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Dear Charles,

The weather is dreadful here in New York. The rain pours down incessantly; it feels like years since I’ve seen the sun. You would love it. Do you remember when we were children and you used to run wild outdoors in thunderstorms and come tracking mud home? How Mrs. Jenkins yelled at you! And I don’t think Mother ever forgave you for ruining her favorite rug in the downstairs parlor.

I suspect you are enjoying warmer and dryer days in Los Angeles. I miss it. It is much lovelier than New York and much more my preferred environment. In fact, I’ve been thinking about returning. I may visit next week to look at places to stay. What do you think? There is hardly any work that interests me here anyways -- perhaps a return to L.A. is overdue. I know I speak of moving back often, but I mean it this time. Think on it. I know I am.

Please thank Erik for sending along that autographed photograph; my friend is enjoying it immensely. She hopes to meet him someday. Perhaps I will bring her along if I come back to New York. You’ll arrange a meeting, won’t you? I’ve already told her my brother is very old friends with the famous Erik Lehnsherr, and now she reveres you almost as much as she does him. I haven’t yet told her how much of a flat tire you really are.

I hope you’re doing well. Have you gotten over your flu yet? Erik’s new movie is premiering very soon, isn’t it? Do give Erik a kiss for me.

See you soon (I hope!),

Raven

Charles folded up the page and slipped it carefully back into its envelope. “What do you think,” he asked, “of having Raven over in a week?”

Erik glanced at him through the mirror, his fingers fussing with his bowtie. “She’s coming to L.A.?”

“So she says. We ought to have dinner together at the Grove, just like old times. What does your schedule look like?”

“I don’t know. What does my schedule look like?”

Charles huffed fondly. “You need a secretary.”

That made Erik grin. “Why do I need one when I have you?”

Charles shook his head and beckoned at him.

“Come here.”

Erik flopped backwards onto the edge of the bed, shifting his legs aside so Charles could roll in close and tackle the hash he’d made of his bowtie. As he worked his fingers through the knots he allowed his heart to linger for a moment on the domesticity of the scene. Together in Charles’s flat, dressing before the same mirror, using the same bathroom and sharing the same cologne…Charles gave himself a scant few seconds to pretend that this was exactly what it seemed: two old lovers preparing for a night out.

It was a brief daydream that he crushed with old familiarity. He was old enough to know that make-believe was better left to the movie star sitting in front of him, fidgeting with his cuffs.

“There,” Charles said finally, giving the tie one last definitive tug, “now you’re perfect.”

“Secretary and valet,” Erik joked, standing to give himself a once over in the mirror. “What would I do without you?”

“Perish and die most likely.”

They shared a grin before Erik opened the door and bowed him through, drawing the iron lift upwards with an elegant wave of his hand. 

When they arrived at the theatre it was chaos, as always. Massive spotlights danced over a crowd that was clamouring at the barricade, straining against the rails lining the red carpet to get a look at each star. Emma was there already, luminous and glittering, a white fur falling off of one shoulder, unmistakable amongst the throngs of photographers and journalists dressed in drab gray and brown. Fans flocked to her, pressing against the barricades in a bid to catch her attention. She looked, Charles thought, like an empress gazing out imperiously over her supplicants, deciding which of them to favor.

At his side, Erik glanced out at the crowd and grimaced. “I hate how big these things always get. What did Shaw do, send out invites to all of California?”

“More people means more publicity,” Charles replied. “It’s good for you.”

“What would be good for me would be three fingers of scotch,” Erik muttered.

Charles patted his arm. “That’s what the after-party is for.”

As their limousine pulled smoothly up to the curb, the din rose as the crowd realized who was arriving. Fans milled around for a few frenzied seconds, as if trying to decide between staying within reach of Emma or flocking to greet Erik’s arrival. As the noise level crescendoed, Charles sealed his mind off, hoping that that would stave off the inevitable headache for as long as possible; large throngs of people always made his head hurt sooner or later.

Erik tugged restlessly at his bowtie. “Can I just skip this and jump straight to the drinking?”

“These people love you, Erik. The least you could do is give them a few moments of facetime.”

Parking the car, the driver got out and rounded over to Erik’s door. When he opened it, Erik said, “I’ll see you after then,” and climbed out.

Even through his shields, Charles could feel the hard pulse of excitement that surged through the crowd. Immediately a dozen cameras flashed blindingly, capturing Erik’s figure as he unfolded himself from the backseat. He was made for the camera, Charles thought as the driver shut the door behind Erik. Some days he was eminently glad Erik had sprung up into Hollywood stardom. It would have been a damn shame if every inch of Erik’s beautiful frame weren’t immortalized on paper and film.

The flash of a camera on his side of the car made him jolt with surprise, then with annoyance. Of course. It wouldn’t be a premiere without some bloody busybody trying to catch a glimpse of Erik Lehnsherr’s infamous friend, the cripple. A hand banged against his window, obviously trying to get him to turn toward it, but he stared stubbornly away, trying to ignore the hot flush of embarrassment that crawled up the back of his neck.

“Drive on,” he called to the chauffeur. As the car pulled away from the curb Charles turned to peer through the rear window, eyes fixed upon Erik’s silhouette in the crowd. He was smiling broadly and leaning over to press a kiss against Emma’s cheek, the two of them turning to address the hysterical mass of spectators. Even from a distance, the car pulling Charles further away from the excitement, they were beautiful and perfectly matched. It was easy to see why their partnership had yielded such success.

If only his partnership with Erik had reached a similar soaring height, Charles reflected as the car turned the corner and pushed through a side street toward the stage door. Vaudeville, with its low-class appeal and low-brow humor, didn’t have the same splendor of the silver screen, but it had been the best time of Charles’ life. He’d trade in all this success for a chance to hoof it across the weathered stage of some small town county fair with Erik one more time. As the car pulled to a halt in the damp back alley next to a collection of bruised trashcans, Charles wondered if Erik ever felt the same way.

The driver fumbled with his chair, drawing it from the trunk and clumsily unfolding it on the pavement, and Charles shook himself from melancholy thoughts. No sense dwelling on the past when it held no possibility for the future. He sent a wordless, mental summons inside the building and the stage door swung open to reveal Hank McCoy’s eager face.

“Charles! Just in time--the orchestra is getting warmed up.”

He heaved Charles’ chair up the single short step into the building and then led him through the low-lit corridor toward the stage left wing where he had set up a ramp down into the auditorium through a side door.

“You’re an angel, Hank,” Charles breathed gratefully, wheeling himself over the lip of the ramp, “thank you.”

Hank blushed and waved him off, hurried off into the shadows to presumably prep the reel for the screening.

The crowd in the theatre was swelling, slowly filtering in down the aisles and into their seats, chattering excitedly. Charles rolled as inconspicuously as possible toward the upright piano nestled in close to the right of the stage, within sight of the massive screen as well as the pit where the musicians were tuning their instruments. Charles winked at Armando who rolled his eyes and tightened the peg on his violin.

When Charles turned back to the piano, he noticed that someone had forgotten to move the piano bench. He felt a swell of anxiety bloom in his stomach, spreading to his throat like acid, and swallowed, clenched his shaking hands before leaning forward to awkwardly pull the bench out inch by inch, shifting it left and right until it was out from under the overhanging keys.

Just as he was about to commence the awkward task of shoving the bloody thing out of his way completely, the noise in the room crescendoed into enthusiastic clamour. Charles turned in time to see Erik and Emma make their entrance, brighter than anything in the room and smiling benignly at the crowd, sliding into a reserved row toward the center of the room where Shaw was waiting for them with an oily smile.

Ignoring Shaw’s outstretched hand, Erik looked toward the stage, his eyes scanning swiftly across the audience as the settled into their seats. He caught sight of Charles, and grinned at him, an expression that shifted abruptly into a frown as he took note of the bench still sitting in Charles’ way. Charles watched him raise his hand and make a subtle gesture, and was unsurprised when the piano bench slid smoothly away to be tucked against the stage, out of sight.

Charles offered him a rueful smile in return, frustrated and annoyed but mostly grateful as the lights dimmed and Charles was able to wheel himself into position, rubbing his hands together and massaging out the worst of the cold weather.

The film was an expensive costume drama, the typical star-crossed lovers and sword fights and swooning dramatic looks that marked the regular fare of a Frost-Lehnsherr picture. Charles might have thought it was all a little ridiculous if Erik didn’t sell it so well, each elegant gesture, each minute shift of emotion that moved across his mouth or eyes captured in beautiful, vivid detail on the screen in front of him. Emma was equally as striking, if not as enthusiastic as Erik, and the two of them seemed larger than life and more beautiful than should be possible for regular human beings. Even after knowing Erik for years and seeing him at his very worst, broke and dirty and bloody from another ill-advised fight, Charles was still astonished that he knew that person on screen. That he saw him every day and laughed at his grouchy frown in the morning before coffee.

It was easy enough to play through the action without much thought. Aggressive staccato notes that skittered across the keys as Erik engaged another villain in armed combat. A slow, mournful melody in a minor key as Emma hid her face in a handkerchief, believing that her love had been killed. And finally, a triumphant crescendo of music as the Erik defeated his last foe and the lovers were reunited again. He barely had to look at the roughly outlined sheet music in front of him, taking his cues from the movement of action of screen while the small orchestra followed swiftly behind him. He’d always been better just following Erik’s lead anyways, able to read the movement of his body better than anyone, knowing just when he was about to strike, or sigh. It was why the studio kept him on as an accompanist even though his feet could no longer press the pedals of the piano. No one could play for Erik like Charles could.

