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fifiliphaser · 5 years

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love and tumble (Cherik ficlets): 1

[AO3 Version]

1 | 2 | 3 | TBC

A collection of ficlets, based on the prompt list from this post. Focused on Cherik, with possible appearances of other characters and/or ships. Various AUs, as well as canon compliant stories. There will be information about every story in the notes at the beginning: the setting, rating, characters, etc. Stories are proof-read, but not beta-ed, so I'd be grateful for any and all comments. Enjoy!

1. “I love you, please, don’t go.”

Rating: G College AU, No Powers. Pining, love confessions, sharing a bed.

Why Erik agreed to go anywhere really does escape his comprehension.

“C’mon, the night’s youn’...,” a scratchy voice mumbles fervently next to him, and Erik has to suppress an irritated sigh.

The weight on Erik’s shoulder shifts dangerously forward, forcing him to stop and lean back so that he won’t end up splayed out on the ground alongside his swaying companion. It only serves to prolong the agony that is trying to get his drunken roommate back home.

“You’re pissed, Charles,” Erik says through gritted teeth, his hold on Charles’s arm tightening. “The night’s already over for you,” he states firmly, picking up the slow pace to their flat, even as he hears Charles’s unhappy muttering.

It feels like ages before they finally tumble through the door and into the narrow hallway. Erik barely manages to maneuver them between the shoes scattered on the floor—he’s going to force Charles to clean it all up in the morning, that would be a fitting punishment—and he leads them straight into Charles’s room.

It was Charles’s idea—or rather Raven’s, really—that they all should go to the house party, organised by one of the former classmates of Charles’s sister. Raven had an ulterior motif, though, Erik’s sure of that, if her spending the whole evening close to her new friend, Irene, talking to her animatedly, giggling, and touching the girl’s shoulder, was any indication. But, as a result, she left her brother to his own devices, which inherently meant that Charles drank with a dozen of people he either had already known or barely just met. Erik himself downed two beers at most, not really being in the mood for partying, especially after seeing Charles flirting with some bloke. They only talked for a couple of minutes, with Charles quickly moving to another enthusiastic partygoers, and yet Erik couldn’t help but feel a burning stab of jealousy at the sight.

Of course, Charles couldn’t be more oblivious to Erik’s pathetic, unrequited crush.

Charles’s room is even more of a mess than the hallway, but they somehow make it to the bed in one piece, without any sprained limp or an unwanted encounter with the floor. Charles visibly tries to resist when Erik is stepping from underneath the man’s arm, but his efforts end up being futile.

Erik grabs the lapels of Charles’s coat and pushes it down his friend’s shoulders, gently, but firmly. Charles lets Erik take off his outerwear and shoes, falling unceremoniously onto his unmade bed as soon as they’re off, while Erik shakes off his own jacket. He briefly considers making Charles pull his shirt off too, knowing that sleeping in it will inevitably ruin it, but it isn’t the best idea, not when he has to forcefully quell the flutter in his chest.

Charles stretches leisurely across the sheets, like a slender cat, and looks up at Erik, his eyes half-lidded and glistening as if he’d just begun stalking a new prey.

“Goodnight,” Erik says decisively, before his brain has a chance to come up with any stupid ideas.

Turning on his heel, Erik is about to leave the room, without looking back, when a quiet whine stops him.

“Don’t go-o,” Charles wails, reaching out in Erik’s direction as though he wanted to grab him, but it’s clear that he’s in no state to actually stand up.

Erik takes pity on him and turns back around, stepping to the bed and leaning over.

“You’re almost asleep.” Erik tugs at the linen, freeing it from underneath Charles’s body, and drapes it over his friend. “And I’d like to finally go to sleep, too, you know.”

“You can sleep here,” Charles offers instantly, pulling the covers down to make some space for Erik.

His tone is rather innocent, though a mischievous spark in his endearing blue eyes leads Erik to believe that his friend’s intentions might not be pure at all. The suggestion sparks something up in Erik, something heated and thrilling, that he struggles to push to the back of his mind.

“Go to sleep, Charles.” Erik’s voice is clipped, and he tries to mask the heat that rises to his face.

“Don’t go, please.” Charles’s fingers sneak around Erik’s forearm before he can step away. The man’s grip is surprisingly firm when he begs, “Stay with me, Erik.”

