Three days.
It had been three days, or at least he thought it had. The movement of the sun and moon seemed distant and unimportant in the confines of the room that had once been his bedroom, now an infirmary. A sickroom.
(Slowly, insidiously, the though crept into the confines of Erik’s mind that this place would be more than a sickroom in the end. That it was a hospice and soon, soon it would be a tomb.)
For three days Charles battled whatever illness had sunk its claws into him and clutched him close. For three days he had sweat and starved, shouted and sobbed at shapeless specters until his lips cracked and bled, had gripped at Erik with weak, trembling fingers, had burned.
It had been three days since Erik slept or left the room. The last time he felt so completely helpless was the night his father told him his mother was dead and for the first time in Erik’s life, he had seen his proud, brave, infallible father weep openly and wretchedly. That night Erik had felt like a loose tether, like a paper kite unmoored and adrift in a hurricane wind.
Now, as the night crept into the dark hours of the fourth day, Erik followed the routine that had become ingrained after numerous days spent at Charles’ bedside. Retrieved a fresh basin of water, wrung out a clean cloth and wiped down Charles pallid forehead, his hollowed cheeks, straightened the blankets where they were tangled around Charles’ legs, placed a palm on his chest to calm him as he groaned and fought, leaned close and murmured song and soothing word into his ear until he eased back into sleep. The routine kept him sane, kept him focused.
When Charles was asleep once more, Erik ran a weary hand over his eyes, over the ragged scruff on his chin he hadn’t bothered to shave off in days. Moira and Raven, Emma and Alex, Hank, his father, they had all tried to pry him away from Charles’ bedside, tried to convince him that he was no good to anyone exhausted and bone weary, but he would have none of it.
They had given up after the first two days. All of them except Sebastian. Sebastian had at first been bewildered by Erik’s actions, then frustrated, and finally furious. But the last time he had tried to wrench Erik out of the room and back to his duties, Erik had threatened violence and remained as still and immovable as a pillar of stone. Sebastian had been stunned, had stared at Erik with the cold malevolent rage that had frightened and thrilled Erik growing up, and made him Sebastian’s best student. He had always cowed in the face of that anger as a child. Faced with it now, with Charles mumbling incoherent prayers, his eyes staring at them wide and glassy from across the room, he hadn’t thought twice about showing Sebastian the door.
Sebastian did not understand. None of them did. Couldn’t they see? He had to stay with Charles. He had to be there when Charles woke up. How else was he supposed to apologize? How else would he beg forgiveness?
He watched Charles sleep for a moment longer cataloging the purple shadows beneath his dark eyelashes, the way the breath rattled out of his chest, and begged him silently to open his eyes, to look on Erik again with clarity and recognition in his gaze. To smile at him as he once did before Erik drove him away. Drove him into this sweat-slick nightmare. This feverish hell. As he stood sentinel, he was vaguely aware that the room was growing darker around the edges, hollowing out, black spots expanding like splashes of ink within the lines of his vision.
When his knees buckled and the floor rushed forward to meet him, he felt someone catch him around the waist, the strength and velocity of the movement enough that it knocked the wind out of him, bruised his insides.
“Erik,” a voice commanded sternly from somewhere above him, “you have to lie down.”
He found his feet, rested one hand on the bed by Charles’ hip and looked up over his shoulder at Moira, who glared at him, the tight twist of her lips betraying her worry.
“I can’t,” he said, straightening slowly, standing upright when his head remained firmly in place and didn’t seem likely to knock him off his feet again, “Charles is—“ he broke off when he got a good look at the room over Moira’s shoulder, at the open door to Charles’ sitting room. Angel was standing in the doorway and next to her stood Logan, his body an insouciant sprawl against the wall, his arms folded firmly across his chest.
One moment Erik was standing next to Charles’ bed, barely able to keep his body vertical, weak and exhausted and ready to collapse. The next he was across the room, fingers curling into the worn, stained material of Logan’s shirt, pure rage fuelling his footsteps, running through his veins, giving him strength to shove the man back into the sitting room and up against the wall, pinning him there.
Logan’s face hardly registered surprise, and though his hands up came to Erik’s arms, he only rested them there, didn’t try to push Erik away like he should, like Erik wanted him to. He could hear Moira shouting from behind him, her voice low in deference to Charles in the next room, could see Angel from the corner of his eye, one hand to her mouth, but Logan merely looked at him, his expression cold. Only his eyes revealed a lurking anger, a simmering and palpable disdain.
“How dare you come here,” Erik snarled at him, and Logan’s mouth curled up in one corner.
