Warning: I am a tease. I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to be, it's just how I am. :c I will deliver eventually though! *pinkyswear*
Anyways, heeeeere's chapter ten! Beta'd by LJ user idioticonion (and it needed it!).
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xxvii.
The next morning Raven brought Beast with her to visit Charles. It was the first time he had seen the furred scientist in quite some time, and they only met now because Charles had asked Raven to pull the man away from the labs as a special favor.
When they came in through the door, he felt an immediate pang of guilt; Raven hadn't wanted to bother Beast while he was so busy with relief work, but Charles had insisted, arguing: "Beast is a scientist; he's never not working. Besides, he probably won't eat if you don't pull him away." Raven had pursed her lips, tilted her head, and considered; then, finally, she had agreed. Charles' powers had nothing to do with her decision, but he was disturbed to realize that... That they might have been, had she refused.
Still, Beast was here now, looking vaguely irritated and harassed despite his warm greeting. "Professor! It's been a long time. What have you been doing?"
"Nothing nearly as interesting as yourself, I'm sure," Charles replied. "Raven hasn't been able to give me updates on your work since you vanished into it."
Beast shrugged. "If only there was something to update you with. We have a prototype of a portable solar-powered engine, for field pumps and that sort of thing. Well, we had one. It's been conscripted and now all the engineers are stuck scrambling to make too few engines for too many relief workers." Beast's fingers pushed up beneath his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. "No, that's a good thing. We're helping. We shouldn't complain about having to recreate five hundred intricate glass panels. I just wish they'd stop getting angry at us for not building them fast enough."
"I've offered to help you," Raven chided, hitting the back of her hand against Beast's arm. He snarled a little, reflexively, but there was no real anger behind it.
"You and half the technicians from the other labs," the scientist grumbled. "If we let you all in we'd have nowhere to put our elbows."
"I could change to a form that doesn't have elbows," Raven offered brightly, surprising Beast into a fanged smile.
"Can you do that?" Charles asked, keeping his tone carefully bland. He'd have to wait until after they had finished eating to do what he planned; prematurely cold food would betray his activities. "I've never seen you change your appearance so dramatically."
"We used to pretend I was human," Raven reminded him gently; Charles was suddenly very aware that he was the only non-blue person in the room at the moment. "I've practiced since then. See?" She looked down at her left arm as it shivered and writhed until her wrist replaced her elbow; then she raised her arm and wriggled her fingers at the telepath, who was torn between the strangeness of the sight and his curiosity.
"Where does the extra mass go?" Charles inquired, deciding to pursue the latter route.
"Oh, it gets moved around, a little bit here and there," Raven replied, gesturing across her extremely visible body with her shortened arm. Charles could not see any difference in her proportions.
"She weighs the same no matter what form she takes," Beast explained, looking oddly domestic with a spoonful of creamed wheat poised near his black, whiskery lips. "We're not allowed to do much mutant testing, but since the scale was right there…" He shrugged.
"Are you saying that you're not allowed to test mutant abilities?" Charles asked, puzzled. "I would think it'd be important to know the capabilities of our people in order to better govern them."
"Magneto doesn't want to risk that information falling into the wrong hands," Raven explained, crossing her legs. She paused to re-grow her forearm and then laced her fingers over her knee. "He believes that testing powers would invite prejudice against certain kinds of mutations."
"What she means is, Magneto's still over-protective of mutantkind despite the fact that it's now abundantly clear that we're no better than normal humans, and if the so-called 'Homo superior' find out exactly how powerful some of us are, they'll be just as panicked as if they themselves weren't telekinetic or blue or capable of flight." Beast tossed his spoon down into the dregs of farina at the bottom of his bowl. "Never mind that mutants are already discriminating against each other, anyway."
"Are they? How so?" Charles prompted with a quirked eyebrow, folding his hands over his stomach and leaning back in the chair.
"Come on, Beast, it's not that bad," Raven protested, pleading with her eyes for a change in the conversation.
"Mystique, there's already an unspoken hierarchy of mutations—you can't deny that people with more obvious or powerful abilities are given more prestigious positions in the Brotherhood. It's only logical that the general population is influenced by who they see in charge."
"Logic is one thing," Raven stated, tilting her head sagely. "Pessimism is another."
"'Pessimism?'" Beast scoffed. "Just the other day I had to sit down with a technician who'd been complaining about a lab assistant's work. Do you know why? Because that assistant's an empath and can't, according this tech, use her empathy to grow better bacteria. It's a good thing I look the way I do now or a third of my own staff wouldn't take me seriously."
