Brief Lives (18/?)
Title: Brief Lives (18/?)
Author: monstrousreg
Word count: 3788
Warnings: Erik being irritable and Fraser being... Fraser.
Pairing: Erik/Charles.
Summary: Erik thinks he's going to seduce, interrogate and murder some nondescript CIA intelligence agent, and winds up biting more than he can chew. Charles is not keen on being murdered, he doesn't favor interrogations, and he's certainly not willing to be seduced. That he's not cooperating is midly put.
Notes: Unbetaed, and stuff.
Guys, I'm so sorry this took so long. My brain turned off for like a week. I'm working on editing a novel I wrote and I went to a publishing conference, and I've done... nothing the whole week. I didn;t even work this week. Eh. I don't know. This chapter feels a little off, to be honest.
They’re released from the hospital the same day-Charles has insisted in staying although his own recovery was much quicker than Erik’s. As Charles helps Erik gently into the car, Fraser comes trotting down the steps, a lopsided smile adorning his handsome features.
“Ready to go home, children?”
Fraser is bizarre pile of completely incongruous characteristics that make it nearly impossible to form an informed opinion of him. Perhaps a quickly cluster of characteristics might best describe him:
He’s a genius, frank and honest, with the uncanny ability to wield truth as a weapon. An irrepressible flirt that at the age of thirty-five has been married three times and divorced twice. He likes to read out loud but gets bored if he reads on his own. He has a tattoo of an eagle on his right shoulder shoulder-blade that he argues has nothing to do with the USA, thank you very much. His father, whom he refers to as Fraser Senior, survived through D Day only to be shot down in Holland. Fraser has three brothers, all older than him, and two half-siblings from his mother’s second marriage, both of which he finds to be worthless and stupid-despite the fact that one of them is at Yale and the other at Harvard. This he justifies with a cheery, frank admission that he’s a ‘prejudiced little shit’.
And because Charles, apparently, has never heard of the term ‘overkill’, Fraser is not only argumentative and commanding, but also an anarchist and a Catholic. This is the man Charles begged to come all the way from Oxford to tend to Erik’s arms.
Fraser also knows about mutants, and embraces the knowledge with the same ease with which he deals with broken bones. The way Erik finds out about this is that just as Fraser is removing the stitches from Charles’ forehead, dropping the dark thread into a metal container filled with alcohol, Sean bursts into the room so abruptly that the doctor startles, hits the tray with his elbow and sends the scalpel flying.
Erik catches it a centimeter before it stabs the Texan in the thigh.
Fraser blinks at it, and just as Erik is beginning to feel a wave of heat rise up his neck and cheeks, he plucks it from the air and twirls it expertly in his fingers, with an absent-minded ‘thanks, darling’ falling off his lips.
Fraser doesn’t actually work in the Westchester County Hospital, he’s a researcher in Oxford; he’s here in the States as a personal favor to Charles. So what doubles as his office at the moment is actually the office of an oncologist that’s gone on vacation, a wide, open space filled to the brim with bookcases full of medical text books.
Erik has been to the office several times in the last two weeks, and has learned that Fraser gets singularly irritated if he puts his boots up on the desk. Naturally, he’s taken to doing it often. As a result, Fraser has taken the habit of kicking his chair. He didn’t even feel bad when Erik actually fell and cracked his head on the linoleum of the floor.
“Serves you right,” he’d said, even as he bent down and helped him up.
They get along as well as two abrasive people might get on, considering they dislike each other deeply.
“Have they begged you to stay and consult with them yet?” Charles teases, smiling.
“Several times,” Fraser replies, grinning. “But I told them that I’m a taken man, and why-I couldn’t live if I didn’t have Erik to tell me to go fuck myself in German at least once a day.”
“I’ll be happy to fix that for you. All it takes is a knife and your skull.”
“I love you too, darlin’.”
Charles laughs quietly, closing Erik’s door and rounding the car to enter from the other side. Fraser buckles himself comfortably in the passenger seat, giving Logan a wide, true smile before slipping on his sunglasses.
The drive from the hospital to Xavier Hall takes an hour and a half in the big Bentley. Fraser turns the radio on and rolls down his window, singing along the songs with a clear, melodic Southern voice that curls around the consonants like a playful snake. Erik has to admit the man can sing, that it’s another one of the myriad little things that make him Michael Fraser and not Some Human. Just like the fact that he likes his coffee with cream but no sugar, that he can quote Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ without hesitation, and that he only understand German if you speak it very slowly and throw in a lot of curse words, which he’s ridiculously familiar with.
He’s a good man, Charles says fondly, hand light and companionable on Erik’s left thigh.
Doesn’t his Church state that you and I will burn in a pit of fire for all eternity because of committing sodomy?
We haven’t exactly committed anything yet, Charles retorts. And Judaism isn’t precisely keen on homosexuality, either.
