La Primera Vez
The First Time
Cerebro
What people don't understand about being a telepath is the power of emotion. People assume that i is all cut and dry, thoughts are just words printed on the walls, as easy to read as games on the back of a cereal box. But it's much harder than that; a mind is all colour, flooded with all of the emotions and sounds and sights and tastes that a mind has ever filed away for one to find.
The first time that I stepped into Cerebro I knew it would feel different, change me, fix me, but even with my background in Biology I still feared the reactoin that such heightened senses would yield. Would it be painful? Would it be cold, intrusive? Or something else?
At first I couldn't believe the overwhelming range that Cerebro gave my sight, my knees nearly went week at the massive exspanse I could reach now. My mind was working much faster than my body could comprehend, it was all so new that the physical reprecussions took a moment to hit, but they did hit big. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck and arms standing on end, my whole body tingling as my mind touchedskimmedcaressed these new places, people. I could feel humans and mutants alike, wave after wave of happiness, joy, sadness, anger, and more often than any other, a familiar lonliness.
I gasped, aloud or merely in my mind I don't know, as deep rooted joy shoot through me, crushing me, reaching places inside me I didn't know could feel so warm. After opening my mind I can't say I controlled Cerebro, that would come later, but the machine seemed to manage well enough to pick the closest mutants, the most receptive, and converted emotions and ideas into latitudes and longitudes.
Like most first times I don't remember what happened afterwards. There had been a pull, maybe Hank had done it or perhaps I had pushed myself out, and my sight went white. I slowly started to blink my vision back into focus.
And then came the laughter.
Erik.
Erik. Mocking Laughter. Raven and Hank. I was slowly swimming back from pure emotion to the physical sights around me. Erik was laughing, head thrown back, throat rippling laughter. Ravena dn Hank stood by, alternately avoiding me and avoiding Erik. I inhaled, collecting myself enough to disconnect from all of those strangers and reconnect with my own thoughts.
"I expected better stamina from you, Lab Rat,"
What?
And then I felt it, a sticky warmth in my trousers that I hadn't experienced since my days as a schoolboy.
I remember Hank avoiding eye contact and anything even close to verbal acknowledgement of my presence, detaching me from that loathesome machine with a near clinical air. A part of me stood embarassed and angry while another admonished me for blaming a machine when it was clearing my own fault, my own lack of control.
"I- I think I'll go clean up." I hurried out of the now suffocating sphere unable to fight down the heat in my cheeks.
-XVR-
-
I hid out the rest of the evening in the quarters given to me by Moira on behalf of the CIA when,
A knock
"Come in." Clipped, emotionless, English. A safe voice.
The click of the door, clatter of ivory being arranged on a board.
...
"Charles."
"Yes, Erik?"
A scrape of a chessboard being pushed across the table, a twist of the board. "You go first."
A pawn.
Another pawn.
A knight.
A hadnful of exchanges, moves being made. I have to put my book down to play; Erik is especially aggressive, though he plans less than he is capable of.
"I don't apologize, Charles."
"I wasn't expecting you to, Erik."
"I, what I meant to say is, I'm not good at apologizing. I was wrong. I didn't expect a man like you to be quite so sensitive in matters of the, um," a light chuckle, "make anatomy."
"You did nothing wrong, I merely wished to remain presentable." A little lie, but they do say it is the little evils that kill you. In truth I had felt hurt; the rational side of me said I was merely being overly sensitive after being in such a vulnerable state, while a smaller less reserved part of me said there was more to what had made it hurt.
"Well, perhaps Cerebro is just a grand match for you, eh?" I didn't need to read his mind or even look up to know he was smirking, smirking in a way unique to Erik, sharp and handsome and yet there was an edge of danger that most would not want to get close to.
"Perhaps," Or perhaps there may be a better match for me out there.
"Checkmate."