Slightly AU, because I reached a point of disgust with Marvel's lack of time-line continuality. So I picked a point I liked and have spring-boarded from it. :)
Warnings: Uhm... Comfort. Musings. Homosexuality between the good Professor and the Master of Magnetism. Fairly pg-13. ^_~
/.../ stands for thoughts
~....~ Mental images, 'spoken' thoughts.
C&C is welcome... ^_^;;;
Kat
~~~~~~~~
Teir 2/?
~~~~~~~~
~Smoke, thick and acrid, black as the eyes of the polish Kapo who loomed so nearby...~
He was coughing again, violently; bits of blood came free with every choking noise from his throat, until something warm wiped tenderly over his mouth and nose, wiping away that blood.
~Prying open the mouths of still cold bodies, bloodied fingers digging and wrenching free gold teeth. How many had he pulled free in the past day? Had he filled that basket himself? Hard to tell if it was worse than putting those bodies into the stifling furnaces, breathing that smoke.~
"Erik... Oh, Erik."
~"Sonderkommando!" someone jeered at him, as he trudged past them in the biting air, red-cross blanket wrapped tightly around his nearly bared body. A soldier offered him dried meat and a piece of chocolate that was as big as his fist. It was already becoming obvious to those Soviet soldiers who liberated them that they would not be sharing the food with other survivors -- what was handed to them was *theirs*, and not shared. Erik's stomach turned away the meat that he'd eaten too fast, but the chocolate miraculously stayed in his complaining body.~
Light movement of cloth over skin, his shirt being opened and removed, pulled out from under him with hands that were deceivingly strong.
"Ah." A soft creaking noise, as his care-taker wheeled off to find butterfly bandages.
~Silver grey hair. He'd had a thick mane of brown-black before they'd shaved it, and it had grown back in the colour of dirtied silver. The kapo called him Silberne Krähe -- silver crow. When he'd first arrived, he'd been recognised quickly as a good candidate for being one of the 'Crematorium Ravens'. He'd hung on, through countless liquidations, bartered and bribed his way for warmer clothes in winter, information about where to stand in the roll line to not be killed. Food was all important, a driving force to keeping those ovens working well, to smiling and being as orderly as possible when they emptied the trains...~
~No one wanted anything to do with him, a Sonderkommando, and the silence was good and useful, but also let the pain and horror swirl in his mind...~
Once well-polished shoes, now scuffed from concrete, were removed, lithe hands lingering at well-muscled ankles a moment before they disappeared. He'd never approved of being touched without permission, but there was an... urging at the back of his mind to relax. Let it go.
~Waking up from dreams of those long months, waking up in Israel in the arms of a man just barely younger than he was, hearing soothing words and a gentle mental litany of safety. Comfort and assurance. The languid stirring of clean, humid air, Charles' breath against his mane of hair as he laid back down, the adrenaline of the nightmare leaving his body...~
The cloth was back again, wiping his chest, a gash on his thigh that had been revealed with the removal of his pants. The cool air in the room gave his body a racking chill worse than the night air had, and he coughed again, surfacing slowly from the collage of thoughts, half-dreams and recollections.
"Erik..." Charles' tone was softly wheedling, a hidden plea in that firm, powerful voice. The cool cloth was laid on his forehead at last, and left there. ~How are you now?~ Gently nudging at his mind, just like the urge to 'let it be' and relax there, on the bed he wasn't familiar with.
~Hospital?~ Blearily questioned, hating to ask it, hating more to find out the answer -- had he been listened to, or 'ignored for his own good' as Charles so often had done. /Always crushing the dissident views if you can, to stop contrast with yours -- smothering in a blanket of 'help'.../
And yet that was just what he'd cried out for as the blows landed with rough thuds on his body, and even after. For Charles' help...
"My hotel room, Magnus -- no doctor, no hospital," Charles whispered, surveying the beating his friend had taken . He'd already seen that his back, from knees to neck, was a near solid bruise. The biggest worry had been Magnus' kidneys, but they were thankfully intact, and there was no internal bleeding. /Just horrible bruising down to his ribs. He'll be in pain, but there's nothing I can do for it aside from aspirin.../ "How do you feel?"
Silence for a moment, then it was broken by another short cough. "You always ask... such inane questions, Charles," he spoke, the raw voice sounding tired, drifting -- semi-conscious at best. "You know the answer."
Blue-grey eyes opened at a pressure against the top of his upper leg, and he mused for a moment that for a person as disabled as Xavier was, he did a clean job of removing his clothing. /Stripped right down to my briefs -- what would your students think, Charles?/
~That I've lost my mind, Erik -- un-tense your legs so I can put butterflies on this cut.~ Magnus' thought had been right *there* and so un-shielded that it had been impossible for him to not hear it -- more-so to not give in to the temptation to answer.
Silence fell again, then a push of ~Get out of my mind, Charles.~ Not a request from the mutant who was laid out on the bed -- an order.
"No, Magnus," Xavier murmured evenly to his old friend. "Because you know that I am not in your mind. You know some thoughts rise above even *your* mental shielding."
