Community is Something Completely Different, and its relationship to 30 Rock is more than a little like that of The Colbert Report to The Daily Show.

Where Jon Stewart's show makes fun of pundits, The Colbert Report is, in itself, a spoof of punditry. In the same way, Dan Harmon, Bart Simpson all grown up, isn't making a sitcom. He's making a parody of them.

Pietro continued to whimper, legs kicking as Charles paced around the coffee table with his cheek resting on that small tuft of white-blond hair. “And if that diamond ring turns brass, papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass.” Charles shut his eyes, lower lip trembling as he remembered in sudden, painful detail, being so small, cradled in his own father’s arms as that very same lullaby was sung to him after a nightmare.

We could live for a thousand years.

“You know someone who needs daily yoga training, and is willing to pay for private lessons, and you’re giving him to me?” The question came out in a few bursts, he was in the middle of an uphill push. “What’s wrong with him?”

The following is mostly relevant to people who accept fic on the basis that it's learning to write pro work, which is inherently superior, or ask if I'm writing for money. It is also remarkably centred on Canadian/US culture as I know it.

Writing is like cooking.

Prompt: I want to read a series of little vignettes about Cherik throughout the ages. Starting with caveman!Erik claming caveman!Charles as his prize after he invents metal tools, all the way up to sci-fi space travel times when mutants are an old hat and aliens are the new thing.

The one where there's a bookshop, movie stars, and werewolves.

"Such a good boy," he whispers, breath hot as he bites his earlobe, letting it slide out between his teeth. Charles isnt sure what makes him quiver harder, the lick that edges so close to his oversensitive ears or Mr. Lehnsherr's words.

"I think, dear Magda," he says in a rasp, "I do believe I'll keep you."

Would that he could, Charlotte thinks, but says nothing. She'll be gone before he wakes in the morning. Her one concession to her bet with Raven.

Pity. She thinks she might enjoy keeping him too.

[Continued here: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/7736.html?thread=14575672#t14575672]

He tries not to hope, tries not to dream. He learned not to dream a long time ago, not about this, at least. He spent six months spinning hopes and dreams, imagining the life he'd build with Erik, and not even the paralysis hurt quite as much as watching those dreams turn to ash on a Cuban beach. He tries not to hope that this means what he wants it to mean, that this is the reward they get for so many years of dedication to mutantkind. He tries not to hope that he's going to live out the rest of his days somewhere private and quiet with Erik by his side.

"And here I assumed you finally realized how sexy genetics is," Charles says, sighing theatrically.

Erik looks up at him. "Charles," he says flatly. "Genetics isn't sexy. Your mouth on the other hand...."

Sometimes Erik woke up wondering at the stillness, turning over and half-expecting to see Charles snoring next to him, loose-limbed and taking up most of the bed. Attacks of conscience – wholly unwelcome, when he couldn't muster up enough anger to ward them off – usually came at those hours, staring at the empty pillow and wondering over the pain and confusion on Charles's face. In those quiet hours, the question hadn't been "why the hell didn't Charles understand", but something Erik couldn't articulate, close to "what didn't I understand?".

The White Queen and her Shadow King sit on their throne, safe behind the psionic shields of the Walled City. The armies of Genosha batter uselessly at the gates, a war locked in stalemate. Magneto, camped in the frozen mud, receives word the Citadel intends to send a telepath to the front lines. The same telepath he met two years ago, who sat across a carved wooden chess set and offered Magneto the first friendly smile in a lifetime. The same telepath who still haunts his dreams.

Somewhere between gratuitous sexbot porn and a thoughtful analysis of what it means to be human lies this story. Near-future AU. Mutants have full rights. Cyborgs have none. Featuring genetics expert and telepath Professor Charles Xavier, and Erik, a pleasure model cyborg with a mysterious past.

The advantage of doing it all again is Erik doesn't need to track Shaw down. No trip to Geneva, no bar in Argentina. Erik can go to Florida directly, pilot his speedboat out to a spot in the water where no one will see him.

He waits, not too cold, not in the wet suit he's already wearing. And there it is: the other boat, small and quiet. The other man, diving into the water and climbing up onto the Caspartina.

Many of the pressures in Charles Xavier's life -- the sacrifices Erik and Charles make to be together -- the constant tension of being closeted -- Charles' relationship to the Church he once served as a priest -- his distance from his sister -- come to the forefront in 1967. Because in that year, for Charles, peace is no longer an option.

