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ravenFic:: New Beautiful Things Come
by Raven
17,500w, X-Men: First Class, modern AU, Charles/Erik, Raven, Moira, Emma.
continued from part one
To the NYU Department of Facilities and Management [by email]:
Susan,
Could you please find whichever blithering idiot left thirteen pots of paint in a tasteful shade of institutional magnolia OUTSIDE MY OFFICE DOOR and set them on fire, please?
All best,
CX
*
After those evenings on which Charles doesn't appear, he drops in on his way to work in the morning. For all it's only been days, weeks, there's a celestial regularity to the pattern. Erik thinks the bakery is at its best at that hour, scrubbed clean and full of things rising, baking, cooling and sweetening. Charles buys his breakfast, gets crumbs on his fingers and sometimes Erik kisses him. He always tastes of whatever he chose, always warm sugar with a hint of yeast.
Each day, as Charles goes out, the blast of air that slips through the closing is colder.
"So, it's going well, is it?" Emma asks, wickedly, when she wanders into the kitchen to find Erik whistling.
Erik glares at her. "I have no idea what you're talking about." It's a few minutes before opening time, and the bakery smells richly of bread. Outside, the sun is filtering through the frost on the edges of leaves, the last traces of sunrise leaving the sky a pure, austere blue.
Erik opens the front door, flipping the sign over to "open", and steps back for Az to stagger out, weighed down by bread orders and cookie gift baskets. "Have a nice day, Mr. Lehnsherr!" he chirps. Despite two years working for Erik, he's incurably polite. In the clear space in front of the shop, he teleports away, leaving red sparks in Erik's vision.
Emma chuckles from behind him. "Be like that if you like," she says. "You can't lie to me."
"You're reading my mind?" Erik asks, raising his eyebrows at her. She never has before. He supposes he wouldn't know, really, but he trusts her.
"Not on purpose," she says, sweetly. "If you will radiate these enormous waves of peace and contentment…"
Erik scowls. She only chuckles again, drifting into the kitchen to check on the ovens.
Today's first task is to disassemble the chairs. Since removing them from the sidewalk outside the bakery, Erik has been planning to take out the screws and store them flat. Another project, half-formed in his mind, is adjusting some of the furniture inside the bakery for those mutants who would find something other than chairs comfortable to sit on – his mind is on Hank, who comes in sometimes and gets his fur stuck in the cracks of things. Emma's suggested they get in a barstool for his use, which Erik hasn't got around to yet.
Emma watches him working, the screws spinning wildly, flying up in the air, and laying themselves on a nearby table with surgical precision. "That's a useful gift," she says, approvingly.
"You've seen it lots of times before," Erik tells her, brusque because he's concentrating, controlling the lines of magnetic force from his hands. It's not quite a magnetic power, he supposes, as it works on non-ferrous metals, but it's a useful way to think.
"Even so." Emma smiles. "While you're at it, maybe you could do something about that old dresser you're always complaining about? With the screws out maybe we can persuade the garbage men to take it away."
"There are a few things in it," Erik says after a moment, knowing for a fact there are metal buttons, old metal cutlery and a pincushion full of pins inside. "Empty it out, see if there's anything we'd need, and then I'll take it apart."
"Sure." Emma goes off to do it, and Erik goes on removing screws, thinking of nothing very much in particular, soothed by the hypnotic rhythm of the work, the metal curving through his consciousness. He's still there a few minutes later, with all the chairs neatly flattened, but he's feeling no compulsion to move, just standing with the morning sunlight warm on his face.
"Erik." Emma's grinning, and there's a wickedness in her thoughts that Erik is fairly sure she's broadcasting on purpose. "Erik, you'll like this."
It's a sheet of newspaper. After a second Erik realises that it's come out of the old dresser – he dimly remembers putting newspaper in it to line the drawers, soon after they outgrew the old premises and moved kit and caboodle to 14th Street.
"What?" he asks, and moves to snatch it; she hangs on to it and clucks.
"Manners, Erik." She laughs. "Here, it's the society page. Top right."
Erik takes the paper, faded and dusty, and holds it up to the light. Most of it is taken up by a photograph. The colours have muted with age, the blurring ink is crossing the clear lines, but the two figures are clearly recognisable as Charles and Raven. He's standing against a blue sky, half-lifting her up, and they're looking at each other and laughing, seemingly unaware of the camera. They're beautiful.
Charles Xavier, says the caption, seen here with sister Raven, has recently returned from England. Enigmatic scion of the Xavier family, his mutant status has been a surprise to some…
Erik puts down the paper, very deliberately, and looks up at Emma, wandering around the bakery wiping tables with her head lifted up as though she's listening to a song only she can hear. Charles reminds him of someone. He knows who it is, now.
*
"You're a telepath."
Erik wanted to lead up to it. But Charles wheels in to the bakery the following evening, eyes bright and cheeks pink from the cold, and the way he moves, the expressive cast of his face is so obvious, suddenly, so like Emma and so much just Charles himself, all that curiosity and insouciance making such sense, that Erik wonders how he could not have known and gone on not knowing.
"Yes." Charles is fumbling for his wallet. "No time for chess tonight, I'm afraid, Raven has friends coming over and I'm here for baked goods. And to see you. But mostly for baked goods. Raven was very persuasive."
"Charles," Erik says, slowly, carefully, "you're a telepath. Were you going to tell me?"
"Didn't I?" Charles looks directly at him, a thoughtful expression passing briefly across his face. "I suppose I didn't. Well, then. Yes, I am a telepath. A few other things, too, there are certain nuances, but that's it for the most part."
"Charles," Erik says, and then doesn't say anything more for a long moment. "Were you planning to tell me about this?"
"I'm sure I would have done." Charles rolls back a little. "Erik, is this important?"
"Yes." Erik looks up and sees that there are forks sitting behind the counter, bending. He takes a deep breath, returns them to their former shape and looks at Charles. "Yes, it is important."
"All right, it is important." Charles doesn't sound convinced. "Did Raven tell you, then? Or Emma?"
Erik privately wonders why Emma didn't tell him, and for a crazed moment, if this is a conspiracy. Mutely, he picks up the old newspaper piece and hands it over.
Charles reads it, a slow smile spreading across his face. "I remember this," he says, quietly. "I was an undergrad. I came home for the Christmas vac, my first year. My parents were in the city at the same time that I was – Raven was furious, she'd wanted me to take her off somewhere, and I had no objection, but of course we had to stay and play high-society happy families. I remember the photographer, my mother wasn't pleased about it, but I never saw the picture."
"How hard your life has been," Erik says, voice dripping with sarcasm, and Charles puts the paper down and looks intently up at him.
"I didn't come to be sniped at," he says, crisply. "I came for some macaroons. I'm sorry if it upsets you that I'm a telepath, I'm sorry if my family background offends you, and if you'll give me the macaroons I will no longer contaminate your bakery with my presence."
"If it upsets me – it doesn't upset me that you're a telepath, Charles!" Erik snaps at him. He's nearly yelling, and angry with himself for it. "It's not that! It's that you came here, you let me – you let us… get closer, without telling me…"
Charles inclines his head. "So, you wanted veto power? So it would be all right if I had said, by the way, Erik, here's a piece of information about who I am, feel free to reject me on that basis?"
Erik feels an inarticulable frustration rising beneath the anger. "Charles, I did not say that!"
"What frightens you about me?" Charles asks, suddenly mild. "What's in your head that you don't want me to see?"
He doesn't wait for an answer, but turns himself around with precision and goes out, letting a burst of chilled air into the bakery in his wake.
*
Unlike most of the faculty, Moira tends to come back from teaching classes in a good mood. She dances into the office, her skirt fluttering up in a joyful ruffle. "Messenger RNA!" she says, delightedly. "Bless them all, the darlings, they understood it!"
Charles sighs. "Have they got rid of the paint?"
Moira looks down the corridor. "There's a cowed-looking individual wheeling away several white pots. Is that what you mean?"
"Yes. Good," Charles says, and goes back to trying to make sense of the graphs in the journal article sitting on his desk. Pigeons coo at the window; despite the fact this is a ground-floor office, the local birdlife seems to find their window ledge very attractive.
"Uh-oh," Moira says, without missing a beat. "What is it?"
"Mmm?" Charles flips the article over, wondering if it will make more sense with the axes the other way up. "What do you mean?"
Moira lands in her chair with a dramatic flump. "You're looking unhappy."
"I'm working." This morning he has organised his desk drawers, read all the administrative paperwork he's been meaning to get to in the two years he's been sharing this office with Moira, and made a significant start on a whole new filing system.
"Really?" She's sounding dubious, still twirling as she turns on her computer and it whirs disconsolately into life. "What have you learned about life on this planet this morning, then?"
"I've read our documents setting out the procedure in case of fire," Charles says. "I've discovered that there is absolutely no mention made of people with disabilities in case of an alarm."
"Really?" Moira darts across and picks the document off his desk. "Would that be because you're reading the 1989 edition, by any chance? I can print you off the current one if you really want to read all several hundred pages of it, or you can tell me what's bothering you."
"Nothing's bothering me," Charles tells her.
"Right, that's why you're reading the manual on health and safety rather than doing your work, which you love, or bitching about freshman comp, which let's face it, you also love."
Charles sighs. "Leave me alone, please."
"You're giving me a headache, Charles!" Moira says. "I mean, literally, you're broadcasting. And as I must needs share my office with a telepath…"
"Moira." Charles looks up, cutting her off very gently. "Do you mind that? That I'm a telepath?"
"Of course not." Moira seems genuinely surprised. "Of course not, sweetheart. It's you, it's who you are – wait. You're pissed off because Erik just found out you're a telepath and he can't deal with it?"
Charles blinks, and doesn't bother prevaricating. "Sure you're not one, too?"
"Don't try and distract me!" Moira slams her files down on her desk. "If that's it, then he's a prejudiced shit and you don't need him, and you should ditch him right now and come drinking with me tonight."
"That's not it," Charles says, thoughtfully, then takes a deep breath, then another, then another. The tension headache that was building starts to abate, and he smiles apologetically as Moira visibly relaxes, too. "That's not it. Erik is a mutant himself – his gifts centre on metal, as far as I know. Can work it, manipulate it, that sort of thing. I've known others."
"As far as you know?" Moira looks at him intently. "Charles, sweetheart. What exactly did he say to you?"
Charles thinks about that. "He said… he said I should have told him about it. I should have told him about it, before we got closer."
"Closer." Moira grins, wickedly, then turns abruptly serious. "And what did you say?"
"I'm afraid I asked him what he was hiding, and swept out." Charles does, honestly, feel guilty about that.
"Hmmm."
'Hmmm?" Charles leans back in the chair, feeling suddenly combative. He's been deliberately numbing his mind all morning, and the suppressed energy is rising back up.
Moira's looking contemplative. "Didn't you tell me once that Erik runs a mutant-centred business?"
"Well, I don't know if I'd put it like that." Charles thinks about it. "Actually, maybe I would. He prefers to employ mutants; he thinks they should build mutant-centered communities. I think he's probably on the other side of the mutant education debate from me."
"Right." Moira nods. "So you know that Erik is deeply invested in mutanthood, both his own and others'. From what he says it's clear he has definite ideas about mutant history, community, culture. Being a mutant is important to him. You know all of this, and yet you don't tell him you're a mutant."
"Because it's not important to me!" Charles snaps back, stung. "It's not! Does it have to be?"
"Well, no." Moira smiles at him. "But I think it would have been important to him to know."
"People look at me differently," Charles says, suddenly. "It's not like bending metal or teleportation or being able to look like whatever you want. People find out you're a telepath, then they look at you as though… as though you're dangerous. Don't try to tell me you didn't, when you first met me."