Erik knows that he has to walk out of this room, the sooner, the better, even if the growing part of him wants to comply and crawl under the sheets.

“Charles,” Erik says warningly, pulling his hand gently away, but Charles’s grasp doesn’t ease.

“Please.” His eyes are sparkling, even if a bit distant, and he holds Erik’s gaze unwaveringly. “I love you, please, don’t go.” His voice is small, and yet he sounds so heartbreakingly sincere and desperate that Erik would take pity on him no matter what he said.

And yet, it is Charles’s words that actually catch Erik off guard, sending his heart into a frenzy. For a moment, he believes that he must’ve misheard; that it can’t possibly be what he’d like it to be. But Charles looks up at him uncertainly, his lower lip quivering slightly, and this vulnerability is convincing enough for Erik to slowly sink onto the bed, perching on its edge.

“Charles…,” he starts cautiously, searching his friend’s face for any signs that it might be just a joke.

He can’t find any.

Charles’s grip on his hand tightens, and soon Erik finds himself being pulled onto the bed, the move quick and determined. Erik allows it, slipping out of his shoes and settling next to Charles on the narrow mattress. There isn’t much space, so Erik has no choice but to curl an arm around his friend’s back.

As soon as he does so, Charles snuggles closer to him, a content sigh escaping his lips, his breath ghosting over Erik’s neck. He can feel goosebumps where Charles’s lips almost touch his skin.

“‘Night,” the smaller man mumbles almost inaudibly.

Charles’s breathing evens out not long after, and, after a few short moments, he’s fast asleep, leaving Erik alone with his thoughts, a swirl of disbelief and elation sweeping over his mind.

He doesn’t get much sleep that night, not with Charles pressed snuggly against his side, his confession still echoing in Erik’s mind.

#cherik #charles xavier #erik lehnsherr #x men #xmcu #cherik au #college au #pining #love confessions #sharing a bed #cherik fanfic #my fanfiction #hanshaped writes #and mumbles

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irelise · 5 years

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the yew tree 2.4-5/?

Erik has worked with Sebastian Shaw, mutant revolutionary, ever since Shaw rescued him from human experimentation when he was a boy. He is reluctantly enlisted to assist in Shaw’s newest scheme: seducing the wealthy and enigmatic Lord Xavier and claiming his vast fortune. With Shaw posing as Xavier’s doctor, Erik goes undercover as Xavier’s personal manservant to convince him to fall in love with Shaw.

But Xavier has secrets of his own, and it isn’t long before Erik starts having second thoughts about the whole thing…

(the handmaiden inspired au - no canon knowledge required

part one now on ao3!

and click here for the beginning of part 2!)

Warnings for this part: Major warning for suicide and suicide ideation, sexual exploitation of children, depression, referenced human experimentation Rating: M Word count: 4328 Notes: I’ve tweaked the timeline a bit so this part roughly covers Charles from age 7 or 8 up to 12/13. Previous parts will be edited once everything has been finalised! The next part will take us back to (almost) present day with Erik and Shaw. I would super appreciate hearing feedback on whether Part 2 has felt too slow so far since Shaw and Erik haven’t been present - if so I’ll see what parts I can axe and streamline before I post on AO3!

It’s another day. The leaves outside are wilting, brown and dead, and his room is cold. It must be close to winter. Late October? November? He’s lost track of the date again.

Charles burrows deeper into his blankets, resolutely not looking at the clock on the mantle place. He knows he’s expected at breakfast soon, and after that Uncle will take him to the reading hall. Perhaps they will finish the volume on the girl and her schoolmaster. Or perhaps Uncle will lead him to the back of the room, down the trapdoor and into the impenetrable steel walls of bunker. Range tests, he had overheard from Uncle’s mind yesterday, accompanied by a picture of needles and snarling wires.

Somewhere, a bell chimes. Charles closes his eyes.

He’ll get up later.

***

Everyone says he’s a clever boy – even Uncle. Charles wonders why that is. He feels slow and stupid most of the time, drifting hazily somewhere above his own body, unsure if he’s thinking his own thoughts or if it’s someone else’s thoughts pouring through his mind right now. It’s only during his tutoring sessions that Charles feels lucid, and even then he feels guilty for enjoying them, knowing it’s just another way Uncle plans to use him once he’s developed enough knowledge to be an asset.

