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Erik was ushered in, and immediately felt his hairs stand on end.
The room was cold. The table was cold.
Everything, in and up to the skin of his bared torso was freezing, including the metal tools lining the familiar walls and tables. It was almost another form of cruelty the way the metal, in reassuring him with its presence, added its own chill to his perception.
Cold hands on his wrists. Cold leather. Cold against his forehead, where he was settled face first against the steel examiner, nothing keeping his nose from scrunching into the table but a kink in his neck. His mind rebelled at being put on his front, but he didn’t know why. How he was placed on the table had never been the biggest concern.
Cold, curious eyes on him, but he couldn’t see them from this position, only know that they were there. They were always there.
Erik had been in and out of this lab room for about six months of his sixteen and a half years, thrown from experiment to torture to work and back again, all in the name of pulling rage out of the incisions and control from abject terror.
Yet, this was the first time he could feel not only Schmidt’s chilly gaze and the ever present metal of his watch moving from the table’s right to left, but also smell what he could almost subtly identify as the doctor’s scent. Base and clinical and copper, nothing like the acrid odor of the guards who ferried him from his “room,” or the hint of sweetness between the smoke he couldn’t place.
But distinct.
He was coming to find that everyone’s unique scents were stronger than before. Or more likely, his own nose. His mother told him these things would happen; his scent would change, his senses would grow stronger, and new behaviors would all come naturally to him, like breathing, and no matter what he turned out to be she would still love him.
He could still remember her voice, just barely. Would the memory of her be taken away from him one day, like she had been? She said everything would be alright, before. And then… her body falling to the ground, Schmidt staring at him with cold, cold eyes like she was nothing.
“I didn’t tell you you could do that yet, Erik.”
The metal in the room was vibrating with a low hum.
The voice of the man who’d done the taking only made the rattle even harder to tamper, and he seethed against the cold cage of helplessness. Something bubbled in the back of his throat, something guttural. His dry lips curled to bare teeth, and—
Schmidt struck him.
His head rolled against the table. The breath was forced out of him, and with it he exhaled what would have been his first real, unintentional growl. The dead air sounded like a sob.
“That’s it. Wonderful.” Erik flinched under the pat to his shoulder. The metal was quiet again, just like it always ended up when Schmidt decried it. “We want that anger, Erik. We do. But I need your loyalty.”
He barely stopped another snarl from escaping. One day, this man would die.
For his mother. His father. His freedom.
Shaw held his arm a moment too long, grip tightening sharply before returning to his tools. “You’re growing up to be a fine young man. You’ll be a powerful alpha with a powerful gift.” The instruments he brushed over sang. Perhaps if Erik were braver, he would guide them into the man’s throat, and luckily his bravery was increasing by the day. Schmidt called it typical impulsiveness. “I didn’t expect anything less, actually.”
Schmidt guided his head back into place, cheek smarting, uncomfortably face down once more. He could scarcely breathe from this position. The doctor’s presence bore over the table. His chemical scent was suffocating with every restricted breath.
The hand holding him down carded through matted locks while his other hand, the much more dangerous hand, took up a metal tool Erik couldn’t identify. He could feel it move like pliers, raising to the back of his neck. It drifted just to the left of his spine, settling there with the points of two dull needles, like the ends of a cut chain link.
“It’s good we’re doing this before you get more sensitive. You probably won’t even remember it,” he cooed.
Erik strained against the restraints. He was shivering, always shivering during Schmidt’s experiments. He couldn’t stop himself shaking anymore than he could stop the tools from rattling on his own, especially not now. Not when there wasn’t even metal to move or some goal to accomplish that would make it stop.
Shaw’s thumb soothed the crown of his hair for an eternal, painless moment.
With a creak and unrelenting pressure, the metal points shoved through the skin of his neck, and bent towards each other through the flesh. The nerves alighted in fire.
Erik screamed.
- -
Erik's eyes flicked open.
Above him, the designs in the darkened popcorn ceiling stared back.
He inhaled sharply, exhaled slowly, then turned to recollect his surroundings. He was in a motel room, not the sterile white lab. Charles’ lumpy form laid in the bed next to his, back turned and blanket rising and falling in a stilted pattern, and the AC chugged away, thermostat set to 68.
With a mental flick he turned the dial to 72. Hopefully Charles wouldn’t mind the raise in temperature while he reoriented. Everything still seemed stilted from the memory, and his hand automatically raised to worry at the four divots on either side of his nape. The skin there was still too sensitive to be prodding. At least he knew they were out.
“It was getting too chilled,” Charles’ voice slurred from the darkness.
