Fanfic - The Face of All the World Is Changed (part one)
Fandom: X-Men: First Class (movie)
Characters: Erik, Charles, others
Warnings: Mild racism and sexism as per the time period
Summary: Something is wrong with Charles. Erik must cope with the reality that his friend may not be as strong as he'd once thought.
Disclaimer: Neither X-Men nor the film X-Men: First Class are my intellectual property.
Figured I'd start getting this up on my journal. When I was looking over it, there's actually farily even splits going on between certain scenes, so why not? Done for a prompt over on the kink meme (where you can get faster but shorter updates, but the cleaned-up/edited version is here).
---
Erik shifted the bag around in his hands as he climbed the steps leading up to their room. Curse mutants hiding out in the middle of nowhere. Curse cheap hotels with creaky, unstable floorboards that could collapse underneath him at any time. Curse this miserable heat. And curse Charles and his stupid charisma for goading him into sticking with this ridiculous mission.
He could feel sweat clinging to his back as he made his way down the hall, making the fabric of his shirt stick uncomfortably with every step he took. The heat was damn near unbearable in this place, and he couldn’t wait until they were free of it. How people managed to live here, he had no idea.
The brass numbers on the door marking their room were dull with age, leering at him like some sort of challenge. He glared back, unlocking the door with little more than a twist of his fingers, room key be damned. He’d been living in Virginia for too long. The heat was starting to get to him, and it was unacceptable. He kicked the door shut behind him.
“Charles, I brought the…” He trailed off as he examined the room. It wasn’t much different than before he’d left to grab a quick dinner for the both of them, but he hadn’t expected the place to be so dark. He frowned and flicked on the light, his attention focused on the man seated at the small table in the corner with his head in his hands. There was no muttered hello, no wave of his hand. Nothing. Charles hadn’t even looked up to greet him. Odd, that.
He stalked over to the table, his frown deepening with every step. Erik had had the courtesy of going out and fetching some dinner for the both of them, and yet here Charles was, sitting alone in the dark without even bothering to turn on the fan. It was almost as stifling inside the room as it was out.
He flung himself into the empty chair across from Charles and dropped the grocery bag onto the scuffed wooden tabletop with a heavy thunk. Charles visibly winced at the noise, and when he looked up, Erik’s resolve softened. The man looked awful, and he was cradling his head in his hands as though it were something precious that had just caught fire. Too painful to handle, but too valuable to let go. Waves of foreign thoughts and feelings were washing over Erik like the tide, and he scooted his chair back a little from the table, hoping the added distance would help alleviate Charles’s thoughts pressing down on his mind.
“H’lo, Erik,” Charles mumbled into his hands. He couldn’t look at Erik or face the bright lights of the room anymore, instead choosing to grind his face harder into the palms of his hands, as though the added pressure might lessen the ache in his skull.
“Headache?” Stupid question. Of course it was a headache, and it looked to be a bad one at that. He simply couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Charles grunted in response. He didn’t trust himself to raise his head, and the sound of his own voice was grating to his ears, far too loud and echoing for far too long after the words had left his lips. He didn’t trust himself to even attempt telepathic communication.
Erik sighed and pushed himself from his seat, trudging past his ailing friend to the bathroom. He knew that Charles always kept some painkillers in his toiletry bag. He rifled through the thing, shifting aside a small bottle of shampoo and Charles’s razor to find the little rattling bottle of white pills. They probably wouldn’t do much, but it was something. One of the little complementary glass cups beside the sink was quickly filled with tap water.
He walked back over to the table and placed the little bottle of pills and the water in front of Charles. The man actually looked up this time. His whites of his eyes were tinged with red, the skin around them darkened like the man hadn’t slept in a week. “Drink.” Erik nudged the glass a little closer to Charles with his hand and then made his way back to his seat, his eyes fixed on the professor.
Charles just looked at the water, the pills on the table in front of him, before lifting his gaze to Erik. “What-”
“Don’t start. Just take the damn pills. I can hear your thoughts from here.” Erik folded his arms in front of his chest. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer on this. They were in the middle of nowhere, after a mutant that, for all they knew, was long gone from here. This wasn’t the first time this particular mutant had evaded them, and Erik needed Charles in top-notch condition to find him.
Charles reached forward and unscrewed the cap on the bottle, tapping out a couple of little white pills into his hand. Erik reached across the table for the paper bag holding their dinner, fishing out the twin packages inside. He slid one over to Charles and began unwrapping his own, eager for the sandwich inside but careful to make as little noise as possible. He could feel Charles’s pain surge with every crinkle of the paper in his hands but schooled his features into stone. Charles didn’t need to know that he was projecting.
