X-Men First Class fic: By Any Other Name (Charles/Erik, 1,700 words)
So, the usual cracky nonsense from 1stclass_kink. Original is here
Title: By Any Other Name
Fandom: X-Men First Class
Pairing: Charles/Erik
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,700
Warnings: Cringeworthiness.
Summary: 'But Schnookums..."
The cold air wakes him up as the bedclothes are pulled back. He reaches out sleepily and grabs a limb. ‘Where are you going?’
‘You know where I’m going,’ Charles says, yawning. ‘I’m going mutant hunting. Let me go so I can go.’
‘I don’t want you to go,’ Erik grumbles.
‘I know, but we’ll have a nice new mutant for the school,’ Charles says, petting his hair. ‘Go back to sleep, cootchie-pie. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
The petting is soothing. Erik finds himself drifting.
When he next wakes, Charles is long gone.
***
It’s late. A great start to his day of being responsible. He walks grumpily into the kitchen looking for coffee. Damn Charles. How did he talk him into being in charge of a houseful of children and teenagers on his own? Keeping them in line he can do. He’s good at being the bad parent. But the rest - shopping, cooking, soothing tantrums, all that crap - that’s Charles’s area. He doesn’t like it.
Particularly he doesn’t like waking up alone because Charles left at five in the morning for the long drive to find the latest mutant.
At least there’s fresh coffee in the pot. Some of the kids must be in the breakfast room already. He grabs the milk from the fridge, reaches for a mug… then turns slowly round. There’s a note on the fridge. He'd know the writing anywhere.
To get in town
Milk
Bread
Cereal
Canned soup
Tomatoes
Burgers
Then, at the bottom:
Thanks lovemuffin. xx
When he listens, he can hear muffled voices from the next room. Voices and laughter. Rather more laughter than usual.
He shoves the door open. The laughter stops instantly. He stalks to the head of the table and sits down.
‘Not a word,’ he tells them. ‘Not a single word.’
***
Charles comes back the next day. Erik catches sight of the car as it comes up the drive and waits by the door. He’s feeling rather proud of himself. The mansion didn’t burn down, everybody got fed something (mostly cereal), and he even told little Ororo a bedtime story, though Raven slapped a hand over his mouth when he got to the bit about cutting off the toes.
Charles pulls up in a spray of gravel and exits the car triumphant, with a new recruit in tow. The kid is about thirteen and looks bewildered.
‘You must come and say hello to everyone! They’ll be so delighted,’ Charles is enthusing as Erik comes up to them. ‘Oh, look, here’s my favourite caped crusader. Pookie-wookie, I’d like you to meet Bobby Drake.’
Bobby gazes up at Erik in a sort of awed horror. ‘Hello, Mr… uh…?’
‘Erik Lehnsherr,’ Erik snaps. His expression is designed to convey the words, And don’t you forget it.
‘And this is Alex, and Raven, and Jean and Ororo,’ Charles continues blithely. Bobby greets them with evident relief and they bear him off to show him his room. He shoots a backward glance at Erik over his shoulder. Erik turns the glare up a notch.
‘Was everything ok?’ Charles asks, craning up for a kiss. ‘Thank you for holding the fort.’ He smiles after the departing figures. ‘He’s a wonderful young man,’ he says. ‘A little nervous and moody, as teenagers are, but he’s got a good heart. I’m so glad we found him.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be an asset to the school,’ Erik says.
Charles’s face takes on the determined look he always gets when they discuss his dream academy. ‘Yes, once he starts to feel more at home. Raven will help him settle in. She’s become quite motherly of late. I’m not sure I thought much of the welcome you gave him, mind,’ he adds, slightly reproving. ‘Really, fluffikins, he was quite frightened. Did you have to look so menacing?’
