Archive of Our Own

Charles Xavier, sidekick to one of the world’s greatest superheroes, panted down the corridor towards the secret biotechnology laboratory. He’d got left behind a few buildings ago when Cat-Man had leapt off a roof to follow the wildly cackling Grand Master. It was only the tracking device he’d put into Cat-Man’s belt that had let him catch up at all. His tracker beeped gently as the map on his tablet guided him towards the glowing green cat-head symbol. Nearly there, he told himself. Superhero sidekicks don’t get out of breath chasing down villains. He was in excellent physical shape. Somehow that didn’t stop him from always getting picked last in gym class, but the whole thing was a popularity contest anyway.

If his classmates in middle school knew how he spent his nights he’d definitely get picked first. He was secretly very cool.

As he turned the final corner, he found himself faced with a wall of glass. Behind the glass Cat-Man and the Grand Master were locked in what looked like their typical final showdown fight, with lots of posturing and monologuing interspersed with frantic bursts of action. There was a single door in the glass wall. In front of the door stood the small, black-clad form of the Grand Master’s sidekick.

Well, crap.

Charles had spent a good half hour that night fighting the Shark, and he ached all over because of it. He didn’t really want to do it again, but it looked like there was no way he could get in to help Cat-Man without going through the Shark first.

He sighed, and slipped into a fighting stance.

‘Hi,’ the Shark said.

Charles froze. That wasn’t in the script. ‘What?’ he said.

‘I said hi, moron,’ the Shark said. ‘It’s pretty self explanatory.’

‘Oh,’ Charles said. ‘Um. Hi.’ He should probably attack, but it felt a little strange to do that when the Shark was just standing there. Standing there with a small tablet in his hand, actually, that looked like it was hooked up to the lock on the door. Charles frowned. ‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s sealed,’ the Shark said irritably. ‘I can’t get it open. Try it yourself, if you want to help. Neither of us can be any use from out here.’

Charles gave him a suspicious look. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘If I try to open it, you’re going to hit me on the back of the head.’

‘What would be the point in that?’ the Shark said. ‘I’d still be stuck out here, I’d just be stuck out here fighting you.’

‘We're supposed to fight,’ Charles pointed out. ‘That’s what we do.’

The Shark made a sullen face. ‘I can’t be bothered,’ he said. ‘It’s three in the morning, and it’s not going to make any difference which one of us is still standing when they finish. If we can get in, I’ll fight you. Otherwise you can stuff it.’

Charles frowned. He felt sure there was something wrong with this situation, but he couldn’t really fault the Shark’s logic. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a go.’

He got out his own tablet. The Shark stepped back, and Charles edged warily around him to plug it in. The tablet beeped unhelpfully. For a little while Charles lost himself in some fruitless and frustrating attempts to hack the lock. When he looked up he was surprised to realise that the Shark hadn’t tried anything evil whatsoever. He was just watching, looking impatient and slightly bored.

‘No luck?’ the Shark said.

‘No,’ Charles said. He unplugged his tablet and sighed. The fight was still in progress, and didn’t look any closer to reaching a conclusion.

‘You suck,’ the Shark said conversationally.

‘So do you.’

The Shark shrugged. ‘Get out of the way,’ he said. ‘My turn to try.’

***

Fifteen minutes later there still wasn’t a lot to do.

‘I mean, it’s kind of neat,’ Charles offered, trying to maintain what had so far been a very stilted conversation. ‘You know, us both being animals.’

‘You’re a mouse,’ the Shark said, fiddling a little more with his tablet. Inside the chamber, superhero and supervillain were locked in mortal combat. ‘How come you picked such a crappy animal?’

Charles flushed. He was sitting on the floor with his back to the glass, having already satisfied himself that the lock was uncrackable, rubbing at his leg where, a couple of hours earlier, the Shark had landed a solid kick. ‘I didn’t pick it, he did. You know, Cat-Man and the Grey Mouse.’

‘Don’t even get me started on Cat-Man.’

‘It’s better than the Grand Master,’ Charles snapped. ‘Who does he think he is, Garry Kasparov?’

The Shark paused. He seemed to assess Charles for a moment with an annoyingly piercing gaze. ‘Huh. You know what a real grandmaster is. Does that mean you play chess?’

‘What’s it to you?’ Charles asked.

‘Only, I’ve got it on my phone.’

Charles considered it. ‘Alright,’ he said, pulling out a coin to toss. ‘Winner picks sides. Heads or tails?’

***

‘Why do you even hang out with him?’ Charles asked after the second game, in between bites of a chocolate bar from the Shark’s pack. Behind the wall, the two combatants still showed no sign of finishing their fight. ‘You know he’s evil, don’t you?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with being evil,’ the Shark said. He caught Charles’s mocking snort and flushed slightly. ‘Oh, shut up. What do you know about it? You’re just a little kid.’

Why did everyone always say that? Just because Charles was small for his age. ‘I am not a kid,’ he said. ‘I’ll be thirteen in two weeks, and I bet that’s older than you.’ He didn’t quite add you jumped-up cartilaginous fish, because that would have been rude, but he wanted to.

The Shark raised a surprised eyebrow. ‘You look about eight. You’re tiny.’

Small Charles could admit to. Tiny was going too far. ‘I’m also a genius and a black belt and I could break both your arms with my eyes shut,’ he retorted. The last part might not have been entirely true, because the Shark was also a genius and a black belt, but it sounded good. ‘Besides,’ he added, with sudden realisation, ‘I am older than you, aren’t I? You didn’t say I wasn’t.’

The Shark looked distinctly uncomfortable. He scowled at the floor.

‘Are you even twelve?’ Charles pressed. ‘There are child labour laws, you know.’

‘Breaking laws is what we do, idiot,’ the Shark said, still scowling. ‘And I was twelve in March.’

‘So you’re just twelve.’

‘I’m twelve and a half! Or did you not learn the months of the year yet?’

Charles smugly refrained from pointing out that yes, he knew the months of the year, and he also knew that half of twelve months was six, not four.

The Shark kicked at the door in frustration. ‘Screw this,’ he said. ‘They’re taking too long. I’m going home.’

Charles stared at him. ‘You can’t go home,’ he said. ‘We’re in the middle of a final showdown.’

‘Well I’m going to,’ the Shark said. ‘You can sit here forever if you want, but I have to be at school in four hours and I'm not turning up there dressed like this.’

‘Hey, wait,’ Charles called, hopping to his feet and watching as the Shark ran lightly off down the corridor. ‘You… oh, for goodness sake.’

He sat back down forlornly, feeling very lonely. After another hour, he went home himself.

***

His next encounter with the Shark was a couple of weeks later. As they were dangling from a rope trying to dislodge each other and swing over to reach the doomsday device controls, the Shark said, ‘I got you a card.’

‘What?’ Charles asked, surprised enough that he forgot to give another shove. ‘Wait, you mean a birthday card?’

‘No, a fucking Tarot card. Of course a birthday card. You said it was your birthday this week.’

