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The question of their compatibility was a fluid one, shifting as often as the light across the Westchester grounds. At times, the alignment between them felt so absolute that Erik could almost sense the invisible currents connecting them—a seamless, inevitable pull. But as they delved deeper into the limits of his power, Erik began to see the true nature of those connections. They weren’t just feelings; they were intricate, shifting geometries of energy that rippled and bent between them, a constant flow that only seemed to burn brighter the closer they stood.
Charles’s energy was a restless, reaching thing, complex and uncontained. He moved through the world with an optimism that bordered on the offensive, his spirit stretching out to touch everything and everyone around him. He didn’t know what it meant to be suppressed, not truly. While Charles sought to feed his curiosity, the research into Erik’s own abilities only dragged up the cold, jagged memories he fought to keep buried. The smell of sterile steel, the hollow ache of hunger, and the face of his mother—all of it fueled an internal pressure that Erik struggled to channel into anything other than rage.
Were they truly compatible, or were they merely two powerful forces caught in an inescapable orbit? Charles understood Erik with a precision that was both a comfort and a curse, seeing exactly what he needed while remaining fundamentally blind to the reality of his scars. They were attracted by a shared burden of mutation, yet held apart by the worlds they had come from—one built on privilege and hope, the other on survival and blood.
Erik, you’ve got to get out of that head of yours.
Erik jumped slightly as Charles’s voice cut through the silence. He had been staring out at the satellite dish he’d moved earlier, lost in the lines of energy that sharpened around the manor. Charles was leaning against the stone wall, watching him with a quiet, knowing smile. Erik met those blue eyes for a heartbeat before looking away, the complexities of the air between them growing too heavy to maintain.
“You should understand why I can’t.”
The pain was a tether; if he let go of the hurt, he feared he would lose the will to ensure it never happened again. He bore the weight for those who no longer could, a self-imposed sentence to ensure he would never be small or powerless again. Erik would never allow himself to be weak, even if the cost was his own peace.
He was surprised by the warmth of Charles’s hand on his shoulder. In the sudden closeness, the energy around the other man seemed to spill forward, reaching for Erik with an earnestness that was almost painful. “You can’t hold it all on just your shoulders, Erik. Let us help. Let me…” Charles trailed off, the unspoken offer hanging in the air. He didn’t need to finish; his mind was an open book of shared intention and desire for unity.
But that unity was a fantasy. Charles believed in the power of dialogue and the hope that the world could change its nature. Erik knew better. He had seen the machinery of the world, how it ground down anything different or 'other' to keep those at the top secure. He couldn’t bear the thought of that machinery turning its teeth toward Charles, yet he knew their philosophies were irreconcilable.
Lines shift across the trees in front of them, across the vast grounds of privilege that Charles grew up on. He doesn’t know what it’s like on a fundamental level and it's heartbreaking.
“I can’t.”
The silence that followed was heavy with everything Erik refused to say. He knew Charles understood without needing to peek into his mind. They were two fundamental opposites, finding each other in a vacuum where their differences only highlighted the depth of their connection. It was a tragic, beautiful collision that left everything essential unsaid.
After a moment, Erik walks away.
Erik walked until the manor disappeared behind the trees.
The grounds stretched endlessly around him, immaculate and carefully tended, every path and garden bearing the quiet evidence of a life built without the necessity of survival. Even here, there was something deliberate about the landscape, as though nothing had ever been allowed to grow wild without permission.He should have felt nothing but resentment.
Instead, he found himself thinking about Charles's hand on his shoulder.The warmth of it had been brief, almost insignificant, but Erik could still feel the impression of it against his skin. He flexed his fingers at his sides, irritated by the lingering awareness of something so simple.
You can't hold it all on just your shoulders.
Charles had said it as though it were possible to simply set the weight down.As though Erik had not spent half his life learning what happened when he did.
He stopped at the edge of the gardens, looking back toward the manor. The last light of evening caught against the windows, turning them into pale sheets of gold between the trees. Somewhere inside, Charles would be moving through those rooms as though the world had never taught him to be afraid of it.That thought should have been enough to make Erik turn away.
Instead, he watched.
A figure appeared behind one of the windows.
Charles.
He was speaking to someone Erik couldn't quite see, his hands moving as he talked, expression animated in the way it so often was. Even from this distance, Erik could recognize the restless energy in him—the constant reaching outward, the need to understand, to connect, to make something of every unanswered question. It was infuriating.