‘Was I looking menacing?’ Erik asks. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
***
When Charles picks up an unusual cluster of mutants who seemed to be in trouble, it doesn’t take long to trace them to a CIA building. It’s their first honest-to-god mission since Cuba, and it’s a bit of an adrenalin rush. Being a teacher doesn’t quite have the level of terror and intimidation Erik’s used to.
Close, but not quite.
They make it a night-time assault. It’s not so hard when you have people who can climb walls, fuse wiring and, when all else fails, just blast things apart.
Erik hangs back to secure the perimeter before following the rest in. By the time he’s got the gates neatly bound up and the wire fence turned into razor-sharp strands, Charles already has a row of CIA guards standing in a silent line.
‘And you will obey any request from me or my friends here,’ Charles tells them, hand pressed firmly to his temple. ‘Erik, I think I’ve got a hold on every mind in the building now. I’ll take Hank and Raven and go after the mutants. You and Alex can destroy Cerebro and any spare parts they have in storage.’
Erik nods and motions to Alex as Charles and the other scuttle off down a corridor. ‘Cerebro first,’ he says, ‘then we’ll find the store rooms, and blow up the labs while we’re at it.’
‘Sounds good,’ Alex says. ‘Where do we go?’
Erik turns to first guard in the row. ‘You, where’s Cerebro? Take us there.’
‘This way, schnookums,’ the guard says.
Erik freezes.
Alex’s lip twitches. ‘Ahem. Looks like the Prof put a little more of himself into this one than usual,’ he says carefully.
He’s not laughing. Not quite. Luckily for him, Erik thinks, because otherwise he’d be impaled on a letter opener.
Alex catches his eye and suddenly looks rather less amused. ‘Look, forget about it, I didn’t hear a thing.’
‘Good,’ Erik says coldly. ‘Let’s go. And if we need any other information, you’re doing the talking.’
***
The children are unusually quiet as they wait for class to begin. Possibly it’s the presence of both himself and Charles. They’re all gripping notepads and looking very attentive.
Charles finishes scribbling on the blackboard and comes to sit on the desk. ‘Right, good morning everyone. This, as you know, is Ethics, and Erik’s going to be helping with our discussion, aren’t you, poppet?’
There’s a rustling of papers.
Today we’ll be discussing the question, “can it be morally acceptable to kill?”’ Charles says.
‘And the answer is yes,’ Erik puts in.
‘Can we have a discussion, please, huggybear? That’s rather the point.’
Erik grits his teeth.
Pencils scribble.
They do eventually manage to have a discussion, interspersed with a smattering of terms of endearment. Erik’s rather getting into the thing, though his diatribe on moral responsibility is cut off abruptly by Charles announcing, ‘Pumpkin, you’re talking out of your arse.’
There are surprisingly few sniggers.
Then, on Charles’s first ‘sweetheart’ of the class, Sean suddenly makes a little yelping noise. He swallows it hurriedly, but there’s an immediate sense of disappointment from everyone else. Notebooks droop. Erik looks at them with deep suspicion.
‘Well,’ Charles says, sensing the sudden drop in attentiveness, ‘I think that will do for today. Essays on my desk by Monday, please.’
He turns to go. Erik leans by the door as the children file out. As Sean passes he snags him by the collar. The others scatter hastily.
‘Show me,’ Erik says dangerously.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sean squeaks.
Erik snatches the notebook from his hands and unfolds the piece of paper that tumbles out of it. It’s a grid, with a word written neatly in each square. Several are crossed out. There is, in fact, a row of crosses from one side to the other.
‘You know my views on the moral acceptability of murder, don’t you, Sean?’ Erik asks.
Sean nods.
‘Do you think I consider myself justified in this case?’
Sean swallows, looking round desperately for help. ‘Um, probably?’
Erik smiles. ‘Bingo,’ he says.
***
Eventually, Hank and Raven corner him in the smaller east drawing room, looking respectively pleading and stubborn.
‘What do you want?’ Erik asks.
