deus ex machina:

It’s mid-noon.

Parker sits idle on the bed with his hands in his lap. He picks at a loose thread on the hem of his shirt, head down deep in thought — Xavier sits across from him in a chair and observes him the same way that other scientists at the lab tend to whenever he visits Helen to ask for a little extra change. Pensive, but not quite fascinated. Interested, but not curious about him as a person. It’s the look that one might give a frog before he cuts it open and takes it apart to understand it’s internal structure and learn the way it works.

Parker knows that look well — except Xavier is different.

Xavier looks at him in a way that is both similar yet unlike other scientist. He already knows his internal structure, how it works, and all science that make up something Parker does not and most likely would never comprehend fully. He’s not interested in dissection, there’s something else that piques his interest. Yet, when every time he meets Xavier’s eye, the older never does flinch but something in him does like he’s experiencing a painful memory.

They sit across from one another. And Parker watches the steady continuous raise and fall of Xavier’s foot after he crosses his legs.

He’s biding time by not answering Parker’s question. Parker lets him by not asking it again, curious with other things, wondering if he’ll ever he the answers to the questions he asked upon arrival– though he is starting to feel a little ridiculous, perhaps he asked too many questions and he just ask more, unable to really keep his mouth shut when he knows so little.

“It’s just, that I heard about you from someone. And they told me you can read minds, is that true? Are you reading mine right now?”

“Give it here.” Xavier speaks for the first time, leaning forward to hold out his hand. And Parker hands over the slip of crumpled paper with Xavier’s name, and address without hesitation.

“Did you — did you just mind control me?” Parker asks, eyes wide as he sat back.

“No, you’re just overly obedient.” Xavier says, reading the slip before he tucks it away into his pocket. He doesn’t press for more information on who gave him the address, though Parker suspects he already knows, though he hasn’t gotten the answer to another question that would answer why he won’t quite look at him.

“I’ll help you.”

The table gets set with grilled cheese and tomato soup, and it is Xavier that asks of Parker to stay for dinner. The ask is harmless and intentional all at once, distraught and chaotic in nature much like the scape of Xavier’s mind.

Even without reading it, he knows the questions that linger in Parker’s head: everything from the choice of grilled cheese as dinner to the history held in his single gaze when staring at him. Parker never dares to ask the questions that matter, and Xavier is only thankful to plainly leave them in the unknown for now. Even without scouring his head, he’s sure Parker knows the answers, or will soon come to know much more than he ever can ask of and for.

“Did you want another bowl?”

There’s hesitation with each bit of conversation, and with even the smallest of acts, the most minuscule of movements. He is afraid, mainly because Parker’s existence here, seated across from him from his very dinner table seems to be a haunting on it’s own, a ghost of something he has yet the courage nor will to let go of just yet.

“No, no thank you. But... thanks.” Parker’s thumb brushes over the spoon he’s barely used. There are so many thoughts hovering at his shoulders, but none ever leave. Instead, he takes a stand, pushing the chair to do so. “Well, I should get going.” Parker turns towards the door, then back to him. There’s the same hesitation with him too at the soles of his feet, in how they seem to know where they should be heading and yet do not make the steps in the said direction.

He makes the mistake in the request, for the second time.

“Would you mind staying tonight?” It slips between his teeth, unkept from his sealed lips.

He turns to look away, as if ashamed at his inability to control himself. He’s already showing Parker sides to him that took himself years to come to terms with: the subtle, vulnerable, and quiet humaneness in and of him. A hand swipes down his face, before he picks his head up.

Strangely enough as Xavier speaks there’s only curiosity. (at first.)

Yet, with every word that leaves Xavier’s mouth the quiet only seems to increase, and without him noticing the fairly slight glow of his skin seems to dim as each word sunk in, making sense and fill in the gaps of what little he already knew, and make room for a new realization.

“He forced a mutation.”

Blythe says, feeling neither cold nor hot. Oddly, this is the most normal he’s felt in years — and it’s the first sign that something is wrong but he doesn’t acknowledge the sudden change when all he can do is focus on information he has been searching for all these years.

