Archive of Our Own

“It’s not a date,” Charles insists, combing his fingers through the flicks and curls of his hair that hang over his forehead. He can see Moira behind him in the mirror’s reflection, bent at the hip and rifling through one of his drawers, bottom lip worried between her teeth. He’s tempted to reiterate the fact, but purses his red-bitten lips when he realises how desperate and transparent he’d sound.

Though, really, it’s not a date, it’s… an attempt, Charles thinks, rubbing his palms over his thighs, the scratchy material of his light grey suit alien. It doesn’t yield the way his kimonos do, offers nothing in the way of freedom around his ankles, and where his cuffs have been pinned shut by two silver little studs around his wrists he misses his lengthy furi. His discomfort is worth it, though. To Charles, anything would be worth this second chance.

“If it’s not a date,” Moira starts, turning around with the vial of geranium oil in her hand. Charles tries not to flinch when she rubs it at his neck, ignoring how it tickles. “Why could I hear your heartbeat from across the room?”

She flicks her eyes up, is met with a look that can only be described as dry, and laughs.

“Stop worrying,” she says, squeezing his shoulders, and her warm brown eyes are full of encouragement. “He stayed to be with you. That means something.”

True as it is that Charles felt Erik’s mind - saw Erik’s conviction and love like he had been gazing into a mirror of his own heart, felt the way the man trembled as he held him, three days ago in the courtyard of a northcoast train station - worry and doubt are as wired through Charles as his telepathy. Nothing can be taken for granted; everything is too good to be true. It's a mindset he found himself in as a child, when Raven had been taken, and he's never been able to shake it since. 

It seemed even more poignant and true when Erik left him. No matter how long it's been, he can't shake it.

But Moira is right: Erik had stayed in the country even after he’d found out the truth. He hadn’t gone back to America. He’d latched onto the silver of Charles’ bangle with no hesitation, and had held onto Charles like he feared he was an apparition, a fantasy, a fleeting dream to be broken by morning’s light.

Charles traces the outline of where the bangle sits in his pocket with his thumb. He’s never gone a day without it since the morning Erik gave it to him at the honbasho; even when Erik left the okiya permeating his pain and confusion and cutting into Charles with broken, frantic, transparent words; even when days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and though Charles dragged his heels and spent his nights sitting on the empty verandah watching the jacaranda, one year became two, and time went on; even if to Charles, it stopped when his heart had.

“None of that,” Moira whispers gently, patting his fresh-shaven cheek, her brown eyes soft and sad. It’s not an uncommon practise for his girls to pull him back when he goes under. He won’t be putting them through it anymore, he hopes. “Erik loves you. He knew you as Raven, but what you gave him was Charles.” She smirks, and pinches his cheek. “Raven is a geisha who does what she is told. Charles is the free spirit lead by his beautiful, giving heart, that wouldn’t stop seeing off-limits clients, no matter what threat his Mother gave.”

Her words bring a grin to his lips, full and bright red even without his rouge. “When you put it like that,” he says quietly, voice a little wet, but Moira is right. It was never an act with Erik. He lied about his name, his gender, but never what was in his heart.

The maid steps back and looks him up and down, humming and clicking her tongue. “Even if Emma can’t wrangle your errant heart, she can pick a suit. Erik will take one look at you now and forget you ever wore a kimono.” 

Turning back to his reflection, Charles rakes his eyes over his own appearance, searching for anything less than perfect. “I feel more stifled than when Mother ties my obi,” he grouses, and Moira rests her chin on his shoulder.

“We’ll get you back in your kimonos.” He knows it’s a promise, but Charles can’t help his reservations. “Raven isn’t nervous.” 

“But Charles is,” he says wryly, steeling himself before nodding, turning, and stepping from his tatami-floored bedroom to his house slippers, and out into the hall.

For the two weeks that fell between Erik’s letter and being reunited Charles had spent his nights awake and worrying over what the German was like now, on how he should act, what he could say. “I don’t even know who you are.” Those were the last words Erik had ever spoken to him, two years ago and trapped in his memories; tainting his bedroom, carved into his heart. They hurt, but they were true: Erik didn’t know who he was, for all the secrets Charles split, for all the tentative touches and sly glances and heated kisses. Erik didn’t even know his name.

“And yet he’s still trying for this,” his Mother says quietly from in front of him, and only then does Charles look up and realise he’s stopped in the middle of the hallway. “He still wants you.”

“What if he’s changed?” Charles asks, and Emma smiles fondly at him, reaching out and cupping his cheek.

“Hearts change too, Charles. You know it to be true because a time ago, I’d have never allowed you do this.” Her smile twists to something wry, and Charles huffs. “You have my full blessing,” she continues, “Don’t let anything hold you back this time.”

Shakily, Charles swallows, nods twice, and scans the hallway, eyes seeking down to the far bedroom with its open door.

“She’s here,” Emma coaxes, turning with Charles and starting down towards the room. Hardly a room, it’s more a large storage closet, but compared to the quarters Raven had taken refuge in before now it may as well be a palace; she certainly treats it so. She’s real, Emma thinks, and Charles nods again.

Raven is sat at the narrow wood desk pushed to the eastern wall of the tiny room, her futon rolled and tucked under the low table. She immediately glances up when she hears Charles shuffle to the open doorway, gold eyes switching from wary to light, to relieved, her growing smile making the dark scales around her mouth glitter and catch Charles’ eye.

“You’re too handsome for your own good,” Raven says, and where only days ago Charles couldn’t remember how her voice sounded now he feels like he’s heard it every day of his life. Part of him had worried that, like his reunion with Erik, things with Raven would be stilted and dislocated. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

He holds his sister close after she rises and steps over to him, strong arms coiling around his waist, and he presses a kiss to her cheek. “You aren’t innocent, either,” he jokes, rubbing his hands over her beautiful blue skin, sheathed by the soft orange yukata leant to her by Jean, part of him still convinced she's be a hallucination that his fingers will phase straight through.

