Erick realized, with annoyance, that he was levitating on his bed. Again. Still half asleep, he decided to try to convey his ill humor towards a certain telepath that happened to live under the same quarters.

"I know Erick" Charles voice replied inside Erick's skull, so clearly that it sounded as if he was standing right by his friend's bedside. "Hank is taking me to see her"

"It's the third fucking time this week, Charles. We might as well strap the kids to the beds" Erick opened his eyes and tried his best to adjust to the lack of illumination.

"It is getting better, I think. Apparently it has only affected this floor" Erick could picture Charles' puppy like happy grin as he said that.

"As opposed to what? The whole Easter Coast?" Erick tried to ignore the strange empty feeling the anti gravity provoqued on his body. The only thing keeping him from puking was the fact that he wasn't sure if his vomit would float over his head.

"Jean has suffered a traumatic experience, Erick" Charles sounded annoyed at his friend's lack of sensibility. As per usual, Erick thought. "She has improved on her control of her capabilities but we have a lot of work ahead of us. And she's not the only one that has nightmares"

Erick tensed at that last statement. He didn't wanted Charles to see the horrible images that played every night on his dreams. The worse thing was that they were not creations of his imagination but actual memoires that mixed together in a horrible mix of violence, solitude and loss. He immediately got defensive and started trying to block the telepath's intrusion.

"Relax, old friend. I wasn't referring to you. I promised not to prive on your thoughts and I would stay true to that oath. But half of the people living under this roof has some kind of emotional trauma" Charles' voice was tinted with exhaustion. Erick felt uncomfortable by the calmness on his friend's tone, so he recurred to his comfort zone.

"Don't you have a non gravity situation to handle, Charles?" Erick was amused when Charles chuckled. He mentally chuckled.

"Already handled. It's called multitasking, Erick" Charles responded sarcastically. Almost immediately after that, Erick felt back on his bed.

"By the way, could you help me out and check on Peter now that you're awake? I think he's having a nightmare too" Charles was obviously enjoying giving orders to his old pal and Erick gritted his tooth.

Erick had a million reasons why he shouldn't be checking on the boy. Half of them were related to "I'm not part of the teacher's staff" and half of them were more of the "I don't like talking to kids, people, animals or plants, Charles" type.

"He is going to hurt his leg, Erick. And I have to check up on the rest of the students on this floor", Charles tone became firm and Erick rolled his eyes. It was too late at night (or maybe early in the morning, his clock had landed somewhere in the room after Jean's stunt) to get into a fight with the telepath.

"Just wake him up or something" Charles added vaguely

"Fineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee", Erick replied, making a show of tossing away the sheets covering him.

"Thanks Sleeping Beauty" Charles snickered.

Peter was in pain. Every single bit of his body was burning in agony. His two legs were twisted at abnormal angles, both in opposing directions from his torso. Is arms lie limp by his side, both smashed to dead and reduced to dust.

Apocalypse rose proudly in front of the teenager, wearing a cruel sadistic grin on his face. He approached, slowly, to Peter's broken body. The blue giant placed one of his closed fist on top of Peter's chest and simply pushed down. Peter felt his ribs cracking, his lungs exploding under the pressure of the air inside him. And just as Apocalypse let out a sinister laugh, Peter screamed.

The net thing he knew, his fist was flying up and hitting something solid and warm.

"Jesus Christ!"

Instead of a blue mutant, Erick Lehnsherr stood in front of Peter. He was holding his nose with his hands and wore a mean frown on his face.

"What? Why are you here? Where?" Peter blurted out incoherently as he tried to stand up from the rec room couch where he had snoozed off.

"Try to elaborate a single full sentence, kid" Erick massaged his nose with a hand.

Slowly, Peter became more aware of his surroundings. He was a Xavier's School, not trapped in the middle of the after battle debris. Peter noticed his shirt was soaking in sweat and that there was salty taste on his lips, but Peter casually dismissed the fact that indicated that he had cried at some point of the night.

"I'm sorry if I woke you up dude", Peter was hyper aware of Erick's presence in the dark room. He was thankful the other mutant hadn't thought of turning on the light because he was pretty sure he was blushing a bit and that was lame as hell and also girly. Girls blushed. Not tough cool guys like himself.

