January 1963

It was the cold that was keeping him in this world right now. The wind reached icy fingers down the collar of his coat; Erik had forgotten his scarf again. There weren't any colors in January, now that the colors of Christmas were gone. The gray concrete sidewalks matched the dirty snow. A pewter blanket of clouds obscured the sky. Even the displays in the shop windows were in shades of gray. The other people walking down the street might be wearing bright pink or yellow or red sweaters, but they covered them with coats of black and gray.

Erik waited at the crosswalk for the light to change. The bottom circle lit up, and that's when a dull stab of despair took up residence behind his eyes. The bottom circle was supposed to be green, and it wasn't. He studied the woman walking next to him as they crossed the street, accidental companions for this brief journey. Was her scarf actually blue? There was a pom-pom on her stocking cap, and Erik suspected it wasn't as gray as it looked. Concentrating hard, Erik eventually decided the scarf and pom-pom were blue. The woman gave him a cautious glance and hurried up to get away from him.

Every so often, Erik's mind flipped a switch, disengaging his actions from what was actually going on in his head. His movements became automatic, his body following through on what it knew it was supposed to but his mind not processing any of it. Everything felt slow and gray, a pervasive numbness that he couldn't quite escape as it slowly enveloped him. Anger never threw the that switch; Erik found it curious that despair shut him out of this world more than anger did. It was as if despair was the one thing his mind couldn't figure out how to channel, so he just shut down.

At least the switch in his mind wasn't an absolute cut-off. He could function - he knew he was walking back to his apartment right now and he knew the way. But anything beyond the barest automatic activity was beyond him until his mind flipped the switch again. Sometimes it happened on its own; sometimes the steel factory released it. The steel factory was a safe place, despite what Charles thought. The heat, the danger, the careful choreography of steel-making gave enough structure to Erik's activity that he didn't have time to feel. Once his mind knew he couldn't feel anymore, it would release the switch, and Erik would come fully alive again to molten orange and burning yellow, the bright noise of 3,000 degrees of liquid iron drowning out the thoughts in his head.

He'd gotten another letter from Anya, no Annie, a few days ago. She'd sent him her math test to show she'd gotten 95% on her times tables. Did he dare ask her for a picture? She had dark hair, just like Magda. Erik didn't have a picture of Anya. He couldn't remember what she looked like anymore. What kind of a father forgot his own child's face? He only remembered her dark hair, with the big pink bow Magda made out of scraps of ribbon. Pink. His eyes fastened on a child walking past, holding hands with her father. Was her coat actually pink? He turned to watch her, staring until someone knocked into him and told him to quit blocking the sidewalk.

Erik made his way to a brick wall and leaned up against it. He'd never talked to anyone about how difficult it was to remain in the real world when his thoughts kept pulling him away from it. It wasn't just the hot danger of Vietnam that crawled around in his mind; there was also the cold despair of isolation in the moments like this when he seemed to exist in a parallel world. He wasn't quite lost in Vietnam right now, but he also wasn't part of the world that everyone else lived in. He could see their world, as if through a grayed-out filter, but it moved too fast for him; no matter how hard he tried he couldn't catch up. He couldn't break through that barrier and get back to the place normal people lived, at least not until the switch flipped.

He had lived there once, back when he'd had Anya and sang her to sleep after tucking her into her bright purple sheets. There had been warmth and color all the time back then. Erik wasn't sure he could ever get back to that now, not permanently at least. There were snippets of it, glimpses that hurt more than if he was just never able to touch it at all. Those people hurrying past were from the other world, the one with colors that Erik visited from time to time. They were different than he was; or maybe he was different from them. Erik was the one who had changed.

It took longer than it should have to get home, but he made it. Home wasn't as safe as the steel factory, because of Charles. He felt a lot of things around Charles, so when the switch in his mind tried to stop his feelings, Charles presented a problem.

"Did the post office have John Glenn's Project Mercury stamp?" Charles asked, giving Erik a hug before he could even get his coat unbuttoned.

