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Three years after his attempted assassination of the President of the United States, Erik Lehnsherr returns to 1407 Graymalkin Lane.
He has done well at staying out of public eye, having disappeared from the reports on the evening news and having his headshot printed in the Sunday paper. Any sightings of him have been few and far between (and entirely fabricated). Erik Lehnsherr’s name has been pushed to the back of the population’s mind. But while he’s done well covering his tracks, he’s never been able to hide from Charles Xavier.
It’s how he finds himself currently walking up the long private drive to the mansion the man inhabits. It’s raining, with heavy gray clouds hovering over the estate. Mud clings to his boots as he makes the long walk, and the rain drenches his clothes, chilling his bones. It feels like a lifetime has passed since he was last here—perhaps it has. He’s most certainly not the same man who had set foot on these grounds years ago.
Charles and him have a deal. Charles will stay out of his head so long as Erik stays low and doesn’t stir up trouble, and Erik has agreed to drop in from time to time—both so Charles knows he’s kept his word and that he’s still alive.
The door to the mansion is unlocked when he gets there, likely due to Charles expecting him, so he doesn’t hesitate to let himself in. The interior of the mansion is much warmer than the chill of the cold spring rain outside. He can’t help but let a delighted shiver run through his body at the warmth. The mansion is quiet, and he casts a glance around as he shrugs off his soaked coat, hanging it up on the rack near the door. Neither Charles or Hank are anywhere to be found, nor are any students of the school that Charles claims to be in the process of starting. He can practically picture Charles in his mind, making excuses about getting the proper paperwork in order (like that’s ever stopped him before).
As he steps out of his waterlogged boots, he catches movement out of the corner of his eye. He pauses, carefully setting his boots aside before rising to his full height. Slowly, he walks a little further into the house, keeping his eyes and his ears out for any disturbances. It is then, once he reaches the hall, that he catches it.
At the top of the stairs stands a familiar figure—though, it’s not Charles or Hank. It’s a young male, tall and scrawny with pale silvery hair. The t-shirt he’s wearing hangs off his frame, and the sweatpants he has on are slipping off sharp bony hips. He’s got a hesitant hand on the banister, and he’s staring at Erik with a wary look, like he’s a second away from turning around and sprinting down the hallway.
Erik furrows his brow, trying to recall where he’s seen him before, but then there’s a voice down the hall calling his name, and he can feel the metal spokes on the wheels of Charles’ wheelchair turning. “Erik, old friend, is that you?”
“Unfortunately,” Erik drawls as he sees Charles approaching him from down the hallway. He looks better than the last time Erik had seen him, and it feels like he’s grown healthier with each visit. Since that dreaded day back in 1983, Charles has made a turnaround. His hair is cut shorter, eyes more alert, skin warm and glowing with a healthier tanned hue. It suits him better than the disheveled look of an alcoholic had, but now all the centuries old bottles of expensive liquor in the house are simply for display.
He turns his head back to the staircase just in time to see the young male turning away and out of sight. Charles pushes his chair closer and comes to a stop beside him. His pale blue eyes follow Erik’s gaze, and a sad sort of look passes over him before he turns to greet Erik with a smile.
“I see that Peter’s made himself known,” Charles says, ever-so-chipper but there’s something a little strained behind the cheer.
It’s then that Erik recognizes the male as the energetic teenager who had broken him out of the Pentagon all those years ago. Well, no longer a teenager now. He looks drastically different than the last time that Erik had saw him, and it can’t simply be chalked up to puberty. What had happened to the lively teenager who had chatted his ear off in elevator, and later on the car ride away from the facility? Today, he had presented himself as quiet and subdued—almost skittish. Physically, he looked malnourished, dressed in ill-fitting clothes that hid the bones no doubt visible underneath.
“...Is that so?” Erik murmurs, eyes still fixed on where the young man had been moments ago.
Charles clears his throat and pushes himself forward, urging Erik to follow. “Our doors are always open to those who need it. And Peter knows he is welcome to stay as long as he would like.”
After that, Charles smiles and asks him how he’s been, and Erik amuses him with idle chatter—vague enough to appease him while not giving away more personal details. Still, he can’t help but shake the thought that Charles has more to say about Peter but is keeping his mouth shut for reasons unknown.
———————
Trying to communicate with everyone here is awful.
Everyone is so fucking slow, and Peter’s tired of it. He’s tired of the pitying looks, and being asked to slow down, and tilted heads accompanied by kind smiles and a soft, “I’m sorry Peter, I didn’t quite catch that. Can you tell me again?”
