Erik laughs, and it is a merciless sound not like sobbing but a perfectly placed blow to the chest. He draws Charles' sweater (jumper, he would say, a thing that strikes Erik ludicrously in the moment) into fistfuls at the upper arms and permits his touch like he can do nothing else, breathing through his nose with open mouth. "I need--"
He stops, then, and shudders, wiping a thumb under one of Charles' eyes when his tears spill over; the gesture lacks none of his usual precision. "I don't have anyone else to ask," he goes on, flatly, and it's a sentence that would make no sense without the context behind it: Erik thinks the fact that Charles loves him (he believes, with all of his scarred heart) makes him blind. "Tell me--give me honesty, if nothing else give me that. What am I capable of, Charles?"