Fic: you are the spark (X-Men: First Class, PG)
title: you are the spark
author: ilovetakahana
word count: 2000
fandom: X-Men: First Class
characters: Charles Xavier, Raven Darkholme, Erik Lehnsherr
rating: G
notes: Prompt by starrose17, with additional inspiration from papercutperfect. Modern-day AU, no powers, all details at the linked Tumblr posts.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
Click.
Charles laughs and doesn’t look up from the book he’s annotating, concentrates instead on the corrections he’s trying to stuff into the margins. “Oh, you’re home,” he calls jokingly, and he makes sure he’s looking down, looking away, anywhere but in his sister’s direction and sure enough there’s another flash of light and an irritated half-giggle at his elbow.
“Come on, Charles,” Raven pleads, “look up please please please?”
“Not unless you put that camera down - and yes, that includes your mobile phone too. I’ve had enough strange text messages from those boys you work with,” Charles says, ignoring the way she’s prodding his ankle with her shoe. “How many times do I have to tell you I always look like such a berk in photographs?”
“You’re no fun,” Raven mutters. “And how many times do I have to tell you that you’re just...looking at yourself in a very unhealthy way? Sean and Alex and Armando already know you could give them all a run for their money because you look better than any of them!”
“Crawling all over with dust bunnies and hands full of paper cuts. Come off it, dear,” and Charles looks up at last, and too late, because Raven laughs and click!
His first reaction is to pout and he does, and that gets him another click, Raven giggling and just barely managing to hold her phone steady, and he gives up and affectionately swats at her shoulder. “Can you at least promise me you won’t spread those around? You can’t tell me I look nice right now, dear. I’ve been here since daybreak.”
“How about no,” Raven says, but she smiles softly and leans over to kiss his cheek, and Charles kisses her back with a sigh. “I do like looking at you, Charles, and I imagine a lot of people would if only you’d look up and notice. I’ll take what I can get, though. You know I’m flying out for the next couple of weeks.”
That pulls him out of his chair and he embraces Raven, and he smiles when she immediately hugs him back. “I hadn’t forgotten, dear. Off to your exotic beaches and strange hotels, hm? That calls for a proper home-cooked meal. What do you want?”
“Pancakes,” is the instant answer, and Charles chuckles and goes into the kitchen, washes the dust and ink off his hands and pulls ingredients from the cupboards. He looks over his shoulder, and Raven is sitting in a patch of particularly unflattering light but she still looks stunning: miles of blonde hair, a fey face, and a genuinely happy smile. It doesn’t really take a lot of brain power to understand why she’s one of the world’s most sought-after models.
But to Charles she is always just his sister, his family, the person who makes him laugh and makes him smile, who comes home to him and makes him tea, who texts and Skypes him almost every night when she’s out in the world among strobe flashes and telephoto lenses.
He puts a stack of pancakes on a plate for her, pours himself some milk, and quizzes her about her day.
“Oh, yeah, that reminds me, I came home to show you this, too,” and Raven is pulling a new set of glossy prints from her oversized handbag. Some of the photos are black and white and some of them are in full color - but it’s the sense of life, of movement, of the woman behind those eyes that catches Charles’s attention, and he looks up from the glossies to the pride in Raven’s face.
“You have never looked more beautiful,” he says, honestly, and accepts a happy kiss. “Who took these?”
“New guy,” Raven says, pouring another slug of syrup onto her plate. “Erik Lehnsherr. He’s a pretty strange guy, but man, everything he photographs literally turns to gold.”
“I agree, though you are a lily and therefore you need no gilding,” Charles says, loyally. He takes her delighted laugh in stride and peers closer at the photos. “If he’s the photographer for your current assignment, I have no doubt the next time I see you in print it will be another smasher.”
“Oh, he’s not,” and Raven actually sounds relieved, and Charles looks up. “Don’t worry about that. He’s...just all the way out there perfectionist, you know. We’re working with Moira and Emma.” She sobers, just a little. “You’re going to be mad at me, Charles.”
