Chapter Text
Bookshop
If he'd been around when Emma Lazarus had written that bit about giving her your tired and your poor, Sebastian Shaw would have added "and I will put them to work for as cheap as possible," instead of the part about the lamp and the golden door and liberty and everything.
(In fact, he might have been around back then, one of the oil or steel tycoons or a factory owner who employed five-year-olds, for "His evil is ancient," as Raven liked to say, and say often. This was because Caspartina Books might have been one of the few mutant-run businesses in Boston, and it might have been one of the few places to hire mutants preferentially, but Sebastian's sympathy for his fellow posthumans ended where his profit margin began.)
In point of fact, Sebastian Shaw did employ the wretched of the earth, namely, college students drowning in twenty credit hours and student loan debt, or people so hopeless at retail their names had actually made the unofficial blacklist circulated by local business owners.
To wit: Raven Xavier-Darkholme, whose constantly-metamorphosing hairstyles and array of piercings (to say nothing of her facial features and body type) had proven too much for her previous five employers; Sean Cassidy, whose attention span marijuana had contracted to about ten seconds (Sebastian frequently said he could see his lectures disappearing from Cassidy's memory even as he spoke); and Alex Summers, hostile and taciturn and with an employment history that included two suspicious fires and a rap sheet that included a few more.
Then there was Erik Lehnsherr, who loathed Sebastian with a passion that Sebastian found deeply gratifying – even touching – and who was more hostile and taciturn than Summers, and far more terrifying. Why he derived such satisfaction out of watching Lehnsherr stew in helpless, subordinate fury, Sebastian had no idea, but he did.
He was okay with that.
"Darling, one would think you had a point to make," Emma Frost said the first time she graced Caspartina Books with her presence after Lehnsherr came on board. She'd watched Lehnsherr stalk out of Sebastian's office, all lithe and sullen menace; the expression on her face had been disturbingly intrigued. "Did you hear what he supposedly did to one of Osborne Aerial Sciences' customers when he gave him a hard time about some custom-order glider? Chemical burns take a very long time to heal."
"Urban legend." Sebastian waved the story into insignificance.
"Well, if you need a lawyer to represent you in the inevitable pain and suffering lawsuit, Janos is busy." Emma's lips thinned. "We're currently… involved in some unpleasantness with Drake Mountain Sports, and that damned boy isn't going down without a fight."
"I have no doubt you'll carry the day, my dear," Sebastian said, and Emma smiled her terrifying smile, pristinely white with blood on her teeth already.
Privately, Sebastian had to admit Emma might – might – have had a point. There was cheap employment on one hand, because it was easy to pay eight bucks an hour to people constitutionally incapable of obtaining steady work. On the other hand, even the thought of paying thousands of dollars in settlements and lawsuits to customers traumatized by Lehnsherr's particular brand of psychopathy… Sebastian shuddered. Thousands of dollars, he thought anxiously. Times were tough for the small business person.
Lehnsherr did have one or two advantages, though, Sebastian reminded himself. He leaned back in his chair (ergonomically correct, real leather, and completely worth the overtime he'd withheld from Cassidy for screwing up a window display) and pondered the ceiling tiles and the benefits to employing someone like Erik Lehnsherr.
Advantage one: Lehnsherr was, objectively speaking, on the attractive side, with the sort of chiseled, dramatic good looks Sebastian imagined teenaged girls associated with Gothic heroes or vampires or whatever else they swooned over. At least, traffic had picked up noticeably in the ten months since Lehnsherr had started working. Sebastian had kept track of this, eliminated the influence of the holiday season (Lehnsherr had been hired, at least in part, for his willingness to work Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve) and decided that, like a good, if potentially destructive, piece of art, Lehnsherr was worth keeping around.
Advantage two, perhaps related to number one: Lehnsherr had attracted the notice of one Charles Francis Xavier, who loved books and (just as important in this context) was filthy, filthy rich.
