Present Perfect 4/?

[skull_bearer]

 

Present Perfect

Part Four

After this time will be moving faster, I have a lot to get through in the next few years. Each chapter will cover about a year, maybe more for years where a lot happens.

As for the comatose Holocaust survivors. Another case of I wish I made this up. Some have still not woken up. How's that for a horror story?

Half an hour later Charles is shivering on their bed, having been ordered out when Erik had gone to report to Allens that one of the patients had woken up.

Charles looks down at his hands, every so often they jump of their own accord, he feels cold in the warm room, teeth sore from chattering.

He is completely drained, washed out and empty and run over. And good. So utterly, shockingly good.

Waking the man out of his nightmare had been like waking up from his own bad dream. Like opening eyes he didn't know he had, like... like...

Charles thinks he ought to start a new language as those he knows are simply unable to stand up to the challenge. His life is beyond his ability to describe. For the first time though, it's a good indescribable.

Erik is lying back on the bed, his happiness at their success a warm revolving presence in the back of Charles' mind, there and not, something he only need to reach out and take.

The man had woken sudden and screaming. Charles knew the shape of his name from his mind, stamped on every part of his brain, but had no idea how to say it. He had spoken to him in thoughts and emotions, and when the man had woken had been unable to understand a word he said.

"I told you. It was amazing." Erik smiles up at him, the light catching in his eyes and hair tangled on the coverlet.

Charles shrugs, reaching over to curl a lock of it around a finger and pulling Don't gloat. "Was it? What was there to see?" He'd sat beside the man and touched his temple very gently. Then he was in and nothing much would have happened outside.

Erik sits up, frowning in the slight, still smiling way he has when something's interesting him. "You were talking to him the entire time. Telling him to wake up, and then something about his family and that the war was over-"

Charles blinks, "I did that?" He'd something like that in the man's mind, he hadn't realised- thank god there was no one else in the ward.

"He was talking back. I didn't understand anything, but you did. Like half a conversation."

Charles leans back until he's lying across Erik's chest, head half off the bed. The man had screamed of the place around them, a camp like Auschwitz and not, with deliberate mistakes with dead trees holding up barbed wire and inmates with no faces. He'd been back there, and alone.

And he'd torn it to pieces, he'd ripped it down and the man had soon understood and joined in, and together they'd torn the camp to rubble and dust. The sheer raw joy of it fills him up until he wants to scream or laugh because it's gone. It doesn't matter if it was only in the man's head, every one of those places should not be and now there are one less thanks to Charles.

Erik pulls him up until they're pressed together, and Charles hears the door click locked. His head hits the pillow beside Erik's, and he turns to look at him.

He's beautiful. It's funny, but it really hasn't sunk in until now. It must have been a gradual change. Sharp face with all sharp angles counterbalanced by his brilliant smile and grey-blue eyes.

Erik must have heard him because he laughs softly and pulls Charles in for a kiss, pushing in a rough thought, a story he once read about a girl who found a muddy kitten only to see it grow into a magnificent pure-bred cat. Charles snorts at the comparison and scratches Erik behind the ear.

Charles was not planning to wake anyone else up just yet. He wanted to leave it a few weeks so the next one would seem natural, but it wasn't possible. Or no, it was possible, but not for Charles. In order to do it, he would have to be the kind of person who'd walk past a child dying of thirst while carrying a full pail of water, and Charles is pleased to say he neither is, nor knows any such people.

He can feel the cries even more now. Before, it was alright to block them out or silence them into temporary peace. It was all he could do, and a momentary calm was better than nothing.

Now, he stands at the threshold of hell, and he has the keys. How can he not use them? How can he?

"Charles." He hadn't noticed he'd already knelt down beside one patient. The woman with the bandaged hands.

Charles doesn't speak. He just opens his mind out and lets Erik hear the woman crying curled up cold pain hunger i'm sorry i stole the bread it's not my fault i'd have died oh mother mother forgive me hunger hunger hunger

Erik flinches and jerks away, shaking his head as though to drive out the thoughts. The shields blocking the past are crumbled to dust and Erik is raw and bare before the memories. Charles staggers to his feet and drags Erik into his arms, shutting out everything but the two of them as he tries to rebuild the shields. Erik doesn't move, just standing there with his head on Charles' shoulder.