The hazy gaze watched Charles put the butterflies in place, then watched him apply gentle pressure atop it. If he spoke any of the thousand indignant words on the tip of his tongue, they would only end up falling into the same tightly scripted rolls that had consumed them for so long.
This was careful ground for both of them -- crossed so often that it was nary impossible to not step into the pit-falls of the road, familiar and oft-used as they were. So many things that went unsaid, that were just understood to *be*.
Erik wanted to ask just how much of his 'surface' thoughts Charles could see just then -- and how many he liked the sight of. But it didn't happen, as he let the silence grow into something comfortable, grey-tinted eyes closing again as Charles' hands stroked over his bruised skin with the pretence of inspecting him for further injuries.
Did Xavier really think Magnus was so stupid as to not see the touches for what they were?
Or, perhaps, it was just hope. /How low, to do this,/ he mused, feeling slowly over the other man's firm stomach, then up, letting one hand 'accidentally' brush a nipple. There was a fine line between subtlety to coax out a reluctant man, and being an ass, and he was dancing that line in a way he'd not danced it in years. /Last time was with Gabrielle./
"Tell me where you hurt, Erik," he murmured slowly, letting his gaze drift carefully over the very well-muscled frame. ~You know I want to help you, friend.~
~Do I, Charles?~
What could he reply to that? Xavier let his hand rest atop Magnus' abdomen, feeling the soft rise and fall of breath that was slightly hindered. /The virus -- how far along could he be?/ The coughing would only be worsened by the bruised ribs, something that Magnus would notice not long after he sat up. /Moira has stabilising medications that could hold him at this current stage for months... perhaps years./
Could Magnus handle being trapped in that intermediate state... /The question. Will he let his pride fall long enough to admit to needing help?/
The lack of reply made a bitter little smile curl Magnus' lips, until he heard it -- the echo of his thoughts during the moments Xavier had come across him. That the man was safety, that he'd help...
Help was why he'd come to the convention, and being able to face his many faults had led him to hand Genosha off to Voght. The Dream -- his dream -- was in the hands of others, and he served for nothing more than a figure head of fear any longer. Xavier at least had those who looked up to him from respect and not fright. /Once, Charles, I tried to be teacher and more to those children, and failed horribly. Young lives were lost, ruined.../
"Then help me, Charles."
The words startled Xavier a little, but not enough to change his expression of calm. The coughs that followed did change that expression, as he moved his chair in as close as he could, trying to ease Magneto's discomfort as the pale face contorted with pain. "Steady, Erik," he whispered. "Breath slowly. Your ribs are bruised... How long have you had that cough?"
It trailed into nothingness as Charles lifted the cloth from Magnus' noble brow, wiping the corners of his mouth with it again before setting it in the bowl once more. "More than a week. What..." He started to ask 'What do you think it is?' but didn't -- Charles *knew*, as he always seemed to know. ~Tell me.~
~You have the Legacy Virus, Erik.~
Though the other man's mental voice had been gentle, there was no way to tell someone such a thing gently enough -- even though it was what he'd suspected, in the back of his mind, that it was. Suddenly, everything that had been happening made perfect sense to him and he felt like a fool for not seeing it. Fluctuations in power, going from spikes of heightened power to drops where there was nothing but the sight of it, nothing but a faint hum to signal the fields that surrounded him.
Legacy *was* a death sentence. /Finally, a death sentence that even I cannot escape.../ Auschwitz, the Russians, his daughter's death, so many brushes with death itself during battles, all voided out by two simple words.
"I.... Suspected," Magnus murmured quietly, letting his eyes close. What a horrible way to die, after all that he'd done in life...
/Give him time to think, Charles,/ Xavier chided himself lightly, as he sat back in his chair, one hand lingering atop the back of Magnus' wrist. Though the more active part of his mind was screaming at him to not sit back and watch Magneto withdraw into himself, back behind the mask he wore as often as he wore his helmet.
"You want help, Erik," Charles pressed. So very few could get away with using Magnus' first name as often as he did. "And I will not turn you away, old friend." Without waiting for a reply, Xavier turned his chair away from the bed, wheeling toward the small 'living room' the suite held.
~Do not go, Charles,~ Magnus reached out with his mind, starting to sit up even against the pain.
"Rest," Xavier intoned, still moving off, and out of sight around a corner. ~Do not protest my offer, Erik; I wish to help, and you want my help. Let me do what I can.~ /To make these next however many months you have left rewarding for you,/ he mused as he poured a glass of water into a plastic hotel cup, then added a few chips of ice.
"No, Charles, this will not work unless--"
Already re-entering the room with cup in hand, Charles smoothly cut him off, "Tell me, Erik, what is the 'this' that will not work?" /Could it be that we are both playing the same games with each other?/
/You know, damn you, you *know*,/ Magnus thought as he laid back down, disliking entirely the feeling of being at Charles' mercy, but savouring the sheer assurance that surrounded him, no matter how vulnerable he was then. The vulnerability would follow him were he to leave Xavier's room, were he to go to his hotel and room, were he to go back to Genosha... It was a part of him that could not be denied any longer.
