I.

Most of Magneto's furniture is metal. Pyro can see why that makes sense. Sleeping in a metal bed isn't weird. Sitting in metal chairs isn't weird, although it's a little--what's the word he's looking for? Institutional? Uncomfortable, anyway.

Metal stairs that fold themselves into a sheer ramp when Magneto doesn't want to be disturbed in his private rooms are weird. Pyro climbs them quickly, keeping a hand on the railing, although there's not much point. The railing's metal too. He lets the fact that he's not landing in a heap on the stone encourage him to rap on the door.

"Come in," Magneto says as the door slides open. He looks up over the edge of a book. For all Pyro can see, there's nothing sinister in here. Just a metal chair and desk, and some books. Light pours through a skylight crack in the ceiling. Pyro wonders what happens when it rains.

Magneto follows his gaze upwards. A thin ring of metal Pyro hadn't even noticed flows to seal the crack, leaving the room in the dim light of the gooseneck lamp on the table. Pyro runs a hand through his hair, suddenly not sure what to say.

"Yes?" Magneto asks.

"I'm getting tired of wearing the same clothes," Pyro says. They're not even mine, he starts to add, and then figures Magneto isn't interested in how he wound up wearing Bobby Drake's T-shirt under the jumpsuit of total lameness. "I wanted to know if there's a store somewhere around here."

"Yes, on the mainland," Magneto says. He rises, casting a long shadow across the uneven rock wall. "I'll ask Mystique to accompany you."

"Oh."

Magneto looks at him searchingly, and then his lips curve into a faint smile. "You think she's the scary one, don't you?"

"I'm not scared of anybody."

Magneto's expression darkens a shade. "How fortunate for you."

Pyro thinks he's screwed this up, but he's not sure how. He always hated playing head games with the teachers back at the mansion. He never says the right thing.

Magneto sighs. "I'm in no mood to take you shopping. Ask Mystique. I promise, she won't bite you." He smiles, a brief, knife-edged expression. "She doesn't like you that much."

"I, um, yeah," Pyro says, his mind entirely blown by the mental images that suggests. "Um. I'll just--" He jerks his head toward the stairs.

They flatten behind him the moment he steps off the bottom stair. From above, before the door slides closed, he can see the skylight opening to pour the sunlight in.

II.

It's weird not having a lot of people around. It's kind of like when Pyro was a kid, he guesses, only without his parents fighting or his aunt getting drunk or the couple of foster homes he was in having little photocopied lists of rules he used to burn with a cigarette lighter in the sink. He works out and trains in the big open caves on the lowest level and stacks the books Magneto gives him on a corner of his bed with his dirty laundry, figuring he'll read them eventually.

But that leaves a lot of time, and when Magneto and Mystique go over to the mainland he finds that he doesn't really want to hang around the lair and watch TV. There's a tiny town near the island, but shopping there or eating lousy pizza in the one restaurant that's open in the winter means always remembering to lie about who he is and what he's doing here. He's not good at this cover story shit yet.

He likes it better when there's a warm snap and they drive up to Portland and eat on the waterfront. Magneto wears indigo blue and black and rolls up his sleeves in the warm sun. He and Mystique don't act a bit like parents; they both watch the girls, and then both watch the boys, to Pyro's consternation.

Mystique slips off to get them another round of drinks. (She's drinking beer; Magneto is drinking expensive water; Pyro is drinking Dr. Pepper, with the vague feeling that he's losing cool points by doing so.) Magneto looks at Pyro when she's gone and smiles a little. "What, we're not allowed to take in the scenery?"

Pyro finds himself smiling back. "No, it's cool."

"I'm glad you approve," Magneto says dryly. It's a joke, but Pyro doesn't think the joke is meant to be on him.

"That guy's pretty hot," Pyro says, looking critically at the blond in tight pants that Magneto and Mystique had been apparently rating on some numerical scale of their own devising. He feels the urge to backpedal as soon as the words are out of his mouth. "If you like that kind of thing."

"If one does," Magneto agrees lightly.

