FIC: Utopia 6/? (WIP)
Title: Utopia
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairings: Charles/Erik
Genre: drama, angst, au, dystopia, future!fic
Rating: R
Word Count: 7000/?
Warnings: dubcon, emotional manipulation
Summary: Based on this 1stclass_kink prompt (and originally posted there).
"Erik has succeeded in taking over the world, but mutant utopia has yet to materialize. Charles is his reluctant companion."
Beta'd by the illustrious idioticonion.
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
xxxix.
“I say we should just bomb them,” Zeus declared, thumping his fist on the thick oak table. “Boom, problem solved.”
Skink licked his lips in a flicker of movement. “We can’t just use nuclear weapons against villages, unprovoked,” he cautioned. “Perhaps you forgot, but we need those villages for our own people.”
Zeus scoffed and rolled back into his chair. “How is this unprovoked? If the resistance is going to raid our supply lines when we’re already sending their little darlings aid, then damn straight it’s provoked. Besides, I didn’t say we should use big bombs; just, y’know, little ones, to get a little bit of that radiation going. I hear Splinter has a couple ferreted away somewhere.”
Splinter’s arms remained crossed, and the tall head of state security didn’t respond except to fix his inscrutable regard on the other mutant. Charles, due to his gift, was one of a small number of people who knew for certain whether or not the man could speak; indeed he did, but only to a select handful of people, Erik among them. He evidently did not consider replying to Zeus a worthwhile conversation.
Splinter’s mutation seemed insignificant at first glance; his sole ability was that he could throw miniscule particles of matter at relativistic speeds. Nonetheless, this made Charles glad that he was one of those few truly loyal Brotherhood members; the telepath guessed that not even Erik’s power could stop something moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and with enough kinetic energy even a poppy seed could kill.
Charles did not care to dwell on the mutant-his mind was slick and dark like a midnight murder, and anyway Emma Frost was in there too-so instead he watched Erik’s show, studying the Brotherhood leader’s profile as the man listened intently. There was fatigue tucked away into the corners of Erik’s face, around his mouth and nose and in the skin beneath his eyes, and Charles would have bet that there were white hairs beneath that lurid helmet.
He tried not to think about his promise to Erik, about those hands ungloved and against his skin and-surprisingly-he had some measure of success. The man who sat next to Charles now, on those occasions when he did glance over, seemed as if he might have never touched Charles; had never kissed him, or read him anything that wasn’t written in the form of a report. It was strange to see someone so different in Erik’s chair, and Charles wasn’t sure how to react to that person.
“You’re absolutely mad,” Skink was at that moment accusing Zeus. “Your first solution to everything is the nuclear option. Whatever happened to diplomacy and moderation?”
Zeus drew breath to respond but it was Infrared who spoke. “Boys, boys; now, neither of you are well enough endowed for any of us to get a kick out of watching you wave it around, so why don’t you can it and give someone else a chance to talk?”
While Zeus furrowed his shaggy eyebrows, lips moving silently as he repeated Infrared’s words slowly back to himself, Skink adjusted his spectacles and laced his fingers together on the table. “Well, then, Ms. Infrared, if you would care to share your opinion? I’m sure it is eminently reasonable.”
Infrared swung her gaze pointedly to Emma, who perched delicately in the chair next to her. They were a sharp contrast to each other: Emma pale and delicate as spun crystal, Infrared dark and sharp and there like pitchblende. It seemed only logical that they would pair together, polar opposites bound together by their shared disdain for the world.
Emma tilted her head in a mocking imitation of shyness, and smiled sweetly. “I think that if we’re having problems with the resistance, we should ask our local expert.”
Charles waited for that person to speak up until he realized that Emma was staring at him, as was everyone else. Caught off guard, he fumbled; “I haven’t a clue,” he said. “The last time I had any contact with the resistance was four years ago.”
Zeus laughed, short and derisive. “Well then what’s the point of you being here? I thought Magneto was keeping you around because you know stuff, not so you could be his pet telepath.”
Looking around at Erik to for help, or to perhaps speak up in his defense, Charles instead found that the Brotherhood leader was watching him with wordless appraisal, expression carefully guarded except for just the slightest tinge of humor: waiting to see whether the telepath would sink or swim. Erik was, after all, the same man who had pushed a teenager off a satellite dish in order to teach him to fly.
“Actions do speak louder than words,” Charles mused slowly, pulling his attention away from Erik. Perhaps if he spoke for long enough, something would occur to him. Maybe he could even get away with being vague. “So far you’ve only said that humans will be re-integrated into society. You need to actually pass laws showing that they will. The anti-extinctionists are reasonable; many of them will back off if they think you’re listening.”
“What do you propose?” Erik asked, voice soft but carrying; it was the same tone he used to question his followers.
Meeting Erik’s gaze, Charles felt his throat tighten, because Erik wasn’t looking at him like he was a friend, or a stranger, or even an enemy. Instead, it was a patently Magneto look, one that suggested he and Charles were… Alike. Comrades, even. Brothers. The telepath could see why young mutants fell so easily for Magneto’s ideals.
Charles cleared his throat, wishing that his power also allowed him to think faster. “Perhaps you could found a city where humans and mutants can live together, as equals. Call it a new city for a new world. In the mountains, maybe; it could be symbolic of-” Charles kept his face carefully straight- “rising above hardship.”
There was a long period of silence that Charles hoped could be described as contemplative, while at the same time he dreaded being taken seriously; then Skink cleared his throat. “That would be prohibitively expensive,” he declared, and Charles tried not to be disappointed that it hadn’t been Erik who replied. The telepath sank back into grateful silence and let the Brotherhood members debate the feasibility and worthiness of his idea. He wanted to care, to take a more proactive role, but Charles was too tired, too confused; he wished that the evening would come faster so that he could get it over with sooner.
xl.
Badger raised her eyebrows at the necklace but otherwise did not remark on it; Charles suspected that she had simply filed it away into the same category she placed all of the other things about Charles that bewildered and dismayed her soldierly sensibilities.
She stopped Charles before he could get onto the table where he usually went through his exercises. “Not today,” she explained with an evil sort of relish. “Today you get a special treat.” Badger gestured toward something that had always made Charles wonder, just a little bit, whether someone came in at night to practice gymnastics, although of course he knew its real purpose. It was a pair of parallel steel rails, just wide enough and tall enough for a person to stagger along between.
Charles brushed his hair out of his eyes even though it had not, in fact, been hanging down into them. “Isn’t it a bit… Soon?” He flexed his legs in the chair and they informed him that they definitely didn’t feel up to the task.
Badger chewed on one of her nails. “Don’t play coy with me, buck; I know you’ve been using your free time to practice standing. Hell, you’re like an open book, you know that? Don’t ever play poker.”
Wincing, Charles refrained from denying his illicit activities and protested, “But aren’t there supposed to be steps in between standing and walking?”
“The only step that I see is the one where you stop being a pansy and do it,” Badger observed. “So either you get up on those bars, or you wheel on back to your rooms and shut up about not being able to walk, because it’ll be your own damn fault.”
Charles knew better than to correct Badger on anything regarding politeness, but he was not above casting his eyes skyward as he wheeled past, positioning himself between the rails. They looked like they would be about hip-high to him if he stood; Charles felt some amount of trepidation because he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t fall if he tried to pull himself up. Still, he reached for them and was surprised when Badger helped to propel him to his feet with a strength shocking for someone of her height.
“You’re not quite that ready,” she grunted, as if to deny that she had any desire to help. Nonetheless, Charles had to hide a small smile as Badger’s firm grip held him steady on the bars.
Staring down at his feet, Charles felt a sudden wash of vertigo; this wasn’t really standing, just as what he was about to do wasn’t really walking, but he’d thought… He’d thought there would have been more fanfare. Someone close to him watching, maybe, or some dramatic incident that propelled him to his feet. This seemed very… Anticlimactic.
Well. There was always the moment when he walked on his own. Charles could try to do something special that time; this, perhaps, was merely practice for the future.
Leaning his weight onto one tight-knuckled hand and then the other, Charles shuffled forward a little bit; his feet seemed intent to trip over each other and he had to think about each step, but they were steps, and his legs were still pathetically sticklike but holding.
“Yeah, you think it’s easy now,” Badger cautioned, keeping slow pace with Charles. “Just wait until your arms crap out; then you’ll actually start using your legs.”
l.
When Erik stepped into the room, Charles barely greeted him before moving directly over to the couch; he didn’t really want to talk about this, or fumble around awkwardly with pleasantries when they both knew what Erik was there for, and the sooner Erik finished with Charles-so he told himself-the sooner he could start pretending that it would be a one-time occurrence.
