasn’t clear when we had our ceremony, now is good for me. Not tomorrow or another ten years: now.”

“Yeah,” he said, “me too.”

They stopped at the corner of their street, and Erik glanced across to see the light on in the living room window. In a year, he hoped, they would have built their new house and would be ready to move there. For now, this was more than enough: them making plans for themselves, for their family and their future.

“Oh!” Charles then said. “We forgot.” Charles started going through his jean pockets, producing two wedding bands. They’d bought them the day before the ceremony – he’d been much pickier than Charles, who’d been content with the first gold band they were shown. Erik had insisted they look properly. He had found the right one, eventually, while Charles had settled on a simple, undecorated platinum band for himself. They’d taken the rings off in the taxi, so as to be able to deliver the news to Raven themselves.

“Mustn’t forget those,” he said simply and offered his hand. He’d also gone for platinum, to match Charles’s, but his was more intricate with an inlaid matt surface in the middle of the ring. He looked at it all the time: at work, on the tube, in the shower – he loved it, loved wearing it, loved feeling it on his finger, new and exciting. Charles smiled and steadied his hand with his own, and then slid the ring back on. Erik grinned.

“Do me,” Charles said, offering Erik his hand.

“Do you? My pleasure, Dr Lehnsherr,” he said, and Charles scoffed, even as Erik slid Charles’s ring on, the platinum cold and smooth under his fingertips.

“I believe you’ll find you’re taking my surname, Erik Xavier,” Charles said in a soft, seductive murmur.

“Well, we’ve got the rest of our lives to bigger about this,” he said, but all he could think of was how there Charles stood, in the cool, darkening evening, with the wedding ring on his finger – married to him, at last. “Christ,” he sighed, stepping into Charles’s space and pulling him closer. “Can’t believe you’re my husband now.”

Charles smiled, a little smugly. “I needed a trophy husband, for appearances.”

“Bullsh*t,” he said, leaning in close but not kissing. “I think you proposed because you’re desperately in love with me.”

“Am I?” Charles grinned. “Prove it.”

And he did, kissing the life out of Charles, who was soon disorientated, eyes glazed over and lips swollen and red. They were both suffering from beard burn, but were also refusing to shave – a battle of wills that Erik wasn’t sure he’d win. “Come on,” he said, grabbing his husband’s hand and leading them to the house.

“Proves nothing, frankly,” Charles said as Erik got his keys out. “But let’s do a second experiment in the bedroom. A good scientist must gather as much data as he or she can.”

“Well,” he said, opening the door. “If it’s for science.”

“It is. And you did marry a scientist, dear.”

“I remind myself of it daily – or, well. For two days now.”

Marie was in the living room watching TV, but she switched it off when they got in. Erik made them all cups of tea as they told Marie how Raven had taken the news. Charles and Marie soon began to talk about Marie’s toxology course, but were interrupted by the arrival of Marie’s taxi home.

After Erik had shown her out, he got on with some of the tidying up he’d forgotten to do earlier. Charles went to check on Shani, coming down after a few minutes to report that she was fast asleep. He nodded and cleaned up in the living room, soon rolling his eyes to himself, picking up a forgotten tea cup from the coffee table, next to some of Charles’s work papers. Cold tea lay at the bottom, having gone a sickly off-grey.

As he got to the kitchen, he stopped in his tracks: Charles was sitting at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of tea, reading the day’s paper with reading glasses on his nose. He was in a simple jumper and was wearing plain jeans, hair tousled and messy, beard in need of a trim, a wedding ring on his finger, and a focused look on his face, humming at whatever he was reading. He was breath-taking. Erik still got moments of utter disbelief, and he told himself to tread carefully, so carefully: because he was so happy – had anyone ever been this happy? – and it had to be a dream of some kind, because he couldn’t quite understand how so much happiness could even fit inside one person, and how that person might be him.

Charles looked up at him and noticed the mug he was carrying. “Another one? I’m sorry, I’ll try to be more mindful.”

“Forget about it,” he said.

Fill the house with them, he meant.

Erik felt unsettled and nervous. Just be cool, be casual – god, he wished he’d become a better surfer by now.

Kurt and Telford were trying to set up a goal from piles of sand so that they could play some football. His two friends hadn’t noticed the man who was sitting on a towel a short distance away, sun glasses on his nose, reading a book.

But Erik did notice. The same man had been in the hostel common room the night before, arriving just as they’d been leaving. He had a golden tan all over his lean, youthful form, and hopelessly messy brown hair. The man was also freckled, and Erik had noted – just in passing – that the man had beautiful blue eyes. And now the man was there, on the beach where not many other people were: it was a Wednesday afternoon, and the summer holidays hadn’t started in Australia yet.