Erik paused on the third button. After a bit of thought, he reached into his coat pocket. There were the bills he was supposed to mail, the reason he'd gone to the post office just now. The electric bill, the gas bill, and the rent payment. None of the envelopes had stamps on them. They were out of stamps and that's why he'd taken them to the post office. He stared at the envelopes in his hand, trying to process exactly what he'd done wrong.

"Erik? Are you all right? Erik?"

Erik looked towards Charles, being careful not to focus on him. Charles was always in color, especially those bright blue eyes; he was the bridge between the two worlds, undampened by the gray filter that overlay everything else. The danger this presented was that Charles could trick his mind into releasing the switch before it was safe for Erik's thoughts to re-engage with his actions, before it was safe for Erik to think much at all. Erik's mind had to decide when to release the switch, not Charles.

"Oh no, not this again. Talk to me Erik! What happened? Did somebody say something? Did you see something that brought up a bad memory?"

Erik looked back at the envelopes in his hand. Their presence was an accusation, a glaring reminder that Erik couldn't handle even the simplest things. How hard could it be to walk to the post office and drop a few envelopes in the mail? He could have done just fine if he was normal, if he didn't have that blasted switch in his mind that removed him so entirely from everything. Paying bills was such a mindless task and he couldn't manage even that when he was like this. And sometimes it seemed like he was always like this.

His hands were shaking a little as he clutched at the envelopes that proved how incapable he was and hated them as if it was somehow their fault that he still had them.

"I'll take them. We've got to get the electric bill in the mail today. Will you be all right for a few minutes? I'll be back as soon as I can!"

Charles' voice disappeared when the door shut. Erik hung up his coat and made his way to the couch, where he ignored his newspaper to stare at the wall. Dull as it seemed to him right now, he knew the wallpaper had green stripes. When he could see that the stripes were green again, it would mean the switch had released.

Unfortunately, Charles came home before the stripes turned green. "Erik?" Charles reached for his hand and Erik pulled it away. "Erik?"

Erik looked in Charles' direction, but not at him because he couldn't handle the blue of his eyes right now. "Leave me alone."

"I can't leave you alone when you're like this! What happened? How can I help you?"

Erik returned to watching the gray stripes. "Leave me alone." That really would be the most helpful thing Charles could do, but Charles never believed Erik when he told him that. If he would just listen to Erik for once, stop pushing at things when Erik asked, they could avoid so many problems. Erik was so tired of these fights because Charles couldn't understand that it was best to leave Erik alone.

"Don't push me away, Erik! Please talk to me. Anything, just say anything!"

Charles was releasing the switch, his desperation and demands were purple with love and concern. If the switch released and all that despair and self-hatred simmering in Erik's mind re-engaged with Erik's actions, he didn't know what might happen. "Get away from me, Charles!" he roared.

Charles shrank back, those bright blue eyes too full of this world for Erik to cope with it right now. He had to get rid of Charles to protect both of them. Erik shifted on the couch, ready to get to his feet. Charles took a few steps back, and his eyes flickered gray with fear.

When his eyes turned blue again, Erik stopped. That's right, Charles was the one with the right to live in this world, not Erik. Erik was the one who had to leave. The switch fully engaged again. Slowly, the functional part of his mind came up with a plan that the rest of his mind approved of.

Erik took a tranquilizer and went to bed.


Erik spent the rest of his off-shift trying to avoid Charles and his concern, occasionally shouting at him when Charles insisted on intruding. Charles would look hurt when Erik yelled at him, which made the despair worse. "I'm sorry, Charles, I'm sorry," Erik would say, sometimes out loud and sometimes only in his head. The only words he could say to Charles were "I'm sorry" and "leave me alone." It clearly wasn't enough to reassure Charles, and Erik withdrew further in an attempt to protect Charles from the misery Erik was bringing into his life.

It was a relief when he could take a tranquilizer and spend the entire day asleep before going on the night shift where he knew he wouldn't see Charles for four days. The steel factory reached out for him, chasing away Erik's despair with its physical exertion and unearthly bright colors, and released the switch.