‘Yesterday,’ Charles said. He didn’t usually get many cards. This year there had just been one from his mother, and it looked rather pathetic all on its own. Cat-Man didn’t go in for birthdays. It seemed odd to get his only other card from his superhero’s arch enemy’s sidekick, but he wasn’t about to complain.

‘That’s really nice of you,’ he said.

‘Yeah, well, don’t get used to it,’ the Shark said awkwardly. He dug one-handed in his pack and handed over a slightly battered envelope. ‘You’d better open it later.’

He politely waited for Charles to stow it in his tool belt before throwing the next punch.

***

The card had a cake on it, and a big number 13. Inside, it just said:

To Mouse,

Happy birthday,

From Erik

Cat-Man gave him a stern lecture and made him incinerate it in case of bugs or tracking devices, but Charles decided that he didn’t mind too much. He still had the most important part.

Erik. Erik with a K. It wasn’t like he was going to forget.

***

Eight months later Erik looked at the card Charles handed him, then warily at Charles’s face, obviously realising that Erik-with-a-K, aged twelve, born in March, might be enough information for Charles, with a bit of hacking and a lot of legwork, to put the pieces together and identify one Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, originally from Düsseldorf, Germany, currently residing in the suburbs with parents Edie and Jakob.

Charles had scrubbed all trace of the search from Cat-Man’s computers, of course. He’d only been interested in the date of birth, anyway.

‘Thanks,’ Erik said, sounding more dangerous than grateful as he flipped the card open to read the message. Then he glanced up, startled. He didn’t say anything else but his eyes held a much more eloquent thank you as he traced a finger over the spot where Charles had signed his name.

Charles Francis Xavier.

It had seemed only fair.

***

It was 1am, which wasn’t late by superhero standards, but the night had not gone smoothly. Charles was tired and hot and cross, he had homework for tomorrow, and just when he thought he’d got on top of things life had chosen to throw another difficult and upsetting problem at him. It was all getting to be rather too much.

Having finally vanquished the bad guys Cat-Man had jetted off towards a second distress call, ordering Charles to go straight home to bed after destroying all remaining traces of the villains’ plans and burning the illicit genetic research laboratory to the ground. There wasn’t a lot to do, really. A quick computer virus wiped the data in case any chips escaped the blaze, and the modified creatures had already been killed by their creators in an attempt to hide the evidence.

Except for one.

As Charles was dithering he heard the sound of booted feet touching lightly down on the roof behind him. It was the Shark – Erik – looking oddly ordinary in jeans and a t-shirt instead of his customary charcoal-grey jumpsuit. He sloped over to where Charles was standing. ‘Rough night?’ he said.

‘Mad scientists,’ Charles said grumpily. ‘Were they yours?’

‘Don’t think so.’ Erik shrugged, looking at Charles sideways as though he didn’t especially want to be there, or at least didn’t know why he was. ‘It sucks that you got stuck with the clean-up.’

Despite the fact that most of Charles’s attention was on the creature in his arms, he spared time to be surprised that Erik thought setting fire to things was a chore. ‘Clean-up is part of the job,’ he said. ‘I can do that just fine, it’s not important. But what about the puppy?’ He stepped forwards so Erik could see. ‘Look. I’m supposed to destroy everything, but he can’t expect me to kill it.’

Erik peered at it suspiciously. ‘How is that a puppy?’

OK, it wasn’t exactly a puppy. It was more a lizard thing. Or maybe a monkey. And it sort of had fangs. But whatever it was it was obviously a baby, and it had licked Charles’s face when he picked it up and then squirmed comfortably against him and started purring. ‘I don’t care what it is,’ he said. ‘I’m not killing it. What am I going to do with it?’

‘How should I know?’

‘If you’re not going to help you can just go away.’ To his everlasting shame Charles’s voice wobbled on the last word and he found himself trying to blink away tears. It wasn’t fair. He was so tired and he couldn’t even make himself feel better by burning down a laboratory until he’d worked out what to do with this poor, helpless little animal. A little lost monkey-lizard, all alone in a world where everyone would hate it, no matter how soft and cuddly it was, because it was different and didn’t fit in.

One of the tears spilled over. He had to turn away and try surreptitiously to wipe his eyes before Erik could see and start laughing at him. It didn’t work very well. Another tear dripped off his nose and he had to stifle a sob.

‘Are you crying?’

‘No! Go away.’ Another sob escaped him. The creature peered up into his face and then pawed gently at his shoulder, making comforting noises.

Erik always moved very, very quietly, so Charles wasn’t quite sure if he actually had gone away until he spoke. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. His voice was a little stiff, but decisive.

Charles turned back around. ‘What?’

‘Stop sniffling, can’t you? I said I’ll take it.’

Charles stepped back warily, because this was Erik, and Erik was evil. Sort of. ‘I’m not letting you kill it either,’ he said, cradling the animal closer.

‘I’m not going to kill it, idiot,’ Erik said, giving him a faintly derisory smirk. ‘I’ll keep it.’ He cocked his head, assessing the creature, and reached out to scritch it under the chin, grinning with satisfaction when its purrs deepened. ‘I like it.’

The creature grinned back at him, matching him tooth for tooth.

Charles mopped at his eyes again, feeling a little better now Erik appeared to be on his side. ‘Won’t your parents have something to say about that?’

‘Don’t be stupid, I’m hardly going to take it home. It can live at the lair. It’s a weird mutant creature with great big teeth, it’ll fit right in.’

‘Well…’ As plans went, it might not be ideal to let a small fluffy animal stay somewhere that generally played host to disreputable individuals and nefarious plots, but the alternative was to let it wander off all on its own in the city, which was pretty much on a par with the lair. ‘…alright,’ he said cautiously. ‘But you mustn’t let the Grand Master train it to eat people.’

Erik rolled his eyes. ‘Nobody’s going to train it to eat anyone.’

‘And you’ll look after it? And take it for… walks, or swims, or whatever it likes.’ Possibly there was a bit of crocodile in its genetic make-up, Charles thought as he petted its patches of fur and smoothed his hand over the rough warmth of its scales.

‘Yes, Charles.’

‘And cuddle it?’

‘For god’s sake, will you just give me the fucking monster already?’

It didn’t seem to mind being passed to Erik. It sniffed at him, licked him briefly with its forked tongue and perched obediently on his shoulder when he set it in place. The last Charles saw of it, it was balancing neatly as Erik leapt over the edge of the rooftop, fired off a grapple wire and swung away into the night.

Charles smiled after them and reached for his matches. Arson, homework and bed. His night was suddenly looking up.

***

‘I named her Lamia,’ Erik said conversationally a couple of weeks later, while they were patiently treading water in the sewers under an exploding warehouse.

Talking meant breathing in more of the all-pervading stench, but it was better than contemplating what might be brushing against their legs. ‘That’s a pretty name,’ Charles said, letting his surprise show in his voice. He’d been half expecting something like Venomfang or The Soul Render.

‘I thought so,’ Erik said. ‘It’s a kind of child-eating demon from Greek mythology.’

