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.

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)

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.

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.”

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Charles/Erik, with an ugly duckling twist
Charles and Erik grow up together either as mutants or humans. Either way, Charles is the fat, pasty kid that no one wants to hang out with while Erik is the epitome of cool and awesome. They are unexpectedly good friends and Erik is ubber protective of Charles and stops all the bullies while Charles is the one that really sees Erik for Erik.

Then they move away from each other or something and when they meet again they're adults and Charles has finally ~bloomed~. However, even with his new found grace and glory and sex appeal, and even though Charles isn't naive anymore and is clearly a suave and whip-smart young man, Erik is twice as protective (+ new rage / jealousy / possessiveness), wanting to stop all the new ill-intentioned people that are suddenly attracted to Charles and who want to take advantage of him.

BONUS: Charles is not actually any of the things he appears to be. He is still naive and innocent and gooey on the inside, and all his sex appeal and suaveness comes from hard practice, but he wants to convince Erik he's new and improved, thinking himself unworthy of Erik (when actually Erik thinks he's unworthy ~UST~)

"I don't need your help," Erik said harshly, as though saying it aloud would make it so.

"Perhaps I need yours." Charles caught Erik's wrist, his eyes intent on Erik's. "Shaw has someone very dear to me," he said in a low tone. "You're not the only one playing for keeps, Erik."

“I’m sorry, let me get this straight. A nude model keeps following you around giving you cookies?”

Erik hadn’t told her the part where sometimes Charles gave him cookies in the library, but Emma seemed to have the general gist down. “Basically. He wants me to draw him.”

Emma fell onto the floor and laughed until she cried. “Oh, sugar, the best things always happen to you.”

Erik gives driving, sewing, and cooking lessons, soothes nightmares, bolsters self-esteem, and still can't figure out why Charles keeps smiling at him like that.

"Professor?" Hank asked, sounding very worried.

"I'm sorry, Hank," he said, trying to bring himself under control, "it's just rather a shock. What about Moira?"

He could not bring himself to look.

"You wiped her memory and sent her away so we were safe," Hank said quietly.

Charles could not imagine himself doing such a thing, but he was beginning to realise Cuba had changed him a great deal. He replayed Hank's memory of Erik and Raven walking away over and over again and he came to one simple conclusion.

"This cannot be allowed to go on," he said and looked Hank directly in the eyes. "We are being fools."

While investigating the homicide of a John Doe who he suspects might've been murdered while working the streets as a prostitute, Detective Erik Lehnsherr finds an unexpected ally in a hooker named Charles who seems as determined as he to solve the case. As they become more deeply involved both with the case and each other, there's just one thing that Charles neglects to mention -- that he's really an investigative journalist, one quickly convinced that what they're dealing with is more than simple murder.

"We've done well?" Charles means it to be a statement, but he finds himself glancing up to Erik for confirmation.

"You've done well," Erik says. "I've hardly done anything."

"That's nonsense," Charles says. "You've done so much, Erik. You've helped design the curriculum, you've taught, you've recruited. You've kept me sane and put up with me, which I know is difficult on the best of days. You've tempered me. You've kept me realistic. You've been a listening ear when the children have had issues they couldn't bring to me. This is your life too, Erik, this world we've built."

Erik leans over and kisses the back of Charles' hand.

"Y...yes! I um... well I came to Harvard for genetics and biophysics, but obviously the chance to do work on alpha/omega dynamics is not one I'm going to pass up. Tony's working on physics and engineering... and Emma's psychology and childhood education, so... It's perfect!"

Charles was going to continue to hide behind science and the clinical aspects of the fact that there was a a mutant general who believed in mutant supremacy who was bonded to him and at some point in the future Charles was probably going to... going to...

He closed his eyes, trying to squeeze back the emotions that he'd been ignoring for the passed few hours.

"Oh, I'm sorry, you're in the wrong room."

