Dried blood
Set after X-Men: Days of Future Past. Unedited Cherik fluff with a touch of angst.
"Um, professor X? Am I bothering you?"
"Not at all."
"I have a weird question," Sean announces awkwardly.
"Fire away," Charles says with a distracted smile.
"Did you… Er… Were you and Moira ever a… Thing?"
Charles looks up from the files in his lap. He hesitates.
"We kissed, once," He says at last. "Why?"
Sean shuffles on his feet, hands in pockets, not meeting Charles' eyes.
"Nothing. Just… She seemed to fancy you," He concludes, and then gazes at the professor. "Why did you kiss her?"
Charles lowers his eyes to his busy hands. He doesn't need to read any minds to know what Sean's thinking.
"Because she wished to."
"And you didn't?"
It's not really a question.
He doesn't reply.
Alex calls for Sean to hurry up from the corridor outside.
Charles receives a thoughtful, considerate look before the student runs off with his friend.
It should be easy, because no one mentions it. It should be easy, because meanwhile the older students do try to be careful, the younger doesn't know or care. It should be easy, because he pretends it is.
But it's not.
No one mentions it, but they think about it. He hears it as clearly as if they were speaking out loud, and it's hard to shut it out. The younger students whisper questions to the older ones, and when they only get snarls and ugly responses, their curious eyes follow him attentively in the corridor. And he's not pretending he's not hurting, because he believes that to heal you need to take an appropriate time to grieve, but he takes too long to heal and that just contributes to the pain.
He adjusts to the wheelchair rapidly. He wishes he could stand and run and dance, but he hardly misses it. He has accepted that it won't happen again and he's all right with that new aspect of his life.
The school is splendid. Students keep arriving – curious, excited minds, delighted to hear that they're not alone being lonely, that they're not alone being different, that they're not alone in any way.
I thought I was alone.
You are not alone… Erik. You are not alone.
Alex and Sean and Hank help teaching. They're looked up to and also slightly feared. Charles chuckles at that, but tries to focus on training older mutants so that they can become teachers. After all, the boys have lots to learn still. Of course, that's the case with Charles too, but he has no mentor, and trains by himself.
He learns a lot, though. The students are as interesting as they are interested – they have new gifts to offer, new methods to use, new ways to be. They are a little lost, a little clumsy, because of the lack of proper guidance, but Charles is doing his very best and so are his friends, and it's starting to shape up to something bigger than themselves, something to be proud of.
Charles likes the kitchen. They need to get staff soon, people to cook and clean and such, but for now, the students take their responsibility. Charles makes sure they always have food, and the children casually make themselves sandwiches or have fun cooking big meals for them all. The kitchen is full of life and laughter and slightly irritatingly loud slurping, and he never has to think of how his mother wouldn't take a step in there to make her son a cup of hot chocolate.
You're hungry and alone. Take whatever you want. We've got lots of food, you don't have to steal. In fact… You never have to steal again.
It builds up, slowly but steadily, to become slightly more organized and less messy. New students are recruited at amazing speed, and Charles finds himself seeing new faces and hearing new thoughts every day he wheels down the corridors. He uses Cerebro to find new mutants, but he doesn't go meet many by himself; Sean and Alex like showing off their powers and act experienced and grand, but Hank likes it back at the school, and soon has a small group of science-interested students in awe of his powers and intellect.
Charles doesn't think he has changed – not on the outside, at least. The way his friends look at him has changed, but soon enough, they fall back in to old habits and stop trying to be so careful. The way he looks has changed, due to the wheelchair, but when he sees his own reflection, he sees himself as he always has, with the slightly old-fashioned dressing-style and dark hair. He acts the same; he might not spend as much time chugging down pints, but that's just because of the new workload put on him, and he's all right with that. He still smiles and jokes and teaches the new students the same way he did with his old friends.
But the facts remain that he can't feel his legs and he experiences how it happened at least one night a week and he's empty, empty and hurting and terrifyingly lonely but never alone now his home is full and buzzing of life to a degree where the building itself feels alive.