Blythe isn’t sure what to do, how to respond, or even what to believe anymore — at this moment he realizes how truly fucked up the situation is, how messed up he really is even now with being unable to remember anything past the occasional flashbacks: his father pushing the sleeve of his blue shirt up in order to give him a shot of a strange looking medicine. Or even the weird white rooms, with even stranger objects and paperwork. The strangers dressed in white that would come in and out of these rooms, always wearing anxious expressions on their serious faces. (A young Xavier among them, and his only friend in such a lonely place.)

“I wasn’t born a mutant, was I?”

The answer to his question is so obvious at this point — and it’s not the fact that he wasn’t born that way that disturbs him, it’s the process behind forcing a mutation to occur in a subject that isn’t born with whatever gen, or chromosome, or whatever it is, regardless it’s a long painful process, filled with varying means of, well, nothing less than what can be considered torture with each session worse than the last.

At the thought, Blythe feels sick to his stomach, one of his hands unconsciously going to one of his surgical scars on his chest, tracing the slight raise in skin he starts to feel dizzy with new thoughts about Xavier.

Had the man he just proclaimed to love not even a full 24 hours ago, been the one to give him these scars? Regardless of if he was or wasn’t aware of the situation at hand, had he unknowingly aided in turning Blythe into whatever he is now?

Could he be forgiven for that?

Blythe puts his other hand on his head to try and steady himself, breathing becoming slightly difficult as it came out in harsh puffs of air, almost like he can’t breathe.

Calm down. Blythe thinks, trying to steady his heart beat. He should put a stop to this conversation, and yet his lips form to ask another question despite trying to fight away images of what could have possibly happened back then.

“What did you read?” Blythe questions slowly, words strangely articulate and clear, far from his usual face paced normal way of speaking. “No.” He holds up his hand, holding the silence carefully balancing it on the tip of his tongue before he draws another deep breath. He looks up, eyes meeting Xavier’s for the first time in the duration of their conversation. “Show me instead. Show me what you saw inside his head.”

He knows he’s broken the dam and now he’s afraid of the river to come coursing through. He doesn’t have to read Blythe’s thoughts to see the utter chaos unfolding -- the fold of his eyes tell him enough, in the way normalcy overtakes the other like some storm.

In a way, Blythe looks like the boy from a few years back. The young boy lying on a white bed, surrounded by an endless scape of white halls filled with people in white jackets. One of them, watching everything unfold a little too well, a little too keen; one -- him -- realizing the black spots hidden behind all the white a little too late.

He’s never forgotten the screams. 

If he’s fooled himself into forgetting the needles and the chemicals, he’s still not found himself able to let go of Blythe’s terror, small body strapped down onto a surface he wouldn’t leave for hours on end, for days on end. If his mind has tried to un-remember, his body has only had him re-remember, the way his own hands caused atoms to misalign and combust in all the right ways for all the wrong reasons.

And yet, he allows himself to stare at his own hands hold onto Blythe’s, like that’s alright with the laws of the universe. (Almost like he deserves something as bright as Blythe, when he’s only brought dark matter to manifest inside of his very genetic code.)

He doesn’t bring himself to answer any of Blythe’s incoming questions. He’s expected them, and lulled over each answer in his head hundreds upon thousands of times. Yet even with all the wisdom in the universe, he doesn’t know how to respond to questions that all sound like one, single ask:

Why did you do this to me?

There’s still havoc reaping in Blythe’s eyes when they meet. His own start to falter, glance away and avoid. Then his eyes close, with a sigh holding onto the same weight cracking at the cage withholding his heavier heart. Their eyes meet for the second time, and he opens his mind to him, showing him the answers to his questions; answering to his query.

It’s when Xavier moves away that the graveness of their situation sets in. Blythe had always been able to hand his silence, his resistant to answers but never the absence of his body.

Even during their darkest fights they would come crashing down together eventually. One saying too much, and the other saying too little but the absence of touch was never an issue until this moment when he can feel his temperature steadily dropping, and a static charge on the tips of his fingers.

Something tells him that there won’t be a rebound from this one.

“I don’t understand.”

Blythe sits up halfway, and somehow they’ve come full circle. He’s back to the position he started out on the bed with Xavier on the edge, only the sun is setting painting the both of them in hues of golden orange and shadows. The mood shifting into something tense, and heavy, something worse than before.

Blythe brushes the hair in his face away, as he recounted the words in his head, trying to make a connection of some sort. You asked for the truth. He reminds himself, be mature enough to handle it.