“It must be an Xavier thing.” Raven had been living on the coast, where factories were plentiful and work an easy fix. She’d escaped the north and its outdated traditions with the mutation that got her there in the first place, searching when she wasn’t working. She’d never given up, despite everything, just like him. “I want today to ensure your continued liaison with Mr Lehnsherr,” she carries on, smirking. “I want him to take us to that new American picture.”

Her words are almost crude, and painfully familiar, but her joke balms the rawness that, a time ago, was anything but. “You can count on it,” then, “I love you,” because he’ll never get tired of saying it. 

Raven rolls her eyes, her sentiment buried under the harsh years of street life and loneliness, but Charles can still feel it there, lighting up like gold at the back of her mind. “Maybe the boss will give me an extension on my holiday if all goes well.”

“Like I needed any more pressure,” Charles huffs, rolling his eyes and pulling away. He can feel Emma’s warm delight at watching them from behind him.

“Go get him, Charles.” She hadn’t left him once since the day at the trainstation, Erik granting her leave to stay with Charles. As long as you need, he’d said, voice gruff, his eyes fixed on Charles. Raven hadn’t needed to be told twice.

The descent of the stairs feels strangely familiar, a deja vu that, once, would have caused his heart to clench and the breath to escape his lungs, but now there’s no pain; his heart flutters with hope.

The girls are standing in the genkan, all of them, and Charles can’t stop himself from loosing a laugh at how they all look, squished in the small, stone-floored space like koi fish in a tiny pond. Kitty and Jubilee are nudging each other, their white and pink yukatas matching, hair pulled up into sets of two neat little buns either side of their head. They still when Jean settles her hands on their shoulders from behind them, and Charles can see their eyes go wide and spines rigid. Jean winks at him. Next to Marie in her usual navy blue yukata, Jean’s kimono blazes brighter than Charles remembers seeing it in a long time.

Emma, Moira, and Raven all come up behind him, and Emma rests her hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “Good luck. But you won’t need it.”

Marie is smiling at him with everything she need not say, fond and proud. She had been right with everything til now. Charles steadies himself, reminds himself, flicks his gaze to the heavy wooden door. 

When the chimes sound and echo down the long halls of the okiya, their gentle tinkling pushes a shiver up Charles’ spine.

“A coffee house,” Logan had grunted, those days ago, ushering the three of them onto a tram to the inner of the small coastal town. Charles couldn’t look away from Raven once. Her mind had sung brighter than anything he could have imagined, the exasperating, fruitless years of throwing out his telepathy like a net in the hopes of catching her, elusive and lost and almost forgotten wiped away by her light, zipping thoughts in a matter of seconds.

Touching her mind had been like touching gold. Burning from where he’d sat by Charles’ side in the humble, quiet kissaten, it was almost as bright as Erik's. 

Now Charles can feel him through the door, and it makes him breathless. 

Time could never chip away at his heart, back before everything went wrong and Charles could convince himself in the quiet hours that were between too-late and too-early that it all would pass. Time hadn’t been very successful at taking Charles’ memories out in its tide either, leaving him broken by sudden, aberrant glimpses at that perfect almost-week that could never fade, even if he willed himself to forget, to spare himself the pain. Standing on the edge of the entryway is so achingly familiar, a pertinent reminder of the precipice he’d found himself on back then.

You’re not ending it this time, Jean thinks, and Charles snaps his eyes to find hers, grounding and steadying. This is the start.

The girls step up from the genkan, Kitty presses a kiss to his cheek and Jubilee squeezes his hand. Marie opens the door, bows and stands to the side-

And there stands Erik, the suit jacket open out in the warmth of the day, hands halfway looking like he can’t decide if he wants to stuff them in his pockets or clench them at his sides, his intense eyes riveted on Charles. 

Beautiful. It surprises them both.

Their still moment is concluded with Marie, clearing her throat quietly and shifting from one foot to the other. The girls have made themselves scarce, but Charles knows they’re watching.

“Charles,” Erik says slowly, like he isn’t sure himself, his name thick in his mouth and foreign, and Charles can’t tell if he wants to throw himself at the man or slam the door and run away.

“Good morning, Mr Lehnsherr,” Charles forces himself to say instead; something pained flits across Erik’s features, and so he corrects himself without thought, “Erik.”

The kissaten had been charged, intense, full of shy glances and quiet words; which, while never more than a sentence or so, spoke of a depth that Erik needn’t elaborate upon for Charles to understand. At a point Logan had hunkered out into the street, under the pretense of smoking but Charles knew what he was doing, and so did Raven, who had up until then not let go of Charles’ hand once. “The cakes here are delicious, I’ve heard,” was a white lie that Charles couldn’t pick at - heard from whom? It was too dangerous for Raven to have friends - and so Raven had stepped off to the counter, her white, western dress tight at her waist and bouncing with every step.

“I’m sorry,” Erik said, before Charles could get a word in, and before the quiet could settle and stifle. He’d snapped his gaze up from his teacup at the sound of his voice, something he could only hear in his dreams lately. To see all the raw emotion on Erik’s face made his chest ache. “I’m- Charles, I’m so sorry.”

“Shall we?” he says now, offering his arm with a smile that could be wry. Charles ignores the irony; it makes something hurt in his chest otherwise.

“Of course,” and he forces himself not to look back over his shoulder at Marie, or seek any of the girls’ minds for solace and comfort.

Stepping down into the genkan is stepping towards Erik, and Charles is waiting for the moment he wakes up from all of this. He’s going to wake up, and Erik will slink back into Charles’ mind and memories, locked away where he’s been all this time.

Charles looks up to Erik’s eyes, and like they’re a mirror he finds something knowing there. Erik lets his arm settle at his side. Charles is a man. Men shouldn’t hold each other. Men shouldn’t kiss each other neither. Charles wonders if it’s as taboo as kissing a geisha; Erik is racking up a hefty debt with karma. 

Words stick in his throat. Had it been this hard, back then, for Charles to conjure up a conversation, to flirt or tease? He’s not out of practise, even if his clientele has thinned over the past two years; but, he thinks, his heart might be. Erik saves him the struggle.