“Very good, Charles,” Dr. Essex tells him after one lesson. “You’re reading well above your level. Soon you might even be able to help with our work! I can teach you how to design your own experiments, isn’t that exciting?”

“Yes,” Charles says obediently, although he doubts Uncle will ever give him that kind of control. Dr. Essex pats him encouragingly on the arm, and Charles tenses, waiting for Dr. Essex’s touch to go…other places.

He’s read the books. He knows how these things are supposed to happen.

Dr. Essex smiles. “Now, turn over to the next chapter and we’ll start discussing how our current understanding of environmental epigenetics might allow us to salvage something from Lamarck’s utter mess of use-disuse evolutionary theory …”

***

Uncle’s hand rests warm against his back as Charles flops bonelessly onto the ground. The floor of the bunker is icy cold against his cheek. His head swims.

Voices. Everywhere.

Fuck. What had Uncle put into that serum?

“Come back to me, Charles,” Uncle’s voice coaxes him from somewhere far, far away.

Charles hurls himself deeper into the whirlwind of thoughts and minds. Vaguely, he’s aware of a meaty palm slapping across his face. The crack of a belt. Then the coolness of an antiseptic swab against his upper arm, followed by the prick of a needle.

He awakes some time later in his own room. Someone had bathed him, changed his clothes for him, tucked him in. He wonders if they had done other things.

Charles closes his eyes again and tries to return to unconsciousness.

***

He’s replacing me with that boy.

Maybe it’s better this way.

***

The lab again. His bare chest is cold. Uncle is done with him for the day, but he doesn’t unstrap him from the examination table.

“I’m arranging your debut,” Uncle tells him.

No, Charles thinks. “Okay,” he says.

“What would you like to read?”

Behind the walls that shield his mind, Uncle’s amusement curls dark and poisonous, just as it had during all those times he had told Charles to go cut his own switch. Something in Charles flares.

“I really would rather not,” he says coolly, imperious.

“Oh, Charles,” Uncle sighs. “You agreed to cooperate, remember? You chose to be here.”

Charles turns his face away and refuses to answer.

Uncle turns away. His footsteps echo through the bunker, growing fainter and fainter.

The doors slam shut.

Alone in the dark, Charles rubs his wrists bloody against the restraints. Time is meaningless. He’s left there until his stomach gnaws clean through itself from hunger, until his heart starts racing uncontrollable in the claustrophobic darkness, until his bladder is so full that he can’t hold it in any longer and he has to lie there in his own piss, red-faced with shame, his eyes burning and prickling.

He won’t cry. He won’t.

***

“…You will remember at all times that you have lost all right to privacy or concealment…”

He studies. He goes down to the lab. He reads. He loses track of the date again.

The night of his debut comes. Uncle dresses him in a schoolboy’s uniform, a relic of the life he had led before the mansion. He follows Aunt into the reading room. It’s fuller than ever before, with almost a dozen men lounging about the seats, each smartly dressed in a suit and tie, smoking and talking among themselves, indistinguishable from each other. As he walks to the dais, their attention presses suffocatingly down on him. Nice legs – cute face – virgin? – has Marko fucked him yet – Charles breathes out slowly, trying to block out the images of himself straddling them, being pushed to his knees...

Aunt’s face is beautiful and serene, her painted lips curved into an enigmatic smile. Her mind is a flawless, polished mirror, letting nothing in, letting nothing out.

Charles copies her as well as he can.

“…In your presence I will never close my lips completely, or cross my legs, or press my knees together…”

He reads as Uncle had taught him – smoothly, like a ribbon, like a silken rope – with just a touch of virginal shyness. The men lean forward. Their lips are parted, their legs spread, their eyes hungry.

“…My one and only duty is to lend myself. My body is not my own…”

***

What will happen when he doesn’t have need of me anymore?

***

The trees are stark and bare when Uncle leaves on a business trip. Charles sees freedom stretch gloriously in front of him: no readings, no tests, no disciplinary measures. He can spend all day with his nose buried in a book and no one will care. Dr. Essex has been giving him more and more advanced material lately, and Charles thinks that if only he can show everyone what he’s reading, show them how science can explain even the strangest and scariest things, then people won’t be so afraid anymore. They won’t hate people like Raven and Hank and Angel. They won’t hurt people who are different.

