Chapter Text
The robbery didn't bother Charles overmuch. The stupid painting might have been priceless, but it was also ugly as the sin of talking at the theatre: no one liked it, the person responsible was unabashed, and it made the person booing it seem like an uncultured swine. Charles refrained from commenting every time art came up, but Sebastian Shaw was an old family friend, and decrying his work would be tantamount to disinheritance. As much as Charles liked to think he didn't care about the money, he cared enough, unfortunately, to know that earning it required honest work. He was a hard-worker, no questions about it, but his New York penthouse was expensive and a TA salary would cover, oh, the upkeep, if he fired the current crew and went poking through the dark recesses of the yellow pages.
Besides, it wasn't like it was a high price to pay for his private, luxurious home, having to live with a butt-ugly masterpiece on his mantle. He hardly used the living room, anyway.
So, the robbery was actually a blessing in disguise. It was so kind of the burglar, Charles thought with genuine emotion, as he watched the investigator inspect a piece of wire, masterfully twisted into a symmetrical band-like construction, hanging where the piece ought to be. An intricate wire sculpture was the calling card of the City's most notorious art thief. The insurance people paid up without a word, Mother apologised profusely to the artist whose life’s work had been defiled by unworthy hands, and Sebastian… well, he'd learn to deal without the painting he never got to see, anyway, because Charles tended to kill the lights and pretend he wasn't home when he felt the man approach.
Charles moved on with his life as best he knew how, dulling the pain of losing such a timeless work of art by throwing a party. Ostensibly it was to cheer Sebastian up, unfortunately Charles knew that throwing him a party was a sure-fire way to inspire, and so he was in no way surprised when, an hour in, Sebastian begged off with that special, manic glint in his eye. Charles could only hope he was running out of that expensive whiskey he liked, so he'd sell the painting rather than gift it, to replace the stolen one. He should be so lucky.
As Sebastian left, Charles became strangely aware of someone he didn't remember inviting. This wasn't a comfortable thought – Charles screened his guests carefully, an ingrained habit of the son of a man whose reputation was a perfect three on a scale of one through five, a man reviled and worshipped in equal measure. He was already skirting the edges of safety by teaching classes without a security detail, so he compensated by keeping his living space as private as he could make it.
Yet there it was, a foreign mind Charles couldn't account for. He moved to investigate, side-stepping the boisterous mountain of chiselled muscle, who was attempting to explain his complicated fraternal relationship to one of Charles' university colleagues, a petite brunette with whom Charles’d had the occasional conversation (conversation in this case meaning that Charles prattled about his research and Jane prattled about hers, with the conversation intersecting only when machine printouts could be confused for the other's).
The strange man was sitting on Charles’ white, leather couch, drinking a Bloody Mary, and staring up at the empty space over the mantle. He was a handsome fellow, Charles couldn't help but note, with a chiselled jaw and an intelligent look in his bright eyes. Something about his face seemed familiar, almost as though he'd seen the stranger before, which was enough to make him wary: he had enormous trouble identifying people he knew on photographs, let alone people he never met. This man's mind was wholly unfamiliar, sharp and glinting like glass, which meant Charles couldn't have met him ever before.
And yet…
"You remind me of the painting," Charles said conversationally, making himself comfortable on the opposite end of the couch, once his ability to match a square peg with a square hole finally came in useful.
"Oh?"
"It was stolen. Never mind. May I ask how did you get in here?"
"I was invited."
"Indeed?" Charles beamed. "It was Tony, wasn't it," he continued, nodding at Tony Stark, who was trying to outdrink the inoutdrinkable physics professor.
"He doesn't like to show up without an entourage," the stranger agreed.
"True." Charles shook his head and smiled. "And if it was any other party I would happily walk away, but since Tony is a good friend of mine I know he caters to my whims and doesn't bring people I don't know into my house."
The stranger didn't have the good grace to blush. Instead, he smirked. "I'm here for the drinks."
"All due respect, my friend, but you have thirty seconds to vacate the premises before I throw you out."
"You and what army, little boy?"
Charles countered the smug smirk with an innocent smile of his own. The man frowned and the hand holding the Bloody Mary rose to his lips. His Adam’s apple moved as the last of it went down his throat, and the hand lowered again. "Just me," Charles said quietly, relinquishing the mental hold and letting his mind expand, until he could be sure the man meant him no harm. "Oh."
"Are you going to call the police?" Erik Lehnsherr, the City's most prominent art thief, stretched and smiled. There was a touch less condescension in the smile now, a little more wariness; the magnificent glass structure grew steel vines and began to close off.
"Like they would catch you." The brief sojourn into the steel-and-glass mind was enough to tell Charles it would take more than the police force to bring Mr Lehnsherr to justice. Speaking of… "I kind of owe you, for getting rid of that masterpiece. I hated it."
Mr Lehnsherr stood and set his tumbler aside, so that he could perform a courtly bow. "My pleasure," he said, grasping Charles' hand and bestowing a kiss on his knuckles, "my lord."
He left without further ado. Charles let out a long breath, reached for the glass Lehnsherr abandoned and topped it off with vodka. He made a mental note to give the doorman a description of the burglar, to add to the persona non grata list, because favour or not, manners mattered and showing up uninvited was in bad taste.
He was, understandably, a little miffed to find the burglar sitting on his white couch in the sunbeam, when he returned from the lab a few days later.
"Mr Xavier," the burglar said, helping himself to Charles' pricey whiskey. "Welcome home."
The robbery didn't bother Charles overmuch. The robber? Unbelievably so.