xmen_firstkink

poptartmuse

Because every fandom needs one.

Option one: dueling used bookstores, run by Erik and Charles. They each send various scouts (Raven, Azazel, etc.) to check out the competition, only to find that the competition is not only hot, but also incredibly fond of Gatsby and the Lost Generation. Cue blind dates/book swaps/attempting to out-recommend the other, with a happy ending (perhaps a store merge?).

Option two: Erik is the disgruntled customer, and Charles is the bemused, far-too-smart-to-be-normal bookshop owner. Charles makes recommendations, Erik scoffs at them but secretly enjoys them. Eventually they fall in love and everyone has hearts in their eyes.

one - in which erik is a single father and charles tries to get him to read huxley
"Charles. Seriously, Charles."

Charles looked up from his comparison charts (out-of and back-dated stock; reorganising the shelving for optimum sales opportunity; profits and loss based on previous orders around the holiday season) to see Raven leaning around his office doorframe in a manner that she evidently thought was at least a little surreptitious; Charles thought that she should really be old enough by now to know that hanging into a room by your fingertips didn't really allow you to blend in.

"What, Raven?" He rubbed a thumb against the groove between his eyebrows. It had been a long day already, and he still had several tedious, paper-work filled hours ahead of him. Just the thought alone was enough to tighten his headache.

"There is the cutest guy in the shop." She beamed at him, practically sparking mischief and glee. "Like, you would not believe."

"Okay," he said, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head forwards to look up at her, a habit picked up from a university professor who would glare at his students over the top of his glasses. "And you're telling me this, because..."

Raven gave him her 'don't shit with me, Xavier' look. "He's hot. You're sexually frustrated. It's meant to be."

"Raven!" he started, equal parts shocked and embarrassed (always, always, by her upfront manner, because she will forever be the lost little girl he hid in his wardrobe and snuck food to before the fire).

"Charles!" she mimicked, and rolled her eyes at him. "Seriously, though, he looks like he could use some -" she waggled her fingers at him, "scholarly intervention."

"Innuendo is banned," he told her, but pushed himself to his feet and made his way past precariously-stacked piles of paper and lovingly-wrapped, carefully-stored first editions that needed specialist repair work before they could be sold to shove her gently back into the shop.

"Tell that to Sean," she retorted, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she bounced back to the front desk.

Charles stepped out onto the shop floor, and looked about him for the mysterious customer that Raven was so insistent that he talk to. There was a figure lingering around the science fiction section, and, seeing as the shop was otherwise deserted, logic dictated that it could only be him. Of course, logic and Raven rarely went hand-in-hand, Charles was willing to overlook the universal errancy, just the once.

The man was taller than Charles by a good half head, in slacks and a leather jacket; and was running one long finger down the spine of the Cauvet-Duhamel translation of We. He had excellent posture.

"You might want to try this," Charles said, pulling Brave New World off the opposite shelf. The man whipped around so fast Charles was amazed that he didn't crick his neck. "If you liked Zamyatin."

The man glanced down at the book in Charles' outstretched hand, and quirked an eyebrow at it. "I cannot buy that," he said, eyes flicking up to meet Charles' gaze. "The language is filthy."

Charles grinned, delighted. "Not as bad as Fanny Hill," he said, cheerfully. "Am I to assume you've already read this, then?" He twitched his wrist, indicating the book.

"No," the man said, shaking his head firmly. "I was once subjected to Crome Yellow, which was more than enough, thank you."

"But this," Charles pressed, still smiling; and fairly certain that he caught a glimmer of amusement in the other man's eyes to match his own, "is a seminal piece of English literature."

"All the more reason to avoid it," he replied. "I have little faith in critics."

Charles laughed, and extended his hand. "Charles Xavier," he said. When the other seemed hesitant to reciprocate, he added, "how about I stop trying to sell you Huxley, in exchange for your name?"

The man grinned, a quick flash of teeth, and took his hand. "Erik Lehnsherr."

"Well, Erik," Charles said, enjoying the way the name rolled off his tongue. "How about I make you a cup of tea, and we'll try to find a middle ground between Zamyatin and Huxley. I don't doubt you've read Nineteen Eighty-Four?"

"Naturally," Erik said, checking his watch distractedly. "And I'm afraid I can't stay. I need to collect my children. From school."

"Oh." Well. That was not what Charles had been expecting, at all; it threw him, somewhat, although he was certain that he was still in with a shot at this man. He himself, after all, enjoyed the company of both men and women; why should it be so surprising to him that someone in his peer group should have children? "Well," he said, recovering swiftly, knowing how appearing shocked can make someone feel uncomfortable, "do come back soon, Erik. I would love to debate further the merits and demerits of dystopian literature with you."

Erik blinked at him, surprised, before smiling again, the expression genuine and slowly spreading across his face. "Of course," he said. "I still need to buy a book," he added. "It would be wonderful to own something that wasn't made of cardboard and wax paper again."

Erik left, and Raven appeared at Charles' shoulder, buzzing with interest and excitement.

"So?" she asked, dragging out the vowel. "What was he like? Did you get his number? Are you going on a date?"

"Raven," Charles said; "you really have to stop getting overexcited every time I talk to a customer you deem aesthetically-pleasing."

"But I'm all about the aesthetics," Raven said, cocking her head and grinning at him. Charles sighed, long-suffering.

"We spoke for all of five minutes," he said, "during which I discovered that he doesn't like Huxley –"

"Sacrilege!" Raven cried, clutching her heart.

"His name is Erik and he has children."

A beat. "Erik, huh?" Raven said, and Charles smiled at her determined effort to ignore the fact that Erik was a father and that almost certainly poked holes in all of Raven's plans to tie him to a horse and send him off into the sunset. "Just Erik, or is there an equally mysterious surname?"

"Lehnsherr." Charles rolled his eyes as Raven smirked lecherously.

"Oh, I see," she said. "German. You always did like the Nords." The door tinkled open, and she spun about to return to the front desk; the shop was rather haphazardly organised, seeing as Charles had based it upon his own personal categorising system, and Raven and Hank tended to file things into their own subsections without consulting either him or each other, and thus she as almost always required to direct an unfortunate customer to the section they were after was located (which, sometimes and more often than not, was in more than one place).

"Germany is not part of Scandinavia!" Charles called after her. She ignored him, and he wondered when he had joined his bookshelves as background furniture.

"Never mind, my loves," he said, under his breath, glancing sideways (Ourika and Breakfast of Champions; a combination that pained Hank, who liked to organise alphabetically within the subset, and annoyed Raven, who would have to direct a customer from one side of the shop to another to find The Cannibal or Player Piano. He had been meaning to get in more stock for her and Hank to arrange the more popular novels as they chose, but he kept getting distracted by Moira's latest discoveries from her grandfather's attic – including, most delightfully, a first-edition of Berkeley's New Theory of Vision). "You understand that not everything is about sex. Well," he added, touching the binding of The Trumpet-Major as he passed, "maybe not you, Hardy."

His gaze fell upon Wyndham (Raven had refused to let Triffids onto the shop floor for years, until the Harbinson adaptation forced her to reconcile her differences with Wyndham and try and force people to read the original). The Chrysalids was only a short novel, the shelf-copy a hardback by necessity, but it still fitted neatly into his hand. He ran the pad of his thumb down the closed pages, feeling the paper whisper across his skin, and smiled.

"Raven!" he called. "I'll be in my office if you need me!"

She waved over her shoulder with one hand, nose buried in Shevchenko with reference dictionaries spread across her desk, mouthing the words slowly and carefully to herself as she cross-checked with the English translation he had given her for her birthday.

Still smiling, he wound his way back to his desk. His charts were still open, tables and colour-coding blinking up at him from off-white recycled paper (Hank bought the stationary), and he looked at them for a moment or two, considering just how important it was that he finish the accounts that day.

Opening his desk drawer, he slid the papers into it. Not enough, he thought, flipping open his notebook and uncapping his pen.

He wrote the title across the top of the page in neat, precise handwriting, pausing momentarily to consider what Raven's reaction would be should she find it, and deciding that she probably already knew. He finished the title, and settled back in his chair, casting his gaze about his office.


"Recommendations for Erik," Raven read aloud, when the six of them were eating dinner in the shop's tiny kitchen, sitting knee-to-knee and elbow-to-elbow around the table.

"Who's Erik?" Alex asked, smirking at Charles around his fork.

"Viking god who came in the shop today," Raven said, promptly, before Charles could respond.

"How was work?" Charles asked, pointedly changing the subject. The four of them grinned at him, but let it pass.

"Fine," Sean said, shrugging. "Alex didn't get into a fight, I didn't break anything. All in all, a good day."

Charles laughed into his tea. "Good," he said.

"That's what I said," Sean said, the corner of his mouth cantering up despite himself. The others groaned and Alex threw a crust of his bread at his head.

"What're you going to recommend for him, then?" Hank asked.

"Traitor," Charles said, but he was smiling. "I thought you were supposed to be on my side."

"Geeks unite!" Sean and Alex high-fived.

"Well?" Raven prompted, raising an eyebrow at her brother.

"We're all on tenterhooks," Sean said.