Erik didn’t turn to face him, instead studying the scratchy sheets, illuminated by lamplight filtered in through closed blinds.
“I woke you again,” Erik said. Obviously.
The blanket across the way rustled, lazy.
“It was I who woke you.” Obviously. Erik’s nightmares had never been cut as short as they’d been while searching for fellow mutants, coincidentally while he was sharing space with a telepath. Always at the greatest spike of pain or terror, he’d be ripped back to the bed or flung across the bench seat of the station wagon, only slightly shaken.
He had half a mind to thank Charles. Years of torture did not pleasant dreams make, no matter how long someone’s had to live with them. Yet, the other wanted to growl at the frivolous invasion where Erik made it clear he wasn’t wanted. He didn’t; the air would get stuck in his throat, anyway.
“You shouldn’t have to, Charles,” he said instead, words carefully substituted from what he wanted. “I’ve offered separate rooms.”
He could almost hear the tight smile in Charles’ voice. “And I’ll turn you down again, my friend.”
Erik didn't get it. It wasn’t fair to either of them.
Charles was an omega, and he never seemed bothered by it. Compared to others he was so idealistic and free. His nights were spent still and happy. He’d inherited the entirety of his family’s wealth. His suppressants were supposedly so overengineered they had no cycle, letting him hop on and off as he pleased. Rarely did more than a blemish mark his neck, and God help anyone who tried to put one there without his permission, lest he make them run naked through the street.
His gift complimented his status perfectly. His empathy was endless.
Charles shouldn’t have to be reminded of Erik’s torment, not even flashes of it, and Erik shouldn’t have to fear that empathy finally running out for him. The inevitable displacement when Charles’ instincts realized there was something wrong with him, and after using up so much of it to accept his blood-soaked history, be unable to reconcile with the constant red flags his intuition battered him with. Then Erik would be cast from his presence one way or another.
Charles sought him out, stood near him, stood up for him, gently ribbing him over his turtlenecks and making asides of how he backed down far too easily for an alpha. He wasn’t cruel, which meant the full swathe of repression must not have been included in the “everything” he thought he knew.
But if Charles kept entering those memories, what if that hastened the connection? The curiosity turning to pity, the tentative companionship into carefully staying at arm’s length, the othering as Erik made the omega feel conflicted and unsafe without wanting or meaning to at all.
He was used to it. He shouldn’t care as much as he did.
…What if Charles realized telepathy wasn’t necessary to keep him in line?
He stopped that train of thought. He wouldn't.
“You’re seeing things you shouldn’t have to see,” Erik warned. His voice was rough from sleep and the human urge to quiet with the lights low. Charles’ blanket rustled with something like a shrug. The air conditioner hummed on.
“I’ve seen it all already, so there’s no need to worry.” Erik’s hackles wanted to raise, and couldn't. “But no,” Charles continued, voice dreamy with sleeplessness like a drunk. “I have not deliberately sought out your mind; quite an invasion of your requested privacy that would be. But your nightmares do cause projections that alert me to them. It’s difficult for me to ignore. …Your mind begs for someone to make them stop.”
And surely, omegas like Charles weren’t often begged to do anything.
Erik had gotten used to the nightmares, just as he’d gotten used to the trauma that caused them, and the way he was slowly getting used to Charles.
“Thanks,” Erik muttered, instead of “Why? Why would you assume it's asking you?”
“Your mind is brilliant, Erik. We can’t have that being dragged down by what that man did to you,” Charles responded, and it sounded like “Because I care, of course.”
Charles always smelled pleasant, like tea and honey-maple, or like libraries and gas lamps. But now his scent was almost purely content. He rolled back over with a dainty yawn, leaving Erik tired, unsatisfied, and nonetheless enraptured. “Now, I suggest you try to get some sleep. Much driving ahead of us.”
It wasn’t long before Charles was dozing again, genuinely this time. His soft mouth breaths distracted Erik from driving his worn thoughts back to work. Without too much hope, and with nothing and everything to distract himself with, he brushed the scars on his neck and the numbers on his arm one last time, before he gave himself back up to sleep.
Shaw would die. Soon.
Packing up for another long haul in the morning's glow, Erik caught a glance of Charles standing in the bathroom, rubbing the back of his neck with furrowed brows.
- -
It hurt.
Holding his gangly legs close to his body, Erik blinked back tears, head propped on his knees and neck held stiff to stop aggravating the burning wounds.
It hurt, and it wouldn’t stop.
