Chapter Text
The first time Charles senses his presence, it stops him in his tracks. This mind - his mind -precedes everything else about him. It lights up the campus at Cambridge like a solar flare, brilliant and encroached in darkness and suffocating void and vivid, endless rays. Non-Euclidian geometry overlaid in microscopic filaments and decoys that vanish and disappear like smoke. A mind unlike anything he had ever encountered before, or since. The man, he learns, is called Erik. A German last name, Lehnsherr - can't help but be ironic, since Jews haven't been land-owners in Germany for a century or longer. (That fact isn't plucked from Erik's mind so much as it's woven into the very fabric of the molecules that comprise his being.) And they're all-but driven out now. His accent is lightly Slavic, though - not German, but Polish.
A childhood spent in Łódź is easily picked out from the ether in plumes of thick ash. Worrying nimble, long fingers over his grandfather's metallurgy instruments, learning to forge and bend precious metals to his will. Fingers that produce poetry in fluttered, rebellious leaflets abandoned in the streets after tanks and officers roll in. A dark-haired girl with matching freckles to her big brother's swings her skinned knees off the kitchen counter - while he's inherited the curls, faint reddish hue and vivid green eyes of his mother. That too vanishes before Charles can properly get his hands around it. Slips right through his fingers, as though Erik's mind has built-in defenses and subconscious overlays not even he could adequately explain nor understand, being effectively psi-null. Charles isn't stupid. He's seen it. Once, very briefly, Erik had forgotten to roll down the sleeve of his shirt, and there they were.
Brutal, fuzzy numbers mashed into one another and barely-intelligible, branded into his skin with an amorphous red blob emblazoned beside them.
An American living in the lap of luxury for most of his existence, it's easy to consider Charles privileged, but he is not blind to the realities of man's darkest, baser nature. The nature that incites them to oppress their fellows, the brutality and atrocities that men inflict on each other without rhyme, reason nor remorse. That he's a survivor of war is clear, and it must be what keeps his thoughts so elegantly and ruthlessly controlled. The operation of one's mind is not something that most have any familiarity with. Erik's voice, on the other hand, he wields precisely. Lehnsherr finally comes to his face-to-face acquaintance one Thursday afternoon at MIT's political debate club. Clad in all black, all lithe lines and angles, advocating for mutant separatism with what passed for impassioned fervor for him.
To everyone else, Erik's tone is always quiet. Always even-tempered. Never flickering, never giving anything away to his opponent until incisively cutting them down on cross-examination. To Charles, who sees more, it is fundamental. That he's a mutant is obvious, but Charles can't tell exactly what his mutation is, other than that he has a clear affinity for conductive elements. Nickel, copper, titanium. Silver, sometimes, when he's tracing the edges of his influence over someone's jewelry. Fixing the little nicks of wear-and-tear before they'd ever notice it was damaged. But Erik notices.
There's a need, a longing, to learn more. To uncover this mystery that he is unaccustomed to enduring in another being and has not done since he was five years old and the flavors and sounds of his nanny's private, seething resentment of her station began flickering into his awareness like cold, flowing molasses coating the underside of his neurons. One thing is certain; Lehnsherr is not used to having friends. He's a consummate loner, aside from his Saturdays, which are at the forefront of his recollection in pure fondness, and spent seated in a semi-circle, cross-legged around a group of children reading from a large, Hebrew-scripted tome.
It's the only time he's ever seen Erik smile, and it resolves in him shortly after to earn that smile for himself. Friends it is. It's surprisingly easy to get him to agree to the invitation. Aoife's as an establishment is remarkably discreet when it comes to certain clientele - particularly of the bent persuasion. It's not the first man Charles has ever taken there, but he is the first to be invited back a second time. After a few beers, Erik's expression loosens more - he talks with his hands, leans forward with avid attention at the things Charles is saying - even if he's virulently disagreeing with what he views as a naive perspective. His eyes become even more brilliant in the darkness of the dingy bar after chasing up said beers with shots of unpalatable American vodka.
"You are telling me that - mutacja genetyczna - is like one's eyes or ears," Erik's saying, worrying a stir-stick through the tepid ice cubes in his mediocre beer. His attention is more focused on his companion even as he pauses to drain the rest of the cup. "But you can coexist with someone of green eyes." He taps under his own - which Charles had just made a comment on a few moments prior. "What if their eyes shoot laser beams?" an eyebrow arches. "Coexistence is much scarier. We have laws of regulation with obtaining weapons, but mutants are born with one. That cannot be regulated by law without oppressing us!" he almost smiles. It's not easy arguing with Charles. He was the reigning champion of the MIT team for the last two years running for a reason. So when Erik does make an irrefutable point (at least to him), it's enough to warrant the expression.
After his second drink. L-rd help Charles fucking Xavier.
Challenges, Charles knows, are character-building. It’s a sick stance to take from his position; he’s at least introspective enough to understand how utterly tone deaf he is to be nursing this thought. And yet, if there is anything that Charles Xavier knows for certain—and one could argue that there is truly nothing that can ever be known by anyone for certain—it’s that thoughts of this ilk are universal. The human mind is sublime in its diversity, but as all life, has its mainstays. Oh, yes, people think about things that they shouldn’t at an alarming frequency. Adoring mothers imagine their own relief should their precious little ones simply vanish.
Newlyweds, still dewy-eyed and drooling, wonder if they’ve locked themselves into a life of voluntary imprisonment as they climb into bed together. Doctors who wish certain patients ill, righteous university students such as himself who sympathize with the wrong attitude. The resulting shame is always what alerts Charles to what some PhDs over in Chicago are calling cognitive dissonance; or the discomfort that arises when one holds two conflicting beliefs. It’s not quite the same, but Charles has been attaching that term to this phenomenon anyway. It’s fascinating, he thinks, to watch from this side as people much brighter than he unravels the brain without the gift of pure empiricism. His own cognitive dissonance floods his head as he studies the offending green eyes and thinks about how privileged he is to consider Erik Lehnsherr a challenge.
Having led a life characterized by an abundance of material comfort, Charles is unaccustomed to challenge. It no longer feels appropriate to cast his childhood in that way; emotional absence and the pressures of old money are not really challenging. At least not in a way that justifies attention. Anyone who had lived through the previous decade with even the remotest capacity to empathize had to recognize that. By that extension, it’s doubly unfair to think of Erik Lehnsherr as a challenge. Triply unfair (and positively nauseating) to know that he likes that. A challenge! What’s it like to be challenged? What’s it like to be required to find valiance and strength from within? How does it feel to triumph? Triumphant? Ridiculous, and tone deaf, Charles knows. It’s a blessing that Erik isn’t privy to his thoughts. At the table beside them, two men, two freshmen, bellow with laughter; the lanky one with a cleft chin watches his stocky companion chortle with waiting eyes, analytical and hopeful eyes. He wonders if his own probe Erik’s in this way. So obvious.
“Well, that’s simply not true,” Charles replies, thumbnail tapping against the rim of his smeared glass to punctuate his rebuttal. The near-smile is enticing, and he almost loses his footing at the gentle twitch in those full lips. “Or, I suppose it could be true, but you would have to concede that, if we accept your premise, we are all oppressed.” The artifice of logic is easy to fall back upon, perhaps the sole reason that Charles can masquerade as someone who most definitely is not a simpering dolt. “We are all regulated by laws. Laws that dictate conduct may or may not be inherently oppressive, but that is beyond this conversation.” Charles studies Erik’s leonine features before he takes a long swig of his warming lager. Swill, his mother would have called it with a sour expression. “We readily accept laws that regulate how people use their innate advantages. Is that oppression?” His argument, he knows, is propped up by little more than straw, but Charles doesn’t bother to solidify it.
No, he wants Erik to topple it, to insist that he’s wrong. To challenge him.
The twitch at Erik's lips threatens to emerge into a full-blown smirk, but it merely creases his eyes, marring his atavistic countenance the way an artist smudges their thumb over an oil painting. "Is the law inherently oppressive?" he rephrases Charles's argument swiftly, one eyebrow arced in skepticism. "No, but many laws are. What is..." his mouth forms a little moue as he considers how to parse his thoughts, flickering through different languages as if paging through a children's book - brilliant splashes of cartoonish imagery and poetic verse. He seems to forget himself as he catches onto Charles's gaze. Erik's stare burns into him. Charles has already well-convinced himself that it's linked to drink - perhaps because it's the only time he ever sees Erik's veneer slip from its ironclad repose.
That statue animating to life. With coldness and with cruelty / you shaped me / how good it was to be mere clay / to lie / lifeless and calm / among the sands and stones of earth / between eternities... another liturgy, pulled from the depths. Erik's mind is full of literature. Once, Charles had asked him to read a passage from his latest book - and had gotten the hilarious - and if he's flirting, Erik is playing 4D chess - and shocking delivery of Erik's humored tones reciting: "He visits my town once a year. / He fills my mouth with kisses and nectar. / I spend all my money on him / Who, girl, your man? / No, a mango."
But of course, Der Goylem is apt. A figure of ancient, desiccated clay become alive and vital. Through its elixir of health, the vaunted Pabst Blue Ribbon. "Moralne lub właściwy," he flicks his hand to the side in a dismissive gesture. Charles doesn't need to speak Polish for the lilting terminology to reveal itself - Erik is speaking of morality over legality. "The law does not dictate moralne prawidłowy. All the wars, it was legal. What happened to my people, it was legal. What law is, that matters. What conduct... jakie postępowanie narzuca," he switches, communicating himself as effectively as he can in a language familiar to Charles only in faint whispers at the edges of Erik's curling consciousness. "The first law that says you -" he points to Charles, "cannot use your mutation. You cannot read a mind, you will go to prison. You do not find it oppressive?"
It's sudden and stark and fascinating. No one has ever caught Charles out on it before, not until he's told them. But Erik knows. Erik knows that he can read minds. His stare burns all the brighter.
He isn’t a man of interpersonal subtlety—Charles had gleaned that from their first interaction. Austere patrician features belied the powerful symphonic orchestra of Erik’s mind; Charles hadn’t expected such bluntness from a man who could think in villanelles. Charles’s own manner of social interaction is of an entirely different genealogy. He’s cordial, pleasant, diplomatic. He can grin broadly as his psyche suffers, feign comfort as neckties and stiff loafers suffocate his skin, feign ignorance as he watches his mother’s dinner guests grow rude with drink, watches their prejudices climb to the fore. Peace and comfort are Charles’s twin goals, and so he thrives as a chameleon, or perhaps, a sycophant, chronically redirecting his world and the worlds of those around him. Rarely, if ever, has Charles felt so directionless as he does right now.
There is no clear route away from this discomfort, the immense unease of being identified publicly. Erik’s long finger points at him, accusing and knowing. Mutant eyes, green as late-summer grass and not marginally as tranquil, fix his own. Instinct urges Charles to glance away, to gauge if their bar-mates are tuning in to the debate between the two handsome men at the corner table, but he keeps his own gaze forward. What else does Erik Lehnsherr know? He can discover that for himself, of course, but such intense rummaging extends beyond the level of voyeurism that Charles can tolerate. Cognitive dissonance, he thinks again. He’s still intoxicated by the process by which Erik forms his thoughts. Couplets and quatrains in languages that Charles can’t identify parade through his conscience, accompanied by vivid imagery borrowed from the spectrum that spans Caravaggio to the peeling billboards at the outskirts of Cambridge which promise magic in Brylcreem or fulfillment in Corn Flakes.
Threads of music and literature and art weave themselves along strands of philosophy and language until they settle into the tapestry that Erik reads from with confidence. Charles wonders if he himself is guided in this way when he speaks. His educational pedigree is as impressive as one might expect of an Xavier; the primary schools that he attended in New York and the secondary education that he received across the Atlantic educate in the classic tradition. Charles knows Homer as well as he knows Hesse, Marlowe as well as Marx, Justinian and Joyce. But does he have the aptitude to recruit them as Erik seems to? Mythos and math live on two different planes, to Charles. Myth is false, math is real. Is his own mind really so flat, so dimensionless?