[Sequel to Grace by Yahtzee]

Now Charles was asking for a sacrifice in return, and Erik couldn’t give it.

He couldn’t. It wasn’t a choice. It was a reality. Putting another little girl in Anya’s place – no. Even if he tried, the result could only be shallow. A puppet show. It would mock his grief as surely as it damaged the child, whom he imagined had seen through him already.

[Sequel to Sacrament by Yahtzee]

"And at first I didn't even know if I should visit, I mean... what are visiting hours for fuck buddies who develop inconvenient feelings? Ten to Midnight?" Erik crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I could have just not come, that would be easy... done. And I didn't for a few days but... I like you! Or is no one allowed to like you right now? Does that make you feel better to be all miserable and unloveable?"

Charles felt his eyes grow wide for a moment. "Well... um... I suppose tough love works now and again."

Charles, a miner from a poor village in the countryside, saves the life of Erik Lehnsherr, scion of a successful business family and the richest man on the planet Eisen. Charles is a telepath and somewhat anxious about it, while Erik abstains from relationships because the lights flicker and doors open and electronics vibrate when he gets too excited.

Also featuring a long-suffering sister, a foul-mouthed bodyguard, and a best friend with a heart that is definitely not gold.

In which there are princes, spaceships, long journeys, and old secrets uncovered. (An AU sci-fi fairytale)

Charlotte grins at him and leans down to kiss him, a slow deep hello. She drags his lower lip away with her teeth before she pulls away. "So," she says, "how long until you can go again?"

"You shouldn't let your guard down," Erik says.

"Pardon?" Charles asks.

"Falling asleep around strangers," Erik says.

(Four times Charles fell asleep on Erik and one time Erik fell asleep on Charles.)

Kudos don't, specifically, help me grow as a writer. They don't tell me what amazing insights readers had about a story, neither mine nor anyone else's. Kudos give me that warm fuzzy feeling that makes the dark days worth putting up with, and without any anxiety about how I'm supposed to react. Kudos are someone telling me "you did good," without caveats, without reservations.

He starts walking, tell himself he’s not going anywhere in particular, telling himself it’s perfectly inevitable, that’s all, that he’s going to eventually walk by apartment A32.

And when he gets there, A32 is, of course, on his tiny concrete patio, with only a turtleneck against the rising chill, wearing headphones and gazing intently at the chessboard laid out before him. As always, he’s alone, the board set onto a Lazy Susan so he can play both sides.

Erik's not moving, that’s for sure. Maybe when the twins wake up they can bring their books and Erik can continue not leaving the bed. Forever, maybe.

“—would you like to name me?” He finished.

A sudden burst of thought and streaks of colorful light danced in the back of his eyes: No, no. I want to name myself. Please. His mind was supplying him with hundreds, thousands of different names and before he could tell the voice the one that he wanted—

“Yeah, from now on your name is MAX.”

Despite himself, he smiled, “My name is . . . MAX.”

It would have to suffice. He had a name.

“Great.” The voice said blithely. “Now move around for me.”

He walked toward the lens, looking at it curiously until the voice told him to stop.

"Come dance with me," Charles says.

Erik puts the flyer advertising a party someone put into his hand away and raises an eyebrow. "I thought you don't like contemporary music."

"I don't, not for recreation." Charles sits down cross-legged in a right angle to Erik, eyes wide and blue and eager. He looks irresistible and Erik wants to lean in to kiss him, but he's not sure of them yet, even if Charles does seem to like him as well.

At this point, Erik just really doesn't know if he's going to kill Hank or thank him. It's his fucking fault that he and Charles are locked up in quarantine, because his fucking experiments have led to- to whatever this is. He's been doing things to plants that only Charles can make any sense of; Charles tried to explain some of it to him, but by that time Erik was busy ripping his clothing off, and it was a little hard to pay attention.

It has been a trying few weeks. He is sharing room space, occasionally bed space, car space, and sometimes breathing space with Charles, Charles and his old-man cardigans, Charles and his musty-book smell, Charles and his downy-soft hair, Charles and his pink-flushed skin, Charles and his narrow hips that would be perfect to—

Yes. That. That is what had made it a trying few weeks.

Charles was a weakness he could ill afford, but the man drew him in anyway, tethering Serik to this life the way his planet once did — the way his people's beliefs and rituals grounded him within something larger than history or lineage. A way of being in the universe. Cthia.

