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Charles swirled the wine in his glass, watching the crimson eddy with more interest than he was giving the party around him. Raven had swept off in a swirl of black silk and blue scales, seeming to know everyone there. Charles was a little more reserved at these events, deeply committed to the cause, but aware that he was there for one purpose and one purpose only.
His check book.
The MRO wouldn’t say no to the Xavier family fortune, even if they looked askance at Charles’ perfectly average genome.
As if it was his fault he had been born human.
Having a mutant sister brought invitations to parties that even his doctorate in genetics, focused on the phenomena of extremely divergent mutations, did not.
Charles had spent his entire adult life studying mutations and mutants, doing his best to prove that not only were they entirely natural, but they were beneficial to the species and should be embraced by even the non-gifted.
He donated to every mutant-friendly politician, gave to every mutant rights cause. He worked tireless hours lobbying and promoting.
And yet, they still didn’t quite accept him.
He let out a weary sigh, aware that no one was paying him enough attention to notice the breach of etiquette. He wished the mutants around him would see that he just wanted to help them, that he thought their mutations were fascinating and beautiful. He wanted to talk to each and every one of them, to learn what they could do, to explore the potential hidden in each tiny shift in the genome.
Very few gave him the chance, however. Mutant-human relations were still strained, just barely recovering from the threat of internment camps and government labs that had arisen when the general public became aware of mutants in their midst. A Civil Rights Act had been signed, the threats had mostly passed, and instances of anti-mutant propaganda and violence were almost nonexistent. But the mutants were still wary. Charles could only bide his time and hope that things would improve, that they would accept him eventually, that they would finally experience the harmony of true integration.
Meanwhile, he came to fundraising events like this one, smiling blandly at everyone around him but keeping his distance until they approached him.
“Charles!” Raven swept up, barely suppressed excitement glimmering in her golden eyes.
“Hmm?”
“You’ll never guess who just walked in!” Her voice dropped to an excited whisper as she threaded her arm through his and leaned in close.
Charles immediately scanned the crowded ballroom. “Who?”
“Erik Lehnsherr!”
“Really, Raven.” Charles smirked at the giggling whisper in which the news had been delivered. “One would think you were a star-struck thirteen year old, not an adult woman.”
Raven rolled her eyes, giving her brother a friendly nudge. “You could at least pretend to care.”
“Oh, but I do,” he corrected her with a laugh. “Lehnsherr’s still unbonded, isn’t that right?”
“Well…” Raven said, her cheeks staining purple with a light flush.
“Just as I thought,” Charles nodded. His sister was also unbonded, although not for lack of trying. Not that he was calling her easy—that was normally Raven’s word, directed at him—but he knew that she was eager to find her life-partner and to settle down.
If he just happened to be the most prominent Mutant Rights activist in the country, who was dashingly handsome in the bargain, well, that would just be a bonus.
Charles had long been aware of Raven’s little crush on Erik Lehnsherr, but still wasn’t sure what he thought of it. The man was very effective at what he did, approaching every issue with single-minded focus until he achieved his goal.
It was the nature of his goals that made Charles nervous. He never came right out and said it, but it was clear that Lehnsherr wasn’t fond of humans, and didn’t quite support the integration measures that Charles had been helping work towards for the last several years. He never used the words ‘separatist’ or ‘superior’ but the implication lay under everything he seemed to do.
Still, Charles tried to be supportive of his sister—who faced so many challenges he could only imagine—whenever possible.
And so he said, “Shall we go talk to him, then?”
“We can’t!” Raven gasped, eyes going wide.
“I’m one of the main contributors to his organization,” Charles reminded her. “You’re becoming a prominent face in the movement. Why on earth wouldn’t we talk to him? Come now.” Cupping a hand under Raven’s elbow he began to guide her across the room, before she could protest. She would thank him later.
Lehnsherr stood at the far side of the room, near the exit as if he was prepared to make a hasty escape. Charles shook his head. Always pragmatic.