In his hurry, however, Charles left the chair just a little farther from the couch than he usually did when he shifted himself over. When he went to stand, Charles’ recently abused muscles quivered and gave and there was no way he was going to reach the cushions or get back into the chair, and as he overbalanced and began to fall the telepath’s first thought was oh, how embarrassing, followed shortly by this might hurt.
Charles’ arm wrenched in its socket, his fall halted; Erik’s fingers drove into his bicep where he had caught the geneticist, and he used that grip to haul Charles back up and then lower him carefully onto the couch. Charles hadn’t even known the man was standing so close.
“Are you alright?” Erik asked, still holding Charles’ arm, but more gently now. The concern on his face was mild, but still more than seemed reasonable considering that Charles had never hit the ground.
“Fine,” muttered the telepath, as he straightened the fabric of his pants around the knees. “I just didn’t realize how tired I am. I walked today, you know.”
Erik’s eyebrows sloped gracefully as he sank to the edge of the cushions, sitting almost sideways and with a discreet space between them. “By yourself?”
“Of course; tomorrow I was thinking maybe I’d go for a nice jog,” Charles replied. Then he pushed his fingers through his hair and exhaled. “I’m sorry. That was unwarranted.”
Chuckling low in his throat, Erik replaced Charles’ fingers with his own, cradling the telepath’s head. “You’re too good for this world, Charles,” Erik told him, ignoring the long-suffering stare that earned him.
“That never used to be the case,” Charles remarked, the unspoken before you sharper than anything he said aloud.
Erik growled low in his throat and shoved Charles back into the cushions, pinning the telepath there with a hand on his chest. The geneticist forced his tensed muscles to relax and closed his eyes, swallowing spasmodically; this was it, then. He could handle this.
Warm breath caressed Charles’ cheek. “Open your eyes,” Erik commanded, which only made Charles want to squeeze them more tightly shut. “Don’t run away.”
Reluctantly, Charles looked at the other man. “You didn’t stipulate that I had to be paying attention, Erik.” The hand spread over his chest was heavy and immobile, but moved with the in-and-out of his lungs-also, to a lesser degree, with the steady shock of his heart.
Erik’s gaze dipped down to Charles’ neck-he was still wearing the chain-then back up to his eyes. “Just… Talk about something.”
Charles moistened his lips. His mind, when he cast back into it, was perfectly blank. “Like what?”
“Whatever you want,” Erik replied, his hand pushing up to frame Charles’ throat in the space between his thumb and fingers. The necklace draped out over his wrist. “Your day, science, anything else you think of… I want you here, with me.”
“Okay,” Charles agreed shakily, glancing away to the opposite wall. His attention caught on a painting, old and browned but with snow-capped mountains clearly visible over a clear lake. “There’s-there’s a phenomenon called watermelon snow, that occurs in alpine regions where it’s cold all year round…”
“Mm,” Erik acknowledged, idly unfastening Charles’ jacket.
“…But it’s in the summer, when the snow’s melting back, when it, when the reason for the name becomes clear, because it turns pink or even, even red, sometimes, and smells like… Are you sure you want me to talk?” Charles leaned his head back as Erik’s deft fingers went to work at his top shirt button. He sought out the other man’s eyes, but Erik was intent on his task.
“Mm,” Erik repeated, more firmly this time as the button popped free. “Yes. I’m listening, Charles.”
“All right,” Charles conceded, looking back to the painting as Erik went to work on the next button. “So, until recently, no one knew why the snow turned red in the mountains-well, any tundra, really, it’s been reported on the shores of Greenland too-and they mostly thought that maybe it was from the soil, or blood, or that it fell from the sky with that color, but nobody ever saw red snow falling and it happens over the ice too so it couldn’t be the soil, and the idea that it’s blood was just-”
Pausing his efforts toward undoing Charles’ dress shirt to pluck at the material of the white tee-shirt beneath, a teasing grin parted Erik’s lips. “So many layers, Charles.”
Charles granted him a swift glare. “It’s cold, Erik, and anyway I wasn’t going to go out underdressed today just because you might have to take it off later.”
Erik’s grin softened into a fond smile, and he patted the triangle of exposed undershirt. “Tell me what makes the snow red.”
Allowing himself a sigh of irritation, Charles dropped his head back again as Erik returned to his buttons. “Well, one report in the nineteenth century attributed it to meteoric iron, but more recently we discovered that it’s actually caused by a species of green algae-green in that they’re in the phyletic group of green algae, not that they themselves are green. They have a secondary red pigment in their chloroplasts.”
Erik had nearly reached down to the line of Charles’ trousers, and he had to stop for a moment to tug the shirt out of the telepath’s pants. Charles didn’t feel obliged to help, but he curved his back a little to free up the fabric there.
“There’s an entire ecosystem at the tops of these mountains, right along the surface of the snow,” Charles continued, determined to finish his train of thought regardless of whether the other man was listening-and of course Erik probably was paying attention, even though he didn’t look like he was thinking about anything else than the last several inches of Charles’ shirt and what lay beneath it. “There are flies that feed on the algae, and spiders that eat the flies, and we didn’t know about any of that until this century even though Aristotle wrote about red snow more than a thousand years ago.”
“Fascinating,” Erik remarked, dropping the edges of Charles’ dress shirt to either side of the geneticist’s chest. Contemplatively, he spread his hands over the soft cotton covering Charles’ belly, his fingers wrapping around to Charles’ waist. “Is there a moral to that story?”
“No,” Charles replied quietly, breathing shallowly as if to avoid disturbing Erik’s hands. “It’s just a story. Not even a story, really; more of a bit of history. Sorry.”
“Don’t be; I enjoyed it.” Erik slid his hands down, caught the bottom of the tee-shirt, and his palms pressed flat against Charles’ bare sides as his splayed fingers lead the exploration of Charles’ skin. The fabric of the undershirt gathered around Erik’s wrists, and Charles immediately broke into gooseflesh where his stomach was left exposed-he hadn’t exaggerated; it was bloody cold in the room. Then again, he was used to the fireplace in British Columbia.
Charles couldn’t bring himself to complain, however; he couldn’t speak at all, actually, despite Erik’s prohibition of silence. All he could do was watch as Erik devoured the sight of his bare skin, as if even just that little patch above his navel was for some reason worth memorizing. Charles was struck by a sudden, absurd embarrassment: because, well, he’d tried to stay in shape as best he could, but there had only been so much he could do, and why did he care so much about whether Erik liked what he saw anyway?
Erik twisted his wrists to snare the hem of the shirt with his index fingers, pinning it higher up Charles’ chest, and ran his thumbs lightly along the line of the telepath’s ribs. The other man’s hands seemed dark in comparison to Charles, and were coarse with calluses that rasped against his own, much smoother skin. Charles shivered, but at least he could legitimately blame it on the ambient temperature.
Erik’s words were rough with reverence as he murmured, “You have the kind of skin that deserves milk and honey.”
Charles was immediately indignant; also, a little bit worried. “Please don’t do that,” he implored. “My skin does perfectly fine when it’s not smeared with food.”
For a moment, Erik appeared utterly bewildered; then he barked a laugh, shaking his head. “I wasn’t going to smear-god, what a dirty mind you have. Besides…” the pitch of his voice dropped again, and Erik ducked down to kiss Charles’ belly, then sampled the geneticist’s skin with a daub of his tongue. “…You taste fine as you are.” Erik’s eyes, rising again to meet Charles’, creased with amusement. “Although, perhaps honey isn’t a bad idea…”
“No,” Charles replied, his hands curled into fists at his sides, “that is never going to happen, and if you suggest it, I will throw myself down the stairs.”
“Very dramatic,” Erik commented dryly, straightening up again. He gathered together both of Charles’ shirts and the jacket, businesslike. “But I’ll keep that threat in mind in case I’m ever tempted. Arms up.”
Charles lifted his arms with a final look of unimpressed disdain-just to show that he was definitely above all this-and Erik pulled his shirts and jacket up over his head all at once. For a stifling, claustrophobic moment, Charles was sure that he was tangled up, trapped in the lightless confines of his own clothing-then he was freed. But of course, he wasn’t free; he was still ensnared by simple virtue of being there, nude from the waist up except for the gold chain, icy against his neck because it had come from the outside of his shirt.
Charles tried not to shudder, knowing that he looked pathetic enough without also wrapping his arms around his chest and hunching over for warmth-for once, he wished he had chest hair; if it didn’t keep the heat in then it would at least make him seem less boyish, and really that was ridiculous because he was nearly thirty and he had his doctorate.
He stared out at Erik from his tenuous shell of body heat, and there must have been a plea in his eyes because a tiny smile curved Erik’s lips and he unfastened his cape, shaking it out over Charles’ shoulders and brushing Charles’ disheveled fringe back off his forehead. The telepath resisted the urge to pull the cape closed and hide inside; it smelled of Erik-steel and cologne and old wood-was still warm from Erik, and the scarlet lining was surprisingly soft against Charles’ skin.
