Peter Maximoff v Life, Terrorists, & Awkward Family Conversations, Part 2
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34. Not thirty seconds later the tepid summer air hits Peter’s skin, and he looks up again.
The three of them are in the middle of a large clearing with woods around it. There’s a concrete bunker built into the ground behind them which is missing its entire top half. Ahead of them, a small aircraft is parked in front of the trees, and Peter can see a shape moving around through the cockpit window. Erik’s fingers, curling around Peter’s legs, twitch minutely, and what’s left of the concrete bunker falls in on itself. And that’s Problem Two taken care of, easy.
In the sky, hundreds upon hundreds of stars spread out in every direction as far as he can see.
35. It must be some sort of miracle, because when Erik takes him up into the plane, Hank McCoy and Charles Xavier are waiting to meet them.
Well. Charles is waiting for them, sitting in a wheelchair a few feet from the door. Hank’s fussing over a gurney and an IV stand crammed into the aisle at the back of the plane.
“Jesus Christ,” Charles says when he sees them. Erik heads to the stretcher without a pause and sets Peter down on it so carefully that Peter barely feels it.
Hank’s there, then, leaning over him and squinting at him behind his glasses, and Erik moves away. Peter doesn’t realize he’s grabbed at Erik’s sleeve until Hank blinks down at his hand. He lets go immediately, face heating up, and looks away. His eyes tear up for no reason.
Erik takes his hand and sits down on a seat next to the gurney like nothing happened, though Peter can practically feel Hank’s hard stare. Eric leans forward a bit; two straps buckle themselves over Peter’s legs and stomach, and it’s all Peter can do not to think of mealtimes. His breaths hitch, and he clutches at Erik’s hand like a lifeline. He knows if it were Hank strapping him in he’d probably have kicked the guy in the face, friend or not.
Hanks looks him over for a moment when he’s settled, all wide eyes as if he doesn’t know where to start, then reaches up and very slowly brings an IV stand near.
Peter knows he’s fine now, knows Hank is only here to help and everything is fine now. But his breath keeps coming shorter and shorter and he thinks he really, really wants to let go of Erik’s hand (because he’s not weak, he’s not, he would have figured out a way), but he’s pretty sure he’s just gripping it harder instead, and he can’t stop he can’t stop he can’t stop he
“Charles?” Hanks says, calm. He backs out of Peter’s sight and suddenly Charles is there instead, looking tired and grim and earnest.
“Peter, I’m just going to help you go to sleep, all right?” Charles says, and it’s fine, it’s fine, Peter knows it’s all fine, but suddenly Charles’s hand is on his face
(his hand is on his face
You’re making this harder than it has to be)
and he can’t.
His hand snaps out in a blur, moving at speed for the first time in weeks, and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone but he won’t let them touch him, he won’t let them touch him
(he made a promise to his mom and he’s not going to break it)
and his hand smacks something hard and his elbow catches something else and then,
and then:
bee sting. On his neck.
Except it’s not a bee sting this time either, it’s a syringe floating in mid-air, and he just has time to look down and watch the metal plunger depress itself, smooth and steady against his neck, before things go sideways. Strong, warm hands curl around his shoulders, and they ease him back onto the gurney and brush his hair away from his forehead as he checks out.
36. Medication doesn’t usually work on Peter for very long. When he drifts back to consciousness, they’re still in the plane but it’s starting to be light outside. It takes a while for Peter to wake up all the way, and he feels fuzzy and off-balance when he does. He notices pain all over his body, but it’s muted, muffled and distant like his mind is miles from his body.
He’s wearing a warm, soft knit t-shirt, and there are at least three blankets piled on top of him, but he’s still chilly, and his stomach aches from hunger.
Hank’s nowhere to be seen, but the blond from the bunker-Alex-is sprawled over several seats to Peter’s left, fast asleep and actually drooling. Someone’s drawn a blanket over him, folding it back neatly at his shoulders. Now that Peter has a chance to look, there’s a lot to appreciate about the dude’s face, once you ignore the spit. Peter files that nugget away for later.
Erik and Charles are seated at a small table several seats down, playing what looks like the most intense chess match in history, because of course they are. Erik’s changed, though the shirt he’s wearing is a little tight on him. He’s got a red spot on his cheekbone, like he got hit by the sharp end of an elbow.
Whoops.
“When did you know?” Charles is asking. His back’s to Peter, but he shifts a piece across the board almost gently.
Erik leans back as if to study the board, but his line of sight is down at his hands resting in his lap. “I…had a hint the first time I met him. He said something, I-I didn’t take it seriously, at the time, but I tracked him down, afterwards, and ran into Magda. She’s-”
“Formidable, yes. Not someone I’d care to-ah, Peter.”
Erik looks up from the chessboard and catches Peter’s eye. He loses the intense stare he’d been directing in Charles’s direction, and in its place comes the most restrained look of panic Peter’s ever seen.
It’s kind of reassuring, actually, that Erik might be just as thrown about having a long-lost mutant asshole son as Peter is about having a crazy terrorist father.
Then Charles wheels his chair around, and Peter stops feeling reassured and starts feeling like a dick, because the guy’s got a truly impressive black eye.
“Please don’t feel bad about it; it was entirely my fault,” Charles says. He flashes Peter a smile as he draws near, and hastens to add, “That’s a guess, not a read. I give you my word I won’t go in your mind without your permission, all right?”
Something that was clenched in Peter’s chest uncurls, and he relaxes into the stretcher, though he can’t help but track Charles as the guy rolls around the stretcher and fiddles with the IV. Erik steps up on the other side, near Peter’s head. Peter’s not sure what he’ll see if he looks up at him, so he doesn’t.
“Hank and I weren’t sure what your metabolism was like,” he says, “So we had to guess at the dosages. We’ll get that sorted out, but first I imagine you’re hungry? Thirsty?”
“Easy,” Erik says, and squeezes his shoulder, and Peter realizes he’s jerked up, muscles tense. He lets Erik press him back down onto the gurney and tries to calm his breathing.
This is just stupid of him. Everything’s fine now. He’s fine now. He can stop acting weak.
See? I told you it was easier if you didn’t fight it. It’s going to happen sooner or later, and it will be so much easier if you just keep working with me.
Charles moves somewhere behind the gurney and pops back with a glass of water. He sticks a plastic drinking straw in it and hands it to Peter. Peter moves to sit up-and gets about a quarter inch off his pillow before he flops back onto it, exhausted. The glass wobbles against his stomach for a moment, but Charles grabs it before it can spill.
Then Erik leans in, slips his arm under Peter’s shoulders like the night before, and sits him up. There’s no lifting the gurney or propping Peter up, but Erik holds him steady as Peter takes back the glass and drinks. It takes all Peter’s got not to gulp it down, but he learned his lesson the first time they left the water bucket in his cell, and he takes it slow. He tries not to think of how much weight he’s lost that Erik’s got no issue holding him up one-handed, but it’s either that or focus on the fact that Erik Lensherr is patiently playing nursemaid to him. Frankly, concentrating on how easily he can count his ribs when his shirt is off is preferable.
It distracts from Charles, too, who’s fixed Peter with an intense and curious stare. It’s not unkind, but it’s really creepy-which makes his and Erik’s ‘old friendship’ about ten times more understandable, but doesn’t really help with Peter’s nerves.
“Hank,” Charles says once Peter sets aside the glass for a moment, “Can’t really tell the extent of the damage to your throat without more equipment, but between it and your molar, we thought you’d better take it easy on solid food for a few days.”
The glass feels heavy in his hand. Peter rests the weight of it against his thigh and lets his fingers slip away from it.
“We think your healing slows down when you’re under-nourished, and if we had a better sense of your calorie intake during your-during the last few weeks, Hank thinks we could kickstart your metabolism and get you back on your feet sooner. Anything at all you could tell us would help.”
Peter shifts. Knocks the mostly-empty cup over between his legs. Erik picks it up and sets it to the side with his free hand. His grip with the other doesn’t waver. He could tell them. Should tell them. The sooner he heals, the sooner he’s back to normal. And he-he doesn’t want to tell anyone about it, but he thinks he wouldn’t mind as much with Charles as with, like, his mom, because Charles is both a kind person and a selfish asshole, and in the grand scheme of things he just doesn’t care that much about Peter as an individual beyond ‘Peter, the kid who helped me and whom I therefore owe.’
But Erik?
