FIC: Utopia 2/? (WIP)
Title: Utopia
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairings: Charles/Erik
Genre: drama, angst, au, dystopia, future!fic
Rating: R
Word Count: 6300/?
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."
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
xi.
The memory came to him in sudden, astonishing detail, as if it had been waiting for that moment to pounce.
Wearing their new suits for the first time, ready to fly to Cuba, unaware, for the moment, of what had happened to Hank-Erik and Charles had lingered after the students in the lab, the other man fidgeting in his leather, Charles grinning.
“I look ridiculous,” Erik had grumbled, brushing his hands over his thighs in a covert attempt to retrieve the suit from where it seemed intent on migrating.
But Charles-standing not tall exactly, but standing, on legs he hadn’t yet learned not to take for granted-had thought they looked brilliant, all of them, in their sharp contrasting colors. He’d clapped Erik on the arm to distract the man from tugging at his suit buckles.
“You look good, Erik,” Charles assured him, “We’re lucky we didn’t lose Hank to Paris.”
Erik had stopped what he was doing, self-conscious of his self-consciousness, and smiled back, crookedly. “You’re not just saying that?” he asked, dark humor masking his sincere interest. He could, of course, probably still kill people while butt-naked and painted blue, but he had some measure of pride as well.
Charles had swayed into Erik to bump against his shoulder, chuckling; Erik’s hand caught onto his arm in reply. “You look more than all right, my friend,” he insisted, and Erik’s eyes were so startled and bright, the green in them caught by the laboratory lights, his mind such a fine point of contentment and anxiety-
-That Charles really shouldn’t have been surprised when Erik glanced around to check that the students were gone; when his hand moved from Charles’ shoulder up to the telepath’s cheek; when he closed that last bit of space between them and pressed his lips to Charles’ in a closed-mouthed but emphatic kiss, unhurried but not lingering, the tips of his fingers digging in behind Charles’ jaw.
Then Erik had pulled away, a pleased smirk warring with stark terror for control of his face, and Charles had searched his eyes and mind desperately for some clue that maybe this was just something that people from the continent did, just another one of those peculiar mainland European oddities where it was normal for one male friend to kiss another and-no.
Erik was in love with him.
Erik was in love with him, and Erik-who had not yet committed genocide, who still believed in that place between rage and serenity-deserved more than “it’s not you, it’s me.” Deserved to be unremittingly happy, and loved.
And so, with a shaky smile, still feeling the damp of Erik’s mouth evaporating cold on his skin, Charles had given Erik’s arm one last palsied squeeze and began, warmly, “Erik, my dear friend…”
Then Moira had ducked into the lab and asked, incredulously, what they were waiting around for, and weren’t they all supposed to be in a hurry, so Charles had promised Erik, “After; we’ll talk after.”
But there had never been an “after,” and in hindsight, if Charles could have changed-
Well, he would have changed a lot of things.
xii.
The ghost of a triumphant smiled passed over Erik’s face, and Charles wished suddenly that he hadn’t torn out the loose string, because knotting it between his fingers was a poor substitute for plucking at it. “Er. That is. I had more pressing-uh-important things on my mind,” Charles added, after a too-long pause, and Erik’s smile became more substantial.
He didn’t act on it, however, not yet; Erik would take that information, store it away, and bring in out again for later use. For now, he merely lowered himself down onto the couch, something Charles now knew as the signal that he should move himself so that Erik could perform the ritual of the steel rod.
“We think we’ll be able to clone genes soon,” Erik informed him as he set to work, his words allowing Charles to finally breathe freely.
“Oh?” The geneticist tried not to let his jealousy show. With enough copies of a given gene, isolated from the genetic soup of its host, they’d be able to study the expression of sequences Charles, in his years of study, could only guess at.
“Yes, we’ve found that bacteriophages cut the DNA of E. coli in very specific places in order to insert their own genes. If we could duplicate that, we could insert any sequence we wanted into a bacterial cell and let that cell do the work of making copies for us.” There was no change in the ritual, but instead of replacing Charles’ socks and tucking his legs down again, Erik held the telepath’s feet cradled in his lap, gently kneading the unresponsive flesh with his thumbs.
“Is that so?” Charles asked, somewhat coldly.
Erik glanced up, his eyes creased with fondness. “In time, Charles; in time. There are still plenty of discoveries for you to make.”
xiii.
Charles hadn’t bothered with alarm clocks in a long time-he never had anything urgent to do anymore-but he found it hard to sleep in an unfamiliar bed in a strange room, so he was already in his chair, a thick robe shrugged over his bare shoulders and bunched over his boxers, when his assistant arrived that morning.
He looked away from the chill gray courtyard back into the golden glow of his suite, and felt instantly at ease as Beth’s unobtrusive thoughts washed into his. “What are you doing here so early?” he asked, curious. Beth, he knew with a surety he rarely felt these days, would not hurt him even if she’d hated him.
“Breakfast,” she replied, but she had brought no food.
“Ah,” Charles agreed, nodding. “With Erik.” He felt the same twinge of uncertainty and nervousness he felt every time he thought about talking to Erik after the night before, but Beth didn’t know anything about the breakfast other than that there would food.
She left him to the shower, where he sat on a built-in shelf and scrubbed himself down-one point of pride Charles refused to give up, even though it took a long time and hot water was a luxury-and when he got out she’d arranged clothes for him; some of the new ones that Erik had provided.
Before she helped him get fully dressed, however, Charles lay back on the bed and allowed Beth to stretch his legs, rotating and pulling them in every direction as he stared resolutely at the ceiling. This was another ritual, one that he had endured for all four years of his internment; his assistant, he knew, didn’t think anything of it, but it galled Charles to watch such an obvious display of his inabilities. If the cure worked, at least, Charles wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of tightened tendons because he would be as limber as a twelve-year-old girl.
Finally he was dressed and presentable, wearing a loose brown suit, his hair brushed from his eyes, and his legs neatly perpendicular to the lines of the chair. Charles thought it was all maybe a little formal for breakfast, but then again Erik was the supreme ruler of the world now, or near enough like.
Beth moved to take the handles of Charles’ chair, and he waved her off with a slight smile. “I know where to go, it’s all right.” So she walked behind him as he followed the path in her mind, coasting over the smooth, even floors past occasional guards, all of them as blank and empty as suits of armor.
The room was not a banquet hall, which came as some surprise to Charles; he had expected something large and grand, with some sort of really long table so that he’d have to crane his neck just to look across. Beth had never been inside, so when he opened the door they were seeing it new, for the first time.
Windows. The windows were all that Charles could see, for a moment, as he sat transfixed by the frame-faceted landscape of the New York countryside beyond. This was no mere view into the courtyard, or of tamed and groomed grounds; these were mountains, unlike the sharp peaks of Canada in their time-softened roundness, shrouded in forest.
“I thought you might be feeling a bit cooped up,” Erik’s voice said, and Charles noticed him finally, sitting at a small table below the wall of windows. He occupied the chair as if he not only owned it, but that perhaps, when he sat down, the chair sprang into being simply so that he would not be inconvenienced. It did not, however, prevent him from looking absurd and out of place, his red costume and helmet jewel-bright against the drab (but so, so spacious) world outside.
The other side of the table was conspicuously empty, and Charles moved to take that space. “I have to wonder sometimes, Erik, whether you brought me here just to prove to me that you could find a better mansion than mine.”
Erik’s little disbelieving chuckle convinced, rather than dissuaded, Charles that this was at least partially the case. “You can’t believe that I genuinely want you by my side?”
Charles, who had been re-adjusting the wheels of his chair so that he was just the right distance away, paused. “Yes,” he admitted finally. “I believe that you’re also trying to prove that your side is better than mine.”
