Although Erik was right, and his secluded spot was vastly less populated than the body crush they could witness at the north end of the lake (complete as it was with its wooden boat dock, picnic tables, and barbeque pits), this quiet recess (descriptively known as Rock Wharf due to the stony outpost that creeped its way into the lake as perfectly as any man-made dock) wasn't completely uninhabited either.
Clearing the brush, Erik recognized Alex Summers, a juvenile delinquent who, while corrupting his younger brother, had once set the school gymnasium alight. Although he was only twenty, Erik noticed a cooler of beer (for all intents and purposes his older friends') sitting in the shade near their towels. He also recognized the blonde's younger brother there, ignoring his brother's friends and antics for his girlfriend, a smart teen who Erik had had to write an article on for winning a scholarship to a girl's summer science camp.
He ignored the whooping group of older teens as they splashed and screamed and jumped from Rock Wharf into the sun-warmed lake, instead setting up camp with Charles under the big ash tree in the grass. He was burning up after their trek out here and so put them securely in the shade. Charles didn't seem to mind, or even notice, watching the kids swimming, or, rather, treading water as they stared outright at them, gone silent suddenly.
"Do you know them?" Charles asked with an anxious chuckle.
"Unfortunately," he huffed distractedly, kicking off his shoes and collapsing into the cool of the shade. He wasn't worried about them—underage kids with booze weren't known for their gregariousness. In all likelihood now that the party had been broken up, they'd leave; no doubt heading farther up the lake or finding an even more secluded drinking spot.
Or not.
"Hey Lensherr!" one of the punks shouted from the lake, breaking his concentration. He suspected it was Summers. That kid had a big mouth that didn't know when to stop. The girls he was with giggled, goading him on. "That the ghost hunter, Lensherr? C'mon, bring him on down here! We don't bite!"
"I think the locals would like to make my acquaintance," Charles joked, pushing his hair, sweaty with the trek, back over his skull. Erik wasn't in a joking mood, not after the day he'd had.
"Fuck off, Summers!" Erik called back, and he unbuttoned his shirt, rubbing his bare feet in the cool grass. Why couldn't people just leave him be today?
"We should at least say hello," the Brit suggested. Erik saw why in an instant as the man grabbed his recorder out of the deflated duffel bag.
"What'd you bring that for?" he balked.
"To interview you," Charles said flippantly. "You said you wouldn't talk about it in the house—we're not in the house. Honestly, you didn't expect Darwin to let me skive off completely, did you?"
"I did, actually," he bit back sharply. God, to think he had imagined that Charles was bringing him out here to make him feel better, to be alone with him, maybe even to seduce him a little bit more-and instead it was all part of the job. He could just imagine the team drawing straws to decide who'd give him an airing out, a calming down, before they got down to brass tacks and got him on record. But for what? They'd already asked him a million and a half questions about that damned house. What more did they want from him? And what did Charles want from him at all? A story? A fuck? Or was there any hope of something more?
He scoffed out loud with the frustration of it and Charles moved to appeasingly stroke his hair, but Erik ducked away from it, rolling into a stand. He didn't want to be appeased; he wanted to be informed, not left out of every decision-making process like a child.
"Come on, ghost-hunter," he sneered. "Let's go meet your adoring fans."
Charles followed him slowly and he waited for the man to call him out on his bitchiness, but it never came. Being traumatized seemed to earn him a little leeway, it seemed, or maybe Charles was just argued-out after today (that Charles' arguing had a limit seemed like too much to hope for, though). Another part of him got the feeling that Charles had forgotten how to argue with him and was silent out of futility, maybe even fear.
Erik squinted a curt hello to Scott and Jean talking quietly on their towels as Jean struggled to tan her pale skin. Much as the other teens irked him, he had a soft spot for Jean and, by association, Scott. The littlest Summers didn't seem as hell-bent on destruction as his brother sometimes was, although he was just as mouthy. And Erik had to admit that Alex seemed much improved since juvie. Much less prone to setting forest fires, at least.
Alex was drying off on the wharf when they walked down the jutting stone pier; his friends, another boy and three girls, clung to the impediment from the water. Erik didn't appreciate all those sets of eyes staring up at him and Charles from foot-level. It was creepy and reminded him too much of the burnt creature at the house.
"Ain't you jus' a pretty thing," one of the girls giggled up to Charles, reaching and tugging wetly on his pants leg.
"Back right off, Janine-you want this high-society fella to think Avalon's full of skanks like you?" Alex growled, moving as if to splash her with his beer. She pouted and pushed off back into the depth of the lake, treading water with angry flashes of limbs.
"I'm Charles Xavier," the Brit cheered as if nothing had happened, motioning hello to the teens. "Pleasure to meet all of you."
"Alex Summers," the young man replied, reaching forward to shake his hand. "I've gotta say, Mr. Xavier-it's a real privilege havin' you out here. Really respect your work and all."
