Erik develops this disease...
[Image ID: Crystalline Hearts by Irene A Donovan. Erik and Charles on a background of a heart drawn in sugar crystals. End ID.]
Chapter One
Erik Lehnsherr had wondered if he was going insane. He probably wasn't, he'd decided. He was, however, going blind.
It had started subtly, colors seeming washed out when they should have been vibrant, the whole world seeming just a little fuzzy around the edges. But now everything was blurry and getting blurrier, and all but the brightest colors were gone, casting his world into shades of grey.
He'd gone to a string of eye doctors, but none had found anything to explain the rapid and alarming decline, had found nothing at all beyond some crystalline structures the size of fine sand in his tear ducts, had told him only to prepare himself for what appeared inevitable.
He wasn't ready for this.
Maybe he wouldn't ever be ready.
His doorbell rang, and he rose, knowing who it was by the mass of sleek titanium alloy he sensed on the other side of the door. The last person he wanted to talk to right now, the first person who would know something was wrong. His best friend. Charles.
He halted after taking only a few steps. He couldn't face Charles. Charles would indeed know something was wrong, not just because he was a telepath, but because he knew Erik that well.
"Erik? Are you all right? I know you're in there."
"I'm fine," Erik called back.
"Bullshit," Charles said. "I haven't seen you in two weeks, and you haven't even answered my texts in days."
Erik could no longer read his phone screen, even with maximum enlargement. "You're not going to go away, are you?" Erik said dryly. He briefly entertained going out the bedroom window, but memory of the thorn bushes beneath it and the notion of trying to get through them blind had him scrapping that idea.
"No. So are you going to open the door?"
Erik sighed, swearing under his breath, then used his powers to unlock and open the door.
Charles was little more than a dark blur in the doorway, but as he wheeled in and came closer, his figure resolved into something recognizably human, if lacking in detail. "Something's wrong," he said without further preamble. "You're practically screaming 'go the fuck away,' and you don't do that without reason."
Erik surrendered — he couldn't have hidden it much longer anyway. "It's my eyes," he admitted.
"How bad?" Charles asked quietly.
"Bad," Erik answered. "Everything's blurry as fuck, and it's probably just a matter of time before it's all gone."
He heard Charles' soft inhale. "What is it?"
"Nothing anyone's seen before." He laughed, sharp and bitter. "Whatever it is, it's happening fast. Two months ago, I was fine. A week ago, I could still read my phone. Now I can barely cross the room without crashing into something. In another couple of weeks, it'll probably all be gone."
"I don't know what I'm going to do," Erik admitted, sinking to his knees.
Charles captured his hands, squeezed them firmly, held them to his chest. "What we are going to do right now, my friend, is get very, very drunk. Then tomorrow, we'll start figuring this out."
"Yeah. You're not alone, Erik. Even if it feels that way right now."
Erik clung to Charles' hands like a lifeline.
Erik opened his eyes to pale sunshine and a throbbing head. His mouth tasted like a small animal had died in it, his stomach was doing slow flip-flops, and every muscle ached. He squinted against the light, then blinked a few times to clear his vision.
Nothing changed. Oh, yeah, right.
It was always a shock, first thing in the morning, and the hangover wasn't helping as he struggled to orient himself without most of his sight. He groaned softly and rolled over, away from the light, intending to go back to sleep.
Only to find he wasn't alone in bed.
He peered at the vague form beside him, recognized an amorphous blob of dark hair. Charles.
Charles. The best friend he'd been in love with for nearly a decade.
Rolling over had brought him up close to Charles' body, to Charles' back, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating off his friend's body, close enough that his cock nearly brushed Charles' ass.
He should roll back over, rather than torture himself with what he couldn't have. He should.
Instead, he closed his eyes, leaned just a little closer, and went back to sleep.
When he woke again, the light in the room was a little brighter, and his arm was slung possessively around Charles' hips, the curve of his flaccid cock painfully clear where Erik's arm lay across the thin cotton of Charles' boxers.
Charles was oblivious, still dead asleep, and he wouldn't feel Erik's touch there even if he were awake. Erik eased his arm away then sat up, his head protesting the movement, though the pain remained manageable.
His searching fingers found the bottle of water on his bedside table, and he downed most of it then re-capped it. He turned his head from side to side, squinting at the blurry shapes about him, trying to judge whether his vision had faded further in the night.
It had. It always did. Yesterday he'd been able to identify the shape of the doorway across the room, but this morning there was nothing there but a dark shadow, barely even distinguishable.
Helpless rage spiked within him, and he hurled the water bottle across the room. It hit the wall with a resounding thwack, fell to the ground with a softer thunk.
"What the--?" The noise finally roused Charles, and Erik felt the mattress shift as the other man sat up.
"I got pissed," Erik admitted. "I threw my water bottle."
"Ah," Charles said. "That's okay. Now pick it up."
"Pick. It. Up." An air of soft command in his words.
"I don't know if I can even find it."
"You can, and you will." Charles' voice had slid into what Erik thought of as his teaching mode, full of calm authority. "Think about where you heard it hit and start looking there."
Erik rose, turned in the direction he'd thrown the bottle, and walked forward cautiously until his fingers brushed the corner of the dresser, then he stopped, unsure of what to do next.
"What was the sound like? Did it hit the dresser? Did it hit the wall?"
Erik considered. "The wall, I think." He took two steps to his right, then sank to his knees, hands sweeping outward just above the carpet.
His fingers brushed rounded plastic, and he wrapped his hand around the bottle. "Got it."
"Good. Now bring it back."
That sounded scary. Even yesterday he'd been able to see enough to keep from crashing into the furniture. Not today. He rose, turned slowly, squinted into the shadows.
"Walk toward my voice," Charles said, then he kept talking, quiet and rhythmic, just stuff about what he'd done the day before with his sister.
Erik concentrated on the sound and homed in on it, breathing a sigh of relief when his knee bumped the bed. He turned and sank onto the mattress. "I don't know if I can do this."
"You can, and you will." Charles' voice was gentle but insistent. "What's your other choice? Never moving from this bed again?"
Erik's smile was a little wry, a little grim. "Something tells me you've heard this speech yourself."
A soft chuckle. "I have indeed, my friend." The bed shifted as Charles moved, then he took Erik's hand.
Erik gripped it tightly. "I just don't know what he fuck to do."
"You're going to need some help, people to teach you how to function, and you're going to hate it every bit as much as I did. But it won't be forever. Your life has changed, but it's not over."
Erik clung to Charles' words -- and his hand -- like a lifeline.
