#a masochist like him wants his coffee to be a terrible experience I am sure of this

[jellybeanium124]

in 1x04 wee john tells izzy "be a dear and make me one of those" and I know there's at least a 60% chance that wee john just wanted to piss him off, but on the off chance john was serious and wanted a hot drink, why the fuck would he want what izzy's drinking?? there's a 100% chance that what's in that mug is the darkest dark roast ever made and it's probably not even of great quality.

[earnestly-endlessly]

Do you mind doing a list of your favourite modern AUs? A mix is powered and non-powered fics is okay :) TY!

I'm so sorry how late I am with this, but here’s my looooong list of my favourite modern AUs. I hope that you like this list and can find some fics in there that you haven’t read before. Enjoy!

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Cherik Modern AU Fic Recs 

Sprich Mit Mir | Talk To Me – dreamweavers

Summary: When Charles meets Erik on a midnight train to London, it’s like all of his Christmases and birthdays have come at once – until Erik opens his mouth, and reveals he cannot speak a word of English.

It isn’t easy to pursue a relationship with someone you need to play Pictionary with just to chat to, but with a little help from Charles’ telepathy, the two language-barrier lovers are determined to make it work.

Come as you are – scarlettblush

Summary: Hospital AU. The one where Charles unknowingly woos a coma patient with Pride and Prejudice. Years later, they meet again.

The Man on the Train – Sophia_Bee

Summary: Charles is heading home from a shift at the busy emergency department of the urban hospital where he works as a nurse. He meets Dr. Erik Lehnsherr on the train, who is clearly interested in Charles, but Charles has a rule. He does not date doctors. Not at all. Never, ever ever. But he does shake his ass at Erik, which might be his downfall.

Eyes on Fire – Black_Betty

Summary: Every once in a while, fashion tycoon Emma Frost invites her favourite male models over to entertain her. And by "entertain", I mean she makes them have kinky consensual sex in front of her....Emma never touches herself when she watches, but she always has a glass of wine with her. Emma likes it best when they eventually forget that she's watching.

Charles and Erik meet each other through Emma...

(I've taken some liberties with the prompt, but all the sex is still there, and it's wholly consensual...and gradually, becomes more than just sex...)

Paper Monsters – Clocks

Summary: Fill for this prompt: Charles meets Erik Lehnsherr, his favorite novelist of all time at a coffee shop, but doesn't know it's him, and Erik just criticizes his own writing in front of his biggest fan.

Order Up - ikeracity

Summary: Charles has a terrible habit of multitasking, and that is probably why he absentmindedly tells the pizza man that he loves him when hanging up. Then the pizza man says it back. And Charles is pretty much smitten from there.

Some Things Are Meant To Be – Ikeracity

Summary: Erik is a famous singer. Charles is a closeted fan. When Raven drags him to Erik's concert, the last thing Charles expects is for Erik to single him out of the crowd, for Erik to look right at him as he sings. And the last, last thing he expects is for Erik to personally serenade him and pull him on stage and kiss him senseless, because some things are meant to be and Erik knows it.

Rumor Mill – Ikeracity

Summary: Erik is the grumpiest, most foul tempered worker at Stark industries. His grumpiness is the stuff of legends. So it's obviously the talk of the office when Erik is being made to go to the company party and he's bringing his husband. There's rumors flying round about how much of a masochist or equally antisocial bastard Erik's husband must be to put up with him. Others think he must be a meek mouse perhaps bullied by Erik.

What they weren't expecting was the confident, charming, adorable and unbelievably nice Charles that turns up on Erik's arm. What they certainly weren't expecting was how much Erik obviously adores his husband and how happy he is to let others see this.

Serendipity – humanveil

Summary: Charles sends a text to the wrong number.

[10:22 AM]

Can we meet for coffee? I just got dumped.

[10:30 AM]

I think you've got the wrong number.

[10:31 AM]

Unless you make a habit of texting people you don't know about this sort of thing?

A Nice Boy (The Family Matters Edition) – pocky_slash

Summary: Erik's not sure whether the problem is that he doesn't want his parents to meet Charles or that he doesn't want Charles to meet his parents. Either way, he never invites Charles to brunch. Why should he? It's not like they're dating.