Raven doesn't stay in touch. Charles doesn't expect her to, but it still hurts. He resists trying to find her with Cerebro. He knows Hank is suspecting and almost expecting it, but Charles pretends not to notice and jokes that though the device already is marvelous, he should try and develop it to the point where the amount of hair on the professor's head should have no say in how well it works.
Erik doesn't stay in touch, either.
He doesn't allow himself to grieve Erik too much – not in the beginning. He convinces himself that he should be feeling hot fury rather than the hot pain that actually is filling his chest. He thinks that he should be feeling betrayal, the same betrayal that frays the memories in the heads of his friends. And he does feel it, but not enough to replace the pain; the anger flares up occasionally, making him want to scream, but it's not enough, and the betrayal is there, stinging like an old wound, but it's not enough, and mostly he's hurting, and that's what most definitely is enough.
Enough, enough, enough, enough, enough.
Erik. Erik, that's enough. Erik, that's enough!
Charles tries not to count how many times he has needed to yell at Erik to stop misusing his powers.
He does count how many times Erik didn't listen.
Late at night, breathing hard after jerking awake from another visit at the beach, he wonders if it was his own fault. He wonders if he couldn't have explored the dark corners of Erik's mind more, tried to help him and lead him on to the right path again, untangled the mess that caused his downfall.
He doesn't let himself go back to sleep during those nights. He stays awake grading tests or preparing tomorrow's classes instead, fighting to keep his eyelids up because he knows he needs to, fighting to keep the memories and thoughts from creeping up at him from behind, and it's just as hard of a struggle as any he has ever experienced, and that's really saying something, isn't it?
Charles cries, too. He has always had it easy for tears. He has never been ashamed of them. They're the proof of the link between the two simplest human emotions that has ever been; sorrow and joy. What connects them is how absolutely contradicting they are and how they still can show themselves in the same way when they're so tremendously different, and sometimes Charles doesn't really know which one he is feeling anymore, because everything has blurred and his eyes produce salty water at the same time his mouth parts in a huge smile whenever he thinks of the times before he was bound to a wheelchair, and he's painfully aware that it's not merely out of glee.
But despite all that, he's all right. He shuffles on. His smiles toward his students and friends are genuine. The school gives him hope.
Of course, that all crumbles.
Not slowly or unnoticeably – no, it's a savage, brutal teardown, with children sent to war and the government snatching up mutants to experiment on, and it's painful and raw and horridly wrong, but it does happen fast. It's a blur to Charles, a blur of anger and sorrow and loud yelling, but then it's over and he's sitting in a painfully silent corridor with weary eyes staring in to space.
Hank is the only one who stays. He assures Charles that it's not only because he has no choice. Charles wishes he could believe him, but eventually stops caring with the help of alcohol.
He reaches a foggy state of numbness that he secretly detests, but it's better than whatever waits for him outside the walls of daze. Whenever he lets himself feel his raw anger and pain, he focuses it on smaller things, like the lack of feeling in his legs. Hank offers him the serum he uses to stay human, and Charles overuses it on purpose despite the fact that his friend warns him that it'll drain him on his powers, but maybe if he can shut out the voices of other minds, he might be able to shut out his own too.
Erik hunts.
Hunts for revenge, hunts for bad guys, hunts for what he deserves. Hunts for freedom.
His fellowship grows and he's satisfied. He has Raven by his side, loving and admiring him, and he feels powerful. He loves it and enjoys every moment of it.
He sits in his bed, back against the wall, moves his fingers as something floats around and between them. He remembers sitting in the exact same position what seemed like years ago, letting his anger make a coin move the same way, but now it's effortless and, most importantly, calm. He refuses to think of where and how he was taught that.
You know, I believe that true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity.
Erik realizes it has become a habit way too late. It starts when he and his new comrades teleport away from that beach, and he realizes that he's still clutching the bullet that wounded Charles in his clenched fist. He blinks down at it coldly, not knowing what to make out of that, but then someone starts talking and he slips it in to a pocket without realizing.
He starts playing with it when he's alone – making it fly around the room at high speed but veering swiftly before scraping any surfaces, floating higher and higher to see how far his power range goes, or simply throwing it up in the air and catching it without using any of his powers.