“I trust Raven is well,” he begins, and Charles nods, stomach twisting strangely at how, after everything, Erik stands aside and waits for Charles to pass out onto the front steps. He can feel Emma and Jean’s minds warm in his own, and draws his confidence from there.

“Thank you, for letting her stay.” Charles had thanked him in the front courtyard of the trainstation with a trembling voice and something wet in his eyes, but the words will never turn weak with use. He’ll never go a day not being grateful to Erik; if Erik didn’t recognise Raven, Charles wouldn’t have her back; if Charles hadn’t sat with Erik, talked with Erik, fallen in love with him, he wouldn’t have his sister. He owes Erik everything.

It makes the guilt that much worse.

Charles had found however, in that pivotal morning in the coffee house that all the world was blind to, that the guilt had been - still is - mutual.

Something flits across Erik’s face that Charles catches, and pretends not to have, looking out at the street. “There’s no way I could have done anything but.” Charles swallows, casts his powers out, and diverts the attentions of anyone passing by spying two men walking from the okiya when only one had stood there before. Erik follows Charles down from the porch, his shoes clipping on the stone pathway.

The surreality of it all is making Charles dizzy. Erik’s almost walking on his heels he’s so close, chasing the distance between them put there by two years of silence. Charles can hardly even bring himself to be indignant about it, stubborn as he is, can’t hold a grudge. If it weren’t for his uncertainty on where he stands with the German, he would have all but thrown himself on him and begged him to never leave again.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” Erik had said, reaching across the table to take Charles’ hands with not a care for who might have looked their way, and Charles couldn’t pretend he didn’t feel Erik’s fingers trembling. “Forgive me. Please, I…”

Charles clears his throat, the memory fading away. “Still, thank you. You’ve done so much for me, and all I’ve done is…”

Erik shakes his head, touching his arm gently, and the words catch in his throat. “Don’t, Charles.”

“We have to talk about it at some point,” Charles says quietly, almost dryly, “Because I’m not living a lie. I can’t pretend to be what you want.”

His words have heat, but not the kind that would inspire anger. Erik is patient with him, too patient for his own good, so seldom bridled by his anger. There’s a flash of something Charles catches, in Erik’s mind, and Charles bites his lip. Not anymore.

“You needn’t pretend.”

Erik had said something similar in the coffee house, but Charles can’t draw on it, his heart thumping in his chest and his pulse thundering in his ears. They’re to go to lunch together. Charles isn’t even sure if he’ll be able to stomach any food with the way his belly is twisting in nervous knots. 

Their arms brush as they walk, and it takes all Charles has not to curl around Erik and hold him close. He’d let himself go at the trainstation, holding onto Erik’s coat and burying himself in Erik’s arms and his scent, touching his fill. Between the trainstation and the kissaten they’d hardly a moment alone, Raven hanging off Charles’ arm every chance she got, talking and talking about her years travelling and hiding. Charles couldn’t be frustrated with her for it. Having her close sobered him up; this was the real Raven, the girl with the name Charles had taken, the name Erik had said those years ago with reverence and love. Even if Erik stayed in the country, he hadn't come back for him, never came back to understand. Whatever Charles had felt in his mind at the station, the fact still remains.

Charles tries a steadying breath, and he steps slightly to the side, allowing a scant space - but space enough - between them as they walk on the stone pavement that fringes the street. He can’t let himself fall again, because this time Erik mightn’t be there to catch him.

“You’re quiet,” Erik ventures, and Charles skims his mind, feeling cold when he sees Erik has noted the space between them - the literal one, and he supposes wryly, the figurative distance, too.

He worries his lip, looks out at the street, but his eyes always end up seeking Erik. “I just-- you must have questions. You must want to know what…” He’s not sure how to finish.

In the quiet coffeehouse Charles had stared across the table, eyes searching and mind flitting. “How do you know my name?”

It was such a ridiculous question, Charles still thinks it is, and at the time he couldn’t decide whether he’d wanted to laugh or cry; two people supposedly loving each other, while one didn’t even know the other’s name.

Erik cleared his throat, and began almost clinically, like he’d rehearsed this a hundred times, like a dance Charles might have had to learn. “Raven - your sister. She told me of a brother, a telepath, and she described your features, the details of your separation.” Erik’s hands had tightened minutely around Charles’ across the table. “You used her name as a pseudonym. Raven was your lost sister. Raven’s lost brother had been you. Charles.” His name had sounded heavy from Erik’s mouth, curled by his accent and threaded with something that made Charles’ chest tight. Logan had returned then, not a hint of smoke on him, grunting about all the fish in the air, and Charles hadn’t been able to get another word in.

“I have many,” Erik says easily, nothing strained in his voice, and his smile could light the day for all its brightness. “But I won’t push you. I trust you. Today let’s just have a meal, and see the town, and we can talk when you’re ready.”

I’ve been ready for two years, Charles wants to remark, but he keeps it trapped down. You deserve to know. Erik didn’t come back for him… but he’s here now, at his side, sidestepping rickshaws and tipping his hat to pretty girls in their pretty kimonos. Charles can’t push him away again, this time through his anger or through the overbearing need to touch him. He can't scare him off again, no matter how loudly his heart sings to press itself against the German’s chest.

“Thank you,” he says instead. It would be so easy to just dip into Erik’s mind and find what's in his heart, but that's not what this is about. He has to make things right, they both have to, but he's going to do it right this time.

The restaurant is something small and humble, close enough by but discrete enough that no one should recognise the angles of his face as one of the pretty girls from Frost’s okiya. A young waitress ushers them to a table by the front bay window, and when Charles smiles at her she blushes.

“You’re popular with both genders,” Erik comments quietly, and this time it’s Charles’ turn the blush. He can’t draw on anything to say, so he sets about pouring tea for the both of them. “I’m sorry,” Erik says then, uncertainty in his voice. “I don’t… I’m not sure…”

He trails off, and Charles needn’t see his mind to know what it is he isn't sure how to say.

“I want you to ask me your questions, Erik,” Charles says, and he's surprised at how steady his voice sounds to his own ears. He doesn't disguise it, doesn't cape it with something light and airy and feminine. When he swallows, his Adam's apple bobs in his throat.