“And what if I were allowed to freely use my mutation as I pleased?” Charles counters, voice blessedly calm in spite of his rankled spirit. “What an advantage. I could declare myself King of the World right now, and convince everyone in this room, including you, my friend, that it is so. By tomorrow morning, I could have all of Boston under my thumb. Tomorrow evening, the entirety of New England.” Charles pauses, measuring Erik’s expression. Does his companion understand truly the extent of Charles’s abilities? “Would that not be ‘oppressive,’ as you say?” he continues, one brow arching upward. “I agree with you; any overlap between law and morality is merely coincidental. The law prevents you, after all, from ripping the steel nails from our chairs and sending them into my throat.” He pauses for the briefest of moments, trading an acknowledgement for an acknowledgement. “But you aren’t refraining from that because it breaks the law, are you? Morality is the more powerful force.”
Charles finally drains his drink, and immediately wants another. “Perhaps morality is the true oppressor, here.”
He's roused that intricate beast carved along the underside of Erik's molecular structure; wood-burned and polished, whorls of vivid reds and warmed sienna - speckled-patterns. In the few discussions Charles has had regarding his potential, he is accustomed to his conversation-partner experiencing the full weight of his capability as a bolt of fear through their chest. The - oh, my God. You can do anything to me. And Erik is no different. You could make me do anything...
What is distinct, what is triumphant, is that there is not a hint of fear there at all. There is - admiration. Respect, fascination. And, to-Charles-only, a shimmer. A delicate thread, twinged in Erik's gut. Something deeper, layered and filtered that flits away as soon as it arises. Such things are equally common amongst men. Simple statements drawing baser, primal responses that most are unaware of. In Erik, they're blooms of vivid-tulips and slashing blades of grass across ceaseless canvas. Thunderstorms pulsing between Neuron's synaptic cleft.
"Is there not a difference between the free use of your mutation and the free use of one's hands? Cutting a vegetable with a kitchen knife, or using it to kill?" his reaction is quicksilver, sharp and steady. "But to use your ability... to see another," Erik's tone drops off there, and somewhere, softens. That wooden ego melting into rich chocolate. Accessible, for the briefest moment. Their debate forgotten in this liminal space out of time. "That must be quite... heavy, for you, Charles." It's one of the few times Erik deigns to refer to him by name, his brows knit together; expression all-around gentle and surely confusing. That Charles has admitted to power which could fell empires and topple governments with a simple flick of his wrist (if-that), Yet, Erik is more concerned for him.
As a mind-reader, or a telepath according to the dusty pages of fin-de-siecle mysticism, Charles is rarely surprised. What was once shocking is now pedestrian; people lie or people tell the truth or people lie about some things while professing others. He’s heard so much from so many. That this man, Erik Lehnsherr, has the ability to consistently disarm Charles is more than unusual. His mind flits from formal debate to the Tanakh and finally to a position of pure, deep empathy in the span of a few beats of the Bobby Darin hit pumping from the jukebox. Somehow, that progression is not chaotic, but orderly, precise, determined. Suddenly, Charles is slightly ashamed. Erik, unfazed by the blithe threat, is engaging with his admitted shock tactic rather than fighting it. The few others with whom he has shared this potential had all reacted as expected; with disgust, dismissal, scorn, or fear.
Charles had been expecting dismissal from Erik, whose own power commanded equal respect. What does a man like Erik, sharp and confident, have to fear? Empathy, then, is alarming. The temperature of the Erik’s cool mien has risen by several degrees, and the hardness around those eyes and lips has given way, if only slightly, to something much more malleable. As if true concern troubled his muscles so much as to make them forget that they’re on opposite sides of a debate. His own muscles feel limp. It may be the beer, but, more likely, it’s the intoxication of sitting across from a person who has made Charles feel, for the first time in his life, like being entirely honest. “It’s…” he hesitates, understanding fully well that this stammering betrayed the mask of confidence that he valiantly attempts to front. “It’s not regularly heavy, at least not in that way,” he offers, eyes now on the frothy suds coating the bottom of his glass. “The trivial things can often feel heavy. You know, I overhear someone thinking vile or harmful things about another, and I wonder if I ought to step in."
For emphasis, he jerks his head to his left, toward the door of the dim bar. “That man by the entrance, do you see him? The one with the glasses? He’s hoping that a young man or woman in here will have one too many shandies and will agree to accompany him home, tonight.” Charles furrows his brows now, frowning at his knuckles as they tighten around his empty glass. “Because I know of his intentions, the responsibility, ultimately, may be mine to ensure that his hopes are dashed. I can make him forget where he is and send him stumbling home, or….or I can do nothing, and let evening run its course.” He leans back in his rickety chair then and pulls his right leg up, crossing it atop his left knee.
He feels a bit stuffy in his grey blazer and leather wingtips, argyle socks now visible to anyone who might look. The freshmen at the neighboring table are casual; printed shirts with butterfly collars and loose slacks, saddle shoes and loafers. He feels old and outmoded beside them. “My ego isn’t large enough to make me believe that I am at all qualified to be some global dictator. I would never dream of such a thing, and so that doesn’t trouble me,” he says carefully, fingers drumming against his knee. “The…dilemmas, however, that arise from my opting to be a bystander or opting to insert myself into a situation, can indeed be heavy.” Charles allows that to brew for a moment before he clears his throat, suddenly deeply uncomfortable. “It’s a privilege, however, to even have that choice. Don’t think that I don’t know that.”
Erik lists forward slightly, eyes riveted on his companion as he speaks, long fingers steepled together below his chin in a contemplative triangle. His head rests, and he listens. In many respects, they are opposing elements. Charles in his luxurious Brioni whilst Erik's frame is embraced by casual leather and denim jeans. One of studious formality, the other balanced on that razor-wire of brisk entropy. Chaotic, some would call it, but for a telepath, the precise order of things is made manifest. As Charles draws Erik's attention to the other individual, his gaze - once fully trained on Charles and focused in every manner, withdraws amidst the vague overflow of icy frost. Chilled out, slowed and stretched until it loses all shape or meaning. His shoulders square, and he straightens in his seat.
"My ability," he laughs there, more of an exhaled huff through his nostrils than boisterous joy, but all the same - "you know, it came after. When I was at the Red Cross. I woke up one morning in my tent, and all the little instruments were floating beside me. If I had -" his head shakes a little. There is no need to bring it down here; certainly Charles understood his perspective. A telepath. Fascinating. And side-tracked. "You do not know this information for nothing. It is your gift. You were given this." A winding verse snakes beneath, as it would turn out so often with Erik, though he remains eerily unaware of his mind's catalogue. / you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved , And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them... / "There are many ways that people discover information. Sometimes you learn it incidentally. That does not render it invalid."
And then he holds out his hand, a completely shocking action that perfectly encapsulates Erik Lehnsherr and his boisterous impulsivity, cracking off him as sparks in a malfunctioning circuit. A flurry of sound and taste and smoke. "Let's intervene. I would not wish that man on any poor sap." It takes a few moments to realize Erik is being catty, slipping the knife in before anyone has the chance to realize they've been cut. He's taken the implications and blurred them slightly, just-enough to make this extended offer of vigilantism enticing. Dare-say... fun.
It’s truly embarrassing to consider how Erik affects him so, but at least that glaring implication lives in his own head and nowhere else. He has met one other telepath; an icy blonde called Emma who he grew to know while on a ski holiday in Chamonix some years ago. Though Emma may be the only person alive who can access his thoughts in this way, he for some reason never felt truly vulnerable around her. Not as he does with Erik. Charles knows that he’s charismatic. He knows that he’s likable and popular; all the loneliness that he feels in his life comes from within rather than without. Because of his charisma—his keen ability to lie, Raven might say—others pay attention to him. He’s eloquent but relatable, often disarming.
When he speaks, others tend to listen to him. He’s rarely had to chase. Erik, of course, does not conform to the mold. To enjoy the other’s attention, rapt and thoughtful, brings a renewed vigor. He stares briefly at the outstretched hand, wondering what Erik would have done had his ability come before and not after, wondering what he should do with this information. This, Charles decides, is more hard won than a smile. A modicum of trust, unbroken attention, a proposal. The telepath swallows thickly, and then presses a smooth smile across his lips before leaning forward once more and allowing his hand, smooth and narrow, to rest atop Erik’s own. His fingers ache to dig into the other’s skin, to explore, to imprint, but they remain still and chaste, pink and olive atop the sticky tabletop.
“You make light of my dilemma,” Charles chastises, though his own tone is what is light. “What gives us the right to play God?” Even as he speaks, his free hand travels toward his temple, auburn hair slicked back, and presses two fingers inward. At this proximity, it’s like listening to the radio. Tuning to the frequency of the bespectacled man is not difficult, and within mere seconds, Charles has slipped beneath the outer barrier of his psyche and into the milieu. Neurons fire and concrete images, noises, sensations result. Most people stage their most immediate thoughts in the same area of the brain, just behind the frontal lobe, and this man is no different.
Charles takes his place in the front row, ready to stage manage and direct. One of his invisible tendrils flicks outward, away from the frontal lobe and toward the cerebellum. With minimal effort, Charles extends his control over the knot and blocks the pathways between several sets of neurons, causing the man to freeze. A similar treatment is applied to the thalamus, and though the man remains seated with his eyes open, he is unconscious, unable to move, unaware. A mannequin, a dummy, ready to be manipulated. “What shall we make him do?” Charles asks then, feeling like he did as a child, when he and Raven sat at the top of the stairwell, giddy as they watched their unsuspecting nanny slip her bare feet into the shoes that they had just filled with gelatin.
Watching closely, Erik's eyes narrow on the man. At once, faced with the abrupt reality, he does comprehend Charles. It's a split-second of affinity, but that single moment - he knows exactly what that price would be. "That he desires to leave this place and return home, to read his favorite book." It's surprisingly mild, given the lightning strikes behind too-even features. "Not light," he shakes his head, though, and offers the hand in his the most gentle of squeezes - as though handling delicate chinaware. "The truth. You should be able to openly express yourself. I understand that stops at violating the rights of others," he adds, and indicates the man before them for good measure - which does qualify, despite Erik's leniency. "I know you are a telepath because of the way the Elevator Lounge pledges speak of you."
The Elevator Lounge is part of Tau Epsilon Phi (ΤΕΦ), which reveals a little about Erik - evidently he'd pledged with a fraternity. If anyone did not strike Charles as the frat-boy stereotype, it would be Erik Lehnsherr. But as he's coming to discover with each time they interact, Erik positively delights in disrupting Charles's perceptions of him. At least ΤΕΦ was known as a Mutant and Jewish-inclusive independent-living-group. "They are afraid of you. Even those who are open about their own mutation within our walls. They believe you should be forbidden from utilizing your psionic abilities to invade their privacy. I do not share such a concern, and believe it is a symptom of limited cognitive capacity. However," he has to groan, barely concealing an eyeroll. "I... take your point," he concedes very slowly, clearly unaccustomed to giving an inch let alone a mile within conflict.
"It must be overwhelming, to constantly face these decisions. It cannot be your sole responsibility to address. That would be unfair. But, I see little wrong with amending an individual who is intending to cause serious harm. Perhaps not G-d, but we possess these abilities. We are meant to use them. Ideally in the pursuit of tikkun olam," he elucidates, the Hebrew phrase materializing out of thin air. He pats Charles's hand before wrapping his fingers around the edge of his glass, plucking it up off of the table to allow a natural pause to fall over them as he drains the remaining liquid. - Repair of the World. A lofty goal, weighted in nobility, and once-more a disparity in Erik's psyche. Slowly and steadily, he lifts his fingers from their dripping condensation to flick Charles's fork up into the air, rearranging it molecule-by-molecule until it forms a neat, folded rose with decorative swirls engraved. It hovers in front of Charles's face momentarily before setting down next to his plate.
This time, Erik is smiling. It's a mere wobble, but it reaches his eyes.
“Oh, so very dull,” Charles chides, though it’s likely that they both know that the telepath would not have settled for anything less pragmatic than this. He maintains eye contact with Erik as he presses harder into his temple, for a flourish more than function. Had he been observing his target, he would have witnessed the man throw back the remnants of his beer, drop a handful of coins on the table, and make a quick exit. So glad I got that Christie back from Ray, the man—a middle-aged bus driver called Bruce—thinks to himself as he shuffles through the dim streets. Can’t remember the ending to it, didn’t Poirot get himself into trouble with that British policeman? Funny it’s called “Scotland Yard,” not even in Scotland, right? Maybe she’ll explain it….