And it’s true, he has waited so long for answers. Played this imagined scenario nearly every night for years, before he finally gave up hope he would have any retention of the event himself and now everything is being laid out before him he can’t quite grasp it.

“Xavier, I don’t understand.” he knew that he knew his father, but he was only a lab assistant at the time of the incident, right? That’s why it had taken years for Xavier to find him again, and  the reports only mentioned his father’s death. Surely anyone else besides Blythe would have died in a explosion that powerful… right? “What ill intentions?”

“What happened to my father – if it wasn’t me who killed him… then who or what?”

He too, has played this scene over in his head one too many times. For almost six years, there had been the burning wish to tell the boy everything he had been so hidden and blindly kept from -- yet a small part of him knew that this was no simple secret. He was letting out a beast, and he was not sure how brutally Blythe would fight it.

"Ill intentions that are similar to what some non-mutants have for our kind. An intention that stems from fear of the unknown, that leads to a wish to understand to control what makes us so unique and different... perhaps while some wish to turn us into weapons -- which many humans, already have -- others, like your father, just wanted to understand our genetics." His voice is one tone, nothing but graveness highlighting each syllable. "I thought I would help him, as I too, wished to understand. He had no idea I was a mutant, and then, I was only beginning to stumble upon my own powers, so I did not learn of your father's intentions until... until the incident."

"But he stepped a little too far, much... much too far. The need to understand the origins of a mutant's abilities consumed your father."

He's now pulled himself back, to his normalcy: composed and quite rigid. What he feared was the way the younger sitting close by was beginning to shatter instead, even in just the look exchanged between them. His body sat close but felt far -- like he was building invisible space in between them simply because he could not -- and maybe would not ever -- accept the truth now having filled the void of many years kept from Blythe.

"I read your father's mind the morning of the incident. By then it was too late. He was alright throwing away years of work he had accomplished in that same laboratory as well as all the money he and many other powerful people had invested -- if he could just, evoke a mutation to occur himself. He was alright murdering every human and mutant in that building if it meant he could salvage a mutation in one life form." He was alright murdering his own son, too. "It was not you who sparked the fire in any way, Blythe. But rather your father's ambitions that had fired up a long time ago."

“You don’t know that.” Blythe says without hesitation, “You can’t know that.” he speaks this as a bit of an after thought, uncertainty spreading. He’s not sure which part of Xavier’s words he’s responding to but regardless of the context: wither it be the past or present Xavier isn’t able to see into the future.  

Something about Xavier’s actions are different – he’s resisted his advances before but it was understandable being that they were usually inappropriate situations such as in the office or trying to seduce his way into a grade change after class (which never, ever worked much to his dismay.)

“You weren’t there, Xavier…” Blythe’s eyes are searching his with a curious, questioning look but the shift in Xavier’s body language confirms suspicions that he knows more than what he would tell him, that there’s more to the story other than the bits and pieces his sister and his mother have filled in the gaps over the years.

“Xavier…” now is not the time for this, he wants to say but the thoughts circling his mind that keep Xavier up at night say otherwise, and he’s conflicted. And forgetting would be so much easier at this point then it would be to fill in the gaps. Blythe could already feel the oncoming migraine just from straining too hard to remember something he simply cannot.

He turns his head away, unable to look Xavier in the eye – “It’s now or never.” His hands unconsciously clench, flexing and feeling Xavier’s strong grip around his wrists both frightens him and intrigues him because it’s not like the man he knows.

“Either tell me the truth, or erase it forever.”  

"Yes, I do not read the future. Nor will I ever know of it in as great deal as I can know of thoughts.” He’s practiced this a million times. He’s glossed over, thought through thoroughly about how he would even bring up the subject matter of the explosion, Blythe’s father, and where they both fit into all of the chaos -- and yet, all that practice now meant nothing, especially in the way his foundations were being shaken to ruins so easily from just one look from the younger underneath him.

Blythe wanted answers, answers of the truth -- and Xavier knew better than any: not knowing was worse than never knowing.

“But I know you, Blythe.” He loosens his grip on the younger’s wrists, still hovering above him. Their eyes still stay firmly on each other, Xavier’s a little more shaky, a lot more unstable than they usual are. His body too, is just the same, no longer his composed, collected self. He had never thought for all his walls to tumble down like this all in one night in front of Blythe, but he remains, words with as much tremble. “I know you. And I know you would never do such.”