It was also, Erik realized with a quiet unease, something he had begun to look for.
Charles laughed, and Erik felt the familiar pull in his chest before he could stop it. He looked away.
There was a softness to Charles that Erik had spent weeks trying not to notice. Not a weakness. Never that. Something more dangerous. An openness that seemed almost impossible in a world Erik knew to be capable of cruelty. Charles offered himself to people without first calculating what they might take from him.
Erik couldn't understand it. Perhaps that was what drew him in. Perhaps it was simply that Charles possessed everything Erik had taught himself not to need.
The sound of the window opening pulled his attention back.Charles stepped onto the balcony, the evening air catching lightly at his clothes. For a moment, he stood alone, looking out across the grounds.Then his gaze settled on Erik.
There was no surprise in his expression. No accusation. Charles simply looked at him.
Erik held his gaze, uncertain why he didn't immediately turn away.
The distance between them felt strange. Not empty, but charged with everything that had been left unsaid. Erik could almost feel the shape of Charles's mind at the edge of his own awareness, a familiar warmth restrained by deliberate distance. Charles didn't reach for him.
He only gave him a small, almost imperceptible smile.
Erik looked down, turning before Charles could see any emotion on his face.
By the time he reached the manor, the gardens had fallen into shadow behind him. He told himself he was returning because the air had grown cold, because there was work waiting for them in the morning, because there was no reason to remain outside. He did not tell himself that some part of him had wanted Charles to follow.He did not admit that he was relieved when he hadn't.
He walked the long, silent corridors of the mansion, the architecture itself mocking him with its deliberate, quiet opulence. Everything here spoke of a legacy he had been denied, a security built on a foundation he could never trust. As he passed a mirror, he caught his own reflection, and for a fleeting second, he braced himself against the phantom ache of his past. He needed to be alone, to scrub the lingering, intrusive warmth of Charles’s hand from his shoulder, but the silence of the house felt too loud, a constant, pressing reminder of the chasm that remained between them. He reached his room, desperate for the sterile cold that only solitude could provide, but even there, the air felt charged with the echoes of their disagreement.
That night, in the solitude of his room, the silence was heavy, filled only with the hum of the house and the restless pull of his own thoughts. Erik sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the shadows stretching across the floor. Charles was everywhere in the quiet—not physically, but in the echoes of their earlier conversation.
He closed his eyes, and the familiar magnetic fields surged, but tonight they felt jagged, unmoored. He could see Charles’s perspective, clear as day: the idealistic hope, the belief that coexistence wasn’t just possible, but inevitable if they just talked enough. It was a beautiful, naive dream. Erik’s hand tightened into a fist, metal springs in the mattress creaking in protest. How could Charles not see that the world didn't operate on hope? That it operated on power, on the crushing weight of those who took and those who were taken?
The memory of Charles's hand on his shoulder earlier returned, warm and grounding, but it felt like a haunting in the cold sterility of the bedroom. They were two sides of the same coin, yet spinning in orbits that could never truly sync. Erik sighed, the magnetic lines of the house fraying at the edges of his consciousness, mirroring the exhaustion in his bones. He couldn't be the savior Charles envisioned, and he wasn't sure Charles could survive the version of the world that actually existed. They were tethered by a connection that felt less like a bridge and more like a wire pulled taut, vibrating with the pressure of everything left unsaid.
In that silence, the hum of the house began to shift. It wasn't a sound, but a familiar pressure at the periphery of Erik’s mind—a soft, persistent knock on a door he had forgotten to lock. The shadows in the corner seemed to breathe with a presence that wasn't his own, and the air grew thick with a sudden, unbidden warmth.
I see you, Erik.
The voice didn't just sound in his ear; it bloomed from within his own chest, sending a sharp chill down his spine. Erik didn't startle this time; he simply let his head fall back against the headboard, closing his eyes as the internal barrier he’d tried to maintain finally crumbled.
I can feel what you’re trying to hide. Would you let me see it?
Charles was asking for a depth Erik wasn't sure he could survive sharing, yet he already felt split open, his secrets laid bare by the sheer proximity of the other man’s mind. He could never truly say no to that persistent, gentle light. Across the vast, dark expanse of the manor, Erik gave a small, resigned nod, knowing Charles had already seen the answer in the quiet ache of his heart.