It becomes slightly addictive – whenever bored or angry, he focuses on the bullet. Soon, he starts doing it even when he has company – people find it intimidating, he soon realizes, because even though many gazes linger on his new toy, no one dares to question it. Raven stares at it suspiciously until she realizes what it is, and then shoots him a pained glance but says nothing as he gives her a silencing look.
He refuses to think it has any significance. He could easily replace it – it's a silly object he likes to practice his powers on whenever bored, nothing more than that.
I want you by my side.
There is still some dried blood on the top of the bullet.
Erik ignores it.
He ignores everything from his past, except the anger and pain that has empowered him since the early years of his youth. But even that is less strong now. He refuses to think about why that is.
There's so much more to you than you know. Not just pain and anger.
He refuses to think of how he got this powerful in the first place.
…When you can access all that, you'll possess a power no one can match. Not even me.
He refuses to think of what happened.
She didn't do this, Erik. You did.
He refuses to think of them.
This is yours?
No. It's ours.
He refuses to think of him.
There's good to you, I felt it.
Erik doesn't cry.
Erik doesn't mourn.
Erik doesn't let himself feel anything.
Maybe that's why the pain still feels raw and fresh, a wound that won't heal, a bullet stuck in flesh that is impossible to remove.
He has never liked closing his eyes. To him, it feels like willingly giving up control – not knowing and seeing what is going on around him. He has nothing against sleeping, as long as he falls asleep quick and easy, and wake up the same way. He cannot and never has been able to lie in bed for a long while until he eventually drifts off.
But shutting your eyes to the world gets even worse when you can't shut your eyes to what's happening in your dreams. Every morning, Erik jerks awake, soaked in sweat and breathing heavily, scenes from the day at that beach flashing on the back of his eyelids.
He runs a hand through his damp hair, sits up and leans back against the wall, closes his eyes until the world stops spinning. When he lowers his gaze to his hand, the bullet is playfully making its way in and out through the space between his fingers.
Erik blinks down at it.
There is still some dried blood on the top of the bullet.
He can't fall asleep again, so he sits there, back against the wall, the bullet that paralyzed Charles Xavier looping around his fingers and stares unseeingly in to space.
Erik comes back to the school a few times after their adventure with Logan and Trask.
Charles is trying again. He's still hurting, and he can't feel his legs anymore, but he's desperately trying to get the school back on its feet, and Hank is helping him too. He's thankful for Logan rekindling his hope.
It's around midnight and he is sorting old files in his office when he senses another mind except for Hank's close by. He turns around to look out the window, where Erik is floating in midair with legs crossed, holding his helmet in his hands.
They stare at each other for a moment, until Erik raises an eyebrow to indicate coming inside, and Charles hesitates before opening the window and letting him in.
"Your office hasn't changed," is the first thing out of the man's mouth.
"What do you want, Erik?" Charles asks stiffly.
Erik looks calm, and his mind is controlled. There are no walls – no helmet to keep the telepath from reading his thoughts – but they're not loud enough to be heard without going in, which Charles won't do.
"I wanted to speak to you," His feet touch the ground, and he absent-mindedly walks over to the book shelf. His body language and expression is screaming casual confidence, but Charles can feel a ripple, something shifting and moving in his mind. "About Peter Maximoff."
His eyes turn serious as he looks back at Charles, who is sitting rigidly in his wheelchair and clenching its arms.
"Peter Maximoff?" He repeats.
"Yes," Erik says, voice harsher now. "He's my son, isn't he?"
Charles scowls.
"What are you talking about, Erik?" He asks sharply. "Why would he be your son?"
Erik stares at him, his knuckles whitening around the metal helmet in his clenched hands.
"He told me that his mother used to know a man with my powers," He explains slowly. "I thought-"
"I met him before my powers returned to me," Charles reminds him, realizing what he means. "He never mentioned his father to us. We only met very briefly."
"You didn't know?" Erik asks suspiciously, frowning.
"No idea," The telepath replies with a joyless chuckle.
They spend a few moments gazing at each other. Erik is frowning, looking slightly confused.
"He might not be your son," Charles says and shrugs, raising his eyebrows. "Not that you're not the type to-"
"Oh, don't you remember how you used to be?" Erik snaps, cutting him off.
