It takes a heap o' livin 3/4 [Erik/Charles, NC-17]
It takes a heap o' livin'
chapter 3: the kids must be here
The next morning, in an apparent fit of generosity, Erik brings a cup of Starbucks’ to Janos’ desk. This gets a few envious looks from neighboring cubicles but occasions no great comment, since he does this a couple of times a month without any clear pattern or reason.
Two of the admins believe that there is an illicit office romance going on there, while there is a bet going on among the rest of the department on whether the cute guy in the photo on Lehnsherr’s desk is really his boyfriend.
+ + +
Turns out, by the time evening comes around, the whole gang is coming along - ostensibly so they can observe the mission from the Jet and learn shit, but mostly, in Erik’s opinion, because it’s a Friday night and Charles is a total pushover. Hank reports that several New Jersey PD patrol cars are loitering within a convenient distance of the warehouses, and the FBI channels are showing casual interest in that area in a way that can shift to a very focused and arresting kind of interest at the correct signal.
“I’m not 100% sure the new chestplate is ready,” says Hank, hovering anxiously over the plate that Alex is adjusting on his suit.
“Relax, Bozo, we tested it last weekend. It worked fine.”
“Yes, and then at the end it flew off.”
“You said it was just an issue of the screws not being tight enough.” Alex grasps Hank by the shoulder. “Hey, stop being such a fucking perfectionist, all right? Even if it explodes in my face, everyone’s gonna blame me for not listening to you.”
Erik gives Alex a dry look after Hank has rushed off to drag Sean away from a pile of fragile-looking equipment. “Playing fast and loose with the equipment, Alex?”
Alex shrugs and waves a hand dismissively. “No, you know Hank, if he’s really worried he wouldn’t have let me put it on in the first place.
On the other side of the room, Charles is busy checking on Armando’s gear. It’s a natural pause right before the start of a mission, and Erik takes the time to look at all the technology surrounding them, the smooth hum of the little docking bay, the illuminated Jet looming in the background. It’s practically a different planet from the life he’d had growing up.
He wonders what it would have been like to have been born fifty years ago, when the mutant-human division had been clear, to hear people tell of it, constantly on the precipice of full-out war. A stalemate that dragged on for years, which might have been on purpose, because at the end of it, mutants had sorted their shit out and developed their own systems of governance, overlapping but mostly independent of the humans’, and the humans knew about their existence, if on deliberately vague and misleading terms.
“I want to stay and take care of you,” the child Erik had told his mother.
“And you will, dearest,” said Edie. “But remember Hebrew school? Well, you are also part of another group of people, because my boy is extra special. Now you must go with the kind lady for a little while, and learn about them too.”
Erik had gone, and when he returned he’d made his mother laugh by dancing all their cutlery across their single rickety table like those women in bright dresses he’d seen on the TV.
“ALL ABOARD WHO’S COMING ABOARD!” announces Sean from the ramp.
Erik, returning to the present, becomes aware of Alex and Armando behind him discussing their suits. Specifically, what they would change if Hank and Charles ever let them.
“I mean, it’s cool that they don’t melt or catch fire, I’ve ruined enough street clothes standing next to you when you go off,” Armando’s saying, “but they’re not exactly, you know, superhero-like.”
“Man, you and Erik should make a petition, Erik’s been trying to spiff the suits up for ages. You can’t tell by looking, but he has a weird obsession with capes. Tried to steal Hank’s Halloween costume last year. I think he thinks he’s Batman.”
Erik turns around and gives them what Raven calls his disturbingly shark-like, seriously Erik cut it out grin “For your information, I am better than Batman.” He waggles his fingers. “He sometimes wears plate armor, he’s armed with metal weapons, and drives a metal car. Who, exactly, do you think will win in a fight here?”
Armando laughs while Alex scowls, unimpressed. Erik smirks wider, saunters up the ramp and gets into his usual seat, right behind the co-pilot chair. He’s strangely aware of the empty seat next to him, even though it’s normal because Charles is always the last on board and waits until everyone’s strapped in first. They’re not… ignoring each other, exactly, the kids haven’t even noticed, but Charles has stayed out of his head and Erik may have avoided being alone in a room with him all day.
The Jet lifts up, rising through the opening in the basketball court. The weather is clear, cloudless, and they get a great view of the City once they clear the surrounding woods. Erik is pulled back into the morose mood that’s been plaguing him all day; furthermore, the usual pre-mission tension is making him oddly conscious of the restless of his thoughts.
Things are hardly ideal. The country is still divided about mutants, even though public opinion is based on a dialed down idea of mutant capabilities. But Charles likes to point out that the country is also still divided on gay civil rights, abortion, and whether Charlie Sheen is legitimately insane, so. Meanwhile, for all of its faults, the system established by the mutant community has been relatively functional for decades. They deserve more, far more, Erik knows. But by the time Erik was born, the advent of the information age was pushing anti-integration sentiment out to the very fringes. Most mutants no longer grow up totally isolated, their community is much better at organizing than the humans’, and if the more powerful of their number have to refrain from being too obvious about it, it’s deemed a small price in return for keeping their families and being fucking comfortable.
Like the way Erik has gotten comfortable.
And when they do oppose the humans, it’s done quietly. Attempts to segregate mutants in schools kicked the dust when families left participating school districts in droves, and the marginally more organized Mutant Registration policy lasted a few months before going up, literally, in flames.
Specifically, mysterious and inexplicable fires in the three Mutant Registry Offices. As the Offices had been widely known to be under-funded, run-down, nearly derelict buildings, and no one had been hurt, and no sudden revolution or apocalypse took place in the ensuing weeks, the government had just thrown up its proverbial hands and declared the whole thing a bad job.