The question that had been asked of him went unanswered as the water was given to him, taken into his mouth and swallowed. Cool liquid that soothed his throat and mouth just as much as Charles could soothe his mind.
/Ice for a wound -- what a curious way to think of you,/ he mused, letting his head drop back onto the pillow as the glass was drawn back. Was Xavier reading him just then? /And does it matter at all? We have been friends, companions, fellow philosophers and deadly enemies, Charles. You have healed and broken me as many times as I have done the same to you and yours. I tear apart one of your own, you shatter my mind -- fair-play as always, Charles. You speak of peace, but do not hesitate to lash out in all your stubbornness... We are not so different, you and I./
"You turned away from Genosha, Magnus -- you exiled yourself by stepping down. Would you spend your final days in terrorism?"
"Would *you* spend my final days scrubbing my mind clean?" The bitter urge to ask 'again' rose up, loud in his mind before it was pushed back.
Now it was Xavier's time for silence, having felt the sting of the un-meaning and unspoken blow, however right it had been. Ideally, he would have been able to change Magneto... /Not all ideals are meant to be./ And the last time those thoughts had occurred to him had been years before. There had been hope that it had been done for him, in Joseph, but he had *not* been Erik Magnus Lehnsherr. His memories and views, painful and haunting as they may be, were what made him, and without those memories and views, he was not the same man.
"Your ideals, Erik, are out of your hands," Xavier murmured as he set the glass on the low table beside the bed. "And mine may as well be."
~Still the figurehead~ A drifting thought, clear and half-projected from Magnus.
"It will be a challenge, as much as anything either of us partakes alone would be. But the team had adjusted to Joseph when they thought he was you, Erik, and will adjust again." A glance to the clock on that table told him that he had a full four hours before he'd be expected to go to the convention the next morning. /Three am. Have we talked for so long?/ Watching the bruised face in the light glow of the lamp in the corner, Xavier saw Magnus' lips part to speak before words even came. And he'd promptly cut them off. "No, my old friend. No protesting me this time. Not yet. You are injured and ill, and currently under my care. If you will not let me take you to a physician, you will at least rest for me."
Those blue-grey eyes slitted open just the barest bit, peering at the man beside the bed with a careful gaze. ~Why are you putting so much effort *now*, Charles?~
~I could ask the same of you -- would you rather that I didn't?~ The complete lack of any reply from Magnus was answer enough, coming from that stubborn pride. Xavier wheeled over to the light, flicked it off. "How much pain are you in right now?"
"Less than before," he answered cryptically, closing his eyes again in the darkness. Every movement beyond necessaries caused pain -- even breathing hurt on occasion. /You didn't ask how it happened, Charles -- how unlike you, to not want every detail. Could you feel what happened, through my out-reaching?/ Looking back on it, what he could remember, he'd nearly begged Charles to help him, to not leave him...
And he'd done it once again, with most of his faculties working. /So hard to not follow the familiar road... so very hard.../
"You need your sleep," Charles murmured. The sounds of shifting cloth could be heard, a shifting body, then hands on metal -- a familiar hymn to his ears, the buzz of steel -- and finally, he felt the weight on the bed shift. Yes, Xavier was deceptively strong of body. And just as strong of mind...
There was a familiarity to it and yet a strangeness. The last time they'd lain in bed together, Xavier had two working legs, and he'd not just been beaten to a pulp. As Xavier moved closer still until he laid on his side, pressed against Magnus, the polish mutant felt a gentle tendril probe into his mind.
~Charles...~ A returning warning, as a hand rested lightly atop his chest, rubbing carefully through the coarse hair there, matching the colour of Magnus' hair.
~You need a peaceful sleep -- let me, Erik. I will press no farther than you wish me to.~
The slow, steady stroking of those fingers over his chest, tracing the line between his muscles was certainly relaxing. What Magnus conveyed next was not a word -- but a feeling. Trust of the other man, as complete as he'd ever given over to another being.
The tendril pushed in further, but not too far, and Xavier's hand kept moving, the motion soothing and hypnotic; combined with the soft whispers he heard in his mind and the steady flow of images and feelings from better days...
Magnus fell into a deep sleep, and no nightmares tugged at his mind for the first time in nearly three decades.
~~~~~
"Ah jest wonder wher he could *be*," Samuel Guthrie uttered, sitting back in his chair at the table.
At six-thirty, sharp, everyone was supposed to have been down in the hotel's café, sitting at the back table, for breakfast and the pre-convention plans for the day.
"Ah know ah've not been with ya'll very long, but it just ain't like him to be so late, is it?"
It was Seven already. /Half an hour late!/ The most recent member of the team looked around the table at the other X-men who'd come up for the conference. Scott and Jean, himself, Logan, Rogue and Gambit. The Professor should have been there, but he wasn't and that was worrisome...