I don’t need you to agree with me tonight.
The words caused a physical reaction that Erik had been trying to dispel since the moment Charles’s hand had touched his shoulder. There had always been a quiet worry beneath their arguments, one Erik hadn’t fully realized he was carrying: that Charles was trying to change him. That if he could understand Erik deeply enough, he could somehow convince him to see the world differently, to believe in the same impossible hope that seemed to come so naturally to him.
Erik had almost wanted Charles to hate him.
It would have made things easier. Hatred was something Erik understood. It created distance, gave shape to the boundaries between them, made it easier to imagine the day when their differences would force them to stand on opposite sides of something neither could compromise on. If Charles hated him, Erik wouldn't have to wonder what would happen when they were eventually forced to choose between the things they believed in.
But that wasn't who Charles was.
Charles accepted people in ways Erik couldn't understand. He reached for connection when Erik had spent his entire life learning to protect himself from it. Even now, with Erik allowing him closer than he had ever intended, Charles wasn't asking him to surrender anything. He wasn't asking him to abandon his anger or forget what had happened to him. He wasn't even asking him to agree. He was simply asking Erik to let him see.
The realization settled somewhere deep in Erik's chest, uncomfortable in its simplicity. Right now, they weren't fighting for their lives. They weren't standing on opposite sides of a battlefield, forced to decide which of them was right and which of them would have to give something up. There was no blood on the ground, no machinery waiting to crush them beneath its weight.
Two men alone in the darkness, separated by the distance between their rooms and somehow closer than either of them had intended to become.
Erik could feel Charles's mind against his own, warm and persistent, no longer pushing against the barriers Erik had spent years constructing. It lingered at the edges of him, waiting rather than demanding, and for once Erik found himself too tired to keep fighting against something that wasn't trying to hurt him.
He let himself feel it. The warmth. The terrifying sense that Charles already knew him and had chosen to remain anyway.
I see you, Erik.
The words came softer this time, almost reverent in the quiet of his mind. Erik's breath caught. There was no judgment in them. No pity. Only an unbearable kind of recognition that made something inside him loosen.
How I want to feel you…
The words sent a shiver through him before he could stop it. Ripples of energy began at the top of his head, cascading down through his body in a slow, uncontrollable wave before pooling deep in his stomach. His fingers tightened against the sheets, the metal springs beneath him responding with a faint creak. For once, Erik didn't try to suppress it.
He simply closed his eyes and let himself feel what he had been fighting against for far too long.
The pressure, barely there at first, began at his shoulders and swept down his arms like fingertips. Erik wasn't sure whether it was a part of Charles's mind reaching through the distance between them or a coagulation of the energies already gathering around them. The distinction was becoming impossible to make. The lines between what Charles was doing and what Erik could feel were beginning to blur.
A susurration of barely perceptible sound seemed to expand from him and into the surrounding room, filling the space with the energy that had been building between them for longer than Erik had allowed himself to acknowledge. It was everywhere now, humming beneath his skin, gathering in the spaces between breaths. He had spent so long resisting it that he had never stopped to consider what it might feel like if he simply let it move through him. The pressure shifted, spreading across his chest.
Erik brought his own hand to the place where he could feel it, fingers tracing the sensation as though he could hold it there, guide it across his skin and make sense of something that had become impossible to name. His breath caught, a tentative gasp escaping before he could stop it. The feeling was becoming too much; but, not enough.
I feel it, Erik. How beautiful you are…
The words were barely a hum in his ear, in his head, somewhere just at the back of his consciousness, and a shuddering breath escaped him at the closeness. It was becoming impossible to tell where Charles's voice ended and his own thoughts began. There was no longer a clear separation between them, no boundary that Erik could feel himself standing behind. Charles was there, threaded through the spaces of his mind, and Erik was allowing him to stay, wanting him to stay.
They were becoming two parts of the same magnet, separated and forced apart, changed by everything that had happened to them before being pulled back together again. The attraction between them had always been there, something Erik had tried to reduce to circumstance, proximity, shared purpose, an admiration of his mind. It was easier to believe that they were simply two powerful forces thrown into the same orbit. But this was something else.
Their energies were shifting around each other, folding into one another and creating something that hadn't existed before. Erik could feel it moving through the room, could feel it beneath his skin and along his tongue, a low vibration that seemed to gather strength every time he stopped resisting it.