Charles eases out of the man’s head as he hurries toward his dreary efficiency, turning his attention fully to Erik once more. Their hands remain linked as Charles listens to Erik’s defense, and at the end, he smiles sadly. “Truth is so often subjective,” he counters, though there is no strain of defense in his own voice, now. His tone is soft but assured. “Those friends of yours—your brothers.” A wry glance. “Their truth is not wrong; they fear the horizons of my ability and mistrust me for it. Invading another’s privacy is wrong, and if one can’t even be private in one’s own head…well.” He thinks of Bruce again and is minutely uplifted to know that no unsuspecting soul from this bar will find themselves in the man’s dingy flat tonight. Simultaneously, he can only wonder what may happen tomorrow, or in the bar across the road, or at a bar in Brussels, or maybe one in Bangalore, or Birmingham, or Beirut, or…
“It’s simple to say, Erik,” Charles says at last, tasting the name on his tongue. “But it’s a difficult line to draw. Impossible. Subjectiveness will always make it so.” Tikkun olam, he thinks, watching with fascination as Erik molds the silverware like clay before his eyes. That’s a phrase that he knows, perhaps because he fishes it out of Erik’s head, perhaps from somewhere else. Despite himself, Charles’s own grin grows when a crooked, quiet smile appears on Erik’s face. A genuine one, spurring triumph, quieting the trouble in Charles’s soul, if only briefly. Yes, a truly simpering dolt. He plucks the silver rose from the table to spin it in his fingers, admire the detail in the petals, the perfection of the thorns. He then slips it in his breast pocket, the metal head glimmering in the low light. “Repair implies that the world was working once before,” Charles notes, still grinning, still beaming. “But perhaps, that is a topic for another day.”
A glance at his Rolex indicates that it’s just after 10:30pm. The time when evenings wind down or ramp up.
“Would you care for one more?” he asks, nodding toward the empty glass. “Or, have you had enough of this place?” Or enough of me?
"Brother is a strong word," Erik groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But I digress, we are stronger together." At Charles's last topical note - there it is, once more. That flares a light behind Erik's eyes, and he signals Aoife to refill their mugs in silent answer. "Ah, but nevertheless a fascinating one. I'd wager it began with agriculture. Large populations of people were forced to cultivate land for lords. There is some literature that suggests a bulk of human civilization is based upon slavery, and that the natural design of our species - well, their species, at the least - is to work in small, cooperative communities." Leave it to Erik to reject agriculture out of nowhere, for no reason, and it's infuriating and - there's that light. And tongue-in-cheek. Self-aware in its absurdity. He lifts his glass, confirming his desire to remain, but light-footed. Not-quite understanding the delicate balance of social propriety. "I confess I have never been to this establishment before. I had heard rumors it caters to malcontents, so it would appear I am in the right place."
The fresh pint buoys Charles ever so slightly, as does the promise of another debate. Oh, how exciting this is, he realizes objectively. A companion, a match. It’s beyond arrogant to even consider it so, but Charles wonders if he’s ever encountered his intellectual equal. Certainly he’s conversed with people much smarter than he; many of his professors and colleagues at MIT are currently in the process of discovering principles that Charles can’t begin to envisions. An intellectual equal is different. Someone whose mind is tuned in to the same frequency as his own, which draws upon a similar corpus as his own. Which makes connections in a familiar way. The two of them can hardly be less similar; their backgrounds entirely foreign. And Erik is more poetic than he, his thoughts more faceted. Still, Charles struggles to think of anything but a complementary mirror when he fixes his eyes upon Erik, the electricity of opportunity sparking in his blood.
“Yes, yes, I’ve also read Marx,” he responds with purposeful dismissiveness. “Capitalism, agriculture, and slavery make a compelling trinity. You’re not wrong.” Noting Erik’s awkward shift, Charles raises his own glass, an acknowledgement that he need not halt himself for Charles’s sake. “But I’d argue that before we planted crops, created property, and built governments to protect that property, we were still in disharmony with the earth. It’s a condition of life.” A steep swig from his glass has Charles feeling momentarily sluggish; perhaps the beer is finally catching up with him. He glances around at their surroundings; an abnormally dim room, tables jammed into nooks and alcoves. If someone doesn’t want to be noticed or recognized here, they need only wear non-descript clothing and choose a table carefully.
“Malcontents,” Charles repeats. The nickel rose feels suddenly heavy in his jacket pocket, and he finds himself wishing that he could return the gift with something of his own. From one malcontent to another. He instead turns his glass in his hands. “Your brothers,” he says. “Liberal-minded as they are. Are they aware of this affiliation, of yours?” He chooses his words carefully, as one must about this topic. Even at Aoife's. Even with Erik. “Or will you tell them that you went to Grogan’s tonight with a beautiful woman from your physics class instead?”
It's obvious by the way Erik's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline that he had taken that term at face-value, and it's only upon Charles's elucidation that he realizes, with an abrupt cough behind the back of his hand, what was actually happening, here. Clearing his throat and swallowing, he marshals the rest of his reaction amidst gleaming, endless walls of white and radio static - but for the splash of red coloring his cheekbones. The man seated across from him was a telepath, do cholery pierdonoly śmieciu. Of course he would be aware of Erik's thoughts, as streamlined and clinical as possible. Sure, Lehnsherr. Not like he'd be aware of you sure-as-shit noticing the way Xavier's fancy-ass suit hugs his upper body. Real smooth.
He really, well-and-truly, with a patently valiant effort, tries to play it off totally cool. "They're not aware," is what he answers - and Charles hadn't missed, there. An answer only a queer would appreciate; in any other person it would surely raise hackles and cause deep offense. But not here, not in this climate. Not with Erik. His chin lifts, though, defiant. Refusing to be cowed, to give in to the small frisson of fear that unfurls deep inside him every time it comes up. The sounds of the bar fade away momentarily, and Erik dips his fingers into the small glass of water the waiter had set down right when they first arrived.
He draws them, still-wet, down his own face. The radio static - Charles hears it whine in a jarring, uncomfortable staccato before all of Erik's mind is draped in suffocating silence. A protective measure - not for Erik. Not after the conversation they just had. But for Charles. He's the only person engaging enough to keep Erik's interest piqued since his arrival to the States, scrambling his brain - as brilliant and technicolor as Erik suspects from his limited understanding of the way a mind is formed - is not an option. "But I'm not concerned. --you? Your friends, colleagues?"
Throughout their evening together, Charles has tried desperately hard to keep out of Erik’s head. It’s impossible not to access surface-level thoughts or those that are trumpeted out of the psyche and into the ether, but out of respect, Charles generally does not push beyond the barrier of the mind’s outer walls unless invited. The radical change in the tenor and pace of Erik’s thoughts are all the more poignant, then, and Charles is physically taken aback by the stark departure.
Oh, Christ. Scarlet seeped into his temples—bloody lucky that it’s so dark in this bar, mm? Erik’s face, that stoic, measured visage, is now animated, eyebrows arched, mouth slightly agape. If Charles had any ability to ignore his mortification, he would have noted how truly delightful it is to see Erik Lehnsherr on his haunches like this. The abject surprise lasts only a moment, of course. Within a single measure of Bill Haley, Erik’s expression is schooled into something more recognizable, and Charles is left feeling foolish. The exciting harmony in Erik’s mind cuts to an awkward stop; no lines of Diderot, no Yiddish couplets or Polish colloquialisms dance together at the fore.
Only baffled, disquieting silence. Through the thick fabric of his clothing, the rose seems to burn. Overcome by a sporadic wash of heat, Charles is forced to remove his blazer, certain that the crimson flush in his neck is visible against the crisp white button down he wears. The thin navy tie is tight, constricting, and Charles tugs gently at the knot with clumsy fingers, inviting slack. “It’s not something that I typically discuss with others who aren’t…affiliated,” he replies crisply, watching a droplet of cool water travel down the smooth plane of Erik’s cheek. “I…apologize, Erik,” he offers then. “I didn’t mean to mislead you; I assure you that I didn’t invite you here tonight hoping for anything more than intelligent conversation, which you’ve more than provided.”
It takes several beats before Erik has composed himself - and Charles gets the impression it's not due to distress as much as it lies in the effort he is undertaking to ensure that every errant whisper is neatly tucked inside the box to which it belongs. He's so preoccupied with this effort that he doesn't pause to presume how his outward expressions must look. Confusion, followed by immediate distance. He presses his lips together and holds up a hand, as if to say hang on - and Charles is uniquely privy to the weird, upside-down world - and then a shake of his head.
"There is no offense," he clears up softly. "Admittedly this is beyond my skillset." What? Friendship? Conversation? Dating? Unlike Charles, who he is certain must endure such overtures on a regular basis. Most likely all of the above, and Erik's cool confidence just minutes ago is supplanted by something a lot more... guileless, in a way. "Speaking with you is..." refreshing. Fascinating. Infuriating. "Illuminating." After all, it's not often that Erik has his views properly challenged.
Despite himself, Charles must laugh. Unlike Erik, his laughs and smiles come easy; they’re masks and covers crafted through his skilled artisanship. And also unlike Erik, Charles is exceptionally skilled in this area. Friendship, interpersonal connection. Telepathy makes it easy, and his other natural gifts make it easier. Maybe it’s why he’s so drawn toward the Polish man fumbling across from him. He’s smarter than Charles, quicker than Charles, more handsome than Charles, and yet he’s as adrift as a sliver of wood in the open ocean in the arena of people. That dichotomy of opposites is fascinating.
“You needn’t think of this as practice, or even as a skillset,” Charles offers warmly, employing one of the more disarming tones in his arsenal. The awkward flush still stings the tops of his ears, but Charles is a master, here, and he can bring anything back to Earth center. Even this strange and handsome enigma. “There aren’t even rules to abide by,” he continues. “Other than those that you might observe when speaking with anyone. Friendship is easy, if you’re in want of a friend. Show up when you say you will, listen, talk, relax. That’s all there is to it.” Maybe it’s conspicuous that Charles avoided talking about the other thing, the dating thing, but he doesn’t want to chase Erik away so quickly. “I think even someone of your skillset can handle that.”
"It has been many years since I've had a friend," Erik says, sudden in its simple admission. "I daresay my brothers do not count," is tacked on, firewood dry. Erik sits up, gesturing vaguely toward him. "What did you come here to study?" he wants to know, and his curiosity is genuine if tactless. Charles's intellect is evident, something Erik would certainly classify as several standard deviations above his own if privy to Charles's private musings, almost laughably so. "Or did you just come to get trounced in debate club by yours truly?" his eyebrows waggle, terribly droll. Trounced is a word - Erik really believes the opposite, that he'd been turned around in the arena of verbal semantics and wit several times, but there it is again - foolhardy confidence. One might even say bravado.
Charles smiled, sadly now, at Erik’s blunt admission. Somehow, Charles expects this to be the case; Erik doesn’t seem the type to grow close to others very quickly. It’s hard not to wonder if Erik’s last true friend was from before the horrors. He says nothing, though, and let’s the conversation push forward, deciding that Erik should chart the course. At least for now. “Trounced!” Charles laughs, leaning forward on his elbows now. “Now, that’s a statement. You only pose a challenge because of the university that we’re at. Full of scientists and math nerds who can’t see the forest for the trees…or maybe, the atom for the protons.”
He sips at his beer, toying with his response for a moment.
“I was supposed to go to Oxford. The Eton-to-Oxford pipeline is fairly direct, as is the Eton-to-Cambridge. The Eton-to-Cambridge, Massachusetts pipeline isn’t all that difficult to access either; I’ve a fair few classmates at Harvard.” Charles pauses, understanding that it’s probably uncouth to drop the names of such esteemed institutions with this level of casual flippancy. “I came to MIT because I want the circumstance without the pomp,” he says quickly. “I’m pursuing a Quantitative Biology degree because that’s what I want to study. They let you do that, here. No fuss, no ceremony, no showmanship. I need to know why we—people like you and I—are the way that we are. I can discover that, here.” Charles purses his lips. “And what about yourself?”
