Charles knew he should have stopped there. He knew that this was private, but it was the only time this man was so open. And he wanted to know. He had felt trickles of something teasing him and it was deeper, more intimate, than he was comfortable with. But he wanted… needed to know… because this was about his parallel self.

So he touched deeper.

- Erik had been at the mansion for six months now. He was part of the team, the students turned to him with questions, and he liked answering, helping… maybe even teaching. He had been with Charles to help him figure out a deal with the government so they would be left alone, and it was a tricky kind of back and forth between both sides and the outcome was still open.

With Charles back in shape and mobile, they were following the coordinates the first generation Cerebro had printed out. The new model was still not functional and Hank needed a lot more time. But they had pages full of locations and Charles wanted to follow up on them.

So both were back to what they had done before: looking for mutants and offer them a way out if they wanted to. Or an open invitation should they ever need a place to stay, an open ear to listen to them.

With just the two of them, sharing close quarters, traveling, having so much time to themselves, Erik found that emotions he had shoved away ever since The Beach were coming back. He wasn't used to them. They were mostly unfamiliar and confusing. Seeing Charles half-naked, seeing the scars running from underneath the pants up his back, had Erik replay that moment. And more emotions rose. Not just the guilt.

He stared at the closed bathroom door where Charles was brushing his teeth. He had fought what was leading him closer and closer to Charles for so long, and it had weakened his defenses. Why was he fighting? Erik had no idea. It was almost inevitable. It had been there for so long, before The Beach, and he had always pushed it away. The man was getting to him. This guileless, sometimes too-innocent-for-his-own-good, good-natured, naïve, idealistic, maddening…

The bathroom door opened and Charles stepped outside, stopping when he found Erik's intense gaze on him. Erik got up from the bed in one lithe move. Charles gave him this confused look, but he didn't move away when the taller man approached, though there was a moment of uncertainty.

"Erik?"

"I figured it out."

The sudden calmness in the blue eyes made him shiver. "Oh. And?"

"And you're the frigging mind-reader! You know! You know, right?"

He advanced on the slightly smaller man. Emotions churned. Anger. Rage. So familiar. So easy to fall back upon. And there was more. Need. Soft waves of something he had no word for in his vocabulary.

Charles grinned impishly. "I do."

Erik pushed him back against the wall, leaning closer, fighting his darker side. He wouldn't go the easy way. He didn't have to do it as he was used to. This was a new life.

"You knew!"

"I knew one possible outcome."

"And if I had walked away?"

Charles licked his lips. "Then holding you back would have been a mistake."

"You would have let me go? Just like that?"

"I can't force my emotions on you."

He laughed. Cold and cruel. "You can. There's nothing you can't do to my mind, Xavier! I saw what you're capable of!"

Charles flinched a little.

"You're powerful," Erik pressed on, driving the point home. "You like to hide the fact, you want to think you're such a good guy, but you're a fucking telepath!"

"I know what I am, Erik."

"So you could force your emotions on me!"

"I'd never influence you like that." Charles met his angry gaze head on. "It was for you to decide. I already knew myself."

Erik leaned closer, body taut. "So this isn't just me?"

"No. It never was."

"Since when?" he demanded.

Charles shrugged. "A little while after you joined us. It was a slow simmer that I tried to ignore. When I touched your mind the first time, keeping you from killing yourself in your need for revenge, it was there. It was this feeling… and it grew in time. Your mind is… complex, Erik. Sharp and powerful and so fast… dangerous and dark… and at the beach…" He stopped, then ploughed on, "at the beach I gave you my trust. Completely. I do trust you in every way, Erik. With all of me."

Erik remembered the rightness of being with the other man, of staying, making up for his insanity, the moment he had almost betrayed his best friend. He had looked into the pained eyes and there had been no other choice. He would stay with Charles.

But it had gone beyond that.

He knew it had never been simple and now it was way past complicated.

"Fuck…" Erik stared at him, stunned by the confession. "You're a moron, Charles Francis Xavier. A too polite for your own good IDIOT!"

And then he kissed him.—-

Charles blinked, forcefully pulling out of the connection. He hadn't seen that one coming. He hadn't ever thought that…

Bloody… hell…

Pulling all the way back he withdrew from the connection, even though it was impossible to not listen in to the trickles coming through.

- His whole world collapsed and then realigned itself.

He felt lips on his and the slender form of the telepath was suddenly so very close to him. Charles' arms were wrapped around Erik, holding him, pulling him closer. Pent-up lust and need and emotions broke free and Erik felt them all tumble through him.

The connection. The damned connection! Charles wasn't aware of linking to him, nor did Erik actually mind. He caught flickers, sensations, and it was more than anyone could put into words.

A soft groan from Charles only spurned him on, made him deepen the kiss.–-

-"You love me."

Charles met his sharp eyes. "I have for a long time, my friend."

"You're such a stubborn fool, Charles."

"But you love me?"

Erik pulled him close, rolled on top of him to look into the brilliant blue eyes. His expression grew tender.

"I love you." -

- The scar was still reddish and prominent. In time, Charles had been assured, it would pale and grow less. Right now it was a jagged path across his lower back and to his left hip. No amount of surgery had been able to reduce the mark due to the erratic path of the bullet.

