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Erik categorically loathes his summer job. If it weren’t for his oftentimes questionable friendship with Angel, he would never have set foot within two miles of this monstrosity of an establishment, a great sprawling supermarket that is possibly larger than some private universities and could double as a zombie apocalypse supply shelter.
Erik hates each shining square foot of it with every fiber of his being. For one thing, he has a natural aversion to any place much larger than a ma-and-pop store frequented by at most five patrons at a time. When he deigns to shop at all, he aims for the least amount of human contact possible along the duration of the trip. He’s out to buy groceries or supplies, not to socialize, and his insistence on power-walking through stores and refusing to pause in an aisle for longer than twenty seconds drives his mother mad whenever she comes along.
With this in mind, the number of people he’s forced to interact with every day from 9 to 5 on this job is infuriatingly unacceptable. It’s not that he hates people. It’s that he hates stupid people. And it seems as if supermarkets draw the most brainless creatures that humanity has to offer.
Far more importantly, H.F. Emporium is owned and managed by a man who likely rose from the pits of hell and burned a little too long down there to ever pass as fully human. Sebastian Shaw is a ruthless, unsympathetic, unapologetic, rigid old asshole who demands an impossible standard of perfection from his employees and denies returns or exchanges and foists Erik into the little child-care playground at the front of the store more often than not, even though he knows Erik can’t stand wailing children. Why he’s here overseeing one of the largest mutant-owned businesses in the entire state and not sitting in jail for sheer smarmy evilness is entirely beyond Erik.
This afternoon, he’s crankily organizing the shelves of the gardening tools in the back while cursing Angel’s general existence—“Erik, please, I just need someone to cover for me for two months until I get back or else Shaw’s going to give my job away to someone else, please”—and his own inexplicable agreement. It’s been a relatively uneventful day, free of irritations beyond the one customer in the morning who had stormed in and demanded to return a camera because it was broken, only to storm back out humiliated when Erik examined the camera and found no batteries inside. He hadn’t even offered an apology for screaming in Erik’s face for nearly ten minutes without pausing for breath. He was supremely lucky that Erik had had his coffee that morning, which have given him enough fortitude to keep him from strangling the man with his own tie. It had been a close call.
He’s taking a pair of garden shears from the shelf of gloves (honestly, the rack with the shears is literally five feet to the left—humanity’s sheer laziness makes Erik despair on a daily basis) when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.
“Oh my God!” the movement says. “Look at this, Raven! Did you know they made shampoo like this? Rainforest flowers. I wonder what that smells like. Raven, look.” There’s the sound of a cap popping and then a loud, deep inhalation. And then: “Oh, Raven, come smell this. It’s heavenly. I should get it.”
“That’s a girls’ shampoo,” a female voice answers dryly.
“Oh, rubbish! I ought to be able to smell like rainforest flowers if I want to. I’m the one who’s going to be paying anyway.”
“You’d better be,” Raven mutters, sounding torn between amusement and exasperation. “I knew it’d be a bad idea to take you to the store like this. You’re still drunk, aren’t you?”
“I’m no such thing.”
His words are followed by an emphatic crash, and then a distinct, “Oh, bugger.”
Erik sets the shears down in their correct place, takes a calming breath, and begins to head over. When he rounds the display of Iron Man paraphernalia and comes into sight of the shampoo aisle, he gets a glimpse of a tall blond girl and a blur of brown hair that shouts, “The authorities! Quick, Raven, run!”
So saying, he grabs the girl’s hand and darts off down the aisle. Erik’s left staring after him in a mixture of surprise and displeasure. Drunk people. Exactly what this fucking supermarket needs.
He pauses only to right the fallen shelf of bath soaps that the man must have knocked over before going after them again. Drunks are irritating enough. But experience tells him that happy drunks are nothing short of a menace to society. Erik dodges past a burly man who nearly flattens him with his shopping cart, skirts around a tub of cheap movies, and then pulls to a slow stop by the book section to look around.
Nothing. Erik frowns.
“Raven, look, it’s me! Look, it’s my picture!”
