“It’s a power outage, not the apocalypse,” Charles said. “Calm down.”
His companion turned to look at him. His silhouette in the dark was even more attractive than his face had been in the afternoon light earlier that day. (Granted, Charles hadn’t seen another living person for months before this, but Erik would have been his type whether or not they were the last two people on earth. Or at least Westchester county.)
“Was that a joke?” Erik demanded, sounding not so much annoyed as—what was that emotion? It seemed telling one emotion from the other was a more difficult process when he hadn’t had anyone’s mind to read in so long—amazed that anyone could joke about this.
“Yes,” Charles said, “and it was hilarious, if I say so myself. Which I do.”
Erik was barely listening. Charles strained to listen to his thoughts, the conclusion Erik was already reaching—that without power, they couldn’t stay here, that this huge mansion was barely defensible now, never mind when the fences were off.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have to go anywhere. We just need to turn the generator back on.”
“Where is that?” Erik asked, pulling a weapon out of his belt and leaning down for another out of his bag.
“At the back of the house.” Charles wheeled over to the shelf on which he kept most of his arsenal. The bazooka he’d used to rescue Erik earlier would be a little much now, he decided. Instead, he’d bring the Colt, and the bayonet, just in case. “Follow me—and watch yourself. Sometimes they get in.”
Erik struggled for patience while he tried to convince Wanda that triangle-cut sandwiches were just as good as rectangles. As Erik struggled in the kitchen, Charles tried not to listen in the living room, insteading focusing on answering emails from his students as the two most stubborn Lehnsherrs fought it out.
It really wasn’t any of his business, anyway. Erik was the twins’ father, Magda was their mother, and it had been made very clear to Charles’ from the beginning that his “condescending, superior, know-it-all advice” was best not given in the middle of a conflict—even one as frankly stupid, loud, and stress-inducing on a Saturday morning as this particular conflict was shaping out to be.
At the end of it, rectangles won out, since Wanda simply wouldn’t eat triangles, and even Erik had to let his children eat their lunch at some point even if he would forever think they were eating it wrong. And it still wasn’t any of Charles’ business, but when Erik flopped down on the couch beside him muttering, “Unbelievable,” he couldn’t stop himself from reaching over to pat Erik’s knee and saying, “You could consider choosing your battles, you know.”
“Don’t start,” Erik said.
“What does it matter what shape her sandwich is?” Charles persisted, which, judging from the way it became a huge fight and led to Erik sleeping on the couch for the better part of a week, just went to show that he should learn to take his own advice.
“If you die, I’m going to kill you,” Erik said in a low voice.
For his part, Charles was mostly focused on remaining very, very still. Erik had a perfect handle on the needle, of course, but if Charles flinched away, he still might get jabbed somewhere he’d rather not. Anyway, Erik was agitated enough about having to stitch him up in the first place. Still, Charles couldn’t help but point something out: “It’s a flesh wound, Erik. You’ve shown up on my doorstep with far worse.”
“You had an infirmary,” Erik said. “Stocked with all the supplies I could need. It made tactical sense.”
Meanwhile, the two of them were stuck at a safehouse in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, waiting for Logan and Ororo to return from a supply run, with little more than a first aid kit for medical purposes. Charles got Erik’s point, which was that he should let Erik do everything dangerous while he sat around twiddling his thumbs, hoping that this time, the others would return with the final components to rebuild Cerebro. Charles’ uselessness made tactical sense to Erik, apparently.
“I hope you’re planning to thank me for saving your life,” Charles said. “You didn’t even realize that Sentinel was there until I shouted at you.”
“I was trying to lure it out,” Erik said, irritably enough that this was almost certainly true; he tended more to the defensive side of things otherwise. “You got in the way.”
Charles was beginning to feel rather defensive himself, even though he knew very well where Erik’s concerns came from. Charles’ death and resurrection a few years ago had left their mark on Erik in a way he wouldn’t quite have believed without coming back to life in order to see it for himself. “Well, I’ll try to stay in the time-out corner from now on, then.”
“Good.”
“Hey, have you seen the..? Oh.”
Bobby backed out of the room fifteen times as quickly as he’d wandered in to begin with. Meanwhile, Erik, who hadn’t even bothered to get out of Charles’ lap this time, went back to passionately kissing Charles’ neck as if no interruption had occurred.
“Get off,” Charles said.
“I intend to.”
“I need to talk to him. Get off.”
With a sigh, Erik did. “When are you going to stop coddling the children, Charles?”
“I don’t think explaining a few things counts as coddling,” Charles said. He wheeled out of the room, toward the front of the Blackbird, without bothering to answer Erik’s as-yet-unspoken objections. No, he didn’t think he had to justify (or apologize for) their relationship to anyone - but he didn’t consider any of their allies to be children any longer. There was enough history between Magneto and nearly every person in their group that some sort of discussion needed to happen when people who had somehow been unaware of what Charles had assumed was the least secret secret in the history of mutantkind stumbled upon them.
Next time, though, they were going to put a sock on the doorknob. That needed no explanation at all.
“Don’t you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!”
Approximately twenty minutes after this outburst had occurred, Erik stormed in the front door. He stomped on the mat inside the door, snow flying off his boots, then took off his cape and shook it out, ending up in yet more snow flying, very little of it landing on the mat.
Well, it wasn’t as if the corridor didn’t need to be mopped virtually every day anyway. It was a hazard of living with small people who enjoyed the out-of-doors and tended to track as much nature as they could back indoors with them, regardless of what sort of nature it was.
“Hello, Erik,” Charles said. “I see you’ve already greeted Ororo today.”
That was good. It meant she wouldn’t end up crying later today because she’d missed his visit. Somehow, the way Erik pretended not to like her never seemed to have the same effect (probably because Erik in fact liked her very much and always softened within seconds).
“‘Greeted,’ yes. If that’s what you call that.” Erik sat down beside Charles and began pulling off his boots. He hadn’t worn gloves today, and his hands were very red. They looked painful.
“I’m sure you gave at least as good as you got,” Charles said, with all the confidence that came from having telepathically monitored the entire snowball fight from the safety of the living room. (He had also peeked out the window.) When Erik’s boots were off, he reached for Erik’s hands, rubbing them between his own to warm them up.
“It’s July,” Erik grumbled, but that was the last of his complaining, at least for the moment. He even allowed Charles to make him a cup of hot chocolate before he remembered that he’d actually come here to start an argument about Charles’ most recent appearance before Congress.