“I got you the turkey. You weren’t very clear about what you wanted when I left.” Talking might help keep the man out of his head. If his control was bad enough for him to be projecting, there was no way for Erik to know that Charles wasn’t inadvertently rifling through his thoughts.
“That’s fine,” Charles replied, reaching forward for his sandwich. “I’ve never been terribly picky.”
“Mmm,” Erik grumbled around the mouthful of food in his cheek. The deli hadn’t exactly been the most respectable establishment, but he had to admit that they could make a pretty damn good sandwich. Now, if only he could manage to get rid of this heat. He eyed the fan in the corner before turning his attention back to Charles. He swallowed and lowered the food in his hands. Charles was gingerly picking at his sandwich. He hadn’t even taken a bite. “Not hungry?”
He startled and looked up, wincing as he did. Moved too fast. “What?”
Erik nodded toward the sandwich resting on the table. “Not hungry? You’ve barely touched that.”
Charles sighed and pulled off a little bit of bread from the corner. “Not particularly, but you went through the trouble of getting this for us, and it won’t last long in this heat.”
Erik nodded and cast another glance at the fan. “Are you feeling any better?”
“Yes, the medication has made this more manageable.”
Erik tilted his head toward the fan. “Then do you mind if I turn that on? You seem rather sensitive to sound at the moment, and I’d rather not experience your headache tonight while I sleep.”
Charles lowered his head into his hand again, rubbing his fingers along the temple. “Yes, I think I’ll be fine. The heat will probably aggravate things more than the noise anyway.”
Erik nodded once more and flicked his fingers toward the fan. The little metal switch at its base rose, and the machine’s buzzing filled the air. His eyes never left Charles, who was still picking at his sandwich like a moody child. He let out a heavy sigh. “You need to eat something, Charles. You’re no good to me if you can’t function. I can’t pick out this mutant on my own.”
Charles didn’t answer. He simply popped the bit of bread in his fingers into his mouth and slowly began to chew. Erik turned back to his own sandwich, trying desperately to ignore the subtle waves of pain and discomfort that were still leaking over from Charles to him, instead focusing on the beads of sweat that were resting uncomfortably in the curve of the small of his back and the feel of the bread and meat in his mouth.
It was going to be a long night.
---
Erik wasn’t sure if it was the sound or the smell that got to him first. He jolted awake, his stomach reeling with the sudden motion, and he took in his surroundings. The dingy walls of the hotel greeted him, and he flopped back down onto his lumpy pillow with a sigh of relief and frustration. Relief that he was somewhere even vaguely familiar, that Charles was in the other bed not ten feet away. Frustration that he was still here of all places. And it was still damnably hot.
The sound came again, and he looked over to his left. Huh. He’d been wrong. Charles wasn’t in bed like he’d thought. The other man was in the bathroom, sounding very much like he was vomiting what little he’d had to eat recently, or at the very least trying to bring something up. The distinct acidic smell of vomit that burned at the edges of his senses confirmed this theory. Something had definitely come up while Charles had been in there.
Erik flung an arm over his eyes and tried to focus on the soft buzz of the fan in the corner. Charles was sick. On their mission. And he was the only one who could find the asshole who’d decided to make somewhere as awful as this his hiding place. It was just his luck.
He tried to let the dark wash over him, to let sleep overtake him once more, but he couldn’t get his mind to slow. He removed his arm and stared up at the blank ceiling above him. There was a stain hovering over the end of his bed, and he grimaced. There was no telling what that was.
The hard edge of an old spring in the mattress beneath him jutted painfully into his side. He shifted it with little more than a thought. Charles was still coughing and sputtering in the bathroom; the fan buzzed softly in the background. Erik sat up once more and flung the thin sheet covering his legs to the side. He couldn’t take this anymore. He needed to calm down, relax, find something to do besides lie there and listen to his companion vomiting up everything he’d eaten this past week. He desperately needed a smoke. And that meant braving the bathroom. Fantastic.
He pushed himself up off his bed and shuffled over to the tiny bathroom, his feet catching on the thin carpet covering the floor. The door was just barely open, and the lights were off inside. He slowly pushed the door inward, not sure exactly where Charles was situated inside. As frustrated as he was with their situation, he didn’t want to somehow hit Charles on his quest for cigarettes. That would probably just end up making things worse.
When it was open enough for him to get his head through with minimal difficulty, he peered inside and grimaced as the smell hit him full force. From the moonlight seeping in through the window above the shower he could make out the faint outline of Charles hunched over the toilet, his hands gripping the porcelain rim like his life depended on it. His hair was dangling in sweaty clumps off his forehead, shifting about with his every ragged, panting breath.
Erik sighed. This was not what he’d had in mind when he’d agreed to stick around for this.
