Posted via on April 9th with (140) notes
[snip]
tension tension tension
I love the goldenrod waistcoat. Gotta look nice when visiting Erik in the slammer.
K. So wow. I really like the idea of older Charles who has created all these routines and rules for himself about the figure he’s become. About how much distance and closeness is appropriate between him and his students. About how he still manipulates his image—though not as a charming, cheeky young man anymore, but as the most acceptable, powerful face of mutant rights whose approval or disapproval is very important to so many people.
But will still drop a grand on a special suit for an outing with Erik.
Same with Erik
I guess Charles really really likes the colors blue and yellow (gold) together. The suit he was wearing at the very end of XMFC is similar to the one above, wasn’t it?
Posted via on March 22nd with (92) notes
(This is the article in question.)
***
Erik drops the tabloid directly on top of the Times. Charles doesn’t have to look at it to know why Erik is so incensed—he’s known from the moment Erik saw the rag in the convenience store check-out, from the moment he angrily purchased it instead of the milk he had intended to buy. Charles followed his anger back to the car and back up the road and into the garage and then into the school, through the hallways until it was right in front of him.
Still, he spends a long moment looking incredulously up at Erik over the tops of his glasses, before pointedly looking back down at the paper, even though he already knows what it says.
MAGENTO To Marry PROFESSOR X!
There’s a picture of Erik in the uniform he hasn’t worn since the early seventies, during the uncomfortable period of their separation, the years they try to avoid in polite conversation. The photo of Charles is more recent, unfortunately. He thinks it may be from his last congressional testimony, about six months ago.
“It doesn’t seem fair that you get to be full of youth and vitality in your trashy tabloid photo and I’m still old and bald,” he says. “It rather makes me look like I’m robbing the cradle.”
“Charles,” Erik says between his teeth.
“You’re older than me,” Charles continues. “And it’s not as if you’re not still attractive. Although, I suppose they were going for the contrast of you in the costume and me cloaked in respectability—”
“Charles!”
Charles smiles sweetly up at Erik. “Yes, my love?” he asks.
“This was supposed to be—how do they know about this?” he asks. “Who’s been talking to the press? Because I have no problem adjusting chore rotations and grades as punishment!”
“No one’s been talking to the press,” Charles says, moving the tabloid off to the side. It’s not entirely a lie. He’s rather sure he can trace the story from a student to her baseline sister to a twitter account to an innocuous tweet that somehow got picked up by a reporter. The rest, he imagines, was easy, as he explains to Erik. “We had to register for the marriage license. These things become a matter of public record. It’s not as if we could have kept it secret for long.” He raises an eyebrow and waits for Erik to take the bait, but much to his surprise, after a moment of tense silence, Erik merely sighs and sits across from him.
It’s not the first argument they’ve had about the covert nature of their impending nuptials. In an interesting inversion from the early days of their romance, Charles has encouraged Erik to be much more open about their relationship, while Erik has become more guarded. Charles hasn’t minded much, but the level of secrecy surrounding the wedding that they’re finally, after fifty years, allowed to legally have, has been something of a sore spot.
“I’m not…ashamed,” Erik says.
“I would never imagine for a moment that you were,” Charles says.
“This is ours,” Erik says. “Through all of it—the school, the children, Stryker, Kelly, the Phoenix, the Shi’ar, the sentinels, the bills and laws, the protests and terrorism, through Cuba, through Shaw, through Magneto—this is ours. Sometimes it was all I had. I don’t want a spectacle. I want it to be for us. We’re the ones who’ve been waiting all these years.”
Charles blinks back a threatening wetness in his eyes and reaches across the table to take Erik’s hand.
“I wish you had mentioned that before we planned the party,” Charles says. Erik turns his gaze to the window, embarrassed, which is a rare and quite sweet look on him.
“Everyone wanted a party,” he says. “You wanted a party.”
“What about what you wanted?” Charles asks.
“I want you to be happy,” Erik says, and Charles loses the battle with his tears, wiping discreetly at his eyes and sending Erik a tendril of the affection building up in his chest.