When Logan had shunted Charles and his sister back onto the train when it was due to depart, Charles hadn’t been able to look away from Erik, his gaze piercing and mind singing to him. Now, Erik’s eyes harden, set gazing on Charles’ own, and it takes Charles all the determination he has not to weaken under him.

“Please, Erik.” Charles doesn’t care if it almost sounds like begging. A waitress interrupts to hand them two menu cards, but Erik’s eyes never leave Charles’ face. 

“Raven--” Erik’s shock mingles with Charles’ pain, and it’s like Erik just clawed out another part of him. “Charles,” he corrects himself, but the damage has been done, and it hurts more than it ever did at any of the teahouses or the gardens or festivals. Charles, Erik thinks loudly, and Charles can’t tell if he’s simply reminding himself or pushing. A tense moment passes, and then Erik asks softly, “Did you love me?”

When Charles realises his hands are shaking he stuffs them between his thighs, obscured by the tablecloth. “I did. I didn’t lie about that. Not once.” To finally say the words after all this time sounds strange; they’re words he thought every night, every early waking hour of the day, when he’d come back from the dreams.

“And do you…” It was never like Erik to trail off, to break his sentences. Charles swallows, knowing what he’s trying to say. “Do you still love me?” 

There had not been a day that passed where Charles didn’t think of Erik, where his heart didn’t sing and his chest didn’t ache for him, craving that part of him that Erik had taken when he’d left. Every morning he’d wake to the thought of maybe today would be the day Erik would came back, only to end up staring into nothing when purple evening flirted with the horizon and the stars crept out from space to stipple the night sky, like scattered crystals across dark velvet. Is longing a part of love? Charles isn’t sure. But when he looks back to Erik, he does know one thing for certain. 

“I do,” Charles replies, levelling Erik with his blue-eyed gaze, letting Erik see the sincere truth pooling there.

Erik leans back in his chair, sucks a shaky breath. His words strike something in Charles’ chest. “Because I never stopped loving you.” 

When Charles can breathe again, the words come tumbling out. “How do you know I’m not lying again? I’m not who you want. I’m not who you thought I was.”

Erik leans forward, and his hand settles on Charles’ forearm. “Your name may have changed, the way you look, but I know you’re still you. I know you’re telling the truth.”

“It doesn’t do well to chase empty dreams. Convincing yourself I love you isn’t the same as the real thing.” Charles just wants things to go back to the way they were, he just wants to laugh at Erik’s jokes and kiss his mouth, and share afternoons all through the spring. While it lasted, and at the time, that had hurt significantly less than this now. 

“But I know you do.” The fervor in Erik’s tone lures Charles’ gaze back to the German. “You told the truth about your sister, and your telepathy. I know you’re telling the truth about your love. I trust you, Charles. Please believe me now.” 

Erik won’t catch him if he falls again, that’s what Charles tries to remind himself; because he’s a man, because he lied, and Erik can’t just forgive him that easy. Of all things he doesn’t want to push Erik away, but everything he’s saying almost seems too good to be true; something pieces together, and the thought catches in Charles’ mind and digs its claws in. If his voice sounds wet and strained they both ignore it. “So for two years, you didn’t think I’d loved you? Until you saw the real Raven as testimony?”

Even Erik's mind goes silent, and Charles can no longer feel it warm and shifting in the space around him. The waitress comes to take their orders. Charles tries his best smile and tells her in what he hopes is a steady voice they aren’t ready yet. Erik watches him til she leaves.

“That wasn’t the reason I didn’t come back,” Erik says quickly, before Charles can start up again. “It wasn’t only that.”

Charles can’t tell if he wants to scoff or laugh or cry. He can’t be mad, he doesn’t deserve to be, not after everything, and he doesn’t want to fight with Erik, not at all.

They settle into a charged quiet while Charles tries to distract himself with the menu. He reads it three times before anything sticks. When they’ve ordered, Charles clears his throat. “So you like men, too?”

“I suppose,” Erik replies with a shrug. “I like you.”

Now Charles does huff something incredulous. Emma would pinch him for his gracelessness. “You like me.”

“I don’t see you for your gender. I see you as someone I fell in love with. Before you were Raven, but now you’re Charles. I still see you the same, but now you have a different name.”

Don’t, Charles wants to say, wants to fight Erik’s gentle words and fill in the hole in his chest with angry, hurting things. “I can’t help but wonder how you see me. Money-driven? Deceitful, a whore?”

“None of that.” Erik’s tone doesn’t incite rebuttal. His mind cuts down every single of one Charles’ self-derogatory insults, one by one. “Never any of that.”

If I do, I’m not sure how you don’t. He doesn’t mean to project it, but he must, for Erik’s features soften and he reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket. 

He settles a small, brown leather-bound book on the table, sliding it across to Charles. “This is how I see you, Charles. This is who you are.”

With a glance to Erik, Charles tentatively reaches forward and pulls the book to him. It’s thin and light, and when Charles flicks open the cover and is met with a clean, blank white page, he realises why: it’s a sketch book.

On the first page is a woman Charles doesn’t recognise, and he figures why he shouldn’t quickly enough. Her age is discernable through the way Erik has shaded her cheekbones - strong - and the small crescents beneath her eyes - grey in the graphite but still as fierce and unyielding as the eyes Charles flicks his gaze up to find, across the table from him and watching him in something like apprehension. Erik’s mother, Charles thinks, and he flips through the sketch pad feeling like he’d invaded something private.

Several pages later, Charles finds what it is Erik wants him to see. The geisha is staring up at him from the page, her lips full and almost sad, her eyebrows quirked in some kind of worry. The white flowers of her kanzashi dangle at her temple, stretching down to the soft kimono she’s wrapped in, stippled with flowers like stars across the night. It’s him, Charles realises, and he tries to swallow the lump in his throat. The geisha Erik fell in love with.

Not sad, Erik thinks. Demure. Something cold coils in Charles' belly. 

