FIC: Utopia 15/? (WIP)
Title: Utopia
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairings: Charles/Erik
Genre: drama, angst, au, dystopia, future!fic
Rating: R
Word Count: 8300/?
Warnings: dubcon, emotional manipulation
Summary: Based on this 1stclass_kink prompt (and originally posted there).
"Erik has succeeded in taking over the world, but mutant utopia has yet to materialize. Charles is his reluctant companion."
Beta'd by idioticonion, who knows all but will not tell (and was an exceptionally fabulous help this chapter!).
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23
lxxx.
Delicate trinkling piano music played, twining circles around the low murmuring of the guests. English was not the only language spoken by any means, and those half-familiar voices contributed to a grand incomprehensible flow of dialog that seemed, in a way, almost an expressionistic painting meant to convey the idea of conversation, if not the sense of it.
The ballroom was long and open and although the white plaster ceiling hung well out of reach-except, of course, for a few extraordinarily tall mutants-the comparative width of the space gave it a certain disproportional looming quality. Thick white curtains interrupted the red wallpaper at every entrance and the merrily sparkling lights above dangled down entirely too close on little brass stalks.
Charles cared far more about where, exactly, they were hiding the alcohol; he could see it, in glasses the guests held onto with entirely too little reverence: whiskey and wine, fluted glasses of champagne and brandy in snifters. The Brotherhood, apparently, was not so straight-laced that its members turned their noses up at good spirits, and if there was one thing that remained in abundance after the destruction of the world’s infrastructure, it was fermenting plant material. The only problem was that Charles wasn’t sure where they were getting it from and nobody seemed about to take mercy on him.
“So you see, I really don’t care for the direction Magneto is taking us,” a smarmy dignitary lectured on in a nasally voice, crowded up to the wheelchair and close enough that Charles could smell the odor of mothballs coming off of his double-breasted suit. The man’s wife stared at Charles with a grimly polite smile stretching her lips; she had a mink-lined coat trapped in the crook of her arm. Maybe the mothballs were from that, instead…
No reason they can’t both smell like mothballs, Charles thought to himself, and aloud agreed with a vague, “Sure.”
The dignitary gestured with his champagne, dislodging a flurry of bubbles from the sides of the neglected glass. “It’s just that he doesn’t seem very solution-orientated these days, you know?”
Charles nodded, scanning the crowd around them for familiar faces; Azazel, maybe, or Raven, or… Well, Azazel and Raven were really the only people he knew, except for Emma Frost, whom he could sense nearby but did not especially wish to speak to. For that reason, and the gold chain around his neck, Charles kept grudgingly within the confines of his own skull-at least, as much as he could manage; the plethora of un-shielded thoughts hung around him like the strings of brightly-colored balloons, dangling their strings invitingly. It was difficult not to peek at all.
The dignitary smiled at him, showing the yellowed borders of his teeth; his eyes glittered with calculation. “I knew you of all people would understand my position, Mr. Xavier.”
“Professor,” Charles corrected, glancing back briefly before looking around again. There was a knot of people clustered beyond several smaller groups of socializing mutants-really, the sheer genetic diversity on display was amazing!-and it was difficult to pick through their faces and shoulders for anyone he recognized.
“Of course,” the dignitary replied smoothly, and continued, “And you know, this government really is becoming alarmingly secular-we shouldn’t have let the Communists have so much influence in our politics, they insist on incorporating their ideas into everything…”
“Mm,” Charles grunted. There were a couple people over there that he remembered from the Brotherhood meetings; the Minister of Agriculture was laughing in sudden nervous bursts over his wine, evidently over something that-ah, yes, that was Infrared-was telling another mutant, who was standing next to…
Erik’s eyes met his as soon as Charles recognized the elegant line of his nose, the slope of his shoulders. His smile had seemed stiff and perfunctory even across the room but now it smoothed into something more genuine. Beneath Charles’ hands, the metal of his chair thrummed, for a moment, like a subliminal purr, and he felt something entirely different flutter between his ribs-
“Granted, I don’t think the Reds are to blame for all of it,” the dignitary droned on. Charles’ attention wavered as he looked from the dignitary and back to Erik, but the Brotherhood’s leader had gone back to his conversation-apparently taking his promise not to hover seriously.
“Is that so,” Charles remarked, forcing his voice steady.
“Yes, well, I heard from a very reliable source that he-” the dignitary pointed toward Erik with his champagne- “is Jewish, and, well, of course I don’t care about that, but I don’t think he’s even religious! You won’t hear him thank God in his speeches, and the thought that this Godlessness goes right up to the top-!”
“When I was ten years old,” Charles interrupted, pinning the dignitary with his scrutiny, “I looked up the definition of ‘atheist’ in the dictionary and I’ve been one ever since. Now, I do hope you enjoy that fine champagne you’re holding.”
Without lingering to catalog the stages of the dignitary’s shock, Charles backed away, turned, and then pushed at the rails of his wheels until he was alone again. Except-except he wasn’t really alone; he was surrounded by all these people, and he’d been correct when he’d told Raven that he didn’t think that this would be anything quite so enjoyable as a party.
Charles could feel it in the air as he pushed his fingers up over his eyes; these weren’t people who liked each other. Rather, they had rushed here however they could-by air, by train, through teleportation-simply to wallow together in their misery and ambition, clawing at the rungs of the social ladder. The fact of it clung to the walls, the curtains, and the glowing lamps above like an oily slick of venom.
“You look like you’re having fun,” Badger said, and Charles dropped his hands from his face to see-well, he had seen the uniforms before-the dark red tunics and charcoal trousers-but he had thought that they were only worn by-
“Badger, are you an officer? In the Brotherhood’s army? How-What rank are you?” Charles demanded, peering at her in shock because yes, she was definitely in full dress, and he was pretty sure that people frowned upon wearing uniforms fraudulently.
The erstwhile physical therapist picked at her tunic with the hand that wasn’t holding a mostly-empty snifter, grimacing at the ribbon bars and shoulder insignia-the former awfully numerous and the latter invisible to Charles from his angle. “Damn, you know, I don’t even remember what any of this stuff means,” she told him.
“And the physical therapy?” Charles asked, frowning.
Badger shrugged. “I have strange hobbies. Anyway, the more pressing issue is that you look tragically sober, and really, these sorts of events are intolerable without a little alcohol to free up your schadenfreude.”
“And what sort of event would you call this?” Charles inquired. “I’ve heard a variety of terms used-‘soirée,’ ‘party,’ ‘get-together…’”
Pursing her lips together thoughtfully, Badger peered around at the guests before declaring, “Funeral.”
Charles’ eyebrows jumped. “Not literally, I hope?”
“Nah,” Badger dismissed. “Not this time; wrong sort of crowd. Now, here, see those tables over there? Go find an empty one, sit tight, and I’ll come back with something to drink.”
“Scotch, if I get a choice,” Charles called after her, and she waved an acknowledgement back over her shoulder. Then he went and found an empty table-hardly anyone was sitting, since the entire point of the evening, for everyone else, was to be seen socializing-and pulled one of the plush-cushioned chairs out of the way so that he could sit in its place.
Charles looked around at the gathered mutants-for, certainly, there were no humans hiding here-and allowed himself to marvel; to forget, for a moment, who they were. Many of their mutations-like those possessed by the dignitary and his wife, and Charles himself-were invisible, but some were rather spectacularly on display as points of pride. There was a green-skinned woman whose dress covered her breasts and then split around her midriff to display translucent frosted-glass skin and queasily shifting organs beneath; a man’s fingers and toes stretched long between the rumbled folds of webbing; a young lady’s hair lay draped in hazy suspension on colorful sparks of power as she drifted along on the arm of an older man.
They weren’t all bad people, of course; case in point, there was Badger - then again, it seemed as if he knew even less about her than he’d thought.
Charles decided that he really hated those helmets.
But then, not all telepaths were as lovable as Charles. Exhibit A: Emma Frost, slinking toward him even now, her cape of arctic fox fur twitching around her ankles as if it still remembered how to live.
“Charles,” she crooned, all saccharine charm. “Deigning to rub your elbows with the peasants, I see? Only…” Frost tilted her head at his empty table. “…Not quite.”
“Emma,” Charles replied, making no attempt to smile back at her. “Unfortunately this seat is reserved for a friend, or I would offer it to you. Since I wouldn’t dream of keeping you standing, you can feel free to go on your merry way.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Frost reassured him. “I just came over to ask you how your little research project with Hank is going.” She paused, her lips forming an O of sudden, sweetly embarrassed epiphany. “Oh, that’s right, you’re not working on that anymore, are you?”
“I’m sure that you’re a hero to drug-resistant mutants everywhere,” Charles theorized, and made a little flicking motion at her with his fingers.
Frost’s smile dipped into a pitying smirk. “Oh, honey; you can’t fool me that easily. The only reason I haven’t bothered with snapping Hank’s mind like a toothpick is because I think I’ll enjoy picking him apart to see what you’re hiding in that fuzzy blue head of his.”
Charles felt the hard insectile arms of fear wrap around his stomach, and for a moment they squeezed, but… He pried them away with reason: Frost would not threaten what she could simply do. Charles granted her a flat, unamused stare, and warned, “Don’t try it.”
Her laugh rang high and sparkling. “Are you trying to intimidate me? Haven’t you learned by now that there are simpler ways of ruining someone than telepathy?”
Before Charles could decide exactly how to reply to that-it was regrettably true, at this point-he glanced over and saw that Badger had returned, juggling a bottle and two stout glasses. The snifter was gone.
“Emma, darling,” Badger crooned. “I’m glad you’re here. No evening is entirely ruined until you’re in it.”
“Ah, it’s…” Frost rolled her eyes up to the low ceiling as if trying to remember. “Major General Horton, if I recall correctly? And how are your duties coming along? Have you found any insurrectionists hiding in the corridors?”
Badger arched her brows coolly. “I accepted what I had coming to me,” she told Frost. “I can only hope that you’re as graceful about it when the same happens to you.”
“‘Graceful,’ yes…” Frost mused, scrutinizing the other woman’s stocky frame. “Well, let’s just say I’m not too worried about it.”