If Charles had known it would be the last time he’d score one of Erik’s silent films, he might have savoured the moment, allowed his gaze to linger on the sharp black and white lines of Erik’s body as he moved soundlessly across the screen. As it was he turned his face away when Erik swept Emma into his arms and embraced her, pressing a kiss against her perfect mouth.

Raven arrived on Thursday in a rainstorm. Charles had meant to catch a cab out to meet her, but his back had been cramping horribly since the morning and he couldn’t bring himself to budge from the relative comfort of his bed. Instead, he phoned a cab for her and spent the next couple of hours lying on his stomach, trying to ease out the aches in his back on his own.

Eventually a sharp knock on the door woke him from his light doze. Reaching out, he found Raven’s mind on the stoop, weary and impatient. The spare key’s in the pot by the door, he told her. Let yourself in.

A moment later, the heavy front door swung open with a loud creak. “Charles? Christ, it’s raining pitchforks out there. Where are you?”

In the bedroom, darling.

Raven huffed. “Don’t tell me you’ve been lazing about all afternoon. I waited for you at the airport…” She trailed off once she spotted him wincing as he pushed himself up off the bed. In an instant, her annoyance evaporated, replaced by a sharp pang of pity that she tried and failed to hide from him. More softly, she asked, “Do you need help?”

“No, nothing of the sort,” he replied shortly. His back still felt knotted up, but there was nothing to be done about that now; it was far too late to call his usual masseuse, and besides, they had a dinner to get to. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come and get you personally from the airport.”

She dismissed his apology with a wave of her hand. “Don’t say another word about that. I’m a big girl anyway, I’m perfectly capable of getting around on my own. Are you still alright to go out?”

“Of course.” He reached for his chair and pulled himself off the bed and into it with a swift tug. The maneuver grew smoother and smoother by day, though watching his legs move without feeling them never became any less disconcerting. “Have you got your best dress? I’m going to treat you.”

Raven gave him a lingering, worried glance, but she turned her attention obligingly away from his chair and said, “I’ve got a dress for every occasion, you know that. I expect you to take me to the ritziest place in town if I’m getting all dolled up for you.”

Charles smiled. “Anything for you, my dear.”

He had made reservations at the Ambassador earlier that week after ensuring that they had a ramp for his chair. Erik had come with him to scout out the place, and Erik beat them to it tonight. When they arrived, Erik was already sitting at their reserved table in the back, elegantly dressed in a neat tuxedo, his long fingers curled around a glass of red wine as he surveyed the menu.

“Hello, stranger,” Raven said with a grin as they neared. “You’re looking swanky tonight.”

Erik rose and smiled. “It’s been a long time.”

When he held out his hand for a shake, Raven wrinkled her nose. “Come on, we aren’t literal strangers. Give your old friend a hug.”

She tugged him in tightly and after a hesitant pause, Erik wrapped his arms around her in return with a genuine smile. Charles tried to calculate the time since the three of them had last been able to sit down for a square meal and gave up when he realized how long it had been. There had been a time when Raven had been inseparable from the two of them, back in the early days when they were earning peanuts and Erik was still an unknown stuntman. Raven had left Los Angeles for New York and the stage, but Charles had suspected it was only a matter of time before she returned, and sitting at a table with the two of them now, just like old times, warmed him all over.

Conversation moved swiftly from Raven’s latest play to Erik’s latest film, to the housing market in Los Angeles as one bottle of red was emptied and another uncorked by their obliging waiter. Inevitably it flowed into the news that seemed to be on the lips of everyone in the industry, monumental and unfathomable and surely about to fundamentally shift the foundation of their lives:

“Talking movies? As in...movies where you can actually hear people speak? With their own voices?”

Raven’s incredulity was comforting and familiar. Charles had felt the same way when Shaw presented the concept to a skeptical audience at the after-party for Manhattan Midnight. It seemed impossible, and yet one week later a picture called The Jazz Singer had roared into everyone’s lives and disrupted everything from the very first moment that Al Jolson shouted, “Wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothing yet!”

Now “talking movies” were all the rage and Charles was almost certain he was out of a job. Who needed an accompanist when the movies had music built right into them?

“But how is that possible?” Raven pressed, the half-eaten lamb on her plate entirely forgotten.

“They record the voice separately,” Charles said, swirling the last bit of wine around in his glass, “and then sync it with the picture. Apparently. Music too. It’s all very fascinating, actually.”

“Fascinating!” Raven exclaimed, slumping back in her chair. “It’s hard enough getting the bodies right, now I have to get their voices right too?”

“You could always use your own voice,” Erik said dryly, cutting into his fish. “And your own body, for that matter.”

Raven looked at Charles and rolled her eyes. “Sure thing, Erik. I know the studios are clamouring for a blue matinee idol.”

Erik frowned -- less at her and more at the world in general. “You shouldn’t have to cater to baseline aesthetics.”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have to. But I’m in this business to earn a living, and I’m sure as hell not going to do that with scales and yellow eyes.”

“She’s got a point,” Charles said. “The world may know about us, but they aren’t ready for mutants to take center stage.”

Erik gave him a reproachful look. “Come now, Charles, if all mutants thought like you, we wouldn’t ever take center stage. Change comes through action, not through wishes. You can’t keep expecting the baselines to just gift things to us. They’re selfish creatures.”

‘“The baselines.’ Honestly, Erik, we’re hardly different species.”

“The way they treat us, we might as well be.”

Loath as he was to admit it, Charles had to surrender that point. Though Erik had rocketed up the ranks into stardom and found unprecedented success in the industry, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of young, aspiring mutant actors and actresses who crashed and burned every year. The movie business was tough to break into, tougher still if your CV was marked on the corner with a red stamped M. Most mutants in the industry worked behind the scenes; the studios put them wherever their powers could most effectively cut down on expenses. But Erik had been lucky -- Erik with his gorgeous profile and his subtle talent had beaten down doors no one else had been able to unlock.

But still -- they hadn’t staged a revolution. They hadn’t organized protests and stormed the offices of the studio executives and demanded to be featured. Erik had advanced on his own merits, of his own power, and the studios had been forced to recognize his potential. Their rise might not have involved all the gunfire and upheaval Erik craved, but it had been peaceful and, more importantly, by popular consent, not by force. That, Charles thought, was the best way.

“We’re making progress,” he said. “Ten years ago, not one actor or actress or even anyone in public entertainment was a open mutant. Today, there are a dozen. You and Emma are some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. It can only get better from here.”

“That doesn’t mean we stop pushing.”

“No, it doesn’t. But we must consider how much pushing the public can withstand before they begin to push back.”

Erik snorted. “Let them push back. They can’t fight against all of us, not when we’re united.”

“That’s war talk,” said Charles disapprovingly. “Might I remind you that we’re entertainers, not soldiers?”

“In another life, Erik might have been,” Raven said, arching an eyebrow.

“If we’d been born ten years earlier, we both might have been.” It was easy for Raven to forget -- she had been so young during the war -- but Charles still remembered rationing, remembered the thin veneer of fear across the minds of those he passed in the street and here and there, the sharp, all-consuming echo of loss. He was not keen to force war upon anyone, not when the last one lingered as red scars in the minds and bodies of so many.

Raven looked eager to argue the point further, but Erik subsided, pulled his cigarette case from his breast pocket with a flick of his wrist.

“Yes well,” he placed a smoke between his lips and fished around for his lighter, “one hurdle at a time I guess. First I’ve got to learn lines.”

“Lines?” Raven echoed, attention diverted.

“You know Shaw,” Erik said. “Always looking to piggyback off of others’ successes. He’s contracted us to make a talkie.”

Erik’s disdain curled heavily around Shaw’s name. Though Sebastian Shaw was in large part responsible for Erik’s meteoric rise, Erik had never hid his dislike of the man. Erik’s unrepentant honesty, Charles had always thought, was part of his charm.

Raven’s eyes widened. “You’re making a picture with sound? I’m so very curious about it. Is it alright if I come watch?”

“Normally I wouldn’t hesitate, but Stryker is directing and he never allows guests on set.”

“But I’m sure I could talk him around,” Charles added quickly before Raven’s bright grin dimmed. Then he paused. “That is, if I’m still employed the next time I see him.”

He could tell Erik was fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic, Charles. You already know the studio’s going to contract you to score the film. Your music is more important than ever.”

“I play accompaniment and occasionally improvise pieces. I’m hardly a true composer.”

Raven snorted. “That’s baloney. Your original stuff’s brilliant, I’ve heard it.” Her eyes gleaming with excitement, she said to Erik, “I still can’t believe they’re going to record your voice and put it on top of the picture. For a whole movie! And you’ve got to learn lines for it?”

“A whole script,” Erik confirmed. “Emma and I each got one last week.”

“And you’ve got to memorize all of it?”

Erik shrugged. “It can’t be worse than the shows Charles and I used to do. We used to memorize whole conversations.”