They glance at each other. ‘It’s the names,’ Raven admits. ‘The terrible, terrible names that Charles calls you, the ones that make me ashamed that he's my brother.’
Erik glares at her. ‘How is that any of your business?’
‘We want to help,’ Hank says earnestly. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t do it if he knew how much it embarrassed you.’
‘Yeah, Erik,’ Raven says. Can’t you do something about it? Look, just tell him to stop.’
‘No,’ he snaps. ‘Bugger off, both of you.’
‘Why not?’ Raven whines.
Well, for a start, Erik thinks, he might actually stop. He remembers Charles’s hand on his hair and his fond, Go back to sleep, cootchie-pie.
Nobody else has ever called him cootchie-pie. Or snugglebunny. Or groovy-genes. Or neato Magneto.
‘It’s not good for your image,’ Raven says. ‘Also, it’s not good for our sanity. I caught Alex trying to wash his own ears out after the "tasty-toes" incident.'
‘He shouldn’t have been listening,’ Erik says gruffly.
‘You were teaching a freaking class, Erik. You were standing there in front of half-a-dozen kids, he was meant to be listening to you.’
Just then Charles pokes his head around the door. Raven and Hank spin around guiltily.
‘There you are, Raven,’ Charles says, ‘Jean’s looking for you. She said something about modelling haircuts for her.’
‘Yeah, thanks, in a minute,’ Raven says.
Charles looks from face to face and frowns. ‘Are you arguing?’ he asks. ‘I don’t mean to pry, but there’s a definite sense of tension from all of you.’ He ambles over to Erik and slips an arm around his waist. ‘Hello you great big lump of love,’ he says. ‘I missed you.’
Behind Charles’s back, Raven theatrically sticks a finger down her throat. Cheeky brat. Erik meets her eyes and gives her his best sadistic smile.
He squeezes Charles gently. ‘Hello my little Apfelstrudel,’ he says, and watches Raven’s face take on an expression of utter horror.
What the hell. If you can’t beat them, might as well join them.
He’ll keep ‘Professor Sex’ for the bedroom, though.
Title: By Any Other Name
Fandom: X-Men First Class
Pairing: Charles/Erik
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,700
Warnings: Cringeworthiness.
Summary: 'But Schnookums..."
The cold air wakes him up as the bedclothes are pulled back. He reaches out sleepily and grabs a limb. ‘Where are you going?’
‘You know where I’m going,’ Charles says, yawning. ‘I’m going mutant hunting. Let me go so I can go.’
‘I don’t want you to go,’ Erik grumbles.
‘I know, but we’ll have a nice new mutant for the school,’ Charles says, petting his hair. ‘Go back to sleep, cootchie-pie. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
The petting is soothing. Erik finds himself drifting.
When he next wakes, Charles is long gone.
***
It’s late. A great start to his day of being responsible. He walks grumpily into the kitchen looking for coffee. Damn Charles. How did he talk him into being in charge of a houseful of children and teenagers on his own? Keeping them in line he can do. He’s good at being the bad parent. But the rest - shopping, cooking, soothing tantrums, all that crap - that’s Charles’s area. He doesn’t like it.
Particularly he doesn’t like waking up alone because Charles left at five in the morning for the long drive to find the latest mutant.
At least there’s fresh coffee in the pot. Some of the kids must be in the breakfast room already. He grabs the milk from the fridge, reaches for a mug… then turns slowly round. There’s a note on the fridge. He'd know the writing anywhere.
To get in town
Milk
Bread
Cereal
Canned soup
Tomatoes
Burgers
Then, at the bottom:
Thanks lovemuffin. xx
When he listens, he can hear muffled voices from the next room. Voices and laughter. Rather more laughter than usual.
He shoves the door open. The laughter stops instantly. He stalks to the head of the table and sits down.
‘Not a word,’ he tells them. ‘Not a single word.’