Pyro ducks his head and then makes himself look up. There's no point in playing it safe.

"He kind of looks like Mr. Summers," Pyro begins, but he's cut off by Magneto reaching across the table swiftly and resting his fingers on Pyro's lips.

"No names here." His voice is quiet but not casual.

"Right," Pyro says when Magneto moves his hand away. He thinks about saying Don't do that again, but he's not sure he means that at all.

III.

Late one night when Magneto and Mystique are in bed, Pyro goes exploring. There's a real limit to how much exploring he can do, he finds; a lot of the doors are locked, and he has no idea where to start looking for a key. Maybe there aren't any keys. Magneto doesn't need them. Some rooms he can see but not get to, because they're on the other side of gaps where the rock drops away to dark ocean. Magneto can fly.

He ends up wandering dispiritedly into the kitchen, where even if he can't uncover the mysteries of the Brotherhood of Mutants he can at least make himself a sandwich. He pokes around a little, peanut-butter sandwich in hand. There's a pantry that looks like they're planning for some kind of nuclear winter, with all the stuff in cans and sacks of rice and drums of bottled water. There's a walk-in freezer with even more stuff, although much of it is in familiar packaging from Trader Joe's, and says more we like to eat but not to cook than we're shopping for the Apocalypse.

It's too cold in the freezer to linger in just a sweatshirt and jeans, although it's a familiar kind of cold. Pyro latches the door back and sits down at the kitchen table and plays with his lighter. It's not that he misses that loser Bobby Drake. He's pretty sure being a bad guy means not thinking about the past.

He jumps as the door opens and flicks the lighter shut. It's Magneto, feet bare, looking like people look at two in the morning when they haven't been to sleep yet. He raises an eyebrow at Pyro and rummages in the refrigerator for one of Mystique's Coronas.

"I didn't think you drank," Pyro says.

Magneto looks at the bottle in his hand as if surprised to see it there. He puts it back and comes up with a bottle of Coke. "I'm certainly not drinking that." He hands it to Pyro, who twists the cap off and drinks. It's the kind in long-necked glass bottles, the kind that Dr. Grey always buys. Always bought. Whatever.

"You shop like my teachers," Pyro says.

"Your former teachers."

"Yeah," Pyro says. Magneto is looking at the refrigerator as if waiting for it to produce something he wants to eat. "I could make scrambled eggs," Pyro offers.

"As you like." Magneto shuts the refrigerator door and then leans against the counter. His hand moves restlessly on the countertop.

Pyro goes over to the refrigerator and gets out the eggs. "If you don't want any, I'll just make enough for me."

"I didn't say I didn't," Magneto says. Pyro gets down a frying pan and figures that maybe he'll get the hang of this supervillain thing yet.

IV.

Magneto lets Pyro drive one night on the way back from Portland. It's just the two of them making a run for supplies. Pyro bought a new leather jacket and a new pair of shoes. They still feel stiff on his feet. He bought dark sunglasses, too, but Magneto made him take them off to drive.

Pyro doesn't want to talk until he's feeling confident behind the wheel. He's sure Magneto would jerk the car back onto the road if Pyro were about to run into a tree or something, but it would not impress him. He keeps the car very carefully between the yellow lines until that gets really boring and then risks a glance at Magneto.

He's sitting in the passenger seat drinking coffee and looking out the window, not even clutching the door handle the way Mr. Summers does when he teaches Drivers' Ed. His hat is resting on his knee. He's probably the last person in the world to wear a hat, but somehow it's sexy, not lame, like something out of a black and white movie where everyone smokes.

"So," Pyro says, his voice sounding too loud in the car, "how long have you been ..."

Magneto raises an eyebrow. "Been what?" he asks, sipping his coffee.

Now that he thinks about it, there are a lot of things he wants to know. How long have you been a gay mutant terrorist? "Been doing this kind of stuff."

"A long time. Charles and I were doing 'this kind of stuff' before you were born."