(And if the mutant community had been particularly quiet after that, along with certain human officials in non-descript but key positions in law enforcement, the Bureau, the Agency, and the overall government, well. The idea caught on, seemingly overnight, that mutants should be left to govern themselves.)
Erik is still not sure how he’s ended up where he is: working a regular eight to five desk job, reluctant guardian to a handful of teenagers, and getting to have regular sex with one of the best men he’s ever known, who also happens to be a wealthy, bashfully genius telepath. Oh, and he gets to use his power in creative and satisfyingly destructive ways, and also gets to play with technology that even the military doesn’t have.
It’s unbelievable and ridiculous and frustrating all at once, because it’s like a heap of good things have suddenly landed on Erik’s lap, unlooked-for, and a part of him can’t shake the feeling that it’s all been a mistake, somehow, that one day the person for whom all this good fortune had been meant is going to barge in and take it all back.
Windfalls of this magnitude don’t happen to people like Erik.
It occurs to him, belatedly, that he could have picked a better time than right before a mission to stew in his confused angst. Maybe penciled it into his planner.
“We’re closing in on the site, drop-off in five minutes,” announces Hank.
The Jet levels out. Charles, Erik, Raven and Angel get to their feet. Then Hank says, “By the way, there’s already someone down there,” right before Erik makes out a very distinctive metallic presence and thinks, damn it.
+ + +
“What is he doing here?” demands Raven, once the four of them are on the ground.
Wolverine smirks at them, shrugs. “Saw it on Twitter, figured I might join the party since I’m in the area.”
“It’s just an extraction,” says Erik, even as Charles squawks, “There is a Twitter?”
Another shrug. “Target?”
“In code! Hank made sure our tweets are untraceable!” protests Alex over the comm line. “Besides, it’s not like anyone takes stuff you say on Twitter seriously.”
“Young female, approximately eight to twelve years old, powers unknown,” says Erik. “But she’s somehow keeping regular surveillance from tracking shipments of drugs in and out of these warehouses. Cocaine.”
Wolverine nods gruffly. Erik knows there’s no budging the man once he’s set his mind on a course of action; and because his subconscious just loves to jinx things, thinks, maybe he’ll quit showing up without warning once he gets a taste of one of our boring jobs.
+ + +
Dismantling the sensor field isn’t really necessary, since the basic plan is to get the guards out and attacking them so that Angel and Raven can get into place: one to snatch the captive mutant, the other to make sure the drugs don’t conveniently disappear again. But Erik is uneasy about being enclosed by unfamiliar technology, so he deftly cuts the power to the fence and the transmitters.
It still takes a while for the men guarding the warehouse to figure out that something’s wrong. Erik feels somewhat ridiculous to be standing right in their midst, literally waiting to be noticed and attacked. Finally, there are indignant shouts, guns being brandished, cell phones being dialed. The latter, Erik shorts out as soon as he identifies them. The noise brings men from neighboring warehouses, which - hmm, they should have taken into consideration. But Charles is responsible enough to let him know if there are more than he can handle.
Bullets embed themselves into the ground around them. A few of them, on a more accurate trajectory, freeze mid-air several feet away and drop down harmlessly. And then the gunmen start doing the same, one after another toppling over, Charles gazing out with a finger pressed to his temple.
Erik, please stop the bullets from hitting Logan as well.
“It’s not like they’ll kill him.”
“Really not the point.”
“And it’s Wolverine, dear.”
He’s Logan in my head. I know the importance of using codenames, but in my own damn thoughts, it takes extra effort to remember not to use your real names.
“And what if we run up against a telepath?”
I’ll sense them first. Really, Magneto, you yourself don’t think of us in our codenames. Hostile telepaths can pluck it out of your head just as easily.
Erik grits his teeth. He keeps a proverbial eye on all the remaining gun-shaped objects in the vicinity, resisting the urge to grab a few and start clobbering their owners with them, and waves a hand to crush the last of the security cameras. He’s not linked to Charles, but he doesn’t have to be, knows that Charles is keeping an eye on the two lying in wait on the warehouse roofs.
It’s a somewhat pathetic excuse for a fight; the most distracting object to his metal-focused senses is Logan happily brawling away, so Erik makes the mistake of relaxing and, thus, not realizing what the belt buckle and iron fillings and knife standing too-still several feet away means until it’s too late. A tiny prick of pain, something squeezing tight around his lungs, and the ground comes rushing up to him.
+ + +
Erik wakes up to eyes that won’t cooperate with him for several minutes and something restraining his arms and legs. Once the former wears off, he sees that he’s sitting in a low cage. It’s mostly dark, and he’s been tied up with rope, of all things. The air smells a little fetid, strong overtones of piss and sweat, but it doesn’t bother him, not when the rest of his senses finish coming online and he feelstastesbreathes sweet metal all around.
But first. There’s a gun, several feet away, and Erik’s eyes confirm that it’s being carried by a man, dressed like the others who’d been guarding the warehouse. There’s a soft clank, metal, a shuffle; someone is in the cage with Erik.
The girl is huddled in on herself, limp against her chains. Yet, Erik’s seen an unfortunate number of exploited kids in his time, defeated or outright broken, and there’s something about her that’s just a little too focused. Their lone guard turns away, viciously punching numbers into a cell phone, and her eyes flicker yellow.
Of course. Erik has the tendency to forget that the others are not solely reliant on him to open locks; he suspects Raven has somehow stolen a key to the cage, mentally applauds her for getting the girl out first. Maybe she’d gone back in when she saw that they had Erik.
Getting captured by a bunch of unprepared humans. He’ll never hear the end of this.