And it seemed to be worrisome, at least a little, to the rest of the table, too.
"So Chuck slept in," Logan muttered, lighting up his second unfiltered lung-killer. Not that it mattered at all to a man who regenerated so quickly.
Sam's gaze soon found one that was doing as much scanning as his own was -- Scott's eyes, hidden behind quartz lenses. /I'm not the leader -- I shouldn't have said anything.../
"I think we should at least check on him," Cyclops murmured, getting up out of his chair. "Jean...?"
"I've already found him," she murmured. "He's still in his room..."
~~~~~
Awakened with a tug at his mind, from the restive sleep he'd shared with a man most would consider his greatest enemy.
Sitting more up-right than he'd been before, he managed to look at the bed-side clock.
7:05.
/Letting me sleep in?/ he wondered as he did sit up, truly unwilling to move away from the warmth that was Magnus' side. But it was best that he arise before the other man re-gained consciousness. It was hard, looking back at the night before, to tell how much of what had passed between them would be valid when faced with day-light.
~Professor?~ It was Jean's mental voice, reaching out to him, trying to make the familiar contact with him on the astral plane -- something he would not allow just then.
~Good morning Jean,~ he replied, trying to keep it short and to the point. Less time for her to question him, less possibility of them knowing anymore than the absolute minimum. ~There is a change of plans today, entirely unexpected. I won't be joining you at the convention today.~ /What else was there...?/
Dinner. With the mayor and quite a few other high-ranking city politicians... /No backing out of that./ ~But I will see you at dinner, Jean.~
~What should I tell the others, Professor?~ she asked, obviously distressed by what he was telling her.
~Tell them that I've found Magneto~ And with that, the connection was blocked by Xavier.
It was, in his own memory, one of the few times he'd ever broken a connection so abruptly. /Jean will worry,/ he noted to himself as he decided to settle down again in the sheets. /I'm completely indecisive as to what to do next with him... this./
'This' was the need to have the other man stay with him; 'this' was an undeniable attraction that both of them felt, but neither had spoken of; 'this' was dangerous, fool-hardy, asinine... So many things, but 'this' still was. Hanging in the air between them as surely as Erik laid beside him in bed.
What he'd done the night before, was still doing, had solved one problem, in an unspoken way, but created hundreds more. How far was Magnus willing to let it go? How far could *he* let it go...? /There are better things to do than brood on it.../
His hand was resting atop that bruised, sturdy chest once more, and he pulled back the sheets a little to study his old friend. Sometime in his sleep, his right arm had lifted and was now folded so that Xavier could read numbers of the tattoo. /To become just a number... and this is the fear that has driven you for so long -- that mutants will someday face the same fate as the Jews did. Perhaps it is possible -- we are already herded out of some areas and into others... Small scale Pogroms./
But there was no way or argument that would convince Magnus that there were other ways to 'protect' the mutant species.
Pulling those sheets up again, Charles laid his hand on Magnus' body again, feeling the steady pulse and the even rising and falling of his breaths. "Erik." Voice soft, subdued as he added a faint press with his hand. The silver-capped head shook for a moment, the protest of those who are tired but too close to consciousness to slip back under. "Erik..."
What he did next was simply following a whim. Bending the little bit required to press a faint kiss to un-moving lips, then drawing back. "Ah, Erik..."
"Nnn." A softly pained protest, and he coughed raggedly, as he'd done for much of the night, as he started to sit up.
~Lay back, Erik, and keep resting,~ came the gentle instruction within his mind, along with the return of that familiar stroking against his chest.
~Your students, Charles...~ A drifting thought from Magnus' tired and un-protesting mind. ~You should...~
"I've already told them I will not be at the conference today, Erik." ~Would you rather that I left?~
Xavier was startled when Magnus moved one hand, grasping his fore-arm. ~Safety, Charles. You are... safety.~ Even more startling was the cool grey-blue eyes slitted barely open, looking at him. There was no way to out-manoeuvre that piercing gaze, no way he could think of to change the subject and avoid it as they'd done the night before.
"Will you come with me to the mansion?" ~We'll use whatever pretence you wish, Erik. I want to give you all the help that I can.~
Was it possible that at long last they were deviating from the known paths? /Let it be so, Charles.../ The thick, dragging cough came back then, when he wanted to speak a reply to the other man, and with it the fierce pain in his chest.
Getting quickly out of the bed and into his wheel-chair -- entirely glad he'd slept with his trousers still on from the night before -- Xavier was soon on the other side of the bed, with another glass of water to try to get down the other man's protesting throat. Thankfully the bed was set low, like most everything else in the 'wheel-chair accessible' room. "Steady, Erik. Drink a little slower."
When he was sure that Magnus wasn't going to cough himself to pieces just then, he drew back the glass and helped him sit up, the pillows propped up behind his badly beaten back. Just helping him sit up, Xavier could see the black-red marks on that warm-coloured skin.
"Thank you," came Magnus' ragged reply at last, eyes open again. ~I would like to go with you, Charles.~
Letting his mouth curl into a smile, Xavier nodded. "Thank *you*, my friend."