“Hello, Erik,” Charles mumbled, turning slightly to grace him with a quick, pained smile. “Lovely night we’re having.”
“Says the man with his head in the crapper.” Erik wormed his way inside, careful to avoid Charles’s legs.
“Yes, well I-” Charles suddenly went white as a sheet and turned back to the toilet, coughing up stringy bits of bile and saliva. When the bout passed, he leaned forward so that his forehead rested against the tank. His eyes were wet, and his chest was heaving. “Damn.”
Erik quickly found his cigarettes but couldn’t find it in him to leave just yet. Not when Charles looked like that. He could feel the man’s presence dancing on the edges of his mind, far more muddled than earlier that evening but there nonetheless. At least he wasn’t projecting anymore. Erik leaned back against the counter, his slightly crumpled package of cigarettes clutched loosely in his hand. “Anything I can do?”
“Probably not. Unless you have some sort of latent secondary mutation that can rid one of migraines.” His voice was tinged with humor, and Erik simply shook his head.
“Unfortunately, I have yet to perfect that ability.”
Charles smiled briefly before his face screwed up into a grimace once more, his breath catching in his throat. The shorter man’s eyes squeezed shut, and Erik braced himself for another round of unsuccessful attempts to bring back yesterday’s lunch. But after several tense moments, nothing came. Erik shifted back and forth on his heels, the skin of his feet sticking a bit to the linoleum as he moved. Charles’s harsh breathing filled the small room, bouncing off the walls in endless repeat. “Erik?” he huffed out, his eyes still screwed shut. “Erik, I don’t think he’s here anymore.”
“What?”
Charles winced at his volume, and Erik retreated a bit, though his heart was racing now. “The mutant we’re after. I don’t think he’s here anymore.”
Erik ground the heel of his palm into his forehead and tried to suppress the well of anger bubbling up in his chest. “And why do you think this?” he grumbled impatiently.
“I can’t find him anywhere. He was here,” Charles lightly tapped his temple before moving back to grip the toilet seat, “bright as day this morning, and I could sense him this afternoon, but now there’s nothing. I think he’s moved on us again.” He grit his teeth and fought back against another wave of nausea.
Erik wanted to scream. Here he was stuck in a dingy hotel with a man who was currently so sick he could barely go three minutes without heaving his guts out, searching for a mutant who was no longer around. It was almost as frustrating as figuring out Shaw’s location.
Calm yourself. The words echoed in his ear, and Erik wasn’t sure if he’d heard them aloud, or if they only existed in his head.
“And how do you expect me to do that?” he snarled at Charles, who’d gone rather pale once more.
“Please, Erik, for god’s sake, calm yourself down,” Charles ground out. “I don’t give a damn how you do it, but my control isn’t very good at the moment, and I can hear everything you’re thinking right now as loudly as if you were shouting in my ear.”
Erik got the hint. He wasn’t helping. If anything, he was probably making things worse. He threw his head back and breathed out a heavy sigh. The package in his hand crinkled a little, and he gripped it a little tighter. “I’m going outside.” He stepped over Charles and made his way out of the bathroom.
The night air was warm against his skin, and he was grateful that he hadn’t bothered to stop for shoes on his way out the door. The sharp cut of pavement and loose gravel against the skin of his bare feet was calming in its own way. He propped himself up against the wall of the building and let the smoke of his cigarette waft over him in a cloud of billowing white. He didn’t smoke often, but it did wonders on the nerves. They’d start again tomorrow. Maybe move on to the next mutant on their list of coordinates, or perhaps just head back to Virginia so Charles could recover and be of some use again. It was probably for the best anyway.
He flicked the still smoldering butt of his cigarette to the pavement and watched as the last wisps of smoke faded away into the night sky. They could figure everything out in the morning.
---
Erik was an early riser out of habit. One of the many lessons he’d learned from his time with Shaw was that a man was often at his most vulnerable when asleep. Charles, on the other hand, was not, regardless of his gentlemanly training growing up. Which perhaps was why Erik was surprised to find Charles seated at the hotel’s little table in the corner when he woke. Thin streaks of sunlight were creeping into the main room from the little window in the bathroom, illuminating the dull red of the carpet, the smooth wood of the table, and throwing long shadows into every corner and across the telepath’s face.
Charles had one of the books he’d brought along laid out on the table in front of him, the little glass from the bathroom sitting just off to the side. The fingers of his left hand were absently stroking the carved bottom of the glass, shifting the water inside ever so slightly, which he watched with a detached sort of interest. The room really wasn’t bright enough yet to make reading an easy task; it wasn’t surprising Charles was more interested in the glass than his book.
I wonder if he wishes that were coffee, he mused as he watched the other man.