The gunman gives up on his phone and spins around, shotgun trained on Erik. “I don’t know who you think you are, freak. But we’ve gunned down your buddies outside and you aren’t going anywhere, so sit quiet.”
The man keeps on talking but Erik can’t hear him over the roaring in his ears. Without Erik there - and if Charles hadn’t realized fast enough that Erik wasn’t stopping the bullets anymore - suddenly Charles’ absence in his mind is a chasm, endless, a blank space filling quick with terror, no, no, no CHARLES.
He thinks he hears - senses - something, vague and far-off. The cage creaks ominously around him and Raven-in-disguise, but the gunman’s attention is back on his uncooperative phone. Erik resists the urge to point out to him that his phone’s screen, while on, is distinctly blank, and the internal chip is at least damaged. A knee digs into his side, and he looks back to see Raven nodding toward a small device stuck to a corner of the cage. It’s about the size of his fist, with three small dots glowing blue on one side. Actually, looking around - Erik realizes there’s one in each corner.
The dampeners. He blames the slow uptake on his still-sluggish thoughts. There’d been that bite, on his neck, right before he’d blacked out. Tranquilizer, maybe, and a chaser of sedatives. Or something else? Hard to tell, some cocktails take longer to wear off.
He focuses on the chains holding Raven-in-disguise. She hadn’t actually locked them on, had she? She rolls her eyes at him and shows him where she’d just duplicated the image of the bands around her wrists and ankles, hiding the real bands in her hands and behind her legs.
He focuses on one of the metal chains, and it lifts up easily. But it’s harder than usual for Erik to hold it; his concentration keeps trying to splinter, wavering around the edges, as if he’s drunk and trying to gain purchase on something mentally slippery.
The sounds of explosion and wholesale destruction drift in from outside. Ah, the kids must be here.
After a minute, his stubbornness wins out, bolstered by thoughts of Charles, the small stutters in his control smoothing down, and he knows he’ll be back to normal in less than half an hour. Far less. Fifteen minutes, tops.
“He’ll be fine,” whispers Raven in her own voice, right when something heavy lands against the side of the warehouse.
Ten minutes. But, fuck, Erik needs to know. If it’s his imagination or the kids are attacking far more fiercely than they would under the rule of Charles’ conscience.
Take out just one of the dampeners? Might trigger a fail-safe. Better to disable them all at once. He reaches out, gets a solid hold on all four, feeling out their internal parts. He’s too shaky and too full of the urge to crush something to be doing this, but. Charles. A miniscule push, melding the wires together and flattening the electronic chips. The blue glow blinks. Fades.
Nothing. Erik feels the seconds pass, forces air in and out of his lungs. He looks at Raven. She shakes her duplicated head, little girl eyes tense with worry.
A familiar scream shatters all the glass and light bulbs from high up on the warehouse. Their guard shouts, tries to shield himself from the falling shards. Then he freezes, arm held over his head.
The metal door on the far side of the warehouse is hidden from view by shelves and boxes and storage crates, but Erik can feel something melting through the metal, Alex, before the whole thing falls open. Figures jog in, and he recognizes Hank by his height and Alex by his chestplate and they’re flanking-
Erik? Charles’ thought-voice is tentative, barely brushing Erik’s mind. Erik physically sags with relief, mentally reaches out and latches onto Charles, inviting, hates himself for ever making Charles uncertain of his welcome.
Charles’ mind-touch surges back in, familiar and joyous, and Erik steals a moment to mentally press against it, the unresolved bramble of his confusion and anxiety bubbling out, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Movement behind Erik. Raven straightens up, blue again, brushing off the chains disdainfully. She tosses up her knife for Erik. He floats it, nodding at her gratefully. The rope is tough with age, but the knife cuts through after he temporarily refines the edge to extra-sharpness. Raven is already out of the cage by the time Erik shoves off the rope, rolls out himself, evidently having kept the key she’d stolen earlier.
The remaining gunman is on the ground, as asleep as his colleagues, though Charles’ expression seems particularly peeved when he looks at him. Erik entertains the brief thought that Charles can have the guy thinking he’s a walrus when he wakes up. The corner of Charles’ mouth twitches.
A storm of bad temper and invectives shows up, in the form of Wolverine, and Erik learns that Charles had sensed Erik being tranq’d unconscious. And then Wolverine had jumped on top of Charles to shield him from the bullets. “His head might have run into my shoulder, he was a bit stunned for a while,” admits Wolverine, “which turned out to be a good thing, because once he remembered you going down, Professor Genius over here got the crazy eyes and wanted to come running after you.” Charles’ expression turns sheepish, while Erik suffers the claws of jealousy as his brain parades images of Logan pinning Charles to the ground, “I had to drag his ass away. Then the kids showed up, they’d been listening in and they knew what was going on.”
Wolverine suddenly quiets, looking off to the side. Erik follows his line of sight and sees Angel walking towards them, holding the hand of a little girl, the one that Raven had disguised herself as earlier. The girl’s T-shirt and generic khakis look grimy but still serviceable, and it’s hard to see any marks or bruises on her dark skin, but she doesn’t seem to be moving with any difficulty. She looks scared and intrigued, shyly staring up at Angel’s wings.
“Hello there,” says Charles. He crouches down to her eye-level. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t think she speaks English,” says Angel.
But, of course, Charles has other avenues, and after a moment the girl tilts her head, as if listening to something, then says, “Mandisa.” She blinks up at Angel. “I do speak English. But I don’t know any of you.”
Charles laughs. “Nice to meet you, Mandisa,” he says, “and you are perfectly right to be cautious around strangers. I’m called the Professor.” He holds out his hand. After a moment, Mandisa tentatively reaches out and shakes it. “My friends and I will be handing the men who kept you in the cage over to the police, and we’d like to get you home.”