Instead, Charles sleeps in. Ten, twelve hours. Fourteen. Time loses meaning.

He sleeps until he’s tired from too much sleep, until his back hurts and his eyes are gritty and sore. There’s a constant throbbing ache at the back of his eyeballs. His temples. The base of his skull.

Sometimes people try to wake him. But he learns quickly that if he just closes his eyes again and mumbles something about being sick, they’re quick to leave him alone.

He thinks something might be wrong, but it’s easier to just sleep.

***

It hurts. Charles curls up in his blankets, clutching his head. It feels like – like someone is driving a knife through the side of his head. Every single movement makes his head pound and he bites back a whimper, fingernails digging into his scalp like he can reach inside and rip the pain out.

Without warning, his bedroom door slams open. Uncle looms in the doorway, returned from his business trip. Charles is supposed to be at the lab with him right now. “You’re late,” Uncle growls, and Charles flinches away.

“I’m sick,” he whispers.

He shrinks deeper into the blankets as Uncle’s heavy footsteps come closer. Uncle presses one hand to his forehead, feeling for fever. Even that small motion sends another spike of pain flashing white behind Charles’ eyes. His head throbs in time with the rapid, nervous flutter of his pulse.

“Your temperature’s normal,” Uncle says dismissively. “Don’t lie, boy, I know you’ve been lazing around in bed for days. Get up.”

“I can’t!”

Uncle drags him up anyway, forcing Charles to stumble along, eyes squeezed shut. Everything is so bright and loud. “So much fuss over a headache,” Uncle mutters to himself as he shoves Charles through the reinforced doors of the bunker, “it’s a miracle anyone puts up with you. Go on. Strip. Get on the table.”

The harsh lights of the bunker are blinding. There’s a sour taste at the back of his throat, his stomach roils; without warning, he starts to retch, choking on watery fluid and acid.

When he’s done, Uncle backhands him across the face. Charles stumbles and falls. He could climb back to his feet, but what’s the point?

“Why?” He asks weakly. The pain stabs deeper than ever. “Why are you even doing all this?”

“Table. Now.”

Charles has enough of obeying. For the first time in his memory, he consciously wills the power inside him to reach out, to scoop out Uncle’s thoughts and feelings. Uncle always has walls around his mind but Charles batters at them now, reckless in his despair.

The walls shatter.

It’s like falling into an ocean storm. Uncle’s emotions crash over his head, waves black as tar and flecked with bloody foam. Hatred, disgust, fear…

Lust. Greed. Want.

Charles tries to detangle their minds, but it’s Uncle who holds onto him, forcing picture after picture into his head of all the things he wants to do to him.

“Stop it,” Charles gasps, still lying on the floor. He tries to scramble away, horrified. He can’t. He can’t.

Abruptly, the flow of images stops. Walls slam around Uncle’s mind again, and he looks down at Charles scornfully. “Found what you were looking for, boy?”

Charles hugs himself, shaking. His head feels like it’s about to explode. “I don’t understand,” he babbles, too worn-out to care about making sense. He floats somewhere above his own body. “You don’t make sense. You hate me so much, but you still– you still want me. And my powers. I felt it.”

Uncle’s hands scoop him up like he weighs nothing. He walks the short distance to the examination table, ignoring Charles’ weak thrashing as he dumps him onto the table and begins to methodically secure him in place with the straps. Moving around so much hurts. By the time Uncle starts attaching electrodes to his scalp, Charles had closed his eyes, trying to keep still. Even then, the bunker’s lights stab harsh and bright through his eyelids.

“Hmm,” Uncle says after a while. “No significant changes in brain activity that I can see. But I don’t think you’re faking your symptoms, are you?”

Obviously not. But talking to Uncle never helped before, and it won’t start helping now. As Uncle muses over the tests he should run next, Charles retreats deeper into his mind, returning to his memories of Raven and Hank and Angel. It’s only fair – right? That what happened to them is happening to him too? It’s all his fault. He should have done something sooner. Something more.

It’s fair.

***

He’s spending more and more time with the boy.

I’m being replaced.

