Ten months after a savage split, Arthur climbs down to pull Eames out of limbo.

They're paired by their music teacher for their final assessment, a Battle of the Bands-style playoff. Unfortunately, she doesn't know that a bit of high school drama went down at term-break. She doesn't know what this one song she's making them play might mean to both of them.

You can't get much clearer than this, this slow inexorable push: even in his sleep, Harvey's making it crystal clear that Mike isn't actually welcome here. Harvey, Mike knows, doesn't do serious. Harvey does one night stands.

Erik returns to the mansion to find that the students don't exactly trust him, and they'll do whatever it takes to keep him and Charles apart even if it means more learning. Charles is simply pleased the students are so keen on their studies.

Harvey broke so many rules bringing Mike in as his associate and even more starting a personal relationship with him and after months of living and loving in secret Mike couldn’t take the secrecy anymore, felt like his whole life was a lie, and something had to give and in the end it was them that they let go of. It is their blessing and their curse. This job brought them together but it's also what tore them apart.

Brad's sister is the one to call and tell him. Of all the people.

They caught up to him on the outskirts of a small and rainy town in the northwest of what Jane called America.

Nate’s in a circle of women, and Brad scans their faces, surprised to recognize them all. He saves Nate for last, so busy savoring each second of taking him in that it takes embarrassingly long to see the little girl he’s holding. “That’s a baby.”

Eames wakes up alone.

Arthur and Eames have broken up and moved on. Only they haven't. Sometimes their not-moving-on happens at the workplace and sometimes it happens in hotel rooms. On this particular occasion, it happens in a pool.

Sil shrugged and tapped on the readout screen. "This is a tagged government ship. The broadcast is clear, the designation is on the list. It's the Aurora."

In which Erik is the son of servants, Charles is the son of aristocrats, and hedgehogs make repeated appearances. -- Modern AU that is clearly inspired by Atonement (minus most of the angst, that is).

"I'm leaving, Brad."

Dreaming, driving, dying; this is a story about how things don't change.

Four years after the events of X-Men: First Class, Charles Xavier finds his X-Men on the losing side of their continuing battle with Erik’s Brotherhood. Azazel and Mystique have a child in secret and, unwilling to raise Kurt in the midst of Erik's war, they give him up to Charles to raise at his school for the gifted. He agrees to do so, on the condition that they visit their son regularly. This leads to tenuous contact between the Brotherhood and the X-Men outside of the battlefield for the first time in years, and both Xavier and Magneto realize that the lines dividing them are not as clear-cut as they previously thought.

The world has been irrevocably changed, swept clean by war and disease. Charles and Erik meet on the abandoned island of Genosha to discuss twin futures: theirs and mutantkind's. Not all paths lead to salvation, but everyone deserves a second chance.

After the November election, Sen. Veronica Mars (I-CA) returns home and runs into Mr. and Mrs. Echolls.

"You've always been obsessed with Malfoy, Harry. That should probably tell you something."

"I do believe the two of you were in the same year as boys, were you not?" Headmaster Shaw said. "Charles is the most competent deputy any headmaster could ask for, Erik, and he's been doing this for years…" He trailed off, as if finally noticing something odd in the way his Potions and Divination masters were staring at each other.

"Of course," Charles said quickly, his voice only a little hoarse, and stuck out his hand. "Welcome back to Hogwarts, Erik."

“Someone really should put up a warning on the city website,” someone says from high above. Raven cranes her neck and, of course, there’s Erik, crouching on top of the lamp post like he is the goddamned Batman. “Do not approach. Slayer on the prowl.”

It's terribly bad form, sleeping with your ex when you're still half in love with the bastard.

The story of daemons, and intercision, and souls, and how a ridiculously soft, trusting, naive telepath named Charles had an eagle daemon, and how an idiotic, stupidly fearless martyr named Erik had a tiger, and how the world feared them for it.