“My home is very far away from here,” she says. “I’m from South Africa.”
“That’s not a problem. Now, I’m a telepath - this means I can go inside people’s minds. What is it that you can do, Mandisa?”
The little girl bites her lower lip, undecided. Then she looks up at Angel. A moment later, Angel has disappeared.
“Um, guys, why are you all staring at me?” asks Angel, her voice emanating from where she’d been standing.
“Remarkable,” says Charles, delighted.
“Look at your hand,” says Erik, a little more helpfully.
There’s a faint ripple in the air, and Angel gasps. “Oh shit, I’m invisible!”
“Angel!”
“Sorry, Professor.”
Mandisa doesn’t look like she’s noticed. Erik’s pretty sure she’s heard a lot worse around the kind of people who keep kids in cages.
Angel becomes visible again.
“Thank you for showing us your ability, Mandisa,” says Charles. “As I said, I would very much like to help you get home, and to stop those who kept you locked up. Will you let me look into your mind? I’ll go slowly, and if there’s anything you don’t want me to see, just let me know.”
She seems to be gaining confidence around them, because she doesn’t take so long to nod this time. The two of them fall into a silent exchange, eyes locked, during which Raven pops up and drags the unconscious gunman away none too gently. Erik knows he should help with the clean-up, but he’s somewhat reluctant to let Charles out of his sight. Wolverine shifts, looking awkward and impatient; Erik and Angel, who are more used to this kind of thing, just nod at each other and wait it out.
“Thank you,” says Charles, finally, patting her on the shoulder. Mandisa awards him a shy smile. He looks at the rest of them. “Her name is Mandisa Kuun, she’s eleven years old, and she comes from Johannesburg, South Africa. She has the ability to turn objects invisible while she is in physical contact with them. This trafficking ring kidnapped her and her sister, and are holding her sister as ransom for her cooperation.”
Wolverine starts muttering unsavory things under his breath. Erik frowns. “Do we have people in South Africa?”
Charles gives him a dry look. “Erik, we have people in Antarctica. Yes, I’ll get in touch with our contacts there as soon as we get home.”
They emerge out of the warehouse to see the warehouse guards piled in an unconscious, uncomfortable heap on the ground, watched over by Alex and Hank. The warehouses are… mostly intact. A container the size of a car is lying next to the building Erik had been in, the steel parts of the wall grossly dented. Something is still burning in front of the other warehouse.
“Where’s Banshee?” asks Erik.
“Went to sit on the drugs,” answers Hank. At the looks on all their faces, he anxiously adds, “No, I mean he’s on the warehouse roof! Also keeping an eye out for squad cars. Scanner says law enforcement ETA is around fifteen minutes.”
“Come on, he’s not stupid enough to use cocaine,” says Alex blithely. “Even if he tries to sneak some out, you know he can’t keep a secret.”
Erik has to concede the point.
“All right, everybody, head out for the Jet,” says Charles. “Wolverine?”
Wolverine hesitates, then shakes his head. “Nah, I’ve got my own way home.”
Naturally, Charles insists on shaking his hand, saying with all genuineness, “Thank you so much for helping us - things might have turned out rather poorly this evening, if not for your assistance. I likely owe you my life.”
Erik meets Logan’s eyes over Charles’ head and tries to communicate, yes, what he said, purely via facial expressions. Logan looks grateful for it.
Angel goes and collects Sean from the roof. Hank pulls the psychic dampeners from the cage. They trek over to the next empty warehouse, where Hank had hidden the Jet. Mandisa clings to Angel’s hand but follows Charles with her eyes; Charles, in turn, seems to be looking at Erik every time Erik glances over at him.
By the time they’re in the air and heading home, Erik feels like he’s under sedation again, wants to sleep through the entire weekend. Charles, in the seat next to his, is outright staring at him. If the kids notice their quietness, they seem happy to take up the slack, reliving what sounds like a full-scale battle for the benefit of Raven, Angel and Mandisa. Raven and Angel clearly aren’t convinced by the embellishments - there hadn’t been that many guards, surely Charles must have knocked out at least half of them by the time the cavalry arrived - but are likely keeping quiet because of the wide-eyed, enraptured look on Mandisa’s face.
Erik wants nothing more than to crawl into bed the moment they land. But Charles has to coordinate with whoever has taken charge of the drugs and warehouses now, make arrangements for Mandisa’s situation - all important calls that can’t wait. Raven automatically takes the girl up to find her a room. Erik, as familiar with this routine as all the others, grumblingly changes out of his suit and supervises the clean-up of the Jet and the docking bay.
“Hey, you can go and sleep now,” says a voice, suddenly. Erik opens his eyes with a start, not having realized he’s closed them. He doesn’t remember leaning against the wall, either; in front of him, Alex’s face is a study in artful nonchalance.
Erik glares, but it’s hard to come up with a proper response when his thoughts feel like they’re tumbling through molten caramel.
Alex rolls his eyes. “Look, I know that thinking of us as kids helps with the family structure or whatever, but we are not actually children.” In the hallway, something heavy crashes into something fragile. “Most of the time. Can you just go to sleep before you fall on your face? Personally, I think that’d be an improvement, but the Professor seems to like what you have right now, and I need him to help me write my essays.”
“All right, fuck, I’m going,” grumbles Erik. He wonders if a bit of those sedatives are still in his system - he loses time between the basement and the top floor why the fuck are there so many stairs and stumbles, just barely, into the bedroom, blindly taking a familiar number of steps, whereupon he falls over, face-down, onto the cool blankness of clean sheets, and passes out.
