Chapter Text
I.
No matter how often he thinks about it, Erik can never quite remember how it all began. How he and X found each other, how and when he started to care for the equally twisted man in a manner much deeper than that related to friendship. If he is to look back in proper, it feels as if he was going through life anonymously, his darkest exploits his own to appreciate and purposely denying himself contact with others.
And then there was X.
Suddenly, there was X.
X splattering the city with his initial, carving himself out a niche in history, striking fear into the hearts of its residents in a way Erik’s own work never quite did. Unlike Erik, his type was seemingly nonexistent. One day a hooker in a back alley with the neat little ‘X’ decorating her abdomen, the next a low-risk businessman sodomized with a tire iron and left in front of the police station, that letter identifying just who was responsible.
And of all the sick fucks in the vast city, somehow, X chose Erik. Artless, angry, sadistic, Erik.
Sometimes he wonders if it’s a blessing or a curse.
II.
For you see, each day I love you more
Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
-X
Ps. Check the news on Tuesday
The most recent response sits nestled in its place in Erik’s catalog of their three year long back and forth, yet he can remember it perfectly. The ‘T’ in ‘today’ has a slight smudge, and there’s a crinkle in the corner where the beeping of his watch made him start and jerk the scissors. He can envision the words behind his eyes, and hopes X saw his reply.
The television sits atop the small island separating the living room and kitchenette, turned down to background noise as Erik moves around his tiny apartment, trying to get ready for the day, consumed by the happy anxiety that starts up whenever X sends him something so tantalizing. He fumbles with the buttons on his dress shirt, knots his tie almost irreparably and has to use his restless hands to fasten his pants for the first time in what some would call too long.
The report comes in just when he’s beginning to contemplate staying home from work until whatever X had planned comes to light.
"Another victim of the infamous 'X-killer' was found today in Monroe Park. Twenty-seven year old Marcia Tomlinson was a newlywed and mother of two young girls." The newswoman's orange-hued face is replaced by that of the victim, young and beautiful. Pin-straight platinum blond hair tumbles down to perky breasts, the pallid tops peeking out of a blue scoop-neck top which complements her perfectly Aryan, azure eyes.
She looks like the type of woman that coasted through life at the top, banking on her perfect looks and turning her very European nose up at those she deemed “lower class.” Which is, of course, why Erik hates her immediately. He can’t help but wonder if X knew that, if that was why he picked this particular woman to carve up like a Thanksgiving turkey, or if he simply took extra pride in this kill and wanted to share it. The thought is a selfish one, but this wouldn’t be the first time X has given him such a wonderful present, always seeming to know just how to make Erik smile.
A quick peek in the Classifieds is all the answer he needs. Beneath an ad for a used car the owner is so desperate to get rid of he’s willing to sell for fifty dollars sits the innocuous two words, far more laconic than the long-winded or poetic responses Erik is used to.
Happy Holidays
-X
Erik quirks a brow but disregards it, pulling the scissors out of the junk drawer in his kitchenette. With care, he begins cutting the two lines out of the paper, gingerly extracting it from the rest of the text and laying it on his desk to catalog later.
His watch beeps and his daily eight a.m. sigh appears right on time.
Class calls
***
Erik steps up to the podium with the confidence of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing, who’s done this so many times he could recite the words he’s about to say when being tortured to distraction.
“Good morning and welcome to Engineering 6. For those of you that don’t know me, I am Professor Lehnsherr. My expectations are simple: I speak, you listen. You do not speak when I do or I will have you out of this class faster than you can say ‘but my major’. I don’t care if you show up, that’s your responsibility. I will not slow down or go back so you had better keep up or get the notes after class. Any questions not pertaining to the subject at hand must wait until after class. Do you understand?”
The silence presses in from all sides of the lecture hall and he smiles, shark-like to a fault.
“Wonderful.”
III.
The air on campus is different the first days of the semester. It seems as if every female has been bitten by some travelling love bug and the boys react with the usual surliness of men who feel their dating pool has downsized dramatically.
It takes Erik nearly a week to find the cause, completely by accident of course.
***
By this time of night, everyone is gone. The students back in their dorms, instructors wherever they make their residences.
A sort of peace blankets the campus, the silence drifting alongside the faint buzzing of lamps along the walkways and the last, straggling crickets. For Erik, he prefers it this way, feeling the metal like a heartbeat against his consciousness, flicking out tendrils of his power and letting a satisfaction overtake him, knowing what he could do if he so chose.
