M A G N E T O

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          Another heavy breath sank his shoulders further into the chair, blinking away his moment of confusion and curiosity. “Ah. I’m sure.” He nodded, almost forgetting his own cup in his frantic moment of hospitality, staring at the amber-tinted liquid just a second too long. “… Hers certainly are more potent than anything I could carve. She wields actual magic, I only hope to emulate it through what little of the craft I can work with.” A light chuckle seemed to signify calmed nerves, one sip of tea later brought him back to his right wits. 

          Jason’s eyes studied… But not for too long. He knew better than that, to stare and dig too deeply without cause. They’d barely spoken, he didn’t need to draw any suspicions of… Suspicion. “Still,” he sighed, looking back up towards the bookshelves. “Hers are not misplaced. I hope I don’t have to scold you for some misdeed.” Half of a joke, the only indication was the sly smile curling onto his lips. In truth, Jason had no room to judge. Hell, he would be damned if it wasn’t for the quite immortal curse. Whatever business anyone had, whatever scale of morality, couldn’t compare to what Etrigan had influenced in him… Or, perhaps, his self-made exile had gone on a thousand years too long. 

          Sulphur itched his throat, the flames warming the old room growing just a hair hotter as he realized the gravity of his own explanation. “… Old friend, don’t tell me you meant to attack her.” 

//

He’s used to the somewhat circuitous route his conversations with Blood tend to take--and he can hardly hold it against the man. Blood plays host to something otherworldly, after all, and Erik now knows first-hand just how complicated that relationship can be. 

( Does it say something, he wonders, that he needs more than one hand to count how many of his acquaintances and loved ones are not wholly themselves? How many of them share their body with another force? )

Erik would say something about Blood being far too humble, but in the scheme of things, he was right--the man was impressive, but Zatanna really was in an entirely different class of magic-user altogether. “Oh, I don’t know--there’s always something to scold me for. Par for the course in my line of work, I’m afraid.” 

Then the implications of crossing Zatanna’s wards seemed to click for his host, and the air in the room seemed to get warmer, a hint of egg smell brushing his senses. Ah. Yes, probably would’ve been better to clarify that early. “Of course not. I consider her a dear friend.” 

Not that that’s always, or even usually, stopped him before. 

“I was simply looking for her to have a conversation. Apparently last time I visited her stage area I attempted some reorganization and upset her assistant. To keep me out, Zee put up a ward and then forgot about it until she found me laid out on the floor. We had a laugh about it after, rest assured.” 

Erik takes a sip of his drink, settling back in his chair as the tension in the room eased with his explanation. “It’s been a while--how have you been? Your little jaunt with the Justice League treating you well?” he asks, managing to (mostly) keep his disdain for the team from his voice. 

Lorna glared at him half-heartedly, flicking a towel in his direction. “Remind me not to give you any when I actually make a good batch.” He was right, her current attempt was… dismal to say the least, but she wasn’t normally this bad. Distracted probably played into it. Not to mention an unfamiliar kitchen. It had been years since she’d properly stayed in this mansion and cooked here. They’d tended to supervise her more as a twelve year old.

“No, I know,” she said, her tone shifting. “I was just thinking.” She gave him a half-hearted smile now before looking away. The dirty tools floated over to the sink, arranging themselves beside it with an almost absent glow of Lorna’s hand. “About our family. And burning things down.”

//

He laughed, dodging the towel easily as he pouts at her from across the kitchen. “Taking pastries hostage now, are we? Future pastries, at that. A bold bargaining strategy.” They both knew that Lorna wouldn’t be able to hold out if and when she did actually make a good batch. ( More likely, he may be the proverbial guinea pig testing to make sure they were good. )

Erik turned the knobs of the sink with a thought as he reaches for the dish soap and sponge. Her words earned a little bit of a grimace, and Erik directed his attention back to the contents of the sink, very carefully shoving the immediate memories associated with family and fire back into their box. “I see.” He grabbed at one of the spatulas, scrubbing at it without looking over at Lorna. “Fire isn’t always a bad thing, you know.” 

.

Charles manages, somehow, not to roll his eyes at Erik’s description of himself. It isn’t untrue, but it still feels wrong, too specific of a label to be given to so complex of a man. “I have very long brooms to dust the chandeliers with,” he says, instead of addressing the comment. And then, because he has always been the type to think too much or not at all, he says, “I don’t want you to feel as if you have to earn your place back here. You’re not my housekeeper.” 

As soon as he says it, he wheels around so his back is to the man, pretending to rummage through his desk cabinet so he doesn’t have to watch Erik’s reaction. Nobody would ever describe him, Erik least of all, as someone careful with his own feelings, or even somebody that kept them hidden, but- the man opposite him now knows him so well. It’s impossible to not want to keep something under wraps, when Erik doesn’t even have to look at him to know how he’s feeling, even without the trick of telepathy. 