"And you're certain you can handle slumming it down here?" Erik snorts, an almost full bark of laughter emanating from his side of the table that he quickly quells - such seems to be the way with all of his emotions. They're not absent, but when they do bubble over, he immediately shuts them down. Especially laughter, and pleasure - which just goes to show how much he actually is enjoying himself, even if he wouldn't admit to it - that such things are as visible as they are, as often as they are. Erik isn't accustomed to this, either. The joke rolls easily, but he moves along with the tides and nods as Charles continues to speak. "I am here on scholarship - electrical engineering. MIT..." his features pinch a little, lips pressed together in a grimace.
"MIT is one of the few institutions that actively pursues a diverse student body." It's clear that this is important to him. It made one wonder why he hadn't pursued an education in law, or politics - civil rights was one of the things that aroused his passion most obviously, and forms the basis of every one of his Separatist beliefs, which they had ardently debated many a time. But a scholarship meant restrictions - someone had noticed his talent in one area, and one area alone. "My options for attending university are more limited than your own, but it is not due to finances. I am good at what I do. If I had the opportunity, I could go to any educational institute I wished."
This is confidence, but there's something in the unshakable way he says it, that lacks typical arrogance. It's a statement of fact, and not one he attributes to intelligence but rather to his mutation. "Regrettably, ADCOMs here cater to a very particular type of student." He shrugs it off, waving his hand. "Have you come up with an answer? Why we are this way?"
Charles nods thoughtfully, but acknowledges to himself that diversity had not been on his mind when selecting an institution. What a privilege, to have his pick of the field. One of his former tutors had told him once that he’s a “natural genius,” but that intellect is the least valuable of his gifts. Your mother has roots in the British peerage, and your father the heir of American magnates. Where your family name won’t grant you access, your family coffer will. His ability to thrive in academic settings is an unnecessary bonus. Once more, his privilege seems to glare at him from above as he sits across from a man who has earned his way here on merit alone.
“So, it isn’t your dream to be an electrical engineer,” Charles deduces with a nod. This makes a bit more sense; Erik is more suited for publishing treatises or penning monographs, not tinkering with circuits in some laboratory. At the question, Charles smirks briefly, wondering how to best approach this next beat. If allowed, he will spend the next hour divulging into the specifics of nucleotides, chromosomal encoding, and protein synthesis, but conversation partners tend to find excuses to leave in those situations, so Charles decides to abridge himself. “Not with any sort of definitive certainty,” he offers. “But, just recently, as in months ago, some folks over at the other Cambridge discovered that DNA has a very peculiar shape.” Before he can stop himself, Charles fishes a pen from his leather satchel and slides Erik’s napkin toward himself.
On it, he sketches two overlapping wave-like lines. Within the empty spaces, he draws additional straight lines, connecting each strand with rungs. The final structure resembles a curving ladder. He flips the napkin and pushes it back toward Erik, waiting for the man to take it in. “This is what our DNA looks like,” Charles says, and he cannot hide the excitement from leaking into his voice. “And it’s important, because it provides the mechanism for replication. When DNA needs to replicate, it unwinds, and then splits in half. Each strand then provides a template for creating exact replicas of its missing strand.” Charles taps the tip of his pen above the odd shape, mind sparking with the promise of wonder.
“This means that there is proof about the encoding of mutation. Our mutations aren’t pure accident; or at least no more accidental than your green eyes or your freckles. This has opened up an entire universe of possibilities, and I’ve recently located a…promising lead,” he says, eyes flickering. “A series of nucleotides that seem to serve no purpose in most people that have markedly different patterns in my own DNA, and the DNA of the one other mutant I’ve obtained a sample from. It’s much too early to draw conclusions, but…” Charles trails off, flushing again. He’s talking too much and too quickly.
"The double-helix," Erik nods, following along raptly. He'd heard of this, Watson and Crick made big waves. Even at MIT. DNA as a science was in its infancy, but - he circles the connecting strand. "This is hydrogen, if I recall? -- and the current theory is abiogenesis? Going from..." he draws a small squiggle, and then elaborates the basic shape of the DNA molecule. "This... genetic material, is the composite for everyone, is it not? That must make it individual? My genes must look different to yours, as I look different to you." It turned out that Charles evidently couldn't bore Erik away, because absent educational requirements, it seemed he had studied what he could for fun, in his spare time. Charles can feel the edge of a point to his question, though - a solemn urgency. Not pure scientific hypothesis nor curiosity, but the faintest edges of a warning.
Almost giddy with the news that Erik, too, has been keeping abreast of science’s latest achievements, he nods, lips smiling and broad, eyes wide. “Precisely,” he agrees, tapping Erik’s squiggle with his own index finger. “But at a very, very small scale. They’ve found that, among human beings, we share somewhere around 99.6% of the same code.” This theory hasn’t yet been fully accepted, but it’s bearing acceptance, so Charles decides to appropriate it. “Only .4% of your structure and my structure differ from each other, but that minute fraction accounts for 100% of the differences between you and I.” Still grinning, Charles draws another double-helix, but instead of drawing rungs between the edges, he jots down pairs of letters; A, C, G, or T. A near replica is drawn beside it, but he swaps one of the letter pairs for a different set.
“Because much of our DNA is identical, the places where it differs provide excellent leads for investigation. While I don’t what what sort of technology we’d need to possess to fully map the entirety of the human genome, we are able to at least observe the structural differences between different samples.” Charles circles the dissimilar pairs in each strand. “A human without a mutation might contain this structure,” he says, tapping at the first pair. “You, on the other hand, might have this one.” Another tap. “And that difference, expressed in the particularities of the rest of your body, enables you to manipulate magnetic elements. Within the particularities of my body, it enables me to hear the thoughts of others. This, of course, is a gross oversimplification, but it’s the basis of my research.”
"And you have some of these samples? Of yourself, other mutants?" Erik presses. It isn't accusatory as much as it is concerned. "Please, be careful," he just comes out and says it. "If there is some type of medical test that can determine who is or isn't a mutant, I would wager the government to be very interested in its application. Even more-so if they can compile a database of known mutants, or even find a way to revert a mutant back to baseline. All extralegally, of course." There's no denying his inherent cynicism, that it's the first thing he thinks of - but it can't be helped. Charles's work, it's incredible, but it's also dangerous. Erik can't stop himself from wondering if Charles is putting himself at real risk.
He studies Charles's much greater version of the shapes and strands that make up the spaghetti of their beings. "...Adenine, cytosine, guanine... tyrosine?" he taps each letter, and then the other A. He gets thymine wrong, and - "I forget what this one is," he says of adenosine, his lips hook up in a returning grin - but it's pretty decent for a layman. "This is incredible work. And you are working on this?" he pelts Charles with another question - it can't be helped. "Fascinating. Tell me more. Tell me - all of it. Everything." He reaches down at his feet to withdraw a notebook from his bag, slapping it onto the table along with a pencil. His handwriting - from his non-dominant hand (the dominant right one encircled by a thin black brace that straightens his fingers from what would otherwise be a ghastly, bent claw), is incredibly wobbly, but he poises the graphite tip to the page all the same.
Charles’s spirit deflates slightly at Erik’s warning, and he’s on the verge of protest before remembering exactly who he is speaking with. The government would never use this information for such purposes, he had been about to say, but is fortunate enough to pause. Of course they could, and of course some might. Hell, he’s stupid to think that his own is beyond that, what with the witch hunt for communists and the inhuman treatment of Japanese people just a few years ago. Erik is right, the territory toward which science is venturing is at once exciting and terrifying. “Thymine,” he says absently, considering the implications of Erik’s words.
“And you needn’t worry, not yet. No professors of mine are aware of the type of mutation that I’m searching for, and my only other sample is from my laboratory partner, Hank McCoy. Have you met him?” Before Erik answers, though, Charles watches him pull out a notebook of his own. He can’t help the next chuckle that bubbles from his throat, excited and endeared all at once. “It’s difficult to know where to begin,” he admits. “It may be easier to show you, rather than tell you, if you’re truly interested. We can go to the lab. Now, if you want; I’ve my own set of keys.”
For the first time all night, Erik's smile isn't tamped down. "Yes," he agrees instantly. He slides payment for both of their orders under a generous tip for Aoife before rising to his feet (and it's unnecessary, completely, on principle alone, Mr. Eton Pipeline--)- and Charles doesn't remember him being quite so tall, but looking up - he well-towers over Charles entirely. From across the room he'd been domineering in stature, a glowering menace. Up-close he's a veritable bean-pole, and just as thin.
He's practically chatty as they walk across campus, animated. "--and I think, mutations cannot be relative to a single factor - for example, in your case, your brain must have structures that can decode information inside neutrinos as they pass through solid objects - physics minor," he points to himself. "Just like a person with super-speed would have metabolic and structural divergence.. tell me if I sound like, ah, głupi idiota," he mimes hitting his head with the closed fist of his good hand.
Charles wonders how they look from a secondary perspective as they stroll through the darkened streets of Cambridge. Erik is markedly taller than he—perhaps six inches or more. His shoulders are broad, so he looks more solid than he is, but as they walk in stride, Charles notices just how thin he is. Matchstick legs, narrow wrists, hips that taper almost unfairly. He himself isn’t short—he’s near average, but beside Erik he feels minuscule. The questions are as exciting as the answers. Charles waves away Erik’s concern and delves into the affirmative. Yes, he confirms, mutations are far more complex than a few shifted nucleotides, they cascade across a series of linked mutations, a mutation which adapts to itself. He answers with rigor. Erik is well-versed in some of the granularities of biology to a surprising degree, so Charles doesn’t bother to forgo detail in favor of ease of explanation.
When Erik isn’t aware of a term, Charles briefly explains it, and then Erik files it away in that symphonic brain of his, ready to access again, or perhaps ready to employ as a piece within the greater puzzle. Fascinating. Exciting. Invigorating. Their conversation carries them into the Life Sciences laboratory space. Charles leads them through a series of doors and empty hallways until they arrive at his lab, the room that has become a second home. An electrical hum buzzes through the space after he flicks on the overhead bulbs, illuminating the room in a sterile wash of fluorescent light. Equipment lines the walls, with rows of workspaces covered in notebooks, scrap paper, and supplies cluttering their surface.
Charles deposits his bag on a stand beside the door and gestures for Erik to do the same before extracting four individual latex gloves from a box. It’s become a habit of all students and faculty who use this lab space to don gloves immediately upon arrival, and Charles has job plans to break the lab’s cardinal rules tonight. “Here, put these on, I—oh,” he stops, gloves extended toward Erik, eyes fixed on the hand encircled by a leather brace. “Er, you can wear only one, if you can’t fit this over that,” he offers. “Is your hand alright?”
"Ah, it's fine," he waves it off, dismissing easily. Another small injection of static - something Charles has come to recognize perhaps isn't fine, but that Erik is obscuring for his benefit. Not knowing how much information he's privy to, the impact of that data on Charles's brain, Erik has taken an extremely conservative approach with his thoughts, as much as he can. He moves slowly to unstick one glove from the other, but pulling it on over his hand comes with challenges. Eventually he rolls his eyes and flicks his wrist, and all of it unravels and easily takes care of itself. So it's not just metal - and it's not, as far as Charles is aware, the same thing as someone with a more telekinetic baseline. Erik is... something else. Something different.
"Permanently injured, but I'm accustomed to it," he says, not intending to be rude. His attention is drawn to the laboratory, though - eyes wandering over beakers, burners and cabinets full of chemicals. The opportunity to learn, to understand more, to gain more knowledge, was not something he could pass up. He picks up a notebook and rifles through it, eyes crossing a little at the shorthand. And he's nosy, too, poking this way and that.
"Chemistry... I think I... hm," Erik blinks a moment, and then suddenly flasks are descending upon them, and the burner in front of them heats. "Particle physics, that is what I am really interested in," he has to laugh. "Chemistry is its pair. And knowing--" he raises a small piece of tweed, left behind on the table from someone's hat undoubtedly. It abruptly transforms into a long strip of gold. "Learning about it, helped me to understand what I could do. Knowing the natural laws, how our universe is composed - is it like that for you, as well? You can build upon yourself, push yourself to the next event horizon."
