Fear the Rest
Chapter 1: Friends
December 1983
It was snowing fitfully, snow mixed with sleet that rattled against the windowpanes when the wind blew. Campus was closed for the Christmas holidays, the lab locked up tight. Erik would have been at work if he could have. Instead he was making a show of reading for the empty room, tapping his fingers on the edge of the desk.
He'd had holiday invitations enough from fellow professors and even a few students, and he knew he'd pleased no one by turning them down. But if they couldn't bother to learn that he couldn't stomach either Christmas celebrations or the Hannukah ones that put a gloss of commercialism on a faith that was hollow at the core, he'd have to repeat himself year after year.
The prospect was depressing. Erik turned a page sharply enough to crease it. Charles had always worried about how badly he took the holidays, as if his mood at this time of year wasn't perfectly reasonable. He'd half-expected a call to ask how he was. One hadn't come.
Brendan had invited him to come around to his Christmas party. The crowd would be boys in tight shirts who smoked too much and aging academic types like himself making arch conversation as they got drunker. It seemed like a mockery of any real holiday spirit, and not even the half-spoken understanding that he could stay the night was enough to make it palatable.
One couldn't even turn on the television without seeing families with children gathered around to light candles or look up at a glowing tree. Not that Erik was all that fond of television at the best of times.
He turned up the stereo without looking at it, the slow pulse of Beethoven filling the room. It didn't repair his mood, but at least it gave him a rhythm for his thoughts. His fingers stroked the wood of the desk and willed it warm and yielding. The wood, being neither metal or flesh, refused to cooperate. He stared out the window at the snow.
At Charles's foolish school in Westchester the snow would be falling silently outside the library windows, piling up deep and making the world bright. It would look too picturesque to be real, like a snow globe that could be picked up and shaken in the palm of one's hand.
Erik snapped his fingers, and the blinds collapsed shut, blocking out the snow. He got up to pour another cup of coffee.
There was a knock on the door.
He pushed down his rolled-up sleeves and went to answer. He wondered. Not hoped, he told himself, but wondered.
He opened the door and smiled to cover his surprise. It was Raven, in a smart black wool coat with a suitcase in her hand; there was snow flecking her brown hair. He stepped back and waved her inside, and she dragged the suitcase over the doorstep and smiled.
"I've come for the holidays," she announced, and only then looked around. "Unless you have company?"
"No," he said. "No company."
"Or plans?" A little uncertain, as if she were aware only then that she had gone out on a limb. She always hated being the one to show her cards.
"No plans."
She took a couple of steps closer, smiling again, and he pulled her into his arms. She smelled of snow.
He kissed her hard and then moved his mouth to her jaw and then her throat, the wet wool of her coat against his cheek. She was warm against him, and her hands moved up his back.
Something was odd about the pose, and he realized that in heels she was a good inch taller than he was in stocking feet. He chuckled.
"I'm not used to looking up to women."
She smiled against his cheek.
"Which shall I do something about, the height or the sex?"
"It's just your shoes," Erik said.
"Shall I take them off?"
"Come and sit down and I'll do it for you."
"Yes?"
"Yes," Erik said, steering her firmly toward the bedroom. She glanced back at her suitcase, and he brought it following after them with a jerk of his head. She laughed.
"Erik, you're incorrigible," she said, running her hands up his chest.
"Am I." He kissed her again.
She slipped out of his arms and posed on the bed, one knee raised to show off her shoe and her head thrown back. He slipped off her shoes and tossed them over his shoulder, and she laughed again.
He pressed her down onto the bed hungrily, and they kissed, fully clothed, while he pressed against her as if he could drive his body into hers. After a minute she started working on the buttons of his shirt.
He helped her strip it off and unfastened his own belt. She shrugged off her coat.
"Aren't you still a little overdressed?" he asked, pausing with his trousers half undone. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back again. Her dress melted away to expose creamy, smooth skin, tan nipples, dark brush of pubic hair.
Erik raised an eyebrow in appreciation.
"You're getting better at that. I couldn't tell."
"It does save on clothing costs. After all, I had to pay for the coat."
"Did you?" It was bulky to have risked shoplifting. He hoped she was developing more judgment than that. Getting through college in New York required a different set of skills than surviving on the streets of Germany. At least he knew she was good at not getting caught.