“I think I know what you’re about to say: you showed him, her, them, a photo of me?”
Embarrassed laugh. “Erik, actually. Emma’s sort of given up on photographing you.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Charles says. “And I hope you were polite enough to give Erik my usual response.”
“It doesn’t seem to have worked on him.”
Charles sighs and smiles ruefully. “Well, you may extricate me from this problem, since you have brought it upon yourself and upon my person.”
“Just one time, just let him do it, please? I want to have photos of you that look like you. My brother the genius the dork the wonderful man. We’ll get the raw files from him, we’ll get his negatives, but please let me convince you to sit for him, please?”
And Charles normally says no to these kinds of things but something inside him is prodding him to say yes, and the word is out of his mouth before he thinks it over - and Raven practically flies out of her chair towards him, is dancing happily around the kitchen after she’s done hugging the breath from his lungs, and Charles only fervently hopes he hasn’t just done something he’s going to regret.
///
“Enough, please, Raven, let’s just get this over with,” Charles says after the third time Raven puts her hands in his hair and shakes it all around, making him look completely ruffled. The brisk breeze doesn’t help, and he pulls his jackets closer, wishes he’d worn another jumper, because they’re not even halfway through autumn yet and he already feels like he’s been chilled to his very bones. Only Raven’s firm grip on his wrist is keeping him from bolting - back home, back to his books, back to the things he knows.
Photography is something he just barely understands, and he can appreciate it when it’s his sister - but he’s gone all his life without ever having to look into a camera except for mundane things like identification cards. This is beyond his ken, this is so foreign to him, but he goes where Raven leads him and she’s ushering him into a studio - high ceilings, plain grey walls, indecipherable arrangement of lights and white sheets.
A chair in the corner, and Raven stands over him, half as if to protect him and half as if to keep him in place. He’s not sure he won’t bolt, if not for her. Part of him wants to bolt anyway, and he looks up at her, shaking his head, and she grimaces beautifully at him in response, and.
“Stop scaring him.”
Charles watches Raven roll her eyes. “I thought that was your job,” she says, and he follows her as she looks up and addresses the man who’s just come in.
Now he sees the camera on its tripod in the center of the room, and now he sees the man in the black turtleneck and the worn denims and the bare feet. He watches Raven walk over to him and he knows they must be having some sort of conversation, but he hears nothing over the ringing in his ears.
He’s the photographer? Charles gropes for his name - Erik? - and he almost slides off his chair in shock.
Which is too bad because Erik is approaching him and Raven is walking carefully in his wake, and she’s flashing thumbs-up signs at Charles, and Charles shakes his head at her in panic.
“Do stop, please. Despite what...your sister might have told you, I do not bite.” A hand, that’s a hand being held out to him. “And I would think things would proceed a little more smoothly if you didn’t panic. Erik Lehnsherr.”
Charles swallows, and remembers his manners. He shakes Erik’s hand. “Charles Xavier.”
“I have never seen a more unmatched set of siblings,” Erik says next, and he saunters to his camera.
Charles bristles. “If this is how you work, with insults and with rudeness, I’d much rather Raven stopped working with you.”
“I assure you, Mr. Xavier,” Erik drawls, “I use my rudeness as a weapon, and your sister responds by crossing swords with me, and that is how I make her look good in her photographs. As for you, well, I wonder how you’d do.”
Charles feels bright heat flaring up in his face, and he draws himself up to his full height - which is not much compared to Raven and her fondness for sky-high heels, but it’s a start - and he meets Erik’s eyes head-on. “You may do your worst, sir, and we will see.”
The thin sliver of a satisfied smile is all he gets before he’s being asked to do things - stand up, turn the other way, turn the chair around and sit in it back to front, pretend you’re walking away and then turn back - and he doesn’t know how he manages to follow Erik’s instructions. He blinks the stars out of his eyes and he grits his teeth, flings blind courage back at Erik’s imperious gestures.