“Sir?” he asked, his voice flat and uninterested, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Erik shoved him a little harder into the wall, pushed a little closer to his face, ignoring Moira’s hands which were now gripped into the back of his shirt, holding him tightly as though she would be able to hold back the violence, should it erupt.
“You do,” he spat, “Charles is in there because of you. You had him cleaning out horse shit—couldn’t you see that he was sick?”
Something flashed in Logan’s eyes, and when he responded his voice was steady with the burden of regret.
“I didn’t know he was sick. I wouldn’t have let him if I had known.”
Erik registered his words, but he was not yet willing to let go of his rage, of the sense of purpose flowing through him for the first time in days,
“Why?” he asked, and when Logan stared him down, silent and questioning, he tried again. He dug into the well of strange emotion he had kept under wraps as he sorted through his burgeoning feelings for Charles in the past few weeks, allowed it to bubble up to the surface like pus in a festering wound,
“Why did he go to you? Why does he always go to you?” He looked at Logan, and remembered how many days Charles spent down at the stables, remembered how Charles had looked sitting and laughing with Logan, bright and happy with a smudge of grease on his face as he oiled the leather girth of a saddle. He thought of Logan’s broad palm clasped over Charles’ shoulder, how those hands would look wrapped around the dip of Charles’ waist, thought about the two of them rolling in sweet hay on heady afternoons. He remembered all the times Charles referenced Logan’s name at dinner as the King asked him about his day, how Logan’s name sounded like a pearl in his mouth.
He had never spoken of Erik that way.
Logan must have understood the intent behind the words, the unspoken thought hanging sharp and sour in the air like rotten fruit, because his hands tightened sharply around Erik arms until they were holding each other in a mutually aggressive embrace. Behind him he could hear Moira murmur, “oh Erik,” before she released him, stepped back next to Angel with her hands on her hips.
“You better not be saying what I think you’re saying, Sir,” Logan growled, and the title sounded like a curse in his mouth, a painted disguise for a foul word.
Erik stared him down, refused to give ground in the rising tide of Logan’s anger. Logan clutched him impossibly tighter, as though his hands on Erik’s arms were the only things holding him back from doing greater violence.
“If you weren’t the next goddamn King I would throttle you right now,” and Erik pushed back, honed his anger into sharp, pointed words, into the razor’s edge.
“Try,” he said, “Just try it—your time in the palace is finished anyways, you might as well give me an ironclad reason for it.”
“Fired am I?” Logan sneered, “Well then, let me tell you something—that boy in there, that boy who is sick because you couldn’t show him one bit of kindness, for some reason he thinks the world revolves around you. He thinks of nothing but pleasing you.” Erik gaped, the words pouring into him as all the air in his chest left him in a rush of wind. Logan smiled, cruelly, and continued, “Yeah, and this is the respect you give him in return? I should hurt you, King or no King, for that alone.”
Erik stared at his furious face, stricken, Logan’s words striking him harder than a physical blow. All at once his fury drained from him in a mighty flood and he sagged in Logan’s grasp, legs numb, head lolling forward to rest against Logan’s chest. He felt suddenly, unaccountably exhausted, three days without sleep catching him at the first moment of weakness. Logan hung onto him in a parody of a lover’s pose, and huffed out a broken breath against his hair.
“You’re right,” Erik murmured, and he could feel Moira’s hands on him again, pulling him backwards, looping one of his arms around her neck. Angel fluttered past them, clearing space by the hearth back in the bedroom, stroking up the fire so it radiated heat when Moira deposited him into one of the chairs there.
He looked up blearily and saw that Logan had moved next to Charles, one hand brushing through his hair. He didn’t look at Erik when he said,
“He’ll have your hide if you fire me you know,” Erik sighed and tilted his head against the soft back of the chair, waving Angel away when she tried to tuck a thick fur over his lap.
“I know.”
When he looked back at Logan, he was peering down at Charles, a tender expression on his face. Erik searched for that same jealousy he had felt so fiercely before, but found it vanished. Logan looked up to see his gaze fixed on the hand that is still running gently through Charles’ loose curls, his hair damp with sweat.
“He’s going to be okay,” Logan said, voice firm and resolute, and Erik could feel sleep creeping up on him, could see it in the corners of his eyes, waiting to pull a dark cloak over his mind. He heard himself mumble,
“Tell him I’m sorry,” and then Moira’s voice,
“You’ll tell him yourself, later. Sleep Erik.”
And finally, after three long days, he did.
***
When Erik surfaced a few hours later in the navy blue morning of the fourth day, Charles was awake.