Erik looked confused, then annoyed. This seemed to be a strategy Charles was fond of – when he was losing an argument, he would say or do something unpredictable.

Charles continued, his voice taking on a sarcastic edge, "You're looking for conference room C. That's where you'll find all of the other Holocaust survivors whose mutant powers manifested as they were being dragged from their last surviving family member, thereby catching the eye of a homicidal sadist who went on to imprison and torture them for years. Yes, I believe all of those individuals meet on Thursdays."

Erik felt a twitch in his right arm.

But as to what comes next… Charles isn't sure he has an answer to that question. Survival, naturally. Protecting each other, protecting the children. But beyond that, what? Where can they go? What does he have to offer any of them now besides a life on the run? Loneliness, violence, a world that can't be saved.

"I've spent my life teaching peace," Charles whispers, not even aware he meant to speak. "If I was wrong about that, what can I possibly have to offer?"

Hank doesn't speak, but the way he looks at Charles now—misery and terror in his eyes and thoughts—is answer enough.

Originally I intended for this to all look very much like a comic book, but as time went by that went out the window, but it was so much fun to draw the guys being all superhero and BAMF to start with *laughs*

Raven proves to be more than a companionable roommate. She plays jazz on a little radio in the corner, but it’s down low and she’s quiet. She doesn’t bother him when he’s working. But he knows she watches. He never thought that jewelry making was interesting enough to watch. It comes so easily to him, doing anything basic is rather more a chore than fascinating to him. But that’s what takes up most of his time, silver rings and engravings. Setting stones and repairing ancient pieces that once belonged to someones Grandmother or Aunt.

Over the course of two months he divines that Raven has a brother who calls her every Friday. The dance studio is run by a woman named Angel and above them live Sean and Hank. Sean blows glass with a kiln on the roof of the building but keeps a room with Hank. Hank is huge, blue, furry and blushes furiously whenever Raven pays him any attention. He knows that Hank is a certified genius, as explained to him by Sean as he worked to free the kid from the metal cage of the elevator that had gotten stuck, again. The strange noises and once a rather violent explosion come from Hank’s experiments which he assures everyone are legal. Erik is dubious of that, but Hank is nice and he brings back sandwiches from the deli down the road when he goes out.

The situation is ideal. Erik had blushed when Raven told everyone in the building that he was socially awkward and they should leave him alone. Apparently what she says goes, because no one in the building really bothers him past asking him if he’s going to want lunch or if he’ll lock up when he’s done. It suits him just fine.

Erik Lehnsherr is a visiting professor at Columbia University, as well as an acclaimed and award winning poet. Charles Xavier is a lead researcher with the Genetics Department who is well on his way to tenure. But what happens when Charles has to cancel a class because half his students abandon him in favour of a mysterious new English Lit professor? Naturally he ends up sitting in in the class, where Professor Lehnsherr mistakes him for a student. It's really too bad Erik has such a strict policy against dating students. It's also too bad Erik doesn't seem to know how to use Google.

Set one year post movie, Charles overloads himself in Cerebro, and his mind goes walkabout; wherever he is (and he’s around), it’s not in his body. Erik temporarily takes over the school in his absence, and finds that there’s little time for resentment or hatred when he’s busy organizing assigned reading for English lit, keeping the youngest children out of trouble, and trying to talk Raven into wearing clothing for the boys’ sake. Somewhere in between taking responsibility for the students and dreaming Charles’ dreams every night, he manages to remember that he’s something rather more than a weapon.

For the first time, sand between his fingers as he gasped for air, Charles called it what it truly was. There was a baby. Hank’s voice rang in his mind, “Professor, I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but there is certainly a gestating fetus within you.” Baby. Charles, having given himself to Erik, and received in return, having spent countless nights together, and having dreamed of a utopian future together, was now in possession of a biological anomaly. A mutation. An evolutionary characteristic of humanity’s atypical nature. A baby.

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.