"He seemed to like dystopian fiction," Charles said, unable to keep the slightly defensive tone from his voice and not entirely sure why, "so it's things like Bradbury and Nabokov."

"And Karp and Dick," Alex said, having stolen the list from Raven. Sean snorted. "Trying to send subliminal messages, are we, Charles?"

Charles squinted at him, confused. "I understand 'dick'," he said, "but what on Earth has 'carp' got to do with innuendo?"

"I thought that was banned," Hank said.

"Only on the shop floor," Alex said.

"I checked," Sean added. "On your list. So there."


Charles' flat was situated above the bookstore, both for convenience and cost; a lot of his family fortune had been poured into renovating the books that he had already owned and purchasing others to fill the gap in his collection. Much of what remained he had in a trust fund for Raven, in case anything should happen to him, or to the business.

(Sometimes, when they hadn't had a good month, he would pay her out of this money, and then would be wracked with guilt for weeks afterwards until the shop had gleaned enough to replace her wages.)

Luckily, Charles' natural sales ability and Raven's keen business sense had kept them above board so far; that, and their fortuitous friendship with Hank McCoy, who had stammered and blushed his way through their first encounter (because Raven had appeared, perpetually curious, at Charles' shoulder, clad only in a towel and still dripping from the shower) but had made himself invaluable without really seeming to mean to. He maintained the electricals and always managed to fix the boiler within an hour, no matter how loud Thunder Horse had been galloping; he and Charles would sit up for hours over synthesising an appropriate synthetic binder-glue and Rousseau. Raven flirted with him, gently and evidently charmed by his blushing awkwardness, but Charles was fairly certain that it hadn't gone any further than that.

Charles had never really thought that he would ever need anybody more than just Raven; that their flat would ever feel a little too big (not that it had any right too, as Raven pointed out on many occasions, what with all the piles of books and old newspapers and requests from rich, distant people for something particularly rare). It wasn't that he didn't enjoy the company of others – his university days were more than testament enough to that; he had just never expected to wish for it.

Whilst Raven had probably had more to do with it than anything, Charles found Hank working his way deeper into the groove of their lives, slotting into the shop like he was made for it; like he was something that it had been missing all along. He brought a different energy to the place, although Raven despaired of having two obsessives to cajole to eat and sleep. He shuffled into their lives with multiple degrees and a genius level IQ and a deep, passionate love of knowledge that had thrummed against Charles' from their first conversation.

(It was supposed to have been an interview, following the advert that Raven had placed in the window – without Charles' prior knowledge or consent – for an extra pair of hands around the shop; but had rapidly dissolved into an argument about whether Darwin's religious background influenced The Origins of the Species and his prior and subsequent writings upon evolution, and had furthered into a debate over whether science and religion could ever lie comfortably side by side.

Charles had taken pro, quoting Einstein – 'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind'; whereas Hank had argued that they were too far opposed, despite how close they might be in all actuality, and that as much as they would wish it, they would never reconcile the differences between them; and he cited the monkey trial. They would have continued, Charles didn't doubt, long into the night, if it hadn't been for a loud bang and the lights flaring out, followed by Raven's call of "oops!" down the staircase.)

And then, he had gone out of town for work, to track down a particularly elusive copy of de La Fayette; and, upon his return, he discovered that Raven and Hank had adopted a pair of brothers, who stared at him with thin, shadowed faces when he had entered the kitchen. Raven had looked from them to him, and tilted her chin up defiantly.

He took in the look of fierce independence that the elder of the two was aiming at him, one that was only ever based on insecurity and lack of trust, and the way that he was sitting with his body angled protectively towards his dark-haired sibling; the way that Hank was hovering nervously in the background, knee twitching within his slacks and hands twisted in his pockets, glancing repeatedly between the boys and Charles. He saw the evidence of multiple breaks of the elder's nose, the bruises that faded out of his hairline, the thinness of the younger's arms and the depth of his eyes.

He hung up his mackintosh on the hanger behind the door, kissed Raven on the cheek and stole her half-drunk cup of tea.

"Chips for dinner?" he asked, leaning against the counter.

Scott clearly had no memory of having chips before, if either he or his brother ever had, and he dug into the salty, greasy newspaper cone with a kind of unconstrained wonder and awe, his eyes half-closing as he sucked on his burned fingers. Stream rose from their little huddle, standing on the pavement outside the chip shop, bathed in the yellow-white light of the fluorescents and breathing in air thick with the scent of salt and vinegar.

Alex had been wary of the food, reluctant to begin eating; but he had started once he saw that Charles, Raven and Hank were all tucking in. He ate like he was afraid that someone was going to take his food away from him (and, Charles mused, watching him out of his peripheral vision, that wasn't necessarily far-fetched), shoulders hunched over the food and body angled automatically to shield Scott.

They finished, and the empty, grease-sodden paper was tossed into the nearest bin; Scott looked up at Alex with purposefully wide eyes, because they were obviously heavy, and he put an arm around his brother's shoulders.

"I trust you've got a room made up for them?" Charles said, voice low in Raven's ear. She flushed, slightly, but her voice when she spoke was stubborn, offensive, defensive.

"Is that going to be a problem?"

He pulled her towards him with one arm, and pressed a kiss into the hair above her ear.

"Not at all, darling. If you do it again, though, I'd appreciate a heads-up."

Raven smiled, slid her own arm around his waist as they lead the way back to the flat.

"Is this what we're doing now?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him, keeping her voice low enough for the words to be indistinguishable to the boys that followed behind. "Taking in needy teenagers? Because you might want to worry about getting a reputation."

Charles laughed, the sound sudden and unexpected and almost too loud in the quiet, bouncing back to them off the sharp edges of silhouetted buildings and the cold, crisp shadows within doorways and lining alleys.


"I think it's a little late to be worrying about my reputation," he said, and Raven snorted. "Although I do appreciate the concern."

She tightened his grip on his waist, leaning her head on his shoulder, and they stepped in time down the darkened streets.


Honestly, despite the sudden arrival of Alex and Scott, Charles hadn't thought that there would ever be a similar incident; but he hadn't anticipated Sean, who had appeared from the neighbouring roof one evening, whilst Charles was taking a cigarette. He had landed badly, stumbling forwards and scraping one knee against the stone before shoving himself roughly to his feet. He stopped, abruptly, upon seeing Charles.

His face was bloodied, his lip split open and leaking down his chin and one eye dark and swelling shut. He was very pale, and in the half-light from the waxing crescent moon his freckles stood out in harsh contrast against his almost-luminous skin. Charles met his gaze, just as surprised, until the boy's head jerked around over his shoulder at the sounds of pursuit.

"Do you want to come inside?" Charles asked, pleasantly. The boy spat blood onto the ground at his feet and squinted up at him.

"Why?" he asked, after a moment.

Charles eyed his injuries pointedly. "Head wounds bleed an awful lot," he said. "You don't have to. Just an offer to patch you up and get some food inside you. Get you sober. Then, you can be on your way, if you like."

He'd hesitated, visibly, balancing on the balls of his feet and Charles had been almost certain that he was going to bolt, before he'd nodded and taken several nervous steps forward.

"I don't trust you," he'd told Charles, as he held the door open to allow the boy to go first. "Just so you know."

"That's fine," Charles said. "I wouldn't expect you to."

Even so, he wasn't exactly surprised to find Sean curled up on the sofa in the morning, snoring gently into the crook on his elbow; but he was gratified.

"I thought this wasn't becoming a thing," Raven said, when she appeared ten minutes later.

"I believe I said that I wasn't worried about my reputation," Charles answered.


He didn't ask where they came from. It didn't matter. Hank, he knew, was so crippled with student debts that he had been living in a bedsit about five metres square; but Alex and Scott never said where they'd come from before Hank had found them being harassed by a police officer and had intervened. Sean never spoke of why he had been running across rooftops in the dead of night, beaten up and high as a kite.

It didn't matter and, after a little while, the others came to realise this as well. Alex started laughing. Sean would balance fruit on his nose. Scott would sit on Charles' lap to be read The Snow Queen or Peter Pan or The Woman In White, and the others would inexplicably appear in the lounge whenever he did, to listen to the story even whilst pretending that they really, really weren't.

His life sat in a happy, contented glow at the bottom of his stomach; and he wondered if this was what it felt like, what the books always alluded to but Charles had never understood.

Family. Home. All the things he'd craved as a child and thrown himself into fiction and schoolwork in order to escape the way that his mother found him irksome to her social life, to the way that Kurt had swooped into his home – his father's house – and replaced everything that Charles should have been with himself and Cain. Everything that he'd thought when Raven had broken into his kitchen and he would have promised her anything, in that moment, to ensure that she would stay.

(And then his mother had died and Raven had curled around him in his bed as he shuddered with not-tears; and then the fire had ripped through the basement and Cain had gone back to his mother, and Charles had gone to boarding school with his trust fund and Raven as his sister, and it had all been perfect.)

He'd had to catch himself several times, when coming down the stairs and hearing them laughing in the kitchen, or when walking down the hall and seeing the empty bedrooms steadily filling with things and stuff; had to physically stop and blink and remember that this was okay to fix his fingers into and accept as his own, to remember to breathe to ease the tightness in his chest.