Frosted Hearts – aesc, palalife

Summary: Emma Frost has 99 problems, but a date ain't one. Specifically, she has no time to play the dating game--which is fine with her, because she'd much rather run it instead. From a set of sleek, silver and white offices on Fifth Avenue and with her trusty, stylish, and silent partner Janos Quested, Emma has built Frosted Hearts into New York City's premiere dating service, built on the principle that money, and a sufficiently rigorous psionic scan, can, in fact, buy you love.

Somewhere in Frosted Hearts's server is one Charles Xavier, genius and geneticist, with the kind of nicely-starched good looks that sell well on brochures for New England prep schools. He's also a telepath who's decided to give up pursuing serious relationships and instead spend his thirties doing what he should have done as a teenager: have a lot of sex with random people. Fortunately for him, Erik Lehnsherr, metallokinetic and engineering executive, has absolutely no time in his heart or his schedule for anything more serious than... well, absolutely nothing romantic at all.

Work/Life Balance – pocky_slash

Summary: As teens, Charles was the star of a super popular tween/teen television show and Erik was his best friend. As adults, they're a frighteningly domestic married couple and Alex, Darwin, and Sean are Erik's nosy co-workers.

Impulse Decisions – listerinezero

Summary: Erik wakes up in Las Vegas with a hell of a hangover, a telepath in his bed, and a ring on his finger. Now what?

Fools Rush In – LoveSupreme

Summary: Erik owns a cafe on the edge of campus and accidentally starts maybe-stalking a Biology Professor there.

The Proper Care of Actors – afrocurl, Clear_Liqueur, Clocks, Etherei

Summary: Erik is an A-list action star who is notoriously difficult to work with, until the day he gets cast alongside Charles Xavier, rom-com darling who can charm the pants off movie audiences the world over and apparently even one Erik Lehnsherr. The paparazzi catch them out and about soon enough, and their real-life Hollywood movie romance becomes instant tabloid fodder.

In the Bleak Midwinter – keire_ke

Summary: It is not easy to find out, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, that your mother arranged a marriage for you. It is even less easy to convince her that you have no interest in the very fertile Magda, she of the wide hips and lustrous auburn hair. Fortunately, with a good friend at his side over the holiday weekend, Erik is sure he will prevail.

Curve Fitting – kianspo

Summary: The weird thing is, Charles always introduces Raven as his sister, but he never calls Erik his brother. Erik would be bothered, except he prefers not to think of Charles as his brother, either. He can’t figure it out for four years, and then suddenly he can.

Or. A non-powered AU in which Sharon Xavier never remarries, and Charles 'adopts' not only Raven, but Erik too.

Right Person, Wrong Time – PoppyX

Summary: "TL;DR Charles is an insecure high school student who loses his virginity to the right person at the wrong time, and Erik makes it up to him in a romantic manner."

Favorite Mistake by endingthemes

Summary: Charles Xavier doesn’t think anything of it when he sneaks out without even saying goodbye to his latest one-night stand. What he doesn’t expect is to walk into his new position in the Xavier Industries marketing department and find that his latest hook-up is now his new boss.

I ♥ NY (It’s My Friends I’m Not Sure Of) by oddegg

Summary: For a 1stclass-kink meme promp: Erik is a single, successful man who likes quick sex with no strings attached. Then, he meets college professor Charles and it's love at first sight, at least for him. Charles, who heard of Erik's notorious ways, wants nothing to do with him besides being friends. Cue Erik bending over backwards to steal Charles' heart.

From Westminster With Love - thehoyden

Summary: NATO intelligence says there’s an omega-class telepath who sleeps under Westminster. Major Erik Lehnsherr is about to find out the truth for himself.

