Upon waking to a half-empty bed, Erik shuffled into his robe and slippers and out into the hallway. He found Charles precisely where he'd expected to: a few doors down, in his personal office. Far from the larger headmaster's office on the other end of the house, Charles' personal office was barely larger than a walk-in closet, and only that because he needed room in which to maneuver around his desk. Erik would never be sure how a man who'd grown up in such an enormous house should have a penchant for small spaces, but this of all places in the house was Charles' sole domain. And looked it, as Charles' only nod to any sort of cleanliness was the necessity of keeping clutter off the floor. Every other surface in his study, the top of his desk as well as the narrow shelves on the walls was covered in stuff: mostly books, stacks of student papers (some of which needed grading sometime this week, but most of which, Erik knew, had needed grading a very long time ago and been summarily ignored in favor of giving out As for participation).
"Charles," Erik said as he finished belting his robe shut.
Charles looked up from behind his desk, where he was tapping the end of his pen against a legal pad he'd evidently been taking notes on. "Oh, hello," he said, blinking. "Is it really that late?"
"Yes," Erik said, knowing Charles wasn't judging 'late' by the robe and slippers, but by Erik's bedhead, which Charles often referred to as 'dire,' but offered Erik sexual favors not to trim whenever Erik threatened to do so. "When are you coming to bed?"
"For all you know, I might have been to bed and back already," Charles said, though they both knew that no matter how deeply asleep Erik was if Charles came to bed after him, he always woke up when Charles finally did, even if usually just enough to register Charles' presence. It was the movement, the wheelchair and the bedsprings that did it. Decades of living a peaceful existence had yet to cancel out certain of Erik's prior instincts; he didn't expect ever to become a heavier sleeper. "Well, maybe not. I'm trying to figure out my taxes."
"Don't you have an accountant for that?"
Charles had a veritable army of accountants, in fact, in addition to a second army of tax lawyers—both for himself personally, and for the school. He also had any number of other lawyers. Though Erik had never been more involved with the financial side of the school than he had to be, he suspected Charles owned several law firms.
"Well, yes, of course, but I have to come up with some sort of explanation for all the money we spent upgrading the Danger Room. I need it by the time I go into my meeting tomorrow."
"The basement flooded," Erik said. "It needed repairs."
"It needed five million dollars' worth of repairs? I'm sure they'll buy that one."
As if it weren't better than any lie Charles had ever come up with on his own. Tapping his temple, Erik said, "Well, make them buy it."
"You know I can't do that."
"I know no such thing." Erik had never, and would never, understand why lying was all right, but making the lies convincing wasn't.
"Because it has to look good on paper," Charles said, rolling his eyes. "Otherwise we're asking for exactly the kind of attention we don't want."
Audits. Inspections. There had been a few in the years since Erik had come to live here, and they always left him on edge. In the moment, Charles always seemed blasé about them, but he went out of his way to make sure the school seemed aboveboard and beyond reproach in all ways, to keep such things to the minimum. This included the fiction that the Danger Room was nothing more than a staff-only gym (which was precisely what it seemed to be until activated). No one on the outside needed to know about the training that occurred there, or any of the other measures they'd taken over the years to be sure they'd be prepared to meet the enemy, if the worst should come to pass in their own timeline as it had in the other.
"If you come to bed now, I'll help you think of a more convincing lie in the morning," Erik offered.
If this were Charles' official downstairs office, he could have gone around Charles' desk and worked on convincing him with a shoulder rub—but while he could have fit into that space ten years ago, well, he'd gone to fat over the past few years, and knew better than to try. Instead, he leaned against the doorjamb—having long since learned how sexy Charles found Erik smirking in doorways to be—and thought about which sexual favors he might consider reciprocating, if Charles hurried it up.
"Tempting," Charles said dryly, though there was a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. "I'll be along in a minute, promise."
Past experience had proven that Charles' promises were much more likely to be kept if Erik remained lurking instead of taking him at his word, so that was what he did, and, a few minutes later, Charles grew tired of being hovered over, and followed Erik to bed.
Afterward, Erik lay awake in the dark, Charles sleeping next to him, thinking of lies, both the kind meant only to make Charles roll his eyes and the kind more likely to pass inspection for believability. He thought, too, as he so often did now, of how quickly time was hurtling by—sometimes, it seemed like it had only been last week that Charles had finally flat-out asked Erik to come home. It had been yesterday that they'd married, this morning that Erik had retired, considering twenty years of teaching rudimentary languages to children who would have forgotten everything about them three weeks after graduation to have been enough. Tomorrow, perhaps, they would have caught up with their other selves.
Erik thought of other things as well: he wanted Charles to retire with him. He'd shared Charles for so many years; he wanted a few just for himself.
He hadn't mentioned it yet. He knew Charles wouldn't even consider it, not until they had caught up. Fifty years, and it had only been forty-three so far. Charles wouldn't rest until then, maybe not even then. Maybe he never would. But Erik would try to convince him, once they were there.
Until then, he'd keep dragging Charles to bed when he would otherwise have stayed up far too late, as needed.