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Considering the creep had just groped Erik's mother, Erik thought he really deserved more credit for letting him live.
Of course the judge didn't care about that. The judge only cared that Erik had used his powers to smash a baseline through the wall of a passing train. Showing up at court with all his piercings and tattoos on display and calling out the judge's bias with a megaphone didn't do Erik any favors; that's what his mother said, anyway, beside herself with exasperation. He was lucky to be a minor and get himself sentenced to finishing the school year at the Stryker Institute—a.k.a. the problem mutant child dumping ground—instead of the county jail.
Erik stopped feeling lucky within minutes of his arrival, when the suppression collar clicked into place around his neck.
He hadn't even realized how much space his metal-sense took up in his head, how much he subconsciously kept track of every watch and buckle and screw and paperclip. He actually staggered, unbalanced as what felt like half his perception of the world vanished.
"You'll get used to it," said the intake officer, not unkindly. "And it's only until the weekend." That was how it worked at Stryker—students stayed, collars on and power suppressed, all week, and then went home to their families (if they had them) for the weekend. Erik was already counting the hours.
The intake officer's face was the last kind one he saw that day. The "teachers" at the Stryker Institute, he realized quickly, were more like prison guards, itching for a chance to beat the mutation out of their charges. Most of the students were dull-eyed and sullen, just keeping their heads down until they could get out.
Erik did not keep his head down. He raised questions no one wanted to answer and said things no one wanted to hear. He talked back to teachers and committed every minor infraction of their draconian rules that he could, deliberately seeing what they'd let him get away with and what they wouldn't. By the end of the first day, he'd been earned two detentions and been escorted from one class by security. On the second day, a canine-faced young mutant decided he had something to say about Erik's Star of David necklace. Erik tripped him in the classroom aisle, and he broke his nose on the concrete floor.
"Oops," Erik said with a smile.
On his third day, he met Charles Xavier.
"I don't tolerate violence in my school," he said, when Erik stepped out of his dorm room and found him waiting in the hallway, flanked by followers.
Erik looked him up and down. XAVIER was printed on his uniform, just like LEHNSHERR was on Erik's; Erik had already heard enough scuttlebutt to fill in the first name. Scuttlebutt that called Charles Xavier the king of the school, the one you didn't want to mess with. The one the teachers let get away with murder. Xavier's hair and uniform were neat as a pin, his smile polished, his collar polished… He was too short and too pretty to be taken seriously, except that clearly everyone did.
Rich white boy, Erik thought, letting the disdain show on his face. What are you in for, getting fleas on the butler?
"I don't approve of most of the behavior you've exhibited here," Charles continued, "but you're free to continue sabotaging yourself. Where I step in is when you hurt other people."
"If you're talking about Lyle's nose, I could tell you how much he deserved it," Erik said, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe, "but I don't actually have to bother. Since no matter what you say or what your daddy pays for, this isn't, in fact, your school."
"I think you'll find you're wrong about that," Charles said, soft and smiling. "The hard way, if you step out of line again."
Erik laughed. "Kid, I don't toe anyone's line. Not the government's, not the teachers,' not even my mother's, and her I actually like. I won't be toeing yours, either."
He stepped forward to brush past Charles and his followers—and Charles pushed him back, both hands hard on his chest. Erik's back bounced painfully off the doorframe.
"You're a disgrace to mutantkind, Erik Lehnsherr. I know you're here because you used your powers to put a baseline in the hospital. You are exactly the sort of mutant who makes everything worse for all of us, by teaching everyone they're right to be afraid!"
"As opposed to lying down and letting them walk on us? I don't think I'm the disgrace, Xavier. You might be the baselines' pampered puppy now, because you're pretty and soft and say all the right things, but it won't last. They'll turn on you, and people like me? You'll be lucky if we're still around to defend you." He tried again to push his way past; Charles grabbed his arm in a grip like iron.
"Don't touch me," Erik said through gritted teeth.
"You're going to be a problem, I see," Charles said, voice stony. "Go right ahead. You'll find out what happens to people who cause me problems."
Erik tried to shake off Charles's hand. Charles tightened his grip.
Erik punched him in the face.
The teacher coming around the corner could not have had more perfect timing if she'd planned it. She got a full view of the punch, pressed the panic button on her wrist, and rushed to Charles's side. Charles let her help him up, making an obvious but valiant attempt not to cry as she cooed and fussed over him.
Charles's friends had already wrestled Erik down and pinned him to the floor, and he could hear heavy boots approaching at a run, summoned by the panic button. He'd be lucky to get out of this without being tazed. There was no question that he'd be in "in-school suspension"—which was to say, solitary confinement—for the rest of the week.