"As I am your employer," he said, "it stands to reason I ought to know something about you. But as it stands, all I know of you is that you attempted to drown me in my own lake. Did the kelpies send you to get rid of me? Where did you come from, Mr. Xavier?"

"I came from Essex School at Shawcross, and then Oxford, Mr. Lehnsherr," replied the man so addressed. "Did not Miss Frost inform you?"

"Miss Frost rarely informs me of anything. It's a good arrangement." Mr. Lehnsherr smiled wickedly. "But, even if she had told me the minutest details of what's inside your skull, I still want to hear your report of yourself from your own mouth, if you please."

He accompanied this request with a mocking bow of his head.

"Very well," said Mr. Xavier. He met Mr. Lehnsherr's eyes squarely. "If you wish."

One lap passes, then another. Erik is concentrating on what's in front of him, on potential obstacles in their way, but he can feel Charles smiling, the glow of contentment brushing against his own mind. The rest of the world recedes before this: this small happiness, and the slide of their skates over the ice.

A hand on his elbow stopped him. He turned, seeing Lehnsherr, and started to talk before the other man could get a word in. "Whether you mean it or not, your business is in competition with mine. To expect me not to be affected by that-- I've worked for years to get Bindings to be successful, and now--" He cut himself off abruptly, took a breath, and went on. "It isn't your fault. I'm not saying you shouldn't do business here. I'm simply saying you can't expect me not to care."

"Of course you care," Lehnsherr said. "If you didn't, you wouldn't be any good at this." He had dropped his hand the moment Charles turned; he could feel the cool spot where it had so briefly rested. "And you are," he added. "Quite good."

Oh, geeky comedy show of my heart, I'm still holding out for six seasons and a movie.

“You’re telling me,” Eames says, voice dripping with disbelief, “that the Hierarch’s heir and an Ensign in the state army is an Omega?”

Five times Charles refused help, and one time he asked for it.

He had to be realistic here. This wasn't the dream. He could take care of himself; he wasn't some kid who needed rescuing. In Cobb's dream, he would've been able to fight anyone who tried to kill him, but this was reality, and the people after him and Saito weren't projections. He was an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation. In the real world, he had no weapons, no contacts, not even a goddamned car. He needed help. Fischer had disappeared; he didn't even know if Saito was still alive. Arthur was alone.

And that was when it hit him: he did know someone. He knew a suave, bad ass, British researcher-by-day, criminal-by-night by the name of Eames.

"Not at all." Turtleneck sipped his cappuccino. His accent sat oddly in Charles's ears, the consonants particularly hard-hitting. "There are plenty of good living authors today. Sadly, E. M. Lehnsherr is not one of them."

Charles shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose and aching to get back online where he could complain to HankMC1306 about this impertinent fellow. "Fine, then we'll have to agree to disagree, my friend."

"Fine." Turtleneck nodded at him rather amusedly before taking out his laptop and setting it up. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

Pepper and Steve totally ignore Tony as the agree on what to do with him. It's decided that the next day they'll pack up whatever crap Tony wants to bring with him (mostly research that will be carefully vetted before leaving the tower), and he and Pepper will move back into his Park Avenue house; Steve promises to visit a couple of days later. The way they're talking about it, it sounds like it's sort of a permanent thing. Tony decides that he doesn't want to be disabused of that idea, and lets them hash out the details as if he wasn't there.

[Sequel to Commitments by boombangbing]

Now Cillian has Tom in a headlock so fast he drops the coffee on instinct and it splashes over Joe’s ratty-but-probably-triple-digit shoes, and Joe just *laughs it off* and disappears to the other side of the room to speak with a little brunette who must be their Ariadne, and Tom finds himself thinking hopelessly, "Come back, come back, I will buy you shiny things," and he hasn’t felt this pathetic since Mira Duncan beat him over the head with her lunch box when his pet cricket escaped onto her tuna sarnie.