Schmidt had strictly warned him not to place his fingers to them, for despite it all, herr doktor typically did care to prevent infection. But his senses still clawed for the source of pain. The metal of the two rings sang soft tragedies. He traced their angular shapes, the sharp points stapled about half an inch into his nape and crossed at the laylines of his nerves.
He needed them out.
The moment his pull shifted the rings, the burst of fresh pain had his teeth gritting. It gave way to the ever present ache and the ringing of pins and needles, the latter of which made his limbs heavy with a weakness he didn’t understand. Before he could fully grasp the metal with his powers, some mental block relaxed his grip to nothing.
He tried it again, over, and over, and over. The moment they jarred the nerves with a twitch, his mind and body went limp.
It happened when Schmidt grabbed his nape, now, too.
His mother used to scruff him when he neglected his chores, or when she was guiding his unwilling self to bed. This almost felt similar, but it never hurt. It never buzzed underneath his skin something helpless. It never felt wrong.
When Schmidt squeezed the rings it felt like being stabbed over and over, like when he bumped the one part of his arm below the elbow. His brain demanded he surrender. To Schmidt, to whoever was biting his neck—to whoever would stop if he gave in.
That, Erik would soon learn, was simply how the developing mind of an alpha thought: Being scruffed was a challenge, being bitten on the nape was defeat. The sharp rings perfectly mimicked being shown his place after being overpowered, and though he could rationalize that the pain and nerves screaming were beyond what teeth were capable of, his mind couldn’t. He went limp with supplication because that’s what would naturally placate an attacker.
Schmidt was never satisfied.
If he fought against the experiments into unlocking his powers, Schmidt scruffed him. What used to be an annoyance was now an unnatural level of pain, sending the pulsing give in give in give in running loops through his psyche until his knees buckled on their own.
Subconsciously rattling the metal around him now jostled the rings as well, and he swiftly learned to target only what Schmidt asked him to. The urge to move the world around him buried itself.
If he refused to come down from the rage keeping hundreds of pounds of cement and metal in the air, hands reached for his nape, until sequestering his power when Schmidt lifted a finger was ingrained.
He was bedridden with infection. The Nazis had the best medicine available for Schmidt’s labrat, and often the man sat by his bedside, musing to him about mutations and innate behaviors while cleaning the wounds he’d put there.
He’d reflexively snarled at the men around him no less than three times on a terrible day, and the evening ended with a wire looped into the small gap between the rings and his skin, pulling them so tightly together his voice was ragged from begging screams by morning. His anger became sequestered to a silent, invisible burning, only to be brought out for his powers, only when Schmidt allowed it.
But oh, it all burned indeed. Schmidt would die.
His first rut arrived somewhere around the age of 18. He was locked alone in his room for the occasion. His mind became irrational, feelings became subversive, sensitivity skyrocketed, and when the rings pulled just right they were teeth biting down harder than any loving mate ever would. Confusion finally broke what remained of him down to sobs. The mixed signals between mind and body were too exhausting to decipher, and he spent the entirety of his first rut face down in the pillow, holding himself as still and passive as he could until it was over.
“Wonderful. I knew we’d see eye to eye on these sorts of distractions,” Schmidt had smiled. Erik took the bottle of rut suppressants from him with too-steady hands.
He could lift metal with more strength and focus than ever before.
Hours breezed by him, trembling uncontrollably in the corner of his room.
The coin floated up, effortlessly.
His head hung low, now. He was bending under the weight of the distant sky. The rings never stopped hurting. Never.
Schmidt held him by the neck whenever they walked anywhere together. Erik called him alpha once, automatically, and the cold smile he received for it had him throwing up his rations as soon as he had a bowl to do so in.
He was breaking beneath endless wars against himself. He’d stopped challenging those around him entirely, on the outside, at least.
Magda stared at him through the fence, and her expression shifted like the first hairline crack.
“You… you don’t smell right.”
This half hour they shared was the only time Erik could speak to someone who wasn’t Schmidt or the guards.
No words came to him.
“Erik, you… it used to be stronger. Your scent’s so dull.”
He didn’t feel like an alpha. Or an omega like Magda, or even a beta like Schmidt. He felt sideways. He felt like his mind couldn’t tell what he was anymore, either.
He felt like this was becoming irreversible.
“I’m a weapon,” he murmured.
He felt like it was much too late.
- -
Erik was reading when Charles entered the study, door closing harshly behind him, which Charles of course flinched at, and stopped his entry to hold his hands to the wood like an apology before he could observe the space. He lit up when he saw him properly.
“Oh Erik. Thank God.”
Erik glanced an acknowledgement his way, smile trying to turn his lips.