Sipping at his wine, Charles smiled. “We did, and you were excellent at it. You’re the last one who should be worried about this new talkie phenomenon; you were always good on silent film and now you’ll be better.” He couldn’t imagine any audience hearing Erik’s voice over the loudspeakers and not falling in love instantly.

“If I stay in LA, do you think you could get me a job on set?” Raven asked eagerly. “I could fetch coffee or run errands, I don’t care. I just want to be there.”

“Hoping Emma takes you under her wing?” Charles asked with a smile.

“Hardly.” She shot a sly glance at Erik. “Rather hoping the gallant Mr. Lehnsherr here would.”

Charles watched her with a pang of disquiet. The three of them had been friends long before Erik had come to LA and become the face of mutant celebrity. Erik had met Charles first, but his acquaintance with Raven had followed swiftly after, and for a while, the three of them had been inseparable. Then, Charles had considered them a family, had considered Erik his brother just as he considered Raven his sister. But gradually, it had become clearer to him that what he felt for Erik went beyond brotherhood, beyond what was socially acceptable between two men. Watching Raven gaze at Erik now, he realized with a shiver of unease that perhaps Raven’s affection had deepened as well, in ways it hurt him to think of.

Erik gave her a considering look in return and teased, “I’m not certain, Ms. Darkholme. You’d have to show me some potential first.”

“Oh, as if you haven’t seen me in action before,” Raven huffed. “You know I’m good. If I’d been old enough, it would’ve been me you’d have partnered up with on your road shows, not Charles.” She flashed Charles a sharp grin. “No offense, dear brother. You’re fantastic, but your mutation’s practically useless on stage.”

Charles smiled weakly. “That’s true enough. I’m sure you and Erik would have dazzled audiences if you’d gotten the chance.”

Something in his tone must have snagged Erik’s attention because Erik’s eyes flicked over to him, brows above them drawn. “No more dazzling than we were together,” he said after a pause and a wordless ? pushed in Charles’s direction.

It’s nothing, Charles sent back, focusing on cutting up what was left of the steak on his plate. He never liked dwelling too long on memories of their past together. It always left an acrid taste at the back of his throat.

As if sensing his discomfort (and that was likely the case, given how easily Erik seemed to be able to read his mood), Erik said, “Enough about us now. What about you? Tell us about New York.”

Raven sighed theatrically. “Oh, where does one start? I feel like I haven’t seen you two in ages. Have I told you the story of how I accidentally lit my roommate on fire?”

Charles raised an eyebrow. “Heavens no. Do we want to hear this?”

Raven grinned that grin she always used when she was up to absolutely no good. “Finish your drink, you wet blanket. I guarantee you, you’ll enjoy this one.”

***

Erik threw his script against the wall where it connected with the plaster and burst into a cloud of loose paper.

“I hate this,” he moaned, slouching low on the couch and covering his face with his hands. “I became an actor so that I could jump off things and stab people with swords, not to read lines.”

“It doesn’t help that your scriptwriter doesn’t seem to understand how people actually speak,” Charles replied, wheeling himself over to the scattered pages and selecting one from the crumpled pile. Stifling a grin, he read aloud in a bad imitation of an American accent, “You are divinity herself, a beautiful angel come down to earth to grace us mere mortals with your presence. I say now and always, I love you, I LOVE you, I LOVE YOU!”

He laughed as Erik groaned and slouched lower and lower on the couch. “You ought to speak to whoever wrote this. It reads like Shakespeare gone wrong. It’s tripe.”

“It’s tripe I’m contractually bound to repeat,” Erik said wearily, uncovering his face and reaching out to help Charles gather up the script. The words on each page swam across his vision like little black ants marching across a field of white. They might as well have been ants, for all they made sense to Erik. Damn whoever had thought adding sound to film was a good idea. Damn Shaw for forcing this idiotic talkie idea down their throats.

Damn the scriptwriter, too, he thought as Charles handed him the rest of the pages. But that wasn’t entirely fair -- the man knew about as much of what was going on as Erik did. The only thing he could be blamed for was writing some truly awful dialogue, which Erik loathed with all his being.

“Well come on, let’s go again from the top,” said Charles, still irritatingly cheerful. He was taking a special, vicious joy in watching Erik struggle with this, Erik just knew it. “How are you going to learn these lines properly if you’re throwing them across the room after every page or so?”

“Burn them,” said Erik sullenly. “Throw it all in a fire, I don’t care. I’ll quit. I’ll become a bank robber and steal millions and buy my own island in the Caribbean. It will be the last safe haven for silent films and people will flock to me once they realize how ludicrous these talkies are.”

“What about me?”

“What about you? You’re coming with me, of course. Who else will score my films?”

“Perhaps your millions could assist you in finding a better composer.”

Erik rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re the best all around, everyone knows it. Half the reason I’m still even on this film is because you’re on it, too.”

“The other half of the reason being that Emma would gut you if you left her. Quite a compelling reason to stay, really.”

Erik sighed. Beyond Emma’s threats Erik could begrudgingly admit that he liked the addition of wires and microphones, the secure feeling of metal close to his heart and or running across the soundstage. It didn’t replace the ease of silent film, however, when he could make faces and allow the choreography to tell the rest of the story. And it couldn’t match the sight of Charles sitting at the foot of the stage during a screening, the unearthly light from the picture transforming his pale face into a small moon in the darkness, the flickering images reflected in his large eyes as he watched the action raptly, his fingers flying across the keys.

“Let’s try it again, shall we?” Charles asked, picking his copy of the script up from his lap and smoothing the pages open. “Our love will last until the stars grow cold,” he read, biting his lip to smother a smile.

“See!” Erik shouted, pointing at him. “Even you can’t read it with a straight face!”

“I can,” Charles laughed, smacking at his hand, “I can. Don’t get all up in a lather, just give me a second.” He took a couple deep breaths to calm the laughter in his chest and then looked down at the script, reading over the words intently as if committing them to memory, to heart.

Finally Charles looked up at him. “The world has forsaken us,” he said, and Erik was struck silent by the intense focus of his gaze. Charles didn’t glance down to consult the script once as he continued, “There are forces that threaten to tear us asunder, forces we cannot hope to fight, let alone conquer, but still I love you. We shall surely fail and tear our breasts open on unforgiving steel, but still I love you.” He broke off, pressed his lips together. Erik wanted to peek down at the page in his hands, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Charles as he breathed out sharply. “I love you.”

There was silence. Finally Charles broke away and lowered his eyes to the script, clearing his throat in the way he did when he was embarrassed. “Or something like that. I think I changed some of the dialogue, sorry.”

His cheeks were red, and Erik could only sit and stare at him and remember the days when Charles had been the one in the spotlight.

“You always were the better actor,” he said. When Charles picked up his script and took a swipe at him, Erik grinned and twisted away in a dodge. “It’s the truth. I was never half your equal.”

“You’re a great actor, Erik,” Charles admonished, “when you actually apply yourself.” He wouldn’t quite meet Erik’s eyes as he flipped through the pages of his script. “Now let’s go again from the beginning of this scene. We’re already halfway through.”

“Halfway through hell is still in hell,” Erik muttered, but he took up his script obligingly and pinpointed the starting point with a finger. Giving Charles a baleful look, he added, “Razz me and I’ll twist all your favorite cufflinks into something you wouldn’t want a priest to see.”

Charles’s amusement washed over him like a rush of warm air on a cold afternoon. “I wouldn’t dream of it, darling.”

 ***

There were times when Erik wondered why the hell he’d ever become an actor. He had never been a particularly convincing liar when he was a child. He had never liked interacting with other people, never enjoyed any sort of dime novel romance. And yet his career was built on a series of films whose plots could have been lifted directly from any number of cheap Beadle paperbacks, and he was regularly forced to meet people he’d rather toss out a window than make polite conversation with.

But there were two things that had lured him into the industry in the first place and two things that kept him there. The first was his ability to use his powers regularly without stirring up an outrage -- the film set and the stage were two of the rare places where the public tolerated open mutations. It was rather telling, Erik had thought often and with considerable fury, that mutations were only acceptable when they served as entertainment, but when he’d been seventeen and penniless, that sort of bigotry had put a roof over his head and hot food in his belly.

Even so, he had been determined to break away as soon as he was financially stable enough to stand on his own, and if not for Charles, he would have. Charles had known from the beginning that Erik was determined not to end his career on a stage, but Charles had loved the show, loved the spotlight, and he had been intoxicating and impossible to walk away from.

His powers and Charles -- if either had not been involved, Erik would have been long gone. But as it was, he had hung on and, over time, had even begun to like the industry a little. After all, it could prove to be rather fun sometimes.

He tried to remember that over the next few weeks of production as the entire studio struggled to adapt to the new style. Shaw, who normally never bothered to keep an eye on the action, hovered incessantly, watching every development with a wary eye. Emma withdrew from the process even more than she usually did, stoic and disinterested in each scene, holding meetings in private with her lawyers. The chemistry between them had been feeling thin lately, but Erik had never felt it so strongly as he did in this production. Each day, Emma was utterly bored with the proceedings, which rendered utterly uninspiring scene after scene. Half of the time, it seemed as if she hadn’t even read the script and was running solely off her memory of the trite, token dialogue of past films, which drove Stryker absolutely mad as he shook the script at her.

As for Erik, he struggled through a number of elocution lessons that Shaw had snuck into his contract without Erik’s knowledge. Living in America for nearly twenty years had softened most of his German accent, but evidently enough of it was still left to make the voice lessons a hellish nightmare.