"When I first met you I was twenty-two and drunk," Moira says. "And when I sobered up, I don't deny I was worried. You've got a lot of power, Charles, and that is scary. But I got over it. I got over it and I love you and you shouldn't be having this conversation with me."
Charles sinks back, suddenly realising she's right.
*
"Hello," Charles says, wheeling into the bakery just before closing.
Erik's there, which Charles is grateful for; he doesn't know if he could have persuaded Emma to fetch him if he weren't. But his expression stills as he looks at Charles, and a tension rises in his limbs. "Can I help you?"
"Yes," Charles says, quietly. "We can sit, and we can talk."
Erik frowns at him. "Do we have anything to talk about?"
"I'd say so." Charles tips his head back and looks up. "I can stay here, until you talk to me. Forever, if necessary. I'll just sit here and pretend I'm invisible. Or a piece of furniture."
"You couldn't pretend to be invisible if you tried," Erik says, caustically. "You talk too much."
And then of course he is, despite his very best efforts, talking to Charles Xavier, so he pushes the front door closed and goes and sits down in the chair closest to him. They are both still for a moment, looking at each other. Charles is making an effort to keep his mind locked down. It's like talking through gritted teeth in that it can be done.
"First of all, I want to apologise." Charles is clear about this, at least. "I said one thing to you the other day that was unforgivable. The rest I'm here to argue about."
"This is a very idiosyncratic apology, Charles." For a moment Erik remembers what Emma said about sexual attraction, the elephant in the tutu. He's softening because of Charles's voice, the way he looks up, open and guileless – but perhaps it's more than that. Erik responds to Charles like metal, like a lodestar. It's an unnamed feeling. It's rising.
Charles smiles, ruefully. "I'm sorry for what I said, Erik. I really am."
"You asked me what I was hiding." The moment has a winter-sharp clarity in Erik's mind. "And you were hiding from me, all this time."
Charles nods. "I admit that. I want to say, also, that I never lied to you, and I never would have read your mind without your permission. And that it was my right to hide my ability."
Erik shakes his head. Perhaps with another person, this might become another shouting match, but there's something about the way Charles is holding out, not an olive branch but a metaphorical cap, asking for something. "It might be your right," he says. "But you've a right to sit outside my bakery and be an anti-Semite as loud as you can, too. It doesn't make it right."
Charles nods. "I accept that. And yet."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Erik takes a deep breath, tries again. "Why don't you tell people?"
Charles puts his hands on his face, takes them away, sighs. "For a great many reasons. But it's true, what I said the other day. It's not important. There's much more to me than my abilities. And my disabilities. I'm many things, Erik. I'm a human being."
"Some would contest that." Erik's voice is carefully neutral, and Charles sighs again.
"I have never liked the word 'mutant'," he says. "It always seemed too B-movie for my liking. As though I advance on people, dripping green slime."
Erik can't help but smile at that. "But, human being…"
"I am," Charles says, firmly. "It's not that easy, Erik! It's not, first there's us and then there's them. There's me. I'm the child of a human. If I'd ever had an unguarded moment and agreed to be Moira's sperm donor" – Erik raises his eyebrows – "the children we'd have would be viable. And you're about to call me a reductionist biologist…"
Erik blinks, not about to do any such thing. "Charles…"
"But it's not us and them," Charles goes on, waving his hands. "We are their brothers and fathers and sons and friends. We are who they are; they are us."
Erik has seen Charles like this before, hair falling into his eyes, all mess and eloquence. Getting slowly to his feet, he takes the keys from his pocket and locks the door. "I think you know I live above the shop," he says, carefully. "Perhaps we could continue this conversation elsewhere? Emma and Az are done for the day, I'll let them go a little early."
Charles stares at him, his expression unreadable. "I think you know that I have a longstanding habit of writing to establishments and public bodies who annoy me. I haven't yet written to a private residence."
"If that's your way of asking do I happen to have an elevator, the answer is no. But" – and now Erik's in a hurry, words falling out on top of one another so he says them, so at least he's said them – "I can lift you. There's metal in your chair." And in the ring on your finger, he doesn’t say; in the buckles on your boots, in your blood.
Charles looks at him. "I think I'll see myself out," he says, very quietly, and turns to go to the door. He can't open it.
It's a moment, hanging. With greater clarity than he's had about anything, Erik knows that what happens now will be what happens ever after.
The door unlocks.
Charles pauses before he goes out, gives Erik a sweet half-smile. And then he's gone, and Erik sits down hard on a wooden chair and is conscious only of breathing, breathing, and the shape and pressures of metal.
*
To the staff and patrons of Le Petit Mort:
Dear all,
I recently had reason to visit your establishment for an evening event, and was pleasantly surprised by the ease of accessibility for wheelchair users. I am writing to thank you […]
Charles Xavier
*
A day later Charles is wheeling into the bakery with a chessboard balanced on his knees, blowing steam and rubbing together hands in fingerless gloves. "I brought metal pieces," he says, and Erik hears, not an apology, but a conciliation.
"If I play chess with you," he says, carefully, "will you come out with me tonight?"
"Out?" Charles's expression turns wicked, the meanings of the word tangling together into a salacious jumble. "Somewhere accessible, I trust?"
"Believe me, it will be," Emma says, in passing, and both Charles and Erik watch her go, wondering.
They play two games of chess that afternoon, the first slow and controlled and the second with more recklessness in it, more gambles and lucky chances. Erik wins both games. He understands that again, Charles is trying to tell him something. There's snow coming, sleet hitting the window, casting shadows of the season to come.
"Sorry about this," Erik says, as he stands up, stretching to get rid of the knots from his back, and switching off the lights. "Emma insisted I go, and I really could use the company."
By nightfall, they're heading out of the bakery, with Erik carefully locking up behind them. They both look at the door as he does it, and the moment lasts longer, perhaps, than it ought, but neither of them says anything until they've hit the next block over, stopping so Charles can call Raven.
"I get her voicemail," he complains. "I'd leave her a message saying I'll be late home, but she never checks them." He shrugs. "I guess if she needs me she'll call me."
The bar is impossible to miss, the name set out above the door in neon-pink calligraphy. Erik knows it chiefly as a gay bar with psychedelic cocktails; tonight, though, there are more women than he ever remembers seeing there, and a greater range in age. Charles is looking around, trying to remember the last time he was in a cocktail bar, which is a long time ago, and without Moira, which is longer still.
"Hey, guys," says the woman at the door. "Welcome to Flashes and Ginger Beer, sorry about the wait. My colleague had to go deal with a costume emergency backstage. Tickets are five bucks – wait, you're Erik Lehnsherr, aren't you? "
Erik nods. "I was told..."
The woman nods her head briskly. "Yes, yes, you put up the posters and the flyers, you get comps. Are you mutants? Don't worry, you don't have to answer, it's just for our audience statistics."
"Yes," Erik says, firmly; after a moment, Charles nods.
"And what's your name?" she asks Charles. "We need to write down all the names of the people we give free tickets to."
"Charles Xavier," Charles says, amused.
The woman writes this down. "Xavier? With an X? That must be pretty cool, having X as your initial."
"Hardly," Charles says, dryly. "I'm a London railway station, my sister's a prescription."
"Your sister?" the woman is saying, looking curious, but then someone else comes bustling up, and Erik's momentarily surprised and then not surprised at all: it's Emma.
"Hi, guys," she says, very cheerfully. "Glad you're talking to each other again. Get in there."
They make their way in slowly, and Charles is pleased by how easy it is for him to get around. He isn't crowded, and doesn't have to get people to move out of the way. The bar is placed to one side, covered in glasses of what must be tonic water, quinine glowing under UV light, and at the front there's a tiny stage, lit from behind with warm pink and orange light. They get to the front with no trouble, find a place where Charles can see clearly, and Erik's had time to get them both drinks, beer for himself and hard cider for Charles, when suddenly everyone starts to get quiet.
Angel stands up on the tiny stage and taps a spoon on a wineglass. The lights are already dim, and her wings shine translucent pink. She rises, levitating a few inches from the ground, and there are cheers and whoops from the audience. "Ladies, gentlemen and others," she says, "Homo sapiens and the children of the atom…"
"Interbreeding makes us the same species," Charles whispers for Erik's ears, but he's grinning.
"…welcome to the show."
She flutters up to the ceiling and the music starts. Erik puts a hand on Charles's shoulder and is surprised to feel Charles reach up and cover it with his own. The noise level has fallen to a low buzz; the air smells of smoke and expectation.
It's mutant performance art, Erik thinks, a little dazedly. At first, there are no people on the stage, and then there are flowers, growing up out of nothingness, rich red roses, tulips, poppies and carnations, growing out of the boards and around the sides of the stage, from the ceiling, from the cracks, and as the noise level rises they flash-freeze, turn into frosted sculptures. Charles reaches out and plucks one of them. It crackles into powder into his hands.
Suddenly, rain, a brief crackle and smash of localised thunder, and the flowers run richly with water, disappear, and the three mutants come on stage, all women, all laughing, and bow deeply to applause.
Erik still feels dazed, as though he were present at the birth of something. "This is pretty cool, isn't it?" says the woman next to him, with pink hair and a wicked expression. "No spoken-word poetry at mutant events, thank God. I mean, it's not all bad, but I wouldn't be the third radical feminist poet on in a row for all the honey on Lesbos."
Erik laughs. On the stage a woman with dark brown skin and black hair piled thickly on top of her head is walking around the stage, touching each pillar and post and leaving light behind, small glowing globes, some soft yellow and others too brilliant to look at. "My name is Deepali," she says, as she moves. "Some of the more educated among you may know what that means." Low laughter from the edges of the audience. "But even those of you who don't might appreciate this."
She claps her hands. The globes of light fly back to her, becoming a glorious tiny sun, and she claps her hands again and each one flies to each individual audience member. Erik finds himself holding light. It doesn't burn; it's gentle like body heat.
Charles says, very quietly, "Fiat lux." He sounds entirely sincere, and a little transported. The light takes a long time to fade: through several other acts, it flickers gently, gently, until finally each globe is a single firefly spark winding down to dark.
At the interval, Angel announces that there will be a break for fifteen minutes, and flutters down to sit on the edge of the stage. "Enjoying yourselves?"
"Yes" – and Charles's smile is, as usual, dazzling.
Erik says, "I still don't know what any of the words mean."
"Queering the mutant aesthetic?" Angel grins. "Well, let me explain it to you."
Charles's expression is so readable that Erik has to check he didn't actually broadcast the thought. You walked right into that one.
"We don't all look the same," Angel says, simply. "We are not all the same. I mean, we are all mutants together…"
"Yes," Erik interrupts. "Yes, we are."
"But not always first and sometimes last and not all in the same ways. Me, I found out I could fly the day of my quinceañera. It was a good day. There's a girl over there, Lily, she can fly, but she found out in prep school when they pushed her out a tree."
Charles says, "I am a mutant. I am also an academic, a geneticist, a chess player, a brother, a son." His eyes are on Erik as he says, "And other things, to others. I'm English, I'm American, I talk too much."
"Yes, you do," Erik says, meaning to sound sardonic. He looks down at Charles and feels an inarticulable fondness. "But here we are, all together, in the same space, because we are mutants."
"Yes." Charles looks back up at him and smiles.
"Time to go," Angel says, and blows a kiss at Erik as she takes off backstage.
The final act of the evening is an abbreviated cabaret. "Our singer is nervous," Angel explains. "It's their very first time on stage in front of people, so there'll just be a couple of songs. But we know you'll be kind. You will be, won't you, lovely audience?"
The audience cheers, calling out affectionate encouragement. Then someone comes on stage and Charles's first impression is of a joyously perfect androgyny, their eyes bright and hair tied up, their body with mere suggestions of curves. Charles is reminded of a production of Cabaret he saw once at Oxford, done with enthusiasm and some sort of authenticity in a college bar, with the emcee draped over the tables with this same mixture of cool austerity and ambiguous sexuality.
