Twenty Things About Charles Xavier
1. Even if he's not reading your mind, he's probably hearing your thoughts, particularly if you're being loud about it. He requires the focusing gesture of physical contact to either his head or the head of his subject to actively go into a specific mind, but he's always receiving what's coming out of other people's minds. Generally, it's just kept in soft focus, like background noise, and he doesn't pay much attention to it unless something pops out. The only times that he has complete silence inside his own head is during the occasional nightmare. (And that, of course, isn't real silence, just imagined fear.)
2. He had his first drink when he was 11. He first started drinking when he was 14. He had his first unfortunate drinking-related telepathy incident when he was 17.
3. Yes, the matching sweatsuits were his idea/fault. Honestly, it was the most practical -- everyone didn't exactly have training clothes and they just needed something quick and functional. But also trying to instill a sense of unity and discipline was more than an incidental consideration.
4. Despite the whole "old man professor" thing he has going, he was actually relatively active as a kid. He particularly enjoyed tennis. (He tended to like one-on-one sports, in general. Team sports were less pleasant, probably due in part to the fact that nobody really liked him as a kid. Well, not other kids, at least.) That had dropped off by the time he got into high school, though. Now, he sometimes regrets not having done more in the past few years.
5. He is a very good bartender. The combination of having so many drinks perfectly memorised, possessing discerning taste and being able to go into people's minds to know exactly what they want is a real winner.
6. Charles is a cheerful drunk. Barriers are looser, boundaries are blurrier. Things are less lonely that way.
7. There is a small piece of metal in his back, a plate and some bolts stabalizing his spine. Occasionally, he thinks about it. Mostly, he appreciated the irony upon being informed of it after waking up from the surgery and then put it out of his mind, despite the children's clear discomfort with it. After all, it's not like he's not stuck in a metal chair that could be thrown off a cliff with the flick of a wrist or anything. Though in his more maudlin moments, it seems fitting that there's something tangible in him that Erik will always have a hold on.
8. Charles is very bisexual and has been rather well aware of that fact since he was about 14. He doesn't consider anything to be wrong with it; he got several mind-fulls of other people's sex lives in the years before he got better at filtering and blocking, and he's seen how common and natural it all is.
9. Languages that he knows: English, Russian, French, Latin and Greek (ancient).
10. In the right company, getting stoned is awesome.
11. No matter what anyone else might tell you, as much as Charles enjoyed sex (and he did enjoy it a lot), he wasn't ruled by it. He never had any problem charming women into his bed; he was confident and intelligent and funny and also adorable enough to seem unthreatening. He never really did the whole "girlfriend" thing, though -- too busy with school and research, and as nice and pretty as the girls were, none of them was really interesting enough to go through all of that relationship effort. And if he was too, too busy, sex was the first thing to get de-prioritized. (Drinking was one of the last.)
12. No, there were no men. Unless you count that one time when he was 17 and recently away to college for the first time and he kind of ended up hitching a ride in the minds of a couple in the room next-door, and it's not like he set out intending to, and really, he would have been hearing them even if he weren't a telepath, and he was 17 and it was sex, and it's not like anyone got hurt or anything.
13. Charles believes himself to be a Good Man. Most of that is just his personality, but at some level, he realises that it also serves a defense mechanism of sorts. Adapt and survive. He refuses to let his life be nothing more than an endless negotiation of his own existence.
14. Guilty pleasure: corndogs.
15. It's easy for him to be open and trusting by normal human standards during sex, since his partners are always far more open to him than they know themselves to be and it's not like he actually gives up any power in the situation. People generally find him very amenable in bed, and he's fine with that because it's sex and that's great. What would utterly take him apart would be if someone knew the whole truth about him and knowingly put themselves at his mercy anyways. (He never expected for that to actually ever happen, and he particularly doesn't now.)
16. Charles probably shouldn't drink as much as he does, given how many people on his mother's side of the family died with drink in hand. But it's not like he doesn't know that, so it's all right.
17. There never was a time when Charles was a morning person. He's liked mornings even less for the past couple of months, since waking up meant having to remember that he couldn't walk.
18. Raven appearing in the kitchen that night was the source of some of the purest joy that Charles has ever known. In an instant: he wasn't alone, he could care for someone, he could stop some of the crying that he heard in his head. The world could be a better place.
19. Charles doesn't talk about his stepbrother. He might mention his stepfather, but never in a way that relates to himself.