Charles looked up to meet his gaze with a soft smile. “Good morning, Erik. And coffee would be lovely, actually.”
Erik gave up all pretense of sleep and swung his legs over the side of the bed, lifting himself into a sitting position. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his bent knees and studied the man before him. Charles looked ruffled, his hair askew and still in his rumpled clothes from last night, but the pallor seemed to have left his skin, and he was well enough to pick up on Erik’s stray thoughts. Hopefully they wouldn’t have a repeat of last night, but he felt it best to make sure. He fixed Charles with a hard stare. “How are you feeling?”
“Honestly?” Erik gave a curt nod, and Charles slumped back against the hard back of his chair with a heavy sigh. “Tired, mostly. I wasn’t able to sleep very well at all.”
Erik nodded. Understandable. Charles had still been dry heaving in the bathroom when Erik had finally made his way back up to the room, and he’d still been camped out in the bathroom when Erik had drifted off. He couldn’t imagine that Charles had gotten much in the way of sleep. He slid his eyes over the man’s frame once more, once more taking in his disheveled form. Well, if he really thought about it, based on the state of things he’d be surprised if Charles had managed to get any sleep at all. “Those headaches,” he gestured vaguely at Charles with his hand, “do you get them often?”
“No. Not really. Headaches themselves are pretty common.” He smiled and tapped the side of his head, his voice lifting with humor. “Kind of comes with the territory of being a telepath.” He paused, letting his arm fall down into his lap. “But ones like last night? No, they’re usually not that bad. I haven’t had one that bad in years.” His voice was soft, almost like he was ashamed of himself for appearing so weak in front of the other man.
Erik propped his chin on his folded hands. He needed to change the subject, move on to the task at hand. Charles’s well-being was important, of course, but now that he was functioning they needed to refocus on the mission. “About last night-you said you couldn’t find the mutant we were after.” Charles gave a slow nod and waited for Erik to continue. He already knew the question lurking behind his companion’s words but wanted Erik to actually speak it aloud before answering. “Is he here now?”
Charles lifted his fingers to his temple and closed his eyes in concentration, seeking out the familiar wavelengths of the man they were after. Erik watched him carefully, studying the subtle shifts in Charles’s expression. After several long, silent moments, Charles deflated with a soft release of air, his hand dropping down over the chair’s armrest. “No. I can’t find him anywhere in range. He’s evaded us again.”
Erik cursed harshly under his breath before turning his attention back to Charles. “So what do you propose we do?”
Charles gave a half-hearted shrug with a small shake of his head. “Give up. We’ve already recruited two mutants as it is, and this one’s managed to get away from us twice. All we’re doing in chasing after him is wasting our time and the government’s money. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to be found.” He turned his head toward the bathroom, focusing on the slowly expanding beams of light creeping over the floor as his face screwed up in thought. “I say we head back to base and look up a new target, perhaps one closer to home this time.”
Erik watched Charles in silence, his mouth crushed up against his knuckles. Charles was hiding something, perhaps another headache, and it was making him uneasy. He wondered if the other man picked up it. If so, he was doing a damn good job at keeping it to himself. “So what do we tell the CIA?”
Charles shot him a pointed look. “That we failed,” he answered candidly. “It’s perfectly natural. We can’t expect to successfully locate and recruit every single mutant I identify using Cerebro.” His face lit up in a smile. “Even for a man of your abilities, Erik, such a task is impossible.”
“I know that,” Erik grumbled, rising to his feet. “It’s just frustrating. We came all the way out here for nothing.”
Charles’s eyes followed him as he walked over to his bag and began rifling through it for a fresh set of clothes. “You should call that agent-”
“Moira.”
“Yes, her. You should call her and let her know that we’re on our way back to Virginia.” He straightened. The sleeve of his clean shirt was dangling loosely from the crook of his arm, swaying lightly against his torso. “Maybe she can arrange for faster transportation out of here. That is unless you know of another mutant that’s close by.”
Charles shook his head. “Not one that would be of any use. The closest mutant to us based on the coordinates I can remember lives roughly fifty miles from here, but she’s only three months old.” His hand had moved back to finger the bottom of the glass.
“Then she’s of no use to us.” He reached down and grabbed Charles’s bag from the floor. The room was starting to heat up again; he could feel sweat beginning to gather on his brow. If there was nothing for them here, then they’d best move on as quickly as possible. There was no sense waiting around. “Are you hungry?” he asked Charles.
“Famished.”
He tossed the bag into the other man’s lap, just barely missing the glass of water on the table, and tilted his head toward the phone. “Then get yourself put together and call agent MacTaggert. Find out if she can get us a way out of here, preferably without dragging us through an airport. We can grab something to eat on the way out.”