Raven noticed, of course. She would sit with him on the side of his bed, tuck her head under his chin and they would breathe in time, just like when they were kids hiding from the strangers in his own home that he was supposed to call family.

They were all adjusting to not being alone, any more.

"Give it time," he told Hank, when Sean had smashed all of the crockery in a fit of frustration because he couldn't understand the maths problem that Hank was trying to walk him through (Charles had been adamant on them getting at least the most basic qualifications. It was his only rule).

"I know," Hank sighed, plucking porcelain carefully from his hair. "It's strange for all of us." He caught Charles' wrist as he made to leave. "We do appreciate it, you know," he said, voice earnest and serious, making sure to meet Charles' eyes. "What you've done, taking us in like this. All of us. Even if Al– some of us can't say it."

Charles smiled, squeezed Hank's forearm in return. "Thank you," he said, and then had to clear his throat. Hank dropped his gaze, hurriedly. "That means a lot," he continued, having got his voice under control. "I –"

"It's nice," Hank interrupted, gently, because Charles, usually so eloquent, had no idea what to say. "Not being alone."

"Yeah," Charles agreed. He clapped Hank on the shoulder, and slipped out of the kitchen.

two – in which there is coffee and danishes and raven has an opinion concerning the gaiety of eight-year-olds

Typically, for a Monday, rain was sheeting down, heavy droplets ricocheting off the pavement in millions of tiny pieces. The large glass windows in the front of the shop looked like a water feature, the outside world blurred and swirled in the water that was sluicing across it; it pounded dully on the roof tiles, and solid and booming on the corrugated iron sheeting that they were using as a stop gap for the holes above the boiler room.

Charles had spent the morning frantically lining the storeroom with tarpaulin and bin liners, wrapping the most delicate books in tissue paper and then plastic before carefully sealing them in the hope that it would be enough to protect them from the encroaching damp. Despite the rain refreshing the humidity, something that Charles was always grateful for, there was simply so much rain that cold moisture sat on everything. Scott had run a grocery errand for Hank earlier, and had been complaining ever since that there was no way he was going to get dry. Charles registered the air temperature and the risk that Scott posed to his books by being damp everywhere, and had thrown him in the bath. He had managed to sell Moira's New Theory of Vision, and had fetched a decent amount for it; they could, for once, spare the extra water cost.

Hank was baking (at least, that's what Charles assumed he was doing, because there was flour behind his ear and in the crease at the side of his nose, and he didn't know whether flour was used extensively in savoury cooking as well) when Charles retreated momentarily to the kitchen.

"Slow day?" he asked, as Charles leant against the edge of the table whilst the kettle boiled.

"It's pouring down out there," Charles said, squinting at the window as if he could sharpen his gaze through the whorls that the rain had created. "I don't see as how we're going to have very much custom."

Hank made a noise in his throat that sounded simultaneously non-committal and agreeing, frowning as he carefully measured his various ingredients.

"Oh," he said, as Charles shifted around him to find a mug and the coffee. "Your Erik came in earlier. Dropped of a request for, um, Le Comte, I think. I wrote it down. The slip should be on your desk."

Charles hadn't been to his desk all day; his tax returns kept giving him judgmental looks. Also:

"'My' Erik?" he said, raising an eyebrow as he stirred in sugar.

Hank's head was ducked, and he outwardly retained the appearance of focussing on his cooking, but Charles caught the slow spread of a smirk tilting the corners of his eyes. He rolled his eyes, fondly, and laid his hand on Hank's shoulder as he left.

The slip was, indeed, on his desk, placed carefully on top of the piles of invoices and receipts. Charles carefully avoided looking at the tax forms, instead snatching up the slip and retreating hurriedly from the room.

Erik Lehnsherr, the slip read, in Hank's abysmal doctor-esque scrawl. Le Comte de Monte Cristo. Calmann-Lévy 19C.

Charles paused and leaned back against the door, thinking. He was certain that he had a copy of the Calmann-Lévy edition of Le Comte, that he had been restoring some months ago and had put into storage rather than onto the shop floor: as an antique, it was more specialist than most of Charles' passing trade. He wondered why Erik had wanted an edition from this particular timeframe, and was a little amazed (although he really shouldn't have been, at this point) that Hank had been able to remember that they had one in stock.

"Raven," he said, catching hold of her arm as she passed him, "have you seen that Lévy ed of Le Comte around at all?"

She blinked, thinking. "Oh, you mean the one that preachy –" she stopped when Charles gave her a look, the corner of her mouth tilting up and her eyes rolling almost imperceptibly, "that woman brought in the other day? I think you probably put that one in 'rare and fixed' pile in the storage closet."

Huh. That would make sense. Smirking, Raven tweaked his nose gently and returned to the shop floor.

It didn't take him long to ascertain that he did, in fact, still have the edition he was after, and locate it beneath Déscartes; after which, it was heading towards ten o'clock and he hadn't done any work with Scott yet.

The boy was sitting in the kitchen, watching Hank cook and answering his gentle questions on what he had learned the week before in a serious tone. Sometimes, Charles couldn't get over how different the brothers were: Alex, who was brash and loud and over-defensive, and who was easily bright enough to get good grades but couldn't see the point; and Scott, who followed in Alex's shadow like a puppy and who would listen to his lessons with a fiercely concentrated look, as if frowning at the page would allow him to absorb it better.

And then they would laugh simultaneously at something Sean did, or play basketball with Armando from the café where Alex and Sean worked, or give Charles identical looks of exasperated disbelief when he waxed lyrical over someone they'd never heard of; and then, yeah. Charles could see it.

("Alex," he'd asked, once. "Why won't you try?"

Alex had been heading out the door for his shift, but he stopped in the hallway, shrugging his jacket on over his jumper.

"It's a bit late for me," he said, mouth twisting diagonally into a humourless, self-deprecating smile.

"Alex –" Charles tried to reason with him, to explain that it's never too late, but Alex just slapped his arm and reached behind him for the doorknob.

"Get Scott sorted, yeah?" he'd said, tugging his hood up over his head. "He was always the smart one."

Still, there was his One Rule, and after several long, unfulfilling sessions Hank offered to take on teaching Alex for a bit, to allow Charles to try and deal with Sean's hyperactivity without distraction. It was a little galling that Hank had so much more success than Charles' did, even if Alex was curt and snide when frustrated – but Hank had graduated university at fifteen, and was well used to such comments.

"How do you do it?" he asked Hank, who'd leant back in his chair and shrugged, ever depreciative.

"He doesn't respond to authority figures." Which, really, shouldn't have surprised Charles at all. "Especially male ones, I would guess; they've probably made a habit of sticking around only as long as they want and then leaving him – and Scott – again."

Charles exhaled through his nose, smiling at Hank. "How're you so smart?"

Hank blushed, colour flaring along his cheekbones and behind his ears, and he ducked his head; but Charles saw the smile that he was fighting dance around the corners of his mouth, and knew that he was pleased, really.)

"Scott?" he said, sliding into the seat opposite him. "Did you do your reading?"


Later, Charles was sitting behind the desk, reviewing the list of book requests when the door chimed open, and he heard:

"Du bist wirklich zu alt, um so getragen zu werden."

"Aber Papa –"

"Chockachockachockachocka –"

"Pietro! Hör auf damit! Komm her!"

And he looked up to Erik Lehnsherr shaking a large umbrella out before sliding it into the stand and closing the door; he was wearing a dark great coat, and had a young girl on one hip. She was missing a shoe. A fair-haired boy of similar age had been playing with a steel miniature of a steam engine, but was now hovering about Erik's legs.

"Erik!" Charles was surprised, but delighted in equal measure; he heard Raven give a barely constrained squeak under her breath and he saw her disappear out to the back from the corner of his eye.

"Charles," he said, inclining his head. "I must apologise for Wanda's foot; she managed to lose her shoe somewhere between the train and the station exit."

Charles smiled at the girl, who was staring at him with bright, intelligent eyes from her father's arms. Her hair was as dark as her brother's was fair. "That's not a problem," he said, "but I reckon that your foot must be getting cold, just in your stocking-soles."

"Wanda," Erik said, looking down at his daughter, "Stell dich bitte vor."

She blinked her huge, blue eyes, and held out her child's hand. "Wanda Lehnsherr," she said.

"Charles Xavier." Charles shook her hand, grinning. Erik pressed gently on the back of the boy's head, and he stepped out of his father coattails to extend his hand to Charles as well.

"Pietro Lehnsherr," he said. "Pleased to meet you."

"Charles Xavier." He met their introductions like-for-like, keeping his tone polite and formal even as the smile tugged wilfully at the corners of his mouth. "And the pleasure is all mine, Pietro."

Raven appeared at his elbow, and gave him a blatant and pointed look. "This is my sister, Raven," he said, generously. "She's completely harmless. You have my word."

Raven scrunched up her nose in annoyance, and prodded him hard in the ribs. "I was just coming over to say that Hank's made Danish pastries, if you're interested. I'm not going to give you any now, though," she smiled at the Lehnsherr's, "although you're more than welcome to have some."

Charles rolled his eyes, smiling. "There's coffee – or hot chocolate" (directed at the children) "– included in that offer," he added.

The corner of Erik's mouth tilted up. "Well," he said. "That sounds like an offer I can't refuse."