The singer twirls a top hat and sings, slowly, "Never know how much I love you…"
There's a long awkward pause. Someone at the back of the audience cheers. The singer takes a step forwards and goes on: "Never know how much I care…"
There's more cheering. The singer takes a visible deep breath and sings the next line louder, with clear, rounded notes, and then the audience falls quiet as the song builds against the smoky silence in the bar, rough-edged, but with the seeds of something special. Charles is laughing a little, from pleasure and not mirth, as the singer reaches the end of the song, purrs, "What a lovely way to burn" – and throws off the top hat.
It lands, as if perfectly aimed, in Charles's lap. The singer reaches down to get it, and then they're inches apart, momentarily, close enough for him to breathe in and feel the touch of familiar thoughts, filling his mind with a scent like vanilla, and like lemon.
Charles looks up, says nothing, and smiles.
At the very end, it's dark. The performers have vanished backstage, the lights behind the stage are dimming, the mass of audience is splitting back up into individuals, milling towards the door, towards the bar. Charles reaches out and pulls Erik down, a little insistently, and kisses him, a small, chaste kiss becoming deeper and softer. Erik breaks away and glances around, as though he's worried they're being watched, as though he's worried Charles is doing this for effect, but people are heading out into the night, they're alone in a crowd. Erik kisses Charles and has such a powerful wish, suddenly, a wish for a flat surface, a bed with clean white sheets and a high thread count, that Charles rolls back slightly and laughs.
"You said," Erik begins, whispering, plaintive. "You said you can't hear thoughts, unless you try…"
"Sometimes you shout," Charles says, apologetically, and takes his hand and squeezes it tight.
*
It's a clear, cold night, only the brightest of stars visible in the city sky. Charles is pushing himself forwards with a dreamy intensity, and Erik feels that same quality of being only half there, part of his consciousness still alight with colour and sound.
"Thank you," Charles says, apropos of nothing, and Erik is brought back to himself.
"For what?"
"For bringing me," Charles says, still dreamy. "I would never have… I'd never – well, I enjoyed myself."
"So did I," Erik says, honestly. He should thank Emma, he thinks, and Angel. They go on through the quiet night. Erik's dimly aware of the low hum of traffic, a man at a bus stop humming "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". Somewhere far above an aircraft is heading out towards the ocean, deep and dense structures of metal under carefully calculated strain.
Somehow, it's the right moment to ask the question. "What do you mean, sometimes I shout?"
"Sometimes you shout," Charles repeats. He's moving slowly; he's tired. "I try not to read other people's minds without their permission. Sometimes I do, though, because the other person is so – well, passionate, I suppose. They have such depth of feeling, it's as though they were shouting in an empty room. I couldn't close my ears against them even if I tried."
"Depth of feeling," Erik repeats, a little startled.
"Sorry," Charles says, amusedly. "Sorry, but it is true. Sometimes I can't block my mind against you. I do try."
"Chess," Erik says, suddenly. "You… you play chess against me. And you lose."
Charles merely smiles at him, eyes bright in the low light. "Yes. And sometimes I win. Although the pieces are metal, sometimes I win."
Erik stops walking for a moment, and Charles lifts his hands and lets only his momentum carry him on, and there's an understanding between them in that small pause, that break in the continuity of their motion. For a second Erik thinks about them as stars revolving around one another at a great distance, bound across distance by another's centre of gravity.
"You were right," he says, the words drawn out of him by some inexplicable force. Although, he thinks, looking at Charles, perhaps not so inexplicable; perhaps this is just the force Charles has exerted on him all along, the pull towards truth, and if not that, at least honesty. "You were right, in what you said the other day."
"What?" Charles asks.
"You asked me what I was hiding. What was I afraid of you finding out."
"That was an inexcusable thing to say," Charles says, quietly.
"And yet." Erik takes a deep breath. "The bakery. E. Lehnsherr's Kosher Bakery."
"And De Facto Mutant Sanctuary, Emma calls it," Charles adds, and Erik smiles at that.
"The E doesn't stand for Erik," he says, while he has the force to keep on talking. "Edie, my mother. She started the bakery from scratch, after my father died. She charmed the bank into giving her a loan, baked them pastries to sweeten them. It was her project, her baby. And then she died."
"How did she die?" Charles asks, gently.
"A road accident," Erik says, with some bitterness. "After years of hard work, after making it through such hard times, when things were finally going so well – an accident. Senseless."
Charles says nothing, but there's a mute sympathy in his mind, a softness. Erik takes a moment to realise it's a deliberate sharing.
"So," he goes on, as briskly as he can, "I took over the business. It's what she would have wanted. I employed as many mutants as I could, I thought up new items for the menu occasionally, but for the most part it's still the way she ran it. "
Charles nods. "All right. But why would you want to hide that?"
"It's not what I wanted." Erik holds up his hands in some sort of defence. "I never wanted this. I'm a trained engineer. I attended NYU, in fact. And I had… ideas. Ideas about mutants like me, what we can do, what we become. And now Angel tells me that Edward Bell is running for Congress for this district and it's something – well, perhaps I wanted to do that."
"Edward Bell," Charles says, thoughtfully. "Without the support of the party he's unlikely to get very far, but it's good that he's trying. See, I do pay attention to the world around me occasionally."
"Charles," Erik says. "I'm not even religious. Of course, I was raised Jewish, but there's a difference between that and running a kosher bakery. Whoever heard of a kosher bakery that opens Saturdays?"
"But you don't work on them," Charles notes, remembering the first time he met Emma.
"Because…" Erik holds up his hands again, not able to say it.
"Because that's what your mother would have liked." Charles nods. "Erik, I don't think… well, okay. You may not want to do this, but you do this, and that – well, that says something about you."
"I'm not sure about that."
"There are things about the last two years of my life which I'm grateful for," Charles says. "Some things that are real and precious, even. There's Raven – I mean, we were fairly close growing up, but now I'm finding that she's my sister, but also a dear friend. And I've learned more about her just recently than I expect I would ever have known, if things were different. I live in a city I love, and share an office with my best friend, and my work is what I was born to do. But at the same time, no, this wasn't how I planned my life. And that's, well, that's okay."
He's looking up at Erik, with that familiar total lack of guile.
"Charles," Erik begins, and stops.
"You're going to talk about mutants, and how you're failing your fellow mutant," Charles goes on, suddenly merciless. "You employ mutants. You support mutant culture. You educate everyone you meet on the importance of mutant rights and identity. I think you're doing all right, Mr. Lehnsherr of New York."
"Charles," Erik says, softly, lovingly, "you talk too much."
They've reached the bakery.
*
Erik unlocks the door and switches on the lights without thinking. Charles is sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by stacked tables, looking at him. Erik looks back, then at the small internal door with the mezuzah, to Charles again and then to the sleet-slick street outside. "You don't have to…"
"I would like to stay," Charles says softly.
"I still don't have an elevator," Erik says, feeling a little unsure, a little ridiculous.
Charles reaches out and touches his arm, almost flirtatiously. "I hear you have certain talents."
"You said," Erik says, a little confusedly, "you didn't want to do this."
"I didn't want this just to happen to me," says Charles, suddenly incisive, not dreamy. "Now it's different. You let me out: now I choose to come back."
In his mind, Erik replays the simple motion of his hand, the unlocking door.
"Well," Charles says again, and then Erik feels something extraordinary, something inarticulable and dizzying, as though someone has opened a window in his mind, let in a gentle breeze.
Gentle, he thinks again, and realises it's just a touch. A touch: a request for permission.
"Yes," he says, out loud, and Charles enters quietly. Erik has noticed before that every person has a smell – he's visited friends after they've moved apartments, suffusing new spaces with parts of themselves. His mother's house in Brooklyn smelled like her house in Berlin. This is like that, a little: Charles's inimitable self, all books, dust, iron, the scent of him coming in through those metaphorical windows.
He's shaking a little as he steps back and makes the usual careful appraisal: there's loose change in Charles's pockets, and buckles on his belt and boots, but not enough. It will have to be the chair. Inside his mind Charles shifts, wary, but trusting.
Erik closes his eyes for a moment and lifts. The wheelchair leaves the ground by just a few inches, enough to clear the steps, enough to move smoothly upwards. Inside his mind, Charles thinks: this feels like flying, and his exhilaration makes Erik laugh.
"You are," he says out loud, still moving, still concentrating.
It's when they reach the top of the stairs that Erik turns and says, "You could stop me, couldn't you. You could have stopped me at any time."
Charles nods. He's choosing to speak, although he's still in Erik's mind, a quiet presence like a single reader in a library. "I could have. You could have damaged me; I could have damaged you."
There's nothing either of them can do then but breathe.
"You'll probably have to get me down again in a while," Charles says ruefully, after a moment. "I promise not to write you angry letters, but I probably can't manage here for too long."
Erik nods, understanding, and then as one they move on. The little apartment is nothing very special, but Erik likes it. Since his mother died, he's changed things around, getting rid of chintz and china ornaments and adding his own books and belongings, but keeping the essential shape of the place the way she left it. The living room is tidy and neat, a small television in one corner, a metal menorah on the window sill. Erik pauses, then goes through into his little bedroom, low and shadowed under the eaves. He turns on the lights and Charles follows him.
"Can you," Erik asks, floundering a little and patting the bed with one hand, "can you…"
"Yes," Charles says, calmly, stopping the wheelchair next to the bed. "Erik, it's all right to ask me these things. You can even say 'disability', if you feel up to it."
"I don't want to hurt you by mistake," Erik says, surprising himself with his own honesty. "I don't want to be a… a heel."
"A heel?" Charles stares at him. "Did you actually just use the word 'heel'?"
Erik glares at him." You're laughing at me."
"Yes," Charles says. "You actually just referred to yourself as a heel" – and he's giggling helplessly while moving onto the bed, still laughing as he steals Erik's pillows to prop under his knees.
"I hate you," Erik says.
"I hate you too," Charles replies, very seriously, and kisses him.
It takes time. Charles has taken some of that time already, relearning his own contours, but this is different. He takes time to pull Erik towards him, carefully, not letting either of them overbalance. Drawing back, he asks, "Do you want me to leave?"
"What?" Erik's staring at him, blankly, and then he feels something shift like a mass of water inside his head. He's forgotten, bedded down with Charles inside his mind as though he's been doing it all his life. "No."
"Good," Charles says, happily, and kisses him again, and Erik wonders what it must be like to kiss and be kissed at once, to know both sides of the story. To love and be loved, Charles thinks inside his mind. It's not that different.
Erik's looking confused. "Are there books on this?" he asks.
"Are there books on having sex with paraplegics," Charles says, and starts laughing again. "I'm sure there are, Erik, I can get some out of the public library for you."
"I meant, telepaths," Erik says indignantly, and then he throws off some of his caution and tries to pull Charles closer to him, wanting more, warmth, skin, something, more – and then he's reaching into Charles's mind without conscious intent, sliding inside as though this is where, after all, he's meant to be. What's it like? he asks desperately. What is it like to be inside my head?
"Imagine," Charles says, breathless, "that you spoke another language, that it was full of, oh" – this as Erik's hands slip under his shirt collar and start to attack the buttons – "beauty, and, and, poetry, and more than that – oh, God."
Erik's laughing to himself, pushing back Charles's sleeves, kissing him on the top of his head and on the tip of his nose, so he can keep talking.
"And more than that, you could say things you had no word for in any other language, that you could convey joy and sorrow and just, just, anything, and it was there and it was easy and oh."
"You," Erik says in his ear, "are beautiful, and what can you possibly have to say at a time like this..."
"But," Charles says, all in a hurry, "you can only speak when spoken to. In your entire lifetime, it shall always be thus."