"It wouldn't keep me warm if it wasn't real," she said, clearly as much of an answer as she wanted to give. She rolled him over abruptly and straddled him; he leaned back against the pillows and let her hands roam. "What do you want me to be tonight?"
She shifted, and was blonde and well-endowed, shorter with stronger curves. She shifted again, and was a boyish redhead, with small breasts and long legs and freckles on her knees. She looked at him critically, gauging the effect she was creating, and shifted again to a red-haired young man, weight resting differently on his hips and strong hands sliding under his clothes.
He stroked her cheek. The feel of faint stubble against the palm of his hand was pleasant, but he was hungry for the familiar that night.
"Just you," he said, knowing it was a bit of a risk to ask for. She had always been uneasy in her own skin.
"All right." She ducked her head and shivered, and blue crept across her skin. Her hair went shocking red. She looked up with yellow eyes.
He stroked her cheek again, running his thumb over the scales and then down the line of her jaw. He leaned up to kiss her, and her mouth met his hungrily. He was happy to let her weight press him down.
When she was quite done with him, they lay sprawled among the tangled covers. He listened to her breathe and fingered her hair. He reached down eventually to pull up the blanket.
"I want a cigarette," she said, rolling over and leaning half-off the bed to fish in her coat pockets. Erik propped himself up on one elbow and watched her light one, only a little tempted to indulge. He kissed her instead, savoring the taste of smoke on her lips. She took another drag on the cigarette and then stabbed it out. "I smoke too much."
"So how is school?" he asked, tracing the curve of her hip with his hand. He'd helped her move into a shabby student apartment at the end of the summer. He remembered the way she'd looked when he left, both relieved that she wouldn't be depending on him anymore and suddenly very young, alone in a very big city. She'd called fairly often, but she kept the calls brief. She wasn't one to linger on the phone.
Now she shrugged, watching cigarette smoke curl up from the water glass on the nightstand.
"Hard," she admitted. "My English isn't good enough. All those idioms."
"It's a terrible language," he agreed, but didn't offer to switch to German. She didn't ask him to. "I hated learning."
"But you did."
"Well, in thirty years."
"I need to know now," she said, rolling over onto her stomach. "It's so hard to study. My roommates don't. And they want me to go out with them." She smiled too sharply. "And so I go."
He stroked the curve of her shoulder. Her body wouldn't show the marks of anything she'd been doing, but there was a tightness in her movements he hadn't seen at fall break.
"Is it fun?"
"I suppose." She rested her chin on her hands. "Not always. I get so tired."
"Maybe you need different roommates."
"Maybe," she admitted, and stretched. "It's quiet here."
"Very," Erik said in a tone of voice that made her turn to look at him. He turned his head away. She stroked his cheek, and he let her for a minute before pulling back and smiling. "Have you met anyone interesting in New York?"
"Interesting, or interesting?"
"Either."
"I've slept with people. There's a man I've been seeing. He's got a very nice car. He's going to be a doctor."
"You don't sound enthusiastic."
"It would solve my problems, don't you think?" She looked at her fingernails as if examining a coat of dark blue polish. "I'd like a lot of money."
"I considered it."
She looked both surprised and amused.
"What, marrying for money?"
He shrugged. "There were enough Jewish girls with money when I was in school. I could have caught one."
"So why didn't you?" Raven asked.
"I fell in love," Erik said.
Raven smiled. "There's your mistake."
"Clearly."
"I could get him."
"But is it worth who you'd have to be?"
She sighed. "Well. That's the question. If I've got to be stuck with anyone, I'd rather it be someone I can talk to."
"Haven't you found anyone to talk to?" Erik asked.
"Where? I can't talk to my roommates about anything real. They can't even know who I am."
"So look for more people like us."
"I do," she said with a sigh. "But it's not like I can take out an ad in the paper."
"Mutants Wanted," Erik said. "Or perhaps 'Mutant Seeks Same.'"
Raven looked more thoughtful than amused. "There should be a mutant bar. Like gay bars. Or at least mutant night. It would make it all easier."
"No one would come."
"I think they would," Raven said slowly. "To meet people like them? I think they would."