That’s true enough-in fact, acts of homosexuality are expressly forbidden in the Torah. Erik drops the subject, aware that a religious debate is really not in the order of the day-he’s fairly certain the children at Xavier Hall are desperate to see Charles-both of us, Erik, not only me-and he’d rather be able to greet them without a permanent frown.
Just as he’d predicted, the reunion is tiring. The children fawn and dote, fascinated in the newfound ability to hug and tug as Charles hands, cling at his arms and demand to be picked up. Erik’s bandaged arms prevented him from getting such attention, but that doesn’t stop the younger children from tugging as his trousers and looking up at him the with wide, bright eyes of the happy innocents.
The older students offer only a few pats to the back and wary smiles. Erik is a taciturn man, and the children are unsure as to how offers of affection might be received. Erik nods at them, polite but distant.
The manor is slightly worse for wear-though it is slowly recovering with much work, it still shows the scars of Erik’s panic. Nearly all the windows are still broken. The first order of business in the repairs had been replacing pipes and fixing walls. In the hot summer days and nights, the windows can yet be spared. In exchange for the lack of privacy, the house now presents a fresh, clean atmosphere cleared of the scents of old wood and expensive rugs.
Charles introduces Fraser to the students, and when they naturally enquire as to his gift, Fraser cheerily replies: “Southern charm, plenty of smart, and a mean right arm-raise hands, who here likes football? I like you already, come here and stay close to me.”
Erik arrives to his room only to discover that his things have been moved to Charles’. Ororo, sitting cross-legged on his bed, blinks at him. When he questions this decision, made without his knowledge or permission, the girl hops off the bed and comes closer.
“Erik, you can’t use either of your arms,” she says gently. “You need someone to help you. You were going to end up moving in with him anyway.”
“I also need my own space,” he retorts, exhaling harshly through his nose.
“This place is still your room,” Ororo shrugs. “No one’s going to move in here. You can still come here when you want to be alone. But it made sense to move your stuff to where Charles could help you use them.”
“It shouldn’t be him,” Erik says absently. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go-he’s not my caretaker, my nurse.”
“He doesn’t mind,” Ororo smiles. Then she fishes in her pocket and pulls up something, showing it to Erik as it sits in the middle of her palm.
The coin. Erik feels the urge to snatch it up, take it as far away from Ororo as possible, make her wash her hand very thoroughly. Instead of doing any of those things, though, he gives the girl an even, steady look.
“Throw it to the lake.”
Ororo blinks, but doesn’t ask or comment. Erik appreciates her willingness to comply with his unexplained, seemingly irrational requests, and bends down to press a swift kiss to the top of her head.
He can’t help himself, though, “And wash your hands.”
Dinner is an eventful affair.
“You think I won’t tie that to your torso,” Michael says when Erik makes to grab a fork. “But you’re wrong.”
“How am I supposed to eat, then?” Erik says through gritted teeth. “You’re the one that insists I have three meals a day.”
“Have I told you lately that you’re intolerable? And seriously, not to leer or anything, but you look much better with, you know, flesh on those bones. Why, I’m almost not scared of losing an eye to one of your cheekbones anymore.”
“Mikey,” Charles warns, giving his friend a cutting look. “You’re not helping.”
“Well, case in point I am. But fine, I see your point. Here,” and he grabs Erik’s plate and quickly cuts the food in small pieces. “You can use the fork or the spoon, but you’re right handed for the knife, so that will have to wait a while, yet.”
Charles’ long-range telepathy continues to elude him.
“It’s strange,” Charles says one evening as they’re in bed together. “Not-not maddening, but… disorienting. I feel lost. It’s as-as losing your eyesight. You can work without it, certainly you’ll live, but you’d feel-less.”
“You’re not, though,” Erik murmurs into his hair. “You’re not less. You’re still Charles.”
“Being a telepath is part of being who I am,” Charles sighs. “I don’t know that I can…” he trails off, words proving insufficient for the feelings he attempts to express. Erik’s truly never been stripped of his gift before, so he doesn’t pretend to understand.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says instead.
“I don’t know. It feels-like I said, it’s strange. I thought I’d be happy when my gift was snuffed out and I could live alone in my head, but as it turns out it’s a rather lonely place.”
Charles sighs, pulls himself up to a sitting position and pushes back his hair. With both his hands wrapped and immobilized, Erik can’t touch him nearly as much as he wants to-but for all of the differences they have, Erik knows Fraser is a brilliant medic, and he’s willing to comply to his demands. Charles rests the palm of his hand on the middle of Erik’s chest, casually comfortable with their closeness.
Fraser’s been teeth-grindingly honest on his recommendations about how to manage a steadily growing physical relation at the moment:
“Do what you want with your ass, but you move that arm and I keep you sedated until Kingdom come. And Charles, don’t think I’ve forgotten all about your cranial trauma. Anal sex is fun until someone passes out or rips a stitch, and then I can tell you, the conversation the three of us are gonna have will be fun for no one.”
