x-men fic: the day isn't even half over.
the day isn’t even half over. x-men: first class. emma frost. erik lensherr. 1738 words. pg-13. Emma and Erik and picking up the pieces.
The night after Erik Lensherr broke her out of solitary confinement, he slipped a hand flat against her back, said, “I just need to know that he’s okay.”
Emma’s mouth twisted downwards, his hand cold on her skin, and shook her hair out of her face.
“He’s alive,” she said carefully, leaning away. Her heels scraped against the tile in the kitchen and Erik didn’t flinch.
“Okay,” he breathed, his head between his hands. “I need you to do something.”
Emma’s head tilted gently to the side, her eyes blinking large and innocent. His helmet made a louder noise against the black and white floor than her shoes.
Erik said, “Make this easier,” his voice breaking dangerously over the words, fingers knotted in his hair. The chair squeaked underneath him as he shifted his weight. His back collapsed in on itself and Emma thought, oh shit.
Emma did a surface job on his memories, avoiding anything too difficult, too private, and anything that doesn’t have to do with Charles Xavier. What Erik doesn’t realize is how deeply Charles has influenced him, that if Emma diminished any part of Charles Erik will revert back to an angry, lost thing drowning in rage. That won’t help the cause.
Emma says, lips curled upwards, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
Erik nodded once, his tongue licking his lips, before leaving the room. This is the weakest Emma will ever see him, the closest he ever gets to saying, “I can’t do this without Charles.”
They never speak of it again.
“Surely,” Erik starts, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, dropping ash, “you understand.”
(Earlier, she knocked on his door and he answered, shirtless, his pants hanging low on his waist.
“What?” he spat at her, leaning against the doorframe as if he didn’t care. Emma remembers the steel grip of metal wrapped tight around her windpipe and pushes away the thought that maybe he doesn’t. She has no room for doubts in her own mind.
Emma went diamond, the brilliance of her ricocheting off the wall, the chandelier, the bare skin of his chest. Erik’s eyes went wide with desire, his posture straightening.
Emma went diamond and that’s when Erik first made a move, his thumb running over the raised sparkling peak of her nipple. She slid back into warm flesh, her skin covered in goose bumps, and that’s when he said, “By all means,” his voice thick with German, with that shark’s smile, too large for his face.
Emma has never known if she loves him or hates him for that, for that second where human Emma wasn’t enough and diamond Emma was too beautiful, too brilliant, too incredible to leave alone.)
Emma laughed, high pitched and tinkling. She had already finished her own cigarette, grinding the butt into the crystal ashtray on the nightstand.
Erik raised an eyebrow, sheet discarded. He was fully on display and she didn’t shy away from that fact. His fingers caught onto her knee casually, spread wide, inching upwards slowly.
“If you think I’m going to fall in love with you,” she said, fingers pinching the cigarette out of his mouth, pressing her breasts against his chest, “then you don’t understand why I’m here.”
She angled herself against his fingers, the light spilling onto her skin. Erik growls then, low and from the back of his throat.
“Oh, Erik,” she scolded, mouth full of smoke, “You forget that I’m not afraid of you.”
He looked somewhat stunned at that, and after, her skin sticky, before she left, she said, “Don’t forget to wash your sheets.”
Riptide thinks at her once, hair tucked behind one ear, You know he’s with Mystique when he’s not with you, the delivery blunt for maximum emotional impact. Riptide has a swirl of wind in the palm of his hand, twirling it lazily so the entire room feels a light breeze. He knows she prefers the chill to humidity, and the room was feeling too sticky from everyone, from their sweat and their efforts.
In the training area, Emma’s gaze flits over to Raven.
Emma waves a hand to dismiss the thought and says, lightly, “Obviously.”
He nods once, then leaves. The air is stuffy and Emma huffs, shifts into diamond to cool down.
What she doesn’t tell him is this:
That she is not the type to fall in love, not anymore, not after whatever happened with Shaw, and if she was it would not be with Eric. She is doing this to keep him on track, to keep him from wallowing. It’s not that she cares about Eric, it’s that she, none of them, can afford not to care about him.
She isn’t in love with Eric but she has developed a fondness for him, a responsibility for Max Eisenhardt.
Raven grunts from the other side of the room, and Erik slips an extra ten pounds onto her weights from his perch.
“Again,” he says, calm, hands folded neatly in his lap.
Raven adds an extra weight, glaring pointedly at him. Emma can’t help but smile.
Charles says, quietly, fingers pressed against the curve of Erik’s jaw, “You are so much better than this, Erik. I know it.”