The sharp British accent cuts easily through the din of the crowd. Head snapping up, Erik makes a beeline for the aisle directly to his left, where the nonfiction books are stored behind the posters of Justin Bieber, who smirks at Erik from behind the display glass as he passes. This time, he stops at the end of the aisle, where he stands for a moment unnoticed as the drunk guy strokes the cover of a blue-covered book that Erik recognizes even from the distance. It’s Dr. Xavier’s latest book, Mutant Memory: Mutant-Human Coexistence from 1960 to the Present. Erik has it on his nightstand at home, his bookmark lodged halfway through it. A bit of a dry read, to be sure, but engaging enough and certainly raising interesting points.
“Look,” the man repeats a bit plaintively when the girl doesn’t turn her attention away from the magazine racks.
“Of course your picture’s on the book, Charles,” Raven says with a heavy sigh. “You wrote the thing.”
“It’s a nice picture,” Charles croons, petting the back flap. Then he frowns. “My nose looks a little big.”
When the man raises his head, Erik gets his first good look at him and freezes in shock. He knows that face. He’s read more blurbs about it than probably healthy, has glanced more than occasionally at it on every back flap of every book he owns by Dr. Charles Xavier, PhD.
Their eyes lock for a brief second, brilliant blue flashing in his direction. Then Charles tucks the book under his arm and seizes Raven’s wrist again, hauling her down the aisle and then turning sharply out of sight. In his shock, Erik simply stands there for a handful of seconds, eyes wide. Dr. Charles Xavier, here. In this godforsaken store.
Drunk.
Erik bolts after him, suddenly filled with a strange mix of his regular annoyance and a pulse-raising anticipation. It’s not every day a celebrity stumbles across Erik’s path, and it’s even rarer that a celebrity Erik actually likes comes anywhere within a hundred-mile radius of where he lives. Determined not to lose him now, Erik turns around and heads back the way he came, hoping to head the two of them off at the next aisle. But they must have sprinted because they’re nowhere in sight, having vanished into the milling throng of shoppers in the main pathway.
Damn. Erik pauses behind a display to avoid getting run over by shopping carts and reaches out with his powers, half-hoping that some disturbance will catch his attention. And he’s not disappointed: a rack down Aisle 13 is wobbling dangerously, accompanied by a panicked “Shite!”
Reaching out blindly, Erik stabilizes the rack and pulls it upright again. “Raven, did you see that?” is the delighted response, followed by, “Raven, look, an inflatable pool!”
Hurrying into Aisle 13, Erik arrives just in time to see Charles reaching curiously for a red tab attached to a flattened inflatable pool stuffed on the bottom shelf, the red tab that Erik knows is clearly labeled WARNING: EMERGENCY PULL TAB. Before Erik can even throw out his hand and shout, Charles yanks it and everything explodes.
Erik’s dimly aware of displays crashing into each other and a cart full of soccer balls and beach buckets spewing its contents into the air, and then he’s not aware of much of anything else anymore except for an entire carton of pool noodles slapping him full across the face so strongly they knock him flat on the ground and then proceed to bury him beneath their Styrofoam lengths, their weight reinforced by a pod of killer whale inflatables and a flock of light-up hula hoops. A beach ball ricochets off his outstretched hand and bounces up to strike the shelf right above him, sending a cascade of Transformer figurines flooding down in a thunderous clatter. Erik shields his head as best as he can, twisting to protect his face from the destruction. Something digs in cold and hard against his hip, and somewhere above all the chaos, he hears Raven shout, “Charles!”
Silence descends. He hears nothing but his own breathing, uncomfortably loud in his ears because his face is pressed up against the side of a plastic whale and his exhales are echoing back to him. Trying to alleviate the pressure of whatever’s grinding sharply into his hip, he carefully extricates one arm from underneath a pile of Batman masks and irritably smacks away the nearest inflatable whales and unicorn plushies. With an effort, he manages to sit up and clears enough space to see what’s pinning him down. It’s a metal shelf, the blindingly yellow pricing tags attached to its front shouting SALE! SALE! SALE! at him. Wincing, he levers it off him with a flick of his fingers and slowly climbs to his feet.
A moment’s assessment reveals nothing broken. His side feels like it’s going to bruise spectacularly though, and he has a scrape on his hand that’s just deep enough to begin to bleed.
Fucking fantastic.
