some x-men type shortfic
Inspired by the infamous deleted scene:
Erik tests the stem of the glass between his fingers, and watches Charles work.
Work- this being Charles- is a smile and a lazy salute and a sudden change in the quality of the air, a humid awareness of unawareness: of those invisible worlds that exist behind other people’s eyes. Puzzling out what trick Charles has picked to play on their latest recruit has become a kind of hobby. Erik thinks it’s a kind of hobby, anyway; he has little experience with the concept.
The first time, Charles stopped the woman in place, froze her where she was, bent over a cabinet of her mother’s china, her hair fallen long and pale over the side of her face. Erik could have said something. He said nothing. Charles was evidently not the kind of man who appreciated being taught, and Erik was curious to see whether he was the kind of man who could learn.
He was. In the next mutant’s home, Charles contented with himself with projecting the answers to their target’s urgent questions, and Erik sipped his tea in silence, and while the doctor still refused them, his china teacup didn’t explode once, which he was at that time prepared to count as a victory- if only for the rueful glance Charles shot him when he thought as much.
It’s been a week since then. He is getting tired of such small triumphs. But Charles takes a quiet breath, and Erik holds his peace.
There is a fragile moment in which the sleek red of the room seems to pulse, the sheen of light on satin rippling like light on naked steel. The girl stares at them- at him, Erik knows, with strange certainty- her face a mask. She begins to laugh, and it is no kind of revealing.
She has a slight gap between her two front teeth, dark and kissable, with the feeling of a flaw deliberately placed. She turns her head fractionally.
“How did you do that?” she asks Charles. Erik can feel the texture of the cushions too clearly against his shoulderblades, hot and dense and fine. He turns as well, despite himself, and feels air on the skin of his back. He feels air finger his scars.
Charles is chuckling, actually chuckling, low and rich. It makes Erik’s hackles rise.
(He never used to imagine himself with the reflexes of a dog.)
two times Mystique kissed Professor X on the forehead, for kayliemalinza:
1.
The hospital is dark but not dark enough, and Raven can see the moment where fear forms in the nurse’s eyes.
She hits her again, hard. This time the woman drops like a sack of potatoes.
“Sorry,” she hisses, “sorry, sorry-” but there’s no one to apologize to, really, and a moment later she’s out, in the hall, wearing a heavier face than she’s accustomed too, squinting through eyes she’s only ever seen when they were looking terrified. There’s probably something subtly wrong with her adopted expression. She can’t quite bring herself to care.
Slipping into Charles’ room is easy, anyway.
He’s asleep. She was counting on him being asleep, but she’s nonetheless surprised; he always used to wake up when she approached his room, the nearness of her mind disturbing his dreams, he claimed. He wasn’t drugged then, though, she supposes.
She pads over. He looks… she doesn’t know how he looks. The bruise where Erik hit him is fading on his cheek, yellow even in the cool slant of the moonlight, and the blanket reduces his body to a mountainous and uniform expanse. She could pull the blanket back, could look and look, if she liked: but she won’t.
No more hiding. But sometimes you can let other people hide, a little. It doesn’t always hurt.
She drags a plastic chair over from the window to his bedside, and sits. Charles, she thinks, despite herself. He stirs, his eyes moving under the lids, the roundness of them like eggs, but his lashes never part. The relief tastes like nothing at all in her mouth.
She leans forward, and kisses his forehead, remembering the beach. There are days- and people- where she can only seem to repeat herself. But his forehead is clean and there’s no sand stuck in his eyebrows, and sometimes a goodbye deserves to be rehearsed, cradling the tastelessness of relief on the tongue.
2.
Charles opens his eyes. It hurts immensely. When he can see anything for sunlight, he sees sunlight yellowing the sheets like a bruise.
He rolls his head to one side. There’s a woman he doesn’t know, dozing under the window. Her dark hair spills down her shoulder under her bent head in a way that strikes him as familiar, although he can’t pinpoint the wheres and hows.
It worked, he remembers, and laughs a little, in pure wonder. He has a feeling there are things he should be thinking about, but- he’s alive. Jean let him go.
The woman starts, and straightens, hair sticking to her cheek. It’s endearing, and very familiar. Charles is absently aware that this kind of thinking probably qualifies him as a very old man, but what the hell.
“Hello,” he says. “Excuse my ignorance, but who are you?”
She looks at him, for a moment, and laughs.
“You should have asked me that earlier, Charles,” she says, laughter still sweet in her words. It occurs to him that she could have thought he was the man whose body he has filled like water a glass, and that he’s glad she doesn’t.