Of course it was. Charles glared. ‘You’re a dick, do you know that?’ he said, doggy-paddling forwards threateningly.

Smirking, Erik backed away, attempting to evade Charles’s hands. ‘It suits her. Ow, sod off!’ He pushed off a wall, propelling himself to the other side of the tunnel. ‘You have a lot of violent impulses for someone who’s supposed to be on the side of good. Stay over there. I’m not getting into a fight with you now, we’ll only end up swallowing this stuff.’

Another explosion sent shock-waves rippling through the stinking liquid. Charles steadied himself against a pillar and directed his head flashlight up an access shaft to where billowing orange flames were just visible. ‘How much explosives did your side have in that place anyway?’ he asked.

‘Not much. That’s probably the last of it.’ Erik steered towards the access shaft, his grapple gun appearing as if by magic in his hand. He fired it upwards and watched the hook bury itself somewhere out of Charles’s view, but he didn’t reel himself in. There was something a little shifty about the way he glanced back over his shoulder.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Erik said gruffly. He still didn’t move.

‘Come on, what? I want to get out of here too.’

‘It’s just…’ The water swirled around Erik’s shoulders as he shrugged, a pantomime of disinterest. When he spoke the words tumbled over each other in a rush. ‘Are you doing anything after this?

Charles frowned. ‘Maybe. Why?’ he said suspiciously.

‘Because if you’re not you could meet me in the park later,’ Erik said, looking everywhere but at Charles. ‘I’ll bring her along. You know, if you want to see how she’s doing. I’ve been teaching her to fetch sticks.’

‘Really?’

‘Also wallets. But mostly sticks.’

‘You’re a dick,’ Charles reiterated.

***

Lamia seemed to be doing well. Charles was delighted to find that she remembered him, wriggling out of Erik’s arms to bound towards him over the grass of the moonlit park. She scrambled up with her little clawed hands grasping the fabric of his shirt and licked his face enthusiastically.

They threw sticks for her for a little while until she got tired of the game, and later he and Erik sat side by side in a tree while she swung through the branches above them making happy prooking noises. They played chess, boasted about their best hacks and sniggered over the more ridiculous superhero costumes.

Time passed too quickly.

‘We kind of missed out on the sleeping part of the day,’ Charles said guiltily, looking up at the lightening sky.

Erik shrugged. ‘That’s what school’s for.’

***

This particular mission called for stealth and subtlety.

Charles lowered himself cautiously down onto the windowsill, disabling two booby-traps as he went. He tried fiddling with his magnetic manipulators and then gave it up as a bad job and just burned through the lock. Inside, the room was dark. He crept forwards, using his night vision goggles to focus in on the single occupant.

Then he stepped on something that snapped sharply underfoot.

A light flicked on, casting a bluish glow across the room. Bluish, Charles realised, because it came from an elderly bedside lamp made of cracked blue plastic in the shape of a spaceship.

‘Charles?’ Erik said. He sounded muzzy and exhausted. ‘What the fuck are you doing in my bedroom, you creepy little stalker?’

Charles flipped up his goggles, sparing a brief glance for the colouring pencil that had been his undoing. ‘I was worried,’ he said resentfully. ‘You know, you could have called to let me know you were OK.’

‘Of course I’m OK.’

‘You fell six floors.’

‘Only little ones. And I don’t think you get to ask after my health, considering that you’re the one who pushed me.’

Charles scowled to hide another wave of the guilt that had been plaguing him for hours – not that any of what happened had been his fault at all. ‘You should have had a line attached to something. It’s a basic safety precaution.’

‘Did you come here to lecture me?’

‘No,’ Charles said sullenly, going over to perch on the edge of the bed. He felt just a little bit ashamed, because, alright, he had been just about to launch into a lecture, and Erik probably wasn’t in any kind of state to listen. But it wasn’t fair of Erik to do something so stupid and scare him like that. ‘Excuse me for wanting to know you weren’t dead.’

‘Well, excuse me for not texting you with my broken wrist.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Get stuffed.’

There was an awkward pause.

‘I’ll sign your cast,’ Charles offered.

Erik pushed himself up on his good elbow and gave him a disbelieving look. ‘Like hell you will. I can’t go round with my enemy’s name written on my arm.’

Charles had to concede that he had a point there. ‘It doesn’t have to say The Grey Mouse. I could sign it from Charles.’

‘That’s your secret identity,’ Erik said, but there was a hint of a smile in his exasperated glare.

In the end Charles compromised by drawing a shark fighting a bear, and writing get well soon in disguised handwriting.

‘Not bad,’ Erik said grudgingly when it was done.

‘You should get some sleep now.’

‘I was asleep until you barged in.’ He yawned, hunching back down under the covers. ‘And you’d better reset my traps on the way out, or I’ll make you sorry for real.’

‘I’m so scared,’ Charles deadpanned. He would reset the traps though. It would take a while but it was a small price to pay. He smiled over his shoulder as he swung one leg over the windowsill. ‘Sleep tight.’

‘Goodnight, Charles.’

***

Erik got a bit of his own back about a month later.

Charles was sick. As a well-known badass butt-kicking high-tech teenage superhero sidekick he hated to admit it, but it was true. He’d been off school for two days straight as well as missing his patrols, and now he was running a fever and he felt horrible.

It might have been the illness messing with his thoughts, but somehow he wasn’t at all surprised to wake and find Erik at his bedside.

‘Erik?’

‘Hello Charles,’ Erik said, with the perfect unconcern of someone who’s determined to brazen his way through any awkward questions, such as what the hell he thinks he’s doing in his enemy’s sick-room. ‘My mom sent you some soup.’

‘Huh?’ Charles said, which was about as intelligent a response as he could manage.

‘Chicken soup,’ Erik said nonchalantly. ‘She always does it when one of my friends is sick. I’ve tried telling her not to but it doesn’t make any difference.’

‘How did she know I was sick?’ Charles asked, though somehow from Erik’s expression he realised that this was one of those questions he wouldn’t be getting an answer to. ‘Wait, friends?’ He shivered, pulling the blankets up around his chin and sinking back onto the pillows. ‘We’re not friends. We’re exactly the opposite of friends.’

Erik shrugged. ‘What was I supposed to tell her? “Actually, mother, he’s my archenemy, and the reason I have an archenemy is that I’m working for a supervillain”?’

‘I suppose not,’ Charles conceded. His own mother would probably be equally unimpressed to hear that he was running around after Cat-Man. She preferred people with impeccable lineage, old money, and no morals whatsoever.

‘It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,’ Erik said. ‘Even if she knew she’d still have made you soup. And I have to give it to you or she’ll go on at me about it.’

‘Why not just lie and say that you did?’ Charles shivered again. His head ached.

‘She always knows,’ Erik said darkly. ‘But you should eat it.’ His expression turned sardonic, but Charles’s fuzzy brain seemed to detect a touch of unexpected concern. ‘I know you’re called the Grey Mouse but your skin isn’t supposed to be that colour.’