For a brief moment, Charles considers extending an offer of help; it’s clear, now, that Erik’s right hand is nearly non-functional. The brace has a low profile, but its support extends long along the underside of Erik’s fingers, beyond his second knuckles. His fingertips, however, attempt to curl back toward the palm. It becomes evident within seconds, however, that Erik does not need assistance; through the abrupt static, Charles can feel a low churn of something that he’s never felt before. Erik, using his abilities, but to manipulate latex rather than metal. His eyes widen, and he glances at the tall man, who is now thumbing through a notebook with his good hand. What a wonder, Erik Lehnsherr. Physics flow through his body and out again; the man himself is a conduit.
Questions about a variety of unrelated things tumble through Charles’s head. How did you get injured? Does it hurt? Can you manipulate all materials? Do you realize how intoxicating you look in those bloody jeans? The telepath, of course, asks none of them, and instead strides toward a stainless steel cooler, from which he extracts a tray of test tubes and several Petri dishes. Before he can begin preparing his supplies, several items begin to move, seemingly of their own accord. A burner flickers on, glass beakers flock, and before his eyes, Erik performs alchemy. Charles’s jaw is slack as he stares at the thin ribbon of gold, luminous and perfect in the cold light of the lab. His eyebrows shoot upward as he reaches out to touch it, surprised to find it warm against his skin. “You can…you can transform atoms,” he says softly, understanding, now, that the mechanics of Erik’s mutation are more than simple ability. A marriage of practical science and innate nature. “That’s…goodness, Erik. You possess the power of the universe.”
"No," Erik looks at him very seriously. "Not the universe. Many things are closed to me. Just as they are to you," he draws back to their earlier conversation. "Electrons, they are the easiest. Metal is the most conducive element - for a long time, I thought it was limited to metal. It is in my best interest that people believe it is," he adds, wry. As though the universe itself is playing a cruel joke on him, Erik is bent over the microscope, looking at slides of bacteria and amoeba as he speaks. Either he doesn't know, and the man is as oblivious as he is tall, or he does know and that's somehow way worse. His mind is alight, from out of the shrieking static comes once more - tomes of poetry and playwright in the ether. An incandescent attention, for Charles alone. Well, and the amoeba. "You sell yourself short. Is the mind not the universe understanding itself? The fabric of reality, the illusion of constancy. I suspect if you were to apply yourself, you could do something very similar to me. And perhaps, I could do something similar to you. What is a human body, what is a thought, but an electrical impulse? We are far more alike than we are different, I think."
Still clutching the gold in fingers that feel clumsy, Charles watches Erik bend over and peer into a microscope. The curve in his back is elegant, graceful. Everything about him is graceful, save perhaps his social aptitude. The way he thinks, moves, reasons, argues. Like a figure from myth. “I’m not sure that I can,” Charles says absently. “What I can do feels more like a sensation. Thoughts are electrical impulses, sure, but the brain is a different medium. I can operate within that medium, but nowhere else.” Charles swiftly pushes a slide into Erik’s view, waiting for the man to focus the microscope. Once the knob stopped moving, Charles speaks again. “What you’re looking at is a sample of my DNA. It’s far too small to see, even with that microscope, but you’re looking at the code that, I believe, enables me to use that medium.” Stepping closer to Erik, Charles continues. “You’re right. I think that we’re far more alike than we are different, but the same code in two different people will produce wildly different expressions. You can harness electrons. I can’t. Not like you can. But that’s okay. It’s magnificent, the diversity. How wonderful it is that we have such similar genes and such variable bodies.”
"I can see it," Erik says softly. He's not looking at the microscope any longer, having straightened up. "The arrangement. How it is, how you are. I'm certain you've been called attractive many a time in your life, but perhaps it would be interesting to learn that your very molecular structure itself is -" he clears his throat, blinking a little as he forces himself to say - no use backing out now, Lehnsherr. In for a penny, in for a pound. "Pleasing as well." There's a catch beneath his thoughts, well-worn pages beneath his fingers stained with ink and wine. A favorite verse. One of his very, very favorites. That it arises now - that he can't help but consider it, is... well, he clears his throat again. He must be developing a cold, at this rate.
By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go...
Of all the compliments that Charles has received in his life, this one, commending the shape his molecular structure, is undoubtedly the strangest. It’s also the most touching, and it steals the words from his tongue. Yes, it’s well-accepted that, despite all of our attempts to regard the character of others rather than their physical appearance, the latter is what pulls the greatest focus. Charles knows that he’s attractive enough, but that never mattered much to him thus far. Why should he care about how others perceived something that he could not control? This….this is different. Yes, Erik is indeed commenting on something purely physical. Physicality in its purest form, actually.
Whether one enjoys brown eyes or blue eyes or fair hair or curls is subjective to the point of utter nonsense. There’s nothing true behind that type of physical attraction; it changes both with time and amongst individuals. Biology, however is real. Physics is real. Chemistry is real. They’re all that’s real, and if, at his only real point, Charles is attractive… His cheeks flush as he gazes up at the man, on the verge of dumbfounded. He doesn’t even stop himself from hearing the lines of verse that float into Erik’s surface level thoughts, and all at once, his own heart is beating faster, throbbing in his neck. He wonders if Erik can feel the iron in his blood as it raced within his veins.
“We can look at yours, too,” he says in a near whisper. “I’ll destroy the sample once we’re done so there’s no record of your DNA, but…goodness, Erik, we must see what you look like, too.”
"Come over here," Erik motions for him to take a spot beside him in front of the chalkboard, and waves down his hand. A white sheet falls from the ceiling, unfurling over it where a projected image would ordinarily be posed. His eyes slip closed, and from its spot in the dish, a few spots of Charles's blood sample along with a few hairs from Erik's head float unseen up to the backdrop, and then - all at once, the image they form is magnified by a magnitude of billions, letting Charles see with his own eyes, without need for a microscope, exactly what Erik sees. The shape of atoms themselves, their movements in orbit around one another, the forces that push and pull them together. This is the world, to Erik. Everything is this way - inside the spaces between solid matter.
"Neutrinos," he murmurs softly, "they hold more information than you could possibly understand by reading it in a book. It's not just a thought that you might one day know, but every bit of history and every experience ever imprinted onto any object. Organic or otherwise. Your potential is limitless. It's not just the brain, Charles. It's everything. This is at the heart of our abilities, every single one of us. Defying physics? No, it is physics. All of it." He taps his own temple. "It makes me nervous, I will be honest with you. I cannot imagine how - how it must feel, to be privy to everything. It's honestly been... existential," he laughs again, eyes creased at their edges, a span of freckles across his nose expanding as it wrinkles up.
"What experience is, what matters, what the difference is between learning and experience - if there is a difference. It's not just power that you wield. Your gift is -- beautiful." You are, goes unsaid. Erik knows that it isn't unsaid, and tries not to waver at all - tries to remain brave in the face of this least-understood facet of human-to-human interaction. He gestures to the front of the room, as if to say, see?
The display that floats before Charles’s eyes is too sublime to ever quantify. The first time he had ever peered through a microscope had been a moment of euphoria; seeing the evidence of particular life before his own eyes. Tiny greyscale dots, floating listlessly in clear solution, a symbol representing all that lie within. To watch as each particle balloons to the size of a pinhead, an apple seed, a marble, a golf ball, an orange…. Chains of life suspend in midair. All of the material that forms Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, clear as a photograph in the center of his lab. Their essence, their core. Visible, tangible. Beautiful.
“Oh, Erik,” is all Charles can whisper, frozen at the taller man’s side. He wants to rush toward the structures, to touch them, to hold them in his hands. Impossible, he knows, but oh so alluring. “Neutrinos,” he repeats finally, eyes unblinking as they fix on his own strand, the spiral staircase. “I…yes, I know.” He understands what Erik is saying implicitly, the platonic method of learning-as-a-recollection-of-that-which-we-already-know. “Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” The words of John Keats are spoken aloud, Charles’s turn to draw upon verse to categorize the moment. The structures might even resemble the Grecian Urn mythologized in Keats’s heartbreaking ode, containing music and imagination that no human ears would ever hear, no human mind would ever think.
Except Erik’s, maybe. And his. Maybe his. Finally, Charles turns to face Erik once more, expression some mixture of elation, apprehension, and collusion. “I don’t know what to do, now,” he admits with a breathless laugh. “It seems as if you and I are sitting at the brink of something incredible, but I don’t know what that yet is, or what to do with it when we find out.” His hands reach out and clasp Erik’s own—his right squeezing Erik’s left, and his left gently cradling the injured appendage, careful and delicate. “But we need to do something. You must agree.”
"Fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired," Erik recites back, because of course Charles knew the Great Odes, it'd be silly if he didn't, but Erik can't help it - above physic, above law, above contemporary means, lies poetry. "I do," he agrees with a solemn nod. "I agree. This - all of this, will it help? Help us find them? Reach them? Our people. The more we know about one another, the more of each other we know - right now, all over the world, we are - infinitesimal. People will find a way to make that ugly, and make that horrific. The only chance we stand as a species is to stand together."
He squeezes Erik’s good hand once again, a kinship unlike he’s ever felt before blossoming in that small space between his chest and Erik’s own. “I agree that we must come together, people like us,” he says. “Whether to protect ourselves or simply to learn, we must find each other. I imagine that there are those out there who feel entirely alone, scared, wondering convinced that they’re freakish.” The memory of the first night that he and Raven met flashes. Small children discovering a companion for the first time in each other, the incredible relief of similitude. “Let’s find them together.”
"Oh!" Erik gasps, hand flying up to his cheek as though to press the images that aren't his own even closer. Charles can't help but see as though the loudest ringing of a bell - it had been so long since he'd felt this particular sensation, he half turned and expected to see a ghost. Someone inside of his mind - a sensation inside of him put there by someone else, the warmth of family. Erik is incredibly embarrassed to realize his eyes have grown hot, and he stands very still to prevent unshed tears from shedding. "Who-and she's blue---?"
Erik’s sudden outburst catches Charles by surprise, and only then does he realize that he’s projecting. “Oh,” he echoes, eyes widening upon discovering that Erik is swelling with emotion, to the point of tears. Oh. Charles rarely fumbles like this anymore; accidental projections only happen when he’s either truly tired or truly distracted. Enraptured by Erik and their future and the stunning beauty of being alive, he’s allowed his memory of a young Raven, blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, to work its way into Erik’s frontal lobe. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,” he breathes, watching the tears obscure Erik’s green eyes. “That’s Raven, my adoptive sister. What you’re seeing is my recollection of the first night we met. I was ten, she was seven. Wandered into my house, looking for food and a warm place to sleep. I…may have nudged my mother into allowing her to stay.”
"She's blue," Erik repeats, but it's not horrified or confused. "Wonderful. Do you still speak to her? She - you grew up together?" he asks, getting a rein on himself as quickly as he'd loosed it. "I can - feel it. Feel what you feel for her. Like it's my own." His hand, the good one, is settled over his heart, like he's afraid it had stopped beating at some point. He makes a little sound, swallowing harshly. "You still have her?"
The question, phrased in that way, makes Charles feel immensely sad. He quickly closed off that vein of the connection, ensuring that Erik feels nothing but the affection that he has for Raven. That little girl, the one with the braids and freckles and gap-toothed smile, from Erik’s memories…his own sister. The loss is palpable. “I do,” he says. “She travels quite a bit, spends a lot of time in Europe, but her home base is actually my apartment.” A small smile. “She’s arriving on a plane from Lisbon tomorrow afternoon, actually. I’ll be picking her up. Why don’t you join us tomorrow for dinner? We always go for pizza, when she comes back from a trip.”
"I would like that," Erik replies, letting the images slowly fade, along with the feelings - those take longer, as though burned into him. Perhaps they were. It had been a long, long time since he'd felt something like that. He wasn't even aware he still could, and that, more than anything, is the reason he'd so visibly cracked at the sensation. "Is she... aware? Of your..." Erik gestures between them. Affliction, Charles had called it, though Erik does no such thing, not even privately.
Charles grins. Raven, he decides, will love Erik. She’s always complaining about Charles’s choice of friends, deeming them too posh or stuffy or closed-minded. “She does,” Charles says, noting the intensity deflate from Erik’s mental energy. Perhaps he’s calmed by the idea of meeting more mutants. Meeting a little sister. “She made me promise never to keep any secrets from her, since she technically can’t keep any from me.” A chuckle. “You should know, she isn’t always blue. She’s a shapeshifter. She can assume the physical appearance of any person she’s seen before. It’s remarkable, her ability. I think you’ll agree."