“Clearly I need to locate my chess set,” Erik mused. “I’m starting to realize that the board and pieces were really only insulation from your wit.” He raised the fingers of one gloved hand absently, and Charles realized with a start that they weren’t alone; being surrounded by people he couldn’t read was like being surrounded by dim paper silhouettes that occasionally moved, and one of those person-shapes had just nodded and left through a side door.
Erik watched the man go, then turned his attention back to Charles and leaned forward. “I do really want you to stand next to me, Charles; or even sit, if that’s the case. I want you at my right hand when we write the words that will bring order back to the world.”
Charles huffed and looked away from Erik’s earnest gaze, down into the lacy threads of the tablecloth. He traced his finger over a spot in the pattern that looked smoother than the others. “Then I think you’ll find that fewer ears will listen to you.”
The other man tilted his head, the movement exaggerated by the shape of his helmet. “How do you mean?”
“Your Brotherhood, as you say-and by the way, I saw quite a lot of women there as well-think little enough of me when I’m simply in the room. I imagine they’ll be much less open to the idea that I might be in a position of power.”
Erik seemed about to grin, as if perhaps Charles was joking, before his lips smoothed into a line of concern. “You think that they think less of you…? Why?”
Charles shrugged and glanced down at his legs ruefully before staring out between the panels of the window.
He was shocked to feel a hand touch his, stopping his fingers from their obsessive lace-stroking. Erik’s gloves were warm and rough, and Charles looked back up at him to see that his expression was deadly serious.
“They’re nervous around you, my old friend, but not because of-of some mistake. They fear you because you’re Charles Xavier, and for an entire year, almost single-handedly, you made our every attempt at war look like a child’s tantrum,” Erik explained firmly, and then lowered his voice to add, “Seeing you by my side, they won’t be thinking of you as weak or frail. They’ll be admiring me, because I dare to be near you.”
Charles slid his hand out from under Erik’s and used it to push his chair back from the table slightly, as clear a signal he could make without actually saying anything. Erik let him, scrutinizing the telepath’s posture as he too leaned back.
“This isn’t really appropriate conversation for breakfast, is it?” he admitted, and glanced around. “Speaking of-”
Erik hadn’t warned him, and the thoughts of the cook were like a bucket of scalding hot water being poured over his head; sudden, startling, overwhelming in its intensity. Charles couldn’t help the small noise he made in his throat, saw Erik look over at the sound, smiling from the corner of his eye-the telepath felt a deep stab of resentment, even as some sort of pathetic gratitude bubbled up around it, seizing upon the fresh, unfamiliar taste of a new mind.
The cook was just an ordinary person-well, mutant-but how he was ordinary! He hadn’t got enough sleep the night before; he hadn’t stayed in a relationship with a woman for longer than a month in over six years; he loved to use cinnamon in everything, from hot chocolate to bacon. He was extraordinary, in his own ways.
He was also aware of-and Charles had to glance over at Erik to see if he suspected-a number of people spread throughout the mansion who were quietly anti-extinction insurrectionists.
Charles thanked him for the omelette and coffee set before him, observing as a plate of buttered toast and a carafe of orange juice separated the table into halves. Utensils rapidly found their way to either side of his plate, and an empty glass landed near his knife. Then the cook retreated to a further corner of the room to wait.
“Well, this is all very opulent,” Charles remarked dryly, his hands still spread away from the table.
“Thank you,” Erik replied, claiming some of the toast.
Charles sipped at his coffee silently, cutting into the omelette. It contained mushrooms, which he did not care for, but while mutants didn’t suffer terribly from the haze of radiation spilled from countless ruptured power plants, chickens were somewhat more susceptible, so he didn’t complain.
Erik was still talking, of course, about maybe getting Charles something a little more striking to wear, or what projects he might find interesting in the labs if at some point he could go there, and Erik’s enthusiasm did not seem to be hampered by Charles’ monosyllabic responses.
As Charles watched Erik take it upon himself to pour Charles a glass of orange juice-as if he could just walk into the supermarket and grab more off the shelf-and as he offered salt and pepper and more toast and cream for his coffee, Charles began to come to a grim realization, and he was so sure of its truth that he wondered if perhaps his powers included seeing into the future.
He was probably going to end up having sex with Erik. Not right then, of course, and probably not for a while, but Charles knew the matter was going to come up eventually, and that when it did, he would, and almost certainly not because Erik forced him to. Erik had changed, and had done terrible things, but Charles didn’t think he’d changed that much.
No, it would happen because Erik, damn him, was the only person who could provide Charles with the things he needed to make life bearable, and if Charles had to choose between living forever in dull solitude or occasionally having sex with his mass-murdering former (and male) best friend, well, he knew himself well enough and honestly enough to guess which choice he’d make.
xiv.
True to his word, Erik brought a chess set that evening. However, he stayed long enough only to exchange a few rounds with Charles before excusing himself, claiming an early morning and a full schedule for the next several days. Charles studied the board for a long time after Erik left, until the black and white checkers blurred into an indistinct gray and he decided it was time to go to sleep.
The next day was a dull blur. Charles tried turning on the radio, but the songs were all the same ones that had played four years ago, and were frequently interrupted by bursts of static. He called Beth four times until he sensed her tightly-wound frustration at being continually interrupted, and Charles worried that if he kept calling her she might not come for a genuine emergency. He reasoned that she had not been a very interesting conversationalist anyway.
All of this took place before noon, and the rest of the day stretched before him like a cat staring malevolently out from its master’s favorite armchair.
The books were as dull as before, but Charles attempted to read Plato, since it had made a favorable impression upon his younger self. He now found it to be a rather uninteresting statement of things he could have guessed for himself coupled with outright falsehoods, and despite his every attempt to soldier on through it, it was only one o’ clock when he set it down. Trying to write down a journal resulted in only a number of scratched-out introductions and a half hour of successfully wasted time.
Charles realized, with a start, that he had not used his voice for hours, and had a sudden and extremely irrational fear that the silence had stolen it for good when he opened his mouth and, for a moment, couldn’t speak; then the words came, loud and senseless without an audience, and he felt embarrassed for the moment of panic.
After all, it was only one day.
With every other option exhausted and his mind idle, Charles began, inevitably, to imagine being kissed by Erik. The only information he had to go on was his five-year-old memory of what amounted to a peck on the lips, but while he was sure that kissing a man would be different from kissing a woman, he had an extensive library of such occurrences to draw from.
He imagined Erik’s hands in his hair, angling his face up to meet-stubble? No, Erik was always clean-shaven; could probably shave while using his hands for some other task. He would be controlling, certainly, but Charles didn’t know enough about Erik’s rather barren love life to guess whether he’d be rough or gentle. He pictured both scenarios: teeth knocking against his, scraping his lips in a frenzied rush; or slow, sensual, with large hands sweeping along the curve of his neck and trailing down his chest.
Charles expected to feel disgust. Certainly he felt a twist in his gut, and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling, but it was-what? Dread, nervousness, anxiety, embarrassment; and then of course there was the lingering bitterness over being used, but… Not disgust.
Charles decided that this was probably because Erik, while lacking in certain areas necessary for Charles’ interest-most of them, admittedly, around his chest-was not himself objectionable. He was clean, fit, intelligent; from many people’s point of view, not a bad catch. Perhaps most importantly, with the way the world was currently, he was safe.
This is absurd, Charles thought. Here he was, rationalizing that being coerced into sexual relations with the person responsible for the largest extinction event since the end of the Mesozoic might be acceptable simply because the idea itself didn’t make him sick.
You’re giving up, Charles, he accused himself. You’re giving up and nothing’s even happened yet.
xv.