Erik stared between the two in shock. He'd never seen Alex really respect anything in his whole life. He hadn't been completely aware that the boy was capable of the emotion.
"Ah, you've seen the show?" Charles asked, clearly flattered.
"Off and on. But I think I've read about every article you've ever written."
"I didn't know you wrote," Erik growled. It was one more thing Charles hadn't seen fit to tell him, it seemed.
"Just science essays," Charles said with some surprise. "They're not even published-you can only find them online. You must have a keen interest, Mr. Summers, to have gone through the trouble of finding them."
"Oh he's keen on it a'right," Scott's snarking voice intoned from behind them. He and Jean had apparently seen fit to join the circus act. "Never shuts up about it. Mama's fit to throttle him he ran on about you so long. 'Mr. Xavier says-' 'When Mr. Xavier shows up-' 'When I meet Mr. Xavier-'. He's been hanging out around the motel so long the police thought he was trynna find a hooker in the middle of the day time."
"You shut your fat face, Pinkeye!"
"I ain't had pink eye for years and years, you pyromaniac!"
"Well what a great talk," Erik disdained, headache quickly forming. "I think I'll go back to the shade now if it's all the same to you."
He didn't wait for a reply, just muscled past the lot of them and stalked back on bare feet to the blanket. He was surprised when Charles, towing Alex and the younger ones behind him, followed along. After all, if this little trek was all about work then they didn't have to be together for it at all.
"Where you guys goin?" Alex's friends in the lake wailed. But everyone ignored them and they went back to drinking and swimming without further protest.
"How come you're not with your team up at the Gone-Away House, Mr. Xavier?" Alex questioned excitedly as he sat down in the grass before Charles. Scott looked fit to roll his eyes and stalk away but Jean was so obviously intrigued that he ended up staying too.
"Is it a dud?" she asked curiously.
"On the contrary," Charles said, shaking his head. "It's incredibly active. Uncomfortably active."
"So how come you're not there, then? Aren't you like, in charge of the place?" Scott wondered aloud without too much vitriol.
"It was important that I be here," Charles said, brushing Erik's sleeve with his arm as he did so. Erik shifted away vengefully. It was important that Charles run him away far enough to study him, maybe. It was important that Charles get his little interview and if that meant going to the lake then the man would take one for the team and do it. "And my team is more than capable without me there-I don't need to babysit them."
"What have you found? Energy pulses? Temperature fluctuations? Complex electro-magnetic fields?" Alex questioned in a rush, leaning into Charles' space with the gravitational pull of his interest.
"All of it," Charles nodded back, just as excitedly. "And not only that but corporeal projections, even physical manipulation!"
"Woohoo," snarked Scott and Jean elbowed him in the side, at which point he apparently decided to take things more seriously.
"Does that mean the Discovery Channel is really going to come here to do a show on it?" he asked with enough energy to atone for his flippancy.
"Well, I'm not in charge of that, but if it were up to me we'd do a whole season on it! It's one of the most interesting cases I've ever worked on I'm sure..."
The kids all exchanged a thrilled glance at this.
"How much longer are you here for, Mr. Xavier?" Alex asked, as if he fully planned on working himself into every spare hour the brunet had available.
Charles stiffened slightly beside him on the blanket and coughed. "Well...we're only scheduled through to tomorrow...so..." he mumbled.
If he said anything else Erik couldn't hear it past the sudden ringing in his ears, nothing but tomorrow, tomorrow. He watched in shock as his vision whited out at the edges, waited for his pulse and his breathing to start back up again and when they did he stood mechanically, stumbling out to the pier.
He was too numb to be angry. His emotions felt cut off and confused. He had no sense of time. He only realized his hearing had come back to him when Jean sat down next to him, slipping her bare legs into the water beside his. He didn't remember doing it, but his legs were definitely soaking there too, his trousers sodden up to the knee.
"You do that to his neck?" she asked, swinging her legs softly through the water. He stared at the sunlight on the lake and struggled to ungrip his hands from where they were clutching one another painfully in his lap.
"What?" he croaked.
"You like him, huh?" she sighed almost sadly.
"What the hell are you even doing here?" he groaned, pulling his hair. Why was his life so suddenly shit? His life had been so good this morning, before his brain could remember anything but Charles' tight clench of a body around him. Why couldn't he have stayed there forever? Why did he ever have to progress past that swift thrill of orgasm and afterglow? Maybe he could convince Charles to date him (assuming he wasn't already dating someone else, and also that he was prone to dating, which wasn't clear) but could he manage it in 24-hours? He didn't give it much hope. He'd never tried to convince someone to date him before. He needed time to figure out how it went, certainly more time than 24 hours.
"I hang around boys all the time: I'm used to fixing their stupidity," the girl shrugged, reaching forward and scooping water up across her pale knees. At fourteen she still looked twelve and he didn't appreciate having his so-called stupidity fixed by a practically-twelve year-old.
"I've got no stupidity for you to fix, so go away."