"Shapeshifting," Erik repeats dumbly. He supposes it's not much different from turning tweed to gold, but it's a comparatively simple process. Both materials are inorganic. And not conscious. The idea of attending a family dinner is -- it sets Erik aback, truthfully. (There's laughter / a hand hovering over dirt-encrusted root vegetables / clapping and dancing / and suffocating loneliness / disconnection / stutters / idź do domu! nie pasujesz tutaj! / smoke-filled stages, like dust and shining chrome, the endless desert) "I have never had pizza," he admits wryly. (Maybe it wouldn't be like that.)
The memory flashes across Charles’s vision like a movie, as do Erik’s associated feelings. Comfort. Warmth. And then—emptiness. Cold. Fear. Anguish—despair. Charles shivers where he stands, watching Erik’s troubled eyes. “No?” Charles asks, though it’s not entirely surprising. “It’s…indulgent. I tried it for the first time after moving back to the US. It’s decadent and a bit messy. You’ll like it, I think.” Feeling a bit like a voyeur, Charles isn’t sure if it’s wrong that he hasn’t acknowledged the snippets of Erik’s past that he’s this far been privy to. He supposed that there’s no use in hiding it now, so he clears his throat before speaking again. “Was that your family?” he asks quietly, carefully. “The dancing?”
"Kurwa," he mutters the curse under his breath. "I apologize - forgive me, I am still growing accustomed to this," Erik pastes on a grim smile. "But no," he shakes his head once. "Not my family. Just... a place I stayed, for a while. After." The image opens up in his mind a little more - fields of twisting corn stalks and blazing-hot sun. "I will do my very best to ensure that my thoughts are more controlled from now on," he promises softly. "I would be honored to share pizza with you and your sister." It's silly and stilted and formal, but entirely Erik.
“I’m not asking you to control yourself around me, Erik.” His voice is urgent, earnest. Most who know of his mutation work hard to keep their thoughts quiet and uncontroversial around him, and Charles hates that. Hates that he’s the gag order, the problem. “I don’t mean to pry into your thoughts, I really don’t. But when they’re intense or vivid, it’s impossible not to see, sometimes. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think freely.” With that out of the way, Charles smiles again and nods. “And we’d be honored to share it with you, too. Speaking of…shall we think about getting something to eat? Or—“ it’s now well past 11, and the only place that will be open is the all-night diner on the other side of campus, near the bridge. A good twenty minutes away on foot, and in the opposite direction of home for both of them. “Are you hungry?”
Erik holds up a hand, though, stalling the conversation from where it had been directed, decidedly not out of the way for him. "Let me ask you this. If someone - a... friend, or Raven. Someone you knew. Had a memory, and you gained that information in your mind. Is that the same thing as you having experienced it? If someone recalls being punched in the face, do you interpret that data as a memory of your own? Do you feel the sensations? Do you know what it is like?"
Charles accepts the redirection, happy enough to satisfy Erik’s curiosity. “Yes and no,” he answers. “And it’s quite dependent on the content. Often times, people don’t viscerally remember sensations. They can remember the way they felt, but it’s rare for someone to ever relive an actual sensation. If someone recalls being punched in the face, I see their recollection like a film or a radio broadcast, depending on whether they’re a visual thinker or not. And I’ll remember it as I remember a film or recording. I don’t integrate it as my memory.” Charles shifts his weight onto his other foot. “However, if I’m in someone’s head, and they’re actively feeling a sensation, then I feel it, too. It becomes my own memory, because it’s my own sensation. If I were in your head as you were being punched in the face, I would feel what you felt until I extracted myself. Then, though I technically would have no physical injury, the pain might linger psychosomatically.”
"What about... if someone is... what about if someone is not psychologically stable? Could they... could that cause you to be exposed to stimulus that normally would not affect you? Pulling you 'in', so to speak? Do you have to choose to be in someone's mind, or does it happen involuntarily? Does the strength of a person's emotion or memory affect how intense your perception is?"
Charles frowns, considering the question carefully. “I’m…not sure,” he admits. “This scenario has never happened to me before, and I’ve encountered plenty of unstable minds, as you say. I suppose that this person would have to know I’m in their head and have to actively do something to keep me there. It’s possible; whenever I manipulate someone’s thoughts, I’m simply using their own mind to carry out a task that they could carry out on their own. It’s not out of the realm of possibility for someone to develop a method of keeping me locked inside.”
Erik blinks several times at that, initially dismissing it as irrelevant to his concerns, but then really considering what that might entail. "That... I suppose that makes some sense. So you do not just 'read' passing information, you can embody another person entirely, essentially supplanting your own consciousness with theirs, while retaining some form of awareness? Like a lucid dream." He brushes that aside, coming back around to the topic. "Please know it is not your mutation that causes me discomfort. I do not place a premium on what others value about their thoughts. My reticence is solely because I do not wish to cause you harm, nor frighten you or make you sad. If there is a possibility that my experiences could be misinterpreted by your brain as your own - I could not allow that to happen, Charles. It would be - do you understand? It would be unconscionable."
Charles is unsurprised by Erik’s earnest concern, but it makes him smile a watery smile nonetheless. Most who hesitate around him do so out of concern for their own privacy, and Charles does not blame them. The head is supposed to be a quiet place, a private place where one can think their worst thoughts. No one wants an audience. Erik’s primary concern, though, is for him. “That is very thoughtful of you,” he says. “But you need not worry. I will tell you that I am accustomed to being affected by the thoughts of others. I encounter the entire spectrum of human emotion on a daily basis, Erik. It’s become part of my own existence. Much of the time, I can ignore it, or at least regulate how it affects me. I would never want you to temper yourself for my sake.”
"I do not want to hurt you. My life has been... a sad life." Erik has a singular talent for understatement, there. "Regretfully so. Not self-pity, but a practical consideration, given your abilities." and Erik smiles genuinely, this time. "What you feel for your sister - thank-you. For sharing it with me. She is lucky to have you. I really would be quite pleased to meet her." He clicks his tongue for a moment before saying allowing the heaviness in the moment to subside with a far more pressing question: "how long has it been since you have eaten a home-cooked meal?"
Charles wants to promise Erik that even if his memories are painful, they’re not going to break Charles. Memories and emotions are so central to the human experience, and as painful as it is sometimes, Charles knows that he’s lucky to have this window to someone so pure and genuine. But, he doesn’t. He simply smiles softly, not wanting to belabor this point. It will come with time. At the question, he raises a brow. “How did you know that I’m a horrendous cook?” he chuckles, pushing his hand through his hair. There’s day-old gel in it, and the action leaves it standing up in the back, but he can’t be bothered to pat it down. “Let me think…Christmas, 1948? It’s the last time I lived at home.”
"My apartment is near here - I live alone." It's an unusual circumstance, given his association with the independent living group on campus, but it's undeniably convenient. Erik's hand reaches toward Charles's hair completely without his volition, and hovers just above his head before he realizes what he's almost done and lowers his arm - awkward, but he presses on anyway, because - He doesn't know why. Because Charles looks like he lives off of eggs and bread and noodles. Because he doesn't know how to use hair gel and does know Keats. "Much closer than the diner, and I am an excellent cook. It is, after all, just chemistry."
A small part of Charles is still in disbelief that he’s being invited over to Erik Lehnsherr’s apartment, but after the evening that they’ve just shared, it simply feels impossible to part. He’s slightly disappointed that those long fingers on his good hand didn’t pat his hair down, but he smiles anyway, eager for the night to continue. “I can’t say no to that,” he says honestly. “Best I can pull together is toast and jam.” Within minutes, the lab is back in order, and they’re out on the street again, the orange glow of the halogen bulbs casting a film through the damp air.
As they walk, Charles thinks of Erik’s memories again, of the sharp transition between comfort and anguish. “Who taught you how to cook?” he asks, knowing that he’s likely intruding into a space that Erik may want to keep private. “I was never allowed in the kitchen. When I first moved here, I had to have the sweet old woman who lived next door explain to me how to light a stove.”
"Ah, you did not bring the maid with you?" Erik's practically smirking, rocking back on his heel as the paragon of virtue. Charles's last question causes a small rise in that static again, but this time, Erik's prepared and barely even bristles as he answers, "my father. He taught me how. My mother, she once exploded a turkey. No more turkey for her." It's lighthearted, and Erik's expression doesn't shift much, but Charles can feel how much it costs him.
“Tried to, but no one wanted to clean a college boy’s filthy apartment, no matter the wage,” Charles quips back easily as they walk. He feels the spike in Erik’s head at the question, but appreciates the answer, and the notes attempt at keeping the conversation light. “What was your father’s specialty?” he continues. “Something he made better than anyone?” It’s glaringly obvious that Charles speaks of Erik’s father in the past tense; it’s not a secret that Charles knows where Erik came from, what he endured, so there’s no sense in pretending, he thinks. Erik shouldn’t have to be tasked with explaining the story in some sort of abridged overture, for Charles’s sake.
Erik knows, and tries his best to press that sliver of gratitude forward. "Phyllo," Erik answers immediately. "He was from Salonika, originally. He could make pastry like nothing you have ever had. Even with all the power of the universe at my fingers, I cannot replicate it." He wonders if Charles can sense this - the memory of him, grubby, child-like fingers with flaky pieces of dough coating his hands. Laughter. The joy that was there.
A short but poignant wave of joy presses from Erik’s head, and Charles smiles, glad that the man derives joy from these memories. Good. Everyone deserves happy memories, memories that can’t be taken away. “Your father was Greek?” he asks, intrigued. “You’re Greek?”
"Half, I suppose?" he laughs a bit. He's never thought of himself in the same way - the way a Greek person might. It was always more relevant to him that he was Jewish, Sephardic to be exact - that was the scandal, at least to hear his mother tell it. But she preferred Iakov's hamin, so it all worked out. For a time. "I can speak a little Ladino and Greek both." It puts the tally of languages he could speak at at least five. "But, I am Polish," he confirms Charles's prior interpretations of his memory easily. "From Łódź, or Litzmannstadt." He pronounces it like wooj, or close-to, and adds its alternate name in case the first was unrecognizable.
"Tell me about you? Britain?" he guesses, based on Charles's accent.
Charles abruptly looks at Erik when the man mentions the German name for the town, brought to prominence by the German occupation and conversion of the lively urban center to a ghetto. There’s a dark expression on his face, one that tells of sardonic pain. “Łódź,” he repeats in Erik’s pronunciation, only butchering it slightly. “Sort of,” he muses dryly at the question. “I was born in New York. My mother is British, as are the women who raised me. I spent a fair amount of time in London as a child, and then went to secondary school in England. My father was an American. His family has been in this country since before it was a country, but they’ve Scottish roots.”
Erik's eyebrow arches, curious. "The women who raised you? Other than your mother?" He doesn't put together that Charles means anything like a nanny, such a thing totally foreign to him. It sounds... lonely. Erik has a great deal of loss in his history, but he had known love. Real love, genuine love. He had been raised with its certainty, regardless of the context of occupation and poverty. He knew he was loved. He wonders if Charles did.
Charles’s cheeks redden a touch at Erik’s question, but he nods. It’s his turn, he supposes, to offer up some of the grimmer facets of his life. “My mother is…distant,” he says, voice even. “I was raised by nannies, primarily. Mother wasn’t much interested in or equipped for mothering. My father was much more involved, but he died when I was very young.”
"I am very sorry," Erik presses his hand over Charles's heart. Both for the loss of his father and evidently having never been in possession of a proper mother. It does explain some of their differences in ideology. Erik puts that together well - Charles is always so assured he can individually change the tides, person to person. While Erik is concerned with systematic violence, not person to person. He suspects this might be the reason for their departure.
And because he'd been exposed to more radical ideology overseas, he nevertheless left for the same reason - too much pain. Too much pain caused by them. They were not ready, they were not well. There had to be an alternative, something in-between terrorism and horror that preserved life and dignity and self-determination. He didn't know what that was, and now mutants were facing the same existential threat.