“Fair enough,” Badger acknowledged. “Now, do be a dear and remove yourself elsewhere, eh? I only have enough glasses for two and frankly, you’re not getting either of them.”
The female telepath’s pale blue eyes flashed, and she pursed her lips, studying Badger for a few silent seconds before pronouncing, “You know, I’m not so sure that you have gotten what’s coming to you yet. Charles,” Frost nodded to him, “Major General… Enjoy your night.”
Frost drifted away from them, the clack of her heels slow and unconcerned, and the pair stared after her until she was out of view.
“Well!” Badger exclaimed. She set the glasses down and lowered herself into the chair. “That was exciting.”
“‘Major General Horton?’” Charles echoed, raising a single eyebrow. Now that she was seated, the insignia on her shoulder were clear, if not particularly familiar: two gold stars and broad, notched band of that same shining thread.
“Yeah, now you know why I prefer ‘Badger,’” she agreed. Charles continued to stare at her and she flicked her eyes ceiling-ward. “Eh, it’s not that big of a deal. I mean you know that lout, Zeus, right? He outranks me. Clearly the standards can’t be set too high, and anyway our unit sizes are pretty small, as these things go.”
“Still, that means you should be in charge of-what, a platoon?”
“Division,” Badger corrected.
“Right. But… You’re not?” Charles prompted, furrowing his brow.
She sighed expansively. “Too sober,” she muttered, and set the Scotch whiskey onto the table between the glasses. “Here, I brought you the whole bottle. It’s hard to hold onto a full glass when you’re in a chair-well, and keep it full, that is.”
“Marry me,” Charles demanded, fixing his attention on the wavering line of alcohol near the neck of the bottle.
“Ooh,” Badger groaned, wedging one of her stout white nails under the cork, “but I would never know if you loved me for me or just because I bring you booze.”
“I like you,” Charles protested. “Although… Maybe not as much as the booze, no.”
“I knew it,” she replied, pulling her face into a mocking pout. “You’re just using me for Scotch.”
Holding his finger and thumb up near each other, Charles admitted, “Maybe a little. Now, about your hallway patrol duties…”
“I’m beginning to doubt your dedication to Scotch,” Badger chided, pouring some of that drink into the bottom of his glass. “Here, let’s see if this is enough to distract you.” She nudged it toward him and it slid over the tabletop and bumped into Charles’ palm.
Charles raised it to his lips and took a long sip without breaking eye contact; the smooth glide of it sharpened past his tonsils and he curled his lips into a satisfied grimace. “I can drink and listen at the same time,” Charles pronounced.
Badger crossed her arms over her chest, raising her eyebrows and pressing her lips together in surrender. “Well, okay then. It’s not a very long story. I’ve been what we call ‘shelved’; that is, I did something that I’m entirely too proud of but they don’t have enough qualified soldiers to justify demoting or otherwise getting rid of me, so instead I get all the odd shit jobs, like double-checking the inventory on our armory and looking after your scrawny ass. Happens all the time; or, well, it did, back when there were other military forces.”
Frowning, Charles asked, “What did you do?”
A corner of Badger’s mouth twitched upward. “Don’t get too excited, Chuck; I wouldn’t still be alive if I weren’t loyal. You don’t get one of these-” she tapped a blunt claw against the dull silver dome of her helmet- “unless they already know you’re not hiding anything in there. You know the Immolation of Chicago? I did that. The only thing was that it should have been worse-I gave them fair warning. Those people were supposed to burn up with the city; inspire a little of the old terror in the enemy. That’s the only favor I ever did humanity.”
“As favors go, that’s considerable,” Charles told her.
Badger scoffed. “I’m just not a bully,” she explained. “I don’t hate humans; it’s just that, when the fighting broke out, I had a choice and it seemed pretty obvious.” She scratched through the thick black hair on her face. “I don’t think I would have done too well on the human side of things.” She kept scratching, as if she had accidentally freed an itch, and made a face when her fingers met the edge of the helmet.
“Excuse me,” Badger requested, and pulled the helmet off; she set it down on the table next to the bottle of Scotch. Upon seeing Charles’ shock, she rolled her eyes. “What? All this fur gets itchy when it’s cramped down underneath that all day. Although don’t… Don’t go telling everybody; I might end up have to check coats next time.”
Invitations didn’t get much clearer than that-it would almost be rude not to look, and, well, it wasn’t as if he weren’t curious-so Charles cast out something like a fisherman’s bobber to signal what he was doing-she would not have felt that he had been there, otherwise-and waded in just far enough to get his ankles wet; metaphorically speaking of course. From there, he looked out over the warm pond of Badger’s mind, at the fish he could see but did not bother to catch moving just beneath the reflected sky.
He didn’t understand her soldier’s conviction, her willingness to fight against people she didn’t hate; it was there, like an impenetrable wall of dense and muddy cattails-Charles could see it, could understand its reality, but he couldn’t fathom what reasons might lie within.
Charles withdrew and felt, for a moment, the red flash of a turtle’s ear-what if he doesn’t like what he saw? He smiled to himself, just a little, and the sun over Badger’s pond grew warmer in a languid pulse of there’s nothing to worry about.
“Huh,” Badger remarked. “That wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as when Frost does it.”
“I’m not sure that she has any concern for your comfort,” Charles commented dryly.
“Then I’ll be sure to be extra pissed off next time,” she replied. “Speaking of having no concern for your comfort, have you been practicing with your crutches?”
Charles hid behind the glass of whiskey, considering. “Sure I have,” he said, when he had swallowed.
Badger glared out at him from under her eyebrows. “Really, Charles? Haven’t we gone over how if you go through all of this and still can’t walk, it’ll be your own damn fault?”
“I haven’t really had time,” Charles told her, cringing at the blatant lie. Sure, he was busier now than he had ever been-but he really had nothing but time, now. It was just… He felt clumsy with the crutches, and every step seemed so much farther away than the last.
Badger shrugged, rolling her wrist down to grasp her glass from the top; she brought it to her mouth and drained half of it in one go, then held her breath, all of her attention focused inward. Finally, she exhaled in a hiss between her teeth. “Well, it’s not my time that you’re wasting. Mine’s already wasted. Now, how about I tell you about something embarrassing Zeus did this one time, instead, and you can think about your failings later…”
lxxxi.
Badger left, eventually, after sharing several more misadventures and attempting without much success to goad Charles into telling some of his own; while Charles believed himself to be an excellent storyteller under most circumstances, he had found himself mumbling his anecdotes to a close with something like “and, well, actually we just went straight home after that instead of going any further” or “so you see, I thought about making him believe he was a troll living under the bridge, but in the end I decided it was rather too cruel.”
“You can’t be afraid to embellish a little,” Badger had advised him, looking pained. “It’s called artistic license. I mean, you and I both know that I made up half of that last story.”
But then someone who had known Badger for quite a lot longer than Charles had called her away, and she had drained her glass, raised it in an empty toast, and left after threatening to see him tomorrow.
The bottle of Scotch was still there, and Charles pulled it toward him; he wasn’t sure whether he would have to give it up once he went back to his rooms for the night but he didn’t want to risking wasting it if that were the case. It had been a while since he had last had the opportunity for more than a single glass of anything alcoholic, but the whiskey was really quite good and Charles was invested enough in some day having the chance to taste it again that he was willing to take some care not to act like an undergraduate and drink himself stupid.
The helmet remained on the table where Badger had left it and Charles pulled that to him as well, bracing it between his palms as if he could stare into its hollows and find eyes. It was cool beneath his skin; it looked as if it ought to be soft but it snagged, somehow, on the ridges and whorls of his fingers. It was surprisingly light; Charles turned it over and peered inside at the vinyl padding. The one he had worn, back when he had been captured, had been lined with leather-evidently supplies had grown scarce.
He set the helmet back onto the table and nudged it to an arm’s length away. Badger would be returning for it, Charles was sure, but he didn’t much care to dwell on it until then. Instead, he peered back out onto the open floor of the ballroom and nobody peered back; he didn’t stand out anymore now that he sat at a table, and it was dimmer near the wall where the red paper held the light captive.
As Charles sipped at the whiskey and watched the guests talk and gesticulate and exchange their thin polite smiles, he felt a gentle calm wash over him; for a moment, it was as if he weren’t there at all: that this was some sort of curious dream, or an anthropological scene set behind a plate glass wall so broad that it only seemed that he was in the same room. The voices and thoughts burbled together and Charles allowed himself to forget their meaning, if only for a little while, and float over top of them.
There was a flash; the sudden rush of displaced air drove the odor of sulphur to sting Charles’ nose. Azazel stood before him, snapping reality back into crispness with the sharp black of his suit and the jagged lines of his face.
Azazel’s scars dimpled with his grin. “I was beginning to think you had not been invited.”
Charles scoffed. “Are you joking? The entire purpose of this evening was just to give us the chance to sit down together.”
Ducking his head into a tentative smile, Azazel replied, “Is that so? Then I should be honored that all of this effort was given on my behalf.”
“Considering the number of hours spent on hair styling alone, I should think so!” Charles remarked. “All these women have sacrificed their comfort for our sake.”
Azazel arched a single crow’s-feather eyebrow. “Are they really so uncomfortable?” he asked.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Charles confirmed.
“Then,” the other man’s eyes dipped down to the glass, “we should not let them suffer pointlessly. If I may share that bottle…?”
“Of course,” Charles agreed, nodding an invitation toward the empty chair.
Bowing just a little at the waist, Azazel’s lips quirked as he requested, “A moment.” He vanished in a swirl of red smoke.
Charles settled in to wait but he had no more begun to fidget before Azazel returned, holding a glass of his own. His gray eyes lingered over Charles’ stilled fingers and he smirked knowingly as he took his seat. The spade of his long red tail threaded itself through the arm of the chair and looped around one its legs, the sharp tip questing over the tiled floor like the head of a snake.
Tearing his attention away from the appendage, Charles looked back to Azazel only to find himself being studied in turn.
“You will be trusted eventually,” Azazel assured him, pointing with his empty glass before reaching to fill it. Charles glanced down, startled to find that he had been working the links of the gold necklace between his fingers.
He dropped the chain quickly and returned to his Scotch. “I’m sure there must have been some adjustment period for you, after Shaw…” Charles hesitated; was he being rude?