+ + +
{CHAPTER INDEX: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4}
chapter 3: the kids must be here
The next morning, in an apparent fit of generosity, Erik brings a cup of Starbucks’ to Janos’ desk. This gets a few envious looks from neighboring cubicles but occasions no great comment, since he does this a couple of times a month without any clear pattern or reason.
Two of the admins believe that there is an illicit office romance going on there, while there is a bet going on among the rest of the department on whether the cute guy in the photo on Lehnsherr’s desk is really his boyfriend.
+ + +
Turns out, by the time evening comes around, the whole gang is coming along - ostensibly so they can observe the mission from the Jet and learn shit, but mostly, in Erik’s opinion, because it’s a Friday night and Charles is a total pushover. Hank reports that several New Jersey PD patrol cars are loitering within a convenient distance of the warehouses, and the FBI channels are showing casual interest in that area in a way that can shift to a very focused and arresting kind of interest at the correct signal.
“I’m not 100% sure the new chestplate is ready,” says Hank, hovering anxiously over the plate that Alex is adjusting on his suit.
“Relax, Bozo, we tested it last weekend. It worked fine.”
“Yes, and then at the end it flew off.”
“You said it was just an issue of the screws not being tight enough.” Alex grasps Hank by the shoulder. “Hey, stop being such a fucking perfectionist, all right? Even if it explodes in my face, everyone’s gonna blame me for not listening to you.”
Erik gives Alex a dry look after Hank has rushed off to drag Sean away from a pile of fragile-looking equipment. “Playing fast and loose with the equipment, Alex?”
Alex shrugs and waves a hand dismissively. “No, you know Hank, if he’s really worried he wouldn’t have let me put it on in the first place.
On the other side of the room, Charles is busy checking on Armando’s gear. It’s a natural pause right before the start of a mission, and Erik takes the time to look at all the technology surrounding them, the smooth hum of the little docking bay, the illuminated Jet looming in the background. It’s practically a different planet from the life he’d had growing up.
He wonders what it would have been like to have been born fifty years ago, when the mutant-human division had been clear, to hear people tell of it, constantly on the precipice of full-out war. A stalemate that dragged on for years, which might have been on purpose, because at the end of it, mutants had sorted their shit out and developed their own systems of governance, overlapping but mostly independent of the humans’, and the humans knew about their existence, if on deliberately vague and misleading terms.
“I want to stay and take care of you,” the child Erik had told his mother.
“And you will, dearest,” said Edie. “But remember Hebrew school? Well, you are also part of another group of people, because my boy is extra special. Now you must go with the kind lady for a little while, and learn about them too.”
Erik had gone, and when he returned he’d made his mother laugh by dancing all their cutlery across their single rickety table like those women in bright dresses he’d seen on the TV.
“ALL ABOARD WHO’S COMING ABOARD!” announces Sean from the ramp.
Erik, returning to the present, becomes aware of Alex and Armando behind him discussing their suits. Specifically, what they would change if Hank and Charles ever let them.
“I mean, it’s cool that they don’t melt or catch fire, I’ve ruined enough street clothes standing next to you when you go off,” Armando’s saying, “but they’re not exactly, you know, superhero-like.”
“Man, you and Erik should make a petition, Erik’s been trying to spiff the suits up for ages. You can’t tell by looking, but he has a weird obsession with capes. Tried to steal Hank’s Halloween costume last year. I think he thinks he’s Batman.”
Erik turns around and gives them what Raven calls his disturbingly shark-like, seriously Erik cut it out grin “For your information, I am better than Batman.” He waggles his fingers. “He sometimes wears plate armor, he’s armed with metal weapons, and drives a metal car. Who, exactly, do you think will win in a fight here?”
Armando laughs while Alex scowls, unimpressed. Erik smirks wider, saunters up the ramp and gets into his usual seat, right behind the co-pilot chair. He’s strangely aware of the empty seat next to him, even though it’s normal because Charles is always the last on board and waits until everyone’s strapped in first. They’re not… ignoring each other, exactly, the kids haven’t even noticed, but Charles has stayed out of his head and Erik may have avoided being alone in a room with him all day.
The Jet lifts up, rising through the opening in the basketball court. The weather is clear, cloudless, and they get a great view of the City once they clear the surrounding woods. Erik is pulled back into the morose mood that’s been plaguing him all day; furthermore, the usual pre-mission tension is making him oddly conscious of the restless of his thoughts.
Things are hardly ideal. The country is still divided about mutants, even though public opinion is based on a dialed down idea of mutant capabilities. But Charles likes to point out that the country is also still divided on gay civil rights, abortion, and whether Charlie Sheen is legitimately insane, so. Meanwhile, for all of its faults, the system established by the mutant community has been relatively functional for decades. They deserve more, far more, Erik knows. But by the time Erik was born, the advent of the information age was pushing anti-integration sentiment out to the very fringes. Most mutants no longer grow up totally isolated, their community is much better at organizing than the humans’, and if the more powerful of their number have to refrain from being too obvious about it, it’s deemed a small price in return for keeping their families and being fucking comfortable.
Like the way Erik has gotten comfortable.
And when they do oppose the humans, it’s done quietly. Attempts to segregate mutants in schools kicked the dust when families left participating school districts in droves, and the marginally more organized Mutant Registration policy lasted a few months before going up, literally, in flames.
Specifically, mysterious and inexplicable fires in the three Mutant Registry Offices. As the Offices had been widely known to be under-funded, run-down, nearly derelict buildings, and no one had been hurt, and no sudden revolution or apocalypse took place in the ensuing weeks, the government had just thrown up its proverbial hands and declared the whole thing a bad job.