I'm sorry I didn't mean-

Please don't. Anything not to remind him of the screams, the flashes of mud and cold and mixed up everywhere with Erik's own memories and mother mother his mother in the pit and the taste of dirt-

Charles tries to tear that apart too, but only makes Erik flinch. Everything is raw and there's nowhere for Charles to lay his thoughts that doesn't hurt. Instead he tried to think of nothing, just white on white and when that doesn't work he tries to think of the sky with clouds and endless. Erik lets out a breath neither of them knew he was holding, and his shoulders sag a little.

I'm-

No. Never. No reason. Never sorry not to me.

---

There's nothing to be sorry for. This is what it would be without Charles. The only reason he can feel this good, can walk and speak and not flinch and climb the walls when a mouse squeaks or a door groans is because of the shields and the guard they stand in their dreams. Erik takes a deep breath and tries to get himself under control. The memories are still raw, waiting just outside the shields and Charles, behind Erik's eyes. Just waiting.

One breath. Two. Stand straight and rub his eyes. The outside world comes back into focus. The woman still groaning on the bed, gnawing mindlessly at her fingers in a hunger no food can sate.

"I'm sorry-"

Hearing it with his ears is even worse. "No." Deep breath. This was what Charles heard every day here. "But, you can't wake them." If you wake them there will be suspicions. They will realise we can do something. We can't. Not unless we want to run the next day. Slowly, every few months. Maybe. But not all at once or they'll know and you can't help any more because we'll be dead-

"Shh..." Charles is still holding him, still projecting blue skies and clouds into his mind. Erik answers with his projection from the other night, the cool sea reflecting the stars.

Charles hesitates, then sinks down, hands to his temples as he focuses. The ward goes silent. Everyone is fast asleep.

When they head down the stairs, they find the second ward just as still. Down again and they smell lunch burning where Nurse Gunther fell asleep at the stove.

Charles doesn't say anything, Erik can see the pride in his own eyes reflected endlessly in Charles' own.

Time passes, and winter comes. It's the sweetest winter Erik has ever had. It rains. Sometimes it's so warm they can stand outside and it's like a shower. There's no snow, the wind is never cutting. Together they could stay here and forget what being cold ever was. What being hungry every was. What pain was. It's still and quiet and sometimes Erik is scared to breath in case he breaks whatever this is and the hungry cold horrors he knows are just waiting outside rush back in.

But Charles is determined to take risks, and Erik doesn't really want to stop him. After so long of being terrified of what he can do, having Charles starting to relax with his skills is worth it. Perhaps it will not be if they are caught, but so far, it's worth it.

Charles has woken two others already.

There's a half-hearted attempt at a Chanukah celebration, but Erik looks at the menorah and the memories of the last time he'd seen one in the ghetto hits so hard the shields don't hold. There'd been such a fight. In the entire street they'd only had enough candles to light one, and the argument to decide which family's would be used was fierce. They'd known they wouldn't see another year. Erik quietly gets up and leaves while nurse Gunther is lighting the first candle, her face a crumpled mask like a used paper bag.

No one says anything when they go, and sit on the stairs. Charles sitting as close as he dares here where anyone could see them. He doesn't speak, and projects an image of the four of them - him, Charles, Gunther and Allens - at the table around the menorah, picking out details Erik's hadn't seen, the tears in the old nurses eyes. The way Allens looked anywhere but the candle flame.

We should all be in the beds upstairs, he adds, a slight smile.

Not you. The only one without bad associations.

I'm a liar and not Jewish.

I wonder if they've noticed.

You're the only one who sees me naked.

Erik manages a smile, the memories going back behind the shields. Charles soothes them and builds the walls up higher and brighter. Nothing but here.

"Would you forget it all if you could?" Charles murmurs, and runs his nails very lightly down Erik's neck.

It's tempting, but it's a question with only one answer. Forget the camps and he forgets everything before, his family, his childhood. The good as well as the bad. Even during, there were... not good, but fragments of the less bad. Meeting Charles, Charles telling him he was loved. It would be like having part of himself removed.

He doesn't need to say anything. Charles tugs at his hand. "Shall we?" He suggests, a smile. "A present for the season?"

"Waking someone else?" He can feels Charles' hunger for it, wanting the challenge, and the feeling of doing something. Of control, even when he still has trouble going out during the day for the noise.

Anything for him. To make him happy. There's precious little else.