“What an open minded little altar boy you are,” Erik had snarled.
“Curiously enough I don’t spend much time thinking about what you do with your rectum. I went through my rounds in college, you know, I can make a probe.”
Now Charles rubs his forehead, dispelling Erik’s stray thoughts of the insane medic with a tired gesture of his hand.
“I’m scared I-I might have done something to myself.”
Erik frowns, “What do you mean? When?”
Charles fidgets nervously with the drawstring of Erik’s pants, swallowing.
“I might’ve-I think I hurt myself. When we-when we killed Shaw, you’ll remember. I’d have… what I was doing, I didn’t know exactly how to control it, I only knew Francis could do it so surely as could I, since I am so much more powerful than he ever was. I knew how to immobilize Shaw, but I couldn’t-I wouldn’t have lasted long. And I couldn’t disconnect sensations from him, as I had done with your arms, because the coin was going directly through his brain tissue. So he-there was a lot of pain.”
Erik attempts to take this all in, in a context in which he finds some interest other than the underlying satisfaction of having murdered their tormentor in a painful, horrifying way.
“Yes,” he says at length, unsure. “He did scream.”
Charles nods distractedly, “It felt fair to let him.”
“Fair? Why would you concern yourself with-“
“Erik,” Charles interrupts, looking down at him with wide, guileless blue eyes, and there’s a frown to his brows and a twist to his lips that speaks of fear and uncertainty, and the suspicion that he’s done something wrong. “I had to keep him still for you, I had to stop him. But I didn’t-I couldn’t stop his pain, do you see?”
Erik doesn’t.
And then, all of a sudden, in a white-hot streak of horror, he does.
“You felt it,” he says breathlessly. “You felt the coin-you felt him die?”
Charles nods vaguely, as if it’s not the horror of it the fact itself that worries him at all-which is disturbing-but rather something else immediately associated it to that.
“And then… and then it was gone. The telepathy. It was just… off. I don’t know. I think I might have broken something.”
He looks down at Erik, unhappy and lost like a boy. This is one of the countless times Erik is reminded that Charles is four years younger than him, and it’s really not that much of an age difference-except, sometimes, it is.
You didn’t break anything, he sends gently through the bond. The gift is still right here. You’ve just blocked it, somehow. We’ll figure it out.
Charles nods, but he still looks uncertain and lost. When Erik urges him to, he settles down and hides his face in Erik’s neck, like that will shelter him from whatever went wrong in his mind the moment a coin when through it.
Erik takes a deep breath, and consciously wills himself to relax until he starts feeling drowsy. They have some time yet-Moira is monitoring the CIA’s communications to be aware of everything that happens concerning Charles and the school, and she says they’re not prepared to make a move.
So they have some time. In the morning, they’ll sit Fraser down and tell him the entire truth about what happened with Shaw-something Charles has been insisting on and Erik has been steadily refusing. Fraser has a degree in psychology (when questioned his explanation basically amounts to ‘I was bored, the classes were open, whatever’) and might be able to be of assistance.
The next morning as Charles immerses himself into one of his classes, Erik goes down to the lawn where Fraser is with Hank and Azazel, gesturing animatedly between Hank’s legs and his own. Azazel looks genuinely puzzled, tail swishing absently.
“…admittedly scrawny thighs, because I’m a slob, but that’s beside the point. You say you’re like a gorilla, but you’re more leonine to me, frankly, and you do have feline characteristics, like reflexes and reactions. Your reflexes are almost as fast as Azazel’s, and he’s the fastest-not counting Quicksilver, obviously.”
“Hm,” Azazel makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. “You think he’s not done manifesting, yes?”
Fraser rubs his bottom lip, “No, I doubt it. The bone structure in your legs keeps changing, slowly, Hank.”
Hank looks away, irritated.
Fraser gives Azazel a pointed look. The red-skinned mutant shrugs, unsure as to what he can do to help, but he offers Hank a hand in good will.
“Let’s go for a walk, comrade,” he says, and when Hank takes the outstretched hand, they disappear in a cloud of sulfur.
The doctor rubs his eyes tiredly, shoulders tense. Erik stands at his side, looking at him critically.
“You think Azazel might help Hank be more comfortable with himself?”
“He’s admirably self-assured,” Fraser shrugs. “And quite a bit older. He might be the only one around that actually understands what’ in Hank’s head, so… yeah, maybe. He’s no good with kids, though, so the good Lord knows what’ll come of it. How’re your arms? Any pain?”
“I’m alright,” Erik answers. “We need to do something about Charles’ telepathy. He’s scared he might have broken something inside his head.”
Fraser snorts inelegantly. “Probably just a loose part. Sure, I’ll help if you think I can.”