(And if the mutant community had been particularly quiet after that, along with certain human officials in non-descript but key positions in law enforcement, the Bureau, the Agency, and the overall government, well. The idea caught on, seemingly overnight, that mutants should be left to govern themselves.)
Erik is still not sure how he’s ended up where he is: working a regular eight to five desk job, reluctant guardian to a handful of teenagers, and getting to have regular sex with one of the best men he’s ever known, who also happens to be a wealthy, bashfully genius telepath. Oh, and he gets to use his power in creative and satisfyingly destructive ways, and also gets to play with technology that even the military doesn’t have.
It’s unbelievable and ridiculous and frustrating all at once, because it’s like a heap of good things have suddenly landed on Erik’s lap, unlooked-for, and a part of him can’t shake the feeling that it’s all been a mistake, somehow, that one day the person for whom all this good fortune had been meant is going to barge in and take it all back.
Windfalls of this magnitude don’t happen to people like Erik.
It occurs to him, belatedly, that he could have picked a better time than right before a mission to stew in his confused angst. Maybe penciled it into his planner.
“We’re closing in on the site, drop-off in five minutes,” announces Hank.
The Jet levels out. Charles, Erik, Raven and Angel get to their feet. Then Hank says, “By the way, there’s already someone down there,” right before Erik makes out a very distinctive metallic presence and thinks, damn it.
+ + +
“What is he doing here?” demands Raven, once the four of them are on the ground.
Wolverine smirks at them, shrugs. “Saw it on Twitter, figured I might join the party since I’m in the area.”
“It’s just an extraction,” says Erik, even as Charles squawks, “There is a Twitter?”
Another shrug. “Target?”
“In code! Hank made sure our tweets are untraceable!” protests Alex over the comm line. “Besides, it’s not like anyone takes stuff you say on Twitter seriously.”
“Young female, approximately eight to twelve years old, powers unknown,” says Erik. “But she’s somehow keeping regular surveillance from tracking shipments of drugs in and out of these warehouses. Cocaine.”
Wolverine nods gruffly. Erik knows there’s no budging the man once he’s set his mind on a course of action; and because his subconscious just loves to jinx things, thinks, maybe he’ll quit showing up without warning once he gets a taste of one of our boring jobs.
+ + +
Dismantling the sensor field isn’t really necessary, since the basic plan is to get the guards out and attacking them so that Angel and Raven can get into place: one to snatch the captive mutant, the other to make sure the drugs don’t conveniently disappear again. But Erik is uneasy about being enclosed by unfamiliar technology, so he deftly cuts the power to the fence and the transmitters.
It still takes a while for the men guarding the warehouse to figure out that something’s wrong. Erik feels somewhat ridiculous to be standing right in their midst, literally waiting to be noticed and attacked. Finally, there are indignant shouts, guns being brandished, cell phones being dialed. The latter, Erik shorts out as soon as he identifies them. The noise brings men from neighboring warehouses, which - hmm, they should have taken into consideration. But Charles is responsible enough to let him know if there are more than he can handle.
Bullets embed themselves into the ground around them. A few of them, on a more accurate trajectory, freeze mid-air several feet away and drop down harmlessly. And then the gunmen start doing the same, one after another toppling over, Charles gazing out with a finger pressed to his temple.
Erik, please stop the bullets from hitting Logan as well.
“It’s not like they’ll kill him.”
“Really not the point.”
“And it’s Wolverine, dear.”
He’s Logan in my head. I know the importance of using codenames, but in my own damn thoughts, it takes extra effort to remember not to use your real names.
“And what if we run up against a telepath?”
I’ll sense them first. Really, Magneto, you yourself don’t think of us in our codenames. Hostile telepaths can pluck it out of your head just as easily.
Erik grits his teeth. He keeps a proverbial eye on all the remaining gun-shaped objects in the vicinity, resisting the urge to grab a few and start clobbering their owners with them, and waves a hand to crush the last of the security cameras. He’s not linked to Charles, but he doesn’t have to be, knows that Charles is keeping an eye on the two lying in wait on the warehouse roofs.
It’s a somewhat pathetic excuse for a fight; the most distracting object to his metal-focused senses is Logan happily brawling away, so Erik makes the mistake of relaxing and, thus, not realizing what the belt buckle and iron fillings and knife standing too-still several feet away means until it’s too late. A tiny prick of pain, something squeezing tight around his lungs, and the ground comes rushing up to him.
+ + +
Erik wakes up to eyes that won’t cooperate with him for several minutes and something restraining his arms and legs. Once the former wears off, he sees that he’s sitting in a low cage. It’s mostly dark, and he’s been tied up with rope, of all things. The air smells a little fetid, strong overtones of piss and sweat, but it doesn’t bother him, not when the rest of his senses finish coming online and he feelstastesbreathes sweet metal all around.
But first. There’s a gun, several feet away, and Erik’s eyes confirm that it’s being carried by a man, dressed like the others who’d been guarding the warehouse. There’s a soft clank, metal, a shuffle; someone is in the cage with Erik.
The girl is huddled in on herself, limp against her chains. Yet, Erik’s seen an unfortunate number of exploited kids in his time, defeated or outright broken, and there’s something about her that’s just a little too focused. Their lone guard turns away, viciously punching numbers into a cell phone, and her eyes flicker yellow.
Of course. Erik has the tendency to forget that the others are not solely reliant on him to open locks; he suspects Raven has somehow stolen a key to the cage, mentally applauds her for getting the girl out first. Maybe she’d gone back in when she saw that they had Erik.
Getting captured by a bunch of unprepared humans. He’ll never hear the end of this.