When he came back off-shift, he was fine. Charles kept asking him if he was alright, afraid to trust Erik's good mood. Erik did what he could to reassure Charles, but he knew it wasn't enough. He didn't dare talk about the recent reminders of Anya, about his despair or how much he hated himself for everything, for fear of throwing the switch again. Those episodes terrified Erik so badly that once they were gone, he pretended they never happened. They weren't always as bad as that one had been, but there was just something terrifying in even the shortest moments of losing himself so completely. Erik didn't know how to describe it, how to stop it, so he just avoided it.

Today had been completely normal, which Erik considered success. He was on his way home from the store, knowing that Charles would be home from school by now, when someone stopped him on the landing.

"Excuse me, young man, could I speak with you?" The woman was small and slight, perhaps in her late forties, with gray-streaked brown hair pulled back into a bun. She wore a brown cardigan over a lighter brown blouse. A man who was likely her husband stood in the open apartment door behind her. He might have been handsome at one point, but his features were too careworn now, his eyes and mouth drab.

Erik paused on the landing, a bag of groceries in each hand.

"I'm Mrs. Huddleston, and this is my husband. We live in apartment 2B." She turned to indicate the open apartment door.

"How do you do?" Erik said, setting down the groceries to shake hands. "I'm Erik Lehnsherr, up in 4A."

"Yes, I know, with that nice teacher."

Erik smiled politely and waited for Mrs. Huddleston to get to the point. She turned to glance at her husband, and he gave her a resigned look.

"I heard you were in Vietnam."

Erik stiffened, then nodded.

Mrs. Huddleston teared up. "Our son Rickie was in Vietnam."

Please no.

"He was killed last summer, right about the time you moved in, actually. The Army sent us the nicest letter. But we haven't been able to actually talk to anyone. We thought, well I thought," and here Mrs. Huddleston turned to look at her husband, who looked even more resigned, "that it might be nice to ask you to come to dinner. Perhaps you could tell us a bit about what Rickie's last few months might have been like. He wrote to us, we got four letters before he died. He said he had some friends in his unit, and he told us Vietnam was greener than anything we could imagine. Would you please come to dinner?"

Erik kept his face blank while his mind churned. He'd written some of those nice letters. The regret and guilt and aching need to do more to make things right for all the men who had died tumbled through his mind and he answered from his heart instead of his head. "Yes."

"Oh, thank you!" Mrs. Huddleston's thin features were suddenly beautiful. "You can bring Charles if you'd like."

They set a date and time. Erik turned down Mrs. Huddleston's offer to help him carry groceries, and he went home.

Charles met him at the door for a hug, then took a bag of groceries to the kitchen. Erik told Charles about Mrs. Huddleston's invitation.

"And you accepted?" Charles asked, setting cinnamon and oregano in the spice cupboard wherever they would fit instead of where they belonged.

Erik cleaned out the breadbox before putting the fresh loaf in it. "She invited you too. Want to come?"

"Do you want me to come?" Charles asked guardedly.

Erik looked up in surprise. He'd thought Charles would jump at the invitation and the chance to hear Erik talk about the war. "Of course I do."

"All right, then, I'll come," Charles said with a shy and pleased smile.

Sunday evening, Erik and Charles put on ties and jackets and went to the Huddlestons for dinner. It was awkward from the start, with Mrs. Huddleston trying too hard to put them at ease, Mr. Huddleston clearly apologetic that his wife was putting Erik through this ordeal, and their 16-year-old daughter, Trudy, never looking up from her plate.

"You do make friends quickly," Erik said, searching for good things to say about Vietnam. "Since your life depends on everyone else." Then he thought that wasn't the best thing to say, since Rickie had died. "Not that your friends can save you, what I mean is, you get close to the other men because of your experiences, not like here where everything is so safe that you don't have to really depend on someone to save your life. Or not really like that, of course you can have friends outside of war, but just that, well." Erik stopped trying to explain it and shot Charles a desperate look.

"I think Erik is trying to describe the camaraderie between soldiers," Charles said. "I remember a funny incident he wrote me about, where his men tricked him into thinking he could actually buy strawberries in Vietnam. I'm sure they all put their heads together and laughed a lot at planning to play a trick on their sergeant."

"Yes, things like that," Erik said.

Mrs. Huddleston smiled at that. "Our Rickie was a great one for practical jokes. I bet he would have had all his friends laughing."