“Having fun with the recruits?”
Charles sat himself down in the chair across from his, wiping sweat away from his forehead. He peered at the genetics textbook he’d been gleaning with approval.
“They stink, Erik. It’s almost tolerable in normal conditions, but outdoors? After exercise? The hormones are intolerable.” He shuddered. “I sometimes wish Raven and Alex could be more like you. You’re perhaps the most scentless alpha I know of.”
Erik tempered himself between the droll paragraphs. He couldn’t be upset. Charles didn’t know.
“I never told you I was an alpha,” he remarked instead.
After a flit of confusion, Charles had the decency to look almost sheepish. “Right,” he sighed. He at least treated secondaries like something unimportant, simply there, like mutations. It was a refreshing frame of mind. “I'm sorry. Hank knows, too. The others hotly debate whether you’re a beta.”
“It isn’t a secret,” Erik stated, book forgotten on his lap. “Scentblockers are wise to have.”
Charles blinked at him. "You... don’t use those.”
Erik stilled. A cold tickle dripped down his spine. Did he... But no, of course, they’d been effectively living together all this time. Charles didn’t need telepathy to see what body wash he used.
“Why do you think that is then?” Erik inquired, cursing himself for forgetting to set up his alibis. “That I’m scentless?”
Charles’ eyes lit up like he’d been asked about his senior thesis. “Your mutation, perhaps. Your scent is so very clean, only faintly metallic when I’m standing as close as I can. It’s quite a relief, if I do say so, and…”
And, well.
Oh.
Erik was expecting to be told how he must have some sort of hormonal imbalance(almost certainly, though completely unnaturally), or a fascinating genetic glitch unrelated to bending metal(a coincidence, if not implausible), or maybe for Charles to have a flash of dark realization that would send him closing off and reeling far away(inevitable, but please, not yet).
Magda once told him he smelled like coins and wildberries and an open field.
Charles huffed a smile after apparently saying something quite poignant at the end of his ramble Erik missed entirely, and settled his elbows on the armrests. “What would you say my scent is of?”
Erik stared at him, incredulous. Surely the genetics student wanted to be confidently wrong a bit longer? It was getting endearing. (And genuinely, even when speculating about something Erik didn’t want him to know, Charles had no lack of infectious passion for his major.)
“A stroopwafel,” Erik threw out.
“A what?”
“A stroopwafel. A wafer with maple in it. You heat it over your tea or coffee in the cup.”
“Ah, I’ve heard of those before. Are they German?”
“Nederlanders.”
“Bless you,” he stated, so straightly Erik could only tilt his head. “And that’s what my scent is, you’d say?”
Yes. Sweet like maple, like tea with honey, warmth and pleasant mornings. After spending months on the road with him, Erik was almost addicted to it.
“You should know.”
Charles stood, rocking his way over to the window to tug open the curtain. “Well, like all other secondaries no omega can detect their own scent. Unless one had a mutation that enabled them to, but that would surely be a special case.” Dust particles danced in the revealed light.
Erik blinked, eyes adjusting from hours of his single lamp. He cocked an eyebrow. “Surely you’ve seen what someone else thought of it.” He gestured to his temple.
Charles smiled off to the side. “I could, I suppose,” Out the window, the distant figures of Alex and Hank were still running laps around the lake. “But I can’t concentrate enough to see a full review of myself passively, no. I need…” he tapped his forehead in turn. “This. This motion. It’s often more subtle to ask when the cause is simple.”
Charles had both hands on him in the frigid waters. Charles never touched his temple while they dried off. He looked Erik’s way constantly like he was the most interesting thing in the room after they finally shook hands, yet he’d never lifted his hand above that level, had he?
“You told me you knew everything about me,” he reminded. “From when we first met.”
Charles stepped back to his chair. “I do.”
“Do you?” Erik questioned, voice quieter and calmer than the worry bubbling inside. “You never asked.”
Charles’ mouth opened and shut like a fish, settling on closed in a downturn. He sat back down, staring off to the window, honey-maple-tea burning at the edges.
“The moment I touched you, I searched your surface thoughts for your name. Instead, I saw your entire life in flashes of sights and emotion. It happened all in a split second, and in all honesty I didn’t expect it myself. No, Erik, I didn’t ask, and for that I apologize. I didn't exactly have a chance to.” He looked back to him, eyes brilliant, burning ice in the evening light pouring in. “I also apologize, for I think I would still like to know you better, Erik, even if you wouldn’t like the same.”
Erik swallowed, staring back, long, and hard. Then he set the book aside. “There’s nothing there worth learning.”