He shouldn’t be so mean. He doesn’t want to be—doesn’t try to be. But he’s just so tired. He’s used to being faster than the world around him, used to waiting for people to finish formulating their thoughts before speaking, but nowadays each second around others is an exercise in patience. And it’s agonizing. He knows—knows that these people are trying to help him. They’ve been so generous, and whenever Peter’s annoyance spikes it’s immediately overturned by gut-wrenching guilt and the fear of being ungrateful. They don’t expect anything from him, yet they allow him to live here for free with a warm bed and a roof over his head and hot meals and medical care and it makes him sick.
Sometimes, their kindness and patience with him makes him want to cry. At the tail end of an outburst, he’ll catch their eyes—their sad, pitying eyes—and immediately grow nauseous because they’ve been nothing but nice to him and he’s treated them like shit. It’ll cause tears to sting his eyes, and then he’ll suddenly be bursting into sobs with Charles gently drawing him into his arms, and Hank’s careful hand on his shoulder, and a reassuring whisper of, “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
So, he tries. If not for himself, then for them. But it’s hard, and it’s frustrating, and he’s attempted more than once to throw the stupid sign language books Charles had gotten him out the window. He sits, and he pours over the books, reading faster than any normal person can, and he practices the signs depicted in the pictures with shaky hands. He’ll squint at the pictures of vague gestures, practicing them over, and over, and over until it’s memorized, even if he doesn’t know when he’ll ever need to use said phrase. Charles learns alongside him because he wants to be able to understand him, and so Peter can have someone to practice with, and because, as he claims, it’s always worthwhile to learn a new skill. But Charles has other responsibilities, and he just can’t pick it up as fast as Peter can. Charles’ pace is too fucking slow, but Peter zooms ahead because there’s nothing else for him to do but sit and read and practice. During their lessons, he’ll get too excited or too antsy or too agitated, and his fingers will move so fast that they blur together, and for a few seconds it feels like really speaking again until Charles cocks his head and asks Peter to slow down. It’s so tiring.
He doesn’t like writing—not when the words pour out of him at a rate as fast as his thoughts, long-winded, rambling, and incohesive, and reading over them makes even Peter want to bang his head against the wall. He goes through pencils too quickly that way, with the lead snapping and wood splintering in his hand, and that’s if he doesn’t manage to rip the paper with his fast, aggressive strokes. Pens can’t keep up with him either, and the ink gets smeared all across his hand and the paper before it even has a chance to dry. He’d given up when Hank had found him after a one had exploded, blue ink smeared across his face and down his shirt, the pen held tightly in a shaking fist, staring blankly ahead while tears streamed down his cheeks.
Writing is too slow, and signing is too slow, waiting for them to respond is too slow, and everything is too fucking slow.
But then he see Charles in front of the mirror, practicing signing alongside his speaking so he can be sure to get the movements right. And he’ll go to Hank’s laboratory and see the man slumped over his desk asleep while a beginner’s guide to sign language sits open in front of him. The guilt and ungratefulness will churn in his stomach, so he’ll go to his room and hide underneath the covers until the frustration and sorrow and shame filters into something more manageable.
(But sometimes, sometimes, he’ll think about how this is his fault. That if he’d just kept his mouth shut, none of this would’ve happened. That if he’d stayed quiet like they asked, they wouldn’t have had to put the stitches in his lips, and then he wouldn’t have accidentally torn them open one too many times, and they wouldn’t have had to resort to taking that knife to his tongue.)
———————
“Will Peter not be joining us for dinner?”
It’s just Erik and Charles at the dinner table—far too long of a table for only two people. Charles is at the head, and Erik to his right, but there’s an extra plate and silverware set up across from him to Charles’ left. At first, he thinks it’s for Hank, but Hank never eats at the table when Erik visits, always preferring to eat downstairs in his lab (and silently fuming that Erik so righteously claims his designated spot at the table whenever he visits).
When Charles poses the question, Hank lifts his head from where he’d been preparing a plate to take downstairs with him. The man glances at the empty seat at the table, then out into the hall, before giving a small shrug.
“...I could go upstairs and ask him?” Hank suggests warily. If you asked Erik, he’d say the young male was probably just trying to avoid sharing a meal with a mutant terrorist.