Azazel took no notice of the missing verb. He shrugged, a brief rustling hitch of his padded shoulders. “It was very rough going for a while,” he admitted. “Magneto was always very suspicious when I went away, for a long time after I joined him. Not without reason, perhaps. But after you were gone, he began needing to rely on me more.”
He shifted, and met Charles’ gaze. “It was not personal, of course. I am sorry if you were very unhappy, after.”
Charles swirled the contents of his glass, staring down into it as he remembered the only time he had ever been teleported anywhere; the sudden suffocating squeeze of it, the unexpectedly obvious difference of the air in that new place. What could he say? It’s all right; I wasn’t using those years anyway? Or perhaps, you were only doing your job-but that excuse had never worked in the past, had it?
“It wasn’t bad, as things go,” Charles settled for. “The view was nice, and the staff were all very friendly. They didn’t understand a thing about genetics but they let me ramble on about it to them. Plenty of practice for lecturing, I suppose.”
“That sounds very quiet, at least,” Azazel commented. He brought one of his thick, yellowed nails up to touch against a deep groove in his cheek. “I am going to look old soon, for all the scars on my face.”
“Some women like that,” Charles offered, suddenly very conscious of the fact that he was sitting across from a demonic-looking man who could pop from one place to another with a thought and reassuring said man about his appearance. It all seemed a bit unlikely. “And you’re very smartly dressed. They do like that.” Charles tugged at the lapel of his own silver-gray suit to emphasize his point.
Azazel’s eyes crinkled with amusement as he held his glass near his mouth; the liquid within went scarlet with proximity. “I was not complaining,” he explained. “But thank you.”
“Oh.” Charles blinked, and frowned. “Then maybe you should consider being more careful?”
The white of the other man’s teeth gleamed shockingly bright against his skin. “I try, but it never works out that way, you know?”
They spoke for a while longer, although their conversation consisted mostly of quiet punctuated by low murmurs of observation as Azazel joined Charles in watching the other guests. At one point Charles saw Raven out in the crowd, her hair glowing with streaks of orange and her skin deepened to indigo beneath the warm daze of a lamp. She wore a dress Charles proudly suspected might inspire a seamstress to quit on the spot, if that women did not know that Raven had simply grown it from her skin-she was barely decent beneath gauzy layers of white and lattices of shining, silver beads.
At Raven’s elbow rested the pale hand of an auburn-haired woman wearing a long, pale blue dress and dark glasses-Charles realized with a start that the woman was blind; moreover, from the way that the woman leaned close to Raven, he suspected that she might be Destiny.
Raven caught his eye from across the room; Charles saw the flash of yellow narrow into sly triumph as she noticed Azazel sitting beside him. She whispered to Destiny, who smiled but did not look over to them, and Raven then waved over to Charles.
Hesitantly, Charles raised his hand in reply; through a series of increasingly vague gestures and wildly exaggerated expressions, Raven communicated that she would not be interrupting them, but that she would certainly try to come by later when Charles was free again.
Charles watched them merge back into the flow of suits and dresses with some measure of bewilderment; beside him, Azazel almost buzzed with amusement.
“They are always going everywhere together,” Azazel commented fondly. “Very good friends. Not many people welcomed Destiny at the start. She can see the future; she makes people nervous.”
Charles nodded, feeling, despite the warmth of Azazel’s words, the sink of disappointment: “very good friends” seemed like such an inadequate label, once he knew the truth. So he didn’t reply-and anyway, Charles found that he didn’t mind sharing silence with Azazel; the Russian didn’t seem to expect anything of him and in turn, Charles was well aware that this truce did not mean that Azazel possessed any inclination to disloyalty.
He felt at ease with that; there was no mystery, here. Charles could sink down into his chair with his glass cradled loosely between his fingers and empty his mind, turning his thoughts into the perfect black sheet of an underground lake; the churning rush of foreign minds ran around and through but not a single eddy rippled that gleaming surface.
If Azazel needed to ask him something, Charles had the time to come back to himself and consider his answer. And if, after that reply, Azazel should want nothing to do with him? Well, then Charles would not be terribly upset; he had not forgotten what the other man had done to the innocent men at the CIA headquarters years ago.
This was a good ritual, Charles decided. The alcohol helped things right along. He could consider overlooking certain injustices, for now.
After about an hour Azazel rose to his feet, the sway of his tail the only indication that the Scotch might have had any effect on him.
Charles tipped his head back, and it seemed as if his brain spun over and over in his skull. He squinted a little; gained focus. “Leaving?”
The other mutant smiled down at him, the gentleness of the expression at odds with the harsh angles of his face. “I can’t sit here for the entire evening,” Azazel told him, “But I did enjoy our drink.” He stepped closer, right up to the side of the chair, and set his hand down on Charles’ opposite shoulder. “When you no longer require such an entourage to do so, we should talk again.”
“Mm,” Charles agreed, leaning over thoughtlessly to rest his head on Azazel’s hip. “I would like that.”
Fingers brushed lightly over his neck, and Charles felt the hum of surprise from Azazel’s mind-a sudden flash of idea, of obscenity-then a ruthless living burial of that idea and a chagrined assertion of apologies; it was only a thought; not to be taken seriously-
Charles turned his nose to press against the fabric of Azazel’s long jacket; smelled cigarette smoke. I don’t mind, he thought. …If you want. And he didn’t; not really. Charles needed someone; he needed someone he didn’t care about, with whom he could share pleasure and then leave, and not worry about the consequences. If that person happened to be a man… Well, it wasn’t as if there were very many women throwing themselves at him these days, was it?
Those sword-callused fingers froze against Charles’ neck and he sensed Azazel staring down at him; sensed the dull shock in the other man’s head warring with mortified contemplation. And in any event, Azazel did not think that Charles was sober enough to be making that sort of offer; that Charles would never even consider it, in his right frame of mind, which… Was quite possibly true. And that is why you should decide now, while I’m still offering, Charles argued.
Azazel wavered; he was not, after all, attracted to men; did not want Charles to think that he was-did not want Charles to delude himself, or to expect anything to come of it-and, Azazel marveled, was he really considering taking Charles up on it?
Perfect, Charles insisted, pulling away to peer up at Azazel’s face. I’m not really either. It seemed to be true, in any case-he did not feel a thing when he looked at the other man, certainly not the-the madness he felt around Erik. But Azazel wasn’t unattractive, either, just… Different. It was refreshing, like a mouthful of snow.
Finally, weakly, Azazel wondered what Charles could possibly get out of it, why he would even want to-but Charles simply, elegently reminded the other man that he was after all a telepath, and could get quite a lot of it, really.
Azazel frowned, and then shrugged mentally: conceding that if Charles was willing-if he truly wanted to do it-well. Then there was no problem, was there? His tail flicked a request-follow-and Charles was disappointed, for a moment, that they weren’t going to teleport away. It would have called too much attention, of course; and anyway, like Charles, Azazel’s abilities could not reach through the shielded walls.
The entire debate had lasted fewer than ten seconds.
Charles followed behind the red-skinned man, along the edge of the ballroom and to one of the curtain-lined doorways; he tried not to look suspicious as he scanned over the faces out in the main of the room, searching to see: was Erik watching? Or, worse, Raven. Preemptive fear skated through his gut; maybe… Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea…
But Azazel held the door open and Charles smiled up at him in a distracted sort of way as he wheeled through. For all that the other mutant had been reluctant, his anticipation now coiled slow and curious through Charles’ mind; the telepath felt almost drunk with it-well, he was drunk, a bit, of course-but he remembered, now, why he had missed this. Azazel bore no resemblance to one of those blushing co-eds, but this… This part was the same, still, and Charles basked under that attention, if perhaps not quite as vainly as he had when he was younger.
They reached the coatroom and Azazel shut the door behind them, enclosing the pair within the dense silence of furs and wool, illuminated by a single yellow bulb. The teleporter peered down at Charles, his brow furrowed; now what? he wanted to know.
Back- Charles urged, eyeing the room around them. Azazel’s need rested in his abdomen right alongside his own, distracting. Against the wall.
Azazel took note of the fact that the wall, as it so happened, was covered in coats.
Of course it is, Charles agreed. At least it will be soft. He didn’t wait for Azazel to think about it; instead, Charles drove the other man back into the coats through the simple expedient of crowding forward with his chair until Azazel leaned nestled in the folds of some sort of fur-rabbit, maybe, who knew-and Charles poised before him, brakes locked in place to give him some leverage. This would be different-definitely different from touching a women-but this was a skill he’d need soon, wasn’t it? Best to learn now, when it wasn’t serious; when Charles could get into Azazel’s head and know what worked.
Not, Charles mused privately, that it is really all that complicated, comparatively.
Azazel’s fingers rested lightly on Charles’ shoulders and the telepath didn’t look up to see his face, although he knew what would be there-a continuing bemusement, but not enough surprise that it reached Azazel’s eyes. His irises were too light to be dark with arousal but Charles knew, because he could feel it echoed in himself, that Azazel’s lips would be very slightly parted as he exhaled reverently through them, watching intently as Charles shoved his hips back, flush to the wall-as Charles pushed the black suit jacket out of his way and wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the teleporter’s belt buckle-
Charles’ fingers slid off the buckle, pulled by his wrist-no-Charles frowned in confusion, then lost his frown to alarm because he was being pulled by his watch-
The collar wound tight around Charles’ neck, just enough to force him up straight; he met Azazel’s stare and found his own realization matched there, in the wild, frenzied denial of the truth of it-the truth that Erik would certainly be there at any moment, was all around them now, in hangers and buttons and the metal of the wheelchair, and there was no point in hiding because they’d already been found.
Azazel and Charles shared a long, panicked stare of what are we supposed to do now, straining their ears as if they could hear through the insulation of the coats until finally, just in time, it occurred to Azazel that maybe it would be best if Erik didn’t walk in to see him pressed up against the wall in front of Charles-and so Azazel slipped out from the grasp of the fur coat and away from Charles moments before the door opened.