“I was there, that night.” He begins and soon moves on the bed, no longer having Blythe trapped. He takes a seat by the edge once more, a hand coming down his face to wash over nothing. “And many nights before the night of the explosion. I knew your father. I knew him even better than I know you. And he was a great man, with extraordinary ideas and visions... just with intentions that had fallen ill.”

His smile only lasts for so long before the ghosts hidden inside seek him out — pinpointing their target, and striking with a fierce velocity because his inability to control the power is what brought them to where they are now.

(You killed him.) (I can’t remember… I didn’t mean to. I.)

As Blythe stares into Xavier’s eyes there’s a hint of unclaimed sadness that lingers between what little space remained between their bodies, for this reason alone he shifts impossibly closer to Xavier, drawing him into an embrace — wraps his arms around his neck securely, leaning his tired head on the other’s steady shoulder.

This is what safety feels like. This is why it is said that a home is not a house but a person.

Right now, it would be so easy to simply forgo the past. Xavier held so much power within him that if Blythe asked he could simply wipe all the bad parts of his mind clean, then they could begin again.

“Would you want that, Xavier?” Blythe speaks softly, moving his mouth to lightly trace over the shell of Xavier’s ear with small warm breathes punctuating his words. “We could begin again.”

(You killed him. And you’ll kill all of us.) (You don’t mean that.)

Blythe presses a few open mouth kisses to the column of Xavier’s neck as his fingers move to hover over the buttons on Xavier’s shirt. There’s hope in the future, Blythe reminds himself.There’s hope in their future. “I don’t want to kill you too.”

Blythe’s thoughts come too loud over him to a limit where they scream beyond the noise of his own thoughts. When he embraces Blythe, he swears he can hear the other’s heart beating to the same guilty mantra, one of misunderstanding and mess of the unknown. It’d be so easy to tell him. It was so much more difficult to keep things from him. With Blythe, he finally understood how others felt around him: exposed and bare, with not a single corner to hide in.

He knows the mind is not just some toy to fiddle around with: taking away, wiping of memories was in an instant, yet building those same fragments and leaving them behind to cherish was not the same. What Blythe asked was not such a simple task -- and what Blythe asked, he asked without knowing of the consequences.

His body is more truthful than his mind, even now, when it reacts to the small motions of Blythe all in all with his closeness. It takes him a minute too long to push away Blythe’s hands, shifting their positions all over again. This time, he keeps Blythe pinned underneath him as well as his hands by his side, only eyes meeting, the same way their heartbeats met just alike.

“Blythe.” HIs voice is soft, and nothing but. Another breath comes over him before he lets the floodgates open. “You didn’t kill him.” A weight lifts from his body, from the truth now lifted into the air between them. “You didn’t kill anyone.” 

He’s aware that his mouth must taste of ashes – like the aftermath of a man made disaster yet continues to kiss Xavier deeper in a desperate attempt to turn a blind eye toward anymore thoughts of the night prior. He kisses him to numb himself against all the fights they had in a way to erase them.

Blythe chases after Xavier’s lips every time they part from his own, kissing him until he feels as if his lungs may burst, then and only then does he duck his head to catch his breath by hiding his face inside the crook of Xavier’s neck.

Slowly, he begins to shake his head as he breathes in the comforting smell of Xavier’s aftershave. “I’m sorry… give me a moment.”

He’s starting to feel like erratic weather, inconsistent with temperatures varying in his body. And despite feeling like he’s on fire and his body is turning into ashes beneath his skin each of his fingers are cool to the touch that leave a path of goosebumps wherever he drags the tips against the fine skin of Xavier’s arms.

There’s a flux in his powers, a fluke he can’t seem to understand much less control.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Blythe says apologetically into skin of Xavier’s neck, moving to hold onto the other’s shirt so tightly that he loses feeling in his hands. “It’s like… i’m malfunctioning.”

Blythe is sweet -- a kind of taste that he knows he’ll never get enough of. Every time there’s space created between their lips, the craving only resists, and it burns until their mouths crash again, the flames dying out until the next time. He’s always known never to play with fire, yet Blythe brings out the rebel in him, and he only revels in it all.

