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Erik knows how to read people. So he expected the sheepish expression of rejection that Raven wore over her scaled blue face as she sat in his bed.
But there was also something more. Something… afraid.
She lingered, her fingers twisting in the aged bedspread in his chosen guest room.
The metal manipulator gave her a moment as he changed out of his turtleneck for a softer t-shirt; she was beautiful, and any other time he would’ve taken her desperate attempt at seduction.
But he wasn’t quite sure what to say to her considering his tongue was still heavy with the taste of politics, scotch, and her brother.
“Mystique, is everything okay?” He tried to question more gently than he had just encouraged her proud revealing of her mutation.
“You’ll think I’m silly.” She started, and she sounded young, about as young as she appeared beneath her red hair.
“Charles always does.” And that gets her curious raised eyebrows. Charles and him had many disagreements about Raven, whether the psychic was coddling her or protecting her rightly.
He sits in the chair by the window, avoiding giving her any implication that he wished to be in the bed with her nude form, and waits for her to spill what was making her shift with anxiety.
“The mansion is haunted.” She breathes in a rush, her eyes wide and earnestly staring at him, asking him to believe her.
Erik’s immediate inclination is to scoff in disbelief, but at the same time, there is a vague impression in his memories of a childhood rabbi who spoke of spirits.
And he personally knew evil existed in the world.
His silence must’ve been seen as a judgement, because strong arms fold aggressively over a chest.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe it. Charles never believed me, but I’ve seen and heard things ever since I came here as a child.” Her frown immediately began to lessen as quickly as it began.
“It feels more comfortable to sleep with someone.”
Something in Erik’s chest aches. Something old, buried, childish.
He had barely spent time in a bed with another person besides the few moments it took to chase pleasure. It felt like danger to let another see him sleep.
And he treasured his space after the crowded bunks of the Camp.
“Well, I can’t say we know everything that could exist in the world, we don’t even understand mutations.” Erik attempted to hedge his bets and soothe her worries.
A clock chimed somewhere in the house. Midnight. Tiredness itched at the man’s eyes.
He had already turned down one bed companion tonight.
“You may stay tonight, but we’ll need to find a different solution moving forward.” He hands over Raven’s clothes now, while he believes she should be proud in her skin, the separation also felt safe.
His power reached out to the metal string dangling from the lamp, tugging it down to immerse them in darkness with a small gulf between them on the bed. And the house settling all around them.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Erik awakes alone.
Mystique stays blue and bare in all her glory. But she does not attempt to crawl back into Erik’s bed.
He thinks she might be finding her comfort elsewhere by the way she has begun to hang around the young awkward scientist, much to the apparent annoyance of young mister Summers.
The children- that are adults but make Erik feel far older than them- do seem to linger together when Charles isn’t splitting them apart to hone their skills.
Erik attempts to assist as well, often pushing their “students” a little over their limits just to get the exasperated presence of Charles in his brain, scolding him. But also because the young Brit might be too gentle considering they may be fighting against one who wasn’t afraid to kill.
The group had experienced that first hand with Darwin. Thinking about the young group frozen in fear against Erik’s childhood tormentor always had his blood rushing in anger more than he liked to admit.
But he can’t think on such things too much, not with the beautiful presence of Charles Xavier slipping into the darkened corners of his mind and shining a light onto the horrors within.
And then telling him that he is good.
Erik had moved the satellite dish with the assistance of the warm presence of his mother singing the blessings over their hannukiah, tears streaming down his face.
And when he was done and every bone ached down to his very soul, Charles kissed the tears from his cheeks as if he was precious and deserved to be held gently.
But the man still let him go, and asked no questions when he wanted to be alone.
A shower washes the salt from his skin, but he remains sore as though he had used his actual muscles and not just his power to move the satellite. But the soreness feels well-earned.
Erik takes the evening to wander the halls of the mansion, enjoying the stillness of the air in the closed off halls, trying not to sneeze at the thin layer of dust drifting through the air.
The setting sun is streaming through the windows, casting sharp bright lines and stark shadows over portraits on the wall.
There are older faces that were perhaps Xavier ancestors, and even a dusty painting of a boy that could only be a young Charles. Erik stands before the image, wondering what the young boy in the painting could have experienced to make his brow so serious, what troubles clouded his eyes.
Not for the first time, something like envy bubbles in Erik’s chest at the grandeur around him, and how he was just a few countries away watching his family be murdered.
Something moves at the end of the hall, drawing the metal bender’s attention out of his own mind and toward a cracked door.
Erik couldn’t quite remember having seen it open before.
He recognizes where he is the second he steps in; the main library that he often shares with Charles late into the night. Perfect for drinking, playing chess, talking, and a few more salacious activities.
They had only really been in the mansion over a week preparing in secret, but this room felt more like home than anything had in a long while.
As he strolls toward the bookcase on the far wall, the one where he’d seen a book he hadn’t read yet in English, his power snags a pen from a nearby table as if by second nature.
With half a mind and a distracted swirl of his fingers, the bits of the pen come apart, the plastic casing dropping from inside, the spring and metal nib stretching and squishing themselves over and over like the bellows of a forge.
Erik’s fingers leave a disturbed line in the dust along the covers of the books as he drags along them reading each title. Maybe he’d pulled out the book the other night and forgotten it beside the heavy wingback chairs he and Charles relaxed into while sipping libations.
”Erik.”
He turns with a hum to answer the call, and is faced with a continued empty room. The German blinks thrice in rapid succession, uncertain if he had imagined his name being called.