Erik reached an arm under the cape, against the curve of Charles’ back, and pulled the geneticist in against himself. In that same movement, he leaned down to capture Charles’ mouth with his own, almost violently at first as Charles more-or-less toppled into him. They weren’t flush, exactly, because they weren’t entirely facing each other, but the red jacket was itchy against Charles’ bare chest and punctuated by the scratch of buttons. Charles thought, as he obligingly swept his tongue over Erik’s lower lip, that he probably would never look at buttons the same way again, after this; they might even be leaving marks, as far as he knew.
Erik’s other hand came to rest on his waist, while at his back Erik skimmed his fingertips down until-Charles gasped against Erik’s mouth, arching into him; nobody but himself had touched his scar since he’d regained sensation in his lower body-even then, Charles avoided it-and he discovered now that it had become shockingly sensitive; not quite pain, but too much and Charles had to move, somehow, anywhere, so he clutched his hands in the stiff material of Erik’s jacket and pulled as if he could climb up it.
Mercifully, Erik moved on from the spot with a soft noise of amusement, breaking the kiss and tucking his nose into the geneticist’s hair as Charles hid his face somewhere in the vicinity of Erik’s left clavicle. Now that Erik couldn’t see and admonish him for it, he let his eyes fall closed as the other mutant’s hands moved up to his shoulders-with a quick detour to readjust the cape-and began to trace the lines of Charles’ back; slowly, methodically, categorically. He could almost find it relaxing, with his eyes closed, and Charles recited the names of muscles as Erik found them.
Trapezius, he identified as Erik mapped a symmetrical diamond between his scapulae. Infraspinatus… Deltoid. Charles suspected that Erik thought those words as well; the telepath felt certain that his teres major was not well enough defined to follow by intuition alone, but Erik’s fingers brushed over it nonetheless and then swept down the long diagonal of the latissimus dorsi, a muscle broad enough to accommodate the length of Erik’s hands as his fingers met in the curve of Charles’ lumbar spine and dipped-just a little bit-beneath his trousers.
“Above the belt,” Charles mumbled into Erik’s jacket, and the vibration of a chuckle did strange things to his stomach.
“Well, I’m not below it, at least,” Erik said to Charles’ temple, but he withdrew his fingers and grazed them instead over the notch of Charles’ waist, light and terribly ticklish and the telepath had to cringe away. It wasn’t until Erik touched him there again, however, more deliberately this time, that Charles had to tighten his grip on Erik’s jacket until it hurt, and even then the pain wasn’t enough to distract from the sudden surge of his heart and the not-quite-uncomfortable tension jolting down his abdomen.
Erik’s cape was a bit drafty but this time he definitely couldn’t blame it on the chill, because when Erik thoughtfully scraped his nails over the spot once more Charles couldn’t quite keep himself from squirming a little and he pressed his mouth into the hollow of Erik’s shoulder just in case, and he really didn’t want to think about what circumstance might follow those words.
It’s only natural, Charles told himself, discovering that now he was breathing in Erik, could smell nothing else but Erik, and that this did nothing to solve any of his problems. You’re half-naked against another man’s chest, a man who’s, who’s notentirelyunattractive and who’s touching you and you haven’t been touched since-since-and it would really be more surprising if you didn’t feel some sort of-of reaction-
Then Erik pushed him back into the couch, his fingers tight making bands around the telepath’s arms, and this time when Erik kissed him it was like drowning and there was no one out there waiting to jump in and save him. Erik was leaning up on one knee for a better angle as his hands corralled Charles’ body; Erik’s fingers glanced along his ribs and clavicles, tugging at the gold chain around his neck and tracing around Charles’ navel, rough knuckles brushing over the low silhouette of Charles’ nipple, and then there was Erik’s scent, rich and smooth and male-god, he’d been a fool, hadn’t he, thinking he could go through this unaffected, that he could be touched and not feel.
Erik’s hand was tangled in his hair, pulling Charles’ head back. “Erik, may I-” Charles began, but his breath hitched as the other man’s mouth and tongue met his-( sternocleidomastoid, some part of his mind was still babbling)-neck. “Erik may I ask you something?”
“No,” Erik replied, working his way up to the spot just below Charles’ ear and-how did he know about that?-Charles gasped for air and felt like maybe he was going to melt down into the cushions.
“Erik,” Charles beseeched-didn’t squeak, definitely didn’t squeak-and it was to Erik’s credit that he immediately pulled away, frowning.
“Is something wrong?” Erik inquired, which was really the most obvious question he could have chosen and Charles hoped his expression conveyed that opinion. It must have, because Erik leaned back against the cushions, wrapped an arm around Charles, and used his nose to push aside the cape on the closer of Charles’ shoulders and press his lips to the spur of bone there.
“You’re safe here,” Erik murmured, and it sounded like he was trying to cast a spell with those words, to make it true through repetition, sealed with another kiss to Charles’ shoulder. “You’re safe with me.”
There was something in Erik’s voice that sounded a lot like fear, and that terrified Charles more than anything else. “I don’t get it, Erik,” he sighed. “I don’t know what you want from me, why you don’t just hold me down and-” the word stumbled on his lips, harsh and bitter- “and fuck me, if that’s what you want, and ow, Erik, that’s really not very seductive at all you know.”
Erik removed his teeth from Charles’ shoulder, pausing to check the divots with the tip of his tongue. “It wasn’t supposed to feel good. Stop talking.”
Charles met his eyes, searching them for some deeper clue before continuing, “You could do it, you know. I couldn’t stop you. I wouldn’t stop you; I’ve even offered, but you don’t seem to want that. Why?”
“I don’t go to bed on the first date,” Erik rumbled stubbornly.
“I’ve been in your head. You don’t go on second dates,” Charles stated. “Furthermore, I don’t think I can call what you do ‘dating.’”
“Good point,” the other man agreed, and tried to pull Charles to rest against him. The telepath halted him with a hand.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Charles told him. “What are you trying to do? Why all the bargaining?”
Erik glanced down at Charles’ bare chest, a small enigmatic smirk on his lips, and tugged the cape back over the telepath. He left his hand beneath, splayed over Charles’ stomach. “Maybe I’m not after your body, Charles,” he said, and this time Charles did remain silent and Erik seemed content to sit quietly with him. Eventually, Charles could relax again, superficially at least, and he could almost ignore Erik’s hands where they still lay on him.
Erik’s words were perhaps meant to be reassuring, but Charles found them more worrying that anything else the man could have said. He had very few possessions left, besides his body, and all were things Charles valued far more than the flesh and bone he inhabited.
li.
Charles was shocked when Raven come through his door looking as if she had just moments ago stepped from his memories, pale and blonde and beautiful. Although he had never considered her natural blue shape unattractive, he had also never really looked at her as being a potentially sexual creature whilst she was covered in scales; in fact, for both their sakes he had tried as hard as possible to not regard her in any manner approaching sexual, especially after Raven had entered her teenaged years shortly after himself and come to the inevitable realization that they were, in fact, not brother and sister.
Since then the scales had always seemed like an extra barrier, but it surprised Charles to discover that as he had spent more and more time around Raven as she really was, the blue had become secondary to the woman beneath, and it was unsettling to see her now wearing the smooth skin and loose curls Raven had adopted all those years ago.
Raven, in turn, paused mid-step upon seeing Charles. “You’re sitting,” she observed. “I mean, not in your chair.”
Charles set his book-Raven’s book, actually, on loan-down on the arm of the couch and showed her a softly triumphant smile. “So I am,” he stated. “Would you care to sit next to me?”
Cautious glee crept and then sprang onto Raven’s face, and she all but jumped into the spot next to him, hesitating for a fraction of a second before leaning their shoulders together. “I missed this,” she confided, after a moment of revelatory silence.
A grin pulled at Charles’ lips and he surrendered to it, ducking his head. “It’s just like old times, isn’t it? I could grab something boring to read for you.”
“No, I just woke up a few hours ago; I’d rather stay awake.” Raven peered at him curiously. “I don’t usually see you from this angle-did you know you need a haircut?”
Charles tried in vain to smooth down the tangle of hair that had, in the past few weeks, begun to pile up at the nape of his neck. “Yes, I’ve heard as much, thank you. I don’t know who to ask here; I’m half-worried whoever I go to will shear it all off.”
Raven laughed in disbelief. “Why would anyone do that? You have beautiful hair!”
“Well, I was rather hoping it was dashing, or handsome, but thank you,” Charles replied. “It’s just that, oh, this is technically a military base, after all, and they do seem to favor their buzz-cuts around here.”
Raven hugged his arm tightly and said, “Oh, don’t worry, Charles, I’ll protect your hair! I know of at least half a dozen girls who’d love to fondle it.” Then she laughed at Charles’ flatly unamused glare. “Honestly, you and your hair-I can promise you at least one of them has actually been paid money to wield scissors before.”