"You will have to forgive the conditions," he says as he leads them up the stairs to the townhouse. Charles had just seen him create gold from nothing, so poverty was not an issue for Erik anymore. But he did live modestly - his apartment had a kitchen, living area and bedroom sparsely decorated. Boxes still lined the walls that he hadn't unpacked, furniture gifted to him by the organizations and the kibbutz, still dusty and unused.
Its only point of originality is the various plants that make their home along the darkened fire pit and the window ledges and shelves. Cacti and mother-in-law's tongue and tomato trellises. And the kitchen, with its kitsch paintings and clay bowls decorated by the children that lived on the farm with him. They hadn't minded when he asked to take them, silly and irreverent but - they made him smile, and he hadn't expected to have company. Ever. Welp.
The pots and pans and utensils are brand new and scuffed with use already, and Erik only has one set - anyone who knew the significance would realize this made him a vegetarian, but he doesn't draw attention.
The gesture takes him aback; Erik is genuinely empathetic for him, and Charles’s flush can only deepen. His upbringing was lonely, sure, but it was still one of immense privilege. He never wanted for anything material, only love. But he doesn’t know any different. He was always safe, clothed, fed, educated, catered to. Silver spoon on a silver platter. Still, the gesture is touching, and Charles feels suddenly forlorn for something he never experienced. “Thank you, it’s alright,” is all he can murmur.
He glances about Erik’s townhouse as he enters the living room, smirking. It’s Spartan, utilitarian, and exactly how Charles imagined that it would be. “Nothing to forgive, it’s perfect,” he says as he follows Erik into the kitchen, which is a bit more decorated. He eyes the bowls that line one of the shelves, noting they’re homemade appearance. Cute. “How can I help?” Charles asks then as he hangs his jacket over the back of a chair and pulls off his necktie. The first two buttons of his shirt come undone quickly after, and the looseness makes him sign with relief. “I’m utterly useless for the most part, but I can chop, stir, or hand you things.”
The ice box has no ice, and yet is cold, and while the place has lights, if Charles were to inspect the fuses he'd discover they weren't connected to anything that ran - Erik didn't bother paying for electricity, the whole place coming alive as he approached instead. Erik pulls out some tomatoes, salt, feta, mint, oil, zucchini, pumpkin mash, lemon, onion, a container of tzatziki, a bouquet of fresh dill, basil, parsley and oregano and the ingredients for batter. He directs Charles through the chopping and comes up behind him, touching his arm and repositioning his hand over the knife correctly with a tap to the top of his palm. It's - intimate, but gentle, without pressure or expectation. He really did mean just a meal.
All of the ingredients are rolled into balls and deep-fried, and as it cooks Erik unrolls some pre-made phyllo and puts together a basic baklava that would ordinarily take a while to cook, but with a tap, it transforms into its finished component easily. He plates the whole thing, which turns out to be zucchini and tomato fritters with a side of espresso-style coffee. It's typical Mediterranean fare, what he'd eaten at home given his mother's propensity to explode the kitchen and in Haifa as well, having clustered together with other survivors of Salonika. "Bon appétit," he jokes dryly as he sets a hand on Charles's shoulder to guide him to sit at the small table smashed up against the kitchen walls.
His own leather jacket divested, he wears a simple white button-down (easier with the hand) underneath, that's somewhat rumpled, but clean. It's the tiny things that suggest Erik is alone, and not precisely skilled at caring for himself, but at least the dinner is easy and delicious. Most of which is accomplished via precise applications of his mutation, given his injury. It's served on a plate with a shining sun and moon, each with happy faces and cool 'shades', and a blue mug with hand-painted Hebrew letters and flowers.
Charles accepts the corrections, the current between his hand and that of Erik’s feeling like an electrical pulse. Knowing what they had just seen, it very well might be. He’s about to ask Erik how he manages to cook with only one functional hand, but stops himself before asking such an obvious question. He’s then about to ask why in the world Erik is having him chop vegetables if the Polish man is perfectly capable of doing so without any physical labor, and then decides not to. Truly, Charles is happy to contribute to their meal in this way. The first meal he’s ever even attempted to make. What he throws together for himself can’t be considered a meal, can it? Toast and the occasional bowl of buttered noodles? No…this is good. He’s learning.
It’s almost like magic, Charles thinks, as the aromatic ingredients come together to form food. Fried vegetable fritters with dips and thin bread that Erik calls “pita.” That flaky pastry layered with pistachio and honey is called baklava, and a side of espresso complements it all. He’s never had food like this before. There are no Mediterranean restaurants in this part of Boston, and none of the chefs ever would have dreamed to prepare something so foreign to them. “This smells utterly delightful,” Charles beams, though he’s unsure how he’s supposed to even begin eating this. Raven pokes fun at him for the way he eats pizza; he uses his knife and fork while others typically eat it with their hands, but some habits are difficult to kill.
He decides to stab one of the fritters with a fork and cut off a small corner, spooning some of the yogurt dip with a complicated Greek name (tatziki? zatsiki?) on top of it. When he takes a bite, all of the flavors seem to explode in his mouth all at once. The mint is strong but not overpowering, perfectly enhancing the tomato and zucchini. “Oh, wow,” he murmurs. “This is…my goodness. This is delicious.”
There's no mistaking the pleasure that suffuses Erik as Charles eats - and that he likes it. A sense of pride, or at least delight. There's something set deep into his being about food, and it would be obvious why, except that it's just part and parcel for the culture he'd grown up in. Jews and food had a long and storied history, featuring heavily in various holidays and services
(Charles sees kiddush - a type of luncheon at the end of shul - Erik attends a Conservative synagogue - not Reform, not Orthodox, but somewhere middling with mixed seating for men and women and more progressive attitudes - with its table of North American and Middle Eastern cuisine both mixed together - and sees Erik in the kitchens, towering over his peers and largely silent, together and yet apart --)
Food. They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat! This is the first time he's ever had someone in his home, a place that solely belongs to him - his space. There are a lot of rumors about Erik circulating at the university, most of which consign him as inhospitable and cruel or even dangerous, but there is warmth here. Perhaps only visible to Charles, and perhaps this is intentional. But unmistakable, for Charles, at least. "What you put into it affects the taste," Erik says, and he doesn't mean ingredients as much as intention. Friendship, companionship. Cooperation. That's what aba always said to him. He hadn't quite understood until adulthood, until he was able to cook for himself and others and experiment on his own.
"I will teach you to make it," he says, and it sounds like a promise. "You should eat more than soup, or take-out." Erik has to laugh a little for how he sounds just like Mrs. Cernik, for all that she chides him about being too skinny whilst Erik listens to her wax poetic on shtetl life over the mah-jongg table. Some things are just universal, and Erik is entering his Old Bitty Era.
Charles understands what Erik implies and feels warmth at the thought. Made with love, his favorite nanny used to say to him sometimes as she’d set a warm a piece of cake in front of him. He’d always thought that the cakes and biscuits and pies made with love tasted a whole lot sweeter than the ones made without. “I know that I should,” he agrees. He’s always been slender, but since arriving in Boston, he has gotten smaller, less healthy, less vital. A diet of beer and simple carbohydrates and minimal fresh vegetables would do that do anyone. “I can’t imagine that I’ll ever have the capabilities that you have, but wouldn’t mind learning a few tricks.” Another warm smile toward the man who has so quickly become so dear. A man out of another time and place. A specimen of physical perfection, atomically and anatomically. Beautiful in body and in mind.
“Does your hand hurt?” He hears himself ask, and he doesn’t know why he chooses this particular moment to do so. “If it does, I can help.”
Erik gives a slight shrug and a small smile. "I am accustomed to it," he says back, soft. "Please, do not worry yourself over me." But the answer to Charles's question is evident in the small pin-pricks and pulses he can feel that aren't submerged beneath radio-static. It's not just Erik's hand, but most of his body, with aches and creaks and groans of a man decades older, with pain-points at his knees and shoulders and along his back and neck. "You will not need such capabilities," Erik finds himself saying. "I will make certain you are well-fed." That is a promise.
Charles cocks a brow at Erik’s answer. Yes, is what that means. It does cause him pain. Ignoring the man’s promise to keep him fed and healthy, Charles extends his sixth sense toward Erik, making his presence at the outer bounds of Erik’s mind felt, but he does not enter. Not yet, not without permission. “As complex as it feels,” he says, applying only the lightest amount of pressure to Erik’s psyche. “Pain is simple. Simple to create, simple to eradicate. If you let me in, I can block it for you. Permanently, temporality, only halfway…however you want. You need only say the words.”
Erik's gaze burns into him. "Charles," he says, barely above a whisper. "You would do me a great kindness, but -" his eyes close, vivid hues of malachite disappearing behind long-lashes. Almost too long, for a man. He thumbs at his nose, breathing in. "I could never do that to you. To let you in, as you said, you would -" he clears his throat. "Can you promise that you would not feel it? Like it's your own. That you could distance yourself in that way? Because -" he falls off, a little, at the sensation of Charles surrounding his mind, and inhales audibly through his nose.
There's a spark, a brilliant light that melts through his body like butter. Unlike anyone else he had met, whose reaction to such an event would undoubtedly be discomfort and confusion and fear - Erik isn't afraid. On the contrary, he seems to enjoy it. But he has to wrangle himself, to bring himself under marshal. He cannot be selfish, not with this. He cannot imprint onto Charles what has been imprinted onto him. That would make him no better than the men who inflicted his pain.
"Charles," he almost mumbles.
Charles can sense the apprehension in Erik’s voice, and before he can stop himself, he reaches out to place a hand on his shoulder. Broad as it is, it’s slightly bony under his touch. The physical connection only reinforces the telepathic pathway between them, and Charles presses just a little harder against the bounds. “Any pain I feel will be temporary,” he promises in a steady, confident voice. “And if you want me to avoid memories or images or thoughts associated with any injury, I can.” His fingers tighten around Erik’s shoulder, and he finds himself yearning to push through the barrier and, for the first time, truly enter Erik’s mind. He’s been listening to it from afar for weeks and weeks, parsing through the surface thoughts that form his aura, but he hasn’t been inside, not yet. “I’ll be okay, Erik. For once, let yourself be taken care of, hmm? Let me take care of you.”
Oh, fuck. Something in Erik swerves at that, and he lets out a completely involuntary gasp as Charles's thumb brushes against the exposed skin on his neck. He was not supposed to say yes. He was not supposed to agree to this. Charles buoying along his consciousness - before he knows what to do with himself, Charles can feel as Erik's mind instinctively reaches back. The profound isolation of two souls in unison - alone, apart, separate. The disparity between the frigid harshness of Erik's outward demeanor at odds, juxtaposed with the real affection Charles can sense - for him.
He is not the only one who has watched from afar. He has watched as Erik's irritation for perceived naivete opens into respect, appreciation and yes - desire. That he's kept clamped, even now, having never felt it before - having had himself twisted by past-prologue. His good hand grips into the top of his thigh, desperate for purchase. Not understanding - this man who waltzed into his life and turned everything upside-down, and he didn't even know it.
"W porządku," Erik rasps back with a voice like gravel, English momentarily forsaking him.
Charles doesn’t hesitate. As soon as he’s given the harsh assent, he eases through the barrier and settles into the magnificent mind of Erik Lehnsherr. And once inside, it’s… An audible gasp escapes Charles’s lips, eyes fluttering shut. It’s as if he’s a patron of the arts, walking into the Sistine Chapel for the first time, gazing upon a masterpiece so incomprehensible that all he can do is stare. What he had been hearing, from way out there, is nothing compared to the elegant and graceful space he finds himself in. “Oh,” he whispers, fingers digging slightly into the man’s exposed skin. Yes, Charles thinks. He can live in here. Except… As he settles into the gorgeous architecture of Erik’s brain, abuzz with poetry and music, a darker, ominous force tantalizes him. He turns, and a corridor unfolds before him, powerful and frightening. The horrors of Erik’s past, occupying a vast artery of space.