He only finds the momentum to stop at Blythe’s words, withholding a breath from leaving, a little afraid that if he moved even an inch, he would not be able to cease.

“There’s nothing wrong with you.” He’s held silence for a long while, only speaking once Blythe had recaught some of his breaths. His hands come down from the younger’s face to come over his hands, fingers soon wrapping and lacing together. “You just don’t know how to control it yet, Blythe. Every one of us goes through what you’re experiencing. It’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to be sorry for.”

His hands leave Blythe’s, but only momentarily, to bring him closer. He brings the younger’s body on his lap, then shifts their heads, until their foreheads are touching, kissing as their lips just had. His thumb traces along the bags under his eyes, staring into his hues with a soft, tender smile. “It’s not malfunctioning.”

We always fight in the morning. Are the words that come as his first train of thought. We always fight in the morning, and you’re tired. These are the thoughts he never vocalizes, knowing that even without the use of his voice Xavier would still hear.

Blythe casts a small sigh uncertain of where to even look or what to say — what to think, but what was there left to say?

Being in love with Xavier meant having all of his cards laid out, or be a body without it’s skin and multiple layers while his mind remained an open book in which the pages could be torn out, as well as replaced… what was the point of trying to hide?

Blythe quietly contemplates the odd fragments of dust floating in out of the sunlight filtering in through the window as he feels Xavier look over him. He avoids the other’s steady eyes — afraid to meet him halfway, afraid that if he does he’ll look at Xavier in a way that’s too desperate, or obsessed, or too lovesick. And when Xavier calls him by that petname, he can feel his heart move toward him.

If he looks at him now, he’ll want to kiss him: desperately, violently, and all consuming — something akin to a natural disaster. The need, the desire to love him without being overbearing was nearly impossible to keep the balance when he needed so much, and wanted even more.

Blythe lays back and with a soft voice he says, “Then let’s make up for lost time.” With the children gone for a couple more hours there was a cozy quiet atmosphere inside the house that promised an easy sleep for two people that were tired from always fighting off unspoken demons. “Let’s get some rest Xavier.”

I won’t leave you this time.

If Blythe’s avoided the kiss, he has been looking for chances to start it. Even now, where Blythe fits into his chest snug, in the warmth built in the bare space between them, a kiss would be so easy to begin, but he’s not sure if he had enough control to stop.

The thought always makes him laugh -- he had never known how not to be immature. With knowledge came a level of maturity always estranged from how young he had been -- and yet, now that he had come to an age where maturity was finally expected of him, there were many times and places where he wished to be everything but. Blythe had always been the anomaly because he was the exception -- that one box opened that wouldn’t shut back closed.

Recklessness came with consequences. He knew this better than anyone. Yet the moment Blythe moves all in the right way, he only brings the younger closer, until he’s able to place his hand on the other’s cheek. Even here, he hesitates. His thumb circles over Blythe’s cheek, and is unable to keep itself from moving over to his lips.

(You won’t know when to stop, so don’t begin.)

His thumb traces the curve of Blythe’s lips, as a smile appears on his own. Again, the smile is awry. Unsettling. Unfitting for a time like this.

((Who says I have to stop?)) 

The day is easily mistakable for spring with the warmth that floats in the air and the carefree sunshine streaming in through the windows settles itself on his skin. The light also settles in both of his sisters hair – intertwines itself with their strands as he watches his oldest brush and then braid the youngest sister’s hair in a way that they both match.

It’s the first time in such a long, long time that he and Blaise have gotten to take on their respective role as siblings rather than parents. Especially with Blaise taking on the bulk of the work raising her younger siblings it is a rare sight to see her so carefree with a genuine smile resting on her lips.

He has Xavier to thank for all of this – for aiding them even in the smallest of tasks such as washing dirty dishes to taking care of the youngest sister (and brother) when they became sick with a high fever. Xavier’s help gives Blaise more time to spend time with her siblings. He gave her the one thing that Blythe couldn’t seem to because time was something that she worries about consistently. Simply because her greatest fear is that her younger siblings (Blythe included) will feel unwanted and even worse unloved like she did when she was their age. She tries to use what little time she has to shower each sibling with undivided attention and shower them with as much love as she can possibly give.

Really, with her efforts alongside the largeness of their family (and Xavier by his side) Blythe finds it hard to be truly lonely.