No mistake there. She was talking to him. He swallowed, and the gulp sounded like the word, Dad, to digest. It warmed his heart like the best whiskey and tasted like his grandmother’s cooking: a feeling long forgotten and forever welcome.

"Oh, excellent," Xavier said earnestly. He looked like a delighted teenager. "I- oh, I'm sorry. Do you have jet lag? It's night in, in Germany, isn't it? You can go sleep. You can start tomorrow morning."

Erik stared at him. It just hit him, like that, that he had a job. He remembered his plan to walk back to the nearest village. Take buses until his money ran out. See the Statue of Liberty (towering metal HIGH distant). Jump off a bridge or a dock.

Xavier's eyes had gone a little wide. Erik wondered what he was getting. Just vaguely pleasant surprise, he supposed. Thank god he was only a low-level empath. "I'll show you to your room," he was saying. "It's next to the library. It's an adjoining room, actually. I'm always in the library. So it'll be more efficient like that, I suppose. I hope you like it here."

"Thank you, Mr. Xavier," said Erik, more intensely than he'd intended.

Xavier touched the back of his hand gently. "Charles. It's Charles."

Erik really can’t quite tolerate the fawning on most days because it gets excessive and redundant awfully quick and if the people truly wanted to compliment him or what-have-you, then they should just buy more. With nowhere to go, however, Erik settles for running a hand tiredly across his face with a sigh.

“I bake the breads. It’s me,” he caves once again for some unfathomable reason. “I’m your mystery man,” Erik says wryly.

He immediately regrets talking.

“It is far to early in the morning for this,” Erik said, following him after a moment. Wanda and Pietro were good enough to allow him to sleep on weekends, fixing their own cereal and peacefully watching cartoons until at least ten. This was not supposed to be interrupted by handsome men needing help with pianos.

The subject just says "Re: Today" and Steve clicks on it even before the little preview sentence is there.

"He doesn't know what to do about you. You might just have to let him buy you things for a while before he figures out that he doesn't have to try to buy your affections."

There's a brief "P." above a formal signature reading "Virginia Potts, CEO Stark Industries" above lines of incomprehensible ways to contact her.

Raven looked at the ducklings like she didn't know whether to be amused or mystified. "He's a telepath isn't he?" she asked Charles. "Or... she?"

"Yes and yes and yes," Charles said. "Presently, oh--well. It would appear that David and Julia are both here, and alternating in conversation." When Raven looked at him, he said, helplessly, "It is....how should I put this...what they are doing is--"

"Complicated," Erik said. He looked like a knife in repose on the couch next to the children.

[Companion story to But the World is so Much Grander by TheColorBlue]

Scenes from a canon AU in my mind; in which Cerebro resembles more real-world tech and less sexy science fiction; in which Sean has family outside of the mutant group, and points this out himself; in which Erik and Charles actually sit down to have conversations about their mutations and science and genetics; and in which the world is truly so much larger than just the few of them, collected together in this way.

“Stark, did you just make Captain America come out?” Clint asked from the corner, one hand on his bow. “Christ, never mind the suit. It’s your mouth that’s the deadly weapon.”

“I know,” Tony said, happily, watching the way Steve’s neck was getting redder and redder. “It’s one of my best features.”

Sixteen months after the beach, Emma comes back from her usual sweep of the Westchester mansion and wakes Erik, her normally-cool expression worried. That should amuse him - they've all got attached to Charles and his band of boys somehow, living vicariously through Emma's reports of what they're doing - but with the helmet off, and with Emma unconsciously projecting as much as she is, the concern is contagious.

"They're gone," she says. Before Erik can demand a further explanation, she provides it. "I went in to look for signs of a struggle. Someone's taken them."

Charles realized he was doing it again - the staring. He coughed and shifted his gaze to the insignia on the man's chest. "Right. And you are?"

"Erik."

