So, this is it.
This is the story I've been dying to post for ages - written between April and July last year. My first long story- and I hope, not the last!
The title comes from Sharp Edges by Linkin Park. I highly recommend you to listen to it :)
The first sentence of this story comes from Azra Tabassum. You can find them on Tumblr, as it's not possible to share links in here. This was so inspiring!
I have to thank from the bottom of my heart:
- Flo'w, my dearest friend, my helpful beta, my relentless T-rex, the one who got me through this story and every other one with her encouragements and love (and threats haha). Thanks to you, I'm now capable of publishing a full 70k story when I thought a year ago that I wouldn't be able to do this ever. I love you.
- Mikanskey for her encouragements and love while I was writing, for the wonderful gifts she offered me and that I can finally share with you all. You are so talented, so adorable, and I'm so proud to count you as one of my most precious friends.
- Holdt for her wonderful work betaing this story, as English isn't my first language. You are so sweet, thank you for everything, for all the encouraging comments!
You can also find me on Tumblr under the name NesNalou. I'm always open for a chat, so don't hesitate!
This story will be updated roughly every week, as it is fully written and almost completely betaed!
This is the biggest work I have ever done on a story, so please, don't hesitate to leave a comment! I want to know what you thought of it!
Thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to go through this. I hope you will enjoy yourself.
This work is originally posted on my AO3 account with the following tags:
Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Erik Lehnsherr is not a Happy Bunny, Erik Has Feelings, Protective Erik, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Erik has Issues, Erik-centric, POV Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Always Says the Absolute Worst Thing He Could Possibly Say, Charles Getting Uncomfortable, Top Erik Lehnsherr, Bottom Erik Lehnsherr, Top Charles Xavier, Bottom Charles Xavier, Switching, Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, past gang, BAMF Logan, Shaw Being a Manipulative Bastard, Probation worker Logan, Edie Lehnsherr lives, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Wordcount: 50.000-100.000, Art, Tattoos, Piercings.
Nalou
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"Not all love is gentle. Sometimes it's gritty and dirty and possessive, sometimes it's not supposed to be careful or soft at all. Sometimes it feels like teeth."
That's something Erik Lehnsherr has learned pretty damn early.
oOo
He has just moved in to the Bronx after his mother and he fled Pittsburgh. He can't see that as anything else but fleeing. Even if Edie Lehnsherr considers it starting a new life.
He has a new life, in a new high school, far away from his own old one, full of mutantphobes and haters, of students and teachers he despises with all his heart for all they have done to him. He has a new apartment to get accustomed to, with old squeaking pipes and peeling paint and stains on the ceiling, built in a street that barely sees the sun more than a few scant hours each day.
Right now, all he needs is to finish high school without causing any more trouble. He's had enough. His mother's had enough. He can't hurt her any more than he already has. She's getting old, and she's the only family Erik has left.
He's turning eighteen next January and the prosecutors won't be so generous with him as soon as he's an adult regarding the law, if he ever steps out of the line again. Just thinking about it makes him crush the legal papers in his hands.
He slowly breathes in. Holds. Breathes out. Thinks about this new room of his, bare but for a bed and a desk, all of his (scarce) belongings still packed in cardboard boxes. Books, mostly. Second-hand and patched clothes. Metal scraps he's usually toying with. No pictures. He leaves the memories to the past. Doesn't have many happy memories, anyway. It'll take no time to get his stuff out and stored.
The old spring mattress creaks underneath him, and he concentrates on every metal bits inside it to straighten them and assure his back a few more years of approximately good sleep. Then, he finally comes back to that letter clutched in his right fist.
The lacerations on his knuckles have almost completely healed, leaving faint white scars among the older ones.
He straightens the two sheets of paper back and reads them again. They've transferred his juvie record to the closest probation centre from his new home, and he's got an appointment with his new counsellor the next day. He's got only a few remaining days before the school year starts and he still hasn't completely caught up with the classes he missed after his exclusion. He'll have to manage.
oOo
Erik would have laughed, had he remembered how to do it. The new probation worker looks like anything but a saint. The man is built like a bull overloaded with growth hormones, has sideburns the size of Erik's hands, and a haircut so hideous Erik almost throws up a little in his mouth upon seeing him.
The man, after opening the door to his insalubrious office inside a crumbling building, has growled a "Logan" that, Erik supposes, is his name. He sits back on his creaking desk chair and looks at Erik for an impossibly long minute before retrieving the cardboard folder on the cluttered table. He opens it, mumbles the words beat up, four guys, and pulp.
"Well, kid, you're aware you're in deep trouble?" Logan starts. He grabs a cigar in his front shirt pocket and puts it between his teeth, leaving it unlit.
"No shit, Sherlock," Erik whispers, crossing his arms over his chest. He nudges a coin he has in his jeans' front pocket and gets it to float over his hand, sliding easily between his spread fingers at his side. The kid he is can easily ignore the new probie.
Logan raises his eyes from the file and watches him once again, considering. Drops the cigar in the ashtray on his desk. Lifts a paw to his face—no way a hand could be so big and hairy—and oh so slowly, a claw emerges from between his index and middle finger, and how could Erik have not sensed it before? This is metal. Metal covering every damn bone in the counsellor's body.