***

The headache goes away. Then it comes back. Again and again, an endless cycle without rhyme or rhythm. For the first few months Charles preoccupies himself with keeping a journal in his child’s scrawl, tidy for his age, trying to narrow down the cause of the stabbing headaches. It’s almost like a puzzle. For the first time in months, he’s excited by something. It feels good to have a problem he can work on.

Time passes. Nothing changes. Why bother, he thinks once, setting down his pen and resting his head against the crook of his folded arms. He’s so tired.

Slowly, the entries dwindle, then stop.

His bedroom is dark, the curtains drawn. Uncle has learnt to leave him alone on these days, when the pain interferes too much with the tests and his reading comes out clumsy and lifeless. In a way, these are his most peaceful days. Charles drifts somewhere above his own body, disconnected from the small, pale boy on the bed. Thoughts hum all around him, quiet enough that their emotion is dulled, and they wash over him like waves on the shore of a pristine white beach, lapping harmlessly against his bare feet.

Sometimes, he wishes he could drown in those waters.

Sometimes, he wishes for a lot of things. It’s worst on those days when he guiltily sinks into the minds of the mansion’s inhabitants and the people of the nearby town, curling up wary and cat-like at the back of their skulls, seeing through their eyes and savouring a brief taste of their lives.

More than anything, he wants to find others like him. People who are…different. But they’re better off somewhere else, somewhere far from Uncle. In every mind he encounters, he implants the quietest of suggestions to stay away stay away stay away from the big mansion in Westchester…

(He never, ever tries to enter Uncle’s mind.)

***

Charles freezes the second he enters the lab, whirling around to face Uncle, shocked and afraid. “You promised,” he says accusingly.

“Oh?”

“You promised! You won’t run the tests on anyone else! I can feel him, you have a boy in the cells!”

Uncle gives him an approving look. “Your range is improving. Come with me. Shall we meet him?”

The boy is sitting docilely in the cell. He’s drugged; Charles can recognize the glazed look in his eyes and the strange floaty feeling of his mind. Even when Uncle unlocks the cell, the boy doesn’t so much as glance their way.

“Why is he here? What do you want with him?”

“You remember all those tests we ran on your brainwaves.” As Uncle talks, Charles can’t help rubbing at his scalp, remembering the clinging electrodes and the prick of needles. “I think I’ve identified specific patterns that manifest whenever you use your unnatural ability. Today, I’m going to induce those patterns in that boy. We’ll see if anything interesting happens.”

“You can’t– you promised–!”

Charles doesn’t like the way Uncle is smiling. Not one bit. “So I did. But I can’t let this boy go now, can I? He knows too much. Unless…”

There’s a trap closing around him, but better him than an innocent. Charles braces himself. “Unless?”

“Make him forget. I know you can do it.”

Charles looks at him, teeth clenched. “That’s what you wanted to do all along. You don’t really want to run tests on him at all.”

“Reading me again, boy?”

“No,” Charles snaps. “Just logic.” He’ll never read Uncle again. Ever.

“So? Are you going to do it?”

“I can’t, I don’t know how to. My power doesn’t…”

Uncle scoffs. “Don’t be silly. I know what you can do. You’ve been manipulating the staff, haven’t you? When you don’t want to be found, they don’t find you. When you want to be left alone, they leave you alone.”

What? “I haven’t! I wouldn’t!”

“Enough of your lies. Unless…” He crouches down. Charles makes himself meet his eyes, and Uncle smiles darkly. “Now this is interesting. You must be doing it unconsciously. You’re such a good boy, you wouldn’t be using people on purpose, would you?”

“I’m not like you,” Charles retorts, and immediately regrets his boldness. But Uncle only chuckles.

“Good boy. Now. Are you going to do it or shall I get the machines ready?” Uncle jerks his head at the boy inside the cell, then grips Charles by the shoulder and turns him around, forcing him to look at one of the machines, a hulking monstrosity bristling with wires and probes. Charles has been in it before. He knows it hurts.

“If I do it… You’ll really let him go?”

Uncle smiles the smile of someone who knows they’ve already won. “I will. You must know you’re the only one I’m really interested in, Charles. My good boy.”

Charles nods tightly. Uncle unlocks the cell door for him, unceremoniously shoving him inside. Charles feels a spike of panic, wondering if this is all a ploy to lock him away forever, but Uncle leaves the door open.