"Was he a terror at school? I know I have class clowns. I have to pretend to discipline them, even if what I really want to do is burst out laughing," Charles said.

"Oh yes!" Mrs. Huddleston told several stories about Rickie's school escapades. Even Trudy looked up to tell a story her mother hadn't heard, and Mr. Huddleston cracked a smile.

When that topic died down, Mrs. Huddleston returned to the war. "What did Vietnam look like? Rickie said it was greener than any spring here in New York. I've seen pictures. Is it really like that?" Mrs. Huddleston asked.

"Except where they've sprayed defoliant and destroyed an entire jungle," Erik said, then again thought that wasn't the best thing to say. "It's very green, because it's always so wet. The humidity could suffocate you, and your feet rot in your socks." Again, probably not the best way to comfort a grieving mother. Erik tried harder. "Some of the flowers are as big as dinner plates."

"Very exotic," Mrs. Huddleston murmured.

Erik shot another desperate look at Charles.

"I read that there are more types of plants in one acre of the tropics than in several square miles of more temperate climates. I bet Rickie saw plants and flowers more beautiful than you could possibly imagine! The entire country is alive in a way the United States could never be, especially in January. Did Rickie like summer or winter best?" Charles asked.

At that point, Erik decided to let Charles take over the conversation entirely. He did a wonderful job, keeping the focus on Rickie rather than Vietnam. It seemed that what Mrs. Huddleston really wanted was to talk about her son to an interested audience, and Charles was it. Charles had lived in this building long enough to remember Rickie before he was drafted, and they'd loaned each other Everly Brothers albums and talked about sports. With his kindness and gentle smiles, Charles soon had Mr. Huddleston and Trudy participating in the conversation too. All five of them ended up in the living room looking at the scrapbooks Mrs. Huddleston had made about Rickie. The evening ended with Mrs. Huddleston piling up plates of leftovers for them, and Erik assuring Mrs. Huddleston he would let her know if there was ever anything else she could do for him.

Both of them were emotionally wrung out when they returned to their apartment. Charles set the plates of food in the refrigerator and came immediately into Erik's embrace. "Are you going to be alright?"

Erik blew out a long breath and nodded. A tremor ran through his body, but it wasn't fear. He tightened his grip on Charles, wishing there was a way to simply absorb the man's entire personality. He settled for kissing him, a long, possessive kiss that attempted to draw out Charles' essence and calm all the pain that Erik struggled with. Charles relaxed into the kiss, his hands going up into Erik's short hair. It was a long time before they broke apart.

Erik kept his face pressed against Charles' cheek, inhaling the scent of him, brushing his lips over Charles' jawline, hoping Charles wouldn't insist on having a conversation about what they'd just been through. He couldn't stand it if Charles interrupted this moment by insisting they talk. He wanted to simply be with Charles, absorb the feelings between them and let them soak in and heal whatever had opened up tonight. Because something had opened up. Too many words would close it again.

Charles wrapped his hand around Erik's belt and pulled him towards the bedroom. He unbuttoned Erik's shirt, helped him with his shoes and pants, and guided him to lie down on the bed, all of it compassionate instead of erotic. Charles straddled him to rub his back. Erik put his face down on his folded arms, which always had the faint acrid odor of the steel factory no matter how much he washed, and let Charles' soothing touch ease the strain of the evening. He'd written so many letters to the parents of the soldiers who had died; talking to a set of parents who had gotten a letter like that pulled up a well of grief, but it felt oddly clean, more like a sharp knife than jagged shrapnel. The war wasn't throbbing in his head the way he feared it would.

He rolled over, letting Charles sit on his stomach. "Tonight was different - not like a flashback. It's a clean hurt; I don't think this is going to haunt me."

Charles considered that, fingers running over the edge of Erik's ribcage. "Perhaps it's because you helped the Huddlestons by talking about the war. You try to keep things bottled up, and the pressure causes you problems. You let some of the war out tonight in a way that helped other people."

"You might be right." He could get lost in Charles' bottomless blue eyes, so clear and unguarded.