After spending all afternoon thinking about it, Charles half expected to be jumped by Erik the moment he came through the door. He wasn’t, of course, and nothing unusual occurred that evening; Erik preformed the Ritual of the Feet, which was as eventful as always, then exchanged another few rounds of chess, humming absently at Charles’ suggestions that he might like more to do during the day.
All too soon, Charles was again faced with the silence of his rooms, and when he went to bed it was more to escape awareness than because he felt tired.
xvi.
The next day was worse. With the exception of attempting to converse with Beth, Charles tried everything he had the day prior to even less success. He even kept the radio on, despite the fact that it kept fizzing out during important parts of the songs. Charles attempted to fill in the gaps from memory, but he just couldn’t remember the words, or even many of the melodies.
Eventually he found himself motionless, staring out the window nearly unblinkingly, watching the movements of those below; looking for familiar faces. After a while he noticed that the radio had stopped playing songs entirely, and had been filling the air with static for some unknowable duration.
That night, Erik was less talkative than usual, and spent much of his visit staring at the board silently. Charles attempted to draw him into conversation, but he had done nothing, and had nothing to say.
xvii.
Charles began to feel as if he’d done something wrong, and the more he considered it, the more he felt that it was probably his continuing lack of response to the cell culture he’d been injected with six days prior.
But that’s ridiculous, he thought to himself, even as he willed his legs to move. It’s supposed to take a week.
Still, that night, he couldn’t help but notice that Erik frowned as he ran the metal rod down the soles of Charles’ feet; that he had begun to refer to if the cure worked, rather than when.
“I thought I felt something that time,” Charles muttered, and the lie sat heavy and humiliating between the two of them. Erik, thankfully, pretended that he hadn’t said anything.
xviii
…I can’t survive this, I’m going to give in, this is torture, this is inhumane...
But of course it was only silence, and men had endured far worse for longer.
xix.
It took a week exactly.
Erik had been talking about Africa, about how many of the more arid regions had, strangely, reverted to nearly tropical conditions due to an odd combination of altered ocean currents, precipitation caused by the ash in the atmosphere, and cooler weather.
“I’ve arranged a study to determine whether these effects will be permanent, and if it would be worth it to establish a base in Namibia,” Erik said, and then, abruptly, stopped.
Charles’ knee had jumped beneath the weight of his hand.
They both stared, for a while, before Charles looked back up to see a cautious smile flirting with Erik’s face. “I felt that,” Charles declared, almost unable to believe it.
Erik touched the rod to Charles’ other foot, and this time the movement was more noticeable and the feeling more tangible, although it was nonetheless very general and faint. Even still, it was more than Charles had felt from that part of himself in five years, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe as they both watched his toes, expectantly.
Finally he exhaled. “I can’t move them,” he admitted, disappointed despite the success.
Erik nodded, running his fingers over Charles’ ankles, tucking his feet into the pair of black slippers Charles had taken to wearing and now realized, belatedly, that he could feel. “It will take time,” Erik assured him, controlling his expression carefully. “Your spine is only just starting to transmit signal again. This… This is a big step. This is good. You’re recovering faster than predicted.”
Erik tucked his legs back down onto the chair, and Charles felt a flare of frustration that his legs, so close to being freed, must once again be trapped. He wanted to say something-finally had something to say-but he didn’t know where to begin.
Clearing his throat, Erik shifted on the couch. “I had thought that after, if the cure worked… You might like to see Mystique. Tell her the good news yourself.”
“I would, yes,” Charles replied, and the words felt almost mechanical; too regular, too empty of any one of the emotions currently running circles through his brain.
The other man appeared to be uncomfortable on the couch, and stood. “Charles, I…” He paused, looking down at the floor, and no further speech seemed to be forthcoming.
His throat felt dry, ready to crumble, but Charles forced himself to ask, “Yes, Erik?”
“I…” Erik began again, his eyes too bright, too dark, and then he bent down, leaning one hand on the arm of the chair, and Charles had an absurd moment to think Are my brakes down? before Erik’s other hand wove into his hair and Erik’s mouth was against his, urgent and wet and with the helmet complicating things by digging into his face and it was too much-
-Charles broke the kiss and, corralled by the hand in his hair, tucked his nose against Erik’s throat and breathed, “Erik, I can’t, I don’t, I can’t…”
Erik pressed them together in an awkward one-armed hug, his hand sliding down to the back of Charles’ neck. Then he drew away, just far enough to look into Charles’ eyes as he brought his other hand up to cradle the telepath’s cheek. “I know,” he murmured back.
Charles could see that he did know; could tell, in a moment of clarity that made him wonder whether it was his telepathy and not his legs that was working again, that Erik knew exactly what he was doing, and that made it easier.
It made it easier, when Erik leant into him again, to give no resistance; to let Erik kiss him with the careful reassurance he wouldn’t express through words; to relax into the hands holding his face steady, Erik’s thumbs shielding him from the edges of the helmet. To, when prompted, allow Erik’s tongue to run along the insides of his teeth, and even to respond.
It was easy, and tomorrow, Charles knew, he would see Raven.
xx.
When she knocked at the door, Charles thought Beth was warning him of her entrance, and didn’t say anything.
But then the knock came again, and he knew.
“Come in,” Charles called, after a frightening moment where his voice cracked and he thought she might leave before she heard him. He hadn’t seen her in years, not since he’d been captured, and she had looked at him with a mixture of pity and anger and apology and turned away, letting Erik’s soldiers take him.
The door opened, and it was Raven, and she was, was-
Dear god, she’s naked, he thought, blushing a little and raising his hand to his forehead to block his eyes.
“Charles?” Raven inquired, concern in her voice; in her mind as well, although Charles, keeping to his old promise, did not look any deeper. Instead, he took a moment just to listen: to hear the unique cadence of her thoughts, always shifting but at the core, unchanging. Constant.
“Charles?” He saw Raven step cautiously closer from between his fingers, which he managed to pry away from his face so he could meet her eyes. Her eyes. Charles’ first glimpse of breasts in four years needed to not be those of his adopted sister.
“Raven, it’s… It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” he asked, cautiously, reaching a hand down to turn one wheel of his chair, angling to face her.
Raven’s scaled blue skin creased with a small, teasing smile as she padded forward on bare feet. “No one’s called me that in a long time.”
Charles sighed, and rolled his eyes. “I’m not calling you Mystique,” he protested. “It’s just, it’s silly.”
It was a comment that could have offended, but Raven barked a laugh. “Fine, fine, you can call me Raven. But only you,” she clarified. She had reached his chair, and she paused, looking down at him apprehensively. She seemed about to speak, but stopped herself, pressing a single finger against the edge of the chair’s armrest.
“Charles…” Raven began, her voice trailing off and leaving them in the grips of a jumbled silence.
“You never came to visit,” Charles finished for her, eyes dropping down to watch where her finger sank into the padding where he sometimes rested his hand.
“I…” Raven shook her head, and started over. “…I won’t say that I couldn’t have. I should have. Charles, this is a poor excuse, I know, but I was angry at you for a long time, after.”
Charles nodded grimly, his lips pressed together in a firm line. “What changed? You’re here now.”
He glanced up to see a brief, bitter smile pass over Raven’s face as she studied his knees. “I don’t know. The world. Time. Me, maybe. It was dumb, and after a while I just couldn’t think of anything you did that was bad enough for me to never talk to you again. By then, it had been so long that I didn’t know if you…”
“Perhaps I’m simply infuriating by nature?” Charles mused, the sincere worry of his expression a revealing contrast to the levity of his voice.
A grin, finally, spread over Raven’s face, and she pushed at Charles’ shoulder. “Of course! But not that infuriating. You’re only a small nuisance, really.”