The wedding is three days away. They applied for the marriage license last week, just another errand to take care of while they were in town. Hank can be relied on to keep a secret.
“You’re an old fool, Erik,” Charles says. “Go get dressed. Wear something nice and meet Hank and me in the garage in twenty minutes.” Charles pushes himself away from the table, already summoning Hank from his lab.
“What are you up to?” Erik asks, slowly getting to his feet.
“We have nothing planned today, a marriage license waiting for signatures, and a favor to call in with a judge in White Plains,” Charles says. He heads towards the elevator and turns to smile at Erik over his shoulder. “It’s the twenty-first century, darling. I see no reason why we can’t both get what we want.”
reason kait is my favorite, #1,783,203
From mutant fiances to mutant husbands. ♥♥♥ (Athough I thought Erik was gonna pitch a fit about the typo [“MAGENTO”] at first.)
Posted via on January 26th with (44) notes
ninemoons42 writes: at the end of the [long, loved] day
[for friends and fellow fans]
There are days on which he feels like he has never really known a quiet day in his life - not since the distant morning when he woke up from fever-dreams and a crushing headache to realize that the voices in his head were real, and that they belonged to the people who shared the house with him, and that men and women were capable of both great congruence and fatal dissonance in the words that came out of their mouths and the thoughts that spun in their heads on gossamer threads of meaning and intent; not since he first reached out to people who had abilities; not since he met people who shared the terrible weight of his knowledge and of the way he could read people’s deepest memories - and certainly not since that strange day so many years ago when he plunged into the mind of a man who only needed to reach out to command more than just metal, more than just the orbit of the Earth, more than just sight and physics and gravity itself.
The years have been long and strange, Charles thinks, as he resettles himself in his armchair, and when he looks out the window of his office he knows that he can see the spectacular late-autumn landscapes of Westchester, but that he can see something else beyond those hills and those familiar slopes: he can see the world that is still building itself steadily out there, on a foundation of handshake and agreement and argument and the march of time; he can see people walking a thousand paths leading in a thousand directions and yet all still working toward shared goals, shared dreams - he closes his eyes and he can still see, even without Cerebro’s aid, the thousands of twinkling lights, every one a mind that he knows, every one a mind that knows him - knows him and Erik both.
Speaking of which, he really must be getting up soon, because he can hear Erik’s thoughts about dinner and privacy and candles set up on the corner of the eastern porch that they have long since claimed for their own: they used to sit out there in any weather, and have it all out there, huge screaming fights and near-silent reconciliations and endless games of chess and some really magnificent long nights of nothing but love and passion and inexhaustible desire - now, they’ve had to concede somewhat to their physical shells, and to have protective walls built around the table and the chairs and the immense and still comfortable loveseat that never seemed large enough for both of them but almost always seemed to be a good place to hold on to each other, especially on the nights when they had nothing else but faith and the enduring wisp of shared warmth to go on with.
He’s still thinking of Erik when he slips under: a moment of silence, a moment of being not-alone, because even during the long torn years of wartime and separation he’d never truly been able to extricate himself from Erik, nor had he ever wanted to - a beautiful mind, a heart that would struggle for every inch and every moment of its existence and be exultingly alive with every success so he was, and is, always a beacon, someone for Charles to point towards: because there have been countless letters in which Erik has named Charles the star that he steered by and there have been countless thoughts in which Charles has always found himself pointing back to Erik, again and again, over the long years, from the first meeting and in every day since.
When he wakes up, it’s not because of a familiar warmth in his mind, and it’s not because of a familiar hand worn and rough around his - he wakes up because it’s Erik, because it’s all of him, the lines in his face and the knowing light in his gray eyes and the familiar lopsided smile, and Charles goes, willingly, knowing that he must care about how carefully Erik has supervised the cooking and the table and the stray autumn rose still blooming in the white vase between their plates, pure pale cream petals - but knowing that he still cares even more about who Erik is beneath the severe shirts and the warm coat, about that mind and that body and the hands that are still leading him, that he clings to, and that cling back to him.
Oh that’s beautiful. *sighs*