"Hmm." Erik leaned back, and she settled with her head on his shoulder. Her skin was smooth and inhumanly warm against him, with the slight pressure of her scales where her weight rested. He felt a sense of contentment sneaking over him, and was still debating whether to fight it off when he fell asleep.
Three days later she was already asleep on his shoulder when the phone rang. He dragged himself out of bed with a sigh and shrugged on his bathrobe, preparing to deliver a blistering lecture to any student who felt the need to get him out of bed to talk about his engineering grades on Christmas Eve.
"Yes?"
"Hello, Erik."
"Hello, Charles." He ran his thumb around the edge of the telephone receiver. "Quiet Christmas Eve?"
"Very," Charles said. "The children are all in bed."
"While you sit up and brood by the Christmas tree."
"Not really brooding," Charles said, and Erik could hear him smiling. "Just thinking of you."
"And there's a difference?"
"So I tell myself. How's Boston?"
"Quiet. All the labs are closed. I'm working on a paper."
"Amazing how they do that over the holidays. Anything I'd be interested in?"
"Maybe. It's metallurgical. I don't know if you're still fiddling with Cerebro."
"A bit. The students keep me busy."
"I imagine," Erik said. "Has Scott blown up your mailbox again?"
"Not this winter. He's learning to shovel snow just like everyone else."
Erik smiled. "He wouldn't have to if he'd learn how to aim."
"I like my new mailbox," Charles said. "I'm not sure I'm willing to risk it yet."
"Always unwilling to make sacrifices," Erik said.
Charles laughed. "Come up and have lunch with me. We can talk about your research."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Erik warned.
"What's the worst thing that could happen?"
"We could decide to give it another try, spend a week in bed, three weeks at each other's throats, and six months only speaking to the people around us in monosyllables."
"You know, it would almost be worth it," Charles said thoughtfully.
"And yet not quite."
"Here's an idea. You could come up to lunch, we could have sex in the car, and then break up on the way back to Boston. We could set a new record."
"That has a certain perverse appeal," Erik said.
"Come and have lunch with me, Erik. We're adults. We can keep our hands off each other long enough to talk about engineering."
Erik glanced at the bedroom. "I've got company. After the holidays?"
"Of course," Charles replied, only the slightest strain in his voice. "Call me after New Year's."
New Year's Eve he and Raven went out. She smiled at his severe suit but said it made him look handsome, brushing imaginary dust off his lapels. They had an expensive dinner he'd be regretting when he got the credit card bill. The steak was excellent. He turned one of the shrimp in the shrimp cocktail that had appeared before salad over by its tail, wondering if he'd feel more guilty eating it or leaving it on the table.
"I'll take them, if they're without a home," Raven offered.
He slid the shrimp across the table to her and watched her make short work of them, despite having demolished her own steak. She licked cocktail sauce off a rose-pink shrimp tail, and then off her fingers, and then saw him smiling at her and sucked on the tip of her fingertip provocatively. He laughed.
"My roommates are vegetarians," she said by way of explanation.
"Poor thing. Are they also very earnest?"
"Terribly." She ran a hand through her hair. "About everything."
"Am I a bad influence on you?"
She smiled and shook her head.
"No. I'm a bad influence on you. I keep you from being stuffy."
"Am I 'stuffy'?"
"Sometimes."
He fingered the lapel of his suit.
"Just because I sometimes act my age . . ."
"Oh, Erik." She pushed her plate forward. "Dance with me."
It was the sort of music he'd learned not to admit he liked anymore, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong. He turned her round the dance floor, his arm about her waist, her steps perfectly matched to his own. With anyone else it would have taken practice. He had quite a lot of champagne, and by midnight he was laughing as she clung to him, too tipsy to balance well on her shoes.
"It's a new year," she said as the cheers from the television screen by the bar cut through the music. "Let's hope for better than the last."
"It's starting off well," he said, and kissed her as silver confetti began to fall.
The next day he put her on her train and watched as it pulled away, with her waving at the window. She seemed her age for once, not warily older than her years. He watched, smiling, and then turned away and walked back to his car. The apartment seemed very quiet without her.
He went up to Westchester the next weekend ready for the usual bloodbath and was a little unnerved as lunch proceeded peacefully. They talked about engineering and the latest theories on mutation, with a brief digression on movies they'd seen lately when it seemed that the discussion of theory was getting sharp.