The gunman gives up on his phone and spins around, shotgun trained on Erik. “I don’t know who you think you are, freak. But we’ve gunned down your buddies outside and you aren’t going anywhere, so sit quiet.”
The man keeps on talking but Erik can’t hear him over the roaring in his ears. Without Erik there - and if Charles hadn’t realized fast enough that Erik wasn’t stopping the bullets anymore - suddenly Charles’ absence in his mind is a chasm, endless, a blank space filling quick with terror, no, no, no CHARLES.
He thinks he hears - senses - something, vague and far-off. The cage creaks ominously around him and Raven-in-disguise, but the gunman’s attention is back on his uncooperative phone. Erik resists the urge to point out to him that his phone’s screen, while on, is distinctly blank, and the internal chip is at least damaged. A knee digs into his side, and he looks back to see Raven nodding toward a small device stuck to a corner of the cage. It’s about the size of his fist, with three small dots glowing blue on one side. Actually, looking around - Erik realizes there’s one in each corner.
The dampeners. He blames the slow uptake on his still-sluggish thoughts. There’d been that bite, on his neck, right before he’d blacked out. Tranquilizer, maybe, and a chaser of sedatives. Or something else? Hard to tell, some cocktails take longer to wear off.
He focuses on the chains holding Raven-in-disguise. She hadn’t actually locked them on, had she? She rolls her eyes at him and shows him where she’d just duplicated the image of the bands around her wrists and ankles, hiding the real bands in her hands and behind her legs.
He focuses on one of the metal chains, and it lifts up easily. But it’s harder than usual for Erik to hold it; his concentration keeps trying to splinter, wavering around the edges, as if he’s drunk and trying to gain purchase on something mentally slippery.
The sounds of explosion and wholesale destruction drift in from outside. Ah, the kids must be here.
After a minute, his stubbornness wins out, bolstered by thoughts of Charles, the small stutters in his control smoothing down, and he knows he’ll be back to normal in less than half an hour. Far less. Fifteen minutes, tops.
“He’ll be fine,” whispers Raven in her own voice, right when something heavy lands against the side of the warehouse.
Ten minutes. But, fuck, Erik needs to know. If it’s his imagination or the kids are attacking far more fiercely than they would under the rule of Charles’ conscience.
Take out just one of the dampeners? Might trigger a fail-safe. Better to disable them all at once. He reaches out, gets a solid hold on all four, feeling out their internal parts. He’s too shaky and too full of the urge to crush something to be doing this, but. Charles. A miniscule push, melding the wires together and flattening the electronic chips. The blue glow blinks. Fades.
Nothing. Erik feels the seconds pass, forces air in and out of his lungs. He looks at Raven. She shakes her duplicated head, little girl eyes tense with worry.
A familiar scream shatters all the glass and light bulbs from high up on the warehouse. Their guard shouts, tries to shield himself from the falling shards. Then he freezes, arm held over his head.
The metal door on the far side of the warehouse is hidden from view by shelves and boxes and storage crates, but Erik can feel something melting through the metal, Alex, before the whole thing falls open. Figures jog in, and he recognizes Hank by his height and Alex by his chestplate and they’re flanking-
Erik? Charles’ thought-voice is tentative, barely brushing Erik’s mind. Erik physically sags with relief, mentally reaches out and latches onto Charles, inviting, hates himself for ever making Charles uncertain of his welcome.
Charles’ mind-touch surges back in, familiar and joyous, and Erik steals a moment to mentally press against it, the unresolved bramble of his confusion and anxiety bubbling out, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Movement behind Erik. Raven straightens up, blue again, brushing off the chains disdainfully. She tosses up her knife for Erik. He floats it, nodding at her gratefully. The rope is tough with age, but the knife cuts through after he temporarily refines the edge to extra-sharpness. Raven is already out of the cage by the time Erik shoves off the rope, rolls out himself, evidently having kept the key she’d stolen earlier.
The remaining gunman is on the ground, as asleep as his colleagues, though Charles’ expression seems particularly peeved when he looks at him. Erik entertains the brief thought that Charles can have the guy thinking he’s a walrus when he wakes up. The corner of Charles’ mouth twitches.
A storm of bad temper and invectives shows up, in the form of Wolverine, and Erik learns that Charles had sensed Erik being tranq’d unconscious. And then Wolverine had jumped on top of Charles to shield him from the bullets. “His head might have run into my shoulder, he was a bit stunned for a while,” admits Wolverine, “which turned out to be a good thing, because once he remembered you going down, Professor Genius over here got the crazy eyes and wanted to come running after you.” Charles’ expression turns sheepish, while Erik suffers the claws of jealousy as his brain parades images of Logan pinning Charles to the ground, “I had to drag his ass away. Then the kids showed up, they’d been listening in and they knew what was going on.”
Wolverine suddenly quiets, looking off to the side. Erik follows his line of sight and sees Angel walking towards them, holding the hand of a little girl, the one that Raven had disguised herself as earlier. The girl’s T-shirt and generic khakis look grimy but still serviceable, and it’s hard to see any marks or bruises on her dark skin, but she doesn’t seem to be moving with any difficulty. She looks scared and intrigued, shyly staring up at Angel’s wings.
“Hello there,” says Charles. He crouches down to her eye-level. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t think she speaks English,” says Angel.
But, of course, Charles has other avenues, and after a moment the girl tilts her head, as if listening to something, then says, “Mandisa.” She blinks up at Angel. “I do speak English. But I don’t know any of you.”
Charles laughs. “Nice to meet you, Mandisa,” he says, “and you are perfectly right to be cautious around strangers. I’m called the Professor.” He holds out his hand. After a moment, Mandisa tentatively reaches out and shakes it. “My friends and I will be handing the men who kept you in the cage over to the police, and we’d like to get you home.”