Charles looked over the teacher's shoulder at Erik and smirked.
***
It was open warfare after that, or as open as it could be without triggering adult intervention. Charles and Erik sabotaged each other with the teachers, vandalized each other's things, argued and contradicted each other at every opportunity, and even got in the occasional shoulder-check or elbow jab when the teachers weren't looking. Erik began gathering followers of his own—kids who were tired of being walked on and ready to step up, once someone showed them how to do it—and hardly a day passed that someone from one side didn't go toe-to-toe with someone from the other, even if it wasn't Charles or Erik themselves.
One of the more intriguing developments in that area was Charles's sister, Raven. She was unfortunate enough to exhibit a physical mutation, which the suppression collars couldn't affect; they only kept her from using her shapeshifting ability to hide it. Even here—perhaps especially here, surrounded by kids raised on a diet of mutant-loathing—someone with as bizarre an appearance as Raven got a lot of flack for it, from peers and teachers alike. She wouldn't do a thing when her brother was watching, but if Erik was there and Charles was not, she grew more and more likely to follow his lead.
Every now and then—a lot, actually, the more Erik paid attention—Charles would do something that made it harder to hate him. He frequently shielded the smaller or more timid kids from bullying, sometimes simply by surrounding them with his followers, other times by distracting evil teachers with his ingratiating charm. He paid for anyone's lunch that needed it, and bought tampons for a girl who'd been banned from the commissary.
But he was also a high-handed imperious brat, and anyone who earned his wrath found that same system of resources and charm and support turned against him. Not exactly a saint.
One teacher, after Charles and Erik's argument about Booker T. Washington had completely taken over his class and nearly come to blows, threw his hands up in despair and declared it was lucky that the two of them never agreed on anything. "If you two ever got pointed in the same direction," he said, "you'd probably take over the country and burn this place down."
"Don't tempt us," Charles and Erik said simultaneously, then both turned red and ignored each other for two days.
Charles was smart, that was the awful thing. He was every bit as smart as Erik, which wasn't something he was accustomed to admitting; he might even be smarter, which Erik was not ever going to admit aloud. But he wasted it on stupid things like political maneuvering and actually studying for their pathetic half-baked classes. He wasn't completely beyond hope, though; more than once, when Erik smarted off to a teacher, he saw Charles biting down on a smile, maybe even muffling a laugh in his hands. One time, he could almost swear he saw Charles applaud.
One Monday Erik's mother sent him off to Stryker with a loaf of challah. "Share it with your friends," she said, "like that Charles boy."
"What?" Erik stared at her. "Charles and I are not friends!"
"No? You talk about him more than any of the others."
"I complain about him. Because I hate him."
"Oh, I see," his mother said in that light 'I don't believe you but I'm not arguing' tone she had that drove Erik crazy. "Well, share it with him anyway."
Erik arrived early enough that morning to drop by Charles's dorm room—emphatically not to give him any challah, but because Charles had announced last week that he was starting a chess club. Erik knew himself to be an excellent chess player, and couldn't wait to publically obliterate Charles, but unfortunately joining the club meant submitting an application to Charles himself.
The students' rooms had curtains, but no doors. Erik didn't bother calling out for permission to enter, simply swept the curtain aside and stepped in.
He found Charles staring intently into a mirror on the wall, which was already hilariously vain, but Erik could hardly contain himself when he realized the boy was putting on makeup.
"I knew nobody's lips were really that red," Erik said. "Do you wear perfume, too?"
Charles jumped and turned toward Erik—revealing the huge black eye he'd been trying to cover.
Erik's laugh died in his mouth. Had Charles gotten in a fight? Other than the altercation with Erik himself, he'd never seen Charles get directly violent with anyone. Besides, it was Monday morning, and classes hadn't even started yet. Whatever had happened must have happened at home over the weekend.
"Get out!" Charles snarled, sounding very unlike his usual controlled, amiable self. Almost childlike. Almost frightened.
In pure surprise, Erik turned and left.
He ran into Raven in the hall, hurrying towards Charles's doorway with what looked like a makeup bag. He snagged her arm as she went by. "Hey, what happened to Charles's face?"
"Our stepfather happened," Raven spat, then looked immediately as if she regretted speaking.
"What, he hit him? Why?"
"Because Charles wouldn't let him get to me." She shoved past Erik and disappeared into Charles's room.