He thought about saying well, we're being remarkably civil or to what do I owe this unexpected truce? or simply saved the world lately, Charles?
Charles paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "Yes, Erik?"
"It's good to see you," Erik said.
"And you." Charles smiled. "Perhaps you could come up again in a few weeks. I'll tell you all about Parents' Day, if I survive it this year."
"The Worthingtons?"
"It's not that I dislike them . . ."
"It is precisely that you dislike them, and for good reason."
"I don't really know them well enough to judge," Charles said. "Warren has a great deal of respect for them."
"And there's a recommendation."
Charles set his fork down. "Erik, sometimes I get the impression that you don't like children."
Erik sighed and put his elbows on the table.
"I never told you I did," he said, and then relented. "I like the ones who are worth liking."
"They're all worth liking," Charles said.
"You're such an innocent, Charles."
"Not anymore." Charles looked amused.
"Then how do you account for your . . ." Erik searched for the precisely cutting word.
"Lack of misanthropy?"
"They don't all like you , Charles."
"They don't have to."
"Because you have such a wealth of people's affection that any one person's doesn't matter to you in the least?" Erik smiled, but it didn't take the edge out of his voice.
"Because I can't afford to care what the students think of me," Charles said. "Being an authority figure doesn't always make me popular."
"All those rules."
"And I apparently live to assign extra homework."
"You do realize then you'll just have to grade it?"
"Thus the phrase 'this hurts me more than it hurts you.'"
Coffee arrived. They drank it, in no hurry despite the hovering of the waitress. Finally Erik couldn't justify nursing a tablespoonful of coffee any longer. They walked out to Erik's car. The wind bit cold.
"Well . . ." Charles said.
Erik hesitated, awkward, and then offered his hand. Charles shook it with a wry smile, his hand warm in Erik's. Neither of them was in a hurry to let go. After a minute Charles's other hand drifted down to rest on Erik's hip. After another minute Erik closed his eyes.
"Does it have to be in the car?" Charles asked finally. "I think we're getting a little old for that."
They took both cars back to the school, Charles having vetoed Erik's half-serious suggestion that his could follow them on its own. They went in through the carriage house door and took the stairs quickly; Erik rather liked both Charles's guilty expression and the way he shut the door very firmly behind them and locked it.
"I think--" Charles said, which seemed like a bad idea; Erik cut him off by pushing him up against the door and kissing him. There was a minute of frantic struggle with clothes that only got as far as shirts open before Charles went down on his knees.
"I . . ." Erik said, and then after a minute, "shall I do that?"
"You have an advantage with zippers," Charles said in frustration.
"There."
"Better," Charles said, and then silenced himself effectively.
Erik closed his eyes, his breath catching. Even with Charles's arm around the back of his thighs he felt unsteady on his feet. Charles pulled away, earning a noise of protest until Erik realized that he was meant to lean against the wall. He did so gratefully.
"Hurry," Erik said. He was waiting for the touch of Charles's mind. It didn't come. Without it he felt hyperaware of his own sensations: Charles's mouth working on him and the wood paneling cold against his back and those warm hands on his hips pressing through the fabric of his pants.
It came suddenly, the ghost sensation of pressure against his knees, the pressure of his erection against his clothes, the taste as his mouth worked in a familiar rhythm, the image of Erik pressed back against the wall, hair in disarray, open, vulnerable, hungry, beautiful.
He closed his eyes and reached out blindly for Charles's shoulders, as if seeking some deeper contact yet, as if Charles's mouth and his hands could melt them together into one being. Instead he felt the pressure mount and break, leaning hard on Charles after the last spasms passed.
"It's all right," Charles murmured. Erik ran his hand over Charles's face. "Ah--"
"Yes," Erik said, brushing his thumb against the corner of Charles's mouth and watching him shiver. " Now the bed?"
"Now the bed."
Some time later they lay tangled in the sheet, sweating, sated, and at least in Erik's case rather cold. The blanket had been lost early on. He was reluctant to start a search for it and end this long moment of quiet. There was a whisper against the window that he eventually decided was snow falling.
"You know, I'm hungry," Charles said after a while.
"So am I," Erik admitted.
Charles sat up.
"We could go down and make sandwiches."
"Aren't your students missing you?"