Accidentally Welcome to the Rest of Your Lives by kianspo

Summary: Non-powered college AU. Erik and Charles have nothing in common until they end up having sex at someone's party. They don't have much in common after that, either, but find each other a hard habit to quit.

irreconcilable differences (make for surprisingly good bedfellows) – pocky_slash

Summary: Tonight on The Evening Report with Malcolm Stevens, noted geneticist and mutant equality proponent Dr. Charles Xavier faces off with the infamous mutant rights activist Magneto in a live televised debate over the Genetic Nondiscrimination Act.

(At least, if they can stop flirting long enough to stay on topic.)

Mutually Beneficial Transaction – Pookaseraph

Summary: In his sophomore year at Columbia University, Erik, feeling slowly strangled by his mounting college debt, places an add on a sugar daddies website. He doesn't know exactly what to expect from it, but when he's contacted by a man named Charles who seems less creepy than the other people who have responded to his profile, he decides to give it a shot. Charles is nothing like what he expected, and Erik finds himself slowly falling in love with his sugar daddy while trying to find out exactly what caused this amazing guy to buy his emotional and sexual intimacy when he clearly deserves so much more than that.

Made To Be Broken - Yahtzee

Summary: Charles makes a New Year's Resolution: “No more straight men,” Charles repeated as he began scrolling through the apartment directory for Emma’s name. “No more futility. No more pointless hoping and heartbreak. In 2013, I never want to hear the words ‘exception,’ ‘experimenting’ or ‘phase.’ If, God forbid, I hear ‘bicurious’ even once, I may take a hostage.”

Then he goes into the party, and Erik is there.

Anarchy In The U.K. – Yahtzee

Summary: "Good God, Erik thought. The Prince of Wales is gay."

Charles lives in the unceasing glare of the public spotlight, yet keeps his sexual orientation a closely held secret, afraid he could lose his throne and force his deeply troubled younger sister into a role that would crush her. Erik, journalist and world traveler, has been a loner most of his life; he has little patience for closet cases. But a chance meeting in Kenya brings these two opposites together and sets in motion a love affair that will challenge the British monarchy -- and their most deeply held beliefs about who they are, and who they should be.

An Ideal Grace – afrocurl

Summary: Erik Lehnsherr is a visiting professor at Columbia University, as well as an acclaimed and award winning poet. Charles Xavier is a lead researcher with the Genetics Department who is well on his way to tenure. But what happens when Charles has to cancel a class because half his students abandon him in favour of a mysterious new English Lit professor? Naturally he ends up sitting in in the class, where Professor Lehnsherr mistakes him for a student. It's really too bad Erik has such a strict policy against dating students. It's also too bad Erik doesn't seem to know how to use Google.

An absence which could not be more there – aesc

Summary: He prepared to shift another half-step over to the Current Events section (which would, of course, enrage him) when the teaser positioned by the model's left elbow caught his eye: DATING WHILE TELEPATHIC: WHY I DON'T DO IT.

rooms/shares – pocky_slash

Summary: Erik is single, working a cube job he hates, letting his master's degree in mutant studies collect dust, and living on his best friend's couch. When she kicks him out, he's forced to trawl Craigslist for the least-offensive rooming option within his meagre budget. He never expects a response from the persnickety, high maintenance ad he replies to as a joke, but it's possible this too-nice apartment and mysteriously absent roommate might be the answer to all four of his problems.

Heli Cases –Black_Betty

Summary: "Heli Cases" is a program on PBS whose aim is to educate on the rapidly increasing occurrence of genetic mutation in the general populous by breaking the complex science down into palatable, easy to digest pieces.

It is also the only thing that helps Erik get his fussy daughter to fall asleep.

(Featuring Dadneto, baby Lorna and the struggles of single fatherhood, and Charles as the host of a late night show about genetics.)

Simple and Uncomplicated – Pookaseraph

Summary: Erik and Charles had been fuck buddies for some, but when Charles is in an accident he figured their relationship would be over. Erik's visit to his bedside in the hospital changes his assumptions even as he has trouble believing Erik is sincere.

Guilty by Association – Regann

Summary: While investigating the homicide of a John Doe who he suspects might've been murdered while working the streets as a prostitute, Detective Erik Lehnsherr finds an unexpected ally in a hooker named Charles who seems as determined as he to solve the case. As they become more deeply involved both with the case and each other, there's just one thing that Charles neglects to mention -- that he's really an investigative journalist, one quickly convinced that what they're dealing with is more than simple murder. cop!Erik, fake-hooker-slash-reporter!Charles, Modern AU.