"I'm sure it's not that wide-spread," Raven assured him. "I've never noticed any mocking of less powerful mutants."
"You wouldn't have," Beast muttered. "You're blue; nobody doubts that you're a mutant. Try walking around looking like a human and see what kind of looks you get. I might not be on the receiving end any more, but I can recognize alienation when it's happening to someone else."
Raven raised her chin proudly and said, "Okay, I will go around looking human, if it'll make you happy. I'm not afraid to do it; I just don't have any shame for my natural appearance anymore."
"Nobody was trying to say that you weren't willing," Charles promised her gently. "While I do believe that Beast is right, I know how easy it is to take for granted the problems you don't have, and it's not a sign of being a bad person. I've done it myself, after all, and I of all people should know better."
Raven pushed her empty bowl to the center of the table and smiled sweetly. "Sometimes you act so much like you're trying to be my dad, I forget that we're almost the same age."
Charles returned her smile. "I know," he said, and added silently—but only to himself—I'm sorry, Raven. He squeezed his eyes closed and when Charles opened them again, Beast was blinking dazedly at Raven, who had begun to roll her eyes fondly and now held that position, frozen except for the soft in-and-out of her breath.
"I remember," Beast declared, his voice sluggish and the tufts of his eyebrows low in concentration. He blinked a few more times, vigorously, and slowly his expression cleared. "I remember. When you came to visit me in the labs, we talked about overthrowing Magneto. Wait, did you just freeze Mystique?"
Charles pressed the knuckle of his index finger to his lips and glanced at his adopted sister sheepishly. "Yes, it appears I have. I… Didn't want to, but we haven't been able to talk privately and, well, I think the longer we wait the less impact deposing Er… Magneto will have."
After directing one final uneasy stare at Raven, Beast shifted his attention back to the telepath. "I have to agree with you. Before the tsunamis it might not have been as urgent, but I can tell you that the resistance is not pleased with Magneto's attempts to move mutant refugees into human towns. He can't just send his people into the last shelter of the oppressed and expect everyone to be happy."
"I didn't see that there was any other option," Charles stated, his forehead pinching.
"At this point in time, no, but Magneto didn't need to force the humans into shanty towns back then, either. They won't have forgotten who sent them away in the first place, even if, by happy accident, it saved their lives." Beast set his foot on the edge of the table, giving Charles the opportunity to muse on how, just half a decade ago, that same man would have been embarrassed just to be seen in the same room with his feet; now his toes gripped and caressed the wood without a shred of concern for Charles' watching eyes.
"Surely their experiences will allow them to see the value of compassion, now that their former neighbors are less fortunate," Charles rationalized.
Beast peered at the geneticist from over the tops of his glasses—not the ones he had worn back when they'd met; thinner, certainly, but in a similar style and still jarringly out of place. "I heard about how you lectured the Brotherhood leaders, Professor, and I think everyone can appreciate that you saved lives that day. Nonetheless, you have to realize that most of the people out there—the ones who have to scrounge for food and treat their illnesses with whatever molding medication or wild plant they can scavenge—they can't see beyond the next month, let alone the next generation, and they won't care about things like genetic drift and whether or not either of our species go extinct. They care about what's in their hands right now, and if someone comes to take that away from them—again—they're not going to think twice about striking out. If we don't act soon, we're going to have another war on our hands, and this one we might not win because we'll both be too sore to get back up."
"Fair enough," Charles assented. "Perhaps the only way to prevent wiping ourselves out is to make sure that Erik's subdued before he can resort to violence."
"If we can by then," the leonine scientist said, tone flat. "It'll be hard to think of a way to kill him when I have to forget everything before I leave the room."
The telepath blinked and frowned. "I was rather hoping we wouldn't have to kill him."
Beast gave Charles a look of puzzled incredulity. "What are you going to do, keep Magneto locked away in a cell without any metal? Stay by his side twenty-four hours a day and stop him from using his powers? You know he wouldn't tolerate that kind of life, and there are others who would come to free him. You're left with the option of either wiping his mind or killing him; both of those things will destroy everything that he is, but one's both easier and, in my opinion, more humane."
"I suppose," Charles agreed reluctantly, "but I would prefer to at least offer him the choice. I'd like to think that we're above cold-blooded murder."
"Perhaps you would, but that doesn't mean that it isn't necessary, or that it isn't deserved. Remember: even aside from everything he did to us, personally, we are talking about the man who committed the worst genocide in history and allowed the pollution of Earth's atmosphere," Beast said, still watching Charles as if he feared for the telepath's sanity.