“There are some things that can never truly be unsalvageable.” He said it like it was obvious. “You’re so deeply loyal, and so headstrong. You care for others with a protective passion. You despise injustice. You, and your mind are beautiful, Erik.”
Charles believed that about the world. It was that naivety that had him sleeping in hotel rooms with an alpha he only knew the half of, and desperately fighting for humans who would never understand them enough to live with. He was beautifully wrong now, too.
“What are you asking for, Charles?”
“More time with you, I suppose.” He laughed, a singular, nervous puff of air. “You always coop yourself up in the darkest corners.”
For good reason. The teenagers often gossiped about his loner ways, how he was so weird and hard to read when they thought he was out of earshot, oblivious of his sensitive hearing. But if Charles was willing to offer companionship, Erik would take it, just until Shaw was dead. He would leave before Charles realized. Or after. Or maybe, just maybe, Charles would never find out, impossible as it was. Hope could make anyone an addict.
“No looking into my mind without permission, and never at the camps.” Erik held out his hand.
Charles beamed. “As you say.”
He took it.
- -
It was the middle of the night when Schmidt woke him.
He was dragged by the scruff out of bed, then on limp legs to the yard, guards around him yelling and running and climbing towers, guns moving outwards instead of in. The shouting was too loud for the hour. He realized idly that they were about to be attacked.
Schmidt pulled him from flinching with a harsh “with me.” They marched past the distracted guards, to the lot beyond the main fences Erik had only seen in dreams of escape, under the gate he’d memorized the creak of, to the sight of a truck waiting for them, the men inside waving them over frantically. The camp was about to be attacked, and Schmidt was taking him away again. To more labs and experiments. To more pain and denial. Away from what was left of his people. From Magda.
Schmidt squeezed his nape as they neared like he could sense his derision, the familiar shot of pain and numb-compliance stopping him from protesting. But, thanks to him, Erik could bend metal faster than the rings could break his focus. He would do as he'd wanted for so, so long.
Make it stop.
He closed his fist, and one of the pipes within the vehicle collapsed with a metallic crunch.
Schmidt stopped dead. “Erik,” he warned.
Erik met his gaze, cold and wide.
The first of the gunshots rang out as Erik flicked his finger, and sparked metal together in the gas tank.
- -
Charles picked up Erik’s hand, and pressed the back of it to his cheek.
“Here,” he said, almost exasperated.
Erik paused from the sandwich he was making(and he had to, since his hand was occupied), to puzzle over Charles’ odd ways.
“Your… temperature feels feverish,” he commented. Guessed.
Charles nuzzled his wrist like a cat.
“This is you scenting me.” He said. “You’re allowed to now. I’m giving you permission.”
“I don’t have a scent,” he stated the fact, confusion only growing, but still intrigued. It was when Charles dropped his hand, something forlorn and bitter in the air, he realized with growing fear he was missing something. Again.
“It’s the thought that counts,” Charles sighed, plucking the loaf back from the breadbin.
He didn't know what to do.
- -
He’d forgotten the sweet taste of freedom on his tongue.
The forest at the edge of town was endless and evergreen, flowers danced with butter sweetness, the sky was somehow bluer, the air was fresh and filled with the scents of summer. And yet, the world around puttered away almost exactly as it had four years ago.
His parents were dead, and the villages and hamlets they passed through never seemed to care.
Magda wanted to seek refuge with the allies, and surely a human omega would be granted sanctuary. An alpha mutant would garner no sympathy, though Magda never knew he could control metal. It’s not that Erik didn’t trust her with it, but, Erik didn’t trust anyone anymore. He’d become cold, emotionally distant; he didn’t want to be touched. He was ill-tempered from the rings catching on the scarves he rarely took off and a desire for action, to do something against the ones who'd destroyed his life.
What Schmidt had turned him into wasn’t what she needed. And yet, they were all each other had. He held her close sometimes, coats too thin for the cold, and wondered what he was doing wrong for her to feel so tense. She smelled sad around him.
Days of moving later, Magda told him his scent still hadn’t returned.
“I don’t know when you’re angry,” she hissed back at him when he faltered at the fear in her scent. They argued where to go from Poland. “I don’t know what sets you off.”
He was filled with hate, but whenever the rare urge to growl or snarl struck him, his throat wouldn’t make the sound correctly. His expression was often schooled placid, showing nothing, nothing just like his scent, because his body and mind learned it was safer. Even off the suppressants he hadn’t had a single rut.
There was something fundamentally wrong with him.