He waited a second but nothing further was offered. He upgraded his mental impression of military to high-level clearance military. "How can I help you then, Erik?"

"I need to find a man."

Charles nodded. That explained the referral. He launched into his standard spiel. "A thousand credits if he's on the station. Five thousand if he's not. Ten thousand if he's involved in something illegal or if he's the kind of man who will take offense and try to have me killed for helping you."

Erik raised an eyebrow. "I can see why you get mistaken for a prostitute."

Erik Lehnsherr: Gay or European?

"Your book will be ready by the end of the week," Charles said, after a few minutes of comfortable silence and gorgeous sandwich. "The previous owner had decided that it would be a good idea to store it outside over Spring; so, naturally, the binding had rotted away. I've almost finished re-stitching it, however."

"You do the repairs yourself?" Erik asked. "Don't you have any of your staff assist?"

Charles twisted his mouth. "Hank, maybe," he said, "but he's rather too keen on polyurethane as an adhesive for my taste. There's nothing wrong with it, but not so much for the more delicate restorative tasks."

"I see." Erik was watching Charles with a strange kind of intensity, and Charles was certain that he was taking in the faint bruises under his eyes and the reddening at the corners. "You shouldn't worry about it," he said, after a moment. "It's not at all urgent."

"Still," said Charles, and smiled.

"Ah," Erik said, "but if you keep completing all my requests so diligently, then I shall soon run out of excuses to call in to your shop."

Charles caught his eye, briefly, before dropping his gaze and grinning, stupidly, at the table.

"What happened to him before?" Steve interrupts. There's a growing feeling of unease in his stomach, and worse, he recognizes it. Ever since he walked away from Tony he's mentally been cataloging the way Tony hunched around his injured shoulder, favoring his arm, and the unsteadiness in his hands, and the way he swallowed like there was some sort of sour taste lingering in his mouth. He recognizes the symptoms—not precisely, but close enough.

The two of them find themselves talking late into every night, and Charles has so many ideas for the future of Genosha, and is so cleverly critical yet gently supportive of Erik’s own dreams and ambitions. Charles has been sitting at Shaw’s right hand for years and he knows everything, he sees everything, and he understands all of it. How can Shaw leave him out here to recuperate? Charles would be such a valuable advisor, could even be a silent prompt at the back of Erik’s mind – Shaw’s mind, rather. Because he’s Shaw’s omega. Not Erik’s. Shaw’s.

"You're not doing the voices," Raven whined. "Erik does," and this time, out of her tiny mouth came a pitch-perfect mimicry of Erik droning in his native accent, just subtle enough for a four-year-old to still understand the words, "I'll eat half of you now."

"What, he's a German alligator?" Charles asked.

"Yes, he does it like, like, like, You're my lunch," Raven copied Erik again. It was quite unnerving, even when you had raised the little shapeshifter since she was a baby.

Charles was out of town for the day, which was why Erik had chosen this particular morning to ask Raven's permission to marry her brother. He instructed Raven to keep completely silent about his intentions until after Charles got back. If she could avoid Charles and his telepathy long enough for Erik to pop the question, that would be appreciated too. Raven promised sincerely.

She immediately went and told Hank. Hank couldn't keep a secret for all the oral sex in the world, and he immediately told Alex, who told Sean, who ran off and told the younger students, Ororo, Scott and Jean.

"Professor, for the past three weeks—"

"Oh please, call me Charles," Xavier says. Erik stumbles, mentally, at the way that accent wraps around such a friendly request, and forces himself to recover at speed.

"Fine. Charles. For the past three weeks I've been tracking a serial killer who targets prominent, mutant advocates of human-mutant cooperation and coexistence. Senator Robert Drake, Katherine Pryde, Warren Worthington, and now Emma Frost have all been victims of this killer, and my investigation indicates that you are likely to be his next target."