Charles didn’t want to look-his face burned with humiliation-but he had to; he couldn’t force himself to turn away as the door swung open and Erik stared in at them, lips pressed tight between the hard vertical lines of his helmet. His expression was unreadable except for one damning, immutable fact: he wasn’t happy.
Azazel, who had not been standing nearby to begin with, ducked his head and shuffled a further step away, tail curving around his ankles. “Apologies,” he muttered, fixing his attention on the shiny toes of his boots. “I didn’t know.”
Erik did no more than glance at the teleporter before pinning Charles with cold gray-green eyes. He crooked his finger; “Come with me,” he commanded, and before Charles could decide not to obey the chair jumped into life beneath his palms, coming to heel in the wake of Erik’s cape.
lxxxii.
Erik said nothing, but the stiff jut of his shoulders spoke volumes as he led Charles down the hall. That was all right, though; Charles’ fear-it was, after all, perfectly true that Erik could be terrifying-was rapidly transmuting into an anger of his own. He found himself seething right along with Erik as they went around a corner-through a set of wide double doors-another set of doors-and then out into darkness, where-
The cold seared the air from Charles’ lungs and he forgot his fury to gaze up at the sky; the moon loomed almost full above them, like the hooded eye of some great and beautiful reptile. Dried leaves rattled from tree branches, their withered embrace reaching nearly to the wall of the mansion itself. They were outside, but no mere courtyard was this! This was the forest, that great sprawl of wilderness that lay just beyond the mansion walls, which Charles had previously only glimpsed through the windows.
The world had proved itself large again, and Charles was only one tiny mammal crawling along the grudging surface of his planet. It was hard to believe that he had fancied himself meaningful-but then, didn’t some people have more influence than others? And now-now it was getting harder to hold onto that anger, and it was impossible not to remember: rage was Erik’s territory, and they were firmly within that tangled space now. The confident buzz of the alcohol receded into a tinny whine: Charles had, in all likelihood, made something of a mistake.
A concrete path lit by low electric lamps trailed off lonely into the distance, presumably finding its origin at a garage of some sort, where the guests had come through. Erik-and thus, Charles-followed this path for a while before diverging onto a hard-packed dirt trail leading into the satin black of the forest. The wheelchair shuddered over the first bump and then rose to hover a stately few inches above the ground.
Charles felt a chill, but it was in addition to his gradually accumulating shivers, not because of them-if something happened to him out here, no one would know.
That’s ridiculous, a more rational part of his mind whispered. If he wanted to get rid of you he would just do it. Besides, there’s a trail; clearly people come here. Still, it was… Unnerving. Why go so far from the mansion?
It would have been better if there was snow; the dusting that Raven and Charles had abused each other with was long gone now, but that sheet of white would have reflected the moonlight and made it so much easier to see. Erik had been reduced to a lean black silhouette before him, featureless except for where the gleam of the moon rested on his helmet like a slippery coin.
Eventually they reached a clearing, filled with the soft luminescence of dead grass not yet matted down by the crush of snow. It shushed over Erik’s boots as he strode out into it, and those long shards of leaves caressed the wheels of the chair as if in adulation as it sank back to the ground. The grass stood in gossiping clumps all around them, and there was enough light now that Charles could see, more or less, the features of Erik’s face as he turned around again; as he coiled tense and fuming over the solid root of his feet.
Erik’s voice snapped in the cold air. “What did you think you were doing?”
Charles gaped at him indignantly, and said, “If you need me to explain, then maybe we shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
The other huffed a laugh, mocking Charles’ taunt. “Really, Charles-what did you even hope to achieve? You were going to-to suck the cock of a murderer, for what? To get back at me?”
Charles found that he was trembling, but he refused to wrap his arms around himself. Frigid air teased over his neck as he raised his chin and stated, “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“It is my business,” Erik growled, taking a single stuttering step closer. “Moral considerations aside, did you even spare a thought for your safety? Did you realize where you were?” He snarled, almost, and jerked his head to the side as if he couldn’t stand to see Charles so naïve. “Two doors away from outside, out of the shielding. He could have taken you away, gone anywhere-”
“He wasn’t going to,” Charles replied, flatly, and Erik whipped around again to face him.
Striding forward, Erik hissed, “That’s not the point. He could have. All it would have taken was a silver of open door-” He stopped, biting off the end of his own sentence as he looked away again; then he paced back, cape swirling around his shins.
“He wasn’t going to,” Charles repeated. “No one-no one without a helmet can force me to do anything, let alone travel-travel somewhere else against my will.”
“No,” Erik breathed, stalking slowly forward. “No, they couldn’t make you do anything-which leads me to ask-why did you? Why do something so foolish, so, so…”
Charles narrowed his eyes, daring Erik to continue. “Again: how is what I do on my own time any business of yours?”
Erik frowned; his eyebrows furrowed tightly together as he stared down at Charles. “It is. You’re my…”
“‘Your’ what?” Charles echoed, watching icily.
“You’re mine,” Erik concluded, his voice a deep feral rumble. He stood tall over Charles for a moment, muscles all coiled potential-then bent, darted down-his gloved hand wrapped around the base of Charles’ skull, angling his head up as Erik pressed in to kiss him-
Erik didn’t make a sound when Charles bit into his lip, but between one moment and the next he had gone; vanished. Charles opened his eyes to see Erik standing, still close, shoulders hunched as the fingers of one hand hovered near his chin in case his tongue proved insufficient to learn the extent of the damage. Most of Erik’s attention, however, remained fixed on Charles; his eyes were wide with shock and-what was that, hurt?
No, because that would have been ridiculous-ridiculous to feel betrayed after trying to force a kiss on someone who didn’t want it and earning their justified retaliation. Charles’ gaze dipped, down to Erik’s parted lips, where steam unfurled itself over the dark gleam of blood in the moonlight. He saw the hesitant tip of Erik’s tongue, there, blindly seeking to assure itself of the wound’s exaggeration. Absolutely absurd-lunacy.
Charles saw his own breath-a faint tatter of fog, that constant exhalation made visible now only through its protest of the wintry air, vanishing again as it surrendered to the ambient temperature. Charles himself felt cold, but not-not as much as he had been; his heart beat rapidly in his chest, the fire of-of anger, of vindication, of-maybe alcohol too, still, who knew-
A low, faint groan struggled from Charles’ throat as he reached up and seized Erik by the collar of his cape, as he dragged the other down-and Erik resisted at first; tried to obey Charles’ first command with the defiance of this second-then gave in, supported himself with his hands on the back of the chair as Charles pulled him into the kiss.
Erik hissed as Charles crushed against his bitten lip, but made no further noise as the geneticist explored with his tongue, tasting the thick sluggish twinge of blood as he sucked on Erik’s lip, then moved on to Erik’s teeth, and between them-his tongue, too, tasted of iron, and-well, that was appropriate, wasn’t it? It seemed to Charles that if-if Erik were to have a taste, it ought to be of metal.
Charles broke away, leaning back to see; Erik stared back at him, through the steam of their unsteady breaths, his eyes dark and intent through those living whorls, fixed on Charles’; the attentive, dangerous stare of a half-tamed dragon.
Erik took his hands off the back of the chair and stood; the cold rushed back to embrace Charles immediately. Then, quietly, full of the stillness of uneasy confidence, the other held out a hand and offered: “Dance with me.”
Charles glanced around at the empty clearing, at the darkness beyond. The only other sound was that of the wind, high in the branches. He laughed, faintly; briefly. His heart raced inappropriately. Lunacy; yes, that was the correct word-madness by moonlight. Who knew that it could so severely afflict even the best of them? “What, here? Now?” Charles asked, incredulously.
Erik’s only reply was an insistent angling of his eyebrows as he breathed lightly from his mouth, the air waiting in his lungs. The hand remained.
Charles sighed, nudged the footrests aside and lowered his shoes down into the grass as he slid his hand into Erik’s; who was he, to say no to a madman? So Charles gripped tightly as the other man pulled him up to his feet, and as Erik wrapped an arm and a good portion of his cape around Charles. He did not release Charles’ hand.
Erik leaned back, a little, to peer down at Charles, a soft, tender smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes, pulling at the tear in his lip-then he looked to the side and Charles followed his gaze to watch the chair move itself out of their way.
Slowly, astonishingly-they began to dance.
It wasn’t much; just a rather awkward shuffling of feet as Charles followed Erik’s lead. His legs were stronger now, but not yet enough that he could do anything more, and at first Charles felt very self-conscious. There was no music, there was no grace to this, none of the hard-won skill Charles had once displayed on Saturday nights in Oxford-merely a mindless sort of rocking, drifting slow circles through the rustling prickle of dead grass; just the two of them endlessly, painfully aware of each other. But…
But after a while, Charles realized that he was warm, beneath Erik’s cape and with his hand cradled in Erik’s, and he could feel the shift of muscles in the other’s back where he had splayed the fingers of his free hand. The edge of the helmet dug hard through Charles’ hair, but Erik’s nose rested there too and Charles could feel the heat from inside his chest with every fall of Erik’s ribs.
Charles had already put his head down against Erik, but now he closed his eyes, listening to the shush of the wind overhead. Somewhere out there the world lay in ruins, but here-now-it was only autumn, and summer would come again.
Eventually Charles became aware of the fact that Erik had stopped, and now they only stood leaning together; he blinked up at the man to see that Erik wasn’t smiling, not really, but his eyes-god, his eyes-
Charles swallowed, and felt something catch. He realized that there was cold air drafting up beneath the thin fabric of his trousers and shivered. “Could you,” he whispered harshly, “Could you take me back inside, please?”
Now Erik smiled, gently. “Of course,” he agreed, and when he lowered Charles down the chair waited, ready. Erik stepped back, thought for a moment, and removed his cape with a sweep; then spread it over Charles, tucking the edges down behind his shoulders. “I have to be somewhere tomorrow night,” Erik murmured as he did this. “I have a speech to organize… But then, the day after tomorrow… I will see you again.”
Satisfied that Charles would be warm, Erik led him back. As the geneticist stared at the man’s shoulders-relaxed, now, not a bit of threat in those muscles-he huddled cold and miserable even beneath the weight of the cape. Charles had run out of time; he had stayed too long and indulged too much. If he wanted to leave, to fix this-it would have to be soon.
And Charles had a plan for how to do just that.
