Erik watched the steam rising off his hand on the side of the tub and then reached for his Scotch and downed the rest of it, feeling warm inside as well as out. Cold as it was outdoors that day, he hadn't been sure he'd ever get warm again. It seemed harder, lately, to get warm and stay warm. His doctor said it was because he was anemic, or underweight, Erik didn't remember which. Now the dual heat left him feeling light-headed. That was right, he hadn't eaten. Straight from work to the hospital to the gym. Keep busy, keep moving, don't think. Don't think about what today was. Don't think about twelve fucking years living like this, not even actually living but waiting. Don't think about Logan's phone number burning a hole in his phone.
You're at the end of your rope.
He sighed, looking at his empty glass in the light, watched the prisms it cast out like a flamboyant searchlight, then set it down. He wasn't at the end of his rope, not yet, he knew. If it felt that McCoy was getting too above himself he could switch Charles to another hospital, one where the doctor wouldn't push so suicidally towards cutting off a good chunk of funding. If Raven was up to something, he could get around it. He was a damned good lawyer, after all. She could fight him all she wanted over Charles' power of attorney, but he wouldn't give it up. This was check, but not checkmate, he was sure of it.
But.
But it required so much energy, and he had so little left. When he expended all he had to hold on to Charles, how did they expect him to scrounge up the energy to fight them as well? Where was that energy supposed to come from? Where was he supposed to find it?
Taking a breath and holding it, he slipped below the water, let the warm liquid pool over his face. He couldn't call Logan. Not today. Not today of all days. But he wanted him today of all days. The hardest of all the days. Wanted not him so specifically but someone-someone's skin on his, someone's mouth on his, someone looking at him and responding to him. Someone to forget himself in. Someone to fan the dwindling fire inside of him, to give him.
He looked up at his ceiling through the water and realized that if he took a breath right then and there it would all be over.
Jolting, he came up splashing and stood completely, head swimming, choking for breath. What was he thinking? he wondered as he wiped the water from his lashes. He couldn't leave Charles there, all alone in that hospital with no one to be there when he woke up. He couldn't leave the man to what Raven and McCoy had planned for him. Leave him there to die, to starve to death...god!
Drying off, he scrubbed over skin and bones-that seemed to be all there was of him anymore. How had he forgotten to eat? And after the talking to his doctor had given him just last week about losing too much weight. Even now, though, just thinking about eating felt like too much work. All that healthy food he'd been prescribed and the thought of even making a simple salad, even throwing a chunk of salmon in the oven, felt like climbing fucking Mount Everest. Much easier to just pour himself another drink.
Scrubbed dry, he pulled on his robe and a warm pair of slippers and did just that, spilling a little as he poured himself another glass. He'd left the music going and Billie Holiday was crooning quietly in the dark,
Gloomy Sunday, my hours are slumberless,
Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless.
"Turn it off," Charles would yawn, rubbing his eyes. "It's depressing me."
Erik thrilled momentarily, chasing the phantom, struggling to bolster the momentary concoction with imagination-Charles in the armchair-no, half-sprawled on the couch in his blue and gray pajamas-no, in Erik's green sweater, his checkered pajama bottoms.
It didn't work, the vision falling apart at the seams faster than Erik could build it. He was left alone in his apartment, Charles' voice fading in his ears like the whisper of a ghost. He could never recreate the man in this space, a place he'd never been to, never imprinted himself on. Erik had moved here after, to be closer to the hospital. Charles ruled now only in his memory and if he wanted to be with the man he'd have to travel there.
His phone was going off on the coffee table and he collapsed down onto the couch, checking it. Moira. He put it back, sipping his drink angrily, ice tapping against his lips. It wasn't fair of him, but he was pissed at her.
She called every year this day, and he loved talking to her, this day or any day. She was one of the few soft spots left in his life. Most of the people he had these days were hard edges and he felt scraped raw by their company, or flayed when it came to Raven. But Moira was soft cotton. She never accused him of being delusional or mental or selfish. She never claimed that Charles was in anything but the best of hands. Her presence, her conversation, was a breath of fresh air though his stifled mind, a balm to his wounds.