This Is Not Comedy – baehj2915

Summary: Written for amarriageoftrueminds' prompt for a Cherik version of Louis CK's tangent about the fuckability of Ewan McGregor.

Naturally the similarities end there. I made this about Erik's full on public lust-filled gay revelation, and the chaos that spirals from there.

Politico – cygnaut

Summary: Modern Genosha Politics AU. In which Erik is l'enfant terrible of the mutant National Assembly, and his staff just wants to get him laid.

Conspiracy of Kisses –  Alaceron

Summary: Seven-year-old Erik needs to keep his telepathic best friend Charles from finding out that he wants to kiss him. But that's okay, because he has a plan - he'll put on a tinfoil hat.

The Pretender – Clocks

Summary: Charles is sick of having his best friend Erik drop to one knee and fake-propose to him in restaurants, just to score a free dessert. He doesn’t know which is worse: the complete embarrassment, or the likelihood that Erik doesn’t mean a word of it.

Bound – FuryRed

Summary: Is there anything worse than someone else’s wedding? Well, perhaps your sister’s wedding- where the groom just has to invite his boss and that man just happens to be your ex-boyfriend; a person you had an extremely passionate and tumultuous relationship with that ended badly.

Charles hadn’t seen Erik for a year by the time Raven had told him about the wedding. He wasn’t looking forward to the occasion, particularly when Raven explained that they would be celebrating the event with a two-week extravaganza at a luxury hotel, meaning that Charles would be forced to spend a whole fortnight with the man who he’d given everything to; the man who had ultimately broken his heart…

Lonesome On the Shelf – ikeracity

Summary: After three years of marriage, Charles has to admit that his relationship with Erik has significantly cooled off. These days, they're barely ever home at the same time and it seems like every conversation they have turns into an argument. Charles misses the way they used to be, misses the spontaneous dinner parties and the surprise morning sex and the wake up calls in the early mornings to catch the sunrise. But it's going to take two of them to fix this marriage, and some days, it seems as if all Erik wants is to be rid of him.

A fic about rekindling marriage.

Math Reasons – pearl_o, pocky_slash

Summary: "Mom says Erik always knows what he wants, it just sometimes takes him a little while to actually realize it," Ruth said.

Charles fell in love with Erik the first night they met, the first week of freshman year. Two years of friendship, adventures, arguments, hijinks, secrets, and summer visits later, Erik is starting to catch up.

Melted Ice Cream and Macaroni Art – pocky_slash

Summary: Everybody likes Charles. Nobody likes Erik. And that's really the source of Erik's doubts. Also, there's ice cream and a baby.

Watch Your Back – swoopswoop

Summary: Bodyguard AU where Erik is overly protective and things aren't as simple as they seem.

Dress Your Family in Plaid and Skinny Jeans – cygnaut

Summary: Erik and Charles meet at the mutant playgroup/parenting support circle and they instantly hit it off. And so do their kids, Lorna and David.

Continue firm and constant – aesc

Summary: Moira hasn't seen her old partner in saving the world from threats human and intergalactic, Erik Lehnsherr, for a few years. When she finally does see him again, she finds a man different from the one who's been with her down in the dark and the dirt and the blood... or maybe he isn't so different after all.

cradles you and connects you to everything – pocky_slash

Summary: Charles and Erik spend a chilly November afternoon in Manhattan doing not much at all. Also, there are cupcakes, chess, and Feelings.

[loveclub24]

November 2019

I’m driving home from Silverlake and thinking of him. I don’t know why I am — I’ve always known I could never love him fully, not in the way that he wanted me to love him. And yet, here I am. In Los Angeles, while he is thousands of miles away in Europe. He’s dating an Italian girl, eating pizza, making love in a cute Airbnb in Positano. They wake up and he makes espresso in one of those authentic Italian kettles. He portions out the coffee, boils the water. A few minutes later — espresso. He pours it in two tiny porcelain espresso cups and walks to the bedroom. She is in bed, her curly dark hair splayed over an off-white pillow case. Her dark locks are displayed so perfectly in the creases between the pillows that it looks like Raphael himself designed the sight that is now being beheld by the boy with the two porcelain cups. He smiles at her, sits down beside her, moves over the knitted blanket they’d been sharing. He kisses her and says Buongiorno, in his stilted American accent. 