The rings, still stapled in his neck, still ached. They’d migrated from where Schmidt first pierced them: still pressed against his nerves, but now asymmetrical and somehow more ugly with scarring than they’d started. Schmidt had been right: they only got more sensitive. Thankfully, his body had done its best to push them away, though not far enough. He slept on his front. His brain told him it was wrong. He slept on his back, or side. The rings agonized and crushed him.
They followed the roads. They followed Magda’s gut. He picked up a pair of needlenose pliers on their travels.
Facing the mirror, he turned his stiff neck both ways to judge their placement, and plan his course of action. The curving V shapes jutted out from either side of his nape like the bolts of Frankenstein’s monster. With newfound liberty and without Schmidt there to staple them back in, he watched the unfamiliar reflection take a leather belt into its mouth to bite on.
Magda slept soundly in the other room. She didn’t need to see him like this.
Pliers in one hand, other white-knuckling the counter, he concentrated on the bend that kept them stapled into his neck, and steeled himself. All he had to do was unfold them with his gift, and pull. It was all he had to do. He pictured the crimped shape. He put the pliers to the back of his neck, and locked his legs when it knocked against metal, sending signals down his spine. He guided the jaws forward, fell to his knees when he finally had a ring shut between them. He alternated between staring at the ceiling and squeezing his eyes shut while he waited for his resolve to strengthen. Schmidt had put him through a thousand tortures. And still, his mind screamed in protest.
He wanted to do all the vicious things with metal Schmidt had tried to break him of, he wanted to kill the doctor, he wanted part of himself back. He squeezed the handles tightly.
He couldn’t do it.
The pliers fell to the floor.
Erik rose again when he had the strength to do so, and the tired eyes in front of him stared down at the tool, then back up to meet his. Mocking.
He punched the glass, cracking it into an unsatisfying spiderweb, and almost immediately a flood of no no don’t make them mad, don’t draw attention, don’t make them bite you, they’ll know, someone will come washed in, regret and fear overwhelming his being, and he fought for breath over the bathroom sink. When he'd finally calmed enough to crawl back into bed, Magda was still asleep.
The landlord had been hesitant to let him stay. When he asked him why, he didn’t have any solid answers.
The shopkeepers in town stared at him moments too long with perplexed curiosity.
The people chattered about him behind his back.
Alphas weren’t supposed to cower from kind hands reaching for them, or pull all their clothing into a nest like an omega just to feel some semblance of safety(he trusted Magda why did he not trust her he trusted Magda why did he not trust her—), or do any number of the things he did or didn't. Therefore, Erik was an alpha, but he also wasn’t.
He knew it, and she knew it, and everyone else did as well. Schmidt had gouged a grand disconnection into him that everyone could see, that no one could properly trace to understand, that confused everyone to fear, like a robot trying to be human.
He left her with a note on the table of their meager lodgings, and half of the money in his pockets. In it, he apologized for his shortcomings, and for his poor behavior during her heat: the instructions that were supposed to come naturally never had. She had done all the work, as usual, and he’d just waited for instinct to kick in, then waited for it to be over when they inevitably never did.
He would be the one to end this before it painfully wilted. Magda would be able to find a proper alpha or a legible beta or another empathetic omega to give her life meaning. He wished her well, so, so well.
This is for the best, Erik. Pain only strengthens you.
He would devote his life to killing Schmidt, and anyone who’d associated with him.
You’ll thank me for this, one day.
He finally pulled the rings out at 24. Sobbing, curled up with the twin bits of metal warped beyond recognition in the dirt and a line of blood thin down his back, he never felt more anguished, yet relieved, to be completely and utterly alone.
- -
Charles hardly left his side, now.
Ever since the chat in the study, they’d been conversing over chess, conversing over drinks, conversing over training the recruits… it was perhaps the most conversing he’d done in his life. And besides carefully guiding the conversation away from his past, it was so easy.
Charles filled in the spaces he blanked on, talking about the weather, or favorite foods, or an interesting paper he’d read, or which books in his father’s collection were the least boring. Mutant-societal issues was where they agreed the least, but Erik’s mood shifts never bothered Charles so much as his "poor grasp on the relationship between understanding and acceptance.”
Charles told him of his miserable childhood on a rainy night, both of them staring out the window to a misty world and raindrops snaking down the glass. By the end Erik wanted to have words with the poor excuse of a mother who left Charles to practically raise himself, but also badly wanted to move closer to Charles for some distant reason, yet also found his body unwilling to cooperate. He was already safely cushioned into the corner of the couch, neck hidden.