"They'd be happy for the distraction." Charles smiles as they climb the stairs.

---

Everyone in the ward is still asleep, although it's getting thin here and there. If he focuses, Charles can feel the echoes of their nightmares through the veil he's cast over them. He lets that guide him. The loudest, the most suffering in a room of overlapping horrors like the scales of a fish, each one different.

He doesn't see the boy he kneels down beside, but he knows him, knows his name is Tomas from Italy and he was in the camp whose name sounds like it's spoken through a mouthful of earth and he's still there now, in a pit with walls of stone and he's falling, and Charles is falling with him.

He wrenches his head away from the piles of sharp stones coming to meet them and tries to grab hold of the boy, but it's like holding ice and the boy looks at him with eyes of terrorfurypain and Charles has to struggle not to cry out, tumbling up behind the boy and grasping for him again.

It's not real. He hopes he isn't really shouting in the ward. You're dreaming. Wake up.

The boy looks at him again, and it's not simply fear but desperation. They're waiting for me. It's Italian but Charles can understand every language there is here. I want to be there.

He points down and Charles can see the smashed bodies on the rocks below. He makes a grab for the boys arm and turns his head away. The boy's been falling for months if not years, he won't hit the ground when Charles is there. A good thing, because if you can't die in dreams, you can get quite close. He pulls at the boy's arm. You can't. They're dead. You'll fall forever. Come back.

I won't! Not back there!

No, not back there, the war's over. You're in a hospital. In Palestine. It's Chanukah and- he can't do words properly, he projects an image of the hospital, for a moment it surrounds them like wallpaper hanging in the air, before the force of the boy's memories burns through them.

They might still be falling, or they might be hanging in place. The boy hesitates, no longer hanging head down but standing in the air, facing Charles. Who are you?

It doesn't matter. None of them ever remember. He caught the woman looking at him oddly after he woke her, but she said nothing. She left soon afterwards, not saying where she was going. Many did, not wanting to stay in the same building with those still lost in their nightmares, as though afraid they would fall back and never wake up again.

The boy looks down and Charles pulls him, not up or down or any direction but there, a direction simply labelled Out. Through the layers of the mind and memories to the forefront of everything. The boy doesn't struggle, only staring back over his shoulder at the bodies of, Charles knows now, his brother and father. He leaves the boy within the walls of his own mind and pulls out all the way out, back into his own head.

Someone shakes him. Erik's mind is a mass of spiking panic and Charles jumps, the world coming into sudden focus. All the ward's lights are on, and everyone is here. Allens, Nurse Gunther, two of the other night nurses, and Erik's face a rigid mask and mind screaming. Allens has Charles by the shoulder, the feeling of being touched by someone he can't feel in his mind is so utterly wrong and terrifying that he jerks away and accidentally elbows Tomas in the ribs.

The boy groans, and Allens turn to him, astonishment rolling off him. Charles scrambles back and Erik catches hold of his arm. The touch is as calming as anything can be and Charles wonders if they should just run and try and get a head start, or if he can maybe put everyone to sleep and make them forget this ever happened.

Gunther is helping the boy sit up and giving him a glass of water. Allens is just looking at him, then back at Charles. "Amazing."

There's no fear in his mind, no hostility. He's stunned, but not in the sense of seeing something completely unexplainable. "How long have you been doing this?"

Charles doesn't know what to say and Erik is within moments of attacking everyone with the bedsteads. It's a horrible frozen electric moment, everything in potential.

"You're the one who's been waking them up." Allens runs his fingers through his hair and takes a step towards them. Stopping when he sees them flinch. "It's alright. I just didn't realise- you must be some kind of natural. I heard of this sort of thing when I was in medical training, about some people in the last war. Could get soldiers back on their feet with a few words."

Charles stares. People like him? A wild, desperate hopes explodes inside him, he didn't even know it was there, wanting to know they weren't alone, Erik and him, that they weren't just the result of some twisted Nazi experiment.

"Mind you, they'd had training. But, didn't Shomron say you'd studied medicine? is that where you learnt how to do it?"

What? There's no choice. Charles sifts carefully into Allens' mind. The images are front and forwards and very clear, doctors talking to shell-shocked men and getting them back to fighting strength. It's at once a disappointment and an overwhelming relief. Allens doesn't know. He thinks Charles is some kind of natural mind-doctor.