Peter does look over at Erik then, and wishes he hadn’t. Erik meets his look straight on with a neutral but firm stare of his own, and he doesn’t look away until Peter does-and maybe not even then, the weirdo. And that’s the thing, right there; yes, Erik is a weird-ass, creepy douche, and violent and murderous and just a general bag of unappealing dicks, and Peter knows he shouldn’t care what Erik thinks of him, knows it doesn’t matter, but he doesn’t want to look weak in front of Erik, doesn’t want Erik to know.
Charles sets a pen and a small pad of paper in his lap. Peter grabs the pen. His eyes flicker over towards Erik, so he can just make out Erik’s leg where it disappears below the side of the gurney. He’s kneeling on the seat across from the one Alex is still fast asleep on, hunched forward so he can help hold Peter up. Even Peter’s back hurts thinking about it, and he’s not old like Erik and Charles.
He looks back and Charles and sets the pen down. Charles’s expression shutters, though he brings up a smile and opens his mouth to say something encouraging, but Peter beats him to it.
“Look?” The word comes out a harsh whisper, but the water’s helped, and Peter manages. He points up at his head. “’S’faster.”
Charles takes a long, deep look at him. “You’re sure?”
No.
Peter nods.
Charles shares another look with Erik-and it’s not until later that Peter wonders if they were speaking-before he brings his hands up and sets his thumbs on either side of Peter’s temples. Peter doesn’t shiver, thank God, but he’s wound tight as a coil, and he knows Erik can feel it too.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit. This was a stupid idea. He’s just going to embarrass himself even more than he would have otherwise, and Erik’s going to know how weak he is, and he’ll never be able to look his mom in the eye again.
“All right, Peter, just relax. Try and focus on the memory you want to share with me, and I’ll be in and out as quick as I can, all right? If you want me to stop at any moment, just think it at me and I will, immediately.”
Peter nods again and closes his eyes. He feels Erik’s arm tighten around him. Then that’s gone, and he’s back in the bunker, back on that first day when he woke up in the feeding chair, four beakers on the table and a funnel down his throat, and he wants it out-wants it gone-and then it is gone, and he’s back in his bedroom reading Wanda her favorite book, the one about the tiger who came to tea and ate all the food. They’re hunched over on his bed in a sunny shaft of light, warm and comfortable and tired from a really intense game of tag that took all morning that ended up mostly being Peter running around and Wanda trying to trip him with one of her spheres, though Peter’s not going to mention that to his mom that evening.
The touch to each side of his forehead drops away. Charles squeezes his arm and ducks down to meet Peter’s gaze when Peter opens his eyes again.
“Thank you, Peter,” Charles says, with an emphasis on his name. His fingers are white-knuckling the bedrail, but he doesn’t look like if he’s pitying Peter, which is a relief. Peter looks away anyway. “That should help. We’ll…we’ll see what we can do about your throat. And get you back on a normal diet as soon as possible.”
He backs off and starts wheeling himself away. “I’ll get with Hank on those dosages. Erik, soup. And Peter?”
He waits until Peter’s looking at him before he continues.
“Nothing he said about you was true. I’ve met war heroes that weren’t half as brave as you.”
And he wheels himself into the cockpit and shuts the door behind him.
37. And it’s a very nice note for Charles to leave on, but it leaves Peter, hot-faced and sweaty-palmed, alone with Erik; Erik, whom he just obviously excluded from information about his time away and whom Peter would far rather not be alone with right now. Erik, who is levitating a metal thermos towards them with the same seriousness as when he almost slaughtered the sitting president and most of his cabinet.
“Cream of chicken,” he says pleasantly when the thermos settles in Peter’s lap.
What do you even do with someone like that? Inquire about the soup? Ask them how their terrorism’s going? Both?
Peter sticks with repeating “Cream of chicken?” for the moment. He brings the glass up and takes a sniff. It smells all right. He lifts it to his mouth and takes a deep breath, but he just. He can’t. He freezes with the cup against his lips and doesn’t move.
“It’s all right,” Erik says. “Just take it slow.”
Hysteria bubbles up in Peter’s throat, but he tamps it down. Right. Slow and easy. It’s not like he can hold off eating forever. And, Jesus, it’s not like this is something he should be scared of. It’s fine now. He’s fine, now. Everything is fine. He’s just being stupid.
He tips the cup forward and takes a gulp before he can rethink it.
“It’s no problem,” Erik says as he strips the top blanket. He sets the now-empty thermos on the counter behind Peter’s head. Peter doesn’t have the breath to answer back, yet, so he shuts his eyes and tries to focus on getting there. Erik fusses around some more, spreading out a new blanket and fiddling around with what smells like more soup in the space behind the gurney.
When he starts patting at Peter’s chin with a napkin, though, Peter finds his breath.
“I’ve got it.” It hurts more to talk than it did earlier, and his rib aches, but like hell if he’s going to let Erik fucking Lensherr wipe his face like a baby.
Erik surrenders the napkins with a placating gesture, but Peter’s pretty sure he catches the guy grinning as he turns around. And, yeah, irritating Peter’s probably the quickest way to motivate him, but it irritates him even more that the asshole’s figured him out this easily.
“If you want to try again, I can wrap your ribs after you eat.”
Smug fucking bastard.
“Yeah, fine.”
Of course, this time he has an even harder time sitting up and staying up, thanks to his rib, so in the end Erik has to bodily climb up on the bed behind him, prop Peter up against his shoulder, and help him hold the cup.
Peter kind of wishes he could jump out of the plane, right then and there.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says after he’s taken a couple of sips. It’s easier now he’s pacing himself, and the ache in his throat has dulled a little-though he’s pretty sure that’s more to do with what feels like ground-up pills on his tongue when he swallows.
Erik, of course, pretends like he didn’t hear him, because he’s a dick.
“Really,” Peter continues after the next sip when Erik pulls the cup away.
Erik sighs.
“You came,” Peter says. It’s hard to get the words out, but he’s intent. “That’s enough. ‘S not like we’re-I mean, you’re not exactly-”
“We should probably discuss this when you’re not drugged,” Erik finally says. “But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”
“But-”
“If I’d known your mother was pregnant, Peter,” Erik continues. The cup nudges against Peter’s lips again, and Peter takes another sip. “I never would have left.”
“Wait,” a sleepy voice says from somewhere beside Erik. “What?”
Erik doesn’t even look. “Alex, go make yourself useful. In the cockpit.”
“Erik.” Alex pulls himself laboriously out of the seat and stumbles to his feet. His hair’s smashed flat on one side, and there’s crusted spit to the left of his lip. “You do realize no one fits in there if Charles is in his wheelchair? I literally can’t-”
“Now,” Erik says.
Alex goes.
He does pat Peter’s leg through the blankets with a friendly “Hey, kid,” as he goes, and they hear his clear “Holy shit, Hank,” as he shuts the door to the cockpit.
“So,” Peter says after a second. “Cream of chicken.”
“Hank made it.” Erik swipes a thumb across the rim of the cup and tastes it. “He’s surprisingly talented in the kitchen.”
“’S good. Think it’s drugged.”
“Is it working?”
“Hmm,” Peter says. Everything seems softer around the edges again, and Erik’s chest and shoulder feel warm and comfortable rather than, of course, massively humiliating, so. “Yeah.”
“Good,” Erik says.
38. The next time he wakes up, he’s lying in an actual bed in a warm, sunny room with lots of windows and bookcases, and his mom’s sitting beside him and holding his hand.
“Hey,” Peter starts-
--and he doesn’t get any farther, actually, because his mom looks down at him, goes, ”God, Peter,” with shining eyes, and scoops him up into a hug.
She’s wearing the scratchy green sweater that Peter doesn’t like because it feels like a thousand nettles scrubbing at his skin in slow motion when she brushes past him. Her long hair’s loose and frizzy and makes his neck itch where it falls. She cries into his hair.
It hits him, then, that he’d thought he’d never see her or Wanda again. He hugs her back and lets it roll over him.
39. “You’re not okay,” she says about seven minutes later. She runs her hand over his left cheek. “You’re all bruised, up, honey.”
It feels like the bunker was so long ago, but it must not even be a day since they broke him out. So twenty-four hours ago, he was probably in the middle of yesterday’s training game, the one where the woman with superstrength set him in a bath and held his head underwater repeatedly. It probably did bruise his face, now he thinks about it.
“And Xavier said you’re-you’re not okay, Peter.” She brushes his hair away from his forehead and looks like she wants to ask him about what happened.
“Where’s Wanda?” he asks, instead.
