Author's note: The book extracts are taken from C. Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Chapter 25- You must understand part 5

'No, I have never been married and I am not dating anyone at this current time,' Erik replied sharply in a rather chilly voice, 'Anything else you want to know?'

Charles bravely forged ahead with growing curiosity.

'Come Erik,' he said bracingly. 'Don't be like that. There must have been someone! You must share, I insist on it.'

Frustrated, the older man leaned his head back on his stack of pillows to stare at the ceiling. 'You are much too young for me to talk to you about this; maybe in a few years.'

The young man in question roared with laughter, vastly amused at the various techniques the larger man was employing to get out of this conversation, although a part of him warned that perhaps Erik had a good reason for trying to bow out gracefully from his question.

'Can we talk about something else?' the older man finally snapped, before he could help himself; Charles' laughter had been enough to push him over the edge.

'Why do you have to be such a shit?' the small man accused him in a surly tone, 'I don't go around telling everyone I had my stomach pumped. I trusted you…'

'It's not a matter of trust. I just have NO stories to …'

The professor unconsciously held his breath as the older man grappled with some faraway memory, judging from the way his gaze had momentarily slipped out of focus.

'Well, there was this one girl,' the older man finally said. There was faint sheen in his eye and a small smile hovered on his lips.

In the meantime, Charles felt his heart plummet south to keep his pancreas company. Actually knowing Erik was bisexual and then hearing him describe how beautiful some girl's hair was, were two different matters entirely. He sincerely wished now that Erik would shut the hell up, because he really didn't want to hear this. However, he couldn't think of any clever way to change the topic seeing as how he had badgered his companion into it in the first place.

'Magda was bookish like you. She used to like me to rest my head on her knee and listen to her read. She could also spin quite a tale from her own head, when she had a mind to.'

The professor's eyes widened to the size of saucers. He had never heard Erik talk like this before. It was a bit surreal seeing the peaceful transformation that came across his face, blurring and softening his sharp profile like in an old romantic black and white movie.

'…and I loved her with all of my fourteen year old heart,' he finally added, quickly raising his hands to protect his face as the small man flung an infuriated pillow at his head.

'Abuse, abuse!' Erik cried out indignantly, vigorously massaging the top of his head where the homemade missile had connected.

'Ha, ha,' the professor retorted unsympathetically. 'Is any of that story even true?'

'Of course it's true. Are you calling me a liar?' the older man replied conversationally.

'You are sure this is not like the time when you said you needed me to leave the room so that you could concentrate on your knitting?'

Erik snorted with evil laughter, not even bothering to pretend to be ashamed of that incident. On that occasion, the young man had released his hold on the television remote (which was Erik's goal at the time) and actually risen from his seat before he realized that the larger man was having a good laugh at his naïveté.

Charles reached out and pushed on his thigh to stop him from laughing and the older man raised his knees to his chest to escape.

'So what happened?' the professor demanded peevishly. 'She got tired of your dreadful sense of humor and turned you away.'

'We got…separated.'

The abrupt answer coming so close on the heels of a laughing Erik made the young man shiver. The shuttered look in the other man's eyes stifled Charles' next question before it even had a chance to be born.

'…she was my very best romance story, and isn't that what you wanted to hear?' Erik demanded a bit desperately now.

'I want to hear about it all, the good and the bad,' the professor replied with quiet compassion.

'No you don't. You don't want hear all of that. Be satisfied with what I have told you,' Erik whispered, as Charles' blue eyes seemed to pierce his very soul as he stared at him.

The small man relinquished his pillow and crept forward to hug the other man's upraised knees.

'You can tell me anything my friend,' he reassured the older man who had turned his head away as he had moved closer.

'I don't see what good is there in me telling you that I can't remember the last person I slept with. I don't see WHY you would want to know, that I have a handful of names floating around in my head which I can't match to the blur of faces that I can barely remember. I move around a lot Charles and I just don't have time for steady relationships but I am content, so please don't fuss.'

'Content?' the Englishman asked skeptically.

'Alright, maybe content is not the right word.'

'What is the right word?'

Sigh.

'You can be quite irritating, you know that?' Erik groused affectionately, as he stroked Charles' long hair. The professor was in desperate need of a haircut.

He thought that the other man would have been disgusted by his rather loose lifestyle, but he noticed only concern as the small man yawned up at him. For him sex was a form of relaxation; one that could be easily discarded if it became too distracting.

'I know you haven't asked for my opinion, but it sounds like a lonely way to live Erik,' Charles offered.

The older man had to silently agree that sometimes it was. 'I haven't thought about Magda in a long time.'

'It was a beautiful memory, thank you for sharing and thank you for coming tonight. I am having a good time.'

'Then you are very easy to please, little one.'

He turned his head to rest one cheek against Erik's knees because for some unknown reason, his neck muscles no longer had the strength to hold him up.

'I just find that speaking to you like this,' Charles replied closing his eyes blissfully, as the larger man had moved from his hair and was now tracing the delicate, sensitive outer shell of his ears, 'talking to you about my day, sharing secrets is very intimate and quite….relaxing.'

There was no way that Erik could miss the sudden change in the man's voice. He felt he should stop this but he was mesmerized by the way the Englishman was slowly coming apart right infront of him.