Charles had been too taken aback to ask questions. He hadn’t attended a class in mechanical engineering in his life and he had no idea why he’d been requested by a professor he didn’t think he’d ever even heard of before to be his TA in a field which was so far removed from his own. He tried to think if Lehnsherr might have taken one of the few physics papers he’d done as an undergraduate and completely drew a blank.

This time, it's Erik who takes Charles's hand and says, "You could stay."

Charles had- so naively- thought that it might be nice to take Erik around Oxford. To self-deprecatingly point out youthful follies and triumph and steer them into "companionably" cramped restaurants, commensurately delicious for all their lack of elbow room and generally ingratiate himself.

He had rather forgotten that the obtaining of all this knowledge- the chip shop best after drinking, the bookstore most full of first editions, the fountain once urinated in- came with more than a few... entanglements.

Erik continued to murmur nonsense ("yes, see, isn't that better, what a good boy you are...") as he held the child. He caught a glimpse of Charles out of the corner of his eye, sitting on the edge of the bed, and he turned to look at him.

Charles's mouth was open, and his eyes were wide. He looked ... amazed. Thrilled. Besotted. As if Erik had just performed some sort of magic trick or miracle.

"What?" Erik said.

Charles expects Erik to show up at the mansion within a few months or at most a year after the War. It's not like he's really a teenage boy, any more than Charles is. As erratic as Erik's mutation may yet be - as undeveloped as Charles' own is, now - he's seventy damned years old and Charles knows that if he's here, he's very capable of finding his way to Westchester by whatever means necessary.

If he's not here, then there's some reason he hasn't come yet.

"Hello," he says, sounding calm and composed and slightly amused, and it's just not fair. "Didn't we just pass each other by?"

Fuck. "Uh, yes." Erik pulls up his shoulders and hopes nobody recognizes him; the shop isn't very busy right now, but still, you never know. He can forget his two days off if tomorrow there'll be a headline about him stalking poor hapless guys into coffee shops.

"Sudden craving for caffeine?", the man teases, and Erik glances at him. His expression is open and relaxed, the flush still in his cheeks, and up close Erik can tell just how bright blue his eyes are. Jesus, he's never been so smitten with anybody, not even with Evelyn Miller in seventh grade, whom he had pined over for months. Especially not at first sight.

“Nobody's as ticklish as Charles,” Raven says, gloating.

He ignored the soup for the moment, but took the glass of water and drank deeply. When he spoke again, he sounded more like himself. "What am I doing here?"

Charles folded his hands carefully in his lap. "You've been ill."

"So I gathered," Erik said, raising one of his eyebrows. "But why am I *here*?"

Eyes closed, Charles is in heaven. Ropes chase lines over his chest, around his neck, up his back in a pattern he could never hope to trace himself. Only Erik knows how this works. Suspended, Charles doesn’t care about the how - he only cares about Erik’s hands and his wonderful, beautiful mouth.

Erik guided himself into Charles’s waiting mouth, pushing deep straight away. He showed no consideration for Charles’s comfort, even if his eyes remained locked on Charles’s face, his mind open if Charles ever cared to push.

He took it, every inch that Erik sank into his mouth sliding heavily over his tongue.

Xavier, bizarrely enough, brightens. “How nice! We’ll be sharing an office and living together.” He runs a hand through his hair; it ends up fluffed up rather than patted down.

“Yes,” Erik says with a too-wide grin. “Nice. Right.”

Erik is incredulous, “You’re sending me off to train?”

“What else would you like to do? Sit at my bedside? Think of it as your punishment. You’re always tearing things apart. Build me something, Erik. As a present. Build me something nice.”

“It’s alright,” Erik breathed, caring a hand through Charles’s floppy hair. He could still feel the warmth of Charles’s mind inside his own, and surprisingly, it didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would.

Sensing this, Charles nipped affectionately at his shoulder before placing a kiss on the same spot. “I really can leave if you want.”

“No.” Erik’s answering thought surprised even himself. He knew that he and the man he was now moving to kiss would never work. They could never work if Charles couldn’t see how dangerous it was for mutants to come out into the open. But somehow none of that seemed to matter as much when their lips met tenderly once more. If Charles sensed any of his thoughts, he didn’t acknowledge them. Instead, he opened his mouth to Erik’s eager tongue, sending wave after wave of acceptance and happiness to the other man, the golden threads of the bond connecting their minds growing subtly stronger.