~~~~~
Warnings: Uhm... Comfort. Musings. Homosexuality between the good Professor and the Master of Magnetism. Fairly pg-13. ^_~
/.../ stands for thoughts
~....~ Mental images, 'spoken' thoughts.
C&C is welcome... ^_^;;;
Kat
~~~~~~~~
Teir 2/?
~~~~~~~~
~Smoke, thick and acrid, black as the eyes of the polish Kapo who loomed so nearby...~
He was coughing again, violently; bits of blood came free with every choking noise from his throat, until something warm wiped tenderly over his mouth and nose, wiping away that blood.
~Prying open the mouths of still cold bodies, bloodied fingers digging and wrenching free gold teeth. How many had he pulled free in the past day? Had he filled that basket himself? Hard to tell if it was worse than putting those bodies into the stifling furnaces, breathing that smoke.~
"Erik... Oh, Erik."
~"Sonderkommando!" someone jeered at him, as he trudged past them in the biting air, red-cross blanket wrapped tightly around his nearly bared body. A soldier offered him dried meat and a piece of chocolate that was as big as his fist. It was already becoming obvious to those Soviet soldiers who liberated them that they would not be sharing the food with other survivors -- what was handed to them was *theirs*, and not shared. Erik's stomach turned away the meat that he'd eaten too fast, but the chocolate miraculously stayed in his complaining body.~
Light movement of cloth over skin, his shirt being opened and removed, pulled out from under him with hands that were deceivingly strong.
"Ah." A soft creaking noise, as his care-taker wheeled off to find butterfly bandages.
~Silver grey hair. He'd had a thick mane of brown-black before they'd shaved it, and it had grown back in the colour of dirtied silver. The kapo called him Silberne Krähe -- silver crow. When he'd first arrived, he'd been recognised quickly as a good candidate for being one of the 'Crematorium Ravens'. He'd hung on, through countless liquidations, bartered and bribed his way for warmer clothes in winter, information about where to stand in the roll line to not be killed. Food was all important, a driving force to keeping those ovens working well, to smiling and being as orderly as possible when they emptied the trains...~
~No one wanted anything to do with him, a Sonderkommando, and the silence was good and useful, but also let the pain and horror swirl in his mind...~
Once well-polished shoes, now scuffed from concrete, were removed, lithe hands lingering at well-muscled ankles a moment before they disappeared. He'd never approved of being touched without permission, but there was an... urging at the back of his mind to relax. Let it go.
~Waking up from dreams of those long months, waking up in Israel in the arms of a man just barely younger than he was, hearing soothing words and a gentle mental litany of safety. Comfort and assurance. The languid stirring of clean, humid air, Charles' breath against his mane of hair as he laid back down, the adrenaline of the nightmare leaving his body...~
The cloth was back again, wiping his chest, a gash on his thigh that had been revealed with the removal of his pants. The cool air in the room gave his body a racking chill worse than the night air had, and he coughed again, surfacing slowly from the collage of thoughts, half-dreams and recollections.
"Erik..." Charles' tone was softly wheedling, a hidden plea in that firm, powerful voice. The cool cloth was laid on his forehead at last, and left there. ~How are you now?~ Gently nudging at his mind, just like the urge to 'let it be' and relax there, on the bed he wasn't familiar with.
~Hospital?~ Blearily questioned, hating to ask it, hating more to find out the answer -- had he been listened to, or 'ignored for his own good' as Charles so often had done. /Always crushing the dissident views if you can, to stop contrast with yours -- smothering in a blanket of 'help'.../
And yet that was just what he'd cried out for as the blows landed with rough thuds on his body, and even after. For Charles' help...
"My hotel room, Magnus -- no doctor, no hospital," Charles whispered, surveying the beating his friend had taken . He'd already seen that his back, from knees to neck, was a near solid bruise. The biggest worry had been Magnus' kidneys, but they were thankfully intact, and there was no internal bleeding. /Just horrible bruising down to his ribs. He'll be in pain, but there's nothing I can do for it aside from aspirin.../ "How do you feel?"
Silence for a moment, then it was broken by another short cough. "You always ask... such inane questions, Charles," he spoke, the raw voice sounding tired, drifting -- semi-conscious at best. "You know the answer."
Blue-grey eyes opened at a pressure against the top of his upper leg, and he mused for a moment that for a person as disabled as Xavier was, he did a clean job of removing his clothing. /Stripped right down to my briefs -- what would your students think, Charles?/
~That I've lost my mind, Erik -- un-tense your legs so I can put butterflies on this cut.~ Magnus' thought had been right *there* and so un-shielded that it had been impossible for him to not hear it -- more-so to not give in to the temptation to answer.
Silence fell again, then a push of ~Get out of my mind, Charles.~ Not a request from the mutant who was laid out on the bed -- an order.
"No, Magnus," Xavier murmured evenly to his old friend. "Because you know that I am not in your mind. You know some thoughts rise above even *your* mental shielding."
