I.

Furniture is heavy. Old Manhattan apartment buildings do not have elevators. It's going to be enough work getting the boxes of Charles's books and his clothes up the stairs, so Charles leaves the furniture from his graduate school apartment at the curb. None of it is his childhood furniture, just pieces he has picked up in junk stores, some of which he's sanded down and finished inexpertly. When Erik comes to fetch him, in a rented truck that he hopes Erik really knows how to drive, he leaves it behind without a backward glance.

He’s a little surprised to miss the familiar body-shaped curve of his armchair, even if the cushions were lumpy and a water-stained blue. Their furniture now is spare and modern, black and white and steel. Charles reaches out every morning when the alarm clock shrills, his fingers brushing the steel surface of the nightstand. Every morning he thinks I'm at Erik's before remembering that this is his bedroom, his life. He stands at the window and watches the traffic crawl along the street, feeling the pressure of so many minds like a tightening band around his head.

He'd forgotten how living in the city gives him headaches so bad he can’t sleep. He makes it through his days at the university by spending too much time in the lab and too little with his students, who not only have loud emotions but are intimidatingly near his age. He’s always afraid they’ll notice he’s really one of them under the skin. After bad days he lies curled in the cool sheets with Erik’s strong fingers working at his temples, soothing away the ache, and Erik’s voice in his head drowning out the noise.

His clothes are quickly migrating to chairs in Erik’s bedroom, out of the room with a single bed in which he does not sleep. He makes the bed neatly anyway and tries to keep up appearances by not piling it high with books. The books have already taken over the metal desk in the corner where Charles grades papers, his eyes aching from the hard glare of the metal-collared lamp. After a few days he goes out and buys a glass-shaded desk lamp and props it on the metal desk shelf that's too narrow for it. It rocks precariously when he turns it on or off.

A few days later Charles pulls at the lamp's chain and it doesn't rock at all because the shelf is no longer too narrow. He fingers the almost imperceptibly thinner metal, smiling wryly. He’ll take that as an attempt at compromise.

He has a key to the front door, but sometimes when he comes home it doesn’t work in the lock. It’s me, he calls mentally, hand pressed to the door, and still it’s a long minute before the key will turn.

II.

They've spent years stealing time to be together, bits of weekends planned around classes and work schedules and the oppressive need for caution. He's never realized how powerful a drug Erik is. How easy it is to lose afternoons or days talking until they're both hoarse, making love until they're both exhausted, dozing wrapped in the sweaty sheets and then picking up the conversation where they left it off as soon as their eyes are open.

Now and then he can feel the closeness beginning to chafe. Erik will break off in mid-sentence and begin not very subtly trying to put as much space between them as he can in an apartment the size of Charles's childhood playroom. Charles tells himself this is only to be expected sometimes and tries not to let it sting.

Mostly, though, Erik stays close to him when they're in the apartment, close enough for him to reach out and touch. They go to the kind of parties where Erik can introduce Charles as his boyfriend. The first time is painfully embarrassing, but after that Charles relaxes and finds that it's easy to stop watching what he says. Once, walking home, he forgets himself and throws an arm across Erik's shoulders.

Erik shrugs it off angrily. "For God's sake," he snaps, and when they're back in the apartment he buries himself in a technical book . Charles is staring out the window framing an apology when he decides he's really not sorry. It was innocent enough, and besides, who in the Village would care?

He knows the answer to that question isn't simple. He can feel it, whether he wants to or not: the flash of disgust from the postman when he opens the door wearing nothing but a hastily-thrown-on pair of pants to take Erik’s mail; the warmth behind the smile from the old lady downstairs whose groceries Erik carries up the stairs; the flash of recognition in the eyes of the heavily-made-up boy loitering on the street corner, whose gaze Charles makes himself meet.

He can’t say no one cares. He won’t promise Erik safety he can’t deliver. He’s never wanted to so often before.

He's taking the trash out to the garbage chute when he sees Erik making conversation with the girl who lives down the hall; he's leaning just a little too close, and something he says makes her laugh and toss her dark, waved hair. Charles doesn't say a word when they're back in the apartment, but that's the same as saying something, for them.

"Don't you think, with the two of us, living here--" Erik begins, and then runs a hand through his hair. "What do you want people to think?"