Finally, a short eternity later, Erik says “We’re done,” and Charles is weak and breathless and he mutters imprecations under his breath all the way home, and Raven makes him cup after cup of tea to settle his nerves.
But she doesn’t apologize to him, and he doesn’t want her to.
///
Raven has been in Penang four days when there’s a knock on the door and the postman hands Charles a thick manila envelope. The label carries a design of some kind of helm, something a knight or a Grecian warrior would have worn, and underneath are the initials EML and an address which he recognizes with a start as that belonging to the studio.
Charles rips it open at his desk and out fall a dozen matte six-by-eight photographs. Half are in color, half in black and white. His own emotions looking back at him: angry, curious, confused. A sardonic smile, a determined frown, a resigned grimace. Covering his face with his hands.
Is this what he actually looks like?
He looks at the photographs for a long moment and then all the fight goes out of him, and he shakes his head in mute acknowledgement. Erik knows what he’s doing, all right, and he no longer doubts that this same process created the portfolio Raven had shown him. He’s never thought of himself as beautiful and he’s not starting now, but looking at these photographs - Charles thinks about Raven, and he thinks that perhaps they might just have something in common at last.
He’s about to go through the stack of prints for the second time when a note falls out onto his papers.
An angular scrawl, long descending loops. I do not usually do something like this but - forgive me for my brusqueness at our first meeting. Perhaps you will let me make it up to you. May I buy you a coffee? I promise I will bring neither camera nor mobile phone. lehnsherr
Charles catches his breath, and steels himself, and calls the number under the signature, and he doesn’t know why he smiles when someone picks up the phone and mutters, “Who is this?”
“It sounds as if you’re more in need of that coffee than I am; besides, I am more of a tea person myself.”
“Charles...Charles Xavier?”
“Raven’s brother, yes, and I presume this is Erik Lehnsherr? I accept. Is now a good time?”
Long pause, and then, “Absolutely, yes.”
“Splendid,” Charles says with a smile.
[on to you are the storm]
author: ilovetakahana
word count: 2000
fandom: X-Men: First Class
characters: Charles Xavier, Raven Darkholme, Erik Lehnsherr
rating: G
notes: Prompt by starrose17, with additional inspiration from papercutperfect. Modern-day AU, no powers, all details at the linked Tumblr posts.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
Click.
Charles laughs and doesn’t look up from the book he’s annotating, concentrates instead on the corrections he’s trying to stuff into the margins. “Oh, you’re home,” he calls jokingly, and he makes sure he’s looking down, looking away, anywhere but in his sister’s direction and sure enough there’s another flash of light and an irritated half-giggle at his elbow.
“Come on, Charles,” Raven pleads, “look up please please please?”
“Not unless you put that camera down - and yes, that includes your mobile phone too. I’ve had enough strange text messages from those boys you work with,” Charles says, ignoring the way she’s prodding his ankle with her shoe. “How many times do I have to tell you I always look like such a berk in photographs?”
“You’re no fun,” Raven mutters. “And how many times do I have to tell you that you’re just...looking at yourself in a very unhealthy way? Sean and Alex and Armando already know you could give them all a run for their money because you look better than any of them!”
“Crawling all over with dust bunnies and hands full of paper cuts. Come off it, dear,” and Charles looks up at last, and too late, because Raven laughs and click!
His first reaction is to pout and he does, and that gets him another click, Raven giggling and just barely managing to hold her phone steady, and he gives up and affectionately swats at her shoulder. “Can you at least promise me you won’t spread those around? You can’t tell me I look nice right now, dear. I’ve been here since daybreak.”
“How about no,” Raven says, but she smiles softly and leans over to kiss his cheek, and Charles kisses her back with a sigh. “I do like looking at you, Charles, and I imagine a lot of people would if only you’d look up and notice. I’ll take what I can get, though. You know I’m flying out for the next couple of weeks.”