He couldn’t truly place the voice that had spoken, maybe it was his own recently dredged up memories bothering him.
Rigid shoulders slowly turn their back to the room, a small metal spring straightening itself out in preparation.
Anything metal could be a weapon in this killer’s hands.
Even as the thought creeps up, Erik shakes it away, forcing himself to relax. Not just anger. He was more.
And he quite liked exploring his new breadth of emotions with a certain psychic.
“Erik!” an urgent harried whisper rends the silent air again.
This time the metal manipulator leaves the bookshelf behind and stalks through the room to check every corner, and even out into the empty hall.
Nothing but slowly filtering downward dust, in a quickly bluening light as dusk approached.
Maybe it wasn’t external.
Erik reaches out with his mind, though it feels about as silly as “clearing one’s mind” for meditation.
And yet almost immediately his senses are wrapped in the warm hug of thoughts that is so essentially Charles. The man is pleased to be reaching back to him, seemingly always prepared to accept his hand whether internally or externally.
You called? Erik thinks in the man’s general direction as he slinks back into the library, closing the door behind him with the flick of a wrist, and sinking into his chair.
No? But you are welcome to join us, and it’s accompanied by an impression of the group of misfits around the table, sharing dinner.
Banshee had called them “family dinners” which seemed to please Charles even if Erik scoffed at it. They were soldiers, not a family. But that distinction was becoming difficult to hold.
Nevertheless, Charles hadn’t reached out to him. So who then? Or what?
Mystique's fears swam to the front of his mind, but he pushed them away before the psychic could notice.
Find me after? and he thinks of the night a few days ago, with the fire roaring in the grate and carpet beneath his knees.
The answering affirmative burns almost as deeply as the sun on bare skin.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
He brings it up when Charles is frowning at Erik’s poorly planned, and therefore superior, opening move on the chessboard between them.
“Raven has told me the mansion is haunted.” He keeps his voice light, trying not to think too hard at the shadows and movement he’d seen out of the corner of his eyes, or the voice calling out his name.
Erik watches the Brit carefully, categorizing the cycle of expressions he goes through before settling on rueful.
It had almost appeared like guilt.
“Yes, a silly childhood fear she never seemed to shake.” There’s years of siblinghood layered in the words, The young woman has described how the pair had shared an apartment and Erik had an inkling they both needed the closeness.
Instead of saying such things, he hums noncommittally, taking Charles’ knight.
“She came to my bed the other night for comfort.” The pyschic’s jealousy is like a hot coal rolling along Erik’s spine, sending a shiver of pleasure over him as fiery blue eyes glance up from the checkered board.
The placement of the next bishop rattles just a little.
“How nice for you.” Charles almost growls.
“It was a shame to tell her I wasn’t interested.” Erik enjoys the way it soothes the hitch of shoulders beneath the patterned sweater vest, and wishes he could chase the way the man’s teeth dig into his own plump pink lips.
“I think it’s me.” It’s quiet but there is no one else in the room, and no noise besides the crackle of flames eating at wood.
So it is loud enough to echo through Erik’s mind.
“It’s not ghosts, but a lonely child’s desperately searching mind reaching from deep within my subconscious.” A pawn taken in the silence, black overcoming white for just a moment, but the game remains close. Their skills equal, their minds open, their tongues a little loosened.
“My childhood trauma could never compare to yours, my friend, but life was not perfect within these walls. Especially not when I knew every thought within a neglectful mother and hateful stepfather’s brain.” Charles leans back in the high velvet chair, swirling his drink, eyes looking into the middle distance.
“So your brain is reaching out for… someone?” Erik asks gently, staring into the other man’s worry lines that make him look more his age than his smile,
“Perhaps, for comfort.” A twitch of a smirk, and a castle takes a queen.
“Checkmate.” Ruefully, Erik sees he is beaten, but it never smarts as it would losing to another.
The men stare at each other, the hard rounded tip of Erik’s shoe bumping into the slight squish of Charles’ house shoe (something Erik wished to call slippers but that had offended the young Brit previously).
“Perhaps… your inner child may find safety if you share your bed?” With me? The German attempted to ask as clearly as possible, and hoped it came across clearly as the offer it was meant to be, and not a general question.
The surprise was almost tangible from Charles, but his smile is earnest and pleased.
“I am always one for testing a hypothesis,” the young doctor says, and his hand fits well in Erik’s as they stand, perfectly pulling the man who was as immovable as the metal he bent to his will.
The halls are nearly pitch black if not for the moon streaming in the windows, but Erik could see where a young Mystique would develop a fear of these halls and the ghosts that existed within. Even if they only existed in the brains of the two children that had grown up here.
Charles drags the other man into the steam of a shower to remind them both of the muscles they had already used today, breaths and moans slipping between mouths making it impossible to know where one man began and the other ended.
The psychic’s pants are too short on Erik, and he doesn’t even bother trying to fit into one of the softened cotton shirts.
The sheets are cool on his skin, ]the other man is warm against his side. It’s almost a shame to turn off the lights with the flutter of lips against the stubble on his cheek. He would've rather stayed awake and counted the freckles over soft cheeks, or gotten lost in the ocean blue eyes.
Erik lays awake in the dark, uncertain in his skin, buzzing with something warm in his chest listening to slowing puffs of breath against his shoulder.
Erik … Erik…
And when the whisper occurs again, a quiet voice reaching out, it falls silent when Erik reaches back, running a soothing hand over Charles’ sleep slackened cheek.
His ghosts can finally rest, because Magneto has brought his own demons to their door, and they lie safe within each other's arms.