Erik thinks of saying Fraser hasn’t seem to care much about what Erik thinks of him so far, but instead he finds himself staring at the faint, almost-faded burn marks on the back of Fraser’s right hand. The pyrokinetic boy had lost control of his ability momentarily and nearly set fire to the kitchen-Fraser and Charles had had to put the fire out with rags. It had been Fraser that had sat the boy down and insisted he was perfectly fine, though his skin had raised in blisters immediately. A kindness to a boy scared of his own shadow.
“Not all humans are like you,” he says instead.
Fraser gives him a calm, clear look. “True. I’m sweeter than honey.”
Erik grits his teeth, “Stop that.”
“You want a serious conversation, Erik? Fine. No, not all humans are going to be accepting and embrace the mutants like I have. But not all of them are going to be Hitler, either. I understand you’ve been hurt and one bitten twice shy, but boy-you can’t go through life looking over your shoulder forever.”
“It’s easy for you,” Erik says quietly. “No major tragedies in your easy life, Fraser. It’s easy to trust when you’ve never been betrayed.”
“You’re right. I’ve had an easy life. I wasn’t singled out and slaughtered because of my belief, I wasn’t dissected like a frog on a school-day because of a genetic accident, I’m not special and different because of my sexual inclinations. I know you can’t help but resent me for it and I forgive you that. But I know you wouldn’t have wanted me to have to go through that, either. It wouldn’t make you happier if I had suffered like you have. You’re not that kind of man.”
“How do you know what I am?” Erik challenges.
“I know you’re an intolerant, impatient little shit, and if I hadn’t seen you around the children I would diagnose an acute sociopathic episode with violent outbursts. But I have, and Charlie loves you, so there must be some good in you.” Fraser shrugs. “There’re layers to everyone. We’re different men, because we’ve had different lives. I’ve seen your body, Erik, and it tells me everything you won’t say. That doesn’t mean I know what you went through, or what kind of waste it lay in that head of yours. That’s just skin and flesh-well, a little flesh, you still need to gain weight.”
He takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment, sliding his hands in his pockets.
“I knew you were Jewish and a mutant when I took a plane from Oxford to New York City, then a bus to Westchester County, rented a hotel room to drop off my stuff and then in the same day spent six hours on my feet squinting down at the inner structure of your arm. I did my absolute best to make sure you get to move those fingers again. On my own time, might I add, since no one’s paying me to be here. I’m not saying you owe me anything, because I didn’t for it for you, I did it for Charlie. I’m telling you this because I wonder if you’d do the same for some random, anonymous human, Erik.”
Erik considers that. The immediate, easiest answer is absolutely not. But nothing’s that easy any more.
“I would, for Charles. I think. I don’t-maybe. But not on my own. No.”
Fraser smiles without humor, “At least you’re honest about it.”
“Poor comfort.”
“Yes.”
The doctor sighs, “We’re men entirely of our own creation, Erik.”
Impulsively, savagely, Erik says, “Charles and I murdered the man that tortured us. Charles held him back and I put a piece of metal through his brain.”
He doesn’t know what makes him say the words. Maybe Fraser is wrong, and Erik does want him to suffer through some of what Charles and him have been put through. Fraser is convinced there’s good in Erik, but he’s very probably wrong. He feels some measure of dark satisfaction and Fraser’s paling face, but it’s short lived and empty. There’s a long moment of silence, stretched out in the garden like the sweet summer breeze.
“Well,” Fraser says finally, rubbing the pad of his right thumb between his eyebrows. “that takes the cake.”
Erik feels the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.
“Second time in my life I met Charlie?” Fraser starts conversationally. “Knock on my door, three am sharp. I open the door and there he stands, bleeding from a head wound deep enough I could see skull. He says, ‘I just killed the man that helped someone rape me, and I know it’s late, but I think this is rather a bad wound and I need help and I know I can trust you’.”
He turns around, pats Erik’s stomach in a friendly manner with his knuckles and starts walking away-only to stop and turn back a second later, and look up at Erik’s face seriously.
“Jewish, mutant, homosexual, intolerable hypocrite and a murderer. I still get up and sit at your side at the breakfast every morning, Erik. I don’t delude myself into thinking I’m the average, but Erik-make an effort. If I exist, then others out there that think like me exist as well. Not only my mother and cousins, either. Other people. Unrelated. That will look at you and think, ‘nice hipbones, poked anyone’s eye out today?’ and not ‘jew’. But not if your first reaction to seeing a human is putting a bullet through them.”
Fraser reaches over and, very pointedly, gently, puts his hand in Erik’s shoulder. Fraser is a tactile kind of man, as doctors are inclined to be, but there’s never any harshness to his touch; he only ever means to comfort, soothe, heal. Erik doesn’t-loathe it. Doesn’t loathe him.
“I see you and I see a man and an equal, Erik. Don’t you think you owe me that at least?” He grins, stepping away. “Food for thought.”