Chapter 16
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairings: Charles/Erik
Genre: drama, angst, au, dystopia, future!fic
Rating: R
Word Count: 8300/?
Warnings: dubcon, emotional manipulation
Summary: Based on this 1stclass_kink prompt (and originally posted there).
"Erik has succeeded in taking over the world, but mutant utopia has yet to materialize. Charles is his reluctant companion."
Beta'd by idioticonion, who knows all but will not tell (and was an exceptionally fabulous help this chapter!).
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23
lxxx.
Delicate trinkling piano music played, twining circles around the low murmuring of the guests. English was not the only language spoken by any means, and those half-familiar voices contributed to a grand incomprehensible flow of dialog that seemed, in a way, almost an expressionistic painting meant to convey the idea of conversation, if not the sense of it.
The ballroom was long and open and although the white plaster ceiling hung well out of reach-except, of course, for a few extraordinarily tall mutants-the comparative width of the space gave it a certain disproportional looming quality. Thick white curtains interrupted the red wallpaper at every entrance and the merrily sparkling lights above dangled down entirely too close on little brass stalks.
Charles cared far more about where, exactly, they were hiding the alcohol; he could see it, in glasses the guests held onto with entirely too little reverence: whiskey and wine, fluted glasses of champagne and brandy in snifters. The Brotherhood, apparently, was not so straight-laced that its members turned their noses up at good spirits, and if there was one thing that remained in abundance after the destruction of the world’s infrastructure, it was fermenting plant material. The only problem was that Charles wasn’t sure where they were getting it from and nobody seemed about to take mercy on him.
“So you see, I really don’t care for the direction Magneto is taking us,” a smarmy dignitary lectured on in a nasally voice, crowded up to the wheelchair and close enough that Charles could smell the odor of mothballs coming off of his double-breasted suit. The man’s wife stared at Charles with a grimly polite smile stretching her lips; she had a mink-lined coat trapped in the crook of her arm. Maybe the mothballs were from that, instead…
No reason they can’t both smell like mothballs, Charles thought to himself, and aloud agreed with a vague, “Sure.”
The dignitary gestured with his champagne, dislodging a flurry of bubbles from the sides of the neglected glass. “It’s just that he doesn’t seem very solution-orientated these days, you know?”
Charles nodded, scanning the crowd around them for familiar faces; Azazel, maybe, or Raven, or… Well, Azazel and Raven were really the only people he knew, except for Emma Frost, whom he could sense nearby but did not especially wish to speak to. For that reason, and the gold chain around his neck, Charles kept grudgingly within the confines of his own skull-at least, as much as he could manage; the plethora of un-shielded thoughts hung around him like the strings of brightly-colored balloons, dangling their strings invitingly. It was difficult not to peek at all.
The dignitary smiled at him, showing the yellowed borders of his teeth; his eyes glittered with calculation. “I knew you of all people would understand my position, Mr. Xavier.”
“Professor,” Charles corrected, glancing back briefly before looking around again. There was a knot of people clustered beyond several smaller groups of socializing mutants-really, the sheer genetic diversity on display was amazing!-and it was difficult to pick through their faces and shoulders for anyone he recognized.
“Of course,” the dignitary replied smoothly, and continued, “And you know, this government really is becoming alarmingly secular-we shouldn’t have let the Communists have so much influence in our politics, they insist on incorporating their ideas into everything…”
“Mm,” Charles grunted. There were a couple people over there that he remembered from the Brotherhood meetings; the Minister of Agriculture was laughing in sudden nervous bursts over his wine, evidently over something that-ah, yes, that was Infrared-was telling another mutant, who was standing next to…
Erik’s eyes met his as soon as Charles recognized the elegant line of his nose, the slope of his shoulders. His smile had seemed stiff and perfunctory even across the room but now it smoothed into something more genuine. Beneath Charles’ hands, the metal of his chair thrummed, for a moment, like a subliminal purr, and he felt something entirely different flutter between his ribs-
“Granted, I don’t think the Reds are to blame for all of it,” the dignitary droned on. Charles’ attention wavered as he looked from the dignitary and back to Erik, but the Brotherhood’s leader had gone back to his conversation-apparently taking his promise not to hover seriously.
“Is that so,” Charles remarked, forcing his voice steady.
“Yes, well, I heard from a very reliable source that he-” the dignitary pointed toward Erik with his champagne- “is Jewish, and, well, of course I don’t care about that, but I don’t think he’s even religious! You won’t hear him thank God in his speeches, and the thought that this Godlessness goes right up to the top-!”
“When I was ten years old,” Charles interrupted, pinning the dignitary with his scrutiny, “I looked up the definition of ‘atheist’ in the dictionary and I’ve been one ever since. Now, I do hope you enjoy that fine champagne you’re holding.”
Without lingering to catalog the stages of the dignitary’s shock, Charles backed away, turned, and then pushed at the rails of his wheels until he was alone again. Except-except he wasn’t really alone; he was surrounded by all these people, and he’d been correct when he’d told Raven that he didn’t think that this would be anything quite so enjoyable as a party.
Charles could feel it in the air as he pushed his fingers up over his eyes; these weren’t people who liked each other. Rather, they had rushed here however they could-by air, by train, through teleportation-simply to wallow together in their misery and ambition, clawing at the rungs of the social ladder. The fact of it clung to the walls, the curtains, and the glowing lamps above like an oily slick of venom.
“You look like you’re having fun,” Badger said, and Charles dropped his hands from his face to see-well, he had seen the uniforms before-the dark red tunics and charcoal trousers-but he had thought that they were only worn by-
“Badger, are you an officer? In the Brotherhood’s army? How-What rank are you?” Charles demanded, peering at her in shock because yes, she was definitely in full dress, and he was pretty sure that people frowned upon wearing uniforms fraudulently.
The erstwhile physical therapist picked at her tunic with the hand that wasn’t holding a mostly-empty snifter, grimacing at the ribbon bars and shoulder insignia-the former awfully numerous and the latter invisible to Charles from his angle. “Damn, you know, I don’t even remember what any of this stuff means,” she told him.
“And the physical therapy?” Charles asked, frowning.
Badger shrugged. “I have strange hobbies. Anyway, the more pressing issue is that you look tragically sober, and really, these sorts of events are intolerable without a little alcohol to free up your schadenfreude.”
“And what sort of event would you call this?” Charles inquired. “I’ve heard a variety of terms used-‘soirée,’ ‘party,’ ‘get-together…’”
Pursing her lips together thoughtfully, Badger peered around at the guests before declaring, “Funeral.”
Charles’ eyebrows jumped. “Not literally, I hope?”
“Nah,” Badger dismissed. “Not this time; wrong sort of crowd. Now, here, see those tables over there? Go find an empty one, sit tight, and I’ll come back with something to drink.”
“Scotch, if I get a choice,” Charles called after her, and she waved an acknowledgement back over her shoulder. Then he went and found an empty table-hardly anyone was sitting, since the entire point of the evening, for everyone else, was to be seen socializing-and pulled one of the plush-cushioned chairs out of the way so that he could sit in its place.
Charles looked around at the gathered mutants-for, certainly, there were no humans hiding here-and allowed himself to marvel; to forget, for a moment, who they were. Many of their mutations-like those possessed by the dignitary and his wife, and Charles himself-were invisible, but some were rather spectacularly on display as points of pride. There was a green-skinned woman whose dress covered her breasts and then split around her midriff to display translucent frosted-glass skin and queasily shifting organs beneath; a man’s fingers and toes stretched long between the rumbled folds of webbing; a young lady’s hair lay draped in hazy suspension on colorful sparks of power as she drifted along on the arm of an older man.
They weren’t all bad people, of course; case in point, there was Badger - then again, it seemed as if he knew even less about her than he’d thought.
Charles decided that he really hated those helmets.
But then, not all telepaths were as lovable as Charles. Exhibit A: Emma Frost, slinking toward him even now, her cape of arctic fox fur twitching around her ankles as if it still remembered how to live.
“Charles,” she crooned, all saccharine charm. “Deigning to rub your elbows with the peasants, I see? Only…” Frost tilted her head at his empty table. “…Not quite.”
“Emma,” Charles replied, making no attempt to smile back at her. “Unfortunately this seat is reserved for a friend, or I would offer it to you. Since I wouldn’t dream of keeping you standing, you can feel free to go on your merry way.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Frost reassured him. “I just came over to ask you how your little research project with Hank is going.” She paused, her lips forming an O of sudden, sweetly embarrassed epiphany. “Oh, that’s right, you’re not working on that anymore, are you?”
“I’m sure that you’re a hero to drug-resistant mutants everywhere,” Charles theorized, and made a little flicking motion at her with his fingers.
Frost’s smile dipped into a pitying smirk. “Oh, honey; you can’t fool me that easily. The only reason I haven’t bothered with snapping Hank’s mind like a toothpick is because I think I’ll enjoy picking him apart to see what you’re hiding in that fuzzy blue head of his.”
Charles felt the hard insectile arms of fear wrap around his stomach, and for a moment they squeezed, but… He pried them away with reason: Frost would not threaten what she could simply do. Charles granted her a flat, unamused stare, and warned, “Don’t try it.”
Her laugh rang high and sparkling. “Are you trying to intimidate me? Haven’t you learned by now that there are simpler ways of ruining someone than telepathy?”
Before Charles could decide exactly how to reply to that-it was regrettably true, at this point-he glanced over and saw that Badger had returned, juggling a bottle and two stout glasses. The snifter was gone.
“Emma, darling,” Badger crooned. “I’m glad you’re here. No evening is entirely ruined until you’re in it.”
“Ah, it’s…” Frost rolled her eyes up to the low ceiling as if trying to remember. “Major General Horton, if I recall correctly? And how are your duties coming along? Have you found any insurrectionists hiding in the corridors?”
Badger arched her brows coolly. “I accepted what I had coming to me,” she told Frost. “I can only hope that you’re as graceful about it when the same happens to you.”
“‘Graceful,’ yes…” Frost mused, scrutinizing the other woman’s stocky frame. “Well, let’s just say I’m not too worried about it.”