By mid-noon the house is nearly empty albeit Xavier who he can still hear moving around downstairs. And of course in the quietness he can’t help think too much while laying lazily on his sister’s bed his eyes scan the room. He wonders, when had he stopped feeling so ashamed of the humble home he grew up in – with it’s creaky wooden floors, and mixed matched sheets, towels, and dish sets.

Perhaps it’s because despite the fact he spends a majority of his time here, he hasn’t actually lived in this house in the past 5 or 6 years, not since his mother died. At the thought of her, his eyes stray to the closed bedroom door across the hall – the one room inside the house he can’t bring himself to go in. Oh, he’s seen inside it… mostly just long enough to see the pictures of himself, Blaise, and the middle brother as kids.

Snapshots of old times from his childhood that no matter how hard he looked or focused it’s a childhood he simply doesn’t remember. And it leaves him more irritated than sad, fills him with a rage and nowhere to pinpoint it, therefore he avoids the room and its unspoken history.

“It’s unlike you to hover.” Blythe sits up, leaning back on his arms and a lazy smiles appears at the sight of Xavier lingering by the doorway. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, did you work too much again?”

He doesn’t remember ever being so normal. Normal, in the sense of having to hesitate before letting his limbs move, hover before making the knock -- breathe before having to make a decision. He can’t remember the last time he’s ever thought twice about something; that was the the benefit of knowing everything -- you already knew the best choice to make.

Blythe was the anomaly. 

(That was always the problem.)

Decisions were easy to make -- actions, easy to take on. Decisions around someone who could possibly be the world to him -- actions that were for or against the one good in his life -- here was the hesitation, and here, the breath he held in his throat.

He exhales, and only then, allows the door to fully crack ajar.

“Never enough work,” He means to speak of the usual petname after the words, but it too, gets caught between his teeth, and instead, he plays it off with an awry smile. “Never enough work.” He gives himself another inhale, chest rising then falling, rather a big motion along with it. He intrudes Blythe’s space, his body now almost right besides the younger’s. Perhaps this too, was something he thought too much about. But this was what came most natural to him, remaining close, as close as possible to Blythe, and yet his thoughts said all else. As if the things he was keeping from Blythe was a sin big enough to keep distance from the other.

For the first time that day, he takes a good look at Blythe’s face. He traces his features with his eyes, the glance full of adoration, too much, too abundant. He ceases the stare the moment they fall on his lips, eyes now falling to where his legs dangled over the edge of the bed. 

When Blythe steps in, he doesn’t respond immediately to Xavier’s greeting. Silently, he places his helmet on the table before coming to lean his back against the counter right next to Xavier.

Crossing his arms over his chest Blythe takes his time to look at the man beside him. There’s still a part of him itching to run up stairs to calm the sound of footsteps running every direction to help his siblings get ready for school. His oldest sister is gently scolding the one right under Blythe in age yet here he is down stairs, a bittersweet feeling piles up in the pit of his stomach.

Their lunches are already made, ready, waiting for them. All of them.

He takes his time looking at Xavier — who by now already knows what he’s going to say even before he’s going to say it, sees what he sees, knows what he knows… knows more than what he knows. It’s the little details that move his heart like the way Xavier moves as he sets the table or the way, or the way he considers the little details.

He keeps sparing small glances in Blythe’s direction almost in hesitation, but yet refuses to say anymore until Blythe is ready but it’s like they’re stepping on eggshells, it’s like he’s waiting for something.

Blythe’s eyes don’t miss the little details. This time it is no different, he doesn’t miss the glint from the light shinning on the upper part of Xavier’s ear when he reaches for his hand but the significance of it simply goes over his head. He moves on, considers it something of an oddity — but he can swear he sees the tension from Xaviers shoulders leave when he doesn’t question it (doesn’t think to question it.)

“Good morning.” Blythe says, he doesn’t have the energy to chastise Xavier about doing to much for him, and his family. He doesn’t want to fight, but there are things that he needs to say out loud. “What I said last night I won’t take it back, but I don’t expect you to say it back either.” He kisses both of Xavier’s hands before stealing a small of glance of his own, and moves away at the rumble of small feet climbing down the stairs.

Nothing is fair about this. (He knows that best.)

