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A shout woke Erik in the middle of the night.
"Raven!"
Woke him up and sent him flailing for the covers as he fell out of bed onto the floor - since it echoed and re-echoed through his mind with all the power of a resounding gong. "Ow."
It was not as though he was angry to have been rousted from sleep. Erik swallowed hard against the sickness in his throat. He had a new bed here in Westchester - wide and obscenely soft, with plump pillows and blanket upon blanket .... New bed, but old nightmares - worn and grimy as any pillow he might have kept on the road.
And now he heard voices.
"No powers!" Running feet. "No powers!"
"Raven! Get back here, you little -"
Erik tried to focus. That second voice - the echoing one - was Charles.
"Can't catch me!"
And the first voice was Raven.
"The instant I do, I'm telling you - a bucket, and above my door - you know you could have brained me with that, you absolute goose -"
"But what a brain to brain -"
"Not funny!"
Then there the sound of a door opening. "Could you guys keep it down? Some of us are trying to sleep here."
Sean, Erik realized, and at least he wasn't screaming. His voice sounded grumpy. He had a point, too. Erik reached out with his power, and felt for the brass hands on the clock. One A.M.
"Is everything all right?" Hank quavered from next door.
Scrubbing his hands into his eyes, Erik waited for Alex's voice - the one to round out the trio he'd run into the ground tomorrow, or die trying.
"Where's Alex?" Hank's voice again. Great minds thought alike, it seemed, and Erik cast his own back over the mansion blueprints he had memorized. Alex's room was right down the hallway. Young McCoy could probably see his door - or he knew where said door was, for whatever reason.
And speaking of great minds -
"You can run, but you cannot hide from the in-finitely powerful X-avier!" Charles' voice skirled up into a register that sounded deranged. And here Erik had thought him very proper, very posh. "Run! Run and try to hide in - the kitchen!"
And was that an evil laugh?
Erik sighed. Charles thought he was being funny, no doubt, when he was in truth anything but. Just another night in Westchester.
"Verdammt," he grunted, lips twitching. He lurched to his feet and fell back into bed. Possibly face-first - but, Erik decided, he didn't care. Days, months, years of chasing Shaw - by g-d, when he had the chance to catch up on sleep, he grabbed it with both hands.
Both hands, he thought, muzzily, as his eyes fluttered shut. To grab whatever he wanted, when he had the chance ...
"Checkmate, my friend."
Erik had gripped the table with both hands and glowered at the board, his first day at the mansion. Charles had only just given casual instructions as to rooms and amenities, suitcases and schedules - before strolling to the library, looking back over his shoulder and smiling an invitation at Erik.
Less than an hour later, and Erik had lost his first chess match in years. He exhaled through gritted teeth. "I don't suppose you have any liquor?"
One eyebrow went up. "A bit early for it, isn't it?"
Which was ridiculous, as Moira had been quite clear on Charles' own carousing up and down the streets of Oxford - no doubt, Erik thought, as he himself had been skewering German swine in Argentina. But no matter. He smiled tightly. "Take away the sting of defeat."
"Well, it's just a game." Charles rose from his chair and walked over to a cabinet. "Let's have a toast instead. To the success of all our endeavors, here. What say you?"
"Our endeavors? So ambitious?"
"I suppose you could say that, although ..." His voice trailed off for a moment.
Then Erik felt puzzled, as Charles beamed from ear to ear. It was like the sun rising. Even when he turned to face Erik, and popped out the cork from a bottle of champagne -
- and Erik yelped despite himself, jumping backwards, as something bright and colorful shot from the bottle with a skrreeeeeep!
It landed on the chessboard. He poked it with one finger. "What the hell is this?"
"It's from Raven," Charles said, still smiling. "It's a joke. A prank, if you will."
"No, thank you, I will not." Erik still felt twitchy. "A nasty joke - in a bottle like that, aimed the wrong way -"
"A cork would act on an eye with prejudice far more extreme."
"Still. It's frivolous."
"Yes, my friend." Charles stepped towards him with a new bottle - bourbon, this time. "Sometimes frivolities are the best part of life. Don't you think?"
Erik shook his head. "A waste."
"A waste of perfectly good bishops and knights, perhaps." Charles indicated the chessboard, where the strange contents of the prank bottle had toppled several pieces. "Such destruction."
Then he gave Erik some bourbon, and smiled at him over the rim of his own glass. "We'll drink to the honor of the departed, and to your health."
Erik had stared, suddenly appalled - for his stomach had twisted and his heart had lurched, with something much warmer than mere surprise.
"Charles!"
The shriek catapulted Erik from his bed and to the floor. He landed neatly enough, after sweeping off the blankets in one fell swoop - but a neat landing in the fire place was still a landing right in the damned fireplace.