“Fair enough,” Badger acknowledged. “Now, do be a dear and remove yourself elsewhere, eh? I only have enough glasses for two and frankly, you’re not getting either of them.”
The female telepath’s pale blue eyes flashed, and she pursed her lips, studying Badger for a few silent seconds before pronouncing, “You know, I’m not so sure that you have gotten what’s coming to you yet. Charles,” Frost nodded to him, “Major General… Enjoy your night.”
Frost drifted away from them, the clack of her heels slow and unconcerned, and the pair stared after her until she was out of view.
“Well!” Badger exclaimed. She set the glasses down and lowered herself into the chair. “That was exciting.”
“‘Major General Horton?’” Charles echoed, raising a single eyebrow. Now that she was seated, the insignia on her shoulder were clear, if not particularly familiar: two gold stars and broad, notched band of that same shining thread.
“Yeah, now you know why I prefer ‘Badger,’” she agreed. Charles continued to stare at her and she flicked her eyes ceiling-ward. “Eh, it’s not that big of a deal. I mean you know that lout, Zeus, right? He outranks me. Clearly the standards can’t be set too high, and anyway our unit sizes are pretty small, as these things go.”
“Still, that means you should be in charge of-what, a platoon?”
“Division,” Badger corrected.
“Right. But… You’re not?” Charles prompted, furrowing his brow.
She sighed expansively. “Too sober,” she muttered, and set the Scotch whiskey onto the table between the glasses. “Here, I brought you the whole bottle. It’s hard to hold onto a full glass when you’re in a chair-well, and keep it full, that is.”
“Marry me,” Charles demanded, fixing his attention on the wavering line of alcohol near the neck of the bottle.
“Ooh,” Badger groaned, wedging one of her stout white nails under the cork, “but I would never know if you loved me for me or just because I bring you booze.”
“I like you,” Charles protested. “Although… Maybe not as much as the booze, no.”
“I knew it,” she replied, pulling her face into a mocking pout. “You’re just using me for Scotch.”
Holding his finger and thumb up near each other, Charles admitted, “Maybe a little. Now, about your hallway patrol duties…”
“I’m beginning to doubt your dedication to Scotch,” Badger chided, pouring some of that drink into the bottom of his glass. “Here, let’s see if this is enough to distract you.” She nudged it toward him and it slid over the tabletop and bumped into Charles’ palm.
Charles raised it to his lips and took a long sip without breaking eye contact; the smooth glide of it sharpened past his tonsils and he curled his lips into a satisfied grimace. “I can drink and listen at the same time,” Charles pronounced.
Badger crossed her arms over her chest, raising her eyebrows and pressing her lips together in surrender. “Well, okay then. It’s not a very long story. I’ve been what we call ‘shelved’; that is, I did something that I’m entirely too proud of but they don’t have enough qualified soldiers to justify demoting or otherwise getting rid of me, so instead I get all the odd shit jobs, like double-checking the inventory on our armory and looking after your scrawny ass. Happens all the time; or, well, it did, back when there were other military forces.”
Frowning, Charles asked, “What did you do?”
A corner of Badger’s mouth twitched upward. “Don’t get too excited, Chuck; I wouldn’t still be alive if I weren’t loyal. You don’t get one of these-” she tapped a blunt claw against the dull silver dome of her helmet- “unless they already know you’re not hiding anything in there. You know the Immolation of Chicago? I did that. The only thing was that it should have been worse-I gave them fair warning. Those people were supposed to burn up with the city; inspire a little of the old terror in the enemy. That’s the only favor I ever did humanity.”
“As favors go, that’s considerable,” Charles told her.
Badger scoffed. “I’m just not a bully,” she explained. “I don’t hate humans; it’s just that, when the fighting broke out, I had a choice and it seemed pretty obvious.” She scratched through the thick black hair on her face. “I don’t think I would have done too well on the human side of things.” She kept scratching, as if she had accidentally freed an itch, and made a face when her fingers met the edge of the helmet.
“Excuse me,” Badger requested, and pulled the helmet off; she set it down on the table next to the bottle of Scotch. Upon seeing Charles’ shock, she rolled her eyes. “What? All this fur gets itchy when it’s cramped down underneath that all day. Although don’t… Don’t go telling everybody; I might end up have to check coats next time.”
Invitations didn’t get much clearer than that-it would almost be rude not to look, and, well, it wasn’t as if he weren’t curious-so Charles cast out something like a fisherman’s bobber to signal what he was doing-she would not have felt that he had been there, otherwise-and waded in just far enough to get his ankles wet; metaphorically speaking of course. From there, he looked out over the warm pond of Badger’s mind, at the fish he could see but did not bother to catch moving just beneath the reflected sky.
He didn’t understand her soldier’s conviction, her willingness to fight against people she didn’t hate; it was there, like an impenetrable wall of dense and muddy cattails-Charles could see it, could understand its reality, but he couldn’t fathom what reasons might lie within.
Charles withdrew and felt, for a moment, the red flash of a turtle’s ear-what if he doesn’t like what he saw? He smiled to himself, just a little, and the sun over Badger’s pond grew warmer in a languid pulse of there’s nothing to worry about.
“Huh,” Badger remarked. “That wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as when Frost does it.”
“I’m not sure that she has any concern for your comfort,” Charles commented dryly.
“Then I’ll be sure to be extra pissed off next time,” she replied. “Speaking of having no concern for your comfort, have you been practicing with your crutches?”
Charles hid behind the glass of whiskey, considering. “Sure I have,” he said, when he had swallowed.
Badger glared out at him from under her eyebrows. “Really, Charles? Haven’t we gone over how if you go through all of this and still can’t walk, it’ll be your own damn fault?”
“I haven’t really had time,” Charles told her, cringing at the blatant lie. Sure, he was busier now than he had ever been-but he really had nothing but time, now. It was just… He felt clumsy with the crutches, and every step seemed so much farther away than the last.
Badger shrugged, rolling her wrist down to grasp her glass from the top; she brought it to her mouth and drained half of it in one go, then held her breath, all of her attention focused inward. Finally, she exhaled in a hiss between her teeth. “Well, it’s not my time that you’re wasting. Mine’s already wasted. Now, how about I tell you about something embarrassing Zeus did this one time, instead, and you can think about your failings later…”
lxxxi.
Badger left, eventually, after sharing several more misadventures and attempting without much success to goad Charles into telling some of his own; while Charles believed himself to be an excellent storyteller under most circumstances, he had found himself mumbling his anecdotes to a close with something like “and, well, actually we just went straight home after that instead of going any further” or “so you see, I thought about making him believe he was a troll living under the bridge, but in the end I decided it was rather too cruel.”
“You can’t be afraid to embellish a little,” Badger had advised him, looking pained. “It’s called artistic license. I mean, you and I both know that I made up half of that last story.”
But then someone who had known Badger for quite a lot longer than Charles had called her away, and she had drained her glass, raised it in an empty toast, and left after threatening to see him tomorrow.
The bottle of Scotch was still there, and Charles pulled it toward him; he wasn’t sure whether he would have to give it up once he went back to his rooms for the night but he didn’t want to risking wasting it if that were the case. It had been a while since he had last had the opportunity for more than a single glass of anything alcoholic, but the whiskey was really quite good and Charles was invested enough in some day having the chance to taste it again that he was willing to take some care not to act like an undergraduate and drink himself stupid.
The helmet remained on the table where Badger had left it and Charles pulled that to him as well, bracing it between his palms as if he could stare into its hollows and find eyes. It was cool beneath his skin; it looked as if it ought to be soft but it snagged, somehow, on the ridges and whorls of his fingers. It was surprisingly light; Charles turned it over and peered inside at the vinyl padding. The one he had worn, back when he had been captured, had been lined with leather-evidently supplies had grown scarce.
He set the helmet back onto the table and nudged it to an arm’s length away. Badger would be returning for it, Charles was sure, but he didn’t much care to dwell on it until then. Instead, he peered back out onto the open floor of the ballroom and nobody peered back; he didn’t stand out anymore now that he sat at a table, and it was dimmer near the wall where the red paper held the light captive.
As Charles sipped at the whiskey and watched the guests talk and gesticulate and exchange their thin polite smiles, he felt a gentle calm wash over him; for a moment, it was as if he weren’t there at all: that this was some sort of curious dream, or an anthropological scene set behind a plate glass wall so broad that it only seemed that he was in the same room. The voices and thoughts burbled together and Charles allowed himself to forget their meaning, if only for a little while, and float over top of them.
There was a flash; the sudden rush of displaced air drove the odor of sulphur to sting Charles’ nose. Azazel stood before him, snapping reality back into crispness with the sharp black of his suit and the jagged lines of his face.
Azazel’s scars dimpled with his grin. “I was beginning to think you had not been invited.”
Charles scoffed. “Are you joking? The entire purpose of this evening was just to give us the chance to sit down together.”
Ducking his head into a tentative smile, Azazel replied, “Is that so? Then I should be honored that all of this effort was given on my behalf.”
“Considering the number of hours spent on hair styling alone, I should think so!” Charles remarked. “All these women have sacrificed their comfort for our sake.”
Azazel arched a single crow’s-feather eyebrow. “Are they really so uncomfortable?” he asked.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Charles confirmed.
“Then,” the other man’s eyes dipped down to the glass, “we should not let them suffer pointlessly. If I may share that bottle…?”
“Of course,” Charles agreed, nodding an invitation toward the empty chair.
Bowing just a little at the waist, Azazel’s lips quirked as he requested, “A moment.” He vanished in a swirl of red smoke.
Charles settled in to wait but he had no more begun to fidget before Azazel returned, holding a glass of his own. His gray eyes lingered over Charles’ stilled fingers and he smirked knowingly as he took his seat. The spade of his long red tail threaded itself through the arm of the chair and looped around one its legs, the sharp tip questing over the tiled floor like the head of a snake.
Tearing his attention away from the appendage, Charles looked back to Azazel only to find himself being studied in turn.
“You will be trusted eventually,” Azazel assured him, pointing with his empty glass before reaching to fill it. Charles glanced down, startled to find that he had been working the links of the gold necklace between his fingers.
He dropped the chain quickly and returned to his Scotch. “I’m sure there must have been some adjustment period for you, after Shaw…” Charles hesitated; was he being rude?