The scars are clear, etched into the contours of raven the loveliest eaves. His eyes fill with tears as forces brilliant and mysterious dance together, underpinned by the ever-present reality of all that has happened to him. Before he can reduce to complete nothingness, Charles remembers that he’s here for a purpose. Yes, pain. A lot of pain. The center not far off from this grand atrium, and regretful as he is to leave, Charles respects his mission and traverses toward the prefrontal cortex. The pain center. It’s only seconds before Charles extends himself outward, allowing himself to physically feel what Erik does at that very moment. There’s intense electricity, a fast-beating heart, and then—
“Mm,” he grunts, an uncomfortable wince quickly snaking down his body. Not just toward his hand, but through his knees, shoulders, hips, back… There’s a pocket of memory sitting beside him now. Associations with each of the maladies. Though tempted, Charles focuses on the physical, swiftly casting a wave over the pathways responsible for the discomfort. Several of them begin to quiver before they settle again, deactivated. The pain in his own body wanes quickly, nearly disappearing. There’s stuff stiffness in his hand, but no longer a tight throb.
Is that better? he asks Erik from within, eyes still closed.
Whatever Charles could do to Erik’s mind, it has already been done. It's bent and twisted like fingers crunching metal structures into unnatural shapes, an endless fog of white-radio static and walls upon walls, spires rising into space. As deep as Charles could go, he still encountered resistance and decoys and clones and microscope-filaments sectioned into mirrored pieces. Meandering from blackness to blackness to blackness and inky event horizons to the center of a white room, and it sharpened into focus. As he grows closer to that pain, Charles can't see past his nose, the rest blurred from view. Revolting bleach in the air, on the back of his tongue mixed with bitter almonds.
Across from him, Erik's hands have found Charles's as a grounded lodestone magnetic-currents zapping to root in their feet. Don't look, neshama. Look away. Like she said, rifle pressed to her temple. Look away, look away
-we are digging a grave in the sky and it’s ample to lie there he shouts play death more sweetly Death is a Master from Deutschland you rise then in smoke, we drink you at nightfall, we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink-
The endless white of the chambers, the sound of mottled, purpled corpses as they dragged across linoleum. Watching Erik's mutation trace over people's metal fillings as the first things he took stock of. The bitter pejoratives spat at him in Jo'ara. Collaborator. Nazi. The new pejoratives that followed. Summer is a time of suffering for our people. Because they all of them were starving and furious and directionless.
You're an Omega-level mutant, g-ddammit. Just move the coin! You better be good for something. He couldn't move it, he didn't know what a mutant was - only that he wasn't one, that he couldn't - the metal coin that winds through his fingers, thunderstorms in the distance, where they trudge aimlessly through the atmosphere.
In the deep-deep world where Ruthie sing-songs childishly at him and zeyde teaches him about simcha, savlanut, tikvah and ima let him strike the match-swaying firelight after dark-baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha'olam asher kidishanu b'mitzvotav, vitzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Chanukah- the brilliant metallic echoes of instruments in meticulous fingers that guide him. Zeyde's worktable. This place is warm from winter and glitches -- he's seated, eating something from a tin. Sardines, or tuna. Piles of clothes in an empty space. They're all dead, and he's digging through sardines, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips --- endless blank spaces. No dreams, no hopes, no needs. Disconnected from nerves, separated from sensation. Where one has died but still walks the earth, a comforting lullaby of electrons floating in the air, floating on particles. Lounging on atoms the size of a skyscraper.
The crack! of someone's boot ramming down on his hand held down. Raucous laughter. Bent angles, sorrowed angles. It's easy to forget that once he had been a boy, forced to witness the destruction of his people and his culture. Forced to participate in its process, to steal from the dead and strip them of their belongings, leaving them naked and blue. Mouths contorted in terror, often with their eyes bulged from their heads. From the cart, came the fire. When he was a child (what he defines as child, at least) he remembers the old Rebbe explaining tachrichim, taharat. Their rituals of mourning and death. How important it was to bury the body quickly. How necessary it was to respect the dead and treat their bodies with compassion.
To clean every inch of dirt from them, to wrap them in a white shroud - the symbol of purity, and deposit them into the Earth. Whole, for they would be recalled again to take their portion of Olam Haba - the world to come. A human body completely burns at 982.22 degrees Celsius. Disintegrated into ash and pulverized bones, and rises out from the crematoria in large plumes of thick black smoke that coat his skin and leave their thick, filmy residue on his tongue. The air tastes of it. The stench. Raining their anguish over him, their betrayal and fury at what he had done to them. Surely, he has been made kareth. Cut off from the spiritual center of his kind. The vibrating strings of each component of his soul - the breath of life, the light of reason and compassion, the winds by which they are delivered.
Ripped out of him like frayed cords. When such experiences transformed him into a man, and then Schmidt - who found other uses for him still. One might pity him, think him broken by it, but that supposes he had a heart left to break. In the deep-deep world where he wasn’t an instrument of his own culture’s obliteration, where he could still feel sorrow and trace winding kinos over wavering voices- Look at me G-d; the roads of the temple became desolate when the walls of Yerushalayim were breached. Torah scroll that was consumed by fire, ask about the welfare of those who gasp as they lie in the dust of the Earth, who grieve and are bewildered over the burning of your parchment...
In the Real where the wetness in his eyes has eclipsed its holding-place and streaks freely down his cheeks, dripping onto his collar expressionlessly. And then it wobbles, a bubble popped - the pain mutes down and evaporates and Erik gasps aloud, as though breaking through the surface of an interminable ocean. It sends a wave of ease through him that he hasn't felt... ever. Perhaps, ever. Charles asks him - and he hears it in his own mind. It's said that every year, it is inscribed in the Book of Life by G-d each person who is destined for Heaven and Erik has known long that his name was cast from it eons ago, until he hears Charles's voice in his mind and it blazes across him as a supernova burns into the sky. Swallowing, throat stuck together and ashen, his chin lifts in assent as he regulates his breathing.
"It's gone," he whispers. The pain is gone, and he is not alone in here. Not anymore.
He doesn't notice the gentle streams on his own cheeks, nor the vice around his fingers, the weight of the body against his own. No, the silo of Charles's own physical sensation is dormant at the moment, empty and inaccessible. Instead, he is enmeshed with Erik. Erik's body, Erik's mind, the soul that lies somewhere in between. Torrent of memory and emotion, twined together like a rope, unraveling and reforming in the grand cathedral. Like DNA, Charles might think, if he could. Splitting and binding. The building blocks of life. For the first time in his life, Charles understands what it means to understand. In others, there are few emotions that are entirely unrecognizable to him.
There's anger to a greater degree than he's experienced, there's strife. Hunger, pain, sadness, euphoria. Charles can recognize all of these, and though his abilities enable him to explore the depths of these emotions in greater scope, he cannot say that he's ever encountered a core emotion that he has never felt himself. Until now. It isn't fair to cast Erik in this role, but Charles has done so anyway, eyes brutally privy to the greatest extremes of depravity, of evil, of anguish. No, Erik should not have to be a teacher or an example, but by virtue of their sudden closeness, he has become just that, and the only thing that Charles can do is root himself deeper into the fabric of Erik's soul and allow it to flow through him. And then...silence. Stillness. Semblance of calm. Two men, side by side at a small table, hands intertwined. There's kinship, now. Something akin to warmth.
A space in Erik's mind, rapidly expanding whether conscious or not, a space that tells Charles that he is welcome here. As the physical pain peters to nothing, Charles exhales, settling like a blanket into that space, promising Erik that he will never have to suffer alone. Wordlessly, Charles regains a sliver of control over his own physical form. His fingers twitch to life, and then find the braced hand. Clumsily, he pulls away the leather straps until the hand is free and bare, fingers immediately curling toward the palm without the support of the brace. With only gentleness, Charles unfurls those fingers and rest them atop his own, thumb rubbing over the wasted knuckles, the spindly digits.
"You don't deserve that kind of pain, Erik," Charles murmurs aloud, though he dares not exit the man's head. Not yet. "No one does, but certainly not you. You need never suffer alone, my friend. Never again."
Erik is staring and staring, watching as his hand is un-bent - the pain is no more, but the contracture remains, and when Charles lets go, they curl back once more like pages in a book returning to homeostasis. Without the brace there's evidence of gnarled keloids, and a long, thick, jagged scar on the inside of his forearm. A flash there - the scalpel pressed into his skin, opening thick globules of fat and myoglobin and blood dribbling out in torrents. A surgery - one he had been awake for. Touching over it lightly with his other, he is shocked to discover that the remembered pain does not translate to sensation. When he blinks, fresh tears anew and he laughs through them, the red streaks along his sclera only serving to enhance vivid green. It's a real laugh, the first one of the night.
"I have no words," he whispers, hoarse as though he'd been screaming as he had in those locked rooms and expanding corridors. "Charles - are you - did I - are you OK?" he lifts the hand freed from its implement and draws the back of his fingers down Charles's cheek. "Are you OK? Please, tell me. What you have done - no one has ever -" Another small laugh. Charles having casually dropped in from above like an angel out of the Torah, in all its six-winged, million-eyed glory. Al tir'u! You are about to join battle with your enemy. Let not your courage falter. And Erik will not. Not any longer.
He needs Charles to know - to know what a gift this is, to understand what he has done. There are new rooms, now. In the endless white there are tomato trellises and books - The Once and Future King, the lapis lazuli of his beautiful sister and little feet underfoot as they chase and hoot with the only joy in Greymalkin. Charles did not just take away his pain - he left something in its place. And in so doing, he has cemented his place in Erik's soul. Erik, his sentry of ice, devoted protector, did not need to give word to the vow that was now inscribed into his conscious being.
On this night, Charles now found himself in possession of something he has been wanting and lacking for all his days - despite his suave tenor and sharp wit and the dilettante of charm and sparkling smiles. Despite all that crafted and constructed like so much jewelry before the stealing. At the part of him, perhaps the only part of him which was real. The part of him that Erik saw, that could not be obscured nor obfuscated. Charles had made a friend.
A laugh of his own bubbles from Charles's throat, and he quickly wipes away the tears that he hasn't taken note of until now. But it's not pain or fear of his own that's made Charles blubber; it's true understanding. Empathy. Closeness. Erik has taught him much today, but more immediately, Erik has planted himself firmly in Charles's life. Erik has quickly filled the gap that no one else has been able to fill, not even the sister he cherishes with his every atom. The love he holds for her is familial, unconditional. The place that Erik now occupies is something else. Companions by choice and not chance. Equals. Friends.
"I'm okay," he reassures Erik, and allows those knuckles to stroke along his cheek for a moment before he pulls it away by the wrist. He then encircles the curled hand between both of his own for a moment before unfurling those fingers once again to examine them more closely. The fingers are long and bony, but deep scars and gnarled skin work their way down each digit, toward his wrist, until they disappear underneath his shirt. What other scars does Erik bear? His thumb swipes along the lengths of those fingers.
"May I stay over?" he asks after a silent moment, lifting his own red-rimmed eyes to meet Erik's, equally bloodshot. "I'll sleep on the sofa, don't worry, I just...mm. I don't want to go back to my empty apartment tonight, I suppose." And he doesn't; the thought of leaving this sparse-but-warm townhouse, the thought of leaving Erik feels cold and wrong.
"I usually do not delve into the pits of despair until the third date," Erik quips, eyes bright and lingering over Charles as though to ensure for himself that he truly is well. Charles realizes after a while that the warmth he hears in Erik's tone, and sees on his face, is not actually there. It's what he perceives through this lifeline that has animated him more than anything else. "You are welcome here, always," he returns without hesitation. He already was considering the arrangement of the couch - certain he could do his part to ensure that Charles was as comfortable as any bed, and so unconcerned by the prospect.
The idea of letting someone close enough to do this, even in proximity, to examine and touch the pieces of him that are bent and broken - Erik hadn't known it was even possible. He hadn't known that he could permit such a thing without compunction at all. He bids Charles to eat the rest of his dinner, though, because he meant what he said. Charles has to figure out how to eat one-handed, though. Erik doesn't seem quite able to relinquish their contact, just yet. It's easy, natural in a way he doesn't expect, to lead Charles to the pull-out once they wrap up, and he finds a spare blanket and pillow that are made softer and smoother than their construction with a simple touch of his ability.
He tucks Charles in, and sits at the edge, the stern navigator ferrying him off into dreams with a story.
One of a mythical bird that lives in a castle in the sky, with wings large enough to block out the sun.