Chapter Text
The Men Who Were Tuesday: A Nightmare
The suburbs of what came to be called the Estates had been built of promise and progress, the American dream realised through generations of innovation and industry. But over the years, the sky-line had became fantastic array of shadow and smog and the landscaped grounds had grown wild. History generally agree the cause had been the clash of two idealists, with temperaments that the more literary wanted to call “artistic,” and the realists called “mad” and the worst called “mutant”.
Regardless, there was an unattractive unreality to the place and came nightfall, and even the most scientific and literal minded had to admit that there must be some truth to the ghost stories- of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, who were always trying to find each other. It became a tradition for parents to warn their children away from the Estates on Tuesdays where the winds were said to whisper: “Come back, I’m waiting for you.”
-=-=
Sleep becomes like death over the years
At first, it began like all of Erik’s dreams- in darkness. And like all the dreams Erik had grown used to and nearly forgotten since they parted, the darkness disappeared with Charles’ appearance. Understandably angry, but solid, skin and muscle warm and alive and walking and with him. Erik was used to pain.
The nightmare began with the sound of pencil on paper while blood trickled down his neck and a lucid memory that Charles had always used a pen, the metal nib an intimate reminder of companionship and trust. Consequently, it couldn’t be Charles who held Erik immobile, who wrote and tested while Erik gave all he was, all he would become-
And still, Erik wished for the dream. He would bear even the shadow of the man he loved than to have Charles
absent from his thoughts.
-=-=
Erik comes back on Tuesdays. He never gets use to it: the way he must steal in to the mansion like a thief, the pills by the bed, the changes to the doorways, the order of books on the bookshelves. Sometimes he thinks he’s punishing himself, but he stays until Charles wakes up. Charles can lose himself in other people’s thoughts, but in his bed, next to the warmth of his body, Erik makes an argument (for the Brotherhood, for himself): they’re not merely a whim, an idea, or a dream. He refuses to think that it’s because he doesn’t want to leave.
-=-=
“I dare you,” says Charles to Erik every Tuesday. He is waiting for the question he knows Erik wants to ask.
Erik glares. He always wonders if Charles is mocking him by refusing to answer that question, but Charles takes out another book. He is staying for at least one more day.
-=-=
How do you keep a man who manipulates metal behind steel bars and a man who manipulates mind in prison? The solution was elegant- they did it for each other and were apart except for Tuesdays. But the arrangement made neither happy. The enforced passivity ended no arguments and offered no compromises. Charles and Erik only learned that they could not bear to be parted and would only be enemies to a point.
-=-=
In the early hours of an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday, Charles/Erik took over the world and the world liked it that Tuesday and every Tuesday afterwards; little do the humans know it’s a compromise made in the bedroom to which they owe their lives.
-=-=