Charles leaned forward and narrowed his eyes a little. “You don’t get to call me a nuisance. You’re the queen of nuisances.”
Raven bent down and met his stare fearlessly. “Every kingdom needs a king,” she replied, smugly.
Unable to maintain his frown, Charles felt his face crease with the first true smile he’d had in a long time, and he slung his arm around Raven’s shoulders to pull her down into a fierce, if somewhat unbalanced, hug. Her scales were soft and dry beneath his fingers and against his cheek, and her palms against his back were more solid than they had ever been in his dreams.
“I missed you,” he whispered, almost soundlessly, near Raven’s ear.
“I’m sorry,” she responded, just as quietly. “You shouldn’t have had to.”
xxi.
After Charles had a moment to wipe at his eyes-something he always did openly, because he believed that a person could only be as embarrassed as they looked-he had a chance to really look at Raven.
She didn’t appear to have aged at all, which didn’t surprise him, although Charles himself had a number of gray hairs and lines he hadn’t before. Unlike Charles, Raven’s body showed signs of harsh use; she had grayish scars and notched scales, a thinner face, and her color was not quite the intense shade he remembered. Charles wanted to ask her what she’d been doing, but he thought he knew.
“So am I allowed to sit down?” Raven asked, a mocking glint in her mottled yellow eyes.
“Sure,” Charles replied, jolted from his observations. “The couch is free.”
The words had barely left his mouth before his adoptive sister was sinking into the couch-at one time, she would have flopped down-and he didn’t comment on the fact that she was sitting more-or-less exactly where Erik always did as he wheeled himself over.
“Fancy rooms,” Raven observed, looking around at the nice furniture and wood paneling.
Charles grimaced. “Boring rooms. Erik could at least have provided me with something to do during the day.”
“Only you would complain from the lap of luxury,” she teased fondly. “I’m a little surprised he still lets you call him that, by the way.”
“It’s his name,” Charles reminded her. “You’re just hurt because ‘Magneto’ was your idea.”
“Maybe,” she admitted, the enigmatic tilt of her head matching her own nickname. “Speaking of, he told me you have some sort of news?”
“Did he?” Charles inquired, the quirk of his eyebrows ruining the effect of his studied nonchalance. “Very well, I suppose I’ll have to demonstrate.”
“Please do,” Raven told him, settling her hands in her lap and straightening up, every inch the perfect student she never was.
Leaning over, Charles wrapped his hands around his right knee to bring his foot close enough to remove the slipper, which he placed on his other thigh. Then, still holding up his leg, he concentrated, wiggling his toes and rotating his ankle. It wasn’t a smooth motion, because it had taken hours lying in bed and staring down at his feet just to re-locate that part of his brain where messages to his toes were filed; still, it elicited a gasp from Raven.
She reached out to brush her fingers along the edge of his foot, and Charles, with a small noise of surprise, tugged it away from her, still using his hands to move the estranged limb. “Tickles,” he admitted, and Raven’s smile was almost crafty enough for him to attempt escape, but instead she settled back and grinned at Charles as if he’d actually gotten up and tap-danced.
“That’s fantastic!” Raven declared. “You know that I would have, would have never left back then if I’d… But I’m glad.” She paused, and Charles could feel the hum of her mind-genuine happiness, but also…
“You knew about this, didn’t you?” he accused. Charles kept his tone light, but he felt a hard glint of hurt at the thought that his surprise had been taken from him, along with everything else. “Did Erik tell you?”
Raven flushed a deeper blue. “No, he didn’t, but I knew you were here and I knew that the lab’s had some success in that direction, so it was easy to guess.”
Charles raised his eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have anything to do with somewhere science was taking place.”
It would have been a feat for another person to look as mischievous as Raven did then. “I have a, let’s say, vested interest. You should talk Erik into letting you get down there sometime.”
“Mm. Perhaps I will,” he agreed, frozen beneath his smile. Charles wanted, right then, to tell her about the-what? Arrangement? Bargain?-between himself and Erik, wanted to tell her that he had asked, but that asking might not be good enough. Raven, however, was smiling as if he were the best thing she’d seen in a long time, and the words just wouldn’t come. Instead, Charles guessed, “It’s Hank, isn’t it? He’s your vested interest.”
Her blush spread, but Raven remained evasive. “You’ll just have to see, won’t you?”
Charles leaned forward, hands folded together, and told her, “Well, I’ll just have to act surprised when I do.”
Raven reached out to give him a playful slap upside the head, laughing at his stunned, blinking silence. “You’ve had that one coming for a long time,” she explained. “I can just imagine you, sitting by yourself with nobody around to beat some sense into you, and it breaks my heart.”
Giving Raven the glare that meant she was definitely not being as funny as she thought she was, Charles rearranged his ruffled hair. “I’m beginning to look back on those days with a fond nostalgia.”
“Ooh, Professor Grumpypants unsheathes his claws,” Raven replied, smirking.
“I’m even less of a Professor now than I was then,” Charles corrected, his playful mood quickly evaporating into weariness.
“Yeah,” Raven acknowledged, looking away. “Yeah, but if anyone could succeed at it in this world, it’d be you.”
“How do you mean?”
Raven sighed, looking down at her hands, which she curled palm-up on her thighs. “Another reason I avoided you for so long, I guess, was because I was afraid you were going to say ‘I told you so.’”
Charles furrowed his eyebrows, trying very hard to look as if he were thinking no such thing.
“I suppose it can’t be justified,” Raven admitted, “but, well, what started out as a simple separatist movement encouraging individuality and self-worth became terrorism, became militarism, and when that wasn’t enough…”
“So you’re saying it got a little out of hand?” Charles asked, his expression deceptively mild.
With a wry little smile showing she had noticed, Raven replied, “Yes. We wanted to use our powers to intimidate humans into leaving us alone, and to show other mutants how to be strong; how to escape from the oppression of stigma and fear. Things like the Argentinean traps… Those weren’t supposed to happen.”
She was referring, of course, to the massive volcanism ongoing in South America, which even as they spoke poured sulfur dioxide and ash into the atmosphere from across more than half a million square kilometers of flood basalt, and showed no signs of stopping. Very few mutants possessed the necessary abilities to get anywhere near the area and survive, let alone measure or prevent the eruptions.
Charles took a deep breath. “I can’t dispense absolution for that sort of thing, Raven.”
“I know,” she muttered, seeming, for a moment, as if she’d actually believed he might. “But I thought if I told you…”
“You’re my sister,” Charles told her, choosing his words carefully, “and I could never hate you.”
Raven bit her lip and nodded, blinking rapidly and glancing away. “That’s good. Thanks. Better than I expected. It’s not just me, though, who I’m talking about.”
Charles wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh, so he settled for a harsh chuckle. “You want to apologize on Erik’s behalf?”
Her quiet little smile was exactly the one she’d always used to mock his disbelief in the past. “He certainly won’t apologize,” Raven explained, and leaned forward with a languid grace Charles thought was new. “Erik is-god, don’t tell him I said this, but he knows just as well as you do what’s happened to the world-what that makes him-and he’s become… Well, it seems odd to think of him as being fragile, but he’s the only person preventing us from falling into total anarchy, and if something happens to him…”
“Are you saying I should hold his hand and ask him how he feels?” Charles asked, voice flat.
Raven’s teeth glinted bright between the blue of her lips. “No, not at all; in fact, the less you say about it, the better, maybe. Just… Be careful with him. For him. He’s a bit of an ass, but he’s all we’ve got.”
“Sure,” Charles agreed, the word stumbling from his mouth, tripped by others he wouldn’t say. This was a concern he didn’t need. “I’ll be careful.”