"Yes," He manages. "It was there. In Havard."

"Havard?" Allens frowns deeply, looking from Charles to Erik and back again. Then, loud as if he'd spoken out loud If he keeps waking them up I don't care what secrets they've got. And a smile. "Well, you'd better rest. It sounded like you'd had a fascinating conversation, I wish I knew as many languages as you do."

---

Charles isn't actually sick, but it's close. They sit on the cold bathroom floor with the door firmly locked, trying to calm down. "I'm sorry, they came in just after you started and I didn't know how to wake you."

"You can't." Charles' voice is a croak, he swallows. "It would be too dangerous. I don't know what would happen if I'm in their mind like that. We might both be lost." He rubs his face.

Erik drops his head in his hands at the shudder of emotion that brings, like having a thunderstorm inside him, lessening terror and panic from earlier mixed with the renewed fear of what Charles had just said.

A hand touches his shoulder, "It's always safe. I can't be disturbed, but as long as I'm not it's fine."

He remembers Allens shaking Charles' shoulder. If that had been a minute earlier-

"Yes. But it wasn't." How can Charles be this calm? He wishes he'd never suggested this. He wishes he'd known it could be this dangerous-

"It's not. It's-" Charles sighs, Erik can almost hear him change tactics. "If you had an accident on the motorcycle, you could be badly hurt."

The motorcycle was finished a week ago, if the rain stops they'll be able to take it out. I wouldn't. He sends what it feels like to push his powers into the metal, feel it move and purr around him. Safe.

You could. An accident with a car, Erik falling.

No. The car spinning away, the motorcycle remaining upright.

Then you see, it's like that. Nothing bad can happen. And even if it did, I'm sure I can find my way back.

It's all academic anyway, Charles couldn't stop doing it even if he wanted to, Allens will be expecting it. Charles, he unbearable fool, is actually happy about this. Happy to be able to risk his life more often.

Just make sure I'm not disturbed, and nothing will happen.

He will. If he has to pin Allens and Gunther and the rest up with cutlery he will, or impale them with bedposts, or... anything. Anything.

"It's fine." Charles scoots forward and hugs him, it's become so familiar and safe that Erik relaxes without meaning to. "It's better than fine. Didn't you see? Because none of them know how we can do what we can do, and they keep making up reasons for it. They won't know unless we make it too obvious."

Still not safe.

Better than nothing. Charles insists stubbornly.

---

Charles wakes up first that morning. The ever present rain is still pattering outside, on the tree outside their window, on the closed shutters, on the tiles above their heads. Charles opens his eyes and looks up at the grey ceiling. Under Allens' astonished supervision, he's woken another patient, and the doctor has hinted that when he leaves, he'll have enough money to start paying him proper wages. And Erik, he adds as an afterthought. Someone like him is worth their weight in gold, and he's been feeling guilty about using them essentially as slave labour. Worth putting up with his sour brother if it means the patients will be healing that much faster. A flash of Charles and Erik, seen through Allens' eyes, nervous and constantly defensive, as damaged as the people in the beds. Physician, heal thyself.

The new year's come and gone, and it's 1946 now. Almost a year. Entirely a year if he's counting from leaving Auschwitz. Normally a time of reflection but Charles can't think back properly, and not simply because of the shields. Everything comes in fits and starts like a failing lightbulb. He closes his eyes. Better not to remember. The only worthwhile thing to come out of that disaster is currently in bed with him.

Erik is curled up towards Charles, still asleep. His mind is the warm darkness born of no longer having dreams. It again strikes Charles just how beautiful he is. The hard bones filled out to a wiry frame made muscular from lifting patients and motorcycle parts, his face sharp and softer than usual, relaxed in sleep, colourlessly grey lashes half invisible on skin tanned even in winter, one lock of grey hair falling over his cheek. It's shoulder-length now. Charles brushes his fingers over his ribcage, side, hip. He wants him. Not simply because he's Erik, and the very idea of sleep with anyone else is impossible, but because he's stunning and would be wanted by anyone.

Erik opens his eyes and smiles. There's a sleepy stretch in Charles' mind as Erik makes room for himself, amused at waking to Charles so eager and hungry. His hands start coming up as Charles closes those last few inches and their mouths press together.

You're beautiful too, you know. An image of himself through Erik's mind, sun-kissed and smiling a brilliant, dazzling smile Charles didn't even know he owned, eyes shining and so utterly desirable and loved.