They were building together. Becoming something greater than either of them could be alone.
There was something addicting about it, about the possibility of what they could become if neither of them held anything back. If Charles stopped trying to reach him from the edges and Erik stopped building walls between them. If they were fully invested, fully committed to whatever this was, without worrying about where it would lead or what it might eventually demand from them. Erik didn't want to know the limits. He wanted to see how far it could go.
The energy continued to build, gathering on his tongue, vibrating through his chest and down into his stomach. It buzzed through his blood until every part of him felt awake, alive in a way that made the quiet of the room almost unbearable.
This wasn't something Erik was experiencing alone. Whatever was happening between them was being reflected back and forth, each sensation answered by another, each thought seeming to draw the other closer. They were feeding the same current, making it stronger simply by allowing themselves to exist within it.
Erik had spent so much of his life afraid of what power could do when it was left unchecked. But this didn't feel like destruction -- it was creation, the realization settled into him with a strange, aching certainty. What they could be was beautiful.
Erik wanted more. More of Charles's mind against his own. More of the warmth, the energy, the impossible sense of being understood without having to explain any of the things he had spent his life burying. More of this thing that existed only when they were together.
He let the sensation move through him, following it instead of questioning where it came from or what it meant. His own restraint began to give way, not because Charles was asking him to, but because Erik wanted to know what would happen if he stopped holding himself apart from it. Erik didn't allow himself to hesitate.
His hand moved lower, following the warmth that had gathered beneath his skin, and the energy around him seemed to respond to the movement. It was no longer something distant or abstract. He could feel it everywhere now, humming through his body, gathering wherever his attention lingered.
A sharp inhale comes from the back of his mind and Erik stilled for a moment. For the smallest moment, Charles's careful restraint slipped.
It was only a moment, barely more than an instinctive reaction, but Erik felt it with startling clarity. The mental barrier Charles had kept between them faltered, and beneath all that precision and careful restraint was something much more immediate. Just a raw, instinctive reaction that passed between them before Charles could pull it back.
Charles had always seemed so impossibly precise to him. Always thinking, analyzing, reaching for the meaning beneath everything. Even his telepathy carried that same deliberate quality, a careful touch against Erik's mind that seemed to ask permission even when Erik knew Charles could simply take what he wanted. But this-- this was something Erik caused.He could affect Charles. There was something almost intoxicating in the realization. Not because Charles was trying to understand him. Not because Erik was some fascinating puzzle for him to solve. Charles was reacting to him, to what Erik was allowing him to see and feel, and there was something almost dizzying in knowing that the usually composed man could lose that careful control because of him.
Erik…
His name came through Charles's mind differently this time. Closer. Breathless. Spoken with a reverence that Erik couldn’t believe was being put around his name. That this other man could be affected like this from him.
Erik's fingers tightened, and the energy between them surged in response, rushing through his body until he could barely distinguish sensation from power. The room seemed to contract around him, every sound muted beneath the low hum that had begun to fill the space.
He could feel Charles trying to gather himself. Shifting things around them almost unseen. Trying to put the walls back where they had been. Gain his sense of control back.
Erik didn't want him to. For once, he wanted to be the thing that Charles couldn't intellectualize away. Couldn’t put away in a box. He never was like that and wouldn’t start now.
He wanted to feel the moment where thought gave way to instinct, where all the careful boundaries between them became as meaningless as the distance between their rooms and Charles was letting him feel it, continuing to choose to stay in the back of his head, build their energies together. The realization was enthralling.
Whatever existed between them had stopped being something Erik could dismiss as circumstance or curiosity. It was alive now, moving between them with every breath, every thought, every involuntary response.
He was touching himself now, keeping his eyes closed but still able to see the geometric lines of energy swirling, almost taste it on his tongue between the breathlessness in the back of his head. He couldn’t help the slide into more and more, faster and faster. Agonizing thoughts filled his head of wondering what Charles was doing on the other side of these walls, was he breathing aloud in the quiet of his room? Something dark and beautiful around him. Was he touching himself too when reading Erik’s thoughts? Feeling Erik’s feelings? His overwhelming urge for more, the energy, the dizziness, of being seen so fully.