“That would be great, Hank, thank y—oh, there you are, Peter!” As if on cue, Peter enters the room, ducking under Hank’s arm as he takes his seat, but he does allow the man to ruffle his hair before he exits. Erik does not miss the way that Peter’s shoulders jump for a fraction of a second at the touch before loosening. He quietly takes his seat across from Erik and allows Charles to pass over a bowl of green beans. It’s oddly domestic the way him and Charles pass dishes and sides between them, clearly used to eating together. It’s almost familial.
Peter’s quiet as the three of them eat. Erik indulges Charles in conversation, letting the older man do most of the talking. They partake in mundane topics: the early spring, cold rain outside, the slow process of registering the mansion as a proper school. Mindful of the third person in their presence, they avoid some of their usual, more divisive subjects: politics, the state of mutant affairs, the latest anti-mutant legislation.
Throughout it all, Peter’s silent. He doesn’t attempt to join into their conversation. Charles attempts to bring him into their talk, and Peter answers his yes or no questions with small nods or shakes of his head. For the most part, his head stays ducked as he eats from his plate, little bites of food carefully brought up to his mouth.
Erik does his best not to stare, but it’s difficult when there’s only two other people at the table, and Peter happens to be directly across him him. Erik finds his eyes flicking to Peter’s lips, an imperceptible frown forming. They’re chapped and flaking, but Erik’s more concerned with how red and irritated the skin around them looks. Just above his lips, right near his cupid’s bow, he can see tiny pinpricks of something—barely visible bumps like those of piercings attempting to heal. Initially, he ponders if they are simply old piercing holes attempting to heal, a poor teenaged decision that Peter’s come to regret. But there’s too many for them all to be piercings, lining the area above his top lip and below his bottom.
When Peter’s eyes flick upwards to his, Erik quickly looks away. Peter seems to curl further into himself after that, pushing around at the food on his plate rather than eating it.
Eventually, Charles questions Erik on what he’s been up to. He gives him vague answers and half-truths. A new job, but he doesn’t say where. The house him and Magda have purchased, but not what country or city they’ve settled down in. Charles was lucky to even hear of Magda in the first place after Erik had been stupid enough to keep his wedding ring on during one of his last visits. Even then, Erik only gives Charles her first name, not her maiden name in fear of him attempting to dig into their private lives.
Tonight, however, he does share something unprompted—though, he’d much rather keep it to himself, but he knows that Charles is bound to find out sooner or later, and Erik won’t be able to make excuses forever.
“Magda is expecting,” Erik offers quietly, and Charles beams, about to launch into a congratulations of some sort, but it’s interrupted by Peter’s fork slipping from his fingers and clattering to his plate.
Peter flinches at the sound, and he carefully sets down the rest of his silverware with shaking hands. He lifts his head enough to cast a glance towards Charles. Charles gives him a troubled look but nods and says he can be excused. Peter doesn’t waste any time after that. He pushes away from the table, chair scraping across the floor, and all but runs out of the room.
Erik watches him go, brows furrowed in confusion, and Charles seems to be feeling a similar way. After a few seconds, Charles sighs and shakes his head, giving Erik a small smile.
“Don’t mind Peter, Erik. He’s just feeling a little under the weather today,” Charles says, and then he’s reaching out to place a hand atop Erik’s, giving it a gently squeeze. “But truly. Congratulations, old friend. That is wonderful news.”
Erik swallows and nods, and the two of them finish the rest of their dinner in silence. He tries not to think about the half-eaten plate growing cold at the table.
———————
It was stupid of him. He’d been trying to keep a brave face, and he’d answered their questions with witty retorts, smiling and trying to ignore the pain his body was in and the feeling of something wet dripping down his back.
Eventually, they had grown tired of his comebacks. They’d put something in the water ration he’d been given one evening. It left his limbs feeling heavy and his head foggy and clouded. They’d entered his cell in the middle of the night, and when he’d attempted to lift his head from the cool concrete flooring, he found he couldn’t. Panic had seized him then, welling up in his throat, but when he’d tried to scream, only a hoarse little rasp came out.
He’d been turned onto his back, and someone had straddled his hips while the other held his head, keeping his mouth closed and teeth pressed together. He’d seen the needle then—thin, long, and shiny with a slight curve to it. To his horror, he could do nothing but lie there as the needle drew closer.