"You like him, he likes you. He wants to spend time with you, you want to spend time with him. He's only here until tomorrow, so your options are to take advantage of it while you can or sulk the time away. Which sounds like a better plan to you?"
He glared at her and she grinned back. Maybe the necessary squinting was diluting the effect of his scowl...
"Excuse me, but what the hell do you know about any of this? You only just met the man a few minutes ago." He wasn't even sure that Charles wanted to spend time with him-how could she manage it?
"With the way he looks at you, a few minutes was all it took," she shrugged, beaming.
After his brain fact-checked that yes, he had in fact heard her correctly, he was too shocked to stop himself from grinning back wanely, blinking his way into perfect understanding.
Then he pressed a palm into the bare skin of the girl's back and shoved her right off the pier.
"You dick!" she screamed as she spluttered to the surface of the water.
"You're wearing a swimsuit," he hummed back uncaringly, walking back up to the blanket. He wasn't quite fast enough and she caught up long enough to wring her hair at him, splattering him with uncomfortable wetness and then running away again before he could get back at her.
When he sat down Charles shifted closer and pressed a hand that Scott and Alex didn't notice into the small of his back while otherwise appearing to listen attentively to the boys' babble. Erik didn't relax but he didn't pull away either.
The H4 was out and running and so Erik didn't say anything, just listened in as well. He couldn't help but speak though when he figured out what the boys were talking about.
"I thought you didn't want Gone-Away House history because it would bias you?" he reminded indignantly.
"Yes but now that the team is here they can remain the unbiased ones and I can do whatever I want," Charles shrugged.
"Don't interrupt," Alex demanded crossly.
"Yeah," Scott agreed. "We were just getting to the good part! So then, Schmidt dug a secret tunnel to the ocean-"
"The ocean's a hundred miles from here," Erik scoffed, rolling his eyes.
"Anyway he didn't even dig it to the ocean you idiot," Alex corrected, hitting his brother in the arm. "He dug it to the lake and that's why it's called Corpse Lake—it's where he hid all the corpses."
"What corpses? He was a fucking immigrant farmer! You idiots are mouthing off old wives' tales that don't make any sense to begin with."
"Mr. Xavier didn't ask us what's old wives' tales, he just asked what we know about the Gone-Away House and this is what we know!" Alex bit back angrily.
"And he needed the tunnel to hide all his Nazi friends and stuff," Scott assured.
"Just because he has a German name, he's a Nazi? He built the house in the 1880s! There weren't even any Nazis yet!" Erik pointed out.
"Maybe I'll just finish their interview first and then you can correct any mistakes you feel they've made?" Charles suggested, rubbing warm circles into his spine. Erik huffed but allowed it, listening intently to Alex and Scott's slapdash report so he could try to remember all the myriad things that needed to be corrected.
A man named Klaus Schmidt had built the first house on the Gone-Away land back in the 1880s, and a lot of people blamed him for whatever had first kickstarted the "hauntings" although it was unclear if there had been anything ghostly from the start, certainly nothing like what Alex and Sean were saying. Mostly, Erik just recognized the same old stories that had circulated, he felt incorrectly, since when he was in school. There were no records that Schmidt roasted humans on a spit to cannibalize them. Nor that he conducted seances with the Devil in the basement. He didn't start the Ku Klux Klan. He probably wasn't stabbed to death in the head by the bayonet of a boy whose family he'd sold to Satan. Everything that happened with him and the house was so ancient and obfuscated that anything surviving today was more fiction than fact. The records building burnt down in 1886 (and again in 1890, and again in 1921) so there wasn't any surviving data on the land that wasn't kept buried in someone's backyard for a century. The only way they knew anything about the house at all was by one property deed and hearsay and the hearsay they got was amped up with every retelling, even in recent history.
"And then one day the Lovegoods got home and all of the walls were bleeding! Real blood!" Scott insisted and Erik was pushed beyond his limits.
"Schmidt was a foreigner who decided to build a house in the middle of nowhere and it weirded people out! He probably never went to church and so they said he was in league with the devil! That house is awful, I'll give you that, I've no argument there, but that doesn't mean it had anything to do with Schmidt! That house has been around for hundreds of years and it's probably picked up on all sorts of bad stories over time! There's no evidence whatsoever that Schmidt was anything but a weird guy who liked to be alone and had a penchant for pissing off his scant neighbors. The end."
Charles slammed off the recorder and beamed in order to distract the boys from going after him for his blasphemies.
"You boys have been such a help!" Charles gushed. "I don't know if you'd want to, but please feel free to come by the house and visit us. The photography crew is coming by at 3, and we'd love to have you, too, of course. The more the merrier."
"Mama would thrash us both," Scott pointed out with a gulp.
"I'll be there, Mr. Xavier!" Alex beamed. "I wouldn't miss it for the world!"
"Don't put us in the paper, though, Mr. Xavier," Scott begged. "Mama really would thrash us."
"My daddy won't thrash me," Jean said. "I'll be there."