His eyes weren't like that. Erik could never entirely let his guard down. There was a dam built up in Erik's head. Behind it was Vietnam - every memory, every image, every fear. Erik had seen what happened to soldiers when the dam broke; read the newspaper articles about the tragedies, violence and insanity when Vietnam drowned a returning soldier. Or there were the more prosaic cases, the veterans who stumbled along streets with a bottle in their hands, homeless. Erik suspected they were the men who had a switch like Erik did. They were what happened when a soldier let that switch flip permanently and just never came back to the world of color and sensation.

They weren't all like that though, he told himself. Look at the Summers brothers. Thousands of soldiers returned from Vietnam, only a miniscule number of them ended up in the newspaper. He would never end up like them. His dam would hold. He would keep fighting back to this world and never concede to existing forever in the dark despair of that colorless numbness when the switch was thrown.

"Remember this, Erik. Remember that it helped to talk, and not keep it all inside." Those bright blue eyes were serious.

It frustrated Erik that Charles didn't understand how hard he was trying to keep Vietnam from bleeding over into Charles' world. He couldn't talk about Vietnam, not really, that would breach the dam. Tonight had been about facts, a few details without any feelings attached. Charles was still safe from all the horrors of Vietnam, and Erik meant to see that it stayed that way. He'd been unable to protect so many young men in Vietnam; protecting Charles was a way to make up for that failure.

"Lover, you're talking too much," Erik said, drawing Charles down beside him and making it impossible to talk further.


The dinner with the Huddlestons must have stirred up more feelings than Erik had thought, or maybe it was because January was such a dingy colorless month. Either way, he was edgy, though he really didn't yell at Charles as much as Charles said he did. The yelling wasn't personal anyway. As a sergeant, Erik would yell at a private who was getting too close to a minefield. He yelled at Charles when he was getting too close to Vietnam. It was the same thing - Erik was just trying to protect him. Charles didn't need to be so sensitive about it.

"I told you to leave it alone, Charles!" Erik shouted.

"I just asked if you could look over this book about Vietnam with me, Erik, you don't have to shout," Charles replied.

Erik hated it when Charles had that hurt expression on his face, those red lips in a pout. It made him feel guilty, and Erik couldn't process guilt. "Why do you think I'd ever want to look at a book about Vietnam?"

"You said there were flowers the size of dinner plates. I wanted to see a picture," Charles said.

Erik buried his face in his hands for a second, took a deep breath, and reminded himself of how helpful Charles had been at the dinner with the Huddlestons. "They're called rafflesia flowers. The biggest ones were rafflesia flowers."

Charles flipped to the index of the library book, then turned back to a page and held it up.

"Yes," Erik said. Flowers, okay fine, he could talk about flowers. "There were lotus blooms too. Vietnam had lots of ponds, and there would be lily pads and lotus blooms." He came to stand next to Charles and look over his shoulder. He noticed the book was about tropical climates in general, not just Vietnam. Charles was flipping past sections on the Amazon rainforest and African jungles.

Still turning pages, Charles walked over and sat on the couch. Erik considered ignoring the obvious invitation and ending the conversation, but he still seemed to be doing fine. He told Charles 'no' so often that he felt he ought to say yes when he could. Besides, he'd gotten through the dinner with the Huddlestons without anything besides awkwardness. A book about tropical climates was hardly going to cause him serious problems. Erik sat down next to Charles and looked at pictures. He talked about the heat and humidity, the heavy wet smell of the jungle. It was just a place. Vietnam was just a place. Besides the memories, the blood, the guilt and the horror, Vietnam was just a place on a map and pictures in a book. How strange to realize that Vietnam could be an ordinary place as well as a slice of hell.

When Charles started moving the conversation from the climate to his experiences, Erik abruptly stood up. He'd done as much as he could.

"Erik?" Charles asked tentatively.

Erik turned back to Charles, his breath catching unevenly in his chest. He got lost in Charles' clear blue eyes, his own expression confused and overwhelmed. Please let Charles see he'd said as much as he could stand today. Please let him not ask questions until Erik went crazy and yelled at him. Please stop while Vietnam was just a place and before it could become hell again.