Not that his power is as simple as a ‘trick’, most fairly described as an ‘affliction’, truly, but the mood in the room is tentative, and that isn’t a mood most baselines can feel. Tentative, quiet, something that feels like a bridge from one stage to another. It tingles. 

He must consider his students before all else, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a part of him that wants to be selfish. It is the part of him that remembers the time before the beach, remembers any time before they all had so much responsibility. Erik has always had something, as long as Charles has known him, but he remembers when he himself was carefree. “I can talk to them.” The words are strong, no room for argument, “I will, if you want to stay here.” It’s an offer, a repeated one, “I want you to stay here.” It’s the most honest he’s been since Erik arrived. 

His eyes are focused on Erik’s face as he switches the kings between his fists, making no effort to try and follow the side he usually plays. “There’s a charm to losing, too, if you do it graciously enough,” he smiles, though he doesn’t expect either of them to be playing to lose. 

//

Charles turns away to look through his desk, which is probably a mercy for both of them as Erik bristles a bit at the words. It’s a polite rejection, as they go, phrased as a favor, but the point regardless seems to be that Erik can keep himself to the study and gardens. 

Except then perhaps not, because Charles is turning back to him and saying something Erik had never expected to hear again, certainly not with Cuba and a decade and the world between them. I want you stay.

The very words he’d hoped to hear an age ago in that agonizing moment on the beach when everything had fallen apart; words that are so close to his own rejected plea all those years ago, sand and shame and fear and love clogging his throat as he told Charles I want you by my side. We want the same thing.

( I love you. I’m sorry.

Of course, that wasn’t their style, the two of them. Never had been. The former had always seemed to go without saying, the two of them falling into orbit so easily, understanding teach other so readily that to actually say those words had seemed redundant. Inadequate. As for apologies, they were both far too confident in their decisions, and far too proud, to voice that sort of regret with any sort of reliability.)

I’m sorry my friend, but we do not.

That had been the end of it, right there. That one moment, and the silence that stretched for a century after it before Erik had finally forced himself to look away from Charles, to hand the man over to her and walk away from yet another family.  Ten years on, and Erik had found himself drawn back to the Xavier mansion again and again, no matter how hard he tried to force himself to move on. Somehow, he always ended up right back here, sooner or later--sitting in Charles’ study, shoving the past into boxes and burying them for the sake of a few moments of peace in each others’ presence. And now Charles was looking him in the eyes and asking him to stay in that tone of voice that Erik had never been able to resist. 

Some things never change.

( He pretends part of the reason he can’t even consider saying no isn’t because nowhere else feels anything like home. )

“Okay. Only because you asked so nicely,” he said, as if the telepath didn’t know better. Erik turns over the hand Charles indicates, to set the white king on the opposite side of the board, and pretends, too, that he hasn’t used sleight of hand to give the man his preferred opening colour for every game they’ve played in the last decade. 

He begins setting his own side of the board, and scoffs a bit at the man’s words, looking up to flash him a grin. “You’d best lose, then, hadn’t you? G-d knows you need all the charm you can get.” 

( ✉️ → ERIK ): Is this where I say “send nudes” but the cracks in my screen are basically a censor bar? ( ✉️ → ERIK ): Wait, is that actually an ability you have? Because that’s definitely something I need to study. I mean, not that I can really bleed out either, but you know, for other people. The super-people we work with that aren’t nearly indestrucible. ( ✉️ → ERIK ): Oh. You’re drinking. That makes more sense. Is this alone-drinking or enjoyment-drinking? ( … ) ( … ) ( ✉️ → ERIK ): Westchester, huh?

( ✉️ → ERIK ): You know I’m using a phone with a horrendously cracked screen, right? ( ✉️ → ERIK ): Are you bleeding out or something? ( ✉️ → ERIK ): And not to sound creepy, but where are you going? It’s not a scary-bad checking out, is it?

You’d think that the further north you went, the less intense the summer got--but in Erik’s experience, the entire East Coast was a bloody oven from June-October. Atlanta would almost have been preferable to the heat glaring down on the Battery; the park’s proximity to the hall of mirrors that was Manhattan meant that the sun wasn’t just glaring down from the sky above, but from a hundred other buildings all intent on roasting you alive. 

Maybe Logan had been onto something, going to Canada. 

Genosha gleams at him across the bay--or would, if he wasn’t doing his best to avoid looking in its direction for the time being. Instead, he’s settled in on a blanket beneath one of the towering trees on the western side of the park, a bag of pastries from Katz’s sitting waiting while he sipped at an iced coffee. 