* * *
Caspartina Books occupied an awkward corner of Brookline, far enough away from the trendy shops and restaurants to have the air of independence and neglect that drew the young people in, but close enough to seem almost too raffish next to the sleek lights and chrome of its neighbors. Even after the sea changes that other independent bookstores had undergone to compete with their national-chain rivals, Caspartina remained deliberately old-fashioned, never ventilated properly and defiantly lacking in the amenities that most people expected when they visited bookstores these days. Sebastian, torn between his love of preserving money and his love of making it, had reluctantly agreed to the addition of a reading space and some furniture, and even more reluctantly to a wireless connection – but released the code only after a four-dollar minimum purchase. He had put his foot down on the subject of an espresso bar, and flatly rejected any notion of partnering with a local baker for muffins and pastries.
"If you're up late partying and doing drugs or whatever it is you kids do nowadays, that's your problem, not mine," he told Sean, when Sean had asked about the possibility of coffee again. "And no, you're not allowed to bring coffee into the shop; you'll end up spilling it on something, and I would hate to take it out of your wages."
"What wages?" Sean had asked.
As a result, Caspartina's reluctant employees – indentured servants, Raven said – had to find other sources of entertainment. Setting up books like dominoes had ended with the three of them kept late and unpaid to reorganize all the shelves. Raven practiced her shapeshifting by transforming into carbon copies of their customers and following them around until Shaw put a stop to that, too. For a while, Sean had offered dramatic readings of the dirty parts out of the romance novels in the used-book basement, at least until he began to attract impromptu audiences consisting of curious ten-year-olds and subsequently their indignant parents. When that ended, there hadn't been much until Erik Lehnsherr came along.
"My money's on deballing," Raven said from her vantage point behind the cash desk one afternoon. A pile of used books sat mostly forgotten in front of her, a pencil tucked into a dog-eared copy of Crime and Punishment. "That guy is totally going to get deballed."
"Dude has a watch on, I vote Magneto's going to make him punch himself in the face until he's unconscious," Alex said. "Sean, what do you think?"
"I think dude's gonna wet himself and then faint," Sean said decisively. "It's what I'd do."
"It's what you've already done, you mean." Raven snickered and Alex joined in; Sean turned an interesting, humiliated shade of red.
(The incident had occurred about six months prior and involved Erik hoisting Sean up to Caspartina's roof for reasons and motives unspecified, and leaving him there.)
"What," Shaw materialized briefly from the back office and fixed them with a gimlet eye, "did I tell you about congregating around the cash desk? And Raven, I hope you're not helping the sciences students unload their literature textbooks again."
"Absolutely not, sir," Raven said. Sean and Alex shuffled back onto the floor, and Raven pretended to study the used-book pricing sheet. Shaw faded back through the door, and Raven returned to watching Erik and the customer.
The customer in question had already interrupted Erik while he'd been reorganizing the graphic novels, which were perpetually out of order, thus a perpetual thorn in Erik's side, thus guaranteed to put Lehnsherr in a bad mood, thus guaranteed to end badly for anyone who annoyed him. He'd then proceeded to ask after a book in the vaguest way possible, beginning with "I'm looking for this book… it's by some guy. Jim or Tim, I think?" and Lehnsherr had stared wordlessly at him, grip tightening on a copy of Persepolis. It was no way to treat Satrapi, and Raven winced on its behalf. The customer kept going, oblivious to impending pain, "… I think it had a black cover? Or maybe really dark blue? It's not American; like, I remember color was spelled weird."
A silence had settled around Erik, as the silence before a breaking storm. Distantly, Raven heard the door chime as someone walked in, but she had eyes – and ears – only for Erik and the foolish, doomed customer. Raven felt bad for him, but not bad enough to rescue him. This was the most fun she'd had all day.
"Do I look," Erik said, "like a damned telepath?"
"Er, no," said the customer. He backed up a step, preparing to flee; the look in Erik's eyes, a pale and inimical grey, froze him in place as effectively as if Erik had pinned him with his abilities. "Um," the customer babbled, "I – I'm very sorry for – "
"Ah, I think he means John le Carré," said a new voice. A familiar voice.
