A/N: Once again, theonionistheonewhocries gave me a prompt on Tumblr, haha. This one was: "Charles always wanted to try bowling but he never had the time, with all his studies. Erik wanted to change that."
Enjoy the college!AU-ness! C:
"Charles, you mean to say that you've never gone bowling before? But it's practically an American pastime! Come bowling with me," Erik says, shaking his head at his studious friend and moving to shut one of Charles' books.
Charles sputters a sound and shoots a glare up at his childhood friend. "No, Erik. I don't have the time; I never have. I would love to try it, but it will have to wait until after college. I need to become a professor; I intend on it."
Erik frowns. "You're honestly going to waste your college years away being the perfect role model? Honestly, Charles, what sort of life is that? Come on, indulge just this once. Humor me a little. Dump this incessant studying for one night and come bowling with me," Erik coaxes strongly.
Charles groans, stands, and stretches out his aching muscles from being hunched over his books and papers for so long, his laptop humming, a Word document for his recent assignment on the screen.
"You are very persuasive when you want to be, my friend," Charles sighs, relenting. He rubs his eyes with a single hand. "Fine, but only this once, because I honestly have only had genetics in my head for so long that I can't think of anything else any longer."
"Well, we'll just have to fix that, won't we?" Erik remarks, bringing an arm around Charles' shoulders as he guides the shorter man out of the bedroom and his desk, Charles shutting the lid on his laptop along the way.
Erik removes his keys from his pocket, Charles takes his own just to lock the apartment door behind him, and soon enough, they're playing music, Charles singing loudly along with it, in Erik's truck on the way to the bowling alley.
The second Charles walks into the vicinity, he smells cigarette smoke and cheap food, and he can already hear the rolling and then crack! of the balls racing toward and striking the pins.
A thrill zips through Charles, and he smiles. He feels nervous the way any beginner might, but Erik has gone bowling with his family for years, his mother in particular a big fan of it, so being with a seasoned bowler helps ease some of Charles' nerves.
"Can't we get bumpers for the next game?" Charles complains with a sigh as he sits down and watches Erik pick up his ball to bowl on their fifth round of ten.
Erik rolls his eyes and takes a swig of his beer. "Charles, don't be a child. You can get this. Watch me, and pick up your own technique."
Erik isn't one of the people who go running up to the line and do something odd with his leg as he throws the ball like some professional underhanded baseball pitcher.
Charles observes with keen interest as Erik paces calmly within inches of the line, centers his right arm instead of his body, and takes half a step back, bends his knees, focuses his aim, and then, all at once, powerfully launches the ball straight and true, and it rolls quickly down the lane and knocks all but one pin in the right corner down, the 10th pin.
Charles raises his brows. "Impressive. So it's all about aim and precision, then?"
"Exactly," Erik agrees as he runs a hand through his hair and returns to his beer for a moment while he waits for the ball to come back. "Keeping your arm straight so that you don't lose aim or spin the ball too much. Oh, and your wrist should be stiff; don't turn it, just flick it. It's not that difficult; you'll be a fine bowler yet." And he smirks.
Charles laughs. "Well, we'll see. I'll attempt it, but I make no promises."
"You'll find your own way, I'm sure. You just need to try. Don't make me have to teach you step by step, standing behind you to go through each motion," Erik teases, grinning at how superior he feels in such an amusing way,as if he would bowling against a kid.
"Don't poke fun, Erik; I may beat you next game, you never know!" Charles retorts. "And your ball has returned. Hurry and finish your turn so that I may go."
Erik chuckles, glances up at his score — the name he typed in being an old nickname from high school, 'Magneto,' named for the way he could easily catch a football, as if it were magnetized to his hand — and shakes his head. No way can Charles beat him, even if he suddenly perfected his technique.
On Charles' next turn, he wriggles his butt a little as he tries to find a position to stand in, and Erik snorts, trying not to laugh, as he looks away and down at his drink. Charles frowns, glancing back at his friend, and then steps forward with one foot to lean forward and throw the ball.
It stays mostly straight, veers in a slight curve to the left, and then tumbles through the pins off-center. Charles gets a strike. But after gutterballs and one or two pins here and there, even the strike doesn't help his score very much.
But still, it's his first strike, all because he both focused and didn't think much about it at the same time. So he cheers, hollering, "Yeah! Ha! See?"
The game continues like that; Charles gets one more strike, but the rest are decent shots, although he never gets a spare because he seems to only be able to aim straight once or twice and then curve too much all the other times.
During their second game, Erik is getting a little competitive because Charles is starting to get the hang of the technique since he's so damn brilliant. And it grates on Erik's nerves a little that Charles keeps doing this adorable little wiggle as he positions himself in front of the bowling lane.
