On Friday night, just like always, Erik leaves his alarm off so he can have a nice lie-in in the morning. The next morning, just like always, he wakes up to the sound of the hair dryer, several hours before he wanted to even start thinking about being conscious.
By the time he realizes he's not going to be able to get back to sleep on this particular morning, Charles is still in the bathroom, holding his hair back with one hand as he examines his forehead in the bathroom mirror.
"Oh, good morning," Charles says distractedly, not so much as turning his head to demand a kiss the way he usually does. He's obviously obssessing over the small forest he shed on his pillow overnight. It's becoming tiresome.
"It's not the seventies anymore," Erik says. It hasn't even been the eighties for a few years now, and Charles really needs to do something about his hair. Male pattern balding and ponytails have never been in fashion.
"You wear an ascot practically every day. You still own multiple pairs of bell bottoms," Charles points out, as if that has anything to do with anything. "Anyway, I'm not cutting my hair. I'll be going bald soon enough as it is. There's no need to rush it."
He's always saying that; he's been saying it for twenty years now. Erik's heard about how Charles is going to go bald by the time he's in his nineties at least a hundred times, but all he'll ever say about how Erik's going to age is that he's going to be hideous, with old man chicken legs. (Considering he usually says this with the same soft expression he wears after they've had sex, Erik assumes he's going to age very well. Charles is probably just jealous.)
"Then shave it all," Erik says, flipping up the toilet seat. "If it's going to happen anyway."
Charles makes a face in the mirror. "Absolutely not." He corrals his hair back into a ponytail with a rubber band, then hastily wheels out of the bathroom before Erik so much as has his pajama bottoms open. He's always been squeamish about being in the same room as Erik when he's pissing, despite the fact that Charles takes ten times as long and they've both long since stopped being embarrassed when Erik's around for that.
*****
It's several weeks later, after school's let out for the summer, that Charles says, "Do you really think I should shave my head?"
Erik knew something was coming. Charles has been giving him thoughtful looks for days, and that usually means they're going to have some sort of heavy discussion the next time they go on a reasonably long drive. Considering they're on their way to Maine to spend a few weeks at Charles' cabin up there, (and though they live together in Charles' ridiculously large mansion, somehow it's always the summer cabin that trips Erik up. It makes sense that he owns instead of rented, given how difficult it can still be to find accessible lodging, but for some reason it's still the thing that makes Erik's life feel surreal), that means today.
Erik wasn't expecting a return to the hair discussion, which he had completely forgotten about by breakfast that day, but he's also not sure what he did expect. Maybe, 'Now that I've been forced to live with you for a few years, it turns out I actually do hate you. How soon can you move out?' (It's been five years since he came back to Charles, but he's still bracing himself for that one, and maybe he always will.)
Once Erik's caught up to this discussion being about hair and not his imminent eviction, which takes a few seconds, he says, "Yes. I think it would look good."
"I've been considering it. I don't know."
"If you don't like it, you can always grow it back," Erik says. "Or buy a wig."
"It's not that. I'm not worried about how it'll look. I know how it'll look. It's not...bad. That's not it. It's just—" Charles falls silent. When Erik glances over at him, he's looking out the passenger window, fingers drumming on the armrest. Probably chewing on his bottom lip, too, though Erik can't be certain.
Erik gives him a minute, then says, "It's just what?"
Charles sighs. "It's just that I'm not sure I'm ready to...well, to look like him. It seems like it would be that much closer to being him."
"The sainted Professor X?" Erik asks dryly. "You should stop worrying about him. We're doing better than they did. We're winning."
"You don't know that. We have no idea what was going on right now in the original timeline."
"Yes, except for all the times you've told me you don't think mutants were even public knowledge for decades." As always, Erik feels ill-equipped to argue on the side of hope and things being all right. He's never been good at offering comfort or reassurance, especially about this, especially when they both know their people really were on the edge of being eliminated, thirty years from now in another life. "We're ahead of it. If something were to happen," and even on Erik's best day, he has little doubt that something will, eventually, "our chances are twenty times better."
"I suppose," Charles says, sounding like what he's supposing is that he'll never be able to measure up to his fabled alternate self.
They've had this conversation a few times over the last year or so. The first time Charles hinted that he didn't know if he could measure up to his own alternate future self, Erik was equal parts annoyed and gratified; now, many iterations later, he's just frustrated that Charles still hasn't internalized any of Erik's own opinions on the matter.
(Erik was, and still often is, annoyed because Charles, this Charles, is the one who founded not one but three schools for mutant teenagers in the Northeast, with several more in the works in other parts of the country; this Charles, his Charles, is the one who's constantly speaking in Washington on behalf of mutantkind; he's the one who's constantly being called upon for interviews on the radio or television; he's fought harder than anyone for their people, and the results are clear to be seen, everywhere. If they weren't, Erik wouldn't be here.
He was gratified the first time it happened because, for the first few years after he came home the way Charles had so often insisted he wanted, Charles still wouldn't open up to him. He showed little weakness, let Erik in on few confidences that weren't already widely known among the school's senior staff. For a man who can learn others' most deeply-buried secrets on a whim, Charles keeps his own remarkably close to the vest. There were times in the beginning Erik despaired of ever being trusted again. There was more than one night he spent smoking and pacing the length of the roof, talking himself out of doing anything more about it than fuming as darkly as possible.)
Frustrating as it is, Erik's willing to dig in all the way to Maine if he has to. But Charles doesn't say anything else about it, and, a few minutes later, sets his hand on Erik's knee and starts talking about some of the new curriculum he has lined up for next year. It's all mundane, english and math and chemistry, and Erik would normally complain about him talking about next school year already when graduation was just last week, but this time he allows it.
For the rest of the trip, Charles examines his hairline in the mirror on his sun visor at the rate of at least once an hour.
*****
On their last day in Maine, Erik intends to sleep in, but wakes to a buzzing sound in the bathroom, accompanied by the vibration of the metal in a set of hair clippers.
When Charles emerges from the bathroom, he's a bald man. It's a better look on him than a ponytail ever was, in Erik's opinion, but somehow he didn't expect how striking Charles would look without hair. He looks confident. He looks powerful. He looks incredibly sexy, and Erik's going to drag him back into bed within the next few minutes.
"Feeling saintly yet?" Erik asks. Charles doesn't look saintly to him; he looks like Charles without any hair. He looks like he probably should have shaved his head on the first day of their vacation rather than the last, so it could have tanned along with his face and neck.
"I feel like there's a draft on the top of my head." Charles laughs, but the look he's giving Erik is more appraising than anything else. "You know, your future self was completely gray," he says after a moment, approaching the bed, "and you've had more salt than pepper in your hair for the last few months...would you lean in here, please?"
Erik does, expecting Charles to kiss him, but instead of that, Charles' hands frame his face, Charles' eyes very serious and darting back and forth, like he's searching for...something, Erik doesn't know what.
"You're starting to look like him, too," Charles says, which is not anything Erik has ever really wanted to hear, since he's always considered himself far superior to any other version of himself that could exist, especially one who fucked up as badly as that guy did. "But not entirely. You're going to have so many more laugh lines than he did, when you're that age." His expression and his voice have both gone very soft; he's smiling now. "They're going to be beautiful."
And that much, Erik can live with.