Orbital Decay
Charles doesn't usually get drunk; he doesn't usually dare. It's too hard to remember what he should and shouldn't say, what he's been told and what he just knows. He nurses a single drink in bars and is careful to let only the edges of other people's thoughts brush his, clinging to him like the smell of beer and cigarettes.
At the same time, he knows it's wrong to drink alone, and worse to get drunk alone. It would be a sign that he is not coping appropriately with his parents' deaths. Now he is not alone, though, because Erik is curled up on the sofa, his feet up in an elaborate attempt not to look as if the house makes him uncomfortable. Charles appreciates the effort, even if it's almost entirely unsuccessful.
The house makes him uncomfortable, seen through Erik's eyes: large and cold like a museum, dusty and empty, belonging to the past. It's strange to see the room through Erik's eyes, with no softening nostalgia for childhood hours spent driving toy cars across the fireplace hearth. It's strange to see himself --
"Maybe we don't need to get drunk," Erik says, suddenly aware of Charles's intrusion. The rapport between them shatters painfully. Charles's own perspective on the room seems strange for a minute. He's glad he's sitting down.
"No, it's a good idea," he says. He's fairly sure it's not, but here they are. Erik thinks they can both do more than they're willing to let themselves do. Charles thinks he could understand Erik's power better if he could get deeper into Erik's mind. Therefore in a mutual spirit of experiment they are sitting in Charles's upstairs parlor with a bottle of vodka on the table in front of them.
Charles isn't sure why vodka, when he doesn't particularly like vodka. Some Puritan impulse, he supposes; it's easier to think of this as science if there's little chance he'll enjoy it. Erik doesn't comment on his choice, although he makes a slight face as he drinks.
Charles drinks, feeling it burn in his throat. He's not sure why this feels so strange. He is getting drunk with a friend. Normal people do that. Erik pours himself another drink, and tops off Charles's not-quite-empty glass.
"Try to keep up," Erik says.
"I can keep up," Charles says. He drinks. He's not sure how much alcohol each glass contains; more than a shot, certainly. He is tempted to find a way to measure their volume, but this is not a scientific inquiry into how much alcohol it takes to get him drunk. He drains the glass and puts it down on the coffee table, daring Erik with his eyes to refill it.
Erik does, although he hasn't finished his own. "Is this working?"
"Give it a minute," Charles says. "It does take time to metabolize alcohol."
He is afraid that Erik will find this conversation absurd, find him absurd, but Erik seems fascinated, watching him intently with his bright blue eyes. Charles drinks more slowly; the alcohol is a burning knot in his stomach.
"I think that might be about right," Erik says. Charles sees what Erik sees, the flush rising on Charles's cheeks and his broadening movements, the way the back of his hand arches around his glass.
"That's not a sign of intoxication."
"On which I'm sure you are an expert." Erik wants to capture that shape in steel, the contrast between the tension and the smooth curves. Something he could hold between his hands and control.
"I can hear you," Charles says.
"Of course you can," Erik says, with something in between pride and fear. "What will you do?"
Charles wants to protest that it should be what will we do, but he's aware that right now he has the control. "What do you want me to do?" he says.
That feels like the right answer. He'll remember that; easing Erik's tension is quickly becoming a Pavlovian response for him. Erik draws out a handful of change from his pocket and scatters it across the table with a flick of his wrist. "Do something with these."
Charles looks down at them on the table. They are dead metal. He raises a hand toward them, feeling absurd now himself, like Charlton Heston trying to part the Red Sea. Nothing happens, not even a metallic twitch.
"That's you, not me," Erik says. "You're a telepath, not --"
"There's not a good word for it," Charles says. "Magnetokinetic? Magnetogenic?"
"Magnetic," Erik says, spreading out his fingers. The coins do a dance around them, orbiting his hands as if in answer to some altered law of gravity. It's beautiful, and Charles can't help reaching out, stretching out his hands until they hover a few inches over Erik's, in the center of the dance.
The coins orbit their paired hands, first stately, then speeding up until trying to follow them with his eyes makes Charles dizzy.
"Close your eyes," Erik says. Charles hesitates, wanting to watch, but then he understands Erik's intention, and does. With his eyes closed he's very aware of the effects of the alcohol; it's hard to tell where he is, the world moving disorientingly around him. He is very aware that he is moving through space, the world turning under his feet, his own atoms spinning.
Then the world resolves itself into the quick bright pattern of the coins orbiting his hands, bending to his will against the tug of gravity and the urge to make straight lines that Charles realizes after a moment is the pull of the Earth's magnetic poles. The coins turn around the iron in his own hands, suspended above the iron skeleton of the glass table.
He looks down with Erik's eyes and slows the rotation of the coins, changing the pattern of their orbit slowly until they are all following a single slow circle around his hands and Erik's. He wants their hands to touch, and lowers his own until they brush Erik's.
He can feel Erik's moment of triumph at that, and his own moment of fear: he's not sure if he wanted to do that at all, only sure that Erik wanted it.
"Did you think this was safe?" Erik whispers. His voice is mocking, but his mind is all fascination and an animal hunger for touch. Charles laces his fingers through Erik's, which seems safer than lacing Erik's fingers through his own. For a long moment the only sound is their breathing in the quiet house.
Then the coins go clattering to the table. Charles isn't sure which one of them meant for that to happen, or if either of them did. The rapport between them breaks again, even more painfully, and he finds himself holding onto Erik's hands, too much himself. For a moment he has no one else's desires to blind him to his sharp awareness of how Erik smells, his desire to taste the stale vodka on Erik's mouth.
Erik is gripping his hands painfully tight. "Try again."
"I can't," Charles says. He doesn't dare let Erik in now. But Erik holds onto his hands, keeping them joined, pushing his way back into Charles's mind. It's a force Charles could easily brush away, like the distant tug of the poles, but he can feel it. Not telepathy, only the force of Erik's will, wanting so much, refusing to pretend he doesn't want.
"Do it again," Erik says, and Charles tries, less like going into Erik this time than letting Erik in; he imagines opening the fingers of one hand, in hope or surrender.