Erik stews all the way through the second half of class that day; then, once all the other supervillains have gone, he stalks up to Charles’ desk.
“Yes, Erik, what is it?” Charles says.
“I didn’t get a gold star,” Erik says.
“Well, you didn’t participate in sharing time,” Charles says. “Only students who participate in sharing time are entitled to a gold star.”
“What?” Erik says - knowing on some level that he might be being slightly irrational about this; but the gold stars Charles gives out are just so shiny. “You gave Dr. Horrible three gold stars, and all he did was stare down at his desk and cry.”
“Well, he was in tune. Besides which, crying counts as sharing,” Charles says firmly. “Sitting there with your arms crossed glaring at all the other students does not.”
“Really, Erik, will you stop sulking?” Charles says when they’re halfway home and Erik still is. “It’s hardly my fault if all the men would rather proposition me over you.”
He leaves out the part where it actually is completely Charles’ fault; he’s sure Erik will come to that same conclusion at some point without any assistance.
“You're in a wheelchair,” Erik says, perfectly as though he doesn’t start salivating every time he gets wind of some fancy new metal extension they can order for the chair. Charles is next to certain he only asked Charles out the first time because of the chair. “I’m commando.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a phrase,” Charles says. “I think the usage here ought to be ‘I went commando.’ Since it’s usually ‘going’.”
Erik shoots him an unnecessarily nasty sort of look, and continues with his sulk all the rest of the way home.
The first thing Erik ever says to the new kid is this: “Your wheelchair is ugly and so are you.”
It’s not that he actually thinks that; Charles seems pretty neat. His wheelchair is made of metal and that makes it cool. Erik wonders, at first, whether the chair might be Charles’ mutation - because Miss MacTaggert always says no one has to tell about their mutations unless they want to, and Charles never talks to Erik - but eventually decides that can’t be it, it’s just a bonus.
Actually, Charles ignores Erik completely, no matter what he does. Looks right past him like he’s not even there. It’s really annoying and it doesn’t take long before all Erik wants is a reaction, no matter what it is.
So, one day he catches up to Charles after school is out, and takes his books. And then, because taking Charles’ books has never gotten a reaction either, Erik melts half of the wheelchair to the ground so that Charles is sitting there all crooked.
And Charles is still looking right past Erik like he’s not even there. His face is all red though, and his eyes are shiny, and crying counts as a reaction, doesn’t it.
But then, right before Erik thinks he’s going to, Charles looks him straight in the eye, then puts his hand to his temple. For a second Erik worries that Charles’ mutation might be eye lasers, it’s so close to what Scott does sometimes - but then he decides that’s stupid, because Scott has a visor like La Forge and Charles doesn’t even wear normal glasses.
Then, suddenly Charles is smiling at him, and he says, “You like me! Why didn’t you just say?”
“I don’t like you,” Erik says, scowling at him because he was supposed to cry and now Erik is all confused.
“Yes, you do,” Charles says. “Really, you should have pulled on my hair once or twice, I might have gotten it then without having to look.”
Erik has no idea what Charles is talking about. “Your hair is stupid,” he ventures.
Charles frowns at him. “Don’t you push me,” he says. “Now, fix my chair and let’s go.” Then, when Erik tries to give him his books back, Charles says, “If you want them so bad, you can carry them for me.”
Erik follows Charles all the way home to Charles’ giant house, feeling lost the whole time.
Things are going well, hot and heavy and so, so good after the screaming frustration of all of today, with the car breaking down and the CIA not answering the bloody phone to make arrangements for the repairs, for hours, nearly the entire day -
But things are going well at day's end, right up until the moment Erik tries passing the Vaseline on over.
"It's your turn to top," Charles reminds him - reasonably enough, considering that Charles topped last night and they do, after all, have an arrangement.
"I'm too tired for that tonight," Erik says, snappish. "I'll top tomorrow and the day after to make up for it."
"I don't think so, Erik, I'm tired too -"
"You're tired? You're tired? I didn't see you moving two tons' worth of metal thirty miles down the highway."