"Thank you!" the twins chimed, in unison, and Charles was worried momentarily that Raven might spontaneously combust from sheer glee before she made herself scarce into the kitchen – presumably to fetch the pastries.

Charles leant his elbow on the desk, and his chin in his palm, and smiled at the children. "So," he said. "Do you have a favourite book? Wait, let me guess (I'm good at this): The Wind In The Willows?"

"We're eight," Pietro said, flatly. "Not four."

Charles' face split into a delighted grin before he could stop himself (because he probably, really, shouldn't be encouraging this kind of behaviour in other people's children).

"My apologies," he said, not quite able to control his smile. "I stand corrected. Perhaps you'd be willing to enlighten me?"

"Kim," Wanda said.

"Silas Marner," Pietro said, at the same time. The twins glared at each other, and Charles was almost worried that he was going to hurt himself, his smile was spread so wide.

"That's a depressing book," Raven said, re-emerging from the back with a tray; she indicated with a raise of her eyebrows and a flick of her eyes that they could take it on the arm chairs in the corner, and Charles darted around the desk to lead the way. "Haven't you read, like, Treasure Island, or something?"

"My favourite book," Charles said, "when I was a boy, was Can't You Sleep, Little Bear?"

Raven snorted. "That's still your favourite book, Charles. You know it by heart. Now, if you want the best children's book –" She disappeared into the stacks; Wanda and Pietro watched her go, hovering around Erik's chair. Raven bounced back towards them and sat on the floor in one fluid motion, her legs folding in front of her so that she was sitting cross-legged. She opened the book she'd brought into her lap, and the twins edged closer, sitting on their knees next to her so they could see.

"This is too young," Wanda said, staring at the colourful illustrations and the large print type.

"Never," Raven declared, grinning. "This is The Adventures of Little Tim! They will never grow old."

The twins sat a little closer, until they were flush against Raven's thighs, as she read aloud from the book. Charles glanced sideways at Erik, who was watching them with a look of mingled confused surprise and cautious delight.

He lead Erik out into the stacks, keeping the children in sight; Erik didn't specifically request it, but Charles had caught the way that the other man had kept his children close at all times. It reminded him of Alex and Scott, the same fierce, protective flare that burned at the forefront of every action.

"Here," he said, stopping and carefully tugging a frequently-repaired edition of The New Poetry; "this is one of our most popular, in as much as it keeps getting resold back to us after a few months." He grinned, a flash of teeth in the musty air and the silence, broken only by the steady voice of Raven and the clattering of rain against the windows. "I don't think people quite get it."

"You mean that they are not intelligent enough to understand," Erik said, smirking and turning the book over between long, dextrous fingers.

"Now, that just makes me sound snooty," Charles said, without heat.

"An unjust assumption?" And somehow he managed to make the question into a barb, dulled only by Charles' infinite capacity to overlook such comments and the steady spark of amusement in Erik's eyes. Charles attempted a glare, but found it ruined by the way his mouth insisted on smiling.

"I think I will take this," Erik said, holding the book out to Charles. "It will make a welcome break from prose."

"Rupert the Bear is in poetic form," Charles said, faux-innocently. Erik grumbled from behind him, and Charles found the noise almost impossibly endearing.

"Do not speak to me of that book," he said. "There were three months of my life when the children would not hear anything else."

Charles laughed, a expulsion of breath as he rang the book up. Erik leaned against the counter on one arm, turning to watch where the twins were still sitting next to Raven, listening happily to her as she read to them. She was extraordinarily good at it, with different and distinct voices for all of the characters; her long, blonde hair was pulled over one shoulder to hang over into her lap, and Charles could see her mouth moving as she read.

"She's always been good with children," he said, wrapping and sealing the book against the weather before handing it to Erik. "Raven, I mean."

"So I can see," Erik said, glancing back at him. "Do you have younger siblings? Or children?"

Charles tilted his head, slightly, unsure of whether the children fitted into either of those categories, really; he certainly didn't think himself appropriate as a father figure, but – he felt more responsible for all of them that he would associate with a sibling.

"Scott's twelve," he said, after a moment; "he's the youngest, and Raven reads to him a lot. He's long-sighted," he added, catching Erik's look. "It hurts his eyes to read for too long, and he enjoys the stories so."

And then he realised that Erik's look may have been more to do with his word choices (he's the youngest) than any concern over Scott's reading age.

"I see," Erik said, before Charles could figure out how to explain when he didn't even know how to define his strange mix of a family.

"Did you find that book?" Hank said, walking past from the back and nodding at Erik as he passed.

"Oh, yes; thank you, Hank." He leant forward on the counter. "Your copy of Le Comte – the one you requested? – I'm afraid it's still undergoing some repair work, so it's not available today."

"That's fine," Erik said, shrugging fluidly. "I was hardly expecting it to be; honestly, I thought you'd have to hunt one down, so –"

"We normally wouldn't have one of that era in stock." Charles pressed the tips of his fingers together. "But we had a recently had a woman sell us an unwanted copy that she'd bought for her granddaughter, without realising that it wasn't a French translation of the Victorian edit."

Erik laughed, soft and low in his throat. "So, she didn't approve of sexuality of the Dumas original, I'm guessing?" he said.

"One would assume," Charles said. "She complained rather volubly about the – oh, what was it – 'crass language and lewd behaviours exhibited by the characters', as if it were to be something unexpected of a Dumas novel."

Erik smiled at the counter, tilting his head to look over at his children; Charles watched the dime he had given as change turn itself over and over between his long fingers.

"I shall just have to return at a later date," Erik said, pushing himself up from the counter.

"You're always welcome," Charles said, warmly, inclining his head in the direction of the children even though his eyes didn't leave Erik. "All of you."

"Thank you," Erik said, tucking the brown-paper package beneath his arm and shaking back his sleeve to check his watch. "Ach; we have to leave now if we're to catch the last train." He nodded to Charles and stepped over to the twins. "Time to go," he said, and they looked up at him, startled.

Charles dreamed.

He was standing in his father's house, pristine and polished as it had been when he was a boy, before his father had died and his mother had drowned herself in the wine cellar and Kurt had burned alive in the basement. The bay windows were clean and crystal clear, and the grounds spread out before him. Sunlight was playing in from some angle overhead, dancing cloud shadows across the lawns and warming the woodwork around him.

Everything was hazy and warm and sharp, the colours saturated; the air smelt of wheatpaste and calfskin and old paper. He smiled.


Charles awoke.

His cheek was stuck to something: the silk-covered board that he used to protect the more delicate pieces that he was working on due to the natural hypoallergenic nature of the material. In trying to sit up, the silk and his skin seemed reluctant to part ways.

"Good morning," said Scott's voice, cheerful and brightly amused. Charles braced the silk flat and carefully peeling his face from the board. "You fell asleep in the middle of binding, so Hank and Alex moved you. Not before you got paste on your face, though."

"You don't say," Charles said, drily, rubbing an open palm against his cheek to try and remove as much of the broken layer of paste as possible. The rest would dissolve in a water solution.

"Coffee!" said Sean, grinning as he bounced into the room – and then immediately stopped bouncing, because he was carrying liquid and surrounded by paper, and there had been many unfortunate accidents before.

"What time is it?" Charles asked, accepting the mug with a nod of thanks.

"Half-ten," Sean said, and Charles almost spat coffee everywhere.

"Shit," he said, scrubbing one hand through his hair. Shitshitshit."

"What?" The boys blinked at him in half-amusement, half-alarm.

"The tax returns," Charles groaned. "I needed to send them off today."

"They've already gone," Sean said. Charles stared at him, aghast.

"But I hadn't finished them!"

"Raven gave them to Hank," Scott said, smirking. "So stop worrying."

"She's gone on an errand," Sean said, "but she left us with strict instructions to get you fed, caffeinated and cleaned before you go return this." He held out his hand to Charles.

"A wallet?" Charles turned it over in his fingers and raised an eyebrow at them. They shrugged, but knowing amusement kept tugging at the corners of their mouth and Charles didn't believe them for an instant. There was a note clipped to the front of the wallet.

Official party line, it read, in Raven's large, loopy handwriting, is that he left it here. Don't say I never do anything for you.

The identification read Erik Lehnsherr.

When Charles looked up, disbelieving and incredulous, the boys' faces were the very picture of innocence.

"Well," said Sean, brightly, "I've got to go to work. Don't let the side down, now, Scotty." He winked, and clapped Scott on the shoulder as he left.

Scott looked at Charles. "Food," he said. "Bathe." He was smirking and completely serious at the same time. Smug, Charles thought. Damnit, they're conniving.

"Enjoy your lunch!" Hank said, as he left for the train station.

"You're all in league!" Charles said, astonished and not-really.

"Conspiring for your happiness," Scott said, waving as he opened the door.


A half-hour train journey, a fifteen-minute bus journey, a brisk five minute walk and six flights of stairs later (the elevator was out-of-order), and Charles was standing in front of the apartment listed as Erik's address. He tugged the wallet out of his coat pocket one last time, thumbing it open and checking again just in case, but it matched. Unless Erik had moved, and the information in his wallet was incorrect.

He wouldn't know until he knocked.

Knock on the bloody door, Charles.

When Erik opened the door, his eyes widened in surprise. "Charles!"