That pulls him out of his chair and he embraces Raven, and he smiles when she immediately hugs him back. “I hadn’t forgotten, dear. Off to your exotic beaches and strange hotels, hm? That calls for a proper home-cooked meal. What do you want?”
“Pancakes,” is the instant answer, and Charles chuckles and goes into the kitchen, washes the dust and ink off his hands and pulls ingredients from the cupboards. He looks over his shoulder, and Raven is sitting in a patch of particularly unflattering light but she still looks stunning: miles of blonde hair, a fey face, and a genuinely happy smile. It doesn’t really take a lot of brain power to understand why she’s one of the world’s most sought-after models.
But to Charles she is always just his sister, his family, the person who makes him laugh and makes him smile, who comes home to him and makes him tea, who texts and Skypes him almost every night when she’s out in the world among strobe flashes and telephoto lenses.
He puts a stack of pancakes on a plate for her, pours himself some milk, and quizzes her about her day.
“Oh, yeah, that reminds me, I came home to show you this, too,” and Raven is pulling a new set of glossy prints from her oversized handbag. Some of the photos are black and white and some of them are in full color - but it’s the sense of life, of movement, of the woman behind those eyes that catches Charles’s attention, and he looks up from the glossies to the pride in Raven’s face.
“You have never looked more beautiful,” he says, honestly, and accepts a happy kiss. “Who took these?”
“New guy,” Raven says, pouring another slug of syrup onto her plate. “Erik Lehnsherr. He’s a pretty strange guy, but man, everything he photographs literally turns to gold.”
“I agree, though you are a lily and therefore you need no gilding,” Charles says, loyally. He takes her delighted laugh in stride and peers closer at the photos. “If he’s the photographer for your current assignment, I have no doubt the next time I see you in print it will be another smasher.”
“Oh, he’s not,” and Raven actually sounds relieved, and Charles looks up. “Don’t worry about that. He’s...just all the way out there perfectionist, you know. We’re working with Moira and Emma.” She sobers, just a little. “You’re going to be mad at me, Charles.”
“I think I know what you’re about to say: you showed him, her, them, a photo of me?”
Embarrassed laugh. “Erik, actually. Emma’s sort of given up on photographing you.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Charles says. “And I hope you were polite enough to give Erik my usual response.”
“It doesn’t seem to have worked on him.”
Charles sighs and smiles ruefully. “Well, you may extricate me from this problem, since you have brought it upon yourself and upon my person.”
“Just one time, just let him do it, please? I want to have photos of you that look like you. My brother the genius the dork the wonderful man. We’ll get the raw files from him, we’ll get his negatives, but please let me convince you to sit for him, please?”
And Charles normally says no to these kinds of things but something inside him is prodding him to say yes, and the word is out of his mouth before he thinks it over - and Raven practically flies out of her chair towards him, is dancing happily around the kitchen after she’s done hugging the breath from his lungs, and Charles only fervently hopes he hasn’t just done something he’s going to regret.
///
“Enough, please, Raven, let’s just get this over with,” Charles says after the third time Raven puts her hands in his hair and shakes it all around, making him look completely ruffled. The brisk breeze doesn’t help, and he pulls his jackets closer, wishes he’d worn another jumper, because they’re not even halfway through autumn yet and he already feels like he’s been chilled to his very bones. Only Raven’s firm grip on his wrist is keeping him from bolting - back home, back to his books, back to the things he knows.
Photography is something he just barely understands, and he can appreciate it when it’s his sister - but he’s gone all his life without ever having to look into a camera except for mundane things like identification cards. This is beyond his ken, this is so foreign to him, but he goes where Raven leads him and she’s ushering him into a studio - high ceilings, plain grey walls, indecipherable arrangement of lights and white sheets.
A chair in the corner, and Raven stands over him, half as if to protect him and half as if to keep him in place. He’s not sure he won’t bolt, if not for her. Part of him wants to bolt anyway, and he looks up at her, shaking his head, and she grimaces beautifully at him in response, and.