Thank you, and stay still. It's your turn to be appreciated.

He hears the door lock, and pauses in the kiss, sending his mind down through the floors to where Allens and Gunther are sleeping, and presses in to make sure they won't wake up for a while yet, and again for the night nurses, making sure none of them are about to go up and bother them.

Erik is grinning. "I told you," His voice is thick with sleep, "You are amazing." The last is hissed as Charles presses his lips against his neck and sucks.

He tries a few different places before he finds the spot that makes Erik whine and arch half off the bed. Charles climbs on top of him to hold him still, hot and precious and alive against him, and continues his exploration, taking his time to learn the new contours by touch. The collarbones jutting out like handlebars, the hollow in the throat just above them, the strong curve of Erik's shoulders, all fitting in his hands as though they'd been built as one and later broken apart.

Erik's image, of himself with the skin missing from his ribs and Charles inside the cage of bones. Erik wrapping his arms his chest and keeping the two of them safe. His fingers skate over Charles' chest.

Mine, of me part of me never leave me.

A trail of kisses down his chest, a pause to lick around pectorals and nipples that has Erik arching again despite Charles' weight and a jolt of sensation so intense it's almost pain and Charles stop!

He can feel the heat of his chuckle against the over-sensitive skin and continues to move down. He's never done this before, but Erik's gotten the idea and his hands run over Charles' bare scalp. So this is all right? Charles sends, holding back so that his breath is just ghosting over Erik's cock, standing painfully hard from the nest of silver hair.

What Erik sends then as completely incoherent and his growl, done while biting down on his arm from control. His arousal is like a white-hot wire in Charles' mind, and when they touch it sends showers of sparks through both of them.

To think, he sends back, lowing his head further to lick, We are the only people in the world who can feel each other like this.

What Charles can decipher from Erik's answer is that they deserve something don't they? Which shatters into fragments and Charles hears the bedstead creak warningly when he takes Erik's cock into his mouth.

How do you do this? It's not easy to think with his own erection grinding into Erik's leg and Erik's mind going off in fireworks. In the end he doesn't try and experiment. Judging by Erik's reaction he's enjoying this perfectly well.

Yes. Definitely.

Deciding that if Erik could think coherently he was doing something wrong, Charles works his cock in his mouth as far as he could, and sucks. Erik cries out something garbled that makes Charles glad he'd made everyone in the hospital ignore them, and his nails dig into Charles' head. Charles starts and must have bitten slightly because the rush of pleasure-pain in his head makes everything go white for a moment, and Erik yelps and, to Charles' surprise, starts to laugh.

What?

The response is a mixed exasperation and love and please dear god more.

Charles hums, and that goes well, his fingers stroke over Erik's sides and hips, down his thighs. He is close, and Erik is close, and if Charles isn't careful he'll lose control as well, just from being pressed against Erik's calf. He shifts and Erik literally whines. His knuckles are knotted white in the sheets, and his head is thrashing back and forth. One of the pillows fall off the bed.

He hums again and Erik throws back his head and comes hot and bitter. It's not at all pleasant but Charles is too gone to notice because the starburst in his head in enough to bring him over too, grinding in the sheets as everything goes wonderfully white and he hears something crash nearby.

Charles doesn't open his eyes. He brings his arm up and wipes his mouth of in, getting rid of the unpleasant taste.

Should I be insulted?

Charles drags himself up Erik's sweat damp body and kisses him. What do you think?

Quite right, how you suffer.

Erik, what did you break? He still doesn't dare open his eyes to see.

Erik does though, and Charles is still far enough inside his mind to use his eyes and see how the doorknob had flown off the door so hard it's fractured a windowpane.

Ah. Charles isn't sure how they can explain this. It's not broken though, just cracked, maybe nobody will notice. It looks like he's not the only one who has to learn control.

There's a rather rueful though that no else has to deal with this sort of thing either.

I wouldn't change it for anything. For the first time, Charles means it completely and fervently.

 

Fic brought to you by having seen XMFC for the third time running and listening to That Fucking Take That Song one infinite repeat (cheers for that, you-know-who-you-are)

Comments

[synecdoche-and.livejournal.com]

Hohohohooooo! I regret nothing!

[p-lea.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy Present Perfect. Your capture of those two is beautiful. Please continue. :)