"Erik," he said, grinning, nervousness wreaking havoc with his ability to look sane. Erik was dressed in a loose, well-worn, collarless cotton shirt and slacks, which was the most dressed-down Charles had ever seen him "You left this behind." He held out the wallet, that Erik took with a slightly suspicious look. He had paint stains on his trousers and flecked over his knuckles and the insides of his wrist.

"And you came," he said, "all the way across town, just to return this to me?"

"Of course," Charles said, all innocent smiles and wide eyes.

"Really." Erik's voice was flat, genial disbelief echoing through his tone. "You had no ulterior motive. Whatsoever."

Charles tilted his head, smiling. "Would you like to have lunch? With me?"

Erik blinked, slowly. "I'm not exactly dressed for it," he said, drily. Charles' smile must have slipped, a little, because one was chasing Erik's mouth from his eyes, dragging the corners upwards in a slow, steady movement. "But," he continued, "I was just about to make myself something. You're welcome to join me."

Charles' eyebrow twitched upwards of its own volition. "Really?" he asked, genuinely (delightedly) surprised. "I mean, yes please. That would be wonderful."

Erik smirked, and lead the way inside, Charles following wide-eyed behind him. A narrow corridor, kept fastidiously clear and entirely unlined by storage (which, Charles considered, made sense when one took into account the very width of the space, and the fact that the flat was home to two young children). Erik bade him remove his shoes when they entered the kitchen, and Charles placed them next to the neat line behind the interior door. They had passed three other doors, with the kitchen at the end of the corridor and a door out onto the fire escape on the far side of that.

The floor was smooth, brick tiles, the grouting rough beneath Charles' clothed toes, the tiles warm from the Aga. True to Erik's earlier statement, there was two slices of bread upon a chopping board, one still connected to the loaf for the final quarter.

"I was just going to have a sandwich," Erik was saying as Charles took in the room. "Gruyère. I hope that's okay."

"That sounds wonderful," Charles said, catching Erik's eye and smiling. The man returned the expression, an almost surprised feel to it, as if he hadn't been expecting to warm to Charles. "I'm afraid that I can't cook for tuppence," he said, seating himself at the table and watching as Erik finished cutting the second slice and added two more to his pile. "We tend to rely on Hank's expertise in that field. Which," he mused aloud, "it hardly a hardship – he is an excellent cook."

Erik dropped the bread onto the warming plate, and dusted his hands on the sides of his shirt as he ducked into a cupboard to take out the cheese.

"How have you managed to survive," he asked, slicing the cheese in long, smooth strokes, "without being able to cook?"

"Well," Charles said, considering the question, "I guess it's because I've never lived alone. Raven – my sister –"

"I remember," Erik said.

"– she would always make sure I ate properly, even at university. And then she hired Hank and he's a chemistry major: you know how they say the characteristics carry over into cooking."

"Someone's always looked after you," Erik said, flipping the bread over – toasting it, Charles realised, as the smell filled the kitchen.

"Yes, I suppose. In that respect, at least."

Erik glanced over at him, eyes flicking over his expression. "Does that make you the dependant of your little sister?" he asked, voice light with humour. Charles snorted.

"Excuse me," he said, in mock offense, "but there are five minors in my care."

"Five?" Erik seemed genuinely surprised.

"Hmm," Charles said, "I'm not entirely sure how that happened. I just seem to have – adopted them; or, rather, they've adopted me. You've met Hank," he said. "He was the one that took your original request for Le Comte; and then there's Sean, and Alex and Scott, as well as Raven, of course. Luckily, they all pretty much look after themselves."

Erik slid a plate in front of him, and took the seat opposite.

"What about you?" Charles asked, lifting the sandwich and taking a bite. The cheese, warmed by the bread, oozed over his tongue, the oils dissolving into the bread and coating the salad leaves that accompanied it. He half-closed his eyes in please. "Erik, this is divine."

"Thank you," he said. "And what do you mean?"

"Well," Charles said, swiping at some escaping oils in the corner of his mouth with his thumb, "what do you do for a living?"

Erik smiled into his sandwich. "I make toys," he said.

Charles' eyebrows shot into his hairline. "Toys?" he said. "How did you get into that?"

"I used to make guns," Erik said, bitingly, blisteringly honest and entirely unshackled by it. "But my children cannot play with them."

"No," Charles agreed, after a beat. "An undoubtedly sensible career move, my friend."

Erik smiled, and something seemed to loosen behind his eyes.

"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.


"You," he said, tugging off his coat and tossing it onto the hook as the door banged shut behind him, "need to stop stealing."

Raven blinked innocently at him, and Charles attempted to give her his most stern expression, but was probably foiled by the fact that his mouth only wanted to smile. Raven's smirk only served to validate his theory.

"You had lunch with him," she said, accusatory and delighted. "Don't deny it, Xavier! I can see straight through you."

"Yes," he said, smiling and sighing at the same time, sitting down at the table. "I suspect that you can."

"So?" Raven leant forward, balancing her chin in her upturned hands and fixing him with an almost comically interested expression. "Where did you take him?"

"Actually, he made us lunch." Raven squeaked, beaming. "Just sandwiches, Raven," he added, rolling his eyes at her glee.

"But I bet they were the best sandwiches you'd ever had," she said, triumphantly.

Charles, remembering the smooth, nutty Gruyère against the sharp, bitterness of the rocket leaves, the crisp, moist bread and the slow smile of Erik across from him, humour sparkling in his eyes, couldn't deny it.

Raven's expression softened to something almost unbearably fond, and she stood, pausing on her route around the table to kiss Charles' cheek; then, juxtaposed as ever, she darted out of the kitchen.

"Charles had lunch with Erik!" she yelled, followed by whoops from Sean and Scott.

"Conspirators: success!" Sean said, punching the air and high-fiving Scott.


"So," said Raven, stepping into his bedroom uninvited and unannounced, and seating herself on his bed.

Charles placed his bookmark carefully between the pages of Call To Arms, and looked at her, steadily. "So," he said.

"Erik." Raven was watching Charles with a very curious expression, as if her face couldn't entirely decide which emotion it was currently wishing to display. "You like him."

"Apparently," Charles said, lightly. "You were so very invested in our tryst this morning, darling; I would hate to disappoint."

Raven shot him a look that was simultaneously searching and don't joke about that, dickhead, and Charles schooled his face into something appropriately mollified.

"What did you do on this date, then?" she asked, leaning back against his legs, spread out in front of him on the coverlet. "Aside from just eating sandwiches, I mean."

"What, precisely, do you mean?"

Raven rolled her eyes at him. "Fine, whatever, Charlie; are you going out again? Is that why you aren't working on Le Comte? Wait," she squinted, suspiciously, at Charles. "You did tell him it was a date, didn't you?"

"Well." Charles laid back against the headboard, tucking his hands behind his head. "I did ask him if he wanted to have lunch with me, so I'm going to go with yes." Raven stabbed at his shin with one finger, and he smirked at the ceiling.

"Are you going to go out again?" she asked, again. "Oh God," she added, when he didn't immediately answer. "He didn't want to, did he? It was a pity date, wasn't it? Oh my God, Charles, I'm so sorry; that's why you aren't working, isn't it? You're heartbroken – I'm such an awful sister –"

"Raven," Charles interrupted, taking hold of her hands. "No. I'm not - I'm not heartbroken. We just didn’t – arrange anything, is all."

She blinked, frowning. "So… you're not working because?"

Charles couldn't help the smile that caught the corners of his lips, nor the pleased flush that swarmed over his ears. "Because," he said, slowly, "Erik told me not to."

"Because?"

"Because," he continued, both reluctant and pleased, "then he'd have to think of new excuses to come by."

Raven squealed and threw her arms around his neck. "I'm so glad you're dating again," she said, voice muffled by her proximity to his neck. "I was worried – after the Moira fiasco –"

Charles petted her hair, soothingly. "Well, this is a change," he said, deliberately airily. "Normally, you're quite the insistent advocator of my celibacy." Raven giggled against his shoulder, and Charles was struck by a sudden flash of suspicion. "Is this because Erik's a man?" he asked. "Does he pose a threat to my affections?"

"Shut up," Raven said. "It's not like that."

"Really."

"I just want you to be happy," she said, defensively.

"I know, pet," he said, kissing her temple.

"She demanded all of your attention," Raven said, after a pause. "All of it. It was like we were a threat to the two of you being happy and shit." Charles didn't say anything, just continued to thread his hands threw her long hair. "She would've wanted to have children," Raven said, and Charles heard the unspoken replacements. "And then you wouldn't have had time for m – for us. Ever."

"And Erik?"

"Already has children." Raven shifted position, slightly, pushing her face more into his shoulder. "He's already got priorities, even if he is a little too strict with them. They seemed so cautious of enjoying themselves."

"So he can't steal me away from you," Charles said, ignoring the second part of her statement and smiling as he felt Raven pout against his collarbone.

"It's not –"

"I know," he said. Bending forwards a little, so that his mouth was right next to her ear (so she had no choice but to hear him), he murmured, "I will always have time for you.

"It's not that – don't let us stop you being happy," Raven said.