The hazy gaze watched Charles put the butterflies in place, then watched him apply gentle pressure atop it. If he spoke any of the thousand indignant words on the tip of his tongue, they would only end up falling into the same tightly scripted rolls that had consumed them for so long.
This was careful ground for both of them -- crossed so often that it was nary impossible to not step into the pit-falls of the road, familiar and oft-used as they were. So many things that went unsaid, that were just understood to *be*.
Erik wanted to ask just how much of his 'surface' thoughts Charles could see just then -- and how many he liked the sight of. But it didn't happen, as he let the silence grow into something comfortable, grey-tinted eyes closing again as Charles' hands stroked over his bruised skin with the pretence of inspecting him for further injuries.
Did Xavier really think Magnus was so stupid as to not see the touches for what they were?
Or, perhaps, it was just hope. /How low, to do this,/ he mused, feeling slowly over the other man's firm stomach, then up, letting one hand 'accidentally' brush a nipple. There was a fine line between subtlety to coax out a reluctant man, and being an ass, and he was dancing that line in a way he'd not danced it in years. /Last time was with Gabrielle./
"Tell me where you hurt, Erik," he murmured slowly, letting his gaze drift carefully over the very well-muscled frame. ~You know I want to help you, friend.~
~Do I, Charles?~
What could he reply to that? Xavier let his hand rest atop Magnus' abdomen, feeling the soft rise and fall of breath that was slightly hindered. /The virus -- how far along could he be?/ The coughing would only be worsened by the bruised ribs, something that Magnus would notice not long after he sat up. /Moira has stabilising medications that could hold him at this current stage for months... perhaps years./
Could Magnus handle being trapped in that intermediate state... /The question. Will he let his pride fall long enough to admit to needing help?/
The lack of reply made a bitter little smile curl Magnus' lips, until he heard it -- the echo of his thoughts during the moments Xavier had come across him. That the man was safety, that he'd help...
Help was why he'd come to the convention, and being able to face his many faults had led him to hand Genosha off to Voght. The Dream -- his dream -- was in the hands of others, and he served for nothing more than a figure head of fear any longer. Xavier at least had those who looked up to him from respect and not fright. /Once, Charles, I tried to be teacher and more to those children, and failed horribly. Young lives were lost, ruined.../
"Then help me, Charles."
The words startled Xavier a little, but not enough to change his expression of calm. The coughs that followed did change that expression, as he moved his chair in as close as he could, trying to ease Magneto's discomfort as the pale face contorted with pain. "Steady, Erik," he whispered. "Breath slowly. Your ribs are bruised... How long have you had that cough?"
It trailed into nothingness as Charles lifted the cloth from Magnus' noble brow, wiping the corners of his mouth with it again before setting it in the bowl once more. "More than a week. What..." He started to ask 'What do you think it is?' but didn't -- Charles *knew*, as he always seemed to know. ~Tell me.~
~You have the Legacy Virus, Erik.~
Though the other man's mental voice had been gentle, there was no way to tell someone such a thing gently enough -- even though it was what he'd suspected, in the back of his mind, that it was. Suddenly, everything that had been happening made perfect sense to him and he felt like a fool for not seeing it. Fluctuations in power, going from spikes of heightened power to drops where there was nothing but the sight of it, nothing but a faint hum to signal the fields that surrounded him.
Legacy *was* a death sentence. /Finally, a death sentence that even I cannot escape.../ Auschwitz, the Russians, his daughter's death, so many brushes with death itself during battles, all voided out by two simple words.
"I.... Suspected," Magnus murmured quietly, letting his eyes close. What a horrible way to die, after all that he'd done in life...
/Give him time to think, Charles,/ Xavier chided himself lightly, as he sat back in his chair, one hand lingering atop the back of Magnus' wrist. Though the more active part of his mind was screaming at him to not sit back and watch Magneto withdraw into himself, back behind the mask he wore as often as he wore his helmet.
"You want help, Erik," Charles pressed. So very few could get away with using Magnus' first name as often as he did. "And I will not turn you away, old friend." Without waiting for a reply, Xavier turned his chair away from the bed, wheeling toward the small 'living room' the suite held.
~Do not go, Charles,~ Magnus reached out with his mind, starting to sit up even against the pain.
"Rest," Xavier intoned, still moving off, and out of sight around a corner. ~Do not protest my offer, Erik; I wish to help, and you want my help. Let me do what I can.~ /To make these next however many months you have left rewarding for you,/ he mused as he poured a glass of water into a plastic hotel cup, then added a few chips of ice.
"No, Charles, this will not work unless--"
Already re-entering the room with cup in hand, Charles smoothly cut him off, "Tell me, Erik, what is the 'this' that will not work?" /Could it be that we are both playing the same games with each other?/
/You know, damn you, you *know*,/ Magnus thought as he laid back down, disliking entirely the feeling of being at Charles' mercy, but savouring the sheer assurance that surrounded him, no matter how vulnerable he was then. The vulnerability would follow him were he to leave Xavier's room, were he to go to his hotel and room, were he to go back to Genosha... It was a part of him that could not be denied any longer.