***
Charles comes back the next day. Erik catches sight of the car as it comes up the drive and waits by the door. He’s feeling rather proud of himself. The mansion didn’t burn down, everybody got fed something (mostly cereal), and he even told little Ororo a bedtime story, though Raven slapped a hand over his mouth when he got to the bit about cutting off the toes.
Charles pulls up in a spray of gravel and exits the car triumphant, with a new recruit in tow. The kid is about thirteen and looks bewildered.
‘You must come and say hello to everyone! They’ll be so delighted,’ Charles is enthusing as Erik comes up to them. ‘Oh, look, here’s my favourite caped crusader. Pookie-wookie, I’d like you to meet Bobby Drake.’
Bobby gazes up at Erik in a sort of awed horror. ‘Hello, Mr… uh…?’
‘Erik Lehnsherr,’ Erik snaps. His expression is designed to convey the words, And don’t you forget it.
‘And this is Alex, and Raven, and Jean and Ororo,’ Charles continues blithely. Bobby greets them with evident relief and they bear him off to show him his room. He shoots a backward glance at Erik over his shoulder. Erik turns the glare up a notch.
‘Was everything ok?’ Charles asks, craning up for a kiss. ‘Thank you for holding the fort.’ He smiles after the departing figures. ‘He’s a wonderful young man,’ he says. ‘A little nervous and moody, as teenagers are, but he’s got a good heart. I’m so glad we found him.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be an asset to the school,’ Erik says.
Charles’s face takes on the determined look he always gets when they discuss his dream academy. ‘Yes, once he starts to feel more at home. Raven will help him settle in. She’s become quite motherly of late. I’m not sure I thought much of the welcome you gave him, mind,’ he adds, slightly reproving. ‘Really, fluffikins, he was quite frightened. Did you have to look so menacing?’
‘Was I looking menacing?’ Erik asks. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
***
When Charles picks up an unusual cluster of mutants who seemed to be in trouble, it doesn’t take long to trace them to a CIA building. It’s their first honest-to-god mission since Cuba, and it’s a bit of an adrenalin rush. Being a teacher doesn’t quite have the level of terror and intimidation Erik’s used to.
Close, but not quite.
They make it a night-time assault. It’s not so hard when you have people who can climb walls, fuse wiring and, when all else fails, just blast things apart.
Erik hangs back to secure the perimeter before following the rest in. By the time he’s got the gates neatly bound up and the wire fence turned into razor-sharp strands, Charles already has a row of CIA guards standing in a silent line.
‘And you will obey any request from me or my friends here,’ Charles tells them, hand pressed firmly to his temple. ‘Erik, I think I’ve got a hold on every mind in the building now. I’ll take Hank and Raven and go after the mutants. You and Alex can destroy Cerebro and any spare parts they have in storage.’
Erik nods and motions to Alex as Charles and the other scuttle off down a corridor. ‘Cerebro first,’ he says, ‘then we’ll find the store rooms, and blow up the labs while we’re at it.’
‘Sounds good,’ Alex says. ‘Where do we go?’
Erik turns to first guard in the row. ‘You, where’s Cerebro? Take us there.’
‘This way, schnookums,’ the guard says.
Erik freezes.
Alex’s lip twitches. ‘Ahem. Looks like the Prof put a little more of himself into this one than usual,’ he says carefully.
He’s not laughing. Not quite. Luckily for him, Erik thinks, because otherwise he’d be impaled on a letter opener.
Alex catches his eye and suddenly looks rather less amused. ‘Look, forget about it, I didn’t hear a thing.’
‘Good,’ Erik says coldly. ‘Let’s go. And if we need any other information, you’re doing the talking.’
***
The children are unusually quiet as they wait for class to begin. Possibly it’s the presence of both himself and Charles. They’re all gripping notepads and looking very attentive.
Charles finishes scribbling on the blackboard and comes to sit on the desk. ‘Right, good morning everyone. This, as you know, is Ethics, and Erik’s going to be helping with our discussion, aren’t you, poppet?’