It made it all the more difficult, therefore, to ignore her call, a call he knew he'd enjoy so much, needed so much, especially this year. It wasn't even her fault. It wasn't fair or just or even decent for him to punish her in this way, withholding his company, when she probably needed his support as much as he needed hers today. It was a double anniversary for her: the day her best friend went into a coma, the day she got married-now the anniversary of a defunct marriage. As hard as this was on her, a divorce from a man she'd loved since freshman year, it felt like a personal affront to him. Charles had now been in a coma longer than Moira had been married.
Hallmarks like these always felt like a particularly foul blow. When Charles had slept through Raven's wedding, the birth of his nephews and niece. His mother's death. Erik making partner at the firm. Now Moira's entire marriage. That was just too huge a chunk to take lightly, and Erik wasn't taking it lightly. He was taking it with great revilement.
Was it any wonder, with all this added stress, that he was having difficulty resisting the call of Logan's phone number burning in his mind?
He finished his drink in one more gulp, his head swimming as he collapsed back on the couch, but alcohol itself wasn't going to be enough to keep him from calling Logan-telling him to come over, giving himself up to a mauling that numbed his mind from his troubles more than any other substance could manage.
"No," he growled audibly, loud enough for Dantes to wake up and stare at him.
Not tonight. Not tonight of all nights.
His burning desire curdled into putrid tempid hatred for unruly black hair and a metal skeleton. How dare he? How dare he come into Erik's life and make it harder for him? He'd been doing fine. Whenever he couldn't expel his desire by himself there were always lowlifes he could pay for the trouble. His disgust for the situation made it easier to put it off, made it easier to keep himself chaste. But with Logan...the disgust was overwhelming but not quite bad enough to keep him away, to keep him from finding pleasure in it, escape it, release in it.
All those faceless whores he'd thrown money at to please his body while his mind recoiled, how could he have known that they were a blessing compared to a real person, someone he saw as a real person? How could he have known that one night would turn into two would turn into twenty, would threaten to make him forget the way Charles' body moved against his, the way Charles groaned his name, the way Charles kissed him, breathless and in love.
Now he feared his nights with Logan as much as he needed them as much as he loathed them. The worst part was, despite everything, he knew he was going to give in. For the first time in his life there was something dangerous inside himself, something he couldn't excise or resist. In every other way he'd managed to stay pure, stay true to Charles as a monk stayed pure for God. But here, where it really mattered, he had no more control over himself than over a willful child, a toddler, with a sense for want but not ideals, not promises, certainly not restraint.
Erik didn't have the energy to fight that, not even the energy to scrounge up too much passionate hatred over it (he thrummed instead with nauseous disgust) but he could scrounge up the energy to put it off, and he would do that for as long as his energy could hold out. He had no idea how long that would be. And there was always one sure way to stave it off a little longer.
Erik had looked through reality so many times and for so long at a time that it had attained a thin, almost transparent feel to it, like a cloudy piece of glass that had been rubbed and rubbed and rubbed till it could be seen through. At the same time, his memories had been lived in so many times and for so long at a time that they had taken on a bright, iridescent gleam, like a stone polished into a jewel. By now he could slip into his memories like a well-tailored suit, while making dinner and ordering coffee was like wearing his father's gloves, ill-fitting fabric making fumbling fingers were once there had been dexterity.
It was in this way that he lie back, closed his eyes, throwing himself in opaque darkness; his mind took over, lighting up into a living theatre. Whatever he didn't remember himself was filled in with overabundant imagination. It was seamless at this point, a road in which every pothole had been patched over, artificial and smooth.
So when his eyes opened again, even though it was only in his mind, he saw it all, felt it all, heard it all. He skipped past the ceremony, gorgeous as it had been, with only a cursory glimpse of Moira at the altar, of Charles by her side, elegant and straight-backed in his tuxedo. He was her best friend, and she'd rather have him as her maid of honor than her new husband's skanky cousin, screw tradition. Erik had only seen it as a base collusion, Moira and Charles, working together on underhanded schemes to force him to propose. Look how lovely he looks in a tuxedo, look how exciting weddings are-don't you want one too? Look look look, want want want.
Erik, at that age, hadn't. He was young and high-minded. He wanted the great, the remarkable things in life, and hadn't understood that love, loving someone fully and deeply, could be one of them.
So while everyone else was was oohing and ahing, Erik was sitting there seething. While everyone else was thinking how handsome Charles was, how good he'd look on their arm or in their bed, Erik was thinking that he was a scheming prick, an underhanded manipulator, who deserved everything Erik did to him.