That said, the Magneto shirts often leave out the most important part of the photograph; the man who sits calmly in the eye of the storm, his expression gentle as he watches one of the most powerful men on the face of the planet. He can afford to be calm. He is ‘the Professor’ — Charles Xavier — still young enough to be sporting a shock of brown hair: a scientist who made his name fighting for peace between human and mutant-kind. He seems an odd match to the militant Magneto, but in the years following the rise of Genosha he proved to be the country’s greatest asset aside from their charismatic leader — a mutant as powerful as Magneto, a beloved diplomat, and, reportedly, Magneto’s conscience. Their wedding last year had been long-anticipated, their relationship an open secret that scandalized conservative countries and gave hope for change to many around the world.

Because of all the experience he’d had as an X-Man, Scott had a pretty good idea about the sort of craziness that had gone down today. In an attempt to reach a point of stability, where he wasn’t going to have to worry constantly about Magneto getting jumpy and possibly impaling everyone with any metal object on hand, he asked, “What do you three think the date is? Because its June, 2011.”

This seemed to further unsettle Magneto and Professor again squeezed his shoulder, repeating, “Calm.”

It was Mystique, looking like a scared, pretty child, who answered. “September, 1962.”

Five Times When Charles Used Endearments and the One Time When Erik Did It.

Set in an AU world wherein Charles and Raven were born roughly fifty years later than they actually were, but Erik was not. Instead, Erik and Emma killed Shaw and then Emma used Erik for her fight towards making mutants accepted within the human world. Twenty years after he has freed himself from her telepathic influence, Erik - an omega-level mutant who doesn't age - meets Charles, a telepath famous for standing up in school and fighting for a fellow mutant's rights. All Charles wants is to ask Erik what he thinks about his great plan to build a school exclusively for mutants, and possibly convince him to become a teacher; what he gets instead is, eventually, a boyfriend.

This story is set two years later, when, in the middle of planning the school, Charles finds out about his secondary mutation.

[This reads like a stunning 10,000-word excerpt from an absolutely mind-blowing million-word epic; and I would dearly love to read the rest of it.]

“Aren't you sore?” Erik asks uncomfortably. If he were Charles, he'd want Erik to leave already. Something along the lines of 'get the fuck out of me, you insensitive prick,' wouldn't be amiss here.

“I like having you in me.” Charles murmurs sleepily. He skims his fingers down Erik's thigh. “I don't want you to leave.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you think too much?” Erik's there, leaning in the doorway.

“As a matter of fact, they have.” Charles admits. He can't help the thrill that courses through him as Erik closes the door and just looks at him.

It's still new, this thing between them. It began that first moment he sensed Erik's mind out in the dark of the ocean. Since then, they've come so far. Now it feels only natural to wake up beside Erik, to have him at his side as he trains the students.

“Shall we do something about that?” Erik locks the door.

'It turns them both on like nobody's business when Charles pretends he doesn't want it.'

I think some of what drives Erik is that he wasn't able to "save people." So during the bromance tour with Charles, when they go out and find other mutants, I want them to hook up because there's someone they might not be able to recruit, and what that does to them. And by "what it does to them," I mean "they have broody sex in a shitty motel."

He catches sight of the book later while he's tidying his desk in the library. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. For a moment, Charles just looks at it out of the corner of his eye, as though it's a wild animal that might scamper off if he faces it straight on. Then he blushes so hard, his entire body feels like it's on fire.

Erik can't out of bed the next morning, too rundown from a burning fever and a powerful nausea that makes it impossible to keep his breakfast down. This only serves to make him more ornery than ever.

She shrugged and gestured to two men standing behind her. One was tall and sharp-looking, wearing a black leather jacket and a smirk. The other man was smaller and more dainty looking. He was dressed like some kind of professor or librarian, which put Ron on edge.

"Hello," the smaller man said, extending a hand. "I'm Charles Xavier."

Great. Ron had an appointment with British guys? This was the worst.

"Anyway, this is the good kind of spying. I'm making sure Ron's okay."

"And watching him eat dinner will do that?" Ann asks.

"It's not what he's eating, it's who he's with," Leslie says.

Who he's with, his apparent new friend, is a tall, good-looking guy who Leslie's never seen before. They're sitting side-by-side at the counter and they're both eating JJ's Round-the-Clock Breakfast Bounty Platter. The stranger has skipped the sausage in favor of double bacon, a variation known as "The Ron Swanson." No wonder Ron thinks they're friends.