The question that had been asked of him went unanswered as the water was given to him, taken into his mouth and swallowed. Cool liquid that soothed his throat and mouth just as much as Charles could soothe his mind.
/Ice for a wound -- what a curious way to think of you,/ he mused, letting his head drop back onto the pillow as the glass was drawn back. Was Xavier reading him just then? /And does it matter at all? We have been friends, companions, fellow philosophers and deadly enemies, Charles. You have healed and broken me as many times as I have done the same to you and yours. I tear apart one of your own, you shatter my mind -- fair-play as always, Charles. You speak of peace, but do not hesitate to lash out in all your stubbornness... We are not so different, you and I./
"You turned away from Genosha, Magnus -- you exiled yourself by stepping down. Would you spend your final days in terrorism?"
"Would *you* spend my final days scrubbing my mind clean?" The bitter urge to ask 'again' rose up, loud in his mind before it was pushed back.
Now it was Xavier's time for silence, having felt the sting of the un-meaning and unspoken blow, however right it had been. Ideally, he would have been able to change Magneto... /Not all ideals are meant to be./ And the last time those thoughts had occurred to him had been years before. There had been hope that it had been done for him, in Joseph, but he had *not* been Erik Magnus Lehnsherr. His memories and views, painful and haunting as they may be, were what made him, and without those memories and views, he was not the same man.
"Your ideals, Erik, are out of your hands," Xavier murmured as he set the glass on the low table beside the bed. "And mine may as well be."
~Still the figurehead~ A drifting thought, clear and half-projected from Magnus.
"It will be a challenge, as much as anything either of us partakes alone would be. But the team had adjusted to Joseph when they thought he was you, Erik, and will adjust again." A glance to the clock on that table told him that he had a full four hours before he'd be expected to go to the convention the next morning. /Three am. Have we talked for so long?/ Watching the bruised face in the light glow of the lamp in the corner, Xavier saw Magnus' lips part to speak before words even came. And he'd promptly cut them off. "No, my old friend. No protesting me this time. Not yet. You are injured and ill, and currently under my care. If you will not let me take you to a physician, you will at least rest for me."
Those blue-grey eyes slitted open just the barest bit, peering at the man beside the bed with a careful gaze. ~Why are you putting so much effort *now*, Charles?~
~I could ask the same of you -- would you rather that I didn't?~ The complete lack of any reply from Magnus was answer enough, coming from that stubborn pride. Xavier wheeled over to the light, flicked it off. "How much pain are you in right now?"
"Less than before," he answered cryptically, closing his eyes again in the darkness. Every movement beyond necessaries caused pain -- even breathing hurt on occasion. /You didn't ask how it happened, Charles -- how unlike you, to not want every detail. Could you feel what happened, through my out-reaching?/ Looking back on it, what he could remember, he'd nearly begged Charles to help him, to not leave him...
And he'd done it once again, with most of his faculties working. /So hard to not follow the familiar road... so very hard.../
"You need your sleep," Charles murmured. The sounds of shifting cloth could be heard, a shifting body, then hands on metal -- a familiar hymn to his ears, the buzz of steel -- and finally, he felt the weight on the bed shift. Yes, Xavier was deceptively strong of body. And just as strong of mind...
There was a familiarity to it and yet a strangeness. The last time they'd lain in bed together, Xavier had two working legs, and he'd not just been beaten to a pulp. As Xavier moved closer still until he laid on his side, pressed against Magnus, the polish mutant felt a gentle tendril probe into his mind.
~Charles...~ A returning warning, as a hand rested lightly atop his chest, rubbing carefully through the coarse hair there, matching the colour of Magnus' hair.
~You need a peaceful sleep -- let me, Erik. I will press no farther than you wish me to.~
The slow, steady stroking of those fingers over his chest, tracing the line between his muscles was certainly relaxing. What Magnus conveyed next was not a word -- but a feeling. Trust of the other man, as complete as he'd ever given over to another being.
The tendril pushed in further, but not too far, and Xavier's hand kept moving, the motion soothing and hypnotic; combined with the soft whispers he heard in his mind and the steady flow of images and feelings from better days...
Magnus fell into a deep sleep, and no nightmares tugged at his mind for the first time in nearly three decades.
~~~~~
"Ah jest wonder wher he could *be*," Samuel Guthrie uttered, sitting back in his chair at the table.
At six-thirty, sharp, everyone was supposed to have been down in the hotel's café, sitting at the back table, for breakfast and the pre-convention plans for the day.
"Ah know ah've not been with ya'll very long, but it just ain't like him to be so late, is it?"
It was Seven already. /Half an hour late!/ The most recent member of the team looked around the table at the other X-men who'd come up for the conference. Scott and Jean, himself, Logan, Rogue and Gambit. The Professor should have been there, but he wasn't and that was worrisome...
And it seemed to be worrisome, at least a little, to the rest of the table, too.