Erik let the ceremony slip away, moved himself through time as he could only in his head, and when the fog lifted he could feel the wooden bar pressing into his back, his beer cold in his hand, and the waves of disappointment roiling off Charles at his side. He kept his eyes on the party, on the old couples shuffling on the dance floor, on the bridesmaids flirting with their dates by the ice sculpture, on Moira's posh parents hob-nobbing with the MacTaggerts.
Charles called the bartender over, ordered a whiskey, told him to leave the bottle, and Erik remembered being incensed by that. The man's father had died in a drunk driving accident, his own mother was a raging alcoholic, so how could he wallow in his own disgraceful drunkenness so flippantly? The rest of his emotions from that evening came back to him as well, a far-away tug that was not as real as the rest of his memory, removed as Erik felt from those emotions, supplanted as they had been by love and regret and suffering. It was only on the periphery that he knew he was angry too, angry beyond gracefulness-that Charles had dragged him here, that Charles had agreed to be in the wedding even though he knew Erik's feelings on the matter, that Charles was drinking to get back at him in the most base way possible, that Charles had the gall to be angry with him, to make him feel like he was the one at fault.
"You could have at least called me," Charles accused once the bartender had walked away again, downing a double right away. It was going to be a real Xavier kind of night.
"It was just the reception," he shrugged back, purposefully blase. He could practically taste the words in his mouth-they were stale and bitter. "I showed up to this travesty, didn't I?"
"Barely," Charles muttered.
At that Erik had finished off his own drink-underwhelming Sam Adams-and turned to put the glass on the bar, and that was the first he'd seen him up close-pale and angry, red lips compressed bitterly. He'd realized the man did look very handsome in his tuxedo and had railed at himself for falling into the trap Charles had designed for him. It just made him angrier.
He would have come up with something callous to say to the man, but Charles beat him to it, jerking to look at the band as they started on some new tune, glaring back at him, mouth held in a tight pout that Erik thought he'd probably inherited from his mother.
"Are you even going to ask me to dance?" the man growled, tossing down another whiskey and quickly pouring himself yet another. It took a lot of alcohol to overcome Charles' telepathy enough to actually feel drunk, but Erik thought he was rushing down the road to it, especially with all that champagne earlier. It pissed him off, and he got back at him by turning him down-passing up his chance, his last chance, to dance with the man.
"I don't think so," he'd yawned, making a show of checking his watch.
"Maybe I'll ask Jeremy," Charles had sneered meanly to get back at him, and Erik's eye had turned immediately towards Moira's new brother-in-law, a wickedly handsome younger man who looked as if he'd be more than happy to take Charles off his hands. Fury flared up immediately.
"You're so immature!" he'd hissed. Charles, too upset for his usual diplomacy, had flared back at him.
That was the only spark their tinder of a night had needed. Like one neglectful match in a full dry forest, everything had blazed out of control from there. They'd argued. Viciously. People were staring, Charles was embarrassed-that just made Erik more vituperous, feeling like he'd gain the upper hand through Charles' sensitive distaste for scenes. Charles retreated outside, controlled, refusing to be routed, and Erik had fought back by accusing him, loudly, of being drunk, stealing his set of car keys with his powers.
He wondered now what would have happened if he'd simply let Charles go. Let him cool off. Call a cab and see the man in the morning. Apologize; accept his apologies. The man wasn't that drunk. And surely any trouble he got himself into couldn't have compared with the trouble Erik had made for him. What would his life be like now if he'd changed that one little thing?
Erik huffed to himself at his own despicable rosy thinking. Even if things had gone differently that one night they would have gone much the same another night. Either way they'd be separated. He was insufferable then, and only the shock of that night had made him even consider changing. Charles deserved the best in life, and the best sort of love anyone could offer, and Erik had been above desiring to give him either, then, had looked down on it as childish, naive...
The argument had continued in the car, even though he knew early on it was making it difficult to drive. He'd argued viciously, with everything he could muster, and he'd fought to win, excited with the thought of winning, with the promise of it. He'd win and Charles would be so traumatized, so cowed by the pain of his defeat that he'd never have the heart to so much as glance at a wedding announcement ever again, for the rest of their lives.
"Maybe if I'd known you were just going to shove marriage down my throat all night I would have stood you up again! It would have been the least you deserve!" he shouted at Charles in the passenger seat.