[Companion story in the Daycare Verse by brilligspoons and pocky_slash]

Mycroft Holmes LET ME LOVE YOU FOREVER

7. Start a rumor that if you say my name three times in a row while looking into a darkened mirror, I show up at your house.
8. Check out library books and write my name in all of them with a different year ranging from 1860 to present day.
9. Whenever someone calls anything “cumbersome,” punch them in the face and yell, “Cumbersome? Cumber-all! Cumberbatch!”

"I can feel it," Erik says quietly, his grey eyes silvered as he gazes out at the rain-soaked grounds, and there's something like wonder in his voice. "Feel it growing. Swelling."

Watching the faint shimmer of reflected rain on Erik's chest is giving Charles something of a growing swelling of his own, but he ignores it and takes a step closer. "Feel what?"

"This." Charles jumps as the room is abruptly illuminated by an explosive flash of light, followed an instant later by a booming crack of sound that he feels down to his bones.

"Jason Wyngarde?" Erik asks. It's the name on the outside of Jason's wagon. "Or Jason Watanabe." It's the name he was born with. Erik did his research. He knows them both.

He left then, going into four, where, if he were a little bit less Harvey Specter, he would probably have dropped his coffee. Because there, smack in the middle of the three walls lined with metal cages in the kennel room, Mike the Test-Taking Felon was rubbing the belly of the pit bull-chow rescue who, so far, had proven too dangerous for anything other than termination.

The problem is it's very hard to tell when a superhero is recklessly endangering himself versus when he's accepting the very real dangers of the job. Tony, who is the embodiment of reckless on a good day, doesn't know if Captain America is throwing himself into his work because it's his work, or because secretly he wishes he were dead.

It scares him. And the fact that it scares him also scares him. Tony is used to being a shallow jerk; he's very good at it. Caring about Steve to the point that he worries if the guy goes off his own personal radar for more than an hour is seriously fucking with him.

the story of two women in their 30’s who lead a group to end the cuban missile crisis and debate passionately about social injustice, one very angry and the other fond of shit your grandma would wear but bags the men like groceries anyway

"I've been watching all of these angsty season 2 Sherlock vids lately, and the more I watched, the more convinced I became that only this song could truly express how I felt. (...how I felt about the wealth of identical and identically terrible angsty Sherlock vids, that is.)"

Arthur made a non-committal sound, and Eames asked, aiming for nonchalant, "Do you have a job coming up? I could meet you."

"A job?" Arthur repeated, and Eames remembered, belatedly, that Arthur wasn't in dreamsharing anymore. "Cobb's already gotten us a new account. I guess people forget you were under investigation for killing your wife as long as you keep writing books with titles like Never Mind the Bollards: Pedestrianisation and Public Disorder in Central London."

"Cobb is an appalling human being," Eames said.

Inside him, a disappointed feeling at not knowing when he'd see Arthur again was warring with an ugly, complete incomprehension over Arthur willingly staying in the same place. Arthur's home was lovely, of course, but it was difficult for Eames to even imagine wanting to live like that; he hadn't stayed in the same place for more than a couple of months since he was a teen and, at the urging of his parents, hadn't dared set foot back in Britain since ID Cards Act of 2006.

In the meantime, there is the Word, and the Word is WikiLeaks. Actually, to be perfectly precise, there are thirty thousand words in a document leaked out of the American military establishment, and every thirty thousand of those words (from the little ones like 'the' to the big ones with friends linking arms like 'somnacin peptide correlation') is on the subject of the once-shadowy practice of dreamshare. The 'once' part of it starts to look extremely lovely to Eames, so bathed in nostalgia is he when the public sinks their teeth into the WikiLeak and CNN and the BBC start broadcasting stories with titles like 'GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED DREAMING?' There are panels and panels, Stephen Colbert makes a musical episode out of it, the American president is forced to deliver speeches, alongside press conferences with upper military personnel, and Eames goes to hide in Liverpool for a while.

Xavier's School for Entitled Brats seemed hell-bent on keeping the two of them apart. Despite the singular position Erik knew he held in Charles' affections, even now, he was but one mutant against half a centuria who didn't trust him further than they could throw him, and their mutations were generally not for throwing.

He smirks at Erik again and names a number, rather overpriced for a streetwalker—even one in Switzerland—but Erik is asking for the entire night. He nods curtly in agreement and touches the man's arm, a little surprised by the rich feel of the wool of his coat. "Let's go then."

It's the heart of him Charles is looking for, and beyond all the barriers and defenses and traps laid out, Charles finds it, curls up with it, shares his own feelings of warmth and bliss and safety.

In this post you can find the complete list of vids included in Festivids 2011.