"So Chuck slept in," Logan muttered, lighting up his second unfiltered lung-killer. Not that it mattered at all to a man who regenerated so quickly.
Sam's gaze soon found one that was doing as much scanning as his own was -- Scott's eyes, hidden behind quartz lenses. /I'm not the leader -- I shouldn't have said anything.../
"I think we should at least check on him," Cyclops murmured, getting up out of his chair. "Jean...?"
"I've already found him," she murmured. "He's still in his room..."
~~~~~
Awakened with a tug at his mind, from the restive sleep he'd shared with a man most would consider his greatest enemy.
Sitting more up-right than he'd been before, he managed to look at the bed-side clock.
7:05.
/Letting me sleep in?/ he wondered as he did sit up, truly unwilling to move away from the warmth that was Magnus' side. But it was best that he arise before the other man re-gained consciousness. It was hard, looking back at the night before, to tell how much of what had passed between them would be valid when faced with day-light.
~Professor?~ It was Jean's mental voice, reaching out to him, trying to make the familiar contact with him on the astral plane -- something he would not allow just then.
~Good morning Jean,~ he replied, trying to keep it short and to the point. Less time for her to question him, less possibility of them knowing anymore than the absolute minimum. ~There is a change of plans today, entirely unexpected. I won't be joining you at the convention today.~ /What else was there...?/
Dinner. With the mayor and quite a few other high-ranking city politicians... /No backing out of that./ ~But I will see you at dinner, Jean.~
~What should I tell the others, Professor?~ she asked, obviously distressed by what he was telling her.
~Tell them that I've found Magneto~ And with that, the connection was blocked by Xavier.
It was, in his own memory, one of the few times he'd ever broken a connection so abruptly. /Jean will worry,/ he noted to himself as he decided to settle down again in the sheets. /I'm completely indecisive as to what to do next with him... this./
'This' was the need to have the other man stay with him; 'this' was an undeniable attraction that both of them felt, but neither had spoken of; 'this' was dangerous, fool-hardy, asinine... So many things, but 'this' still was. Hanging in the air between them as surely as Erik laid beside him in bed.
What he'd done the night before, was still doing, had solved one problem, in an unspoken way, but created hundreds more. How far was Magnus willing to let it go? How far could *he* let it go...? /There are better things to do than brood on it.../
His hand was resting atop that bruised, sturdy chest once more, and he pulled back the sheets a little to study his old friend. Sometime in his sleep, his right arm had lifted and was now folded so that Xavier could read numbers of the tattoo. /To become just a number... and this is the fear that has driven you for so long -- that mutants will someday face the same fate as the Jews did. Perhaps it is possible -- we are already herded out of some areas and into others... Small scale Pogroms./
But there was no way or argument that would convince Magnus that there were other ways to 'protect' the mutant species.
Pulling those sheets up again, Charles laid his hand on Magnus' body again, feeling the steady pulse and the even rising and falling of his breaths. "Erik." Voice soft, subdued as he added a faint press with his hand. The silver-capped head shook for a moment, the protest of those who are tired but too close to consciousness to slip back under. "Erik..."
What he did next was simply following a whim. Bending the little bit required to press a faint kiss to un-moving lips, then drawing back. "Ah, Erik..."
"Nnn." A softly pained protest, and he coughed raggedly, as he'd done for much of the night, as he started to sit up.
~Lay back, Erik, and keep resting,~ came the gentle instruction within his mind, along with the return of that familiar stroking against his chest.
~Your students, Charles...~ A drifting thought from Magnus' tired and un-protesting mind. ~You should...~
"I've already told them I will not be at the conference today, Erik." ~Would you rather that I left?~
Xavier was startled when Magnus moved one hand, grasping his fore-arm. ~Safety, Charles. You are... safety.~ Even more startling was the cool grey-blue eyes slitted barely open, looking at him. There was no way to out-manoeuvre that piercing gaze, no way he could think of to change the subject and avoid it as they'd done the night before.
"Will you come with me to the mansion?" ~We'll use whatever pretence you wish, Erik. I want to give you all the help that I can.~
Was it possible that at long last they were deviating from the known paths? /Let it be so, Charles.../ The thick, dragging cough came back then, when he wanted to speak a reply to the other man, and with it the fierce pain in his chest.
Getting quickly out of the bed and into his wheel-chair -- entirely glad he'd slept with his trousers still on from the night before -- Xavier was soon on the other side of the bed, with another glass of water to try to get down the other man's protesting throat. Thankfully the bed was set low, like most everything else in the 'wheel-chair accessible' room. "Steady, Erik. Drink a little slower."
When he was sure that Magnus wasn't going to cough himself to pieces just then, he drew back the glass and helped him sit up, the pillows propped up behind his badly beaten back. Just helping him sit up, Xavier could see the black-red marks on that warm-coloured skin.
"Thank you," came Magnus' ragged reply at last, eyes open again. ~I would like to go with you, Charles.~
Letting his mouth curl into a smile, Xavier nodded. "Thank *you*, my friend."
~~~~~