"I wasn't shoving anything down your fucking throat! I invite you to our friend's wedding-that's shoving it down your throat?!"
"Our friend! Ha! As if you two aren't constantly colluding against me! And looking at me the whole time! And when Moira's cousin asked you if you were going to go after the bouquet-you didn't tell her no!"
"It was a fucking joke! And so what if I did want to catch the bouquet? I want to get married-I've always wanted to get married! You've always known that!"
"Oh so I guess I'm just the dumb one again-I'm the idiot for thinking that this is something we need to agree on!"
"You are an idiot," Charles shouted back viciously, eyes wet-drinking always made him more emotional; his next sentence proved it. "But-god!-not as big an idiot as I've been. No, you never lied to me, you never promised to marry me, but damn you if you didn't allow me to delude myself into thinking this mess had a happy ending!"
"Now it's my fault! Of course it is-everything is, isn't it? I'm the bad guy and you're the fucking saint!"
"Get over yourself! Why don't you just be honest? Be honest with both of us! You don't want to commit to me because you're still waiting for something better to come along! Mutant rights and a law office of your own and putting your name down in history-that's more important than having me at your side! You think I can't see that?!"
"Get out of my fucking head," Erik growled dangerously back, grabbing Charles by his black tie. His imagination filled in the details-Charles' skin hot against his knuckles, his pulse fluttering hard, the scent of whiskey and anger.
"I wasn't," Charles gasped back through his hold, voice thick, eyes running over. "I didn't need to be. You're that obvious."
Erik let him go, pushing him away roughly because he was pissed, rattling him against the window. He'd been infuriated that Charles had thrown down an unexpected ace and ruined his expectation of a quick win. He was a little hopeful though when Charles crumbled immediately, face in his hands. He took it as too much alcohol, the stress of exiting his best friend's wedding in a screaming match, the stress these arguments always took on them. He'd had to bite back a smile. Maybe that was enough to skew things in his favor despite Charles' sound arguments. He felt sick now at the memory.
"I'm done," Charles gasped, tilting his head back, tears shining on his cheeks. "I can't do this any more, Erik. We don't want the same things, you and I."
"Don't threaten me," he'd snarled back-he could still feel his heart, racing on adrenaline and the promise of winning, stumbling into a flutter of disbelieving panic.
There was a wet kind of chuckle, and Charles had turned to him, eyes wet and mouth open as if he were going to speak, and Erik didn't know if he was going to say that it wasn't a threat or if he was going to say he was sorry-finish it or concede, take the field and everything else in Erik's life or give it up. He didn't know.
Charles' eyes went wide. He had one anticipatory moment to say, "Ah!" and then there was nothing but blaring horn, blinding headlights, the shove of impact, the scream of metal on metal. There was the sickening feeling of his stomach flipping inside of him, his hands painful gripping the steering wheel, his eyes slamming shut against shattering glass.
It was impossible to tell how much time it took. It seemed simultaneously as if it had been a second and an eternity. Eventually the car stopped moving and Erik opened his eyes and saw that he was upside down. Saw that his airbag hadn't inflated, that his side of the car was pristine apart from the broken windows. Saw that he had hardly a scratch on him.
At the moment of impact he'd gone antimagnetic on pure instinct, a safe bubble repelling any metal that approached to hurt him. It had obviously interrupted the crash sensor in its duty, so even that hadn't lunged out at him. The only injury seemed to be a throbbing, empty feeling at the base of his skull, and some numb scrapes from the flying glass.
Laughing with surprise he relaxed his death grip on the steering wheel and pushed his tie out of his face, turned to share the joke with Charles.
It was only then that he realized what he'd done, that his reflexes had saved himself but not the man that meant as much to him as his self.
Raven said it was because he hadn't loved him, not enough, and he guessed she must be right or else what else explained it? He'd thought he'd loved Charles as much as he possibly could, but on that day he'd discovered hidden recesses to his heart he hadn't realized could be filled.
Charles had been rushed to the hospital and straight into surgery. There was a shattered hip, fractures in his pelvis, broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, a ruptured kidney, and, the coup de grace, a fractured skull. And Erik had walked away with a bandaid and a headache.