There’s a rustling of papers.
Today we’ll be discussing the question, “can it be morally acceptable to kill?”’ Charles says.
‘And the answer is yes,’ Erik puts in.
‘Can we have a discussion, please, huggybear? That’s rather the point.’
Erik grits his teeth.
Pencils scribble.
They do eventually manage to have a discussion, interspersed with a smattering of terms of endearment. Erik’s rather getting into the thing, though his diatribe on moral responsibility is cut off abruptly by Charles announcing, ‘Pumpkin, you’re talking out of your arse.’
There are surprisingly few sniggers.
Then, on Charles’s first ‘sweetheart’ of the class, Sean suddenly makes a little yelping noise. He swallows it hurriedly, but there’s an immediate sense of disappointment from everyone else. Notebooks droop. Erik looks at them with deep suspicion.
‘Well,’ Charles says, sensing the sudden drop in attentiveness, ‘I think that will do for today. Essays on my desk by Monday, please.’
He turns to go. Erik leans by the door as the children file out. As Sean passes he snags him by the collar. The others scatter hastily.
‘Show me,’ Erik says dangerously.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sean squeaks.
Erik snatches the notebook from his hands and unfolds the piece of paper that tumbles out of it. It’s a grid, with a word written neatly in each square. Several are crossed out. There is, in fact, a row of crosses from one side to the other.
‘You know my views on the moral acceptability of murder, don’t you, Sean?’ Erik asks.
Sean nods.
‘Do you think I consider myself justified in this case?’
Sean swallows, looking round desperately for help. ‘Um, probably?’
Erik smiles. ‘Bingo,’ he says.
***
Eventually, Hank and Raven corner him in the smaller east drawing room, looking respectively pleading and stubborn.
‘What do you want?’ Erik asks.
They glance at each other. ‘It’s the names,’ Raven admits. ‘The terrible, terrible names that Charles calls you, the ones that make me ashamed that he's my brother.’
Erik glares at her. ‘How is that any of your business?’
‘We want to help,’ Hank says earnestly. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t do it if he knew how much it embarrassed you.’
‘Yeah, Erik,’ Raven says. Can’t you do something about it? Look, just tell him to stop.’
‘No,’ he snaps. ‘Bugger off, both of you.’
‘Why not?’ Raven whines.
Well, for a start, Erik thinks, he might actually stop. He remembers Charles’s hand on his hair and his fond, Go back to sleep, cootchie-pie.
Nobody else has ever called him cootchie-pie. Or snugglebunny. Or groovy-genes. Or neato Magneto.
‘It’s not good for your image,’ Raven says. ‘Also, it’s not good for our sanity. I caught Alex trying to wash his own ears out after the "tasty-toes" incident.'
‘He shouldn’t have been listening,’ Erik says gruffly.
‘You were teaching a freaking class, Erik. You were standing there in front of half-a-dozen kids, he was meant to be listening to you.’
Just then Charles pokes his head around the door. Raven and Hank spin around guiltily.
‘There you are, Raven,’ Charles says, ‘Jean’s looking for you. She said something about modelling haircuts for her.’
‘Yeah, thanks, in a minute,’ Raven says.
Charles looks from face to face and frowns. ‘Are you arguing?’ he asks. ‘I don’t mean to pry, but there’s a definite sense of tension from all of you.’ He ambles over to Erik and slips an arm around his waist. ‘Hello you great big lump of love,’ he says. ‘I missed you.’
Behind Charles’s back, Raven theatrically sticks a finger down her throat. Cheeky brat. Erik meets her eyes and gives her his best sadistic smile.
He squeezes Charles gently. ‘Hello my little Apfelstrudel,’ he says, and watches Raven’s face take on an expression of utter horror.
What the hell. If you can’t beat them, might as well join them.
He’ll keep ‘Professor Sex’ for the bedroom, though.