Charles remembered wondering how his mother could stay married to a man who so blatantly beat her son. "You make me happy," he said, firmly. "The whole, mad lot of you. Nothing else will ever come first."

Raven settled, a little guilty and a lot more reassured; as her breathing was beginning to slow and her legs were twitching with the tell tale signs of imminent sleep, Charles sighed.

"You're not going back to your room, are you?"

Raven mumbled her dissent, and Charles shifted her into a more comfortable position, switching off the light before settling back onto the bed himself, and closing his eyes.

"No, you don't." Charles had been awake with Sean all through the night; there was an impressive bruise forming across his cheek and mouth where Sean had managed to boot him in the face, and he had scratches down his arms. But Sean had asked, before the withdrawal had kicked in. He'd been sober – for once – and Charles had sat him down and Sean had asked for help. So damn it all if Charles was going to let him down. "You can have the cannabis, Sean, just like we agreed. But you don't need the heroin. You don't need the acid. You don't need it."

"Yes," Sean had sobbed. "Yes, I do. Please."

"This is ridiculous, Charles," Moira said, her fingers twitching from the sight of Sean so far gone. "Take him to the bloody hospital, already."

"He doesn't want the hospital," Raven snapped, pushing past her to kneel next to Charles and wipe Sean's face, tipping a bottle of water against his slack mouth.

"It's where he should be," Moira said. "Really, Charles, you're a professor, you know he needs a doctor – a real doctor, not just Hank; you know he needs a hospital –"

"It's his choice," Charles said, trying to keep his voice calm as Sean shuddered and heaved again.

"He's a child, Charles. He doesn't know what he wants."

"Moira," Charles said, voice deliberately calm but bitingly cold. "If you're not going to do anything useful, get out of my house."

She'd returned, three days later, looking for an apology that Charles hadn't been willing to give. They remained friends, as much as they could with Moira's belated realisation that the children always came first.)

"Well, Charles," Erik said, "you are indeed quite the Samaritan."

Charles laughed. "Or a gullible fool."

"I was being kind."

"And for that, my friend, I thank you." Charles smiled at him. "It's nice to be humoured in my fallacies every once in a while. Raven has rather despaired of me, I'm afraid."

Erik laughed again, and Charles caught Wanda watching them, and Pietro stopping as if by psychic communication to gaze across the park at the two of them.

"You play, correct, Charles?" He blinked, and looked at where Erik was gesturing to the chess tables, and felt a smile bloom across his face.

"Naturally," he said, "although I wouldn't wish for you to lose face in front of your children."

"Your concern, whilst appreciated, is hardly necessary." Erik's answering smile was light and easy, and Charles wanted that look to dominate all of his expressions.

Charles smirked. "We'll see. White or black?"

Erik elected black, allowing Charles to start – both a polite gesture and a method of gauging Charles' game early on; Charles wasn’t entirely sure which it was – and pulled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, offering one to Charles.

Four moves apiece and Charles was considering his fifth; they were easily twenty minutes playing, when Erik said, his voice absent, as if the statement held no weight at all,

"You haven't returned the question."

Charles didn't look up from the board, knew that Erik wouldn't either; the only movement between them the curl of cigarette smoke as it was stolen by the breeze. "It isn't my place to ask," he said, calmly, and caught the curl of Erik's smile – pleased, relieved, because Charles knew that Erik wasn't ready to tell him about the mother of his children, wherever she was.

He moved his knight, and took Erik's bishop. Erik's smile turned a little triumphant, and his pawn took Charles' knight. Charles had been expecting the move, of course, required the pawn to move in order to free the line to check, but there was something about the lowly nature of the pawn taking his best piece that dug at the rivalry built on a childhood of competitive sports and schooling.

"Check," he said.


The house was hardly in the best state of repair, but they made do fairly well; Hank was a more than competant electrician – although his tendencies to try and rig the wiring to be more 'efficient' almost always leant towards 'dangerous' – and the boys were more than willing to chip in with the generic manual labour.

(Sean was a monkey, all gangly limbs and strong fingers that had him hanging off the side of the building to reattach the guttering more autumns than not; whilst the rest of them stood below in the tiny yard, Raven calling distracting insults up at Sean in the hope of getting him to slip as Alex and Hank argued over the best way to seal a wooden window frame and Scott tried to convince the ratty stray to be his friend and their new mouser. Charles would hover with the ladder, and smile at Sean's fake-hurt comments about his lack of faith.)

It was all they could do to keep the damp away from the books when it was wet, and with a savagely cold winter followed by a depressingly wet spring, it was only matter of time until something went. And, in the manner of the sardonic humour of the universe, things always went spectarularly wrong at precisely the wrong moment.

Like the time that Charles had been prospecting the garden shed as an extra storage area, and the door had wedged itself shut with him inside, and no one else was home. He had ended up sitting on an upturned flower pot, making a careful, suspicious friendship with a worryingly large rat that had appeared to sniff at his foot until Alex had kicked the door in.

(Raven had been less than impressed at the news that they had rats in the garden, but Charles had no problems with them being outside. The only creatures he had issues with were mice, silverfish and moths, because they ate the binding out of books.)

This time, it was the roof above the boiler room – or, to be more accurate, the iron sheeting that they were using as a temporary roof for the boiler room; there was no warning creaking, as Charles would have expected, or any prior suspicious behaviour on its part. Instead, there was simply a loud, pulsing whump and the lightbulbs exploded, scattering tiny shards of glass all over Charles' study.

"Fuck," Charles spat, freezing in place and trying desperately not to move him hand. "Fuck, fuck, shitting Hell –"

"Charles?" Raven's voice carried worried down the stairs. Charles grit his teeth and clenched his eyes shut, taking several deep, jarring breaths as he felt the warm trickle of blood wind over his hand.

"Buggering –" he snapped, automatically jerking his hand away from his books and simultaneously trying to hold it still to avoid agravating the wound further.

He breathed sharply and fast through his nose three times as he wrapped his fingers around the handle, and breathed out hard as he tugged it free from his hand.

"Motherfuck."

"Charles!"

The door flew open, and he felt the air displacement as Raven appeared in the doorway.

"Careful!" he said. "There's glass all over the floor."

Raven stopped short, hovering in the doorway in her nightdress and bare feet. He couldn't see her, the pounding rain that had started a little less than an hour ago like someone had taken a knife to the heavens obscuring any moon that might had shone through the windows of his office; but he could imagine the look of her face, white and worried and angry for being worried.

"We heard you yell," she said. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," he said, pressing down hard on his injured hand with a mostly-clean rag, trapping it between his thigh and his other palm. "Fine, I'm alright. I just – I stabbed myself with the awl."

Raven snorted, but Charles could hear the throb of worry still prevalent in her tone.

"Did you check on the others?" he asked.

"The boys have gone to check it out," she said, and then gave a muffled shriek.

"Sorry," said Scott, voice small and apologetic from behind her. "Um. Charles? Are you okay?"

Charles smiled around a silent sigh, and pushed himself upright. "I'm fine, Scott. I just stabbed myself with the awl."

"You never swear," Scott said, serious and anxious.

"Because it's a filthy habit," Charles agreed. "It did really hurt, though." He slipped his good hand into Scott's; the boy might have been twelve, but he gripped it tightly. "Let's go see whether the other's have managed to set anything on fire yet," he added, leading the way towards the back.

"But it's pouring out," Raven said.

"And that's stopped them when?" Charles asked, and felt Raven's eyeroll at the back of his head.


Alex, Hank and Sean were standing around the wreck that had been the boiler room; the roof had completely caved in, dragging the tops of the exterior walls with it; the boiler itself had managed to escape damage due to its saving grace of being against the interior wall, and so shielded from the collapse. The fuse box, however, was undoubtedly a mangled mess beneath the brick and iron.

As they approached, remaining in the doorway as protection from the sheeting rain, Sean picked up the broom, flipped it so he was holding it by the brush and cautiously prodded at the wreckage.

The pile flashed and sparked, and the three boys leapt back.

"Poking it with a stick," Charles said, drily. "Very scientific, boys."

They turned, Sean flexing his grip on the broom handle guiltily.

"Charles!" Hank said. "Are you okay?"

He waved his hand at them. "Stabbed myself," he said.

"Again?" Sean said, raising an eyebrow.

"That last time was not my fault," Charles said, accusatorily. "I wasn't the one who left the rake out."

"Inside," Raven said, clearly tired of the bickering; she was watching the remnants of the fusebox warily, "before you guys get electrocuted. And," she prodded Charles in the shoulder, rather harder than necessary, "I'll need to bind your hand, mister."

"Yes, mother," Alex said, smirking; Raven shot him a glare as they all trooped back into the darkened kitchen, the boys dripping everywhere.

"I'll, um, find some candles," Hank said, wiping his glasses on his sleeve and only really succeeding on smearing the water across the surface.

"Good idea," Raven snapped, tugging Charles down into a seat and glaring into the darkness until the match flared, sulphur-bright, and Hank set the candle down next to them.

"Ow," Charles said, sardonic, as Raven peeled off the rag with savage force. She glared at him.

"Baby," she said, reaching behind her to tug open the drawer, pulling out the first aid one-handed. Her mouth was twisted sideways as she examined the hole in Charles' palm, and he recognised that she was being rough because she was worried about him. He nudged her ankle under the table, and her gaze flickered up to his. "Idiot," she said, but the tightness in her face relaxed somewhat. "Who stabs themselves with an awl?"