Charles smiles at the pawn in his right hand. "That was when I understood how easy it was. If I operated without limits, I could remake the world. Isn't that the best argument for restraint?"

Looking back, that should have been his first clue.

"I sent you an email."

"And here I am."

"And it had nothing to do with me being in Las Vegas, the Gambling Capital of the World."

"Las Vegas. Duluth. Athens. In cases such as this a good memory is unpardonable."

He's not sure why he asks why. He knows Danny's going to lie, and yes, Danny feeds him a line of bullshit, and he acts like he believes. Because Danny has always needed to think he's the smart one, he's the one in charge, and because liars always need someone who believes. Rusty has always let him, because Rusty needs Danny.

The thing in the elevator barely took the edge off. Danny's been gone a long time.

Thinking that a reporter genuinely likes you is pretty much on par with feeling like you really are special to that stripper.

“Oh, look! It’s Charles, and he’s been transformed into a cat by a malevolent government program! I wonder how I can change him back and thereby secure his love forever and ever, amen?”

He opens his eyes, and he is Erik Lehnsherr. He is hardly more than a boy. And he is walking through the mud on his way to the gates of Auschwitz.

"Wow." Alex sat back in his seat, a little dazed. "So do you think your dad is...like..."

"...your dad's ex boyfriend?" Lorna finished with a wince.

"Sometimes I think a curse should rest on me—because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment—and yet—I can't help it—I enjoy every second of it."

Some people press their memories between pages of scrapbooks; others have fancy photographs that wave and dance. Sirius has music.

“I loved you once, you know.” James knew that things would be different. He just hadn’t known how much they had changed.

"There's no need for being so glum. Twenty-nine's the new nineteen, they say."

They kissed like it was no surprise; like it had been leading up to this all along, like taking one step forward and two steps back was an intricate dance and not the end of their relationship, like they were always going to end up with their hands clasped when the music stopped.

Coming together was so, so easy. Chris tries to remember that later, remember what's right when everything else is wrong as hell, but it's harder.

"No! Arthur. You're straight, all right? You're completely and entirely straight. Because if you're anything else, if you're gay or bi or even curious or what the fuck ever, Arthur, you will ruin my entire fucking life."

A freshman year at Hearst and the cyclical nature of love.

Erik's presence intensifies a great deal long before Charles can actually see him, sitting at a stone table with the chess pieces already nearly arrayed in their proper places. Its more than the nominal awareness of an unshielded mind. It's practically deliberate projection bursting forth from Erik. It makes Charles' heart beat faster.

Ten years clean of Neptune living, Logan's past finds him in an all-night grocery store.

In which the boys pretend to still be together for Christmas (and there is more than one kind of charade).

Either the Fates have yet again decided to align against him, or MTV's just bankrolled the longest, cruelest, most X-treme episode of 'Punk'd' in the history of the world. It'd be a fucking relief to see Ashton at this point, no matter how much Logan usually wants to punch the guy in the face. He just wants it to stop.

Five years after taking his fifteen-year-old godbrother's virginity, Teddy has done everything he can to avoid James. He is definitely not supposed to look this good when Teddy finally runs into him again, but Teddy is pretty sure the kid will never forgive him for disappearing like that.

Percy meets Luke's reincarnation, only to find he's practically the same.

"Eames is in Mombasa."

Arthur knows that those four words are nothing more to Cobb than a location.

When Harry finds out that the manager of James's Quidditch team is none other than Draco Malfoy, old memories begin to surface, threatening to take his attention away from the things that are supposed to matter.

James couldn’t deny the significance of giving Sirius a blowjob. There was far too much history between them for that.

"I wasn’t hiding it from you. Honestly, I didn’t know for certain until yesterday, which I think we can agree was bad timing and not the sort of thing one springs before the heat of battle," Charles says earnestly.

A long fatal love chase, or: your ex-lover is dead. Well, as good as dead, anyway.