“Where those scissors specifically used on hair?” Charles asked, doubtfully.
“Yes,” Raven replied, shoving her brother away from her. “Quit moping; it makes your chin wrinkle up funny.”
Charles immediately assumed a more dignified expression. “I would of course appreciate it if you would ask,” he conceded.
Only a tiny grain of smugness made it into Raven’s smile. “That a-hold on, is that Magneto’s cape?”
Grimacing, Charles didn’t need to look up in order to answer, but he glanced regardless to where the cape hung from the lowest rung of the coat rack. When Erik had left the previous night, he’d left Charles wrapped in the garment with the promise that he would come back for it that morning. He had yet to arrive.
“Yes,” Charles responded, sincerely hoping he wasn’t blushing. “He must have forgotten it.”
Raven raised her eyebrows. “Magneto forgot something? That’s new.”
“Mm, quite,” Charles mused. “Say, I’ve been meaning to ask, but you and Beast, you never got… Together, did you?”
Raven laughed. “What gave it away?” she teased.
“Well, it’s just that you were so interested in each other back at the mansion-my mansion. I thought maybe since you were both here and seem to enjoy each other’s company…” Charles trailed off, fishing for an explanation and distraction.
“Oh, you mean, why aren’t we going at it like bunnies now?” Charles cringed and Raven snorted in a very unladylike manner. “You really are turning into an old coot, you know that? The last time Beast and I batted eyelashes at each other was five years ago, if you recall.”
“I also seem to remember that you were very delicate with each other on the, well, during our altercations,” Charles countered with a stiffness that was definitely not coot-like at all.
“Battlefield romances never work out,” his adopted sister pointed out pragmatically.
“I was also going to mention that while you might not be batting your eyelashes…” Charles began suggestively.
Raven finished his sentence for him: “…Beast is. Yes, I’ve noticed, poor guy. Not that I don’t appreciate it, just, well, you can’t expect that an attractive young woman like me has remained single all these years, can you?”
“Oh,” Charles remarked, blinking. “Congratulations, then, to the lucky man.”
Perhaps he was still unused to filtering thoughts after being deprived for so long, or perhaps Charles’ senses were still touching on Raven’s mind after his previous activities there, but either way he was caught off guard by the rush of wrongdenialno that flashed through Raven’s head. While her expression didn’t change, Charles felt himself blush as he glanced away and he knew that he’d revealed himself.
“Sorry,” Charles muttered, “I didn’t know.”
Raven’s lips were in a smile, but her eyes were wide with worry. “What have I told you about looking in my head?”
“I’m still a little rusty,” Charles protested. “I don’t, it doesn’t bother me, you know. Who you date. I’m not that old-fashioned.”
“I don’t think you can call it an old-fashioned frame of mind just yet,” Raven told him, but she had relaxed, just a little bit, readjusting her hands on Charles’ arm as if not quite so prepared to flee.
“Maybe not,” Charles agreed, “but you could have told me. I’m your brother, remember, and a telepath-if anyone would understand it’d be me.”
“You never said anything about it either way,” Raven objected. “Being a telepath doesn’t necessarily make someone understanding. It just… Wasn’t important, at the time.”
“I would have understood,” Charles insisted quietly. It was true that he’d never really voiced a position on sexuality, other than his vigorous pursuit of coeds; his mutation allowed him enough information on human sexual proclivities to make Kinsey furious with envy, but it had seemed a solved mystery to the telepath. Sure, he’d wondered why men and women could be attracted to members of the same sex in light of evolution, but he’d never doubted that their feelings were genuine, and Charles didn’t believe in the cosmically objective morality other people used to justify their discrimination.
Charles had never felt the need to involve himself in that particular injustice-beyond his usual attempts to treat everyone nicely-but now he rather wished he had. “How is public perception now?” he asked, trying not to seem too stiflingly sympathetic.
“Oh, well, you know, these days people mostly just hate immigrants, but it’s getting better. Magneto’s really pushed the idea of men and women being equal, which helps, and there was that thing with the Spanish minister, but you know how people are-when things get rough, they turn to God, and these days God can be pretty unforgiving,” Raven explained. “I just have to be careful who I tell.”
“I see,” Charles commented. He knew about the reactionary conservatives, of course: those people who wanted to be mutant and proud, but didn’t want any part of racial or gender equality. Many of them had taken that to an extreme, insisting that their mutations were proof that evolution had meant them to be superior to their black neighbor, or to their wife. The idea of evolution having any purpose-much less one so specific-bemused Charles to no end, and he could only imagine how those views would themselves mutate once the lack of science education in the world at large made itself felt.
Raven regarded Charles apprehensively before inquiring, “Forgive me if I’m off the mark, here, but I thought… Are you and Magneto involved with each other?”
If Charles hadn’t been blushing before, he certainly was now; he stammered, a little, because Raven always seemed to know when he was lying, and instead chose to obfuscate a little with, “It’s not like that.”
“Oh,” Raven remarked, although it was less the sort of “oh” someone said when they were wrong and more the kind they would use when they were sorry to hear the wrong answer. “It’s just, the way you talk about each other sometimes…”
Charles wondered what Erik had to say about him. “Well, we’re still… Friends, but we have our differences and it can be exasperating. Say, can I meet your-girlfriend? Partner? Can I meet your partner sometime?”
“Oh.” This was yet another version of the sound, Charles observed, as Raven continued, “She’s Brotherhood, actually; that’s mostly why Beast disapproves, by the way, not because he’s all that hung up on the woman thing. Also everything she says is potentially classified? That is, I don’t think you can, anytime soon. I’m sure you’ll be able to eventually though!”
“Well,” Charles began, taken aback slightly. “Can I know her name at least? How long have you been together?”
“Her name’s Destiny,” Raven told him, her eyes strangely human as they wrinkled with soft affection. “I met her-oh, almost back at the beginning, I think. It wasn’t long after that when we-”
There was a knock at the door, interrupting her, and before Charles could call out it swung open. Erik had half a grin on his face before he noticed Raven and froze; likewise, she stopped mid-sentence and tensed in the way Charles knew meant she was considering shifting her shape.
“Magneto,” Raven greeted, cautiously. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“Yes,” Erik agreed, keeping his wariness mostly contained. “I visit sometimes.”
“Charles told me you forgot your cape,” Raven said, smiling with an almost aggressive friendliness.
Erik glanced over at the coat rack, gestured, and the clasp of the cape found its way into his hand. “That I did,” he acknowledged. “You look human. Did Charles put you up to this?” He trained his gaze on the telepath, scrutinizing him. Charles hadn’t even done anything and he already felt guilty; more urgently, however, his heart seemed to have sped up when Erik looked at him and watching the other man spin his cape up over his broad shoulders was far more interesting than it ought to have been. There was a certain deliberateness there, an economy of motion that appealed to Charles.
Meanwhile, Raven turned a gentle shade of pink. “No, it’s a-an experiment, I guess, of Beast’s. About how mutants treat people with more and less obvious mutations.”
Frowning a little, Erik ceased glaring at Charles and nodded thoughtfully. “And what have you found, so far?”
Clearly her throat delicately, Raven replied, “Not much, yet, but I just started this morning.”
“You’ll have to tell me the results once you’re out of that inferior skin,” Erik stated. His eyes met Charles’, just as intense as before, and the telepath wondered whether Erik could be any more obvious in front of Raven. “The meeting got pushed back to later in afternoon. We won’t be able to play chess tonight, I’m afraid.”
“All right,” Charles acquiesced. “I’ll see you then?”
He was essentially dismissing Erik from his quarters with that, which was a bit risky, but the other man nodded. “Mystique,” he said, acknowledging Raven. “Charles.”
Then he left, leaving the two siblings to stare at each other awkwardly.
Exasperated and wistful, Raven asked, “Are you sure you’re not involved?”
lii.
Charles stared sullenly out from his window and reassessed his earlier prediction.
He was probably going to end up having sex with Erik. Charles had reconciled this with himself, had prepared himself for that eventuality and had even volunteered. Everything was going to plan, so far, except that where Charles had envisioned himself giving in with stoic silence and calm surrender, he was instead rather more… Involved.
It was becoming increasingly clear that he could not do this and remain aloof. Charles couldn’t very well back out, as he still had an agenda to pursue, but he desperately needed to come up with a plan in case he climbed into bed with Erik and enjoyed it.
Maybe it’s not a bad thing to mix pleasure and work, some part of Charles’ mind whispered, and he crushed it furiously because that was a very bad idea. For all of Charles’ past hedonism; for all that he knew that most men who loitered outside the park washrooms weren’t actually attracted to other men; and for all that Charles wasn’t in this situation by choice…
Charles could not share something like that with someone without becoming attached, and there was a possibility that he would have to be very unattached indeed to do what needed to be done.