"Charles?" Raven squawked. The customer made a pathetic noise as Erik's attention shifted away from him.
"Raven! I didn't see you there." Charles tossed a smile at her over his shoulder. Raven scowled, because like hell he hadn't known she was right there, not ten feet away from him. Technically, Charles hadn't lied; he probably hadn't seen her – like, physically, with his own eyes – because he'd zeroed in on Erik the second he'd walked through the door, maybe even before that, and when Charles was around Erik the rest of the world tended to melt away for him.
"Erik, really." Inevitably, Charles's attention swiveled back to Erik again. Raven could hear the affection hidden (badly) under the veneer of disapproval and rolled her eyes.
"You did mean John le Carré," Charles said, this time to the customer, who heaved a sigh of relief and nodded furiously, too grateful for deliverance to realize he'd just had his mind read. "A Perfect Spy, I believe," Charles added after a moment and a quick telepathic look-through of the customer's brain.
"We don't have that," Erik said curtly. They actually might not – Erik's steel-trap memory meant he carried almost their entire inventory in his head – but there was also a good chance it was only Erik being difficult, encouraged by his dislike of stupid customers and his hatred of Shaw. Raven could sympathize with both these impulses. "Why don't you go to Barnes and Noble? They should carry it."
"Don't lie," Charles said with some exasperation. "Honestly, Erik."
Erik snorted unrepentantly. Raven caught the edges of Charles projecting annoyance-affection-amusement and rolled her eyes again. Watching her adopted-estranged-then-re-adopted brother trapped in Erik's orbit, like an exceptionally irritating satellite whirling around an exceptionally irritable planet, didn't qualify as entertainment. It did for Alex and Sean, who lurked in the safety of the children's section and watched Charles and Erik through the gaps in the shelves.
The customer had long since fled for the mystery section and found their one copy of A Perfect Spy. With some disappointment – she'd been hoping for bloodshed or at least a pants-wetting – Raven rang him out and watched him escape.
By the time she got back to eavesdropping on her ridiculous brother and sociopathic colleague, Charles had shepherded Erik back into the philosophy and religion section, and they'd forgotten the rest of the store existed.
Again.
Raven sighed and went back to cataloguing books from the MIT engineers' general literature course.
* * *
The problem with being a senior carrying eighteen credit hours and an internship and being a mutant who could control magnetism but not time meant that the chances for a part-time job that fit into his schedule were vanishingly small. Even worse, the positions most likely to hire him were in Erik's opinion the least desirable, requiring as they did the sort of customer service that invited abuse and entitlement, and further demanded that he interact with people who proved that acquiring money didn't need intelligence.
"It's that attitude that we don't want around here," his manager at Stryker's Sporting Goods had told him two seconds before handing him his pink slip. "It's service with a smile, not service with a grimace, or service with a restraining order." At Osborne's, he hadn't even gotten that; his manager had told him that the customer wouldn't press charges so long as Erik was fired immediately and then agreed to sign a sworn statement promising he would never set foot in an Osborne's store again, ever.
In the small circle of Cambridge-area mutants, Caspartina Books had a reputation as a place that would hire mutants without the hand-wringing, extra precautions, and subtle threats that came with being employed in human-dominant establishments. Its owner also had a reputation for being a slave driver, but faced with ramen for the third week in a row and his tenth consecutive tacit rejection from an employer, Erik realized he wasn't in a position to be picky.
He had loathed Shaw at first sight, because that was how the universe conspired against him: to put him in the power of a megalomaniac who had no qualms about exploiting his workforce.
"You'll start at eight dollars an hour," Shaw had said, after a glance at Erik's resume and an abortive call to Osborne's (apparently, the manager had hung up on him when Shaw mentioned he had called regarding Erik Lehnsherr). "And you'll stay at eight dollars an hour, probably forever or until you graduate and try to do something with yourself. And I hope you don't want the holidays off to visit your family."
"No," Erik said, the short version of I don't have any family.