---
Part two
Characters: Erik, Charles, others
Warnings: Mild racism and sexism as per the time period
Summary: Something is wrong with Charles. Erik must cope with the reality that his friend may not be as strong as he'd once thought.
Disclaimer: Neither X-Men nor the film X-Men: First Class are my intellectual property.
Figured I'd start getting this up on my journal. When I was looking over it, there's actually farily even splits going on between certain scenes, so why not? Done for a prompt over on the kink meme (where you can get faster but shorter updates, but the cleaned-up/edited version is here).
---
Erik shifted the bag around in his hands as he climbed the steps leading up to their room. Curse mutants hiding out in the middle of nowhere. Curse cheap hotels with creaky, unstable floorboards that could collapse underneath him at any time. Curse this miserable heat. And curse Charles and his stupid charisma for goading him into sticking with this ridiculous mission.
He could feel sweat clinging to his back as he made his way down the hall, making the fabric of his shirt stick uncomfortably with every step he took. The heat was damn near unbearable in this place, and he couldn’t wait until they were free of it. How people managed to live here, he had no idea.
The brass numbers on the door marking their room were dull with age, leering at him like some sort of challenge. He glared back, unlocking the door with little more than a twist of his fingers, room key be damned. He’d been living in Virginia for too long. The heat was starting to get to him, and it was unacceptable. He kicked the door shut behind him.
“Charles, I brought the…” He trailed off as he examined the room. It wasn’t much different than before he’d left to grab a quick dinner for the both of them, but he hadn’t expected the place to be so dark. He frowned and flicked on the light, his attention focused on the man seated at the small table in the corner with his head in his hands. There was no muttered hello, no wave of his hand. Nothing. Charles hadn’t even looked up to greet him. Odd, that.
He stalked over to the table, his frown deepening with every step. Erik had had the courtesy of going out and fetching some dinner for the both of them, and yet here Charles was, sitting alone in the dark without even bothering to turn on the fan. It was almost as stifling inside the room as it was out.
He flung himself into the empty chair across from Charles and dropped the grocery bag onto the scuffed wooden tabletop with a heavy thunk. Charles visibly winced at the noise, and when he looked up, Erik’s resolve softened. The man looked awful, and he was cradling his head in his hands as though it were something precious that had just caught fire. Too painful to handle, but too valuable to let go. Waves of foreign thoughts and feelings were washing over Erik like the tide, and he scooted his chair back a little from the table, hoping the added distance would help alleviate Charles’s thoughts pressing down on his mind.
“H’lo, Erik,” Charles mumbled into his hands. He couldn’t look at Erik or face the bright lights of the room anymore, instead choosing to grind his face harder into the palms of his hands, as though the added pressure might lessen the ache in his skull.
“Headache?” Stupid question. Of course it was a headache, and it looked to be a bad one at that. He simply couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Charles grunted in response. He didn’t trust himself to raise his head, and the sound of his own voice was grating to his ears, far too loud and echoing for far too long after the words had left his lips. He didn’t trust himself to even attempt telepathic communication.
Erik sighed and pushed himself from his seat, trudging past his ailing friend to the bathroom. He knew that Charles always kept some painkillers in his toiletry bag. He rifled through the thing, shifting aside a small bottle of shampoo and Charles’s razor to find the little rattling bottle of white pills. They probably wouldn’t do much, but it was something. One of the little complementary glass cups beside the sink was quickly filled with tap water.
He walked back over to the table and placed the little bottle of pills and the water in front of Charles. The man actually looked up this time. His whites of his eyes were tinged with red, the skin around them darkened like the man hadn’t slept in a week. “Drink.” Erik nudged the glass a little closer to Charles with his hand and then made his way back to his seat, his eyes fixed on the professor.
Charles just looked at the water, the pills on the table in front of him, before lifting his gaze to Erik. “What-”
“Don’t start. Just take the damn pills. I can hear your thoughts from here.” Erik folded his arms in front of his chest. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer on this. They were in the middle of nowhere, after a mutant that, for all they knew, was long gone from here. This wasn’t the first time this particular mutant had evaded them, and Erik needed Charles in top-notch condition to find him.
Charles reached forward and unscrewed the cap on the bottle, tapping out a couple of little white pills into his hand. Erik reached across the table for the paper bag holding their dinner, fishing out the twin packages inside. He slid one over to Charles and began unwrapping his own, eager for the sandwich inside but careful to make as little noise as possible. He could feel Charles’s pain surge with every crinkle of the paper in his hands but schooled his features into stone. Charles didn’t need to know that he was projecting.