He spots Raven on the other side of the chaos, digging through the destruction while growling, “I knew I shouldn’t have let you outside the house—you’re so stupid when you’re drunk—Are you okay, talk to me—”
“Excuse me,” comes the highly-affronted reply. A hand bursts out from underneath a pile of giant play balls, groping for leverage. “I’m not stupid. And yes, I’m perfectly all right, thank you. What the hell just happened?” The hand flails futilely for a moment, then stops. “Raven? I think I’m stuck.”
“Hang on.” Raven disappears underneath the inflatable pool. Then she announces, her voice muffled, “Congratulations, you’re tangled in a bunch of jump ropes.”
At this point, Erik decides to pick his way carefully over to them, refraining from stomping irritably only because he doesn’t want to deal with Shaw’s yelling about damaging merchandise. Climbing over a fallen display shelf full of toy phasers that are now all firing wildly with whooshing noises and pew-pew sound effects, he finds Raven tossing Captain America action figures over her shoulder in an effort to dig Charles out.
“Careful,” he says, words that come instinctively after weeks of Shaw’s indoctrination. “You break it, you buy it.”
Raven shoots a glance over her shoulder and immediately flushes at the sight of him. “Oh my God,” she says quickly, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry for the mess—we’ll clean it up, really—”
“Who is that?” Charles asks, his voice muffled.
“It’s someone who works here,” Raven hisses, “and he says we’re going to have to pay for everything, you idiot.”
Erik opens his mouth to protest that no, he hadn’t actually said anything of the sort, but then a glance around the aisle makes him shut it again. There’s no telling how much is broken without taking inventory. From the looks of it, possibly everything.
“Oh?” Charles says as Raven shifts a slew of Hulk fists to the side. “Is he hot?”
Erik blinks. Raven rolls her eyes. “He can hear you, you know.”
“Can he?”
Erik clears his throat and calls out, “Yes.”
“Oh.” Then: “Are you hot?”
“Ignore him,” Raven grumbles. “He’s a menace to society when sober. Alcohol just makes him five times worse.”
Erik kicks a few play balls out of the way, listening to them bounce against the other shelves as they roll down the corridor. When he looks up, there’s a crowd formed at the edge of the wreck, shoppers who are gaping at the destruction and a few other employees who are standing around being useless. A couple of them have their camera phones out, which Erik switches off with a neat flick of his hand. Rubberneckers.
“I think I see light!” Charles calls gleefully a moment later. When he starts flailing his hand around again, Erik steps forward over a toy truck and grasps it. Then, when Raven seems to have cleared most of the toys away, he gives a mighty pull, and Charles Xavier emerges from the piles of chaos, Legos falling out of his hair and off his shoulders in a glorious cascade as Erik yanks him to his feet.
“Oh,” Charles says once his eyes focus on Erik’s face, “he’s hot.”
Then he sways and topples, tangled up in jump ropes around his knees. Erik grabs him to steady him, staggers backward into an overturned display, and nearly trips over a fleet of plastic sailboats. Somehow, he manages to regain his balance, and it’s only once he’s steadied that he realizes Charles is now pressed up against his chest and gazing dreamily up at him, a vague smile on his face.
“You have beautiful eyes,” he says happily. “Did you know that variations of HERC2 affect the expression of the OCA2 gene? Almost always found in people with blue eyes. Of course, yours are a sort of…gray-blue, aren’t they? No, not quite—”
He reaches up and cups Erik’s face, pulling him so close their lips nearly touch. Startled at the sudden proximity, Erik freezes, which gives Charles ample opportunity to stare hard into his eyes, a crinkle of concentration appearing between his brows.
“Definitely not pure blue,” Charles muses. “But still quite gorgeous, really—”
“Charles,” Raven interrupts, “shut up.”
Erik fights the urge to ask Charles to no, please go on. As soon as the thought crosses his mind, Charles grins wickedly at him and his voice suddenly echoes deafeningly through Erik’s head: I can go on at great length over drinks if you’d like.
Erik releases him in shock, and if Raven hadn’t been there to catch him, Charles would have floundered headfirst back into the play balls. “Sorry!” Charles says aloud, so intensely apologetic Erik can feel it. Then he whispers, “Inside voices.”
“How drunk is he?” Erik demands.
“Horribly drunk,” Raven laments. “Horribly. Charles, come here. Sit down and let me untangle you.”