Chapter Three
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairings: Charles/Erik
Genre: drama, angst, au, dystopia, future!fic
Rating: R
Word Count: 6300/?
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."
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
xi.
The memory came to him in sudden, astonishing detail, as if it had been waiting for that moment to pounce.
Wearing their new suits for the first time, ready to fly to Cuba, unaware, for the moment, of what had happened to Hank-Erik and Charles had lingered after the students in the lab, the other man fidgeting in his leather, Charles grinning.
“I look ridiculous,” Erik had grumbled, brushing his hands over his thighs in a covert attempt to retrieve the suit from where it seemed intent on migrating.
But Charles-standing not tall exactly, but standing, on legs he hadn’t yet learned not to take for granted-had thought they looked brilliant, all of them, in their sharp contrasting colors. He’d clapped Erik on the arm to distract the man from tugging at his suit buckles.
“You look good, Erik,” Charles assured him, “We’re lucky we didn’t lose Hank to Paris.”
Erik had stopped what he was doing, self-conscious of his self-consciousness, and smiled back, crookedly. “You’re not just saying that?” he asked, dark humor masking his sincere interest. He could, of course, probably still kill people while butt-naked and painted blue, but he had some measure of pride as well.
Charles had swayed into Erik to bump against his shoulder, chuckling; Erik’s hand caught onto his arm in reply. “You look more than all right, my friend,” he insisted, and Erik’s eyes were so startled and bright, the green in them caught by the laboratory lights, his mind such a fine point of contentment and anxiety-
-That Charles really shouldn’t have been surprised when Erik glanced around to check that the students were gone; when his hand moved from Charles’ shoulder up to the telepath’s cheek; when he closed that last bit of space between them and pressed his lips to Charles’ in a closed-mouthed but emphatic kiss, unhurried but not lingering, the tips of his fingers digging in behind Charles’ jaw.
Then Erik had pulled away, a pleased smirk warring with stark terror for control of his face, and Charles had searched his eyes and mind desperately for some clue that maybe this was just something that people from the continent did, just another one of those peculiar mainland European oddities where it was normal for one male friend to kiss another and-no.
Erik was in love with him.
Erik was in love with him, and Erik-who had not yet committed genocide, who still believed in that place between rage and serenity-deserved more than “it’s not you, it’s me.” Deserved to be unremittingly happy, and loved.
And so, with a shaky smile, still feeling the damp of Erik’s mouth evaporating cold on his skin, Charles had given Erik’s arm one last palsied squeeze and began, warmly, “Erik, my dear friend…”
Then Moira had ducked into the lab and asked, incredulously, what they were waiting around for, and weren’t they all supposed to be in a hurry, so Charles had promised Erik, “After; we’ll talk after.”
But there had never been an “after,” and in hindsight, if Charles could have changed-
Well, he would have changed a lot of things.
xii.
The ghost of a triumphant smiled passed over Erik’s face, and Charles wished suddenly that he hadn’t torn out the loose string, because knotting it between his fingers was a poor substitute for plucking at it. “Er. That is. I had more pressing-uh-important things on my mind,” Charles added, after a too-long pause, and Erik’s smile became more substantial.
He didn’t act on it, however, not yet; Erik would take that information, store it away, and bring in out again for later use. For now, he merely lowered himself down onto the couch, something Charles now knew as the signal that he should move himself so that Erik could perform the ritual of the steel rod.
“We think we’ll be able to clone genes soon,” Erik informed him as he set to work, his words allowing Charles to finally breathe freely.
“Oh?” The geneticist tried not to let his jealousy show. With enough copies of a given gene, isolated from the genetic soup of its host, they’d be able to study the expression of sequences Charles, in his years of study, could only guess at.
“Yes, we’ve found that bacteriophages cut the DNA of E. coli in very specific places in order to insert their own genes. If we could duplicate that, we could insert any sequence we wanted into a bacterial cell and let that cell do the work of making copies for us.” There was no change in the ritual, but instead of replacing Charles’ socks and tucking his legs down again, Erik held the telepath’s feet cradled in his lap, gently kneading the unresponsive flesh with his thumbs.
“Is that so?” Charles asked, somewhat coldly.
Erik glanced up, his eyes creased with fondness. “In time, Charles; in time. There are still plenty of discoveries for you to make.”
xiii.
Charles hadn’t bothered with alarm clocks in a long time-he never had anything urgent to do anymore-but he found it hard to sleep in an unfamiliar bed in a strange room, so he was already in his chair, a thick robe shrugged over his bare shoulders and bunched over his boxers, when his assistant arrived that morning.
He looked away from the chill gray courtyard back into the golden glow of his suite, and felt instantly at ease as Beth’s unobtrusive thoughts washed into his. “What are you doing here so early?” he asked, curious. Beth, he knew with a surety he rarely felt these days, would not hurt him even if she’d hated him.
“Breakfast,” she replied, but she had brought no food.
“Ah,” Charles agreed, nodding. “With Erik.” He felt the same twinge of uncertainty and nervousness he felt every time he thought about talking to Erik after the night before, but Beth didn’t know anything about the breakfast other than that there would food.
She left him to the shower, where he sat on a built-in shelf and scrubbed himself down-one point of pride Charles refused to give up, even though it took a long time and hot water was a luxury-and when he got out she’d arranged clothes for him; some of the new ones that Erik had provided.
Before she helped him get fully dressed, however, Charles lay back on the bed and allowed Beth to stretch his legs, rotating and pulling them in every direction as he stared resolutely at the ceiling. This was another ritual, one that he had endured for all four years of his internment; his assistant, he knew, didn’t think anything of it, but it galled Charles to watch such an obvious display of his inabilities. If the cure worked, at least, Charles wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of tightened tendons because he would be as limber as a twelve-year-old girl.
Finally he was dressed and presentable, wearing a loose brown suit, his hair brushed from his eyes, and his legs neatly perpendicular to the lines of the chair. Charles thought it was all maybe a little formal for breakfast, but then again Erik was the supreme ruler of the world now, or near enough like.
Beth moved to take the handles of Charles’ chair, and he waved her off with a slight smile. “I know where to go, it’s all right.” So she walked behind him as he followed the path in her mind, coasting over the smooth, even floors past occasional guards, all of them as blank and empty as suits of armor.
The room was not a banquet hall, which came as some surprise to Charles; he had expected something large and grand, with some sort of really long table so that he’d have to crane his neck just to look across. Beth had never been inside, so when he opened the door they were seeing it new, for the first time.
Windows. The windows were all that Charles could see, for a moment, as he sat transfixed by the frame-faceted landscape of the New York countryside beyond. This was no mere view into the courtyard, or of tamed and groomed grounds; these were mountains, unlike the sharp peaks of Canada in their time-softened roundness, shrouded in forest.
“I thought you might be feeling a bit cooped up,” Erik’s voice said, and Charles noticed him finally, sitting at a small table below the wall of windows. He occupied the chair as if he not only owned it, but that perhaps, when he sat down, the chair sprang into being simply so that he would not be inconvenienced. It did not, however, prevent him from looking absurd and out of place, his red costume and helmet jewel-bright against the drab (but so, so spacious) world outside.
The other side of the table was conspicuously empty, and Charles moved to take that space. “I have to wonder sometimes, Erik, whether you brought me here just to prove to me that you could find a better mansion than mine.”
Erik’s little disbelieving chuckle convinced, rather than dissuaded, Charles that this was at least partially the case. “You can’t believe that I genuinely want you by my side?”
Charles, who had been re-adjusting the wheels of his chair so that he was just the right distance away, paused. “Yes,” he admitted finally. “I believe that you’re also trying to prove that your side is better than mine.”