Quicker now, things were crescendoing. Frenzied behind his eyelids. Explosive in what they could be, it is all becoming overwhelming before it suddenly peaks with a shared whisper. Breathing the same air, though separated. Everything around is suddenly too quiet, too still and it drives Erik mad thinking of what they had, what they could continue to have. This was extraordinary and addicting.
Eventually he opens his eyes and sees Charles above him, his face mere inches above his own. He knows Charles isn’t really here, that this is a projection. If Charles was really here, Erik would feel his warm breath on his cheek, smell warm whiskey on his breath, feel his heart beating out his chest, and would not be able to hold back from feeling the warmth of each other’s skin.
“Come to me, Erik.”
His voice, quiet and gruff. Erik is standing up and haunting the halls before he can think about it, not an ounce of hesitation in his mind anymore. Charles knows just the words to say to have Erik act, be there and open his wooden door, seeing Charles becoming undone on his own bed as they meet eyes. They are together in an instant, Erik on top of Charles and pressing upon him.
Erik can feel the metal filler on one of Charles’s teeth in the back of his mouth. He can feel the metal springs of the mattress pushing against Charles’s back. He can feel Charles’s belt buckle pushing against Erik’s hips, against the zipper on Charles’s jeans, against Charles’s abdomen. It takes all of his self control to not seize them all, take all of Charles, see what they could become.
“Erik,” A breath out, held between them and buzzing, connecting between their parted lips with intricate lines. Erik pauses and catches Charles’s eyes, dilated and wide. All Charles manages is the smallest nod and Erik almost collapses at the approval, the affirmation, the reliquement of control.
He has to grip the sheets above Charles’s head for a moment, for a semblance of control, he would never want to hurt Charles as the other man is placing so much trust in Erik’s hands. With heavy breathing and Charles watching him, he very carefully unbuckles the belt and unzips the jeans.
Erik rakes his nails up and under Charles’s shirt, taking time to splay his hands across his chest and feel the skin thrumming beneath his fingertips before lifting the other man’s shirt above his head.
He catches a glimpse of Charles’s face with flushed sheets, beautiful waves bouncing off his head and to the surrounding room, looking at Erik with such profound vulnerability. He remembers for a moment their arguments, their fighting, and he can see Charles almost looks scared. That Charles remembers their differences, the destruction that Erik holds inside him and that Charles definitely doesn’t. But he is here, again, trusting Erik. Erik cups Charles’s cheek gently, softly, and brings their lips together, slower this time. They are here, at this moment. Tomorrow they can go back to their differences and the bigger problems, but for this moment in time, they are here and together.
Erik’s fingers trace patterns across Charles’s chest, down his arms, his stomach, and lower. Charles’s hands find Erik’s hair and Erik’s cheek, holding closer, more still than Erik’s own movements. Erik’s hands find the top of Charles’s jeans again and barely slip under, touching the soft smooth skin and Charles’s hip bone. His hips jerk up slightly and he gasps inside Erik’s mouth, taking some of Erik’s air, but Erik would give it all to him, would give anything to him in this moment.
Charles grips the end of Erik’s shirt and lifts above his head, scanning Erik’s chest before meeting their eyes again. Charles’s hands go to Erik’s shoulder and grabs hard, digging his nails slightly into Erik’s back, meeting their lips again harder this time. Teeth brushing against Erik’s lip with a soft bite, a tongue in his mouth tasting him. Erik gives it all to Charles and wants more. He wants all of Charles. He wants Charles to have all of him.
Erik pushes Charles’s jeans off, throwing them to the side of the room. He reaches down and feels Charles through his underwear, feeling the shape of Charles through the thin cloth, feeling the hardness and the shape and running his palm across it all. He groans into Charles’s mouth and Charles hips buck again, pushing more pressure into Erik’s hand.
“Erik,” again, heady and warm, hanging in the air between them. Unable to help himself, Erik pushes Charles’s underwear just low enough to grab a hold of him firmly, thumbing pre-cum down his length and using that to slowly fist down his length. Erik’s using his arm to hold himself above Charles, who’s laying on the bed and now gripping the sheets beneath them. Their heads are close, lips close, eyes close. Charles’s eyes fell closed and his mouth open, shuddering gasps coming from him. Erik can only admire, speechless, feeling the electricity from the other man. He stays slow, watching Charles come further apart.