A memory is pushed to him, and Charles lets it in without thought. A lonely night lost between those two years of silence, of separation, with too many thoughts and too many memories and not nearly enough ways to drown them; the sketchbook, and itching fingers, and an aching chest, arms trembling and burning from working the mill but never sore enough to numb or surpass the other perpetual pain; the sinking realisation of just who it is Erik has drawn, mindless and empty as he had been.

The next page is like a photograph. Captured in his profile is the soft blush high up on his cheekbones, the fan of his long eyelashes over the top of his cheek, every unruly and untameable flick and curl of his hair at his neck and forehead. Charles can see concentration he hasn’t felt, peace he hasn’t known. The thick kimono obscures his flat chest, even where his obi has been drawn tight; but it’s low and loose around his neck, and when Charles’ eyes settle on the Adam’s apple in his throat, he feels his own throat go tight.

“You see,” Erik says, and Charles thinks he wants to cry. “This is who you are to me.”

He’s not sure how to respond. The pages over have more sketches, different angles of Charles’ face, and Charles wills himself not to blush at the intimacy with which Erik has drawn his features. “I didn’t know you could draw,” Charles eventually murmurs. Erik scratches his nose, waits a few moments before speaking.

“I needed a way to see you again.”

Charles understands, and he nods quickly, hoping Erik doesn’t note the wet in his eyes. “My memories wouldn’t fade. I suppose an eidetic memory is a consequence of being a telepath.”

“Is it selfish of me to be a little glad for that?” Erik wonders, taking the sketchbook when Charles passes it to him. “For a while, I believed what you’d said to me: that I was inconsequential, only serving to be a source of income.” Charles flinches at the words, and he knows Erik’s seen. “But you didn’t forget me, like you should have if I was. You didn’t, Charles. That means something.”

Charles manages a sip of his tea, choosing his words. “But can you love me as I am? As a man?”

“I already do.” Erik takes his hand across the table, and Charles quickly diverts the attention of anyone who might think to look their way. “Whether you’re dressed as a man or as a woman, it changes nothing.”

Some part of Charles thinks that Erik is just going to keep saying the same thing over and over until it settles in his mind and fits snuggly in the cavern his guilt carved out, until his words heal Charles’ cracked heart, until they become part of his blood and he can feel Erik’s conviction thrumming within him. Erik smiles at him gently, and when his own mouth curves and splits over his teeth it feels like there’s stars forming in his chest. “If it’s all to same to you,” he jokes quietly, “I think I prefer my kimonos.” 

Erik’s answering grin takes Charles back to teahouses, and verandahs overlooking gardens; mornings wading through the raining cherry blossom petals, evenings spent in spring downpours. “You do cut a dashing figure in a suit.” 

When their food comes they settle into a silence that Charles finds surprisingly comfortable. Not everything has changed, not everything is fixed, but it’s a start. A corner of Charles’ heart still clings to the idea that Erik didn’t want him, because Erik left, because Erik fell in love with a woman; but when he catches Erik watching him in something like awe, something like reverence, his insecurities are easy enough to squash.

Erik tells him about the steel mill. The factory had been built faster than estimated, and if any of Erik’s workers attributed it to their boss’ own involvement on the site they never said anything of it. He lives in a small house not far from the factory, on the coast just before the country rises in steep mountains, breaking off into craggy cliffs. He lives with Munoz, and after a beat Charles remembers him. So does the eldest Summers brother, apparently, and Charles tries not to blush. It begins to make sense that Alex never took interest in Emma’s girls, no matter how sweetly she smirked. Erik raises an eyebrow, tilts his head, and takes a sip of his tea. “They aren’t as quiet as they think they are. I don’t have the heart to tell them. Munoz would be red for days.” Erik’s words make something twist funnily in Charles’ belly, and he tries not to think on their own situation. Would Erik want to do that, with him? He’s not even sure if he’s allowed to.

Erik asks how Jubilee and Kitty are, and Charles huffs playfully to that. “They got their free will from you,” Erik teases. 

Charles foots the bill when they finish, Erik acquiescing and shucking his pride when the geisha casts him a look. It’s somewhere between early in the evening and late in the afternoon when Charles checks his pocketwatch, and after excusing himself does he hurry to the bathroom, double-taking at his reflection when he catches himself; catches the man in the glass, no makeup, no wig. It went well, he tells himself, everything went well and Erik is still here and Erik still looks at him the same. Carding a hand through his hair does little to smooth out the fluffy curls and flicks.

Erik’s standing out the front smoking a cigarette when Charles returns, his back to the restaurant’s glass windows. He takes his time just watching the man, committing every little detail to mind to supplement the gaps in his memory. Erik’s shoulders seem broader, his skin darker, with little slivers of silver in his short dark hair. There’s more lines on his face, deepset with age and worry, but Charles wants to learn every single one of them, wants to trace his fingers and remember everything from before, reacquaint himself with Erik’s mouth, fall in love with him all over again. When he steps from the restaurant and comes to Erik’s side quietly, the German smiles down at him fondly. Charles can feel the bangle thrumming in his pocket.

Erik hasn’t returned to the hanamachi til now, so Charles walks him through the town, showing him the new shops, eyeing the pretty western dresses tucked around mannequins in the front windows. “They say there’s a war coming,” Erik murmurs quietly, but when Charles chances a sly glance up to him Erik is eying the price tags and nothing else.

Charles can remember an evening like this, walking through the city chatting quietly and snacking on cheap food from stalls along the main roads. He recognises the sudden heaviness in his chest when Erik walks him to the front gate of the okiya, only this time, when his stomach twists, he struggles to say a word about it.

He needn’t have to. “I’m not going to leave you again, Charles,” Erik says, and Charles knows he means it, feels it in his mind and in the way the bangle tingles against his thigh, but he just can’t shift his worry.

“Thank you for today,” Charles only says, staring up at Erik a moment and hoping before- no. Rationality kicks in and no, it’d be too early, it’d be too soon to… 

“Thank you,” Erik replies quietly, and his hand twitches at his side. “I suppose now is the time Ms Frost will open the door with daggers for eyes.”

