Chapter Text
The doorbell rings.
"Oh, hello, Hank!" Charles grins brightly. Hank can't help but smile too; if Hank weren't straight he'd probably be in trouble. "Come on in! I've made some tea."
"Thanks professor."
"No need to call me that, chap. Just Charles is fine."
"Ok. Thanks for doing this, Charles. I wouldn't have bothered you, but--"
Charles shushes him as he wedges the door into an open position with a wooden stopper. "Hank, we've gone over this. We're neighbors, and that's what neighbors are for."
According to Charles, "neighbors" is interchangeable with "friends", and that’s usually not how most people think.
Well, Hank thinks, that's just Charles for you.
He tows a trolley full of cardboard boxes out of an open elevator towards Charles' door. "I'm really sorry, it's a lot of stuff."
"Erik and I have a spare guest room that can't seem to ever get used, so I can't think of a better place for your things. Come on." Charles begins lifting boxes up from the trolley and starts towards the supposed guest room.
Hank picks up two other boxes and follows his friendly neighbor. Hank does not point out to his friendly neighbor the reason his guest room can't seem to ever get used is most probably because Charles' flatmate -- boyfriend, he corrects himself -- is the most intimidating turtle-neck wearing creature known to mankind. He isn't even sure Erik is human, with all that teeth. Christ. He's so glad the man isn't here--
"Charles!"
--or rather, is here.
Hank trembles. "Hi."
Erik grins, and it takes Hank all of his strength not to abandon his plan. He had an entire relationship banking on this. "Hi, Hank, is it?"
Hank nods.
"Erik!" Charles beams at him, all sunshine. "Hank's an ornithologist, as I've told you, and he's going to South America to do a bit of field work. We'll be looking after some of his belongings for a couple of weeks. His apartment's going to be let out to a temporary student during the time, you see."
"Sure," Erik shrugs. He goes to the trolley by the doorway and helps them transfer the boxes. Hank's only met Erik for a grand total of one time, but Erik doesn't seem as scary as he did the last time, when Hank watched from a distance Erik growling like a wolf at a man trying to pick Charles up. But Hank is definitely not picking Charles up, so he supposes he's safe.
When the all the boxes are sitting neatly inside the guest room, Charles surveys the pile like it's artwork and hums satisfyingly to himself.
"Oh, by the way."
"Yes, Hank?"
"Here--" He goes over to the pile and casually picks out two boxes to set aside from the rest. "I know you're a molecular biologist, and everything, but there's a bit of unpublished work I did on bird genomes that I think you might find interesting. You can look through these boxes, if you like. Well, you can look through all of them, if you like, but these two might be more interesting to you."
Charles smiles very widely at him, and Hank feels a bit warm. He can kind of see why Erik's so protective of him. "Really, Hank? Are you sure?"
"Well, yes," Hank says, "I trust you."
"And I'll be sure to do your trust justice," Charles says sincerely, eyes bright. "I'd love to take a look later. But now let's go have some biscuits and tea, shall we? It's probably quite cold by now. I'll heat it up again."
They sit in the kitchen and talk. It's actually quite nice, Hank thinks, and Erik isn't the monster that everyone in the neighborhood says he is. Well, none of them know Erik personally, and the only other person besides Charles who does is Raven, Charles' sister, and she seems to like him a lot, as well. If all the people who know Erik like Erik, Hank supposes it's safe enough to assume that Erik is a befriendable soul. Even if the "all" is a ginormous sample size of two people, but Hank decides to let his inner scientist rest for the sake of his girlfriend.
You see, Hank is here on her behalf. According to her, Erik and Charles have been together happily for five years by now, but, for Christ's Almighty Sake, they never get on with it and Hank can't you see they're so perfect for each other and it's all just so ugh, Hank, I can't even.
Raven's been very, very, very invested in her brother's relationship, and his ear's been talked off for goodness knows how many times about their baseless self-doubts and inability to take that one step further, and since he kind of needs his ears to identify bird mating calls in the wild, Hank has decided to take matters into his own hands.
"Oh, by the way, Charles," Hank says. "If you see an old terracotta tablet in one of the two boxes I set for you, uh, leave that alone, if you can."
"Huh? Oh, sure, no problem, Hank," Charles says half-focused, before turning back to feed off of Erik's intense gaze.
Hank supposes it's probably time to go, then. His work is done, for now.
***
Charles hums as he settles down on the floor of the guest bedroom, and pulls the two boxes Hank set aside for him. He's really quite excited; birds are such fascinating creatures, being one of the few organisms that can take to the skies, and Hank's work has never failed to be nothing short of brilliant from all the times Charles has been allowed to see it. His inner molecular biologist is giddy with curiosity.
There's a load of research draft papers that Hank has written, including data and some samples of rare bird feathers and other vials and papers of things about which your author has not quite the knowledge to confidently describe in this -- let's be honest here -- midterms-stress-release fanfiction. But on the other hand, she can confidently assert that Charles is certainly intrigued by the material and is ravenously reading and memorizing all the information when he catches sight of a certain object quite out of place among all the more science-y stuff.