A few minutes and Charles opens his eyes, low-lidded and looking at Erik with a look that sinks Erik lower to his lips again. Charles kisses him and then moves to kissing his cheek, his jawline, and to his neck. Charles’s mouth is hot on his neck and Erik melts under his touch, bringing his hands up and grabbing Charles’s hair, arm holding him up giving out and pushing their hips together as Charles holds his head and grabs his hair to keep Erik’s neck in place, pressing heavy lips against him.
A moan escapes Erik as he tries and fails to push it against the bedsheets, something louder than he intended crying out and shaping the space around them. Charles grabs Erik’s hips in response and pushes them over so Charles is on top now, leaning over Erik laying on the bed.
Erik goes limp under Charles’s touch that’s running nails over his chest, his arms, pushing his shorts off his body. Charles could do anything to Erik at this moment and he would go along with it. The touch of this deeply intrinsic man. Could Charles read in Erik’s mind what he wanted Charles to do next or did he simply know? Charles’s barely held back moans -- were they a response of their hips grinding together or a reaction to Erik unable to hold back the sounds he’s making?
Erik was staring at the roof exploding into shapes and colors around them. Moving at a rapid pace and evolving as the energy of the room increases and increases.
Charles pushes off his underwear as well and moves his lips along his neck, to his collarbone, kissing the bone there before kissing down his chest and down his stomach. He pauses his path down Erik’s body again at Erik’s hip bone and kisses there, traversing to his thigh for a moment before he’s kneeling between Erik’s legs and pausing a moment before taking Erik’s cock in his mouth.
Erik cries out and his hips jerk up. Charles keeps his lips at the end of Erik’s cock and grabs the rest with his fist. He’s kissing the end of it and pumping the rest of it with his fist and Erik is panting. He’s seeing stars fully now, gripping anything around him for a semblance of the control he is easily losing. Grabs Charles’s hair, his shoulder, as a cold flushing starting at his head moves down his body, skin prickling and alive at Charles’s touch. The energy around them was pooling in the bottom of Erik’s abdomen and causing him to shakily exhale louder and louder with each moment.
Looking down, Erik sees Charles make a circle with his tongue around the tip and gasps loudly, grabbing Charles’s shoulder with one hand. This was too much, he was too close too soon. Charles stops, and looks up with big eyes in a way Erik almost can’t handle. Their openness is consuming Erik, that Charles would stop whenever Erik wanted to, would not prod and dig into Erik’s mind unless he wanted him to. He’s respecting Erik in a way that sees right through him.
“Charles,” he rasped, “I’m too close.” He’s too breathless, too hesitant in this vulnerable state -- looking down at Charles splayed open. Thinks, I need more of you still and knows Charles can hear it in the way he crawls back up and meets their lips once more.
Charles kisses him again, and this time Erik doesn't feel the need to hold himself apart. Whatever careful distance had existed between them is gone. There is only the warmth of Charles beneath his hands, the quiet rhythm of their breathing, and the strange, impossible sensation of another mind resting against his own without asking him to be anything other than what he is.
I have you.
The thought isn't spoken so much as felt, carrying through the space between them with a tenderness Erik isn't prepared for. His eyes close. For once, he doesn't think about tomorrow. He doesn't think about the arguments waiting for them, or the world beyond the walls of the mansion, or all the reasons this could never last. He doesn't think about the ways they will inevitably hurt each other, or the lines that will one day divide them again.
There is only Charles.
Erik feels Charles's fingers curl gently against his skin, grounding him, and something inside him finally gives way—not violently, not like the breaking of something precious, but like a door being opened after years of being kept locked. The energy between them changes. It isn't sharp anymore. It doesn't pull or strain or demand. It settles around them, warm and steady, until Erik can no longer tell where his own thoughts end and Charles's begin.
You don't have to be afraid of me.
Erik swallows, the silence stretching between them.
I'm not.
And for the first time, he realizes that it is true.
Charles smiles against him, and Erik feels it as clearly as if he were seeing it.
The rest of the world falls away. There are no philosophies here. No sides. No future waiting to be decided. Just two minds open to one another, two bodies pressed close, and the quiet certainty that, for this moment, neither of them is alone. Erik lets himself disappear into it. Into Charles. Into the warmth. Into the impossible, terrifying possibility of being known completely and still being wanted.
And when Charles reaches for him again, Erik doesn't hesitate.