Charles hissed as she applied the iodine, the brown tincture staining the skin yellow around the wound and mingling with the blood still dribbling from it. "They're drills, Raven," he said. "They're supposed to be sharp."

"Yes," she said, threading the crescent needle to stitch the skin together, "but they're supposed to drill through inanimate objects. Not your hand."

"Shut up," he said, cheerfully.

Sean was sweeping the floor, knocking whatever might be on it out into the yard; a sensible precaution, Charles thought, remembering that his entire study was probably coated in glass.

"I'll make some tea," Scott said, eyes on Charles' hand.

"Not with the kettle!" Charles said, sharply; Scott's hand stopped mid air. "Boil it on the stove," he said. "That's gas-powered; we don't want to risk the electricals until we know how bad the damage is."

"Right," Scott said, changing direction to dig the old whistling kettle out of the cupboard.

Raven cleaned the stitches carefully with Dettol and cotton wool, her movements more gentle now; she had clearly got over her fright at Charles' outburst on injuring himself, and her anger over being frightened by it. The Dettol and iodine smells mingled in the air, filling the kitchen with a clean, sterile smell as the stove clicked alive and the water stared to shudder within the kettle.

"There," she said. "Lucky the awl is tiny; better than the rake, anyway."

Charles grumbled in his throat, experimentally flexing his hand and feeling the tug of the stitches against his skin. "Yeah, well," he said. "It was an interesting experience, anyway."

"You reinacted a scene from The Railway Children," Sean said, propping the broom against the wall and grinning, his teeth glinting in the candlelight. "That's got to be the geekiest injury yet."

"At least I do it with class," Charles said. "Thank you, Scott," taking his mug one-handed from him, the tea swirling dark and steaming as he sipped it. "Where's Alex got to?"

Scott glanced over his shoulder, and Alex reappeared from the corridor, stripping off the heavy, rubber-lined gloves that they used for the rewiring.

"I've disconnected all of the appliances," he said. "In case of shocks and shi– stuff."

"Good idea," Charles said, smiling as Alex joined the table, accepting his tea from Scott. The six of them sat in silence, listening to the rain shatter off the flagstones outside, and the hiss and spark of the fusebox. Charles would have covered it with tarpaulin, to stop the danger from the loose electric current, but the rain caused an extra hazard in an of itself; if the electricity sparked whilst they were standing out in it, then there was no telling whether they would be shocked or not.

"We can't afford an electrician, can we?" Scott said, after a long minute. Charles sighed.

"We'll get by," he said. "We always do."

"The shower's electric," Raven said. "Even if the boiler's gas-fired. We're going to have to take baths, now."

Hank rubbed his forehead with the heel of one hand. "Rebudget for the whole year," he said.

"In the morning," Charles added, firmly. "We all need to sleep this off, first; come back to it with a clear head and, with any luck, a dry day to solve it under."

"Yeah," Alex said, nudging Scott with his shoulder. "Hank can do most of the wiring, anyway. And we can rebuild the shed, no problem. A good excuse to do that remodelling that Charles has wanted."

"Does this mean that I'm going to have to spend days tiling again?" Sean moaned. "Tiling is really fu– bloody. Really bloody boring."

"Don't use English swear words," Raven said. "You can't pull them off."

They abandoned their mugs in the sink, for dealing with in the morning, along with all the other problems the night had brought, and padded single-file up the narrow staircase. Charles tugged off his clothes and pulled on his pajamas, falling sideways onto his bed.

A moment later, he threw back the covers on the unoccupied side and shuffled closer to the edge.

"Come on, Raven," he said. "I'm not waiting all night."

There was a flurry of movement and the bed creaked as Raven clambered in; and then shuffling sounds from the rest of the room. Charles opened his eyes to see the others creeping in, Hank and Alex and Scott making piles of bedding on the floor whilst Sean claimed the ancient, delapidated armchair, spreading his long legs out onto the windowsill.

"Goodnight, everyone," Charles said.

"'Night, Charles," the boys replied, sounding only a little caught-out.

Raven prodded him in the small of his back as she shuffled closer. "You know you love it," she said.

"Oh, drat," he said, grinning into his pillow. "That was supposed to be a secret."


Charles woke the next morning to find his room empty, with only the piles of sheets and pillows folded neatly into the corner any sign that the children had slept in there at all; also, his clock informed him that it was half-past ten. Swearing under his breath and into his pillow, he forced himself upright, hissing and biting the inside of his cheek when he pulled the stitches in his hand.

He slumped downstairs, the need for caffeine his only driving force; he almost caught his foot on the stairs, his bare toe clipping the edge of the step and causing him to stumble. Rubbing a hand over his face as daylight assaulted his vision, he blearily entered the kitchen to see Erik Lehnsherr sitting at his table.

Blinking, he stopped short, and stared at him. Erik was holding a cup of what smelled suspiciously like coffee, which distracted Charles enough from the smirk that was fighting to appear on Erik's face as he saw Charles.

"Morning!" Raven trilled, appearing from nowhere at Charles' side and handing him a cup. "Did you sleep well?"

Charles gave her as accusatory a look as he was capable of, refusing to be fully placated by the gift of coffee. "Why didn't you wake me?" he asked. "And why –" he shifted his gaze to Erik– "why are you here?"

"I called him," Raven said, her chipper tone grinding against Charles' still mostly-asleep brain. "He's an engineer by trade, you know."

"Yes," Charles said, rubbing between his eyebrows. "Of course. I'm going –" he waved his free hand vaguely behind him.

Raven beamed at him, and Erik called after, "nice pajamas, Charles."


Charles stuck his head under the faucet in an attempt to both tame his hair, which had never grown out of its desire to defeat basic physics and almost always ended up vertical when he awoke, and to wake himself up. The cold water ran down the back of his neck and into his eyes, clearing the sleep from his eyes and the fog from his brain; and he suddenly realised that he had just stumbled into his kitchen, in his pajamas, with Erik sitting as his kitchen table.

He resisted the urge to just hide in the bathroom (because he was an adult, Goddamnit), and instead settled for knocking his head mournfully against the lip of the sink; which hurt, but made him feel a little better.

Rubbing his forehead and shaking the water out of his eyes, he dressed quickly in casual clothes, the shop obviously not being able to open due to the lack of electricity. They really should have woken him up; there was almost no way that the boys hadn't managed to kill themselves in his absence.


"Your faith in our abilities is flattering," Sean called, from where he was wedged between the house proper and the outbuilding, "but you really needn't have worried."

"We've got it all under control," Hank added.

"A lie," Raven said, leaning against the doorframe. "But whatever. You'd almost electrocuted yourself eight times before Erik arrived."

"Why did Erik's arrival stop Hank from being electrocuted?" Charles asked, dragging his eyes away from where Sean was shuffling about over empty space, disconnecting the external electricity lines from the transformer.

"He turned off the electricity," Raven said. Charles stared at Hank, who had the good grace to look rather embarrassed.

"Henry McCoy," Charles said. "You have – how many degrees? – and you didn't think to turn off the electricity before playing with the shattered fuse box? What were you thinking?"

"Sorry," Hank mumbled. Alex, who was supervising Scott nailing together a temporary house for the boiler, looked up at Charles tone. A pink flush was spreading up Hank's neck. "It won't happen again."

"Damn straight," Charles said, looking back up at Sean just as he slipped, whitewash and grit skidding down the wall to clatter onto the flagstones.

"I'm okay!" Sean called, catching himself on the edge of the roof.

Charles rubbed at his temple. It was going to be a long few days.

"They're really very capable," Erik said, appearing at his side and watching Sean cut the wires. "You should be proud."

Charles sighed. "You're encouraging them to preform unneccessarily dangerous acts in the name of DIY," he said.

"They haven't died, yet," Erik pointed out, "or killed anyone. That's something, isn’t it?"

Hank was carefully dismantling what was left with the fusebox, the line of his back clearly indicating that the sting of Charles' reaction was still being felt. He sighed again.

"You're probably right," he said, reluctantly. "I'm sure I couldn't do any of this without them, anyway. I'd just have Raven, and she's pretty useless at man's work."

A lump of mortar smacked into his arm. "Hey!"

Raven glared at him from the doorway, already rearmed. "Man's work?" she said, flinging another lump, which Charles dodged. "What does that make you then, nerd boy? You've never done a day's manual labour in your life! Hank has done more 'man's work' than you. Hank!"

"Thanks," Hank said, drily. Sean had been forced to pull himself onto the actual roof; he was laughing so hard at Charles attempting to avoid being hit that he had been in danger of falling.

"But you can paint!" Charles said. "That's what you do!"

"That's woman's work, you mean!" Raven was a surprisingly good shot. Charles was definitely going to bruise.

"Sexist, Charles," Erik said, grinning. "There's no reason why a woman can't do anything a man can do. Brave new world."

"No," Charles said, stopping and pointing an accusatory finger at Erik. "Side against me with my sister all you want, but you don't get to quote Huxley at me. You haven't even read the book!"

"Oh my God, Charles!" Raven stopped hurling rubble at him to stare in laughing disbelief. "You are such a nerd!"