Erik traced it like hypnotized. He had been there throughout it all, had had blood on his hands. Literally.

"Can you feel this?" he asked softly.

"Yes. The numbness is gone."

Charles turned his head, looking at him. He was stretched out on his stomach, on his bed, arms pillowing his head. Erik had asked him to turn around and he had done so without a question as to why.

He had probably sensed the reason.

Erik splayed his hand over the scar, feeling the ridges and bump. For a while Charles had had no feeling in that area of skin, but that had been because of severed nerve-endings.

Could have been deeper.

Could have been a vertebra.

He stroked over the lean sides of pale skin. Paler than his. Charles, for all his abilities, was a scholar and it showed. He taught, he educated, he read, he wrote papers.

::I'm not fat:: came the lazy reply with a tinge of complaint.

"No, you're not," he conceded.

Erik worked out, kept fit, and he knew it was like an obsession. He had been drilled and the programming was hard to break through.

::And you look stunning:: Charles purred.

He blinked.

::Beautiful::

"I'm the girl in this relationship now?"

Charles grinned, completely at ease under Erik's hands. Hands that had killed; a man who had taken the lives of many men.

::You're very much a man, Erik::

Images flooded him and Erik fought down his arousal. He pushed back and Charles smiled more.

"Men are not beautiful, Charles."

::But you are. Stunning and gorgeous and handsome and just Erik::

The warmth grew and Erik leaned down, kissing the scars, then working his way up the spine. Charles closed his eyes, eddies of pleasure lapping at Erik's mind. –-

Charles screwed his eyes shut at the tender image of Erik touching his parallel self, watching him, his emotions overwhelming. Mind, body and soul. Everything. Belonging. Need.

Emotions alien to him, unable to understand how he could still feel this way, but feeling nonetheless. Surrounded by a shield that bore Charles' name, protecting him in turn.

- A weekend together. A surprise holiday the students had organized to get their professor and his partner some time off. Neither of them had known that their relationship was this much out in the open – and accepted.

"Go," Raven told them, laughing, yellow eyes sparkling with humor. "It'll be good for you."

And then she winked.

Charles was still staring, open-mouthed, when she was gone. Erik reached over and gently pushed his chin up.

"She's your sister," he teased. "You should know her by now."

"I thought we had been more secretive," Charles stammered.

Erik laughed, clearly deeply amused. "You, my friend, have hardly been secretive."

Outrage flared in the blue eyes.

"You're an open book, Charles."

He huffed. Erik slipped an arm around his waist and pressed a kiss against his temple.

"She's your sister and she knows you, you idiot. She has eyes."

"We're not making out in the open and I've never…" Charles stopped, scowling at the laughing man. "You're impossible!"

"And you're blowing this out of proportion. They know. Good. We can stop hiding." –-

- Yellow eyes that looked barely human fixed him with a hard stare. Erik had to say he was impressed. While Raven was behaving like a teenager most of the times, that look told him that he was facing a young adult right now. A very intent and focused young adult.

"Don't you ever hurt him," she said, voice cool and faintly threatening.

"How would you know?" he challenged her. "There are many ways of hurt and pain."

Her eyes narrowed. She wasn't amused or impressed. "He's my brother, Erik. I've known him for most of my life. I'll know."

He chuckled.

It didn't come across well as Raven now snarled. Erik raised a placating hand.

"I won't ever hurt Charles," he vowed. "In any way."

She lost some of her tension. "I know you're good for each other. Just don't fuck it up, okay? He can be bit of a hardhead. And he's a bit too… soft sometimes. But he's Charles. He's my brother. I love him."

"He's Charles," Erik acknowledged, grinning.

And he loved him.

"And he's sensitive. Don't ever tell him that. He'll take it the wrong way. It's just that his ability sensitizes him. He's also a moron and despite being a telepath, he doesn't always get it." Raven looked hard at him again. "You know what you're getting into, right?"

"He knows what he's getting into, too," Erik answered calmly.

The realization what he was talking about seemed to settle almost immediately and the young woman frowned. Then she nodded once.

"Like I said, you're good for one another. Kick him in the head now and then. I can't do it any more. He needs it, Erik. He needs it to get out of the fugue he sometimes has. Telepathy is a bitch."

He chuckled at her harshness. He had noticed before and he had developed a sixth sense for when Charles needed human contact, a touch, a brush against his skin, a word or two.

"I noticed. You have my word, Raven. I will protect him. I will never hurt him in any way." –-

"I can't do more for him," Hank said, pulling Charles out of his – Erik's - thoughts.

He had placed his patient into another room that didn't look like a wrecking crew had run through. He had hooked Erik up to several monitors and ran a feed into his veins to replenish his fluids.

Xavier nodded. "I'll stay with him," he offered.

"Professor…"

"It'll be okay, Hank."

McCoy didn't look happy, but he left. Charles rolled over to the prone man and studied the familiar features. It was easier now to skim Erik's mind and he picked up the differences in the lives of both Erik's. Everything had been just the same until the Cuban Missile Crisis. After that, the memories were like a movie he didn't know the plot of beforehand.

Like Erik and his parallel self. It sounded so out of this world; something he had never consciously pondered.

Had he ever felt an attraction? Had there ever been any doubt? Could there had been more?

There were no answers now and he doubted he would ever find them.

tbc...