Everyone had been hopeful-when the swelling goes down, when the drugs wear off, when he's stronger...Erik had been living twelve years on that first certainty of hope. Now people asked him how he did it, or if they didn't ask it then they wondered it, as if it were a miracle of endurance, or a telling sign of mental defect. He never knew what to say, and was glad that so many people kept their questions to themselves. All he knew was something too intense, too enmeshed deep inside himself to put into words: it was Charles' eyes, smiling and bright and not sad in the slightest, it was Charles' smile, erasing the defeated grimace of that night, it was the sound of his voice, soft and loving and overwhelming the memory of its thick timbre full of tears.
And the strange thing was he knew Charles wouldn't disappoint him, as much as he deserved to be disappointed, as much as he deserved to be haunted by his memory of that night, never to be effaced or replaced or conquered. Charles was always doing the right thing, even when it wasn't deserved, and Erik knew the man wouldn't prove him wrong just to be contrary. As soon as he didn't know that, as soon as he lost faith in Charles and his innate goodness, his mercy, then he'd give up-he'd take another bath and not stop himself that time, because who could live with nothing to live for?
But that day had not quite come yet.
So he opened his eyes, and he got up, and he shivered as he got into an empty bed, and he thought about visiting Charles tomorrow for the 4,383rd day.
Erik hadn't slept well. He'd had strange dreams. Or maybe it was just one dream. Wrenching, but not like his standard nightmares, where he went to Charles' hospital room but the man was missing and no one knew who he was talking about, or Charles woke up but it wasn't Charles, or, of course, Charles simply died, silently and nondescriptly. Instead, in this dream, he was lying down and he could hear the ocean, feel the sun on his skin, and when he opened his eyes Charles was smiling at him, blue eyes sparkling in the light and happy, mouth smiling, too-wide nose pink with the beginnings of sunburn.
He'd clutched the man instinctively, pulling him tightly to his chest and he could feel the sun-heated skin against his own, and Charles' hair-not soft like one would think in a fantasy-but thickened with saltwater and coarse and realistic for it.
"I miss you-I miss you," he'd mumbled, crying painfully.
He'd woken himself up crying, his arms empty and cold.
Now he had a headache, just at the base of his skull, full and pulsing like an infected wound, and he forgot to pick up the flowers from the florist and it was too late to drive all the way back so he ended up stopping at a grocery store, rubbing his gritty eyes in the harsh fluorescents. They didn't have much of a selection and he wondered if he shouldn't just skip it. But no. The roses he'd gotten Charles were dropping their petals already-blue, because he couldn't stand red roses: they'd had red roses at his parents funeral-and the stench of them was already overwhelming, like a funeral parlor.
A strikingly bright orange bunch of flowers caught his eye and he fingered the tiny petals with nominal interest. Pretty enough. He checked the tag quickly: butterfly weed. He grabbed a couple bundles of them and turned to go. It wouldn't be his usual flamboyant mixture, but flowers were flowers and after his night not much more could be expected of him.
Stepping towards the cashiers though, he was immediately distracted. A huge bouquet of delicately soft white-pink flowers stood on their own in a little black receptacle. Instead of the small typed tag someone had drawn them a little placard, a white board of paper with 'peonies' written in pretty pink cursive. memory hit him swiftly, fresh and natural, free of the anti-septic polish of overuse, uninfiltrated by imagination, missing in places and imperfectly perfect for it.
They were lying on their bed, or maybe this was back when they didn't live together and it was only one of their beds at that time. The light was streaming through the window and they were exhausted because of something and lay napping in the sun's warmth, curled and tangled up together in a way that made him realize how young they must have been. Charles, sleepy and murmuring was fingering a big bouquet of flowers, pale pink and bloody red, full and frail and beautiful that Erik didn't remember. where or why he'd gotten: "When I get married, I'm going to have nothing but peonies." Erik was, for once, too tired to argue, or maybe this was before he'd even formed an opinion on marriage. He'd simply hummed complacently and kissed Charles' shoulder.
Smiling faintly, Erik closed his eyes a moment, letting the dull pain in his head ebb away. He dropped the vibrant orange flowers drop into a bucket and grabbed up the pack of pale peonies, enjoying their comforting fragrance as he walked them to the counter.
In the car he switched to the oldies station and his favorite song was playing, was just starting, and his mood improved further.
It's been a long, a long time comin'
But I know a change gonna come
Somehow, he found himself smiling yet again on what had been such a dour morning. Well so what? What was one more anniversary, one more day? It also meant he was one year, one day closer to the end of it all. Closer to the day when Charles would wake up and make this momentary happiness he felt last, last forever.