Wanda, it turns out, only left the room ten minutes ago, and is currently playing hide and seek with Alex, who is apparently ‘a nice boy’.
“It’s such a big mansion, she’s having the time of her life, now you’re back, and-”
“I thought they’d got her,” he blurts out. “When I woke up after-after they took me. I thought they’d taken her too, and-I swear, Mom, I didn’t let them know she’s a mutant too, I didn’t tell anyone-”
“Of course you didn’t,” she says when she’s hugged him again. She rubs his back and curls her hand around his head like she used to when he was little and hurt himself running. “I never thought you would, Pietro. You’re such a good big brother.”
40. The next time he wakes up, it’s Erik on the chair next to his bed, feet propped up on his mattress, paging through a hardbound copy of The Metamorphosis.
“I really wouldn’t,” Erik says when Peter sits up and looks longingly at the window seat, soft and full of pillows and swimming in sunlight.
“I’m fine.” Peter shifts his weight, ready to tear off the blankets and swing his legs over the side of the bed.
“Of course you are,” Erik says. He flips to the next page. “And you’re also wearing a catheter.”
Disliking a person because they’re a dick, Peter discovers, is actually an entirely distinct feeling from disliking them because they’re a psychotic murderer.
41. Things Peter wakes up to over the next three days, in order:
*Wanda accidentally smacks him in the eye with her doll, not used to a Peter with slow reflexes, and throws herself into a hug right over his broken rib. It’s pretty great anyway.
**”What, did Hank make a rota?” Peter asks when he wakes up and sees Alex staring back.
“Well, yeah.” Alex purses his lips together. “It’s Hank. What’d you expect?”
And Peter-well, he’s got no answer to that. It’s not like he knows Hank that well, really, but he totally seems like the sort of guy, now he thinks about it. “Huh.”
Alex waves a card at him. “He’s got you on some medications he cooked up in his lab-don’t ask me what-and said they’re probably safe, but he wants someone with you until you’re off them in case you have a heart attack or something.”
Peter almost takes his IVs out, but Alex distracts him with poker until he gets tired again. He even pretends like he doesn’t notice Peter’s using his powers to cheat.
Hot and nice. Peter doesn’t even complain when Alex doesn’t let him go back to sleep until he drinks down all Hank-prescribed thirty-two ounces of soup, that’s how much he’s impressed.
42. The fourth day after the rescue, Hank declares him well enough to get out of bed and walk around the mansion if he wants, though he’s cautioned not to use his powers, on pain of probably fainting.
It’s surprisingly exciting, especially given how Peter can only wander for at most a half hour before he has to head back to eat. Hank has him on eight meals a day, at the moment. It’s weird, because back in the bunker he had enough energy to get around, but now he’s at the mansion it’s like he’s been sapped of it.
“Stress and adrenaline,” Charles says when Peter tells him that. “They kept you up and alert when you were in danger, but now that your mind knows it’s safe, your body’s catching up to it.”
(Charles finds him at a window seat overlooking the sunrise that morning before anyone else is up. He invites Peter to tea in the kitchen and doesn’t ask him any questions about the-about the bunker. Peter’s been expecting questions, now his throat’s healing up quickly since he’s on the Hank McCoy Plan of Nutrition and Experimental Drugs, but so far everyone’s been pretty good about it.
It’s probably why he spills his guts to Charles at the kitchen table.
He doesn’t tell about everything. Bits, here and there. A little bit about the guy with the hands (Dickface, he remembers, before he touched him), about the light bulb that wouldn’t shut off and how they hosed him off every night [“Yeah,” Charles interjects, “You were mildly hypothermic when we got you out, actually.”]. He even lets Charles poke around in his brain a little after he lets a mention of the training game slip. It’s different than the eating thing; Charles pulls up a good memory for Peter-his first Pink Floyd concert-and goes digging around behind it, so Peter doesn’t even know what Charles looks at.
“Would you like to have tea again tomorrow morning?” is all that Charles says about the memories, aside from clapping him on the shoulder and going ‘You’ve been so strong through all this, really’, which is lies, because Peter’s been anything but, but Peter says yes to the tea, because he’s having trouble sleeping in late and time passes slowly enough already even when he does have things to do.)
Peter’s sure Charles is right about the stress, because Charles is an actual genius, according to Alex, but it doesn’t stop it irritating the hell out of him when he falls asleep in the kitchen in the middle of their talk and wakes up to Hank very quietly trying to make breakfast around him.
43. Broccoli and Cheddar -> Potato and Chicken -> Cream of Chicken -> Tomato
44. That afternoon, Magda tracks him down in the library, where he’s helping Wanda build a fort out of what in retrospect are probably very expensive books. She tells him she’s going to be on the phone with her work for a couple of hours, in case he needs her.
He feels like a dick, then, because he hadn’t even thought of her work and how she’s probably taking her own sick days off to be with him. She sees it in his face, and she leans in to reassure him and puts her hand soothingly on the back of his neck
It rubbed at the skin underneath when the water hit him, the plastic clinging and chafing it raw. One time he had a nightmare and must have spoken, because he woke up to the buzzer. His body wasn’t allowed to go at speed, but his mind still moved quicker than all the world around him, so he had enough time to fully appreciate the dread before it hit him, each and every time.
and Peter’s gone, just like that.
He doesn’t stop until he hits the lake at the far north of the estate. Stepping into the chilly water snaps him back to himself. He’s got about half a second to notice the light-headedness and realize, hey, Hank was right! before he faints.
45. “-is he?”
Peter wakes up soaking wet again.
But it’s fine, now. Because the sun’s shining down on him, and he’s slung over someone’s shoulders, gripped tightly around the legs like they’d actually care if he fell off and hurt himself. Also, from where he is he’s got a perfect view of their ass, and it is an ass he recognizes, having taken careful notice of it previously.
Alex Summers is one guy he really wouldn’t mind sticking his dick in.
There’s this bizarre honking noise, then, and Peter takes a peek over Alex’s shoulder and-oh. Oh, right. Telepath.
“Charles,” Erik is saying so earnestly that it would be ridiculous even if it were an actual serious situation. “Charles, what-”
“I’m so sorry. Peter’s-Peter’s just fine, Erik,” Charles manages before he doubles over again and can’t stop laughing, the fucker.
Alex, at least, pays the two idiots no attention as he carries Peter all the way back to his bedroom, where Hank’s got an IV, a warm change of clothes, and four chicken salad sandwiches waiting.
46. “It wouldn’t hurt you to pick up a book,” Erik says when Peter complains that evening about being so bored of bed. “Or even a magazine.”
“I have a lot of magazines.”
Erik quirks an eyebrow.
“Oh my God,” Peter says. “You’re disgusting. Real magazines. With articles.”
“About?”
Peter shrugs. “I dunno. Music. Stuff. Whatever.”
Erik lets it drop and turns back to his Quarterly Journal of Biology. Peter falls asleep listening to him flip the pages.
47. Wanda spends the afternoon with him since he’s not allowed out of bed for twenty-four hours, per Hank’s most recent orders. She makes him play dolls with her, asks him to read and pokes at his throat when his voice still sounds scratchy, and lectures him about magnets, which she’s learned all about thanks to Erik, who apparently spent the bulk of his morning making her dolls fly around the study with strips of metal around their arms at her request.
She stays through naptime and falls asleep snuggled up with her head on Peter’s shoulder. It’s hot and heavy and sweaty from all the running around she did after lunch, looking for secret passageways and playing tag in the garden with Alex and their mom.
48. “What was he like back then?” he asks his mom when she comes in to grab Wanda for supper.
Magda leans back, takes a long look at him, and sighs.
“Different,” she says. “But in many ways the same.”
49. The Story, as Summarized By Magda:
50. He falls asleep at his window seat at eight and wakes up four hours later. Someone’s taken his shoes off and spread a blanket over him, and there’s a copy of the latest issue of Rolling Stone on an empty chessboard at the table. Peter keeps the blanket and grabs the magazine and wanders down to the kitchen in search of food.
He’s not expecting to find Alex lying under the sink with a toolkit or Hank leaning over it and jiggling the faucets.
“Try it again?” Hank’s saying when he hears Peter and his head whips up. He takes in the blanket around Peter’s shoulders, and his eyes narrow. “Hungry?”
Peter nods and heads for the fridge, but Hank waves him off and points him to a chair.
“Yeah, don’t make me carry your scrawny ass upstairs again,” Alex calls out.
Peter’s face heats up, and he’s pathetically grateful Alex can’t see him from under the sink.