He can’t help but smile at that. “She was grateful to you for your fidelity. She forgave you. Just like I did. Just like you forgave me.”

“Of course,” the words seem airy and distant, half-thought through, and now the hand at Erik’s side finally rises to comb through Charles’ hair above his ear. “May I see you tomorrow?”

“Of course.” Charles doesn’t want to say goodbye. It hadn’t been this hard at the station, because they’d hardly spoken, because they’d hardly known where it was the other stood. Erik will come back, Erik still loves him; it’s hard to remember when faced with another lonely night.

Before he can press their mouths together, or slide his hands under Erik’s jacket, or before he can cry with joy or worry or anything else, Charles turns and starts up the garden path, feeling Erik’s eyes on his back all the way. He doesn’t turn to look back when he rings the doorbell, chimes tinkling gently on the other side of the wood. He knows if he does, he’ll probably run and throw himself at the German.

Silence. Charles can’t even feel Marie’s mind beyond the door, so he rings again, rapping his knuckles on the wood and waiting. Nothing. Something hot and prickly raises the hairs on the back of his neck, and when Charles scans the okiya he comes up empty. 

“Are you all right?” Erik calls out. The sun has only just started sinking, tinting the sky purple and red and searing it with bright gold.

“There’s, um,” Charles tries, and Erik starts up the path towards him. “There’s no one home.”

“Oh.” Erik comes up behind him, and Charles remembers that last time they were on the verandah, standing close just like this, only instead there had been something that hurt a lot more than curiosity in Erik's eyes. “Do you have a key?”

“The door is bolted from the inside,” Charles explains, a little sheepishly. “So no one can break in. There’s always someone home, so…”

“So no one can break in?” Erik repeats slowly, grinning cheekily down at Charles and waving his hand in front of the door. Charles can hear the heavy metal bolt sliding in its frame, the bangle warms in his pocket with Erik’s power surge, and then the door is swinging gently inwards, scraping a little over the stone floor of the genkan. “Don’t tell Ms Frost.”

I have a feeling you breaking in was her very intention, Charles only thinks. None of the lamps have been lit, and while electricity is commonplace in the country the okiya is old, and Emma hasn’t been swept into the flurry of the West’s whims and antics. Shadows catch in the corners of the hall, deepening in the rooms and obscuring anything Charles’ brain intrusively suggests could be lurking within. Erik is standing so close behind him that Charles can feel his warmth, and he must sense Charles’ apprehension, because he settles a hand on the side of Charles’ arm. Charles hears his mind thinking, rolling over the words, readying them to be said, and so Charles himself swallows, turns, looks up at the German, and asks the question that’s itching under his skin.

“Do you want to come in?”

The words are innocuous enough, but with the empty okiya behind him and a quiet spring night ahead, Charles knows what’s hanging unsaid; knows it could make Erik flee.

The German is too quiet for too long a second, and Charles tries to fold up the sudden empty coldness in his heart; it’s too much too soon, Erik’s only just come back, and as much as Charles wants to hope things haven’t changed it’s been two years and he knows some things had to have-

“I’d love to,” Erik murmurs, voice husky, then, “If that’s okay. If it’s allowed.”

“There’s no one here to say otherwise.” 

Charles can feel something dangerous and warm coiling in his belly, nervous, something that makes his mouth dry and his skin tingle. Before all sensibility is lost with what remains of the day, Charles casts a mental net over the okiya, obscuring Erik and himself from the minds of anyone around them. It wouldn’t do well for two men to be see stowing away in Frost’s geisha house in the early evening.

“Just til the others get back, then,” Erik says, but Charles can see right through the resolve he capes his words in.

“Of course.”

They toe their shiny black shoes off in the genkan, settling them neatly to the side, and Charles provides guest slippers from the cubby. Even though his nerves are making him almost feel sick he can’t help but giggle when he looks down and sees Erik’s socked heels hanging off the end of the shoes.

“Stop that,” Erik grouses, shuffling along the wood, and he only makes Charles grin brighter.

“Logan usually brings his own slippers,” Charles giggles, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. “He has the same problem.”

Erik throws him a look. “Go light the lamps.” 

The dark has always unsettled him, ever since he was a child, but as Charles leaves Erik at the foot of the stairs he only feels something light, something excited - the nerves are still there, but they have the chance of turning into something else.

When Charles finishes he finds Erik sat in the tea room, eyes flicking over a book that one of the girls has left out. The something else turns into a weight-shifting awkwardness, and when Erik looks up at him he worries his bottom lip. He’s kept Erik almost all day - surely he’d be tired of him by now - but he can’t bear to think of saying goodbye just yet. 

From the way Erik is gazing up at him, Charles thinks he might not have to. “They left a note,” Erik says, tapping a slip of paper on the table. “Mr Howlett has taken them out. There’s dinner in the icebox.”

Stepping out of his slippers and into the room, Charles comes up and glances at the note. He rubs his wrists where his cuffs press tight against his skin. His skin feels slick with kerosene oil. “I suppose they’ll be gone a while, then.” Erik is still looking at him. “Would you like tea?”

“You can change out of that suit, if you’d like.”

The back of Charles’ neck prickles coolly, his stomach twists tight. “Sorry?” he manages, and Erik pushes himself to stand. He’s so tall his hair nearly brushes against the ceiling of the small room.

“You look uncomfortable. This is your home. You can dress how you want here.” Erik must realise how the words sound, for he flushes when Charles continues to look at him with a slight pinch in his brow. “Sorry, you’ve- I should go.”

Before he can move past Charles and leave, Charles catches his arm and steps close to him. “It’s alright,” he says softly, looking up at Erik imploringly. He wants to kiss him, press against him and push their mouths together. “I understand what you meant.” It would be so easy to just roll onto his toes and lean up and slot their lips together. They’re alone in the okiya, hidden within the wood walls and ricepaper doors with two years of longing between them-- but it could be so easy to scare Erik off, forever. “Would you like to see?”

Erik’s Adam’s apple bobs in his throat when he swallows. “What do you mean?”

