Chapter Text
It was no secret in modern human society that mutants were among us; had been there for thousands of years, in fact. Of course it had been complicated at first when they emerged from every corner of the world in 1885, slowly showing themselves and what they were capable of. Ordinary humans had understandable difficulties getting used to the idea that there were some who were superior to them. Almost a century later, though, society had come so far that mutants and normal humans were living side by side peacefully. People grew up together, people worked together, people shared the planet.
While at first some human parents had been wary of letting their children play with mutant children, they adjusted to it rather quickly -- especially the children, who enjoyed being with their mutant friends on the playgrounds and exploring their abilities. These days, humans and mutants were no longer segregated in the education system, and all schools gave children the opportunity to explore whatever gifts their mutations had given them.
Erik was eleven years old when a test confirmed his suspicions that he could control metal. It had started to worry him that sometimes the little lamp on his bed side table would be crumpled into a metal ball on some mornings after he had woken up from some nightmare. Neither of his parents was a mutant, after all, so at first little Erik had thought his mind had been playing tricks on him.
Of course, being mutant catapulted Erik right into the cool kids club -- human children asked him to shape things for them during their lunch breaks, and he could talk with other mutants about his progress in developing his abilities. It didn’t take him long to train his sense of metal, such that by the age of sixteen, he could feel the tiniest movement of pens scraping over paper in his classroom, if he really wanted. Iron was singing to him in the blood of his classmates, aching underneath the weight of each individual that sat down on a chair or decided to lie sprawled across the desk, and keeping him grounded in moments when he thought he was going mad when the pace of a lesson happened to be sluggishly slow.
One thing that fascinated Erik were visible mutations. Of course all mutations were good, Erik tended to feel that all mutants were superior to normal humans, but visible mutations were something else entirely. He loved watching other mutant teenagers showing off their wings or tails, or that one Xavier kid who could shift her shape effortlessly into anybody she wanted to be. More than once he had contemplated asking her to turn into the headmaster just so she could tell the entire school that they were granted a day off. Raven Xavier, however, was several years beneath him and she always looked a bit intimidated by Erik whenever he smiled at her. Unlike her brother, her human brother, Charles, who was a right pain in the ass.
He had never quite figured out why this lanky boy in his oversized sweaters and hideous aviator glasses had started to follow him around school half a year ago. Maybe it was because they had been forced to be partners on a group project once when Charles’s equally geeky friend Hank -- who was just as uncool as Charles despite his visible mutation, which Charles’s level of uncoolness instantly balanced out, throwing Hank right back into the nerdy geek pit of doom -- had been sick. Erik didn’t know why but for some reason the absurd idea that Erik was Charles’s friend had somehow become ingrained in Xavier’s brain, which led to Charles creepily hanging around within Erik’s vicinity, thinking he was safe.
At least Charles had the decency not to bother him when Erik’s other friends -- his actual friends were around. Although…
“Erik, he’s staring at me. Again.”
“I’m sure you’re just imagining things, Emma.”
“No, I’m not, you asshole. I can feel his stare burning into my forehead.” She frowned deeply at her food, pointedly not looking up. “I don’t get why you don’t tell that little creeper to fuck off once and for all.”
Emma was probably Erik’s best friend, as well as a casual fling whenever they were bored and in the mood for some action. She wasn’t his girlfriend per se but he didn’t mind treating her as such. Nor did Erik really mind that Emma was a mutant as well. He even found it thrilling when she sent inappropriate but nonetheless deliciously lewd thoughts towards him in class from time to time with her telepathy. While telepaths were widely regarded as the weirdos among mutants -- nobody really trusted them out of fear of being manipulated or having their deepest, dirtiest secrets unearthed -- Erik saw no threat in them. At least not when it came to Emma. She helped him cheat during class tests, after all.
“Why don’t you do it yourself if he annoys you that much?” he asked, taking a sip from his drink.
“If I talk to him, I might catch something. Like bad skin or a piss poor fashion sense. Soon I’d start wearing scratchy self-knit sweaters from my grandmother.”
That was another thing Erik liked about Emma -- she was one of the most outspoken people he had ever met.
“Well, you could always mentally strongly suggest that he should leave us alone.”
“Thank you, Erik, what would I do without your brilliant ideas?” She rolled her eyes. “It’s not as if I haven’t tried before to manipulate him into jumping from the nearest bridge.”
“But what?”
“It didn’t work. I can’t really enter his mind. Not completely.” Listlessly, she shoved a potato across her plate with her fork. “Maybe his brain is broken.”
“That would explain a lot,” Erik sighed. He leaned forward, resting his arms on the table, and discreetly turned his head to shoot a glance at Charles’s direction. When he caught sight of him, the boy flinched and quickly looked down at the book in front of him. So he had been staring indeed. Erik shuddered.
It was a shame, really, that Charles was sort of what stood between him and Raven. If it wasn’t for him, he’d have talked to her and about her mutation long ago but, as Erik had to find out the hard way, he couldn’t talk to her without her annoying human brother hovering around immediately like a butterfly. Or a moth. What made things even worse was the fact that he and Charles were desk partners in their upcoming Chemistry lesson.