“Your accent’s hardly noticeable,” Charles remarked when Erik complained about it. “Not nearly as strong as mine is, in any case.”

“Try telling that to Thompson,” Erik grumbled. “That man will hardly accept that I’m even speaking English.”

They were sitting in the small office at the back of the studio that Charles had been given. On all previous productions, Charles had worked on set because he and his piano had been integral to every scene. But now, when the music was to be added after, he only appeared infrequently when Erik and Emma were shooting scenes, and even then he never stayed too long. Erik was beginning to miss his constant, steady presence in the wings.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Charles asked as he idly drew a treble clef on the margin of the script page under his hand.

“Well, he gave me this.” Erik fished the small blue booklet Thompson had given him out of his pocket and handed it over. “It’s full of nonsense.”

Charles flipped through several pages. “Interesting. I suppose these vocal exercises are intended to improve your diction.” He set his finger to a page and read, “Around the rocks the rugged rascals ran.”

“And that’s the easiest of them.”

“Sinful Caesar sipped his snifter and seized his knees and sneezed.”

Erik gave him a baleful look. “You’re making this seem easy.”

Charles grinned. “I imagine it’s simpler for me than for you. I’ve spoken English all my life, and besides, they say my accent’s charming.”

Erik couldn’t argue with that. Girls loved Charles’s accent, or at least they used to. Ever since the accident, Charles never got out much anymore; even at Erik’s premieres, he left early, long before the drinks flowed in earnest. He set a stark contrast to the boy Erik had first met and befriended in the dirty back alleys of Manhattan, sharp-eyed and far more mischievous than Erik had ever been. Charles had been Erik’s first friend, had given Erik his first whiff of moonshine, had introduced Erik to his first girl -- all with a wild, untameable enthusiasm that seemed capable of setting the world on fire.

Erik missed that boy often, though he tried to bury those thoughts deep where Charles couldn’t reach them. As he did everything else, Charles seemed to have taken the accident in stride. If he wasn’t lamenting what had been and what could have been, then Erik knew he had no right to either.

Charles turned to the next page and peered at it. “Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously. Moses he knowses his toeses aren’t roses, as Moses supposes his toeses to be. Oh that one’s quite fun.”

“I hate that one,” Erik growled. “Thompson must’ve made me do it twenty times.”

Charles shook the booklet at him. “Come, sit next to me. We’ll do it together.”

“I’m not interrupting anything?”

“Oh no, I’ve finished scoring the scene I wanted done today. Come.” Charles smiled at him, wide and warm. “I want to hear you blunder around the English language.”

“Fuck you,” said Erik as he pulled a chair over.

Charles only laughed fondly and began, in the poshest version of his accent, “Moses supposes his toeses are roses…”

 ***

Even in the first picture Erik had ever took part in in which he’d played the stuntman in four or five scenes, days on the set had always been long and tedious. But those days had been at least nominally rewarding in the end. With the introduction of sound, each day’s work was scrapped more often than not as the technicians wrangled with the unfamiliar sound system, and Erik found himself fighting the urge to strangle himself with his belt. It wasn’t worth it, he thought more than once. No amount of prospective success was worth this almighty struggle.

Today he stood beside the marble bench on which Emma was perched and picked at the stiff material of his silver trousers as Stryker yelled, “Emma, for pity’s sake, speak into the microphone! You have to speak into it or else we’re recording nothing!”

Emma gave the director a withering look. “Your microphone is hidden in a bush. I can’t make love to a bush.”

“You’re hardly even making love to Erik!” Stryker snapped, banging his hand impatiently against the wall of the sound booth. The noise made half the sound technicians inside jump. “You’re looking at him like he’s just upchucked all over your dress.”

When Emma shot a look at him, Erik shrugged. She had been rather uninspiring today, even more so than she had been for the last few weeks. One of the set PAs standing on the edge of the set had been furtively whispering her lines to her all morning long. Erik, at least, had gotten this scene memorized last night.

“Oh, alright,” said Emma irritably, waving one satin-gloved hand. “Start it again.”

Erik retraced his steps and, on Stryker’s cue, entered the “garden” with a flourish of the cane in his hand. “My dear countess!”

The quick glance Emma gave him was utterly disinterested. “Pierre, my darling cavalier,” she said, her voice still thick with that natural, sharp New Yorker accent her vocal coach had spent weeks trying in vain to flatten out. “You cannot be here. If my betrothed finds you, he would…he’d...”

“Lop both our heads off and toss them in the river,” the set assistant hissed.

“...lop both our heads off and toss them in the river.”

Erik tossed his cane away and listened as it landed somewhere behind him with a loud clatter of wood against wood. Once it had rolled to a stop, he strode forward and knelt at Emma’s side, the stiff leather of his pants squeaking as he did. He tried to ignore how uncomfortably the damn trousers pressed against his groin and said earnestly, “Never fear, my love. Your betrothed could no more chase me away than could a man chase a cloud.”

Emma reached out one delicate hand to caress his cheek. “My brave cloud.”

It took a valiant effort not to burst out into laughter as Erik echoed solemnly, “Your cloud.”

Emma bent forward to buss a kiss on his cheek, and right on cue, her dastardly fiancé burst onto the scene shouting, “Betrayed, betrayed, betrayed! I have come home to find that the sun of my life has torn my heart from my breast and ripped it apart!”  

Emma let her mouth drop open in the most unconvincing display of surprise Erik had ever witnessed. “Jacques. What could you possibly be doing here? I thought you were surely -- ”

“Cut, cut!” yelled Stryker. “Emma, what’s going on with you? You sound like you’re asleep! And Erik, for my sanity, can you walk a little quieter?”

“It’s not my damn fault this costume squeaks.” Erik bent his knees demonstratively and was rewarded with the wince-inducing sound of leather squeezing against skin.

Unperturbed, Emma picked at her nails. “I think a smoke break is in order.”

For a moment Stryker looked as if enough pressure was building between his ears to blow his head straight off. Then he growled, “Five minutes!” and slammed his copy of the script down on the nearest table before stalking off.

Erik loosened his cravat with an impatient tug of his fingers and glanced around. Even though Charles hadn’t been around the set recently -- had been working with the orchestra on another soundstage across the lot, as far as Erik knew -- Erik still occasionally turned expecting to see him sitting nearby, watching the proceedings with that small, amused smile of his that he wore whenever he was thoroughly entertained but found it impolite to laugh aloud. But once again, he was nowhere to be found, even when Erik stretched his power out through the building in an attempt to feel out his chair.

“He’s not here, sugar,” Emma said as she tugged off her gloves.

“Well where is he then?” Erik asked irritably. “I know he’s busy with the orchestra but would it kill him to come around sometimes to see how filming’s going?”

Emma gave him a strange look. “He hasn’t told you?”

“Hasn’t told me what?”

“Funny. I thought he told you everything.”

Before he could press, she rose from the bench, tottered for a second in her unwieldy skirts, and strode off, calling for a cigarette. Erik dug his own cigarette case from the pocket of his sequined jacket, wincing as the stiff leather pinched the skin of his arm. As he lit up, one of the new sound technicians came over holding a clipboard, the red pen tucked at his ear nearly invisible under his mop of red hair.

“Hi, Mr. Lehnsherr,” the kid said. “Here’s the scene you just did. I circled the words that the microphone didn’t really pick up.”

Erik took the clipboard from him. On it was the page in the script they’d run through, and Erik grimaced to see that nearly half the words were circled. “Is this right? Cassidy, isn’t it?”

The boy grinned. “Yeah, that’s me. And yeah, man, you gotta make sure you talk right at the microphone. It’s not too good at picking up sound otherwise.”

Erik glanced over at the microphone hidden in the thick rosebush sitting by the marble bench. It wasn’t a problem of knowing where it was; he could feel it easily enough after all, its large circular frame impossible to miss with a brush of his power. But Emma had been right: it was impossible to address the bush directly without looking ridiculous and ruining the whole scene altogether.

“Isn’t there any way to put the microphone somewhere else?” he asked.

“Uh, not that I can think of. I mean, it’s kind of heavy, and the stand’s not real adjustable.”

Erik scowled. “Well it’s obviously not working in the bush. Can it pick up sound if it’s in my jacket?”

“Well -- I guess -- ”

Erik’s arm squeaked as he raised his hand to tug at the thick, hot wig on his head. With a grimace, he said, “Never mind. You wouldn’t be able to hear anything but this damned leather. What about in Emma’s bodice? At least then the microphone could get one of us clearly.”

Cassidy scratched his ear. “Sure, we can try it. Probably need to rewire some of the set, but it might work.”

“Good.” Restlessly Erik glanced around again and then said, “Hey, you sound guys work with the orchestra, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m working here in the morning, but I’ll run over there this afternoon.”  

“You know Charles Xavier?”

“The guy in the wheelchair?”

“The composer,” Erik said, annoyed. “Yes, him. When you see him, can you tell him I’ve been waiting for him to come around? Tell him to bring some of his music. God knows Emma could use some inspiration.”

Cassidy gave him the same look Emma had given him earlier. “Uh, didn’t you hear? Mr. Xavier can’t come around.”

“Why not?”

“Mr. Shaw banned him from the set. Said his chair could be a hazard around all the sound equipment.”