“I got you the turkey. You weren’t very clear about what you wanted when I left.” Talking might help keep the man out of his head. If his control was bad enough for him to be projecting, there was no way for Erik to know that Charles wasn’t inadvertently rifling through his thoughts.
“That’s fine,” Charles replied, reaching forward for his sandwich. “I’ve never been terribly picky.”
“Mmm,” Erik grumbled around the mouthful of food in his cheek. The deli hadn’t exactly been the most respectable establishment, but he had to admit that they could make a pretty damn good sandwich. Now, if only he could manage to get rid of this heat. He eyed the fan in the corner before turning his attention back to Charles. He swallowed and lowered the food in his hands. Charles was gingerly picking at his sandwich. He hadn’t even taken a bite. “Not hungry?”
He startled and looked up, wincing as he did. Moved too fast. “What?”
Erik nodded toward the sandwich resting on the table. “Not hungry? You’ve barely touched that.”
Charles sighed and pulled off a little bit of bread from the corner. “Not particularly, but you went through the trouble of getting this for us, and it won’t last long in this heat.”
Erik nodded and cast another glance at the fan. “Are you feeling any better?”
“Yes, the medication has made this more manageable.”
Erik tilted his head toward the fan. “Then do you mind if I turn that on? You seem rather sensitive to sound at the moment, and I’d rather not experience your headache tonight while I sleep.”
Charles lowered his head into his hand again, rubbing his fingers along the temple. “Yes, I think I’ll be fine. The heat will probably aggravate things more than the noise anyway.”
Erik nodded once more and flicked his fingers toward the fan. The little metal switch at its base rose, and the machine’s buzzing filled the air. His eyes never left Charles, who was still picking at his sandwich like a moody child. He let out a heavy sigh. “You need to eat something, Charles. You’re no good to me if you can’t function. I can’t pick out this mutant on my own.”
Charles didn’t answer. He simply popped the bit of bread in his fingers into his mouth and slowly began to chew. Erik turned back to his own sandwich, trying desperately to ignore the subtle waves of pain and discomfort that were still leaking over from Charles to him, instead focusing on the beads of sweat that were resting uncomfortably in the curve of the small of his back and the feel of the bread and meat in his mouth.
It was going to be a long night.
---
Erik wasn’t sure if it was the sound or the smell that got to him first. He jolted awake, his stomach reeling with the sudden motion, and he took in his surroundings. The dingy walls of the hotel greeted him, and he flopped back down onto his lumpy pillow with a sigh of relief and frustration. Relief that he was somewhere even vaguely familiar, that Charles was in the other bed not ten feet away. Frustration that he was still here of all places. And it was still damnably hot.
The sound came again, and he looked over to his left. Huh. He’d been wrong. Charles wasn’t in bed like he’d thought. The other man was in the bathroom, sounding very much like he was vomiting what little he’d had to eat recently, or at the very least trying to bring something up. The distinct acidic smell of vomit that burned at the edges of his senses confirmed this theory. Something had definitely come up while Charles had been in there.
Erik flung an arm over his eyes and tried to focus on the soft buzz of the fan in the corner. Charles was sick. On their mission. And he was the only one who could find the asshole who’d decided to make somewhere as awful as this his hiding place. It was just his luck.
He tried to let the dark wash over him, to let sleep overtake him once more, but he couldn’t get his mind to slow. He removed his arm and stared up at the blank ceiling above him. There was a stain hovering over the end of his bed, and he grimaced. There was no telling what that was.
The hard edge of an old spring in the mattress beneath him jutted painfully into his side. He shifted it with little more than a thought. Charles was still coughing and sputtering in the bathroom; the fan buzzed softly in the background. Erik sat up once more and flung the thin sheet covering his legs to the side. He couldn’t take this anymore. He needed to calm down, relax, find something to do besides lie there and listen to his companion vomiting up everything he’d eaten this past week. He desperately needed a smoke. And that meant braving the bathroom. Fantastic.
He pushed himself up off his bed and shuffled over to the tiny bathroom, his feet catching on the thin carpet covering the floor. The door was just barely open, and the lights were off inside. He slowly pushed the door inward, not sure exactly where Charles was situated inside. As frustrated as he was with their situation, he didn’t want to somehow hit Charles on his quest for cigarettes. That would probably just end up making things worse.
When it was open enough for him to get his head through with minimal difficulty, he peered inside and grimaced as the smell hit him full force. From the moonlight seeping in through the window above the shower he could make out the faint outline of Charles hunched over the toilet, his hands gripping the porcelain rim like his life depended on it. His hair was dangling in sweaty clumps off his forehead, shifting about with his every ragged, panting breath.
Erik sighed. This was not what he’d had in mind when he’d agreed to stick around for this.