Hank grabs sandwich fixings from the fridge but grabs a box from the counter and tosses it on the table. “You look pale.”
Little Debbies.
“Oh my god.” The box is open and the wrapper’s gone in a quarter-second, though Peter slows down to take the first bite. It’s a moment that deserves savoring.
This. This is the life.
“I didn’t think you guys ate these,” he manages after the first one’s gone. He leans his head on his arms and moans in happiness. His mom would be ashamed of him for talking with his mouth full, but he has an entire box of Little Debbies in front of him for the first time in three weeks: everything else in life is irrelevant.
“We don’t,” Hank says. “Mayo?”
“So, Hank, if I got sick would you make me sandwiches?” Alex asks.
Hank snorts. “Fuck you, Summers.”
Peter wonders suddenly if he can still fit an entire cupcake in his mouth in one go. What the hell.
Alex clambers to his feet loudly and tests the faucet. “Good to g-hey, is that for me?”
Somewhere in the periphery of his sugar-induced bliss, Peter hears three plates thump down on the table. He’s so comfortable, though, he doesn’t want to get up. Getting up requires moving, and moving is overrated.
“Hey.” A warm, calloused hand shakes his shoulder. He groans and doesn’t open his eyes. Too much work. “Jesus, he’s worse than Sean.”
Hank’s glass thumps onto the table harder than usual. “It’s his metabolism. He’ll keep falling asleep like this until he gets back to his normal weight. I think.”
Alex pulls back a chair and sinks into it with a sigh. “Shouldn’t he eat, then?”
“Probably.” There’s the sound of a drawer opening, then, seconds later, what’s unmistakably a fork pokes his arm. “Hey. Hey, Peter. Wake up.”
Peter groans. “’M awake.” He swats out at the fork, but Hank pokes him again until he sits up.
“Eat.” Hank, at the far end of the table pushes the plate-with three ham and cheese sandwiches-at him with the fork, then points it at a glass of chocolate milk next to Peter’s elbow. He and Alex have Heinekens, but Peter knows it would be pointless to ask.
Peter grumbles, but he grabs the first sandwich and bites in. It’s like it kickstarts his hunger when it hits his stomach, and he pulls the plate towards him.
“So,” he says after a second when Alex and Hank seem happy to eat without talking. “Who’s Sean?”
Alex chokes on his beer. Hank’s mouth twitches, and he sets his sandwich down and swallows.
“Sean Cassidy,” Alex says when he catches his breath. He glances at Hank. “We trained here together, with Charles and Erik and Raven.”
“Don’t bring him up to Charles.” Hank picks his sandwich back up. “Sean died, a few years back. It hit him pretty hard.”
“Sorry.”
Alex shrugs. Hank takes another large bite.
“So, you all trained with Erik?” Peter tries not to sound too interested. Judging by the look Alex and Hank flash each other, he fails.
“Ten years ago,” Hank says. “But, yeah. He and Charles brought us all together.”
Alex pushes his plate back and leans back with his beer. “What’d you want to know?”
51. Charles brings him tea in the morning, along with a pack of cards.
“Something wrong?” Charles asks after their third hand. “I’m not reading your mind, but you haven’t so much as tried cheating once.”
Peter tosses his cards down on the tray. “I’m fine.”
“Mmhmm.” Charles shuffles the cards and looks inscrutable.
Peter huffs.
“Peter,” Charles starts.
“It’s Erik.” Peter grabs a cookie-oatmeal sprinkled liberally with chocolate chips, which is apparently Alex’s doing-and chomps down on it.
Charles sighs.
“He’s a complicated person to have as a friend,” Charles says. He wheels his chair up to the window. “I’m sure even more so as a father.”
Peter swallows. “But you’re still his friend.”
“I’m-I think,” Charles says, “That being a good person isn’t one decision you can make once and get out of the way; it’s an option you have in every single choice you make, every day, for as long as you live, and choosing one way in the morning doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind in the afternoon. Erik’s made some terrible decisions that caused harm to-to many people, but at the moment he’s letting them lie in the past, and he has the opportunity before him to let them stay there.”
“But-”
“And if he doesn’t, it’s his choice and his choice alone. The rest of us will still be here. And there will always be a place for you at our school, Peter, no matter what.”
Peter nods, because, at least, everyone’s made the last part perfectly clear since the first time he woke up here.
“And Peter? I saw what you planned on, if you couldn’t get out. There was never any third problem in that bunker. Never will be. If Erik leaves family like you behind for his vendetta, he’s an idiot.” Charles wheels himself back to his place by the bed. His blue eyes sparkle. “Now, are you going to cheat me out of my pocket change, or are you going to mope about all morning?”
52. Magda’s frowning when she comes up to see him after breakfast.
“Work called,” she says. “They want me back on Monday. But I can ask them for more time to-”
“I’m fine,” he says. He rethinks. “I’ll be fine. You should go.”
“You’re happy here.”
He shrugs. Happy’s a strong word for a place that’s basically been an infirmary, but, when he thinks of it, “Yeah.”
Magda tugs him in and presses her lips to his forehead. “That’s all I ask. Besides, you’ll be seeing us every weekend. Charles wants to help Wanda with her powers.”
“But that’s four hours-”
“It’s for Wanda,” Magda says. She smiles. “And for you. And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for either of you.”
53. He finds Erik sitting on the grass by the lake, skipping rocks. There’s a book open face-down in his lap, naturally, but Erik’s not paying it any attention. He looks up as Peter approaches but doesn’t speak, tossing a flat stone so it skips eleven times before sinking.
Peter finds another and sends it off with a flick. It skips twenty-three times before it skids onto the ground on the other side.
Peter grins.
Erik laughs. He frowns, though, when Peter hitches up the blanket he’s wearing over his shoulders and eyes it with distaste.
“If you’re cold all the time, we’ll have to get you a jacket. There’s a-”
“I like silver,” Peter says, because he’s pretty sure he knows the type of jacket Erik will buy for him unprompted, and that is so not his style.
Erik heaves a very put-upon sigh but doesn’t say anything, so Peter counts it as a win. Peter flops down next to him and curls the blanket tight so it’s wrapped around him like one of Hank’s breakfast crepes.
“You’re still here,” Peter says eventually. He opens one eye and finds Erik looking at him. “You don’t have to be.”
Erik grabs another rock and sends it off. “Do you want me to leave?”
Peter shrugs. Grass snags against the blanket and breaks. It smells so green. “I’m just saying. You could be off fighting…whoever you fight.”
Erik stretches so Peter hears his back pop. “I’ve been fighting for so long,” he says, “I’m tired. I don’t agree with Charles, and if they come for me I won’t hold back, but I’d like to stay for a while. If that’s fine with you.”
Peter hmms under his breath. His stomach growls. The water in the lake ripples past them and keeps on, steady.
“I’m a shitty son,” he says eventually.
“As it happens,” Erik answers, “I’m a terrible father.”
“Awesome.”
They lie in peace for almost thirty seconds before Peter’s stomach growls again. He peeks up towards the house and sees a smiling Wanda running towards them, still a couple hundred feet away.
“Wanda looks hungry,” he says. He shuts his eyes again and lets his head smack against the grass.
“Wanda looks hungry,” Erik repeats. He sounds very unimpressed, and Peter opens his eye to see-yes, there it is, the eyebrow of disapproval. It disappears, though, and a wide, predator grin spreads over his face. “You know, Charles has an enormous sweet tooth. Used to keep a secret stash of Belgian chocolates in his study.”
“Oh, really?”
“I’m sure,” Erik finishes, “He wouldn’t mind if we just took a look.”
54. He does. He really does, actually.
But the chocolates are delicious.
34. Not thirty seconds later the tepid summer air hits Peter’s skin, and he looks up again.
The three of them are in the middle of a large clearing with woods around it. There’s a concrete bunker built into the ground behind them which is missing its entire top half. Ahead of them, a small aircraft is parked in front of the trees, and Peter can see a shape moving around through the cockpit window. Erik’s fingers, curling around Peter’s legs, twitch minutely, and what’s left of the concrete bunker falls in on itself. And that’s Problem Two taken care of, easy.
In the sky, hundreds upon hundreds of stars spread out in every direction as far as he can see.
35. It must be some sort of miracle, because when Erik takes him up into the plane, Hank McCoy and Charles Xavier are waiting to meet them.
Well. Charles is waiting for them, sitting in a wheelchair a few feet from the door. Hank’s fussing over a gurney and an IV stand crammed into the aisle at the back of the plane.