Chapter 19(I don't know why it won't let me link, so here, it's ugly, sorry) http://monstrousreg.livejournal.com/10742.html#cutid1
Author: monstrousreg
Word count: 3788
Warnings: Erik being irritable and Fraser being... Fraser.
Pairing: Erik/Charles.
Summary: Erik thinks he's going to seduce, interrogate and murder some nondescript CIA intelligence agent, and winds up biting more than he can chew. Charles is not keen on being murdered, he doesn't favor interrogations, and he's certainly not willing to be seduced. That he's not cooperating is midly put.
Notes: Unbetaed, and stuff.
Guys, I'm so sorry this took so long. My brain turned off for like a week. I'm working on editing a novel I wrote and I went to a publishing conference, and I've done... nothing the whole week. I didn;t even work this week. Eh. I don't know. This chapter feels a little off, to be honest.
They’re released from the hospital the same day-Charles has insisted in staying although his own recovery was much quicker than Erik’s. As Charles helps Erik gently into the car, Fraser comes trotting down the steps, a lopsided smile adorning his handsome features.
“Ready to go home, children?”
Fraser is bizarre pile of completely incongruous characteristics that make it nearly impossible to form an informed opinion of him. Perhaps a quickly cluster of characteristics might best describe him:
He’s a genius, frank and honest, with the uncanny ability to wield truth as a weapon. An irrepressible flirt that at the age of thirty-five has been married three times and divorced twice. He likes to read out loud but gets bored if he reads on his own. He has a tattoo of an eagle on his right shoulder shoulder-blade that he argues has nothing to do with the USA, thank you very much. His father, whom he refers to as Fraser Senior, survived through D Day only to be shot down in Holland. Fraser has three brothers, all older than him, and two half-siblings from his mother’s second marriage, both of which he finds to be worthless and stupid-despite the fact that one of them is at Yale and the other at Harvard. This he justifies with a cheery, frank admission that he’s a ‘prejudiced little shit’.
And because Charles, apparently, has never heard of the term ‘overkill’, Fraser is not only argumentative and commanding, but also an anarchist and a Catholic. This is the man Charles begged to come all the way from Oxford to tend to Erik’s arms.
Fraser also knows about mutants, and embraces the knowledge with the same ease with which he deals with broken bones. The way Erik finds out about this is that just as Fraser is removing the stitches from Charles’ forehead, dropping the dark thread into a metal container filled with alcohol, Sean bursts into the room so abruptly that the doctor startles, hits the tray with his elbow and sends the scalpel flying.
Erik catches it a centimeter before it stabs the Texan in the thigh.
Fraser blinks at it, and just as Erik is beginning to feel a wave of heat rise up his neck and cheeks, he plucks it from the air and twirls it expertly in his fingers, with an absent-minded ‘thanks, darling’ falling off his lips.
Fraser doesn’t actually work in the Westchester County Hospital, he’s a researcher in Oxford; he’s here in the States as a personal favor to Charles. So what doubles as his office at the moment is actually the office of an oncologist that’s gone on vacation, a wide, open space filled to the brim with bookcases full of medical text books.
Erik has been to the office several times in the last two weeks, and has learned that Fraser gets singularly irritated if he puts his boots up on the desk. Naturally, he’s taken to doing it often. As a result, Fraser has taken the habit of kicking his chair. He didn’t even feel bad when Erik actually fell and cracked his head on the linoleum of the floor.
“Serves you right,” he’d said, even as he bent down and helped him up.
They get along as well as two abrasive people might get on, considering they dislike each other deeply.
“Have they begged you to stay and consult with them yet?” Charles teases, smiling.
“Several times,” Fraser replies, grinning. “But I told them that I’m a taken man, and why-I couldn’t live if I didn’t have Erik to tell me to go fuck myself in German at least once a day.”
“I’ll be happy to fix that for you. All it takes is a knife and your skull.”
“I love you too, darlin’.”
Charles laughs quietly, closing Erik’s door and rounding the car to enter from the other side. Fraser buckles himself comfortably in the passenger seat, giving Logan a wide, true smile before slipping on his sunglasses.
The drive from the hospital to Xavier Hall takes an hour and a half in the big Bentley. Fraser turns the radio on and rolls down his window, singing along the songs with a clear, melodic Southern voice that curls around the consonants like a playful snake. Erik has to admit the man can sing, that it’s another one of the myriad little things that make him Michael Fraser and not Some Human. Just like the fact that he likes his coffee with cream but no sugar, that he can quote Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ without hesitation, and that he only understand German if you speak it very slowly and throw in a lot of curse words, which he’s ridiculously familiar with.
He’s a good man, Charles says fondly, hand light and companionable on Erik’s left thigh.
Doesn’t his Church state that you and I will burn in a pit of fire for all eternity because of committing sodomy?
We haven’t exactly committed anything yet, Charles retorts. And Judaism isn’t precisely keen on homosexuality, either.