“Hello, Erik,” Charles mumbled, turning slightly to grace him with a quick, pained smile. “Lovely night we’re having.”
“Says the man with his head in the crapper.” Erik wormed his way inside, careful to avoid Charles’s legs.
“Yes, well I-” Charles suddenly went white as a sheet and turned back to the toilet, coughing up stringy bits of bile and saliva. When the bout passed, he leaned forward so that his forehead rested against the tank. His eyes were wet, and his chest was heaving. “Damn.”
Erik quickly found his cigarettes but couldn’t find it in him to leave just yet. Not when Charles looked like that. He could feel the man’s presence dancing on the edges of his mind, far more muddled than earlier that evening but there nonetheless. At least he wasn’t projecting anymore. Erik leaned back against the counter, his slightly crumpled package of cigarettes clutched loosely in his hand. “Anything I can do?”
“Probably not. Unless you have some sort of latent secondary mutation that can rid one of migraines.” His voice was tinged with humor, and Erik simply shook his head.
“Unfortunately, I have yet to perfect that ability.”
Charles smiled briefly before his face screwed up into a grimace once more, his breath catching in his throat. The shorter man’s eyes squeezed shut, and Erik braced himself for another round of unsuccessful attempts to bring back yesterday’s lunch. But after several tense moments, nothing came. Erik shifted back and forth on his heels, the skin of his feet sticking a bit to the linoleum as he moved. Charles’s harsh breathing filled the small room, bouncing off the walls in endless repeat. “Erik?” he huffed out, his eyes still screwed shut. “Erik, I don’t think he’s here anymore.”
“What?”
Charles winced at his volume, and Erik retreated a bit, though his heart was racing now. “The mutant we’re after. I don’t think he’s here anymore.”
Erik ground the heel of his palm into his forehead and tried to suppress the well of anger bubbling up in his chest. “And why do you think this?” he grumbled impatiently.
“I can’t find him anywhere. He was here,” Charles lightly tapped his temple before moving back to grip the toilet seat, “bright as day this morning, and I could sense him this afternoon, but now there’s nothing. I think he’s moved on us again.” He grit his teeth and fought back against another wave of nausea.
Erik wanted to scream. Here he was stuck in a dingy hotel with a man who was currently so sick he could barely go three minutes without heaving his guts out, searching for a mutant who was no longer around. It was almost as frustrating as figuring out Shaw’s location.
Calm yourself. The words echoed in his ear, and Erik wasn’t sure if he’d heard them aloud, or if they only existed in his head.
“And how do you expect me to do that?” he snarled at Charles, who’d gone rather pale once more.
“Please, Erik, for god’s sake, calm yourself down,” Charles ground out. “I don’t give a damn how you do it, but my control isn’t very good at the moment, and I can hear everything you’re thinking right now as loudly as if you were shouting in my ear.”
Erik got the hint. He wasn’t helping. If anything, he was probably making things worse. He threw his head back and breathed out a heavy sigh. The package in his hand crinkled a little, and he gripped it a little tighter. “I’m going outside.” He stepped over Charles and made his way out of the bathroom.
The night air was warm against his skin, and he was grateful that he hadn’t bothered to stop for shoes on his way out the door. The sharp cut of pavement and loose gravel against the skin of his bare feet was calming in its own way. He propped himself up against the wall of the building and let the smoke of his cigarette waft over him in a cloud of billowing white. He didn’t smoke often, but it did wonders on the nerves. They’d start again tomorrow. Maybe move on to the next mutant on their list of coordinates, or perhaps just head back to Virginia so Charles could recover and be of some use again. It was probably for the best anyway.
He flicked the still smoldering butt of his cigarette to the pavement and watched as the last wisps of smoke faded away into the night sky. They could figure everything out in the morning.
---
Erik was an early riser out of habit. One of the many lessons he’d learned from his time with Shaw was that a man was often at his most vulnerable when asleep. Charles, on the other hand, was not, regardless of his gentlemanly training growing up. Which perhaps was why Erik was surprised to find Charles seated at the hotel’s little table in the corner when he woke. Thin streaks of sunlight were creeping into the main room from the little window in the bathroom, illuminating the dull red of the carpet, the smooth wood of the table, and throwing long shadows into every corner and across the telepath’s face.
Charles had one of the books he’d brought along laid out on the table in front of him, the little glass from the bathroom sitting just off to the side. The fingers of his left hand were absently stroking the carved bottom of the glass, shifting the water inside ever so slightly, which he watched with a detached sort of interest. The room really wasn’t bright enough yet to make reading an easy task; it wasn’t surprising Charles was more interested in the glass than his book.
I wonder if he wishes that were coffee, he mused as he watched the other man.