It occurs to him that he can’t hear anything, except her voice. It should be more frightening than it is, but he is very tired, and he can feel the air on his skin.
“Who are you?” he says, again.
“It’s me,” she says. “Raven.”
The smile that wells up burns like the sunlight.
“Hello, Raven,” he says, hardly able to speak, for smiling.
“Hello,” she says, in a hoarse voice. She stands, and walks to him, and kisses his forehead: her hand lingering a little on his cheek.
double drabble for the firstclass100 prompt "heat":
"How much can you feel?" he asks her, once. "Like this."
His hand on her stomach, the light through her breasts refracted and watery on his knuckles. His palm is inhumanly warm. Inhumanly heavy, too. Emma would like to think that physics plays a part in that-- Sebastian certainly seems to be moving fast enough, these days, to turn pure power into the kind of weight that warps history around itself--, but his hand is only a hand.
The answer to his question is: nothing, in the sense he means it. There is no network of transparent nerves stretching across her interior vertices to speak to her of pleasure. She feels what she presumes diamonds might feel if they had minds clinging to their clear hearts, that is: light, bending in coy counterpoint to the still architecture of this still form; and heat, which moves through her too rapidly to dance. His hand is a hand but it might as well be a fire.
His mind is old and cool.
Do you remember, he is wondering, how it was when you first-
She takes the thought, without hesitating. Closes the hole it leaves behind.
"Enough, sugar," she answers.
He smiles.
double drabble for the firstclass100 prompt "travel":
Once, Erik went to Venice.
When he had done what he came there to do, he took the body to a canal. The water closed, dark but clear, over what was left of her head, and her hair pulled away from her face in a startling moment of unplanned-for motion, spreading fine and pale around the ruined roundness of her skull.
She had grown old, in the time it had taken him to find her. He hadn't, quite, expected that.
He had wrapped her legs in chickenwire. Now he sent her to the bottom with a snap of his wrist.
The water moved in strange ways, forcibly displaced within itself, and then went still. The city lights, reflected in unlikely millions on its scummy surface, seemed to shiver long past the point when they should have stilled, but Erik didn't mind. It was turning out to be a nice evening. The anger had stayed to keep him company in the dark.
He crouched down by the edge; his fingers left bloody smears on the blue tile. If he had thought to bring wine or oil, he would have poured it into the water, then, and watched it bloom like hair.
Erik tests the stem of the glass between his fingers, and watches Charles work.
Work- this being Charles- is a smile and a lazy salute and a sudden change in the quality of the air, a humid awareness of unawareness: of those invisible worlds that exist behind other people’s eyes. Puzzling out what trick Charles has picked to play on their latest recruit has become a kind of hobby. Erik thinks it’s a kind of hobby, anyway; he has little experience with the concept.
The first time, Charles stopped the woman in place, froze her where she was, bent over a cabinet of her mother’s china, her hair fallen long and pale over the side of her face. Erik could have said something. He said nothing. Charles was evidently not the kind of man who appreciated being taught, and Erik was curious to see whether he was the kind of man who could learn.
He was. In the next mutant’s home, Charles contented with himself with projecting the answers to their target’s urgent questions, and Erik sipped his tea in silence, and while the doctor still refused them, his china teacup didn’t explode once, which he was at that time prepared to count as a victory- if only for the rueful glance Charles shot him when he thought as much.
It’s been a week since then. He is getting tired of such small triumphs. But Charles takes a quiet breath, and Erik holds his peace.
There is a fragile moment in which the sleek red of the room seems to pulse, the sheen of light on satin rippling like light on naked steel. The girl stares at them- at him, Erik knows, with strange certainty- her face a mask. She begins to laugh, and it is no kind of revealing.
She has a slight gap between her two front teeth, dark and kissable, with the feeling of a flaw deliberately placed. She turns her head fractionally.
“How did you do that?” she asks Charles. Erik can feel the texture of the cushions too clearly against his shoulderblades, hot and dense and fine. He turns as well, despite himself, and feels air on the skin of his back. He feels air finger his scars.
Charles is chuckling, actually chuckling, low and rich. It makes Erik’s hackles rise.
(He never used to imagine himself with the reflexes of a dog.)
two times Mystique kissed Professor X on the forehead, for kayliemalinza:
1.
The hospital is dark but not dark enough, and Raven can see the moment where fear forms in the nurse’s eyes.
She hits her again, hard. This time the woman drops like a sack of potatoes.
“Sorry,” she hisses, “sorry, sorry-” but there’s no one to apologize to, really, and a moment later she’s out, in the hall, wearing a heavier face than she’s accustomed too, squinting through eyes she’s only ever seen when they were looking terrified. There’s probably something subtly wrong with her adopted expression. She can’t quite bring herself to care.