Chapter Seven
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairings: Charles/Erik
Genre: drama, angst, au, dystopia, future!fic
Rating: R
Word Count: 7000/?
Warnings: dubcon, emotional manipulation
Summary: Based on this 1stclass_kink prompt (and originally posted there).
"Erik has succeeded in taking over the world, but mutant utopia has yet to materialize. Charles is his reluctant companion."
Beta'd by the illustrious idioticonion.
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
xxxix.
“I say we should just bomb them,” Zeus declared, thumping his fist on the thick oak table. “Boom, problem solved.”
Skink licked his lips in a flicker of movement. “We can’t just use nuclear weapons against villages, unprovoked,” he cautioned. “Perhaps you forgot, but we need those villages for our own people.”
Zeus scoffed and rolled back into his chair. “How is this unprovoked? If the resistance is going to raid our supply lines when we’re already sending their little darlings aid, then damn straight it’s provoked. Besides, I didn’t say we should use big bombs; just, y’know, little ones, to get a little bit of that radiation going. I hear Splinter has a couple ferreted away somewhere.”
Splinter’s arms remained crossed, and the tall head of state security didn’t respond except to fix his inscrutable regard on the other mutant. Charles, due to his gift, was one of a small number of people who knew for certain whether or not the man could speak; indeed he did, but only to a select handful of people, Erik among them. He evidently did not consider replying to Zeus a worthwhile conversation.
Splinter’s mutation seemed insignificant at first glance; his sole ability was that he could throw miniscule particles of matter at relativistic speeds. Nonetheless, this made Charles glad that he was one of those few truly loyal Brotherhood members; the telepath guessed that not even Erik’s power could stop something moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and with enough kinetic energy even a poppy seed could kill.
Charles did not care to dwell on the mutant-his mind was slick and dark like a midnight murder, and anyway Emma Frost was in there too-so instead he watched Erik’s show, studying the Brotherhood leader’s profile as the man listened intently. There was fatigue tucked away into the corners of Erik’s face, around his mouth and nose and in the skin beneath his eyes, and Charles would have bet that there were white hairs beneath that lurid helmet.
He tried not to think about his promise to Erik, about those hands ungloved and against his skin and-surprisingly-he had some measure of success. The man who sat next to Charles now, on those occasions when he did glance over, seemed as if he might have never touched Charles; had never kissed him, or read him anything that wasn’t written in the form of a report. It was strange to see someone so different in Erik’s chair, and Charles wasn’t sure how to react to that person.
“You’re absolutely mad,” Skink was at that moment accusing Zeus. “Your first solution to everything is the nuclear option. Whatever happened to diplomacy and moderation?”
Zeus drew breath to respond but it was Infrared who spoke. “Boys, boys; now, neither of you are well enough endowed for any of us to get a kick out of watching you wave it around, so why don’t you can it and give someone else a chance to talk?”
While Zeus furrowed his shaggy eyebrows, lips moving silently as he repeated Infrared’s words slowly back to himself, Skink adjusted his spectacles and laced his fingers together on the table. “Well, then, Ms. Infrared, if you would care to share your opinion? I’m sure it is eminently reasonable.”
Infrared swung her gaze pointedly to Emma, who perched delicately in the chair next to her. They were a sharp contrast to each other: Emma pale and delicate as spun crystal, Infrared dark and sharp and there like pitchblende. It seemed only logical that they would pair together, polar opposites bound together by their shared disdain for the world.
Emma tilted her head in a mocking imitation of shyness, and smiled sweetly. “I think that if we’re having problems with the resistance, we should ask our local expert.”
Charles waited for that person to speak up until he realized that Emma was staring at him, as was everyone else. Caught off guard, he fumbled; “I haven’t a clue,” he said. “The last time I had any contact with the resistance was four years ago.”
Zeus laughed, short and derisive. “Well then what’s the point of you being here? I thought Magneto was keeping you around because you know stuff, not so you could be his pet telepath.”
Looking around at Erik to for help, or to perhaps speak up in his defense, Charles instead found that the Brotherhood leader was watching him with wordless appraisal, expression carefully guarded except for just the slightest tinge of humor: waiting to see whether the telepath would sink or swim. Erik was, after all, the same man who had pushed a teenager off a satellite dish in order to teach him to fly.
“Actions do speak louder than words,” Charles mused slowly, pulling his attention away from Erik. Perhaps if he spoke for long enough, something would occur to him. Maybe he could even get away with being vague. “So far you’ve only said that humans will be re-integrated into society. You need to actually pass laws showing that they will. The anti-extinctionists are reasonable; many of them will back off if they think you’re listening.”
“What do you propose?” Erik asked, voice soft but carrying; it was the same tone he used to question his followers.
Meeting Erik’s gaze, Charles felt his throat tighten, because Erik wasn’t looking at him like he was a friend, or a stranger, or even an enemy. Instead, it was a patently Magneto look, one that suggested he and Charles were… Alike. Comrades, even. Brothers. The telepath could see why young mutants fell so easily for Magneto’s ideals.
Charles cleared his throat, wishing that his power also allowed him to think faster. “Perhaps you could found a city where humans and mutants can live together, as equals. Call it a new city for a new world. In the mountains, maybe; it could be symbolic of-” Charles kept his face carefully straight- “rising above hardship.”
There was a long period of silence that Charles hoped could be described as contemplative, while at the same time he dreaded being taken seriously; then Skink cleared his throat. “That would be prohibitively expensive,” he declared, and Charles tried not to be disappointed that it hadn’t been Erik who replied. The telepath sank back into grateful silence and let the Brotherhood members debate the feasibility and worthiness of his idea. He wanted to care, to take a more proactive role, but Charles was too tired, too confused; he wished that the evening would come faster so that he could get it over with sooner.
xl.
Badger raised her eyebrows at the necklace but otherwise did not remark on it; Charles suspected that she had simply filed it away into the same category she placed all of the other things about Charles that bewildered and dismayed her soldierly sensibilities.
She stopped Charles before he could get onto the table where he usually went through his exercises. “Not today,” she explained with an evil sort of relish. “Today you get a special treat.” Badger gestured toward something that had always made Charles wonder, just a little bit, whether someone came in at night to practice gymnastics, although of course he knew its real purpose. It was a pair of parallel steel rails, just wide enough and tall enough for a person to stagger along between.
Charles brushed his hair out of his eyes even though it had not, in fact, been hanging down into them. “Isn’t it a bit… Soon?” He flexed his legs in the chair and they informed him that they definitely didn’t feel up to the task.
Badger chewed on one of her nails. “Don’t play coy with me, buck; I know you’ve been using your free time to practice standing. Hell, you’re like an open book, you know that? Don’t ever play poker.”
Wincing, Charles refrained from denying his illicit activities and protested, “But aren’t there supposed to be steps in between standing and walking?”
“The only step that I see is the one where you stop being a pansy and do it,” Badger observed. “So either you get up on those bars, or you wheel on back to your rooms and shut up about not being able to walk, because it’ll be your own damn fault.”
Charles knew better than to correct Badger on anything regarding politeness, but he was not above casting his eyes skyward as he wheeled past, positioning himself between the rails. They looked like they would be about hip-high to him if he stood; Charles felt some amount of trepidation because he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t fall if he tried to pull himself up. Still, he reached for them and was surprised when Badger helped to propel him to his feet with a strength shocking for someone of her height.
“You’re not quite that ready,” she grunted, as if to deny that she had any desire to help. Nonetheless, Charles had to hide a small smile as Badger’s firm grip held him steady on the bars.
Staring down at his feet, Charles felt a sudden wash of vertigo; this wasn’t really standing, just as what he was about to do wasn’t really walking, but he’d thought… He’d thought there would have been more fanfare. Someone close to him watching, maybe, or some dramatic incident that propelled him to his feet. This seemed very… Anticlimactic.
Well. There was always the moment when he walked on his own. Charles could try to do something special that time; this, perhaps, was merely practice for the future.
Leaning his weight onto one tight-knuckled hand and then the other, Charles shuffled forward a little bit; his feet seemed intent to trip over each other and he had to think about each step, but they were steps, and his legs were still pathetically sticklike but holding.
“Yeah, you think it’s easy now,” Badger cautioned, keeping slow pace with Charles. “Just wait until your arms crap out; then you’ll actually start using your legs.”
l.
When Erik stepped into the room, Charles barely greeted him before moving directly over to the couch; he didn’t really want to talk about this, or fumble around awkwardly with pleasantries when they both knew what Erik was there for, and the sooner Erik finished with Charles-so he told himself-the sooner he could start pretending that it would be a one-time occurrence.
In his hurry, however, Charles left the chair just a little farther from the couch than he usually did when he shifted himself over. When he went to stand, Charles’ recently abused muscles quivered and gave and there was no way he was going to reach the cushions or get back into the chair, and as he overbalanced and began to fall the telepath’s first thought was oh, how embarrassing, followed shortly by this might hurt.