Erik was restless and irritated. He waded into the water with his surfboard, his red swimming trunks getting soaked. The ocean was calm that day – not any ideal waves to speak of. He’d practise his balance, he thought, but first he moved a bit to the left to get away from his friends and the man on the beach.

The guy probably wasn’t even interested in men, he thought. Yet he was positively distracted. The man just looked like someone he wanted to speak to. Why was he by himself, anyway? Was he backpacking? Where did the guy intend to go next, and where had he been so far? Standard hostel chat. Erik had had dozens of those conversations since coming to Australia, but now he felt put off and foolish. Why was he so goddamn nervous, all of a sudden? Rubbish, all of it!

He looked back to the beach when he was far enough, and Kurt waved at him. He thought that further behind his friends maybe the freckled man – a bit younger than him, he thought – was looking his way, but he was too far to be sure. All he really could see was chocolate coloured hair, golden skin, and blue shorts.

God, he thought, getting on the board, why did he feel like such a fool about this?

He could go over and say hello, he thought – yes, maybe he’d… He could say something really cool or casual, he could…

He stayed out on the water until his fingertips had wrinkled. He tasted the salty ocean in his mouth, his short hair wet. He lay on his stomach on the board, and when some waves worthy of it came, he practised popping up onto the board smoothly. He was so concentrated on this task that he even forgot about the man on the beach, briefly, until he paddled back to Kurt and Telford and realised that the man was now with them, chatting away with a beer in his hand. The man’s sunglasses were resting on his head, sandals digging into the sand, and Kurt was explaining something to the man enthusiastically. The man laughed.

Erik slowly waded out of the water, a lump in his throat. There was a buzzing underneath his skin he couldn’t quite explain.

Charles, for his part, braced himself. He’d talked himself into coming over, after a good half an hour of being stuck on the same sentence in his book. He couldn’t quite explain why he felt so drawn to the man he’d never even spoken to, but he’d recognised the group of Germans from his hostel instantly, and they were all on the same beach, and that handsome one was out on the water.

Go say hi, he’d thought, followed by no, no, stay where you are, don’t make a fool of yourself.

But he’d been rather brave, recently, and he was in Australia by himself. If he made an arse of himself, he thought, who would ever know? Well, he would, but maybe he could live with it as long as no one else knew.

When he realised that he would never manage to get a page of the Dickens read that day, he picked up the book and his towel, and walked over to the two men on the beach. They were friendly and happy to hear that he was staying in the same hostel. Charles admitted having seen them in the common room the night before, albeit briefly.

Ha gazed onto the ocean, spotting the third man popping up onto the board, then lying flat again, and popping up again. “Is that your friend?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s with us. You want a beer?” Telford asked, and he said sure. The two Germans told them of their travelling in Australia so far, and they kept referring to ‘Lehnsherr’ – the man out on the water – but didn’t actually tell him what his first name was. The stories were interesting, their travel extensive, but Charles felt impatient, and knew he was waiting.

And then the man was wading out, surfboard under his arm. This Lehnsherr had an exceedingly good jawline, and his physique was stupidly p*rnographic, all flat stomach and narrow hips, overly elongated chest and stomach, muscular and firm, but it’d been the man’s face that had caught his attention the night before: the kind warmth in the man’s eyes. Christ, Charles thought, he’d regret this soon…

He steered himself, standing up straighter, clutching the beer bottle. His heart seemed to be pounding for no sensible reason he could think of.

“Lehnsherr,” Kurt called out, “come say hi to our friend! He’s staying at our hostel.”

The man put the board down, and walked over, dripping water. It was utterly silly, Charles thought, but he knew that regardless of what happened, he’d needed to talk to this man. He’d needed to be in his presence, even if briefly.

He held out his hand. “Charles, pleased to meet you.”

And the man looked at his hand and then gave him a small, perhaps nervous smile. “Erik. Hi.” The handshake was firm.

“Hi,” he repeated, and then their hands dropped. They stared at each other, a bit awkwardly, and then Erik laughed, flashing a sheepish grin at him, shielding his eyes from the sun. Charles tried not to be flustered. “It’s a great beach, huh?”

“Yeah, totally,” Erik agreed. Erik wanted to know where that accent was from, what book the man was reading, what he thought of it, and how he’d ended up on the beach with them in Australia. He wanted to know everything, he realised, taking in the other man, and he tried to ignore the way his heart seemed to be skipping beats.

The sun caught Charles’s hair, and Erik blurted out, rather untactfully, “Uh, tell me about yourself.”

Charles smiled – bright and warm. “Uh, sure. Um, like what?”

“Well, uh… how you enjoying that beer?” he asked, and Charles laughed.

Erik smiled widely, but the buzzing under his skin remained, electric and hot.

Maybe, he thought, this was what it felt like to be at the start of something.