With some effort, they maneuver Charles to the ground, where he sits placidly enough as Raven unknots the jump ropes around his legs. Apparently he’s done a magnificent job of tangling himself up because it takes Raven nearly five minutes to get it all undone, and in that time, Shaw arrives on the scene. Erik’s expression slides into an immediate scowl, and he leaves Charles’ side to mitigate the explosion that he knows is coming, from the looks of the thunderclouds gathering on Shaw’s face.
“What,” Shaw says icily when Erik reaches him, “happened here?”
“There was an accident,” Erik explains. “A customer mistakenly pulled an inflatable tab and it knocked over the displays.”
“Which one?”
“What?”
“Was it him?” Shaw jabs a finger at Charles, his displeasure nearly palpable. He shoves past Erik and promptly steps on some buried toy that squeals loudly. Shaw glares at his foot for a second before stomping onward toward Raven and Charles, who has been levered to his feet and is straightening his shirt as Shaw seizes him by the arm.
“Do you have any idea how much this merchandise costs?” Shaw hisses, his eyes narrowed. “You understand you’ll have to pay for all these damages?”
“Ow,” Charles says plaintively.
Erik shoulders in between them and breaks Shaw’s hold. “Get off him.”
With a glower, Shaw grabs a handful of his shirtfront and shakes him. “And you. What the hell were you doing, letting a—a—” When he turns and sniffs Charles’ breath, his nose wrinkles in disgust. “Letting a drunkard into the store so he can fuck up our displays—”
“Excuse me,” Charles interjects, “it’s not his fault, it’s mine. Would you let him go please?”
“You can wait your turn,” Shaw growls.
“Let him go,” Charles repeats, and this time, the words echo in their heads, reverberating like shouts in a cave. Shaw pushes Erik away, his eyes wide. When Erik looks over, Charles is bent double and wincing, both hands raised to cover his ears.
“Charles?” Raven says, holding his elbow.
“Sorry,” Charles says to his knees. “It’s loud in here.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Shaw demands.
“Probably your yelling,” Raven answers dryly. “His brain gets sensitive when he can’t control it. Look, we’ll pay for everything. Here—Charles, give me your wallet—”
After a fumbling exchange in which Charles’ fingers don’t work properly, Raven manages to extricate a business card and hand it over. Erik doesn’t see what’s on the card, but whatever it is shuts Shaw up immediately. Not much of a surprise—Charles Xavier is something of a celebrity after all, what with his books and interview deals and mutant advocacy tours. He also travels in the highest social circles, courtesy of his sizeable inheritance, and judging by the way Shaw’s eyes turn crafty, he’s already working out an angle to play off that fact.
“No, no,” he demurs, executing a rapid 180. “It’s an honor to have a man like you in my store, Dr. Xavier, I won’t have you paying a cent—”
“I will pay back every dollar,” Charles tells him solemnly as if he hadn’t heard. “I promise. And please don’t take anything out of—er—” He gives Erik’s nametag a quick glance. “—Erik’s paycheck. That would be terribly unfair.”
Shaw startles. “What—”
“You’re cursing him rather loudly,” Charles remarks. “That’s not the sort of language children should hear, you know. Unless you’re…” He pauses. “Oh, you’re not actually talking out loud. Terribly sorry. I think—Raven? I think I should leave.”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had since you woke up,” Raven grumbles, grabbing his arm. “Call the number on the card with the bill,” she tells Shaw as she passes. “It’ll be paid.”
With that, she marches Charles through the destruction, past the crowd, and down the hall toward the front doors. And that is how Charles Xavier exits Erik’s life just as abruptly as he entered it.
*
But it actually isn’t the last time he sees Charles. In fact, he’s stacking Pop-Tarts on the top shelves in Aisle 8 two days later when someone coughs quietly by his shoulder and says, “Erm…hello.”
He looks down to find Charles standing beside him, faintly embarrassed and noticeably less drunk than last time. “Hello,” he repeats when their eyes meet, “I don’t mean to be a bother, but I wanted to come by and apologize for what happened on Tuesday. I looked for your manager, too, but he doesn’t seem to be in.”
“Shaw doesn’t work until two on Thursdays,” Erik explains, mouth moving on autopilot. Charles Xavier, here again. Sober this time.
“Oh. Well, I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that the bill’s been paid. I hope, ah…I hope I didn’t cause too much trouble with the displays.”