It isn’t even painful to imagine this whole scene in my mind’s eye - it feels beautiful in a slightly masochistic way, perhaps. It allows me to see, and really understand, his happiness. And his happiness conjures up a plethora of joy inside myself, too. He told me she baked him a cake with three layers. He met her family and her mother embraced him lovingly, Italian words dripping deliciously out of her mouth as they met for the first time. Her family loves me, he said, when we Facetimed a few weeks ago and he told me about her. And guess what, he exclaims, she is going to visit my family in the Philippines in December. In that moment, watching his face light up on the tiny, limited screen of my iPhone felt like an out of body experience. It was almost as if I could see their relationship unfolding in front of me, feeling his own falling in love process in my own bones. And as he told me all of this, it was as if we both had a silent understanding. We both knew I could never give him that kind of love. I’m terrible at baking, I’ve never introduced him to my family. He had always invited me to stay with his family in Manila, but again, we both understood this would never happen. 

The first time he kissed me was months ago on a chilly March evening on Sunset Boulevard, right across the street from our favorite Thai restaurant. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me - that he wanted to kiss me. And I wasn’t going to say no — we both wanted to know what it would be like. But in that moment, I looked at him and said, this can’t be anything serious. I don’t have the bandwidth. I just got out of a relationship, I explained. He kissed me anyways. And as the weeks passed, I looked forward to seeing him, always holding myself back though, just a little. I knew it couldn’t last. He wanted a girlfriend — someone to cook for, someone to take pictures of, someone to say I love you to. And I knew I couldn’t be that person for him. 

So that is why when he Facetimed me from a beautiful Tuscan town where he’s been living for work for the past few months, and told me about falling in love with an Italian girl, I smiled as big as I could possibly muster. Because it is true, I am so happy for him. I want him to experience love in its perfect imperfection. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel a small pit in my stomach when I happen to pass through his old neighborhood in Hollywood, or when I drive past Los Globos, the place we’d go out dancing together. The place where we held hands, and felt the heat of our own bodies up against each other. Laughing, dancing, sweating, kissing, laughing. Those times were glorious — and I hope he thinks of them occasionally as well, hopefully fondly. I know I do. 

When he told me about the love of his life, I hoped he couldn’t recognize in my face that a small part of me had suddenly been deflated — a pin in a balloon. Popped — Just like that. It only makes me slightly melancholy at certain times of night, when I’ve had one drink and I start to think about him, and what could’ve been. Because I know he loved me — even if it was just for a short second, even just one fleeting moment as we held hands in a dirty red pleather booth at a bar in Koreatown. Or, maybe it was when we ordered noodles in Weho that were way too spicy and he pretended to enjoy them for me, even though I could see the sweat seeping through his shirt. 

Love doesn’t disappear, it just becomes deferred, displaced, transferred — to a different person, a different moment in time, a different plane of consciousness. Sometimes, and perhaps in our case, I imagine it stays put in one single moment and never leaves. And that’s how I’d like to think about him, about us, about what we can never have in a real way, at least not in this lifetime. I’d like to always imagine our love perpetually existing at a two-top table at Night Market in West Hollywood. Our love ordering two glasses of red wine, our love gazing at each other’s eyes and knowing, truly recognizing just how confusing, frustrating, imperfect and beautiful what we are sharing is. Our love knowing what exists between us may be fleeting, but it will never leave that place, that one perfect moment in time. Our love isn’t a love that grows up — our love isn’t one that grows at all. When he comes back to LA, I’m not sure what will happen when I see him for the first time, but I do know that our love will still live in its purest form at that table, never quite being able to get past the spicy noodles, just the way it is meant to be.