“Jesus Christ,” Charles says when he sees them. Erik heads to the stretcher without a pause and sets Peter down on it so carefully that Peter barely feels it.
Hank’s there, then, leaning over him and squinting at him behind his glasses, and Erik moves away. Peter doesn’t realize he’s grabbed at Erik’s sleeve until Hank blinks down at his hand. He lets go immediately, face heating up, and looks away. His eyes tear up for no reason.
Erik takes his hand and sits down on a seat next to the gurney like nothing happened, though Peter can practically feel Hank’s hard stare. Eric leans forward a bit; two straps buckle themselves over Peter’s legs and stomach, and it’s all Peter can do not to think of mealtimes. His breaths hitch, and he clutches at Erik’s hand like a lifeline. He knows if it were Hank strapping him in he’d probably have kicked the guy in the face, friend or not.
Hanks looks him over for a moment when he’s settled, all wide eyes as if he doesn’t know where to start, then reaches up and very slowly brings an IV stand near.
Peter knows he’s fine now, knows Hank is only here to help and everything is fine now. But his breath keeps coming shorter and shorter and he thinks he really, really wants to let go of Erik’s hand (because he’s not weak, he’s not, he would have figured out a way), but he’s pretty sure he’s just gripping it harder instead, and he can’t stop he can’t stop he can’t stop he
“Charles?” Hanks says, calm. He backs out of Peter’s sight and suddenly Charles is there instead, looking tired and grim and earnest.
“Peter, I’m just going to help you go to sleep, all right?” Charles says, and it’s fine, it’s fine, Peter knows it’s all fine, but suddenly Charles’s hand is on his face
(his hand is on his face
You’re making this harder than it has to be)
and he can’t.
His hand snaps out in a blur, moving at speed for the first time in weeks, and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone but he won’t let them touch him, he won’t let them touch him
(he made a promise to his mom and he’s not going to break it)
and his hand smacks something hard and his elbow catches something else and then,
and then:
bee sting. On his neck.
Except it’s not a bee sting this time either, it’s a syringe floating in mid-air, and he just has time to look down and watch the metal plunger depress itself, smooth and steady against his neck, before things go sideways. Strong, warm hands curl around his shoulders, and they ease him back onto the gurney and brush his hair away from his forehead as he checks out.
36. Medication doesn’t usually work on Peter for very long. When he drifts back to consciousness, they’re still in the plane but it’s starting to be light outside. It takes a while for Peter to wake up all the way, and he feels fuzzy and off-balance when he does. He notices pain all over his body, but it’s muted, muffled and distant like his mind is miles from his body.
He’s wearing a warm, soft knit t-shirt, and there are at least three blankets piled on top of him, but he’s still chilly, and his stomach aches from hunger.
Hank’s nowhere to be seen, but the blond from the bunker-Alex-is sprawled over several seats to Peter’s left, fast asleep and actually drooling. Someone’s drawn a blanket over him, folding it back neatly at his shoulders. Now that Peter has a chance to look, there’s a lot to appreciate about the dude’s face, once you ignore the spit. Peter files that nugget away for later.
Erik and Charles are seated at a small table several seats down, playing what looks like the most intense chess match in history, because of course they are. Erik’s changed, though the shirt he’s wearing is a little tight on him. He’s got a red spot on his cheekbone, like he got hit by the sharp end of an elbow.
Whoops.
“When did you know?” Charles is asking. His back’s to Peter, but he shifts a piece across the board almost gently.
Erik leans back as if to study the board, but his line of sight is down at his hands resting in his lap. “I…had a hint the first time I met him. He said something, I-I didn’t take it seriously, at the time, but I tracked him down, afterwards, and ran into Magda. She’s-”
“Formidable, yes. Not someone I’d care to-ah, Peter.”
Erik looks up from the chessboard and catches Peter’s eye. He loses the intense stare he’d been directing in Charles’s direction, and in its place comes the most restrained look of panic Peter’s ever seen.
It’s kind of reassuring, actually, that Erik might be just as thrown about having a long-lost mutant asshole son as Peter is about having a crazy terrorist father.
Then Charles wheels his chair around, and Peter stops feeling reassured and starts feeling like a dick, because the guy’s got a truly impressive black eye.
“Please don’t feel bad about it; it was entirely my fault,” Charles says. He flashes Peter a smile as he draws near, and hastens to add, “That’s a guess, not a read. I give you my word I won’t go in your mind without your permission, all right?”
Something that was clenched in Peter’s chest uncurls, and he relaxes into the stretcher, though he can’t help but track Charles as the guy rolls around the stretcher and fiddles with the IV. Erik steps up on the other side, near Peter’s head. Peter’s not sure what he’ll see if he looks up at him, so he doesn’t.
“Hank and I weren’t sure what your metabolism was like,” he says, “So we had to guess at the dosages. We’ll get that sorted out, but first I imagine you’re hungry? Thirsty?”
“Easy,” Erik says, and squeezes his shoulder, and Peter realizes he’s jerked up, muscles tense. He lets Erik press him back down onto the gurney and tries to calm his breathing.
This is just stupid of him. Everything’s fine now. He’s fine now. He can stop acting weak.
See? I told you it was easier if you didn’t fight it. It’s going to happen sooner or later, and it will be so much easier if you just keep working with me.
Charles moves somewhere behind the gurney and pops back with a glass of water. He sticks a plastic drinking straw in it and hands it to Peter. Peter moves to sit up-and gets about a quarter inch off his pillow before he flops back onto it, exhausted. The glass wobbles against his stomach for a moment, but Charles grabs it before it can spill.
Then Erik leans in, slips his arm under Peter’s shoulders like the night before, and sits him up. There’s no lifting the gurney or propping Peter up, but Erik holds him steady as Peter takes back the glass and drinks. It takes all Peter’s got not to gulp it down, but he learned his lesson the first time they left the water bucket in his cell, and he takes it slow. He tries not to think of how much weight he’s lost that Erik’s got no issue holding him up one-handed, but it’s either that or focus on the fact that Erik Lensherr is patiently playing nursemaid to him. Frankly, concentrating on how easily he can count his ribs when his shirt is off is preferable.
It distracts from Charles, too, who’s fixed Peter with an intense and curious stare. It’s not unkind, but it’s really creepy-which makes his and Erik’s ‘old friendship’ about ten times more understandable, but doesn’t really help with Peter’s nerves.
“Hank,” Charles says once Peter sets aside the glass for a moment, “Can’t really tell the extent of the damage to your throat without more equipment, but between it and your molar, we thought you’d better take it easy on solid food for a few days.”
The glass feels heavy in his hand. Peter rests the weight of it against his thigh and lets his fingers slip away from it.
“We think your healing slows down when you’re under-nourished, and if we had a better sense of your calorie intake during your-during the last few weeks, Hank thinks we could kickstart your metabolism and get you back on your feet sooner. Anything at all you could tell us would help.”
Peter shifts. Knocks the mostly-empty cup over between his legs. Erik picks it up and sets it to the side with his free hand. His grip with the other doesn’t waver. He could tell them. Should tell them. The sooner he heals, the sooner he’s back to normal. And he-he doesn’t want to tell anyone about it, but he thinks he wouldn’t mind as much with Charles as with, like, his mom, because Charles is both a kind person and a selfish asshole, and in the grand scheme of things he just doesn’t care that much about Peter as an individual beyond ‘Peter, the kid who helped me and whom I therefore owe.’
But Erik?
Peter does look over at Erik then, and wishes he hadn’t. Erik meets his look straight on with a neutral but firm stare of his own, and he doesn’t look away until Peter does-and maybe not even then, the weirdo. And that’s the thing, right there; yes, Erik is a weird-ass, creepy douche, and violent and murderous and just a general bag of unappealing dicks, and Peter knows he shouldn’t care what Erik thinks of him, knows it doesn’t matter, but he doesn’t want to look weak in front of Erik, doesn’t want Erik to know.
Charles sets a pen and a small pad of paper in his lap. Peter grabs the pen. His eyes flicker over towards Erik, so he can just make out Erik’s leg where it disappears below the side of the gurney. He’s kneeling on the seat across from the one Alex is still fast asleep on, hunched forward so he can help hold Peter up. Even Peter’s back hurts thinking about it, and he’s not old like Erik and Charles.
He looks back and Charles and sets the pen down. Charles’s expression shutters, though he brings up a smile and opens his mouth to say something encouraging, but Peter beats him to it.