"We'll see what our options are before we have to decide," Charles compromised, glancing over at Raven. "We should turn our conversation to a more useful direction; I don't want to keep her like this long."
"Of course; she'll notice the missing time," Beast acknowledged, and Charles considered but eventually decided against correcting his reasoning. "I wish I could have more time to think about this—but no, Ms. Frost does check my mind fairly often now; any scrap of plan won't go unnoticed."
"We'll have to work with what we can do while we're together," Charles stated, setting his hands on his knees, business-like. "Drugs seem like the most obvious approach, but I can't think of a good delivery method, and anyway he'd likely notice the effects long before they incapacitated him."
"At a high enough dose it won't matter, but you're right; it'll be hard to get anything into him. I doubt he ever looks away from you, so good luck sneaking it into food or drink. Needles are out, of course, and anything airborne would affect you as well—also, the canister would be hard to hide. Sadly we still can't engineer lethal viruses to target hosts that specifically… Anyway, it would look suspicious if I started ordering a lot of materials," Beast mused, and Charles nodded, increasingly mortified by the scenarios Beast conjured.
"We need to see what materials you already have available," the geneticist advised cautiously, "and perhaps I could also survey the minds of your lab workers for ideas."
"You'll have to convince Magneto to let you start working in the labs," Beast mused, his broad nose wrinkling with consideration and concern. "Can you manage that?"
"I can persuade him," Charles assured the leonine scientist, projecting a certainty he didn't entirely feel. Beast raised a questioning eyebrow, but Charles had no desire to explain further.
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xxxviii.
Once again, Charles had been the very picture of obedience during the Brotherhood meeting, although those affairs had been growing noticeably more strained as Erik's subjects grew frustrated with the demands on their time and attentions. One mutant had even attempted to lie to Erik, claiming that he was already involved in a heretofore unmentioned, obscure project of great importance and so could not perform the duties now asked of him.
Erik had frowned, sure that even the strain of the last week hadn't been enough to make him forget ordering any such thing, and he had looked to Charles for his opinion. With a slight purse of his lips and a gentle shake of his head, the telepath confirmed Erik's suspicions and the lying mutant's chair had flown out from under him, sending the man tumbling to the floor.
"The fact that you'd lie is disappointing," Erik had said, remaining calmly seated. "The fact that you did so in front of a telepath proves that you're an idiot as well. Get out." Then, as the former Brotherhood member scrambled away, Erik had looked at Charles with—with appreciation. The telepath hadn't been quick enough to stifle the answering swell of pride, but he decided it was only a natural response, even if it was entirely unnatural that Erik would value Charles' word over that of his own followers.
It appeared that Erik had decided to accept Charles' cooperation at face value; Charles was sure that Erik doubted the honesty of his affability, but it did not appear to bother the other mutant. In fact that evening, after the meeting had gone especially late and they were finally alone together, Charles reached to unfasten the chain only for it to twitch away from his grasp.
"Leave it on for a moment," Erik murmured, and Charles froze with his hands hovering over his collar, heart stuttering because he knew what Erik wanted—had wanted from the very moment the gold glittered light across Charles' skin.
The other man stalked slowly, smoothly over, until he stood next to Charles. With an elegant curl of his fingers, Erik took hold of the telepath's chin and tilted back Charles' head, exposing the length of his throat for Erik's eyes to devour. Charles allowed this, settling his elbows down so that the view was unimpeded; he required this, because it would make his job that much easier.
Erik rolled Charles' head to the side—to face him, had Charles been able to look down—and touched the fingers of his other hand to the necklace over the geneticist's top shirt button. Charles couldn't really see Erik leaning over him, was unable to see Erik's expression as he was almost drawn to Charles, but he could feel Erik's breath against his Adam's apple: the heat suggested proximity, but the gentleness implied that it had come through Erik's parted lips; wanting, but unable to touch.
So Charles freed Erik of that responsibility; he reached one arm over the other man's shoulders, brushed the helmet—tantalizingly close—and pulled Erik down; down until Erik's lips pressed against his throat, muffling a soft noise of appreciative surprise; down further, until Erik's lips parted and his teeth scraped around either side of Charles' trachea. Then the telepath stopped pulling; waited, with his fingertips brushing the short hairs on the back of Erik's neck, to see whether the man would accept the unspoken invitation.