'Relaxing?' Erik asked with an unbelieving gleam in his dark eyes.

'Alright, maybe relaxing is not the right word,' Charles choked out softly, trying to keep his thoughts flowing in a rationale manner.

'What is the right word?'

By this time the older man had begun caressing the small man's cheek with just the tips of his fingers.

'Erik…maybe we should stop?' Charles asked in a small, confused voice.

'Then tell me to stop and I will stop,' he whispered back, slowly forcing one of his fingers past the professor's lips and into the heat of his mouth.

Erik wasn't sure where he was going with this but he hadn't expect Charles to spring up like if he had been shot . Reflexively he grabbed hold of his friend's slim wrist as he tried to roll away.

'What the hell! Xavier, don't fight me!' he yelled out loudly. And as suddenly as it started it all stopped.

'You know, I really hate it when you use your physical strength against me,' the Englishman muttered mutinously as he stared down into his lap. The older man followed his gaze and then sighed.

'Charles!' he responded in exasperation, shaking the small man once in aggravation. 'There is no need to be embarrassed or try and hide the fact that you have an erection. You are a science teacher for christsakes; it's just biology.'

'I am NOT embarrassed!' he blustered feebly, 'and stop staring you pervert.'

With another loud sigh, the taller man pulled Charles to his feet and pushed him in the direction of the bathroom, 'Go relieve yourself and splash some water on your face. You will feel better in a moment.'

By the time the young man had returned Erik had already turned down the bed for the night and switched off all the lights. Disappointedly, the professor stared at the older man outlined now by only the flicker of firelight as he immediately rose to his feet clutching his robe in one hand.

Erik always gave out an aura of confidence even when walking along a prison corridor or lying flat on his back barely conscious with five stitches in his head, so Charles was a bit puzzled as he jiggled nervously on the spot.

'I suppose you want me to leave now,' he blurted out unexpectedly, grasping the edge of one of the armchairs tightly.

The young man smiled slightly as he crossed the room and sat on the bed facing him, 'No, not at all.'

He made no further comment as Erik swiftly sat down, looking particularly glad not to have been sent away.

'Are you going to be sleeping on that chair?'

'No. But I want you to fall asleep first. I don't sleep well and I don't want to disturb you.'

'I don't mind,' the professor replied crawling under the sheets and turning on his side to face him.

'But I do,' Erik remarked as reached over to help pull the heavy quilts around him. 'No more talking, you have work tomorrow. Do you want me to read to you?'

'You will be here in the morning, when I wake up?' Charles pressed worriedly, still unsure of this idea where the older man would join him later when he had fallen asleep.

'I will be here in the morning,' Erik promised faithfully, reaching out to give Charles a quick squeeze on his wrist, 'And if I start to snore in the middle of the night, give me a jab with that pointy elbow of yours and I will turn over.'

The Englishman smiled contently, reassured now of the man's intent in the face of such precise sleeping instructions.

Erik's gaze fell on a stack of books on the floor and he picked up the only one that was not a text book. He had seen the professor reading the slim volume on his balcony only last evening.

'No…you don't want that book, it's a romance,' the small man informed him, reaching out to take it away. 'And I think we've already gone a little overboard tonight as it is.'

Curiously, the other man flipped through some of the pages, 'It looks like one of those classical novels although I am not familiar with this title. Are you sure this is a love story?'

'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now'… Charles replied.

The older man looked up in surprise from the random page he had been perusing.

… it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your frame. And I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.'

'You don't like it?' the professor inquired as the other man continued to stare at him in awed befuddlement.

The older man took a deep breath and pulled himself together. For a moment, his ability to breathe had been severely impaired because he thought that Charles had been directly addressing him.

'Do I like it? The words and phrasing are beautiful enough and so is the way you say it, but the imagery is quiet darker than what I think you would normally enjoy.'

'You should read it.'

'Why? Do you think I need tips on how to be more romantic?' Erik asked in amused sarcasm.

'No, you are great just as you are,' the professor laughed quietly. 'I pulled it off the shelf recently because it reminded me of you. The hero, Edward, also had a great secret that he wouldn't share with anyone.'

He squinted down at the professor.

'So…I take it to mean, that you think the plot would have worked out differently or better if your hero had shared his secret?'

'I've read that book several times and would you believe, I have never considered that? But Edward made his choice and the woman he loved ran away from the shelter of his protection and it in turn destroyed him.'

Did the small man think that was what was going to happen to him eventually? That his secret was going to backfire and consume him?

'Let us not talk about such things now,' Erik pleaded quietly, 'not in the dead of night.'

He was delighted when the other man nodded wearily in agreement, stifling a huge yawn in his pillow. By continuously keeping his voice low and steady, Erik had managed to push Charles even closer to the edge of sleep. Seeking a last bit of momentum, the older man began to read the first paragraph that his eyes fell on.

'What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace from self approbation; none even from self respect. I had injured-wounded-left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes.'

The older man scowled fiercely down at the page, 'are you sure this is a romance, Xavier?'

The professor was almost gone and he frantically sought out another paragraph to finish the task.

'Gentle reader may you never feel what I felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour that left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.'

Erik stared at the dark ceiling for a long time before the warmth of the young man's body at his side, allowed sleep to claim him at last.