Whatever they gave him wasn’t a painkiller because he could feel every time the needle entered his skin. Hot and sharp and stinging, in and out, and in and out, and in and out, top lip to bottom lip and back again, the thread rubbing raw as it ran through the newly formed holes, catching and tugging and pulling tight. He could feel the blood dripping down his chin, slipping past the gaps in the stitching and into his mouth. His vision went blurry with tears, hiccups caught in his throat and chest spamming with the inability to fully sob. It ached, and every slight twitch of a facial muscle left an excruciating sting.
But it was nothing compared to what had happened nights later, when he’d awoken from a nightmare with a shrill scream, delirious and unable to recall the stitching that had been sewn into his lips. Pure instinct fueled by terror had his jaw dropping wide, forcing itself open as bloodcurdling shrieks erupted from his throat. The sharp, quick movement had the stitches tearing open on one side, thread loosening and pulling through the newly-formed holes that hadn’t yet healed. It ripped the scabbed flesh open, his skin splitting and blood streaming all down his face and the front of his chest.
He was still screaming as they had entered the room, and someone held him down as the other swore when they saw he’d ripped the stitching. At that point in time, they must’ve decided the stitching was a lost cause. He had sobbed apologies, half-garbled from all the blood and the thread that was still in place on half of his mouth. It was then that they had decided they’d grown tired of hearing him at all.
His jaw was forced open, and there were hands in his mouth, and gloved fingers on his tongue. He was sobbing, chest heaving, and his jaw was aching from where he wasn’t allowed to close it. Then there was something sharp and shiny invading his mouth, and he could feel the blade against his tongue before the muscle had been sawed through, and blood had sprayed all over, inside and outside his mouth, and trickling down his throat, and it was hot and sticky, and everything was wet, and he was choking and gargling on his own blood, and he couldn’t breathe—
Peter wakes with a sharp inhale (he knows better than to scream). His throat is raw and achy and tight. He shoots up straight in bed, eyes wide and breathing ragged. He tries to remember what Charles taught him to do when he gets like this, tries to remember he’s not in a cell but in a warm bed in his own room with a large window and a view of the starry sky. Tries to remember to feel the soft blankets underneath him and the bumpy texture of the afghan, but all he can feel is how wet he is—from the tears in his eyes to the sweat dripping down his skin to something warm and foul-smelling pooling underneath him—
His muscles tense, and his body floods with shame before he’s violently sobbing, bent over at the waist with his palms pressed into his eyes. He knows he needs to get out of the bed, needs to change the sheets and his pants before it cools and starts itching his inner thighs and gives him a rash, but he can’t. He’s frozen in place, paralyzed by terror, and bawling his eyes out because he’s an adult but he feels like he’s four, wetting the bed and crying out for his mom.
But his mom’s not here, and he can’t even call her anymore because words no longer fit in his mouth the same way they had as a child. As he cries into his hands while his chest aches with the pain of a broken heart, he realizes that in this moment, he wants Charles.
Gasping and heaving, he struggles to get out of bed. But the wet sheets tangle around his legs in a way that makes him want to throw up. They twist around him, and he falls out of bed, hitting the floor with a loud thud. Frustrated noises tear from his throat as he rips the sheets off him, and he scrambles to his feet, racing to the door. He hip-checks the wall as he stumbles out into the hallway, and normally he’d feel bad about making such noise as this time of night, but it seems Charles has already sensed his distress because the man is wheeling himself out of one of the mansion’s many sitting rooms, Erik on his heels.
Seeing Erik has his stomach dropping because here he is, standing with urine-soaked boxers in the middle of the hallway like an idiot and crying his eyes out. For a second he freezes in place, for while Charles and Hank have seen him at his all-time low, he doesn’t need to add another person to the list.
While Erik’s face morphs into a mixture of confusion and concern, Charles expression softens, and he pushes himself further into the hallway, beckoning him closer. “It’s alright, Peter. It’s alright. Come here, lad. You’re okay now.”
Peter lets out a heavy, relieved sob, and he stumbles forward on shaky legs until he’s collapsing in front of Charles’ wheelchair, upper torso sprawled across the man’s lap. He cries, exhausted and weary, pressing his head against Charles’ stomach while the man strokes his greasy hair and murmurs softly. He’d be lying if he said this was the first time he had ran to Charles for comfort in the middle of the night.
“There we are. It’s alright now. Everything’s okay,” Charles soothes. His touch is gentle, his words more so, and for once Peter doesn’t even flinch as he’s held and has his hair pet like a child. Charles sighs softly, blunt nails lightly scratching along Peter’s scalp. “That’s it, calm your mind, just like I taught you.”