But he’d never been as scared in there as he is when Erik Lehnsherr smiles at him, all teeth and cold, cold eyes. Alex sees his smile and thinks ‘Still waters…’ and fuck, but the waters in Erik are deep and dark: cold steel grey and swimming with dangers and no current of warmth in them anywhere.

'And furthermore, if you would come down here to get your coffee yourself, like normal people do, instead of sending poor Donna all over the place on your errands, then we could talk about this face to face instead of writing notes on coffee cups,' Mike added on the other side of the napkin.

"—first year teaching, of course, so I expect he’ll need a certain amount of assistance now and then," Shaw was saying. "Charles is the most competent deputy any headmaster could ask for, Erik, and he’s been doing this for years. Don’t hesitate to go to him for anything you need, should I be unavailable..." He trailed off, as if finally noticing something odd in the way his Potions and Divinations 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."

She shrugs. “You’ll go back to the turning point.”

“Which turning point?” It seems to Magneto that there have been several in his life.

“The real one. The most important one. I don’t know which, and maybe you don’t either. But my power – it always knows.”

Magneto decides it doesn’t matter. Whatever moment is chosen will have to fall before Charles’ death. He will still have a chance to say goodbye. “Very well.”

Her soft hand closes over his, and the world he knew disappears.

“It’s like living with a bunch of drunk, stoned, super powered, genius toddlers with ADHA,” Coulsen moaned, staring out the window as Thor, Banshee and Havok crouched behind a bush, stalking a duck on the other side (clearly, ducks had joined squirrels on their list of enemies). Acrid black smoke was billowing out of one of the labs where Hank and Bruce were working. Tony and Steve were sitting on the lawn (Fury had wondered about the picnic basket he’d seen Xavier pass Starke earlier), nibbling on bread, cheese and fruit, while Xavier and Lehnsherr were off somewhere, “playing chess”.

Everyone knew what that was code for.

Two events were a coincidence, three was a pattern, ten was time to sit up, take notice, and admit that yeah, maybe villains really were trying to rip Captain America's clothes off.

Five snippets from Erik's increasingly domestic life.

Azazel gives them both an assessing sort of look and then he’s setting his squirming burden down with surprising gentleness, pretending not to notice the way the girl hunches away from him, against Charles and his chair. “He said you would give her shelter.”

It is extremely unfair, Charles thinks. He feels much worse than any of them and it is entirely not his fault that he happens to be projecting just the tiniest amount.

Raven is in the kitchen when he walks stiffly through the door. He doesn’t want her to be there, he wants to be alone, to care for his wounds himself and be done with it. And cut that fucking wound in his side a different shape.

"Yup," says Bucky, a little proudly, "it might be seventy years in the damn future, but I can still get smashed right. Some things never change."

"Speaking of-" starts Steve, and Bucky fists a hand in Steve's t-shirt and pulls him down to eye-level, says, "Yeah, speaking of stuff I think I'm gonna do different this time-"

“Bad judge,” Tony says, gesturing at himself and spilling water all down his shirt, “of character. Like. Always. Thought Rhodey was a dick too, felt like an ass later--liked Pepper from the beginning, she was always good, she’s like. The exception. And fucking Obie, I always get it wrong. People’re hard.”

“So I should...take it as a compliment?” Steve says, sounding completely at sea. “That you thought I was a dick?”

“Smarter,” Tony says. “If I’d thought you were good you’d probably be like. Uh. Plotting...things, are you plotting things, no one has tried to kill me in awhile, but I don’t think you would. That’s a compliment, sorry I called you a dick. You’re not. A dick, I mean.”

Steve stares at him for a second, then sighs and shakes his head. “You’re a complicated guy, Tony, has anyone ever told you that?”

"Sirius Black, you're a long, long way from home," she says, uncurling the captain's fingers and smoothing Sirius's shirt, "but you're a good dog."

“The point is that he doesn’t appreciate me for what I am!” Raven shouts. “He just wants me to be normal, like he can pick-and-choose what kind of mutations are acceptable! I shouldn’t have to hide what I look like in my own house!”

