I wrote something XMEN too
Charles pretends the chessboard in his office doesn’t exist. Alex (Havoc now, he needs to get used to the name) watches him studiously ignore it when they have their meetings to discuss the property damage liability waivers and the new students and his baby brother, who just broke a window in his room with his eyes. Charles (never Xavier to them, not to him) says he can help Scott, repress the power until he’s older and able to handle it and Alex agrees without a first, let alone a second thought. The kid shouldn’t have to be like him. Shouldn’t have to worry about being too close to someone and cutting them in half by mistake.
Charles nods at him, a soft, knowing smile on his face and the hair at his temples far too grey for his twenty nine years of age. Alex lets his mind wander while Charles makes phone calls and focuses in on the half-finished game; the silver king is in check, the dark stone queen poised for the final strike. He’s never been much for chess (too cerebral not enough hitting things) but even he can see the silver king is done for unless-
“Alex?” Charles doesn’t speak into their minds if he can help it. It’s enough to get his attention back to the problem at hand, and the fact that their parents now have two children who can’t function without constant supervision or a jail cell.
“How did they sound?” He winces at the tone of his own voice (since when has he cared if they don’t he doesn’t), the caution he knows he can’t mask and isn’t sure he wants to.
The one thing he likes about Charles Xavier is that he doesn’t lie.
“Scared, but willing to try. We will leave in the morning.” They can’t have people knowing where they are, not yet. Perhaps not ever, with the way things are going. He’s seen the news reports, in-between Beast and Banshee bickering over whether or not to watch the Beatles. The office walls are closing in (he hates small spaces and whilst the office isn’t small it is enclosed and the windows aren’t open) so he just nods, flashing what looks like a smile but feels like a grimace as he backs out of the room like it’s on fire.
Charles said ‘we’. He’s not sure if he wants to go back or not. He glances at the chessboard as he leaves, the game paused in time. He misses Eric, they all do, but not the way Charles does. It’s a singleminded longing that tears at everything he is, makes him more serious and less inclined to smile.
The dragging, metallic sound and the whispered “oh, Eric” as he walks out the door is something he can ignore, considering all that Charles has done for him, so he does exactly that.