"Fool." He nudged an andiron aside with his power. At least it hadn't hit anything important.
Then he crouched, heart pounding - eyes fixed on the glimmer of light at the keyhole - ears straining for any other sound -
"I am going to kill you! Those slippers were my favorite!"
"'Were', nothing - they'll be absolutely fine. You just need to put the frogs back into the greenhouse, making sure that they're properly moist- oh please don't kill me, someone help!"
The voice had more reverberation than one might expect, again. Perhaps that was due to its telepathic echo, bouncing through the minds of the mansion like a gilt-spackled rubber ball - and at least that echo was lighter this time, but it still was enough to wake -
"Can't anyone get any sleep around here?" Sean had gone from grumbling to shouting; Erik winced. But then, thank everything under the sun, the slam of a door and footsteps indicated that he was stomping off - to do who knows what.
Erik sighed. Just another night in Westchester.
Charles had sounded so much more like an adult at the CIA facility. Now that they were back at his childhood home, it seemed the polish wore off by night. Or ran off. He was running now, thudding feet for rhythm and uncontrollable laughter for melody.
Someone else rather lighter on their - her - feet, went running after him. There was, Erik observed, a fascinating Doppler effect to Raven's screaming. Soon enough it faded completely, and he was left in peace.
He unfolded to his feet and brushed the dust off his skin. Shins, knees, ass - of all nights to land in the fireplace, it would have to be a night he went to bed naked. And what the hell time was it? Erik thought with a bleary frown. A brush of his power against the clock confirmed it: two A.M.
Now that he was up, though .... Erik considered, sighed, and discarded the idea. A fine way to pass the time; perhaps take the edge off - but Hank was right next door, and Erik had already noticed that the boy had an acute sense of smell. And since he was apparently also awake again - "Raven?" had squawked through the hallway - it seemed a nice long fantasy about what Erik would really like to make Charles shout ... was out of the question.
"The things I do for you, Charles."
He fell back into bed with another sigh. Three days at the mansion so far. Three games of chess; six shared meals; two full nights of sleep ....
Erik glowered up at the ceiling. Two drawn-out sessions with his hand on his cock, and nothing more. What did a man have to do, to communicate interest sufficiently? After all, when he said a grand total of nothing and thirty seconds later Charles had leaped into cold water and done his best impression of an octopus. With far more time than that over the past three days, and with practically every innuendo possible served up to Charles on a silver platter, complete with his most dazzling smile .... Charles had smiled vaguely back at him, and done nothing.
Nothing except run lap after lap with the students, run circles around Erik intellectually, and run away after playing his latest prank on his sister - always laughing. It was the laugh. Erik turned and buried his face in the pillow. -Erik! You decided to stay, Charles had said, a laugh playing around the corners of his mouth -
- and he had stayed, and now he was in love, and listening to the man he loved cavort with his sister like they were children again - and if he weren't in love, Erik thought, it would be intolerable.
As it was, it only took him five minutes to fall asleep again.
Erik had made it quite clear: Charles was to stay out of his mind, Raven was to stay out of his skin, and the children were to stay out of his way.
The last order was the only one intentionally obeyed, he was sure. For the two siblings in the house only gave him a miss with their powers because they were entirely occupied with playing increasingly elaborate pranks on each other.
Raven drawing a moustache on her brother as he slept their first night there, and giggling at the others' nonplussed reaction in the morning. Charles stealing one shoe from each and every pair she owned, the next day, and hanging them from an apple tree in the garden. Raven putting the mannequins from the Danger Room in a compromising position, to say the least ... in Charles' study, on the day of the CIA agents' visit. The second day. Then MacTaggert had come back to stay, having obtained all the paperwork they needed - and she damn well helped Charles put together a Rube-Goldberg machine that looked as though it could split the atom, but actually only served to do something unmentionable to the person in the W.C. Namely: Raven.
And thus the two stayed busy. MacTaggert's bemused tolerance of the pranks was acceptable; her mood soured drastically when she sat on a whoopee cushion ... with all clustered round for a briefing having to do with Cuba.
Erik was tempted to pull her aside and commiserate. But she was closer to her fellow agents, and to Charles, for that matter. Charles, who was harder to read with every passing day.
Admittedly, only three days had passed. The first had seen their first chess game. On the second, Erik tried to ask Charles the reason for such manifest foolishness. Charles had been in the midst of constructing his Rube-Goldberg machine, and had grinned at Erik, and made no answer.
The third day he had asked Raven. She had laughed, and had told him it was none of his business - and hadn't he more important things to think about, anyway? That said with a glance at Charles and a smirk. Erik had refused to wonder why.