"Didn't make anyone pregnant, though."
Their eyes lock, and Charles feel himself starting to smile, and suddenly disgust of himself flares up inside his chest and he quickly averts his gaze.
"I think you should go, Erik," He announced coldly. "You came here looking for answers but I have none. I apologize for that."
He looks up, and Erik's jaw clenches and his gaze sharpens.
"All right," Is all he says. He puts on his helmet, and Charles can feel something shift in the air around him – no feelings or moods are rolling off him anymore, and there's a thick, blank wall between them the telepath can't and doesn't want to break through.
Erik gives him a lingering, hard look before disappearing out of the room.
Charles thinks he's going to need to cry himself to sleep tonight.
He doesn't.
The next time Erik shows up, the old mansion is starting to feel welcoming again. Charles and Hank are trying to get it to look like a school before recruiting students to educate.
He's outside the window again, but it's day and Charles isn't surprised. He opens it but says nothing as Erik climbs inside. He is, once again, holding his helmet instead of wearing it.
They yell at each other – Erik starts it, spitting insults and anything he knows can hurt, and Charles just goes with it, and it feels like every flash of pain and anger he has felt finally has an opportunity to leave his body.
Charles doesn't understand why Erik isn't wearing the metal helmet. He's clutching it in his hands, knuckles pale and fingers digging in to the smooth surface. His thoughts are hard to read when he's yelling so loudly, as if he's trying to drown them out, but if that was his goal, he could just have slipped on the helmet, and Charles is confused. He doesn't go in to Erik's mind, but the thoughts and emotions rolling off him are overwhelmingly strong anyway – very mangled, but strong and fierce and maybe he wants the telepath to feel them, maybe he wants to stress just how angry he is.
When Erik leaves – through the door instead of the window he came in from – Charles is out of breath and has adrenaline pumping through his veins, but he can't remember what they fought about.
He feels strangely empty when he goes to bed that night.
It happens again.
Erik shows up outside the same window, and Charles isn't surprised. He isn't wearing his helmet, but he's not holding it either – instead, his hands are full of what looks like a new set of chess.
"Care to join me?" He asks.
Charles doesn't reply.
They spend the night playing chess in absolute silence. The telepath doesn't look at Erik at all. Erik is casual and relaxed – but again, Charles can feel something shifting and moving in his mind, a tangle of various, strong emotions that he refuses to show, and Charles refuses to use his powers to examine.
"Good one," He breaks the silence, as Charles moves his knight a few steps and traps his king. "You've gotten better, Charles."
Again, Charles says nothing.
Around one o'clock, Erik gets up. He casually brushes off some invisible dust from his pants, and then smashes his hands together with a cool smile.
"Well, that was nice. We should do it again some time."
The telepath doesn't move or respond. He sits still in his wheelchair, staring at the chess set in front of him. It's not metal.
"Your helmet," He says, seeing how Erik stops moving in the corner of his eye. "You don't have it."
A pause.
"No. I've nothing to hide."
Erik is gone, the chess set is not and Charles puts his head in his hands.
The next visit happens a few days later. Charles is sitting by his desk and working when Erik suddenly appears. The window is already open – it has sort of become a habit to leave it like that – and even though the telepath felt his presence, he's caught by surprise this time, as Erik climbs inside, takes a few long strides towards him, grabs his face and kisses him.
It's just a hard press of lips, and Charles is too frozen with astonishment to even close his eyes. Erik does, though – his eyes are squeezed shut and mouth unmoving but pressing strongly against Charles', and his hands are cupping the telepath's face firmly. A wave of Erik's emotions washes over him, mixing with his own, and it's all an awful mess but the most important thing is that they're kissing, but before Charles can do anything about it, the other pair of lips is gone and Erik has disappeared out through the door.
Charles is confused and slightly angry.
He runs his hands through his hair, he wheels around the room, he sits staring in to space, he glares at the window.
Erik doesn't come back that night, and not the night after, and not even the night after that. Charles is distracted and irritated and distant, and Hank notices but doesn't say anything. He spends most of his time in his office, waiting and then being disgusted by himself because of it. Hank kindly leaves him alone.