Erik stiffened. “And is it?”

“Is it what?”

“A hazard.”

“Well, it could be if he was rolling over the wires. But I guess if he just stuck to the edges of the set it’d be fine.” Cassidy shrugged. “I dunno. Mr. Shaw just said he didn’t want the chair in the way of things.”

“Is that what he said,” Erik growled, his tone flinty. “I think Mr. Shaw and I need to have a talk.”

But within the minute, Stryker was calling for everyone to return to their positions, and Erik was forced to return to wooing a decidedly disinterested Emma for the duration of the morning. They tried it with the microphone tucked into Emma’s bodice, they tried it with the accursed thing hidden within the voluminous folds of her dress, and finally they had Erik float it behind the screen of Emma’s open fan. Even then, the sound quality was apparently poor, and Stryker sent them all off to lunch with a disgruntled, “Come back in an hour ready to enunciate or I swear to God I’ll strap this damn microphone to your faces!”

Erik cornered Emma by the dressing room, blocking the door with his cane. “You knew about Charles being banned from the set?”

Emma shrugged one elegant shoulder. “Sure.”

“How?”

“I listen. I hear things.”

“With your telepathy, you mean. What else have you heard?”

“Oh, sugar, if I was to tell you all the things I’ve heard, we’d be here all day.” She pushed his cane down with a flick of her hand. “Do go whine to Shaw about it though. I love to see the man all riled up.”

Erik knew better than anyone that trying to squeeze Emma for answers was more futile than trying to squeeze water from a rock. So he took himself off in the direction of Shaw’s office and was surprised to find Charles wheeling down the hall toward him, smiling.

“Hello, Erik,” Charles said cheerily. “I heard you were getting off for lunch around this time so I thought I’d come over and ask if you wanted to grab a bite together.”

“Charles.” He tried to work out how to bring up Shaw’s order without insulting Charles’s pride, but he couldn’t seem to find the right words.

“If you’re too busy, that’s alright,” said Charles into the silence. “Don’t feel obligated. I’ve got work to do anyway.”

He was already wheeling his chair back in preparation to turn toward the door, but Erik stopped him with a tug of his power. “Wait. Is it true Shaw told you you’re not allowed on set anymore because of your chair?”

The good humor fading in Charles’s eyes was answer enough. “Yes. It’s irritating, but I’ll have to live with it I suppose.”

“Not if I speak to Shaw.”

Charles smiled fondly at him. “That’s very gallant of you, but please don’t make a fuss on my behalf.”

“Banning you from the set is bullshit!” Erik snapped. “There were always camera and lighting wires before, and you got around fine.”

“You must admit the chair is cumbersome, and now there’s a whole new team of sound technicians and equipment managers. There’s hardly room for me to be maneuvering around the set.”

“Don’t.” Erik glared at him. “Don’t try to justify this. You deserve better than that.”

“Erik,” Charles said firmly, “I appreciate all you want to do for me, truly. But trust me when I say I can fight my own battles, and this isn’t one that’s worth fighting.”

“I know you can take care of yourself. But what if I -- ” Erik blew out a short breath. “What if I wanted you there?”

Charles blinked. “What? On set?”

“Where else?”

“Oh. Well I -- I suppose...But why? The music will all be added later, you know, there’s no point in my being there to rehearse with you -- ”

Honestly, for a man who could read minds, Charles could be astoundingly dense. “I want you there because I always seem to do better when you’re watching me. Besides, Emma always fumbles her lines, and I figure if you were there to feed them to her -- you know, silently -- it would help the scene flow along much better.”

“Oh I…” Charles smiled hesitantly. “I suppose I could do that, yes. Though I doubt Shaw will be easily convinced.”

Erik gave him a sharp grin. “What’s he going to do, fire you? If you go, I go, and you know he can’t have that.”

“Well if you’re certain...”

“Of course I am. I can’t do this without you, you know.”

At that, a brief shadow seemed to flit behind Charles’s eyes. Erik peered more closely at him, but the shadow was gone as soon as it had come. Perhaps it had only been the light in the hall playing tricks on him, he thought as Charles said brightly, “Alright then. Shall we do lunch and then speak to Shaw?”

“Let’s.”

Tuesday morning found Charles sitting beside the sound booth, watching raptly as Erik and Emma worked through scene after scene, fighting microphone cables and odd dialogue phrasings all the way. It helped having him near, though he contributed little. Erik felt reassured every time he glanced over to find Charles’s gaze roving over the set, watching everything quietly, attentively.

He wasn’t sure if it was Charles’s presence or not -- likely not, since Charles hardly spoke anytime he sat on set, except to give an occasional remark about one aspect of the scene or another -- but the following days seemed to run more smoothly. The sound technicians perfected the microphone locations and orientations, the actors began to better understand their hackneyed lines, and Stryker mellowed as the production began to pick up steam. After a while Erik began to think that perhaps this talking movie thing might actually work. Might be something more than a fad or a failed experiment doomed to fade into obscurity.

In the end, he supposed later, he had guessed partially right. It wasn’t a fad after all.

It was an unmitigated disaster.

***

“The Duelling Cavalier makes one want to throw oneself upon the sword,” Charles read from the paper with a wince. “Lehnsherr and Frost were more appealing when they were seen and not heard—are you sure you want me to keep going?” He scanned further down the paper review. “It doesn’t get much better, unfortunately.”

“Keep going,” Erik moaned from where he was sprawled helplessly on the floor, his face buried in the plush pile of the carpet. “Better yet, put a match to it and set me on fire.”

Charles shared a look with Raven who was curled up at the other end of the couch. She shrugged helplessly.

“It wasn’t your fault Erik,” Charles tried, tossing the newspaper down at his feet. “We all know how bad the script was. And the sound falling out of synchronization--you can’t be held accountable for that!”

Erik muttered something foul and incomprehensible.

“And at least you weren’t as bad as Emma,” Raven laughed. “Remember when the vocal track was out of sync and she sounded like a man?” She climbed up on the couch with her usual easy dexterity and transformed  into Emma, affecting her typical half-hearted dramatic pose.

“You will be mine!” she shouted in a man’s voice before dissolving into giggles. Charles covered his grin with a hand, unsure of how Erik would take the joke, but when he glanced over Erik was watching Raven thoughtfully as she pranced about on the couch in Emma’s visage, singing loudly in a man’s voice. He had a look on his face that Charles was familiar with and fond of, a look that usually meant trouble, but also that some bolt of brilliance was percolating in Erik’s brain.

“What if...” he said slowly, as though the idea was still forming. Raven collapsed back down on the couch in her own skin and leaned against Charles’ shoulder. “What if we redid the film, only with Raven instead of Emma?”

Charles and Raven looked  at one another.

“But...you and Emma,” Charles hedged, not wanting to squash something for Raven, “you’re under contract. Shaw won’t go for it.” Erik shook his head.

“No, what if Raven was Emma.” He sat up, excitement radiating from his body and his mind, “We’re going to have to do reshoots of the film, that’s obvious. What if Raven replaced Emma on set?”

“Would Emma go for it?” Raven asked skeptically.

“She hates acting,” Charles said slowly, “Or, at least, she hates it now. She never would have made The Duelling Cavalier if she hadn’t been contractually obligated to.”

Erik nodded. “She’s gunning for Shaw’s job. She won’t care.”

“But...” Raven sounded uncharacteristically hesitant. “I don’t know if I want to keep making movies as other people.” She frowned. “When do I get to make a movie as me?”

“Oh darling,” Charles said, looping his arm over her shoulders and squeezing her tight. He was searching for some words of comfort when Erik replied, with utter conviction, “The next one. You’ll do the next one as Raven Darkholme, I promise you.” He reached forward and gripped her hands tight and Charles watched them grin at each other, already co-conspirators in something wonderful. He remembered when Erik used to look at him the same way.

“Assuming we can convince Emma to step aside, what are we going to do about the script?”

Erik frowned. “Right. The script.”

“It’s too bad it couldn’t just be music, like it used to be,” Raven said, leaning over to pick up the newspaper from the floor. “I think Charles’ music was the only thing the critics did like.”

“Why couldn’t it be?” Erik asked, looking sharply at Charles. “Why couldn’t it be a musical?”

“Oh no-” Charles shook his head fervently, tried to give Erik his most stern, unrelenting look, “No, Erik, they want reshoots done in three weeks! That’s not enough time to write an entire musical--”

“If anyone can do it, you can.” There was that look again, only this time turned on Charles at full capacity. His resolved crumbled like sugar in water. He never had been able to deny Erik anything.

He sighed. “Fine.” Raven gasped in excitement and hugged him tight. “But that’s only if the studio agrees! And assuming you can convince Emma.”

Erik winked at them. “Leave Emma to me.”

***

Raven smoothed her hand over her hair and checked her reflection in the gold plated elevator doors. Her image was watery and distorted and looked as nervous as she felt. She liked to tell herself that she wasn’t scared of anyone, but she had to admit that Emma Frost was an intimidating woman. Especially when she was holding Raven’s career in the palm of her hand and could crush it with a curl of her fingers.

She felt a whisper of Charles’ telepathy graze against her brain, a subtle wash of calm that settled she shoulders and her stomach. When she looked down at him he gave her a reassuring smile.