“My home is very far away from here,” she says. “I’m from South Africa.”
“That’s not a problem. Now, I’m a telepath - this means I can go inside people’s minds. What is it that you can do, Mandisa?”
The little girl bites her lower lip, undecided. Then she looks up at Angel. A moment later, Angel has disappeared.
“Um, guys, why are you all staring at me?” asks Angel, her voice emanating from where she’d been standing.
“Remarkable,” says Charles, delighted.
“Look at your hand,” says Erik, a little more helpfully.
There’s a faint ripple in the air, and Angel gasps. “Oh shit, I’m invisible!”
“Angel!”
“Sorry, Professor.”
Mandisa doesn’t look like she’s noticed. Erik’s pretty sure she’s heard a lot worse around the kind of people who keep kids in cages.
Angel becomes visible again.
“Thank you for showing us your ability, Mandisa,” says Charles. “As I said, I would very much like to help you get home, and to stop those who kept you locked up. Will you let me look into your mind? I’ll go slowly, and if there’s anything you don’t want me to see, just let me know.”
She seems to be gaining confidence around them, because she doesn’t take so long to nod this time. The two of them fall into a silent exchange, eyes locked, during which Raven pops up and drags the unconscious gunman away none too gently. Erik knows he should help with the clean-up, but he’s somewhat reluctant to let Charles out of his sight. Wolverine shifts, looking awkward and impatient; Erik and Angel, who are more used to this kind of thing, just nod at each other and wait it out.
“Thank you,” says Charles, finally, patting her on the shoulder. Mandisa awards him a shy smile. He looks at the rest of them. “Her name is Mandisa Kuun, she’s eleven years old, and she comes from Johannesburg, South Africa. She has the ability to turn objects invisible while she is in physical contact with them. This trafficking ring kidnapped her and her sister, and are holding her sister as ransom for her cooperation.”
Wolverine starts muttering unsavory things under his breath. Erik frowns. “Do we have people in South Africa?”
Charles gives him a dry look. “Erik, we have people in Antarctica. Yes, I’ll get in touch with our contacts there as soon as we get home.”
They emerge out of the warehouse to see the warehouse guards piled in an unconscious, uncomfortable heap on the ground, watched over by Alex and Hank. The warehouses are… mostly intact. A container the size of a car is lying next to the building Erik had been in, the steel parts of the wall grossly dented. Something is still burning in front of the other warehouse.
“Where’s Banshee?” asks Erik.
“Went to sit on the drugs,” answers Hank. At the looks on all their faces, he anxiously adds, “No, I mean he’s on the warehouse roof! Also keeping an eye out for squad cars. Scanner says law enforcement ETA is around fifteen minutes.”
“Come on, he’s not stupid enough to use cocaine,” says Alex blithely. “Even if he tries to sneak some out, you know he can’t keep a secret.”
Erik has to concede the point.
“All right, everybody, head out for the Jet,” says Charles. “Wolverine?”
Wolverine hesitates, then shakes his head. “Nah, I’ve got my own way home.”
Naturally, Charles insists on shaking his hand, saying with all genuineness, “Thank you so much for helping us - things might have turned out rather poorly this evening, if not for your assistance. I likely owe you my life.”
Erik meets Logan’s eyes over Charles’ head and tries to communicate, yes, what he said, purely via facial expressions. Logan looks grateful for it.
Angel goes and collects Sean from the roof. Hank pulls the psychic dampeners from the cage. They trek over to the next empty warehouse, where Hank had hidden the Jet. Mandisa clings to Angel’s hand but follows Charles with her eyes; Charles, in turn, seems to be looking at Erik every time Erik glances over at him.
By the time they’re in the air and heading home, Erik feels like he’s under sedation again, wants to sleep through the entire weekend. Charles, in the seat next to his, is outright staring at him. If the kids notice their quietness, they seem happy to take up the slack, reliving what sounds like a full-scale battle for the benefit of Raven, Angel and Mandisa. Raven and Angel clearly aren’t convinced by the embellishments - there hadn’t been that many guards, surely Charles must have knocked out at least half of them by the time the cavalry arrived - but are likely keeping quiet because of the wide-eyed, enraptured look on Mandisa’s face.
Erik wants nothing more than to crawl into bed the moment they land. But Charles has to coordinate with whoever has taken charge of the drugs and warehouses now, make arrangements for Mandisa’s situation - all important calls that can’t wait. Raven automatically takes the girl up to find her a room. Erik, as familiar with this routine as all the others, grumblingly changes out of his suit and supervises the clean-up of the Jet and the docking bay.
“Hey, you can go and sleep now,” says a voice, suddenly. Erik opens his eyes with a start, not having realized he’s closed them. He doesn’t remember leaning against the wall, either; in front of him, Alex’s face is a study in artful nonchalance.
Erik glares, but it’s hard to come up with a proper response when his thoughts feel like they’re tumbling through molten caramel.
Alex rolls his eyes. “Look, I know that thinking of us as kids helps with the family structure or whatever, but we are not actually children.” In the hallway, something heavy crashes into something fragile. “Most of the time. Can you just go to sleep before you fall on your face? Personally, I think that’d be an improvement, but the Professor seems to like what you have right now, and I need him to help me write my essays.”
“All right, fuck, I’m going,” grumbles Erik. He wonders if a bit of those sedatives are still in his system - he loses time between the basement and the top floor why the fuck are there so many stairs and stumbles, just barely, into the bedroom, blindly taking a familiar number of steps, whereupon he falls over, face-down, onto the cool blankness of clean sheets, and passes out.
+ + +
{CHAPTER INDEX: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4}