“Look?” The word comes out a harsh whisper, but the water’s helped, and Peter manages. He points up at his head. “’S’faster.”
Charles takes a long, deep look at him. “You’re sure?”
No.
Peter nods.
Charles shares another look with Erik-and it’s not until later that Peter wonders if they were speaking-before he brings his hands up and sets his thumbs on either side of Peter’s temples. Peter doesn’t shiver, thank God, but he’s wound tight as a coil, and he knows Erik can feel it too.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit. This was a stupid idea. He’s just going to embarrass himself even more than he would have otherwise, and Erik’s going to know how weak he is, and he’ll never be able to look his mom in the eye again.
“All right, Peter, just relax. Try and focus on the memory you want to share with me, and I’ll be in and out as quick as I can, all right? If you want me to stop at any moment, just think it at me and I will, immediately.”
Peter nods again and closes his eyes. He feels Erik’s arm tighten around him. Then that’s gone, and he’s back in the bunker, back on that first day when he woke up in the feeding chair, four beakers on the table and a funnel down his throat, and he wants it out-wants it gone-and then it is gone, and he’s back in his bedroom reading Wanda her favorite book, the one about the tiger who came to tea and ate all the food. They’re hunched over on his bed in a sunny shaft of light, warm and comfortable and tired from a really intense game of tag that took all morning that ended up mostly being Peter running around and Wanda trying to trip him with one of her spheres, though Peter’s not going to mention that to his mom that evening.
The touch to each side of his forehead drops away. Charles squeezes his arm and ducks down to meet Peter’s gaze when Peter opens his eyes again.
“Thank you, Peter,” Charles says, with an emphasis on his name. His fingers are white-knuckling the bedrail, but he doesn’t look like if he’s pitying Peter, which is a relief. Peter looks away anyway. “That should help. We’ll…we’ll see what we can do about your throat. And get you back on a normal diet as soon as possible.”
He backs off and starts wheeling himself away. “I’ll get with Hank on those dosages. Erik, soup. And Peter?”
He waits until Peter’s looking at him before he continues.
“Nothing he said about you was true. I’ve met war heroes that weren’t half as brave as you.”
And he wheels himself into the cockpit and shuts the door behind him.
37. And it’s a very nice note for Charles to leave on, but it leaves Peter, hot-faced and sweaty-palmed, alone with Erik; Erik, whom he just obviously excluded from information about his time away and whom Peter would far rather not be alone with right now. Erik, who is levitating a metal thermos towards them with the same seriousness as when he almost slaughtered the sitting president and most of his cabinet.
“Cream of chicken,” he says pleasantly when the thermos settles in Peter’s lap.
What do you even do with someone like that? Inquire about the soup? Ask them how their terrorism’s going? Both?
Peter sticks with repeating “Cream of chicken?” for the moment. He brings the glass up and takes a sniff. It smells all right. He lifts it to his mouth and takes a deep breath, but he just. He can’t. He freezes with the cup against his lips and doesn’t move.
“It’s all right,” Erik says. “Just take it slow.”
Hysteria bubbles up in Peter’s throat, but he tamps it down. Right. Slow and easy. It’s not like he can hold off eating forever. And, Jesus, it’s not like this is something he should be scared of. It’s fine now. He’s fine, now. Everything is fine. He’s just being stupid.
He tips the cup forward and takes a gulp before he can rethink it.
- Things that feel like swallowing thick soup after you’ve been force-fed and worn a shock collar for two-and-a-half weeks:
1. Gargling razor blades
2. Chugging vodka with a matchstick chaser
3. Both of the above, coincidentally - Things actually more embarrassing than being hysterical in front of your estranged father:
1. Coughing up a large mouthful of cream-of-chicken soup on the both of you
2. After which you cough so hard one of your previously only-cracked ribs breaks
3. And when you’re done coughing, you’re so weak you can’t even hold yourself up any more
“It’s no problem,” Erik says as he strips the top blanket. He sets the now-empty thermos on the counter behind Peter’s head. Peter doesn’t have the breath to answer back, yet, so he shuts his eyes and tries to focus on getting there. Erik fusses around some more, spreading out a new blanket and fiddling around with what smells like more soup in the space behind the gurney.
When he starts patting at Peter’s chin with a napkin, though, Peter finds his breath.
“I’ve got it.” It hurts more to talk than it did earlier, and his rib aches, but like hell if he’s going to let Erik fucking Lensherr wipe his face like a baby.
Erik surrenders the napkins with a placating gesture, but Peter’s pretty sure he catches the guy grinning as he turns around. And, yeah, irritating Peter’s probably the quickest way to motivate him, but it irritates him even more that the asshole’s figured him out this easily.
“If you want to try again, I can wrap your ribs after you eat.”
Smug fucking bastard.
“Yeah, fine.”
Of course, this time he has an even harder time sitting up and staying up, thanks to his rib, so in the end Erik has to bodily climb up on the bed behind him, prop Peter up against his shoulder, and help him hold the cup.
Peter kind of wishes he could jump out of the plane, right then and there.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says after he’s taken a couple of sips. It’s easier now he’s pacing himself, and the ache in his throat has dulled a little-though he’s pretty sure that’s more to do with what feels like ground-up pills on his tongue when he swallows.
Erik, of course, pretends like he didn’t hear him, because he’s a dick.
“Really,” Peter continues after the next sip when Erik pulls the cup away.
Erik sighs.
“You came,” Peter says. It’s hard to get the words out, but he’s intent. “That’s enough. ‘S not like we’re-I mean, you’re not exactly-”
“We should probably discuss this when you’re not drugged,” Erik finally says. “But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”
“But-”
“If I’d known your mother was pregnant, Peter,” Erik continues. The cup nudges against Peter’s lips again, and Peter takes another sip. “I never would have left.”
“Wait,” a sleepy voice says from somewhere beside Erik. “What?”
Erik doesn’t even look. “Alex, go make yourself useful. In the cockpit.”
“Erik.” Alex pulls himself laboriously out of the seat and stumbles to his feet. His hair’s smashed flat on one side, and there’s crusted spit to the left of his lip. “You do realize no one fits in there if Charles is in his wheelchair? I literally can’t-”
“Now,” Erik says.
Alex goes.
He does pat Peter’s leg through the blankets with a friendly “Hey, kid,” as he goes, and they hear his clear “Holy shit, Hank,” as he shuts the door to the cockpit.
“So,” Peter says after a second. “Cream of chicken.”
“Hank made it.” Erik swipes a thumb across the rim of the cup and tastes it. “He’s surprisingly talented in the kitchen.”
“’S good. Think it’s drugged.”
“Is it working?”
“Hmm,” Peter says. Everything seems softer around the edges again, and Erik’s chest and shoulder feel warm and comfortable rather than, of course, massively humiliating, so. “Yeah.”
“Good,” Erik says.
38. The next time he wakes up, he’s lying in an actual bed in a warm, sunny room with lots of windows and bookcases, and his mom’s sitting beside him and holding his hand.
“Hey,” Peter starts-
--and he doesn’t get any farther, actually, because his mom looks down at him, goes, ”God, Peter,” with shining eyes, and scoops him up into a hug.
She’s wearing the scratchy green sweater that Peter doesn’t like because it feels like a thousand nettles scrubbing at his skin in slow motion when she brushes past him. Her long hair’s loose and frizzy and makes his neck itch where it falls. She cries into his hair.
It hits him, then, that he’d thought he’d never see her or Wanda again. He hugs her back and lets it roll over him.
39. “You’re not okay,” she says about seven minutes later. She runs her hand over his left cheek. “You’re all bruised, up, honey.”
It feels like the bunker was so long ago, but it must not even be a day since they broke him out. So twenty-four hours ago, he was probably in the middle of yesterday’s training game, the one where the woman with superstrength set him in a bath and held his head underwater repeatedly. It probably did bruise his face, now he thinks about it.
“And Xavier said you’re-you’re not okay, Peter.” She brushes his hair away from his forehead and looks like she wants to ask him about what happened.
“Where’s Wanda?” he asks, instead.
Wanda, it turns out, only left the room ten minutes ago, and is currently playing hide and seek with Alex, who is apparently ‘a nice boy’.