"Fighting for mutants, right?" Pyro says. "Not, I mean--"

"That, too," Magneto says. Pyro glances at him out of the corner of his eye again. He looks amused, not angry.

"Is the Professor gay?" Pyro blurts, because his mouth is obviously running ahead of his brain.

Magneto smiles sharply. "Well, I thought so."

"Are you gay?" He can't seem to make himself stop talking. He's going to fuck this up. He always does when people start to like him. Or so the Professor said the last time he got called up to his office, but, hell, what did he know?

"Bisexual," Magneto says, as if that's nothing important. "Why do you ask?"

"I just ... I don't know," Pyro says. "He never said anything about it."

"I'm not surprised," Magneto says. "Charles doesn't believe in visibility."

"Yeah, well, hiding didn't work, did it?"

"It never has," Magneto says, a little distantly. Pyro risks another glance. He can't see the numbers on Magneto's arm, under his shirt, but he knows they're there. That also seems like it's from old movies. In movies the Nazis all have thick German accents and are really stupid. Pyro thinks maybe it's not that simple in real life.

"You were ... in prison before--"

"In a concentration camp." His tone is still mild, his expression faintly amused, but Pyro's starting to wonder if that's as much protective coloration as the hat and overcoat.

"Just because you were Jewish?"

"Humans always persecute people who are different."

"I don't see why that's such a big difference."

Magneto looks out the window. They're passing gas stations, now, with cars stopped to fuel up and guys pumping gas. "Do you see the difference between us and them?"

Pyro takes a breath and lets it out. "Yes."

"I'm glad."

There's a long silence. "Are you going to tell me to kill somebody?" Pyro asks.

Magneto looks at him, face unreadable in the glare from passing headlights. "Why would I do that?"

"To see if I can."

"I already have confidence of that," Magneto says. He pats Pyro on the arm.

Pyro drives. He's getting good at this, having no trouble keeping it on the road. When he gets to the beachside house where they get their mail, he pulls carefully into the driveway, tires crunching on the gravel. He turns off the headlights and gets out of the car and just stands there, looking out over the ocean.

Magneto comes around to his side of the car and stands next to him until Pyro glances his way. "I don't take killing lightly. But it's always an option."

"I get it," Pyro says. He's okay. It's just suddenly really lonely, standing here with sand in his shoes looking over the edge of the cliff at the black rocky shapes of islands he can only barely see against the dark sky.

"Come inside," Magneto says. His voice is gentle. He puts his arm through Pyro's and draws him away from the cliff face. Inside, Pyro turns to him almost blindly, his hands seeking Magneto's shoulders, and Magneto doesn't push him away.

V.

Pyro jerks awake as Magneto's arms tighten around him hard enough to hurt. Pyro struggles away from him and rolls over to look at him. Magneto's frowning in his sleep. His hands jerk against the sheets, and then his eyes snap open.

"Pyro," he says.

Pyro nods. "You okay?" he asks casually.

"Only a dream."

"You get bad ones too, huh?"

"Yes," Magneto says. He brushes a strand of hair away from Pyro's forehead. That should be annoying, but it's kind of nice.

"I'll bet," Pyro says.

Magneto smiles crookedly. "I won't tell you about them. Don't worry."

"Okay," Pyro says, but he wonders if maybe someday he will.

VI.

They come up the stairs to the lair with their packages floating behind them in what Pyro can only think of as an overgrown grocery cart, although the wire basket doesn't actually have wheels. He wonders what happens when Magneto isn't here. He guesses people have to get the groceries up the stairs themselves.

Mystique still isn't home. Pyro wonders briefly if he's supposed to be worried, but Magneto doesn't seem to be. Pyro's more interested in whether this means they can have sex again. He's decided sex is totally not overrated.

Magneto turns toward him from setting down their packages, and Pyro spreads one hand on his stomach. Magneto raises an eyebrow.

"I want everything," Pyro says, and he doesn't just mean sex, although sex is wrapped up with everything else everybody's told him all his life he can't have.

"There are advantages to being the bad guy," Magneto says with a wicked smile, and Pyro knows it's true.

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