"Good." The smile Shaw had offered him had been razor-thin and far from friendly; his handshake had the forced, strangling quality of a man overcompensating for a lack of decency. "You can start tomorrow; I just had to fire someone for being incredibly disappointing."
So, things had begun badly and continued downward.
Then, improbably, Charles Xavier had manifested himself in Erik's life, all cheerful blue eyes and cold-reddened nose above a ludicrously thick Dr. Who scarf. He then proceeded to insinuate himself in every corner of Erik's thoughts, well before Erik knew what was going on and certainly well before he had any chance to object.
"He's not letting you write staff recommendations anymore?" Charles asked now, not bothering to hide his amusement. He was holding the little card from the last book Erik had been allowed to review, and read it through his laughter. "'The Help: a self-indulgent narrative that will appeal to white people who want to feel enlightened about their racial attitudes without having to talk to a person who isn't white.'"
"That's a recommendation, isn't it?" Erik shoved ten issues of Inu-Yasha into place. "I identify a target audience and tell them why they should buy it."
"I suppose that's better than what you wrote for Going Rogue," Charles said, "As I recall, it went something along the lines of '''Don't read this book.'"
"Also a recommendation," Erik said. "It's a recommendation not to read that book."
Charles beamed at him, like Erik's contrariness was merely an endearing quirk, and his thoughts spilled over with the sort of unreserved delight that both warmed Erik straight through and mystified him to no end. It made Erik want impossible things – or worse, things that were in fact possible, and this was worse because Erik suspected he'd have no idea what to do with Charles once he had him, and that it would all end badly. That Charles didn't think the same, hovering fearlessly close and even reorganizing a few issues Erik hadn't bothered to order properly, suggested that Charles knew and didn't care.
"Just because you can read minds doesn't mean that you understand people ," Erik grumbled. He knelt to shove a handful of Sailor Moons onto the lowest shelf, next to Vampire Hunter D. He tried to glare up at Charles, but Charles only hummed and smiled back down at him. Next to Erik’s face, Charles’s jeans-clad leg was unexpectedly warm. Erik tried to steer his thoughts away from being thisclose to Charles and tamp down on his hormones' clamoring over how he was in fact kneeling at Charles's feet, searched for his utter hatred for Shaw for keeping him late and dragged it up.
Charles sighed. "Are you doing anything tonight?"
Erik stood up and straightened, wincing at a twinge low in his back. "Shaw has me doing inventory."
"Until when?"
"Until he stops being a bastard, how the hell should I know?" With his power, Erik directed the book trolley further down the aisle to the RPG manuals. They were in even worse shape than the manga. "Why?"
"I was thinking we could, I don't know, hang out." Charles had gone a bit red around the edges and was looking at Erik as though, for the first time since they'd met, he didn't quite know what to make of him. Erik, quite against his will, found himself softening. "My comp reading is rather miserable right now."
Erik deliberately ignored Raven's encouraging and completely unsubtle nodding and concentrated on the fact that Charles was two years younger than he was and already halfway through his doctorate. "I've got early labs tomorrow," he said gruffly, when it became clear Charles wasn't going to go away.
"I was thinking Zaftig's," Charles said, dismissing early labs tomorrow with an elaborate sort of casualness that made Erik want to break something. And worse, Charles knew how much he liked that place.
"I really can't," Erik said, even though it was futile at this point.
Charles waved off all considerations of Erik's busy schedule. "Raven says Shaw never stays for inventory," he said, "so give me a tap when he's gone and I'll come by. You like the brisket, right?"
"Fine," Erik grunted. He did like Zaftig's brisket, but he refused to think about that. "Whatever."
"Splendid!" As though he hadn't just basically forced Erik to agree to dinner – hanging out, Erik told himself, not a date, and if Charles was going to be annoying about it at least Erik was getting a free dinner out of it all – Charles clapped him on the arm. "I'll see you later then."
