Mutatis Mutandis

Summary: A stolen moment. They aren't growing any younger, haven't learned to love each other any less.

"You're losing more hair every year," Erik says. He takes off his hat and slips his trenchcoat off his shoulders. Both must have metal tucked away in the lining somewhere, because they float over to one of the chairs by the window, collecting themselves in a pile.

"Yours is still going grey," Charles says. But it looks good on him. He doesn't look weathered any more than Charles thinks he looks weathered himself. They're growing older, and not together the way Charles might have wanted, but--they're both still here. And despite everything, Erik is here today.

Between First Class and the (chronologically) later films, Charles and Erik steal and afternoon from each other. Somehow manages to contain all the beauty and tragedy in the relationship wrapped up in four thousand-odd words of eye-blisteringly hot smut. (This is not a kink that would have occurred to me for this pairing, but it turns out that it really, really works.)

As Ever

Summary: Five times when Charles wanted to read someone's mind, but promised not to, and one time he accidentally did.

Moira walks beside him on the grass, sunlight on her hair, and he recalls vividly the half-drunk memory of their first meeting, the strangely distant euphoria of seeing more mutants, more people like him, even just through her eyes. He's oddly glad he wasn't entirely sober during that conversation, since even then he suspects he'd have given himself away too obviously in his delight. How little he could have imagined this, even those few short weeks ago...

"You'd better not be reading my mind, Charles."

He blinks and turns to her, stopping short, surprised at her words. "Why would I be?"

One of the most interesting things about Charles Xavier in First Class is he's a mutant who's come into his powers without anyone to tell him how to use them. Since there isn't an Ethics for Telepaths handbook floating around, he has to work it all out for himself - which is one of the things this story is about. I love the different shades of reaction the other characters have to his powers, and the different ways Charles responds to them.

Five Minds Charles Never Read (And One He Did)

Summary: Charles and Erik, against the backdrop of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and it’s three themes.

And the great metal skin was peeled back in his mind’s eye, to reveal a living, breathing organism.

The metal breathed, inhale and exhale, behind concrete ribs. Expand and contract. The vertebrae of reinforced steel, climbing six-hundred feet above the ground. The give and take of electrons, push and pull of cations and anions at the cellular level. A great metal skin stretched over the entire surface; that glowed the same color as Phidias's Bronzes in the proper light.

A look at Charles and Erik as young men, still in love and full of hope but with the shadow of the future already on them. This is lyical and sad, and the setting is perfect for them.

Century 21

Summary: Storm and Xavier both try to teach history, but history just doesn't seem to learn.

"After the war," he said, "Erik was brought to England, along with other child survivors, to be cared for. To rebuild his life. But he never told anyone the real story of what had happened to him. He was convinced that if anyone knew about his powers, he'd wind up in another laboratory. He was isolated by his secrets. Until he met someone who knew the truth without being told. And I...." He closed his eyes. "I was a young telepath. You know, people in the throes of a first love often have a little trouble remembering where they end and their lover begins -- normal people, whose heads are as separate as stars. In my case...." Suddenly his eyes looked right into her. "Storm. Don't touch her. Don't think you can solve anything that way. The best thing you can do for her is keep her separate."

A series about Storm courts Rogue in the present, while Charles is stuck in the past. Two stories about how love not only doesn't fix everything, it can sometimes make it all worse. I'm not exaggerating when I call this story heartbreaking, and I don't thing I've ever looked a the relationships between these characters the same way since I read this.

Parched

Ex

Half

Summary: Charles has a proposition for Erik.

"You want to know why I'm here and probably also how I got here. You want to know why none of your scanners and psychics can sense the X-Men keeping an eye on me. You want to know what I want."

"A fair approximation."

Charles nods. "I'm here because I want to talk to you. I got here undetected with the help of my own powers and those of various X-Men who are now, much to their considerable displeasure, safely gone from Genosha. What I want... ah, well, that is more complicated."

"It always is," Erik says dryly, folding his arms. "Shall I save us both time and simply say 'no' now?"

Five years after the events of X2, Charles visits the island of Genosha. A great intergration of comic book elements into the movieverse, and I am always a sucker for political arguments between these two. Beautifully characterized.

Strange Giant Creatures