“Would you like to see who I am? Who I turn into?” A kimono might only remind Erik of Charles’ deceit; but wearing it, Charles thinks he might be able to believe Erik fully when he says…

Charles doesn’t give him a chance to reply before he’s twining his fingers between Erik’s and leading him from the tea room, down the hall, up the stairs, creaking on the bottom step. The lamps are high in their brackets up on the walls, casting yellow light along the narrow hallway and burning the paper walls a light orange. Charles doesn’t look back at Erik as he takes him to his room, tries not to think too hard on what it is he’s doing.

“Here,” he says softly, stopping in front of his room. They left their slippers downstairs, so Charles steps easily onto the tatami. His lamp burns away on the dresser. Erik glances around before coming in, something crosses his features and his mind and the quiet determination swelling in Charles’ chest dampens. Two years doesn’t seem that long ago.

Erik glances at the dresser, the floor, the side where he stands in line with the door frame. In his mind are flashes of memories, feelings that settle low in his chest that Charles can feel through him. “Help me?” Charles asks quietly, turning and offering his wrists to Erik, studs heavy and pinning the cuffs closed. When Charles feels Erik’s mind again, it’s full of something tense and warm.

The metal tugs its way to freedom from the cotton, two little clips floating over and settling in the palm of Erik’s hand. Charles offers him a smile as he rolls his shoulders, lets the jacket slide off before he casts it over the partition to the side of the room, framed by intricately carved wood and illustrated with pretty paintings of snowcapped mountains. 

Erik sits and watches him from the small desk pushed against the wall opposite the door, studs in his fist, and Charles doesn’t feel at all vulnerable as he works open each button on his blouse, top to bottom, letting the shirt fall from his shoulders. This is Erik, the same man who carried him from that stifling restaurant when he fainted, who moved the pin from his hair, whose mind he touched unflinchingly; Erik, who found Raven, and brought her back after all Charles’ years of searching. Charles knows what his mouth tastes like, how his hands feel chasing his skin, how they feel pressed at his neck and his waist and his hip. He isn’t a stranger. 

Charles takes the bangle from his pocket, sliding it over his hand to settle around his wrist before he shimmies the slacks down his thighs. When Erik flushes and glances away, Charles smirks, and only then - naked save for his briefs - does Charles step behind the partition. “The kimonos are much too elaborate,” Charles explains, slipping into a yukata made of white satin, emblazoned with purple flowers stretching over the front and down the sleeves. “Moira helps me into them. The knot on the back can only be tied by someone else.”

There’s warmth that spills from Erik’s mind, trickling into Charles’ own and filling his chest and his heart, when Charles steps back from the partition, tying a loose knot in his obi. “You already look… Free. Unhindered.”

“It’s not that I want to be a woman,” Charles says, running his fingers over the jade flower comb Erik gave him all that time ago before slotting it above his ear, and he talks because if he keeps talking Erik will have to keep listening and he won’t leave him, not just yet. “I was raised most my life in a kimono. It’s normal to me."

Erik gazes at him openly, and Charles feels hot everywhere that isn’t covered by the cool satin material, but he lets him look his fill. His mind is a flurry of colours and flitting feelings, from affection to pride to a barely perceptible arousal that makes Charles blush high up on his cheeks. “Make up,” he squeaks, turning to sit in front of his dresser, pulling the tin of white powder forward and setting about mixing his rouge. Erik’s feelings only intensify.

The powder makes Charles sneeze most times, but he keeps control of himself as he dusts the brush over his cheeks lightly. It’s only a little bit - too much and Moira would grouse about wasting it - but it leaves his skin shimmery, shiny, white catching the light from the lamp when Charles turns his cheek and inspects his reflection. In the mirror, Erik is watching him with something heavy in his eyes. He hasn’t left yet. He hasn’t gone.

As he mixes the rouge he catches a thought - accidentally projected, it must have been, from the way Erik is cursing inwardly and looking anywhere but at him - an image, of red lips close enough to kiss, shared breaths, fingers sliding beneath satin. Erik hasn’t left. He said he wants Charles, said his gender didn’t matter, but Charles can’t be sure, can’t be certain Erik won’t spook and flee.

The creaking of the chair and the scruffy sound of cotton catching on tatami alerts Charles to Erik’s movements - he stands, and walks, and Charles shuts his eyes because this is how long it took, all day and an evening before Erik finally had enough. He refuses to acknowledge the cold emptiness that fills in his chest, making his bones heavy. He should be used to this by now.

“May I?” The words come from nowhere, and when Charles opens his eyes again Erik is sat on the floor in front of him, eyes flicking between the small pot of bright red lipstick and Charles’ wide eyes.

When Charles doesn’t understand, doesn’t respond, Erik clears his throat and asks again. “May I put your lipstick on for you?" 

“You’re not leaving?”

Shock, then something sad, before finally, the last emotion Erik lets settle on his face is a gentle smile. “Never, Charles.”

Erik takes his jaw between his long, thin fingers, pulling him forward slightly as he wets the brush in the red paint and wipes it at the rim of the pot. Charles is torn between wanting to shut his eyes and never wanting to look away from Erik’s, a green-stippled grey he didn’t realise he loved just this much. Erik leans in closer, Charles watches his eyes flit down to Charles’ lips before snapping back up, and then the wet brush is tracing his fat bottom lip with a delicate, steady swipe.

Charles’ heart is beating so loudly he’s sure Erik can hear it, sure Erik can see his pulse jumping under his skin - Charles wonders if the German can see his evening stubble brushing the underside of his chin, feels itchy just thinking about Erik seeing him unshaven. “Stop that,” Erik murmurs gently, eyes on his mouth, brush unwavering. Charles can smell his cologne, same as it ever was, something clean and fresh and woody.

I just keep thinking you’ll find something you won’t like, Charles pushes. He won’t blame him if he does.

Erik’s thumb strokes a gentle line along his jaw, skin catching on the little spots of ginger stubble there, and Charles’ heart flies into his throat and his stomach does flips when Erik thinks back, I just keep thinking of kissing you.

“You can do it,” Charles murmurs, when Erik has pulled the brush away and his lips are shiny with red paint. “You can kiss me.”