* * *
They met like this:
Caspartina Books, as a well-known mutant owned-and-run establishment, worried rather less than most stores about shoplifting. Raven could shift into the guise of an ordinary customer and wander the stacks to keep an eye on things, and if anyone did try to make off with a book, Erik could grab them by any handy bit of metal and magnet them to a bike stand or lamppost. Upon being notified, Shaw would sink the fear of God – or, really, Shaw himself – into them before calling the police and calmly informing the culprit that they could expect civil damages as well.
This did not necessarily stop people – particularly young people, and even more particularly young stupid people – from trying.
As with most things that benefited Caspartina and Shaw, Erik was of two minds. Given that it was Shaw, Erik would have happily let people help themselves to Caspartina's stock all day long, but encouraging (or not discouraging) theft also encouraged disorder and, at least in the kids who took Caspartina as some kind of challenge, a level of stupidity that offended Erik personally. When Shaw announced after the theft of six used copies of Like Water for Chocolate that "unplanned losses" to the bookshop's inventory would be deducted from the staff's wages, Erik found himself even more reluctantly on the right side of the law.
The moron that fateful day had been a human kid, old enough to know what he was doing was foolish, prowling through the photography section and taking up too much space in his massive winter coat. Erik had had an eye on him from the beginning, but the kid had been keeping watch too and in the space between Erik turning to reshelve some Vonnegut and turning back around, he'd snatched something off the shelf and stuffed it in his jacket and started to make for the door.
Erik discovered this when another customer, in navy pea coat and immense Dr. Who scarf, stepped around an endcap and the boy froze.
Really, he froze – only a moment, but Erik saw it, the stillness of utterly suspended movement, one leg still reaching forward before the boy, unfrozen, caught himself and pulled up short. The customer studied both of them silently, offered a private smile to Erik before reaching casually into the would-be thief's jacket and pulling out a shrink-wrapped hardback volume.
"Ellen von Unsworth," the customer murmured as he inspected the cover. "Excellent taste, but I'm afraid the law rather frowns on theft. And how old are you?"
"Sixteen," the boy snapped. He made a startled noise, strained against the invisible bonds holding him and failed to break them. At the customer's disappointed expression, he mumbled, "Fourteen."
Erik was reluctantly impressed.
"Of course, Jeremy." The customer smiled gently and tucked von Unsworth under his arm. "Your appreciation of the aesthetics of the erotic feminine body ought to be commended, but as I said…" His eyes were impossibly blue, compelling when they locked on Erik. "I believe you ought to have a discussion with – with Erik here, regarding better ways to support the work of artists you enjoy."
Telepath. The word flickered through Erik's consciousness, followed by a swift, sweet skim of approval. He flushed. If you don't mind waiting here a moment, the voice in his head said, I believe we can get this all sorted. Caught between his annoyance at having to summon Shaw and bemusement at meeting a twenty-year-old who talked like he'd stepped out Masterpiece Theatre, Erik could only nod.
"Now, Jeremy, as this is the first time you've tried this," the customer – Charles, I'm Charles – said, "I'm sure Erik here would be willing to forgive you and let you off with a warning."
Erik opened his mouth to contest that, because he wasn't prepared to overlook attempted theft much less forgive it, but what came out was a grudging, "Sure."
Charles's magnanimous expression shifted to something a bit more steely. "It would also be nice to hear an apology, Jeremy."
"Sorry," Jeremy grumbled, not sounding particularly repentant. He shot a frightened look at Charles and with somewhat more sincerity repeated himself.
"Good man," Charles said. He let go of Jeremy, who bolted for the door and vanished into the foot traffic beyond it.
Charles handed the book back to Erik, who took it automatically.
"Thanks."
"You're quite welcome." The smile Charles offered him was brilliant and intimate, and ignited a certain warmth somewhere deep in Erik's gut, something Erik found (to his immense annoyance) he was powerless against. If Charles was eavesdropping, he gave no sign of it, only continued to regard Erik with those striking eyes of his and said, "Raven told me Shaw likes making you suffer." The smile became rather more mischievous. "She also told me you used to demagnetize people's credit cards."