Erik wakes with a start, hands grasping for something solid. They slip off Emma, shining and dangerous, and when she wakes up, eyes blinking, muttering, “Good morning, Magneto,” he stares at her with blank eyes.
The helmet sits on the nightstand. He puts it on fast, hands scrabbling at the curved lines of the piece, before he can change his mind. The morning is bright and blinding through his curtains. The inside of the helmet is cold.
Emma is gone when he turns around, the curve of her spine pressed into the clean white sheet, the slightest smell of lilies and Chanel No. 5 on his pillow.
There is one time when Emma, late at night, curled away from Erik in bed, feels the gentle, noble press of Charles Xavier inside her head. Emma is not one to panic, it was trained out of her years ago, but she can feel the edge of it in her own mind, in the thought if you don’t leave us alone, we’ll never accomplish anything.
Emma feels the briefest moment of grief, and then she hears Emma and then she goes diamond. She looks over at Erik and slides out of the blankets, sleeps soundly in her own bed with cold sheets. Either Charles does not try again or he doesn’t succeed again. Emma knows which one it is.
Emma is wearing white, draped low and tight against her hips, the clasp of her bra poking tight into her back.
Raven snorts and thinks, gee, Emma, how original loud enough for Emma to hear from the other side of the house. The kitchen is a large room, and Raven makes no attempt to get up from the oversized, dark cherry table to get any closer. Emma leans against the counter instead.
Emma creeps into the edges of Raven’s mind and watches her squirm in the seat; she brushes up against something unfamiliar, too young, the woods dark and too large. Raven steels.
Who the fuck do you think you are? Raven thinks, foot tapping furiously against the floor, the loud slam of her open palm on the table.
Emma says, “Pardon me, Mystique,” but Raven’s mind slowly coils itself away from Emma on it’s own.
“I’m impressed,” Emma lilts, clipped, looking down briefly at her manicured nails,“It looks like Charles taught you some tricks.”
Raven flips her off with a glare. Emma says, “That’s not very ladylike,” with an edge of condescension, just enough to irritate Raven.
Emma sighs, adjusting the strap of her brassiere, “To be young again,” she says.
Somewhere around the corner she hears, I heard that, asshole and then a moment later, louder still, Go back to whatever corner you were working before you ruined everything.
Emma smiles and makes herself a martini, extra dry, her nails dragging along the glass stem and puncturing an olive before she brings it up to her mouth to sip.
Erik finds out through a rare mistake, the slip of her tongue as she zips into her boots.
Emma is running fingers through her hair, swiping underneath her eyes, and Erik stares, frozen, tense. Something curls inside of her, sharp.
“What?” she asks, hoping to cover it up, racing through his mind. Her lips turn up into a smile but Erik doesn’t buy it.
His eyes are too-bright, mouth in a straight line, when he says, “Erik’s in a wheelchair?”
Emma’s face doesn’t move but she remembers it now, the mistake.
Erik was strategizing out loud, like always, and contemplating the defense mechanisms of the others, and he rattled off briefly how fast everyone could run.
Emma had laughed, cruel, and said, “I wouldn’t worry about Charles.”
(And oh, the cruelty she is not proud of, she has never believed herself cruel, misunderstood perhaps, and bitingly sardonic but never intentionally cruel and not towards Erik, who is barely keeping it together - but there was something in the way that Erik said Charles Xavier that made Emma sick, that made her mean.)
Erik says, “Leave now,” and Emma isn’t an idiot so she left, quickly. Outside of the door something crashed and Emma blanched.
“Look,” she says to Raven, “I need your help.”
Erik came downstairs, later that night, Mystique at his side, and Emma breathes a sigh of relief.
Erik’s mind is a terrifying, beautiful thing.
She will call him Magneto in front of Raven, in front of Riptide and Angel and Azazel, but she has seen the parts of himself that even he won’t venture into anymore, the deep slice of metal into his skin, the warmth of a childhood home, and most importantly, the snippets of moments with Charles, warm and lazy and an endless amount of kisses smeared messily along the plane of his chest. Emma has never liked Charles but she knows what it feels like to love him, through Erik, through Raven. In her weaker moments, she fell into one of those memories, just Erik and Charles and something so powerful, so full of understanding and respect, that she wanted to steal it away for her own. Despite what Raven thinks, she understands the kind of loss they feel. Emma is just better at masking it. She’s sure they will learn, soon enough.
In private, she calls him Erik, like the privilege it is, and sometimes, he looks at her and says, “Emma,” and sometimes there might be hope trapped in the words, leaking out around the edges.
Sometimes she thinks it might be enough.