Charles shrugged. "I told them I might not be around for dinner." Erik raised an eyebrow. "In case you wanted to stop by and look at the modifications I'd made to Cerebro."
"Charles, that is the single most flimsy version of 'come up and look at my etchings' I've ever heard."
"You've seen the etchings," Charles said. "I can hardly say 'come and look at them again.'"
They made sandwiches in the kitchen. Erik got out plates and knives while Charles rummaged in the refrigerator. Nothing had been moved, which he found obscurely comforting. He got down glasses and looked for something to pour into them other than milk.
"I don't keep drinks in here," Charles said. "Not with a house full of teenagers."
"It wouldn't hurt them to drink beer. At their age."
"In Europe, maybe."
"American teenagers being so much more susceptible to moral corruption."
"You'd corrupt the morals of a saint, Erik."
"Saint Charles?" Erik said, interposing himself between Charles and the table. "I hardly think so."
"Don't you?" Charles asked with a wry smile, and then unsurprisingly kissed him. It was very nice, but a large part of Erik's mind was still on the sandwiches on the table behind them.
There was a rattle, a quick shuffle of footsteps, and a thud, as of the kitchen door opening and then shutting again very quickly behind someone. They broke apart like guilty teenagers, looking at the door. A handful of white feathers drifted to the floor. One was caught in the doorframe.
They ate their sandwiches in silence.
"Shall we have our coffee in the library?" Charles asked finally. "It's not as if it's going to stay a secret that you're here."
"Was it one?"
"I try to be a good influence," Charles said, watching the coffee drip. "This isn't exactly a stable relationship."
"I haven't noticed you objecting."
"As I said, Erik, I'm not a saint."
Charles poured their coffee and added milk and sugar to Erik's cup. Erik followed him to the library, where a fire was blazing cheerfully. Jean was curled up on one sofa with a textbook propped on her knees. The Summers boy--Scott--was sitting cross-legged on the floor by her feet. A black girl with shocking white hair had papers spread out over one table.
Scott flushed when he saw them and scrambled to his feet.
"Think I've studied enough for tonight," he muttered, heading for the door. He tapped the black girl on the shoulder as he left, and jerked his head in a not-particularly-subtle "we should go" gesture. She looked at Jean questioningly, raising a white eyebrow.
Jean looked at Erik, and then at Charles, who was settling into a chair by the fire with a carefully neutral expression.
"Go on if you want, Ororo. I think I'll stay here for a while."
Erik looked at Charles, who gave the most infinitesimal of shrugs. He settled down to drink his coffee. Jean went back to her textbook. Erik picked up one of the books that lay open on the nearby table and turned pages contentedly for a while. The fire crackled. He and Charles didn't talk and didn't need to.
"Are you going to be staying long?" Jean asked finally. Erik looked up from his book, making himself meet her eyes, reminding himself that this was not his daughter but his former student, and he only a teacher she remembered kindly.
"I'm afraid not." He glanced at his watch. It was getting late. He'd be driving after midnight. Charles glanced up at him and spoke in his mind.
Do you want to stay the night? It's snowing.
Only the night, Charles.
I know.
"Dr. Lehnsherr will be going back to Boston in the morning," Charles said.
"I suppose he just came up to look at Cerebro?" She sounded too cynical for a child her age, more so than Erik remembered. He couldn't find words to answer, and was relieved when Charles stepped in, as he always had.
"You know, Erik and I are still friends. Even now."
"That's great. I'm happy for you." Jean made a production of gathering up her books without looking at either of them. "I'm getting awfully tired. I think I'll go up to bed. Goodnight, Professor. Dr. Lehnsherr."
"Jean . . ." Charles began, but she was already on her way out. "Goodnight, Jean."
She shut the library door behind her, and Erik looked at Charles. "She's not very happy with me," he said.
"Reasonably enough, she's afraid someone will get hurt." Charles looked into the fire, as if searching for more words. "And she's still angry at you for leaving."
"That wasn't my choice."
"Wasn't it?"
"I can't play by your rules, Charles," Erik said. It seemed very quiet in the library suddenly. The fire threw shadows across the floor.
"They're the only ones I know that work."
"Where does that leave us?"
Charles got up and put a hand on his shoulder. "Going up to bed," he said. "And you'll go back to Boston in the morning."