***
Erik didn't talk to Charles about the black eye. As far as he could tell, nobody did, though it was perfectly visible under layers of insufficient makeup. Charles seemed perhaps a little subdued on Monday, but by Tuesday he was back to his usual cheerful self, Mr. Innocence with the adults and the Iron-Fisted King with the students. Erik turned in his chess club application to Hank McCoy, who was apparently the vice president of the club, and mostly avoided Charles for a few days. Hank's boyfriend Alex teased him about taking it easy on Xavier this week just because he had a bruise; Erik kicked him in the shin.
On Friday, Erik bolted down his lunch and snuck out of the cafeteria early, wanting to read his book in peace. At first he was annoyed, but not especially interested, when he heard voices on the stairs above him. Then he recognized Raven's voice.
"I said let me pass."
"What'll you give me if I do, freaky girl? Will you show me some more of that funky blue skin? I mean, is that how you look everywhere?"
"All I'm going to show you is the back of my hand across your stupid mouth. Let me by."
Erik wondered why Raven hadn't already beat the daylights out of whatever pig was harassing her. She usually had no trouble taking care of herself. As he rounded the turn of the stairs, he saw the problem; Raven was carrying a loaded-down lunch tray (strictly forbidden outside the cafeteria, of course) and couldn't properly fight without dropping it.
Blocking her way was a new kid, a transfer-delinquent like Erik himself who apparently didn't know yet that messing with Charles Xavier's sister was a great way to put himself in the infirmary. As Erik watched, the creep tried to put his arms around Raven's waist; her snarling attempt to evade him slopped gravy from the tray onto her shirt.
"Hey, moron," Erik said. "Move it or lose it. That's the only warning you get."
The creep gave Erik a rude gesture. "This ain't your business—"
Erik grabbed the creep and tossed him over the railing, grinning as the cocky words transmuted into a scream. And a thud. And more screaming.
"Erik! Seriously?" Raven rushed to peer over the rail.
"It's just one floor, he'll live." Erik waved at the creep below, who was now shouting swear words as he limped quickly away. "Now what are you doing with that lunch tray? Someone giving you a hard time in the cafeteria?"
"No. It's for Charles." She was moving up the stairs now, hurrying as much as possible with the tray. Probably a good idea; teachers might be drawn to the creep's screaming and shouting.
"Charles? Why can't he get his own lunch?"
"It's Friday."
"So?"
Raven sighed. "I guess you wouldn't know. Charles always has a migraine by Friday—sometimes Thursday. It's the suppressors. His telepathy turns itself inside out trying to get free."
So Charles was a telepath. He'd heard rumors of it, but Charles never talked about his mutation. Telepathy scared people, even other mutants. And it didn't react well to suppression collars.
Erik touched a hand to his own collar. He'd managed to disable it during his second week at Stryker, or else he wouldn't be known for his sweet and easygoing temperament, the way he was now. He couldn't risk moving or manipulating metal during the week—not much, anyway—but at least he could feel it around him like he was supposed to. What must it be like to be a telepath, accustomed to feeling minds around you the way Erik felt metal, and then have that cut off for five days out of every week?
"I'll take Charles his lunch," he said to Raven. "You need to go change, you've got gravy all over you."
Raven glanced down at her shirt and swore. "If I show up to Hardiman's class like this, I'll get written up." She gave Erik a wary look. "You're not exactly Charles's best friend, though. Why should I let you get anywhere near him?"
"Attacking him now would be unsportsmanlike," Erik said dryly. "I didn't know about these migraines. Maybe I can finally convince him to rise up with me in revolution against the suppression collars."
Raven sighed and handed him the tray. "Whatever. Don't hang around and bother him, okay? For real. He doesn't need that right now."
"God forbid Charles Xavier get anything he doesn't need." Erik waved off Raven's rebuke. "I won't bother him. Pinky swear." He extended a pinky.
Raven rolled her eyes, but took the pinky, then went off to change her shirt. Erik carried the tray to Charles's dorm room.
The room was dark, a blanket tacked up over the window, a fan whirring to ease the stuffy warmth of the poorly-ventilated dorms. Charles was a pale sprawl across the bed, on top of the covers with his head buried in the pillow.
"Raven," he said at the sound of Erik's footsteps, his voice hoarse and muffled, "it's sweet of you but I don't think I can eat. I'll just throw it up again."
"Is there any medicine you can take?"
Charles started at the unexpected voice, then moaned as the movement apparently hurt his head.
"It's okay, it's just me," Erik said, and thought they were both equally surprised when that actually did cause Charles to relax. Crossing the room carefully in the darkness, Erik set the tray down on the bedside table. "You really should eat, if you can."