No one seemed to be paying him any mind, which was fine by him--people still didn’t seem entirely certain whether the infamous Magneto was alive or dead. And they certainly didn’t expect to see him sitting under a tree in Battery Park sipping iced coffee like some hipster Brooklynite here to birdwatch or some such nonsense.  As if there were any birds here but pigeons and seagulls, both nasty little thieves. One of them, already absurdly fat, lands a few feet from the picnic blanket, and Erik glares at it behind his sunglasses. “Don’t even think about it. I will zap you.” 

.

Oh, how he has missed that smile. It doesn’t even register until he sees it once more, a sight that somehow echoes round both the room and Erik’s own mind, and as a result Charles’. It fills him up entirely. The other man deserves to be smiling far more often than he is, but he can’t deny that it feels extra special because Charles himself caused it. 

He feels immature, suddenly, finding such pride in such a minor achievement. It’s the sort of feeling he would encourage in anybody else, but in himself it feels silly. He’s too old for such childish wants, but he wants them nonetheless. It is, simply put, Erik. 

“Not around the house, simply the grounds.” Though, even as he says it, he’s thinking of things that do need to be fixed at the school that he can’t himself. It isn’t as if he’s short for money, but saving on paying somebody by mentioning it to Erik isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He can’t fathom suggesting paying the man, can already picture the offense he’d take to it. 

At the man’s self-assured words, Charles finds himself nodding without a second’s thought. He does look good in anything, that can’t quite be disputed. “Hat and overalls is a classic look,” he says, instead of everything else he wants to. 

“You know..” He begins, unsure of where his sentence is actually going to end when he begins it, “Erik, you’re always welcome here, for as long as you would like.” Charles is careful, always so careful, whenever he hears something that he’s not meant to. Telepathy is not as accepted as other mutations. That isn’t to say, of course, that mutants are wildly accepted ( he is not so naive as to believe that, no matter what the man stood opposite him may think, ) but there is a special place of contempt held for a telepath.

However, that doesn’t mean that he can’t interpret whatever Erik’s broadcasting right now. He’s always so careful to hide his emotions, and he does it so well, that whatever this listlessness is, it is particularly strong. He won’t acknowledge it openly, neither of them will, but he can do his best to help. 

The chess board in the corner of the room is beginning to grow dusty with such little use, and he feels himself hope for a game before Erik can even finish his sentence. “You’re not interrupting anything at all.” He rolls over to the board, which now only has one chair beside it. It isn’t a chair Charles ever has to use, and he wonders if it occurs to the other man why he’s kept it there. His heart lurches at Erik’s choice of words, but he doesn’t comment. He hates to think of it at all. “Though, I do hope you’ve been practising since we last played. Give me a challenge.”

//

Erik snorts his amusement before he can stop himself, arching a brow at Charles. “Ah, I see--it’s far more easy to justify a terrorist tending the rosebushes than it is one dusting your chandeliers.” He thinks (hopes) he manages to keep the faint tinge of bitterness out of his voice, because he can read between the lines, thank you. Knows that it’s one thing to let the enemy meet you on your territory and quite another to let him mingle amongst the children--especially having recruited a not inconsiderable number of them away to help lay seige to New York just a year ago. ( A year--has it already been so long? ) 

And then, almost before Erik can finish the thought, Charles is addressing it without acknowledging that he’d heard it at all. A dignity, then--Erik doesn’t feel the familiar intrusion of the man’s mind, so he must have been thinking rather too loudly for the man to ignore.

You’re always welcome here.

He very badly wants, in that moment, to believe it. Coming back to Westchester--back to Charles--always feels like a weight off his shoulders, like a breath of fresh air, like a blanket wrapped around with warm familiarity. There’s moments of it elsewhere, here and there, but nowhere more reliably than the school. And certainly nowhere recently.

He wants to believe it, but Erik’s smile is thin, appreciative yet dubious even as he follows Charles over to where the chessboard has clearly been gathering dust. “I appreciate the offer, old friend, but I fear your students may not agree.” Especially not if they’d caught wind of what had happened on Genosha in that final week before Erik had died--if they’d heard that Erik had come terrifyingly close to crossing a line he’d never crossed in all his fights with the X-Men. 

( He can still see Ric’s face when he’d knocked on the man’s door after his resurrection, the way the blood had drained from his face all at once, the way he lashed out to try and cover the terror that was coming off him in waves. He still doesn’t know how to fix it. If he can fix it. )

Erik reaches out to brush the thin layer of dust off of the chair--only one, he notes, and feels a twist of guilt in the pit of his stomach at the reminder of why--and takes a seat, reaching out to take a king in both hands and switching them back and forth before offering both closed fists to Charles. “Oh, come now. You don’t think I’d show up here planning to lose to you again, do you? Besides--I’m always challenging. It’s a personality trait. Part of my charm.”