He wore a tux, like Charles and the rest of the men in the room. He wore it better than any of them, Charles was forced to admit. Lehnsherr was tall—not just taller than Charles, but properly imposing—and very lean, and the suit clung to his lithe form like a second skin.
“Oh my god, he is so hot,” Raven murmured at his side. Charles manfully resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
He wanted what was best for his sister, and if biology happened to be on her side, he would happily accept her imprinting on Erik Lehnsherr. Perhaps she would temper his more extreme politics.
He let Raven speak first, despite her obvious nerves. In any other social situation Charles would pave the way, stepping up to the man and then introducing his sister. But this was not a human engagement, and unwritten protocol dictated that he hang back, letting his sister do that talking.
“Mr. Lehnsherr,” Raven said, her voice only slightly ridiculously breathy. She stepped forward, holding out a slim hand. Charles watched Lehnsherr carefully, seeing the way his gaze swept over Raven’s blue form. Charles noted the appreciation in his eyes. Raven could wear many beautiful forms, but Charles had always felt her natural form was the most beautiful. He was glad Lehnsherr seemed to agree.
“Miss…Xavier, is it?” Lehnsherr said smoothly and Raven flushed with pleasure. Charles held his breath as the man reached out for her extended hand. The moment seemed to slow as their palms brushed, and he could tell that he wasn’t the only one in the room watching the exchange with interest.
No one really understood the mechanics of imprinting. It could happen anywhere, any time. But more often than not it happened immediately, at first contact between a suitable pair. If Raven was one of the people on the planet who’s chemistry matched up with Lehnsherr’s, they should know immediately.
The man grasped Raven’s slender hand, giving it a gentle squeeze before stepping back, releasing her.
Nothing, then.
Disappointment flitted briefly over Raven’s countenance, so quick that Charles was sure he was the only one who noticed, and then she forced a smile to her face.
It wasn’t the end of the world. It didn’t even mean that Lehnsherr wasn’t meant for her. It was rare, but people could imprint after days or even weeks of knowing each other. Biology had many strange quirks.
“This is my brother, Charles,” Raven said, smoothly working past the moment. Charles stepped forward as soon as he was acknowledged, nodding his head to the other man.
“Brother?” Lehnsherr frowned. “I don’t think I knew you had a brother.” His expression cleared as he glanced at Charles. “Always good to have another member of the cause, though.” With a polite smile, he extended his hand.
Charles couldn’t help the surprise that surely crossed his face. Normally the mutants were more standoffish with him, often neglecting the basic social etiquette of a handshake. He was shocked that Lehnsherr of all people was being welcoming. Perhaps he had misjudged the man.
He reached out, clasping the man’s large hand, and the room came to a standstill.
Lehnsherr’s hand was hot in his, pressing into his skin like a brand.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Raven’s voice sounded tinny and distant, barely audible over the pounding of Charles’ pulse in his ears. He heard other voices in the room, but couldn’t process what they were saying.
All he could hear was his own heartbeat. All he could feel was Erik’s hand in his. All he could see was the stormy blue of Erik’s eyes, wide with shock.
And then he was being reeled in, drawn closer to the heat of Erik’s body, burning like an open fire. He felt weak under the weight of the man’s intense stare, and he was distantly aware that he was swaying, unsteady on his feet.
Erik’s large hands caught him, grasping him roughly by his upper arms, the heat unbelievable even through the sleeve of his tuxedo. “You,” the man murmured, his voice pitched low.
Charles closed his eyes as a low groan slipped, unbidden, from his lips.
And then he was being pulled out of the room, away from Raven and the rest of the crowd. Before he quite knew what was happening he was pushed roughly against a door—a closed door, wrapping them up in a cocoon of silence away from the rest of the party.
And then Erik stepped closer, crowding all his senses.
“Charles,” the man moaned, and Charles tipped his head up, offering himself shamelessly.