That’s true enough-in fact, acts of homosexuality are expressly forbidden in the Torah. Erik drops the subject, aware that a religious debate is really not in the order of the day-he’s fairly certain the children at Xavier Hall are desperate to see Charles-both of us, Erik, not only me-and he’d rather be able to greet them without a permanent frown.
Just as he’d predicted, the reunion is tiring. The children fawn and dote, fascinated in the newfound ability to hug and tug as Charles hands, cling at his arms and demand to be picked up. Erik’s bandaged arms prevented him from getting such attention, but that doesn’t stop the younger children from tugging as his trousers and looking up at him the with wide, bright eyes of the happy innocents.
The older students offer only a few pats to the back and wary smiles. Erik is a taciturn man, and the children are unsure as to how offers of affection might be received. Erik nods at them, polite but distant.
The manor is slightly worse for wear-though it is slowly recovering with much work, it still shows the scars of Erik’s panic. Nearly all the windows are still broken. The first order of business in the repairs had been replacing pipes and fixing walls. In the hot summer days and nights, the windows can yet be spared. In exchange for the lack of privacy, the house now presents a fresh, clean atmosphere cleared of the scents of old wood and expensive rugs.
Charles introduces Fraser to the students, and when they naturally enquire as to his gift, Fraser cheerily replies: “Southern charm, plenty of smart, and a mean right arm-raise hands, who here likes football? I like you already, come here and stay close to me.”
Erik arrives to his room only to discover that his things have been moved to Charles’. Ororo, sitting cross-legged on his bed, blinks at him. When he questions this decision, made without his knowledge or permission, the girl hops off the bed and comes closer.
“Erik, you can’t use either of your arms,” she says gently. “You need someone to help you. You were going to end up moving in with him anyway.”
“I also need my own space,” he retorts, exhaling harshly through his nose.
“This place is still your room,” Ororo shrugs. “No one’s going to move in here. You can still come here when you want to be alone. But it made sense to move your stuff to where Charles could help you use them.”
“It shouldn’t be him,” Erik says absently. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go-he’s not my caretaker, my nurse.”
“He doesn’t mind,” Ororo smiles. Then she fishes in her pocket and pulls up something, showing it to Erik as it sits in the middle of her palm.
The coin. Erik feels the urge to snatch it up, take it as far away from Ororo as possible, make her wash her hand very thoroughly. Instead of doing any of those things, though, he gives the girl an even, steady look.
“Throw it to the lake.”
Ororo blinks, but doesn’t ask or comment. Erik appreciates her willingness to comply with his unexplained, seemingly irrational requests, and bends down to press a swift kiss to the top of her head.
He can’t help himself, though, “And wash your hands.”
Dinner is an eventful affair.
“You think I won’t tie that to your torso,” Michael says when Erik makes to grab a fork. “But you’re wrong.”
“How am I supposed to eat, then?” Erik says through gritted teeth. “You’re the one that insists I have three meals a day.”
“Have I told you lately that you’re intolerable? And seriously, not to leer or anything, but you look much better with, you know, flesh on those bones. Why, I’m almost not scared of losing an eye to one of your cheekbones anymore.”
“Mikey,” Charles warns, giving his friend a cutting look. “You’re not helping.”
“Well, case in point I am. But fine, I see your point. Here,” and he grabs Erik’s plate and quickly cuts the food in small pieces. “You can use the fork or the spoon, but you’re right handed for the knife, so that will have to wait a while, yet.”
Charles’ long-range telepathy continues to elude him.
“It’s strange,” Charles says one evening as they’re in bed together. “Not-not maddening, but… disorienting. I feel lost. It’s as-as losing your eyesight. You can work without it, certainly you’ll live, but you’d feel-less.”
“You’re not, though,” Erik murmurs into his hair. “You’re not less. You’re still Charles.”
“Being a telepath is part of being who I am,” Charles sighs. “I don’t know that I can…” he trails off, words proving insufficient for the feelings he attempts to express. Erik’s truly never been stripped of his gift before, so he doesn’t pretend to understand.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says instead.
“I don’t know. It feels-like I said, it’s strange. I thought I’d be happy when my gift was snuffed out and I could live alone in my head, but as it turns out it’s a rather lonely place.”
Charles sighs, pulls himself up to a sitting position and pushes back his hair. With both his hands wrapped and immobilized, Erik can’t touch him nearly as much as he wants to-but for all of the differences they have, Erik knows Fraser is a brilliant medic, and he’s willing to comply to his demands. Charles rests the palm of his hand on the middle of Erik’s chest, casually comfortable with their closeness.
Fraser’s been teeth-grindingly honest on his recommendations about how to manage a steadily growing physical relation at the moment:
“Do what you want with your ass, but you move that arm and I keep you sedated until Kingdom come. And Charles, don’t think I’ve forgotten all about your cranial trauma. Anal sex is fun until someone passes out or rips a stitch, and then I can tell you, the conversation the three of us are gonna have will be fun for no one.”