Charles just groaned, burrowing deeper into the pillow.
"You didn't answer me about medicine."
Charles raised his head just far enough to rasp, "All the nurse will give me is Tylenol. It doesn't help."
"Maybe this will help," Erik said, and waved a hand, focusing his mind on the complicated inner workings of the suppression collar. It didn't take much to just melt some of it together, at which point the entire mechanism stopped working.
Charles gasped, and for just a moment Erik could feel what must be his telepathy lashing out in all directions, a formless frenzied burst of emotion—and then it was reeled back in, smoothed over with a wave of quiet forgetfulness. That never happened, it never happened. A wave that, interestingly, hesitated at the threshold of Erik's mind, and passed by without altering anything.
"How did you do that?" Charles asked, carefully sitting up and pressing a hand to his collar, now inert.
"My power is metal. Magnetism," he clarified, floating a handful of thumbtacks out of his pocket and orbiting them around his hand. "They should have known a metal collar wasn't going to hold me for very long."
"That's incredible." Charles watched the floating thumbtacks with an expression of breathless awe. Erik felt his face inexplicably heat up. "Mutation is such a fascinating thing."
"Mine's nothing much, compared to telepathy."
"I disagree." Charles narrowed his eyes at him. "You're not afraid, then, to realize you've taken a telepath off his leash? I could fry your brain as soon as look at you. Maybe. I've never tried."
Erik grinned, calling the thumbtacks back to his pocket. "Should I be scared? Did you use your power to assault a baseline?"
Charles rolled his eyes, amused. "No."
"How did you end up here, then? And your sister, too—did you two get into some kind of trouble together?"
"No, no. We weren't sentenced here. Our parents enrolled us." Charles looked away, expression bleak. There were still traces of greenish bruising around his eye.
"Does your head feel better?" Erik asked, instead of prying into that wound.
"Yes, much."
"But it still hurts, doesn't it. My mother has migraines, too." Erik stepped closer, letting his fingertips hover over Charles's temples. "She has me rub her head here, she says it helps…"
"By all means, give it a go."
Erik began rubbing Charles's temples in firm, tight circles. Charles let out a tiny noise and leaned into the touch, his unleashed telepathy bumping up against Erik's mind like a cat desperate to be petted.
Feeling curious and off-balance, flushed and tingly, Erik opened his mind and… petted the cat.
Instantly, his mind was flooded—not invaded, because he'd invited it in, but embraced, Charles's senses merging confusingly with his own for a moment. And it became impossible not to know how much Charles was enjoying being touched, especially by Erik, and how much he really would like for Erik to touch him in other places—
Charles gasped, pulling away, mortification scorching away their connection. "Erik, I'm so sorry—"
Too late; Erik was already kissing him.
Charles returned the kiss with shocked delight, for a moment, then withdrew again. "Did I—did I make you do that—I didn't mean to, I would never—"
"No," Erik said quickly, heart pounding in his ears. "You didn't make me do anything. I've… actually been wanting to do that for a long time." Though he hadn't really admitted it to himself until now.
Charles's smile was fragile and sweet as spun sugar, and Erik sat down on the bed, gathering Charles into his arms to kiss him some more.
After just a few short minutes, Charles started getting lightheaded from all the motion. Reluctantly, Erik made him lie down again. He rubbed his head some more and managed to make him eat a few bites.
"If you can keep that down," Erik said, "I'll bring you some of my mom's challah. There's still a tiny bit left."
"For that alone I could kiss you," Charles said dreamily. "Come lie down and cuddle me. Cuddles are very good for migraines."
Erik let himself be pulled down into the bed. He had never thought of himself as someone who cuddled. It… proved to be a very nice experience. Very comfortable.
"You have a really beautiful mind," Charles murmured, his back warm against Erik's chest. "I knew you would."
"You do, too," Erik said. "Even though you're wrong about everything."
"Everything?"
"Most things."
"I was wrong about you," Charles admitted. "You're not a disgrace to mutantkind. The way you stand up to the teachers, fight back… Maybe I could stand to do more of that."
"Well, I wasn't at all wrong about you. You're a spoiled rich white boy who's used to getting his way." Erik kissed Charles's temple, which elicited a very interesting little soft gasp. "You fight for power and you don't let it go. And then you use it to protect those weaker than you. Maybe I could stand to do more of that."
Charles laughed. "Oh dear, are the two of us pointed in the same direction?"
Erik grinned, pressing his bared teeth against the back of Charles's neck. "We're going to take over the country and burn this place down."
"Well, if we must," Charles said, and turned around to kiss him again.