"Not all the time." Raven? Charles seemed far too nice to be her type. Not that it mattered, Erik told himself; he wasn't interested, no matter what curiosity and hormones said to the contrary. "Just when people deserved it, and only until Shaw worked it out."
(One customer had been his downfall, one exceptionally irritating customer who'd had five cards with him and refused to believe Erik when Erik said he couldn't enter card numbers manually. Shaw had been summoned, and that had been it.)
"I only came by to give Raven some things," Charles was saying, "but it was nice meeting you, Erik." The low, sweet buzz flickered around him again – like something soft settling around his shoulders, or the sun on a warm day, or the attentive hum of metal – before it went away, along with Charles.
When Erik allowed himself to go back at the cashdesk – two minutes after Charles left, not that he was watching the entire time or hoping for Charles to look at him again (which Charles did) – Raven was guarding a paper bag from the attentions of Sean and Alex, fending them both off with a snarl and, abruptly, six-inch long claws.
"Truffles," she said, when Erik asked, and even offered him one. When Sean and Alex protested this, she said, "At least he asked," and as Erik nibbled dubiously at the chocolate, added, "Charles brings them by sometimes; I can't get them these days."
"Oh, really?" Erik grunted. The chocolate melted into powder and stickiness on his tongue. He tried not to think about how, suddenly, the sweetness went bitter in his mouth. The wrapper in his hand resonated faintly, real gold alloyed with cheaper metals in the foil, something you'd buy for someone you knew – intimately. Erik's mind shuddered with resentment.
"So," he said, once he got the rest of the chocolate down, "does Charles always do that? Barge in with his – ?" Erik gestured to indicate mind powers.
"Oh, always," Raven assured him, fond irritation coloring her words. "When I started dating, he'd vet everyone I brought home – I mean everyone, even the girls from my soccer team." Erik blinked, wondering how they'd gone from the Charles who was involved with Raven to the Charles who was – "Older brothers are annoying, but telepathic older brothers… I don't think there's a word to describe the level of irritation."
"Older brother, huh?" Erik asked nonchalantly, and out of all the emotions that cycled through him, relief was definitely not among them. Interest certainly wasn't, nor were speculations on ways to learn when Charles might be in again.
Raven gave him an arch look, arch enough that Erik wondered if maybe some of Charles's telepathy hadn't rubbed off on her. Grumbling to himself, he levitated one more truffle out of the bag to save for later, and went back to reshelving.
* * *
When he'd been younger, Charles believed that humanity offered an almost inexhaustible fund of creativity, passion, experience, and perspective. So much difference, so many identities crowding around, so many voices competing to be heard. The mind was a kaleidoscope, endlessly intriguing in the patterns it created and re-created, and he thought he should be able to spend lifetimes studying them.
Along with hormones (and an absent growth spurt), growing up brought with it the realization that most people were, well, boring. Add in the endless list of restrictions placed on telepaths by a hyper-paranoid society, a list that limited any meaningful contact to surface thoughts and particularly strong or broadcast emotions, and boring only began to describe the utter, quotidian sameness of the human mind.
The more he thought about it, Charles decided that boring wasn't a moral judgment, or a judgment of worth. For that matter, boring wasn't precisely the right word, although it had seemed that way in the six months or so of rebellion he'd allowed himself at sixteen. It was simply years of socialization and acculturation and expectation, and where minds might differ in a few things – like variations on a piano piece, the subtle touches that distinguish one player from another – overall they were, more or less, the same. People's thoughts ran along the same general track, preoccupied with the day-to-day; where they stood out was in the small places – a woman sighing as her favorite piece of music hit its crescendo, the struggle between what the mind wanted and what the world said was acceptable and that transcendent moment of saying the hell with it and giving in to the former, that sort of thing.
Difference was a rare bird. Every now and then a mind came along that was like an undiscovered country, and Charles tended to fall in love with them. Or, Raven said tartly when Charles tried to explain it to her after he first met Erik, with their neurotransmitters, which was not precisely the same thing.
"That explains Erik, though," she mused. "You probably don't get to see someone that certifiable allowed outside."