Relationships of any kind are hard when you know so much. When one side knows so much, and the other, almost nothing. He sees the frustration in Blythe’s creased brows to the very crossing of his arms. Nothing is fair about this, but he doesn’t know how to change the situation. 

In the beginning, assuming the power was the difficulty. To read someone’s mind was something he needed to do with intense focus. Now, resisting the power is even more difficult: he’s not sure how not to tune into the alarming voices encircling his head. Blythe’s thoughts, the worst. He adored his voice too much to dare try to ignore it, especially when his voice was so frail, weak, and lost.

When Blythe comes close, his hands habitually linger, hovering over his waist. Blythe moves away too fast for him to actually touch him or make any sort of contact, and instead, his hands coil into a fist, then settle on the cool counter.

“Good morning,” is what he says again, this time at one of the small pair of feet approaching him. He hears her mutter a good morning back, voice tired, and clearly just woken up. He kneels to pick her up, now natural in the way his arms and his hands all supported her small frame in all the right ways. He offers her a smile as she rubs at her eyes, and he helps, removing whatever’s in the corner of her eyes. Then, he pecks the very center of her forehead, and her nose, both of which he admires, especially since they were exactly the same features on Blythe. “How did my princess sleep?” He asks softly, as if afraid to wake her completely. And with it, comes the train of her responses, which she begins to spill out while he seats himself and her on his lap at the kitchen table. 

The rest of the family gathers and the brunch starts. He feeds the child on his lap while juggling a conversation with both the other boys across the table, casual laughter eliciting here and there. Everything is comfortable, as it should be -- and when he finally meets eyes with Blythe, he knows he feels the same. He smiles at Blythe, eyes not lingering any more than he needs to, hiding his true adoration for the younger.

[ ... ]

(This is a growing problem for him. He’s in love, damn it. And Xavier knows it.)

Blythe stops staring at the palms of his hands, and clenches them into a fist. He punches the nearest wall, and tries to bring himself together but before he knows it tears are escaping. And this is a side of effect of having someone else inside his head all the time.

Deadlines are piling up  –  he owes too much money. And yet he’s still keeps managing to forget his place in this society, falling in love was not supposed to be a part of the equation. Not when his siblings lives are on the line. And he’s not so sure what pains him more, the fact he can’t hide any of these thoughts from Xavier, or the fact that he wants to be able to hide and yet he can’t bring himself to.

Blythe sinks to the ground, back pressed firmly to the dirty wall behind him as he tears a piece of grass into shreds. He can’t even say that the words he said last night were a mistake, he can’t even take them back because Xavier knows, and has always known them to be true.

And Blythe can’t help but to remember the words of a certain Youth Leader from a long time ago, preaching about the grace of God and he can’t help but to wonder…

Where is the grace in all of this.

He wakes with him, as he always does. He watches Blythe slip away from him; leave with just a jacket and that damned pack of cigarettes he tries to hide amongst the piles of things he calls his own amidst the other piles of things he calls theirs. 

Theirs. Ours. Us.

The words are as foreign to him as they are to Blythe. (Neither of them has mentioned anything of the sort.)

He hears the main door close and it is only then that he shifts his body upward, supporting himself with a hand at his head. There are one too many thoughts cluttered up in his mind, and just like any other morning, he wonders when his brain will give out. At the slight annoyance of an incoming headache, he grunts, the edge of his palm circling around his temples. As he moves his arm back down, his palm touches the cool silver helix upon his ear now, and he lets himself fall back into bed. He lies there for a moment, unable to think of anything but Blythe. His headache persists, but his worries eclipse the now-dull sting.

At this rate, he’s sure his heart will implode before his mind explodes. 

It takes him another hour or so, to wash up and pull himself together enough to pull on his facade. In the next hour, he’s let himself into Blythe’s place, now rather comfortable in the kitchen where he’s decided on blueberry pancakes for the kids and Blythe’s breakfast. With the stove top going, he sets out the pre-made lunch boxes on the counter, hearing the rumbles upstairs, the same time that he hears Blythe come through the door.

He turns his back to the door, knowing he’d be in for another morning of you’re not supposed to be in here-s, and I can handle this much myself-s. 

It does feel bloody good. Fascination is written on every corner of his expression as a childlike wonder replace the normal placid expression reflected in his eyes.It’s unlike anything he’s ever experienced, this gift of light. Blythe’s eyes gather a hint of darkness in their depths when Xavier speaks. No. Blythe starts to shake his head donning obstinacy like it’s simply another one of expensive Xavier’s sweaters that he favours.