"Well, no," Charles says. "I only kept everyone else from seeing you doing it during bloody rush hour!"
Ten minutes and lots of shouting later, they finally agree on a coin toss to settle the matter. Erik calls tails.
The coin comes up heads.
"You cheated," Erik says, with a surety going far beyond mere suspicion.
"...So did you," Charles says; because there's only one way Erik could be so certain that the heads is not actually, in fact, heads.
"Fuck this," Erik says then, and turns over and goes to sleep.
*
The following night, Charles doesn't see why he should top when he never got his turn bottoming the night before; Erik, of course, begs to differ, because if Charles had only topped the night before, it wouldn't be an issue.
The remainder of this roadtrip is going to be hellish.
"Cats are traditionally legwarmers," Charles informs Raven each and every time she starts in on him about how he needs something to keep him company. "The purpose of a cat is to sit on one's lap so that one may pet it. In this situation, the cat would be rewarded for doing something that is of no use to me. I would have to feed it, water it and clean its litterbox, all for nothing."
He should have known that Raven would find a way around this absolutely bulletproof logic. Yet still he's surprised the day Raven walks in with a long-haired orange cat with a facial expression that suggests that a. it is about to yark up a hairball, b. said hairball consists entirely of the hairs Charles picks off his pillowcase in greater numbers each morning that goes by, and that c. Charles' hair is not at all appetizing.
"Raven, really," Charles says, as she plops the cat into his lap. "I don't know what you expect to -"
As Charles speaks, the cat wiggles its hiney, jumps atop the back of his wheelchair, then drapes itself across his shoulder.
"- accomplish here."
The cat makes a 'prrp?' sound, and begins to purr, then to knead the area above Charles' collarbone with its paws.
"I hate you," Charles says, which is not at all what he meant to say, which was 'Your little scheme isn't working, now get this horrid fluffy thing off of me.'
Raven does not look at all ashamed of herself; rather the opposite.
Charles means to wait to scritch the cat's neck until Raven leaves, but when it screeches an unholy cat-sound of protest into his ear he isn't given much of an option.
Erik called her a tiger once, and while that could represent some parts of herself - power, beauty, stealth - the comparison isn't anywhere close.
When they were first children together, Charles likened her to a chameleon. Loathe though Raven is to admit it, that's actually much more accurate - though still only half right.
She's neither tiger nor chameleon; she's a storyteller.
*
Charles sees people as they see themselves, the heroes of their own lives. Erik sees people in relation to their use to him: primarily as weapons, either wielded by his own hand or targeting him.
Irene sees what people will do and judges by their future actions, regardless of intent. Emma sees people as their worst selves and judges them by their inner monsters.
Raven, though. Raven sees it all. She sees people as they see themselves, their best and their worst and everything in-between. She sees what they want to be and what they actually are, to themselves and to her and to the cause. She sees what people will do, what they have done, what they're doing right now; more importantly, she sees what people think about what they're going to do, what they have done, what they're in the process of doing.
Wearing someone else's skin means so much more than just looking like them. If she's going to do it right, she has to know their story.
When Erik said, "Let's take a vacation," Charles definitely had something...different in mind.
"Disney World," Charles repeats. "Please tell me you're joking."
"What's wrong with Disney World?"
"For starters, there are any number of accessible destinations that are not Disney world," Charles says. "I would prefer any of them. And so would you, considering you're not going to get lucky unless we go somewhere else."
"I promised my kids we'd go to Disney World this year," Erik says, and though it's not a question, it is questioning, and this conversation has turned into something altogether different.
They've been seeing each other for over a year, but Charles has yet to meet Anya or the twins. Erik has them every other weekend, and Charles has long since gotten used to radio silence from him until later in the evening on those days. At first, Charles even appreciated it — he's been with other people who felt the need to introduce him to their children just a few dates in, which inevitably makes breakups just that much more awkward — but it's become a little more worrisome over the last few months, wondering if Erik is as serious about Charles as Charles is about him.
"Disney World sounds good to me," Charles says. "I can't think of anything better."