Slipping into Charles’ room is easy, anyway.
He’s asleep. She was counting on him being asleep, but she’s nonetheless surprised; he always used to wake up when she approached his room, the nearness of her mind disturbing his dreams, he claimed. He wasn’t drugged then, though, she supposes.
She pads over. He looks… she doesn’t know how he looks. The bruise where Erik hit him is fading on his cheek, yellow even in the cool slant of the moonlight, and the blanket reduces his body to a mountainous and uniform expanse. She could pull the blanket back, could look and look, if she liked: but she won’t.
No more hiding. But sometimes you can let other people hide, a little. It doesn’t always hurt.
She drags a plastic chair over from the window to his bedside, and sits. Charles, she thinks, despite herself. He stirs, his eyes moving under the lids, the roundness of them like eggs, but his lashes never part. The relief tastes like nothing at all in her mouth.
She leans forward, and kisses his forehead, remembering the beach. There are days- and people- where she can only seem to repeat herself. But his forehead is clean and there’s no sand stuck in his eyebrows, and sometimes a goodbye deserves to be rehearsed, cradling the tastelessness of relief on the tongue.
2.
Charles opens his eyes. It hurts immensely. When he can see anything for sunlight, he sees sunlight yellowing the sheets like a bruise.
He rolls his head to one side. There’s a woman he doesn’t know, dozing under the window. Her dark hair spills down her shoulder under her bent head in a way that strikes him as familiar, although he can’t pinpoint the wheres and hows.
It worked, he remembers, and laughs a little, in pure wonder. He has a feeling there are things he should be thinking about, but- he’s alive. Jean let him go.
The woman starts, and straightens, hair sticking to her cheek. It’s endearing, and very familiar. Charles is absently aware that this kind of thinking probably qualifies him as a very old man, but what the hell.
“Hello,” he says. “Excuse my ignorance, but who are you?”
She looks at him, for a moment, and laughs.
“You should have asked me that earlier, Charles,” she says, laughter still sweet in her words. It occurs to him that she could have thought he was the man whose body he has filled like water a glass, and that he’s glad she doesn’t.
It occurs to him that he can’t hear anything, except her voice. It should be more frightening than it is, but he is very tired, and he can feel the air on his skin.
“Who are you?” he says, again.
“It’s me,” she says. “Raven.”
The smile that wells up burns like the sunlight.
“Hello, Raven,” he says, hardly able to speak, for smiling.
“Hello,” she says, in a hoarse voice. She stands, and walks to him, and kisses his forehead: her hand lingering a little on his cheek.
double drabble for the firstclass100 prompt "heat":
"How much can you feel?" he asks her, once. "Like this."
His hand on her stomach, the light through her breasts refracted and watery on his knuckles. His palm is inhumanly warm. Inhumanly heavy, too. Emma would like to think that physics plays a part in that-- Sebastian certainly seems to be moving fast enough, these days, to turn pure power into the kind of weight that warps history around itself--, but his hand is only a hand.
The answer to his question is: nothing, in the sense he means it. There is no network of transparent nerves stretching across her interior vertices to speak to her of pleasure. She feels what she presumes diamonds might feel if they had minds clinging to their clear hearts, that is: light, bending in coy counterpoint to the still architecture of this still form; and heat, which moves through her too rapidly to dance. His hand is a hand but it might as well be a fire.
His mind is old and cool.
Do you remember, he is wondering, how it was when you first-
She takes the thought, without hesitating. Closes the hole it leaves behind.
"Enough, sugar," she answers.
He smiles.
double drabble for the firstclass100 prompt "travel":
Once, Erik went to Venice.
When he had done what he came there to do, he took the body to a canal. The water closed, dark but clear, over what was left of her head, and her hair pulled away from her face in a startling moment of unplanned-for motion, spreading fine and pale around the ruined roundness of her skull.
She had grown old, in the time it had taken him to find her. He hadn't, quite, expected that.
He had wrapped her legs in chickenwire. Now he sent her to the bottom with a snap of his wrist.
The water moved in strange ways, forcibly displaced within itself, and then went still. The city lights, reflected in unlikely millions on its scummy surface, seemed to shiver long past the point when they should have stilled, but Erik didn't mind. It was turning out to be a nice evening. The anger had stayed to keep him company in the dark.
He crouched down by the edge; his fingers left bloody smears on the blue tile. If he had thought to bring wine or oil, he would have poured it into the water, then, and watched it bloom like hair.