"Raven!" Charles' voice was far removed, but the outrage in it clattered through Erik's mind like a saucepan lid on concrete. "That's absolutely ridiculous!"
"You know you love it!" Raven's voice was much closer. The same Doppler effect.
Erik groaned from beneath the pillow. "Let me sleep. How old are you both?"
And why did Raven have to sound sound so bizarre? It wasn't enough that she could take on different forms - she had to steal voices as well?
"Can't catch me, Charles!"
"Would you shut up?" Alex shouted - from right next door, oddly enough, and Hank's voice cut in. "Shhhh-hh!"
"Shut up and shut the door; watch this - ha!"
"Go back to bed," Erik grumbled into the sheet -
- until he felt a hand on the doorknob, and then it turned and there was a draft, and -
He gasped.
So did Raven. Or, the person that had to be Raven. For Erik could hardly believe his eyes - he was staring at his identical twin. Who was staring right back at him.
Well, to be fair, he - she - was staring at the gun in Erik's hand. He slept with one under a pillow at all times; having three done up in velvet at a mansion didn't change that.
"Just another night in Westchester." Erik felt to make sure the safety was on; then turned on the bedside lamp with a flicker of power. "Miss Darkholme. To what do I owe this dubious honor -" he checked the time - "at precisely three in the morning?"
"Um."
It was uncanny, to watch emotions move over his own face. Foreign ones: laughter, fun gleaming from the eyes. Then a dazzling smile - and shit, if he looked like that all the time, no wonder Charles hadn't taken the bait. "Shark" was too kind a word.
"I'm just playing a prank on Charles, is all," Raven said. "You don't mind, do you?"
"You need to use my body to do it?" Erik narrowed his eyes. "Without so much as asking?"
"Please, my new friend," and Raven rippled in front of him - he caught his breath, despite his play at being outraged - "make my night more interesting?"
It was Charles, standing there now. In a blue cardigan and tan slacks, eyes glimmering with mischief and mouth curled in a smile.
"Go to bed, Raven."
And there was no other word for it: she pouted. "But for this one, I need your help."
"For what 'one'?"
"This last prank. It finishes up, I win, and everybody gets to go to sleep."
Erik rubbed his eyes. "Is that a promise?"
Raven - well, Raven-as-Charles - nodded, all earnestness.
"Right." He sighed. "What needs doing?"
"Who needs doing, is more like it." She grinned at him. "He's coming downstairs right now. Could you go ahead and kiss him already?"
Erik gaped. "What?"
"You heard me." A wink. "Take a better look once he gets here - even you can't miss it."
"Miss what? And what do you mean, even me?"
"Oh, Herr Lehnsherr, you have the dubious honor," she sketched a bow, "to be the most emotionally stunted person I have ever met." And Raven, still in Charles' form, nipped over to the wardrobe and opened it. "So. Now is the witching hour; time to learn and time to grow - so say hello to my brother, but keep the joke going a little while. You're me," she explained, easing inside the wardrobe, "and we do this every time we come back home."
"... Do what?"
"Hide-and-go-seek. It's the high point of the pranking. Booby-traps optional; first one to use powers yields a turn. You use, you lose - unless you use it to hide, since that's what it's all about." She smiled. "We might as well be ghosts."
Erik had found out enough about Raven to realize the irony in her loving this game as much as it seemed she did. In the interest of peace, he refrained from pointing it out. "And this has what to do with me?"
"My brother is gone on you, friend." Another ripple, and Raven's blue-scales shimmered into view, from feet and hands up and in. Blue eyebrow ridges waggled. "And if you keep him here for half an hour at least, I win hide-and-go-seek, and total victory is mine this year."
"Victory in our time." Despite everything, Erik felt himself smile. "At three in the morning, no less."
"I wouldn't stay up this damn long for anything less. Although ... come to think of it," and her voice dropped, "I have the sneaking suspicion that, as adults, parts of the game could prove a bit more groovy. If we all put our minds to it."
Erik started a retort - then caught ornate metal buttons moving down the hallway at a fast clip. "Here he comes."
"You'll play along? Great!"
"Not with you listening in that wardrobe, I won't. I -"
"Secret passage." Raven waved at him. "Right next door. Alex still there with Hank?"
"I don't -" Erik started. And stared as she elbowed something, gave him one last grin, and slid sideways through the wardrobe's back paneling.
He hardly had time to blink, though, before someone pounded at the door. "Raven!"
Someone, nothing. It was Charles.
Erik cleared his throat. "Come in."
"Oh. Oh, dear. Is that you, Erik?"
"Yes."
"You're awake?"
He snorted. "Obviously."