Charles shut the book. His eyes were pensive, but he nodded, which Erik took as permission to leave. He went to his room and shut the door. The red wall stayed red, and he hadn't yelled at Charles, or at least not in the last few minutes. The goal now was to stay in this world, and get some distance from Charles before he could start talking again. Erik grabbed his coat and scarf and ended up at the YMCA where he put himself through a grueling workout.

What he needed to do was find ways to get both of them out of this apartment where Charles kept trying to start conversations about Erik's feelings. The men at the steel factory talked about basketball games, and Erik wondered why he hadn't thought of that before. Erik bought tickets, and told Charles they were going to a basketball game. When Erik found out the Summers brothers would be home from college for a weekend, he bought them tickets too. The four of them yelled and cheered for the Celtics and then went to a bar with the rest of New York City to celebrate the win.

Erik was recounting the best play of the game in between sips of scotch, when Ramsey stole the ball in the other team's key, dribbled down half the court, passed it to Lovellette, who scored on a dramatic layup. Scott kept looking past Erik, and finally smacked him in the chest. "She's checking us out."

Erik turned in time to see a curvy brunette in a black blouse smile again at Scott.

"See ya," Scott said, and headed over to escort the brunette to the dance floor.

"That didn't take long," Charles commented, sliding onto the stool Scott had just vacated, drink in hand.

"Where's Alex?" Erik asked.

Charles pointed.

The brunette had a friend, and she was rather brazenly staring at Erik. "You gonna get jealous if I go dance?"

"Just don't bring her home with us," Charles said.

Erik laughed at the thought, slipped some money under his drink, and hit the dance floor. Yeah, it was good to get out of that apartment. He stayed out on the dance floor for a while, then bought his dance partner a drink. Charles was chatting with several other women at the bar. Erik idly wondered where Scott and Alex had gotten to, when Scott tapped him on the shoulder.

"I gotta get Alex home."

Erik turned. Alex was swaying on his feet, looking distinctly green.

"Whiskey shots," Scott explained.

"Take him outside and see if you can find us a cab. I'll get Charles."

Erik made his excuses to his dance partner, a petite woman named Angel with a lacewing tattoo that covered both her shoulders, and went to extricate Charles from where he was holding forth at the bar on something incredibly interesting, judging by how many women were listening to him. Erik paused at the edge of the circle. Genetics? He was talking about Crick and Watson's discovery of the structure of DNA?

Erik waved a hand in Charles' line of sight. "Gotta go."

"The double helix, ladies, will forever be the most famous shape in science," Charles said, draining the last of his scotch. He swayed slightly as he stood up, and Erik wondered if he'd have to make an exception to their 'no touching in public' rule to keep Charles on his feet. Charles very carefully steadied himself and Erik smothered a snort of affectionate laughter.

"Why the hell were they listening to you talk about science? On a Saturday night in a bar?" Erik asked as they wove their way through the crowd to the door.

"I've discovered it's my accent, Erik dear. I could read the phone book and gather a bevy of female admirers. Are you that shallow? Is that why you love me?"

"Shut up, Charles," Erik whispered.

"Right-o. Shutting up now," Charles agreed cheerfully.

Out on the street, Alex was puking into the gutter. Good timing. Maybe he wouldn't puke in the taxi. Scott was hanging onto the back of his coat to keep him from falling over, so Erik went to wave down a cab. Four taxis passed him. Charles waved at the fourth one and it pulled over to the curb by Charles.

"What's up with that?" Erik demanded.

"I smiled at the driver, Erik. You looked like you were searching for your next mugging victim," Charles explained.

Charles thought he was so funny when he was tipsy.

Erik ended up in the backseat with Scott and Alex, with Alex leaning over his lap and moaning like he was going to vomit again. Charles took the front seat, where he promptly became best friends with the taxi driver and got to hear his life story.

"If you puke on my shoes, I will have you court-martialed," Erik warned Alex.

"Yeah, Sarge," Alex said with a groan.

Erik had long since given up on getting the Summers brothers to call him anything but Sarge. Alex groaned again. Erik hauled him off his lap and pushed him over on his brother. He could puke on Scott instead.