Charles’ arm wrenched in its socket, his fall halted; Erik’s fingers drove into his bicep where he had caught the geneticist, and he used that grip to haul Charles back up and then lower him carefully onto the couch. Charles hadn’t even known the man was standing so close.
“Are you alright?” Erik asked, still holding Charles’ arm, but more gently now. The concern on his face was mild, but still more than seemed reasonable considering that Charles had never hit the ground.
“Fine,” muttered the telepath, as he straightened the fabric of his pants around the knees. “I just didn’t realize how tired I am. I walked today, you know.”
Erik’s eyebrows sloped gracefully as he sank to the edge of the cushions, sitting almost sideways and with a discreet space between them. “By yourself?”
“Of course; tomorrow I was thinking maybe I’d go for a nice jog,” Charles replied. Then he pushed his fingers through his hair and exhaled. “I’m sorry. That was unwarranted.”
Chuckling low in his throat, Erik replaced Charles’ fingers with his own, cradling the telepath’s head. “You’re too good for this world, Charles,” Erik told him, ignoring the long-suffering stare that earned him.
“That never used to be the case,” Charles remarked, the unspoken before you sharper than anything he said aloud.
Erik growled low in his throat and shoved Charles back into the cushions, pinning the telepath there with a hand on his chest. The geneticist forced his tensed muscles to relax and closed his eyes, swallowing spasmodically; this was it, then. He could handle this.
Warm breath caressed Charles’ cheek. “Open your eyes,” Erik commanded, which only made Charles want to squeeze them more tightly shut. “Don’t run away.”
Reluctantly, Charles looked at the other man. “You didn’t stipulate that I had to be paying attention, Erik.” The hand spread over his chest was heavy and immobile, but moved with the in-and-out of his lungs-also, to a lesser degree, with the steady shock of his heart.
Erik’s gaze dipped down to Charles’ neck-he was still wearing the chain-then back up to his eyes. “Just… Talk about something.”
Charles moistened his lips. His mind, when he cast back into it, was perfectly blank. “Like what?”
“Whatever you want,” Erik replied, his hand pushing up to frame Charles’ throat in the space between his thumb and fingers. The necklace draped out over his wrist. “Your day, science, anything else you think of… I want you here, with me.”
“Okay,” Charles agreed shakily, glancing away to the opposite wall. His attention caught on a painting, old and browned but with snow-capped mountains clearly visible over a clear lake. “There’s-there’s a phenomenon called watermelon snow, that occurs in alpine regions where it’s cold all year round…”
“Mm,” Erik acknowledged, idly unfastening Charles’ jacket.
“…But it’s in the summer, when the snow’s melting back, when it, when the reason for the name becomes clear, because it turns pink or even, even red, sometimes, and smells like… Are you sure you want me to talk?” Charles leaned his head back as Erik’s deft fingers went to work at his top shirt button. He sought out the other man’s eyes, but Erik was intent on his task.
“Mm,” Erik repeated, more firmly this time as the button popped free. “Yes. I’m listening, Charles.”
“All right,” Charles conceded, looking back to the painting as Erik went to work on the next button. “So, until recently, no one knew why the snow turned red in the mountains-well, any tundra, really, it’s been reported on the shores of Greenland too-and they mostly thought that maybe it was from the soil, or blood, or that it fell from the sky with that color, but nobody ever saw red snow falling and it happens over the ice too so it couldn’t be the soil, and the idea that it’s blood was just-”
Pausing his efforts toward undoing Charles’ dress shirt to pluck at the material of the white tee-shirt beneath, a teasing grin parted Erik’s lips. “So many layers, Charles.”
Charles granted him a swift glare. “It’s cold, Erik, and anyway I wasn’t going to go out underdressed today just because you might have to take it off later.”
Erik’s grin softened into a fond smile, and he patted the triangle of exposed undershirt. “Tell me what makes the snow red.”
Allowing himself a sigh of irritation, Charles dropped his head back again as Erik returned to his buttons. “Well, one report in the nineteenth century attributed it to meteoric iron, but more recently we discovered that it’s actually caused by a species of green algae-green in that they’re in the phyletic group of green algae, not that they themselves are green. They have a secondary red pigment in their chloroplasts.”
Erik had nearly reached down to the line of Charles’ trousers, and he had to stop for a moment to tug the shirt out of the telepath’s pants. Charles didn’t feel obliged to help, but he curved his back a little to free up the fabric there.
“There’s an entire ecosystem at the tops of these mountains, right along the surface of the snow,” Charles continued, determined to finish his train of thought regardless of whether the other man was listening-and of course Erik probably was paying attention, even though he didn’t look like he was thinking about anything else than the last several inches of Charles’ shirt and what lay beneath it. “There are flies that feed on the algae, and spiders that eat the flies, and we didn’t know about any of that until this century even though Aristotle wrote about red snow more than a thousand years ago.”
“Fascinating,” Erik remarked, dropping the edges of Charles’ dress shirt to either side of the geneticist’s chest. Contemplatively, he spread his hands over the soft cotton covering Charles’ belly, his fingers wrapping around to Charles’ waist. “Is there a moral to that story?”
“No,” Charles replied quietly, breathing shallowly as if to avoid disturbing Erik’s hands. “It’s just a story. Not even a story, really; more of a bit of history. Sorry.”
“Don’t be; I enjoyed it.” Erik slid his hands down, caught the bottom of the tee-shirt, and his palms pressed flat against Charles’ bare sides as his splayed fingers lead the exploration of Charles’ skin. The fabric of the undershirt gathered around Erik’s wrists, and Charles immediately broke into gooseflesh where his stomach was left exposed-he hadn’t exaggerated; it was bloody cold in the room. Then again, he was used to the fireplace in British Columbia.
Charles couldn’t bring himself to complain, however; he couldn’t speak at all, actually, despite Erik’s prohibition of silence. All he could do was watch as Erik devoured the sight of his bare skin, as if even just that little patch above his navel was for some reason worth memorizing. Charles was struck by a sudden, absurd embarrassment: because, well, he’d tried to stay in shape as best he could, but there had only been so much he could do, and why did he care so much about whether Erik liked what he saw anyway?
Erik twisted his wrists to snare the hem of the shirt with his index fingers, pinning it higher up Charles’ chest, and ran his thumbs lightly along the line of the telepath’s ribs. The other man’s hands seemed dark in comparison to Charles, and were coarse with calluses that rasped against his own, much smoother skin. Charles shivered, but at least he could legitimately blame it on the ambient temperature.
Erik’s words were rough with reverence as he murmured, “You have the kind of skin that deserves milk and honey.”
Charles was immediately indignant; also, a little bit worried. “Please don’t do that,” he implored. “My skin does perfectly fine when it’s not smeared with food.”
For a moment, Erik appeared utterly bewildered; then he barked a laugh, shaking his head. “I wasn’t going to smear-god, what a dirty mind you have. Besides…” the pitch of his voice dropped again, and Erik ducked down to kiss Charles’ belly, then sampled the geneticist’s skin with a daub of his tongue. “…You taste fine as you are.” Erik’s eyes, rising again to meet Charles’, creased with amusement. “Although, perhaps honey isn’t a bad idea…”
“No,” Charles replied, his hands curled into fists at his sides, “that is never going to happen, and if you suggest it, I will throw myself down the stairs.”
“Very dramatic,” Erik commented dryly, straightening up again. He gathered together both of Charles’ shirts and the jacket, businesslike. “But I’ll keep that threat in mind in case I’m ever tempted. Arms up.”
Charles lifted his arms with a final look of unimpressed disdain-just to show that he was definitely above all this-and Erik pulled his shirts and jacket up over his head all at once. For a stifling, claustrophobic moment, Charles was sure that he was tangled up, trapped in the lightless confines of his own clothing-then he was freed. But of course, he wasn’t free; he was still ensnared by simple virtue of being there, nude from the waist up except for the gold chain, icy against his neck because it had come from the outside of his shirt.
Charles tried not to shudder, knowing that he looked pathetic enough without also wrapping his arms around his chest and hunching over for warmth-for once, he wished he had chest hair; if it didn’t keep the heat in then it would at least make him seem less boyish, and really that was ridiculous because he was nearly thirty and he had his doctorate.
He stared out at Erik from his tenuous shell of body heat, and there must have been a plea in his eyes because a tiny smile curved Erik’s lips and he unfastened his cape, shaking it out over Charles’ shoulders and brushing Charles’ disheveled fringe back off his forehead. The telepath resisted the urge to pull the cape closed and hide inside; it smelled of Erik-steel and cologne and old wood-was still warm from Erik, and the scarlet lining was surprisingly soft against Charles’ skin.