"Very resonant," Erik murmurs, "very biblical."
"Always like this," Charles goes on, still hurried, "always a silence, because otherwise is a violation, and you do not want to be" – and he stops stock still and looks right up at Erik – "a monster."
Erik crushes him. It's a rough embrace, layers of protection and passion all mixed together, and for a moment Charles is fluently multilingual, all of Erik's thoughts crashing around him in layers, and then the two of them draw apart, looking at each other.
"Oh," Erik says after a while, as though he's just thought of it, "sex."
"We don't have to," Charles says. "I mean, we can work up to it. Or not, if you prefer. And" – now he sounds tentative, now, for the first time, he really is out of Erik's mind – "I'm not. Well. Me and sex, since the accident, is, well. something of a work in progress. You know?"
Charles is ineloquent and Erik is furious, suddenly, at a world where this is what does that. "Mind and body," he murmurs, breathing out anger, "I want you."
"Fetch me one of those," Charles whispers. On the windowsill, there are loops of solid, polished metal, piled haphazardly where Erik left them. He got them online; they're intended to be an unusual alternative for juggling. Which is what Erik does with them, in a way; manipulating them and combining them and raising them until it's all smooth, it's all control. He pulls one off the pile without even a twitch of his fingers, all thought, and lets it hang, motionless above them both.
Charles reaches for it, and pulls himself into a sitting position, and for a moment it's a test of their strength against one another, steady and balanced.
"Right," says Charles, still holding onto metal, eyes as bright as the first day Erik ever saw him, with passion, with that determination to be only himself. "Let's begin."
*
Charles discovered he was a telepath when he was five years old. He barely remembers what deep sleep is like; what it's like to wake up and not know where you are; what it's like to fall down into an all-consuming black. Other thoughts linger on the surface of his mind like the froth on the tide, and he's used to dreaming other people's dreams.
It turns out Erik dreams of him, sometimes, with the two of them living the life they do, here in New York at the start of a new century, playing chess and looking through the window at the turn of the seasons; it turns out he sleeps better with Erik next to him, curled around him like a question mark.
And when he wakes up and Erik goes home with him, the two of them in rhythm, melded mind to mind and mind to metal, it's not a formed thought between them, it's not articulated – but it's an answer.
*
To the Editor:
Dear Sir,
We are writing in connection with the Times crossword of Saturday, September 18th. Having discovered to our displeasure that the clue for three across featured the phrase "wheelchair bound" to refer to people with disabilities, we would like to complain about the hackneyed use of this unpleasant, unrealistic phrase. A wheelchair is a mobility device, like any other, and we expected better.
Furthermore, fourteen down suggests that "feared; unusual" is an appropriate clue for "mutant". Mutants and their loved ones form an integral, valuable part of any society, it is shameful that this narrow-minded stigma is being shamefully perpetuated by the paper of record.
Yours sincerely,
Moira McTaggert, Emma Frost, Raven Xavier
(The writers are a professor of genetics at NYU, a waitress and mutant activist, and a freshman at Tisch.)
*
Moira calls at ten, which in Charles's opinion is far too early for anyone to be awake on a Saturday. "Hello, sweetness," she says, happily. "Hungover and shagged out? Jolly good. I dropped my office key down the toilet, can I come round and borrow yours? Thanks, I'll be over in a bit."
"How did you" – Charles begins, and she's gone.
Sighing, he goes into the kitchen to find out what he can scavenge for breakfast. "Look what the cat dragged in," Raven comments. She's reading the newspaper at the kitchen table and looks fresh-faced and well-scrubbed. "Who even knew you had that much hair to stand on end?"
Charles runs his fingers through it, distractedly, and rolls backwards by mistake. "Coffee," he says.
"In the pot." Raven turns a page. "You got back very late last night, Charles. Are you going to tell me about it?"
"There are some things I shouldn't tell my sister about, so no," Charles says, but can't stop the smile spreading over his face, and Raven takes on an expression that's partway between satisfaction and triumph, and leans back in her chair.
"Oh, shut up," Charles murmurs, and goes to the coffee pot. "Moira will be here in a while," he says, absently, and Raven says nothing.
He's poured the coffee out, peering down into the inky depths of the mug, and he's reaching for the sugar pot when the scent triggers a memory from the night before. He turns and there's Raven, looking at him with a steady gaze, as familiar as breathing.
Slowly, she changes.
His first impression is to think, through bleariness and lack of caffeine, that he's looking at another version of himself. The man in front of him has Charles's blue eyes and his curls, and some of his bone structure, and all of his height. But there are differences: he's stockier, with a little more definition to his features.
They look like siblings, Charles thinks.
"I've been thinking recently," Raven says, and it's Raven's voice but a little stilted, as though this little speech has been practiced, "that sometimes I want to look like I feel. And I don't always feel the same."
The doorbell rings. Charles wheels across to open it, saying nothing, eyes never leaving Raven.
Moira gives Charles a quick kiss on the cheek, and then does a momentary double-take. "Who's – oh. Raven." She smiles. "You're looking very like your brother today."
Raven nods, tentatively. "Thanks."
There's a moment of tension – and then it's gone. "Charles," Moira says, waving her hands about, "first of all, you clearly had sex last night so don't even bother to deny it, and also I need to borrow your key to get a copy cut. Be a darling and get it off the chain, would you?"
"Moira," Charles says, "could you not announce these things in front of my sister? In front of one of your students?"
"No," she says calmly. "I am all for your sex life, Charles, it makes me feel better for the lack of my own. The lovely baker, I presume? You kissed and made up?"
"Yes," Charles says, indignant. "Yes, Erik!"
She giggles, and winks at Raven, who actually smiles. "Just checking."
"Moira," Charles says, gives up, and wheels over to pick the keys off the table. He can't get the office key off the ring. "Let me," Raven says, and he looks up and she's in her own familiar form, using her long manicured nails to prise the metal apart.
"Thank you," Moira says, and then she's gone again. They hear her footsteps thudding down the stairs, and the distant sound of the door slamming.
Immediately, Charles goes over to sit next to Raven, close enough for him to reach out and push some of her hair away from her face. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, gently.
"You hide, Charles," she says, and she sounds a little like she might cry. "You hide your powers away. You've never thought – I mean, you're not comfortable…"
"Oh, God," Charles says, sincerely, takes a deep breath and begins again. He has an uneasy feeling that he's woken up to something bigger than this quiet Saturday morning; that part of how the world is going to be depends on what he says now. "Raven. I do hide my powers. I do. As I'm saying to a lot of people these days" – he puts a hand on her shoulder and tries not to accidentally project thoughts of Erik – "I have my reasons for that, and I don't think they're not good ones. But they're not yours, Raven. You…" – Charles takes another deep breath – "you, you're you. You're not me. You make your own choices."
"I thought you'd freak out," she says, suddenly sounding very young and teenage.
"Sometimes I need freaking out," he tells her.
"But," she says, head down, "but, even if I started walking around naked and blue…"
Charles raises his eyebrows. "Clothed and blue, Raven. Clothed and blue."
She laughs at that, and there are tears standing out in her eyes but she's looking right at him. "But blue? What if people laugh at me?"
"I'll run over their feet," Charles promises.
He means it. Looking at his keys sitting on the table, he makes a decision. "What's the betting Moira went to the ironmongery place next to the bakery? How about we go down there, find out how she dropped a key down the toilet and I buy you breakfast?"
"That sounds nice," she says, inhales and says, "Dr. McTaggert dropped a key down the toilet?"
"It is a wonderful world we live in," Charles says, "with many wondrous things in't. Moira is just one of them."
*
The kitchen is quiet and empty, with none of its usual warmth. The ovens are switched off. Erik is sitting on the edge of a table, doing nothing in particular. "Hi," Charles says, appearing without warning at the door. He wheels across and kisses Erik. "Good morning."
Erik looks at him. "That's it? Good morning?"
"It is a good morning," Charles says. "Moira apparently had an exciting Friday night, I got laid and it turns out Raven is one of the bravest people I've ever known. And here you are."
Erik abruptly realises that the reason Charles looks so happy – so bonelessly, helpless-grin happy – is because of him. "Oh," he says. "It is a good morning, isn't it. A very good morning. A wonderful morning, in fact."
"I knew you'd see it my way," Charles says, and kisses him again. They go back out into the main space of the bakery, and find Moira, Raven and Emma engaged in the Times crossword, eating vegan cupcakes and getting crumbs everywhere.
"Emma, they're customers, you could actually serve them," Erik complains, and she looks up and beams at him.
"They wanted cupcakes, I gave them cupcakes. Shut up, Erik. Go kiss your boyfriend."
"Leave her alone, it's the weekend," Charles says, easily. He's setting up the chess pieces as he speaks, wheeling around the table with more movement than is quite necessary. Erik recognises the energy in him as familiar: something that comes from the bracing quality of the winter air, the sunlight that makes everything looks polished.
"We could go to the park, the open-air tables," Erik says, suddenly. "I'm not supposed to be working today. Turns out I'm Jewish."
Charles laughs. "I'd heard rumours to that effect. Pick up the pieces for me?"
Erik does, raising them into a suspended constellation, and letting them fall in a cascade into the box. The sound is like a glockenspiel.
Washington Square Park, Charles thinks, and Erik jumps.
"Sorry," Charles says, quickly. "Sorry, I was relaxed – sorry. I really didn't mean to do that."
"No," Erik breathes, very quietly, and thinks, clearly: it's cold, but we could sit in the sun. We could play chess. We could do… what Emma said.
Charles laughs, gently. "Yes," he says, and rolls in the direction of the door.
"Don't mind us," Emma says, waving a hand, over the sound of Moira and Raven having a quiet disagreement about fourteen across. "We'll run your bakery."
"You'll do it magnificently, I'm sure," Erik says, with a bow, and waves at them through the window.
"Your bakery," Charles murmurs, and it sounds like there are many things he's not saying, and thoughts he's keeping to himself. Erik loves him.
He stops for a moment, describing a circle on the sidewalk, breathing, breathing. Raven has stood up to wave back at them through the glass, and it seems to Erik that she's taller.
"Raven," he says to Charles, looking back at her. "Is she one of us?"
"Queer?" Charles says blandly. "Ask her yourself."
Erik, surprising himself, chuckles. "Don't you ever give up?"
"No," Charles says serenely, "no, I don't." A little unsure, he adds: "Do you want me to?"
No, Erik thinks, remembering what it felt like to lift Charles, imagining living through days and weeks and years with that balancing weight. Never, never.
"Well, good," Charles says, and they go on together, across the frosted sidewalks, through the sparkling world.
end.
notes & acknowledgements
I never do this! But so many people were involved in writing this story that I feel it's necessary.
-first and foremost,happydork betaed this, and her notes were very helpful and good for the soul. She also said, thoughtfully, "Shouldn't it be a kosher bakery?" so it's all her fault anyway;
-marina and roga took me to lunch and told me their Thoughts On Charles/Erik in a cute cafe in Tel Aviv;
-gavagai showed me the movies in the first place (and tweeted everything I said when watching them, I should add - I maintain my twenty-minutes-in first reaction was correct, and the whole thing really is a tragic love affair gone sour about the two old guys), and forthwritten was an endless source of support and verbal abuse. Thank you also to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chains_of_irony, wildestranger, macadamanaity and everyone else who thought this was a good idea.
-thank you,opportunemoment for letting me borrow your rad-fem spoken poetry line;
-my apologies to the lovely people of New York, for repaying your endless kindnesses to me by massacring your city's geography;
-and finally, the real Lashings of Ginger Beer Time may be found at lashings.org. They're in ur kyriarchy, queering it the fuck up. Thank you all.
by Raven
17,500w, X-Men: First Class, modern AU, Charles/Erik, Raven, Moira, Emma.
continued from part one
To the NYU Department of Facilities and Management [by email]:
Susan,
Could you please find whichever blithering idiot left thirteen pots of paint in a tasteful shade of institutional magnolia OUTSIDE MY OFFICE DOOR and set them on fire, please?