Azazel took no notice of the missing verb. He shrugged, a brief rustling hitch of his padded shoulders. “It was very rough going for a while,” he admitted. “Magneto was always very suspicious when I went away, for a long time after I joined him. Not without reason, perhaps. But after you were gone, he began needing to rely on me more.”
He shifted, and met Charles’ gaze. “It was not personal, of course. I am sorry if you were very unhappy, after.”
Charles swirled the contents of his glass, staring down into it as he remembered the only time he had ever been teleported anywhere; the sudden suffocating squeeze of it, the unexpectedly obvious difference of the air in that new place. What could he say? It’s all right; I wasn’t using those years anyway? Or perhaps, you were only doing your job-but that excuse had never worked in the past, had it?
“It wasn’t bad, as things go,” Charles settled for. “The view was nice, and the staff were all very friendly. They didn’t understand a thing about genetics but they let me ramble on about it to them. Plenty of practice for lecturing, I suppose.”
“That sounds very quiet, at least,” Azazel commented. He brought one of his thick, yellowed nails up to touch against a deep groove in his cheek. “I am going to look old soon, for all the scars on my face.”
“Some women like that,” Charles offered, suddenly very conscious of the fact that he was sitting across from a demonic-looking man who could pop from one place to another with a thought and reassuring said man about his appearance. It all seemed a bit unlikely. “And you’re very smartly dressed. They do like that.” Charles tugged at the lapel of his own silver-gray suit to emphasize his point.
Azazel’s eyes crinkled with amusement as he held his glass near his mouth; the liquid within went scarlet with proximity. “I was not complaining,” he explained. “But thank you.”
“Oh.” Charles blinked, and frowned. “Then maybe you should consider being more careful?”
The white of the other man’s teeth gleamed shockingly bright against his skin. “I try, but it never works out that way, you know?”
They spoke for a while longer, although their conversation consisted mostly of quiet punctuated by low murmurs of observation as Azazel joined Charles in watching the other guests. At one point Charles saw Raven out in the crowd, her hair glowing with streaks of orange and her skin deepened to indigo beneath the warm daze of a lamp. She wore a dress Charles proudly suspected might inspire a seamstress to quit on the spot, if that women did not know that Raven had simply grown it from her skin-she was barely decent beneath gauzy layers of white and lattices of shining, silver beads.
At Raven’s elbow rested the pale hand of an auburn-haired woman wearing a long, pale blue dress and dark glasses-Charles realized with a start that the woman was blind; moreover, from the way that the woman leaned close to Raven, he suspected that she might be Destiny.
Raven caught his eye from across the room; Charles saw the flash of yellow narrow into sly triumph as she noticed Azazel sitting beside him. She whispered to Destiny, who smiled but did not look over to them, and Raven then waved over to Charles.
Hesitantly, Charles raised his hand in reply; through a series of increasingly vague gestures and wildly exaggerated expressions, Raven communicated that she would not be interrupting them, but that she would certainly try to come by later when Charles was free again.
Charles watched them merge back into the flow of suits and dresses with some measure of bewilderment; beside him, Azazel almost buzzed with amusement.
“They are always going everywhere together,” Azazel commented fondly. “Very good friends. Not many people welcomed Destiny at the start. She can see the future; she makes people nervous.”
Charles nodded, feeling, despite the warmth of Azazel’s words, the sink of disappointment: “very good friends” seemed like such an inadequate label, once he knew the truth. So he didn’t reply-and anyway, Charles found that he didn’t mind sharing silence with Azazel; the Russian didn’t seem to expect anything of him and in turn, Charles was well aware that this truce did not mean that Azazel possessed any inclination to disloyalty.
He felt at ease with that; there was no mystery, here. Charles could sink down into his chair with his glass cradled loosely between his fingers and empty his mind, turning his thoughts into the perfect black sheet of an underground lake; the churning rush of foreign minds ran around and through but not a single eddy rippled that gleaming surface.
If Azazel needed to ask him something, Charles had the time to come back to himself and consider his answer. And if, after that reply, Azazel should want nothing to do with him? Well, then Charles would not be terribly upset; he had not forgotten what the other man had done to the innocent men at the CIA headquarters years ago.
This was a good ritual, Charles decided. The alcohol helped things right along. He could consider overlooking certain injustices, for now.
After about an hour Azazel rose to his feet, the sway of his tail the only indication that the Scotch might have had any effect on him.
Charles tipped his head back, and it seemed as if his brain spun over and over in his skull. He squinted a little; gained focus. “Leaving?”
The other mutant smiled down at him, the gentleness of the expression at odds with the harsh angles of his face. “I can’t sit here for the entire evening,” Azazel told him, “But I did enjoy our drink.” He stepped closer, right up to the side of the chair, and set his hand down on Charles’ opposite shoulder. “When you no longer require such an entourage to do so, we should talk again.”
“Mm,” Charles agreed, leaning over thoughtlessly to rest his head on Azazel’s hip. “I would like that.”
Fingers brushed lightly over his neck, and Charles felt the hum of surprise from Azazel’s mind-a sudden flash of idea, of obscenity-then a ruthless living burial of that idea and a chagrined assertion of apologies; it was only a thought; not to be taken seriously-
Charles turned his nose to press against the fabric of Azazel’s long jacket; smelled cigarette smoke. I don’t mind, he thought. …If you want. And he didn’t; not really. Charles needed someone; he needed someone he didn’t care about, with whom he could share pleasure and then leave, and not worry about the consequences. If that person happened to be a man… Well, it wasn’t as if there were very many women throwing themselves at him these days, was it?
Those sword-callused fingers froze against Charles’ neck and he sensed Azazel staring down at him; sensed the dull shock in the other man’s head warring with mortified contemplation. And in any event, Azazel did not think that Charles was sober enough to be making that sort of offer; that Charles would never even consider it, in his right frame of mind, which… Was quite possibly true. And that is why you should decide now, while I’m still offering, Charles argued.
Azazel wavered; he was not, after all, attracted to men; did not want Charles to think that he was-did not want Charles to delude himself, or to expect anything to come of it-and, Azazel marveled, was he really considering taking Charles up on it?
Perfect, Charles insisted, pulling away to peer up at Azazel’s face. I’m not really either. It seemed to be true, in any case-he did not feel a thing when he looked at the other man, certainly not the-the madness he felt around Erik. But Azazel wasn’t unattractive, either, just… Different. It was refreshing, like a mouthful of snow.
Finally, weakly, Azazel wondered what Charles could possibly get out of it, why he would even want to-but Charles simply, elegently reminded the other man that he was after all a telepath, and could get quite a lot of it, really.
Azazel frowned, and then shrugged mentally: conceding that if Charles was willing-if he truly wanted to do it-well. Then there was no problem, was there? His tail flicked a request-follow-and Charles was disappointed, for a moment, that they weren’t going to teleport away. It would have called too much attention, of course; and anyway, like Charles, Azazel’s abilities could not reach through the shielded walls.
The entire debate had lasted fewer than ten seconds.
Charles followed behind the red-skinned man, along the edge of the ballroom and to one of the curtain-lined doorways; he tried not to look suspicious as he scanned over the faces out in the main of the room, searching to see: was Erik watching? Or, worse, Raven. Preemptive fear skated through his gut; maybe… Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea…
But Azazel held the door open and Charles smiled up at him in a distracted sort of way as he wheeled through. For all that the other mutant had been reluctant, his anticipation now coiled slow and curious through Charles’ mind; the telepath felt almost drunk with it-well, he was drunk, a bit, of course-but he remembered, now, why he had missed this. Azazel bore no resemblance to one of those blushing co-eds, but this… This part was the same, still, and Charles basked under that attention, if perhaps not quite as vainly as he had when he was younger.
They reached the coatroom and Azazel shut the door behind them, enclosing the pair within the dense silence of furs and wool, illuminated by a single yellow bulb. The teleporter peered down at Charles, his brow furrowed; now what? he wanted to know.
Back- Charles urged, eyeing the room around them. Azazel’s need rested in his abdomen right alongside his own, distracting. Against the wall.
Azazel took note of the fact that the wall, as it so happened, was covered in coats.
Of course it is, Charles agreed. At least it will be soft. He didn’t wait for Azazel to think about it; instead, Charles drove the other man back into the coats through the simple expedient of crowding forward with his chair until Azazel leaned nestled in the folds of some sort of fur-rabbit, maybe, who knew-and Charles poised before him, brakes locked in place to give him some leverage. This would be different-definitely different from touching a women-but this was a skill he’d need soon, wasn’t it? Best to learn now, when it wasn’t serious; when Charles could get into Azazel’s head and know what worked.
Not, Charles mused privately, that it is really all that complicated, comparatively.
Azazel’s fingers rested lightly on Charles’ shoulders and the telepath didn’t look up to see his face, although he knew what would be there-a continuing bemusement, but not enough surprise that it reached Azazel’s eyes. His irises were too light to be dark with arousal but Charles knew, because he could feel it echoed in himself, that Azazel’s lips would be very slightly parted as he exhaled reverently through them, watching intently as Charles shoved his hips back, flush to the wall-as Charles pushed the black suit jacket out of his way and wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the teleporter’s belt buckle-
Charles’ fingers slid off the buckle, pulled by his wrist-no-Charles frowned in confusion, then lost his frown to alarm because he was being pulled by his watch-
The collar wound tight around Charles’ neck, just enough to force him up straight; he met Azazel’s stare and found his own realization matched there, in the wild, frenzied denial of the truth of it-the truth that Erik would certainly be there at any moment, was all around them now, in hangers and buttons and the metal of the wheelchair, and there was no point in hiding because they’d already been found.
Azazel and Charles shared a long, panicked stare of what are we supposed to do now, straining their ears as if they could hear through the insulation of the coats until finally, just in time, it occurred to Azazel that maybe it would be best if Erik didn’t walk in to see him pressed up against the wall in front of Charles-and so Azazel slipped out from the grasp of the fur coat and away from Charles moments before the door opened.
Charles didn’t want to look-his face burned with humiliation-but he had to; he couldn’t force himself to turn away as the door swung open and Erik stared in at them, lips pressed tight between the hard vertical lines of his helmet. His expression was unreadable except for one damning, immutable fact: he wasn’t happy.