Erik reached an arm under the cape, against the curve of Charles’ back, and pulled the geneticist in against himself. In that same movement, he leaned down to capture Charles’ mouth with his own, almost violently at first as Charles more-or-less toppled into him. They weren’t flush, exactly, because they weren’t entirely facing each other, but the red jacket was itchy against Charles’ bare chest and punctuated by the scratch of buttons. Charles thought, as he obligingly swept his tongue over Erik’s lower lip, that he probably would never look at buttons the same way again, after this; they might even be leaving marks, as far as he knew.
Erik’s other hand came to rest on his waist, while at his back Erik skimmed his fingertips down until-Charles gasped against Erik’s mouth, arching into him; nobody but himself had touched his scar since he’d regained sensation in his lower body-even then, Charles avoided it-and he discovered now that it had become shockingly sensitive; not quite pain, but too much and Charles had to move, somehow, anywhere, so he clutched his hands in the stiff material of Erik’s jacket and pulled as if he could climb up it.
Mercifully, Erik moved on from the spot with a soft noise of amusement, breaking the kiss and tucking his nose into the geneticist’s hair as Charles hid his face somewhere in the vicinity of Erik’s left clavicle. Now that Erik couldn’t see and admonish him for it, he let his eyes fall closed as the other mutant’s hands moved up to his shoulders-with a quick detour to readjust the cape-and began to trace the lines of Charles’ back; slowly, methodically, categorically. He could almost find it relaxing, with his eyes closed, and Charles recited the names of muscles as Erik found them.
Trapezius, he identified as Erik mapped a symmetrical diamond between his scapulae. Infraspinatus… Deltoid. Charles suspected that Erik thought those words as well; the telepath felt certain that his teres major was not well enough defined to follow by intuition alone, but Erik’s fingers brushed over it nonetheless and then swept down the long diagonal of the latissimus dorsi, a muscle broad enough to accommodate the length of Erik’s hands as his fingers met in the curve of Charles’ lumbar spine and dipped-just a little bit-beneath his trousers.
“Above the belt,” Charles mumbled into Erik’s jacket, and the vibration of a chuckle did strange things to his stomach.
“Well, I’m not below it, at least,” Erik said to Charles’ temple, but he withdrew his fingers and grazed them instead over the notch of Charles’ waist, light and terribly ticklish and the telepath had to cringe away. It wasn’t until Erik touched him there again, however, more deliberately this time, that Charles had to tighten his grip on Erik’s jacket until it hurt, and even then the pain wasn’t enough to distract from the sudden surge of his heart and the not-quite-uncomfortable tension jolting down his abdomen.
Erik’s cape was a bit drafty but this time he definitely couldn’t blame it on the chill, because when Erik thoughtfully scraped his nails over the spot once more Charles couldn’t quite keep himself from squirming a little and he pressed his mouth into the hollow of Erik’s shoulder just in case, and he really didn’t want to think about what circumstance might follow those words.
It’s only natural, Charles told himself, discovering that now he was breathing in Erik, could smell nothing else but Erik, and that this did nothing to solve any of his problems. You’re half-naked against another man’s chest, a man who’s, who’s notentirelyunattractive and who’s touching you and you haven’t been touched since-since-and it would really be more surprising if you didn’t feel some sort of-of reaction-
Then Erik pushed him back into the couch, his fingers tight making bands around the telepath’s arms, and this time when Erik kissed him it was like drowning and there was no one out there waiting to jump in and save him. Erik was leaning up on one knee for a better angle as his hands corralled Charles’ body; Erik’s fingers glanced along his ribs and clavicles, tugging at the gold chain around his neck and tracing around Charles’ navel, rough knuckles brushing over the low silhouette of Charles’ nipple, and then there was Erik’s scent, rich and smooth and male-god, he’d been a fool, hadn’t he, thinking he could go through this unaffected, that he could be touched and not feel.
Erik’s hand was tangled in his hair, pulling Charles’ head back. “Erik, may I-” Charles began, but his breath hitched as the other man’s mouth and tongue met his-( sternocleidomastoid, some part of his mind was still babbling)-neck. “Erik may I ask you something?”
“No,” Erik replied, working his way up to the spot just below Charles’ ear and-how did he know about that?-Charles gasped for air and felt like maybe he was going to melt down into the cushions.
“Erik,” Charles beseeched-didn’t squeak, definitely didn’t squeak-and it was to Erik’s credit that he immediately pulled away, frowning.
“Is something wrong?” Erik inquired, which was really the most obvious question he could have chosen and Charles hoped his expression conveyed that opinion. It must have, because Erik leaned back against the cushions, wrapped an arm around Charles, and used his nose to push aside the cape on the closer of Charles’ shoulders and press his lips to the spur of bone there.
“You’re safe here,” Erik murmured, and it sounded like he was trying to cast a spell with those words, to make it true through repetition, sealed with another kiss to Charles’ shoulder. “You’re safe with me.”
There was something in Erik’s voice that sounded a lot like fear, and that terrified Charles more than anything else. “I don’t get it, Erik,” he sighed. “I don’t know what you want from me, why you don’t just hold me down and-” the word stumbled on his lips, harsh and bitter- “and fuck me, if that’s what you want, and ow, Erik, that’s really not very seductive at all you know.”
Erik removed his teeth from Charles’ shoulder, pausing to check the divots with the tip of his tongue. “It wasn’t supposed to feel good. Stop talking.”
Charles met his eyes, searching them for some deeper clue before continuing, “You could do it, you know. I couldn’t stop you. I wouldn’t stop you; I’ve even offered, but you don’t seem to want that. Why?”
“I don’t go to bed on the first date,” Erik rumbled stubbornly.
“I’ve been in your head. You don’t go on second dates,” Charles stated. “Furthermore, I don’t think I can call what you do ‘dating.’”
“Good point,” the other man agreed, and tried to pull Charles to rest against him. The telepath halted him with a hand.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Charles told him. “What are you trying to do? Why all the bargaining?”
Erik glanced down at Charles’ bare chest, a small enigmatic smirk on his lips, and tugged the cape back over the telepath. He left his hand beneath, splayed over Charles’ stomach. “Maybe I’m not after your body, Charles,” he said, and this time Charles did remain silent and Erik seemed content to sit quietly with him. Eventually, Charles could relax again, superficially at least, and he could almost ignore Erik’s hands where they still lay on him.
Erik’s words were perhaps meant to be reassuring, but Charles found them more worrying that anything else the man could have said. He had very few possessions left, besides his body, and all were things Charles valued far more than the flesh and bone he inhabited.
li.
Charles was shocked when Raven come through his door looking as if she had just moments ago stepped from his memories, pale and blonde and beautiful. Although he had never considered her natural blue shape unattractive, he had also never really looked at her as being a potentially sexual creature whilst she was covered in scales; in fact, for both their sakes he had tried as hard as possible to not regard her in any manner approaching sexual, especially after Raven had entered her teenaged years shortly after himself and come to the inevitable realization that they were, in fact, not brother and sister.
Since then the scales had always seemed like an extra barrier, but it surprised Charles to discover that as he had spent more and more time around Raven as she really was, the blue had become secondary to the woman beneath, and it was unsettling to see her now wearing the smooth skin and loose curls Raven had adopted all those years ago.
Raven, in turn, paused mid-step upon seeing Charles. “You’re sitting,” she observed. “I mean, not in your chair.”
Charles set his book-Raven’s book, actually, on loan-down on the arm of the couch and showed her a softly triumphant smile. “So I am,” he stated. “Would you care to sit next to me?”
Cautious glee crept and then sprang onto Raven’s face, and she all but jumped into the spot next to him, hesitating for a fraction of a second before leaning their shoulders together. “I missed this,” she confided, after a moment of revelatory silence.
A grin pulled at Charles’ lips and he surrendered to it, ducking his head. “It’s just like old times, isn’t it? I could grab something boring to read for you.”
“No, I just woke up a few hours ago; I’d rather stay awake.” Raven peered at him curiously. “I don’t usually see you from this angle-did you know you need a haircut?”
Charles tried in vain to smooth down the tangle of hair that had, in the past few weeks, begun to pile up at the nape of his neck. “Yes, I’ve heard as much, thank you. I don’t know who to ask here; I’m half-worried whoever I go to will shear it all off.”
Raven laughed in disbelief. “Why would anyone do that? You have beautiful hair!”
“Well, I was rather hoping it was dashing, or handsome, but thank you,” Charles replied. “It’s just that, oh, this is technically a military base, after all, and they do seem to favor their buzz-cuts around here.”
Raven hugged his arm tightly and said, “Oh, don’t worry, Charles, I’ll protect your hair! I know of at least half a dozen girls who’d love to fondle it.” Then she laughed at Charles’ flatly unamused glare. “Honestly, you and your hair-I can promise you at least one of them has actually been paid money to wield scissors before.”