All best,
CX
After those evenings on which Charles doesn't appear, he drops in on his way to work in the morning. For all it's only been days, weeks, there's a celestial regularity to the pattern. Erik thinks the bakery is at its best at that hour, scrubbed clean and full of things rising, baking, cooling and sweetening. Charles buys his breakfast, gets crumbs on his fingers and sometimes Erik kisses him. He always tastes of whatever he chose, always warm sugar with a hint of yeast.
Each day, as Charles goes out, the blast of air that slips through the closing is colder.
"So, it's going well, is it?" Emma asks, wickedly, when she wanders into the kitchen to find Erik whistling.
Erik glares at her. "I have no idea what you're talking about." It's a few minutes before opening time, and the bakery smells richly of bread. Outside, the sun is filtering through the frost on the edges of leaves, the last traces of sunrise leaving the sky a pure, austere blue.
Erik opens the front door, flipping the sign over to "open", and steps back for Az to stagger out, weighed down by bread orders and cookie gift baskets. "Have a nice day, Mr. Lehnsherr!" he chirps. Despite two years working for Erik, he's incurably polite. In the clear space in front of the shop, he teleports away, leaving red sparks in Erik's vision.
Emma chuckles from behind him. "Be like that if you like," she says. "You can't lie to me."
"You're reading my mind?" Erik asks, raising his eyebrows at her. She never has before. He supposes he wouldn't know, really, but he trusts her.
"Not on purpose," she says, sweetly. "If you will radiate these enormous waves of peace and contentment…"
Erik scowls. She only chuckles again, drifting into the kitchen to check on the ovens.
Today's first task is to disassemble the chairs. Since removing them from the sidewalk outside the bakery, Erik has been planning to take out the screws and store them flat. Another project, half-formed in his mind, is adjusting some of the furniture inside the bakery for those mutants who would find something other than chairs comfortable to sit on – his mind is on Hank, who comes in sometimes and gets his fur stuck in the cracks of things. Emma's suggested they get in a barstool for his use, which Erik hasn't got around to yet.
Emma watches him working, the screws spinning wildly, flying up in the air, and laying themselves on a nearby table with surgical precision. "That's a useful gift," she says, approvingly.
"You've seen it lots of times before," Erik tells her, brusque because he's concentrating, controlling the lines of magnetic force from his hands. It's not quite a magnetic power, he supposes, as it works on non-ferrous metals, but it's a useful way to think.
"Even so." Emma smiles. "While you're at it, maybe you could do something about that old dresser you're always complaining about? With the screws out maybe we can persuade the garbage men to take it away."
"There are a few things in it," Erik says after a moment, knowing for a fact there are metal buttons, old metal cutlery and a pincushion full of pins inside. "Empty it out, see if there's anything we'd need, and then I'll take it apart."
"Sure." Emma goes off to do it, and Erik goes on removing screws, thinking of nothing very much in particular, soothed by the hypnotic rhythm of the work, the metal curving through his consciousness. He's still there a few minutes later, with all the chairs neatly flattened, but he's feeling no compulsion to move, just standing with the morning sunlight warm on his face.
"Erik." Emma's grinning, and there's a wickedness in her thoughts that Erik is fairly sure she's broadcasting on purpose. "Erik, you'll like this."
It's a sheet of newspaper. After a second Erik realises that it's come out of the old dresser – he dimly remembers putting newspaper in it to line the drawers, soon after they outgrew the old premises and moved kit and caboodle to 14th Street.
"What?" he asks, and moves to snatch it; she hangs on to it and clucks.
"Manners, Erik." She laughs. "Here, it's the society page. Top right."
Erik takes the paper, faded and dusty, and holds it up to the light. Most of it is taken up by a photograph. The colours have muted with age, the blurring ink is crossing the clear lines, but the two figures are clearly recognisable as Charles and Raven. He's standing against a blue sky, half-lifting her up, and they're looking at each other and laughing, seemingly unaware of the camera. They're beautiful.
Charles Xavier, says the caption, seen here with sister Raven, has recently returned from England. Enigmatic scion of the Xavier family, his mutant status has been a surprise to some…
Erik puts down the paper, very deliberately, and looks up at Emma, wandering around the bakery wiping tables with her head lifted up as though she's listening to a song only she can hear. Charles reminds him of someone. He knows who it is, now.
"You're a telepath."
Erik wanted to lead up to it. But Charles wheels in to the bakery the following evening, eyes bright and cheeks pink from the cold, and the way he moves, the expressive cast of his face is so obvious, suddenly, so like Emma and so much just Charles himself, all that curiosity and insouciance making such sense, that Erik wonders how he could not have known and gone on not knowing.
"Yes." Charles is fumbling for his wallet. "No time for chess tonight, I'm afraid, Raven has friends coming over and I'm here for baked goods. And to see you. But mostly for baked goods. Raven was very persuasive."
"Charles," Erik says, slowly, carefully, "you're a telepath. Were you going to tell me?"
"Didn't I?" Charles looks directly at him, a thoughtful expression passing briefly across his face. "I suppose I didn't. Well, then. Yes, I am a telepath. A few other things, too, there are certain nuances, but that's it for the most part."
"Charles," Erik says, and then doesn't say anything more for a long moment. "Were you planning to tell me about this?"
"I'm sure I would have done." Charles rolls back a little. "Erik, is this important?"
"Yes." Erik looks up and sees that there are forks sitting behind the counter, bending. He takes a deep breath, returns them to their former shape and looks at Charles. "Yes, it is important."
"All right, it is important." Charles doesn't sound convinced. "Did Raven tell you, then? Or Emma?"
Erik privately wonders why Emma didn't tell him, and for a crazed moment, if this is a conspiracy. Mutely, he picks up the old newspaper piece and hands it over.
Charles reads it, a slow smile spreading across his face. "I remember this," he says, quietly. "I was an undergrad. I came home for the Christmas vac, my first year. My parents were in the city at the same time that I was – Raven was furious, she'd wanted me to take her off somewhere, and I had no objection, but of course we had to stay and play high-society happy families. I remember the photographer, my mother wasn't pleased about it, but I never saw the picture."
"How hard your life has been," Erik says, voice dripping with sarcasm, and Charles puts the paper down and looks intently up at him.
"I didn't come to be sniped at," he says, crisply. "I came for some macaroons. I'm sorry if it upsets you that I'm a telepath, I'm sorry if my family background offends you, and if you'll give me the macaroons I will no longer contaminate your bakery with my presence."
"If it upsets me – it doesn't upset me that you're a telepath, Charles!" Erik snaps at him. He's nearly yelling, and angry with himself for it. "It's not that! It's that you came here, you let me – you let us… get closer, without telling me…"
Charles inclines his head. "So, you wanted veto power? So it would be all right if I had said, by the way, Erik, here's a piece of information about who I am, feel free to reject me on that basis?"
Erik feels an inarticulable frustration rising beneath the anger. "Charles, I did not say that!"
"What frightens you about me?" Charles asks, suddenly mild. "What's in your head that you don't want me to see?"
He doesn't wait for an answer, but turns himself around with precision and goes out, letting a burst of chilled air into the bakery in his wake.
Unlike most of the faculty, Moira tends to come back from teaching classes in a good mood. She dances into the office, her skirt fluttering up in a joyful ruffle. "Messenger RNA!" she says, delightedly. "Bless them all, the darlings, they understood it!"
Charles sighs. "Have they got rid of the paint?"
Moira looks down the corridor. "There's a cowed-looking individual wheeling away several white pots. Is that what you mean?"
"Yes. Good," Charles says, and goes back to trying to make sense of the graphs in the journal article sitting on his desk. Pigeons coo at the window; despite the fact this is a ground-floor office, the local birdlife seems to find their window ledge very attractive.
"Uh-oh," Moira says, without missing a beat. "What is it?"
"Mmm?" Charles flips the article over, wondering if it will make more sense with the axes the other way up. "What do you mean?"
Moira lands in her chair with a dramatic flump. "You're looking unhappy."
"I'm working." This morning he has organised his desk drawers, read all the administrative paperwork he's been meaning to get to in the two years he's been sharing this office with Moira, and made a significant start on a whole new filing system.
"Really?" She's sounding dubious, still twirling as she turns on her computer and it whirs disconsolately into life. "What have you learned about life on this planet this morning, then?"
"I've read our documents setting out the procedure in case of fire," Charles says. "I've discovered that there is absolutely no mention made of people with disabilities in case of an alarm."
"Really?" Moira darts across and picks the document off his desk. "Would that be because you're reading the 1989 edition, by any chance? I can print you off the current one if you really want to read all several hundred pages of it, or you can tell me what's bothering you."
"Nothing's bothering me," Charles tells her.
"Right, that's why you're reading the manual on health and safety rather than doing your work, which you love, or bitching about freshman comp, which let's face it, you also love."
Charles sighs. "Leave me alone, please."
"You're giving me a headache, Charles!" Moira says. "I mean, literally, you're broadcasting. And as I must needs share my office with a telepath…"
"Moira." Charles looks up, cutting her off very gently. "Do you mind that? That I'm a telepath?"
"Of course not." Moira seems genuinely surprised. "Of course not, sweetheart. It's you, it's who you are – wait. You're pissed off because Erik just found out you're a telepath and he can't deal with it?"
Charles blinks, and doesn't bother prevaricating. "Sure you're not one, too?"
"Don't try and distract me!" Moira slams her files down on her desk. "If that's it, then he's a prejudiced shit and you don't need him, and you should ditch him right now and come drinking with me tonight."
"That's not it," Charles says, thoughtfully, then takes a deep breath, then another, then another. The tension headache that was building starts to abate, and he smiles apologetically as Moira visibly relaxes, too. "That's not it. Erik is a mutant himself – his gifts centre on metal, as far as I know. Can work it, manipulate it, that sort of thing. I've known others."
"As far as you know?" Moira looks at him intently. "Charles, sweetheart. What exactly did he say to you?"
Charles thinks about that. "He said… he said I should have told him about it. I should have told him about it, before we got closer."
"Closer." Moira grins, wickedly, then turns abruptly serious. "And what did you say?"
"I'm afraid I asked him what he was hiding, and swept out." Charles does, honestly, feel guilty about that.
"Hmmm."
'Hmmm?" Charles leans back in the chair, feeling suddenly combative. He's been deliberately numbing his mind all morning, and the suppressed energy is rising back up.
Moira's looking contemplative. "Didn't you tell me once that Erik runs a mutant-centred business?"
"Well, I don't know if I'd put it like that." Charles thinks about it. "Actually, maybe I would. He prefers to employ mutants; he thinks they should build mutant-centered communities. I think he's probably on the other side of the mutant education debate from me."
"Right." Moira nods. "So you know that Erik is deeply invested in mutanthood, both his own and others'. From what he says it's clear he has definite ideas about mutant history, community, culture. Being a mutant is important to him. You know all of this, and yet you don't tell him you're a mutant."
"Because it's not important to me!" Charles snaps back, stung. "It's not! Does it have to be?"
"Well, no." Moira smiles at him. "But I think it would have been important to him to know."
"People look at me differently," Charles says, suddenly. "It's not like bending metal or teleportation or being able to look like whatever you want. People find out you're a telepath, then they look at you as though… as though you're dangerous. Don't try to tell me you didn't, when you first met me."
"When I first met you I was twenty-two and drunk," Moira says. "And when I sobered up, I don't deny I was worried. You've got a lot of power, Charles, and that is scary. But I got over it. I got over it and I love you and you shouldn't be having this conversation with me."
Charles sinks back, suddenly realising she's right.