The boy inside the cell stirs. “No,” he mumbles, “don’t wanna.”

“Shh.” Charles rests a hand on the boy’s forehead. They’re about the same age, the same height – the boy even looks like him. Uncle must have spent ages picking him out.

Charles looks into the dull blue eyes and pushes, falling into the boy’s hazy thoughts. He’s from the town. An orphan. No one will miss him if he disappears. He’s been here since last night and all his memories are dark and muddled. He hasn’t seen Uncle’s face clearly.

It won’t be hard to take those memories. To wind them up like fragile old cobwebs and rip. Maybe it would even be a nice thing to do? The boy can’t be afraid of something he can’t remember.

But Charles can’t. Instead, he visualizes a white shroud draping over everything the boy remembers since yesterday evening. He bundles all those memories up carefully, very carefully, smoothing them into a peaceful white void. It’s the kindest thing he can think of doing.

Don’t be afraid, he tells the boy, mind-to-mind. Just sleep, okay? You don’t have to worry about anything when you’re asleep.

He pulls back gently, and when he opens his eyes again, the boy is sound asleep. Uncle watches him with a frown, and Charles meets his eyes evenly. He feels curiously calm. He’s done something which shouldn’t be possible. He’s done something he shouldn’t have done. He’s just changed someone’s mind, maybe forever. “What are you going to do with him?”

“I’ll have someone drop him off where we found him. He’ll be asked a few questions when he wakes up, we’ll see if he remembers anything.”

“Okay.” Charles takes a step forward. His eyes never leave Uncle’s. “But you broke your promise.”

Uncle doesn’t say a word.

“Don’t do it again.” His head is pounding. “If you do it, I’ll break my promise too.” He wills Uncle to listen. “Don’t do it again.”

“Fine.” Uncle’s voice is strangely hollow. “We’ll both keep our promises.”

***

Uncle comes to his bedroom the next night, when the grounds are dark and the moon the thinnest of slivers in the sky. Charles draws the blankets tightly around himself as he sits up, his heart thumping rabbit-fast. He crosses his legs and presses his knees tightly together. Uncle gives him an amused look, but then his mouth thins.

“That boy from yesterday… What did you do?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

Uncle’s eyes glitter; he looks – intrigued. “His mind is empty. He can’t stay awake. What did you do, Charles?”

Charles’ own mind whites out. From very far away, he hears himself say: “What do you mean, empty?”

“Empty. You scooped everything right out of him.”

No no no. This is all wrong.

“I didn’t, I can’t have…”

Uncle must be lying. He must be. Just like he – he lied about Raven and Hank, he must have, Charles has looked and looked and he hadn’t found anyone who knew them, much less killed them…

“I didn’t!” Charles insists, and Uncle shakes his head pityingly.

“Get some sleep. We’ll run more tests tomorrow. You can’t let this happen again.”

***

He just –

He wants to sleep.

He doesn’t want to wake up again. He wants it so fiercely that his chest hurts.

***

He doesn’t have a use for me anymore.

He won’t leave loose ends lying around.

***

Adults, Charles had long ago learnt, enjoy showing off their children. His mother had done it, presenting him at dinner parties where her friends could praise him on his good manners and his academics. (Of course, that was before she had him packed off to boarding school where he wouldn’t disturb her.) Now Uncle is doing it too. After another successful night of reading – where did Aunt go? She was there just a moment ago… – Uncle has wrapped a paternal arm around Charles’ shoulder and is now in the process of introducing him to all his associates.

“A lovely voice, truly remarkable,” one of them compliments him with a tip of his wineglass. “You’ll give us marvellous entertainment in a few years’ time.”

How dare he. Charles isn’t a – a thing, a songbird to perform on Uncle’s command. He won’t be here in a few years’ time. He’s about to snap–

But his power had already reached out of its own accord, slipping across the man’s mind and coming away tarred with his eagerness to humiliate, to dominate. Charles averts his eyes and gives him a bland smile. “Thank you, sir,” he says.

Polite. Demure. Charming, but with little personality. Someone of absolutely no interest.