“Where those scissors specifically used on hair?” Charles asked, doubtfully.
“Yes,” Raven replied, shoving her brother away from her. “Quit moping; it makes your chin wrinkle up funny.”
Charles immediately assumed a more dignified expression. “I would of course appreciate it if you would ask,” he conceded.
Only a tiny grain of smugness made it into Raven’s smile. “That a-hold on, is that Magneto’s cape?”
Grimacing, Charles didn’t need to look up in order to answer, but he glanced regardless to where the cape hung from the lowest rung of the coat rack. When Erik had left the previous night, he’d left Charles wrapped in the garment with the promise that he would come back for it that morning. He had yet to arrive.
“Yes,” Charles responded, sincerely hoping he wasn’t blushing. “He must have forgotten it.”
Raven raised her eyebrows. “Magneto forgot something? That’s new.”
“Mm, quite,” Charles mused. “Say, I’ve been meaning to ask, but you and Beast, you never got… Together, did you?”
Raven laughed. “What gave it away?” she teased.
“Well, it’s just that you were so interested in each other back at the mansion-my mansion. I thought maybe since you were both here and seem to enjoy each other’s company…” Charles trailed off, fishing for an explanation and distraction.
“Oh, you mean, why aren’t we going at it like bunnies now?” Charles cringed and Raven snorted in a very unladylike manner. “You really are turning into an old coot, you know that? The last time Beast and I batted eyelashes at each other was five years ago, if you recall.”
“I also seem to remember that you were very delicate with each other on the, well, during our altercations,” Charles countered with a stiffness that was definitely not coot-like at all.
“Battlefield romances never work out,” his adopted sister pointed out pragmatically.
“I was also going to mention that while you might not be batting your eyelashes…” Charles began suggestively.
Raven finished his sentence for him: “…Beast is. Yes, I’ve noticed, poor guy. Not that I don’t appreciate it, just, well, you can’t expect that an attractive young woman like me has remained single all these years, can you?”
“Oh,” Charles remarked, blinking. “Congratulations, then, to the lucky man.”
Perhaps he was still unused to filtering thoughts after being deprived for so long, or perhaps Charles’ senses were still touching on Raven’s mind after his previous activities there, but either way he was caught off guard by the rush of wrongdenialno that flashed through Raven’s head. While her expression didn’t change, Charles felt himself blush as he glanced away and he knew that he’d revealed himself.
“Sorry,” Charles muttered, “I didn’t know.”
Raven’s lips were in a smile, but her eyes were wide with worry. “What have I told you about looking in my head?”
“I’m still a little rusty,” Charles protested. “I don’t, it doesn’t bother me, you know. Who you date. I’m not that old-fashioned.”
“I don’t think you can call it an old-fashioned frame of mind just yet,” Raven told him, but she had relaxed, just a little bit, readjusting her hands on Charles’ arm as if not quite so prepared to flee.
“Maybe not,” Charles agreed, “but you could have told me. I’m your brother, remember, and a telepath-if anyone would understand it’d be me.”
“You never said anything about it either way,” Raven objected. “Being a telepath doesn’t necessarily make someone understanding. It just… Wasn’t important, at the time.”
“I would have understood,” Charles insisted quietly. It was true that he’d never really voiced a position on sexuality, other than his vigorous pursuit of coeds; his mutation allowed him enough information on human sexual proclivities to make Kinsey furious with envy, but it had seemed a solved mystery to the telepath. Sure, he’d wondered why men and women could be attracted to members of the same sex in light of evolution, but he’d never doubted that their feelings were genuine, and Charles didn’t believe in the cosmically objective morality other people used to justify their discrimination.
Charles had never felt the need to involve himself in that particular injustice-beyond his usual attempts to treat everyone nicely-but now he rather wished he had. “How is public perception now?” he asked, trying not to seem too stiflingly sympathetic.
“Oh, well, you know, these days people mostly just hate immigrants, but it’s getting better. Magneto’s really pushed the idea of men and women being equal, which helps, and there was that thing with the Spanish minister, but you know how people are-when things get rough, they turn to God, and these days God can be pretty unforgiving,” Raven explained. “I just have to be careful who I tell.”
“I see,” Charles commented. He knew about the reactionary conservatives, of course: those people who wanted to be mutant and proud, but didn’t want any part of racial or gender equality. Many of them had taken that to an extreme, insisting that their mutations were proof that evolution had meant them to be superior to their black neighbor, or to their wife. The idea of evolution having any purpose-much less one so specific-bemused Charles to no end, and he could only imagine how those views would themselves mutate once the lack of science education in the world at large made itself felt.
Raven regarded Charles apprehensively before inquiring, “Forgive me if I’m off the mark, here, but I thought… Are you and Magneto involved with each other?”
If Charles hadn’t been blushing before, he certainly was now; he stammered, a little, because Raven always seemed to know when he was lying, and instead chose to obfuscate a little with, “It’s not like that.”
“Oh,” Raven remarked, although it was less the sort of “oh” someone said when they were wrong and more the kind they would use when they were sorry to hear the wrong answer. “It’s just, the way you talk about each other sometimes…”
Charles wondered what Erik had to say about him. “Well, we’re still… Friends, but we have our differences and it can be exasperating. Say, can I meet your-girlfriend? Partner? Can I meet your partner sometime?”
“Oh.” This was yet another version of the sound, Charles observed, as Raven continued, “She’s Brotherhood, actually; that’s mostly why Beast disapproves, by the way, not because he’s all that hung up on the woman thing. Also everything she says is potentially classified? That is, I don’t think you can, anytime soon. I’m sure you’ll be able to eventually though!”
“Well,” Charles began, taken aback slightly. “Can I know her name at least? How long have you been together?”
“Her name’s Destiny,” Raven told him, her eyes strangely human as they wrinkled with soft affection. “I met her-oh, almost back at the beginning, I think. It wasn’t long after that when we-”
There was a knock at the door, interrupting her, and before Charles could call out it swung open. Erik had half a grin on his face before he noticed Raven and froze; likewise, she stopped mid-sentence and tensed in the way Charles knew meant she was considering shifting her shape.
“Magneto,” Raven greeted, cautiously. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“Yes,” Erik agreed, keeping his wariness mostly contained. “I visit sometimes.”
“Charles told me you forgot your cape,” Raven said, smiling with an almost aggressive friendliness.
Erik glanced over at the coat rack, gestured, and the clasp of the cape found its way into his hand. “That I did,” he acknowledged. “You look human. Did Charles put you up to this?” He trained his gaze on the telepath, scrutinizing him. Charles hadn’t even done anything and he already felt guilty; more urgently, however, his heart seemed to have sped up when Erik looked at him and watching the other man spin his cape up over his broad shoulders was far more interesting than it ought to have been. There was a certain deliberateness there, an economy of motion that appealed to Charles.
Meanwhile, Raven turned a gentle shade of pink. “No, it’s a-an experiment, I guess, of Beast’s. About how mutants treat people with more and less obvious mutations.”
Frowning a little, Erik ceased glaring at Charles and nodded thoughtfully. “And what have you found, so far?”
Clearly her throat delicately, Raven replied, “Not much, yet, but I just started this morning.”
“You’ll have to tell me the results once you’re out of that inferior skin,” Erik stated. His eyes met Charles’, just as intense as before, and the telepath wondered whether Erik could be any more obvious in front of Raven. “The meeting got pushed back to later in afternoon. We won’t be able to play chess tonight, I’m afraid.”
“All right,” Charles acquiesced. “I’ll see you then?”
He was essentially dismissing Erik from his quarters with that, which was a bit risky, but the other man nodded. “Mystique,” he said, acknowledging Raven. “Charles.”
Then he left, leaving the two siblings to stare at each other awkwardly.
Exasperated and wistful, Raven asked, “Are you sure you’re not involved?”
lii.
Charles stared sullenly out from his window and reassessed his earlier prediction.
He was probably going to end up having sex with Erik. Charles had reconciled this with himself, had prepared himself for that eventuality and had even volunteered. Everything was going to plan, so far, except that where Charles had envisioned himself giving in with stoic silence and calm surrender, he was instead rather more… Involved.
It was becoming increasingly clear that he could not do this and remain aloof. Charles couldn’t very well back out, as he still had an agenda to pursue, but he desperately needed to come up with a plan in case he climbed into bed with Erik and enjoyed it.
Maybe it’s not a bad thing to mix pleasure and work, some part of Charles’ mind whispered, and he crushed it furiously because that was a very bad idea. For all of Charles’ past hedonism; for all that he knew that most men who loitered outside the park washrooms weren’t actually attracted to other men; and for all that Charles wasn’t in this situation by choice…
Charles could not share something like that with someone without becoming attached, and there was a possibility that he would have to be very unattached indeed to do what needed to be done.
Chapter Seven