“Clearly I need to locate my chess set,” Erik mused. “I’m starting to realize that the board and pieces were really only insulation from your wit.” He raised the fingers of one gloved hand absently, and Charles realized with a start that they weren’t alone; being surrounded by people he couldn’t read was like being surrounded by dim paper silhouettes that occasionally moved, and one of those person-shapes had just nodded and left through a side door.
Erik watched the man go, then turned his attention back to Charles and leaned forward. “I do really want you to stand next to me, Charles; or even sit, if that’s the case. I want you at my right hand when we write the words that will bring order back to the world.”
Charles huffed and looked away from Erik’s earnest gaze, down into the lacy threads of the tablecloth. He traced his finger over a spot in the pattern that looked smoother than the others. “Then I think you’ll find that fewer ears will listen to you.”
The other man tilted his head, the movement exaggerated by the shape of his helmet. “How do you mean?”
“Your Brotherhood, as you say-and by the way, I saw quite a lot of women there as well-think little enough of me when I’m simply in the room. I imagine they’ll be much less open to the idea that I might be in a position of power.”
Erik seemed about to grin, as if perhaps Charles was joking, before his lips smoothed into a line of concern. “You think that they think less of you…? Why?”
Charles shrugged and glanced down at his legs ruefully before staring out between the panels of the window.
He was shocked to feel a hand touch his, stopping his fingers from their obsessive lace-stroking. Erik’s gloves were warm and rough, and Charles looked back up at him to see that his expression was deadly serious.
“They’re nervous around you, my old friend, but not because of-of some mistake. They fear you because you’re Charles Xavier, and for an entire year, almost single-handedly, you made our every attempt at war look like a child’s tantrum,” Erik explained firmly, and then lowered his voice to add, “Seeing you by my side, they won’t be thinking of you as weak or frail. They’ll be admiring me, because I dare to be near you.”
Charles slid his hand out from under Erik’s and used it to push his chair back from the table slightly, as clear a signal he could make without actually saying anything. Erik let him, scrutinizing the telepath’s posture as he too leaned back.
“This isn’t really appropriate conversation for breakfast, is it?” he admitted, and glanced around. “Speaking of-”
Erik hadn’t warned him, and the thoughts of the cook were like a bucket of scalding hot water being poured over his head; sudden, startling, overwhelming in its intensity. Charles couldn’t help the small noise he made in his throat, saw Erik look over at the sound, smiling from the corner of his eye-the telepath felt a deep stab of resentment, even as some sort of pathetic gratitude bubbled up around it, seizing upon the fresh, unfamiliar taste of a new mind.
The cook was just an ordinary person-well, mutant-but how he was ordinary! He hadn’t got enough sleep the night before; he hadn’t stayed in a relationship with a woman for longer than a month in over six years; he loved to use cinnamon in everything, from hot chocolate to bacon. He was extraordinary, in his own ways.
He was also aware of-and Charles had to glance over at Erik to see if he suspected-a number of people spread throughout the mansion who were quietly anti-extinction insurrectionists.
Charles thanked him for the omelette and coffee set before him, observing as a plate of buttered toast and a carafe of orange juice separated the table into halves. Utensils rapidly found their way to either side of his plate, and an empty glass landed near his knife. Then the cook retreated to a further corner of the room to wait.
“Well, this is all very opulent,” Charles remarked dryly, his hands still spread away from the table.
“Thank you,” Erik replied, claiming some of the toast.
Charles sipped at his coffee silently, cutting into the omelette. It contained mushrooms, which he did not care for, but while mutants didn’t suffer terribly from the haze of radiation spilled from countless ruptured power plants, chickens were somewhat more susceptible, so he didn’t complain.
Erik was still talking, of course, about maybe getting Charles something a little more striking to wear, or what projects he might find interesting in the labs if at some point he could go there, and Erik’s enthusiasm did not seem to be hampered by Charles’ monosyllabic responses.
As Charles watched Erik take it upon himself to pour Charles a glass of orange juice-as if he could just walk into the supermarket and grab more off the shelf-and as he offered salt and pepper and more toast and cream for his coffee, Charles began to come to a grim realization, and he was so sure of its truth that he wondered if perhaps his powers included seeing into the future.
He was probably going to end up having sex with Erik. Not right then, of course, and probably not for a while, but Charles knew the matter was going to come up eventually, and that when it did, he would, and almost certainly not because Erik forced him to. Erik had changed, and had done terrible things, but Charles didn’t think he’d changed that much.
No, it would happen because Erik, damn him, was the only person who could provide Charles with the things he needed to make life bearable, and if Charles had to choose between living forever in dull solitude or occasionally having sex with his mass-murdering former (and male) best friend, well, he knew himself well enough and honestly enough to guess which choice he’d make.
xiv.
True to his word, Erik brought a chess set that evening. However, he stayed long enough only to exchange a few rounds with Charles before excusing himself, claiming an early morning and a full schedule for the next several days. Charles studied the board for a long time after Erik left, until the black and white checkers blurred into an indistinct gray and he decided it was time to go to sleep.
The next day was a dull blur. Charles tried turning on the radio, but the songs were all the same ones that had played four years ago, and were frequently interrupted by bursts of static. He called Beth four times until he sensed her tightly-wound frustration at being continually interrupted, and Charles worried that if he kept calling her she might not come for a genuine emergency. He reasoned that she had not been a very interesting conversationalist anyway.
All of this took place before noon, and the rest of the day stretched before him like a cat staring malevolently out from its master’s favorite armchair.
The books were as dull as before, but Charles attempted to read Plato, since it had made a favorable impression upon his younger self. He now found it to be a rather uninteresting statement of things he could have guessed for himself coupled with outright falsehoods, and despite his every attempt to soldier on through it, it was only one o’ clock when he set it down. Trying to write down a journal resulted in only a number of scratched-out introductions and a half hour of successfully wasted time.
Charles realized, with a start, that he had not used his voice for hours, and had a sudden and extremely irrational fear that the silence had stolen it for good when he opened his mouth and, for a moment, couldn’t speak; then the words came, loud and senseless without an audience, and he felt embarrassed for the moment of panic.
After all, it was only one day.
With every other option exhausted and his mind idle, Charles began, inevitably, to imagine being kissed by Erik. The only information he had to go on was his five-year-old memory of what amounted to a peck on the lips, but while he was sure that kissing a man would be different from kissing a woman, he had an extensive library of such occurrences to draw from.
He imagined Erik’s hands in his hair, angling his face up to meet-stubble? No, Erik was always clean-shaven; could probably shave while using his hands for some other task. He would be controlling, certainly, but Charles didn’t know enough about Erik’s rather barren love life to guess whether he’d be rough or gentle. He pictured both scenarios: teeth knocking against his, scraping his lips in a frenzied rush; or slow, sensual, with large hands sweeping along the curve of his neck and trailing down his chest.
Charles expected to feel disgust. Certainly he felt a twist in his gut, and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling, but it was-what? Dread, nervousness, anxiety, embarrassment; and then of course there was the lingering bitterness over being used, but… Not disgust.
Charles decided that this was probably because Erik, while lacking in certain areas necessary for Charles’ interest-most of them, admittedly, around his chest-was not himself objectionable. He was clean, fit, intelligent; from many people’s point of view, not a bad catch. Perhaps most importantly, with the way the world was currently, he was safe.
This is absurd, Charles thought. Here he was, rationalizing that being coerced into sexual relations with the person responsible for the largest extinction event since the end of the Mesozoic might be acceptable simply because the idea itself didn’t make him sick.
You’re giving up, Charles, he accused himself. You’re giving up and nothing’s even happened yet.
xv.