“What an open minded little altar boy you are,” Erik had snarled.
“Curiously enough I don’t spend much time thinking about what you do with your rectum. I went through my rounds in college, you know, I can make a probe.”
Now Charles rubs his forehead, dispelling Erik’s stray thoughts of the insane medic with a tired gesture of his hand.
“I’m scared I-I might have done something to myself.”
Erik frowns, “What do you mean? When?”
Charles fidgets nervously with the drawstring of Erik’s pants, swallowing.
“I might’ve-I think I hurt myself. When we-when we killed Shaw, you’ll remember. I’d have… what I was doing, I didn’t know exactly how to control it, I only knew Francis could do it so surely as could I, since I am so much more powerful than he ever was. I knew how to immobilize Shaw, but I couldn’t-I wouldn’t have lasted long. And I couldn’t disconnect sensations from him, as I had done with your arms, because the coin was going directly through his brain tissue. So he-there was a lot of pain.”
Erik attempts to take this all in, in a context in which he finds some interest other than the underlying satisfaction of having murdered their tormentor in a painful, horrifying way.
“Yes,” he says at length, unsure. “He did scream.”
Charles nods distractedly, “It felt fair to let him.”
“Fair? Why would you concern yourself with-“
“Erik,” Charles interrupts, looking down at him with wide, guileless blue eyes, and there’s a frown to his brows and a twist to his lips that speaks of fear and uncertainty, and the suspicion that he’s done something wrong. “I had to keep him still for you, I had to stop him. But I didn’t-I couldn’t stop his pain, do you see?”
Erik doesn’t.
And then, all of a sudden, in a white-hot streak of horror, he does.
“You felt it,” he says breathlessly. “You felt the coin-you felt him die?”
Charles nods vaguely, as if it’s not the horror of it the fact itself that worries him at all-which is disturbing-but rather something else immediately associated it to that.
“And then… and then it was gone. The telepathy. It was just… off. I don’t know. I think I might have broken something.”
He looks down at Erik, unhappy and lost like a boy. This is one of the countless times Erik is reminded that Charles is four years younger than him, and it’s really not that much of an age difference-except, sometimes, it is.
You didn’t break anything, he sends gently through the bond. The gift is still right here. You’ve just blocked it, somehow. We’ll figure it out.
Charles nods, but he still looks uncertain and lost. When Erik urges him to, he settles down and hides his face in Erik’s neck, like that will shelter him from whatever went wrong in his mind the moment a coin when through it.
Erik takes a deep breath, and consciously wills himself to relax until he starts feeling drowsy. They have some time yet-Moira is monitoring the CIA’s communications to be aware of everything that happens concerning Charles and the school, and she says they’re not prepared to make a move.
So they have some time. In the morning, they’ll sit Fraser down and tell him the entire truth about what happened with Shaw-something Charles has been insisting on and Erik has been steadily refusing. Fraser has a degree in psychology (when questioned his explanation basically amounts to ‘I was bored, the classes were open, whatever’) and might be able to be of assistance.
The next morning as Charles immerses himself into one of his classes, Erik goes down to the lawn where Fraser is with Hank and Azazel, gesturing animatedly between Hank’s legs and his own. Azazel looks genuinely puzzled, tail swishing absently.
“…admittedly scrawny thighs, because I’m a slob, but that’s beside the point. You say you’re like a gorilla, but you’re more leonine to me, frankly, and you do have feline characteristics, like reflexes and reactions. Your reflexes are almost as fast as Azazel’s, and he’s the fastest-not counting Quicksilver, obviously.”
“Hm,” Azazel makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. “You think he’s not done manifesting, yes?”
Fraser rubs his bottom lip, “No, I doubt it. The bone structure in your legs keeps changing, slowly, Hank.”
Hank looks away, irritated.
Fraser gives Azazel a pointed look. The red-skinned mutant shrugs, unsure as to what he can do to help, but he offers Hank a hand in good will.
“Let’s go for a walk, comrade,” he says, and when Hank takes the outstretched hand, they disappear in a cloud of sulfur.
The doctor rubs his eyes tiredly, shoulders tense. Erik stands at his side, looking at him critically.
“You think Azazel might help Hank be more comfortable with himself?”
“He’s admirably self-assured,” Fraser shrugs. “And quite a bit older. He might be the only one around that actually understands what’ in Hank’s head, so… yeah, maybe. He’s no good with kids, though, so the good Lord knows what’ll come of it. How’re your arms? Any pain?”
“I’m alright,” Erik answers. “We need to do something about Charles’ telepathy. He’s scared he might have broken something inside his head.”
Fraser snorts inelegantly. “Probably just a loose part. Sure, I’ll help if you think I can.”