“Not at all,” Erik says quickly, even though he’d been the one who had spent nearly four hours putting the racks back up and sorting the fallen merchandise. “It was fine. Things like that happen all the time.” At Charles’ skeptical look, he amends, “Well, not all the time, but it happens.”
“I’m sorry all the same,” Charles says. “I hope you didn’t get into too much trouble with your boss.”
Erik shrugs. “Shaw’s an asshole anyway. I’m used to it.”
Charles frowns at that. “So you did get in trouble.”
“Only a little.” Mostly a little. Shaw had raged at him in his office for a few minutes before sending him back out to clean up the mess, and that had been that. As with every time he gets near Shaw, Erik had been tempted to quit on the spot, but the fact that this was Angel’s job he was holding onto, not his own, had kept his mouth shut. She owes him so much when she gets back.
Charles grimaces. “Look, it wasn’t your fault, and if you want, I can talk to him for you.”
“You can’t reason with Shaw,” Erik replies, shaking his head. “Like I said, he’s an asshole.”
“Still, I feel very guilty.” Charles hesitates for a moment and then thrusts his hand forward. “How about some real introductions this time around? I’m Charles Xavier.”
Erik shakes his hand. “I know. I’ve read your books.”
“Oh, you have?” Charles sounds strangely flattered, and a bit of color rises to his cheeks. “You know, I’m always surprised to find that people actually do.”
“Why? They’re good.”
That earns him a brilliant smile that actually makes Erik’s breath catch a little. “Thank you,” Charles says happily. “Erik, is it?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I’m Erik Lehnsherr.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Charles says with genuine emotion. He’s even more attractive when he’s not bumbling around crashing into things. Out of the corner of his eye, Erik admires the curve of that red mouth.
“For the second time,” he reminds him.
Charles winces. “Let’s just forget about our first meeting, shall we?”
After a moment, Erik smirks. Placing a box of confetti cupcake-flavored Pop-Tarts on the second shelf, he asks casually, “Why? I have some good memories of our first meeting. You said I was hot.”
“I—I did no such thing—” Charles splutters.
“Yes, you did. You also complimented me on my eyes. Something about OCA2…?”
With a groan, Charles rubs a hand over his face. His cheeks are definitely pink now, bordering on red, and the way he blushes is utterly, horribly charming. “I’m so sorry. I’m a rubbish flirt when I’m drunk.”
“And when you’re sober?”
“Much better. At least, that’s what I like to think.” There’s a pause in which Erik can practically hear Charles processing the question. “Wait…”
“There’s a coffee shop around the corner,” Erik comments as nonchalantly as he can manage. He’s partly shocked at his own audacity; he’s normally never the one to make the first move, never the one to offer. But this is Charles Xavier. Erik already likes him quite a bit from following his work, and yesterday’s shenanigans have—amazingly enough—done nothing to dim Erik’s attraction to him. He’ll be damned now if he’ll let Charles slip away without so much as a coffee.
“Coffee…” Charles echoes slowly. Then his eyes brighten. “Right! Coffee! I owe you anyway for what happened. I’ll be glad to treat you. Today maybe? What time does your shift end?”
“Four-thirty.”
Charles checks his watch. “That sounds excellent. Here, let’s exchange numbers.”
They trade phones. Erik enters his number and then scrolls through Charles’ address book to make sure he saved his contact information properly. Charles has dozens of numbers here, and it makes Erik suddenly self-conscious about the fact that he probably has six contacts total, and the last one on his call log is Mama. But when Charles hands back his phone, he’s beaming and Erik can’t help but smile back.
“I’ll see you at four-thirty then,” he says. “I’ll text you the address.”
Charles grins. “It’s a date.”
*
SIX YEARS LATER
“We’re going to be late,” Charles calls from the bottom of the stairs.
“Give me a minute,” Erik shouts back. “I can’t find the bow. It fell off somewhere at some point.”
“Come on, it’s a birthday party. Someone there’s got to have a spare bow to lend us.”
“I’m pretty sure presents are supposed to be all nice and wrapped before we get to the party.” But it seems to be a lost cause; the bright blue bow he and Charles picked out last week seems to have vanished into thin air. Erik sighs, grabs the box, and jumps down the steps three at a time to meet Charles at the bottom.