‘I’m not really a mouse,’ Charles said vaguely, suddenly unable to muster the energy for more coherent conversation. ‘Fine, I’ll eat it.’

‘I need to warm it up.’

‘The kitchen’s down the back stairs and to the left. Don’t get caught.’

Erik twitched with nervousness. ‘Oh goodness, is it dangerous? Do you really think I should risk it? It’s not as though I’m a trained spy or anything.’

It hurt to laugh. Charles flipped him off as best he could and curled over, coughing.

He must have dozed off. When Erik came back it was hard to rouse himself enough to open his eyes. Erik seemed determined on prodding at him. Charles growled something obscene and put the pillow over his head, letting the world go hazy around him.

The next thing he could focus on clearly was Erik’s voice, sounding much younger and more put-upon than Charles was used to.

‘…I don’t know where she is. She’s not home. No, I am not bringing him home with me, he’s not abandoned, there are servants and stuff, they just don’t seem to… Yes. A thermometer? Yeah, got it. Huh? Really, you want me to take his shirt off? Aren’t I a little young for that? OK, OK, you don’t have to yell at me. Hey, Charles, wake up. I have to stick this under your arm.’

Charles mumbled in protest at the cold as Erik fumbled open the top buttons of his pyjama shirt. ‘Jerk,’ he said miserably.

‘Shut up or I’ll leave you to die of the plague,’ Erik said, then flinched at an audible yammering from the phone. ‘God, mom, I’m kidding.’

Being at Erik’s mercy while in this weakened state was fairly disastrous, and Charles hated to think what Cat-Man would say, but resisting was too much effort. He submitted unwillingly to having his temperature taken and being made to swallow juice and Tylenol, and then, when Erik finally stopped prodding and hung up the phone, took advantage of the sudden silence to fall deeply and resentfully asleep.

When he next woke, several hours later, he was alone save for a still-steaming bowl of chicken soup.

***

It was around then that Charles realised this thing with Erik might not be entirely normal.

The problem was, they really couldn’t help running into each other. The Grand Master popped up with a new evil scheme at least once a week and even when he wasn’t planning anything in particular he liked to swoop down wherever Cat-Man was saving people from distressing circumstances in order to make mocking comments and generally get in the way.

Erik tended to hang out in the shadows behind him, grinning. Often he waved at Charles, who sometimes forgot himself far enough to wave back. And then there were the times when neither of them was really needed in the battle. They fought for the look of the thing, of course, but there seemed no reason not to chat as well.

In fact, since Charles was generally too busy to make close friends, Erik might be the only person his own age that he spent time with.

***

One of the best things about being a superhero’s sidekick, in Charles’s opinion, was the potential to look super-cool in front of the population in general, and distressed individuals in particular. One of the worst things was the potential to look like a total idiot.

‘Hello,’ Erik said, peering down into the containment chamber with a particularly infuriating smile. ‘What are you doing in there?’ His voice was slightly muffled through the glass. So was the background noise of explosions and gunfire.

‘Nothing,’ Charles said. ‘Sod off.’

‘It looks a lot like nothing,’ Erik agreed, ‘which is funny, because a team of supervillains happens to be invading your base at the moment. Isn’t there somewhere you ought to be?’

‘I’m stuck,’ Charles said grimly. He got the feeling he wouldn’t be allowed to forget this one for a while. ‘I was trying to trap the woman with the pointy mask and the stupid purple suit and she locked me in here instead. Shut up,’ he snapped as Erik sniggered, ‘it’s not funny.’

‘Actually, it is.’

‘Are you going to let me out?’ he asked, without much hope.

Erik raised an eyebrow. ‘No, Charles, surprisingly enough I’m not going to let you out.’ He swung his legs over the side of the walkway and settled himself comfortably where he had a good view of Charles’s embarrassment. ‘You really can’t get out by yourself?’

Charles looked up sulkily at the sardonic face and the dangling legs. Erik had hit his growth spurt a few months ago, and now seemed to be all pointy elbows, awkward over-long limbs and impressive sarcasm. Charles meanwhile, was only slightly less tiny than he had been when they first met. ‘No, I can’t. It’s an impregnable prison. I should know. I built it.’

‘You built it?’ Erik asked. His grin widened to new levels of toothiness. ‘You built a prison and you didn’t build a secret means of escape?’

‘That’s what impregnable means,’ Charles grumbled.

‘You’re a moron.’

‘Well fuck you very much.’ Charles turned his back huffily, which turned out to be not very effective. The walkway encircled the cylindrical cell and all Erik had to do was walk round it. ‘Don’t you have somewhere to be? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re part of an invading force.’

Erik shrugged. ‘Not especially. It was a dumb plan to begin with. We’re going to get beaten back eventually whether I’m there or not, so I might as well stay out of trouble and keep you company.’

‘What?’

‘Aren’t you bored in there?’

‘Well, yes,’ Charles said, a little bewildered. ‘I suppose I am. And I can’t stop you staying, if that’s what you want.’ He frowned. ‘You know, you seem to be keeping me company a lot lately.’

‘Maybe I like you,’ Erik said.

Charles stared at him. Either this relationship was even stranger than he’d previously realised, or it was some kind of evil scheme. He ran through the possibilities in his mind the whole time Erik was chatting to him, answering almost at random, but by the time the League of Supervillains trampled through the room in desperate retreat, scooping up Erik as they went, he wasn’t any closer to finding an answer.

***

It’s a well-known fact that getting trapped is a common occurrence in the life of a sidekick. It’s less well-known that hanging upside down over a pit from a rope wrapped around the ankles is even less comfortable than it looks.

‘Stakes and snakes,’ Charles complained, looking disapprovingly downwards at the offending death-trap. ‘Really? One or the other, yes, but both is overkill.’

‘Literally,’ Erik said, stretching his shoulder muscles languidly as though this was just a normal part of his post-exercise warm-down.

‘Ha ha.’ Charles wriggled a little. According to the best supervillain traditions there was a candle in the process of burning through the rope, and the fibres were giving way one by one. Neither he nor Erik would be able to swing far without the rope snapping completely and tumbling them both to their doom. ‘What are you doing here anyway? I thought the Gruesome Gremlin was an ally of yours.’

‘He sold us out,’ Erik said unconcernedly. ‘It happens a lot.’

‘Yes, it would, what with all of you being evil.’

‘It comes with the job.’

‘It doesn’t have to,’ Charles said reasonably. ‘You could be good instead. Elasto-Woman needs a new sidekick, I know she does.’

‘Yes, and we all know what happened to the last one. No thank you. Besides, I have to be evil.’

‘But why?’ Charles demanded.

‘Because otherwise you’d have nobody fun to fight.’

Charles scowled. Erik seemed determined to be illogical and just plain insane for no doubt nefarious reasons, which was bad enough when he was the right way up but downright baffling upside-down. ‘If I reach far enough,’ he said, ‘I could probably get my hand on the trigger of my cat-claw gun.’

‘You couldn’t point it at anything useful with your wrists bound like that.’