It takes a lot of effort to let Charles into his mind, but he doesn’t mind doing it in moments like this. It helps when Charles can see inside his head and get a grasp on the things that Peter’s words can no longer explain. Typically, his mind moves too fast for Charles to get a read on—not unless he wants an ear-splitting headache—so it takes Peter forcing his mind to slow so he can let Charles inside.
In times like these, slowing down is a reprieve, and while he would normally bitch about having to reel himself in, the techniques that Charles has practiced with him are incredibly beneficial in calming his mind. He closes his eyes and forces himself to take deep, shuddering breaths. The tears begin to slow, no longer soaking Charles’ pants. He counts each breath, shaky and arrhythmic, until he’s able to breathe to a steady beat. At that point, he can feel Charles’ gentle presence standing at the entrance to his mind, so Peter exhales softly, burying his nose against the fabric of Charles’ pants, and lets him in.
Charles doesn’t linger for long, and he’s thoughtful enough to put up a sort of curtain in Peter’s mind that allows him to search behind it for what he needs while Peter doesn’t have to relive the events. When he’s done, he recedes from Peter’s mind with a quiet ‘thank you’ and comes back to his body with a shuddering exhale.
“Good lad,” Charles murmurs, voice choked with emotion, and his hand shakes as it continues to stroke Peter’s hair. “Thank you for trusting me enough to share that with me.”
Peter nods mutely into Charles’ lap.
“You’re safe here, lad,” Charles continues, and Peter feels his body growing heavy with exhaustion, all the adrenaline drained out of him. “No one will ever hurt you like that again. Not with us around. I promise you that.”
———————
“Charles told me what they did to you.”
Peter lifts his head from where he’d been picking at the dirt underneath his nails. He’s currently perched in his favorite spot—a window seat in one of many sitting rooms in the mansion. From here, he has a view of the entire front lawn of the property, extending out far past the green lawn and into the forested wood-line. It’s the ideal spot for the sun to catch through, streaming through the glass and warming his skin.
Erik stands in front of him before he hesitantly lowers himself onto the plush cushion of the seat. Peter eyes him warily, but he does draw his legs further towards himself to make room. He doesn’t really want to talk to Erik, or see him for that matter. He still feels the shame and embarrassment, hot and sickening, of him having seen his freak-out last night. He can’t see why Erik would want to talk to him anyways. He’s not very fun to be around these days.
For a while, they sit in silence as he waits for Erik to find something to say. The older man has his hands clasped in front of him, elbows resting on his knees. He stares into space for a bit before scrubbing a hand down his face, an exhausted sort of sigh leaving his lips. He leans back until he’s resting against the glass of the window, and his eyes drift to meet Peter’s.
“I would kill them for you, if you wanted,” Erik offers quietly.
Peter feels his shoulders tense slightly while his head ducks at the proposal. For a second, he almost wants to laugh, because of course the mutant terrorist who had tried to kill the president wouldn’t have any issue adding a couple more bodies to his list. But from what Charles has said, Erik’s truly trying to be better now. He’s got a wife. A kid on the way. A new family, and a new life.
He chews on the inside of his cheek and shrugs. It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it before—about hunting them down and placing names to their faces, beating them until they’re within an inch of their life, watch silently as they suffer and plead with him, hold them down and cut out their tongues so they’re choking on their own blood and know exactly how he feels—
But he’s not Erik. And he doesn’t want to be.
Erik just nods, seemingly accepting the answer with such ease that it makes Peter uneasy. The older man waits a beat before speaking again. “It was wrong, you know. What they did to you,” he says softly. “No child should have to suffer that way. You did not deserve such pain.”
Peter wants to protest that he’s not a child, and in the eyes of the law, he’s an adult—old enough to pay taxes and serve their country (but Peter’s got no intention of doing either of those things). Instead, he nods and ignores the stinging in his eyes. It’s not like Charles hasn’t told him these things before, but they feel different coming from Erik’s mouth. He disguises a sniff by wrinkling his nose, and Erik doesn’t say a thing about it.
The older man rises to his feet, heading towards the door—probably preparing to head back to his new wife and new child and new family—but pauses in the doorway. He gives Peter one last look.
“My offer still stands, if you want it,” Erik says while something like understanding shines in his eyes.
Peter pauses before shrugging again, but this time it comes across as more of an ‘I’ll think about it’. Erik just nods in acknowledgment before he’s leaving, and Peter can’t help but think how he wouldn’t have felt bad if he said yes.