The first slide of Erik’s lips on his own was like being dragged down by a powerful undertow, drawn along helplessly, fighting for air but unable to breath.
It was like drowning, a sound like water roaring in his ears as he desperately clung to Erik, opening his lips to the man and sucking in his sweet taste.
Dimly Charles was aware of what was happening. The heat, the urgency, the overtaxing of his senses…they were imprinting, marking each other for life, carving out a space for themselves in the other’s very cells.
He had read a hundred papers on the phenomenon, had it described in minute, painstaking detail.
But nothing could have prepared him for the hot press of Erik’s body against his own, the overwhelming need that threatened to drag him under, making him pant into Erik’s mouth and keen at every touch of his hot, slick tongue.
Erik was touching him everywhere, his body a solid wall of flesh, trapping him in place.
But it wasn’t enough.
He wanted to be naked, to rub his skin over Erik’s, to rut against him, to have Erik’s scent all over his body.
He wanted to be marked, to be bitten, to be taken.
He moaned shamelessly at the image, clawing at Erik’s broad shoulders.
The man wrenched his mouth away, panting with the effort. “You’re coming back to my place.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Charles keened.
Erik laughed even as he slid a possessive hand over Charles hip, pinning him in place against the wall. “I thought it might be your pretty sister,” he said, the words rough in his throat. “I thought she might be perfect, but then…you.” he shook his head. “I didn’t even know there was another mutant in the family.”
His hand slid over Charles’ hip, around to cup a handful of his ass. Charles’ hips snapped forward.
“I’m—I’m not,” he ground out, his focus entirely on that wandering hand.
“Not?” Erik murmured.
“A mutant.”
“What?”
Charles whimpered as Erik wrenched himself away, dropping his hands and actually stepping back, putting space between their bodies. “No,” he insisted, reaching out for the other man. Every part of his body called out for Erik, every impulse was to be as close as possible.
Erik evaded his grasp. “You’re—are you saying you’re human?”
“Yes, of course,” Charles said impatiently, still reaching for him. The drive to couple was irresistible, uncontrollable.
Erik swayed slightly closer, even as a dark frown clouded his face. “You can’t be. I can’t have imprinted with a human. It’s impossible.”
Charles shook his head, trying to clear the fog of lust that surrounded him, to focus on Erik’s words. “It’s entirely possible,” he argued. “Mutants and humans share almost exactly the same DNA. Imprinting is slightly more likely to happen in human and human or mutant and mutant pairs. But it’s not unheard of for mutants and humans to bond.”
“I know that,” Erik snapped, taking another shaky step back. “It’s impossible for me.”
“What—what are you saying?” Something tightened painfully in Charles’ stomach.
“I can’t be with a human,” Erik said, and there was disgust in his voice, disgust written all over his handsome face.
It felt like a punch to the gut.
“We’ve imprinted,” he said helplessly. “It’s biology.”
“No,” Erik growled. “Mutants are more than mere biology. More than what you try to reduce us to, a few errant genes. We are the future. And the future doesn’t include humans.”
Charles had suspected, and yet he still gasped at the confirmation of Erik’s views.
“Erik,” he pleaded, even as the other man took a few more shuffling steps backwards. Their bodies were calling out for each other, demanding consummation, and Charles knew things would get unpleasant fast if Erik persisted in keeping his distance.
The man set his jaw, the resolute look he wore to Mutant Rights rallies and speeches. Hard and uncompromising. “No,” he said again. “I don’t want you.”
It was like a slap in the face, for all Charles knew it was a lie—biologically speaking. With one last nauseated look, Erik bolted for the door, leaving Charles gaping in his wake.
Pressure built in his head, a fierce migraine twisting within him, increasing with every step Erik put between them. “Erik!” he called out one last time, before things went dark.
________________________________________________________________________
“Charles? Charles, wake up!”
Charles grimaced, sounds barely filtering in over the pounding in his head. “Erik?” he croaked.
“Oh, Charles.” A soft, cool hand pressed against his cheek.