‘It’s already pointing at something useful,’ Charles said grimly. ‘It’s pointing at you.’

Erik grinned. ‘Alright, no need to be like that. I was just being friendly.’

‘Well don’t,’ Charles snapped, as fibre number 13 of 16 started to smoulder.

Fortunately just then Cat-Man and The Grand Master turned up to retrieve their respective sidekicks. Both of them kept their eyes carefully averted and pretended not to notice that the other was there.

***

The next time around, a shady government agency had decided to bind Charles in a straitjacket and tie him to a meat-hook over a vat of boiling oil. For which, Charles thought amusedly, the requisition forms must have been a bitch.

The first ten minutes had seen him divested of the jacket, which had been sloppily strapped by an underling Charles would be ashamed to employ. The rest didn’t seem too difficult, though it always took him an embarrassing number of throws to bounce things off walls and hit control switches.

The important point was that he had the matter completely in hand when he was unexpectedly reeled in and rescued.

‘What was that for?’ he said irritably as he dropped down on the platform next to Erik. ‘I could have got myself out, you know. A child could have got out of that one.’

‘You are a child,’ Erik said, smirking and ruffling his hair.

Charles wriggled irritably under the touch. He had grown quite a lot lately but Erik still had an infuriating four inches on him and took advantage of the fact whenever he could. ‘You’re a child. You’re not even fifteen yet, you uppity little brat.’

Erik’s birthday was in a month. Charles had a Danger Mouse card all picked out. It was sitting on his desk under the corkboard where Erik’s latest offering was pinned, a big blue card with a smiling shark on it, and the message ‘Fishing you a happy birthday’.

Erik shrugged. ‘Anyway, I was in the neighbourhood and I thought I’d save you the trouble. Now you can run off and save the day and we’ll have time for a coffee after.’

‘You’re such a freak,’ Charles snapped. ‘Do you even realise that we’re on opposite sides? You’re evil. We’re not friends.’

Erik grinned and hopped up to balance on one of the girders that ran towards the skylight. ‘Aren’t we?’ he said, walking along it gracefully despite his awkwardly gangling limbs.

‘No!’ Charles called after him. He turned away, still fuming at the unwanted intervention. What a stupid question. Evil aside, why would he be friends with a smug dick who constantly talked down to him despite being eight whole months younger? Of course they weren’t friends.

It wasn’t until he’d followed his tracker halfway to Cat-Man’s location that he realised Erik hadn’t said where to meet for coffee.

Oh well. Erik would probably text him soon.

***

Charles’s heart was racing as he carefully made his way across a warehouse beam. ‘Erik, stop,’ he called.

‘Erik, stop?’ Erik repeated incredulously ‘That’s your plan? You’re just going to ask me not to steal the poison gas?’

‘I can’t fight you,’ Charles muttered, feeling himself flush with crippling embarrassment.

‘Why not?’

‘You lost your grapple back there over the smelting thingy.’

Erik stared at him. ‘So? Oh, for God’s sake, is this the safety line obsession again? Seriously?’

‘You broke your wrist before. And there are machines down there. If you fall you’ll get crushed.’

‘That was years ago. I’m not going to fall.’

‘Erik, come on.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Erik sighed. ‘You’re a disgrace to the spirit of sidekicks. I’m sorry that I’ve apparently given you some kind of complex but you really need to get over it. Either fight me or get out your gas mask.’ He turned to take another few steps over the teetering plank bridges towards the abandoned briefcase of poison samples.

‘Don’t be an asshole.’

‘I’m doing you a favour.’

‘Can’t you just borrow one of mine?’ Charles said, moving unwillingly out to follow him. He always had several spare lines. He didn’t like going out without them.

‘No,’ Erik said firmly as Charles edged closer. ‘Look, stop worrying. Even if something meat-grinderish happens to me it won’t be your fault. Nobody’s forcing me to be here.’

‘You’d still be dead.’

Erik rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘Get a grip,’ he said, and lashed out with an unexpectedly vicious roundhouse kick.

Charles had to scramble to get out of the way. ‘Fuck you,’ he snapped, blocking the next punch and countering smoothly. He was so irritated he pretty much forgot about the fall.

From there the fight progressed as usual. Erik had some cool new moves. Charles took a bit of a beating but he managed to buy enough time for Cat-Man to save the city yet again.

Three days later he received an elegantly laid out invoice for three hundred dollars, labelled, ‘for psychiatric services rendered’. He balled it up and tossed it in the trash.

All the same, he did feel better for that particular fight. He hadn’t even noticed that he was nervous around heights until suddenly he wasn’t any more.

***

Although Charles was still deeply suspicious of Erik’s friends charade he couldn’t deny that his arch enemy seemed to be – well, fond of him, in a funny sort of way.

Erik hung around to chat after fights. He sometimes dropped down from rooftops when he saw Charles in the street, just to say hello. And he was good company, when he wasn’t being a dick. Charles found himself giving in to temptation. There were more coffees. There were more evenings in the park throwing sticks for Lamia and returning people’s wallets. They even went to the movies once. Erik insisted on buying the popcorn and they laughed at the spy gadgets and critiqued the martial arts, and Charles maybe got a little flustered at the sight of the hero in very tight shorts. Luckily Erik didn’t look away from the screen during that scene so he couldn’t possibly have noticed.

(It didn’t take Charles long to realise that girls weren’t nearly as interesting as other people said they were. It took him rather longer to work out why this was true.)

Sometimes Charles found himself wanting to get in touch with Erik at the oddest times. When something made him happy, or excited him, or when he felt down, it seemed like too long to wait until the next time he bumped into Erik to get it off his chest. Erik understood how he felt, that was the thing. Aside from the good/evil divide they had a lot in common.

The good/evil divide was definitely an issue, as was proved by Charles’s sixteenth birthday. He was wandering moodily along the street on his way home from school, trying not to think about how few people there had known or cared what day it was, when Erik dropped lightly down from a fire escape in front of him.

'Hello Charles,' he said, and tossed a wrapped package into Charles’s hands. 'Happy birthday.'

'Oh,' Charles said, feeling suddenly much more cheerful. 'Thanks.' He carefully peeled away the tape and unwrapped the Mr. Men wrapping paper to reveal a book. A very specific book.

He groaned. ‘Erik, what the hell is this?’

‘You should know,’ Erik said, a smile hovering around the corners of his mouth. ‘You described it to me last week. In excruciating detail. You wanted it. I wanted to give it to you. Ergo…’

‘I didn’t want you to go out and steal it!’

I didn’t steal it,’ Erik said, looking melodramatically horrified at the very thought.

‘Yeah? How did you get it then?’

‘I bought it.’

‘Where did you get the money?’

Erik grinned. ‘OK, that I stole.’

Charles sat down on the dusty sidewalk with the book in his lap and his head in his hands. It wasn’t the first time he’d run up against Erik’s unusually malleable brand of logic, and by now he’d got over his surprise and even his exasperation.

‘Erik, if you know I won’t accept stolen property you should also assume that I won’t accept something bought with stolen money.’