"I don't like lying," Charles says. “That’s what I think.”

"We’re going to have to. About a lot of things."

"Is that the way you want to live?"

"Of course it's not." But I want you.

"It'll get better," Charles says, and puts his hands on Erik's arms from behind, an apology. "We'll make it better. At least for mutants."

"You're such an optimist," Erik says, but Charles can feel him, not quite hoping yet, but wanting to hope.

III.

Charles is making coffee after a long and frustrating day's work on his new lab equipment when Erik opens the refrigerator, scowls at it, and closes it again. He opens the cabinet door, still scowling.

"I thought you were going shopping tonight," he says, rattling a half-empty box in the cabinet and setting it down hard. There's precious little left there, Charles has to admit, looking over his shoulder. They've been eating out a lot.

"We can get Chinese," Charles says. "It's raining now."

"It is," Erik says shortly. He stalks into the living room, body tight, and picks up his overcoat. "Don't bother yourself."

"I'll go tomorrow."

"You said you would tonight."

"Erik, it doesn't matter."

"Of course not," Erik says, after a pause, and throws his overcoat back down on a chair. "Tell me about your experiments in computing."

They talk about it over the delivery Chinese food, which Erik barely touches. Erik puts the cartons carefully away in the refrigerator, although he never eats the leftovers. There's something tightly stretched in the air between them.

"I'm sorry," Charles says, late that night after they've made love with a desperate intensity that leaves Charles uneasy. Erik says nothing, only curls closer against him. He rests his hand on Erik's cheek, aware as he almost never is of Erik's skin as a wall between them. "Let me in."

"No," Erik says, and Charles moves his hand away reluctantly. He wraps himself around Erik protectively, his cheek against Erik's hair. He's not sure how to prove to Erik that he will never again be a starving child. I'll keep you safe, he thinks, not trying to make Erik hear it but not trying to prevent him from hearing it, either. Trust me.

In the morning none of the doors in the apartment will open for Charles; he stays in the bedroom and reads a book, not wanting to wake Erik from his restless sleep. He’d never noticed before that there's a lock on every door.

IV.

If Charles let him, Erik would spend half their income on taxis, Charles thinks, settling into his seat on the subway with the guilty satisfaction of an argument won. Neither of them makes much as a junior professor; occasionally when they talk about the future, Erik says "well, when ..." and then trails off. Charles's mother is in poor health. Or so he hears from the few people who are speaking to them both.

But for now the subway is a necessary economy, which Erik always complains about. When Charles put his foot down about the cost of a taxi crosstown, Erik said a bus would be as easy as wasting time waiting on a stinking subway platform for a train that will still leave them having to walk once they get to the crosstown station. Charles thinks he’s past the point in his life where he was eager to wait for buses in the rain.

They’re on their way to a play Erik was enthusiastic about when he bought the tickets, but now nothing is going well. Erik has so far complained about the litter on the subway platform, the price of the tickets for the play, the seats Charles chose, and the state of dramatic theater today. And the fact that it’s raining. Which you can’t even see from inside a subway tunnel.

“You know, given your mood, perhaps we should do this another time,” Charles says finally.

“Perhaps so,” Erik says, with a surge of perceptible relief. Charles doesn’t know what he’s done to make Erik that happy about being able to avoid his company for the evening. And he’s getting a headache. Again. He glares out the window to avoid glaring at Erik.

“But I wouldn’t dream of ruining your evening,” Erik continues, standing and beginning to push his way through the crowd to the doors.

There is a jerking shudder, and the train slows to a halt, stopping too far from the station. “Oh, not again,” someone mutters. It’s an old train. They’re all old trains. Erik stops short, staring at the doors.

After an interminable pause there’s a garbled announcement that Charles assumes means there’s something wrong with the train. The roar of emotion pressing in is annoyance, with a thread of something sour underneath it. The press of people against Charles’s shoulders brings an unaccustomed wave of claustrophobia. The train smells of sweat and urine, and the motion is making him want to vomit.

But there’s no motion. The train is stopped. He grasps the handhold of the seat in front of him. The train has plastic seats strewn with discarded newspapers. There's a crumpled coffee cup by his foot. The sound of rain drumming on steel boxcar roofs is only in his mind. Erik's mind. He isn't really seeing a child's hands spread against a padlocked boxcar door.