He blinked his eyes open to see Raven’s worried face, peering down at him.
Not Erik, then.
“Charles, what happened?”
Awareness filtered in, and Charles realized he was still in the small room Erik had dragged him off to, stretched out on the floor with curious partygoers peering down at him. Embarrassment twisted in his gut, forcing him to sit up, despite the pain in his head.
“Charles, where’s Lehnsherr?” Raven asked urgently.
Charles had never been more aware of his outsider status than he was then, surrounded by mutants and reminded of Erik’s parting words. He hung his head, unable to meet his sister’s glowing yellow eyes. “He left,” he murmured, trying to pitch the words for Raven’s ears alone.
Still, whispers spread in the gathered crowd, and Charles had no doubt everyone would know before long.
“What?” Raven frowned. “But, I thought you two…”
“Imprinted,” Charles agreed, hunching his shoulders. The flood of sensations, of want and need, came back to him in a rush. He had never felt something so heady, so addictive, leaving him gasping for more.
But Erik was gone.
“He didn’t know I was human.”
“So?” Raven demanded indignantly. “So he left?”
The babble of the crowd increased, and Charles stomach turned. It hurt, to have Erik gone, and now to deal with the gossip that the evening was sure to generate…he closed his eyes, wishing the night would just end.
“Raven, can we go home?”
Raven was furious, he could tell, but still gentle as she helped him to his feet, shooing the other partygoers out of the way. “He can’t just abandon you,” she said insistently as she led him out to their car.
Charles slumped in the passenger’s seat, his perpetual reluctance to let Raven drive finally overcome. His vision swam as the pressure in his head increased.
“Charles?” Raven asked, her voice hesitant and unsure. “What do we do now?”
He didn’t know. He tried to remember everything he had read about imprinting, but it was hard to think through the cloud of pain and abandonment. Of course, bonded pairs got separated. People died. But he didn’t think he had ever heard of a pair being separated so early, before the bond was even fully formed.
The biological drive was to mate, to satisfy the bond. Charles had no idea what would happen to them if they didn’t.
But the pressure in his head and the clenching in his gut told him it wouldn’t be pleasant.
By the time they reached the house, Charles could barely walk. Doubled over in pain, Raven had to half-carry him into the mansion, even her soft, soothing murmurs too loud in his head.
“I’m going to call a doctor,” she assured him, settling him in bed. Charles groaned, squeezing his eyes shut against the overhead light.
Through the overpowering fog of pain, there was a riot of conflicting emotions. He longed for Erik, fucking yearned for him, but he was also furious and embarrassed at the way he had been rejected. There was horror at the man’s politics, concern for the future of mutant-human relations and a powerful drive to do something about it. He wanted to slap Erik, to kiss him, to rant at him, to throw himself at his feet and beg for his touch.
It was confusing, to say the least.
Over the next twenty-four hours, people came and went. Raven gently removed his tuxedo, helping him into soft, comforting flannel pajamas. A doctor came, poking and prodding and frowning over his condition. Other people, both mutant and human, seemed to filter in and out of the room. Charles’ thoughts became more and more entangled and confused, the people barely registering. He thought he heard his friend Moira, and Raven’s friend Angel. A man with dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses peered down at him occasionally.
But none of them were Erik.
“What should we do?”
“Has someone called him?”
“How can he bear to stay away at this point?”
“If he does show up, I’m going to kill him.”
Voices filtered through the air, detached from the people who seemed to drift in and out of the room. Charles tried to latch on to a voice, a thought, a person, but everything was adrift in a sea of pain.
“This,” a heavy Russian voice declared, “is ridiculous.” There was a pop that seemed to burst in Charles’ very eardrum, and then another a moment later.
And then everything stopped. The storm of thoughts and feelings calming around him.
The twisting knot of pain in his head loosened, and Charles’ eyes opened, surprised.