For a long moment Erik did nothing, his tongue questing hesitantly over Charles' skin in the private darkness of his mouth; then, finally, he bit—ever so gently, less of a change in pressure than a difference of intent, but with a deep feral sound far more frightening than anything ever threatened by a wild animal. For a few seconds, Charles wondered not-so-idly whether it would actually be possible for Erik to tear his throat out with his teeth, until the mutant withdrew—and closed in again, to nip along Charles' neck until Erik paused just before subjecting the geneticist's lips to that same treatment.
"What do you want, Charles?" Erik inquired, the ghost of a chuckle mingling with Charles' shallow breathing.
"You know I never studied to be a politician," Charles confided, glancing down Erik's face in what he hoped was a seductive manner.
Now Erik did huff a laugh. "You want me to let you go back to the labs." He shifted his grip over the geneticist's chin, the pads of his fingertips warm and lingering.
"I want you to let me work in the labs," Charles clarified, utterly still. He thought that the shiver that passed down his spine must have been from the wetness evaporating from his throat; it made a long line of cold.
Erik's eyes were creased with amusement where Charles wanted to see lust. "And what are you offering in return?" he asked, a dark smile curling through his words.
Charles hesitated, finding a tightness in his throat that had nothing to do with Erik's teeth. Finally, his voice made harsh with quiet, he offered, "Anything."
The other man was grinning, but Charles suspected it was not because he was being taken seriously. "You bargain yourself away too easily, Charles," Erik chided fondly.
"It's all I want," the telepath explained with a bleakness he didn't need to feign. It was not for nothing that he had spent all those years of his life studying.
"Is that so?" Erik asked doubtfully, stroking his thumb along Charles' jaw, moving his hand up the side of Charles' face to brush against his sideburn. "You don't want to have control of your own projects? Or to be able to teach? What about going outside? Those things aren't outside the realm of possibility, I imagine."
Charles fell silent, considering. Then, grudgingly, he said, "Since you seem to know a lot more about this procedure than I do, why don't you make a request, and I'll decide whether it's acceptable."
"You've already shown your hand, but all right." Erik shifted, pulling his face a little away from Charles as he spoke. His free hand moved from the chain to the V of Charles' shirt, pressing the hard plastic button into the notch between the telepath's clavicles; from there, they slid off and, unseen, settled on the next button down. "Hmm. I don't want to be too greedy…"
Erik's touch slipped another button lower, to the center of Charles' sternum. "How about this…" As Erik spoke, his fingers marched slowly, inexorably down the line of Charles' shirt, and the geneticist wondered wildly whether Erik really could manipulate the iron in blood because all of his seemed to be following Erik's hand, lower and lower and Charles couldn't breathe.
"I'll let you work in the lab if, tomorrow night…" Erik was muttering, watching the creases spread over Charles' forehead as his fingers found the divot of the telepath's navel, "…you let me touch you anywhere I want—" he leaned close, his fingers fastening over Charles' belt buckle— "above the belt."
Charles laughed, sharp and a little bit hysterical. "You do that anyway," he pointed out, meeting Erik's gaze because if he glanced down at the hand on his buckle he might just keep right on cackling like a person gone mad.
Not like this, Erik's eyes seemed to say, but instead he replied, "Then you lose nothing."
Throwing his head back as if to put physical distance between his mind and reality, Charles pulled at his lower lip with his teeth, studying the ceiling with fierce determination. "When would I start work?"
"Soon," Erik responded. His thumb made lazy patterns over Charles' shirt, just above the line of his trousers. Charles couldn't tell whether it was intentional.
"How soon?" Charles insisted.
Erik leaned close, edging in next to Charles' face and very nearly stealing the air from his lungs. "If you keep the chain on tomorrow… By the end of the week."
Charles furrowed his brows in consideration, glancing down, finally, at Erik's hand, which no longer seemed nearly as funny. "Um," he began, eloquently. That was fairly soon; between two and four days, at most.
"You should take the deal," Erik urged softly; hypnotically. "It's better than what you offered." Charles remained silent, and Erik tilted his head. "Well, Charles? What do you think?"
The telepath inhaled deeply and wrapped his fingers around Erik's wrist, pulling the other man's hand off of his belt. "I think you're early for your reservation," he declared, forcing as much confidence as he could into the statement.
Erik's smile was slow and predatory, like the kiss he pressed to Charles' lips; his fingers and thumb dug into the sides of the geneticist's jaw as if he needed to in order to coax Charles' mouth open. Attempting to keep the future out of his thoughts, Charles wondered when the slide of Erik's tongue against his had started seeming like the safer option; then Charles wondered why, if he had paid less than he offered, he still felt as if Erik had gotten the better of him.
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