After spending all afternoon thinking about it, Charles half expected to be jumped by Erik the moment he came through the door. He wasn’t, of course, and nothing unusual occurred that evening; Erik preformed the Ritual of the Feet, which was as eventful as always, then exchanged another few rounds of chess, humming absently at Charles’ suggestions that he might like more to do during the day.
All too soon, Charles was again faced with the silence of his rooms, and when he went to bed it was more to escape awareness than because he felt tired.
xvi.
The next day was worse. With the exception of attempting to converse with Beth, Charles tried everything he had the day prior to even less success. He even kept the radio on, despite the fact that it kept fizzing out during important parts of the songs. Charles attempted to fill in the gaps from memory, but he just couldn’t remember the words, or even many of the melodies.
Eventually he found himself motionless, staring out the window nearly unblinkingly, watching the movements of those below; looking for familiar faces. After a while he noticed that the radio had stopped playing songs entirely, and had been filling the air with static for some unknowable duration.
That night, Erik was less talkative than usual, and spent much of his visit staring at the board silently. Charles attempted to draw him into conversation, but he had done nothing, and had nothing to say.
xvii.
Charles began to feel as if he’d done something wrong, and the more he considered it, the more he felt that it was probably his continuing lack of response to the cell culture he’d been injected with six days prior.
But that’s ridiculous, he thought to himself, even as he willed his legs to move. It’s supposed to take a week.
Still, that night, he couldn’t help but notice that Erik frowned as he ran the metal rod down the soles of Charles’ feet; that he had begun to refer to if the cure worked, rather than when.
“I thought I felt something that time,” Charles muttered, and the lie sat heavy and humiliating between the two of them. Erik, thankfully, pretended that he hadn’t said anything.
xviii
…I can’t survive this, I’m going to give in, this is torture, this is inhumane...
But of course it was only silence, and men had endured far worse for longer.
xix.
It took a week exactly.
Erik had been talking about Africa, about how many of the more arid regions had, strangely, reverted to nearly tropical conditions due to an odd combination of altered ocean currents, precipitation caused by the ash in the atmosphere, and cooler weather.
“I’ve arranged a study to determine whether these effects will be permanent, and if it would be worth it to establish a base in Namibia,” Erik said, and then, abruptly, stopped.
Charles’ knee had jumped beneath the weight of his hand.
They both stared, for a while, before Charles looked back up to see a cautious smile flirting with Erik’s face. “I felt that,” Charles declared, almost unable to believe it.
Erik touched the rod to Charles’ other foot, and this time the movement was more noticeable and the feeling more tangible, although it was nonetheless very general and faint. Even still, it was more than Charles had felt from that part of himself in five years, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe as they both watched his toes, expectantly.
Finally he exhaled. “I can’t move them,” he admitted, disappointed despite the success.
Erik nodded, running his fingers over Charles’ ankles, tucking his feet into the pair of black slippers Charles had taken to wearing and now realized, belatedly, that he could feel. “It will take time,” Erik assured him, controlling his expression carefully. “Your spine is only just starting to transmit signal again. This… This is a big step. This is good. You’re recovering faster than predicted.”
Erik tucked his legs back down onto the chair, and Charles felt a flare of frustration that his legs, so close to being freed, must once again be trapped. He wanted to say something-finally had something to say-but he didn’t know where to begin.
Clearing his throat, Erik shifted on the couch. “I had thought that after, if the cure worked… You might like to see Mystique. Tell her the good news yourself.”
“I would, yes,” Charles replied, and the words felt almost mechanical; too regular, too empty of any one of the emotions currently running circles through his brain.
The other man appeared to be uncomfortable on the couch, and stood. “Charles, I…” He paused, looking down at the floor, and no further speech seemed to be forthcoming.
His throat felt dry, ready to crumble, but Charles forced himself to ask, “Yes, Erik?”
“I…” Erik began again, his eyes too bright, too dark, and then he bent down, leaning one hand on the arm of the chair, and Charles had an absurd moment to think Are my brakes down? before Erik’s other hand wove into his hair and Erik’s mouth was against his, urgent and wet and with the helmet complicating things by digging into his face and it was too much-
-Charles broke the kiss and, corralled by the hand in his hair, tucked his nose against Erik’s throat and breathed, “Erik, I can’t, I don’t, I can’t…”
Erik pressed them together in an awkward one-armed hug, his hand sliding down to the back of Charles’ neck. Then he drew away, just far enough to look into Charles’ eyes as he brought his other hand up to cradle the telepath’s cheek. “I know,” he murmured back.
Charles could see that he did know; could tell, in a moment of clarity that made him wonder whether it was his telepathy and not his legs that was working again, that Erik knew exactly what he was doing, and that made it easier.
It made it easier, when Erik leant into him again, to give no resistance; to let Erik kiss him with the careful reassurance he wouldn’t express through words; to relax into the hands holding his face steady, Erik’s thumbs shielding him from the edges of the helmet. To, when prompted, allow Erik’s tongue to run along the insides of his teeth, and even to respond.
It was easy, and tomorrow, Charles knew, he would see Raven.
xx.
When she knocked at the door, Charles thought Beth was warning him of her entrance, and didn’t say anything.
But then the knock came again, and he knew.
“Come in,” Charles called, after a frightening moment where his voice cracked and he thought she might leave before she heard him. He hadn’t seen her in years, not since he’d been captured, and she had looked at him with a mixture of pity and anger and apology and turned away, letting Erik’s soldiers take him.
The door opened, and it was Raven, and she was, was-
Dear god, she’s naked, he thought, blushing a little and raising his hand to his forehead to block his eyes.
“Charles?” Raven inquired, concern in her voice; in her mind as well, although Charles, keeping to his old promise, did not look any deeper. Instead, he took a moment just to listen: to hear the unique cadence of her thoughts, always shifting but at the core, unchanging. Constant.
“Charles?” He saw Raven step cautiously closer from between his fingers, which he managed to pry away from his face so he could meet her eyes. Her eyes. Charles’ first glimpse of breasts in four years needed to not be those of his adopted sister.
“Raven, it’s… It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” he asked, cautiously, reaching a hand down to turn one wheel of his chair, angling to face her.
Raven’s scaled blue skin creased with a small, teasing smile as she padded forward on bare feet. “No one’s called me that in a long time.”
Charles sighed, and rolled his eyes. “I’m not calling you Mystique,” he protested. “It’s just, it’s silly.”
It was a comment that could have offended, but Raven barked a laugh. “Fine, fine, you can call me Raven. But only you,” she clarified. She had reached his chair, and she paused, looking down at him apprehensively. She seemed about to speak, but stopped herself, pressing a single finger against the edge of the chair’s armrest.
“Charles…” Raven began, her voice trailing off and leaving them in the grips of a jumbled silence.
“You never came to visit,” Charles finished for her, eyes dropping down to watch where her finger sank into the padding where he sometimes rested his hand.
“I…” Raven shook her head, and started over. “…I won’t say that I couldn’t have. I should have. Charles, this is a poor excuse, I know, but I was angry at you for a long time, after.”
Charles nodded grimly, his lips pressed together in a firm line. “What changed? You’re here now.”
He glanced up to see a brief, bitter smile pass over Raven’s face as she studied his knees. “I don’t know. The world. Time. Me, maybe. It was dumb, and after a while I just couldn’t think of anything you did that was bad enough for me to never talk to you again. By then, it had been so long that I didn’t know if you…”
“Perhaps I’m simply infuriating by nature?” Charles mused, the sincere worry of his expression a revealing contrast to the levity of his voice.
A grin, finally, spread over Raven’s face, and she pushed at Charles’ shoulder. “Of course! But not that infuriating. You’re only a small nuisance, really.”