"Jean woke me, you punched me" Erick clarified, finally deciding his nose had made it.

"Whaaaaaaaaaaat? Did I just punched a terrorist in the face. Cool. I mean baaad. Don't hit dad, Pietro" , the teenager thought.

"I'm sorry!" Peter said alarmed. "Please don´t kill me. Or hit me. It wouldn't be fair, you know, since I'm a minor. Besides, I'm crippled. You can hit a crippled guy. Or perhaps you can. The Professor gets his ass quick often enough" Peter realized he was a bit more fidgety and jumpy than usual and the fact that he was in front of his unaware-parenthood-but-still-his-dad dude didn't help at all.

"He does get beat a lot", Erick agreed and Peter could sweat the older mutant was smirking. Or at least he was making his best effort to do so, which resulted on a twisted grimace. "So, you're awake now"

"Apparently" Peter realized that Erick seemed extremely uncomfortable. The teenager tried to reason that the other mutant was not a very sociable persona and that his awkwardness had nothing to do with his company, but it still resulted in a small, miniscule, tiny bit of emotional pain.

An eerie silence settled on the room. Peter wished the mansion to be haunted because in that way they could at least listen to the ghosts moan and whimper. Instead, they had to put up with the longue uncomfortable pause in the conversation.

"Do you want a beer?" Erick blurted out.

"What?" Peter had never thought Erick would say something like that. "Dude, I'm seventeen"

"Seriously? Charles is running a kindergarden" Erick shook his head in disappointment. And then switched right back to being all coy and weird towards the young speeder. "Well don't know what's the protocol here. Comforting people is not my area or expertise"

"Yeah, no kidding", Peter scoffed and regretted doing so immediately after he received a murderous glance from Erick. "Sorry. Please don't kill me"

"It would be extremely hard to wash off your blood from that leather couch" Erick said with a straight face and then, ignoring the shocked and a bit panicked expression on the teenagers face, he offered, "How about tea?"

"Tea is fine. Tea is super. I am a huge fan of tea. And infusions. And all tea related varieties" Peter staggered and Erick had to fight back a grin. He managed to keep his badass act until he turned around and head towards the kitchen, and then he let out a small smile.

"The case is gone", Erick noted after a few minutes of sitting in comfortable silence next to Peter, each of the men holding a steaming cup.

Peter had been playing with the tea bag on his cup. He didn't know how to act around Erick. They weren't close enough to be considered friends and he doubted Erick would let anyone other than Raven and the Professor call him a friend. But they weren't strangers either and after Erick came back from the kitchen he could have gone back to bed and instead he told Peter to sit up so that he could fit in the couch. That had to be a good sign.

"Yep. Hanks says I only have to wear this plastic stuff for a week more and then I'll be free. I won't be able to run yet, though but at least this shit will be gone. Seriously, my calf sweats like crazy", Peter couldn't help to smile as he thought about the end of his treatment. Even if Hank insisted it only took Peter half of the average human recovery time to heal, the teenager still insisted he had been suffering and sulking for ages. Centuries.

"I'm glad to hear that. Of all the young mutants here, I haven't seen anyone else that treasures his powers as much as you" Erick sounded sincere but Peter scoffed.

"Well that's easy because my powers are awesome. But I wouldn't be so happy if I had killer ray vision or if I was blue. Or any other color" Peter confessed.

Erick rolled his eyes, saving his objections to himself. Whatever the powers were, mutants should be proud of them. And sure, even if there were some downsides, they were still unique and marvelous creations of evolution that should be explored and respected not shamed and repressed.

"And it's not all cool, you know", Erick's attention peaked when Peter sais that.

"Really?" Erick asked with interest.

Peter dropped his bag of tea back on the cup. Erick wanted to tell him that he should place it on the plate before the infusion got too concentrated but he didn't want to miss what the teen had to say.