“It’s such a big mansion, she’s having the time of her life, now you’re back, and-”
“I thought they’d got her,” he blurts out. “When I woke up after-after they took me. I thought they’d taken her too, and-I swear, Mom, I didn’t let them know she’s a mutant too, I didn’t tell anyone-”
“Of course you didn’t,” she says when she’s hugged him again. She rubs his back and curls her hand around his head like she used to when he was little and hurt himself running. “I never thought you would, Pietro. You’re such a good big brother.”
40. The next time he wakes up, it’s Erik on the chair next to his bed, feet propped up on his mattress, paging through a hardbound copy of The Metamorphosis.
“I really wouldn’t,” Erik says when Peter sits up and looks longingly at the window seat, soft and full of pillows and swimming in sunlight.
“I’m fine.” Peter shifts his weight, ready to tear off the blankets and swing his legs over the side of the bed.
“Of course you are,” Erik says. He flips to the next page. “And you’re also wearing a catheter.”
Disliking a person because they’re a dick, Peter discovers, is actually an entirely distinct feeling from disliking them because they’re a psychotic murderer.
41. Things Peter wakes up to over the next three days, in order:
- Erik, still reading Kafka
- Hank, jiggling his IV lines while his mom sleeps in the chair next to his
- His mom, reading Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
- Erik, having finished Kafka and started on the left-behind Atwood despite there being literally hundreds of other books not five feet away from him, though at least he doesn’t move the bookmark
- His mom and Wanda, playing checkers next to his bed*
- Erik, with an open copy of TIME magazine on his lap, in the middle of an intense argument with Charles, apparently; Peter can’t tell until Erik storms off to the other end of the room, because: Telepathy Bonus #1: People eavesdropping on your spats? Not actually a thing.
- Alex, sitting cross-legged on the chair and playing solitaire on a pillow he’s laid over the twin blanketed bumps of Peter’s legs**
*Wanda accidentally smacks him in the eye with her doll, not used to a Peter with slow reflexes, and throws herself into a hug right over his broken rib. It’s pretty great anyway.
**”What, did Hank make a rota?” Peter asks when he wakes up and sees Alex staring back.
“Well, yeah.” Alex purses his lips together. “It’s Hank. What’d you expect?”
And Peter-well, he’s got no answer to that. It’s not like he knows Hank that well, really, but he totally seems like the sort of guy, now he thinks about it. “Huh.”
Alex waves a card at him. “He’s got you on some medications he cooked up in his lab-don’t ask me what-and said they’re probably safe, but he wants someone with you until you’re off them in case you have a heart attack or something.”
Peter almost takes his IVs out, but Alex distracts him with poker until he gets tired again. He even pretends like he doesn’t notice Peter’s using his powers to cheat.
Hot and nice. Peter doesn’t even complain when Alex doesn’t let him go back to sleep until he drinks down all Hank-prescribed thirty-two ounces of soup, that’s how much he’s impressed.
42. The fourth day after the rescue, Hank declares him well enough to get out of bed and walk around the mansion if he wants, though he’s cautioned not to use his powers, on pain of probably fainting.
It’s surprisingly exciting, especially given how Peter can only wander for at most a half hour before he has to head back to eat. Hank has him on eight meals a day, at the moment. It’s weird, because back in the bunker he had enough energy to get around, but now he’s at the mansion it’s like he’s been sapped of it.
“Stress and adrenaline,” Charles says when Peter tells him that. “They kept you up and alert when you were in danger, but now that your mind knows it’s safe, your body’s catching up to it.”
(Charles finds him at a window seat overlooking the sunrise that morning before anyone else is up. He invites Peter to tea in the kitchen and doesn’t ask him any questions about the-about the bunker. Peter’s been expecting questions, now his throat’s healing up quickly since he’s on the Hank McCoy Plan of Nutrition and Experimental Drugs, but so far everyone’s been pretty good about it.
It’s probably why he spills his guts to Charles at the kitchen table.
He doesn’t tell about everything. Bits, here and there. A little bit about the guy with the hands (Dickface, he remembers, before he touched him), about the light bulb that wouldn’t shut off and how they hosed him off every night [“Yeah,” Charles interjects, “You were mildly hypothermic when we got you out, actually.”]. He even lets Charles poke around in his brain a little after he lets a mention of the training game slip. It’s different than the eating thing; Charles pulls up a good memory for Peter-his first Pink Floyd concert-and goes digging around behind it, so Peter doesn’t even know what Charles looks at.
“Would you like to have tea again tomorrow morning?” is all that Charles says about the memories, aside from clapping him on the shoulder and going ‘You’ve been so strong through all this, really’, which is lies, because Peter’s been anything but, but Peter says yes to the tea, because he’s having trouble sleeping in late and time passes slowly enough already even when he does have things to do.)
Peter’s sure Charles is right about the stress, because Charles is an actual genius, according to Alex, but it doesn’t stop it irritating the hell out of him when he falls asleep in the kitchen in the middle of their talk and wakes up to Hank very quietly trying to make breakfast around him.
43. Broccoli and Cheddar -> Potato and Chicken -> Cream of Chicken -> Tomato
44. That afternoon, Magda tracks him down in the library, where he’s helping Wanda build a fort out of what in retrospect are probably very expensive books. She tells him she’s going to be on the phone with her work for a couple of hours, in case he needs her.
He feels like a dick, then, because he hadn’t even thought of her work and how she’s probably taking her own sick days off to be with him. She sees it in his face, and she leans in to reassure him and puts her hand soothingly on the back of his neck
It rubbed at the skin underneath when the water hit him, the plastic clinging and chafing it raw. One time he had a nightmare and must have spoken, because he woke up to the buzzer. His body wasn’t allowed to go at speed, but his mind still moved quicker than all the world around him, so he had enough time to fully appreciate the dread before it hit him, each and every time.
and Peter’s gone, just like that.
He doesn’t stop until he hits the lake at the far north of the estate. Stepping into the chilly water snaps him back to himself. He’s got about half a second to notice the light-headedness and realize, hey, Hank was right! before he faints.
45. “-is he?”
Peter wakes up soaking wet again.
But it’s fine, now. Because the sun’s shining down on him, and he’s slung over someone’s shoulders, gripped tightly around the legs like they’d actually care if he fell off and hurt himself. Also, from where he is he’s got a perfect view of their ass, and it is an ass he recognizes, having taken careful notice of it previously.
Alex Summers is one guy he really wouldn’t mind sticking his dick in.
There’s this bizarre honking noise, then, and Peter takes a peek over Alex’s shoulder and-oh. Oh, right. Telepath.
“Charles,” Erik is saying so earnestly that it would be ridiculous even if it were an actual serious situation. “Charles, what-”
“I’m so sorry. Peter’s-Peter’s just fine, Erik,” Charles manages before he doubles over again and can’t stop laughing, the fucker.
Alex, at least, pays the two idiots no attention as he carries Peter all the way back to his bedroom, where Hank’s got an IV, a warm change of clothes, and four chicken salad sandwiches waiting.
46. “It wouldn’t hurt you to pick up a book,” Erik says when Peter complains that evening about being so bored of bed. “Or even a magazine.”
“I have a lot of magazines.”
Erik quirks an eyebrow.
“Oh my God,” Peter says. “You’re disgusting. Real magazines. With articles.”
“About?”
Peter shrugs. “I dunno. Music. Stuff. Whatever.”
Erik lets it drop and turns back to his Quarterly Journal of Biology. Peter falls asleep listening to him flip the pages.
47. Wanda spends the afternoon with him since he’s not allowed out of bed for twenty-four hours, per Hank’s most recent orders. She makes him play dolls with her, asks him to read and pokes at his throat when his voice still sounds scratchy, and lectures him about magnets, which she’s learned all about thanks to Erik, who apparently spent the bulk of his morning making her dolls fly around the study with strips of metal around their arms at her request.
She stays through naptime and falls asleep snuggled up with her head on Peter’s shoulder. It’s hot and heavy and sweaty from all the running around she did after lunch, looking for secret passageways and playing tag in the garden with Alex and their mom.
48. “What was he like back then?” he asks his mom when she comes in to grab Wanda for supper.
Magda leans back, takes a long look at him, and sighs.
“Different,” she says. “But in many ways the same.”
49. The Story, as Summarized By Magda:
- Erik Lensherr wasn’t lying when he said he would have stayed if he’d known about Peter
- Magda knew. That’s why she didn’t tell him.
- But there’s a difference between ‘I thought he would be dangerous to a child’ and ‘I thought being around him would be dangerous for a child’
- When Peter was missing, she knew he would help at all costs
- Even if the people holding Peter were mutants
- Even if they believed in everything he believed in
- He’s still an asshole, though.