His footsteps slap against the pavement, a steady, even pace, not too fast not too slow. Leisurely.
When the splashing first catches his attention, he isn’t sure what it is. It cuts through the night, seeming ten times louder than it would during the day when the students fill the pathways and it isn’t uncommon to hear something going on at the pool. But at this time of night . . .
He can’t say what draws him to the indoor pool, but before he can think about it he’s pulling the door open and his nostrils are assailed by the scent of wet and chlorine.
In the style of a voyeur, Erik watches almost disinterestedly as a pale slip of a boy darts around beneath the water, his already ivory skin washed out by the blue tint and light from the pool. Almost as if sensing a new presence, the skinny swimmer emerges, dark hair sticking to his boyish face and falling in loose, dripping waves.
“The pool is closed.” He says curtly, and the other man grins.
“You must be Erik!” His voice is jovial and primly English. Erik feels a muscle in his jaw twitch and has to wonder if such disrespect is common in English colleges, assuming the boy is a transfer student.
“I’ll thank—”
“Charles Xavier,” he thrusts a damp hand out, grinning broadly. “I’m the new genetics professor.”
Involuntarily, his eyebrows fly up and it takes a moment to react, only moving when something in his mind nudges him lightly and he’s accepting the hand, palm meeting Xavier’s swim-wrinkled one. The smile that the other man is wearing makes him oddly uncomfortable, like the new professor can see the contents of his soul, like he knows. But the cast fades and it’s suddenly a perfectly pleasant look once more.
Erik catalogs it away in his mind, but in hindsight realizes it’s the first time he questions the innocence of Charles Xavier.
IV.
Rage. Erik believes in its power, in the necessity of the darker emotions that come with it. The way metal sings, in tune with his wrath and doing his bidding with little concentration, seeming to take on a life of its own with only a taste of Erik’s thoughts.
Like now.
The sphere of iron hovers just above the dark-eyed man, dyed a rust-red from the blood that has coated it time and again. Slowly, so slowly, it begins to reshape itself, a sort of face mask with needle-like appendages where the mouth goes lowering itself onto the man’s open, panting mouth, choking off a wholly feminine screech. Erik closes his eyes and concentrates on the metal, slipping and slicing down the esophagus, entering the stomach and jabbing through the lining until it breaks free to wreak havoc on his internal organs.
He lets himself go, lets the metal do what it will. He can feel it reforming and stabbing, needling, bruising, ruining this man who dares bear the swastika so openly on his neck.
A piece of the metal flies off and out of the screaming man’s thigh to dash the mark from existence, to giver Erik a fraction of mental peace, knowing another of the men that made his family suffer will soon know death intimately. And so when his heart stills, Erik doesn’t feel quite so empty as he normally would.
V.
“So where did you teach before here, Professor Xavier?”
“Oxford.”
“How prestigious.”
Erik can hear the bedroom eyes in the girl’s voice, almost feeling bad for Professor Xavier, though the uncomfortable coloring to his response just makes him smile.
“Y-Yeah, it was great . . .” The girl and professor round the corner, and something in his eyes lights up like a child finding his Christmas presents a month in advance. “Professor Lehnsherr! Just the man I was looking for. Excuse me, Laura, I really need to talk to Professor Lehnsherr.”
The girl is disappointed. Of course she is. She nods but doesn’t protest, continuing on down the hallway, an added swish to her wide hips.
“You wanted me?” Erik asks through the smile his students have compared to a shark.
“Oh, um. Well, yes. It’s Friday and I believe we like-minded individuals ought to stick together and . . . go out for drinks.”
“Like-minded?”
“Oh, yes. I think we too are very alike.” He smiles like a child with a secret he shouldn’t know. “And from what Emma has told me, you aren’t the most social of instructors. Admittedly, neither am I.”
Erik snorted. “Really, now? You seem to be the most social of us all.”
“Not by choice. However, it is in my nature to please.” He shrugs and loops his arm through Erik’s, brash and easygoing with a devil-may-care smile that seemed odd on his face. “Now, please, Erik. Humor me, I tire of the company of such insipid people.”
The taller man finds himself chuckling, but following the gentle nudging of his companion, disregarding the gentle voice in his head, whispers of a dream.
To hang up on the branches
Our wavering love,
And to break the sickle
Of the Time who takes his revenge
I'll leave it up again
I'll leave it up to you
You see, you can make the summer
You see, I can carry the winter
You see, we can get under way
You see, we can crunch the Earth