“You’re going to do great.” The elevator announced their arrival with a ding and Raven took a breath before the doors slid open. “Emma’s a pussycat.”

I don’t like being compared to animals, Charles, a voiced licked into their minds. Raven followed Charles out of the elevator into a penthouse suite lavishly decorated in white silks and marble, a glittering chandelier cascading silver light over an austere living room where Erik and Emma sat waiting for them.

“Though I do have claws.”

Emma stood from the couch and drifted toward them, perfect and posed in fur and silk, a crystal glass of clear liquor in her hand. She leaned down to kiss Charles on the cheek and then turned to Raven, looked her over from head to toe as she took a delicate sip from her drink.

“You must be Raven,” she said once her examination was complete. “Can you really do what Erik says you can do?” Raven took a breath to settle her nerves and shifted quickly into an exact replica of Erik, making sure to copy the same sharp suit he wore while stretched across Emma’s satin chaise watching her with amusement and something like pride. She changed quickly to Shaw and then President Coolidge, Charlie Chaplin, Queen Victoria and finally, Emma herself.

Beyond the icy exterior, Emma looked impressed. “You’re a one-woman show.” She turned to smirk at Erik. “She could put us both out of business.”

“I’m not trying to put anyone out of business,” Raven said, shifting back to her own skin. “Erik said you could use my help, that’s all.”

Emma raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

“And there’s nothing in it for yourself? You don’t have aspirations for fame, Ms. Darkholme?”

The words were mocking and Raven shifted uncomfortably. Emma had a way of looking right through a person. She wasn’t sure if it was the telepathy or something innate, some vicious part of her nature.

“I want to act,” she said finally, straightening her spine. “I want to act in my own skin. I’m sure you know firsthand, Ms. Frost, how difficult it is to get work as a mutant actor, and a female one at that. Though,” she gestured at her skin, “we don’t necessarily have the same obstacles.”

Emma was quiet for a moment, one manicured finger tapping against her glass.

“I know a thing or two about obstacles.” Her voice was serious, and when she looked Raven in the eye, she sensed a flash of kinship before the sardonic, icy mask was back in place and she was moving to collapse sensually back on the couch.

“So you can look like me--fine. Let’s hear you read my lines.”

***

Convincing Emma turned out to be the easy part. Charles couldn’t help but think they were all willing pawns in a larger game, but as long as they were on the same side he didn’t much care to dig into Emma’s brain and figure out her motives. He had larger problems to deal with—namely, writing an entire musical in three weeks.

By week two he was ready for a stiff drink and a one-way ticket out of the country.

He crumpled the current page of sheet music into a ball and threw it across the studio. The melody refused to fit together, his back was cramping to nearly unbearable levels, and his head felt thick and full of cotton. It was four in the morning and he couldn’t remember the last time he had slept in his own bed for an entire night.

“I thought that one was good,” Raven said from where she was sprawled on the floor. She sat up and crawled over to the wrinkled ball of paper, smoothing it out.

“Lucky Star,” she read, humming a few of the notes. “It’s nice!”

“Yes, nice,” Charles grumbled. “It’s perfectly nice.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Erik heaved himself off of the lumpy couch in the corner. “Time for a break.”

“A break?” Charles stared at him, “I have to have a song finished for tomorrow morning to show Shaw or else this entire musical charade of yours is over!”

Raven pressed a hand against her forehead and winced.

“Charles, you’re leaking everywhere.”

He set his elbow against the keys in a discordant bang and covered his face, tried to wearily pull his shields back together. Suddenly Erik was there next to him, his mind projecting soothing calm, his hand resting against Charles’s shoulder, rubbing at the tension there until Charles felt himself relax. He rested his face against Erik’s side, breathing in the scent of his laundry, the faint smell of sweat on his skin after a hot day and a long night of rehearsal.

After a moment, he realized he was leaning into Erik a little too heavily and quickly pulled himself back, offering them both a rueful smile. “Maybe a break is in order.”

They wandered through the studio lot, the soundstages looming up around them here and there like black monoliths blotting out the stars. The air was warm and damp, and an uncharacteristic rumble of thunder rolled above them promising rain. Erik was right: it felt good to get out of the cramped studio, to stretch the stiffness out of his hands by sliding them over the rims of his wheels as the three of them meandered here and there, swerving around shadowed set pieces of ancient cities and the Manhattan skyline.

“Charles, look!” Raven exclaimed. “This looks just like that place you and Erik performed at in Queens!” She ran over to a set piece that did look remarkably like the rundown Italian restaurant from one of their first tours, the one with the dilapidated stage and the impolite patrons who had thrown stale bread at them.

Raven soft-shoed lightly through a few steps. “I watched you dance that routine so many times I feel like I know it by heart.”

“Let’s see it then,” Charles called, laughing as she put on an appropriately campy expression and sang the first verse of Fit as a Fiddle, tapping out the steps with remarkable precision.

When she got to the end of the phrase, Charles and Erik applauded her wildly, calling for an encore just as the sky split open and the promised rainstorm was upon them. Raven let out a shriek as they were immediately soaked and then burst into gales of laughter, dancing a few more steps into the newly forming puddles.

“Come on Erik!” she shouted, reaching out her hand, “This is your part!”

“Are you crazy?” Erik hollered back, holding his coat over his head, looking as put out as a wet cat. Raven looked at Charles instead.

“How ‘bout it?”

Charles tilted his face up to the sky and let the black clouds pour rain across his cheeks, washing over his closed eyelids like holy water. Raven had been right in her letter: he did miss the rain. He opened his eyes and grinned up at her, reached out to snatch her around the waist so that she toppled into his lap and then took the two of them careening around the lot in swooping circles, splashing water up from the wheels of his chair. Raven was breathless with laughter, and once they’d almost run him over twice, Erik joined in, plucking Raven from Charles’ lap so that they could dance around him and kick water at one another, as silly as children and twice as carefree.

It struck him like lightning, as inspiration always did, the words of the song pouring into his brain so quickly that he nearly fell out of his chair, frozen body drawn tight as a bowstring.

“Wait—“ he called, holding a hand out to Erik who had been about to spin him in an elaborate circle. He looked up at him and grinned, clutched at his sleeve as the fragmented melody of the song tangled itself up with a bright joy and poured out his brain over Erik, over Raven, maybe over the whole of Los Angeles, asleep in their beds.

“I’ve got it.”

 ***

Erik hated being wet. It reminded him uncomfortably of harder, colder days on the street, but Charles seemed unbothered by his dripping hair or the way his shirt was clinging wetly to his shoulders and chest. When they arrived back at the rehearsal studio he wheeled quickly to the piano, shaking out his wet hands before placing them on the keys and playing a short phrase.

He laughed sharply and looked up at Erik. There was a spark in his eyes that Erik saw too seldom these days, the bright light of Charles’ genius that shone through every now and again. He scrambled for the stack of blank sheet music on top of the piano, rooted around frantically for his pen, and began to scribble sharp black notes across the page.

Erik let him work, watched the song burn through him and onto paper, Charles playing sections here and there on the piano. It was a catchy tune—damn catchy. Erik was beginning to think that maybe they had a hit on their hands. He always loved to watch Charles like this, completely consumed and in his element, somehow sharper than usual, dazzling and untouchable.

Raven returned to the room with a stack of towels. One she tossed at Erik, another she folded around Charles’ shoulders. “You’re going to catch your death, Charles.”

Charles ignored her and pointed at the page. “Sing this, will you?”

She leaned in closer to the page, squinting to read Charles’ chicken-scratch handwriting. Charles played a light, happy intro and then Raven began to sing in her beautiful low alto:

“I’m singing in the rain, just singing in the rain, what a glorious feeling I’m happy again—Charles it’s lovely! It’s perfect!”

Charles grinned up at her and sang,

“The sun’s in my heart, and I’m ready for love.”

It was perfect. It had just the right tone of optimism that was adored by the studio and audience both. More than that it was Charles’ brand of optimism—what Erik on his more unforgiving days would term as naivety—hope and sunshine in the face of extreme adversity. He listened to Charles and Raven sing, “Let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place, come on with the rain I’ve a smile on my face,” and realized: that was Charles all over. He forgot about how cold and wet he was, forgot about the rain, just listened to Charles sing and felt the song warm him down to his bones.

Within the hour they were in another studio, this one full of incomprehensible sound equipment and Charles was explaining something to a sleepy sound technician as Erik and Raven prepared themselves at the microphone.

“He’s amazing,” Raven murmured to Erik as she adjusted the height of the microphone stand, “I don’t know anyone else who can do what he does.” Erik watched Charles gesture something at the tech, his hands moving in graceful loops as he conducted a particular phrase of through the air, and silently agreed.

Finally Charles wheeled himself out from the sound booth and into the studio, pushing himself close to the short platform where Raven and Erik were waiting.

“Alright I think we’re all set. Erik, I was thinking you could sing the first verse—“

He turned to look at the door as it swung open abruptly and Shaw strode in, Emma trailing in behind him with amusement curling around her lips. Shaw looked furious, his thin mouth pressed into a flat line as he took in the three of them.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, and Erik looked at Emma over his shoulder, sent her a pulse of confusion coloured with annoyance. If this is some kind of maneuver--

Don’t look at me, she sent back, I didn’t tell him anything.

“Mr. Shaw,” Charles said politely, “we’ve finished a new song for the movie, would you like to hear it?”