“Meek little thing, isn’t he?” One of them says to Uncle. His mind is red and cruel, his eyes raking hotly over Charles’ body. Charles can’t help shrinking back, and Uncle draws him closer, possessive. The man continues: “That’s no proper way for a boy his age to behave. You should let me train him out of it.”

He doesn’t need shame in his position, the man is thinking. His mind is filled with sense-memories of Aunt’s white skin splitting open, the coppery spray of blood, the curves of her body spread out on display.

Charles musters his best smile, boyish and innocent. “Uncle gives me so much training, I can’t possibly take on more.” He leans against Uncle suggestively even as he tries not to shiver, his skin crawling.

The man chuckles and waves him away, sufficiently entertained.

And so it goes. For each new man he’s introduced to, Charles skims lightly over their mind and adjusts accordingly. He flows from mood to mood, from virginal innocence to polite, well-bred formality to lively charm to something…else, a being of coy smiles and alluring glances loaded with meaning, the sort of nymphet he’s read to all these men about. Asking for it, just look at him, one of the men thinks, his eyes fixed on Charles’ lips.

Charles holds onto the comforting thought that Uncle is too possessive to let any of these men touch him.

Eventually, the night ends with Aunt still missing. Uncle personally brings him back to his bedroom, his hand a constant heavy pressure against the small of Charles’ back. “Let me help you get ready for bed,” he says, and Charles can’t stop trembling. In the darkness of the room, Uncle has him stand by the bed as his fingers go to the first button of Charles’ collared shirt.

He stands deathly still as Uncle undoes the buttons one by one. As his shirt falls unceremoniously to the floor, Charles closes his eyes.

Is this going to be the rest of his life? Forever?

***

I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.

Charles huddles in his bed, arms thrown over his face, shaking uncontrollably.

I need to get out of here.

Just let me escape.

Please. Let me escape.

I’ll do anything.

His cheeks are wet and hot.

I don’t want to wake up again.

***

The next day, they find Aunt’s body. She hangs from a silken rope, her neck snapped, her feet dangling off the ground. Above her, the yew tree looms black against the boundary of the estate.

5. “Did you kill her?”

“Did you?”

He and Uncle stare at each other in the harsh sunlight that slants through the windows of Uncle’s study. Charles is the first to look away.

“I can’t help you anymore,” he says. “I’m never using my telepathy again.”

“You think you did it? Influenced her?”

“I don’t know.”

He could look. Uncle’s mind is walled up tight as always, but he’s stronger now. He can break down those walls. Uncle has the means and – he knows from the stray wisps of thought he had stolen from Aunt’s mind – he has motive.

He could look, but he doesn’t.

He’s too afraid of what he’ll find.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Uncle is saying. “You’ve always had poor control, and we’ve recorded plenty of incidents where you subconsciously use your telepathy. A whole library’s worth of them, in fact.”

“I’m never using it again.”

“You can’t turn it off,” Uncle says frankly. “You’re using it even now, aren’t you?”

It’s true. It’d be like trying to turn off his hearing – utterly impossible. Even if he can’t read Uncle he still gets a faint sense of his presence, a prickling awareness at the back of his mind that he can’t sever.

“I’ll find a way.”

“Why? Your gift is a wonderful one. Imagine if everyone could communicate mind-to-mind like you do – no more misunderstandings, no more wasting hours on arguments…”

No more fear of the unknown. No more fear of those who are different.

It’s so hard to remember why those things are important, but Charles clings to them the best he can.

Uncle continues: “Really, your only problem is your control. You may never develop it to a sufficient level, so you see why it’s important for you to stay here. At home. You’ll have a hard time finding a place more isolated than this mansion. Can you imagine what’ll happen if you lose control in a city?”

Charles looks out of the window mutely. Uncle nods. “That’s right. And I do promise you, Charles, if I can’t find a way to control your telepathy, I’ll help you get rid of it. One way or the other. Do we have a deal?”

Outside, the yew tree is a dark stain on the grounds. Charles thinks about a fluttering rope of silk, a noose.

He has an escape if he’s brave enough to take it. He always had. Maybe it would even be the selfless thing to do. Nothing good can come from giving Uncle more and more chances to run experiments on him.

“Do we have a deal?” Uncle barks, impatient.

Charles has never been brave enough. “Yes,” he says quietly.

(next part)

#cherik #xmfc #My writing

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