It's a small, dusty beige tablet the size of an average novel, with ancient hieroglyphics engrained into the surfaces with what looks like painstaking time and effort. Its edges are smooth and sanded, except for one side, which is irregularly jagged, as though that part were broken off crudely.
Ah, Charles thinks. This must be the terracotta tablet Hank was talking about it. Charles remembers something about "leaving it alone", which he presumes to mean to "keep it safe".
I had better put this in another box then, he thinks.
Charles touches it.
***
"Charles! Have you seen my keys?"
Erik calls, checking into the kitchen and the living room and their bedroom and not finding his boyfriend anywhere. Goodness. Where had that idiot gone? He was just putting on his coat in front of the door earlier. He has to be somewhere around the apartment.
"Charles, where are you? I really need those keys! I'm not letting you drive if that's what you're doing. You know what happened last time." Erik doesn't want to talk about it, so the author will respectfully obey his wishes, but let's just say it involved a couple trucks, an ambulance, three hundred helium balloons and an expired pizza.
Erik continues calling for Charles for his misplaced keys because, god, Charles, you're always taking my keys, I'm absolutely never letting you drive again, when he stumbles by their guest bedroom, the door of which has been left ajar. He sees a pile of strangely arranged clothes -- Charles' clothes the man had just been wearing -- on the floor, as though their owner had been wearing them just moments before disappearing into thin and letting the clothes fall to the ground.
Even more strangely, Erik finds, is that there is a rather confused-looking white dove sitting on top of the clothes, blinking at its surroundings as though it can't seem to understand where it is. It notices Erik, and then it opens its beak to give an awkward peep.
"What have you done to Charles?" Erik asks it, feeling rather lost.
The bird looks shocked, as if that were even possible, and then gives a loud squawk. It flaps its wings in what looks to be frustration and stamps its feet into the blue cardigan. As Erik watches the strange display -- Erik knows zilch about bird behaviour; is that a mating dance? he wonders, vaguely mortified -- before it waddles over to the neck of the cardigan, ducks into it, shuffles around and pops its head out of the neck. It cocks its head and lets out another small peep.
Erik balks.
***
"…Charles?" he manages.
The bird… nods.
"Oh my god," he says.
Charles fluffs his wings and waddles out of the cardigan. Erik sits down, stunned out of his mind.
"What the hell happened?"
The Charles-dove hangs his head before shuffling over to one of the boxes. He leaps onto one of the edges and, with the tip of his wing, points down into the box. Erik leans over to look, and sees the terracotta tablet. Confused, Erik reaches in to pick it up, but is promptly preempted by Charles squeaking and flapping into his arm and face in a sudden frenzy. Erik bats him off and spits out some feathers. "What the f-- what is it, Charl-- stop that -- what is it?!"
Charles goes still. Then, when he's made sure that Erik is watching, Charles dips one wingtip slowly into the box again, touches the tablet gingerly, then dramatically leaps backwards with splayed appendages onto the ground. He flaps his wings against the ground, belly up.
"You… touched the tablet?" Erik asks. Charles bobs eagerly, upright again. "And… got turned into a bird."
His guess is affirmed by another bob.
Erik stares a bit, then falls onto his back, covering his eyes with an arm.
"What the ever loving fuck?" he says.
A light pair of tiny feet patters onto his chest and up to his collar bone. Erik lifts his arm and opens one of his eyes to stare into the fluffy white face of the Charles-dove. It looks almost nothing like Charles, except for its blue eyes, and perhaps its pink beak, which could resemble the man's beautiful red lips, if Erik squints a bit.
"We're going to have to cancel our movie date," he says. It's the first thing that comes to his mind. "Pets aren't allowed in the theatre."
Charles plops down on his chest, cooing sadly.
Very gently, Erik cups him up by his soft bird belly and sits upright. "Shh, it's all right. We'll just go over to Hank's right n--"
Oh. Shit. Hank's in South America by now, isn't he? He flew out yesterday. Charles seems to realize this too and sinks into his feathers, looking very, very sad.
"We're just going to wait until he comes back. I'm so sorry, Charles. Can you hang in there?"
Charles bobs his head, looking resignedly up at Erik.
Erik sighs, holding his boyfriend in the cup of his hands. The soft, fluffy white belly is warm on his skin, a few feathers brushing against his palms as the bird shifts a bit. The wings are plump and gorgeous, pristinely white, and the face is so innocent and so… smol. And cute.
Just like Charles.
Erik smiles at him, and Charles cocks his head in question.
"Well," Erik answers softly, "you're still very beautiful, as a bird. I don't mind at all."
Charles looks at him with wide eyes for a bit, then flutters his eyes coyly, looking for all the world like one of those shy, blushy birds in an old animated Disney princess film.
Erik tells him so.
Charles swats him with his wing.