“Is it okay?” Erik suddenly seems unsure, but he’s dangling this in front of Charles’ eyes and he’s waited too long not to push for it now.

“It’s been two years since I’ve kissed anyone,” Charles admits, and when Erik cracks and smiles breathlessly he smiles, too, and then-

And then Erik’s pushing forward, setting his lips of Charles’, heedless of the staining red rouge there, kissing him with a closed mouth over and over, and Charles pushes forward, holding Erik’s wrist and crawling into his lap, the yukata sliding open around his pale thighs.

“I missed you unbearably,” Erik says against Charles mouth. “I counted every day away from you.”

Erik leans forward to kiss along Charles' throat, over the lump in it, and something frantic chases down Charles' spine.

“Are you sure about this?” The insecurity comes back, even with the relief of kissing Erik once more. “I'm a man, Erik,” Charles says quietly, refusing to let any hint of contempt into his tone. 

“That doesn't matter,” Erik replies, mouth turning up into a soft smile, and he ducks his head a little to the side, pulling away only to kiss at Charles’ jaw, fingers twitching against Charles’ thigh. 

"It mattered before." Charles’ eyes flick to their reflection in the mirror, coiled around each other and slotted perfectly, but it hits him again and again, and he breathes deeply and hopes his words don't sound as shaky as he feels. “I'm not what you want.”

Erik could tell him a thousand times that he loved him, and Charles isn't sure he'd be able to accept it even then. How can Erik have forgiven him for lying if Charles can't even forgive himself? Dressed as a woman Charles has just made it that much easier for Erik to think of him as such as they kiss, has made it effortless for Erik to delude himself. Charles' arms shake when he pushes him away. 

Erik lets a sigh but it doesn't sound exasperated. “You're the only person I've ever wanted, Charles. Feel my mind, you'll know it to be true.” Charles has to shut his eyes; Erik's are too wide and earnest, crinkled at the corners and full of warmth. “Man or woman.”

Charles isn't sure if he gasps or laughs or sobs, but his eyes are wet and his nose stings. The words are out before he has time to clamp them down and trap them. “Why didn't you ever come back for me, then?” 

Stabbing guilt lances through Charles’ chest, but it isn't his own. The smile falls. Erik wets his lips and thinks a moment before he speaks. “I hurt you. The second I left you I wanted to turn back and fix everything; but I didn't. I hated myself for it. There was no way you didn't hate me for it, too.”

“Erik,” and Charles lets the stinging wet in his eyes trickle down to catch on his lips. “You should have come back. You should have.”

Gentle fingers find his face and rub over his cheekbone, catching his tears and pushing them away. “I know.” 

Two years worth of pent up words escape him in gasps and tight almost-sobs. “You left me, Erik. You didn’t even give me a chance to explain.”

Erik’s voice is softer this time, and he pushes his forehead against Charles’, breath shaking. “I know.”

“It was my fault.”

Erik pulls away, eyes wide and wild. “Never,” he says adamantly. “Don’t say that. It wasn’t your fault, Charles.”

His voice is thin, shaky, and his words fall into Erik’s neck where he pushes his face. “I can’t watch you leave again.”

Erik eases him away, holding him by the shoulders to look into his eyes. “You won’t have to.”

Charles doesn’t remember how they end up on the futon, but he does remember the way Erik holds him around his waist, kissing his mouth with its smeared-red makeup, over the stubble on his jaw, down his neck, down down down along a collarbone and over his sternum. The yukata parts easily for him, satin falling gently around Charles’ shoulders, and bunching at his elbows. When Erik kisses every inch of skin he can find covering Charles’ chest, Charles looses a shaking, stuttering breath, and his fingers slip into Erik’s hair to hold him.

“I’ve never- I’ve not,” Charles whispers when Erik lays him down, and Erik smiles, settles beside him after he’s shucked his jacket and cast his button up into some far away, forgotten corner of Charles’ room.

Me, neither, Erik admits with his mouth over Charles’ heart.

Words are lost to them quick enough, replaced by colours and heated, jumbled thoughts, and the warm press of emotion that never fails to make Charles gasp when he feels it. The yukata fans around Charles’ body, framing him in white and purple, and he catches Erik’s memory - of lying on the rug in the courtyard, the jacaranda above scattering purple flowers with every gentle breeze, like the world had been sighing with them. Lying there with Erik pressed against his side, the bangle around his wrist warms as it vibrates, heavy like a weight, and Charles can feel Erik’s power in the jade comb tingling against his scalp.

Maybe it’s because little else happened in Charles' life after Erik, the only thing filling day after monotonous day thoughts of him, the memories of those days spent beneath the jacaranda, but Charles can’t tell where the last two years went; can’t draw on what happened, can’t wonder about how he changed. Erik makes him forget all that time they lost with his gentle mouth and clever hands over the shells of his hips, and soft, warm, loving thoughts, that trickle into Charles’ mind through their incorruptible tether.

Afterwards, they talk, quiet and bared midnight secrets spilt from one mouth to another, one mind into another, the fluttering in Charles’ chest and low in his belly making him dizzy and chasing away his inhibitions. They lose all their clothes, and Moira will probably have words with him for sleeping naked in a futon, but at this moment everything is shiny, pink-hued and soft, and Charles feels like he’s caught in a soap bubble and floating away.

“Charles,” Erik says outloud, into the quiet filled only with their quick breaths and shallow noises. “Charles.” He’s saying it because he can. He’s saying it because it’s Charles’ name, his true name, and now there can be no secrets, there’s no duties, and no lies. “Charles,” Erik murmurs, pressing a soft kiss under Charles’ jaw, stubble and all, and drowsy as he is Charles can’t bring himself to feel self-conscious of all the masculine parts of him he’s tried so long to hide. “I love you.”

When Charles wakes up in the morning it’s with Erik’s head on his chest, and it’s a little uncomfortable, he’s little heavy sprawled over his body in the single-sized bed, but for that perfect, first waking moment, where everything is peaceful, before the sun has beckoned the day, Charles’ first thought is, this time he stayed.