The downward spiral of deliberation halted when Charles settled against his side, having moved himself with too-knowing eyes. It took a few minutes of rainfall on the window, but soon Erik relaxed into the warmth of a body alongside his, and breathed in sweetness and tea.
He was falling in love with Charles.
The realization slapped him across the face, and demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing, but it was also… pleasant. Light. He didn’t think he could love anymore. Nor have his trust justified, either, but he agreed when Charles asked to enter his mind. And indeed, he’d retrieved a memory of his mother, without touching any thoughts of his neck being scruffed beyond agony or the endless subjection it caused.
…He’d forgotten his mother’s face. He missed her.
Between the leverage of two extremes, Erik had turned a satellite with one hand.
Across from each other in the familiar study, he and Charles giggled when they were alone again, fireplace warming them over a chess set they barely spared glances at.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hank so displeased,” Charles lamented with a wry grin.
“You asked me to move the radar.”
“I didn’t know he was conducting an important radar-related test when I asked you to move it!”
“You’re a telepath.”
“I— oh, you’re impossible.”
Erik moved a piece half-heartedly. “So they've said. Raven referred to me as an ‘alphabeta.’”
At least since he'd become more active in their training, he'd found some of the unease turning into optimistic admiration, but he knew the uncanniness they felt towards him would ever go away completely. That wasn’t their fault.
Charles only shook his head, with the fondest expression Erik could ever remember being leveled at him “They keep telling me you make them nervous, heaven knows why.”
Erik flicked his eyes up. “Do I not make you nervous?”
“You terrify me with your antics, yes. And do indeed make me nervous, in few ways.”
“Few?” Erik leaned forward. He'd rather not make Charles nervous at all, if he could help it.
“Well, pushing Sean off the dish. Or vanishing for an entire day to read Shaw’s file- without eating for twenty-four hours, mind. But it’s nothing I expect you to change.” He was picking his words carefully, face flushed. There was something else there, and Erik was certain it was his wrongness, finally rearing its head. Charles grimaced. “I don’t blame you for wanting to find Shaw, and certainly not for having your own unique inspirations when teaching.”
He started moving his queen, in a way he knew he'd pay for if the game were more serious. “Were you not thinking the same?”
“Unique inspirations,” Charles repeated sternly, enough to bridge a smile from Erik at the release of tension. “But no,” he uttered, “You make me nervous, because you’re one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.” Charles scooted closer, studying the board, where Erik was frozen with his piece poised for d3. "I've met many, but none I feel as though I can relax with, as with you. That is your uniqueness," he leaned closer still, skirting his pawns perfectly positioned to attack, and instead set his hand on Erik’s. The flash of warmth sent a chill through him. “And you don’t even know it,” he sighed.
And then Erik was being kissed. Charles had raised from his seat and leaned over the board to kiss him. He was holding his hand, chess piece still clutched in his fingers, and he was kissing him.
Erik was stunned like he’d been shot. He couldn’t even think to move his still lips until Charles’ scent turned to creeping worry, and his mind just barely caught up to reciprocate before the other could pull away. He pressed his lips back like disbelief, feeling the softness against his, and scenting the honey in the air, dripping off them. His eyes closed. Charles kissed him like he was wanted, then he was kissing him like he was needed. He pushed forward, and Erik cursed the chess set for being in their way, Charles practically leaning on the board to reach him. He nipped at Erik’s lower lip like a vixen, their soft sounds muffled against each other, and his lips parted, then all he could taste was Charles Charles Charles—
There was a hand on his neck.
Pressure against his nape, pulling him inwards. Tightening.
His mouth fell slack.
The rings were gone, but the scars flared with the memory of pain, and his mind was thrust back to chanting cries to surrender, hijacked nerves sending him limp, Schmidt-Shaw smiling down at him, and agony, and make it stop, please, he’d done everything he wanted, please, make it stop, make it—
There weren’t lips touching his anymore. He drifted back to focus, and Charles' wide eyes stared back at him, breathing rapidly with his hands raised. The firepoker, as well as the rest of the loose metal in the room, were spears leveled at his face.
They clattered to the ground in a crescendo, leaving a deafening silence. The sweet fantasy moments ago faded like a final note.
“Right…” Charles breathed. He picked at the metal fallen into his lap, replacing it on the side table haltingly. “No touching your neck. Understood.”
It was done. Here would come the pity. The distancing. Then the wanting to know, then the inevitable I can’t help you. You’re on your own. Maybe not spoken aloud, but always there.
“I’m sorry,” Erik husked.
“You hardly have a reason to be. I should have known.”
He flinched, holding himself steady like the rings were still there, to hide it. “I didn’t want you to ever have to.”