"What's going on?"

Pietro appeared at Raven's hip, white-blond hair falling into his face and piant all over his hands.

"You brought your children to my building-site of a house?" Charles asked, turning to Erik, who shrugged.

"Raven called, and they don't have school today – free babysitting," he said.

"In payment for services rendered," Raven said.

"What, precisely, does that entail?" Charles asked.

"Raven said your shed exploded," Erik said. "I'm going to help rebuild it. Engineer, remember."

"Right." Charles looked around the yard, at where the boys were all occupied, and at Raven who was apparently supervising Erik's children. "Right. Well. I'll be cleaning my study if you need me."


There was glass everywhere. The force of the electrical feedback from the collapse had caused not only the lit bulbs to explode, but every other bulb in the room to do so as well; and, due to the nature of Charles' work, there were a lot of lights. He could only be grateful that he hadn't been using adhesive when they blew.

As it was, it looked to be merely a laborious sweep-up; some of the glass pieces were so small that Charles was fairly certain he'd have to go through the bindings of some of the books with a fine-toothed comb in order to clear them out fully.

His palm itched around the stitches, and it twinged savagely as he flexed his fingers. It was going to be a long job; not only would he have to be supremely thorough in his cleaning, but he wouldn't be able to go as quickly or efficiently as he otherwise would with one damaged hand.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sighed at the mess of his study, before straightening his back and picking up the dustpan and brush.

"It's the job that never gets started as takes the longest to finish," he said to himself, and grinned.


Cleaning was always therapeutic. The physical process is in itself a repetitive one, which is why Charles had detested it so as a child – it offered no interest or challenge – but as he grew older he realised that it allowed his mind to wander; and, in cleaning things, it was almost as if he could clear out his thoughts.

When he was younger, he had combated the boredom that inevitably walked hand-in-hand with tedious tasks by attempted to memorise whatever text he had been reading, reciting it aloud to himself as he worked. It was a habit that he'd never really grown out of. Which was why he was currently, on his knees, carefully dusting glass of a stack of books and talking to himself in a low voice:

"The afternoon buzzes like lazy bees round the flowers, round Mae Rose Cottage. Nearly asleep in the field of nannygoats who hum and gently butt the sun –"

"– she blows love on a puffball."

He twisted around, almost dislodging both the books and the dustpan but managing to do neither, just, to see Erik standing in the doorway.

"You know Thomas?" he asked, surprised. He wouldn't have thought it was to Erik's taste.

"Burton sends my children to sleep most effectively," Erik said, by way of explanation.

"He does have the most soothing cadence, doesn't he," Charles said, smiling.

"Hank says that lunch is ready," Erik said, leaning back out of the doorway. Charles got to his feet, dusted off his knees.

"Excellent," he said. "I missed breakfast. And this is the perfect opportunity for you to try Hank's savoury range."

"It's just sandwiches," Erik said.

"Yes, well," Charles said, tilting his head and smiling. "Sandwiches are my favourite."

"I'll need someplace to wash up," Erik said, as Charles stepped out into the hallway.

"Yes," Charles agreed, glancing down at his own, dishevelled state, "I probably should to. The boys'll be using the kitchen; come on."

He lead the way upstairs to the single bathroom: tiny and cramped, with a bath that was barely five foot long and a shower head that, despite being wedged into the highest position, still forced Sean to hunch to get underneath it; the sink was practically hovering over the toilet, which made it useful for when there had been a really bad bout of stomach flu going about but was otherwise a hazard for knees.

With practise, it was still possible to get three people in there at one time; four, if two were sharing the shower. Charles sat on the rim of the bath, remaining upright only due to years of practise and his heels braced against the base, as Erik carefully scrubbed his hands, wrists and forearms clean of brickdust, dirt and grease.

"I never thanked you," he said, abruptly, watching the muscles shift in the small of Erik's back as he rubbed a lather around his nail beds. Erik glanced up, catching Charles' gaze in the mirror. "For coming over," Charles clarified. "I mean, there was no reason for you to drop everything and come to our rescue."

Erik smiled, a crinkling of one cheek, the lines spidering out from the corner of his eye as he dropped his gaze back to his hands. "I could hardly leave you to burn," he said. "The children would never have forgiven me."

Charles raised an eyebrow. "I had no idea that they were so fond of the place," he said.

"Not at all," Erik countered, lightly. "Pietro merely disapproves on any fire he doesn't start himself."

"Pietro likes to burn things?" Charles asked, surprised. "I would've thought he was a little young to have discovered such infatuations."

"One can never be too young," Erik said, moving to lean one shoulder against the doorjamb so Charles could access the sink. "He's rather more fond of creating friction fires, however; so there's never any real danger of him setting the flat alight."

Charles glanced sideways as he carefully cleaned his hands, trying his best not to rub soap into his stitches; but Erik's expression was one more of fond amusement at his son's antics than of any parental irritation. Erik must have caught his gaze, because one eyebrow twitched minutely.

"It's no more dangerous than the other things that eight-year-olds become obsessed with," he said, blithely.

"Like what?" Charles furrowed his brow, trying to remember what he had been obsessed with when he was eight, other than books and staying out from under his stepfather's palm.

"Soil, dog shit," Erik said, waving a hand as if to encompass all other kinds of dirt that pre-pubescent boys like to examine and, presumably, ingest. "It's far more difficult for him to hurt himself trying to start a fire than it is eating animal faeces."

"True," Charles conceeded, and then hissed as he accidently washed soap into the wound. Erik's gaze zeroed in on his hand as Charles ran it carefully under the cold tap.

"What happened to your hand?"

"Nothing," he said. "I mean – our blackout startled me somewhat and, ah, I may have stabbed myself through the hand."

"I see." Erik's expression was in danger of making Charles flush, and he'd already embarrassed himself enough for one day; Charles concentrated on drying his hands rather than look at the other man.

"It's only a tiny hole," he said, "really; it probably won't even scar. Raven does an excellent job of stitching me up. Last autumn, I stood on the rake – it went right through my foot, and fractured my knee. The doctors were worried that I might not be able to walk on it again."

"No lasting damage," Erik repeated, still watching Charles as he lead the way back down towards the kitchen.

"Well," Charles admitted, "I won't be running any marathons again, but apart from that –" He shrugged. "I've no complaints."


Lunch threatened to be a subdued affair, with Hank evidently still feeling the lash of Charles' earlier rebuke; but Raven had knocked his ankle under the table and Charles asked what he thought their best options were for replacing the fusebox, and everything shifted back to normal. Hank spent most of his explanations darting his gaze between Charles and Erik, as if to confirm his postulations with the professional; Erik didn't dispute any of Hank's ideas other than to query how, precisely, he would effectively transmute the kinetic energy of a basic hydropump into decent electrical output, and Charles rapidly lost track of the conversation as they slid deeper and deeper into technicalities.

There was also the small fact that the other boys were rapidly coming down from the adrenaline high of the morning – one that Charles was all too familiar with, the one that grips tight to the scruff of the neck and jolts you through the day with yes there's something I can do - and were drooping over their sandwiches, plowing through them dully and waiting for the energy kick.

Whatever lethargy the boys brought to the table was completely cancelled out by the twins, however. Raven had been right about them being ridiculously well-behaved for a pair of eight-year-olds, but she appeared to have made it her personal mission to drag the twins out of their shells and force them to have fun. Raven's idea of what eight-year-olds should deem as 'fun' mostly seemed to involve anything that made a lot of mess.

She still, obviously, had problems with the way that Wanda and Pietro were so well-behaved (despite the fact that Charles had tried to explain that maybe, maybe, that was how normal eight-year-olds behaved, and she had just been ridiculously rambunctious), and still evidently blamed Erik for being overly-strict with them; when they had first sat down for lunch, the twins had come barrelling into the kitchen covered in dried paint and food colouring and flour, and had skidded to halt in front of Erik, hands held palm up.

Erik bent onto one knee so that he could examine their hands carefully – and Charles watched Raven watching them, and thought at her do you see, Raven, do you see the way he looks at them; how could you ever think that he wants anything but the world, because the corners of Erik's eyes and mouth had relaxed into something fond and practised, and the twins were looking at him inspect their fingernails for evidence of missed dirt with bright eyes and laughter twitching in their cheeks.

"Satisfactory," Erik declared, and the twins beamed at him before clambouring up to the table.

"Raven let us paint her wall!" Wanda said, practically glowing with excitement. Erik twitched an eyebrow at Charles, who flicked his gaze skywards as if to say it's her wall; since when did she listen to me, anyway?; Raven threw him her favourite desquamatory look that Charles had long since developed resistance to, and simply raised his eyebrows at her, slightly.

"I painted a dinosaur!" Pietro said, enthusiastically. "With robot augmentations." He said the last word slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable, and then beamed when Erik inclined his head, slightly – an indication that Pietro had said it correctly – and waggled his hands on top of his head to demonstrate.

"And then I drew a troop of ninjas!" Wanda said. "Loads of them! With katanas and shuriken and everything! Because ninjas could totally beat a dinosaur."

"Nuh uh!" Pietro protested. "The only way your stupid ninjas would win is because there's loads of them and that's like cheating."