They end up twenty minutes late, but Raven doesn’t seem to even notice as she opens the door to admit them. Her attention is distracted by Angel, who’s trying to tell her something about the latest book she’s reading, so Erik and Charles are able to slip into the living room and put their present by the table with all the others with relatively little fuss.
The rest of their friends are already gathered in the kitchen by the time they arrive. The birthday boy sits imperiously in his high chair, paper crown perched precariously on his head.
“Hi, Kurt,” Erik says, patting his head.
“Hello, Kurt,” Charles says with a bright smile. He leans down to tickle Kurt’s nose, much to the boy’s amusement. “You’re getting big.”
“He’s growing at the speed of light,” Raven groans as she brushes by him. As she and Angel take the empty seats at the table, Azazel appears with the cake, a giant towering creation of chocolate and whipped cream, topped with three lit candles. Kurt’s eyes shine at the sight of it, and he almost tries to blow out the candles before anyone can even start to sing. But at Raven’s insistence, he holds his breath instead and they sing through happy birthday before he can asphyxiate. At the end of it, he furiously blows out all three candles in one fell swoop and they all applaud enthusiastically as Kurt gives them his pleased gap-toothed grin.
Opening the presents follows the cake, so once they’re all well and jittery from sugar highs, they troop to the living room. Kurt and Scott begin to fight over who gets to open the gifts, and it takes Alex a bit of time to explain to his brother that only birthday boys get to open birthday presents, which Scott takes offense at and goes to sulk in the corner.
“We had a giant bow,” Charles tells his sister as Kurt tears into the packages with glee. “Erik lost it.”
“I did not,” Erik protests. “It got lost somewhere in the house. It wasn’t my fault.”
“It was entirely his fault and he should be ashamed of himself,” Charles sniffs, his lips twitching. When Erik jabs him in the side with his elbow, the small lip twitch turns into a full-blown smile and Erik rolls his eyes and slings his arm around Charles’ shoulder, pulling him close to press a quick kiss to his forehead.
“Toy truck!” Kurt shouts delightedly, narrating as he uncovers each present. “Bubbles! Socks. Ew.” He wrinkles his nose and tosses the package over his shoulder.
“What?” Sean says defensively when the room breaks into laughter. “Socks are a classic, man. It’s what I always got.”
“Probably because you were dumb enough to think they were a good present,” Alex snipes.
“Play nice, boys,” Raven says dryly. “Can we get through my son’s birthday party without brawling?”
“No promises,” Alex says, but his grin is nothing but friendly.
“Dog!” Kurt shouts on the floor, waving around a stuffed animal puppy until everyone coos in acknowledgement. Finally, he reaches for the box Charles and Erik brought and makes short work of the wrapping, tearing it into little bits that fly around him like a storm of paper. When he’s got it open, he turns the box to the front and frowns at it. “What?”
“It’s an inflatable pool,” Charles says helpfully. “Erik and I thought he’d like it, since the summer’s getting hot.”
“A bit of sentimental value wedged in there, too, am I right?” Raven asks wryly, waggling her eyebrows until Charles turns a bit pink and mutters, “I was drunk.”
“You were,” she snickers. “You so were.”
Soon enough, all the presents are unwrapped and as Kurt and the other children busy themselves with exploring them, the adults migrate to the other side of the room to chat. As Charles and Erik haven’t had much time to socialize lately, what with Charles’ book tour and Erik finishing law school, they take advantage of the gathering to catch up on whatever’s going on with their friends. Evidently, Angel has gotten a job as a teacher at a local high school and is spending her days struggling not to strangle her students. Hank has gotten a new research grant that has him and Charles sequestered over in the corner in minutes, engrossed in a discussion about the latest developments in mutant genetic studies. Erik makes small talk with Raven and Azazel for a while before drifting back to the kitchen to fetch refills of punch for himself and Charles.
Since he’s the only one not involved in a conversation as he returns, he’s the only one who notices that Kurt and Scott have gotten the inflatable pool out of its box and are looking it over curiously. Nearby, Kitty is picking at the sides, running her hands over the plastic.
Then Kurt reaches under one of the folds of the pool and Erik realizes with sudden horror what’s caught his eye.
Kurt’s little hand closes around the red pull tab just as Erik shouts, “Kurt, no!”
Everything explodes.