"Hello," Charles says, wheeling into the bakery just before closing.
Erik's there, which Charles is grateful for; he doesn't know if he could have persuaded Emma to fetch him if he weren't. But his expression stills as he looks at Charles, and a tension rises in his limbs. "Can I help you?"
"Yes," Charles says, quietly. "We can sit, and we can talk."
Erik frowns at him. "Do we have anything to talk about?"
"I'd say so." Charles tips his head back and looks up. "I can stay here, until you talk to me. Forever, if necessary. I'll just sit here and pretend I'm invisible. Or a piece of furniture."
"You couldn't pretend to be invisible if you tried," Erik says, caustically. "You talk too much."
And then of course he is, despite his very best efforts, talking to Charles Xavier, so he pushes the front door closed and goes and sits down in the chair closest to him. They are both still for a moment, looking at each other. Charles is making an effort to keep his mind locked down. It's like talking through gritted teeth in that it can be done.
"First of all, I want to apologise." Charles is clear about this, at least. "I said one thing to you the other day that was unforgivable. The rest I'm here to argue about."
"This is a very idiosyncratic apology, Charles." For a moment Erik remembers what Emma said about sexual attraction, the elephant in the tutu. He's softening because of Charles's voice, the way he looks up, open and guileless – but perhaps it's more than that. Erik responds to Charles like metal, like a lodestar. It's an unnamed feeling. It's rising.
Charles smiles, ruefully. "I'm sorry for what I said, Erik. I really am."
"You asked me what I was hiding." The moment has a winter-sharp clarity in Erik's mind. "And you were hiding from me, all this time."
Charles nods. "I admit that. I want to say, also, that I never lied to you, and I never would have read your mind without your permission. And that it was my right to hide my ability."
Erik shakes his head. Perhaps with another person, this might become another shouting match, but there's something about the way Charles is holding out, not an olive branch but a metaphorical cap, asking for something. "It might be your right," he says. "But you've a right to sit outside my bakery and be an anti-Semite as loud as you can, too. It doesn't make it right."
Charles nods. "I accept that. And yet."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Erik takes a deep breath, tries again. "Why don't you tell people?"
Charles puts his hands on his face, takes them away, sighs. "For a great many reasons. But it's true, what I said the other day. It's not important. There's much more to me than my abilities. And my disabilities. I'm many things, Erik. I'm a human being."
"Some would contest that." Erik's voice is carefully neutral, and Charles sighs again.
"I have never liked the word 'mutant'," he says. "It always seemed too B-movie for my liking. As though I advance on people, dripping green slime."
Erik can't help but smile at that. "But, human being…"
"I am," Charles says, firmly. "It's not that easy, Erik! It's not, first there's us and then there's them. There's me. I'm the child of a human. If I'd ever had an unguarded moment and agreed to be Moira's sperm donor" – Erik raises his eyebrows – "the children we'd have would be viable. And you're about to call me a reductionist biologist…"
Erik blinks, not about to do any such thing. "Charles…"
"But it's not us and them," Charles goes on, waving his hands. "We are their brothers and fathers and sons and friends. We are who they are; they are us."
Erik has seen Charles like this before, hair falling into his eyes, all mess and eloquence. Getting slowly to his feet, he takes the keys from his pocket and locks the door. "I think you know I live above the shop," he says, carefully. "Perhaps we could continue this conversation elsewhere? Emma and Az are done for the day, I'll let them go a little early."
Charles stares at him, his expression unreadable. "I think you know that I have a longstanding habit of writing to establishments and public bodies who annoy me. I haven't yet written to a private residence."
"If that's your way of asking do I happen to have an elevator, the answer is no. But" – and now Erik's in a hurry, words falling out on top of one another so he says them, so at least he's said them – "I can lift you. There's metal in your chair." And in the ring on your finger, he doesn’t say; in the buckles on your boots, in your blood.
Charles looks at him. "I think I'll see myself out," he says, very quietly, and turns to go to the door. He can't open it.
It's a moment, hanging. With greater clarity than he's had about anything, Erik knows that what happens now will be what happens ever after.
The door unlocks.
Charles pauses before he goes out, gives Erik a sweet half-smile. And then he's gone, and Erik sits down hard on a wooden chair and is conscious only of breathing, breathing, and the shape and pressures of metal.
To the staff and patrons of Le Petit Mort:
Dear all,
I recently had reason to visit your establishment for an evening event, and was pleasantly surprised by the ease of accessibility for wheelchair users. I am writing to thank you […]
Charles Xavier
A day later Charles is wheeling into the bakery with a chessboard balanced on his knees, blowing steam and rubbing together hands in fingerless gloves. "I brought metal pieces," he says, and Erik hears, not an apology, but a conciliation.
"If I play chess with you," he says, carefully, "will you come out with me tonight?"
"Out?" Charles's expression turns wicked, the meanings of the word tangling together into a salacious jumble. "Somewhere accessible, I trust?"
"Believe me, it will be," Emma says, in passing, and both Charles and Erik watch her go, wondering.
They play two games of chess that afternoon, the first slow and controlled and the second with more recklessness in it, more gambles and lucky chances. Erik wins both games. He understands that again, Charles is trying to tell him something. There's snow coming, sleet hitting the window, casting shadows of the season to come.
"Sorry about this," Erik says, as he stands up, stretching to get rid of the knots from his back, and switching off the lights. "Emma insisted I go, and I really could use the company."
By nightfall, they're heading out of the bakery, with Erik carefully locking up behind them. They both look at the door as he does it, and the moment lasts longer, perhaps, than it ought, but neither of them says anything until they've hit the next block over, stopping so Charles can call Raven.
"I get her voicemail," he complains. "I'd leave her a message saying I'll be late home, but she never checks them." He shrugs. "I guess if she needs me she'll call me."
The bar is impossible to miss, the name set out above the door in neon-pink calligraphy. Erik knows it chiefly as a gay bar with psychedelic cocktails; tonight, though, there are more women than he ever remembers seeing there, and a greater range in age. Charles is looking around, trying to remember the last time he was in a cocktail bar, which is a long time ago, and without Moira, which is longer still.
"Hey, guys," says the woman at the door. "Welcome to Flashes and Ginger Beer, sorry about the wait. My colleague had to go deal with a costume emergency backstage. Tickets are five bucks – wait, you're Erik Lehnsherr, aren't you? "
Erik nods. "I was told..."
The woman nods her head briskly. "Yes, yes, you put up the posters and the flyers, you get comps. Are you mutants? Don't worry, you don't have to answer, it's just for our audience statistics."
"Yes," Erik says, firmly; after a moment, Charles nods.
"And what's your name?" she asks Charles. "We need to write down all the names of the people we give free tickets to."
"Charles Xavier," Charles says, amused.
The woman writes this down. "Xavier? With an X? That must be pretty cool, having X as your initial."
"Hardly," Charles says, dryly. "I'm a London railway station, my sister's a prescription."
"Your sister?" the woman is saying, looking curious, but then someone else comes bustling up, and Erik's momentarily surprised and then not surprised at all: it's Emma.
"Hi, guys," she says, very cheerfully. "Glad you're talking to each other again. Get in there."
They make their way in slowly, and Charles is pleased by how easy it is for him to get around. He isn't crowded, and doesn't have to get people to move out of the way. The bar is placed to one side, covered in glasses of what must be tonic water, quinine glowing under UV light, and at the front there's a tiny stage, lit from behind with warm pink and orange light. They get to the front with no trouble, find a place where Charles can see clearly, and Erik's had time to get them both drinks, beer for himself and hard cider for Charles, when suddenly everyone starts to get quiet.
Angel stands up on the tiny stage and taps a spoon on a wineglass. The lights are already dim, and her wings shine translucent pink. She rises, levitating a few inches from the ground, and there are cheers and whoops from the audience. "Ladies, gentlemen and others," she says, "Homo sapiens and the children of the atom…"
"Interbreeding makes us the same species," Charles whispers for Erik's ears, but he's grinning.
"…welcome to the show."
She flutters up to the ceiling and the music starts. Erik puts a hand on Charles's shoulder and is surprised to feel Charles reach up and cover it with his own. The noise level has fallen to a low buzz; the air smells of smoke and expectation.
It's mutant performance art, Erik thinks, a little dazedly. At first, there are no people on the stage, and then there are flowers, growing up out of nothingness, rich red roses, tulips, poppies and carnations, growing out of the boards and around the sides of the stage, from the ceiling, from the cracks, and as the noise level rises they flash-freeze, turn into frosted sculptures. Charles reaches out and plucks one of them. It crackles into powder into his hands.
Suddenly, rain, a brief crackle and smash of localised thunder, and the flowers run richly with water, disappear, and the three mutants come on stage, all women, all laughing, and bow deeply to applause.
Erik still feels dazed, as though he were present at the birth of something. "This is pretty cool, isn't it?" says the woman next to him, with pink hair and a wicked expression. "No spoken-word poetry at mutant events, thank God. I mean, it's not all bad, but I wouldn't be the third radical feminist poet on in a row for all the honey on Lesbos."
Erik laughs. On the stage a woman with dark brown skin and black hair piled thickly on top of her head is walking around the stage, touching each pillar and post and leaving light behind, small glowing globes, some soft yellow and others too brilliant to look at. "My name is Deepali," she says, as she moves. "Some of the more educated among you may know what that means." Low laughter from the edges of the audience. "But even those of you who don't might appreciate this."
She claps her hands. The globes of light fly back to her, becoming a glorious tiny sun, and she claps her hands again and each one flies to each individual audience member. Erik finds himself holding light. It doesn't burn; it's gentle like body heat.
Charles says, very quietly, "Fiat lux." He sounds entirely sincere, and a little transported. The light takes a long time to fade: through several other acts, it flickers gently, gently, until finally each globe is a single firefly spark winding down to dark.
At the interval, Angel announces that there will be a break for fifteen minutes, and flutters down to sit on the edge of the stage. "Enjoying yourselves?"
"Yes" – and Charles's smile is, as usual, dazzling.
Erik says, "I still don't know what any of the words mean."
"Queering the mutant aesthetic?" Angel grins. "Well, let me explain it to you."
Charles's expression is so readable that Erik has to check he didn't actually broadcast the thought. You walked right into that one.
"We don't all look the same," Angel says, simply. "We are not all the same. I mean, we are all mutants together…"
"Yes," Erik interrupts. "Yes, we are."
"But not always first and sometimes last and not all in the same ways. Me, I found out I could fly the day of my quinceañera. It was a good day. There's a girl over there, Lily, she can fly, but she found out in prep school when they pushed her out a tree."
Charles says, "I am a mutant. I am also an academic, a geneticist, a chess player, a brother, a son." His eyes are on Erik as he says, "And other things, to others. I'm English, I'm American, I talk too much."
"Yes, you do," Erik says, meaning to sound sardonic. He looks down at Charles and feels an inarticulable fondness. "But here we are, all together, in the same space, because we are mutants."
"Yes." Charles looks back up at him and smiles.
"Time to go," Angel says, and blows a kiss at Erik as she takes off backstage.
The final act of the evening is an abbreviated cabaret. "Our singer is nervous," Angel explains. "It's their very first time on stage in front of people, so there'll just be a couple of songs. But we know you'll be kind. You will be, won't you, lovely audience?"
The audience cheers, calling out affectionate encouragement. Then someone comes on stage and Charles's first impression is of a joyously perfect androgyny, their eyes bright and hair tied up, their body with mere suggestions of curves. Charles is reminded of a production of Cabaret he saw once at Oxford, done with enthusiasm and some sort of authenticity in a college bar, with the emcee draped over the tables with this same mixture of cool austerity and ambiguous sexuality.