Azazel, who had not been standing nearby to begin with, ducked his head and shuffled a further step away, tail curving around his ankles. “Apologies,” he muttered, fixing his attention on the shiny toes of his boots. “I didn’t know.”
Erik did no more than glance at the teleporter before pinning Charles with cold gray-green eyes. He crooked his finger; “Come with me,” he commanded, and before Charles could decide not to obey the chair jumped into life beneath his palms, coming to heel in the wake of Erik’s cape.
lxxxii.
Erik said nothing, but the stiff jut of his shoulders spoke volumes as he led Charles down the hall. That was all right, though; Charles’ fear-it was, after all, perfectly true that Erik could be terrifying-was rapidly transmuting into an anger of his own. He found himself seething right along with Erik as they went around a corner-through a set of wide double doors-another set of doors-and then out into darkness, where-
The cold seared the air from Charles’ lungs and he forgot his fury to gaze up at the sky; the moon loomed almost full above them, like the hooded eye of some great and beautiful reptile. Dried leaves rattled from tree branches, their withered embrace reaching nearly to the wall of the mansion itself. They were outside, but no mere courtyard was this! This was the forest, that great sprawl of wilderness that lay just beyond the mansion walls, which Charles had previously only glimpsed through the windows.
The world had proved itself large again, and Charles was only one tiny mammal crawling along the grudging surface of his planet. It was hard to believe that he had fancied himself meaningful-but then, didn’t some people have more influence than others? And now-now it was getting harder to hold onto that anger, and it was impossible not to remember: rage was Erik’s territory, and they were firmly within that tangled space now. The confident buzz of the alcohol receded into a tinny whine: Charles had, in all likelihood, made something of a mistake.
A concrete path lit by low electric lamps trailed off lonely into the distance, presumably finding its origin at a garage of some sort, where the guests had come through. Erik-and thus, Charles-followed this path for a while before diverging onto a hard-packed dirt trail leading into the satin black of the forest. The wheelchair shuddered over the first bump and then rose to hover a stately few inches above the ground.
Charles felt a chill, but it was in addition to his gradually accumulating shivers, not because of them-if something happened to him out here, no one would know.
That’s ridiculous, a more rational part of his mind whispered. If he wanted to get rid of you he would just do it. Besides, there’s a trail; clearly people come here. Still, it was… Unnerving. Why go so far from the mansion?
It would have been better if there was snow; the dusting that Raven and Charles had abused each other with was long gone now, but that sheet of white would have reflected the moonlight and made it so much easier to see. Erik had been reduced to a lean black silhouette before him, featureless except for where the gleam of the moon rested on his helmet like a slippery coin.
Eventually they reached a clearing, filled with the soft luminescence of dead grass not yet matted down by the crush of snow. It shushed over Erik’s boots as he strode out into it, and those long shards of leaves caressed the wheels of the chair as if in adulation as it sank back to the ground. The grass stood in gossiping clumps all around them, and there was enough light now that Charles could see, more or less, the features of Erik’s face as he turned around again; as he coiled tense and fuming over the solid root of his feet.
Erik’s voice snapped in the cold air. “What did you think you were doing?”
Charles gaped at him indignantly, and said, “If you need me to explain, then maybe we shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
The other huffed a laugh, mocking Charles’ taunt. “Really, Charles-what did you even hope to achieve? You were going to-to suck the cock of a murderer, for what? To get back at me?”
Charles found that he was trembling, but he refused to wrap his arms around himself. Frigid air teased over his neck as he raised his chin and stated, “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“It is my business,” Erik growled, taking a single stuttering step closer. “Moral considerations aside, did you even spare a thought for your safety? Did you realize where you were?” He snarled, almost, and jerked his head to the side as if he couldn’t stand to see Charles so naïve. “Two doors away from outside, out of the shielding. He could have taken you away, gone anywhere-”
“He wasn’t going to,” Charles replied, flatly, and Erik whipped around again to face him.
Striding forward, Erik hissed, “That’s not the point. He could have. All it would have taken was a silver of open door-” He stopped, biting off the end of his own sentence as he looked away again; then he paced back, cape swirling around his shins.
“He wasn’t going to,” Charles repeated. “No one-no one without a helmet can force me to do anything, let alone travel-travel somewhere else against my will.”
“No,” Erik breathed, stalking slowly forward. “No, they couldn’t make you do anything-which leads me to ask-why did you? Why do something so foolish, so, so…”
Charles narrowed his eyes, daring Erik to continue. “Again: how is what I do on my own time any business of yours?”
Erik frowned; his eyebrows furrowed tightly together as he stared down at Charles. “It is. You’re my…”
“‘Your’ what?” Charles echoed, watching icily.
“You’re mine,” Erik concluded, his voice a deep feral rumble. He stood tall over Charles for a moment, muscles all coiled potential-then bent, darted down-his gloved hand wrapped around the base of Charles’ skull, angling his head up as Erik pressed in to kiss him-
Erik didn’t make a sound when Charles bit into his lip, but between one moment and the next he had gone; vanished. Charles opened his eyes to see Erik standing, still close, shoulders hunched as the fingers of one hand hovered near his chin in case his tongue proved insufficient to learn the extent of the damage. Most of Erik’s attention, however, remained fixed on Charles; his eyes were wide with shock and-what was that, hurt?
No, because that would have been ridiculous-ridiculous to feel betrayed after trying to force a kiss on someone who didn’t want it and earning their justified retaliation. Charles’ gaze dipped, down to Erik’s parted lips, where steam unfurled itself over the dark gleam of blood in the moonlight. He saw the hesitant tip of Erik’s tongue, there, blindly seeking to assure itself of the wound’s exaggeration. Absolutely absurd-lunacy.
Charles saw his own breath-a faint tatter of fog, that constant exhalation made visible now only through its protest of the wintry air, vanishing again as it surrendered to the ambient temperature. Charles himself felt cold, but not-not as much as he had been; his heart beat rapidly in his chest, the fire of-of anger, of vindication, of-maybe alcohol too, still, who knew-
A low, faint groan struggled from Charles’ throat as he reached up and seized Erik by the collar of his cape, as he dragged the other down-and Erik resisted at first; tried to obey Charles’ first command with the defiance of this second-then gave in, supported himself with his hands on the back of the chair as Charles pulled him into the kiss.
Erik hissed as Charles crushed against his bitten lip, but made no further noise as the geneticist explored with his tongue, tasting the thick sluggish twinge of blood as he sucked on Erik’s lip, then moved on to Erik’s teeth, and between them-his tongue, too, tasted of iron, and-well, that was appropriate, wasn’t it? It seemed to Charles that if-if Erik were to have a taste, it ought to be of metal.
Charles broke away, leaning back to see; Erik stared back at him, through the steam of their unsteady breaths, his eyes dark and intent through those living whorls, fixed on Charles’; the attentive, dangerous stare of a half-tamed dragon.
Erik took his hands off the back of the chair and stood; the cold rushed back to embrace Charles immediately. Then, quietly, full of the stillness of uneasy confidence, the other held out a hand and offered: “Dance with me.”
Charles glanced around at the empty clearing, at the darkness beyond. The only other sound was that of the wind, high in the branches. He laughed, faintly; briefly. His heart raced inappropriately. Lunacy; yes, that was the correct word-madness by moonlight. Who knew that it could so severely afflict even the best of them? “What, here? Now?” Charles asked, incredulously.
Erik’s only reply was an insistent angling of his eyebrows as he breathed lightly from his mouth, the air waiting in his lungs. The hand remained.
Charles sighed, nudged the footrests aside and lowered his shoes down into the grass as he slid his hand into Erik’s; who was he, to say no to a madman? So Charles gripped tightly as the other man pulled him up to his feet, and as Erik wrapped an arm and a good portion of his cape around Charles. He did not release Charles’ hand.
Erik leaned back, a little, to peer down at Charles, a soft, tender smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes, pulling at the tear in his lip-then he looked to the side and Charles followed his gaze to watch the chair move itself out of their way.
Slowly, astonishingly-they began to dance.
It wasn’t much; just a rather awkward shuffling of feet as Charles followed Erik’s lead. His legs were stronger now, but not yet enough that he could do anything more, and at first Charles felt very self-conscious. There was no music, there was no grace to this, none of the hard-won skill Charles had once displayed on Saturday nights in Oxford-merely a mindless sort of rocking, drifting slow circles through the rustling prickle of dead grass; just the two of them endlessly, painfully aware of each other. But…
But after a while, Charles realized that he was warm, beneath Erik’s cape and with his hand cradled in Erik’s, and he could feel the shift of muscles in the other’s back where he had splayed the fingers of his free hand. The edge of the helmet dug hard through Charles’ hair, but Erik’s nose rested there too and Charles could feel the heat from inside his chest with every fall of Erik’s ribs.
Charles had already put his head down against Erik, but now he closed his eyes, listening to the shush of the wind overhead. Somewhere out there the world lay in ruins, but here-now-it was only autumn, and summer would come again.
Eventually Charles became aware of the fact that Erik had stopped, and now they only stood leaning together; he blinked up at the man to see that Erik wasn’t smiling, not really, but his eyes-god, his eyes-
Charles swallowed, and felt something catch. He realized that there was cold air drafting up beneath the thin fabric of his trousers and shivered. “Could you,” he whispered harshly, “Could you take me back inside, please?”
Now Erik smiled, gently. “Of course,” he agreed, and when he lowered Charles down the chair waited, ready. Erik stepped back, thought for a moment, and removed his cape with a sweep; then spread it over Charles, tucking the edges down behind his shoulders. “I have to be somewhere tomorrow night,” Erik murmured as he did this. “I have a speech to organize… But then, the day after tomorrow… I will see you again.”
Satisfied that Charles would be warm, Erik led him back. As the geneticist stared at the man’s shoulders-relaxed, now, not a bit of threat in those muscles-he huddled cold and miserable even beneath the weight of the cape. Charles had run out of time; he had stayed too long and indulged too much. If he wanted to leave, to fix this-it would have to be soon.
And Charles had a plan for how to do just that.
Chapter 16