"Yah I mean, it's not only my body that goes fast, it is also my brain. So I can't focus on stuff like learning or reading. I watch like three movies at the time on different screens because otherwise I get super bored", Peter seemed to be venting for the first time about the issue and Erick listened closely to every detail. He had never imagined Peter's powers had any other purpose than , well, moving fast. "And I don't sleep much either. I nap for fifteen minutes and that's it. And the shittiest part is when I can't move. Like when I was thirteen, I had a fever that put me down for like a week and it messed up my sleeping schedule. It's like my brain is trying to compensate the energy left out by giving me this vivid super realistic dreams. Kind of an acid trip. But it can get a bit frightening, you know. Like having an overload of static on your mind"

"Is that why you had a nightmare?" Erick asked. He had done so out of pure scientific interest but he noticed Peter recoiling on his seat and regretted his intrusion. "I didn't meant to offend you"

"Nah is cool. I mean it wasn't cool because that weird blue guy crushed me to death…" Peter's eyes got empty for a second and Erick cursed himself for his lack of sensibility.

"The memories…", Erick said without thinking. He managed to snap the younger mutant out of his trance, so he carried on, "…some times they are worse than the things created by our minds"

"Do you dream about Nazis and that stuff?" Peter's voice was shy and almost whispery. Erick knew the teen must have been unsure of his right to ask such a personal question but it was late and Erick was not as defensive as he would be if he had rested some more.

"Among other things", Erick admitted.

"I am sorry", Peter said and Erick simply shook his head.

"It's fine, I don't mind your questions"

"No I mean, I'm sorry that happened to you", Peter blurted out. Erick was taken back by the teenager's reply. He stared at the silver haired mutant but Peter was purposely avoiding looking at him and he kept fidgeting with the tea bag

Erick would never let anyone say such things about his life. He could have erupted in ire against Peter, he could have thrown at the teen's face all the truly horrible things he had witnessed, the things he had done himself and tell him he knew nothing about his past, that he had no right in apologizing and that his good feelings wouldn't make a difference.

Instead, Erick felt something close to affection for the young boy. There was no ulterior motive to his comment. There was not a trace of a manipulative intention. Nothing like the pity and the guilt Charles used to address Erick's past. It had been such a naïve thing to say, such an innocent belief and spontaneous reaction that Erick felt truly touched for a moment.

"Thank you", Erick courtly say not really knowing what his feelings were at the moment. "You should probably go back to sleep now"

Peter seemed a bit disappointed but he didn't argued when Erick stood up. The older mutant thought about simply leaving the room but instead he turned around and said, "What do you usually do when you have bad dreams?"

"Oh!" Peter's face lightened up and Erick noticed his features were still juvenile and boyish. "If I listen to my Walkman as I sleep sometimes the music gets stuck on my brain and I get this lucid dreams where I'm at a Beatle's concert or The Who is playing in my bedroom. It's really cool"

"Where is it? Your Walkman?" Erick questioned, grinning a bit when Peter let out a dramatic moan.

"Catching dust on my mom's basement because I was an idiot who forgot to pack it" Peter grumpily admitted, trying his best to compose a serious frown.

"Shame" Erick simply said. "Good night Peter."

"Night", Peter gave Erick a small (a bit over enthusiastic) wave and the older mutant left the room.

The next morning Peter had to make an effort not to fell asleep on his cereal. H had dark circles under his eyes and he yawned tiredly as he tried to remember the purpose of spoons. Then Peter noticed Erick entering the cafeteria. He seemed well rested and elegant as always. He briefly noticed the teen looking at him and offered a court nod before taking a sit next to the Professor and Raven at the teacher's table.

Peter decided that for two people that claimed to hate each other, The Professor and Erick sat together too often.

"Ewgh, Peter! This is not tea, this is like a mutant super fueled caffeinated thing!" Ororo complained as she took a sip from Peter's cup. "You let the bag sink in for too long"

"It is just perfect like that" Peter replied with a beamingly smile before using his super speed to steal the piece of bacon that Kurt was about to bite.

Peter's right hand rested on the brand new Walkman that had appeared on his room in the morning. It had a classic music CD inside and a note written with impeccable handwrite.

"Tell Mozart I said hi"

Hi guys! Thank you so much to PokemonTrainer12, Mordollwen Castieland occasionalreaderfor taking the time to encourage my writing. I was afraid this chapter might be too serious but I tried my best to ease into the relationship I want to create for this two characters. I've already thought about the next chapter and I think we're on the right way. Any constructive criticisim is highly encouraged and appreciated!