"That's not very fair, darling."
"Don't 'darling' me," Raven said ominously.
At the time, Charles had desperately wanted to explain to Raven that Erik hadn't, in fact, been planning to use Jeremy's skull as a hat (which was what Alex and Sean apparently believed). Mostly, he'd only wanted to terrify the kid into wetting himself every time he even thought about shoplifting, or paralyze him with fear long enough to call the police. It occurred to him that maybe Erik liked it that way: while Erik wasn't precisely a creampuff encased in a layer of hostile, temperamental steel, he had that hostility and temperament for a reason. He probably cultivated it, Charles thought after Raven had huffed off and left him to gaze dreamily at his ceiling, like other people cultivated plants, or hobbies.
Then, Charles reminded himself, there was the additional difficulty of Erik actually believing he was this person. It violated all sorts of ethical codes – and, you know, laws – to know these things about Erik, the things that got pressed deep down where most people didn't have to think about them if they didn't want to. Those tended to be the things that came out in dreams, or were dragged up now and then in unguarded moments. Charles had his own blind spots, but it was hard being blind to other people, even when they were blind to themselves.
Working out that he was in love with Erik – and not just… neurotransmitter lust, or whatever – had been easy.
And Erik was in love with him, or at least partway to being there, but like everything else with Erik, it was snarled up in a complex of mistrust, anger, and independence, and what Charles decided was pure, simple bloody-mindedness. It had been easy to work that out, too.
That Erik was aware of his mental gymnastics but was also refusing to acknowledge them – that was the rub. It chafed at Charles, nearly to distraction.
"Generally speaking," Raven said when they'd been curled up on her tiny couch one night, after he'd done something ill-advised and told her about Erik, "people don't like it when you tell them things they haven't figured out yet, or don't want to admit to themselves. It's just a thought."
"You always say that, and it always ends up being true," Charles said mournfully. "Why, though?"
"If you figure it out, you'll get the Nobel for That's The Way Things Are Studies." Raven's arms tightened around him, her scales sliding slick-smooth against his skin. "Also, I'm pretty sure most people still don't like having their minds read. So, if you want to get in my psychotic coworker's pants, you'll have to do it the hard way, I'm afraid."
"They've had sixty years to get used to it," Charles groused, deciding discrimination against telepaths was a safer topic than Erik. "My grandfather was a well-known telepath and – "
"Preaching to the choir," Raven butted in, "and the choir is bored. Now hand me the remote, my shows are on."
So it was that his and Erik's most recent conversation had led to this: Charles lurking in a coffee shop a block away from Caspartina, paying half a mind to his coffee and scone. The other half – rather more than half, really, a thirty-seventy split – hovered over Erik's shoulder, a mental finger's-breadth from brushing the skin of Erik's thoughts. It probably moved him into the creepy stalker side of the spectrum, and Raven would have words to say about it if she ever found out (oh would she have words, and she would find out somehow), but for Charles, there wasn't much of a difference between standing five feet away and sitting five hundred – or five miles – if he didn't want there to be.
That, and he was helplessly fascinated by Erik, he had to admit; Erik with his thoughts as undeviating as railway tracks, single-minded determination and practicality a scaffold of iron and steel that gave structure to the deep, upsurging well of passion, anger, and conviction. Erik wasn't particularly nice – he wasn't nice at all, if Charles were being completely honest with himself – but he was good, good in a way that didn't require niceness to exist, not the cloying, angelic sort of goodness, but the kind that its owner refused to acknowledge he might even have. Charles knew from Raven's reports that Erik had, despite his status as relative newcomer, taken over leadership of the young mutants of the Caspartina, and stood up for them as much out of his concern for them as his dislike (well, complete and utter loathing) of Shaw. He had an instinctive hatred of injustice and the sort of stupidity that allowed it to exist, and under the hostility and aloofness, a yearning for something like the family he didn't have anymore.
Like most people he wanted to belong, but the fiercely-ignored ache of that wanting – that, that was different.