He was whistling by time he arrived in the hospital. He remembered that even McCoy would know not to try to talk to him today of all days, and that thought made him happy, not having to deal with the man's accusations or arguments today. He chatted quickly with Carlotta and was introduced to Angel's replacement now that she was on maternity leave, a lanky boy with a beakish nose and white feathers sticking out of his pink scrubs. He'd have to spend some time in charming the guy when he got a chance-Angel would be gone for months and Charles' care would fall into this boy's hands more often than not. Erik knew that a certain amount of amicability would ensure that Charles got all the extra attention Erik needed him to have.
The man was just as he'd left him, and before Erik dealt with the closed blinds or the cloying roses he said hello, finger-combing Charles' over-long hair, caressing his ghostly white brow.
"You need a nice long day at the beach, sweetheart," he informed, and kissed the man softly on his warm cheek. He pulled back in some surprise. Charles never seemed warm enough in this room, skin always a degree too cool. It was refreshing to feel him warm for once. He checked his chart quickly but no fever was mentioned.
Erik smiled happily. Well. Maybe year twelve wouldn't be so bad. Maybe this was a sign.
He replaced the old flowers, inhaling the peony's fresh, soft scent fully and burying the roses in the trashcan in the bathroom. Outdoors it was cloudy and dismal but there was still plenty of light to let in, immediately brightening the place to something more cheerful than a crypt.
"We're down to the last chapter of The Count of Monte Cristo. I know you say the ending is the best part, but I've got to restate that this book has no point once Dantes starts forgiving everyone. This is supposed to be the best revenge story in the world! Why is the whole last quarter all about giving up revenge? But I won't push my love of justice on you-I know you crave your rehabilitation stories. It'll be Jane Eyre again next, I presume. No, wait, nevermind, Pride and Prejudice. A Tale of Two Cities? Oh, that might still be too depressing for you. Am I right?"
He paused for a response he didn't expect, and took out the big paperback copy Charles had gotten him for Valentine's day in college, brushing the pressed flowers Charles used to use as bookmarks, a pretty little bunch of papered purple and yellow violets, taking a seat in the chair at the foot of Charles' bed.
"October the Seventh," he began softly, rubbing the fullness at the base of his skull, thinking of taking some more Tylenol. His mind wandered as he read, thinking of the next book he'd pick. Had they already read Cold Mountain? Erik was looking forward to that non-fiction book about the Mutant Internment Camp in China but Charles couldn't stand books like that. He'd liked his depressing texts to come in newspaper articles or magazine blurbs so he wouldn't have to spend so much time being utterly depressed. He did much better with Persuasion or White Fang. Maybe they'd read that-he hadn't read White Fang in years and it had always been one of their mutual favorites. Oh but at the same time he still hadn't read Memoirs of a Geisha to the man, having opted for The Time Traveler's Wife instead. Well, he'd do a blind pick he guessed. Coin tosses never went too well for him in terms of surprises.
Charles would always poke fun.
"What do you think? Green or blue?" he'd asked breathlessly, picking out a tie for his big interview with the Mutant Protection League.
"Hmm," Charles had mused, looking up from his class reading. "Why don't you flip a coin?"
He breathed in deeply, the peonies slowly overcoming the reek of old roses, and smiled, pushing his hair back from his brow as he continued to read. Twelve years and one day, and so what? What made it any different than any other day? There was still flowers and reading, combing hair and drawing curtains, and memories-everywhere memories. Charles had been silent for twelve years and one day but in his memories he was still bright and vibrant, soft and murmuring, loving and worth every hardship. It was the same as any other day, except that this was one day closer.
His voice stumbled and he paused, looking at what he'd just read, breath catching in his throat and he smiled as he started over and read it again.
" 'So,'" he murmured Edmond's words carefully. " 'Do live and be happy, children dear to my heart, and never forget that, until the day what God deigns to unveil the future to mankind, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: "wait" and "hope"!'"
"Huh," he muttered to himself, caressing his hand over the page, at where Charles had long ago underlined the sentence. "Wait and hope, hmm? Well, why stop now?"
Laughing, he looked up at Charles, to let him in on the joke, glad that McCoy wasn't there to grit his teeth over it.
And Charles was looking back at him.