Coherent thoughts are still strewed across the river bottom, if they weren’t he wouldn’t have missed the quiver in Xavier’s voice and understood that the intervals between his words were warning bells in disguise. He should notice that he didn’t say it back.

Instead, his interest lies in indulging in his own selfish desires, I want to feel this a little while longer.

And yet, he is still weak and inexperienced. Disobeying Xavier proves itself to be a disheartening task and truthfully the invitation to sleep is too alluring when he knows for certain that this isn’t a dream nor a fantasy. For the first time, reality was more inviting than anything the obscure pitch of his dreams have to offer him now. Blythe’s eyes began to close, the steady motion of his finger tips drawing circles on Xavier’s nape slow to ovals, messy attempts, and almost nothing.

Caught in that sweet place that is akin to limbo between consciousness of the real world. Just as he’s about to cross over into the threshold and into the dream world, an unforeseen electric shock pulls him back. He folds into himself, lets a cry of shock as a deafening pain surges through him starting at his helix piercing. Immediately, one of his hands cup his left ear — It burns, everything burns so much that all he can do is focus on the pain. For a searing hot minute, he suffers before the pain ebbs away to linger with everything else that will surely haunt him in the following days to come.

He can almost hear his fear laughing at him from where its hiding for the time being.

Blythe blinks, he can feel Xavier intense stare in the sudden pitch darkness of the room. They are no longer glowing — Xavier is no longer reflecting him, and there are no stars, there isn’t even any yellow light streaming in from the window of the apartment. But he feels so tired now, so so tired and his breathes come out in pants, with every rise and fall of his own chest he swears he can feel Xavier press closer, coddling him, protecting him, lulling him to sleep. And sleep he does.

Blythe falls asleep in his arms, and he reads his thoughts even without the aid of his mutation. The quiver of his lip, the flinch in his face, and the tremble in his body -- they all tell him much too much, and he reads him all too easily.

He puts away his glasses to the side counter, vision now a blur, but still able to register the Christmas lights in the background. As the younger inhales, he watches the bulbs dim, then relearn their glow with the exhale that follows. In the faint light, he pushes back the loose locks of hair behind Blythe’s ear, admiring the details of his face. He comes closer to press his lips upon his jaw, avoiding his lips, as if some nightmare would come upon them both once met mouth-to-mouth. By the time he reaches the crook of his neck, he hears him murmuring his name, right beside his ear. And there is something extraordinary about the way he calls to him, in the way he says the name. When he wishes to hear it again, he does just that, ever so carefully, as if he cradles it with caution, like something he’s afraid of falling from his small hands. 

When he brings him in closer, he feels the way his heart acknowledges Blythe. There’s a terrible weight pressing onto the seams of his muscles, as if ready to burst out onto the sheets, to proclaim itself. 

You’re in love, you fucking asshole.

A part of him wants to be reasonable. He reasons that he is responsible enough, able to take care of not just Blythe, but his whole family. He reasons that where he stands, he is absolutely capable of supporting, certainly capable of protecting and capable of loving.

Then Blythe retreats, or more so, begins to shake more so than before -- and he knows of his pain, and even knows the source. Before he can react to take upon the other’s pain to himself, Blythe has calmed again, lulling further when he finds the warmth of his embrace again. Here again, a second time, he tucks a bit of the younger’s hair behind his ear, and peers upon the helix dauntingly staring back at him. 

He falls into habit, falling with another blade of guilt. He scorns himself for the explosion, not being confident enough to cease Blythe’s father -- and above all, being one of the hands having turned Blythe into a walking bomb of energy. 

With bitterness settling on his tongue, he closes his lips, swallows the knife down his throat, and plucks off the helix from the younger. He feels the electricity at his fingertips, the jolt rather ticklish, before he locks it into his own ear instead. Then a palm comes over Blythe’s head, fingers settling onto his scalp, as he takes a breath, then begins thieving of the other’s pain just now. Now it is Xavier whom quivers, flinches and trembles -- his eyes shut tight with a clench of his teeth, as he bares the shock until it fades. Then he tangles up their legs, letting the movement of Blythe’s chest calm him.