The singer twirls a top hat and sings, slowly, "Never know how much I love you…"
There's a long awkward pause. Someone at the back of the audience cheers. The singer takes a step forwards and goes on: "Never know how much I care…"
There's more cheering. The singer takes a visible deep breath and sings the next line louder, with clear, rounded notes, and then the audience falls quiet as the song builds against the smoky silence in the bar, rough-edged, but with the seeds of something special. Charles is laughing a little, from pleasure and not mirth, as the singer reaches the end of the song, purrs, "What a lovely way to burn" – and throws off the top hat.
It lands, as if perfectly aimed, in Charles's lap. The singer reaches down to get it, and then they're inches apart, momentarily, close enough for him to breathe in and feel the touch of familiar thoughts, filling his mind with a scent like vanilla, and like lemon.
Charles looks up, says nothing, and smiles.
At the very end, it's dark. The performers have vanished backstage, the lights behind the stage are dimming, the mass of audience is splitting back up into individuals, milling towards the door, towards the bar. Charles reaches out and pulls Erik down, a little insistently, and kisses him, a small, chaste kiss becoming deeper and softer. Erik breaks away and glances around, as though he's worried they're being watched, as though he's worried Charles is doing this for effect, but people are heading out into the night, they're alone in a crowd. Erik kisses Charles and has such a powerful wish, suddenly, a wish for a flat surface, a bed with clean white sheets and a high thread count, that Charles rolls back slightly and laughs.
"You said," Erik begins, whispering, plaintive. "You said you can't hear thoughts, unless you try…"
"Sometimes you shout," Charles says, apologetically, and takes his hand and squeezes it tight.
It's a clear, cold night, only the brightest of stars visible in the city sky. Charles is pushing himself forwards with a dreamy intensity, and Erik feels that same quality of being only half there, part of his consciousness still alight with colour and sound.
"Thank you," Charles says, apropos of nothing, and Erik is brought back to himself.
"For what?"
"For bringing me," Charles says, still dreamy. "I would never have… I'd never – well, I enjoyed myself."
"So did I," Erik says, honestly. He should thank Emma, he thinks, and Angel. They go on through the quiet night. Erik's dimly aware of the low hum of traffic, a man at a bus stop humming "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". Somewhere far above an aircraft is heading out towards the ocean, deep and dense structures of metal under carefully calculated strain.
Somehow, it's the right moment to ask the question. "What do you mean, sometimes I shout?"
"Sometimes you shout," Charles repeats. He's moving slowly; he's tired. "I try not to read other people's minds without their permission. Sometimes I do, though, because the other person is so – well, passionate, I suppose. They have such depth of feeling, it's as though they were shouting in an empty room. I couldn't close my ears against them even if I tried."
"Depth of feeling," Erik repeats, a little startled.
"Sorry," Charles says, amusedly. "Sorry, but it is true. Sometimes I can't block my mind against you. I do try."
"Chess," Erik says, suddenly. "You… you play chess against me. And you lose."
Charles merely smiles at him, eyes bright in the low light. "Yes. And sometimes I win. Although the pieces are metal, sometimes I win."
Erik stops walking for a moment, and Charles lifts his hands and lets only his momentum carry him on, and there's an understanding between them in that small pause, that break in the continuity of their motion. For a second Erik thinks about them as stars revolving around one another at a great distance, bound across distance by another's centre of gravity.
"You were right," he says, the words drawn out of him by some inexplicable force. Although, he thinks, looking at Charles, perhaps not so inexplicable; perhaps this is just the force Charles has exerted on him all along, the pull towards truth, and if not that, at least honesty. "You were right, in what you said the other day."
"What?" Charles asks.
"You asked me what I was hiding. What was I afraid of you finding out."
"That was an inexcusable thing to say," Charles says, quietly.
"And yet." Erik takes a deep breath. "The bakery. E. Lehnsherr's Kosher Bakery."
"And De Facto Mutant Sanctuary, Emma calls it," Charles adds, and Erik smiles at that.
"The E doesn't stand for Erik," he says, while he has the force to keep on talking. "Edie, my mother. She started the bakery from scratch, after my father died. She charmed the bank into giving her a loan, baked them pastries to sweeten them. It was her project, her baby. And then she died."
"How did she die?" Charles asks, gently.
"A road accident," Erik says, with some bitterness. "After years of hard work, after making it through such hard times, when things were finally going so well – an accident. Senseless."
Charles says nothing, but there's a mute sympathy in his mind, a softness. Erik takes a moment to realise it's a deliberate sharing.
"So," he goes on, as briskly as he can, "I took over the business. It's what she would have wanted. I employed as many mutants as I could, I thought up new items for the menu occasionally, but for the most part it's still the way she ran it. "
Charles nods. "All right. But why would you want to hide that?"
"It's not what I wanted." Erik holds up his hands in some sort of defence. "I never wanted this. I'm a trained engineer. I attended NYU, in fact. And I had… ideas. Ideas about mutants like me, what we can do, what we become. And now Angel tells me that Edward Bell is running for Congress for this district and it's something – well, perhaps I wanted to do that."
"Edward Bell," Charles says, thoughtfully. "Without the support of the party he's unlikely to get very far, but it's good that he's trying. See, I do pay attention to the world around me occasionally."
"Charles," Erik says. "I'm not even religious. Of course, I was raised Jewish, but there's a difference between that and running a kosher bakery. Whoever heard of a kosher bakery that opens Saturdays?"
"But you don't work on them," Charles notes, remembering the first time he met Emma.
"Because…" Erik holds up his hands again, not able to say it.
"Because that's what your mother would have liked." Charles nods. "Erik, I don't think… well, okay. You may not want to do this, but you do this, and that – well, that says something about you."
"I'm not sure about that."
"There are things about the last two years of my life which I'm grateful for," Charles says. "Some things that are real and precious, even. There's Raven – I mean, we were fairly close growing up, but now I'm finding that she's my sister, but also a dear friend. And I've learned more about her just recently than I expect I would ever have known, if things were different. I live in a city I love, and share an office with my best friend, and my work is what I was born to do. But at the same time, no, this wasn't how I planned my life. And that's, well, that's okay."
He's looking up at Erik, with that familiar total lack of guile.
"Charles," Erik begins, and stops.
"You're going to talk about mutants, and how you're failing your fellow mutant," Charles goes on, suddenly merciless. "You employ mutants. You support mutant culture. You educate everyone you meet on the importance of mutant rights and identity. I think you're doing all right, Mr. Lehnsherr of New York."
"Charles," Erik says, softly, lovingly, "you talk too much."
They've reached the bakery.
Erik unlocks the door and switches on the lights without thinking. Charles is sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by stacked tables, looking at him. Erik looks back, then at the small internal door with the mezuzah, to Charles again and then to the sleet-slick street outside. "You don't have to…"
"I would like to stay," Charles says softly.
"I still don't have an elevator," Erik says, feeling a little unsure, a little ridiculous.
Charles reaches out and touches his arm, almost flirtatiously. "I hear you have certain talents."
"You said," Erik says, a little confusedly, "you didn't want to do this."
"I didn't want this just to happen to me," says Charles, suddenly incisive, not dreamy. "Now it's different. You let me out: now I choose to come back."
In his mind, Erik replays the simple motion of his hand, the unlocking door.
"Well," Charles says again, and then Erik feels something extraordinary, something inarticulable and dizzying, as though someone has opened a window in his mind, let in a gentle breeze.
Gentle, he thinks again, and realises it's just a touch. A touch: a request for permission.
"Yes," he says, out loud, and Charles enters quietly. Erik has noticed before that every person has a smell – he's visited friends after they've moved apartments, suffusing new spaces with parts of themselves. His mother's house in Brooklyn smelled like her house in Berlin. This is like that, a little: Charles's inimitable self, all books, dust, iron, the scent of him coming in through those metaphorical windows.
He's shaking a little as he steps back and makes the usual careful appraisal: there's loose change in Charles's pockets, and buckles on his belt and boots, but not enough. It will have to be the chair. Inside his mind Charles shifts, wary, but trusting.
Erik closes his eyes for a moment and lifts. The wheelchair leaves the ground by just a few inches, enough to clear the steps, enough to move smoothly upwards. Inside his mind, Charles thinks: this feels like flying, and his exhilaration makes Erik laugh.
"You are," he says out loud, still moving, still concentrating.
It's when they reach the top of the stairs that Erik turns and says, "You could stop me, couldn't you. You could have stopped me at any time."
Charles nods. He's choosing to speak, although he's still in Erik's mind, a quiet presence like a single reader in a library. "I could have. You could have damaged me; I could have damaged you."
There's nothing either of them can do then but breathe.
"You'll probably have to get me down again in a while," Charles says ruefully, after a moment. "I promise not to write you angry letters, but I probably can't manage here for too long."
Erik nods, understanding, and then as one they move on. The little apartment is nothing very special, but Erik likes it. Since his mother died, he's changed things around, getting rid of chintz and china ornaments and adding his own books and belongings, but keeping the essential shape of the place the way she left it. The living room is tidy and neat, a small television in one corner, a metal menorah on the window sill. Erik pauses, then goes through into his little bedroom, low and shadowed under the eaves. He turns on the lights and Charles follows him.
"Can you," Erik asks, floundering a little and patting the bed with one hand, "can you…"
"Yes," Charles says, calmly, stopping the wheelchair next to the bed. "Erik, it's all right to ask me these things. You can even say 'disability', if you feel up to it."
"I don't want to hurt you by mistake," Erik says, surprising himself with his own honesty. "I don't want to be a… a heel."
"A heel?" Charles stares at him. "Did you actually just use the word 'heel'?"
Erik glares at him." You're laughing at me."
"Yes," Charles says. "You actually just referred to yourself as a heel" – and he's giggling helplessly while moving onto the bed, still laughing as he steals Erik's pillows to prop under his knees.
"I hate you," Erik says.
"I hate you too," Charles replies, very seriously, and kisses him.
It takes time. Charles has taken some of that time already, relearning his own contours, but this is different. He takes time to pull Erik towards him, carefully, not letting either of them overbalance. Drawing back, he asks, "Do you want me to leave?"
"What?" Erik's staring at him, blankly, and then he feels something shift like a mass of water inside his head. He's forgotten, bedded down with Charles inside his mind as though he's been doing it all his life. "No."
"Good," Charles says, happily, and kisses him again, and Erik wonders what it must be like to kiss and be kissed at once, to know both sides of the story. To love and be loved, Charles thinks inside his mind. It's not that different.
Erik's looking confused. "Are there books on this?" he asks.
"Are there books on having sex with paraplegics," Charles says, and starts laughing again. "I'm sure there are, Erik, I can get some out of the public library for you."
"I meant, telepaths," Erik says indignantly, and then he throws off some of his caution and tries to pull Charles closer to him, wanting more, warmth, skin, something, more – and then he's reaching into Charles's mind without conscious intent, sliding inside as though this is where, after all, he's meant to be. What's it like? he asks desperately. What is it like to be inside my head?
"Imagine," Charles says, breathless, "that you spoke another language, that it was full of, oh" – this as Erik's hands slip under his shirt collar and start to attack the buttons – "beauty, and, and, poetry, and more than that – oh, God."
Erik's laughing to himself, pushing back Charles's sleeves, kissing him on the top of his head and on the tip of his nose, so he can keep talking.
"And more than that, you could say things you had no word for in any other language, that you could convey joy and sorrow and just, just, anything, and it was there and it was easy and oh."
"You," Erik says in his ear, "are beautiful, and what can you possibly have to say at a time like this..."
"But," Charles says, all in a hurry, "you can only speak when spoken to. In your entire lifetime, it shall always be thus."
"Very resonant," Erik murmurs, "very biblical."
"Always like this," Charles goes on, still hurried, "always a silence, because otherwise is a violation, and you do not want to be" – and he stops stock still and looks right up at Erik – "a monster."