“As amusing as it is to watch you vomit incessantly,” the same, gruff voice was saying, “you are both useless to us in this condition.”
Charles struggled up in bed, his vision clearing enough to show him Raven, frowning uncertainly, hovering by the door. A man, just as deep red as Raven was blue, stood in the center of the room, clutching…
Erik.
Charles was furious at the other man, hated the very idea of him. And yet he was reaching out, imploring.
Erik made a choked sound and stumbled forward.
Relief sang out in Charles even as he registered how terrible the other man looked, dishevelled and pale, his eyes tired and bruised.
Their eyes met, and Erik made a soft, keening sound, dropping to his knees beside the bed.
Dimly, Charles was aware of Raven and the red-skinned man withdrawing from the room, but his attention was focused on Erik’s face, the crease of pain between his brows, the conflict he saw in those blue eyes.
“You hurt me,” Charles said simply, and Erik made another low, wounded noise, pushing up onto the bed and crawling over him.
“I know, I know,” he murmured, driving Charles back against the pillows.
“Humans aren’t bad people,” Charles insisted, even as Erik’s large hands delved between the buttons on his pajama top, rending the fabric apart to get at skin.
“Charles,” he said, eyes wide, uncomprehending.
They would need to talk, to deal with their differences, but—later.
Charles reached up, digging his fingers into Erik’s hair and dragging him down, panting against his lips, just out of reach. Erik groaned, deep and desperate, and forced their mouths together, biting and sucking at him with a startling violence.
Charles gasped, opening his mouth and letting himself be plundered.
He had never felt anything so heated, so desperate. Erik raked his back with his nails, opened his mouth over his throat and bit, hard and hungry. He gripped Charles tight enough to leave bruises, overpowered him and forced him to yield, to bend to any shape Erik wanted.
And throughout, Charles begged for more.
Later, much later, he lay, staring up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. The initial burn of desperation had abated, and now he could feel every mark, every wound. His body still hummed with low-level lust, every twinge of sore muscles or sting of scratches sending a spark of arousal through him.
Erik slept fitfully beside him, curled in on himself at the far side of the bed, all sharp lines and tense muscles.
They hadn’t talked, had just coupled in a seemingly endless haze of want, coming together again and again. Now that the first need had worn off, Charles wondered what would happen.
Erik hated what he was; he hated what Erik believed.
He thought of the disgust that had crossed Erik’s face when he found out what Charles was—or, more importantly, what he wasn’t. For someone like Charles, who had spent his whole life wishing he had been born as special as his sister, it would have stung in any circumstance. But coming from the man the universe had just foisted on him, to have and to hold, for better or, apparently, much worse…it had been a moment of utter devastation.
And yet, beyond the hurt, the betrayal, the abandonment, Charles had felt a similar disgust for Erik, for the divide the man saw growing between mutants and humans. Charles had his own beliefs and followed them just as strongly, just as passionately, as Erik did his.
He saw a future of mutant-human harmony, of acceptance, of knowledge, of growth. He saw suspicion giving way to trust, and each side gaining in the bargain. That was what he had spent years working towards, just as tirelessly as Erik had pushed for separation, for violence.
“I can hear you thinking from here,” Erik grumbled. “Are you sure you’re not a mutant?”
Charles tensed.
“I’m kidding,” the man said dryly, rolling over to bring them face-to-face.
“I’m proud to be human,” Charles said defiantly. Erik’s eyes narrowed. “Just like I’m proud to have a beautiful, mutant sister. And I’m proud to be a campaigner for mutant rights.”
“For your sister’s sake,” Erik said, expression unreadable.
“For all our sake’s,” Charles countered. “Because we are more alike than we are different, because both sides have something to offer the world.”
“Not all humans think that’s true,” Erik said darkly.
“There are bad people in the world,” Charles agreed. “Both human and mutant. Individuals do bad things. Species do not.”
“Hmm.” Erik’s expression remained frustratingly blank, and Charles sighed, rolling to his back. Was this to be his life from now on? This, or the unbearable pain of separation?