On any other day, and faced with someone other than Erik, Charles would puzzle over the contradiction of how it was possible to be a fundamentally good, but not a decent, person. On this particular day, he was mostly absorbed in following along as Erik reorganized the biography section, finding himself caught in eddies of disapproval as Erik wondered why, even in a mutant-owned bookstore, there were so few biographies of mutants, or decent, unsensationalized mutant histories, or even children's books on how to cope with manifesting abilities.
Here we are, more than fifty years after mutants were first recognized by the world and we still can't help kids understand themselves. A few random thoughts bubbled up, half-formed meditations on Erik writing some of those books himself, I wish I'd had someone to help me figure this shit out, before Erik discarded them in a flurry of impatience and reminders that he had enough work to do, and anyway, he wasn't a writer. The thoughts returned anyway, flitting idly around the margins of Erik's brain, making inroads when boredom overwhelmed Erik's ability to concentrate on his work.
Charles felt Shaw leave, not so much perceiving him directly as catching the contrails of finally and relief that poured off Erik and the rest of the staff. Sean, his psychic presence a haze not unlike marijuana smoke in the corner of Charles's awareness, left a few minutes later with Alex in tow. This left Raven, who seemed determined to stay, so determined that Charles gave serious thought to nudging her gently out the door. Erik beat him to it, with a pointed remark about calculus homework and a failing grade.
He wasn't paying close enough attention to catch Raven's retort, but even on the edges of Erik's mind he found himself caught in tides of desire-affection-embarrassment before a wave of impatience covered over everything else. It shocked Charles back to himself and the coffee shop – which was in the process of closing, and whose barista was spiky with irritation – and even the heat of Erik's annoyance with himself couldn't quite mask the softer warmth that had been the briefest image of himself through the lens of Erik's liking him: animated hands and eyes, the ghostly overlay that was Erik's split-second hypothesis of what it might be like to kiss Charles on the mouth.
With the barista glowering over his shoulder, Charles pulled out his phone and dialed Zaftig's.
* * *
Erik desultorily pulled up the purchase and sale records for the past week. Shaw, devoted to sadism in all its forms, used an antiquated inventory program, one that froze and needed hours to update its numbers – deliberately, Erik suspected – and in league with the equally-antiquated printer, meant that a simple two-hour task might need as much as four.
Charles, he reminded himself, careful to keep the thought in his own head. What difference that might make to Charles, he had no idea; laws or no laws, Charles probably had his own ideas of what constituted acceptable telepathic behavior.
That he was not more irritated by this mystified Erik to no end. The mystification, however – that irritated him. A lot.
He tore the information on biography/autobiography off the printer and stalked through the now-silent store through to the shelves. Charles, his brain reminded him as he tried to concentrate on counting, and hounded him from Alcott through to Twain, interrupting him at Marie Curie for a meditation on Charles half-drowned in his Dr. Who scarf, and then again at Magnus Eisenhardt (shelved under M for Magneto, one of the precious few mutant biographies, and a personal hero of Erik's) for a consideration of the dizzying power Charles had to have, if he could use his telepathy to hold Erik down, or if he'd be able to whisper filthy thoughts right into Erik's brain while Erik tried to concentrate on his labwork.
"Fuck," he muttered. Charles was a distraction from, well, everything: the need to get his work done and graduate, the need to get through inventory so Shaw would stay off his back for another day. Shifting, he checked off Nelson Mandela (immediately after Magneto) and absently skimmed his way through to Twain, not seeing the titles on the spines so much as seeing Charles pushed up against the shelves, panting and twisting happily against him, and he'd be good, really good, Erik knew – he'd know everything, know how Erik liked the other person pushing into his mouth, and fingers holding firm at the back of his neck, and Charles would tell Erik what he liked, too, if he liked Erik pressing one thigh between his legs or if the subtle dip of his spine was really as sensitive as it looked.
Charles, Erik thought helplessly, nearly breathless.
Be there in a tick, Charles replied, sounding thoroughly composed – except, except, Erik thought, maybe for a telepathic breathlessness of his own.