Charles was already sitting at their shared table, back hunched over some notes he was frantically scribbling down before the class started -- presumably, someone else’s homework -- and when Erik unceremoniously put down his bag on the table, Charles nearly jumped at the sound.
“Hi, Erik.” Charles smiled brightly at him as he pushed up his awful large wire-framed glasses with his finger, his cheeks a bright rosy colour, his friendliness unwavering as ever. Which was another thing that annoyed Erik -- Charles was always so fucking happy and friendly to everyone. If people treated Erik the way they treated the Annoying Xavier Sibling, he would have been suspended from school long ago.
“Hey,” he grunted as he sat down, hoping that this would be enough conversation for today.
“Do you want to compare homework before Mrs. Fisher comes in?” Charles asked, already taking out his own homework while the person whose work he'd been correcting snatched her exercise book hastily away.
“I’m good,” Erik hastily responded before Charles could get the idea Erik wanted to talk to him. Thankfully, the teacher came into the classroom just in time and told them that they’d be experimenting today. Charles looked a little disappointed but he shrugged it off just as quickly, and together, he and Erik had the best lab results of the day.
When the lesson was over at last, Charles fidgeted next to Erik. He wasn’t as fast with packing up his things as Erik was, seemed even a little reluctant to do so while Erik couldn’t get out of here quickly enough.
“Erik, can I ask you something?” Charles eventually said as he zipped up his jacket. He seemed a little nervous. Erik looked anywhere but at Charles.
“What?”
“I, uhm, well, it’s my birthday tomorrow and I --”
“Don’t talk to him for too long, Erik, he smells weird!” some boy said who passed them by, giving Erik’s shoulder a squeeze while he laughed. Charles had fallen silent, face flushed.
When Erik noticed the look on the other’s face, his grin died instantly on his lips and he cleared his throat. “What did you say?”
Charles blinked owlishly at him for a moment, and then -- “Never mind.” Faster than Erik had ever witnessed, Charles packed his things and crammed them into his backpack.
“Charles,” Erik sighed, and when Charles ignored him, he repeated himself more resolutely, “Charles, for fuck’s sake, what did you want to say?”
“Nothing.” Charles gave him a strained smile. His glasses slipped down his nose, too big for his face, and he pushed them up again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to embarrass you or anything.” He hitched up his backpack. “It was a stupid idea, really.”
“Jesus, I’m not going to ask you again what you wanted to say, so this is the last time.”
“All right, all right.” Charles practically withered into obedience before Erik’s eyes. “It’s just… It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I wanted to invite you, s’all…” He wasn’t looking at him while he spoke, probably didn’t have the nerve for it, and Erik felt slightly sorry for him. Knowing more or less how socially accepted Charles was at this school, he could imagine how many friends he probably had to celebrate with. “As I said, forget about it.”
God, why couldn’t Erik shut his damn mouth for once in his life? Why did he have to get himself into a situation that would practically be social suicide?
“It’s okay,” he ground out reluctantly through clenched teeth, the syllables coming out nearly unintelligible.
Charles cocked his head a little and furrowed his eyebrows with narrowed eyes as he tried to understand what Erik was mumbling.
“Sorry?”
“I said it’s okay,” he repeated and muttered an additional “Jesus,” under his breath.
“So,” Charles drew out the word in the most overly annoying way possible, “Is that a yes?”
At least the classroom had been entirely vacated by this point, so it was really just them in here (even Mrs. Fisher had retreated back into the storeroom for the chemicals), and Erik felt secure enough as he said (despite the words burning like acid on his tongue), “All right. Okay. I’ll be there.”
As soon as the words had left his mouth, he might have cursed himself but Charles… Charles was fucking beaming at him, eyes going wide, lips stretched into a comical ‘o’ while his tiny bird brain processed Erik’s answer. And then he was grinning at him, easily competing with the sun outside that shone with evil joy down upon Erik’s misfortune. But even he, Erik Lehnsherr, a second generation German immigrant whose mother still struggled with her accent after all these years, mutant and proud and superior to normal useless human beings -- even he didn’t have a heart of stone. Some sick self-loathing part of him felt sorry for the boy in front of him who seemed to get picked on by the entire school. Charles had only two friends, as far as Erik could tell, Hank and Raven. One’s own sister didn’t really count, however, so Charles really had just one friend who was sick most of the time.
Erik didn’t want to be Charles’s friend, not even if someone threatened to tie him up and shave his hair off, but he couldn’t really look away from this train wreck of a birthday party either.
You fucking did not do that, Erik. Please tell me it was just some warped messed up worst-case scenario that I had seen in your brain or whatever you want to call that slab of meat instead of what actually happened, Emma’s voice berated him angrily in his mind as he walked down the corridor.
He heaved a sigh.
I heard that, too, you know, Emma clicked her tongue mentally at him.
Piss off, Em.
What in all that is holy possessed you to say ‘yes’ to that little nerd? Are you mental? Did someone blackmail you into this? I know a guy who could help you with that, and take care of Charles as well while he’s at it…
Will you shut up? he groaned out loud. Other people around Erik were shooting worried glances at him. We’ll talk when school is over, okay?
Fine, she huffed out, voice testy. I’m curious about what poor explanation you’ll come up with.
I don’t even know why I have to justify this to you.
Because you hate him as much as I do, sugar.