He has memorized what it felt like – it was barely a kiss, nothing more than two mouths squished against each other awkwardly. Still, it makes him overwhelmed to think of, so he focuses on all the things Erik had been feeling – so much at the same time, all thrown over Charles without warning as they kissed, and it was a horrendous tangle of everything he feels himself and some more.
Exactly eight days later, Charles straightens his spine as he feels Erik's presence close by the school. He waits patiently, until he practically can feel the visitor watching him through the open window, and wheels around to meet his eyes.
Erik's jaw is clenched, his eyes hard, his face set in an expression Charles recognize as frustration and frigidity caused by confusion. They stare at each other for a few long moments, until Erik slowly climbs through the window and in to the office.
"Mind explaining?" Charles asks him calmly.
He opens his mouth, but then snaps it close, and the telepath secretly enjoys this new, vulnerable, puzzled side of Erik. He restrains himself from going in to the metal-bender's mind.
"I still have this," Erik says at last, and reaches in to his pocket. On Charles desk, he puts a small, metallic object with red splashed on top.
Charles stares at it.
"I couldn't throw it away during all this time," Erik continues stiffly. "It confused me."
Charles doesn't look away from the bullet. He tries to count how many years ago it was buried in his own flesh.
There is still some dried blood on the top of the bullet.
"They took it away from me at Pentagon. I went looking for it after we parted. Didn't know why. I found it a few days back."
Erik is looking at him, but the telepath's gaze is still fixed on the bullet.
"I-" He cut himself off, frowning in frustration. "I wanted to try something."
Charles realizes that's the answer to the question he had asked.
"And did it work?" Charles speaks up. He finally raises his head, stares back at Erik.
The metal-bender blinks.
"You know, I'm still angry. Logan helped me, us, but I'm still mad. You did abandon me, Erik, before I abandoned any of you."
Erik is staring, and Charles voice is slightly hoarse.
"And then you start visiting me, as if nothing has changed since the day we started this school together, and I do question your mind sometimes, but I have not read it out of respect, even when you refused to explain," Charles continues, voice steely. "But I have to say, right now, I really need to hear a real explanation."
Charles looks at him, and Erik inhales slowly and clenches his hands in to fists. His eyes flicker to the bullet, and then back to the telepath.
"Read it."
The telepath blinks.
"What?"
"My mind. Read it," Erik says grittedly.
Charles blinks again, thinking, but then licks his lips and raises his hand. Erik comes closer, going down on his knees in front of the wheelchair and grabbing the arms of it, and Charles lightly touches his temple with a few fingers.
Erik doesn't have anything to say.
He can't say anything.
He can feel Charles inside his head, his presence floating through Erik's thoughts effortlessly. His blue eyes are wide, staring in to the metal-bender's but at the same time watching something else beyond him.
Then, suddenly, it's over, because Charles suddenly sucks in a breath as if he has been under water, and he leans back slightly as his eyes regain focus.
He swallows, looks at Erik, and Erik just glares back until the telepath suddenly leans in.
The kiss is eager and joyful and the metal-bender's hands fly up to Charles' jaw, and Charles cups his cheeks and kisses on enthusiastically and Erik doesn't understand why they've never done this before.
Then he starts pulling back, and no, can't have that, Erik thinks and moves his lips persistently against the telepath's, and he can feel Charles smiling and he does too.
Charles' eyes are shining brightly blue when they finally do pull away, and his hands are on Erik's shoulders. His cheeks are wonderfully flushed and he's smiling hugely, and Erik grins back because really, he can't help it.
"Ah, your timing couldn't be more perfect," Charles says, attempting to sound casual, though his voice is slightly deeper than usual.
"I disagree. We should have done this a long time ago," Erik says, gaze dropping to the telepath's gloriously kiss-swollen lips.
Charles chuckles so that his chest vibrates beneath the metal-bender's hands.
"You are truly a madman, Erik Lehnsherr," He sighs gleefully.
"And you, Xavier, should not wear such an unstylish sweater. Let me help you get it off immediately."
"Says the man who prefers wearing a purple cape and a metal bucket on his head," Charles snorts, eyes crinkling in delight.
Erik grins widely.