Finally, when the second game is over and they're returning their balls and shoes, quitting the game on the screen above, Charles is a tad buzzed from having three or four beers without food in his gut, and Erik suggests that they go out for dinner together.
"Aw, Erik, you sound like you're asking me out on a date," Charles muses with a slight slur in his tone. Erik could always hold his liquor better than the aspiring professor. He hangs onto Erik's form and rests his head on Erik's shoulder, and someone sends them a dirty look, and Erik hastily assure them that he and Charles are just friends, and that Charles is loopy.
"Maybe we should skip dinner and take you home," Erik remarks a hair frostily, his mood darkened after that stink-eye look sent their way.
"What? Noooo! I'm hungry. And I will sober up in a jiffy if you feed me," Charles remarks. "And hey, I did win the second game! You owe me. You said I couldn't win, but I did, didn't I, Erik? You must have been terribly distracted, because you were off your game."
Erik had been distracted. Distracted by his best friend, whom he doesn't want to start seeing in a new light, but is beginning to. And it's bizarre and definitely feels like the world is spinning off its axis.
Charles sighs and drops down into the passenger seat. His brain is fuzzy, but not so heady that he's entirely drunk. Three or four (really, he hadn't been counting) beers wouldn't do that to him, even on an empty stomach. So he can see that gears churning and turning in Erik's mind, and he wonders what the other college student is thinking.
He cocks his head and pokes Erik in the arm when Erik sits down and starts the car, buckling his seat only when Charles reminds him.
"What is it, Charles?" Erik asks once his belt is in buckled and he's pulling out of the bowling place's parking lot.
"We're still going to dinner, right?" Charles asks meekly, nibbling on his bottom lip. "I don't want to go home yet." Home being an odd phrase to use, since his apartment isn't home like his parents' house, nor is it homelike when he's with Erik, since Erik has been his friend for so long.
Sighing, Erik relents and changes lanes to get into a turning lane at an intersection. "I only brought you out to bowl, but all right, we can do dinner, too, if you want it that badly. But I'm paying, so don't even bother trying to argue with me about it."
Charles laughs. He usually fights with Erik to pay for him, since Charles has always been financially well-off, but Erik has always been stubborn in paying for himself. But this time, it seems, Erik is in no mood; dinner was originally his idea, so it's his treat.
Charles sighs softly, contentedly, and relaxes in his car seat, reaching down to fumble for the handle until his back support is flying backward and he's lying down comfortably. "How sweet of you, Erik. Thank you. It is like a real date, then; you're such a gentleman."
Erik tints pink in the cheeks and says nothing. They are friends, he reminds himself. Going bowling, staring at Charles more than usual, carrying his buzzed ass around, and treating him to dinner are nothing; it's not couple-like at all, he convinces himself. Not a date, not a date.
As if reading his mind, Charles grins and leans over the armrest/cupholder combo between them in the truck, his seatbelt loose and stretched, and presses a kiss to the sleeve of Erik's jacket over his bicep. "It is a date. Afriend-date. Because friends love each other, too."
Erik frowns, clears his throat, and keeps his eyes on the road. "Charles, you are drunker than I thought."
"Not drunk," Charles protests. "In fact," he says, sitting up and fixing his seat, "I'm thinking clearer than I ever have."
And he leaves it at that, falling silent until the restaurant, and when they take a seat across one another in a booth, most of the haze clears for Charles and he sobers up during the meal, and he never takes his eyes off of Erik for longer than five seconds at a time, and Erik keeps forcing himself to look away, because they are friends, goddammit, best friends since they met at the public pool as children, and Erik doesn't want to ruin that, because, all right, they are both gay — closeted to most people except their families and each other — (Charles originally being the second to come Out to Erik, saying, "You're not alone, Erik; you're not alone. I… I'm gay, too,") — and that shouldn't change anything, but it does, and Erik's head is swimming, and he just wants to eat and leave.
Erik blames the bowling. It brings out strange things, it seems.
"I am never bringing you bowling again," Erik grumbles in the truck after dinner, about to start the car and take Charles back to his apartment to let him finish his homework.
But Charles isn't buckled in yet, so he leans over, grabs Erik's face, and kisses him, hard. The world stops and Erik trembles — this is the best kiss of his life — and then, all too soon, Charles is pulling away, an uncontrollable smiling growing on his face.
"No, I think that's an awful idea. I want to go bowling with you every weekend, now, and then to dinner before or after a few games. Agreed?"
Erik blinks, starts the truck, and listens to the metallic click of Charles' seatbelt. "…Agreed," he says quietly, and then they're driving onto the street and away, their relationship forever altered, but in a decidedly good way.