Erik thinks of saying Fraser hasn’t seem to care much about what Erik thinks of him so far, but instead he finds himself staring at the faint, almost-faded burn marks on the back of Fraser’s right hand. The pyrokinetic boy had lost control of his ability momentarily and nearly set fire to the kitchen-Fraser and Charles had had to put the fire out with rags. It had been Fraser that had sat the boy down and insisted he was perfectly fine, though his skin had raised in blisters immediately. A kindness to a boy scared of his own shadow.
“Not all humans are like you,” he says instead.
Fraser gives him a calm, clear look. “True. I’m sweeter than honey.”
Erik grits his teeth, “Stop that.”
“You want a serious conversation, Erik? Fine. No, not all humans are going to be accepting and embrace the mutants like I have. But not all of them are going to be Hitler, either. I understand you’ve been hurt and one bitten twice shy, but boy-you can’t go through life looking over your shoulder forever.”
“It’s easy for you,” Erik says quietly. “No major tragedies in your easy life, Fraser. It’s easy to trust when you’ve never been betrayed.”
“You’re right. I’ve had an easy life. I wasn’t singled out and slaughtered because of my belief, I wasn’t dissected like a frog on a school-day because of a genetic accident, I’m not special and different because of my sexual inclinations. I know you can’t help but resent me for it and I forgive you that. But I know you wouldn’t have wanted me to have to go through that, either. It wouldn’t make you happier if I had suffered like you have. You’re not that kind of man.”
“How do you know what I am?” Erik challenges.
“I know you’re an intolerant, impatient little shit, and if I hadn’t seen you around the children I would diagnose an acute sociopathic episode with violent outbursts. But I have, and Charlie loves you, so there must be some good in you.” Fraser shrugs. “There’re layers to everyone. We’re different men, because we’ve had different lives. I’ve seen your body, Erik, and it tells me everything you won’t say. That doesn’t mean I know what you went through, or what kind of waste it lay in that head of yours. That’s just skin and flesh-well, a little flesh, you still need to gain weight.”
He takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment, sliding his hands in his pockets.
“I knew you were Jewish and a mutant when I took a plane from Oxford to New York City, then a bus to Westchester County, rented a hotel room to drop off my stuff and then in the same day spent six hours on my feet squinting down at the inner structure of your arm. I did my absolute best to make sure you get to move those fingers again. On my own time, might I add, since no one’s paying me to be here. I’m not saying you owe me anything, because I didn’t for it for you, I did it for Charlie. I’m telling you this because I wonder if you’d do the same for some random, anonymous human, Erik.”
Erik considers that. The immediate, easiest answer is absolutely not. But nothing’s that easy any more.
“I would, for Charles. I think. I don’t-maybe. But not on my own. No.”
Fraser smiles without humor, “At least you’re honest about it.”
“Poor comfort.”
“Yes.”
The doctor sighs, “We’re men entirely of our own creation, Erik.”
Impulsively, savagely, Erik says, “Charles and I murdered the man that tortured us. Charles held him back and I put a piece of metal through his brain.”
He doesn’t know what makes him say the words. Maybe Fraser is wrong, and Erik does want him to suffer through some of what Charles and him have been put through. Fraser is convinced there’s good in Erik, but he’s very probably wrong. He feels some measure of dark satisfaction and Fraser’s paling face, but it’s short lived and empty. There’s a long moment of silence, stretched out in the garden like the sweet summer breeze.
“Well,” Fraser says finally, rubbing the pad of his right thumb between his eyebrows. “that takes the cake.”
Erik feels the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.
“Second time in my life I met Charlie?” Fraser starts conversationally. “Knock on my door, three am sharp. I open the door and there he stands, bleeding from a head wound deep enough I could see skull. He says, ‘I just killed the man that helped someone rape me, and I know it’s late, but I think this is rather a bad wound and I need help and I know I can trust you’.”
He turns around, pats Erik’s stomach in a friendly manner with his knuckles and starts walking away-only to stop and turn back a second later, and look up at Erik’s face seriously.
“Jewish, mutant, homosexual, intolerable hypocrite and a murderer. I still get up and sit at your side at the breakfast every morning, Erik. I don’t delude myself into thinking I’m the average, but Erik-make an effort. If I exist, then others out there that think like me exist as well. Not only my mother and cousins, either. Other people. Unrelated. That will look at you and think, ‘nice hipbones, poked anyone’s eye out today?’ and not ‘jew’. But not if your first reaction to seeing a human is putting a bullet through them.”
Fraser reaches over and, very pointedly, gently, puts his hand in Erik’s shoulder. Fraser is a tactile kind of man, as doctors are inclined to be, but there’s never any harshness to his touch; he only ever means to comfort, soothe, heal. Erik doesn’t-loathe it. Doesn’t loathe him.
“I see you and I see a man and an equal, Erik. Don’t you think you owe me that at least?” He grins, stepping away. “Food for thought.”
Chapter 19(I don't know why it won't let me link, so here, it's ugly, sorry) http://monstrousreg.livejournal.com/10742.html#cutid1