It's stupid, he knows, but he wishes Raven were with them. As much as he trusts and is glad to know Erik, there is no way Charles can ask for help with something as ridiculous as a cold. What would Erik do anyway? Go and buy him tea, or cough medicine maybe? Tuck him into bed?

Erik's mind itself was sort of like a compound formula that he could relate only back to memorizing charts of the various elements in the Periodic Table. All of these components—rage, strength, regret, vengeance, good, kindness, acceptance and so much more—somehow made up Erik. Erik, who had seen so much and yet sometimes seemed open to so little. It wasn't by accident that he'd delved into Erik's mind, but it was by accident that he happened to discover another of his darker components.

“Go back to your book, professor,” he mocks. Charles notes that his voice is still sharp, he hasn't really relaxed much at all. “Or am I upsetting your atmosphere by sitting here?”

“No,” Charles says. He flips open to the page he'd left off on and holds it open with his thumb and pinky. His hand falls to Erik's head more of its own accord than his own conscious effort. “You can stay wherever you're comfortable, my friend, you know that.”

Charles settled down, and it seemed like he was finally prepared to be serious. "My name is Charles Xavier. My sister, Raven, is the woman that was with me last night. We, along with some friends that I'm sure you will meet shortly, run the Butterfly Circus. The ringmaster is yours truly," and watching Charles bow while lounging seated on the grown made Erik's mouth twitch in a smile despite himself, "but Raven runs all the acrobatics, and you'll meet Hank soon who does all of our medical aid, Scott does logistics and so on. I'm currently trying not to inundate you with too many visitors, I'm afraid some of our members tend to be somewhat...excitable." Though Charles had sounded dry, there was an unmistakable happiness in his eyes.

Charles is surprised when a human applies for admission to the Xavier Institute, and in deciding whether or not to admit her, manages to seriously piss off Erik. Now Charles has to go about fixing the mistakes he’s made, and worst of all: Charles may have to apologize. But after more than twenty years of running the school together, Erik shouldn’t be so surprised when Charles acts like a selfish ass.

[Sequel to Twenty-Four Years Earlier... by listerinezero]

So this is what they have: occasional nights and mornings after. Too few and far between, but if it happened any more often he doesn't think he'd be able to leave, and he needs to leave.

It had passed like almost any other birthday, except for one thing: this birthday signaled the end. And the beginning. Soon he would trade his shining cage for another, and he could only assume that life was about to get better.

And then suddenly the day was there. The day when the doors were thrown open and his piles and piles of books were loaded into heavy wooden trunks and heaped onto the carriage with the stamping horses that would take him away. That would take him to Erik, who he had dreamed about for so long. He wondered if he would be smart, or handsome, or funny. He hoped he would be kind, if nothing else. Charles had not experienced much kindness in his 18 years.

Being Batman was hard.

Well, alright, no, being Batman was actually pretty easy. Mostly he lurked around being extremely threatening, driving his fast car and ripping some punk’s own gun out of his hand from five feet away, then making it smack him in the face.

Being Batman made being Erik hard. Being Erik now required no less than half a dozen carefully constructed alibis. Being Erik required a practiced indifference, an attitude carefree to the point of inanity. That was hard.

Especially when Charles gave him that look, the one that said he wasn’t angry; he was just disappointed.

Long story short, I hope a few kind souls in this community might answer my questions about existing canon, specifically how certain mutations work. I'd like to continue my thus far successful tactic of focusing on the movies and merrily ignoring the comics, but I find I really can't until I satisfy my curiosity on this subject.

“Us turning on each other: it’s what they want. I tried to warn you, Charles. I want you by my side. We want the same things.”

“No, my friend. I'm sorry, but we do not.”

Erik watched the tears well in Charles' eyes, and his face fell.

But only for an instant. Erik gritted his teeth and growled, “Yes, we *do*,” and when he tore the helmet off his head he finally felt the screams Charles was muffling, and the biting, yowling pain he was in. “Oh, god. Charles.” He called out to Azazel, “We have to get him out of here! NOW!” and moments later they were on the sidewalk in front of New York Presbyterian.

[Sequel to Letters From Prison by listerinezero]

Charles shut his eyes tightly. Lust was not the enemy – oh, it taunted him, teased him, fogged the daylight and illuminated his dreams, but he could never contemplate breaking his vows for lust alone.

At seminary they had taught him to guard against that. Not against love.

'My boyfriend is a pregnant female telepathic cat,' Erik said. 'I think this time I'm entitled to panic.'