All at once the train jerks forward until it’s level with the platform, with a sickening shudder. The doors slam open unnaturally hard and fast, with a scream of twisting metal levers and tearing wires. One side of the opening is spitting sparks, but New York subway riders take more than that to faze, and people press out the doors and onto the platform despite the shouts of the subway policeman down the platform.

He has to find Erik. That’s the one thing at the top of his mind as he elbows his way out, and he opens his mind to the chaos on the platform, pushing aside my goddamn boss and hope she’s starting dinner for her brothers and did you see how those doors just and forgot my keys, I hope someone’s home.

Charles finds him out on the street, leaning against the brick wall of an apartment building, head back against the wet brick, eyes closed.

I’m sorry seems inadequate.

“Why didn’t you--” Charles begins.

“Go to hell.”

No one looks at them. Charles only occasionally has to touch people’s minds to ensure that. This is New York.

“It’s all right,” Charles says after a pause, slipping his arm through Erik’s. “Let’s go home.” A cab begins making a wild series of lane changes, headed in their direction.

“I wouldn’t mind the bus,” Erik says. Charles wants to crush him in his arms for that. He supposes it’s enough that Erik knows that’s what he wants.

V.

It's been a bad few nights, and when Charles closes his eyes he falls asleep even before Erik has waved a hand to put out the lights. It seems like only minutes this time before he's walking into the camp through ash that falls like gentle rain, understanding (because dreams are more cruel than memory) that it's his parents' burned flesh clinging to his skin.

He jerks awake, ashamed that the first thing he thinks is God, not again. Erik is tearing at his shirt in a panic that dissolves into sobbing against his shoulder, his breath hot on Charles's neck. Charles makes himself not pull away, though it's like he has no skin, nothing between them at all. He curls a hand around the back of Erik's neck and keeps it there.

After a minute Erik takes a shuddering breath and pushes Charles away, angry shame rolling off his skin like heat. Charles steals a glance at the bedside clock and winces at the time.

He always thought Erik's black moods never lasted long. But the nights when Erik said he was too busy studying to see him, the weeks when Erik wouldn't call ... if he hasn't understood why, he has no one to blame but himself. No one can lie to Charles unless Charles wants them to.

He'd wanted to believe Erik's scars would heal, in time. He'd wanted to believe he could help.

“You do,” Erik says in genuine surprise. “Of course you do.”

“Your dreams--”

Erik shrugs, twitches his mouth into a smile he doesn't feel. “I’m used to them.”

Charles cups a hand over his head, smoothing his hair like a child. “Tell me about it,” he says. He's seen enough of Erik's memories to understand that there are unspeakable horrors there, things that he admits he doesn't really want to know. But he wants to know Erik.

"You know already."

"Not enough."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I think you do."

“Do I.”

“I’m a telepath, Erik."

“You’re not God.”

“If you can stand to remember it, I can stand to see.”

Maybe, Erik thinks, drawing closer again, but for a long time all they do is lie listening to the sound of each other breathing and the rumble of traffic on the street below.

VI.

They come home from the library both laden down with books, Erik laughing at Charles's futile attempts to keep the books from getting soaked in the rain. It’s a long way up the stairs.

“They should make metal books,” Charles says.

“Well, if you wrapped them in foil--”

Charles actually contemplates going up the stairs, getting the box of aluminum foil, coming down, and--

Erik is laughing in earnest, now, hard enough that he drops a book. “It’s your fault,” he tells Charles, trying to point an accusing finger without dropping any more.

They get to the door, and Erik quickly gives up on reaching his keys; he lowers his eyebrows at the door, which opens without a touch. Charles clears his throat. Erik shrugs, dropping the books gratefully on the sofa.

“No harm done if there’s no one to see.”

“No sense in getting into bad habits,” Charles says.

Erik presses his fingers to Charles’s lips, radiating amused desire. “Shh.”

Charles thinks even if he were God, for this moment he wouldn’t change a thing about the world, not even the rain that clings to their clothes or the traffic noise from the open window or the television blaring from the other side of the too-thin apartment wall.

“If I were God--” Erik says.

"You're not," Charles says. "And neither am I."

"I know," Erik says, as if he'd asked to be forgiven.

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