Erik crushes him. It's a rough embrace, layers of protection and passion all mixed together, and for a moment Charles is fluently multilingual, all of Erik's thoughts crashing around him in layers, and then the two of them draw apart, looking at each other.
"Oh," Erik says after a while, as though he's just thought of it, "sex."
"We don't have to," Charles says. "I mean, we can work up to it. Or not, if you prefer. And" – now he sounds tentative, now, for the first time, he really is out of Erik's mind – "I'm not. Well. Me and sex, since the accident, is, well. something of a work in progress. You know?"
Charles is ineloquent and Erik is furious, suddenly, at a world where this is what does that. "Mind and body," he murmurs, breathing out anger, "I want you."
"Fetch me one of those," Charles whispers. On the windowsill, there are loops of solid, polished metal, piled haphazardly where Erik left them. He got them online; they're intended to be an unusual alternative for juggling. Which is what Erik does with them, in a way; manipulating them and combining them and raising them until it's all smooth, it's all control. He pulls one off the pile without even a twitch of his fingers, all thought, and lets it hang, motionless above them both.
Charles reaches for it, and pulls himself into a sitting position, and for a moment it's a test of their strength against one another, steady and balanced.
"Right," says Charles, still holding onto metal, eyes as bright as the first day Erik ever saw him, with passion, with that determination to be only himself. "Let's begin."
Charles discovered he was a telepath when he was five years old. He barely remembers what deep sleep is like; what it's like to wake up and not know where you are; what it's like to fall down into an all-consuming black. Other thoughts linger on the surface of his mind like the froth on the tide, and he's used to dreaming other people's dreams.
It turns out Erik dreams of him, sometimes, with the two of them living the life they do, here in New York at the start of a new century, playing chess and looking through the window at the turn of the seasons; it turns out he sleeps better with Erik next to him, curled around him like a question mark.
And when he wakes up and Erik goes home with him, the two of them in rhythm, melded mind to mind and mind to metal, it's not a formed thought between them, it's not articulated – but it's an answer.
To the Editor:
Dear Sir,
We are writing in connection with the Times crossword of Saturday, September 18th. Having discovered to our displeasure that the clue for three across featured the phrase "wheelchair bound" to refer to people with disabilities, we would like to complain about the hackneyed use of this unpleasant, unrealistic phrase. A wheelchair is a mobility device, like any other, and we expected better.
Furthermore, fourteen down suggests that "feared; unusual" is an appropriate clue for "mutant". Mutants and their loved ones form an integral, valuable part of any society, it is shameful that this narrow-minded stigma is being shamefully perpetuated by the paper of record.
Yours sincerely,
Moira McTaggert, Emma Frost, Raven Xavier
(The writers are a professor of genetics at NYU, a waitress and mutant activist, and a freshman at Tisch.)
Moira calls at ten, which in Charles's opinion is far too early for anyone to be awake on a Saturday. "Hello, sweetness," she says, happily. "Hungover and shagged out? Jolly good. I dropped my office key down the toilet, can I come round and borrow yours? Thanks, I'll be over in a bit."
"How did you" – Charles begins, and she's gone.
Sighing, he goes into the kitchen to find out what he can scavenge for breakfast. "Look what the cat dragged in," Raven comments. She's reading the newspaper at the kitchen table and looks fresh-faced and well-scrubbed. "Who even knew you had that much hair to stand on end?"
Charles runs his fingers through it, distractedly, and rolls backwards by mistake. "Coffee," he says.
"In the pot." Raven turns a page. "You got back very late last night, Charles. Are you going to tell me about it?"
"There are some things I shouldn't tell my sister about, so no," Charles says, but can't stop the smile spreading over his face, and Raven takes on an expression that's partway between satisfaction and triumph, and leans back in her chair.
"Oh, shut up," Charles murmurs, and goes to the coffee pot. "Moira will be here in a while," he says, absently, and Raven says nothing.
He's poured the coffee out, peering down into the inky depths of the mug, and he's reaching for the sugar pot when the scent triggers a memory from the night before. He turns and there's Raven, looking at him with a steady gaze, as familiar as breathing.
Slowly, she changes.
His first impression is to think, through bleariness and lack of caffeine, that he's looking at another version of himself. The man in front of him has Charles's blue eyes and his curls, and some of his bone structure, and all of his height. But there are differences: he's stockier, with a little more definition to his features.
They look like siblings, Charles thinks.
"I've been thinking recently," Raven says, and it's Raven's voice but a little stilted, as though this little speech has been practiced, "that sometimes I want to look like I feel. And I don't always feel the same."
The doorbell rings. Charles wheels across to open it, saying nothing, eyes never leaving Raven.
Moira gives Charles a quick kiss on the cheek, and then does a momentary double-take. "Who's – oh. Raven." She smiles. "You're looking very like your brother today."
Raven nods, tentatively. "Thanks."
There's a moment of tension – and then it's gone. "Charles," Moira says, waving her hands about, "first of all, you clearly had sex last night so don't even bother to deny it, and also I need to borrow your key to get a copy cut. Be a darling and get it off the chain, would you?"
"Moira," Charles says, "could you not announce these things in front of my sister? In front of one of your students?"
"No," she says calmly. "I am all for your sex life, Charles, it makes me feel better for the lack of my own. The lovely baker, I presume? You kissed and made up?"
"Yes," Charles says, indignant. "Yes, Erik!"
She giggles, and winks at Raven, who actually smiles. "Just checking."
"Moira," Charles says, gives up, and wheels over to pick the keys off the table. He can't get the office key off the ring. "Let me," Raven says, and he looks up and she's in her own familiar form, using her long manicured nails to prise the metal apart.
"Thank you," Moira says, and then she's gone again. They hear her footsteps thudding down the stairs, and the distant sound of the door slamming.
Immediately, Charles goes over to sit next to Raven, close enough for him to reach out and push some of her hair away from her face. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, gently.
"You hide, Charles," she says, and she sounds a little like she might cry. "You hide your powers away. You've never thought – I mean, you're not comfortable…"
"Oh, God," Charles says, sincerely, takes a deep breath and begins again. He has an uneasy feeling that he's woken up to something bigger than this quiet Saturday morning; that part of how the world is going to be depends on what he says now. "Raven. I do hide my powers. I do. As I'm saying to a lot of people these days" – he puts a hand on her shoulder and tries not to accidentally project thoughts of Erik – "I have my reasons for that, and I don't think they're not good ones. But they're not yours, Raven. You…" – Charles takes another deep breath – "you, you're you. You're not me. You make your own choices."
"I thought you'd freak out," she says, suddenly sounding very young and teenage.
"Sometimes I need freaking out," he tells her.
"But," she says, head down, "but, even if I started walking around naked and blue…"
Charles raises his eyebrows. "Clothed and blue, Raven. Clothed and blue."
She laughs at that, and there are tears standing out in her eyes but she's looking right at him. "But blue? What if people laugh at me?"
"I'll run over their feet," Charles promises.
He means it. Looking at his keys sitting on the table, he makes a decision. "What's the betting Moira went to the ironmongery place next to the bakery? How about we go down there, find out how she dropped a key down the toilet and I buy you breakfast?"
"That sounds nice," she says, inhales and says, "Dr. McTaggert dropped a key down the toilet?"
"It is a wonderful world we live in," Charles says, "with many wondrous things in't. Moira is just one of them."
The kitchen is quiet and empty, with none of its usual warmth. The ovens are switched off. Erik is sitting on the edge of a table, doing nothing in particular. "Hi," Charles says, appearing without warning at the door. He wheels across and kisses Erik. "Good morning."
Erik looks at him. "That's it? Good morning?"
"It is a good morning," Charles says. "Moira apparently had an exciting Friday night, I got laid and it turns out Raven is one of the bravest people I've ever known. And here you are."
Erik abruptly realises that the reason Charles looks so happy – so bonelessly, helpless-grin happy – is because of him. "Oh," he says. "It is a good morning, isn't it. A very good morning. A wonderful morning, in fact."
"I knew you'd see it my way," Charles says, and kisses him again. They go back out into the main space of the bakery, and find Moira, Raven and Emma engaged in the Times crossword, eating vegan cupcakes and getting crumbs everywhere.
"Emma, they're customers, you could actually serve them," Erik complains, and she looks up and beams at him.
"They wanted cupcakes, I gave them cupcakes. Shut up, Erik. Go kiss your boyfriend."
"Leave her alone, it's the weekend," Charles says, easily. He's setting up the chess pieces as he speaks, wheeling around the table with more movement than is quite necessary. Erik recognises the energy in him as familiar: something that comes from the bracing quality of the winter air, the sunlight that makes everything looks polished.
"We could go to the park, the open-air tables," Erik says, suddenly. "I'm not supposed to be working today. Turns out I'm Jewish."
Charles laughs. "I'd heard rumours to that effect. Pick up the pieces for me?"
Erik does, raising them into a suspended constellation, and letting them fall in a cascade into the box. The sound is like a glockenspiel.
Washington Square Park, Charles thinks, and Erik jumps.
"Sorry," Charles says, quickly. "Sorry, I was relaxed – sorry. I really didn't mean to do that."
"No," Erik breathes, very quietly, and thinks, clearly: it's cold, but we could sit in the sun. We could play chess. We could do… what Emma said.
Charles laughs, gently. "Yes," he says, and rolls in the direction of the door.
"Don't mind us," Emma says, waving a hand, over the sound of Moira and Raven having a quiet disagreement about fourteen across. "We'll run your bakery."
"You'll do it magnificently, I'm sure," Erik says, with a bow, and waves at them through the window.
"Your bakery," Charles murmurs, and it sounds like there are many things he's not saying, and thoughts he's keeping to himself. Erik loves him.
He stops for a moment, describing a circle on the sidewalk, breathing, breathing. Raven has stood up to wave back at them through the glass, and it seems to Erik that she's taller.
"Raven," he says to Charles, looking back at her. "Is she one of us?"
"Queer?" Charles says blandly. "Ask her yourself."
Erik, surprising himself, chuckles. "Don't you ever give up?"
"No," Charles says serenely, "no, I don't." A little unsure, he adds: "Do you want me to?"
No, Erik thinks, remembering what it felt like to lift Charles, imagining living through days and weeks and years with that balancing weight. Never, never.
"Well, good," Charles says, and they go on together, across the frosted sidewalks, through the sparkling world.
end.
notes & acknowledgements
I never do this! But so many people were involved in writing this story that I feel it's necessary.
-first and foremost,
happydork betaed this, and her notes were very helpful and good for the soul. She also said, thoughtfully, "Shouldn't it be a kosher bakery?" so it's all her fault anyway;-
marina and roga took me to lunch and told me their Thoughts On Charles/Erik in a cute cafe in Tel Aviv; -
gavagai showed me the movies in the first place (and tweeted everything I said when watching them, I should add - I maintain my twenty-minutes-in first reaction was correct, and the whole thing really is a tragic love affair gone sour about the two old guys), and forthwritten was an endless source of support and verbal abuse. Thank you also to chains_of_irony, wildestranger, macadamanaity and everyone else who thought this was a good idea.-thank you,
opportunemoment for letting me borrow your rad-fem spoken poetry line;-my apologies to the lovely people of New York, for repaying your endless kindnesses to me by massacring your city's geography;
-and finally, the real Lashings of Ginger Beer Time may be found at lashings.org. They're in ur kyriarchy, queering it the fuck up. Thank you all.
no subject
on 2011-09-25 10:43 pm (UTC)So many of my favourite things are in here, I don't know where to begin. So maybe.. how making a community or writing letters can be as valid a form of activism as running for office. How lucky Raven is to have those powers. How very, very right you are about Charles and Erik being what the whole movie canon is about. And all the soft loveliness of it all...
no subject
on 2011-10-02 07:38 pm (UTC)