Charles looked up to meet his gaze with a soft smile. “Good morning, Erik. And coffee would be lovely, actually.”
Erik gave up all pretense of sleep and swung his legs over the side of the bed, lifting himself into a sitting position. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his bent knees and studied the man before him. Charles looked ruffled, his hair askew and still in his rumpled clothes from last night, but the pallor seemed to have left his skin, and he was well enough to pick up on Erik’s stray thoughts. Hopefully they wouldn’t have a repeat of last night, but he felt it best to make sure. He fixed Charles with a hard stare. “How are you feeling?”
“Honestly?” Erik gave a curt nod, and Charles slumped back against the hard back of his chair with a heavy sigh. “Tired, mostly. I wasn’t able to sleep very well at all.”
Erik nodded. Understandable. Charles had still been dry heaving in the bathroom when Erik had finally made his way back up to the room, and he’d still been camped out in the bathroom when Erik had drifted off. He couldn’t imagine that Charles had gotten much in the way of sleep. He slid his eyes over the man’s frame once more, once more taking in his disheveled form. Well, if he really thought about it, based on the state of things he’d be surprised if Charles had managed to get any sleep at all. “Those headaches,” he gestured vaguely at Charles with his hand, “do you get them often?”
“No. Not really. Headaches themselves are pretty common.” He smiled and tapped the side of his head, his voice lifting with humor. “Kind of comes with the territory of being a telepath.” He paused, letting his arm fall down into his lap. “But ones like last night? No, they’re usually not that bad. I haven’t had one that bad in years.” His voice was soft, almost like he was ashamed of himself for appearing so weak in front of the other man.
Erik propped his chin on his folded hands. He needed to change the subject, move on to the task at hand. Charles’s well-being was important, of course, but now that he was functioning they needed to refocus on the mission. “About last night-you said you couldn’t find the mutant we were after.” Charles gave a slow nod and waited for Erik to continue. He already knew the question lurking behind his companion’s words but wanted Erik to actually speak it aloud before answering. “Is he here now?”
Charles lifted his fingers to his temple and closed his eyes in concentration, seeking out the familiar wavelengths of the man they were after. Erik watched him carefully, studying the subtle shifts in Charles’s expression. After several long, silent moments, Charles deflated with a soft release of air, his hand dropping down over the chair’s armrest. “No. I can’t find him anywhere in range. He’s evaded us again.”
Erik cursed harshly under his breath before turning his attention back to Charles. “So what do you propose we do?”
Charles gave a half-hearted shrug with a small shake of his head. “Give up. We’ve already recruited two mutants as it is, and this one’s managed to get away from us twice. All we’re doing in chasing after him is wasting our time and the government’s money. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to be found.” He turned his head toward the bathroom, focusing on the slowly expanding beams of light creeping over the floor as his face screwed up in thought. “I say we head back to base and look up a new target, perhaps one closer to home this time.”
Erik watched Charles in silence, his mouth crushed up against his knuckles. Charles was hiding something, perhaps another headache, and it was making him uneasy. He wondered if the other man picked up it. If so, he was doing a damn good job at keeping it to himself. “So what do we tell the CIA?”
Charles shot him a pointed look. “That we failed,” he answered candidly. “It’s perfectly natural. We can’t expect to successfully locate and recruit every single mutant I identify using Cerebro.” His face lit up in a smile. “Even for a man of your abilities, Erik, such a task is impossible.”
“I know that,” Erik grumbled, rising to his feet. “It’s just frustrating. We came all the way out here for nothing.”
Charles’s eyes followed him as he walked over to his bag and began rifling through it for a fresh set of clothes. “You should call that agent-”
“Moira.”
“Yes, her. You should call her and let her know that we’re on our way back to Virginia.” He straightened. The sleeve of his clean shirt was dangling loosely from the crook of his arm, swaying lightly against his torso. “Maybe she can arrange for faster transportation out of here. That is unless you know of another mutant that’s close by.”
Charles shook his head. “Not one that would be of any use. The closest mutant to us based on the coordinates I can remember lives roughly fifty miles from here, but she’s only three months old.” His hand had moved back to finger the bottom of the glass.
“Then she’s of no use to us.” He reached down and grabbed Charles’s bag from the floor. The room was starting to heat up again; he could feel sweat beginning to gather on his brow. If there was nothing for them here, then they’d best move on as quickly as possible. There was no sense waiting around. “Are you hungry?” he asked Charles.
“Famished.”
He tossed the bag into the other man’s lap, just barely missing the glass of water on the table, and tilted his head toward the phone. “Then get yourself put together and call agent MacTaggert. Find out if she can get us a way out of here, preferably without dragging us through an airport. We can grab something to eat on the way out.”
---
Part two