Charles paused for a moment, regarding a letter opener with impossible interest. Erik’s heart was somewhere down in the pit of ice at his feet.
“Erik, it’s…" He looked up, and back down again. "If you wish to be alone…”
The thought of being without Charles now hurt, but the slow decay would be even worse. “You can go, Charles.” Leave me alone. Don’t leave. Leave me alone. Stop. Make it stop. He heaved a shuddering sigh through his nose, savoring the maple before he’d let himself forget. "I know you want to."
“I won’t, then.”
Erik’s head shot up. Charles set the tool off to the side, steepling his fingers. “I'm still in a fit I didn’t realize your condition wasn’t related to your mutation. I know he pierced your nape with metal. I know it caused agony to a sensitive area during development…”
Condition was such a simple way of putting something permanent.
“It won’t become tolerable, Charles. I'm letting you leave, here and now.”
Charles’ confusion was clear. “It won’t be tolerable that you were tortured? I should hope not!”
“Me,” Erik pushed. “I’m completely scentless. Unreadable. I don’t communicate instinctively and I don’t know what it means to. I don’t—I never feel any more protective than I have to be. I’m not drawn to omegas the way others are. Everything alpha about me is subdued. That isn't tolerable." The confessions slipped through his tingling lips with self-sabotaging ease. “…I’ll never let anyone bite my neck. Not anywhere. Not even for a bond mark.” Charles stared on, the beginnings of cursed pity starting to swell in the blue there. Erik smiled with all his teeth, feeling suddenly drained. “But if you threaten it often enough, I might do anything you ask to make it stop.”
The silence ached on. It felt like he’d been hollowed out, chest empty. He regretted saying any of it.
Charles looked on for several painful, weighted ticks of the clock. He inhaled, and toed the table and chess set aside with his leg, the few upright pieces on Erik’s side wobbling, some joining the others on the floor. He rose to his feet.
This was it. Erik looked past him, into the nothingness that waited there. It was always coming for him. It was who he was.
“I’m unsure of what I said or did to make you think any part of that would bother me, darling, but allow me to rectify.”
Charles leaned down, and pressed his lips to his again, so chaste and gently this time they felt like a warm cup of tea on his mouth. He couldn’t swallow down his sound of surprise, but he could let out something choked when Charles pulled back slowly, projecting love and honey. Erik couldn’t tell if it came from Charles’ scent or his telepathic mind steaming.
This time, Charles’ hand rested safely on his cheek, brushing the stubble there when he drew away. “Do you remember when I said your scent was clear..? It wasn’t an insult. Your mind is clear, too. No drone of omega-this or dominance-that. Your passion comes straight from you, and your affection is your own. For me that may as well be the opposite of intolerable.” Then Charles, the forward little omega he was, caged his legs between his knees, practically sitting on his lap if he were any closer. “If I controlled you, or wished you any other way, you wouldn’t be you. -This here is alright, if I might?”
Erik wondered what all he’d done to end up in this situation. He nodded barely. “Yes, it’s… don't you find it confusing?" Volatile, he'd been called before.
Charles tapped at his own temple. “I was confused as to why your surface thoughts rarely matched your actions, yes. I was never afraid, though. You’ve never wanted to hurt me.” Then he did settle into his lap, hands light on his shoulders, and let his head rest gently into the crook of his neck. Too low for biting, simply… being. His soft breath was warm on his skin. “You’re not the monster you think you are.”
Erik didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He didn’t know what he’d done right.
All he knew was the warmth of Charles against him, familiar, bundled with love and safety. And acceptance. A breathtaking, weight-lifting acceptance, that drove back the dark thoughts of how it couldn’t last. Charles wanted him. He had this. Here, now, he had this. Erik wrapped his arms around him in turn.
This was his.
Charles rumbled a soft purr while they cuddled close in the light of the fire, surrounded by the mess of chess pieces and metal. His chin dug into his collarbone to hide what Erik knew was a grin, and hid there when Erik tilted his head down in question.
“You’re purring, too,” Charles whispered into his sweater. He was? His throat didn’t feel any different than it ever had before. “It’s quiet, but it’s there.”
The endearment in his voice banished the feelings of inadequacy before they could even start. “I didn’t know alphas could do that.”
Charles raised his head from the fabric. “Oh it’s very uncommon, but perfectly reasonable. After all, we all have the means to create them…” He was starting to ramble when Erik guided him back to his lips, quieting him with another kiss, one that was blissfully reciprocated.
Warmth, maple, honey, and tea.
For now, this felt right.