The man uses the claw to pick his teeth, and the scrape over enamel makes Erik gag and the penny, drop. Erik scowls at Logan, but knows that he can't even try to force him to stop—assaulting a probation worker seeing you for, well, an assault case, is probably not a good idea—even if the metal is now singing to his senses.
"Good, I finally have your attention?" Logan's voice rumbles, but he actually stops doing that thing with his claw. "Adamantium, if you're asking."
"I'm not." Erik replies immediately.
"You have your tricks, I have mine. And I also have a folder full of stories about you and what you can do." He pauses, takes the cigar again. "I know you know how everything works. I won't repeat it. You come here once a week, I stamp the needed box in that grid, and we're fine." He produces a lighter from nowhere in sight and uses it to ignite the tip of the cigar. Thick, odorous smoke escapes his mouth after his first intake of breath.
Erik glares at the man for fumigating him but then gets his own tobacco pouch from his pocket and starts rolling a cigarette.
Logan cuts him off. "What do you think you're doing?" as Erik is about to lick the paper and close his smoke. Baffled, Erik doesn't move, his unrolled cigarette still in hand, as Logan watches him cautiously. But an instant later, the man's face breaks into a grin. "Kidding. I don't give a fuck. Smoke in here if you want to. I'll just say I didn't know your age."
"It's on the paper." Erik says, deadpan. Seriously, what's wrong with this guy? Erik doesn't know what to do, how to behave. Maybe that's precisely what that creep wants.
Logan folds the cardboard pouch over his juvenile record. "What paper?"
Later, as Erik goes back home, walking the few miles separating him from his mother, he wonders what the few months left on probation will be made of.
oOo
When he gets home, his mother is removing vegetables from brown paper bags and storing them in their new crappy kitchen. He empties his pockets in the bowl sitting in the entryway before going to help her. They make a quick work of it and he then floats the kettle under the faucet in order to make tea. His mother never stops, moving and bustling over anything at any time of the day, and Erik knows she's tiring up. She tries to conceal it but he knows her way too well.
He pours the now hot water over the bag inside the old, chipped teapot and gets their two mugs from the cupboard. The ceramic is stained from years of leaves infusing and hurried rinsing. He silently urges Edie to sit on one of the stools with her tea and some biscuits he got from the 'food' labelled box, then Erik starts unpacking the remaining stuff inside it under his mother's rapt attention.
She talks about her trip to the nearest synagogue, and all the nice people she met there. The rabbi has welcomed her and asked her if she was well settled, if she needed some help from the others in the community, but she had answered that her son was helping her and doing everything she needed and that he was a good boy. As she tells that part, Erik can't stop blushing.
"Mama, you know that's not true. You know what happened." He berates her.
"I know that what happened was a farce and that you weren't responsible," she answers quickly.
"I'm not talking only about that. I'm talking about everything. I'm no good."
"Hush, boy. Don't you think your old mother knows the truth? That you hide even to yourself?"
Erik snorts and resumes storing the food they packed, deciding not to listen to her anymore for now. He grits his teeth, jaw tightened to keep control over his rising anger. Breathe in. Breathe out. Pushing the turmoil down.
She doesn't leave him to his own devices for long. "I talked with a nice elderly couple. They own a shop, a… grocery store, a few blocks from here. And they could use a hand. Poor Mr David can't lift much those days, with his back hurting so much. They might look for someone for a few hours a week, and I told them you wanted to find a job for after school and the weekends. So they asked me to give you their shop address. You can go and talk to them any time you want."
"Yes, Mama."
"Now, go-I'll finish that and make dinner, all right? You have yet to unpack your things."
Erik chugs his lukewarm tea in one go and rinses both mugs before drying his hands on the rag sitting near the sink. Putting a hand on her frail shoulder, he leans to kiss her cheek. "Call me if you need anything." He goes straight to his room.
oOo
He stares at his reflection on the mirror he'd installed the day before in his bedroom. He'd discarded his shirt upon entering the room and after moving a few things, now he stops to look at himself, lost in his thoughts.
The black lines covering his arms and chest are stark over his golden skin, proofs of the things he has done. They cover a few scars but don't conceal them totally, and others appeared after the ink. His gaze is hard, ruthless, the grey of his pupils unsettling. Erik has been hardened in Pittsburgh's worst streets, and it shows not only on his skin, but also underneath, as lean muscles ripple with each tiny movement. But all those years—they have defined him. They took what he was and perfected it, shaped him in a diamond so hard he wouldn't fear anything. He's not especially proud. He just… He doesn't know how he would have fared without all that. Not after… Not after.
Erik shakes his head, breaks the contact with his reflection. Resumes his storing. Tomorrow, he'll go to the shop and see if they want to hire him despite his tattooed arms. Jews usually don't like the idea of it, but Erik had needed to break that taboo. Had needed the pain, the metal drilling his body, the acknowledgment.
Tomorrow, he'll go to the shop and discover if he's definitely an outcast or if he can redeem himself—if there's still one microscopic chance.
.