There’s a moment of shocked silence that greets her outburst. Then, Logan turns to Charles and says, “She’s right, you know. That’s some heavy internalized oppression you got.”

The psychic command of GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN is strong enough for Raven to pick up. Logan double-times it out of there, trying, Raven thinks, to suppress a shit-eating grin.

“He’s telling the truth,” she says after a long while, and her voice shakes as she massages her temples slowly. “He’s the Professor, and his last memory is of going to bed on the twenty-second of October, 1962, when he and Magneto were preparing to prevent a mutant called Sebastian Shaw from starting World War III with the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“You’re always a lady,” he said. “And of course you can help plan the wedding.”

Raven’s face lit up, and Charles took the opportunity to cast a disparaging eye towards the bridal magazines.

“But I don’t think we’ll be needing all of those,” he said. “It’s going to be a small affair. Intimate. Just us – maybe Moira, if she’ll come.”

“Small,” Raven said, nodding. “Intimate. I can do that. No problem.”

Which was why Charles was surprised, to say the least, when two weeks later there were two dozen doves in his living room.

“Do you remember the little boy who couldn't understand you when you asked him if he wanted to play with you?” Erik's smile seems embarrassed, but Charles just grins back, fond.

“That little boy helped me out a lot too, you know,” he replied. “He was the most important person I've ever scared into running into a basement.”

The only problem was, it had all happened so fast that none of the others knew, and telling them had quickly surpassed the point at which Charles could safely rule out the risk of shock-induced tachycardia.

Modern-day, powered AU in which Charles runs a daycare for tiny mutants, Erik is a misanthropic engineer, and they are the loveliest of lovely boyfriends.

“Oh, that’s just wonderful . . . So it’s not enough to die uncomfortably and somehow come back to life, no, I have to nurse Erik to health, too. Because he is emotionally fragile. Well, Hank, my boy, let me tell you, this is not fair . . . Contrary to popular belief dying is not easy, nor is it fun. It hurts. It’s dark and it’s cold and I really would like some comforting from the lot of you, or at least shock. I was in shock when I woke up, and I was there. Is a moderate amount of surprise too much to ask for? Oh, I understand that this is America’s prime spot for the unusual these days, that Azazel alone makes it supernatural central, but it is not everyday people come back to life, or to be more precise, turn out to have had two bodies all along. Which is only a little strange, as far as strange happenings go. Is it strange to you?

In an alternate universe, Harvey's still a lawyer but Mike's not a pot runner -- he's a deliveryman for Rollo's Pizza and Ribs, which happens to be Harvey's favorite pizza place. Once Harvey finds out his pizza guy is a genius, Mike's life takes a few turns he would not have expected.

Alex Summers referring to anyone as ‘the kids’ makes Erik’s lips tic in a small smile. It doesn’t feel like terribly long ago when he and Charles classified Alex’s generation that way. As such, ‘the kids’ currently includes Lorna, and the conversation he had with Charles comes rushing back to his mind. He’s worked on building up trust enough to overcome his worry. He’s not sure if he’s there yet—not sure he’ll ever be. But he’s working on it. [Sequel to Progression Of A Family Portrait by Xris]

“We’ve come to take you away from here.” He’s not fooling himself. Five is significantly younger than any other child he’s taken on before. Already, he can tell it will be a battle to help her recover from past abuses. But what else can he do? He can’t leave her here. And with such an obvious mutation—no matter how benign—he can’t leave her to the casual cruelties of the world around them. “Is that all right with you?”

Erik remains standing, staring out at the orchard, taking in the view of the barn and the trees and the creek in the distance. He can probably see the children from this high, scampering around, laughing and letting off steam. The landscape, Charles knows from experience, is beautiful. Still, his eyes don't stray from Erik's profile, stark over the backdrop of bright blue skies and rolling white clouds.