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Erik felt Raven tense beside him as Shaw pointed at her fiercely, and reached out to grip her wrist.

“This is the newest star of Monumental Pictures, Sebastian. You should watch the way you speak to her.”

Shaw looked at him, stunned and incredulous.

“Blue? You think people want to see a blue dame on their screens?”

Erik’s vision went red. Distantly he could hear Charles sputtering some enraged defense on Raven’s behalf, and then Erik felt Raven shift beneath his hand, scales clicking away to smooth skin.

“They’re already going to be looking at me,” she said in the low, flat tone of Emma’s voice. When he looked at her, it was Emma who looked back at him with yellow eyes, her expression strangely mobile and passionate. The real Emma Frost would never show so much emotion on the surface of her skin, but then, the real Emma Frost wasn’t half the actress Raven was. “Might as well be the real me.”

Erik looked back to Shaw, and instead of anger he was peering up at Raven curiously, his gray gaze sharp and shrewd. Realization began to dawn behind his eyes. “Your name?”

Raven lifted her chin and slipped back into her own skin. “Raven Darkholme.”

“You’ve been standing in as Emma for the past few weeks, haven’t you.” He looked at over at Emma, who has draped herself elegantly over a chair and was examining her nails. “I thought she seemed more...amenable than usual.”

“Mr. Shaw,” Charles said, wheeling forward, “Raven is a superbly talented, as you can see. She has agreed to step in for Ms. Frost for the duration of this shoot, but I think afterwards it will be in your best interest to offer her a personal contract. Before someone else does.”

Shaw looked back at Emma.

“And you?”

“I’m out, darling. I’m bored. When my contract expires after this picture, I’m heading back to New York.” She smirked at him. “I’ll let someone else be your prized peacock.”

Shaw looked them over, one by one. Finally he smiled, the broad, sharp-toothed grin that made him look like a weasel in a fine suit.

“Well this is perfect then--this is ideal. Ms. Darkholme will continue to stand in for Emma, and Emma will fulfill the obligations of her contract.” He looked to Raven and his smile broadened. “I’ll have the lawyers draw up something for you to sign, my dear, something that will ensure your many talents are utilized.” He flicked his hand at Charles, “Carry on, Xavier.”

As he settled into a chair at the back of the room next to Emma, turning expectant eyes on Erik and Raven as Charles walked them through the song, Emma whispered in his mind, Too easy, Lehnsherr. Be careful.

***

Charles was buried in loose sheet music when Erik came to find him the next day. Once inspiration struck it tended to pour through him in massive waves until it eventually ran dry. He was scribbling down lyric ideas down the margin of an already completed overture when Erik knocked gently on the door.

“Got a minute?”

Charles nodded, dropping the pen wedged between his lips into his hand and waving him forward.

“Is everything alright? How’s rehearsal on the new number?”

Erik smiled and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.

“To be honest, it’s making me realize how long it’s been since I sang in front of an audience. I’m not sure I’m up to snuff.”

“You have a wonderful voice!” Charles protested. “Did Shaw say something to you?”

“No, no,” Erik waved aside his concern. “It’s pure vanity.” He came and sat on the piano bench next to Charles, disturbing his papers and shoving him over until they were pressed close to one another. Normally Charles sat in his chair when he played, but he found the bench gave him extra space for making notations when he was writing, and now he could feel the heat of Erik’s body tucked up close against his own.

“Wanna give me a lesson?” Erik asked, playing a few discordant notes on the piano before shooting him a smile.

“You don’t need a lesson.” Charles shuffled his sheet music together, trying to vaguely organize the pieces before sliding them on top of the piano.

“What are you working on?” Erik asked, flipping through the stacks of music set out in front of them, songs Charles was in the middle of figuring out. “What’s this one?”

Charles snatched it out of his hand once he read the title.

“This one…this one isn’t ready yet.”

“Oh come on,” Erik nudged him with his elbow, “You always play me your works in progress.”

Charles swallowed and laid the music out again. Of all the lousy songs Erik could have chosen.

He placed his hands on the keys and pressed the first chord lightly.

“Life was a song, You came along, I've laid awake the whole night through. If I ever dared to think you'd care, This is what I'd say to you: You were meant for me. And I was meant for you—“ He cut off, abruptly, his heart fluttering wildly in his throat until he could no longer sing. He was aware of every part of his body that was touching Erik’s, even the parts he could no longer feel: his thigh, his knee, the spur of bone in his ankle that was pressed lightly against Erik’s shin.

The quiet in the room seemed overwhelmingly loud once the ringing tones of the piano had faded. He could barely look at Erik, was sure all of his feelings were sketched as obviously across his face as they were in the words of the song. That song he had written in the deep hours of the night when his loneliness was at the peak of mourning.

“I always forget,” Erik said, breaking the silence. When Charles looked at him, his eyes were dark, his expression considering.

“Forget what?” Charles asked.

“I always forget how beautiful your voice is.” Charles could barely breathe. Erik smiled, sharp and playful. “Maybe we should get you to dub me in the movie.”

The tension broke in an instant and Charles was able to roll his eyes and shove his elbow into Erik’s side. “Pipe down you sap. You’ll be fine, trust me.”

They startled when the door swung open and Raven rushed in, bee-lining toward them when she spotted them at the far end of the room.

“Here you are. You’re not going to believe what I just found out.”

Emma swept in after her with considerably more grace, turning to shut the door before she joined Raven at the piano. Raven nudged her.

“Tell them what you told me.”

Emma shot her an annoyed look but said, “I was rooting around in Sebastian’s head last night—don’t look at me like that Charles, we all can’t be as moral as you—and I found out that he’s planning on making Raven sign a contract that will force her to continue on impersonating me.”

“What?” Charles gasped. “But how can he do that?”

Emma shrugged. “He’s a snake. He’ll find a way.” She looked at Erik. “I told you it was too easy.”

“What do we do?” Raven reached out and grabbed Charles’ hand. “Emma said he could use you as leverage? Fire you if I refuse?”

“I’ll be damned if he gets rid of Charles,” Erik growled, “I’ll quit. He can’t make Raven impersonate both of us.”

“Now now, let’s be calm,” Emma raised placating hands. She smiled deviously and leaned in toward the three of them. “I have a plan.”

***

There was something eminently satisfying about experiencing success again after an enormous failure. The audience applauded for a full five minutes, rising to their feet when Erik and Emma stepped out from the wings to take their bows. And yet, it felt false to leave Raven behind while the two of them soaked up the adulation. He glanced back to where she was standing next to Charles off stage, one hand on his shoulder, her expression sitting somewhere in between excitement and disappointment.  Emma whispered into his mind, Patience, Sugar.

He escorted Emma back into the wings just as Shaw appeared, smiling his sharp, showman’s smile and congratulating them all on their success.

“We’ve  just ensured that Lehnsherr and Frost are going to last another five years,” he said, shaking Erik’s hand tight enough to nearly crush the bones, “isn’t that right, little lady.” He winked at Raven, and Erik saw her fist clench into the material of Charles’ suit jacket, nearly ripping shoulder from sleeve.

In the auditorium, the audience was chanting Emma’s name, demanding a song.

“Well?” Shaw looked at Emma and then shooed her with his hand, “Give the people what they want Ms. Frost.” Emma’s eyes moved slowly from his hand to his face, and after contemplating him for a moment, smiled viciously.

The crowd cheered as Emma returned to the stage, her furs sweeping behind her, the spotlight illuminating her hair like a golden halo. She stopped before the microphone and held up her hands, a hush falling over the crowd as she leaned toward the orchestra and asked for Singing in the Rain in the key of B.

At Charles’ gentle push Raven hurried behind the curtain toward the microphone Shaw’s people were setting up. On stage Emma looked toward the wings and smiled at Erik and Charles, a slow, amused curl of her lips. As Charles gestured at Raven to get ready, counting her in as the conductor cued the orchestra, Shaw leaned close to Erik and gripped him tight around the elbow.

“What’s going on?” he whispered fiercely, his breath hot against Erik’s neck. “What have you done?”

Erik stepped back until his leg bumped against Charles’ chair and Shaw was forced to let him go.

“Nothing,” he replied, “nothing except what you asked us to do.”

Shaw’s hands clenched, but he fell quiet as Raven began to sing. Erik peered out at the audience, at the bright, excited faces watching Emma lip-sync halfheartedly to the music, one hand placed lazily on her hip, the other wrapped around the microphone. As she reached the end of the second verse, Charles wheeled forward and caught the attention of the conductor, signalling a vamp. Erik watched him wheel back sharply to catch Raven’s attention, holding up one hand to cut her off at the end of the phrase before the reprise, and was suddenly, overwhelming proud of him, and glad he was with Erik in this, though it was a huge gamble for all of their careers.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Emma called, her real voice carrying over the crowd, amplified by the microphone. “It is with real regret that I announce my retirement from acting." An unsettled murmur spread over the crowd, but they quieted as Emma held up one hand.

"But it is my pleasure to present to you the woman behind the voice you all fell in love with tonight--the jewel of Monumental Pictures, Raven Darkholme.”