‘You might as well. I’m not giving it back,’ Erik said. ‘If I did, the poor old lady who sold it would have to give me a refund. Then she wouldn’t be able to pay off the debts on her family mansion, and all those orphans and kittens would be kicked out of their home after she’s gone.’ He put on an angelically pious expression. ‘Charles, that would be wrong.’

‘You are so full of shit.’

Erik grinned. ‘I’m not all bad. At least I always remember your birthday.'

'Hardly always,' Charles said sullenly. 'We’ve only known each other four years.'

'Always,' Erik said. 'I promise.'

He turned and walked away. Charles stared after him for a long time, mouth hanging open.

Of course he couldn’t keep the gift, no matter how oddly tight his chest got when he thought about parting with it. Setting everything right was a real pain. He had to do a great deal of shuffling, and even then the end result was that a certain entirely unrelated safety deposit box that had previously contained a hundred thousand dollars now contained an extremely valuable first edition copy of On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection.

***

Not all sidekicks went on to become heroes. Some of them died, some of them quit, and some of them just didn’t make the grade and would be wearing their sidekick tights for the rest of their lives.

In his own opinion, Charles was definitely hero material.

He was still small, but when he stood in front of the mirror in his costume and tilted his chin up at the right angle he didn’t actually look like a child. Much. Besides, he was getting a sick of taking orders from Cat-Man, who might have the strength, agility and reflexes of a Bengal tiger, but also, to put it bluntly, had the brains of one.

That’s why, when he ran into Alex and Raven, AKA Havok and Mystique, at the Supers Together convention, the plan seemed to fall into place easily. It was time for them to make it on their own. From Charles’s point of view the only downside was that the other two both had such cool code names. He was really going to have to do something about the “Mouse” thing.

Starting up a new team took time. It involved creating a base under the mansion, building a plane, and a car, and a submarine, recruiting more members, designing new uniforms, and negotiating their territory with the other superheroes. And when they went out on their first patrol all the villains kept laughing at them. Though not, admittedly, for long.

It had been nearly two months, Charles realised the next night, when they were called in to an all-heroes skirmish. Two months since his last outing with Cat-Man. Two months since he last saw… but he wasn’t thinking about that. His new team wouldn’t be fighting the Grand Master, since muscling in on someone else’s nemesis was bad manners, and no Grand Master meant no Shark. Erik was part of his old life now. Their worrying definitely-not-a-friendship wouldn’t even be an issue.

It was better this way.

Of course, it turned out that the all-heroes skirmish was also an all-villains skirmish.

Cat-Man gave Charles a betrayed look when he arrived, obviously still smarting over being abandoned. The Grand Master merely favoured him with a polite nod before throwing a fireball. Erik, however, wasted no time in wading through the multiple battles and jumping into Charles’s way, kicking off the fight with a showy, dramatic series of moves that caused a great deal of flailing and noise with little enough actual movement that it was perfectly possible to carry on a civilised conversation.

‘Where have you been?’ BAM! ‘Who’s that brat that’s been hanging around with Cat-Man?’ POW! ‘And what the hell are you wearing?’ KABLOOEY!

‘It’s my new costume. I’m a proper hero now,’ Charles said smugly. He executed a neat back flip, landing in the perfect position to pin Erik’s wrists.

Erik shrugged him off without much difficulty. ‘What do you mean, a proper hero?’

‘I’m not a sidekick any more. I have a team. There’s five of us. We’re called the X-Kids.’

‘X-Kids?’ Erik said, frowning as they went through a quick-fire sequence of close blows and blocks. ‘You mean you’re running around with a bunch of teenage do-gooders fighting other people? ’

‘Yes.’

‘Huh,’ Erik said. There was a speculative note to his voice that was somewhat disconcerting. His eyes shadowed thoughtfully and he glanced over his shoulder to where the Grand Master and Cat-Man were locked in their usual mortal combat.

Charles took the opportunity to knock him on his ass.

***

The police commissioner looked ever so slightly condescending as she reported to Charles that someone was breaking into a bank vault, and Charles wondered yet again if maybe he should get Raven to answer the video calls in an adult form. But he was the leader, dammit, and people would just have to learn the hard way that he did not appreciate them calling him ‘kiddo’.

As they piled into the X-Car he couldn’t help feeling a trifle suspicious. While a lot of robbers were incompetent, these ones seemed to be managing the heist with an overly impressive lack of skill. They’d set off every alarm in the place. Apparently the bank manager didn’t even know some of those alarms existed.

Thus, when they burst through the ragged hole in the vault wall, he wasn’t particularly shocked to find himself faced by a line-up of eight assorted supervillains’ assistants, servants and sidekicks.

The X-Kids dove in with enthusiasm, dodging energy blasts, knocking heads and generally kicking ass, and their evil counterparts seemed quite as keen to get some action. This time it was Charles wading through the battles with a very fixed destination in mind.

‘Erik,’ he hissed, ‘what the hell are you doing?

Erik leapt back, pressing a button to set off some kind of explosive that rained bricks to cover the exits. ‘Ahahahah, you will never escape,’ he said loudly, glancing over his shoulder at the mêlée. ‘This room will be your tomb of doom.’

‘Tomb of doom? Will you stop this? Someone’s going to get killed.’

‘I doubt it,’ Erik said, blocking a punch and getting Charles in a loose headlock. ‘Your lot are too moral and mine are too incompetent. Besides, I’m now the official head of the Little League of Evil. I’m in favour of people getting killed.’

‘The Little League of Evil?’ Charles repeated, almost too astonished to struggle. ‘No, really, Erik, Little League? That’s just silly.’

‘It’s my league, I pick the name.’ Erik grinned again. ‘We’re your new arch enemies. You’ll be seeing a lot more of us from now on.’

‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Charles said, thoroughly exasperated, ‘did you just create a supervillain league because you missed me?’

‘Well look at that,’ Erik said, turning the headlock into a very quick hug, ‘you really are a genius.’

***

Then Erik had him kidnapped.

‘Now you are in my power,’ Erik howled as his henchmen shoved Charles through the door of the evil lair’s operations room to sprawl on the floor at his feet. ‘Ahahaha! Good work minions! Leave me to my torture session.’

The minions left. Erik grinned his smug bastard grin. ‘Hello Charles. Are you well?’

Charles was not amused. He scrambled to his feet and dusted himself down with irritable little flips of his hands. ‘What do you mean, am I well? he demanded through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve just been captured, half drugged and shoved in the back of a van with a bag over my head, of course I’m not bloody well. You’re insane! Let me go.’

‘I’m evil, Erik said firmly. ‘There’s a difference. And as kidnappings go it was very gentle. I know, I had a remote video hook-up from several angles.’

Having being repeatedly kidnapped as leverage against Cat-Man, Charles had to admit that this was true. Still, it did not make it ok. He huffed. ‘Look, I’ve been fighting sea-monster-summoning wizards all day, I’m not in the mood for your games.’