________________________________________________________________________
Charles woke to find Erik gone, the sight of the empty expanse of sheets sending panic crashing down over him. He scrambled up, eyes wide.
“You’re a geneticist?” Erik’s cool, unreadable voice drifted from the far side of the room.
He was perched in Charles’ favorite reading chair, a book open on his lap.
Charles’ book, he noted with surprise.
“Yes.”
“You work on mutations.”
“Yes.” He slid out of bed, casting about for his dressing gown, wanting to pull something defensively around himself, shielding his bare flesh from Erik’s cold gaze.
“Why?”
“Because mutations are the way evolution progresses, the way the world shapes a species’ future.”
“You think mutants are the future?”
“I think we are all the future, we are all mutants. Blue eyes are a mutation. Auburn hair. The ability to raise just one eyebrow. The ability to change shape and form. It’s all just a spectrum. It is not a hostile takeover, but a natural process.” He drifted closer to Erik even as he argued, drawn inexorably to the other man.
“Nature is hostile,” Erik countered.
“Then leave it to nature,” Charles said helplessly.
Erik reached out, catching him by the wrist. One tug had Charles tumbling forward, landing in a tangle of limbs in Erik’s lap. “You would have me do nothing?” he asked, gathering Charles in and pushing a curl out of his eyes.
Charles suppressed the whimper that rose, unbidden, in his throat. He couldn’t suppress the urge to turn his face into Erik’s touch, turning the simple gesture into a caress. “No. Do I do nothing? Lobby. Educate. But people won’t learn if you think them incapable of learning.”
Erik sighed, closing his eyes briefly. “How did this happen to me?”
Charles knew what he meant: how did you happen to me? He wondered the same thing. He had always thought that eventually he would meet the right girl, a girl whose gentle touch ignited something within him, knitting them together for life.
Instead, he had found a gorgeous, frightening, committed man, who handled him roughly and made him like it.
“Are you going to leave me again?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.
Erik looked at him, gaze hard. “No. That was a mistake.”
“Because it hurt you?”
Erik’s expression tightened. “Because it hurt you.”
Charles gasped, surging up to capture Erik’s lips. Erik’ hand still cradled his face, guiding him into the kiss, tilting his head so he could lick deep inside. His other hand pushed impatiently at Charles’ robe, shoving the fabric off his shoulders to pool around his waist.
Charles felt himself be scooped up, Erik standing easily with him in his arms. He crossed the room smoothly, his lips never leaving Charles’.
He landed on the bed with a thump, gaping breathlessly up at Erik as the man shed his clothes, revealing his lean, powerful body. Charles reached out, demanding, and Erik moved over him, covering him and pressing him back into the bed.
This was where he belonged, his body told him. Spread beneath Erik, his body open to the other man’s touch.
____________________________________________________________________________
He came home from the University to find Erik in his study, rifling through his carefully organized notes.
Erik looked up as he entered the room. “You’re working on how to predict instances of mutation?”
“Yes.”
“How does that work?”
Charles bit his lip, leaning against the doorframe. “In theory, population data, rates of mutations, and study of the parents’ genes would allow me to predict a child’s likelihood of future mutation.”
“For what purpose?”
Charles crossed his arm, refusing to be cowed by the hard look in Erik’s eyes. “Early education. For both parents and mutants. It would stop people being surprised at puberty, hopefully stop the horror with which some parents greet a child’s mutation.”
Erik frowned thoughtfully, and Charles sighed. It had been a long day. He didn’t want to fight.
“God,” Erik said, dropping the notes and striding across the room. “You’re going to end up being even more invaluable than Azazel, aren’t you? And he can teleport.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
A wide, toothy grin spread across Erik’s face. “We are going to change the world,” he said decisively, gathering Charles up exuberantly into his arms.
“But I’m human,” Charles said helplessly.
“Yes,” Erik gloated. “And you’re mine.”
~