When she looked at Erik again, he stretched his power toward the trim chains over the stage and with a gesture pulled the heavy velvet curtain open. He watched as Raven smoothed a hand over her hair and took a breath, looking up and smiling as the light hit her, the curtains slipping past her and into the wings. The deep gold of her dress shone beautifully against her skin and her red hair, radiant under the spotlight. It seemed for a moment as though the entire audience was holding its breath, confused and suspended in disbelief.

Raven hesitated, a moment of panic and doubt flickering over her expression, but when Emma held a hand out to her she steeled herself and strode forward, came to a stop before the microphone as Emma looped an arm around her waist. Charles gestured wildly at the conductor who was staring up at the stage in confusion, his baton held limply in one hand. At Charles’ signal he nodded and swept the music forward again into the reprise.

This time it was Raven singing as Raven, and when her clear, beautiful voice poured through the microphone, the audience was rapt and won over. As Emma stepped back and left her alone at center stage, Erik watched Raven come to life, mesmerizing and unstoppable and soon the audience was applauding, slowly at first and then thunderously, with enthusiasm.

Erik realized he was clapping as well, and when he looked over Charles was laughing, his face open and beaming, split into an impossible smile. They shared a look and Charles reached out and clasped Erik around the wrist, squeezing him tightly before he brought his hands together again as the song came to an end and the audience was pulled to their feet.

Erik found it difficult to draw his eyes away from Charles, but Emma was calling for him and the stagehands were pushing him forward, forcing him out in front of the crowd. When he appeared the applause swelled and exploded from the rafters and he held a hand out to Raven who grinned at him, her face flushed and excited as she took another bow. The three of them joined hands and bowed as one, smiling and waving at the audience as they stood again.

The applause went on and on until the three of them were laughing, until Erik's hand was tired of waving and his mouth ached from the stretch of his lips. He turned back to the wings and grinned at Shaw whose expression was thunderous, his arms crossed tightly against his chest. But then just behind Shaw he caught sight of Charles, nearly blocked completely from view by the bodies of the stage hands and studio executives watching and applauding from the wings. Erik could only see his face through a slice of space between bodies, but he could see Charles was smiling. He looked content, and satisfied, but strangely Erik felt his heart twist, his ear suddenly numb to the sound of applause, or Raven asking if the two of them should sing the reprise as a duet before they left the stage.

***

The after party was as glamorous as always, though Erik suspected this would be the last one Shaw would host at his grand manor out in the Hollywood hills. With the way Emma was holding court in the corner, approached on all sides by simpering studio executives, it looked as though a change of regime was coming.

He drifted through the crowd, ignoring the proffered trays stacked with golden flutes of wine, the hands that brushed against his arm and grasped at the his sleeve, the bedroom eyes and offered dance partners. As he rounded a low, circular couch piled full of chorus girls in pink feathered headpieces he spotted Raven across the room, glittering like a sapphire in the low light and surrounded by admirers. She caught his eye and gestured at him to come over but he shook his head. A room full of beautiful people vying for his attention and the one person he wanted to see was nowhere to be found.

He made his way toward the far end of the room, toward the terrace and the lush gardens beyond. The french doors had been thrown open in deference to the heat of the crowded party and a cool breeze was blowing in from the ocean, crisp and welcome on Erik’s cheeks when pushed his way outside. Beyond the doors couples were gathered here and there against the stone railing, locked in intimate embraces or whispering soft secrets to one another in the moonlight.

Erik left the raucous noise of the party behind him and headed down the steps toward the elegantly landscaped yard. The foliage was lush and Erik pushed past tall palm fronds to find a pool glimmering in the dark, and beyond it the smell of roses in full bloom. All was shadowed and quiet, the strains of music and laughter softly calling from the distance over the sound of leaves moving in the evening breeze.

He skirted the pool, found a pathway carved through the rosebushes and eventually, the stone patio that overlooked the city, bright lights twinkling in the distance. The view was spectacular, but Erik saw only Charles, his chair parked close to the trees, his profile outlined by the moon. There were stars in his eyes when he looked over his shoulder and Erik felt as though he couldn’t breathe.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” he asked, venturing forward to come and stand next to Charles’ chair. Charles looked back out toward the city.

“I figured this might be the last chance I get to come out here, now that Emma’s thrown her coup.” He grinned up at Erik. “Shaw might be a bastard but he does have one hell of a view.”

Erik nodded in agreement and called one of the heavy wrought-iron benches forward to settle in next to Charles. They sat in silence for what felt like a long while, watching the pinpoints of light move back and forth like a moving universe spread beneath their feet. Erik could tell Charles was mulling something over, could feel the static in the air caused by his churning thoughts, and waited him out.

“I guess you and Raven will get to dazzle audiences together after all,” he finally said, giving Erik a small smile before looking back out toward the city. “You make a good team. Maybe the best match of all of us.”

“I don’t know,” Erik said, keeping his eyes fixed on the horizon, “I thought we made a pretty good team.”

Charles was quiet, and the sounds of the night crept in around them again.

“Do you ever miss it?” Erik asked, and he snuck a glimpse at Charles then to gauge his reaction. Charles to rarely chose to speak about the past, but tonight he looked open, almost raw, and contemplative.

“Sometimes. Do you?”

“You know what I miss?” He had to take a minute to pull his thoughts together, just to put a finger on just what it was he was feeling, and what he wanted to say.  “I miss people seeing you.”

Charles looked at him, surprised. “What?”

“Not just people seeing you up on stage. I miss them recognizing how good you are. How amazing you are.”

 “And what,” Charles asked sharply, “I’m invisible now? The chair makes me invisible?”

Erik stiffened. “You’re never invisible to me. Never.”

Charles was watching him now with close scrutiny, the slanted shadows obscuring his face.  “And what do you see, Erik? What do you see when you look at me?”

“Back when we were doing the act together, you were...brighter than me. You shone. I always knew you were the real talent.” He laughed a bit uncomfortably. “I think most of the audience knew that too.”

Charles opened his mouth to object but Erik held up a hand to forestall him. “I know you think the accident changed all of that, but it didn’t. It didn’t change the way you shine. It didn’t take away your talent.”

“I’m not sure I can tap dance as well as I used to,” Charles laughed, choked and broken. It startled Erik to hear it; Charles’s cheerful mask so rarely slipped. In that, Erik thought, Charles’s acting talent had always served him well.

Erik shifted closer to him along the bench so he could see his face in the darkness. “You’re the same,” he said, watching Charles carefully, “in all the ways that matter.”

He watched a muscle in Charles’s jaw flex as he looked away. When he looked back his eyes were wet and he was chewing on the corner of his bottom lip, a nervous tick that was painfully familiar.

“You might be the only person who sees me like that,” he whispered, and the pain in his voice was immeasurable. Was unbearable. Erik shifted closer still, close enough that he could feel Charles’ breath hot against his cheek.

“I’ll always see you like that,” he murmured before crossing the final distance between them and pressing a kiss against Charles’ mouth.

It was just a gentle touch of skin, lips grazing tentatively. They parted and stayed close, their commingled breathing a moving current that drew them together again. Charles kissed him harder this time, and then again, fiercely, as though a dam had given way. Erik was dizzy in the tide of it, hands coming up to cling to Charles’ lapels, and then the sharp line of his jaw, drawing him as close as he could and swallowing each gentle sound that crept out of Charles’ throat and into his mouth.

He bit sharply at the swell of Charles’ distracting bottom lip, chased after him when he drew back with a gasp to kiss him again. Charles began to laugh, loud and long, and Erik pulled away at last, trying to see what had amused him so thoroughly.

“Do you know,” Charles said, breathless and wide-eyed, “I’ve been in love with you since I was nineteen.”

Erik stared at him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because -- ” Charles took a long, sharp breath. “Because I was also stupid when I was nineteen.” One hand clutched tightly at the arm of his chair, the other clenched in his lap as if he were stopping himself from reaching out. With a strained smile, he said, “Erik, I love you. But I don’t want you to feel obligated to -- I mean, the chair -- ”

“Don’t. Don’t doubt this, not now.” Erik’s thumb pressed against the generous line of Charles’s lower lip. “I meant what I said before. I want all of you, the chair included. And I love you.”

A tear slipped from the corner of Charles’s eye and escaped down the side of his cheek before Charles brushed it away with an impatient swipe of his sleeve. “Look at me, crying like a great sap. Come here and kiss me again before I weep all over you.”

Erik had never followed an order more eagerly.

Above them the night sky grew dark as clouds blotted out the stars and with a low, heart-jolting rumble of thunder, a gentle rain began to fall. When they startled apart, Charles laughed as Erik cringed under the downpour, glaring up at the sky. Erik frowned at him and then found his bad humour melting away at the sight of Charles, his hair plastered across his forehead, his eyelashes sticking together like the points of a star, laughing brightly in the midst of an autumn rainstorm. He reached out to push Charles’ hair off his face, combing back the wet strands and placing a light kiss on the cool skin revealed underneath.

“The sun’s in my heart,” he sang softly, kissing the high arch of one cheek and then the other, “and I’m ready for love.”

“Come here,” Charles said, his voice raw with emotion as he tugged Erik’s jacket lapels gently forward until Erik climbed onto his lap. It wasn’t long before they were soaked through to the bone, and cold trickles of rainwater slipping down the back of Erik’s collar made him shiver. But he kissed Charles again and again, kissed his smile and felt the warmth of it down in his toes, and for once the rain hardly bothered him at all.