“Stop scaring him.”
Charles watches Raven roll her eyes. “I thought that was your job,” she says, and he follows her as she looks up and addresses the man who’s just come in.
Now he sees the camera on its tripod in the center of the room, and now he sees the man in the black turtleneck and the worn denims and the bare feet. He watches Raven walk over to him and he knows they must be having some sort of conversation, but he hears nothing over the ringing in his ears.
He’s the photographer? Charles gropes for his name - Erik? - and he almost slides off his chair in shock.
Which is too bad because Erik is approaching him and Raven is walking carefully in his wake, and she’s flashing thumbs-up signs at Charles, and Charles shakes his head at her in panic.
“Do stop, please. Despite what...your sister might have told you, I do not bite.” A hand, that’s a hand being held out to him. “And I would think things would proceed a little more smoothly if you didn’t panic. Erik Lehnsherr.”
Charles swallows, and remembers his manners. He shakes Erik’s hand. “Charles Xavier.”
“I have never seen a more unmatched set of siblings,” Erik says next, and he saunters to his camera.
Charles bristles. “If this is how you work, with insults and with rudeness, I’d much rather Raven stopped working with you.”
“I assure you, Mr. Xavier,” Erik drawls, “I use my rudeness as a weapon, and your sister responds by crossing swords with me, and that is how I make her look good in her photographs. As for you, well, I wonder how you’d do.”
Charles feels bright heat flaring up in his face, and he draws himself up to his full height - which is not much compared to Raven and her fondness for sky-high heels, but it’s a start - and he meets Erik’s eyes head-on. “You may do your worst, sir, and we will see.”
The thin sliver of a satisfied smile is all he gets before he’s being asked to do things - stand up, turn the other way, turn the chair around and sit in it back to front, pretend you’re walking away and then turn back - and he doesn’t know how he manages to follow Erik’s instructions. He blinks the stars out of his eyes and he grits his teeth, flings blind courage back at Erik’s imperious gestures.
Finally, a short eternity later, Erik says “We’re done,” and Charles is weak and breathless and he mutters imprecations under his breath all the way home, and Raven makes him cup after cup of tea to settle his nerves.
But she doesn’t apologize to him, and he doesn’t want her to.
///
Raven has been in Penang four days when there’s a knock on the door and the postman hands Charles a thick manila envelope. The label carries a design of some kind of helm, something a knight or a Grecian warrior would have worn, and underneath are the initials EML and an address which he recognizes with a start as that belonging to the studio.
Charles rips it open at his desk and out fall a dozen matte six-by-eight photographs. Half are in color, half in black and white. His own emotions looking back at him: angry, curious, confused. A sardonic smile, a determined frown, a resigned grimace. Covering his face with his hands.
Is this what he actually looks like?
He looks at the photographs for a long moment and then all the fight goes out of him, and he shakes his head in mute acknowledgement. Erik knows what he’s doing, all right, and he no longer doubts that this same process created the portfolio Raven had shown him. He’s never thought of himself as beautiful and he’s not starting now, but looking at these photographs - Charles thinks about Raven, and he thinks that perhaps they might just have something in common at last.
He’s about to go through the stack of prints for the second time when a note falls out onto his papers.
An angular scrawl, long descending loops. I do not usually do something like this but - forgive me for my brusqueness at our first meeting. Perhaps you will let me make it up to you. May I buy you a coffee? I promise I will bring neither camera nor mobile phone. lehnsherr
Charles catches his breath, and steels himself, and calls the number under the signature, and he doesn’t know why he smiles when someone picks up the phone and mutters, “Who is this?”
“It sounds as if you’re more in need of that coffee than I am; besides, I am more of a tea person myself.”
“Charles...Charles Xavier?”
“Raven’s brother, yes, and I presume this is Erik Lehnsherr? I accept. Is now a good time?”
Long pause, and then, “Absolutely, yes.”
“Splendid,” Charles says with a smile.
[on to you are the storm]