‘I don’t play games,’ Erik said, ‘except for chess, of course.’ He went over to the bar and got out a couple of glasses and a bottle, set them on the coffee table and sprawled comfortably on the white leather sofa. ‘Scotch?’

It wasn’t fair that the Little League of Evil got such a swanky lair.

‘I’m leaving,’ Charles said, ignoring the extremely tempting offer. ‘Don’t make me hurt you.’

Erik poured the drinks. ‘Think about it like this,’ he said. ‘Your team will have realised you’re gone by now, and you’re going to be rescued in…’ he glanced at his watch, ‘an hour, give or take. Now, you can either spend that hour in our dark, dank dungeon, or you can stay up here and have a drink and a foot rub.’

‘I don’t want a foot rub,’ Charles said sulkily. Actually, after spending most of the night scrunched up in ambush position in the freezing cold and the rest of it battling with sea monsters, a foot rub sounded like heaven, but Erik was absolutely not going to become aware of that fact. ‘And I’m not nearly old enough to drink. Neither are you.’

‘Underage drinking is evil,’ Erik said. ‘The bad guys get all the good stuff.’

‘Foot rubs aren’t evil.’

‘Mine are,’ Erik said. He sipped his scotch, his tongue flicking out to lick a stray droplet off his bottom lip. ‘Mine are sinful.’

***

The klaxons went off precisely one hour later, when Erik’s thumb was sweeping its way up Charles’s instep, eliciting some highly embarrassing moans.

‘What’s that?’ Charles asked. ‘No, don’t stop, why are you stopping?’ He shifted on the couch to look round, trying not to dislodge the pillow that he’d oh-so-casually placed in his lap.

He was sixteen. Any kind of skin contact got him a little bit turned on. Erik had nothing to do with it.

‘Your X-Kids are here,’ Erik said. He set Charles’s foot aside, stood up and stretched. ‘Right on time.’

‘Shit,’ Charles said fervently. His arousal subsided in an instant, which at least solved one of his problems, but discovery was still an appalling prospect. ‘Erik, they can’t find me here like this. What are they going to think? Can you get me to the dungeon, or… tie me up, or something?’

Erik raised an eyebrow. ‘Kinky.’

‘Fuck off,’ Charles said. If Raven and Alex realised he’d been drinking scotch with his bare feet in his arch enemy’s lap and his arch enemy’s mutant monkey-lizard cuddled up next to him it would be the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to anyone in the world, ever.

Erik guided him over to a chair, with Lamia watching the proceedings with interest from her customary perch on his shoulder. ‘Ropes or handcuffs?’ he drawled, smirking.

Charles felt a blush creeping up his neck. By the time Erik had trussed him up, crouching down to do up the knots with his elbow resting between Charles’s thighs, he had to concentrate very firmly on the memory of frigid water and sea monsters to keep himself under control. The room seemed much too warm.

‘Done,’ Erik said, pulling the last knot tight. ‘It’s been a pleasure, Charles.’ He patted Charles on the cheek in a friendly manner. After the last pat his hand just stopped. His fingers, long and slightly roughened, lay gently across Charles’s skin.

There was a crash in the corridor, and a brief scream.

‘I think you’d better go,’ Charles said. His voice came out as a very mouse-like squeak.

‘Quite right.’ Erik jumped to his feet, ruffled Charles’s hair, and stepped away to slip through a neat little secret panel at the back of the room.

‘Um… goodbye, then,’ Charles called after him. ‘Thanks for the foot rub.’

He was still staring at the closed panel when the rescue party arrived.

***

It wasn’t as though Charles had put any stock in Erik’s promise to remember his birthday forever, because lying was practically in Erik’s job description. But still, as the clock ticked around to 11.45 pm he couldn’t deny that he was sulking just a little bit. He sighed and got up to close his bedroom window, which was open because it was a nice, warm night. Not for any other reason whatsoever. And then he nearly had a heart attack when a black-gloved hand caught the bottom of the sash and slid it smoothly back up again.

‘Happy birthday, Charles,’ Erik said, ducking neatly through the gap and stepping down onto the carpet.

Charles very determinedly didn’t smile. ‘Erik,’ he said. ‘The proverbial bad penny. I suppose you’ve stolen a completely insane present for me again?’

‘Not this year,’ Erik said. ‘Actually, I came here to steal something from you.’

He looked altogether too pleased with himself.

‘What?' Charles said cautiously. 'Steal what from me?’

‘This,’ Erik said. His smile was unusually soft as he leaned in, tilting Charles’s chin gently upwards, as easy and natural as though they did it every day.

Charles was young and healthy and horny and most of all busy. His time was mostly taken up with studying, his nights were spent patrolling, and he really didn’t have time for extracurricular activities.

Erik was never, ever going to know that it was his first kiss.

***

As a pre-teen sidekick, Erik had been a sarcastic jerk. As a teenage villain he was a flirtatious menace. He was always there, always gorgeous in his skin-tight outfits, always disturbingly flexible and always grinning the grin of someone who would get exactly what he wanted, by any means necessary, and thoroughly enjoy himself in the process.

The effect on Charles was inevitable and embarrassing and often all too visible. After the third incident he felt compelled to undertake an urgent costume redesign.

(‘I like it,’ Erik had breathed into his ear as they struggled for a bomb trigger on a rain-swept roof. ‘Does it zip up at the back? Just here?’)

Of course, it wasn’t anything to do with Erik per se, simply the fact that he had a penis and a pulse. Charles’s skinny adolescent body was broadening into manhood but it still had no particular discrimination. He could get aroused by root vegetables. He could get aroused by throw pillows, thought he didn’t know why. It was just that he was around Erik a lot, and Erik, being evil, was determined to drive him crazy.

When Charles set up a superhero team - five people to begin with, and rapidly expanding - He hadn't considered that this wouldn't leave him a lot of one-on-one fights with Erik. More importantly, it wouldn't leave them a lot of privacy.

Which led to certain awkward situations.

‘Erik! No, no, they’ll see,’ he gasped, each word half muffled against Erik’s lips. ‘Oh God…’

Erik moaned, an absolutely filthy sound, as though instead of making out with a too-short, freckly teenager behind a dumpster he was having the time of his life with the world’s most gorgeous human being and just couldn’t contain himself. It made Charles’s knees go so weak that he almost fell over.

'Sex pollen,' Erik breathed against his neck. 'Tell them we were dosed with sex pollen. Lots of it. Iron-clad excuse.'

'There's no such thing as sex pollen.'

'Not yet,' Erik purred, after some protracted nibbling designed to make Charles's brain liquify. 'I'll start work on it tomorrow.'

'I hate you,' Charles said. He wriggled, and Erik reluctantly let him go. 'And you're a crappy genius. Why didn't you just split up your minions better? You could have used decoy bombs, you know. Really, Erik, it wouldn't be difficult to get me on my own.'

'I'll keep that in mind,' Erik said, smirking, and shot his grappling line up at a nearly building, swinging himself away just as Alex came panting into the alley.