20. That night at the water, when Erik nearly drowned himself with the submarine -- Charles had never felt anything like that. Charles had been completely prepared to follow Moira and the others below the deck when he was hit by an intensity he had never experienced. From that moment onward, he was hooked. Really, Erik can't blame him for going inside of his head when Erik went inside of Charles first.
2. He had his first drink when he was 11. He first started drinking when he was 14. He had his first unfortunate drinking-related telepathy incident when he was 17.
3. Yes, the matching sweatsuits were his idea/fault. Honestly, it was the most practical -- everyone didn't exactly have training clothes and they just needed something quick and functional. But also trying to instill a sense of unity and discipline was more than an incidental consideration.
4. Despite the whole "old man professor" thing he has going, he was actually relatively active as a kid. He particularly enjoyed tennis. (He tended to like one-on-one sports, in general. Team sports were less pleasant, probably due in part to the fact that nobody really liked him as a kid. Well, not other kids, at least.) That had dropped off by the time he got into high school, though. Now, he sometimes regrets not having done more in the past few years.
5. He is a very good bartender. The combination of having so many drinks perfectly memorised, possessing discerning taste and being able to go into people's minds to know exactly what they want is a real winner.
6. Charles is a cheerful drunk. Barriers are looser, boundaries are blurrier. Things are less lonely that way.
7. There is a small piece of metal in his back, a plate and some bolts stabalizing his spine. Occasionally, he thinks about it. Mostly, he appreciated the irony upon being informed of it after waking up from the surgery and then put it out of his mind, despite the children's clear discomfort with it. After all, it's not like he's not stuck in a metal chair that could be thrown off a cliff with the flick of a wrist or anything. Though in his more maudlin moments, it seems fitting that there's something tangible in him that Erik will always have a hold on.
8. Charles is very bisexual and has been rather well aware of that fact since he was about 14. He doesn't consider anything to be wrong with it; he got several mind-fulls of other people's sex lives in the years before he got better at filtering and blocking, and he's seen how common and natural it all is.
9. Languages that he knows: English, Russian, French, Latin and Greek (ancient).
10. In the right company, getting stoned is awesome.
11. No matter what anyone else might tell you, as much as Charles enjoyed sex (and he did enjoy it a lot), he wasn't ruled by it. He never had any problem charming women into his bed; he was confident and intelligent and funny and also adorable enough to seem unthreatening. He never really did the whole "girlfriend" thing, though -- too busy with school and research, and as nice and pretty as the girls were, none of them was really interesting enough to go through all of that relationship effort. And if he was too, too busy, sex was the first thing to get de-prioritized. (Drinking was one of the last.)
12. No, there were no men. Unless you count that one time when he was 17 and recently away to college for the first time and he kind of ended up hitching a ride in the minds of a couple in the room next-door, and it's not like he set out intending to, and really, he would have been hearing them even if he weren't a telepath, and he was 17 and it was sex, and it's not like anyone got hurt or anything.
13. Charles believes himself to be a Good Man. Most of that is just his personality, but at some level, he realises that it also serves a defense mechanism of sorts. Adapt and survive. He refuses to let his life be nothing more than an endless negotiation of his own existence.
14. Guilty pleasure: corndogs.
15. It's easy for him to be open and trusting by normal human standards during sex, since his partners are always far more open to him than they know themselves to be and it's not like he actually gives up any power in the situation. People generally find him very amenable in bed, and he's fine with that because it's sex and that's great. What would utterly take him apart would be if someone knew the whole truth about him and knowingly put themselves at his mercy anyways. (He never expected for that to actually ever happen, and he particularly doesn't now.)
16. Charles probably shouldn't drink as much as he does, given how many people on his mother's side of the family died with drink in hand. But it's not like he doesn't know that, so it's all right.
17. There never was a time when Charles was a morning person. He's liked mornings even less for the past couple of months, since waking up meant having to remember that he couldn't walk.
18. Raven appearing in the kitchen that night was the source of some of the purest joy that Charles has ever known. In an instant: he wasn't alone, he could care for someone, he could stop some of the crying that he heard in his head. The world could be a better place.
19. Charles doesn't talk about his stepbrother. He might mention his stepfather, but never in a way that relates to himself.
20. That night at the water, when Erik nearly drowned himself with the submarine -- Charles had never felt anything like that. Charles had been completely prepared to follow Moira and the others below the deck when he was hit by an intensity he had never experienced. From that moment onward, he was hooked. Really, Erik can't blame him for going inside of his head when Erik went inside of Charles first.