"Oh." Charles' voice sounded unexpectedly ... dithery. Erik didn't like it, but it seemed there was more, for the next words were: "I did not mean to wake you, my friend. I mean. I -"
"Bit late for that. Or ... early. Did you know that it's three in the bloody morning, Charles?"
He took on a bit of the accent deliberately. And -
- Charles must have pulled in his power. For Erik only heard a gasp, and then an outraged: "Raven."
"Yes?"
"Raven, stop that at once. It's very well done - you've mastered all of our voices now, it would appear - but I'm sure Erik would be upset to learn that you were using his."
"I am upset, Charles -"
"Stop that. I've stopped with mine."
"- but mostly because you're not in my bed yet."
There was a long pause.
Then: "Not funny, sister dear."
Erik laughed. "Get in here, Charles."
"No. You win, all right? You know all about my silly little schoolboy crush, but there's no need to rub it in my face and - oh!"
For Erik had made up his mind - dazzling smiles had not worked. Nor had subtlety. Perhaps it would be best to take hold of what he wanted ... with both hands.
So he flicked open the door with his ability, gave the buttons on Charles' robe the slightest of tugs, and - though neither by itself would have been sufficient, the two together sent Charles stumbling from threshold to bedside and down - and the mattress bounced, brown hair flopped, and there he was.
"Perfection." Erik smiled, and let the smile touch his eyes.
"What is?" Charles squeaked.
"No. The question, Professor, is: who is? And the answer is: Du." Greatly daring, Erik leaned forward and dropped a kiss on his new bedmate's nose. "Schoolboy crush, hm?"
"Erik," and the voice was a mumble, as color rose from the base of Charles' throat into his face, up and up further, "you weren't supposed to - find out - I mean, I thought -"
"Really?" Erik showed some of his teeth. He watched in fascination as Charles' color heightened. "Then you had better blame your sister, for letting the cat out of the bag. She went through that wardrobe," he hooked a thumb over his shoulder, "and told me: half an hour of me delaying you, and she wins."
Charles made no reply. He was staring, Erik realized, at his chest. Well. He had gone to bed naked, but he hadn't expected it to pay off in such a way. Sheer genius, that.
"Did you hear me, Charles? She'll win, if you don't follow her straightaway. Don't you want to win? You're plenty fierce about it in chess."
"Well ..."
It was so strange, to hear the man hedge. Erik couldn't keep the foolish grin from his face. One kiss to Charles' nose, and all he wanted to do was kiss down, and down further - see if he could beat the blush to the bathrobe's hem.
He felt a faint, warm touch on his mind.
Erik reached out with his own power; heated the metal ornaments on the bathrobe through in a flash. Charles sucked in a breath, and let it out in a shaky laugh. "That feels good."
"It'll only feel better, if you let me. But you had better run, Charles. If you want to win."
"Erik ..."
And then broad hands came up to cup his face.
"My friend." Charles tried a smile. "I think I've won already."
"Game, set, and match?" Erik said.
"Mate, rather."
"Have I told you, Charles Xavier, that I like the way your mind works?" Erik leaned down and brushed a kiss across Charles' mouth.
He felt the smile widening against his own lips, before Charles said: "I'm very glad to hear it."
With that, he twined his arms over Erik's back - and a delighted shiver made Erik's entire body prickle, as he felt the coils and tendrils of Charles' power ease round his thoughts, warming them, as they kissed again and as he slipped the bathrobe off and let it slide away.
"What on earth was all that clatter last night?"
Agent MacTaggert sounded perfectly clear-headed, and particularly severe.
Erik cast a glance round the table. Hank had turned red as a beet, as had Alex. Raven, sitting between them, looked nothing but smug.
At the foot of the table, Charles took a nonchalant bite of pizza. The smile he shared with Erik was just for the two of them. Erik smiled back. He would have it no other way -
- but of course, Sean had to break the moment by thumping down the servants' stair and into the kitchen. "Here," he said, brandishing a thermos - at MacTaggert?
Erik raised an eyebrow. "Good morning, Cassidy."
"Morning." Sean plopped into a chair next to MacTaggert, who was studying her fruit cup with great intensity. "We're going running later."
"So - you hear all the noise last night, Sean?"
Perhaps Alex had only meant to share the pain of embarrassment - he certainly sounded sulky enough. But Sean's eyes went wide.
"The Danger Room -" He turned to Moira. "I thought you said it was soundproof."
Charles choked on his pizza. Erik went round the table to thump him on the back. "Just another night in Westchester," he said under his breath - and gave Charles a grin.
The others were laughing and talking too loudly to notice Charles smiling back, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin - very proper, very posh - and kissing Erik's hand, and whispering to his mind: just another night at home, my love. And so many more to come.