'Damn,' Charles said with feeling, realising too late that he might have revealed a little more of his emotional state than was really wise.

'It's okay, boss,' Alex said, patting him sympathetically on the shoulder. 'You'll get him next time.'

***

Naively, Charles had thought Erik was kidding about the sex pollen. But no. No, apparently he really had gone away and figured out how to make it. Being Erik, he had also loaded it into a bomb and set it to release city-wide.

He had also managed to split Charles up from the other X-Kids this time around, but as for the rest of his plan… well, in Charles’s opinion he just hadn’t thought it through. By the time the countdown reached the more threatening numbers, Charles had already cornered him, neutralised his weapons, snagged him in a net gun, and zip-tied him to some scaffolding poles. The only logical next move Erik could make was to bargain for his freedom with the pollen release code.

Erik, however, didn't seem to realise this.

'I'm not going to tell you,' he said. 'If you want the code, you'll have to torture it out of me.'

Charles raked his fingers through his hair and tried not to groan. 'Erik, you know what’ll happen if that pollen gets out. There’ll be chaos.'

'Yes. In about five minutes,' Erik said cheerfully. 'You'd better hurry up with that torture. Time's ticking.'

'I'm one of the good guys,’ Charles said. ‘I don't torture.'

'So you're going to sacrifice thousands of innocent people for the sake of your own moral code,' Erik said. Somehow his customary smirk was even more distracting when his arms were tired above his head. 'That's not selfish at all.'

Charles glowered at him.

'You don't need any special equipment,' Erik said. 'I can lend you a knife if it would help.'

Charles had several knives of his own tucked away in various hiding places. Grimly, he pulled one out of a sheath in his boot. 'Tell me the code,' he said.

'Hmmm. Maybe. Let me think about it.'

'Erik!'

'If you need to torture someone under time pressure I recommend starting with the eyes.'

Charles looked at the knife in his hand. He looked at Erik. It was no use. He couldn’t do it. There was no point in even considering it.

‘Out of options, Charles?’

‘Just stop this, can’t you?’ Charles snapped. ‘Give me the code!’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘If you give me the code,’ Charles said desperately, ‘I’ll go on my knees right here and suck your cock.’

‘Deal,’ Erik said, without a second’s hesitation.

***

Charles didn’t mind sacrificing himself to Erik’s evil sexual desires for the sake of the city. The problem was, after that first time it kept on happening.

He wished he could blame it on sex pollen, or mind control, or anything, but he knew that there was nothing forcing him to hang around in this particular alley in the rain. It had been five minutes since he’d knocked on the small, nondescript wooden door that disguised the two-foot-thick steel back door of Erik’s evil lair, and he was getting really sick of waiting. The sensible thing would be to just turn around and leave, he thought for roughly the fifteenth time.

Yet somehow he was still there.

A little peephole in the door opened, and a smug, familiar voice said, ‘Password?’

‘Fuck you.’

The door swung open to reveal Erik at his most self-satisfied. ‘Quite right,’ he said.

Charles shot him a dirty look. ‘There’s something really wrong with this,’ he said, stepping inside and, incidentally, stepping right into Erik’s personal space. ‘We’re enemies. We shouldn’t be doing… what we’re about to do. Again.’

‘Post battle adrenaline,’ Erik said, pulling him into a kiss and shamelessly groping his arse in the process. ‘Perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about.’
`
Charles pressed involuntarily forwards as the kiss grew heated, tongues thrusting and teeth nipping to the point of pain in an all-too-familiar fight for control. His mind switched itself off for a minute or so, deciding quite correctly that it would only get in the way. By the time he managed to pull back he was gasping for breath and painfully hard. ‘Erik, our last battle was two days ago.’

‘We’d better have another one, then,’ Erik purred. ‘Does wrestling work for you?’

Rational thought was not easy with a mouth sucking on his neck and a sizeable erection grinding against his hip, but even so Charles could see that this was a case of happy-go-lucky Erik-logic that he really ought to correct. ‘That doesn’t make any… doesn’t make any… oh Jesus, can’t you even wait for us to get to your bedroom? Adrenaline doesn’t work like this, you maniac, we’re not… you can’t just….’

Erik reached further into Charles’s boxers, undoing his own pants with his free hand. He ran his thumb teasingly over the tip of Charles’s cock and wrapped his hand around the shaft, stroking with tantalising, brain-melting slowness. ‘Charles,’ he said, grinning like the cat that got the cream, ‘this is the point where you stop talking.’

Charles quite literally couldn’t argue with that.

***

It was Charles’s birthday, and as usual Erik turned up unannounced. The surprising thing was how he arrived, marched into the X-Mansion at gunpoint, with Lamia perched comfortably on his shoulder, and most of Charles’s team crowding around to gawk.

‘We captured the Shark,’ Alex said, looking a little confused. ‘Also this… monkey lizard thing.’

‘And by captured, we mean he came and knocked on the door and asked to see you,’ Raven said. She gave Erik a sharp jab in the back with her gun.‘I can’t find any trackers or bombs or bugs, but it’s got to be a trap. Why else would he just walk in here?’

‘Because I’ve made a decision,’ Erik said. He smirked. ‘Hello Charles,’ he purred. ‘Happy birthday.’

Charles swallowed. ‘Hello Erik.’

‘Erik?’ Alex and Raven said simultaneously.

‘Erik,’ Erik confirmed. ‘With a K. As I was saying, I’ve made a decision. Being evil is fun, but right now it’s getting in the way of something else I rather like doing. So I’m joining the X-Kids.’

There was a deafening silence in the room. Erik looked around with one eyebrow slightly raised, as though he mildly disapproved of everyone’s manners.

‘We’re the X-Men these days,’ Charles said weakly.

‘That’s terribly sexist, Charles,’ Erik said, rolling his shoulders. ‘We’ll have to do something about that. Now, which way’s our bedroom?’

‘You can’t just join the…’ Raven began. Then she paused. She stared. ‘Wait, what do you mean, our bedroom?’

‘I’m not taking you to my bedroom,’ Charles said.

‘Where, then? Are you going to lock me in dungeon? How unoriginal. When was the last time we did it in a dungeon? Tuesday?’

‘Oh God,’ Charles said, running a hand over his rapidly reddening face. ‘Shut up. Fine, damn it, follow me.’

‘I plan to,’ Erik said. He stepped right into Charles’s space, tilted his chin up with one finger, and kissed him. ‘You look rather nice from the rear.’

‘You’re a terrible person,’ Charles said, finding himself completely unable to resist as Erik reeled him in. ‘This is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever… Erik! We’re in public, can you please stop…’

Erik took his mouth briefly off Charles’s neck to ask, ‘What was that, Charles?’ His hands, however, didn’t stop what they were doing at all.

‘I said… I… oh…’ said Charles, completely losing his train of thought. He barely noticed as Raven, Alex and the other X-Men (and X-Women) made scandalised noises and hurried from the room. ‘OK. Yes. Do that again,’ he said, closing his eyes.

Lamia chittered happily and jumped from Erik’s shoulder to his.