Charles leaned forward and narrowed his eyes a little. “You don’t get to call me a nuisance. You’re the queen of nuisances.”
Raven bent down and met his stare fearlessly. “Every kingdom needs a king,” she replied, smugly.
Unable to maintain his frown, Charles felt his face crease with the first true smile he’d had in a long time, and he slung his arm around Raven’s shoulders to pull her down into a fierce, if somewhat unbalanced, hug. Her scales were soft and dry beneath his fingers and against his cheek, and her palms against his back were more solid than they had ever been in his dreams.
“I missed you,” he whispered, almost soundlessly, near Raven’s ear.
“I’m sorry,” she responded, just as quietly. “You shouldn’t have had to.”
xxi.
After Charles had a moment to wipe at his eyes-something he always did openly, because he believed that a person could only be as embarrassed as they looked-he had a chance to really look at Raven.
She didn’t appear to have aged at all, which didn’t surprise him, although Charles himself had a number of gray hairs and lines he hadn’t before. Unlike Charles, Raven’s body showed signs of harsh use; she had grayish scars and notched scales, a thinner face, and her color was not quite the intense shade he remembered. Charles wanted to ask her what she’d been doing, but he thought he knew.
“So am I allowed to sit down?” Raven asked, a mocking glint in her mottled yellow eyes.
“Sure,” Charles replied, jolted from his observations. “The couch is free.”
The words had barely left his mouth before his adoptive sister was sinking into the couch-at one time, she would have flopped down-and he didn’t comment on the fact that she was sitting more-or-less exactly where Erik always did as he wheeled himself over.
“Fancy rooms,” Raven observed, looking around at the nice furniture and wood paneling.
Charles grimaced. “Boring rooms. Erik could at least have provided me with something to do during the day.”
“Only you would complain from the lap of luxury,” she teased fondly. “I’m a little surprised he still lets you call him that, by the way.”
“It’s his name,” Charles reminded her. “You’re just hurt because ‘Magneto’ was your idea.”
“Maybe,” she admitted, the enigmatic tilt of her head matching her own nickname. “Speaking of, he told me you have some sort of news?”
“Did he?” Charles inquired, the quirk of his eyebrows ruining the effect of his studied nonchalance. “Very well, I suppose I’ll have to demonstrate.”
“Please do,” Raven told him, settling her hands in her lap and straightening up, every inch the perfect student she never was.
Leaning over, Charles wrapped his hands around his right knee to bring his foot close enough to remove the slipper, which he placed on his other thigh. Then, still holding up his leg, he concentrated, wiggling his toes and rotating his ankle. It wasn’t a smooth motion, because it had taken hours lying in bed and staring down at his feet just to re-locate that part of his brain where messages to his toes were filed; still, it elicited a gasp from Raven.
She reached out to brush her fingers along the edge of his foot, and Charles, with a small noise of surprise, tugged it away from her, still using his hands to move the estranged limb. “Tickles,” he admitted, and Raven’s smile was almost crafty enough for him to attempt escape, but instead she settled back and grinned at Charles as if he’d actually gotten up and tap-danced.
“That’s fantastic!” Raven declared. “You know that I would have, would have never left back then if I’d… But I’m glad.” She paused, and Charles could feel the hum of her mind-genuine happiness, but also…
“You knew about this, didn’t you?” he accused. Charles kept his tone light, but he felt a hard glint of hurt at the thought that his surprise had been taken from him, along with everything else. “Did Erik tell you?”
Raven flushed a deeper blue. “No, he didn’t, but I knew you were here and I knew that the lab’s had some success in that direction, so it was easy to guess.”
Charles raised his eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have anything to do with somewhere science was taking place.”
It would have been a feat for another person to look as mischievous as Raven did then. “I have a, let’s say, vested interest. You should talk Erik into letting you get down there sometime.”
“Mm. Perhaps I will,” he agreed, frozen beneath his smile. Charles wanted, right then, to tell her about the-what? Arrangement? Bargain?-between himself and Erik, wanted to tell her that he had asked, but that asking might not be good enough. Raven, however, was smiling as if he were the best thing she’d seen in a long time, and the words just wouldn’t come. Instead, Charles guessed, “It’s Hank, isn’t it? He’s your vested interest.”
Her blush spread, but Raven remained evasive. “You’ll just have to see, won’t you?”
Charles leaned forward, hands folded together, and told her, “Well, I’ll just have to act surprised when I do.”
Raven reached out to give him a playful slap upside the head, laughing at his stunned, blinking silence. “You’ve had that one coming for a long time,” she explained. “I can just imagine you, sitting by yourself with nobody around to beat some sense into you, and it breaks my heart.”
Giving Raven the glare that meant she was definitely not being as funny as she thought she was, Charles rearranged his ruffled hair. “I’m beginning to look back on those days with a fond nostalgia.”
“Ooh, Professor Grumpypants unsheathes his claws,” Raven replied, smirking.
“I’m even less of a Professor now than I was then,” Charles corrected, his playful mood quickly evaporating into weariness.
“Yeah,” Raven acknowledged, looking away. “Yeah, but if anyone could succeed at it in this world, it’d be you.”
“How do you mean?”
Raven sighed, looking down at her hands, which she curled palm-up on her thighs. “Another reason I avoided you for so long, I guess, was because I was afraid you were going to say ‘I told you so.’”
Charles furrowed his eyebrows, trying very hard to look as if he were thinking no such thing.
“I suppose it can’t be justified,” Raven admitted, “but, well, what started out as a simple separatist movement encouraging individuality and self-worth became terrorism, became militarism, and when that wasn’t enough…”
“So you’re saying it got a little out of hand?” Charles asked, his expression deceptively mild.
With a wry little smile showing she had noticed, Raven replied, “Yes. We wanted to use our powers to intimidate humans into leaving us alone, and to show other mutants how to be strong; how to escape from the oppression of stigma and fear. Things like the Argentinean traps… Those weren’t supposed to happen.”
She was referring, of course, to the massive volcanism ongoing in South America, which even as they spoke poured sulfur dioxide and ash into the atmosphere from across more than half a million square kilometers of flood basalt, and showed no signs of stopping. Very few mutants possessed the necessary abilities to get anywhere near the area and survive, let alone measure or prevent the eruptions.
Charles took a deep breath. “I can’t dispense absolution for that sort of thing, Raven.”
“I know,” she muttered, seeming, for a moment, as if she’d actually believed he might. “But I thought if I told you…”
“You’re my sister,” Charles told her, choosing his words carefully, “and I could never hate you.”
Raven bit her lip and nodded, blinking rapidly and glancing away. “That’s good. Thanks. Better than I expected. It’s not just me, though, who I’m talking about.”
Charles wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh, so he settled for a harsh chuckle. “You want to apologize on Erik’s behalf?”
Her quiet little smile was exactly the one she’d always used to mock his disbelief in the past. “He certainly won’t apologize,” Raven explained, and leaned forward with a languid grace Charles thought was new. “Erik is-god, don’t tell him I said this, but he knows just as well as you do what’s happened to the world-what that makes him-and he’s become… Well, it seems odd to think of him as being fragile, but he’s the only person preventing us from falling into total anarchy, and if something happens to him…”
“Are you saying I should hold his hand and ask him how he feels?” Charles asked, voice flat.
Raven’s teeth glinted bright between the blue of her lips. “No, not at all; in fact, the less you say about it, the better, maybe. Just… Be careful with him. For him. He’s a bit of an ass, but he’s all we’ve got.”
“Sure,” Charles agreed, the word stumbling from his mouth, tripped by others he wouldn’t say. This was a concern he didn’t need. “I’ll be careful.”
Chapter Three