That night they made love slowly, Charles's mouth lingering at the curve of his neck, the plane of his shoulder, the palm of his hand, stopping frequently to talk in tones they hoped wouldn't carry. When they stopped talking he drove Charles's body against the bed with his own, his hands on Charles's shoulders, setting a steady wordless rhythm that went on for a long time.
At the end, to their mutual surprise, it was Charles who kept shaking even after he'd come in the sheets, who when Erik tried to shift his weight off him only rolled to one side and clutched at him, his breath ragged.
"Charles?"
"I don't know." One hand moved blindly over his shoulder. "Just a feeling. Like we'll never--" He took a shuddering breath and then let it out. "Please don't go just now, Erik."
"I said I'd stay," Erik said.
Charles spread his hand on Erik's shoulder. "You did."
He spent more of the night watching Charles sleep than he did sleeping himself. It was still dark when he got up and dressed.
"Not going already?"
"I . . ."
"Go," Charles said. "Call me when you can."
"I will," Erik said. He went out, shutting the door very quietly behind him.
At dinner the next week, Brendan shook his head at him.
"Erik, it's not that I have anything against sex."
"I've noticed," Erik said. He swirled his wine in his glass and smiled.
"But why do you do this to yourself? Bad enough that you spend the holidays holed up with a co-ed--"
"Raven and I are friends."
"You weren't sleeping with her?"
"Did I say that?" He stabbed a forkful of salad.
"I just think you need to remember why you stalked out of Westchester and spent the spring on Paul's sofa in the first place," Brendan went on. "I was there, remember? Well, on the sofa. Not in Westchester."
"Charles and I are friends."
"Erik, friends is when you aren't having sex."
"You and I are friends."
"That's different," Brendan said. "Thankfully, I'm in no danger of falling in love with you and therefore having my heart crushed into tiny pieces. You're ill-tempered and arrogant and frankly not my type, unless you're planning to miraculously lose twenty years."
"I take it sex is out of the question, then?"
"I didn't say that. You do have some redeeming qualities."
"Oh, enlighten me," Erik said. He leaned back in his chair, draining the wineglass. The evening was beginning to produce a warm glow.
"You just want to hear me talk about you." Brendan gave an appreciative glance at some one of the party of young men who were gathered around the bar competing for one another's attention; Erik couldn't tell which one had caught his eye. "Honestly? Sometimes I want to spend the night with someone who remembers the Kennedy administration."
"Well, if my only virtue's that I'm old . . ."
"You're good-looking, you're an interesting conversationalist, you have amazing mutant powers, and you're paying for dinner." Brendan picked up his own wineglass. "Have we finished the flattery portion of the evening now?"
"Yes, now we can talk about you."
"What a relief," Brendan said. "I've been wearing myself ragged trying to whip my dancers into shape for the opening Friday."
"More modern dance?"
"I suppose you'd prefer Swan Lake?"
"I'm just never sure I understand it."
"You don't have to, but you could come see the opening."
"Only for you."
"I'm touched," Brendan said dryly. He glanced at his watch. "Think we should go? The play's starting soon."
"We should be able to have coffee and still make the curtain," Erik said. All the same, they drank the coffee rather quickly.
"Home afterwards, or out somewhere?" Brendan asked, draining his cup.
"I did not come out with you to watch you cruise."
"I mean for a drink."
Erik shrugged. "You know, my 'co-ed' suggested that there should be mutant bars," he said.
"That's not a half-bad idea," Brendan said. He rolled the sugar packet he'd been toying with onto his palm, where it trembled and then rose an inch in the air. "If the ability to do this is one of your criteria."
"I don't think it would be only be useful for dating."
"No, I imagine not. It really is a good idea, Erik. It's not as if there's much of a mutant community. It's only luck that we ever run into anyone else like us." Brendan smiled wryly. "It might even inspire some people to take an interest in politics, at least as much as anyone does when they're drinking."
Erik batted the sugar packet off the palm of Brendan's hand onto the table, where it rolled and lay still. "You shouldn't do that in restaurants," he said.
Brendan shrugged. "Anyone who sees it will just think they've been overdoing the before-dinner drinks."
"I prefer not to live dangerously," Erik said.
Brendan shook his head. "Somehow I don't believe you."