50. He falls asleep at his window seat at eight and wakes up four hours later. Someone’s taken his shoes off and spread a blanket over him, and there’s a copy of the latest issue of Rolling Stone on an empty chessboard at the table. Peter keeps the blanket and grabs the magazine and wanders down to the kitchen in search of food.
He’s not expecting to find Alex lying under the sink with a toolkit or Hank leaning over it and jiggling the faucets.
“Try it again?” Hank’s saying when he hears Peter and his head whips up. He takes in the blanket around Peter’s shoulders, and his eyes narrow. “Hungry?”
Peter nods and heads for the fridge, but Hank waves him off and points him to a chair.
“Yeah, don’t make me carry your scrawny ass upstairs again,” Alex calls out.
Peter’s face heats up, and he’s pathetically grateful Alex can’t see him from under the sink.
Hank grabs sandwich fixings from the fridge but grabs a box from the counter and tosses it on the table. “You look pale.”
Little Debbies.
“Oh my god.” The box is open and the wrapper’s gone in a quarter-second, though Peter slows down to take the first bite. It’s a moment that deserves savoring.
This. This is the life.
“I didn’t think you guys ate these,” he manages after the first one’s gone. He leans his head on his arms and moans in happiness. His mom would be ashamed of him for talking with his mouth full, but he has an entire box of Little Debbies in front of him for the first time in three weeks: everything else in life is irrelevant.
“We don’t,” Hank says. “Mayo?”
“So, Hank, if I got sick would you make me sandwiches?” Alex asks.
Hank snorts. “Fuck you, Summers.”
Peter wonders suddenly if he can still fit an entire cupcake in his mouth in one go. What the hell.
Alex clambers to his feet loudly and tests the faucet. “Good to g-hey, is that for me?”
Somewhere in the periphery of his sugar-induced bliss, Peter hears three plates thump down on the table. He’s so comfortable, though, he doesn’t want to get up. Getting up requires moving, and moving is overrated.
“Hey.” A warm, calloused hand shakes his shoulder. He groans and doesn’t open his eyes. Too much work. “Jesus, he’s worse than Sean.”
Hank’s glass thumps onto the table harder than usual. “It’s his metabolism. He’ll keep falling asleep like this until he gets back to his normal weight. I think.”
Alex pulls back a chair and sinks into it with a sigh. “Shouldn’t he eat, then?”
“Probably.” There’s the sound of a drawer opening, then, seconds later, what’s unmistakably a fork pokes his arm. “Hey. Hey, Peter. Wake up.”
Peter groans. “’M awake.” He swats out at the fork, but Hank pokes him again until he sits up.
“Eat.” Hank, at the far end of the table pushes the plate-with three ham and cheese sandwiches-at him with the fork, then points it at a glass of chocolate milk next to Peter’s elbow. He and Alex have Heinekens, but Peter knows it would be pointless to ask.
Peter grumbles, but he grabs the first sandwich and bites in. It’s like it kickstarts his hunger when it hits his stomach, and he pulls the plate towards him.
“So,” he says after a second when Alex and Hank seem happy to eat without talking. “Who’s Sean?”
Alex chokes on his beer. Hank’s mouth twitches, and he sets his sandwich down and swallows.
“Sean Cassidy,” Alex says when he catches his breath. He glances at Hank. “We trained here together, with Charles and Erik and Raven.”
“Don’t bring him up to Charles.” Hank picks his sandwich back up. “Sean died, a few years back. It hit him pretty hard.”
“Sorry.”
Alex shrugs. Hank takes another large bite.
“So, you all trained with Erik?” Peter tries not to sound too interested. Judging by the look Alex and Hank flash each other, he fails.
“Ten years ago,” Hank says. “But, yeah. He and Charles brought us all together.”
Alex pushes his plate back and leans back with his beer. “What’d you want to know?”
51. Charles brings him tea in the morning, along with a pack of cards.
“Something wrong?” Charles asks after their third hand. “I’m not reading your mind, but you haven’t so much as tried cheating once.”
Peter tosses his cards down on the tray. “I’m fine.”
“Mmhmm.” Charles shuffles the cards and looks inscrutable.
Peter huffs.
“Peter,” Charles starts.
“It’s Erik.” Peter grabs a cookie-oatmeal sprinkled liberally with chocolate chips, which is apparently Alex’s doing-and chomps down on it.
Charles sighs.
“He’s a complicated person to have as a friend,” Charles says. He wheels his chair up to the window. “I’m sure even more so as a father.”
Peter swallows. “But you’re still his friend.”
“I’m-I think,” Charles says, “That being a good person isn’t one decision you can make once and get out of the way; it’s an option you have in every single choice you make, every day, for as long as you live, and choosing one way in the morning doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind in the afternoon. Erik’s made some terrible decisions that caused harm to-to many people, but at the moment he’s letting them lie in the past, and he has the opportunity before him to let them stay there.”
“But-”
“And if he doesn’t, it’s his choice and his choice alone. The rest of us will still be here. And there will always be a place for you at our school, Peter, no matter what.”
Peter nods, because, at least, everyone’s made the last part perfectly clear since the first time he woke up here.
“And Peter? I saw what you planned on, if you couldn’t get out. There was never any third problem in that bunker. Never will be. If Erik leaves family like you behind for his vendetta, he’s an idiot.” Charles wheels himself back to his place by the bed. His blue eyes sparkle. “Now, are you going to cheat me out of my pocket change, or are you going to mope about all morning?”
52. Magda’s frowning when she comes up to see him after breakfast.
“Work called,” she says. “They want me back on Monday. But I can ask them for more time to-”
“I’m fine,” he says. He rethinks. “I’ll be fine. You should go.”
“You’re happy here.”
He shrugs. Happy’s a strong word for a place that’s basically been an infirmary, but, when he thinks of it, “Yeah.”
Magda tugs him in and presses her lips to his forehead. “That’s all I ask. Besides, you’ll be seeing us every weekend. Charles wants to help Wanda with her powers.”
“But that’s four hours-”
“It’s for Wanda,” Magda says. She smiles. “And for you. And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for either of you.”
53. He finds Erik sitting on the grass by the lake, skipping rocks. There’s a book open face-down in his lap, naturally, but Erik’s not paying it any attention. He looks up as Peter approaches but doesn’t speak, tossing a flat stone so it skips eleven times before sinking.
Peter finds another and sends it off with a flick. It skips twenty-three times before it skids onto the ground on the other side.
Peter grins.
Erik laughs. He frowns, though, when Peter hitches up the blanket he’s wearing over his shoulders and eyes it with distaste.
“If you’re cold all the time, we’ll have to get you a jacket. There’s a-”
“I like silver,” Peter says, because he’s pretty sure he knows the type of jacket Erik will buy for him unprompted, and that is so not his style.
Erik heaves a very put-upon sigh but doesn’t say anything, so Peter counts it as a win. Peter flops down next to him and curls the blanket tight so it’s wrapped around him like one of Hank’s breakfast crepes.
“You’re still here,” Peter says eventually. He opens one eye and finds Erik looking at him. “You don’t have to be.”
Erik grabs another rock and sends it off. “Do you want me to leave?”
Peter shrugs. Grass snags against the blanket and breaks. It smells so green. “I’m just saying. You could be off fighting…whoever you fight.”
Erik stretches so Peter hears his back pop. “I’ve been fighting for so long,” he says, “I’m tired. I don’t agree with Charles, and if they come for me I won’t hold back, but I’d like to stay for a while. If that’s fine with you.”
Peter hmms under his breath. His stomach growls. The water in the lake ripples past them and keeps on, steady.
“I’m a shitty son,” he says eventually.
“As it happens,” Erik answers, “I’m a terrible father.”
“Awesome.”
They lie in peace for almost thirty seconds before Peter’s stomach growls again. He peeks up towards the house and sees a smiling Wanda running towards them, still a couple hundred feet away.
“Wanda looks hungry,” he says. He shuts his eyes again and lets his head smack against the grass.
“Wanda looks hungry,” Erik repeats. He sounds very unimpressed, and Peter opens his eye to see-yes, there it is, the eyebrow of disapproval. It disappears, though, and a wide, predator grin spreads over his face. “You know, Charles has an enormous sweet tooth. Used to keep a secret stash of Belgian chocolates in his study.”
“Oh, really?”
“I’m sure,” Erik finishes, “He wouldn’t mind if we just took a look.”
54. He does. He really does, actually.
But the chocolates are delicious.